By that year, however, Marguerite had already come to the end of two other marriages, the last being to Edwin A. Ekdahl. Between Pic and Ekdahl came the six-year interval, starting in 1933, when she was married to Robert E. Lee Oswald, and they soon had a son, Robert Lee Oswald, Lee’s middle brother. Five years later, Robert E. Lee Oswald died while Marguerite was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Lee Harvey Oswald was born, therefore, fatherless.
So much for the natal and nuptial facts. The impact of Robert E. Lee Oswald’s death was borne in isolation by Marguerite, and that was characteristic of her. She was proud of her Southern manners, which were self-acquired. The youngest sister in a large New Orleans working-class family, she had developed airs and aspirations in her adolescence, and even achieved a measure of gentility through her second marriage. After the death of Robert E. Lee Oswald, Marguerite was, however, reduced to penury. Her life became a journey through stunted little commercial enterprises—moves from low-paying jobs to business ventures so small that the heart of the profit was chewed out before she began. But we can leave these details to John Pic, Lee’s oldest brother.
MR. PIC. Well, while we lived on Bartholemew Street, my mother opened in the front room a little store called Oswald’s Notion Shop. I think she sold spools of thread and needles and things like this.
MR. JENNER. Did she sell any sweets or candy for children?
MR. PIC. Yes, sir; I remember we used to go there and swipe it. [The store] was [in] the very front room . . . we had a dog and the dog’s name was Sunshine . . .
MR. JENNER. Was it a nice neighborhood? . . .
MR. PIC. Well, digging back in my Sociology courses, I would say it was upper-lower class, if there is such a classification . . .
MR. JENNER. Now, I ask you again to recall the circumstances under which you entered the Bethlehem Orphanage, you and your brother Robert?
MR. PIC. . . . I think properly the notion store wasn’t a booming business, and she had to go to work and since we were reminded we were orphans all the time, the right place to be would be in an orphan home . . . 2
Marguerite had an older sister, Lillian Murret, who had five children, and Lillian would take Lee into her household for periods when he was two years old.
MRS. MURRET. . . . he was a very beautiful child . . . I would take him to town, and . . . he would have on one of these little sailor suits, and he really looked cute, and he would holler “Hi” to everybody, and people in town would stop me and say, “What an adorable child he is.” [My children] liked him . . . I had 5 in 7 years, . . . had to get my own five children ready for school, and I didn’t have any help on that and it kept me pretty busy, and that’s why I guess it was that Lee started slipping out of the house in his nightclothes and going down the block and sitting down in somebody’s kitchen. He could slip out like nobody’s business. You could have everything locked in the house, and he would still get out. We lived in a basement house, and we had gates up and everything, but he would still get out.3
Lillian Murret’s daughter Dorothy is more than ready to corroborate her mother’s description.
MISS MURRET. . . . He had a certain manner about him that other children never had. I mean he was very refined, he really was, and extremely well-mannered . . . he was darling, and very outgoing and a very pretty child. He was adorable . . . 4
Relations, however, between Marguerite and Lillian were frequently on edge.
MRS. MURRET. She was very independent . . . She didn’t think she needed anyone at any time, . . . no matter how much anyone would try to help or how much they would try to do for her, she never thought that anyone was actually helping her . . . Sooner or later it seemed like she would just take one little word or something that she would think was wrong, and we would have these little differences.5
While his brothers, John Pic and Robert Oswald, were in Bethlehem Orphanage, Lee would, for thirteen months, go back and forth from the orphanage to the Murrets’. John Pic remembers his presence well.
MR. PIC. . . . Robert and I enjoyed Bethlehem. I mean we were all there with the kids with the same problems, same age groups, and everything. Things for myself became worse when Lee came there . . .
MR. JENNER. Tell us about it.
MR. PIC. At Bethlehem they had a ruling that if you had a younger brother or sister there and they had bowel movements in their pants the older brothers would clean them up, and they would yank me out of classes in school to go do this and, of course, this peeved me very much . . .
MR. JENNER. He was only [2 or] 3 years old?
MR. PIC. Yes; but I was 10 . . . 6
In those difficult years, Marguerite met an electrical engineer, a Yankee from Boston described by John Pic as “Tall . . . over six feet. He had white hair, wore glasses. Very nice man.” He proved to be one electrical engineer who had an eye for ladies with verve, and he and Marguerite traveled together on his business trips through Texas for months, and Lee went with them until he was old enough for school, at which point Mr. Ekdahl married Marguerite and bought a house in Benbrook, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth.
Her economic situation now solved, she took John and Robert out of the orphanage and sent them to military school in Mississippi, at an academy called Chamberlain-Hunt. However, Marguerite’s good life with Ekdahl began to deteriorate. Their disputes were many, and often over money; they would quarrel and separate, come together and fight once again. During one of these separations, in the summer of 1947, at a time when John Pic was home from Chamberlain-Hunt and closing up the store in which he worked that summer, Marguerite and Mr. Ekdahl “drove up and told me that they were going downtown to the Worth Hotel. This was one of their reunions.”7
MR. PIC. . . . So, I went back and told Lee and Robert, and this seemed to really elate Lee, this made him really happy that they were getting back together. Mr. Ekdahl, while Robert and I were at the academy, would write us, he was a great one for writing poetry. He would send us a poem about ourselves or something, treated us real swell.
MR. JENNER. . . . did Lee like him? . . .
MR. PIC. Yes, sir; I think Lee found in him the father he never had. He had treated us real good and I am sure that Lee felt the same way . . . 8
The marriage, however, proceeded to come further apart. Marguerite, as John would put it, had “strong suspicions.”
MR. PIC. . . . Mr. Ekdahl was seeing another woman and [my mother] knew where the woman lived and everything.
So, one night [my friend] Sammy, my mother and I all piled into this young couple’s car, went over to these apartments, and Sammy acted as a messenger, and knocked on the door and said, “Telegram” for this woman, whoever she was, I don’t remember the name. When she opened the door, my mother pushed her way in, this woman was dressed in a nightgown negligee, Mr. Ekdahl was seated in the living room in his shirt sleeves and [my mother] made a big fuss about this. She’s got him now and all this stuff . . . 9
Lillian Murret goes into further detail:
MRS. MURRET. . . . his coat and tie and shirt was off, and he had his athletic shirt on [so Marguerite] questioned him about that, and he said he was there on business, which was absurd, because you know you don’t disrobe yourself on business, so that’s what started off the Ekdahl case, and then of course she wanted to get a divorce from him right away, you see, and that’s why I say she’s quick, you see, because I would not have gotten a divorce. I would have got a separation, because he was making a big salary, [but] she wanted a divorce [although] it seemed like he had connections [because] her pastor told her that if she would press this case against Ekdahl, that he would have a heart attack and that would make her a murderer, that she would be the cause of him dying, so he was in the hospital, I think, so she went to the hospital to see him, and I think they had a roar-up there . . . 10
Came the trial:
MR. PIC. . . . I don’t remember my testimony completely. I do remember that my mother had made the statement that if Mr. Ekdahl ever hit her again tha
t she would send me in there to beat him up, something which I doubt that I could have done.
I was told by her that she was contesting the divorce so that he would still support her. She lost, he won. The divorce was granted. I was also told that there was a settlement of about $1,200 and she stated that just about all of this went to the lawyer . . . 11
Ekdahl died soon after, and the family was in economic trouble again.
MR. PIC. . . . Robert and I were informed that we would not return to Chamberlain-Hunt in the fall. This, I think, was the first time that I actually recall any hostility towards my mother . . .
MR. JENNER. How did Robert react to that?
MR. PIC. He felt the same way, sir. He wanted to go back. But we were informed because of the monetary situation it would be impossible . . . I was 16 at this time. In September, Lee and Robert returned to school, and I went to work. I obtained a job at Everybody’s Department Store which belonged to Leonard Bros. I was a shoe stock boy at the salary of $25 a week.
MR. JENNER. Did you pay some of that money to your mother?
MR. PIC. I think at least $15 out of every pay check . . . 12
As soon as he is old enough, John joins the Coast Guard. Robert was going to school in Fort Worth and working. Marguerite was working, and Lee was alone.
MRS. MURRET. Yes; she told me that she had trained Lee to stay in the house; to stay close to home when she wasn’t there; and even to run home from school . . . She said she thought it would be safer . . . than to have him outside playing when she wasn’t there [so] he just got in the habit of staying alone like that . . . he was with himself so much.13
John Pic adds a telling detail, and not without malice:
MR. PIC. Also, Lee slept with my mother until I joined the service in 1950. This would make him approximately 10, well, almost 11 years old.
MR. JENNER. When you say slept with, you mean in the same bed?
MR. PIC. In the same bed, sir.14
3
Indian Summer, New York
In 1952 Marguerite sold her house, got into her car with Lee, and drove to New York, where John Pic was stationed in the Coast Guard:
MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . I had no problem of selling my home and going there . . . the main thing was to be where I had family . . .
MR. RANKIN. And what date was that?
MARGUERITE OSWALD. That was exactly August 1952, because I wanted to get there in time for Lee’s schooling . . . Robert joined the Marines in July of 1952. And that was my reason for going . . . So at this time I was living in my daughter-in-law’s home and son. And we were not welcome, sir.1
John Pic had not known in advance that Marguerite was planning to live permanently in New York. He had thought it was just a visit, and so he could put her up. At this time, he and his wife lived in his mother-in-law’s apartment in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. It was what John called “a freight-car type,” one room after another, but there was space because his mother-in-law was away visiting her other daughter in Norfolk, Virginia.
MR. PIC. . . . They brought with them quite a bit of luggage, and their own TV set. On my way home from work I had to walk about 8 or 10 blocks after the subway, and Lee . . . decided to go up and meet me. We met in the street and I was real glad to see him and he was real glad to see me. We were real good friends. I think [in] a matter of a few days or so I took my leave. Lee and I visited some of the landmarks of New York, the Museum of Natural History, Polk’s Hobby Shop on 5th Avenue. I took him on the Staten Island Ferry, and several other excursions we made.
MR. JENNER. Go ahead.
MR. PIC. Well, sir; it wasn’t but a matter of days before I could sense they moved in to stay for good, and [my mother-in-law] was due back in a matter of a month or so.
During my leave I was under the impression that I may get out of the service in January of 1953, when my enlistment was up, so [my mother drove me] to several colleges . . . Fordham University, for one, and Brooklyn . . . I remember one conversation in the car that she reminded me that even though Margy was my wife, she wasn’t quite as good as I was, and things like this. She didn’t say too many good things about my wife. Well, naturally, I resented this, because I put my wife before my mother any day.
Things were pretty good during the time I was on leave but when I went back to work, I would come home and my wife would tell me about some little problem they would have. The first problem that I recollect was that there was no support for the grocery bill whatsoever. I don’t think I was making more than $150 a month, and they were eating up quite a bit, and I just casually mentioned that and my mother got very much upset about it. So every night I got home . . . and my wife would have more to tell me about the little arguments . . . It seems that there was an argument about the TV set one day between my wife and my mother . . . According to my wife’s statement my mother antagonized Lee [until he was very] hostile towards my wife and he pulled out a pocketknife and said that if she made any attempt to hit him that he would use it on her. At the same time Lee struck his mother. This perturbed my wife to no end. So, I came home that night, and . . . my wife told me this in private, sir. I went and asked my mother about it . . .
MR. JENNER. Was Lee present when you spoke with your mother? . . .
MR. PIC. I am getting to that, sir. So I approached Lee on this subject, and about the first couple of words out of my wife he became real hostile toward me . . . it perturbed my wife so much that she told them they are going to leave whether they liked it or not, and I think Lee had the hostility toward my wife right then and there, when they were getting thrown out of the house as they put it.
When I attempted to talk to Lee about this he ignored me, and I was never able to get to the kid again after that. He didn’t care to hear anything I had to say to him. So in a matter of a few days they packed up and left, sir. They moved to the Bronx somewhere . . . 2
Marguerite offers a variation on this episode:
MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . it was not a kitchen knife—it was a little pocket knife, a child’s knife, that Lee had. So she hit Lee. So Lee had the knife—now, I remember this distinctly, because I remember how awful I thought Marjory was about this. Lee had the knife in his hand. He was whittling, because John Edward whittled ships and taught Lee to whittle ships. He puts them in the glass, you know. And he was whittling when this incident occurred. And that is what it occurred about, because there was scraps of wood on the floor.
So when she attacked the child, he had the knife in hand. So she made the statement to my son that we had to leave, that Lee tried to use a knife on her.
Now, I say that is not true, gentlemen. You can be provoked into something. And because of the fact that he was whittling, and had the knife in his hand, they struggled.
He did not use the knife—he had an opportunity to use the knife.
But it wasn’t a kitchen knife or a big knife. It was a little knife.
So I will explain it that way, sir.
So immediately then I started to look for a place. I did find a place, I think off the Concourse . . . in the Bronx. And it was a basement apartment . . . 3
A month or more later, Robert, taking his first leave as a Marine, came to visit Lee and Marguerite at their apartment in the Bronx, and John and Marjory were invited for a family dinner.
MR. PIC. . . . [Lee] sat in the front room watching TV and didn’t join us whatsoever . . . Didn’t speak to me or my wife.
MR. JENNER. That kind of put a pall on the visit, did it not?
MR. PIC. Yes, sir . . . Lee walked out and my mother informed us that he would probably go to the Bronx Zoo. We had Sunday dinner, and in the course of the conversation my mother informed me that Lee was having a truancy problem and that the school officials had suggested that he might need psychiatric aid to combat his truancy problem.
She informed me that Lee said that he would not see a head shrinker or nut doctor, and she wanted any suggestions or opinions from me as to how to get him to see him, a
nd I told her just take him down there. That is all I could suggest.
MR. JENNER. What was her response to that?
MR. PIC. . . . He was definitely the boss . . . I mean if he decided to do something, regardless of what my mother said, he did it. She had no authority whatsoever with him. He had no respect for her at all.4
Soon enough, Marguerite and Lee were called into children’s court. Eleven years later, testifying before the Warren Commission, Marguerite consults her notes:
MARGUERITE OSWALD. I have that information here.
Went to school in the neighborhood, Public School 117, which is a junior high school in the Bronx. It states here he attended 15 of 47 days. This is the place we were living that Lee was picked up by the truant officer in the Bronx Zoo.
I was informed of this at work, and I had to appear before a board, which I did.
Lee went back to school.
Then he was picked up again in the Bronx Zoo. And I had to appear before a board committee again.
Then the third time that Lee was picked up, we were—I never did get a subpoena, but we were told he had to appear at Children’s Court . . . I did not think it was anything serious, because the Texas laws are not like the New York laws. In New York, if you are out of school one day you go to Children’s Court. In Texas the children stay out of school for months at a time.5
4
Youth House
MR. CARRO. I forget whether he had just turned 13 or was still 12, but in New York State we have a law that requires each boy to attend school until at least 16, and this was a young man of tender age who had at this point taken it upon himself to just not bother to go . . .