John Kowalski

12 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

John K., is there any chance you could dig up a picture of John Caesar Grossi from the 1950's or 1960's? 

Paul:

Newspaper reported his 1965 arrest and it has a picture.

https://archive.org/details/grossiarrest1965

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I agree entirely with John B.  If the Deep Politics participant has the time to examine the Blair papers in Madison, it might be really helpful.  

Is this fellow knowledgeable about the report of the anonymous phone call to the Tippits and the Gardos family questions we have posed here?  If there is a big volume of correspondence, he hopefully knows what to look for.

If we made a list of suggested references to watch for, would that be helpful to the fellow, or would that be unnecessary?  For example,

Any reference to Oswald, obviously, and
Any reference to John Gardos, son of Emil and Grace,

Any reference to any other young boy living with or often in the company of Emil (or Grace) Gardos.

Jim:

Just contacted the poster and will let everyone know what his answer is.

Not sure how knowledgeable he is about the Tippit call so I explained the event to him. He has posted on David's H&L thread on Deep Politics.

If he agrees to go to Madison we can all make suggestions about which boxes and file folders to review. I can make a list for him that would include everyone's suggestions.

On 12/6/2019 at 9:57 AM, John Butler said:

Jim,

That's very interesting. I, too, have not initially found any references to another John Gardos born in 1939.  John Armstrong's friend gives the Census year, 1940,  wife, sons, birth dates, residence, and parents.  This should be an easily found  Census reference.  You say you have not been able to duplicate the source after two searches.  I haven't found that reference either in the Census Record of 1940 for John's friend's reference.  The closest I can get is a Joseph Gardo living at 63rd Drive, Queens, NY.  But, he is an Italian.

Maybe John's friend can be more forth coming with where he found this information.

I have an idea.  See if John's good friend can find the school district for the address 217 East 86th Street.  Then check that school for John Gardos attendance.   HIs parents are Emil and Grace A. during the years 1945 and 1946.  John Gardos should be in the 1st and 2nd grade.  He should not be there for a 3rd and 4th grade years.  If he is then John Gardos is not likely to be Harvey Oswald.

Here's the reasoning for that.  I'm a retired school teacher.  The H & L record for Harvey Oswald at Benbrook school in 1947 was immediately suspicious to me and seemed to lack credibility.  Why?  John Gardos or Harvey Oswald's age in the fall of 1947 should be 8 years (or 7 years old and close to 8 years in the fall of 1947).  This is too old for a 1st grade student.  This implies that he was a truant for two years and probably would have been tracked down by a truant officer no matter what state he was in 1945-1946.

The admission of school age children into the 1st grade was pretty much standard across the US in the 1940s and 1950s.  Overall, it was mandatory and compulsory attendance at 6 years old for the first grade.  Generally, there was not a kindergarten or pre-school available.  Different states may vary a little on these procedures.  Kentucky has always adjusted the laws to match other states as much as possible.  In this period for a child to enter into the first grade they must have been 6 years old when school started or would be 6 years old before Jan, 1, of the following year.  This has been changed in more recents times to a closer (I've forgotten) date to the fall entry date.  I have argued this really doesn't matter since pre-school and Kindergarten is available  at an age earlier age then 6 years.

Secondly, if possible, check the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the Fred Blair papers.  Box Number 5 has correspondence between Fred, Emil, and Grace.  I believe this covers the years in question.  This might be helpful.

 

 

 

John B and Jim:

There is a person on Deep Politics forum that lives about a one hour drive away from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Has anyone gone there to look at their papers, if not I can contact him and ask him if he would be interested in making copies of these letters.

Had a look at the Blair papers finding aid, there is a lot of correspondence and a family history as well. A box and folder list should be made for anyone who plans to review the papers.

2 minutes ago, John Butler said:

Thanks David,

I don't see anything at this point that is in need of fixing.  Correct me if I am wrong, the first good record you have for Harvey is in July 7, 1947.  You have him at the Benbrook school in September, 1947.  Actually, the 1947-1948 school year.

That corresponds to what I have been researching.  If Harvey was in the 1st grade in 1947-48 he would have been 8 years if he was born in 1939 as was Lee.  Compulsory attendance was country wide for 6 year old childern to attend the 1st grade.  Either Harvey skipped those two years as a truant or he went to school somewhere else for 1945-46 and 1946-47.

That's what we are working on by trying to find the school records of John Gardos, also born 1939, in the years 1945-46 and 1946-47.  This wouldn't necessarily prove John Gardos is Harvey Oswald, but it could be an indicator that he might be.

I'm trying to build a set of circumstantial evidence that might lead to a reasonable conclusion that John Gardos is Harvey Oswald.  There is a lot of problems for that, but I haven't at this point found any evidence that will rule that out.

 

 

Jim and John B:

Does New York state government keep records of students?

On 11/26/2019 at 8:15 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

Marina went with Lee on at least this occasion. We believe the purpose of that visit to the Furniture Mart was to set up the (bogus) sighting work done on a rifle in "Oswald's" name at the Irving Sports Shop, by Dial Ryder. All of this was to set up "Oswald", although I doubt that Marina fully understood what was going on. 

Paul:

When I was researching my Osborne story who alias was John Howard Bowen, I did some research on career criminal John Caesar Grossi who worked with Oswald at Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval. Was interested in Grossi because one of his many aliases was John Bowen. Ordered a copy of his prison record from Leavenworth prison where he was doing time for auto theft. James Earl Ray did time at Leavenworth in the 1950s but am not sure if they were there at the same time and knew each other. His prison record indicated that he mailed a check to F. Ryder at 305 E Cason St. Irving Texas. The 1954 Irving City Directory shows that Homer Ryder lives at that address, and the the 1940 US census states that Homer had a daughter named Fleta and son named Dial.  Looks like there is a connection between the bogus rifle work and Oswald's friend at JCS.

I tracked down Grossi's son, John Bowen and interviewed him. He continues to use the Bowen name even though he knows his father's name was an alias. He did not have much contact with his father as he lived in Canada while Grossi remained in the US. One thing he did tell me was that Grossi, who was also a talented commercial artist, got the job at JCS through someone, whose name he does not know, who had tried to help Grossi abandon his criminal ways in his teens.

1940 United States Federal Census

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Question for John Kowalski....

Can you remind me why you suspect John Gardos might have attended the Ramaz School if and when he lived at 217 E. 86th St. in Manhattan?  Today, at least, it appears to be a Jewish-oriented private school.

To everyone, I plan to send the following question to the research department of the New York Public Library and ask how much it would cost to research this query:

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?

Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

Jim:

No need for improvement.

On 12/7/2019 at 3:22 PM, John Butler said:

Paul,

The school records for John Gardos would solve this problem.  What is need is records from the 1st and 2nd grade from a school in Yorkville such as the Ramaz school or some other.  If you could find any other school record that would be important.  If you found 3rd and 4th grade records there in Yorkville, then that would pretty much end the research.

The Ramaz school is intriguing.  Somewhere, Harvey Oswald got the notion he should be an intellectual reading books that people don't normally read.  Going to the opera, etc.  He could have gotten this mind set from his original parents or from a school.  You say the Ramaz school was known for academic excellence.  It was close by. 

 

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Question for John Kowalski....

Can you remind me why you suspect John Gardos might have attended the Ramaz School if and when he lived at 217 E. 86th St. in Manhattan?  Today, at least, it appears to be a Jewish-oriented private school.

To everyone, I plan to send the following question to the research department of the New York Public Library and ask how much it would cost to research this query:

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?

Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

Jim:

Am not suspicious of Ramaz but John B suggested that Harvey may have attend this school and this is why I suggested locating their yearbooks or ask for a student list.  You make a good point about the Gardos being communist would most likely not send their kid to a religious school but I sent them an email yesterday asking for this info anyways. If they refuse to provide info about their students they may provide guidelines for requesting this info from a school.

On 12/6/2019 at 9:57 AM, John Butler said:

Secondly, if possible, check the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the Fred Blair papers.  Box Number 5 has correspondence between Fred, Emil, and Grace.  I believe this covers the years in question.  This might be helpful.

It he reviews these papers maybe they can be uploaded to this forum so we can review them. Correspondence can provide many new leads and names of people previously unknown.

43 minutes ago, John Butler said:

I really haven't given that a thought thinking computer research was much easier.  Back in the day, early 1980s to late 1990s,  when I was doing genealogical research in a big way research at libraries, archives, etc was fairly hard to do.  Sitting in front of the computer was much easier. 

John B:

i agree. Began doing research just before the internet access was available. Would visit the local Mormon church and order documents from their microfilm records. Also wrote many letters that took so long to get a response. Like the computer much better and it has made genealogical and historical research so much easier.

On 12/5/2019 at 9:44 AM, John Butler said:

The 2nd Red Scare began in Canada in 1946:

"In Canada, the 1946 Kellock–Taschereau Commission investigated espionage after top secret documents concerning RDX, radar and other weapons were handed over to the Soviets by a domestic spy-ring."

 And, headed south.  President Truman:

"In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the "Federal Employees Loyalty Program" establishing political-loyalty review boards who determined the "Americanism" of Federal Government employees, and requiring that all federal employees to take an oath of loyalty to the United States government. It then recommended termination of those who had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union, as well as some suspected of being "Un-American".

John B:

The Kellock-Taschereau Commission recommended that all people working for the Canadian government be required to have a security clearance. The government implemented this policy and everyone now has to have a security clearance done by CSIS.

On 12/8/2019 at 12:04 PM, John Butler said:

The Ramaz School has a Contact Us section on their website.  I don't know whether asking them anything about John Gardos would result in them saying anything.

I will contact them and ask general questions about student lists and yearbooks but will not mention Gardos.

On 12/3/2019 at 9:42 PM, John Butler said:

In Canada, the 1946 Kellock–Taschereau Commission investigated espionage after top secret documents concerning RDX, radar and other weapons were handed over to the Soviets by a domestic spy-ring.^[14]

This is off topic but the Kellock-Tashereau Commission was created after Soviet cipher-clerk, Igor Gouzenko, who was employed at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa defected in 1945. He left the embassy with 109 documents that proved that there was a Soviet spy ring operating in Canada, the US and Great Britain. Many arrests followed his defection. There is info about him on the web and I also wrote a story about him that was published in a community newspaper in Ottawa where Gouzenko was living with his wife and child when he defected. Contacted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is Canada's CIA, many years ago and asked if I could see the documents and as I recall they either said no or denied having them, but I had to try. Link to my story is below. There was a film made about Gouzenko's defection called The Iron Curtain.

https://archive.org/details/gouzenko

On 12/1/2019 at 9:48 PM, John Butler said:

Jim,

The fees are not significant.  They can be done on a montly basis.  I'm just not optimistic.  Let me do further research and I might give it a try.

Did you know that many libraries and archives have free ancestry subscriptions? I access it for free at Library and Archives Canada and it includes the whole database.

1 hour ago, Bart Kamp said:

If you go to your link you see the pic.

Click on the pic and the link to the pic becomes visible.

Paste that link in the body of the msg or bottom right "insert other media" and choose "insert image from url"

Thanks Bart.

On 11/30/2019 at 3:12 AM, Jake Hammond said:

A little late to the topic I’m sorry, I have skimmed through so apologies if this has been mentioned already... 
 I am not familiar with the accents of 1950’s New Orleans residents but ... in his radio interview on the fair play for Cuba LHO has moments where his accent and sentence structure sound VERY much like that of German or Eastern European’s . Having a brother in Germany, Russian wife and having lived in London for ten years I have some experience here. 

 

Jake:

Interesting comment about his accent. I posted about Marguerite's accent, citing Jean Stafford who interviewed Marguerite for a book. She said that she sounded like she had taken elocution lessons that suggests that she was trying to change how she spoke.

What we need is a linguistic profiler to listen to both Harvey's and Marguerite's voices because a profiler may be able to determine where they are from.

Netflix has a series called Manhunt: Unabomber that tells the story of the FBI's hunt for the Unabomber. One of the things they did was to bring in a linguistic profiler who analyzed the language he used in his manifesto to see if they can find out where he came from. It was really fascinating to see what they could learn about him just by reading what he wrote. The FBI finally caught him by publishing his manifesto that Ted Kacyynski's brother recognized as his brother's writings.

On 11/27/2019 at 12:30 PM, John Kowalski said:

David:

Did not know that Fred Korth was Secretary of the Navy. Having the secretary of the Navy involved in Harvey's life is very suspicious and more research may provide more evidence about the Oswald project.

David:

Eckdahl's company, Ebasco did a report on the Coast Guard in 1948. Study of the United States Coast Guard, New York, Ebasco Services 1948: managing a federal agency the hidden stimulus, Louis K. Bradgaw. Another possible Navy-ONI-Oswald connection.

Bart:

Have been having difficulties uploading pictures so I have been uploading links instead.

Can you show me how to upload a picture to my post.

18 hours ago, John Butler said:

Paul,

The school records for John Gardos would solve this problem.  What is need is records from the 1st and 2nd grade from a school in Yorkville such as the Ramaz school or some other.  If you could find any other school record that would be important.  If you found 3rd and 4th grade records there in Yorkville, then that would pretty much end the research.

The Ramaz school is intriguing.  Somewhere, Harvey Oswald got the notion he should be an intellectual reading books that people don't normally read.  Going to the opera, etc.  He could have gotten this mind set from his original parents or from a school.  You say the Ramaz school was known for academic excellence.  It was close by. 

 

Does Ramaz have a yearbook that would be available for public viewing? Yearbooks have pictures and names of students who went there.

Has anyone done any research on the Pitcairn family? Greg Parker claims that Marguerite Oswald worked for Pittsburgh Glass, which is one of their companies, and that they were fascists.

Saw a documentary about Hoffa's life and disappearance. It does not agree with Sheerhan's account.  It  mentions his book and states that he released it without his claim about his role in Hoffa's demise and it didn't do so well so he released again and added his alleged role in Hoffa's disappearance and this helped book sales.

The title is: WDIV’s Steve Garagiola investigates the notorious labor leader’s disappearance and was shown on WDIV Detroit

https://www.clickondetroit.com/features/2019/12/04/watch-local-4-hoffa-primetime-special-tonight-at-10-pm/

John B:

In the absence of conclusive evidence regarding the beginning of the project, I am interested in knowing what theories they may have about it's origins. More arguments is not what I am looking for either, just more research on where Harvey came from and Marguerite's family history. Have been doing my own research and about their origins but have not been able to find any new leads.

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Second, the seeming certainty of the caller suggests that the child might have been using the name “Lee Harvey Oswald” or something very close to that when the woman knew him and the Gardoses.  If that is the case,  it *MAY* set the start date of the “Oswald Project” to earlier even than 1947.  Phony Marguerite was very much in the picture during the full time Harvey Oswald is known to have attended school in New York City in the 1950s, so I doubt the caller was referring to that time frame, but it is hard to be sure.

Jim:

I should have realized that the significance of the call was relevant to posters on this thread.

Am very interested in the origins of the Oswald project. No date has been established but 1947 has been the earliest date suggested. Can you clarify something for me; you stated that it may have begun prior to 1947 because "...the caller suggests that the child may have been using the name 'Lee Harvey Oswald'..." Why do you think that this statement suggests an earlier start date? Do you or John have any theories about the when the project began?

16 hours ago, John Butler said:

The foremost question is what did the FBI know and when did they know it.  What did the FBI know about the Oswald Project early on and later after the assassination?  Why did Hoover have the concern that someone might be using Oswald's birth certificate? 

You make a good point about what the FBI knew. They probably knew more than they let on in the documents they have released tot he public. The fact that they had been tracking them for years and then not seeming to know anything about them is suspicious.

Jim and Vince: you are welcome.

Bart: thanks for uploading the pics, been having problems doing that so have been posting links instead.

Below are links to pictures of Clay Shaw and General Thrasher together. Pictures were taken by Therese Bonney and are archived at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k6qn6f6t/?docId=k6qn6f6t&brand=calisphere&layout=printable-details

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k63t9qn7/?docId=k63t9qn7&brand=calisphere&layout=printable-details