Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  The place was a tumult of reporters and cameramen, cables and tripods and television lights. Several times that day Oswald was led from Fritz’s office to a basement assembly room for police lineups. He was mobbed each time. Microphones were thrust in his face and questions shouted at him. He told reporters that he demanded a shower and his “civil rights.” By curious contrast he did not complain to the police about the way they were treating him—only the press.

  At 7:10 on Friday evening, Lee Harvey Oswald was brought before Justice of the Peace David L. Johnston and arraigned for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit.

  That night Gregory Olds, president of the Dallas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who did not know that Oswald was a member, when to the jail to see if he wanted a lawyer. Three people—two police captains and Justice of the Peace Johnston—assured Olds that Oswald had been informed of his rights and had so far declined counsel. Just before midnight Oswald was taken to the basement for a press conference, and Olds decided to attend. During his brief appearance Oswald did protest that, at his arraignment, “I was not allowed legal representation during that very short and sweet hearing.” He requested “someone to come forward and give me legal assistance.” But Olds did not hear in the hubbub, and he went home.

  Oswald was asked at the press conference whether he had killed the president. He replied: “Nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when a newspaper reporter in the hall asked me that.” It could have been Oswald’s way of saying that he had tried to kill the president and this was the first he knew that he had succeeded.

  On Saturday, at 1:36 A.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was brought again before Justice of the Peace Johnston and formally arraigned for the murder of John F. Kennedy.

  That morning, having apparently decided during the night whom he wanted to represent him, Oswald told Fritz that he wanted a lawyer—John J. Abt of New York City. Fritz wondered why he did not want someone in Dallas. Oswald said he did not know Abt personally, but he had defended “victims” charged under the Smith Act—the 1940 law making it a crime to advocate violent overthrow of the government—and Abt was the man he wanted. Failing that, he would appeal to the ACLU. However, he told Fritz, he lacked money for the long-distance call. Fritz said that he could use the prison phone and call collect. Fritz explained how to place the call and trace Abt even though Oswald lacked a telephone number or address for him.

  At 1:40 P.M., just after his visit with Marina, Oswald tried to reach Abt. He succeeded in obtaining Abt’s home and office numbers from the New York operator, but he failed to find him at either place. Abt was the lawyer he had told Marina about during their visit, the lawyer he was “counting on.” He did not tell Marina, nor did he mention to Fritz, that John Abt was a lawyer for the US Communist Party.

  Fritz later asked whether Oswald had succeeded in reaching Abt. He answered that he had not, then courteously thanked Fritz for allowing him to use the prison phone.

  At 4:00 P.M. on Saturday the telephone rang at the Paines’. Ruth answered.

  “This is Lee,” said the voice at the other end of the line.

  “Well, hi!” Ruth said.

  Lee asked Ruth to call John Abt in New York City and request him to be his attorney. He gave her the numbers he had obtained and told her to call after 6:00 P.M., when long-distance rates went down. Ruth agreed, and he thanked her.

  No sooner had she hung up than the telephone rang again. It was Lee. In a word for word repetition of the call he had just made, he asked her again to call Abt.

  Ruth was stunned—stunned by his gall, his assumption that her friendship for him would not have been affected by what had happened, and that she would go right on helping him just as she always had. She thought he seemed utterly “apart” from the situation he was in.4

  Appalled and angry though she was, Ruth did try to reach Abt, and like Lee, she failed. Abt was at a weekend cabin in Connecticut.

  Shortly after 5:00 P.M. on Saturday, H. Louis Nichols, president of the Dallas Bar Association, appeared in the office of Police Chief Jesse Curry. Curry was relieved to see Nichols and led him immediately to Oswald’s maximum security cell on the fifth floor. Oswald was at the center of three cells with no one on either side. He was lying on his cot. He stood up to greet Nichols, and the two men talked on a pair of bunks three or four feet apart. Nichols explained that he had come to see if he wanted an attorney.

  Did he, Oswald asked, know a lawyer in New York City named John Abt?

  Nichols said that he did not.

  Well, Oswald said, that was the man he would like to have represent him. Failing that, Oswald said he belonged to the ACLU and would like someone from that organization to represent him. But if that should fall through, he added, “and I can find a lawyer here [in Dallas] who believes in anything I believe in, and believes as I believe, and believes in my innocence”—here Oswald hesitated—“as much as he can, I might let him represent me.”5

  Apparently, Oswald intended to continue trying to reach Abt himself. But he asked Nichols to return the following week and, if he had failed to find someone of his choosing, he might ask the Dallas Bar Association to find him a lawyer.

  Nichols and Curry left the cell area together wondering aloud whether Curry had an obligation to reach Abt, wherever he was, even though Oswald had not asked Nichols, Curry, or Fritz to do it for him.

  Oswald’s choice of Abt, together with his remarks to Nichols, appear to bear out Marina’s belief that her husband had every hope of making his a political trial, a forum for his ideas, at which he would either proclaim his innocence or proclaim that his deed had been justified by history.

  Throughout his interrogations, Oswald made many statements about his actions on November 22 that the police already knew to be lies. He lied about his whereabouts at the time of the assassination. He lied about the rifle. And he lied about the manner of his flight from the Depository Building. But he talked about his political affiliations. Not only had he lived in Russia for three years, he said, but he was in touch with the Soviet embassy and received Soviet newspapers and magazines. He mentioned repeatedly that he was a member of the FPCC and had been “secretary” of its New Orleans “chapter.” He was also a member of the ACLU. He claimed proudly to be a Marxist. Asked if he belonged to the Communist Party, he replied that he had “never had a card,” perhaps a way of saying that his sympathies belonged to the party, but he was not a member.

  Whenever he could, Oswald steered his interrogators toward politics, and he appears to have talked more freely to Hosty than to anybody else. The views he espoused, his choice of Abt, which the policemen failed to understand since they had no idea who Abt was, together with the fact that his last two letters had been written to the Communist Party and the Soviet embassy in Washington, are a clue to what was in Oswald’s mind. Once again, as when he had shot at General Walker, he was trying to establish himself as a hero of the left. Just as at that earlier time, in April, he had in his mind a list of fantasy constituents, people and organizations with which he had been corresponding: the Worker, the Communist Party, the Militant, the Socialist Workers Party, the Soviet embassy and government, and the FPCC, and he hoped they would come to his aid.

  Only one of the old constituents was missing, or rather, was distinctly less important in November than he had been in April, and that was George de Mohrenschildt. Not that Oswald had forgotten de Mohrenschildt. He had listed his name twice on job applications the previous month, and on one he had written after the name de Mohrenschildt, “best friend.” De Mohrenschildt still mattered to Oswald, but he appears no longer to have been what he was before, the person for whose approval, above that of everyone else, Oswald had done the deed. He was still a constituent, but a lesser one now.

  Not that any of Oswald’s “constituents” approved what he had done or would have come to his aid. Indeed, they hardly knew who he was. They were constituents only in Oswald’s head, and he knew little more about t
hem than he had conjured up in his imagination.

  As willing as he was to expatiate about politics to his interrogators, Oswald denied having killed anyone. He had not shot “any of them,” he said, adding that he did not know Governor Connally had been hit, a way of saying, perhaps, that he had not been aiming at Connally—he had been aiming at someone else.

  As for the president, while giving hints, in his own way, as to the truth, Oswald outwardly, and steadfastly, denied killing John F. Kennedy. He and his wife, he said, liked the president and his family—“they are interesting people.” He had his own ideas about national policy and doubted that American policy toward Cuba, for example, would change as a result of the assassination. Anyway, Oswald said, “In a few days people will forget, and there will be another president.”

  After their visit with Lee on Saturday afternoon, Marina, Marguerite, and the children were moved from the Hotel Adolphus to the Executive Inn Motel, near Love Field. That evening Marina dealt in her own fashion with the bothersome photographs of Lee. She removed them delicately from her shoe, tore them in two, placed them in an ashtray, and lit a match to them. She was unaware that other copies had been found by the police among their belongings in the Paines’ garage. Lee had already been confronted with enlargements at the police station. Adding to his other lies, he said he had never seen the photographs before, admitting that they showed his face but with a different body.

  Marina thought of one more thing. She telephoned Ruth that night, explained carefully where Lee had left his wedding ring, and asked Ruth to keep it for her.

  Ruth’s telephone rang one more time that night. It was 9:30, and once again it was Lee. But this time, unlike his two calls in the afternoon, he was speaking Russian. He did not ask Ruth if she had reached Abt. He appeared to have only one thing on his mind. It was, “Marina, please,” the same abrupt words in which he had always asked for her.

  Ruth explained that Marina was not staying with her. Lee was incensed. He asked Ruth to convey a message to Marina, in strong terms, that he wanted her at Ruth’s. As Ruth understood it, he wanted Marina in a predictable place, wanted to know her whereabouts every second, so that she would be available to him at any moment he might try to reach her.

  That night at the Dallas Police Department, Chief Jesse Curry decided to move his prisoner to the county jail the next day. His decision was in keeping with the police department’s practice of transferring prisoners who have been charged with felonies from the city to the county jail. A Secret Service agent, Forrest Sorrels, asked Curry to make the transfer at an unannounced hour, possibly during the night. Curry, however, wanted to accommodate the press. No definite time was announced for the transfer, but he told waiting reporters that they would not miss anything if they were there by ten in the morning.

  On Sunday, November 24, at 11:10 A.M., after another interrogation that lasted longer than expected, Oswald was ready to be transferred. 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 the 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 was taken to the basement of the police station where he was to step into a waiting car. The basement and the ramps leading out of the building were crowded with reporters and cameramen, three television cameras, and nearly a hundred policemen. Oswald reached the basement at 11:20 A.M. and was promptly led to the exit.

  A few minutes earlier, Jack Ruby, carrying $2,000 in cash and a .38 caliber revolver, entered the Western Union office on Main Street, a block from the police department. At 11:17 he sent a money order for $25 to one of his nightclub strippers in Fort Worth, left the Western Union office, and headed for the police department. He walked down the Main Street ramp toward the basement without impediment. Because of his demimonde life, Ruby was known to some of the officers, and he was not even noticed. Everyone was straining to see Oswald.

  Someone shouted, “Here he comes!” Along with Captain Fritz and the four detectives, Oswald walked through the door toward the car that was waiting for him. At 11:21 A.M. Jack Ruby stepped out of the crowd and fired a single, point-blank shot into Oswald’s abdomen.

  At 10:30 that morning Robert Oswald met two Secret Service agents at a Howard Johnson’s motel halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. The Secret Service had recruited Peter Gregory, Marina and Lee’s first Russian-born friend in the United States, to act as interpreter, and the four of them drove to the Executive Inn Motel, where Marina, Marguerite, and the children had spent the night. Marguerite appeared to be unhappy, and Robert decided to move them all to a farm owned by his wife’s parents outside Fort Worth. It also occurred to him that they might be safer there.

  As he was loading their belongings into his car, one of the Secret Service men came up to him. “Now, don’t get excited,” he said, “but we’ve just gotten word that Lee’s been shot.”

  Robert did not tell Marina or his mother what had happened. He asked the Secret Service men to drive them to his in-laws’ farm and left immediately for Parkland Hospital.

  Marina and Marguerite had been promised a visit with Lee. So when they and the children left the motel with the Secret Service agents and Peter Gregory, they thought they were going to the county jail. But the agents said that they could not go right away and drove them around for what seemed to Marina to be hours. Then one of the men told them that Lee had been shot. The normally voluble Marguerite was silent. Marina asked whether Lee’s wound was serious. The agents said no. They were listening to the car radio. Finally, they told Marina that it was serious and that Lee had been taken to the hospital.

  They were driven to the house of Jesse Curry to await further news. Marina remembers that the house was beautiful, that everyone was quiet and kind to her, and Mrs. Curry even brought her a glass of water. Marina sensed that it might be a few days before she returned to the Paines’, and she telephoned Ruth to ask her to gather together some of her clothing, some of the children’s things, Lee’s wedding ring, and the money he had left her.

  When she was back in the living room, Peter Gregory came up to her, and Marina could tell from his expression what he was going to say. “Marina,” he said. “Get hold of yourself. He’s dead.”

  Marina felt her heart turn to stone. So her children, too, were orphans, Rachel only four weeks old and June just learning to walk.

  Her one thought was to see Lee. Peter Gregory tried to dissuade her. It might be dangerous, he said. There would be an angry crowd outside the hospital, and she had no right to risk the children. Marina surmised that it was his own life Gregory feared for. She did not wish to place him in danger, but she and Marguerite were agreed. “We’re going,” Marguerite said.

  The doctors at the hospital were kind, but they did not want Marina to see Lee. “He doesn’t look good,” one of them said. “It’s terrible,” said another. “We don’t want you to see.”

  Lee did look terrible. His face was yellow and unshaven, and his nose stuck out. Marina wanted to see the wound that had killed him, she had to see it, but he was covered by a sheet. She reached out to lift the sheet away, and someone arrested her arm. So she kissed Lee and touched his hand. It was like ice.

  Marina was angry as well as sad. “In Russia,” she thought, “it wouldn’t have happened. They would have taken better care of him.”

  From Parkland Hospital the Secret Service drove all of them, including Robert, to a new hideaway, the Inn of the Six Flags, near Fort Worth. Word had come from
the attorney general, Robert Kennedy, and the new president, Lyndon Johnson, that the Secret Service was to protect the Oswald family. Within an hour the inn was an armed camp, with men patrolling outside armed with carbines. “All we need is to have one more of you killed,” one agent said, “and we’re in real trouble.”

  Marina was unable to eat. Although the agents solicitously brought her food, she only smoked and drank coffee. Robert cried, and little June was sick. And all afternoon and evening they were not allowed to watch television or see the newspapers. They were wholly cut off from the outside world.

  Except for one thing. It had fallen to Robert to arrange Lee’s funeral.6 It was not easy. One cemetery after another refused even to countenance the suggestion that they sell Robert a plot for his brother’s body. A funeral director took up the search and finally found a cemetery in Fort Worth.

  The same thing happened with ministers. Four of them turned Robert down. The office of the National Council of Churches in Dallas asked two Lutheran ministers to go to the inn and offer help. Only one dared visit Robert in person. The funeral was arranged for four o’clock Monday afternoon, and the minister, with a hesitation that to the grief-stricken Robert was all too apparent, reluctantly agreed to officiate.

  On Monday morning Marina heard that President Kennedy’s funeral was being shown on television. She whispered to Robert that she wanted to watch, and Robert switched on the set. A Secret Service man switched it off.