What Marguerite Oswald Said About Lee, After the JFK Assassination - #leeharveyoswald #1963 #booktok

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]This incident was the beginning of a lifelong suspicion of federal authorities by Mrs. Oswald. To the end of her life, she maintained that Lee had been working as some sort of agent for the US government and that unnamed high officials were part of the plot to kill Kennedy and blame her son. After Watergate, she told a local newspaper, "If you called in all the FBI men involved in Lee Harvey Oswald's life and questioned them, one thing would lead to another and it would probably break the assassination case.

[00:00:41]Hello and welcome back to my channel.

[00:00:45]And if you're new, then welcome. I am Jess Canel and I would love to earn your subscription today with this video. We are going to be going through a bit of information about two members of Lee Harvey Oswald's family that I actually don't know that much about. Uh I know a little bit more about his mother Margarite, although I still have a lot to learn. Um but I know almost nothing about his brother Robert. And so when I was looking for information about Joseph Miltier in Jim Mars's book, I noticed a section that just seemed perfect for us to read together and do a little bit more digging about what in the world was the backstory of Lee Harvey Oswald in regard to his mother Margarite and his brother Robert. Uh Robert ended up writing a book about Oswald, which I don't have actually. Um, and Margarite wrote a pamphlet about Oswald. And she always maintained to the end of her days that he was a psy, that he was innocent, that he was not who uh they accused him of being. Uh, Robert's a bit more squidgy on the details. And so I want to understand why. I want to understand each of them a little better. And I just thought we could do that together. So we are actually going to be reading from part two which is called means motives and opportunities uh in Jim Mars's book Crossfire the plot that killed Kennedy. So uh that's what we are in for today. If you missed that episode about Miltier and you wonder about his role as like someone who predicted the assassination in advance, uh, and also his role as potentially a right-wing influencer who, uh, may have had some sort of planning or fornowledge actually in the assassination.

[00:02:41]That would be a worthwhile episode for you. Next time we're actually going to be going through part of Sylvia Mar's book to talk about the disappearing mouser. So you can come back for that um next time, but this time we're going to dig right in to this section. It's uh set in the context of who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the act just like any good detective does as they are evaluating a crime. And so he says Lee Harvey Oswald assassin or psy gives this background before we get towards Margarite. It says prior to his enlistment in the Marines and with the exception of the death of his father Lee Harvey Oswald's boyhood was little different from that of millions of other Americans. Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 18th, 1939, 2 months after the death of his father, Robert E. Lee Oswald, a collector of insurance premiums. While this unfortunate event must have had some effect on young Oswald, it was a fate endured by thousands of others young Americans, none of whom have felt compelled to murder national leaders. In 1945, Oswald's mother married for a third time. But three years later, this marriage ended in divorce. From that point on, Oswald and his brother Robert were brought up by their mother, Margarite. Now, I will say um this sentence that his boyhood was a little different strikes me as possibly not true or misrepresenting because I have read many places that Oswald was from time to time put into a an orphanage uh in New Orleans and would be left there and like signed in and then signed out some number of days or months later. Sometimes I think it was used like almost like a day facility. Um, but I think he was left there for lengths of time. And so to say he had a childhood no different than millions of other Americans strikes me as maybe a bit dismissive toward that very real childhood trauma that that would be for any child to be just sometimes deposited away from your whole family in a in an institution of other children uh who are orphans. I think that would feel very disconnecting and very um to use modern language like it would be not a strong attachment to one's caregivers and that does attachment theory just to offshoot a little bit if you don't know I'm a large family mom I have nine babies all of whom are my biological children all of whom were born one at a time and all of whom were breastfed to a year and I was home with them Uh so while we haven't at nobody provides a perfect home environment, they have had secure attachments. They've been uh you know connected with their caregiver for their entire lives. And that one factor of your life actually holds a significant psychological value for whether or not you think your needs will be met.

[00:05:58]Whether or not you believe the world is like a fair place, a kind place, a trustworthy place, whether or not you trust your authorities, there's a lot of psychological things that come from that one decision. And even when you take a child who perhaps is adopted at one year of age um and and then goes on to live in a very happy, healthy home, they still suffer some attachment issues from potentially that first year of life being one where they were not assured that their needs would be met. Maybe they were left in a crib to cry for hours or days on end, some of them to the point where they just stopped crying. Uh so depending on the caregiving facility or people that are charged with the care of that orphaned infant or orphaned toddler, many important lessons are learned that do carry over into adulthood. So I I just want to note that that this feels dismissive of something that may indeed have contributed to some level of psychological dysfunction or lack of balance. Uh sometimes there is emotional dysregulation that happens in children who are institutionalized for for any length of time. So there's some significant things that shouldn't be brushed over. And granted, this book was written in like 1989. Um attachment theory and, you know, psychological understanding of the long-term effects of adoption maybe weren't as studied at that point, but that is something that we know now. And he wasn't adopted out.

[00:07:27]But if he was farmed into this orphanage from time to time and repeatedly, uh, that could do some level of trauma on the brain and on your who you view as your authority, whether or not you view your authorities as trustworthy, etc. So, I won't belabor that point anymore, but I do just want to acknowledge from the outset that that part seems mishandled. Okay. A mother in history. So, now we get into Margarite.

[00:07:58]The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 concluded that President Kennedy was quote probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy end quote. I just want to stop there and say if you are a new viewer, did you know that did were you aware that our own government in 1979 had concluded that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy? direct quote from our own government's uh investigation. Did you understand that? I think most Americans don't. And that's why I ask it that way is it's no shame on you. It's a shame on our media institutions and the fact that our government didn't widespread publish the fact that they had overturned their own statement. So most people still believe that the Warren Commission is the last kind of verdict on whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for President Kennedy's death.

[00:08:55]However, they maintained that Lee Harvey Oswald was the actual killer and that another gunman whose presence was established by two separate scientific tests based on a Dallas police recording of the gunfire in Daily Plaza escaped and remains unidentified.

[00:09:11]This finding was a milestone to the many Americans who had come to disbelieve the lone assassin theory of the Warren Commission. Typically, however, this reversal of official American history was still not enough for the mother of the accused assassin, Margarite Oswald.

[00:09:28]She told Newsmen, "The committee members have made a first step in the right direction. It's up to us to do the rest." I hope and know the future will vindicate my son entirely. It took us 15 years to come this far. It may take another 15 years or longer. I probably won't be around, but the world will know that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the charges against him. This was the statement of a woman who was much more than just a supportive mother. It came from a woman who faced more public hostility than most murderers. A woman who faced the autumn of her years alone and in poverty. And all because of a child she bore. So now we're going to go back. He takes us back to uh her years as a mother and then we're going to move forward pretty quickly after we get this little biographical bit. We're going to move pretty quickly towards November 22nd. So don't check out. We're just getting a little bit of the context needed to understand her background as a mother. Margaret Clavy was born in New Orleans in 1907.

[00:10:33]Her family was of French and German extraction. Her mother died a few years after her birth, leaving young Margarite and her five siblings in the care of her father, a street car conductor.

[00:10:46]According to relatives, the Clavy family was poor but happy.

[00:10:51]Margarite at the age of 17 completed one year of high school. She then dropped out to become a law firm receptionist.

[00:10:59]In August 1929, she married Edward John Pik Jr., a clerk. That last name is P I C P. However, the marriage was not successful and the couple divorced in 1931, several months after the birth of her first son, John Edward Pick. So, pause there. This is the introduction of Lee Oswald's first and oldest halfbrother.

[00:11:29]So, they shared a mother, but he had a different father. In 1933, she married Robert Edward Lee Oswald, himself recently divorced. She described her marriage to Oswald as the only happy part of her life. Out of this union came a second son, Robert. So, Robert is his next brother. It's his full brother. He was the second born to Margarite.

[00:11:58]Then her happiness came to an end. Two months before the birth of Lee Harvey Oswald in October of 1939, her husband died of a sudden heart attack. Making her way alone, she saw an opportunity of establishing a family once again by remarrying in 1945. Okay, so we get that second little family where she says it's the only happy part of her life. First, she has Robert, but they do not get divorced after this son as her first marriage had happened. instead she's pregnant with Lee Harvey Oswald when he has a sudden heart attack and dies. So that was 1939.

[00:12:39]Then it says, "Making her way alone, she saw an opportunity of establishing a family once again by remarrying in 1945." So that would be when he's five or six years old. It continues, "Sending the two elder sons off to boarding school. She and her new husband, Edwin A. Ectal took six-year-old Lee and moved to Benbrook, Texas, a small town south of Fort Worth. Okay. So, two sons off to boarding school, which is this the same kind of orphanage that we're talking about or was it a different one? I don't know. So, that's where Robert is. Uh, but Lee is six and he goes along with her to this new home. However, there were soon arguments over money and charges of infidelity against Ecol. A divorce was granted in 1948 and she was allowed to use her former name of Oswald. It is interesting to note that Ectal's divorce attorney was Fred Cor who in the fall of 1963 was fired as Secretary of the Navy by President Kennedy amid charges that Cor may have been involved in a scandal over the General Dynamics TFX airplane. Okay. So, yes, ectod doll is one of those things where, and this is something that I've dug into a bit and I need to learn more, but John Armstrong has done a lot of work on all the places that Lee lived.

[00:14:04]Uh, and there are some where there seem to be conflicts where he seems to be attending one school and another school at the same time. he seems to be living with this mother at this address and also at a different address at the same time. This is one of those times where what's going on with Ectool is is um difficult to discern sometimes and I still don't have my head around it. Um but it does seem to involve defense things.

[00:14:34]John Pik and Robert Oswald, the two older brothers, rejoined their mother, but both soon left home to join the military. Wow. So, they moved in 1945.

[00:14:46]So, her sons were actually 12 and 15, 12 and 14 uh when she sent them off to boarding school. So, she her sons were at boarding school from 12 and 14 until they were basically they rejoined but pretty soon left to go to the military.

[00:15:03]So for their formative years of being young like adolescents through early adulthood, they were really formed by others.

[00:15:14]Margarite was left with only young Lee.

[00:15:18]Some accounts say Lee was overly motherthered by her while others claim she neglected the boy. However, the former seems to be closer to the truth in light of the fact that she became a practical nurse charged with keeping the children of prominent Texans such as the late Aean Carter Jr. Wow, that's a big name here in Fort Worth. He has a whole museum named after him. So, for him to uh for her to be care charged with the care of the child of such a wealthy man is significant. and former congressman Tom Vandergriff. Despite much conjecture, there is little evidence that Lee's childhood was any better or any worse than others. You know, that may be fair. I think at this time in in place in history, no matter where you were as a child, there was a sense of like uh better to be seen and not heard.

[00:16:10]Um you know, keeping your head down and your mouth shut as a child. Um but also this was a time of extraordinary um self-discipline in the life of our nation post World War II uh and also economic growth. And so both both blessings and burdens were on most people during these times. So that that very well may be true that maybe he had a difficult childhood in some ways, maybe he had it okay in other ways. Um, I would say that the divorces do put him in a rarer category in terms of challenges and that was a bigger deal at that time where you were seen as like you know your daddy's not even your real daddy. Like little kids would say that on the playground because it was such a social it made you a social pariah in some ways and specifically probably in the religious south.

[00:17:07]In 1959, after serving three years in the mil in the Marines, Lee received a sudden discharge. Okay, we've skipped ahead some um because the boys went off to the military. Uh but we didn't hear that he had. But in 1959, after serving three years in the Marines, Lee suddenly received a discharge and came back to Fort Worth for a two-day visit with his mother.

[00:17:33]Sounds good. Lee said he was off to New Orleans to work for an import export firm, but several weeks later, Mrs. Oswald read that her 20-year-old son had turned up in Russia, where he told US officials he wanted to defect. I do also want to say that he doesn't mention it here, but the reason for his discharge was to go care for his injured mother.

[00:17:55]He got a special discharge that he was supposed to go care for her. And he kind of gives her some money. He checks in with her for two days and then he heads off to Russia. So, it's been thought by a lot of people. There's been like examination of her work papers and whether or not there was even an actual injury. It doesn't seem that he was there caring for her. Um, so this may actually be a more honest way of dealing with it that that they had a two-day visit and then he was off to New Orleans. Several weeks later, Mrs. Oswald read that her 20-year-old soul son had turned up in Russia where he told US officials he wanted to defect.

[00:18:30]Mrs. Oswald's statements to the press at the time were unpopular. Instead of branding her son a traitor, she said, "I feel very strongly that as an individual, he has the right to make his own decision. Lee has definite ideas. I believe God gives us a conscience and the ability to know right, and I feel he has the right to make his own decision."

[00:18:55]Despite this motherly support, Lee seemed to make every effort to avoid Margarite after his return from the Soviet Union in 1962.

[00:19:05]At one point, he moved his family from Fort Worth to Dallas without leaving his mother a forwarding address. That is true. I think the most that Margarite had to do with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren was right after the assassination. And that up until that point, she really hadn't been invited into their life very much. Her family was reunited only briefly during those dark days of November 1963.

[00:19:30]Mrs. Oswald was on her way to work on November 22nd when she heard over the car radio that Kennedy had been shot while riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas. She also learned that a young ex-marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was being held by police as the suspected assassin. Concerned by the broadcasts and apparently with no friends to turn to, she contacted the local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and asked if someone would take her to Dallas. She told the newspaper men who drove her to the Dallas police station, "I want to hear him tell me that he did it." Mrs. Oswald also told them that she had been persecuted since her son's journey to Russia, and she knew the meaning of suffering. She also told of being fired by her last employer, Star Telegram publisher Aean Carter Jr. She said she had been acting as a day nurse for the Carter's children until about two weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination.

[00:20:25]After a weekend trip to Las Vegas, the Carters suddenly let her go. She once told this author, meaning Jim Mars, "You don't know what it's like to have someone look at you and say,"You've done a good job, but we no longer need your services."

[00:20:44]In Dallas, Mrs. Oswald was disappointed in her desire to hear a confession from her son. She was not allowed to talk with him, and Oswald steadfastly maintained his innocence. He shouted to newsmen gathered in the police station hallway, "No sir, I didn't kill anybody.

[00:21:00]I'm just a psy."

[00:21:02]After the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby two days later, his mother's tone changed to one of suspicion and accusation, blaming the Dallas police and federal authorities for her son's death. she asked bitterly.

[00:21:17]Why would Jack Ruby be allowed within a few feet of a prisoner, any prisoner, when I could not even see my own son?

[00:21:27]To compound her suspicions, she maintained until her death that the FBI had shown her a photo of Ruby the night before her son was slain. She said at about 6:30 p.m. on November 23rd, the night after the assassination, an FBI agent and another man knocked on the door of the hotel where she and Lee's wife were staying. After being told that her daughter-in-law was tired and couldn't talk with the men, the FBI agent said he wanted to ask her a question. She recalled the incident to newsmen a week later. So, I want to be clear on what's happening here. We are on the sandwich day. That's what I like to call it. It is a day sandwiched between the day that JFK was murdered and the day that Lee Oswald was murdered. Uh there was one day in between the Saturday.

[00:22:17]That's when she's being spoken to by this FBI agent. And I want to let you know Margarite Oswald is not the only person who records that Jack Ruby's photo was shown to her before Jack Ruby makes his entrance on Sunday. So remember, until Sunday, no one in the public, no one in news, no one anywhere is looking at Jack Ruby and thinking he has anything to do with this. Not until he goes up and silences the assassin do people start to go, "Wait a second. Why would he do that? What's his motive? We all need justice. We all need answers.

[00:22:52]He just shut up the one person who could tell us about this. So until Sunday, nobody, unless they already knew him, nobody knows Jack Ruby's name, and they certainly don't associate him with any of this. But Julia Anne Mercer was also, she says she was shown a picture of Jack Ruby, and she had identified a photo of Jack Ruby as a man she had seen in Dilly Plaza before the assassination.

[00:23:17]So Julie anne Mercer is another person who tells this similar story which is that uh on November 23rd, the night after the assassination, an FBI man said he wanted to ask her a question. This is how she says it. He had a picture coupled inside his hand and asked me if I had ever seen that man before. I told him, "No, sir.

[00:23:45]Believe me, I never have. Then he left.

[00:23:49]A few days later, I walked into the room where I was staying and in front of my son, Robert, and a lot of witnesses, I picked up a paper and when I turned it over, I said, "This is the picture of the man that FBI agent showed me." I did not even know at the time he was the man who shot my son. I was told that the picture was of Mr. Jack Ruby.

[00:24:14]FBI officials, when informed of her statement, speculated that she must have been confused as to the date she was shown the photograph. On July 10th, 1964, FBI agent Bardwell D. Odum signed an affidavit with the Warren Commission stating that he had shown the picture to Mrs. Oswald. He said the photo was furnished by FBI superiors who obtained it from the CIA. The FBI said they included the photo as a Warren Commission exhibit. It was reportedly supplied by the CIA which was secretly photographing visitors to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. That's quite a train of of uh he said this, they supplied that they obtained it from these people. They were doing this. But Bardwell ODM signed an affidavit that he had shown the picture to Mrs. Oswald.

[00:25:02]That's the critical part. Now, it doesn't say he says when he showed it, so maybe we get that in a minute. that this incident was the beginning of a lifelong suspicion of federal authorities by Mrs. Oswald. To the end of her life, she maintained that Lee had been working as some sort of agent for the US government and that unnamed high officials were part of the plot to kill Kennedy and blame her son. after Watergate. She told a local newspaper, "If you called in all the FBI men involved in Lee Harvey Oswald's life and questioned them, one thing would lead to another and it would probably break the assassination case." Just after the assassination, Mrs. Oswald said, "They," meaning the public, "all turned their backs on me before when Oswald appeared in Russia, and they will turn their backs on me again, but my faith will see me through." And faith was truly about the only thing left for Mrs. Oswald.

[00:26:02]With the exception of a couple of mysterious benefactors who kept her supplied with publications concerning the assassination, Margaret Oswald was forced to live through the next two decades on less than $500 a month in social security payments. In the bicesentennial summer of 1976, she was without a refrigerator for almost two months because she couldn't afford to repair hers. The loneliness and poverty of her life, however, failed to crush her fighting spirit. She continued to assail the official version of the assassination and to strike out at media presentations of the events. In 1978, after viewing a CBS docu drama entitled Ruby and Oswald, she told the local newspaper, "I have every right to be upset over that program as well as many other things because they are talking about my son and my family. They sit there and tell the gullible American public that their program is the truth and based on documentation."

[00:26:57]Well, I'm sitting here with things you've never heard of. I can tear that CBS program apart like I did the Warren Commission.

[00:27:07]Her thoughts on the Warren Commission, whose conclusions were taken as gospel at the time, but gradually lost the confidence of the majority of Americans are summed up in a letter that Mrs. Oswald wrote to several congressmen in 1973 at the height of the Watergate crisis. Here is the letter. I'm just going to read it in my normal voice because her voice is hard to do too long. On November 29th, 1963, this is her letter. On November 29th, 1963, the then president of the United States, Lynden B. Johnson, created a commission to evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F.

[00:27:41]Kennedy and the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin and to report its findings and conclusions to him.

[00:27:49]President Johnson selected Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States, as its chairman.

[00:27:55]Because I was critical of the commission, I was asked, "Mrs. Oswald, are you implying that the chief justice would whitewash evidence or hide information so that the American people as well as the whole world would never learn the truth?" I answered, "Yes, in the name of security, men of integrity, and who are the most esteemed, most respected, and honored, who have the welfare of the country at heart, would be most likely to do what the White House wanted and thought necessary." The Watergate affair has followed this pattern. Those we believe are above reproach. Those who have reached the pinnacle or are near it. Those who are guiding our nation's destiny are found to have manipulated events to accomplish certain things they think were for the good of the country. Those who have a deep sense of patriotism and loyalty are most likely to twist events to accomplish their purposes.

[00:28:52]The Watergate affair only strengthens my convictions and proves my theory. In 1963, the suspect was my son, and seven such respected men branded a dead man who was neither tried nor convicted an assassin.

[00:29:09]That is quite an incisive letter for her to have written. It's very public. It's very clear. It's very like how people now will say will connect the dots between events. Oh, this assassination attempt reminds me of this assassination attempt or this event with this fraudulent behavior is very like how that fraudulent behavior was handled. We can see patterns across time and she is saying uh guys Watergate that just happened gives us some important clues here. We can see that actually information has been mishandled by the very people who are supposed to be our bettererss, our patriots, our esteemed ones, our leaders.

[00:29:55]Very, very interesting. Through the years, Mrs. Oswald, who always claimed to be a mother in history, was quick to point out that her defense of her son went beyond simple motherly love. She once told this author, meaning himself, these are personal conversations he had with Margarite Oswald, "If he was truly guilty, I can accept that. But whether it's my son or someone else's son, I want the proof, and the proof is just not there." In her last years, Mrs. Oswald was virtually a recluse in her modest but well-kept brick home on the west side of Fort Worth. an occasional visitor, usually a journalist, and her small dog Fritz were her only company.

[00:30:40]Neither her sons nor Lee's wife, Marina, ever spoke to her again after those days in November 1963.

[00:30:50]I mean, that is so sad. What a sad picture. I realize she is quite a piece of work and we're going to go on to keep reading about some of the things that offended them, but I don't know. I just I don't like this modern approach of like cutting off a family member. I grew up in a family where um one family member had uh disowned my aunt and then later that same family member then switched who was disowned and it created a lot of chaos and havoc in the extended family gatherings. It made summers and times off of school weird. It made holidays weird. It really creates an odd phenomenon in the family.

[00:31:35]And I don't know, I I do understand there are unhealthy family members, but I just think even still like an old woman in her in her old elderly years, I just think like why not run the children by and let them bring a page they had colored or something like that and let her hug on some babies and then scoot on out before offensive things get brought up. I just I don't think it has to be that you never talk again. I find that very hard for her. uh that she was potentially a very difficult woman, but she had lost a son in a very public way and then to be completely cut out by all of her children and her daughter-in-law.

[00:32:14]I mean, you know, look, maybe she was really difficult. Maybe they were right to do that. I just find it very sad.

[00:32:21]When money problems pressed too hard, she would sell a book or a letter from her mammoth collection of assassination materials. It was such money problems that helped create the belief that Mrs. Oswald would only talk for profit. So, you can see the cycle where she's so poor, she's like, "Well, let me see what I have here that's of any value cuz I've got to fix my oven or whatever." So, she'd sell it. And then people would say, "Well, she she just only talks because she wants money." However, as several Fort Worth newsmen can confirm, she never hesitated to pick up her telephone and call the media when a particular news item wrinkled her. She once explained the charge of talk for cash this way. Well, here I am without money, wondering where my next meal is coming from. And these writers come to my house wanting an interview. Then they go out and write some piece. Some of them don't even talk to me for more than 15 minutes or so, and they get all this money for their work. That's not fair.

[00:33:19]Over the years, Mrs. Oswald made repeated attempts to publish a book based on her knowledge, memories, and research of the assassination.

[00:33:27]Oddly enough, in light of the hundreds of books on the subject by authors ranging from the famous to crackpots, no one would publish a book by the mother of the accused assassin.

[00:33:38]In January 1981, Mrs. Oswald quietly entered a Fort Worth hospital. Rumors circulated that she had cancer. By the end of that month, Margarite Clavy Oswald was dead. Her memorial service was private, but her cause lives on. In one of her last letters to this author, she wrote but one simple sentence again. The charges against my late son Lee Harvey Oswald are false. Wow. She just wrote that one sentence to him in her last letter. That's very interesting.

[00:34:13]Oswald's early life is shrouded in Okay, so now we are going to get so the last bit of our the last bit of our episode will get into his childhood. Here we go.

[00:34:25]Oswald's early life is shrouded in innuendo and misinformation. Much of it stemming from the passionate attitudes following the assassination.

[00:34:34]Anyone who had any contact with Oswald was hunted down and interviewed by newsmen. And many were deposed by the Warren Commission. And no one, including some family members, had anything good to say about the man accused of killing one of this nation's most popular presidents. Some examples of misinformation include the statement that his two older brothers and eventually Lee himself were placed in an orphanage by their mother.

[00:35:00]Okay, so he's going to tackle this.

[00:35:01]Let's hear it. While true in one respect, a closer look shows that Mrs. Oswald had to work to earn a living for their fatherless family. Keep in mind there were no daycare centers in 1942.

[00:35:16]H Okay. Mrs. Mrs. Oswald explained to Newsmen years later that she placed the boys in the Bethlehem Children's Home operated by the Lutheran Church.

[00:35:25]Admittedly, it was also an orphanage, but more precisely, it was the forerunner of a daycare center. She saw the boys on weekends and holidays. It was quite a different situation from that described in the Warren Commission report.

[00:35:39]Reminding her sons that they were orphans and that the family's financial condition was poor, she placed them in an orphan's home.

[00:35:48]Hm. Well, I would love for those of you who have done deeper reading on this and deeper thinking about it to weigh in about this because that has been my understanding that they were kind of put off from time to time. And even this says she saw the boys on weekends and holidays.

[00:36:03]At what ages, when was this? For how long? That's what I wonder is that those things would be they would put you in a different situation than most average kids.

[00:36:14]Lee's older brother, John Pik, told the Warren Commission that Lee slept with his mother until almost 11 years old, thus supplying much fodder for later psychological speculation.

[00:36:28]Mrs. Oswald's version sound much sounds much more mundane.

[00:36:32]While I was married, Lee had his own bed, of course, all the while. After I divorced this man, Ect Doll, all I got from this divorce was $1,500. And I paid $1,000 down on a home. Well, I had to buy furniture. I bought used furniture and one of the boys slept on an army caught and the other on a twin bed. And because of the circumstances, Lee slept with me, which was a short time because then his brother joined the service. And when he did, Lee took his bed. But it just implies that all through his life he slept with his mother, which isn't the case. You see, it's quite a difference. Well, that is a difference.

[00:37:14]And, you know, I have an 11-year-old son right now, and if I was in that situation, I would not consider it sexual or problematic for me to share a full or a queen bed with him for a season. Not forever. Um, but if I was in dire straits like she's describing, I can see this being a reasonable thing. I I don't know if y'all have heard from family members of this era, but one of my older my husband's older family members has told me about a time when they moved into a two-bedroom house. Her parents had one bedroom and then she had three brothers. And so they offered her the bedroom and said, "You're the oldest sister. If you want the bedroom, you can have it." But she realized pretty quick, well, if I am out in the the family area, then I just have my area to clean up. But if I have my own bedroom, then I would have my own bedroom to clean up, and I'd have to clean up after all the boys in the family room. So, she had her bed in the dining room all the time, and the three brothers shared a tiny little room, and they all slept in one queen bed. I say that to say that those were different times and that people did not consider sharing a bed for children or even with parents to be a sexual thing. It was thought to be a practical thing. We all have to squeeze into this little house and we got to make it work. So, I just don't I I don't like the over sexualization of that because I don't think it has to be that. And I her her description sounds really reasonable.

[00:38:47]And it also I also have the experience of my children leaving the house. I have adult children now who have gone and they don't always know what's happening once they've gone. And if her oldest son left and then the boys each moved over in their beds, well then that would have been a short period of time when he would have had it. So I just I do kind of think her description actually might be accurate. And I think kids don't always remember things accurately. They might go, "Oh, he was babyed." And it's like, well, you were 17 and, you know, growling for a fight all the time and you didn't even know what was really going on. And I was over here having to share a bed with my son and the minute you left, we all got a little more room.

[00:39:26]You know, I could see that totally being the case. and him being kind of a, you know, a not very observant older teen son that is in hindsight criticizing his mother for something where she was poor.

[00:39:39]She had been widowed. She they were they were in dire straits and and went ahead and uh made made it work. Anyway, y'all let me know in the comments, but that's that's where I am with that. Robert Oswald supported his mother's version of this issue by writing, "If this sleeping arrangement had a bad effect on Lee, I'm sure mother didn't realize it. She was simply making use of all the space she had." Much was made of Oswald's truency in New York during 1953 and 1954, as well as the psychological testing resulting from this infraction. In the summer of 52, shortly before Lee's 13th birthday, he and his mother had gone to live with his half-brother, John Pik, and his wife in New York City, where Pik was stationed with the Coast Guard.

[00:40:25]There were reports of fights and divisions within the group, and by the start of the school year, Lee and his mother had moved into their own apartment in the Bronx. Teased at junior high school because he wore jeans and spoke with a Texas accent, Lee began staying away. However, unlike most truents who ended up in the pool halls or street gangs, Lee continued his education on his own, frequently the lo frequenting the local library and the zoo. Finally caught, the youngster was handed over for psychiatric observation to an institution called Youth House.

[00:40:58]Here he stayed from April 16th until May 7th, 1953.

[00:41:05]Three weeks for your 13-year-old to just be gone from you? I don't know. This does seem really like negligent mothering.

[00:41:16]I mean, you get you just see this like single mom who's been through a lot of heartache. She's not really clued into what's going on with her children. She's just trying to tread water and get through. And it's like, well, he got himself into a pickle. I'll get him. It must have been her thinking, but I just can't imagine leaving him there.

[00:41:39]Mrs. Oswald said it was only after having both her gifts and her person searched for cigarettes and narcotics that she realized youth house was one step short of jail. She said her son implored her. Mother, I want to get out of here. There are children in here who have killed people and smoke. I want to get out.

[00:42:02]What a sad thing for a 13-year-old to experience. While under the care of the state, Oswald was given psychiatric tests. The results were essentially inconclusive. They showed him to be a bright and inquisitive young man who was also somewhat tense, withdrawn, and hesitant to talk about himself or his feelings. This sounds really normal for a 13-year-old who's been through what we've already just read that he's been through.

[00:42:25]Even the Warren report, which generally tried to depict Oswald in the worst possible light, conceded, "Contrary to reports that appeared after the assassination, the psychiatric examination did not indicate that Lee Oswald was a potential assassin, potentially dangerous, and that his outlook on life had strongly paranoid overtones or that he should be institutionalized."

[00:42:44]After that experience in youth house, there were no further truency problems with young Lee. In January of 54, Lee and his mother returned to to New Orleans where he finished the ninth grade and began the 10th. Upon arriving in New Orleans, the Oswalds lived initially with Mrs. Oswald's sister and her husband, Lillian and Charles Duts Morett before finding an apartment of their own. As a side note, uh the Morettes, if you go down that rabbit hole, there are some interesting things to be found.

[00:43:15]It does seem that their family was intelligence connected. Uh, his cousin Marilyn appears to have led a double life. There's some very interesting things about her that you can kind of find online, but they're hard to find.

[00:43:29]Um, and oddly, I mean, I don't know. I don't know enough to know what to do with this, but she does look very like Ruth Payne. And some people have even said, was Ruth Payne actually his sister? And I mean, actually his cousin.

[00:43:42]I don't think that's actually true, but it is interesting how much they resemble one another. Um, but Lillian Morett and Marilyn Morett do have some interesting background things that are worth doing a little dive into if if you like that sort of thing.

[00:43:59]Everyone who knew Oswald as a youth agrees that he was somewhat introverted and was what could best be described as a bookworm. His interests were widely varied, including animals, astronomy, classical literature, and eventually politics. Robert Oswald later recalled one of his favorite TV programs was I Led Three Lives, the story of Herbert Filbrick, the FBI informant who posed as a communist spy. In the early 1950s, Lee watched that show every week without fail. When I left home to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns.

[00:44:33]There can be little doubt that the well- read but lonely young Oswald spent much of his time daydreaming, fantasizing about being an important person someday.

[00:44:41]Oswald appeared to have been drawn at an early age to the epic and intense ideological struggle between communism and democratic capitalism. He claimed that his first contact with communist ideology came with a pamphlet handed to him on a New York street corner in a Moscow interview shortly after arriving in Russia. Oswald told Associated Press reporter Ailen Mosby, which I thought about reading this article to y'all.

[00:45:06]Actually, I I just came across that article in full and thought that would be a really interesting read sometime.

[00:45:11]So, we might do that. But this is what he said. I'm a Marxist. I became interested about the age of 15 from an ideological viewpoint. An old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs. I looked at that paper and I still remember it for some reason. I don't know why. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been convicted of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Russians in a celebrated and still controversial case beginning in 1950 and they were executed on June 19th, 1953.

[00:45:42]However, this story of early interest in communism must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, this is simply what Oswald told a reporter at a time when he was trying very hard to depict himself and prove that he was a devout communist supporter. Right? This is part of the sheep dipping months where all of a sudden we see these like public professions and public connections with communist organizations uh that are very very new in Oswald's life. We we see uh from the time of when he def when he defects until the radio interviews uh the summer before the assassination, he's like publicly trying to make himself into this very convincing communist. So, we have to take it with a grain of salt that what was really happening there. Was that pretense? Was it real? Was it putting on a a front so that you could gain access?

[00:46:39]What was really going on? His brother Robert also expressed puzzlement over that story, writing, "If Lee was deeply interested in Marxism in the summer of 1955, he said nothing about it to me.

[00:46:52]During my brief visit with him in New Orleans, I never saw any books on the subject in the apartment on Exchange Place. Never in my presence did he read anything that I recognized as communist literature. I was totally surprised when the information about his interest in Marxism came out at the time of his defection to Russia. I was amazed that he had kept to himself ideas and opinions that were evidently so important to him. So, that's where we're going to leave it today. That's the look that uh I wanted to give us as a little just crystallized look at what Margarite said about the situation, who she was, what her response was to these things, and who Robert was. What did he have to say? I do think it's interesting. And I've heard that he um said some things that people wondered if maybe he was fed certain things to say or told certain things to say. But it's interesting to me that he readily admits I didn't know that Lee was into communist Marxism until the time of his defection. And for how uh intellectual, how thorough, and how vehem we're told that Lee Harvey Oswald was, it is interesting. Even having had conflict with this brother in New York, it's interesting that at no point does he say, "What do you think about this thing?" You know, um, and bring that up in any way. It's like, it's interesting that Robert Oswald himself says, "I didn't know anything about that."

[00:48:25]because it tells us what Oswald was doing in his own family, in their own private space. Well, you guys let me know what you think about Margarite, her plight, her responses, the distance from her family, some of her mothering decisions. Um, and then what do we do with Robert? Uh, if you guys have recommendations about good resources about Robert, he is someone that I would love to dig into at some point and understand a little better, especially get my head more around the idea of was he legitimately offering his thoughts or was there moments where some of what he says seems in question. So, let me know if you have recommendations for that. Next time we are going to be going through a portion of Sylvia Mar's book, Accessories After the Fact. We're going to be looking at that mouser and she is going to walk us through what the official account says about that 7.65 mouser that was reported on the sixth floor and called that for something like 36 hours before it suddenly changed to a maker caro in the reporting as the one that was the the rifle used. So, let's get into that.

[00:49:31]We're going to get into I mean, this book is just the best, you guys. if you don't own it. It's one of those books that actually is totally reasonably priced on Amazon. It's very within reach and it is an excellent book. Like if you are looking to get into this, the one that we just read actually from Jim Mars is often cited as one of the best looks that you can get at the assassination.

[00:49:53]This one is often cited as the best in terms of research and looking into the Warren Commission and the actual evidence. Uh so these two actually today's read and next time's read are affordable relatively affordable. This one in particular is quite affordable.

[00:50:12]Uh and so you could get that. Anyway, that's what we're going to be doing next time. Hope you'll come back for that.

[00:50:17]Let's look at the mouser. And I hope you have a great day. Take care. Bye.