Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  Hosty’s fellow agents knew better. Robert Gemberling, the agent who headed the Oswald investigation after the assassination, says that Hosty’s fellow agents took up a collection for Hosty and his family. “Hoover would have been pissed if he knew,” laughs Gemberling. “But the fact is that Jim Hosty was a terrific agent, who did as much or more than any other agent.”24

  Hoover knew Hosty had done nothing wrong, but someone had to be blamed for the heat the Bureau was taking over the handling of the Oswald case. Typically, Hoover was more concerned with the reputation of his beloved FBI than the rights of any one individual, including Jim Hosty.

  Oswald’s activities thus far in Dallas give no hint of an offer or deal made with anyone (in Mexico or elsewhere) to kill the President. However, that possibility is not unsupported by Oswald’s future actions. Indeed, on the very day Hosty met with Marina (November 1), Oswald rented a post office box near his job in Dallas. Among those Oswald listed as being entitled to receive mail at his box was the group belived so dangerous by the CIA and the FBI—the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

  Other curious activity concerns Oswald’s apparent planning for the assassination, as witnessed by a number of Dallasites. While it is true that many Oswald “sightings” are based on mistaken identification, some clearly are not. For a time, it was alleged that someone impersonated Oswald in order to later frame him for the assassination. That now appears not to be the case. Witnesses over the years attest to a pattern of Oswald activity, clearly suggesting his premeditation. One set of witnesses make a strong case that Oswald spent much of his last month honing his rifle-shooting skills.

  The Shooting Range

  “Of course we engage in subversion, the training of guerrillas, propaganda! Why not? This is exactly what you are doing to us.”

  —Fidel Castro, November 196325

  “Just wait, and you will see what we can do. It will happen soon. Just wait. Just wait”

  —Ricardo L. Santos Pesa, the Cuban Third Secretary to the Hague, November 7, 1963, after being asked to comment on recent exile raids against Cuba26

  “There’s no doubt it was Oswald,” gunsmith Howard Price told Dallas newsman Hugh Aynesworth. After the assassination, Price came forward to say he saw Lee Oswald practicing with his rifle at the Sportsdrome Gun Range in Grand Prairie, thirteen miles from Oswald’s Beckley Street apartment. Price said that he witnessed Oswald there starting on October 26, then on November 9 or 10 (Saturday or Sunday) and again on Sunday, November 17—five days before Kennedy was killed. More importantly, according to Price, “Other people were with him [Oswald].”27

  Mrs. Price recalls her (now deceased) husband’s reaction when Lee Oswald’s face first appeared on the television screen on the day of the assassination: “Howard jumped out of his chair, and before the suspect’s name was mentioned, said, ‘That’s Oswald! He comes to the rifle range. I sighted his scope.’”28

  When the FBI later interviewed Howard Price, he didn’t tell them that he knew Oswald’s name as well as his face. “Howard only allowed the FBI to interview him for fifteen minutes. He didn’t want to get involved,” says his widow. Price, however, did say he recalled Oswald’s 7.30 rifle with a 4X Japanese scope.29 Oswald owned a 6.31 rifle, but the two are very similar in appearance. Oswald’s Mannlicher Carcano was, in fact, equipped with a 4X Japanese scope. Price told newsman Aynesworth that Oswald was not alone, recalling that someone passed a wrapped-up rifle over the five-foot fence to him.

  Also at the range on the second Oswald visit (Sunday, November 17) was Garland Slack, who fired from the stall next to Oswald’s. Slack remembered Oswald well because he got into a shouting match with him. Oswald was shooting, rapid-fire, at the targets assigned to other shooters, including Slack’s. Slack affirmed Oswald’s proficiency with the rifle, saying, “I think he centered them all.” Slack, like Price, remembered that the person with Oswald, a man “25 years old or younger,” passed a rifle over the fence to Oswald wrapped in “rags or something.”30

  Another credible witness saw Oswald come to the shooting range on November 16. Dr. Homer Wood, at the range that Saturday with his 13 year-old son Sterling, recalled his reaction on seeing Oswald on television the day of the assassination:

  As soon as I saw Oswald on TV, I said to my wife, “He looks like the man who was sitting in the next booth to our son, out at the rifle range.” . . .When my son came home from school, I purposely didn’t say anything to him. Well, he also looked at the television and he spoke to me quickly, saying, “Daddy, that looks just like the man we saw at the range when we were sighting in our rifles.”31

  Although a youngster, Sterling Wood was quite the rifle buff, and, to the episode’s recounting, added a professional’s eye-for-detail. He told the FBI that while he was at the range, another shooter attracted his attention. Each time the man shot, he said, the rifle spit fire from the barrel. To Wood, this meant that the shooter was using bullets with an extra-heavy powder charge (Oswald’s 160 grain bullets were almost double the charge of the average rifle bullet). Young Wood remarked to his father, “Daddy, it looks like a 6.5 Italian Carbine.” He asked the shooter if that was the case.

  The man responded, “Yes, it is.” Sterling thought he recognized the Japanese four-power scope, and again asked the man if he was correct.

  Again the man responded, “Yes.” Sterling also remembered that each time the man fired, he retrieved the spent shells and placed them in his pocket. Wood counted 13 shells spent during the session. Oswald was, far and away, the best marksman at the range that day, said young Wood. At 100 yards, Oswald hit 8 of 10 bullseyes, with the other two only four inches off. Wood told the FBI he was positive that the shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald. He also recalled that Oswald was accompanied by another man of the same height (5’9”).

  Dr. Homer Wood told Frontline’s W. Scott Malone in 1993, “This guy, if he was Oswald, and I think he was, was an incredible shot with that old junky rifle—incredible!”32 Wood also told Malone that the FBI interview of his son Sterling made the young boy cry. Sterling told his father, “I don’t want to go back with them [the FBI agents] anymore.”

  Accompanying Sterling Wood to the range that Saturday was his friend Ken Longley, also 13 years-old. Longley recently recalled that he also saw the man with the old “bolt-action” rifle, and also remembered him as about 5’9”, although he didn’t recall the man’s face. “I was watching the result, not the shooter,” said Longley. “The man I saw shooting could have done it [the assassination].”33

  In the years immediately following the assassination, those doubting Oswald’s guilt pointed to the rifle range episode as evidence of an Oswald double sent out to set up the innocent “patsy.” The doubters claimed that Oswald was a poor shot, and therefore, they asserted, the gifted shooter seen at the range could not have been Oswald. However, not only could it have been Oswald, it most assuredly was Oswald.

  In 1993, following up on a tip from Dallas resident Dave Perry, who had recently spoken with Sterling Wood, the author contacted one of the rifle range witnesses. Now a successful dentist sharing an office suite with his podiatrist father (Dr. Homer Wood), Sterling Wood was reluctant to meet, let alone repeat the story he had told Perry. “Do you really think that what I have to say is that important to history?” he asked. He was assured that what he had told Perry would help put a key myth to rest—one that some had used to exonerate Oswald.

  After many weeks of haggling, Wood tentatively agreed to talk to the author. He had avoided interviews, he said, because, within a year of the assassination, he had been attacked and hospitalized—and almost died—with the permanent physical result being the implantation of a metal plate in his skull. It should be realized that in the wake of the assassination, paranoia gripped Dallas even more than the rest of the country. Every act of violence in Dallas was viewed initially as connected to the violence of that tragic weekend.34

  Finally agreeing to the interview, Wood stated, “I’ll be bring
ing some things that will blow your mind. Do you know that Marina later contacted us so that we might help forward letters to her family in Minsk? Do you know about ‘the ride?”

  As it turned out, Wood backtracked on his decision to be interviewed. His family, especially his father, was dead set against it. In order to keep family peace, Wood, offering his apologies, begged off. However, the salient points of his conversation with Perry and others are known: Sterling and his father had another reason to be certain that the talented shooter they saw was Lee Oswald—a reason they failed to tell the Warren Commission.

  On one occasion, they drove Oswald home from the range. And not only did they drive him to Oak Cliff, where Oswald’s Beckley Street apartment was located, but they spoke to him of Minsk, where the Wood family had relatives. After the assassination, the Woods received letters from Oswald’s widow, hoping the Wood family would forward them to Minsk. That Marina knew of the Woods and their family in Minsk establishes the credibility of the son’s allegation.

  But if the son is to be believed on this point, the question remains: Who was the second man at the range with Oswald?

  The fact that Oswald was practicing with his rifle is unremarkable, considering what he was going to attempt in a few weeks when Kennedy rode through downtown Dallas. Most important about these sightings are the questions raised about a second man seen with Oswald, and the mysterious movements of the Mannlicher Carcano rifle (and the contradictions implicit in the Warren Commission on the subject). Neither of these points necessarily implies conspiratorial allies in Dallas. Rather, it now seems that there has been a concerted effort to protect someone whom the Dallas Police determined had nothing to do with the assassination, but may have been innocently involved with Oswald.

  Buell Wesley Frazier

  After the assassination, the Dallas Morning News reported that the man who had driven Oswald to the rifle range had been located. The newspaper’s source, an investigator within the police department, said, “A man who knew Oswald stated he drove the 24 year-old suspect to the range area.”35 There was never a follow-up to this story, and if the police had such a man, they never spoke another public word about him. It was later determined that the police source claimed Michael Paine drove Oswald. Paine, however, denied that he was the man.36 One of Oswald’s roommates at the Beckley Street house, Leon Lee, adds to the mystery, saying:

  I remember that Lee used to occasionally get picked up and dropped off by someone who would park his car on the street and wait out there for Lee to join him. That wasn’t all that unusual, though, because few of the tenants had cars, and we always had friends give us rides.37

  It may not seem unusual to Leon Lee, but it certainly does to anyone attempting to characterize Oswald as a total “loner.” So who was the mystery driver? There is at least one known suspect. When Garland Slack’s wife, Lucille, was interviewed by the FBI in 1964, she volunteered that her husband told her that Oswald was driven to the range by a man named “Frazier.”38

  The descriptions of the rifle range “mystery man” as a young man about Oswald’s height and age, and according to one witness, driving an old black Ford hardtop narrows the field of possibilities. The addition of the name “Frazier” realistically reduces the field down to one: Buell Wesley Frazier. “B.W.” was the 19 year-old brother of Ruth Paine’s neighbor Linnie Mae Randle. B.W., who worked at the Depository, had told his sister of the job opening there. She relayed the information to Ruth and Marina, and that resulted in Oswald’s employment. In addition to having the same name, Frazier matched the description of the “mystery man” right down to the model of car he drove.

  In the years since the assassination, Buell Frazier has rarely made himself available for interviews. During those few interviews, he limited the questions to Oswald’s personality, and the size of the package that Oswald took to work when Frazier drove him there on the morning of the assassination. The author’s own meetings with Frazier, beginning in 1987, revealed a man very nervous about discussing the subject.

  At the first meeting, Frazier spoke through a crack in the door for over an hour before being coaxed outside. Eventually, more meetings were held over lunches throughout the Dallas area. Frazier told of how he lost “dozens” of jobs as a result of his association with Oswald. He was constantly uprooting himself to remain hidden from the press, and maintained an unlisted phone number. Frazier always spoke highly of his friend Lee. “He was wonderful with kids and animals,” Frazier remembered. “I used to sit on my porch in Irving and watch him play catch with the neighborhood children down the street [by Ruth Paine’s house].” Although he never socialized with Oswald (he denies driving him to the rifle range), Frazier said that he felt closer to him than any of the other co-workers at the Depository:

  He liked me because I was the only one who didn’t make fun of him. He used to use big words, and the other workers used to kid him about it. I used to go home and look the words up in the dictionary. Even though he was only a little older, he was like a big brother. I always felt that Lee wouldn’t stay long at the Depository. He was different. He was thin, not muscular like other [lifelong] warehouse workers. His hands weren’t callused. I always felt he was just passing through.39

  Three things emerge from encountering Frazier: One, he had true affection for Lee Oswald. Two, he continues to be frightened. And, three, he comes across as a genuinely nice person, unsoliciting of fame, and wishing to be left alone. His matter-of-fact disingenuousness resists the most imaginative portrait of an accomplice to assassination (he is a volunteer little league baseball coach, who has achieved remarkable success with a group of youngsters who worship their beaming instructor).40 Still, one is left with the distinct impression that Frazier is withholding something.

  The questions linger:

  If Frazier was just an unwitting 19 year-old kid, why the fear and withdrawal?

  How could he have been duped into apparent involvement in the assassination?

  Was he the man the newspaper referred to as knowing Oswald, and who “stated he drove the twenty-four year-old suspect to the range area”?

  Was he, in fact, the man at the range whom Garland Slack remembered as “Frazier”?

  Either these questions were never pursued by authorities, or they were swept under the rug to protect an innocent boy spending a day shooting with a friend. Similar to the authorities’ treatment of Sterling Wood, this was another case of an important witness, who may have added key detail about Oswald’s preparation for the crime, getting overlooked, purposely, for a personal reason.

  Mote Mysterious Sightings

  Not only did Oswald appear to be honing his shooting skills, but by the third week of November 1963, he was making appearances in downtown Dallas that were unforgettable to those who encountered him.

  On Saturday, November 16, the Dallas Morning News reported the first concrete details of the Kennedy motorcade, scheduled for the following Friday. Although the turn in front of the Depository on Elm Street was not mentioned, the paper noted that the parade would traverse Main Street. Oswald spent that day at the shooting range.

  Later that night, indeed late in the evening, a man named Hubert Morrow was approached by a stranger he would never forget. It was late in the evening and Morrow was on duty as the night manager of the Alright Parking Garage in downtown Dallas. For thirteen years, he had worked for the garage, which was located next to the FBI headquarters in the Federal building. During that time, Morrow had become quite friendly with many of the local FBI agents. He recently recalled what happened that November night:

  I was working here at night It was ‘round ten o’clock when he came into the garage and he asked me if he could see Main Street from the top of the roof. I said, “You probably can, but you’re not allowed up on that roof.” Nobody was allowed on that roof at that time. He asked me about the motorcade—would the motorcade be going down Elm Street or Main Street? I said it would be going down Main Street. He asked if you could
see Main Street from the roof [you could in 1963]. He was carrying a long item that appeared to be about as long as a rifle. But it was wrapped up in a brown paper or canvas sack. It was completely wrapped up. Only the muzzle was sticking out of the end. But he turned around and walked back out of the garage. The next time I saw him was when he’d assassinated the President41

  Undeterred by Morrow’s rejection, Oswald apparently returned to the garage to try again. Mrs. Viola Sapp, a garage cashier who was not on hand for the alleged confrontation with Morrow, remembers a separate Oswald encounter. “You know, he came to me asking about a job at the Commerce Street garage,” recalls Sapp.42 She was so struck by the oddness of her conversation with Oswald that she claims to be able to reconstruct it from memory:

  Oswald: “Hello, my name is Mr. Oswald. I’m new in town and I’d like to see about a job here.”

  Sapp: “Have you had any experience?”

  Oswald: “No.”

  Sapp: “I’m sorry, we’re full up. However, we have some openings at our other garages if you’re interested.”

  Oswald: “No. I’ve been walking around here at night, and I really love this building and location. I like how all the floors are open to the street and you can see the people on the street below. Tell me, does the top floor have a roof?”

  Sapp (not oblivious to the strange turn the conversation had taken): “No.”

  Oswald: “Do you think I could go up? I just love Dallas, and I’d like to see the sights.”

  Sapp: “Absolutely not. No one is allowed up there.”

  Oswald: “But I sure would like to—

  Sapp: “No!”

  With that, Oswald left the premises. Both Morrow’s and Sapp’s later statements to the FBI reveal none of this detail. When asked about the discrepancies, Sapp would only suggest that her supervisor advised her against providing additional detail. “Just keep it to yourself,” he had told her. Under no circumstances was she to reveal his name. After a period of time, however, Mrs. Sapp was persuaded to reveal that her supervisor was Claude Hallmark, presently a national executive in the Alright Parking Corporation.