Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  *The inside flap to Posner’s book declares that “after thirty years, Case Closed finally succeeds where hundreds of other books and investigations [i.e., the Warren Commission and House Select Committee on Assassinations] have failed—it resolves the greatest murder mystery of our time, the assassination of JFK.”

  *The Zapruder film was not shown to the American public until 1976 (see later discussion).

  *For those conspiracy theorists who say that the Zapruder film is a hoax and probably feel that they are the bold avant-garde in the conspiracy community, I am here to tell them that they really are just pikers in this regard. Author Bernard M. Bane writes that the assassination itself never even took place! “President Kennedy’s assassination was a hoax,” he writes, “masterminded by social engineers in furtherance of promoting social reform.” He doesn’t spell out how these people did it, but in his book Is President John F. Kennedy Alive—and Well? he answers his question with a confident yes. “So what has kept JFK from surfacing all these years, given that he is not being held against his will as in the case of a house arrest?…In order to implement a revisionist face-saving surfacing, he needs the cooperation of the powers that be, his erstwhile adversaries, which, not surprisingly, he is not getting.” (Bane, Is President John F. Kennedy Alive—and Well? pp. viii, 120–121) So there.

  † Although the conspirators would be able to see that Zapruder was in a better position to film the assassination they knew was about to take place, Zapruder’s film, if they tried to alter it, would still have to be 100 percent consistent with films taken from less favorable vantage points, like the Nix and Bronson films. Moreover, how could the conspirators have known, in advance, that only Zapruder would be in the position he was in—that there wouldn’t be other spectators with motion picture cameras on the north side of Elm Street?

  Indeed, since we know that in addition to the many motion picture cameras in plain view, there were many Dealey Plaza spectators taking still photographs, unless the conspirators had a helicopter hovering over Dealey Plaza with several telescopic sights trained tightly on everyone in the plaza, how could they possibly know which of the cameras took stills and which were the more dangerous (to them) motion picture cameras they had to seize?

  *If it weren’t to frame Oswald, and the conspirator-forgers didn’t want something in the film to be known, they obviously (assuming, as the theorists contend, the conspirators had possession of the original film) would have simply destroyed the film rather than engage in the incredibly complex effort to alter it.

  *These are additions or alterations to an image using computer technology to manipulate the pixels (i.e., colored dots) that make up the image.

  † Alterationist David Lifton is satisfied that the original Zapruder film was processed and developed at the Kodak plant in Dallas, but believes a copy was altered at a supersecret Kodak facility in Rochester, New York, and thereafter passed off as the original (David S. Lifton, “Pig on a Leash, a Question of Authenticity,” in Fetzer, Great Zapruder Film Hoax, pp. 387–388, 413). Apart from the fact there is no evidence this was done,

  surely Lifton has to realize that this altered copy could be immediately exposed as a forgery when it was ultimately compared with the out-of-camera original.

  *How, indeed, would they know that presidential assistant David Powers, in the car right behind the president’s limousine, who had a movie camera and did stand up in his car to take home movies at various places along the parade route starting at Love Field, would not have taken any pictures on Elm Street during the assassination (Trask, Pictures of the Pain, pp. 37, 63, 369; Letter from Dave Powers to Richard Trask dated March 28, 1989)? If he had, why would they think they’d be successful in stealing his film so they could alter it to make it consistent with their altered Zapruder film?

  *Little is known of Marguerite’s two younger sisters, except Pearl married and had already died at the time of the assassination, and Aminthe was married and living in Knoxville, Tennessee (8 H 96, WCT Lillian Murret; Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 13).

  *Oswald was a voracious reader of serious literature who had intellectual proclivities, and most who came in contact with him felt he was bright and spoke very well, but he was dyslexic. Throughout this biography, the reader can expect to see a great number of misspelled words and defective grammar by Oswald, which I’ve decided to quote as is, for historical accuracy.

  *Dr. Mancuso continued to rent the house until 1944, when Marguerite obtained a judgment of possession against him. She then sold the home for $6,500 to a bank, which resold it to Dr. Mancuso. (WR, p. 670; CE 2197, 25 H 76)

  † Though Marguerite is quite specific about this, her sons, though less specific, disagree. John said that “maybe once every two weeks,” Marguerite “would drop around” (11 H 20). And Robert said that later, when Lee was also at Bethlehem, “on weekends she came to the home to visit us” (Oswald with Land and Land, Lee, p. 35).

  *Robert told the Warren Commission that he and John did not come home this Christmas of 1945 because Marguerite, Lee, and Ekdahl had been living in Boston and their stay there had included the Christmas holidays (1 H 278). Not only does this clearly conflict with John’s testimony (11 H 25), but we know from school records that Lee, Marguerite, and Ekdahl were back in Dallas at least as early as October of 1945 since Lee entered in the first grade on October 31, 1945 (CE 1874, 23 H 679).

  *Ekdahl died shortly after the divorce proceedings, and there seems to be no record in the literature as to how Lee reacted to his death (Thomson, Boissevain, and Aukofer, “Lee Harvey Oswald—Another Look,” p. 122).

  *Two snapshots given the Warren Commission by John Pic suggest the barrenness of the neighborhood. The only building visible, at some distance, is a small, low, single-story building that Pic said contained both the local grocery store and the laundromat. The photos show Lee, a dog named Blackie they had acquired, and a ten-year-old car belonging to Marguerite. (Pic Exhibit Nos. 54 and 55, 21 H 122; 11 H 30, WCT John Edward Pic) The kids all wanted Marguerite to get a new car because this one didn’t work. Marguerite would have the boys out on the street every morning waving down people to push the car to get it started so she could get to work. (11 H 77, WCT John Edward Pic)

  † Somehow, at least to me, the story just doesn’t have the ring of truth to it, not only because there’s no corroboration, and no evidence that Lee had ever engaged in conduct designed to kill either of his brothers, but also because Marguerite’s ho-hum attitude about this most serious and dangerous of conduct is not too believable.

  *Conspiracy theorists, as much dreamers as the young Oswald, have always believed that in later years Oswald became a rendition of the main character in the show he was fascinated by, a double (some even say triple) agent. The fact that they have no evidence to support this belief, and that millions of others were fascinated by the popular TV show, is not troubling to them.

  *One wonders just how much pressure Marguerite was putting on Lee to go to school. Though she undoubtedly urged him to do so, we also know that Marguerite, who had since started selling insurance, would occasionally allow Lee to go with her during the day, but he found it too boring waiting for her in the car as she made her frequent stops (Siegel Exhibit No. 1, 21 H 485).

  *“I was never told my son needed psychiatric treatment, believe me,” Marguerite would later tell author Jean Stafford (Stafford, Mother in History, p. 22).

  *Marguerite had since left the employ of Lerner Shops and was now working at Martin’s Department Store in Brooklyn. The next month she went to work for Lady Oris Hosiery on Park Avenue South in Manhattan, a chain of hosiery shops she had worked for in New Orleans in 1943. (Carro Exhibit No. 1, 19 H 309; CE 2213, 25 H 110)

  † The consensus of many observers is that Oswald was not bright and was intellectually shallow. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have always been puzzled by this assessment. In my opinion, his words and thinking process in his late teens and early twenties have always struck me as being tho
se of someone not only above average in intelligence, but much more intellectual than I would expect most people of his young age to be.

  *As with the common perception about Lee’s intelligence, I also tend to disagree, although not as confidently, in the general impression of Marguerite. Obviously, Lee and his brothers knew Marguerite and I didn’t. But from the cold written record, and taking cognizance of the fact that everything in life is relative, I don’t find Marguerite to have been that bad a mother. She may have been deficient in several respects, but she was always working hard and providing for them. And the record seems to reflect, as her friend Myrtle Evans would agree, that at least with regard to Lee, alongside of whom she is now buried for eternity, she did love him dearly. One wonders if it wasn’t her offending personality, rather than her conduct and attitude, that turned people off so, and that the two somewhat separate realities seemed to slop over onto each other and get blurred, influencing people’s perception of her. As an example of her disobliging personality, journalist Hugh Aynesworth, who got to know the members of the Oswald family better than any of his peers, wrote, “Few people have ever so deeply annoyed me as Marguerite Oswald. And of all the things I disliked about her, none irritated me more than her voice. It was strange—unique in my experience—a jarring combination of birdlike sing-song, childish whine, and predatory threat that invaded your head like a dental drill. She would not stop talking” (Aynesworth with Michaud, JFK: Breaking the News, pp. 123–124).

  *On the day after the assassination, Dr. Hartogs was interviewed on television about why anyone might want to murder a president. At the time he did not recall having Lee in observation and his remarks were entirely generalities. Such an assassin, Hartogs thought, would be mentally disturbed, with a personal grudge against authority figures, and likely a person seeking to overcome his own insignificance and helplessness with an act that frightens others, even one that would shatter the world, discharging his own insecurity by making others insecure. (8 H 219–220)

  Oddly, Hartogs found fit to tell the Warren Commission (perhaps to impress others that he had foreseen Oswald as doing what he did, and without there being any indication he knew of the two knife incidents) that he had found Oswald “to have definite traits of dangerousness. In other words, this child had a potential for explosive, aggressive, assaultive acting out” (8 H 217). But if Hartogs actually believed this back in 1953, he knew he obviously should have recommended that Oswald not be returned to the community and that he be institutionalized immediately. In his Warren Commission testimony, he said, “I recommended that this youngster should be committed to an institution.” Question: “Immediately?” Hartogs: “Yes, that is right.” But Hartogs did not make this recommendation, only recommending institutionalization as a last resort. In his testimony before the Commission, when confronted with his earlier report by Warren Commission counsel, Hartogs was forced to concede that his earlier report in 1953 “contradicts” the recollection of Oswald’s character and disposition he gave the Commission. Trying to cover himself on another point, he said that he “implied” Oswald’s potential for explosive violence by his “diagnosis of passive-aggressive,” but the latter is hardly a synonym for the former. Hartogs told the Commission that although he did not use the words “potentially dangerous” in his report, he believed that violence was always a possibility with a passive-aggressive personality, whose aggressivity can be triggered by a situation of high stress, particularly if he “nourishes his hate and hostility for [a] considerable length of time.” (8 H 218, 221–222, WCT Dr. Renatus Hartogs)

  Author Gerald Posner, apparently trying to explain away Hartogs’s contradictory testimony, says Hartogs did not mention in his 1953 report his belief that Oswald was capable of explosive violence “since that would have mandated institutionalization,” and Hartogs only wanted “probation” with “guidance” (Posner, Case Closed, p. 13). But Posner gives no source for this, and Hartogs himself never said this in his testimony. Further, if one were to embrace Posner’s logic, it’s understandable and acceptable for a psychiatrist to recommend only probation and guidance, not institutionalization, for someone he believes is dangerous and capable of explosive violence.

  *There were differences of culture between New York City and New Orleans that resulted in Oswald getting beaten up one day. Lee got on a crowded school bus headed for Beauregard and sat where a seat was available. It happened to be in the section of the bus to the rear for colored people. Coming from New York City, Lee didn’t have the faintest idea that he had done anything wrong. He found out differently at the end of the line in front of the school. White boys on the bus jumped and pummeled Lee when they got off the bus, loosening his front teeth. (8 H 124, WCT Lillian Murret; 8 H 159, WCT Marilyn Dorothea Murret)

  *To elaborate on the earlier footnote on Marguerite, the knock on her by virtually everyone who knew her that she was almost impossible to coexist with and not a good mother has a few dissenters, at least as to the issue of whether she was a loving and caring mother. The Evans are two of the few dissenters. And Lee’s junior high school friend in New Orleans, Ed Voebel, was another, telling the Warren Commission that “I think she [Marguerite] tried to take care of him,” adding that “if he wanted something, no matter what it was…she would try to get it for him” (8 H 11). These testimonials cannot be disregarded, though it has to be noted that neither the Evans nor Voebel lived in Marguerite’s household, and Voebel only personally met Marguerite one time and did sense that “something was lacking” in Lee’s relationship with his mother. But more importantly, even if we ignore the negative observations about Marguerite by the professionals like the psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers in New York, even, indeed, those of her own sister Lillian—sisters, of course, can be catty—the relationship a son has with his mother is so special that virtually nothing can tear it asunder. Yet not just one, but all three of Marguerite’s sons seemingly had no respect for her and felt she left much to be desired as a mother. That assessment, coming from such a source, is even more difficult to disregard, although the available record of that assessment from the three sons is mostly conclusionary about their feelings concerning Marguerite, as opposed to supporting their conclusions with chapter and verse.

  *Some confusion has been caused by the fact that there were two businesses under the name Tujague in New Orleans, one of them a restaurant reputed to be an underworld hangout involved in gambling. The HSCA checked to see where Oswald had actually worked, and it turned out to be the shipping company. Frank DiBenedetto, who took over the business when Gerald Tujague died, told the committee that Tujague had once told him that he was in no way related to the owners of the restaurant. (9 HSCA 101–102)

  *Apparently, Oswald wasn’t bad with a pistol either. At the naval air base in Japan where he was later stationed, his pistol instructor, Marine sergeant Arnie Vitarbo, said, “Everyone was required to train with a pistol and rifle, and he showed a special interest. He was better than average…but everyone seemed to think he was different. A loner” ( Los Angeles Daily News, April 21, 1992; see also 11 H 305, WCT Maj. Eugene D. Anderson).

  *There’s no way to know for sure if Oswald used the alias Hidell because of his exposure to Heindel or not. The likelihood is that he did not, it just being a coincidence, the further coincidence being that Heindel was also from New Orleans, though there’s no evidence the two knew each other before Atsugi. Because Marina, who had firsthand knowledge, said Oswald came up with Hidell as an “altered Fidel” due to his reverence for Fidel Castro (1 H 64), and Heindel saying the “i” in his nickname was hard, not soft, as in Fidel, it’s safe to assume that Oswald’s alias had nothing to do with Heindel.

  *There was another puzzling question. On Oswald’s take-home pay of eighty-five dollars a month, how was he even able to afford going to the Queen Bee, one of the three most expensive nightclubs in Tokyo whose “strikingly beautiful hostesses…catered to an elite clientele,…not impoverished marine privates”? A
night at the club “could cost anywhere from sixty to one hundred dollars.” (Epstein, Legend, p. 71) But one should remember that Oswald was notoriously close with his money all of his life and did not gamble like his fellow marines, so he could have easily saved enough to go to the Queen Bee. After all, we know that no one thought any bigger than Oswald. And of course he could have met the hostess at some place other than where she worked.

  *Most of the former squad mates whom the Warren Commission took testimony or affidavits from were only with Oswald in Santa Ana, not Japan. Of three squad mates who were stationed with Oswald at Atsugi, one never mentioned one way or the other whether he had heard of Oswald’s pro-Russian and anti-American bent (8 H 318, WC affidavit of John Rene Heindel), and another said, “I never heard Oswald make any anti-American or pro-Communist statements” (8 H 317, WC affidavit of Peter Francis Connor). However, as indicated, fellow marine Paul Murphy did say that Oswald spoke “a little Russian” in Japan (8 H 320, WCT affidavit of Paul Edward Murphy).