Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (21 page)

After the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby two days later, his mother's
tone changed to one of suspicion and accusation, blaming the Dallas police
and federal authorities for her son's death. She asked bitterly: "Why
would [Jack Ruby] be allowed within a few feet of a prisoner-any
prisoner-when I could not even see my own son?"

To compound her suspicions, she maintained until her death that the FBI
had shown her a photo of Ruby the night before her son was slain. She
said about 6:30 P.M. on November 23, the night after the assassination, an
FBI agent and another man knocked on the door of the hotel where she and
Lee's wife were staying. After being told that her daughter-in-law was tired and couldn't talk with the men, the FBI agent said he wanted to ask
her a question. She recalled the incident to newsmen a week later:

He had a picture coupled [sic] inside his hand and asked me if I had
ever seen that man before. I told him, "No sir, believe me, I never
have." Then he left. A few days later, I walked into the room where I
was staying and, in front of my son Robert and lot of witnesses, I
picked up a paper and when I turned it over I said, "This is the picture
of the man that FBI agent showed me." I did not even know at the time
he was the man who shot my son. I was told that the picture was [of]
Mr. Jack Ruby.

FBI officials, when informed of her statement, speculated that she must
have been confused as to the date she was shown the photograph.

On July 10, 1964, FBI agent Bardwell D. Odum signed an affidavit
with the Warren Commission stating that he had shown the picture to
Mrs. Oswald. He said the photo was furnished by FBI superiors, who
obtained it from the CIA. The FBI said they included the photo as
a Warren Commission exhibit. It was reportedly supplied by the CIA,
which was secretly photographing visitors to the Soviet embassy in
Mexico City.

This incident was the beginning of a lifelong suspicion of federal
authorities by Mrs. Oswald. To the end of her life, she maintained that Lee
had been working as some sort of agent for the U.S. government and that
unnamed "high officials" were part of the plot to kill Kennedy and blame
her son. After Watergate, she told a local newspaper: "If you called in all
the FBI men involved in Lee Harvey Oswald's life and questioned them,
one thing would lead to another and it would probably break the assassination case."

Just after the assassination, Mrs. Oswald said: "They [the public] all
turned their backs on me before [when Oswald appeared in Russia] and
they will turn their backs on me again, but my faith will see me through."
And faith was truly about the only thing left for Mrs. Oswald.

With the exception of a couple of mysterious "benefactors" who kept
her supplied with publications concerning the assassination, Marguerite
Oswald was forced to live through the next two decades on less than five
hundred dollars a month in Social Security payments. In the Bicentennial
summer of 1976, she was without a refrigerator for almost two months
because she could not afford to repair hers. The loneliness and poverty of
her life, however, failed to crush her fighting spirit. She continued to
assail the official version of the assassination and to strike out at media
presentations of the event.

In 1978, after viewing a CBS "docudrama" entitled "Ruby and Oswald,"
she told the local newspaper:

I have every right to be upset over that program as well as many other
things because they are talking about my son and my family. They sit
there and tell the gullible American public that their program is the truth
and based on documentation. Well, I'm sitting here with things you've
never heard of. I can tear that CBS program apart like I did the Warren
Commission.

Her thoughts on the Warren Commission, whose conclusions were taken
as gospel at the time but gradually lost the confidence of the majority of
Americans, are summed up in a letter Mrs. Oswald wrote to several
congressmen in 1973 at the height of the Watergate crisis:

On Nov. 29, 1963, the then President of the United States, Lyndon B.
Johnson, created a commission to evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and
the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin and to report its findings
and conclusions to him. . . . President Johnson selected Earl Warren,
Chief Justice of the United States, as its chairman. Because I was critical
of the commission, I was asked, "Mrs. Oswald, are you implying that
the Chief Justice would whitewash evidence or hide information so that
the American people, as well as the whole world, would never learn the
truth?" I answered, yes, in the name of security, men of integrity and
who are the most esteemed, most respected and honored, who have the
welfare of the country at heart, would be most likely to do what the
White House wanted and thought necessary. The Watergate affair has
followed this pattern. Those we believe are above reproach, those who
have reached the pinnacle or are near it, those who are guiding our
nation's destiny are found to have manipulated events to accomplish
certain things they think were for the good of the country. Those who
have a deep sense of patriotism and loyalty are most likely to twist
events to accomplish their purposes. . . . The Watergate affair only
strengthens my convictions and proves my theory. [In 1963] The suspect was my son and seven such respected men branded a dead man
who was neither tried nor convicted, assassin.

Through the years, Mrs. Oswald, who always claimed to be a "mother
in history," was quick to point out that her defense of her son went
beyond simple motherly love. She once told this author: "If he was truly
guilty, I can accept that. But whether it's my son or someone else's son, I
want the proof and the proof is just not there."

In her last years, Mrs. Oswald was virtually a recluse in her modest but
well-kept brick home on the west side of Fort Worth. An occasional
visitor-usually a journalist-and her small dog, Fritz, were her only
company.

Neither her other sons nor Lee's wife, Marina, ever spoke to her again after those days in November 1963. When money problems pressed too
hard, she would sell a book or a letter from her mammoth collection of
assassination materials. It was such money problems that helped create the
belief that Mrs. Oswald would only talk for profit.

However, as several Fort Worth newsmen can confirm, she never
hesitated to pick up her telephone and call the media when a particular news
item rankled her. She once explained the charge of talk-for-cash this way:

Well, here I am without money, wondering where my next meal is
coming from and these writers come to my house wanting an interview.
Then they go out and write some piece-some of them don't even talk
to me more than fifteen minutes or so-and they get all this money for
their work. That's not fair!

Over the years, Mrs. Oswald made repeated attempts to publish a book
based on her knowledge, memories, and research of the assassination.
Oddly enough, in light of the hundreds of books on the subject by authors
ranging from the famous to crackpots, no one would publish a book by the
mother of the accused assassin.

In January 1981, Mrs. Oswald quietly entered a Fort Worth hospital.
Rumors circulated that she had cancer. By the end of that month, Marguerite Claverie Oswald was dead. Her memorial service was private. But her
cause lives on. In one of her last letters to this author she wrote but one
simple sentence: "Again-The charges against my late son Lee Harvey
Oswald are false."

Oswald's early life is shrouded in innuendo and misinformation, much
of it stemming from the passionate attitudes following the assassination.

Anyone who had had any contact with Oswald was hunted down and
interviewed by newsmen and many were deposed by the Warren Commission.

And no one, including some family members, had anything good to say
about the man accused of killing one of this nation's most popular presidents.

Some examples of misinformation include the statement that his two
older brothers, and eventually Lee himself, were placed in an orphanage
by their mother. While true in one respect, a closer look shows that Mrs.
Oswald had to work to earn a living for their fatherless family. Keep in
mind there were no daycare centers in 1942.

Mrs. Oswald explained to newsmen years later that she placed the boys
in the Bethlehem Children's Home, operated by the Lutheran Church.
Admittedly it was also an orphanage, but more precisely, it was the
forerunner of a daycare center. She saw the boys on weekends and
holidays. It was quite a different situation from that described in the
Warren Commission Report: "Reminding her sons that they were orphans
and that the family's financial condition was poor, she placed [them] in an
orphans' home."

Lee's oldest brother, John Pic, told the Warren Commission that Lee
slept with his mother until almost eleven years old, thus supplying much
fodder for later psychological speculation. Mrs. Oswald's version sounds
more mundane:

.. . [while] I was married . . . Lee had his own bed, of course, all the
while. After I divorced this man [Ekdahl], all I got from this divorce
was $1,500 and I paid a $1,000 down on a home. Well, I had to buy
furniture. I bought used furniture, and one of the boys slept on an army
cot, and the other on a twin bed, and, because of the circumstances, Lee
slept with me; which was a short time because then his brother joined
the service and when he did, Lee took his bed. But it just implies that
all through his life he slept with his mother, which isn't the case, you
see. It's quite a difference.

Robert Oswald supported his mother's version of this issue by writing:
"If this [sleeping arrangement] had a bad effect on Lee, I'm sure mother
didn't realize it. She was simply making use of all the space she had."

Much was made of Oswald's truancy in New York during 1953-54, as
well as the psychological testing resulting from this infraction.

In the summer of 1952, shortly before Lee's thirteenth birthday, he and
his mother had gone to live with his half-brother John Pic and his wife in
New York City, where Pic was stationed with the Coast Guard. There
were reports of fights and divisions within the group and by the start of the
school year, Lee and his mother had moved into their own apartment in the
Bronx.

Teased at junior high school because he wore jeans and spoke with a
Texas accent, Lee began staying away. However, unlike most truants who
ended up in pools halls or street gangs, Lee continued his education on his
own, frequenting the local library and the zoo. Finally caught, the youngster was handed over for psychiatric observation to an institution called
Youth House. Here he stayed from April 16 until May 7, 1953. Mrs.
Oswald said it was only after having both her gifts and her person searched
for cigarettes and narcotics, that she realized Youth House was one step
short of jail. She said her son implored her: "Mother, I want to get out of
here. There are children in here who have killed people and smoke. I want
to get out."

While under the care of the state, Oswald was given psychiatric tests.
The results were essentially inconclusive. They showed him to be a bright
and inquisitive young man who was somewhat tense, withdrawn, and
hesitant to talk about himself or his feelings.

Even the Warren Report, which generally tried to depict Oswald in the
worst possible light, conceded:

Contrary to reports that appeared after the assassination, the psychiatric
examination did not indicate that Lee Oswald was a potential assassin,
potentially dangerous, that "his outlook on life had strongly paranoid
overtones," or that he should be institutionalized.

After his experience in Youth House, there were no further truancy
problems with young Lee. In January 1954, Lee and his mother returned to
New Orleans, where he finished the ninth grade and began the tenth. Upon
arriving in New Orleans, the Oswalds lived initially with Mrs. Oswald's
sister and her husband, Lillian and Charles "Dutz" Murret, before finding
an apartment of their own.

Everyone who knew Oswald as a youth agrees that he was somewhat
introverted and was what could be best described as a "bookworm." His
interests were widely varied, including animals, astronomy, classic literature . . . and, eventually, politics. Reading comic books and listening to
radio and TV were also among his favorite pastimes.

Robert Oswald later recalled:

One of his favorite ITV] programs was "I Led Three Lives," the story
of Herbert Philbrick, the FBI informant who posed as a communist spy.
In the early 1950's Lee watched that show every week without fail.
When I left home to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns.

There can be little doubt that the well-read but lonely young Oswald
spent much of his time daydreaming, fantasizing about being an important
person some day.