Lee and Marina Chronology - 1962 to 1963

Lee and Marina Oswald Timeline - June 1962 thru November 1963

June 14, 1962: The Oswalds arrive in Fort Worth, where they move in with Robert.

July 14, 1962: The Oswalds move in with Marguerite at 1501 W. 7th Street in Fort Worth.

August 10, 1962: The Oswalds move to 2703 Mercedes St. in Fort Worth.  Marina claims abuse at this point.

Early October: Marina and June move in with Gary and Alexandra Taylor at 3519 Fairmont (Apt #12), Dallas, for 4 days.  Alexandra is George De Mohrenschildt’s daughter. 

October 7, 1962: Marina and June move in with Mrs. Elena Hall at 4760 Trail Lake Drive, Ft. Worth, while LHO looks for work in Dallas.

October 15, 1962: LHO moves into the YMCA.  (Lee’s whereabouts unknown from 10/9 thru 10/14)

November 4, 1962: The Oswalds are reunited at 604 Elsbeth St. in Dallas, where LHO had found an apartment.

November 5, 1962: The Oswald’s have a violent argument, and Marina and June move in with their friends, Teofil and Anna Meller.  They live at 5930 LaVista Drive, Dallas.

November 10, 1962: Marina and June move to the apartment of Declan and Katya Ford, at 14057 Brookcrest, Dallas

November 17, 1962: Marina and June spend the day at the home of Mrs. Frank (Valentina) Ray. LHO calls and asks to visit Marina, who agrees to return to him. They return to the Elsbeth St. address that night.

March 2, 1963: The Oswalds move to an apartment on 214 West Neely Street, Dallas

April 24, 1963: LHO arrives in New Orleans and stays with his aunt Lillian Murret. 

April 29, 1963: Marina and June move in with Ruth Paine in Paine’s residence at 2515 W. 5th St, Irving, TX

May 11, 1963: LHO starts work (R. Coffee) and he, Marina and June move into their apartment at 4905 Magazine St., New Orleans.

September 23, 1963: Ruth with Marina and June leave for Irving and arrive on the 24th.

September 26, 1963 begins LHO’s trip to Mexico City.

October 4, 1963: LHO arrives in Dallas and stays with Marina and June at the Paine’s residence in Irving.

October 14, 1963: Ruth drives LHO to Dallas, where he later registers as O.H. Lee at a rooming house on 1026 North Beckley.

THE END

Oswald and Paine Weekend Timeline, October-November, 1963

You can learn a lot from studying timelines in a case, any case. It allows for a linear approach to events that’s similar to standing on the highest mountain and looking down. Everything regarding unfolding events is made clearer.

So what follows is the timeline of Lee Oswald’s weekends at Ruth Paine’s home from October to the last weekend before the assassination. It was chosen as there were so many sightings of Oswald at various locations, mainly the shooting range, on the weekends when Ruth Paine is maintaining that Lee was at her house on those days except for the last weekend before the assassination when he stayed at the rooming house. Perhaps she was not lying at all, if there is an impersonator in play. Warren Commission lawyers knew there were problems in Ruth’s testimony as so many people were seeing Lee at the Sports Drome Rifle Range when he wasn’t supposed to have been there. Eventually, they just had to let it all be.

Please note that on those days or weekends that Ruth Paine maintains that Lee was at her house, he is not supposed to be seen anywhere else, especially at night. Yet witnesses reported seeing Oswald at various locations from Dallas to New Orleans.

October 6 - Sunday (p. 713)

At Ruth Paine’s home all day Sunday. Spent the nights of the 4th, 5th and 6th at the Paine home. (According to her Testimony.)

Activities for Saturday unknown but he did write a letter to The Worker stating he had attended an ACLU meeting the evening of the 5th. 

Mrs. Lovell Penn reports seeing men shoot in her pasture. She is worried about her cows getting shot. She warns them and gets a nasty reply from one of the men. She threatens to call the police if they do not stop shooting. Later, Mrs. Penn ID’s Lee Oswald as the man that was rude to her in her pasture.

October 12-13 - Saturday and Sunday (p. 722-723)

At Ruth Paine’s home.

Oswald spent the weekend at Paine’s home. Not seen elsewhere.

October 18-19-20 - Friday, Saturday and Sunday (p. 730)

At Ruth Paine’s home. (According to her Testimony.)

October 18. According to Wesley Frasier, drove Lee Oswald to Paine's home for his birthday that evening.

October 19. Doorman for The Count of Two Sisters Restaurant in New Orleans, Leander D’Avy, reports seeing Lee Oswald, David Ferrie, his boss Gene Davis, and four other unidentified men in the storeroom, converted to an apartment. NOTE:Gene Davis is an FBI informant starting in October of 1961.

October 20. At the Paine home. Not seen elsewhere. Daughter Rachael was born at 10:41 PM that night. He was not present at the hospital for the birth.

October 26-27 - Saturday and Sunday (p. 736)

At Ruth Paine’s home both days. (According to her Testimony.)

First known trip by Lee Oswald to the Sports Drome Rifle Range. Arrives at dusk and seen by employe Malcom Price. Seen driving himself to the range. Also noticed by the owner, Floyd Davis.

October 27. Seen at the Paine home in the yard by a neighbor.

November 2-3 - Saturday and Sunday (p. 744)

At Ruth Paine’s home. (According to her Testimony.)

Lee Oswald is seen test driving a red Mercury at the Downtown Lincoln-Mercury Dealership. Later that day seen at Morgan’s Gun Shop in Fort Worth.

Spent Sunday, November 3, at the Paine Home. Not seen elsewhere.

November 9-10 - Saturday and Sunday (p. 758-763)

At Ruth Paine’s home, both days. (According to her Testimony.)

Saturday seen shooting a rifle at the Sports Drome Rifle Range.

Sunday, test fired rifle at the Sports Drome Rifle Range and seen by Malcom Price and Garland Slack. Later, witnessed by Harvey Wade at the Carousel Club at 11 PM that night. Oswald was seen with two unidentified men.

November 16-17 - Saturday and Sunday (p. 770-773)

Lee Oswald spent the last weekend before the assassination at the rooming house on Beckley street in Dallas. Oswald was not seen anywhere on Saturday.

November 17, Sunday. Seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range, noticed by Dr. Homer Wood and teenage son, Sterling. Later, Garland Slack complains to the owner that Oswald shot at his target. Afterward, seen at Jack’s Bar in Dallas by witness Vern Davis.

Returns to the Paine home on Thursday, the 21st, for the final night. 

Sources

Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong. All page numbers referenced are from his book.

Ruth Paine Warren Commission testimony HERE.

Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Popular author Stephen King wades into the JFK Assassination.  

Paperback: 880 pages

Publisher: Gallery Books; digital edition (July 24, 2012)

ISBN-10: 1451627297

ISBN-13: 978-1451627299

It took me a few years to get around to Stephen King’s 11/22/63 novel on the Kennedy assassination because he had said one of his sources was Gerald Posner’s dreadful book, Case Closed.  This book is so bad that conspiratorialist mugger Vincent Bugliosi took Posner to task for errors in Bugliosi’s equally dreadful book, Reclaiming History.  I had heard early on that King was going to portray Oswald as the Lone Gunman.  I was disappointed in this but judging from King’s reading on the subject (he lists what books he read in the novel’s Afterword), he clearly did not read very many conspiracy oriented books.  No Six Seconds in Dallas, Rush to Judgement, Accessories to the Fact, or the excellent books published in the last fifteen years; no delving into the released files from the ARRB or for that matter, the Warren Commission’s 26 volumes.  No mention of the Warren Report either.  A pity.  

King of course is a master of popular horror fiction though he has had success in other genres such as fantasy and non-supernatural novels and short stories.  Despite being famous for unsatisfying endings, King no doubt writes compelling tales with believable characters.  It matters little if some of his stories are far out, his major talent is for making them believable, such as Tolkien or Rowling do in their fantasy stories.

The lead character, Jake Epping, is shown a time travel portal from a dying hamburger joint owner who dreams of preventing the assassination of JFK, but fears not living long enough to survive the stay, since the portal always lands the visitor in 1958 and to prevent the assassination of JFK, one has to live in this bygone world till November 22, 1963 in order to get the job done.

King does a great job presenting this time period.  Quite a contrast compared to our world with our relatively advanced technology that makes some things easier, but in some instances can make life more complicated.  Over fifty years ago, everything was cheaper.  It’s easy to buy a gun–no background checks.  People seem more friendly and trusting.  Cars are made heavy-duty and have great, get-up-and-go, power under the hood with those magnificent V-8’s.  Things taste better such as when Jake stops at a little shop for a root beer and King describes in glorious detail how full of flavor and satisfying a root beer used to taste before it was polluted with artificial flavoring.  Oh, you poor people of the future!  You lost some good stuff along the way.

The quest to disrupt the assassination is a long and convoluted one so it will not be covered here as it involves changing the lives of other characters.  The way King describes certain figures and ignores others is of more interest.  Obviously, as all fiction writer’s have to do, he has to simplify things and cut corners or else a story would grind to a halt.  Think about it–in the Shire who were Frodo’s siblings?  We are never told and it doesn’t matter anyway.  If Tolkien got involved with those people Frodo wouldn't have made it to Mount Doom.  A conspiracy would complicate the narrative as much as multiple Oswald impersonators would have.  So would having Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Ruth Paine and Clay Shaw show up for their cameos.  George De Mohrenschildt makes an appearance as if he is Oswald’s only outside acquaintance.  FBI agent James Hosty appears towards the end and that’s it with notable historical figures.  Instead, King leaves the reader with Lee Oswald, his mother, his brother Robert, Marina and daughter June.  It’s an odd cast lineup if one is familiar with the particulars of the assassination and its lore.  On the other hand, I can see King not wanting to get bogged down as the JFK saga has an endless cast of regulars.

King wants the reader to hate Lee Oswald as much as he does.  This Oswald is the Bugliosi caricature of the sniveling, wife beating, gutter rat that deserves his gut-shot from Jack Ruby’s .38.  This is the loathsome little man that haunts the pages of Reclaiming History or Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale, and the minds of most lone nut believers.  King has one scene where Lee physically abuses Marina in public, out on the street, an event that never occurred that I know of.  You want to despise a man who does such a thing.  There are allegations of abuse but there are no other witnesses other than Marina.  It could have happened, or could be part of the legend building that an unlucky deadman cannot refute.

A pity that King did not choose to explore conspiracy in his story.  He could have had Jake Epping get involved in a plot so he could screw it up in some way to prevent the assassination.  Instead, his hero races up the stairs to the sixth floor to confront Oswald, a surprised lone gunman with a junky rifle in hand.  But what if there is a conspiracy and hence other shooters?  Stopping Oswald settles nothing and Kennedy’s handsome head remains in danger.  But of course, there are no other shooters in this alternate reality version of the story, which in a way, does not make any sense.  There is always a path clear for another shooter from wherever, take your pick.  Grassy knoll or the Dal-Tex building.  Maybe Roscoe White with his long barreled pistol in the parking lot.  Or find a new spot.

Ultimately, King decides changing the past has repercussions for the future and not good ones at that.  So ultimately, preventing JFK’s death is not a good thing at all, casting a darker future for everybody.  Not exactly a new idea but that is the way King chose to play it.  Let Johnny take his bullets so a confluence of events does not overwhelm us, bringing on the apocalypse. Under that view, time and its marked events are like pearls on a string, take one out and you muck up the rest down the line.  Nobody can ever know for sure what changing past events can portend for the future, not at least, until somebody does it.  We do get a glimpse of it in quantum mechanics where the observer can change the outcome of an experiment simply by observing.  If only one could do that on a grander scale.

Too bad Stephen King could not have made a better go of the Kennedy assassination on 11/22/63. Away from that, an enjoyable read especially the parts involving the 1950’s when our big talk, our big cars, our big guns, and our big balls set the world’s agenda.  Now we are just Romans in sad decline dreaming of greater days, awash in failed leadership and greedy partakers that have taken the largest pieces of the pie for themselves.  

I really long for a mug of that 1958 root beer though.