Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The only problem with Deslatte’s original story (subsequently recanted) and Sewell’s story is that on January 20, 1961, the real Oswald was in Minsk, Russia.

  Assuming this very shaky and questionable story were true, what possible relevance could it have to the assassination? Ask almost any conspiracy buff and he’ll tell you it means that someone was impersonating Oswald in New Orleans in January of 1961, ultimately framing Oswald for Kennedy’s murder. But let’s walk this through. January 20, 1961, happened to be Kennedy’s inauguration day. Even before Kennedy angered Castro and anti-Castro Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, and before he failed to call his attorney general brother, Bobby, off the mob’s back, and before the CIA and military-industrial complex feared that Kennedy might withdraw from Vietnam, indeed, before Kennedy had done anything at all that might cause anyone to want to kill him, a group of conspirators decided to murder him? And their brilliant plan was to frame a man who at the time was living in Russia—which means they would have no way of knowing if he’d ever return home and even be capable of being framed—and one way they decided to set Oswald up was to have one of two men who were thinking of buying trucks for their organization call himself “Oswald”? Really? Once again, is there no end to the silliness of the conspiracy theorists? Answer: No. And by the way, since those supposedly framing Oswald had to know that he was a Marxist who had defected to the Soviet Union, would it help their cause to have their Oswald impersonator acting like he was anti-Castro, and hence, anti-Communist? Just a thought. Assuming the Bolton Ford incident actually occurred, chances are it was just a coincidence (something conspiracy theorists refuse to acknowledge exists in life) that the man’s name was Oswald.*

  A reported sighting of Oswald took place over two years later, in March or early April of 1963. On November 30, 1963, a Sparta, Wisconsin, barber named John Abbott told the FBI that he had given Oswald a haircut back in March or April. Oswald said he was in town to visit the mother of a drinking buddy of his in Dallas named Philip Hemstock, who was from Sparta. While getting his haircut, Oswald told Abbott that he had been blackmailing, at fifty dollars a crack, some unidentified Texas nightclub operator he used to work for. Oswald stated that when a politician needed a job done, he (Oswald) would do it if the pay was right, and told the barber that he planned to use the blackmail money to buy himself a gun to settle a score he had with the United States.

  Hemstock’s mother told the FBI that no friend of her son’s had ever visited her, and that her son was living in Victorville, California, not Dallas. The Sparta chief of police told the FBI that Abbott, the barber, “uses the truth rather loosely and enjoys telling tall tales.” The local sheriff said Abbott was considered “peculiar” by many townsfolk and came from a family with a history of mental instability, though Abbott had no such record.22

  The next alleged Oswald impersonations occurred in late September of 1963 in Austin, Texas, and Mexico City (Mexico City will be discussed later, out of chronological order). Why those who allegedly were conspiring to kill Kennedy and frame Oswald for the murder decided to take such a long sabbatical from the task at hand is not known. Nor do Second Oswald exponents attempt to explain the hiatus. Mrs. Lee Dannelly, assistant chief of the Administrative Division at the U.S. Selective Service headquarters in Austin, Texas, told the FBI on December 30, 1963, that two days after the assassination she heard over television that as of that time the authorities had no definite record of Oswald’s whereabouts between May and the date of the assassination. Dannelly came to the rescue. She said she recognized Oswald as being the person whom a coworker, Jesse Skrivanek, brought to her desk on September 25, 1963. (On September 25, we know that Oswald was either in New Orleans or on his way to Mexico, with a questioned stop en route at the Sylvia Odio residence in Dallas.) Oswald told her he had “just come from the Governor’s office” (in Austin) to try to change his dishonorable discharge from the Marines, and that office had referred him to the Selective Service office. Dannelly was unable to personally help Oswald (who told her he was registered with the Selective Service in Florida but living in Fort Worth), but gave Oswald information on how he could go about applying for the change he was seeking.23

  The FBI was unable to corroborate Dannelly’s story with anyone at the Austin office of the Selective Service,* including Skrivanek, who not only couldn’t remember seeing anyone resembling Oswald but also could not recall the incident referred to by Dannelly. Further, records at the governor’s office for the previous six months did not document any visit from a Lee Harvey Oswald or anyone else with a similar name.24 The Warren Commission noted that “all of the information which [Dannelly] furnished…could have been derived from news media, consciously or unconsciously, by the time she told the FBI her story.”

  When conspiracy theorist Anthony Summers asked, “Was someone trying to impersonate [Oswald in Austin]?”25 should he not have gone on to ask what purpose such an impersonation would serve? Again, the whole premise of impersonation would be to frame Oswald by laying a trail of incriminating evidence at his door. If the alleged framers of Oswald were so daffy and inept that they believed they could help frame Oswald for Kennedy’s murder by sending an Oswald impersonator to Austin to rectify Oswald’s dishonorable discharge, President Kennedy most likely would have survived November 22, 1963.

  Since less than two months remained between the time of the alleged impersonation in Austin and the president’s fateful scheduled trip to Dallas, one would think that the framers of Oswald would have been stepping up their Second Oswald impersonations. But curiously, they took a holiday for the entire month of October.† Richard H. Popkin, author of the 1966 book The Second Oswald and at that time chairman of the Department of Philosophy (not, as we shall soon see, Logic) at the University of California in San Diego, had an explanation for this hiatus. “In October there seems to have been little double-Oswald activity. This may be explained,” Popkin writes, “by the fact that Oswald was looking for a job at the time and that his second daughter was born on October 20th.”26 Say what? I know some philosophers, as William Saroyan once said, think they can live “on tap water and Proust,” but after awhile such a diet can take its toll on one’s mental faculties. As author Jim Moore points out in his perceptive book Conspiracy of One, “Why would the activities of the ‘real’ Oswald keep the ‘second’ Oswald from going about his duties as impersonator? Professor Popkin doesn’t bother to explain.”27

  Following a month of unexplained rest, an alleged Oswald impersonation took place somewhere between November 1 and 14. The allegation had the aroma of fabrication from its inception. On the afternoon of November 24, two days after the assassination, an anonymous male telephoned Channel 8 news in Dallas and told the news department that Oswald had had his rifle sighted at a gun shop (Irving Sports Shop) located in the 200 block on Irving Boulevard in Irving. That evening, an anonymous male called the Dallas office of the FBI with the same information, claiming to have received it from an unidentified sack boy at an Irving supermarket.28 The next day, an FBI agent interviewed Dial Ryder, service manager of the Irving Sports Shop, who informed him that while cleaning off his workbench on November 23, he discovered an undated repair tag for a rifle bearing the name “Oswald.” The tag reflected the work done to have been “drill and tap $4.50” (mounting a telescopic sight on rifle) and “bore sight $1.50.” Ryder said the rifle was of Argentine make. The transaction, Ryder claimed, must have taken place sometime between November 1 and 14 when Charles Greener, the store’s owner, was on vacation, because he said that Greener did not recall the transaction.29

  Even excluding the suspicious anonymous calls (who else, other than Ryder, would have been privy to this alleged transaction?), Ryder’s credibility went downhill from that point on. Ryder had told the FBI that although he could not be positive from photos of Oswald shown to him that Oswald had ever been a customer in his store, he was quite sure he had seen or talked to Oswald, probably in the store.30 But on December 1, 1963, just s
ix days later, Ryder told the Secret Service that Oswald was not the customer and he had never seen him.31

  Most damning of all is that despite the fact that Ryder worked right alongside his boss, Greener, for several days after the date he allegedly discovered the tag, November 23, and they had discussed the assassination, at no time did Ryder advise Greener that he, Ryder, had located a repair tag bearing Oswald’s name. Greener, in fact, told the FBI that he did not learn of the Oswald tag in his store until November 28, when TV reporters called him to comment on the allegation.32*

  In his later testimony before the Warren Commission on March 25 and April 1, 1964, Ryder, who had told the FBI the rifle was of Argentine make, now claimed he didn’t know what kind of rifle he mounted the telescopic sight on (the Carcano mailed to Oswald already had a sight mounted on it), but knew it wasn’t a Carcano or any other Italian rifle. He reaffirmed in his testimony that “as far as seeing [Oswald] personally, I don’t think I ever have.”33

  For those few who still want to believe Ryder’s fable, if it were Oswald in the store, his owning a second rifle would in no way militate against the evidence of his guilt in the Kennedy assassination. However, Marina Oswald said Oswald had only one rifle, and that was the one he kept in Ruth Paine’s garage.34 And the imposture argument here is even more inane than in those cases where the alleged impersonator does nothing that in any way would incriminate Oswald. Here, the imposture would go in the direction of exonerating Oswald. If the framers of Oswald know he owns a Carcano and intend to plant it, the murder weapon, on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building (as the conspiracy theorists claim the framers in fact did), why would they want to put a different rifle, a nonmurder weapon, that’s not even the same make as the Carcano, in Oswald’s hands?

  Predictably, the conspiracy theorists don’t avail themselves of this logic and also have no trouble with Ryder’s credibility. Anthony Summers and Mark Lane, in their books, don’t tell their readers how Ryder kept changing his story and the fact that he never even mentioned the Oswald repair tag to his boss, concluding, respectively, “somebody who was not Oswald had commissioned alterations for a gun—not Oswald’s—in Oswald’s name”35 and “someone laid a trail of evidence leading to Oswald…Ryder’s testimony regarding the authenticity of the repair tag was unchallenged by the evidence.”36

  An Oswald sighting related to the Ryder incident involved two middle-aged women, Mrs. Edith Whitworth, who operated a used-furniture store in Irving, and her friend Mrs. Gertrude Hunter. Whitworth and Hunter told an American correspondent for a British newspaper that on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, November 6 or 7 (Hunter said she only visited Mrs. Whitworth on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and she also fixes these dates because of an upcoming high school football game the two were to attend), Oswald had come into the store and asked for a “plunger” (colloquial for a firing pin) for his rifle, presumably because a “Guns” sign was still affixed to the storefront, advertising a gunsmith who had previously leased part of the premises. Whitworth referred “Oswald” to the Irving Sports Shop a block and a half away. Before Oswald left, however, he brought his wife, “two or three week old” baby girl and two-year-old daughter into the store, where for thirty minutes or so he alone looked at a dining room set, remarking, “Most people are buying Early American furniture.”37

  In their later testimony before the Warren Commission, both Whitworth and Hunter identified Oswald and Marina from one or more photos showed to them by Warren Commission counsel, although Hunter’s identification of Lee and Marina Oswald was not unequivocal.38 When Marina appeared at the Warren Commission hearings in front of the women, Hunter said she recognized Marina “by her eyes” and Whitworth said she was sure Marina was the woman in the store but she had changed.39

  The likelihood of the two women’s story being true is practically nil. Texas School Book Depository records show that Oswald worked full days on November 6 and 7, 1963, and there’s no evidence he absented himself during working hours on those days.40* Further, Mrs. Hunter said that when the “Oswalds” left the store, Oswald drove their car. However, even apart from the fact that Oswald did not have a driver’s license and was learning to drive, there’s no evidence he had access to a car. And Marina Oswald testified, “Lee never drove a car with me or the children in it. The only time I saw him behind the wheel was when Ruth Paine…was teaching him to drive.” After being taken to Mrs. Whitworth’s store by Warren Commission counsel, Marina testified she had never been in the store before.41

  Mrs. Hunter testified that Oswald was driving a 1957 or 1958 two-tone blue Ford, and the reason she is positive of this is that friends of her’s in Houston, James and Doris Dominey, “had a car just like this.” In fact, she said, she was expecting them to visit her that very day and “had left a note [for them] on my mailbox that I would be at this place [Mrs. Whitworth’s store].”42 However, Mrs. Dominey, whose sister was married to Mrs. Hunter’s brother, told the FBI she and her husband did not visit Mrs. Hunter in November of 1963, had no plans to visit her, and never told anyone of any such plans. According to Mrs. Dominey, Mrs. Hunter had a strange obsession for attempting to inject herself into any big event that came to her attention. As examples, she said, Mrs. Hunter was likely to claim some personal knowledge of any major crime that received much publicity. And if a tornado should strike out of a clear sky, Mrs. Dominey said, “Mrs. Hunter will claim that she had known the day before that this event was to occur.” Dominey stated that “the entire family is aware of these tall tales Mrs. Hunter tells and they normally pay no attention to her.”43

  As to the connection between this incident and the Ryder one, it should be noted that what “Oswald” was allegedly seeking at the furniture store (a firing pin) bears no relation to the work (mounting a telescopic sight) covered by Ryder’s repair tag. Further, in her testimony before the Warren Commission, Mrs. Whitworth said she was uncertain whether she referred the man to the Irving Sports Shop or “down…the highway at some pawnshop or something like that.”44

  For many reasons, including the fact that Oswald was at work and couldn’t have been in the store, we know that Oswald and Marina were never in the store. And as for the issue of imposture by a second Oswald to frame him, how does buying a firing pin for one’s rifle constitute evidence implicating one in the assassination of President Kennedy? Do the conspiracy theorists really want us to believe that for this benign and non-implicating act of buying a firing pin, the conspirators would not only come up with a second Oswald to impersonate the real one, but now, apparently, a second Marina to impersonate Marina? There is no end to the silliness.*

  The Oswald sighting (or impersonation) that conspiracy theorists have perhaps relied on most strongly, and the only one that is supported by credible evidence, is the one by a car salesman in Dallas named Albert Guy Bogard. In statements to the FBI on November 23, 1963, and September 17, 1964, and in his testimony before the Warren Commission on April 8, 1964, Bogard said that on the afternoon of Saturday, November 9, 1963, a man walked into the showroom of the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership he worked for. Bogard said he introduced himself to the man and asked him his name twice before the individual gave his name as Lee Oswald. Oswald asked to test-drive a new Mercury Comet. Bogard, who accompanied Oswald on the test-drive, said that Oswald “drove a little reckless” at about 75 to 85 miles per hour on the freeway, taking the curves “kind of fast.” When they got back from their drive and Oswald expressed an interest in buying the car, Bogard prepared a “customer’s purchase sheet” (which Oswald declined to sign) and told Oswald he would need $300 as a down payment on the $3,000 car. Oswald said he didn’t have the money now but he’d have some money coming in “in two or three weeks.” Oswald would not give his address but told Bogard he lived in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, which Oswald, in fact, did. Bogard said he wrote the name “Lee Oswald” on the back of one of his business cards. When Bogard heard over the radio on November 22 that a Lee Harvey Oswald was a su
spect in the Kennedy assassination, the name rang a bell with him and “I tore up the card and said ‘He won’t want to buy a car’” anymore, throwing the card in a wastepaper basket. Bogard said he also recognized Oswald when he later saw him on TV as the man who had come to his dealership on November 9.45

  On February 24, 1964, the FBI administered a polygraph test to Bogard at its Dallas office and concluded he was not being deceptive in his answers since there was no significant physiological response to the questions.46* Little is known about Bogard, but when the FBI reinterviewed him on September 17, 1964, he was being held at the Dallas County jail on charges of “passing worthless checks and theft by conversion.”47 And on February 14, 1966, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning inside his car in the small racetrack (drag strip) town of Hallsville in East Texas. Nonetheless, his favorable polygraph result cannot be summarily dismissed. Just as obviously, the results cannot be treated as dispositive on the issue. Other evidence has to be examined to see if a reasonable conclusion can be reached.

  Since Bogard was about to leave for a visit home to Shreveport, Louisiana, after Oswald left the dealership, he told Oran Brown, a fellow salesman, to handle Oswald if Oswald came back while he was away, giving Brown Oswald’s name. And Brown confirms Bogard’s story, telling the FBI on December 10, 1964, that Brown wrote the name “Lee Oswald” down “on something.” Indeed, even Brown’s wife told the FBI that she had seen the name “Oswald” on a piece of one of her husband’s papers at the house, but the Browns were unable to find the paper.48 Brown also confirms that he and Bogard and other salesmen were listening to the radio in the showroom after the assassination, and when Oswald’s name was mentioned, Bogard spoke out that this was the same man who had come to the dealership and that Oswald wouldn’t be buying a car anymore, and then Brown saw Bogard throw a card from his wallet into the wastebasket.49