FORT WORTH, DALLAS, NEW ORLEANS
Oswald had originally indicated that he and his family would stay with his mother in Vernon, Tex.[A13-824] His decision to stay with Robert Oswald in Fort Worth apparently had been prompted by his brother’s invitation in a letter to him in Russia.[A13-825] Oswald listed only his brother as a relative on an “Intake Interview” form which he prepared for the New York Department of Welfare.[A13-826]
Robert took his wife and children to Love Field, the Dallas airport, to meet Lee and Marina and their baby, June Lee.[A13-827] He testified that the most noticeable change in his brother’s appearance was that he had become rather bald; he seemed also to be somewhat thinner than he had been in 1959. Robert thought that his brother had picked up “something of an accent” but, except for these changes was “the same boy” whom he had known before.[A13-828] Lee commented on the absence of newspaper reporters and seemed to Robert to be disappointed that none had appeared.[A13-829] Later on, Lee was anxious to avoid publicity.[A13-830]
Robert drove the Oswalds to his home at 7313 Davenport Street.[A13-831] For a few days, Lee seemed tense,[A13-832] but the brothers got along well,[A13-833] and to Robert it was “more or less * * * [as if Lee] had not been to Russia”; they were “just together again.”[A13-834] They did not discuss politics, according to Robert because of a “tacit agreement” between them.[A13-835] Lee indicated to his brother that he hoped to have his undesirable discharge from the Marines corrected.[A13-836] Robert and his wife “took to Marina and June,” and enjoyed showing Marina “things that she had never seen before.”[A13-837] Marina rested and took care of her baby, and when she could, helped in the household.[A13-838] She testified that, apart from a trip to the library, Lee spent about a week “merely talking.”[A13-839]
On June 18, 4 days after he arrived in Fort Worth, Oswald went to the office of Mrs. Pauline Virginia Bates, a public stenographer whose name he had found in the telephone directory,[A13-840] and asked her to type a manuscript from the “scraps of paper,” on which he had recorded his impressions of the Soviet Union.[A13-841] Intrigued by his tale that he had just returned from the Soviet Union and had smuggled his notes out of that country, she agreed to type the notes for $1 per page or $2 an hour, 50 cents less than her usual hourly rate.[A13-842] On that day and the succeeding 2 days, Mrs. Bates spent 8 hours typing for Oswald while he remained in her office helping her with the notes and translating portions of them which were in Russian.[A13-843] At the end of each session he collected his notes and as much of the manuscript as she had done and took them away with him.[A13-844] On June 20, he gave Mrs. Bates $10 for the 10 completed pages; he told her that he had no more money and refused to accept her offer to postpone payment or continue the work for nothing.[A13-845]
Oswald told Mrs. Bates that there was an engineer in Fort Worth who wanted to help him publish his notes.[A13-846] On June 19,[A13-847] he had called Peter Gregory, a petroleum engineer who was born in Siberia and taught Russian at the Fort Worth Public Library as a “civic enterprise.”[A13-848] He asked if Gregory could give him a letter testifying to his ability to read and speak Russian, so that he could obtain work as an interpreter or translator. Gregory suggested that Oswald come to his office, where Gregory opened a Russian book at random and asked Oswald to read from it. Oswald read well, and Gregory gave him the letter he wanted.[A13-849] Gregory and Oswald had lunch together and discussed Oswald’s life in the Soviet Union,[A13-850] but, according to Gregory’s testimony, nothing was said about publishing Oswald’s manuscript.[A13-851] About a week later, Gregory and his son Paul, a college student, visited the Oswalds at Robert Oswald’s home and arranged for Marina to give Paul lessons in Russian during the summer.[A13-852]
On June 26, Oswald was interviewed by FBI agents in Fort Worth.[A13-853] One of the agents who interviewed him described him as tense and “drawn up”; he said that Oswald “exhibited an arrogant attitude * * * and [was] inclined to be just a little insolent.”[A13-854] Oswald declined to say why he had gone to Russia, saying that he refused to “relive the past.”[A13-855] He said that he had not attempted to obtain Soviet citizenship, had not been approached by Soviet officials for information about his experiences in the Marines, and had not offered them such information. Marina’s Soviet passport required her to notify the Soviet Embassy in Washington of her address in this country, and Oswald told the agents that he planned to contact the Embassy for this purpose within a few days.[A13-856] He promised to notify the FBI if he were contacted by Soviet agents “under suspicious circumstances or otherwise.”[A13-857] Oswald told his brother about the interview, saying that it had been “just fine.”[A13-858]
Oswald and his family remained with Robert for about a month.[A13-859] While they were there his mother moved to Fort Worth from Crowell, Tex.,[A13-860] and, sometime in July they moved into her apartment at 1501 West Seventh Street.[A13-861] Mrs. Oswald testified that she had visited them at Robert’s house in June[A13-862] and moved to Fort Worth because she thought that the house was too crowded and wanted to help them.[A13-863] Mrs. Oswald described the period when her son and his family lived with her as “a very happy month”; according to her testimony, she and her son and daughter-in-law got along well. She mentioned that she not only helped Marina keep house and care for the baby but also aided her son in his efforts to find employment.[A13-864] Marina testified, however, that Lee did not get along well with his mother and that he decided after several weeks that they should move to their own apartment.[A13-865] He did not file a change-of-address card at the post office when the family moved to West Seventh Street, as he did when they made their next move,[A13-866] so he may have contemplated from the beginning that they would stay with his mother for only a short while. Around the middle of August,[A13-867] the Oswalds moved to a one-bedroom furnished apartment at 2703 Mercedes Street, for which they paid $59.50 in advance for 1 month’s rent.[A13-868]
In the third week in July, Oswald had obtained a job as a sheet metal worker with the Louv-R-Pak Division of the Leslie Welding Co.,[A13-869] a manufacturer of louvers and ventilators,[A13-870] to which he had been referred by the Texas Employment Commission.[A13-871] On his application for employment, filled out several days before, he wrote falsely that he had had experience as a sheet metal worker and machinist in the Marines and had been honorably discharged.[A13-872] He usually worked 8 or 9 hours a day, for which he was paid $1.25 an hour.[A13-873] Marina testified that Oswald did not like his work,[A13-874] but he was regarded as a good employee[A13-875] and remained with the company until October, when he quit.[A13-876] On the job, he kept to himself and was considered uncommunicative.[A13-877]
Mrs. Oswald visited her son and his family at their apartment and tried to help them get settled; she testified that she bought some clothes for Marina and a highchair for the baby but that Oswald told her that he did not want her to buy “things for his wife that he himself could not buy.”[A13-878] Finally, Oswald apparently decided that he did not want his mother to visit the apartment anymore and he became incensed when his wife permitted her to visit despite his instructions.[A13-879] After he moved to Dallas in October, Oswald did not see his mother or communicate with her in any way until she came to see him after the assassination.[A13-880] Witnesses have described the Mercedes Street apartment as “decrepit” and very poorly furnished;[A13-881] there was no telephone service.[A13-882] Acquaintances observed that Marina and the baby were poorly clothed, that the Oswalds had little food, and that at first there was not a bed for the baby.[A13-883]