Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  “I only hope she can make you happy. As the old saying goes, looks aren’t everything.”

  “But of course they are!” Lee laughed.

  Oh, my dear, pathetic brother in law. Are you ever in for it! As I guess you will soon learn ...

  In actuality, the woman playing Marina, whose name may well have been Alexandrovana Medvedeva, spoke fluent English, this one of the many reasons the KGB picked her for this position. But by pretending to be ignorant, as well as a near-idiot, the lovely, apparently shy secret agent could create a situation in which people spoke openly in front of her, just as she wished.

  *

  At 7313 Davenport Street in Fort Worth, Marina marveled at the everyday objects of suburban American culture: toasters, a TV, an extra bedroom, two bathrooms and, most charming of all, a garden in their small back yard, rich with multi-colored flowers.

  Her mood improved. She asked Lee in Russian if they would soon be able to afford something like this. He was obliged to tell her Bob had worked his way up to an executive with Acme Brick, and that since Lee must begin at the bottom, wherever he might find a position, such comparative luxury would be some time coming.

  “Oh! But a short while, yes?”

  “I’ll work hard, Marina. I’ll do what I can?”

  “Soon, though. Something like this. For us?”

  “Understand, Robert is paid higher than some common worker. Vada brings in additional money as a beautician.”

  “But this is what I want, at least for a beginning.”

  “I can’t promise anything. Only that I’ll try.”

  Lee noted disappointment in her eyes. Marina at once fell into a depression. Lee did, too, if for an entirely oppositional reason Marina could not possibly guess.

  When George had instructed Lee to recreate his Legend, the manner in which he did so had been left up to the agent in the field. As such, Lee arrived at a decision to attack Russia’s cynical form of communism, no better than the supposed opposite pole of fascism. As an American, he believed this fully, had before he even arrived, his experiences offering excellent proof of such a belief.

  On the other hand, his “legend” held that he remained a Marxist-idealist, believing a pure state of all-power-to-the-people could be achieved and that such a state would be the best place on earth.

  So he rejected Russia as a failed experiment, accepting other situations in the world as potential success stories.

  The problem, if there was one, had to do with a gradual but serious blending process between his assumed legend and his true self. Lee had attempted to put his current state into words in his debriefing by Raikin. That extremely ordinary man clearly had no idea what Lee attempted to express.

  One aspect of his earlier “legend,” first in the service, then after arriving in Russia, was to decry the U.S. owing to his own past life: though a hardworking woman, his mother had not been able to bring herself and her children up from poverty. The American Dream of eventual success via hard work was but a myth. Perhaps the Marxist ideal, if ever fully augmented, would provide a better way of life for the common working man.

  Over time, Lee had begun to believe that this might be the case. Life in the Soviet Union only assured him that such a pure communist state did not exist. At least not yet. And not there.

  But could it? Will it? Could I help make that happen?

  For the first time since their initial meeting, Lee had experienced a thought-process he did not share with George in any of their constant secretive correspondences. To do so would likely cause Lee to be drummed out of CIA service, and he did not want that. How powerful, as well as patriotic, all this made him feel!

  Also, he did want to aid the U.S. in its conflict with the Soviet Union, which he had never admired, now strongly disliked.

  Still, he had to reconcile the Company’s abiding attitude—all Communism, in any form, anyplace in the world, constituted a threat—with a gnawing, growing belief that pure Marxism, if it ever instituted, might be better than capitalistic democracy.

  *

  Lee considered writing a book on the subject. But the need to find work so as to feed his family, rather than rely on the good will of Robert (Lee feared an ugly scene like the earlier one in New York), demanded that any literary career be put off indefinitely. Lee applied for a job with the Texas Employment Commission as a possible translator of Russian, should anyone be in need of such services. While this did not immediately provide work, it put Lee in contact with an executive at that office, Peter Paul Gregory. A friendly man, he suggested that Lee soon contact members of the local Russian community.

  Meanwhile, Marguerite had arrived from Crowell, TX. Within a week Lee, Marina, and baby June shared an apartment with Lee’s mother on Seventh Street, a baker’s dozen blocks away from Robert’s.

  Though Marguerite made a fuss over the young woman and their darling baby, her personality was no different than before, other than perhaps more advanced in such directions.

  “Oh, Lee. Such a wonderful family you have now! I’m so proud of you. And so delighted that you came back.”

  “Yes, Momma. Please understand, though. As soon as I locate a decent job, Marina and I want a place of our own.”

  “What?” Marguerite, suddenly appearing faint, collapsed on the couch. “After all I’ve done, all I’ve suffered ...”

  “We’re a young couple, Momma. A young family now.”

  “And me?” she wept. “I’m not part of that family?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Momma, stop crying, please?”

  Marguerite had not changed. If anything, Marguerite was more Marguerite than before. Her bouts of hysteria and overdone performances of gentility confused and irritated Marina, who missed the calm, easygoing company of Robert and his family, as well as their more appealing apartment.

  “Hang on, darling. This will all change—”

  “Yes, Lee? But that’s what you said onboard the boat.”

  Lee did find work with the Leslie Welding Company at its louver-door factory where he labored as a humble metalworker. At least this allowed him, toward the end of July, to move out of his mother’s apartment, over to their first “own place” at 2703 Mercedes Street. Even as Robert drove them there, Marguerite sobbing about being deserted once again by her baby boy, Lee experienced a sense of déjà vu.

  What he’d hated most about his childhood was the constant dislocation, those frenzied moves from one place to another. Now supposedly in charge, the same thing was happening once again.

  “Here, Lee? Here is where we’ll stay?”

  “For the time being, Marina. We’ll have to see ...”

  Meanwhile, Lee sent to George the documents he’d smuggled out of Russia: photographs of the emergent technology at the factory where he’d worked, images too of the adjacent military compounds he had taken while off on hunting trips with his .22.

  Breaks in the monotony arrived in the form of a flurry of invites to homes of local ‘White Russians.’ In particular one senior citizen, George Bouhe, a successful accountant and ardent capitalist, accepted Lee and Marina with open arms.

  At one party that took place in late summer at Bouhe’s home, another guest, Anna Meller, noticed a sincere if terrible contradiction whenever Lee was asked to join a conversation. Years later, she would recall: “He’s against the Soviet Union; he’s against the United States. He made the impression that he didn’t know what he likes.”

  In fact, Lee had finally come to understand precisely what as a unique individual he did and not like. “Each one of us,” Lee explained to Meller, “ought to be always out and about, attempting to take the best of possible worlds we can imagine, and make that come to life around us.”

  “If you want to live in a dream world go visit Disneyland.”

  “That’s just my point. What is that called? ‘The Happiest Place on Earth?’ Well, why not make the world more like that?”

  “Because it’s a fantasy. This? Reality!”


  “Sometimes dreams do come true.”

  “Yes. I believe they’re called nightmares.”

  Somewhere in-between the extremes of raw capitalism and corrupt communism, there might be a Utopia in which the people, actual people, true people, the workers, could at last become the center of interest. Could America, if we would only accept and adopt the best aspects of socialism, become that Shangri-La?

  *

  Lee was wondering about that one day when a sudden rapping came at the front screen door. Hurrying to see who it might be, Lee found himself face to face with a 6’ 2,” early fifties, immaculately coiffed, expensively suited gentleman; his hair silver-grey, the stranger spoke in an upper-class European manner that combined elements of the old Russian aristocracy with a seductive Austrian lilt.

  Epicurian. That’s the first word that come to mind upon meeting whoever this is. I don’t mean that in a positive way.

  “Hello,” the jovial fellow announced with supreme self-confidence. “My name is De Mohrenschildt. My wife Jeanne and I live in Dallas. I heard from the Fort Worth Russians you and your family had recently arrived so I swung on down to say 'hi.'”

  For reasons he could not fully comprehend, Lee hated this dapper intruder on first sight.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  DEEP IN THE HEART OF DALLAS

  “In my opinion he had two lives, spending most

  of his time in his own separate life.”

  —Marina Oswald, reflecting on Lee, 1977

  Members of the Russian community in Dallas considered G. De Mohrenschildt their mystery man. The most obvious aspect of his identity concerned business dealings with Col. Lawrence Orlov, an oil speculator. But while people knew the precise nature of Orlov’s company, De Mohrenschildt’s role remained fuzzy. What exactly did he do to earn his salary? No one could say, not for certain.

  However, wealth and its vestiges (expensive cars, imposing home, hand-tailored suits, rumors of affairs with lovely women) create a confederacy of silence around awesome individuals.

  On that first visit to the Oswalds’ home, De Mohrenschildt regaled Marina with glorious tales of his escape from the Russian revolution while still a child. According to this scenario, his father, a marshal of the old nobility, and mother were killed by crazed peasants. But not before passing their eight-year-old boy to a tribe of loyal gypsies. They smuggled the child out of the country and, in time, to France. Distant relatives there provided him with a first-class education.

  What De Mohrenschildt did not confide to the Oswalds: In May 1938, he arrived in the United States aboard the SS Manhattan. A year later, authorities arrested him when ‘Jerzy’ (as he now called himself, claiming to be Polish) was caught sketching naval installations at Port Aransas, TX. Accusations that he might be a German spy were dismissed by the articulate European. He was a filmmaker, he said; these merely story-boards for a movie he would shortly produce. Yet no one in Hollywood, when contacted, had ever so much as heard of him.

  During World War II, he initially appeared to prove his loyalty by offering to oversee all operations of the French underground in the United States. An FBI investigation rather suggested that he had infiltrated this organization to provide stateside Nazi agents with key information.

  Ultimately, no one could decide if this man was an agent, a double agent, or triple agent; and, whichever he might be, if De Mohrenschildt ever owed any true loyalty to the Allies or the Axis, or if he were manipulating everyone for reasons known only to himself, probably for the sake of personal gain.

  In the end, any evidence against De Mohrenschildt proved so self-contradictory that the authorities shook their heads with frustration and allowed him to walk free. Still, the FBI kept an open file on this man, as did, beginning in 1957, the CIA.

  When the Cold War with Russia replaced the hot one against Germany, everything altered. Clearly, De Mohrenschildt had established contact with Soviet operatives who had entered our country. Yet he lived so lavishly as a capitalist that all his whispered asides—“I’m infiltrating, don’t you see, to serve the U.S.?”—were, if not entirely believed, anxiously considered.

  “And so I appear before you now, proud both of my Russian heritage of a type that is no longer recognized in my homeland and of my status as a U.S. citizen as well.”

  Lee smelled a rat. The way in which De Mohrenschildt spoke struck him as so many details picked up while watching old movies: Adolph Menjou by way of Maurice Chevalier crossed with Erich von Stroheim. As someone who had drawn his own identity from films, sniffing out a similar approach on the part of this different person did not prove difficult for Lee Oswald.

  *

  “Which would you care to hear first: the good news or the bad?” De Mohrenschildt asked early in October, 1962. He, his eighteen-year-old daughter Alexandra, and her husband Gary had driven down from Dallas, ostensibly to catch the Van Cliburn competition, they claiming to be musical sophisticates.

  “Why don’t you choose?”

  “I will, then! The bad isn’t, in truth, so bad at all. You must move to Dallas at once.”

  Just as Lee had suspected, the seemingly magnanimous man hoped to seize control of their lives. If De Mohrenschildt did turn out to be what Lee suspected——he had spoken to George, who confirmed this shady figure was on their dubious-persons-list—this move would be for political as well as personal reasons.

  “We like it well enough here.”

  De Mohrenschildt glanced around the small, shabby apartment while rolling his eyes in contempt for the sad surroundings.

  Oh, this guy is good! Very good. But I’m better.

  “A close friend of mine in the Russian community has found a more rewarding job. And you will earn twice as much.”

  “Metalworking is an honest task for a working-man.”

  “Oh,” Marina gasped, trippingly assuming center stage in the little scene. “Lee, that would be wonderful. At last we could have a place like your brother Robert’s. You did promise.”

  During the next several days, Marina wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, informing Vitaliy A. Gerasimov as to her current whereabouts. He operated in the U.S. much as Richard Snyder did in the Soviet Union. An embassy job served as cover for his secretive role as intelligence-gatherer for the KGB.

  When Gerasimov responded, stating that her new status had been placed on file, he communicated through sub-textual implications his role as her key contact. In truth, Marina, like Lee, had begun to waver. She would gladly consider deserting the Soviet Union if she came to believe a more happy life might exist here.

  What’s best for me and June? I must decide and soon.

  Considering her unattractive apartment, Marina had determined they must make the move to Dallas. Once there, if she so chose, she could prove more useful to the KGB in such a prestigious area. On the other, should she choose to abandon ship and join Lee in marriage for real, how better to relocate there, in an upscale development, her husband transformed into a white collar worker.

  Once in Dallas, I’ll discover what I ought to do.

  Though sexual relations between wife and husband had been nil since moving into “the dump,” that changed. As a result, Lee began to appear less dour and pallid, whistling on his way to work. At her insistence, he traveled to Dallas for the job interview.

  After all, I did promise, as Marina said ...

  Everything might have worked out precisely as Marina had planned were it not for something that occurred several nights later, even as they were preparing for the move. While Marina slept soundly, the phone rang. Lee answered.

  “Lee!” George spoke in a hushed voice, calling from Miami, Langley, wherever he might happen to be at the moment. “You must listen, and listen carefully! Your wife is a KGB agent.”

  “Marina-—”

  “There is no Marina. The actual name of the woman living with you is believed to be Alexandrovna Medvedeva. Marina is her ‘legend.’ She married you so as to come to America as a spy.”<
br />
  Lee felt dizzy. “But ... we have a baby ...”

  “All part of the KGB’s master plan. I know this must hurt. Hurt terribly! That’s not why I’m telling you. From now on, be ultra-careful what you say in front of her. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Lee gasped, “that my marriage is a sham.”

  I’m her ... patsy!

  “Continue as if nothing has changed. She must not know that you know. Keep a close eye on her, watch for anything suspicious she may say or do. But act as if everything is just as it was.”

  Lee hung up. He sat on a dilapidated wicker chair on the porch for several hours, staring into space. Then he heard the baby crying inside. Marina would give the child a bottle and that would shut June up. Moments later, the sobbing halted.

  “Lee?” Marina called. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” he said softly, re-entering. Marina, smiling, moved toward her husband, expecting an embrace. Instead, he fell into a rage and beat her. She screamed for mercy, but when Marina fell to the floor Lee came over on top of the terrified woman and kicked her twice. Hard.

  I won’t be your fall-guy. I won’t! Or anyone’s ...

  Then he strolled to the refrigerator, took a can of beer, and sat down on a stuffed chair. Lee guzzled the brew, muttering to himself while she attempted to rise up from the floor.

  *

  Several days later, De Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne, having learned of the incident via a frantic phone call from Marina, drove to the Oswalds’ in their chic convertible, doing so during the day, while Lee remained at work. De Mohrenschildt told Marina to pack her clothes, take hold of baby June, and come with them at once.

  Twenty minutes later they arrived at a pleasant, spacious home in Farmers Branch, an upper-middle class Dallas suburb. Here lived Henry C. Bruton, with whom De Mohrenschildt had cultivated a friendship half a year earlier. He had managed this by charming the serious-minded, level-headed retired admiral’s giddy wife, impressed as so many upper-middle-class Americans are with aristocratic Europeans. He now begged Mrs. Bruton (her husband was away on business) to allow this beaten woman and her child to remain there for the time being.