Reclaiming History (238 page)

The only relevance of the whole Bogard story, of course, is that if the man was Oswald, his telling Bogard he was going to be coming into some money soon raises the inference that he was getting paid to kill Kennedy and hence, many conspiracy theorists argue, the existence of a conspiracy. But when we look closely at the matter, there’s much less to it than meets the eye. What type of money was Oswald (assuming it was he) talking about? It is not clear from Bogard’s testimony whether Oswald intended to buy the car outright or just make a down payment.

“Did you tell him you needed a down payment?” Warren Commission counsel asked Bogard.

“He said he would have it…in two or three weeks.”

“Did you tell him how much?”

“Yes…Three hundred dollars.”

But later Bogard quotes Oswald as telling him he “would just pay cash for it [the car] at a later date,” so there is some ambiguity. But there is no ambiguity in Frank Pizzo’s testimony. As indicated, he said Bogard told him, “He [Oswald] doesn’t have the down payment,
but he will have $200 or $300 in a couple or three weeks
.” So we may only be talking about $200 or $300. But even assuming Oswald led Bogard to believe he would pay cash for the whole purchase price of the car, nothing can be made of this for two reasons. If a man can tell his wife, as Oswald did, that one day “he would be Prime Minister,” certainly he would be very capable of telling a persistent car salesman he’d be coming into some money soon and would pay cash for the car. These words, like those between lovers, are written on the wind. But far more importantly, we know no one paid Oswald to kill Kennedy, not only because there’s no evidence of this, but because we know that Oswald virtually hadn’t a dime to his name on the day he killed Kennedy. He left $170 behind for Marina on the morning of the assassination, and had $13.87 on his person when he was arrested. In a highly detailed analysis of Oswald’s finances from January 13, 1962 (when he arrived back in the United States from Russia), through November 22, 1963, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald and Marina had $183.87 to their name at the time of the assassination.
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The remainder of the conspiracy community believes that the man at the car dealership was not Oswald but an imposter. As conspiracy theorist Walt Brown puts it, “It would seem, on [its] face, that this test-drive event was a bonafide ‘Oswald impersonation’ which immediately shouts ‘conspiracy,’ as someone wanted to have it on record that a ‘Lee Oswald’ would soon be coming into money.”
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But this argument is counterintuitive. Any group of conspirators out to frame Oswald would obviously want the authorities to believe that Oswald acted alone, that no conspiracy was involved. If the Oswald impersonator said or did anything to advertise that he was not acting alone, that there were conspirators behind him, it would immeasurably increase the risk that law enforcement, now knowing there were people behind Oswald, would eventually find them. Apparently Walt Brown’s good mind was taking a rest when he wrote those words.
*
If conspirators had Oswald kill Kennedy for them, the last thing in the world they would do would be to encourage the suspicion that anyone was behind Oswald’s act. It should be added parenthetically that a professional imposter, as the conspiracy buffs would want us to believe was impersonating Oswald, would clearly have shown Bogard a fake ID to implant his name in Bogard’s mind. But Bogard said “Oswald” showed him no ID. In fact, Bogard said the man had to be prodded even to give his name.
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Some imposter.

My sense is that the man in the Bogard incident was either Oswald, in which case no conspiratorial inferences can reasonably be drawn from all the evidence, or someone else whom Bogard sincerely believed was Oswald. But he surely was no imposter.

S
everal witnesses claim they had seen Oswald firing a rifle at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas at various times from September through November of 1963. Malcolm H. Price Jr., who helped out at the range, told the Warren Commission he first saw Oswald at the range on September 28 when Oswald asked him to set the scope on his rifle for him, which he said he did, zeroing it in at one hundred yards. Apart from the fact that Oswald, a former marine, would certainly know himself how to set the scope on his rifle, the problem with Price’s story is that Oswald is known to have been in Mexico City on that date. Price said he saw Oswald two times thereafter at the range, the last time being the “Sunday before…Thanksgiving.”

Warren Commission counsel: “Well, the Sunday before Thanksgiving [November 24, the day Ruby killed Oswald] was
after
the assassination.”

Price: “It was
after
?”

“Yes, and you saw…Oswald at the rifle range
after
the assassination?”

“I believe I did.”
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Garland Slack, who fired at the range, said that on November 10, when they had a turkey shoot at the range, and November 17, he saw Oswald firing at the range. On the seventeenth he had a run-in with Oswald because Oswald was shooting at Slack’s target. Though Oswald was not at the Paine residence on the weekend of November 16 and 17, and hence, it was possible for him to be at the range, it was not possible for Slack to see Oswald at the range on the tenth. Ruth Paine said that “except for the trip to Dallas, Texas, on November 9, 1963 [to get Oswald’s driver’s permit], Lee Oswald remained in my home from the time of his arrival, the late afternoon of November 8, 1963, until he departed for Dallas, Texas, in the early morning of November 12, 1963.” (November 11 was Armistice Day, a holiday, so Oswald returned to Dallas on Tuesday morning.) Slack acknowledged how “you read the papers and you get to where you…find yourself imagining you saw somebody.” But he said he was positive (“I know”) Oswald was the man at the range. What type of hair did “Oswald” have? Slack said he had “hair that grew down his neck, all the way down into his jacket.”
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Certainly sounds like Oswald to me.

Two other shooters at the range, Dr. Homer Wood and his thirteen-year-old son, Sterling, told the Warren Commission they were confident they saw Oswald firing on the range on November 16, 1963.
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*

Though other witnesses partially corroborated the testimony of the above witnesses, the Warren Commission said, “There was other evidence which prevented the Commission from reaching the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the person these witnesses saw.”
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In addition to the impossibility of some of the witnesses seeing Oswald on certain days, when we know Oswald was elsewhere, some of the descriptions of him (very long hair, the hair was “blonde,” he wore a “Bulldogger Texas style” hat, and had bubble gum or chewing tobacco in his cheek, etc.) simply didn’t fit Oswald. Nor did the allegation that Oswald drove up in a 1940 or 1941 Model Ford, since there’s no evidence that Oswald had access to a car. Also, neither Oswald’s name nor any of his known aliases were found on the sign-in register at the Sports Drome Rifle Range, though customers didn’t always sign their names. Moreover, there is no evidence that Oswald owned more than one rifle, and the one the witnesses saw did not match Oswald’s Carcano. For instance, Price and Slack said that certain pieces were missing from the top of the weapon, and Dr. Wood and his son recalled that the weapon spouted flames when fired. Price and Slack also said they did not believe the rifle had a sling, but the Carcano did.
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Also, all casings recovered from areas where witnesses claimed to have seen Oswald firing his weapon were examined at the FBI laboratory, which determined that none had been fired from Oswald’s Carcano rifle.
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Despite all this, if the man, indeed, was Oswald, his practice firing at the range with his Carcano would be a normal activity and would not implicate him in Kennedy’s murder. Some conspiracy theorists believe that the man at the range was not Oswald. “The [Warren] Commission may be correct,” Mark Lane says, immediately segueing to the possibility that the man at the range was “impersonating Oswald” for the obvious purpose of a frame-up.
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But how, may I ask, would impersonating Oswald firing at the range serve to implicate Oswald in the murder of President Kennedy? That’s evidence of guilt? And if the man were impersonating Oswald, why would he keep his hair very long (like a “beatnik,” Slack told the FBI), wear a type of hat Oswald was never seen wearing, and use a rifle not identical to Oswald’s Carcano (which the conspiracy theorists believe the framers of Oswald knew about and indeed planted on the sixth floor)? Why, indeed, didn’t he tell some of the people at the range that his name was Lee Harvey Oswald, or even print his name in the sign-in register? The whole rifle range story doesn’t add up to a hill of beans.

Leonard E. Hutchison, the owner of a supermarket in Irving, told the Warren Commission that early Friday evening in the first week of November, Oswald tried to cash a personal check payable to him for $189 at his store, but he declined since he never cashed personal checks in excess of $25. Oswald is not known to have received a check for this amount from any source, once again raising in the minds of conspiracy theorists the specter of conspiracy. Hutchison’s story broke down when he said he had seen Oswald in his store on weekday mornings four or five times starting in late September. Not only didn’t Oswald start coming out to Irving until he got his job at the Book Depository Building in mid-October, but in Hutchison’s earlier statement to the FBI on December 3, 1963, he said the $189 check incident in November was the
first
time he had seen Oswald, and Oswald started coming to the store “once or twice a week” thereafter up to the assassination.
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Hutchison also told the Commission that Oswald would always come into the store between 7:20 and 7:45 in the morning (he said 7:15 to 7:20 to the FBI) to buy cinnamon rolls and milk, presumably for breakfast. But Marina said that Oswald would never eat breakfast. “He just drank coffee and that is all.”
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Moreover, except for rare occasions, Oswald was in Irving only on weekends, and Wesley Frazier testified that he’d pick Oswald up around 7:20 on Monday mornings, and never later than 7:25 to get to work by 8:00.
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The Paine and Frazier residences were eight-tenths of a mile from Hutchison’s store.
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Hutchison told the FBI that on Wednesday evening, November 13, Oswald came into the store with a woman he “presumed” was his wife, and this was the only person he had ever seen Oswald with.
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In his testimony before the Warren Commission, he said the woman was Marina, and the two were accompanied by an “elderly lady.”
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We know that Oswald was not at the Paine residence in Irving on Wednesday evening, November 13, having returned to Dallas on the morning of the twelfth, making his going to the store in Irving with Marina and the “elderly lady” highly unlikely. Marina, as well as Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, both told the FBI they had never been to Hutchison’s market, and Marina said neither had her husband.
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Since it is clear the man Hutchison saw was almost assuredly not Oswald, the question again has to be asked: Is it believable that conspirators trying to frame Oswald with an Oswald imposter would advance their cause by having the imposter try to cash a $189 check at a supermarket? If so, in what way?

F
or years, students of the Kennedy assassination have wondered where, if anywhere (i.e., he could have been wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what to do next), Oswald was going just before his fateful encounter with Officer Tippit at around 1:15 on the afternoon of the assassination. Was he going to alleged co-conspirator Jack Ruby’s apartment (1
¹
/
₃
miles away and almost on a straight line from the direction Oswald was walking)? Or was he going to the home of retired Major General Walker (about 5 miles away) to kill him for sure this time? Or was he perhaps on his way to rendezvous with Tippit himself, an alleged co-conspirator in Kennedy’s assassination? These are just a few of the speculations that have tantalized researchers. Conspiracy author Sylvia Meagher pointed out that Oswald “had no known social or business contacts in [the] immediate area” where Officer Tippit was shot.
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Although no one knows where Oswald was headed at the time he met up with Tippit, the probability is that he wasn’t thinking about escaping to Mexico or Cuba. With $183.87 to his name on the morning of the assassination, it is highly unlikely he would have only taken $13.87 (the amount on his person at the time of his arrest) of it for himself if Mexico or Cuba were on his mind. The fact that he only took $13.87 with him on the morning of November 22, 1963, suggests he probably thought the likelihood of his escaping was small.

One of the most interesting speculations that the more serious conspiracy theorists have entertained is that Oswald was on his way to Redbird Airport, a small municipal airport in South Dallas, where waiting co-conspirators would fly him away to Mexico or Cuba in his escape from the police dragnet. Dallas assistant district attorney Bill Alexander, whose job it would have been to prosecute Oswald, told me that “this possibility naturally entered my mind, as well as Captain Fritz’s.”
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Indeed, though Oswald never went to Redbird Airport on November 22, 1963, assassination lore has it that a small plane, bound for Mexico, did leave Redbird Airport on the afternoon of the assassination.

That Redbird Airport (renamed Dallas Executive Airport on May 1, 2002) even entered anyone’s mind is because at the time Tippit pulled his squad car over to talk to Oswald, Oswald was walking eastbound on the south side of Tenth Street near Patton, and if he were to continue eastbound, Interstate 35 (R. L. Thornton Freeway) would have been seven blocks away, with the Redbird Airport being about 5¼ miles southwest down the road from there. The Secret Service said Oswald could have managed to catch a bus near the freeway that would be “routed past the Redbird Airport.”
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