Jim Hargrove

John, I wouldn’t even begin to draw any conclusions until we see if Mr. Geck has any insights into the FBI report of the anonymous Tippit call. The fact that the FBI obscured the name of a communist activist that surely was well known to them--and that they buried the report for three decades--suggests the anonymous caller wasn’t entirely bonkers. Paul J’s questions seemed well thought out. Again, megathanks for this informative research.

That’s wonderful, John! I was really afraid your question would drive Mr. Geck away, but it seems to have been just the ticket. Would you now want to ask him a question along the lines of Paul J’s suggestions? Here’s what Paul wrote on the previous page. AND You might even send him a copy of the FBI report. This was dynamite research and I thank you for it, and no doubt we all do.

Nancy Lee Oswald I searched several big genealogy databases for “Nancy Lee Oswald” and found there are only a handful of persons with that exact name registered anywhere. None of them seems to match the Nancy Lee Oswald located by DJ in the Tarrant County school records. The closest is a Nancy Lee Oswald listed in the 1940 census as a 4-year-old female (birth year 1936) residing in Indiana. Her father is listed as Ernest and her mother as Mary. Find A Grave has the following listing that I suspect, despite a one-year discrepancy in the birth date, is the same person. Name: Nancy Lee Oswald Baker Maiden Name: Oswald Event Type: Burial Event Date: 2017 Event Place: Goshen, Elkhart, Indiana, United States of America Photograph Included: N Birth Date: 15 Aug 1935 Death Date: 05 Feb 2017 Affiliate Record Identifier: 176079098 Cemetery: Violett Cemetery No other “Nancy Lee Oswald,” and I have found only two or three, remotely matches David’s Tarrant County school listing. This is a real mystery.

And it’s a well educated guess. As John A. wrote: She [Georgia Bell] remembered that a 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." -from The Early Years of Harvey and Lee. The 2220 Thomas house was indeed located “across from the Stripling School” and was apparently available to “Marguerite” while she was still on San Saba.

That sounds right to me. The anonymous call, the Tippits' report to the FBI, and the subsequent written report all allegedly occurred on Nov. 30, more than a week after the assassination. By then, the Bureau’s basic cover-up had already been put in place. The Bureau had, for example, FINALLY indicated publicly exactly how much money “Oswald” allegedly paid for a certain Italian carbine. (Which is darkly humorous since the geniuses at the FBI had determined a week earlier that it was definitely “Oswald’s” handwriting on the order.) Now, Hoover had to clean up any potential loose ends that might lead to the the Kardos/Gardos trouble spot. I do believe this report was issued solely to do that. It has an eerie similarity to phony Marguerite’s testimony saying she believed her “son” was a government agent of some sort. Poor, poor, Marguerite. What government bureaucrat with any heart at all, and knowledge of Agent Oswald, would fail to come home to “mom” and tell her the truth. And then, one way or another, that g-man could be silenced. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Tippit. They could be used, even without their knowledge, the same way.

The little house at 101 San Saba is an early key to uncovering the Oswald project, and someone at the WC—almost certainly Allen Dulles—apparently knew it. It seems that the WC Report deliberately lied: On June 24 [1948], the court granted the divorce and approved an agreement between the parties disposing of their property between them and awarding Marguerite $1,500…. Shortly after the divorce, Mrs. Oswald purchased a small house in Benbrook, on what is now San Saba Street….” (WCR 673-674) The WCR’s clear implication was that Marguerite used the settlement from Ekdahl to help buy the San Saba home. But in the 1990s John A. searched the Tarrant County land records and discovered that Marguerite actually purchased the property on July 7, 1947, agreeing with the memories of Georgia Bell and Otis Carleton. It was Dulles who abruptly asked for a adjournment when Albert Jenner asked Robert Oswald to talk about the summer of 1947. Dulles surely knew that Marguerite Oswald and her three boys were living at 1505 8th Avenue in Fort Worth during the summer of 1947. Among many other questions, we must wonder how Marguerite obtained the money to buy San Saba in her own name.

This may mean less than my fevered imagination is whispering to me, but soon after Fred Korth represented Edwin Ekdahl in his divorce from Marguerite, Korth’s name began appearing in Texas newspapers documenting a rather mercurial rise in political circles. The March 14, 1948 Dallas Morning News (p. 4) reported Korth had been elected as a “national committeeman” of the Young Democrats of Texas. Just four months later, on July 15, 1948, the Corpus Christi Times (p. 12) indicated Korth was campaign manager for the U.S. Senate campaign of one Lyndon Johnson of Texas. Small world!

John, In the summer of 1952, the real Marguerite and the real LHO drove to NYC and moved into John Pic’s apartment on 92nd St. in Manhattan, and then moved to 1455 Sheridan in the Bronx, where Lee attended PS 44, PROBABLY in the Bronx, until summer break in 1953. At the same time, in the fall of 1952, Harvey and phony Marguerite started living at 825 E. 179th St. and Harvey began attending PS 117. Copies of school records for PS 117 show that Oswald attended only 15 of 62 days in school during late 1952 through March 23, 1953, which eventually landed him in Youth House for truancy. Lee’s school attendance record was always pretty good. It seems unlikely to me that phony Marguerite ever interacted with the kid born as LHO. Not sure, though, exactly when Harvey and “mom” arrived in New York. Some of this might be clearer if the FBI hadn’t “lost” all the original school records for LHO, despite efforts by the mayor of NYC and a city judge to track them down.

Good catch, David, and quite a coincidence. Mr. Pic, of course, was talking about his real half-brother, the kid born as Lee Harvey Oswald. Since in 1952 PS 30 at 230 88th St. was less than two blocks from the Gardos’s apartment at 217 E. 86th St., do we have to consider other possibilities for the identification by the anonymous caller? Both Oswalds attended the same school in New Orleans (Beauregard). Could both Oswalds have attended the old PS 30 in Manhattan? Or did the birth Oswald somehow get connected with Emil Gardos? That doesn’t seem likely. There are dozens of elementary schools in Manhattan today, and probably more in the 1950s when rent controls in NYC made it more affordable for young families to live in Manhattan. I wish we knew what grades the old PS 30 in Manhattan covered.

Just a brief update on the above. Public School 30 in Manhattan was once located at 230 E. 88th St., but it is long gone. Located there now is a 14-story apartment building that Trulia says was built in 1967. Manhattan’s current P.S. 30 is also called Hernandez/Hughes School and is located at 144-176 East 128th St. in Manhattan. According to its website, it is a pre-kindergarten to 5th grade elementary school. Google has few references to the old PS 30 at 230 E. 88th St. in Manhattan. One is from a book exactly 100 years old (published in 1919) entitled “Directory of Social and Health Agencies of New York City. “ Here is page 134 of that old book, which under “Refraction and Contagious Eye Clinics,” lists “P.S. 30, 230 East 88th St. (tel. Lenox 8391).” Which begs the question, Was the structure at 230 E. 88th St. a public school or some sort of health facility? That question is answered by plate 115 of the 1930 insurance map linked by the NYPL. P.S. 30 in the 1919 book is clearly labeled as a New York Public School. The question now is how to obtain detailed student information on a school that has not existed for at least forty years, and probably longer. The answer will be, I suspect, relatively hard to find. Since John B. located an FBI doc from 1966 indicating that Grace Gardos had a son in Budapest, it might be best to spend research efforts trying to establish if that son was John, born in 1939. If it was, then Grace’s son John Gardos was not Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald and difficult research will not be required.

To anyone still interested in looking into John Gardos as a possible candidate for Harvey Oswald.... A couple of days ago, I sent the following question to the NYC Public Library: Can you tell me what public elementary school a child would have attended in 1946 if he was born in 1939 and lived at 217 E. 86th St. in Manhattan? A few minutes ago I received the following answer:

Not that I'm aware of, and I tried to hunt for some. According to Wikipedia, he ran for governor of Wisconsin in 1930, 1932, 1940, 1942, 1966, and 1974. He also ran for U.S. Senator for Wisconsin in the 1938 election. I found quite a few newspaper articles on him, but only one from New York, just about Milwaukee.

From the GenealogyBank portal to U.S. Census: Mary Fuhrman United States Federal Census, 1940 Name: Mary Fuhrman Census Year: 1940 Gender: Female Age: 42 Marital Status: Married Race: White Relationship: Wife Husband: Alexander Fuhrman Son: Paul Fuhrman Daughter: Doris Fuhrman Son: Arthur Fuhrman Son: Edward Fuhrman Daughter: Emma Fuhrman Daughter: Margaret Fuhrman Residence: Assembly District 2, Manhattan, New York City, New York, New York, United States Birthplace: Hungary Birth Year: 1898 Household Members: Name Age Alexander Fuhrman 43 Paul Fuhrman 18 Doris Fuhrman 14 Arthur Fuhrman 13 Edward Fuhrman 11 Emma Fuhrman 9 Margaret Fuhrman 6

We agree about the likelihood of a pre-1947 connection. I wonder, though, if the anonymous caller was a member of the Blair family, if she might have just decided to keep the name Blair out of the discussion, although brother-in-law does seem like a pretty massive hint. As I said to John B., I do think the peculiar northwoods accent that can be detected from northern Michigan through Wisconsin and westward to at least North Dakota might be misconstrued as a foreign accent. It can be quite pronounced, as the movie Fargo depicted.

Are you still considering Mary Fuhrman, John Pic’s mother-in-law? According to the 1940 U.S. Census, there was a Mary Fuhrman with a daughter Margaret living in Assembly District 2, Manhattan, New York. She was born in 1898 in Hungary. Mr. Pic testified that he thought his mother-in-law was Hungarian, and she might have still had an accent in 1963. The biggest problem with Mary Fuhrman as a candidate for the anonymous caller is that her knowledge of “Lee Harvey Oswald” most likely would date back to the 1940s, since phony Marguerite was most likely his guardian starting at least in 1947. Mr. Pic, I believe, indicated he first met his wife in 1950. Any thoughts?

David, 217 E. 86th St. and 325 E. 92nd St. certainly are a short walk apart. But for PS155 in Manhattan I’m getting this school: P.S. 155 William Paca. According to Google Maps, it is a mile and a half or so from the other two addresses. That’s a possible walk, I suppose, but it seems pretty far. According to the NYC web page above, PS155 is located at 319 E. 117th St. Are we talking about the same school? Just a few years after the dates we’re looking at here, I walked from 440 Riverside Drive in Manhattan to PS165, which Google Maps indicates is about a half mile walk. It always seemed like a long walk to me, partly because I was constantly re-routing to dodge groups of young people I thought might be gang members.

You may be right, John, but I thought of that reference to a German or Spanish accent before making the post above about Grace’s sisters. It may or may not disqualify my theory. The Blair family was living in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in at least one of the old census reports. And they may have had some sort of connection to Ironwood, Michigan, where John Gardos seems to have been born. People in the north woods of Wisconsin often have a discernible accent, similar to the dialect spoken in the movie Fargo. It can be quite pronounced and might be heard as vaguely German by someone not used to hearing it, such as the Tippits of Connecticut. I don’t know whether Fond du Lac is far enough north for this dialect to be prevalent, but it might be. Ironwood, right on the Wisconsin/Michigan border near Lake Superior, certainly is far enough north. There are other possible explanations for the foreign accent reference, but this one strikes me as the most likely.

Warren Commission doubters W.C. member Richard Russell said: "They [the FBI] have tried the case and reached a verdict on every count." Russell then wrote a letter of resigna­tion from the Warren Commission to Lyndon Johnson, which the President refused to accept. W.C. member Hale Boggs said, "We have not been told the truth about Oswald." Boggs and Alaska Senator Nick Begich vanished when their small plane disappeared in the Alaska wilderness during a routine flight from Anchorage to Juneau.W.C. member John I. McCloy told the HSCA in 1978, "I no longer feel we had no credible evidence or reliable evidence in regard to a conspiracy...."W.C. member Senator John Sherman Cooper never agreed with the "single bullet theory," and expressed doubts to fellow members.The two W.C. Commission members who remained committed to the conclusions of the Warren Report were, not surprisingly, former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who attended more WC meetings than any other member), and Gerald Ford, a man described by Newsweek the "CIA's best friend in Congress."After leaving office, the man who created the Warren Commission, President Lyndon Johnson, expressed doubts about the Warren Commission's conclusion for the remain­der of his life. On one occasion he told his aide, Marvin Watson, that he was convinced there was a plot in connection with the assassination and "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot." Lyndon Johnson was correct, but it has taken JFK researchers nearly a half-century to arrive at the same conclusion.

Wow! Most and probably all of the names above (except for John and Mary and Grace herself) are surely the brothers and sisters of Grace Blair (who became the wife of Emil Gardos). If any of these people lived in NYC, especially in Manhattan near 77th and Second Ave. around the time Emil and Grace lived there, we may well have found the anonymous caller! I'll start working on this tomorrow. Megathanks to all for some real research here!

DJ, According to Paul J, Tibor Kajan's "Circus Maximus" was published in 1962 in Berlin. Otherwise, you ask some fascinating questions. I'll try to do some digging tomorrow.

WHO WAS THE ANONYMOUS CALLER TO MRS. JACK TIPPIT? According to the agent in charge of the New Haven FBI office, the anonymous caller “KEPT REPEATING THE WORD BROTHER IN LAW,” almost certainly a reference to Grace Blair Gardos’s brother Fred Blair, also a proponent of communism. Is it likely that a neighbor or casual acquaintance of Emil and Grace would have known the couple’s relation to Fred Blair? Using powerful electronic databases and the internet, it’s easy now to find a few relatively obscure newspaper articles disclosing the relations, but it would hardly be common knowledge in NYC back then. Who would have known about Fred Blair and his relation to Emil Gardos? One decent guess would be a family member. I’m going to try to find out if Grace Gardos had a sister. It would be interesting to see if a sister or another reasonably close member of either Emil or Grace’s family lived anywhere near 77th and Second Ave. in NYC. That might go a long way in making an informed guess about the caller. Also, a fellow for the NYC Public Library sent me a note saying that my question asking where John Gardos would have attended school had been referred to another department, so things there are still moving there, hopefully.

That’s interesting, John. I’m sure the consensus among researchers is that the Bronx Zoo picture is of Lee Harvey Oswald, or at least one of them, but I value your opinion in these matters. Unfortunately, I’m terrible with faces. The evidence suggests that Harvey Oswald DID spend a lot of time at the Bronx Zoo when he lived just three blocks from it at 825 E. 179th St. In 1953, truant officer Victor Connell apprehended Harvey in the Bronx Zoo and returned him to school. Robert Oswald volunteered while testifying to the WC that he took the picture of his “brother” at the zoo, prompting a reprimand from Jenner to just answer the questions. John Pic said he didn’t recognize the photo of the kid in the Bronx Zoo photo, supposedly his own half-brother. Of course, there should be no reason for Mr. Pic to recognize Harvey; they weren’t related. I’ve thought for two decades that it was Harvey Oswald in the Bronx Zoo photo, but considering how much of the evidence in this case has been compromised, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, though I'm still inclined to believe it's Harvey.

I’d suggest, though, that if John Gardos was not Harvey, then we really don’t know Harvey’s exact age. A number of witnesses from the 1950s in both NYC and New Orleans described him as a scrawny little kid, suggesting he could have been a little older than he appeared. Look at his skinny arms in the Bronx Zoo photo. Youth House psychiatrist Renatus Hartogs wrote that Harvey “had an underfed look, reminiscent of the starved children I had seen in concentration camps." That quote, among other things, has made us wonder if Harvey was an eastern European World War II orphan.

Sounds like a good plan, John. I think the Deep Politics fellow should also be made aware of the FBI document John B has been posting suggesting that John Gardos was living in Budapest in 1966. If that's true, he was NOT Harvey Oswald and we will have to find another connection between Oswald and Emil Gardos. Even if we definitively eliminate John Gardos as Harvey Oswald, studying the Blair papers might be extremely helpful. Here's that document again:

This is very good news! Since this appears to have been a deliberate attack, would Invision perhaps be interested in getting more information on it?