Oswald's Tale (88 page)

Still, it was meant to be. Peter Paul Gregory was the first important person outside the family that Lee had met when he came to Fort Worth fifteen months ago from Soviet Russia.

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
So I called . . . I said, “Mr. Gregory, I won’t say who I am, but you know my son and you know my daughter-in-law, and I am in trouble, sir. I am over here.”

He said, “I am sorry, but I won’t talk to anybody I don’t know.”

MR. RANKIN.
What name did you give him?

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
I didn’t give him any name.

He said, “I am sorry, but I won’t talk to anyone I don’t know.”

And I said again, “Well, you know my son real well.”

He said, “Oh, you are Mrs. Oswald.”

I said, “Yes, sir, this is Mrs. Oswald. We are at the Executive Inn in Dallas, stranded. And do you know of anyone who would give my daughter-in-law and I a home, and put us up for the time this is going on, so we can be near Lee at the courthouse? I need help, Mr. Gregory.”

He said, “Mrs. Oswald, what is your room number? I will help you. Hold still. Help will be coming.”

And so that was the end of my conversation with Mr. Gregory.
¹⁴

Marguerite could not know, but at City Hall they were ready to transfer Oswald to the County Jail, where he would be under the custody of the sheriff’s office and security would be easier to enforce. There had been plans to move him to that County Jail since three o’clock yesterday, Saturday afternoon, and different procedures for a safe passage had been discussed and then rearranged, and the time had been altered as well.

MR. BALL.
Did you consider transferring him at night? . . .

MR. FRITZ.
. . . on Saturday night, I had a call at my home from a uniformed captain, Captain Frazier I believe is his name, [who] told me they had some threats and he had to transfer Oswald.

And I said, well, I don’t know. I said there has been no security setup . . . He called me back then in a few minutes and he told me . . . to leave him where he was.
¹⁵

Next, they decided on a scheduled move at 10:00
A.M.
on Sunday, but even then, they were late.

MR. FRITZ.
I did do one thing here I should tell you about. When the chief came back and asked me if I was ready to transfer him, I told him I had already complained . . . about the big cameras set up in the jail office and I was afraid we couldn’t get out of the jail with him with all those cameras and all those people in the jail office.

So when the chief came back he asked if we were ready to transfer and I said, “We are ready when security is ready,” and he said, “It is all set up.” He said, “The people are across the street, and the newsmen are all well back in the garage,” and he said, “It is all set . . . We have got the money wagon up there to transfer him in,” and I said, “Well, I don’t like the idea, chief, of transferring him in a money wagon.” We, of course, didn’t know the driver, nor who he was, nor anything about the money wagon, and he said, “Well, that is all right. Transfer him in your car if you want to, and we will use the money wagon for a decoy . . .”
¹⁶

Actually, Fritz, who knew he would lose custody of Oswald as soon as he was transferred over to the sheriff, had been talking to the prisoner for most of Sunday morning. Finally, at 11:10
A.M.,
after this last interrogation had gone on for an hour longer than expected, Oswald was made ready for the transfer:

McMillan:
But the shirt he had been wearing when he was arrested had been sent to a crime lab in Washington, and he had on only a T-shirt. Some hangers with his clothing were handed in to Fritz’s office, and the officers selected what they considered his best-looking shirt for him to wear. Oswald was adamant. No, he said, and insisted on wearing a black pullover sweater with jagged holes in it. He was now dressed, as he had been in the photographs taken by Marina, all in black—black trousers and a black sweater. Fritz then suggested that he wear a hat to camouflage his looks. Once again, as he had done on entering the jail two days earlier, Oswald refused. He would let the world see who he was.

Accompanied by Captain Fritz and four detectives, Oswald [reached] the basement of the police station [at 11:20
A.M.,
] where he was to step into a waiting car . . .
¹⁷

MR. BALL.
How far behind Oswald were you . . . ? Oswald was behind you?

MR. FRITZ.
Behind me.

MR. BALL.
How many feet would you say?

MR. FRITZ.
In feet, I would probably say 8 feet . . . We first called down and they told us everything was all right . . . I kept my officers back in the jail [and] I asked two officers outside the jail if security was good, and they said it was all right. But when we walked out . . . we met the crowd and the officers coming forward . . .
¹⁸

It could be said without undue exaggeration that Dallas, the corporate soul of Texas, has not yet recovered altogether from what transpired in the next few seconds, when a man stepped out of the crowd and, in front of everyone, killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

9

“He Cry; He Eye Wet”

Let us, at least, bury Lee before we look to comprehend what intent might have lived in the mind of Jack Ruby.

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
At 11:30
A.M.,
Sunday . . . my son [Robert] and Mr. Gregory came to the Executive Inn, all excited. We had diapers strung all over the place. My uniform was washed. I had no clothes with me.

I went with the [wet] uniform.

“Hurry up, we have to get you out of here.”

I am not one to be told what to do, and you gentlemen know that by this time. I said, “What’s your hurry? We have diapers and all. I want to tell you what happened.”

“Mother, Mother, stop talking. We have to get you out of here.”

Mr. Gregory said, “Mrs. Oswald, will you listen and get things together? We have to get you out of here.” . . .

I said, “That is all we have been doing since yesterday, running from one place to another. Give us just a minute. We are coming, but we have to pack things.” . . .

“Mrs. Oswald, we will talk later. We have to get you out of here.”

MR. RANKIN.
Did you have television in this room?

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
Yes, sir.

Now here is another Godsend. We watched the television, Marina and I. She watched more than I did. We were very busy, Mr. Rankin. The babies had diarrhea and everything. I was very busy with the babies and the Russian girl . . . we were just getting snatches of it. But Marina wanted to know. “Mama, I want to see Lee.” She was hoping Lee would come on the picture, like he did. So this morning, Sunday morning, I said, “Oh, honey, let’s turn the television off. The same thing over and over.”

And I turned the television off. So Marina and I did not see what happened to my son.

We turned the television off.

So we did not know.

But frantically Robert and Mr. Gregory kept insisting that we pack and run.

So when we get downstairs, there was Secret Service men all over.
¹

You could count on one reaction: Marguerite Oswald would bristle at the sight of authority.

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
. . . as soon as we got in the car Mr. Gregory says, “We are taking you to Robert’s mother-in-law’s house.”

Now . . . [they] are dairy people—Robert’s in-laws. And they wanted to take us there, which would have been approximately 45 miles from Dallas.

And I said, “No, you are not taking me out in the sticks . . . I want to be in Dallas where I can help Lee.”

“Well for security reasons, this is the best place. Nobody would ever find it.”

I said, “Security reasons? You can give me security in a hotel room in town. I am not going out in this little country town. I want to be in Dallas where I can help Lee.”

And so I am not being well liked, because all the arrangements were made that we were going to go to this little farmhouse. But I would not go.

I could not survive if I was 40 or 50 miles away and my son was picked up as a murderer. I had to be right there in Dallas [but] we needed clothes—Marina and the baby needed clothes. So then they decided that they should go to Irving . . .

When we reached there, they brought us to the chief of police’s home. And there were cars all around.

As soon as the car stopped, the Secret Service agent said, “Lee has been shot.”

And I said, “How badly?”

He said, “In the shoulder.” . . .

I cried, and said, “Marina, Lee has been shot.”

So Marina went into the chief of police’s home at Irving, to call Mrs. Paine to get the diapers and things ready . . .

So I am sitting in the car with the agent. Marina is in the home now . . .

So something comes over the mike and the Secret Service agent says, “Do not repeat. Do not repeat.”

I said, “My son is gone, isn’t he?”

And he didn’t answer.

I said, “Answer me. I want to know. If my son is gone, I want to meditate.”

He said, “Yes, Mrs. Oswald, your son has just expired.” . . .

As a matter of fact, when I got the news, I went into the home and I said, “Marina, our boy is gone.”

We both cried. And they were all watching the sequence on television. The television was turned to the back, where Marina and I could not see it. They sat us on the sofa and his wife gave us coffee. And the back of the television was to us. And the men and all, a lot of men were looking at the television. It probably just happened, because the man said, “Do not repeat.” And I insisted.

They gave us coffee . . .
²

Later on that Sunday, the Secret Service decided to move Marina and Marguerite and June and Rachel to the Inn of the Six Flags, a motel between Dallas and Fort Worth that would be just about empty now in November, but first there was the question of whether the wife and mother would be allowed to see Lee’s body.

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
. . . Immediately I said, “I want to see Lee.” And Marina said, “I want to see Lee, too.”

And the chief of police and Mr. Gregory said, “Well, it would be better to wait until he was at the funeral home and fixed up.”

I said, “No, I want to see Lee now.”

Marina said, “Me too, me want to see Lee.” . . .

They didn’t want us to . . . from the ugliness of it, evidently. But I insisted, and so did Marina . . .

On the way to the car they are trying to get us to change our minds. And he said, Mr. Mike Howard—he was driving the car—“Mrs. Oswald, for security reasons it would be much better if you would wait until later on to see Lee . . .”

I said, “For security reasons, I want you to know I am an American citizen, and even though I am poor I have as much right as any other human being, and Mrs. Kennedy was escorted to the hospital to see her husband. And I insist upon being escorted, and enough security to take me to the hospital to see my son.”

Gentlemen, I require the same privilege.

So Mr. Mike Howard said . . . “I want you to know when we get there we will not be able to protect you. Our security measures end right there. The police will then have you under protection . . .”

I said, “That is fine. If I am to die, I will die that way. But I am going to see my son.”

Mr. Gregory says—and in the most awful tone of voice, I will always remember this—remember, gentlemen, my son has been accused, I have just lost a son.

He said, “Mrs. Oswald, you are being so selfish. You are endangering this girl’s life and the lives of these two children.”

I want to elaborate on this. He is not thinking about me. He is thinking about the Russian girl. I am going to bring this up over and over—that these Russian people are always considering this Russian girl. He snapped at me.

I said, “Mr. Gregory, I am not speaking for my daughter-in-law. She can do what she wants. I am saying I want to see my son.”

And so they brought us to the hospital . . .

MR. RANKIN.
And then what happened?

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
Then Mr. Perry, the doctor, came down . . . And he said, “Now, I will do whatever you ladies wish . . . However, I will say this. It will not be pleasant. All the blood has been drained from him and it would be much better if you would see him after he was fixed up.”

I said, “I am a nurse. I have seen death before. I want to see my son now.”

[Marina] said, “I want to see Lee too.” So she knew what the doctor was saying.

We were escorted upstairs into a room. They said it was a morgue, but it wasn’t. Lee’s body was on a hospital . . . table like you take into an operating room. And there were a lot of policemen standing around, guarding the body. And, of course, his face was showing. And Marina went first. She opened his eyelids. Now, to me—I am a nurse, and I don’t think I could have done that. This is a very, very strong girl, that she can open a dead man’s eyelids. And she says, “He cry. He eye wet.” To the doctor. And the doctor says, “Yes.”

Well, I know that the fluid leaves, and you do have moisture. So I didn’t even touch Lee. I just wanted to . . . make sure it was my son.

So while leaving the room I said to the police—“I think some day you will hang your heads in shame.”

I said, “I happen to know, and know some facts, that maybe this is the unsung hero of this episode . . .”

And with that, I left the room.

Then we were . . . introduced to the chaplain . . . at Parkland Hospital [and I] told him that I thought my son was an agent [and] I wanted my son buried in the Arlington Cemetery.

Now, gentlemen, I didn’t know that President Kennedy was going to be buried [there]. All I know is that my son is an agent, and that he deserves to be buried in Arlington Cemetery. So I talked to the chaplain about this [and] I asked him if he would talk to Robert because . . . as soon as I started to say something, he would say, “Oh, Mother, forget it.” . . .
³

From the hospital they are driven to the Inn of the Six Flags. Robert comments that “within an hour after our arrival, the inn was like an armed camp”:

Robert Oswald:
“All we need is to have one more of you killed or injured and we’re in real trouble,” one of the agents said to me.

We felt completely cut off from the outside world. We were not allowed to see newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television that Sunday afternoon or Sunday night.
⁴

Robert was busy all evening trying to make arrangements for Lee’s funeral on Monday. The first step was to hire an undertaker (known even thirty years ago in the Dallas–Fort Worth area as a funeral director).

Robert Oswald:
The funeral director began telephoning various cemeteries to prepare the way for me to buy a burial plot for Lee. One cemetery after another refused even to discuss the possibility of accepting Lee’s body . . .

While the funeral director was kind enough to continue to search, I began telephoning various ministers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to request that they officiate at the burial services [and] I was astonished by the reactions . . . . The first one, the second one, the third one, and the fourth one flatly refused even to consider my request.

One of the ministers, a prominent member of the Greater Dallas Council of Churches, listened impatiently . . . and then said sharply, “No, we just can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

. . . “Your brother was a sinner.”

I hung up. The question of who would officiate at Lee’s funeral was still unsettled when I went to bed Sunday night, although the time of the funeral had been set for four o’clock Monday afternoon.
⁵

It would hang over him all of Monday morning. His stress is painful to contemplate. Robert is on his way to becoming a successful corporate executive. Yet, like many another straight arrow, he assumes that he must restrain all personal deviations from the approved pattern and to hell with the psychic cost. That psychic cost can be measured by the intensity of the plots one sees everywhere. Robert now exhibits a share of his mother’s gift for strong scenarios. He has, for instance, needed but one look on meeting Ruth and Michael Paine early Friday afternoon in the company of Marina and the police to decide that the Paine couple are highly suspicious and could be linked conceivably in some plot with the Russians. Perhaps it was their faintly patrician air. Robert, after all, must have seen a good deal of Alger Hiss in the early days of TV.

He is also more than alert to the growing friction between Secret Service and FBI. He hears the Secret Service agents talking:

Robert Oswald:
As early as Friday night I had heard some speculation about the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of the President, and . . . I had wondered if Marina herself might be a part of such a conspiracy. On Saturday and Sunday there were rumors in Dallas that the “conspiracy” might involve some government agency. By Sunday night I realized that the agency under greatest suspicion was the FBI.
⁶

Given the covert existence of COINTELPRO in the early Sixties, there may have been reason for suspicion—we shall eventually get an inkling of how distrustful J. Edgar Hoover was of his own people—but in this setting, the rumors had probably been started by police gossip after Oswald’s tirade on encountering Hosty in Captain Fritz’s office. Of course, it is quintessentially American to love situations that raise suspicions, and who are more American than the Dallas police?

Still, to say that Americans are somewhat enamored of paranoia requires at least this much explanation: Our country was built on the expansive imaginations of people who kept dreaming about the lands to the west—many Americans moved into the wild with no more personal wealth than the strength of their imaginations. When the frontier was finally closed, imagination inevitably turned into paranoia (which can be described, after all, as the enforced enclosure of imagination—its artistic form is a scenario) and, lo, there where the westward expansion stopped on the shores of the Pacific grew Hollywood. It would send its reels of film back to the rest of America, where imagination, now landlocked, had need of scenarios. By the late Fifties and early Sixties, a good many of these scenarios had chosen anti-Communism for their theme—the American imagination saw a Red menace under every bed including Marina Oswald’s.