Reclaiming History (237 page)

The likelihood of the two women’s story being true is practically nil. Texas School Book Depository records show that Oswald worked full days on November 6 and 7, 1963, and there’s no evidence he absented himself during working hours on those days.
⁴⁰
*
Further, Mrs. Hunter said that when the “Oswalds” left the store, Oswald drove their car. However, even apart from the fact that Oswald did not have a driver’s license and was learning to drive, there’s no evidence he had access to a car. And Marina Oswald testified, “Lee never drove a car with me or the children in it. The only time I saw him behind the wheel was when Ruth Paine…was teaching him to drive.” After being taken to Mrs. Whitworth’s store by Warren Commission counsel, Marina testified she had never been in the store before.
⁴¹

Mrs. Hunter testified that Oswald was driving a 1957 or 1958 two-tone blue Ford, and the reason she is positive of this is that friends of her’s in Houston, James and Doris Dominey, “had a car just like this.” In fact, she said, she was expecting them to visit her that very day and “had left a note [for them] on my mailbox that I would be at this place [Mrs. Whitworth’s store].”
⁴²
However, Mrs. Dominey, whose sister was married to Mrs. Hunter’s brother, told the FBI she and her husband did not visit Mrs. Hunter in November of 1963, had no plans to visit her, and never told anyone of any such plans. According to Mrs. Dominey, Mrs. Hunter had a strange obsession for attempting to inject herself into any big event that came to her attention. As examples, she said, Mrs. Hunter was likely to claim some personal knowledge of any major crime that received much publicity. And if a tornado should strike out of a clear sky, Mrs. Dominey said, “Mrs. Hunter will claim that she had known the day before that this event was to occur.” Dominey stated that “the entire family is aware of these tall tales Mrs. Hunter tells and they normally pay no attention to her.”
⁴³

As to the connection between this incident and the Ryder one, it should be noted that what “Oswald” was allegedly seeking at the furniture store (a firing pin) bears no relation to the work (mounting a telescopic sight) covered by Ryder’s repair tag. Further, in her testimony before the Warren Commission, Mrs. Whitworth said she was uncertain whether she referred the man to the Irving Sports Shop or “down…the highway at some pawnshop or something like that.”
⁴⁴

For many reasons, including the fact that Oswald was at work and couldn’t have been in the store, we know that Oswald and Marina were never in the store. And as for the issue of imposture by a second Oswald to frame him, how does buying a firing pin for one’s rifle constitute evidence implicating one in the assassination of President Kennedy? Do the conspiracy theorists really want us to believe that for this benign and non-implicating act of buying a firing pin, the conspirators would not only come up with a second Oswald to impersonate the real one, but now, apparently, a second Marina to impersonate Marina? There is no end to the silliness.
*

T
he Oswald sighting (or impersonation) that conspiracy theorists have perhaps relied on most strongly, and the only one that is supported by credible evidence, is the one by a car salesman in Dallas named Albert Guy Bogard. In statements to the FBI on November 23, 1963, and September 17, 1964, and in his testimony before the Warren Commission on April 8, 1964, Bogard said that on the afternoon of Saturday, November 9, 1963, a man walked into the showroom of the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership he worked for. Bogard said he introduced himself to the man and asked him his name twice before the individual gave his name as Lee Oswald. Oswald asked to test-drive a new Mercury Comet. Bogard, who accompanied Oswald on the test-drive, said that Oswald “drove a little reckless” at about 75 to 85 miles per hour on the freeway, taking the curves “kind of fast.” When they got back from their drive and Oswald expressed an interest in buying the car, Bogard prepared a “customer’s purchase sheet” (which Oswald declined to sign) and told Oswald he would need $300 as a down payment on the $3,000 car. Oswald said he didn’t have the money now but he’d have some money coming in “in two or three weeks.” Oswald would not give his address but told Bogard he lived in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, which Oswald, in fact, did. Bogard said he wrote the name “Lee Oswald” on the back of one of his business cards. When Bogard heard over the radio on November 22 that a Lee Harvey Oswald was a suspect in the Kennedy assassination, the name rang a bell with him and “I tore up the card and said ‘He won’t want to buy a car’” anymore, throwing the card in a wastepaper basket. Bogard said he also recognized Oswald when he later saw him on TV as the man who had come to his dealership on November 9.
⁴⁵

On February 24, 1964, the FBI administered a polygraph test to Bogard at its Dallas office and concluded he was not being deceptive in his answers since there was no significant physiological response to the questions.
⁴⁶
*
Little is known about Bogard, but when the FBI reinterviewed him on September 17, 1964, he was being held at the Dallas County jail on charges of “passing worthless checks and theft by conversion.”
⁴⁷
And on February 14, 1966, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning inside his car in the small racetrack (drag strip) town of Hallsville in East Texas. Nonetheless, his favorable polygraph result cannot be summarily dismissed. Just as obviously, the results cannot be treated as dispositive on the issue. Other evidence has to be examined to see if a reasonable conclusion can be reached.

Since Bogard was about to leave for a visit home to Shreveport, Louisiana, after Oswald left the dealership, he told Oran Brown, a fellow salesman, to handle Oswald if Oswald came back while he was away, giving Brown Oswald’s name. And Brown confirms Bogard’s story, telling the FBI on December 10, 1964, that Brown wrote the name “Lee Oswald” down “on something.” Indeed, even Brown’s wife told the FBI that she had seen the name “Oswald” on a piece of one of her husband’s papers at the house, but the Browns were unable to find the paper.
⁴⁸
Brown also confirms that he and Bogard and other salesmen were listening to the radio in the showroom after the assassination, and when Oswald’s name was mentioned, Bogard spoke out that this was the same man who had come to the dealership and that Oswald wouldn’t be buying a car anymore, and then Brown saw Bogard throw a card from his wallet into the wastebasket.
⁴⁹

Another car salesman at the dealership that day, Eugene Wilson, confirmed all of Bogard’s story about the customer test-driving the car. Wilson was told by Bogard that the customer drove like a “madman,” didn’t have enough money for the down payment, and so on, but he could not say, from photos, whether or not the man was Oswald. Anti-conspiracy theorists seize on Wilson’s statement to the FBI that the man was only about five feet tall. But this observation by Wilson, who told the FBI he had “poor vision,” is outweighed by others who saw the man that day, each of whom describe him as being of average height (e.g., Bogard said, “Medium” height; Frank Pizzo said, “Maybe five feet, eight and a half inches”). Further militating against the accuracy of Wilson’s observation is that he didn’t give it until September 8, 1964, nearly ten months after the incident in question. There is another point that makes it hard to give Wilson credibility, since Bogard never mentioned it: Wilson claims that when the man was unable to get the car, he said, rather sarcastically, “Maybe I’m going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car.”
⁵⁰

Jack Lawrence, another salesman, confirmed that he was present at the dealership with other salesmen when Oswald’s name was mentioned over the radio, and heard Bogard say Oswald had been to the dealership about ten days or so earlier test-driving a new car. He said Bogard was nervous about calling the authorities, so he, Lawrence, took it upon himself to do so, and he immediately called the FBI. He had already given notice that he was leaving his job at the end of the month, but he feels his discharge was expedited because of his reporting the matter and he was let go that same day by William Faller, the manager of the dealership.
⁵¹

Frank Pizzo, the assistant manager at the dealership, told the Warren Commission that when Bogard was trying to close the deal with Oswald, he asked Pizzo how much money Oswald would need for a down payment and Pizzo said, “Around $200 or $300.” When Bogard was unable to close the deal, he brought Oswald to the door of Pizzo’s office and told Pizzo, “He doesn’t have the down payment, but he will have $200 or $300 in a couple or three weeks,” and Pizzo said, “Okay.” Pizzo testified that when he saw Oswald on TV, “He looked familiar to me, and at that time I could have sworn it was him.” But Pizzo added that he had only seen the man for “a few seconds” at his door and “couldn’t say absolutely sure” that Oswald was the man. He also said that the “hairline” on two out of three photos he was shown of Oswald was not quite the same hairline of the man he saw for a few seconds.
⁵²

In addition to the problem of whether Oswald could have been at the dealership on November 9 (see later text), there are other problems with Bogard’s story, perhaps the most important of which is that the day after the assassination, Bogard, Pizzo, and an FBI agent emptied out the large dumpster in back of the dealership where all the refuse had been placed from the wastebaskets and other sources, and a thorough search revealed no card of Bogard’s with Oswald’s name on it.
⁵³
Nonetheless, Bogard was consistent in telling his story three times and, as indicated, passed a polygraph test, and all of his coworkers who had knowledge of the incident confirmed one or more parts of his story, not one of them negating the essence of it. So although I am not very confident, I feel that one is led to the conclusion that it is just as likely as not that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who came to the car dealership.

One thing is clear. There can be little doubt that the essentials of the incident described by Bogard took place. As indicated, no one disputes this and everyone at the dealership confirms it. The only question is whether the man was Oswald. Despite the aforementioned evidence that it may have been Oswald, anti-conspiracy theorist Gerald Posner, in the finest traditions of his opposition, the conspiracy theorists, not only didn’t tell his readers that Bogard passed a polygraph test, but actually wrote this about Bogard in
Case Closed
: “A Dallas car salesman, Albert Bogard, said Lee Oswald visited him on Saturday, November 9, and test-drove a car at high speeds. It could not be the real Oswald since he was occupied with Marina and Ruth in Irving that entire day. Again, the specter of a ‘Second Oswald’ was raised. Bogard said he had written Oswald’s name on a business card, which he had thrown away, and also claimed to have introduced Oswald to his manager [Frank Pizzo], who could not remember such a meeting. [Pizzo, of course, confirmed the meeting.] None of his fellow workers supported Bogard’s story [just the opposite is true], although one did remember a five foot tall ‘Oswald,’ not a very good imposter. Bogard was fired soon after he told his story.”
⁵⁴
(Posner gives no source for this last statement and I am unaware of anything in the Warren Commission volumes or elsewhere indicating that Bogard was fired soon after he told his story. As we’ve seen, Jack Lawrence, the salesman who called the FBI about Bogard’s story, may have been.)

If, indeed, it was Oswald whom Bogard saw, the biggest problem with Bogard’s story is that he says the incident occurred on November 9, 1963, which was a Saturday. We know that Oswald arrived at the Paine residence in Irving after work on November 8. The next day, November 9, was the day that Ruth Paine drove Oswald to the Texas drivers’ license examining station in Oak Cliff for him to make an application for a learner’s permit, but the station was closed because it was an election day in Texas. She drove Oswald back to Irving, where he remained for the rest of the day.
⁵⁵
However, we don’t know, for sure, that the incident took place on November 9. Bogard said, “To be exact…I
think
it was…the ninth day of November…a Saturday.”
⁵⁶
But Pizzo said the incident happened “in the middle of the week, towards the weekend.” He said he couldn’t swear to it but thought “it was a weekday.”
⁵⁷
And Eugene Wilson said that “it had been raining” on the day of the incident and Bogard had told him the pavement “was slick,” making Oswald’s driving so fast all the more hazardous.
⁵⁸
But it was desert dry in Dallas on November 9, 1963, without a trace of precipitation.
⁵⁹
The next Saturday, November 16, Oswald was not at the Paine residence in Irving; he had stayed in Dallas because Ruth Paine was having a birthday party for her daughter, and Marina asked him to stay in Dallas.
⁶⁰
We also know that on that day, November 16, Oswald had cars and driving on his mind because he went back to get a driver’s permit that morning, but the line was very long and he left.
⁶¹
Since we know that Oswald told Wesley Frazier he intended to buy a car, albeit an old one,
⁶²
it’s not far-fetched to imagine that he went to the subject car dealership that Saturday, November 16 (when it also didn’t rain in Dallas), or at some previous time that month, and on a lark took a spin in a new car. The fact that the subject car dealership was right near the Triple Underpass, and hence within view of the Texas School Book Depository Building where Oswald worked,
⁶³
increases the likelihood that if Oswald did have any interest in buying a car, this dealership, of which he was probably aware, would have been a natural place for him to go.

The argument by anti-conspiracy theorists that the man could not have been Oswald because Oswald couldn’t drive has some merit, but not much. Though Oswald was not proficient, Ruth Paine, who was teaching him how to drive, said that by November he had made “considerable” progress and had “learned well.”
⁶⁴
Although the Warren Report cites Marina as saying Oswald was unable to drive, of the three citations it gives to support this, one doesn’t deal directly with the issue and one doesn’t address the issue at all. Only the third does and it supports the opposite. When Marina was asked in her testimony if he was “able to drive a car,” she answered, “Yes, I think that he knew how. Ruth [Paine] taught him how.”
⁶⁵
*