McMillan: . . . his life had changed once again for the worse. He had failed to pull off the big coup in sisal or oil that he had counted on. His book on his Central American adventures had been refused by several publishers. And, as always, George was feeling financial pressure. Having spent his life among tycoons, he had never been able to earn as much as he felt he needed. His relations with Jeanne became bitter. They divorced, but then went on living together, estranged from everyone they knew. Jeanne had a job, while George taught French at a small black college in Dallas . . . A decade or so after the assassination . . . his spirits sank into depression . . . 12
Posner, picking up on this deterioration in De Mohrenschildt, does his best to render him permanently incompetent:
Posner: . . . de Mohrenschildt was quite mad by the time he gave his final [Epstein] interview. For nearly a year before his death, he was paranoid, fearful that the “FBI and Jewish mafia” were out to kill him. He twice tried to kill himself with drug overdoses, and another time cut his wrists and submerged himself in a bathtub. After he began waking in the middle of every night, screaming and beating himself, his wife finally committed him to Parkland Hospital psychiatric unit, where he was diagnosed as psychotic and given two months of intensive shock therapy. After his treatment he said he had been with Oswald on the day of the assassination, though he was actually with dozens of guests at the Bulgarian embassy in Haiti the day JFK was killed. Despite de Morenschildt’s imbalance, Epstein and others still quote the final interview as though it were an uncontested fact.13
De Morenschildt does not deserve the label “quite mad” at the time he gave his final interview. Once again, Posner is not including those sources who would indicate that De Mohrenschildt in the last month of his life was depressed but not delusional.
McMillan: Sam Ballen, who saw him in Dallas only one month before he died, found George “beating himself pretty hard.” He berated himself for friendships he had lost and opportunities he had tossed aside and said that his life had been a failure . . .
Ballen, who had not seen De Mohrenschildt in years, came away from their meeting feeling sad. For all his faults, of which the greatest was his “utter irresponsibility,” George was, Ballen believed, “one of the world’s great people.” . . . He invited him to come to Santa Fe and offered him the kind of rough, outdoor work that seemed likely to help George the most. Afterwards Ballen looked back with the feeling that he had been dining with “Hemingway before the suicide.”14
Yes, De Mohrenschildt was in the grip of that grim appraisal of self that weighs so heavily upon older men of once large personal resources who no longer have the energy to improve their lives or their careers and so are left to brood on all that went wrong; but, given Sam Ballen’s assessment, it seems excessive for Posner to decide that De Mohrenschildt was completely out of his mind when he spoke to Edward Epstein about his CIA connections with J. Walton Moore.
We can take leave of George with this passage from Gaeton Fonzi’s book The Last Investigation. Fonzi has just located the oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach where De Morenschildt is living in 1977.
The house was hidden behind a barrier of high hedges . . . a strangely grim house for that narrow, monied stretch of Florida coastline, where the mansions are usually chic pastel modern or classy traditional white . . .
As I got out of the car, a young woman emerged unexpectedly from behind the building. She was strikingly beautiful, tall and dark with a smooth sculpted face, long raven hair and deep brown eyes. She wore a tight black leotard and moved with the supple, sensuous ease of a dancer. Her tan body glowed with a sheen of perspiration; she had obviously been exercising. She wiped her brow and arms with a small towel.
“Excuse me,” I said as I approached her . . . “I’m looking for George de Mohrenschildt.”
She hesitated a moment, her eyes cautious, probing.
“He’s not in at the moment. I’m his daughter, Alexandra. May I help you?”
I told her my name and why I was there . . . “I’d appreciate it,” I said, “if you would tell him that I’ll be calling and would like to see him.” We hadn’t yet been issued official identification so my only credentials were old business cards which identified me as a staff investigator for U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker. I crossed out Schweiker’s name on one and wrote above it “House Select Committee on Assassinations.” She took it and said she would tell her father to expect my call . . .
About 6:30 that evening I received a call from . . . Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Bludworth [who] said my card had been found in de Mohrenschildt’s shirt pocket. About four hours after I had been there, de Mohrenschildt had returned to Nancy Tilton’s house. His daughter told him of my visit and gave him my card. He put the card in his pocket and, according to Alexandra, did not seem upset, but shortly afterwards he said he was going upstairs to rest. What de Mohrenschildt then apparently did was take a .20-gauge shotgun that Mrs. Tilton kept beside her bed for protection. He sat down in a soft chair, put the stock of the shotgun on the floor and the end of the barrel in his mouth, leaned forward and pulled the trigger.15
2
In the Rubble of the Aftermath
As long as Lee was alive, for all of those forty and more hours in which Marguerite was anticipating a long drawn-out trial, the problem as she saw it was how she, Marina, and the children would live. She knew she could cash in her insurance policy for $836, and that would provide a base for her new family.
MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . I am not interested in material things, gentlemen . . . I thought, as a family, Marina and I should stick together and face our future together . . . . I thought it would be [best] to live in my apartment and do the best we can. And I even said “ . . . give us a chance as a family. Don’t put the girl in a strange home, a Russian girl, a foreign girl, taken away from her mama.”1
Yes, for the less than forty-eight hours that Lee would be alive after the death of JFK, Marina may also have been contemplating a life with Marguerite; they could work together on some kind of defense of Lee. After he was killed, however, everything worked to separate them. Marina, after all, did not like her mother-in-law that much; the Secret Service, on whom Marina was depending more and more, certainly detested Marguerite; and the business manager Marina soon took on was looking at a cash-cow in her future: The lonely Soviet widow of the President’s assassin was already receiving small contributions with every mail—some good Americans don’t mind paying a tithe to their sentimental responses. Marguerite, whether she was first or last to sense it, was on the way out.
MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . One of the other Secret Service men had gone to talk to Robert’s boss, because Robert was worried about his job [and] he patted Robert on the shoulder and said, “Now, Robert, I have talked to your boss and you are all right. I assured him you are not involved in this in any way.”
So, gentlemen, Marina is taken care of; Robert is taken care of—I am not feeling sorry for myself, believe me, because I can take care of myself. But here is a mother who has come to the rescue, lost her job, offered her good love and insurance money and nobody has wondered what is going to become of me.
MR. RANKIN. Well, did you think it was improper that the Secret Service man would go to Robert’s boss and tell him he was not involved, and there was nothing improper?
MARGUERITE OSWALD. No, sir, I do not. I think it was a fine gesture. And that is the point I am trying to make . . . Why are these fine gestures to see that Marina is going to have a home and be taken care of, and Robert’s job is secure—but I am nothing. I was not included in the plans. And what is going to become of me? I have no income. I have no job. I lost my job. And nobody thought about me.
I don’t mean to imply I’m sorry for myself. I am trying to bring out a point that through all of this, that I have not been considered, even as much as to testify. I want to know why. I don’t understand why.
It is very strange.2
The embitterment is on the way to becoming
colossal.
MARGUERITE OSWALD. This is the 28th. So [I told] the agent that was taking me home . . . that I wanted to tell Marina that I was going. He knocked on the door. The Russian interpreter from the State Department, Mr. Gopadze, came to the door and the agent said, “Mrs. Oswald is going home and wants to tell Marina and the children goodbye.”
He said, “Well, we are interviewing her and she is on tape. She will get in touch with you.”
So I never saw Marina after that time.3
Well, she would see her on television:
MARGUERITE OSWALD. The first time Marina ever made any statement or public appearance was approximately two weeks ago, or maybe not that long. She was on an exclusive television program, Channel 4 in Fort Worth, Texas, when she stated publicly that in her mind she thought that Lee shot President Kennedy. What an awful thing for this 22-year-old foreign girl to think . . . She doesn’t know. But she thinks, gentlemen . . . “In my mind I think Lee shot President Kennedy.” . . . She is a Russian girl, and maybe they do this in Russia. But what I am going to say is that Marina Oswald was brainwashed by the Secret Service, who have kept her in seclusion for eight weeks—eight weeks, gentlemen, with no one talking to Marina.
Marina does not read English. Marina knows none of the facts from newspaper accounts. The only way Marina can get facts is through what the FBI and the Secret Service probably are telling her, or some of the facts that Marina has manufactured since.4
By the end of winter 1964, Marina would break relations with her business manager, Jim Martin—she grew suspicious of everyone who had commercial relations with her—and she bought a home of her own in Richardson, Texas. It would take her testimony before the Warren Commission and the better part of a year before Marina lost her fear of imprisonment and of deportation. By then, she saw Marguerite as an irritant—Marina’s knowledge of English increased, and she could pick out items in the newspapers concerning her former mother-in-law’s latest conclusions about just how Lee had been framed.
MR. RANKIN. Will you describe to us your relationship with your mother-in-law now?
MARINA OSWALD. . . . I understood her motherly concern. But in view of the fact of everything that happened later, her appearances in the radio, in the press, I do not think that she is a very sound-thinking woman, and I think that part of the guilt is hers. I do not accuse her, but I think that part of the guilt in connection with what happened with Lee lies with her . . . If she were in contact with my children now, I do not want her to cripple them.
MR. RANKIN. Has she tried to see you since the assassination?
MARINA OSWALD. Yes, all the time.
MR. RANKIN. And have you seen her since that time?
MARINA OSWALD. Accidentally we met at the cemetery on a Sunday when I visited there, but I didn’t want to meet with her, and I left.5
A little later in this day before the Warren Commission, Rankin had to steer close to a touchy matter. Marguerite had been making public claims that Marina had been brainwashed, and so it was necessary to reconnoiter the subject:
MR. RANKIN. After the assassination, did the police and the FBI and the Secret Service ask you many questions?
MARINA OSWALD. In the police station there was a regular routine questioning. And then . . . the Secret Service and the FBI, they asked me many questions of course—many questions. Sometimes the FBI . . . told me that if I wanted to live in this country, I would have to help in this matter, even though they were often irrelevant. That is the FBI . . .
MR. RANKIN. Did you see anyone from the Immigration Service during this time?
MARINA OSWALD. Yes . . .
MR. RANKIN. What did he say to you?
MARINA OSWALD. That if I was not guilty of anything, if I had not committed any crime against this Government, then I had every right to live in this country. This was a type of introduction before the questioning by the FBI. He even said that it would be better for me if I would help them . . .
MR. RANKIN. Did you understand that you were being threatened with deportation if you didn’t answer those questions?
MARINA OSWALD. No, I did not understand it that way.
You see, it was presented in such a delicate form, but there was a clear implicaton that it would be better if I were to help.6
The Secret Service had had suspicions of Michael and Ruth Paine. Michael was active in the ACLU, and that was a radical activity as far as the authorities in Texas were concerned. Then, the Dallas police had come up with the letter which Lee had written to Marina in Russian back in April on Neely Street before he took a shot at Walker. Marina had hidden that letter in a Russian-language cookbook, and the police had the letter translated and even assumed at first that it had been written by Ruth. Indeed, on its discovery, Marina had not only been confronted with the letter but with the fear that she could conceivably be imprisoned or deported if she persisted in withholding information about Lee.
Somewhere around this time, Marina began to cooperate with the authorities. Her friendship with Ruth was over. Both women had their grievances. Marina had not told Ruth about the rifle, or about General Walker, or of Lee’s trip to Mexico; Marina, in turn, felt that Ruth had been careless in handing over the cookbook to the police, and so had left her in a position where she had to defend herself at the expense of exposing Lee. June and Rachel would be known as the children of an assassin.
These are hard equations! Yet, it is not easy to break relations entirely with a generous friend because of a few lapses in her protection of you. One looks to find a definitive breach of taste.
MR. RANKIN. You said that . . . Ruth Paine . . . wanted to see you for her own interests. Will you tell us what you meant by that?
MARINA OSWALD. . . . She likes to be well known, popular, and I think that anything I should write her, for example, would wind up in the press.
The reason that I think so is that the first time that we were in jail to see Lee, she was with me and with her children, and she was trying to get in front of the cameras, and to push her children, and instructed her children to look this way and look that way. And the first photographs that appeared were of me and her children.7
Marina is as responsive as Henry James might have been to this brief crack in the Quaker-like goodness of Ruth Paine. A small flaw that one cannot forgive is, by the measure of Jamesian percipience, equal in size to an unsightly hole in the firmament.
In any event, Ruth Paine is out, and Marguerite is out. Marina has two children she wishes to rear, and for that she must survive. She must wall herself away from the past. Marina, given her powerful sense of roots and her deep pools of guilt, can hardly be unaware of the cost of cauterizing her past for a third time—once on leaving Leningrad, once on leaving Russia, and now again saying farewell to Lee.
She could not do it successfully. By her Russian lights, she was his wife. So she was responsible for his acts. To her, it was not always certain that she held no blame for the deaths of the President and the policeman, Tippit. What a burden their children, now fatherless, would have as they suffered in common with the burden of her own two children. She might cry out in conversation that if Lee came back to earth and she could talk to him, “I’d give him such a scolding that he would die all over again,”8 but that was merely a sentiment. To cauterize the past was her real goal.
McMillan: . . . Marina became a little wild, taking only fitful care of her children and spending as many waking hours as she could on escapades with boyfriends and neighbors, on all-night bowling sprees, and on well-publicized sorties to a Dallas nightclub called the Music Box, where she was soon a favorite. Aware of her self-destructiveness, Marina calls 1964 “her second Leningrad period.”9
By 1965, after rejecting numerous marriage proposals (with the suspicion that she might be loved less for the complex composition of herself than for her newfound money—when it came to receiving compliments, she possessed as many quills as a porcupine), she decided to marry a man for whom she could feel some trust, a
tall, gentlemanly Texan with fine, laid-back manners.
McMillan: Today she lives outside Dallas on a seventeen-acre farm, with cattle on it, with Kenneth Porter, whom she married in 1965. They were divorced in 1974, but they continue to live together as man and wife. Kenneth loves life on the farm, and he is an expert mechanic, “one of the best,” Marina says. He is a handsome man, and a devoted stepfather, a fact which Marina, after her own difficult childhood, values greatly.10
She was still there in 1993. There was talk of interviewing June and Rachel and Mark, her son with Kenneth Porter, children now just over thirty-one, twenty-nine, and twenty-seven, but Marina would have none of that, and who could argue against the legitimacy of such a refusal?
The thought that there would be one more book about Lee and herself was painful in the extreme. Ghosts seeped into her mind like poison vapors in a horror film. She did not want to talk about the past. She can hardly remember her old testimony. Rather, she would declare that she now believes Lee was innocent. Or, if not innocent, then part of a conspiracy. But, she would say, he was not the man who fired the gun. Since evidence is a blur to her, she soon will say that she cannot be certain what she believes. If only she knew whether he did it or not. What a great weight would be lifted from June and Rachel if he did not commit the deed. What do you think? she asks. We are trying to find out, say the interviewers.
3
Evidence
Did Oswald do it?
If one’s answer is to come out of anything larger than an opinion, it is necessary to contend with questions of evidence. In that direction, however, one encounters a jungle of conflicting expert estimates as to whether Oswald could fire the shots in time, was a good enough marksman, was the only gunman in Dealey Plaza, and on one can go, trying to explore into every last reach of possibility, only to encounter a disheartening truth: Evidence, by itself, will never provide the answer to a mystery. For it is in the nature of evidence to produce, sooner or later, a counterinterpretation to itself in the form of a contending expert in a court of law.