Jim Hargrove

That's EXACTLY what Marguerite's best friends, Myrtle and Julian Evans, found hard to reconcile. Of course Mr. and Mrs. Evans didn't realize the enormity of what CIA accountant James Wilcott called "the Oswald Project," but they clearly didn't recognize their long-time friend "Marguerite." Myrtle Evans and her husband Julian were friends with the real Marguerite Oswald for nearly three decades. Included in Julian Evans' April 7, 1964 WC testimony was this exchange with Jenner (emphasis added): Mr. JENNER - Give me your impression of Marguerite Oswald. Mr. EVANS - Marguerite? Mr. JENNER - Yes. Mr. EVANS - I think she's a fine woman, myself, a fine woman; intelligent, very soft spoken - a beautiful woman, with black hair streaked with a little gray, but when you saw her on television since this thing happened, she really looked awful; nothing at all like she used to look. She has really aged. She looked like a charwoman, compared to what she used to look like. She used to be a fashion plate. She dressed beautifully, but when we saw her on television just recently, after all this happened, she looked awful. There's no way to describe it, the change that has come over her. You wouldn't have recognized her if they hadn't told you who she was; she looked that different. Where her hair used to be black, now it's entirely gray, and she really looks Old Mr. JENNER - Well, she's 57, I believe. Mr. EVANS - That's right; she's the same age as my wife, but she looks about 70 now. That's about all I can remember about her, and then I saw this thing on television when the President was assassinated, and when it showed her picture, we just couldn't believe it was Marguerite. His wife Myrtle Evans testified on the same day: Mrs. EVANS - A very good housekeeper, very tasty; she could take anything and make something out of it, and something beautiful. She had a lot of natural talent that way, and she was not lazy. She would work with things by the hour for her children, and she kept a very neat house, and she was always so lovely herself. That's why, when I saw her on TV, after all of this happened, she looked so old and haggard, and I said, "That couldn't be Margie," but of course it was, but if you had known Margie before all this happened, you would see what I mean. She was beautiful. She had beautiful wavy hair. Mrs. Evans added this: Mrs. EVANS - As far as I could see, they were very happy, very closely knit, very much in love with each other, and these boys knew that their mother was putting them through school, and giving them what they needed, as best she could. She was a very good provider for her children, and a very decent woman. I mean, she wasn't a loose woman at all. She was very decent, a very fine woman. Does that sound like the "Marguerite Oswald" we all heard about? Mr. and Mrs. Evans both testified that the Lee Harvey Oswald they knew was loud and boisterous, with a "foghorn voice." This is certainly not the quiet, withdrawn, passive-aggressive kid described by the Warren Commission. Item #361 on the Warren Commission's list of source materials is entitled "Biographic Information on Mrs. Oswald and her relatives." The report on Mrs. Oswald's background, not surprisingly, was prepared by the CIA.

All right, just for the record, I’d like to emphatically deny the vicious accusation by William Manchester that I, as a child, employed Mysterious Marge® as some kind of “nurse” at the time JFK was assassinated. Just look at what this scurrilous scrivener had to say in his wretched door-stopper called Death of a President.

Mysterious Marge® apparently took offense when William Manchester called her a “shifter of bodies and bedpans” in his recently published book, The Death of a President. Marge, according to UPI, said she was a “practical nurse,” which she described as a “high calling.” My bet, same as DJ, is that she wasn’t licensed by anyone. It would require too much background information. From the 1/25/67 UPI story:

Here are pictures of the two “Marguerites.” The one on the left shows phony Marguerite in what John A. says is a 1954 photo. It is the earliest picture of Mysterious Marge I can think of. The photo on the right is definitely a 1957 image of the real Marguerite. Note how real Marge has flat, horizontal eyebrows while phony Marge has very slanted eyebrows. In most later images, those slanted brows are partly obscured by glasses. John K: I found a couple of Oswald family trees online, but none of them seemed to include the Voitiers.

John, Whether we get anywhere here or not, this is helpful research. Thanks again. The Oswald who was in New Orleans in 1953 was Harvey. There, he was being “sheep dipped” as a Castro-loving commie so that the whole assassination of JFK could be blamed on Castro. (An opinion, I suppose, but many researchers share it.) During the same period, there is considerable evidence that Lee Oswald was in Dallas working with Jack Ruby. On the practical nursing issue, I know of no evidence that Mysterious Marge was ever licensed to be an LPN—licensed practical nurse, which, I believe, is considerably below an RN—registered nurse. Much of the time she seemed to work as a practical nurse assisting private people in their homes, many of whom would probably not do much checking of her references. However, John A. cites a 2/14/78 HSCA interview in which Dr. Rex Howard said that “Marguerite” worked in a hospital that held a number of his patients. I tried to look this up on the Mary Ferrell database but was booted out for too much searching without payment. I’ll try again later today. Dr. Howard apparently examined Mysterious Marge at least a couple of times, and once refused to help her in what appeared to have been an insurance scam. Real Marge usually worked in clothing stores. Somewhere in the back of my memory I recall a claim by someone that real Marge once said she was just going to disappear. (This may have been around the time of the “defection.”) For the life of me, though, I can’t remember where I saw that.

John, Thanks. My main interest here was getting your take on the “Mistaken Identity” author’s assertion that Aminthe Voitier was Mysterious Marge. I’ve never heard John A. mention Aminthe Voitier in conversation, but he has said that he thought there was a “slight possibility” that the WC Marge was really Margaret Keating. P.S. Thought this paragraph from H&L (p. 533) might be relevant: Harvey Oswald asks about the Oswald family By the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald's paternal uncles, William S., Harvey F., and Thomas H. Oswald, and maternal uncles Charles and John Claverie, Jr. were deceased. Oswald's paternal aunts, Alice Oswald Barre, Ethel Oswald Carter, Hattie Oswald Coker, and maternal aunts Lillian Claverie Murret, and Aminthe Claverie Winfry were still living (Pearl Claverie Whitacker was deceased). On Sunday, May 5 Harvey Oswald telephoned all of the Oswalds listed in the New Orleans telephone directory and located Mrs. Hazel Oswald, the second wife of William S. Oswald, brother of Robert Edward Lee Oswald (father of Lee Harvey Oswald). After introducing himself over the telephone, he asked how he could contact his uncle, Harvey Oswald. Hazel informed him that Harvey, and all of his brothers, were deceased. She told him that she had a large framed picture of Robert Edward Lee Oswald (father of Lee Harvey Oswald), and that he could have the picture.

John, Thank you for doing this research. It looks like the best explanation so far for “Nancy Lee Oswald,” but it’s funny how all the details are a little “off,” just like everything else in Oswaldworld. Since your research brought up the Voitiers, I thought you might be interested in a letter I got from the author of Mistaken Identity, one of the H&L spin-offs we were discussing earlier. I never thought he was able to prove his claims in his book, and I eventually sent it to a well-known journalist who is interested in Harvey and Lee. Anyway, here are two pages from the 5-page letter the author sent to me about his research.

Appreciate the clarification, John. There are so many details to remember analyzing the H&L evidence that it is almost impossible not to make mistakes. I did like your point, though, in the deleted post about spying sometimes being a family business. I ran across an article about that some years ago, but couldn’t find it again just now. While we’re busy clearing a few things up, I couldn’t help but joke about John A’s age when you brought it up earlier. He’s actually a couple of years younger than I am.

Thanks, Bart. These old Gary Mack saves are important!

Hoover “expedites” denial that “Oswald” was an FBI informer:

John, You've completely lost me here. Lee and Harvey were both in Japan in 1958 for just a day or two before Harvey left for Taiwan, and then a little longer after he returned, but are you saying the chart above proves, or helps to prove, that both John Pic and Marylin Murret were there are the same time? That's hard to believe.

David, Thanks much for all this updated source material on the early years of H&L. A few questions.... Little doubt that Lee was living on 8th Ave. in Fort Worth in late 1947 while Harvey was at San Saba in Benbrook, but it looks like on your latest timeline you’ve updated Harvey’s location info. John A’s educated guess is that Harvey and Mysterious Marge® moved from San Saba to Thomas Place in Fort Worth around the end of 1947, but as far as I know, there is no real evidence for that. Have you found some or are you following JA’s speculation? But also during 1948, where does 4029 Byers as a Harvey location come from? I searched H&L (the full book) and found no reference to it. Did I miss it in your post? Sheesh! I’m going to write a bad song called "The Ballad of Harvey and Nancy Lee." This is so strange. Harvey WAS enrolled at Benbrook in 1947, don't you agree? But in 1948 he SHOULD be at a Fort Worth school, right? More question to come (sorry).

The kind words are appreciated, John, but I can’t nominate myself for a list of JFK research heroes. I do believe John A. belongs there, though. BTW, he’s only a decade or so older than me and still has lots of energy. He’s been updating the Tippit murder page on our website for the last two days. It's hard to keep up with his work, even though he's such an Old-Timer.

Megathanks, DJ. This is a wonderful resource! The spreadsheet (.xlsx) version always seemed more flexible and useful to me. The spreadsheet program in Libre Office (used to be Open Office) displays and manipulates the data the the timeline beautifully. Libre Office is available without charge in versions for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Many people think it is actually better than M$ Office. Thanks again!

David, Please include me in the list of people to send your updated timeline whenever you’re ready. It’s a valuable resource. It certainly does seem relevant that no occupants are listed for the back of the duplex at 2220 Thomas Place for the years 1948 to 1954. This is doubly interesting not only for the period dating back to 1948 that we were discussing, but also for the fall of 1954, when Harvey attended Stripling School right across the street from 2220 Thomas Place. In 1954, Fran Schubert watched Harvey walk across the street from Stripling to the Thomas Place duplex. Her YouTube interview with John A. is here. What’s funny is that WC apologists have to deny LHO ever attended Stripling, even though there must be at least a half dozen different newspaper articles saying he did attend the school. Equally funny is the wild disagreement in the articles on exactly when he attended the school, explained by the fact that assistant principal Frank Kudlaty surrendered the files to the FBI before they were archived, and so there is no formal record. It was always, though, common knowledge among staff and students. Frank Kudlaty’s interview is here.

John, I wasn’t sure how to react to this because I always thought this should be about the evidence and not the researchers, but you know in what high regard I hold john Armstrong’s work. I’m really not a researcher, at least not beyond a few very limited matters I checked into at John’s suggestion. I’ve always thought John’s work, for which he took ten years out of his normally lucrative businesses in the oil and custom home building businesses, was utterly heroic.

John A. told me that he searched the records of the elementary school Harvey would have attended if he lived at 2220 Thomas Place between ‘48 and ‘52 and found nothing. This, of course, proves nothing since the FBI confiscated all the originals of “Lee Harvey Oswald's” school and teen-aged employment records within hours of the assassination. As Joe Freeman at the ARRB discovered, all the originals are gone.

'Nuf said.

Thanks, John. I had forgotten the details of the Emil Gardos timeline. Now that I think about it, John A. and I were just talking just recently about where Harvey and his “mom” went after they left 101 San Saba in Benbrook. Since they seemed to drop off the face of the earth for several years, John speculates that they may have moved into what was probably a CIA safehouse at 2220 Thomas Place, just across the street from Stripling School in Fort Worth. Georgia Bell, who lived on San Saba for half a century, told John that a San Saba neighbor, Lucille Hubbard, “drove Mrs. Oswald to pick up some clothes from another house when she got a job as a nurse. Mrs. Hubbard confided to Georgia that Marguerite had furniture and lots of clothes stored at this house which was located ‘across from Stripling School.’" Harvey and his “mom” again lived in 2220 Thomas Place in 1954, while Harvey attended Stripling School. "Marguerite Oswald" was living in the same house at the time JFK was assassinated.

John, I've always found DJ's timeline to be VERY accurate, and so let's take another look at it. Note that there is not a single entry for Harvey's school, city, or address from March 1948 until September 1952, when he enters Trinity Lutheran School in the Bronx, NYC. This is the period John A. is talking about, and David pretty much confirms it.

John K, Very true observations. It should be noted, though, that the two witnesses who remembered seeing her in Goldring's and Krieger's in New Orleans around 1960 were giving kind of a general indication of the dates, but it still must have been after the "defection." I've looked at a number of the newspaper reports of the defection and don't recall if they were front page items or not. I mostly remember that crazy mug shot of LHO published in Fort Worth where people might really recognize the difference between the two boys. There may well have been people who questioned the Official Story of Marguerite and her commie son, but we just never heard about them. Think of all the Dealey Plaza witnesses Mark Lane found who thought shots came from somewhere other than the TSBD. If it wasn't for Mr. Lane, we probably wouldn't have known that the FBI lied about their recollections.

Thank you for spelling this out for the slower members of this discussion. The real question mark here seems to be the Emil Kardos who married Helen Kaminski in 1941. If memory serves, that marriage record comes from a Doppelganger link, correct? If that is so, I can't remember if there is evidence that this is an NYC or NY state record. Do you recall? Is it possible that one Emil Kardos was married twice in the same year? Seems unlikely, but this whole situation seems weird. During a phone conversation yesterday, John A. told me that he can't figure out where Harvey Oswald was living from 1947 to 1952. We might therefore consider these years, rather than earlier ones, for Harvey living in NYC. This, of course, opens up the possibility of brothers-in-law Emil Kardos as well as Emil Gardos while Harvey was in NYC. One more important point about the commie angle suggested by the anonymous caller. As John A. wrote on our website: During the summer of 1943 Rubenstein (Ruby) attended the first of several communist party meetings on the third floor of a commercial building located at Walnut Street between Charles and Jackson in Muncie, Indiana. This suggests that even back in 1943 Ruby was working as some sort of government informant infiltrating communist meetings. For more on this, see The Bare Facts About Jack Ruby, starting in about the fourth paragraph down.

John B's recollection of real Marguerite saying she was going to disappear doesn't ring a bell with me, but I can say that the real Marguerite seems to pretty much disappear from what’s left of the public record around 1959, which makes sense since that is the year Harvey “defected.” From at least that point on, the official record is all about the Marguerite impostor and the LHO impostor. There are clues, though, from two friends of the real Marguerite that suggest she may have moved back to New Orleans and worked in two department stores in the very early 1960s. Unless I’m forgetting something, after that there is not a trace of her. From John’s write-up in the Two Marguerite Oswalds page at our website: In the Spring of 1958 Marguerite Claverie Oswald left Paul's Shoe Store and began working for Family Publications. In the fall she began working for Cox's Dept Store, 7th & Throckmorton, where she had previously worked in the early 1950s, under the supervision of Mrs. Lowell Hopkins. An FBI report indicates that in 1963 Mrs. Hopkins said that "after seeing Mrs. Oswald's picture in the newspaper and on television, she could not say that she recognized the picture as being Mrs. Oswald because, in her opinion, there has been a great deal of change in her physical appearance."The 1958 Fort Worth City Directory still listed her address as 3830 W. 6th. A year later, in the summer of 1959, Marguerite Claverie Oswald quit Cox's Dept Store and moved to New Orleans. Once again she obtained employment with Kriegers Dept. Store and Goldrings. Mrs. Logan Magruder, who had known Marguerite since 1943, saw and talked with her at Kriegers. When interviewed in 1964 Mrs. Magruder old the FBI that she met and visited with Marguerite, "about three years ago." Mrs. Oris Duane, who used to be Marguerite's supervisor at Jean's Hosiery shop in New Orleans, was interviewed by the FBI in 1964. She told the FBI that "3 or 4 years ago" (circa 1960-1961) Marguerite stopped by Lady Oris Hosiery where Mrs. Duane was store manager. Marguerite told Mrs. Duane that she was working at Goldrings Dept Store selling dresses on the 2nd floor. These two women, long time friends of Marguerite Claverie Oswald, place the real Marguerite Claverie Oswald in New Orleans in the early 1960s. The FBI now had information that Marguerite (Claverie) Oswald was working at Goldrings and Krieger's Dept. Stores in the early 1960's. To confirm her dates of employment the FBI only needed to secure employment records from Goldrings and Krieger's Dept Stores and interview management and co-workers. The FBI could also have obtained cancelled payroll checks from Goldrings and Kriegers as well as state income tax records from the State of Louisiana. But if the FBI had conducted an honest investigation concerning Marguerite Claverie Oswald's employment in Ft. Worth and New Orleans from 1956 thru 1963, those records would have conflicted with the Marguerite Oswald impostor's various residences and employment in New Orleans and Texas at the same time. Local FBI agents thoroughly investigated Marguerite Claverie Oswald's employment from the early 1940's thru the mid 1950's. They interviewed employers, co-workers, and beginning and ending dates of her employment. But in 1956 their investigation of Marguerite Claverie Oswald and her employment ended, because their investigation was now focused on the Marguerite Oswald impostor.

I also read that comment about the various conspiracy theories in Pat Shannan’s book, and that is probably going to make it impossible for me to recommend it, out of respect for John A’s opinions if nothing else. During several phone conversations, John told me how much it bothered him that Jack White veered off on topics such as the fake moon landings, contrails, etc. John felt Jack was just making it easier for critics to mock the H&L analysis and ignore the bulk of the evidence.

Wait. Isn’t it only two Emil Kardos/Gardos in their 30s around 1940? At that time, the second Emil Kardos was 66 years old, right? We’re talking about a father and son. We certainly agree that, so far at least, Emil Gardos looks like the best candidate and that this is all a very strange coincidence. Looking at the historic data linked in the e-version of Doppelganger, which for some reason is ordered by given names rather than surnames, it appears that “Emil” is not at all a common given name. One possible explanation for all this is that the FBI decided to take advantage of this remarkable coincidence to hide any possible connection of the Lone Nut® to commies. Recall that, according to Earl Warren, LBJ said he was afraid communists were behind the assassination and that a real investigation could lead to World War III (not in those exact words, of course). But this analysis hardly explains the original coincidence. Are there other explanations? John Kowalski’s work tracking down Tina Tippit Brown and discovering that she still had original notes of the anonymous phone calls may be our best bet at trying to figure this out. Mrs. Brown’s work settling her late husband’s estate is certainly understandable, but I can hardly wait to see if those notes can be read by researchers.