Matt Crumpton

Sep 1814 min read

Ep 56: Fall, 1963

We are in the homestretch of this season 2 of Solving JFK. The goal for this season is to study the life of Lee Harvey Oswald to see what we can learn, and apply to the bigger picture study of the JFK Assassination. So far, we’ve covered Oswald’s life from the time he was born until early October of 1963.

In this episode, we pick up with Oswald back in Dallas. We examine the last 7 weeks of Oswald’s life, including how he got the job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building, the continued political activity of Oswald, and the state of the relationship between Lee and Marina on the day of the assassination.

Kicked Out of Marsalis, Looking For Work

As we discussed over the last few episodes about Mexico City, there are multiple credible reports of Oswald being in two places at the same time during the end of September and the first few days of October - of 1963. Either Oswald was in Dallas at that time and was impersonated in Mexico City, or Oswald was in Mexico City, which would mean that Oswald was impersonated in Dallas. Either way, we know that Oswald was impersonated somewhere during this time.

On October 3rd, a much clearer picture of Oswald’s whereabouts and actions begins to emerge. On that day, Oswald went to the Texas Employment Commission to look for a job in Dallas. Oswald was matched with an open job that needed his skill set, but he wasn’t hired for it. This is because his former boss Robert Stovall at Jaggers, Chiles, Stovall told the company that Oswald was QUOTE “kind of an oddball, peculiar, and may be a damn communist.”[1] After being turned down for this job, Oswald stayed at the Dallas YMCA that night.[2]

The next day, Oswald called his wife, Marina, and asked her to get Ruth Paine to come and pick him up in Dallas to bring him out to her house in Irving. But, Ruth wasn’t able to help because she was in the hospital giving blood just in case it was needed for the delivery of Marina’s baby that was due any day now. So, instead, Oswald hitchhiked the 15 miles or so to get to Irving.[3] Ruth Paine said that he told her he was in Houston looking for work, but that he had been in Dallas for a few days before coming to her house. The unemployed Oswald stayed at the Paine residence from October 4th through October 6th.[4]

On Monday, October 7th, Oswald rented a room at a boarding house from Mary Bledsoe at 621 Marsalis Avenue. But, he was kicked out of the boarding house only one week later because, as Bledsoe told the Warren Commission, she didn’t like that Oswald spoke in Russian on the phone to his wife and QUOTE “I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his attitude. He was just kind of like this, you know, just big shot, you know and I didn’t have anything to say to him, and I didn’t like him….Just didn’t want him around me.”[5]

On October 14th, the day he was kicked out of the boarding house at Marsalis Avenue, Oswald interviewed for another job, this time at the Wiener Lumber Company in Dallas. The hiring interviewer at the lumber company said, Oswald QUOTE “makes an excellent appearance[] and seems quite intelligent,” but Oswald refused to provide proof to the Lumber company of his honorable discharge from the Marines, which was a red flag. This resulted in Oswald not getting the job.[6] Of course, Oswald did not have an honorable discharge from the Marines. So, he would not have been able to provide that documentation.

After being rejected from the lumber company and kicked out of the Marsalis boarding house, Oswald went back to the rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley Avenue and spoke to the owner, Gladys Johnson about renting a room. Johnson remembered Oswald from when he had visited about 3 weeks earlier (around the time when the Warren Report says Oswald was in Mexico). He used the name O.H. Lee at the rooming house and did not tell Mrs. Johnson his real name.[7] According to Earlene Roberts, the property manager at 1026 N. Beckley, Oswald never went out at night and never had any visitors.[8]

The Job at the TSBD

On the same day that Oswald was turned down for a job at the lumber company, his wife, Marina, was talking with Ruth Paine, and her neighbors, Dorothy Roberts, and Linnie Mae Randle. These four mothers of young children were discussing Lee’s difficulty in finding a job.[9]

At some point during this conversation, the women began to brainstorm places where Oswald could potentially find work. They mentioned a few businesses according to Linnie Mae Randle: Manor Bakeries and Texas Gypsum. Then Linnie Mae Randle reminded the group that her younger brother, Buell Wesley Frazier, had recently been looking for work and was just hired at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building. Randle said that it was busy season at the depository. But she didn’t say anything about there being a job opening there.[10]

Randle told the Warren Commission QUOTE “I didn’t know there was a job open at the Texas Schoolbook Depository. The reason we were being helpful, Wesley had just looked for a job and I had helped him to try to find one. We listed several places that he might go to look for work.”

Randle then said QUOTE “Mrs. Paine asked me if I would call [the Texas Schoolbook Depository] and see if there was a job available, and I told her no, that I didn’t know anybody over there, and if she wanted to call over to the place, she would have to do it because I didn’t know if there were any job openings over there.”[11]

Ruth Paine then took it upon herself to look up the number of the Texas Schoolbook Depository and gave them a call.[12] Paine did not call any of the other potential employers that were mentioned by the group. According to Paine, she spoke with supervisor, Roy Truly, and said QUOTE “you don’t know who I am but I have a neighbor whose brother works for you. He tells his sister that you are very busy. And I am just wondering if you can use another man. I have a fine young man living here with his wife and baby, and his wife is expecting another baby in a few days and he needs work desperately.”

When Marina called Lee at his rooming house that night, Ruth got on the phone with him and told him to go to the Schoolbook Depository Building as soon as possible to get the job.[13] On the next day, October 15th, Oswald met with Roy Truly at the Schoolbook Depository. Truly hired Oswald on the spot, with the idea that he would only work for a brief time during busy season. Truly said he hired Oswald because he was a former marine and because he said “yes sir.”[14]

Trans Texas Airlines Job

But, unbeknownst to Oswald, on the same day that he interviewed for the Schoolbook Depository job, a man named Robert Adams from the Texas Employment Commission called the Paine home with a message for Lee Oswald about a higher paying job at a different employer. Adams was following up on the visits that Oswald had made to the Employment Commission in the weeks before. The job Adams was calling about was a position as a cargo handler for Trans Texas Airlines. It would have been a full-time, permanent position (unlike the temporary one at the Schoolbook Depository) and would have paid Oswald 30% more per month than his job at the Depository.

But, Oswald wasn’t at the Paine house when Robert Adams called. Adams said in his affidavit to the Warren Commission that he spoke to someone at the Paine residence and was told that Oswald had taken another job.[15] When asked about this phone call, Ruth Paine first denied knowing anything about it. Then, she said she remembered that Oswald told her about it. But, Adams only called the Paine residence. He never informed Oswald personally of this opportunity in any other medium of communication.[16] So, it is not possible that Ruth Paine could have heard of the Trans Texas job from Oswald.

Given how eager Ruth Paine was to help Oswald get the job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building, it’s surprising that she didn’t at least pass on the message to Oswald about a job that paid 30% more and wasn’t just a seasonal gig. This is especially the case because we know that Oswald wasn’t happy with the Depository job. Marina testified that Lee was looking through the newspapers for something better.[17]

The notion that Oswald was offered this better job and didn’t take it, also confused Warren Commission staff attorneys William Coleman and David Slawson. They wrote a memo noting that because Oswald turned down a permanent job that paid $310 per month when he was only making about $209 per month in his seasonal job, the Commission had to consider the possibility that QUOTE “Oswald may have had a non-economic reason for taking the job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building.”[18]

October 1963

Lee Harvey Oswald’s first full day of work at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building was on October 16, 1963 – about 5 weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated. He worked from 8am until 4:45pm each day, with a lunch break from Noon until 12:45. His supervisor, Roy Truly, said that Oswald’s work was above average and that Oswald did not miss any days of work during his time at the Depository.[19]

On Friday, October 18th, Oswald asks Buell Wesley Frazier for a ride from the Depository back to the Paine house in Irving, for the first time. The Paines then threw a surprise birthday party for Lee on his 24th birthday. They celebrated with wine and a birthday cake.[20] Two days later, Marina Oswald gave birth to her second child, Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald.[21]

According to Michael Paine, three days after Rachel Oswald was born, Lee Oswald attended a right wing political rally featuring General Edwin Walker – the same man the Warren Report says that Oswald fired a shot at in April. The rally – labeled United States Day - was a way to undercut the United Nations Day event led by Adlai Stevenson that was planned for the next day in Dallas. Stevenson had run against Eisenhower for President in 1952 and 1956. The Stevenson rally on October 24th was protested by right wing demonstrators, which got a little out of hand and led to Stevenson being struck by a placard.[22]

Michael Paine, who claimed to be a political leftist, told the Warren Commission that he attended a right wing John Birch Society meeting on the same night that Oswald was at the right wing United States Day rally. Paine told the Commission QUOTE ““I have been to a number of rightist meetings and seminars in Texas.”[23] Paine said about Oswald, QUOTE “I gathered he was doing more or less the same thing ... I didn’t inquire how he spent his free time but I supposed he was going around to right wing groups ... familiarizing himself for whatever his purposes were as I was.”[24]

On Friday, October 25th, Oswald once again hitched a ride with Buell Wesley Frazier from the Schoolbook Depository to the Paine’s house in Irving. This was the first time that Lee had a chance to see Marina and his new baby, Rachel, after they had left the hospital. Soon after meeting his newborn daughter, Lee left the house with Michael Paine to drive 35 minutes away to an ACLU meeting.[25] During that meeting, Lee told the ACLU that he had been to the right wing rally, and shared how members of the John Birch Society had said anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic statements.[26]

Shortly after the ACLU meeting, Oswald wrote a letter to the Communist Party newspaper, The Worker. Oswald mentioned how he had attended the ACLU meeting on October 25th and asked QUOTE “Could you advise me as to the general view we have on the American Civil Liberties Union? And to what degree, if any, I should attempt to highten (sic) its progressive tendencies? Some of those present showed marked class-awareness and insight.”[27] This letter was postmarked November 1st. But, it did not arrive at the Communist Party HQ in New York City until November 29, 1963. Arnold Johnson read the letter when it arrived and told the Warren Commission that there was QUOTE “something odd about the whole letter. You have a different kind of ink in two places here.”[28]

From the United States Day rally, the John Birch Society, and ACLU meetings that Oswald attended, it looks like he remained outwardly politically active once he made his way to Dallas.

November 1963

On November 1st, Oswald registered a new PO Box in Dallas – Number 6225. He listed Fair Play for Cuba and the ACLU as the organization’s name on the PO Box. This is another indication that Oswald’s work with leftist groups was continuing in Dallas. He had previously listed the Paine home as his forwarding address. But this time, Oswald gave a fake address for the PO Box – 3610 N. Beckley Avenue.[29] Incidentally, six days later on November 7th, Jack Ruby rented PO Box number 5475 at the same post office, only 12 feet away from Oswald’s PO Box.[30]

The FBI, despite releasing the flash on Oswald, continued to monitor and check in on him and Marina. On November 5, while Oswald was working at the Schoolbook Depository, FBI agents James Hosty and Gary Wilson interviewed Ruth Paine at her home. She told the agents that she didn’t know Oswald’s address, but that he had been at her house the previous weekend.[31]

On November 8th, Oswald allegedly wrote a handwritten letter to a Mr. Hunt. This letter was apparently written in Oswald’s handwriting on a scrap of paper that was consistent with other paper Oswald used in Dallas. The letter said QUOTE:

Dear Mr. Hunt, I would like information counserning my position. I am asking only for information. I am suggesting that we discuss thematters fully befor any steps are taken by me or anyone else. Thank you, Lee Harvey Oswald (sic)”[32]

Newspaper publisher Penn Jones obtained the letter through the mail from an unidentified person in Mexico City. That person told Jones that they had provided a copy of the same letter to the FBI in 1974.[33] Three handwriting experts told the New York Times in April of 1977 that the letter was consistent with Oswald’s handwriting.

Assuming this note is authentic, there is much debate about the identity of Mr. Hunt. The two prime suspects are career CIA official and Watergate burglar, E. Howard Hunt and Texas oil baron, H.L. Hunt. If Oswald did send this cryptic letter to either of them, it seems to implicate Oswald in a possible conspiracy with them.

On November 13, Oswald visited the Dallas FBI office and left a note for James Hosty, apparently as a follow up from the FBI’s November 5th visit to Ruth Paine’s house.[34] Hosty said that the note said QUOTE “If I did not stop talking to his wife, he would take action against the FBI.”[35] According to Hosty, he flushed Oswald’s note down the toilet on the order of his boss, Gordon Shanklin, the special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI. Despite Hosty’s testimony, Shanklin denied any knowledge of the note or ordering it to be destroyed.[36]

The Week Before 11/22

On November 17, the Sunday before the assassination, Marina asked Ruth Paine to call Oswald’s rooming house to get him on the phone. Paine called the number for 1026 N. Beckley and asked for Lee Oswald but was told there was no one there with that name because Oswald was registered under the alias, O.H. Lee. The next day, Lee called Marina and admonished her for using his real name. He said he was using a false name to stop the FBI from costing him jobs.[37] Marina hung up on him when he tried to call her the next day.[38]

On Monday, November 18th through Thursday, November 21st, Oswald took the bus from Oak Cliff where his rooming house was, to his job at the Schoolbook Depository just like he had done for the last month. But, on that Thursday, Lee asked Frazier for a ride back to Irving – which was a change in the normal pattern of Oswald getting a ride from Frazier only on Fridays.[39] Marina told the Warren Commission that the reason Oswald came to the Paine house on Thursday, November 21st, instead of the normal Friday visit, was that he said he was lonely and he wanted to make peace with Marina from their argument about him using an alias at his rooming house.[40]

Marina said that on that Thursday night, Lee asked her to live with him and wanted them to get an apartment together in Dallas. But Marina wanted to stay at the Paine home through the holidays so that they could save money. Specifically, she said she needed Lee to buy a washing machine now that they had 2 kids. Marina then gave Lee silent treatment for the rest of the night.[41]

According to Marina, Lee watched TV that night and went to bed around 9pm. She says that she went to bed around 11:30. Ruth Paine told the Warren Commission that she thought Lee was in the garage that night because she said a light had been left on. But, Paine also told the Commission that most of the Oswald’s belongings were in the garage and QUOTE “it was not at all remarkable that he went to the garage.” Aside from the light being left on, according to Paine, there was no other reason for her to suspect that Oswald was in the garage that night. Warren Report defenders argue that Paine’s recollection of a light being left on in the garage establishes that Lee was in the garage preparing his rifle for the next day. But, looking at the record, this appears to be speculation based solely on the light being left on.[42]

On November 22, 1963, the morning of the Assassination, Lee said goodbye to Marina and left for work with Buell Wesley Frazier. He told Marina that he did not plan to come back to the Paine home that Friday night (because he had just been there on Thursday), but he did say that he would be back for the weekend.[43]

Lee left a total of $170 in a wallet for Marina. This is the equivalent of about $1,700 today. He told Marina to buy some shoes for herself and to buy anything that the children needed. The fact of Oswald leaving this money for Marina is often cited as evidence that he knew he was about to kill President Kennedy and was trying to take care of his family in advance. But, according to Marina, Lee always left a black wallet in the wardrobe that had money in it. She said that his regular practice was for him to QUOTE “[keep] the amount that he needed and put the rest in the wallet.”[44] So, it’s not accurate to say that Lee suddenly decided to leave extra money for Marina and the kids. The reality was that this wallet was effectively his bank. It’s where he kept all of his extra money.

On the other hand, Oswald also left his wedding ring at the Paine home that morning. While Lee would sometimes remove the ring at work due to it being in the way of him doing his job, Marina said that this was the only time she ever saw him leave the ring at home during their marriage.[45]

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We once again turn our attention to Ruth and Michael Paine and analyze their actions related to the Oswalds. Then, we look at several reports of alleged foreknowledge of the assassination. Is there any evidence that someone knew the assassination was going to happen in advance?

[1] Gerald Posner, Case Closed, at 197.

[2] Id.

[3] Id. at 198.

[4] CE 2124, at 384 - https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2124.pdf

[5] Warren Commission Testimony of Mary Bledsoe, 6H 427.

[6] FBI Exhibit D-89; John Armstrong, Harvey & Lee, at 723.

[7] Gladys Johnson Warren Commission Testimony at 294 - https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh10/pdf/WH10_GladysJohnson.pdf.

[8] Warren Commission Testimony of Earlene Roberts, at 442 - https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/pdf/WH6_Roberts.pdf

[9] Posner at 200-201.

[10] Warren Commission Testimony of Linnie Mae Randle, at 247 - https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/pdf/WH2_Randle.pdf

[11] Id.

[12] Posner at 200-201.