During October and November of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas while his wife and children lived in Irving, at the home of Ruth Paine,[C4-115] approximately 15 miles from Oswald’s place of work at the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald traveled between Dallas and Irving on weekends in a car driven by a neighbor of the Paines, Buell Wesley Frazier, who also worked at the Depository.[C4-116] Oswald generally would go to Irving on Friday afternoon and return to Dallas Monday morning. According to the testimony of Frazier, Marina Oswald, and Ruth Paine, it appears that Oswald never returned to Irving in midweek prior to November 21, 1963, except on Monday, October 21, when he visited his wife in the hospital after the birth of their second child.[C4-117]
During the morning of November 21, Oswald asked Frazier whether he could ride home with him that afternoon. Frazier, surprised, asked him why he was going to Irving on Thursday night rather than Friday. Oswald replied, “I’m going home to get some curtain rods * * * [to] put in an apartment.”[C4-118] The two men left work at 4:40 p.m. and drove to Irving. There was little conversation between them on the way home.[C4-119] Mrs. Linnie Mae Randle, Frazier’s sister, commented to her brother about Oswald’s unusual midweek return to Irving. Frazier told her that Oswald had come home to get curtain rods.[C4-120]
It would appear, however, that obtaining curtain rods was not the purpose of Oswald’s trip to Irving on November 21. Mrs. A. C. Johnson, his landlady, testified that Oswald’s room at 1026 North Beckley Avenue had curtains and curtain rods,[C4-121] and that Oswald had never discussed the subject with her.[C4-122] In the Paines’ garage, along with many other objects of a household character, there were two flat lightweight curtain rods belonging to Ruth Paine but they were still there on Friday afternoon after Oswald’s arrest.[C4-123] Oswald never asked Mrs. Paine about the use of curtain rods,[C4-124] and Marina Oswald testified that Oswald did not say anything about curtain rods on the day before the assassination.[C4-125] No curtain rods were known to have been discovered in the Depository Building after the assassination.[C4-126] In deciding whether Oswald carried a rifle to work in a long paper bag on November 22, the Commission gave weight to the fact that Oswald gave a false reason for returning home on November 21, and one which provided an excuse for the carrying of a bulky package the following morning.
The Missing Rifle
Before dinner on November 21, Oswald played on the lawn of the Paines’ home with his daughter June.[C4-127] After dinner Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald were busy cleaning house and preparing their children for bed.[C4-128] Between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. they were occupied with the children in the bedrooms located at the extreme east end of the house.[C4-129] On the west end of the house is the attached garage, which can be reached from the kitchen or from the outside.[C4-130] In the garage were the personal belongings of the Oswald family including, as the evidence has shown, the rifle wrapped in the old brown and green blanket.[C4-131]
At approximately 9 p.m., after the children had been put to bed, Mrs. Paine, according to her testimony before the Commission, “went out to the garage to paint some children’s blocks, and worked in the garage for half an hour or so. I noticed when I went out that the light was on.”[C4-132] Mrs. Paine was certain that she had not left the light on in the garage after dinner.[C4-133] According to Mrs. Paine, Oswald had gone to bed by 9 p.m.;[C4-134] Marina Oswald testified that it was between 9 and 10 p.m.[C4-135] Neither Marina Oswald nor Ruth Paine saw Oswald in the garage.[C4-136] The period between 8 and 9 p.m., however, provided ample opportunity for Oswald to prepare the rifle for his departure the next morning. Only if disassembled could the rifle fit into the paper bag found near the window[C4-137] from which the shots were fired. A firearms expert with the FBI assembled the rifle in 6 minutes using a 10-cent coin as a tool, and he could disassemble it more rapidly.[C4-138] While the rifle may have already been disassembled when Oswald arrived home on Thursday, he had ample time that evening to disassemble the rifle and insert it into the paper bag.
On the day of the assassination, Marina Oswald was watching television when she learned of the shooting. A short time later Mrs. Paine told her that someone had shot the President “from the building in which Lee is working.” Marina Oswald testified that at that time “My heart dropped. I then went to the garage to see whether the rifle was there and I saw that the blanket was still there and I said ‘Thank God.’” She did not unroll the blanket. She saw that it was in its usual position and it appeared to her to have something inside.[C4-139]
Soon afterward, at about 3 p.m., police officers arrived and searched the house. Mrs. Paine pointed out that most of the Oswalds’ possessions were in the garage.[C4-140] With Ruth Paine acting as an interpreter, Detective Rose asked Marina whether her husband had a rifle. Mrs. Paine, who had no knowledge of the rifle, first said “No,” but when the question was translated, Marina Oswald replied “Yes.”[C4-141] She pointed to the blanket which was on the floor very close to where Ruth Paine was standing. Mrs. Paine testified:
As she [Marina] told me about it I stepped onto the blanket roll. * * * And she indicated to me that she had peered into this roll and saw a portion of what she took to be a gun she knew her husband to have, a rifle. And I then translated this to the officers that she knew that her husband had a gun that he had stored in here. * * * I then stepped off of it and the officer picked it up in the middle and it bent so. * * *[C4-142]
Mrs. Paine had the actual blanket before her as she testified and she indicated that the blanket hung limp in the officer’s hand.[C4-143] Marina Oswald testified that this was her first knowledge that the rifle was not in its accustomed place.[C4-144]