Wesley Frazier--there was no gun

[Rob Clark]

8 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

How about this possible solution to the package Wesley Frazier said Oswald was carrying Fri morning Nov 22?--it was neither curtain rods nor was it a firearm, but instead was the package with the strange "601 West Nassaus Street" nonexistent address that turned up in the Irving Post Office the week after the assassination (carried by LHO Friday morning from Irving to Dallas inside a paper bag which may have also had his lunch). Has this previously been considered?

Greg,

I dig the theory...this package has always been a head scratcher. In my show with Steve Roe he theorized the address could have been meant to be Neches St. which is in Oak Cliff, not too far from the rooming house on Beckley. And Oswald with his sometimes horrible spelling just botched it. Maybe that location was some sort of "safe house". The double mailing of the package though doesn't jive because the package only has one postmark. The envelope does appear to have been reused though...you can faintly see other writing under the bottom part of the label. The postmark date is unreadable unfortunately.

[Greg Doudna]

11 hours ago, Rob Clark said:

The double mailing of the package though doesn't jive because the package only has one postmark. The envelope does appear to have been reused though...you can faintly see other writing under the bottom part of the label. The postmark date is unreadable unfortunately.

Rob your comments have caused me to do some further thinking on this. The Wed Nov 20 postage-due notice says the package of that notice--the one received by Marina when she paid the postage due--was addressed to the Irving 5th Street address, correctly addressed. According to a Dallas post office investigator, the package was delivered to Marina either Nov 21 or 22 (not Nov 20). Therefore, assumption: Marina, gone with Ruth on Wednesday, returned home to find the notice on the door, the 20th. The next day, Thu 21st, Marina is home when the mail carrier delivers the mail and Marina pays the postage due in person and receives the package (or else Marina picks it up from the Irving post office if it was within walking distance). But Lee, having learned from Marina Wed eve of the package, arranges with Buell Wesley Frazier to go out to Irving Thursday night. 

What if ... this whole package business was a mechanism of getting money--cash--to LHO? 

Imagine... the plain package envelope, the one with the sticker on it addressed to Lee Oswald at "601 West Nassaus,  Street", is inside the package that was received by Marina, and it contained cash, perhaps a large sum of cash.

That evening, Lee left $170 cash on the dresser for Marina. What was he earning per week at TSBD--$60 per week or something like that? Where did the $170 come from? From the package that Lee had just received?

Assume that was only a fraction of the actual cash in the package, perhaps a large sum. In LHO's position, if for some reason he wanted no records of this cash, and for some reason did not want to hide it in the Paine garage, but wanted safe storage and access to it, how could he accomplish that? Could mailing the inner envelope to himself at a non-existent address, with no postage and no return address, thereby prompting it to end up in the dead-letter section of the post office for a short time, have been a way of storing cash safely for a few days until he picked it up?

So (to speculate) he cuts open with a knife just enough at one end of the envelope to verify the contents, and removes a small portion of it--$170--to leave with Marina, closes the mailing envelope back up--it has no writing on it at this point--and attaches the label to it addressed to himself at the bogus 601 West Nassaus Street address, puts the envelope inside his (necessarily slightly larger size) lunch paper bag, and catches his ride with Frazier back into Dallas Friday morning where he drops it in a mailbox. No way does LHO tell Frazier what is really in the package--a sturdy 18" mailing envelope with a huge sum of US currency. Nor is LHO going to tell Captain Fritz about the package with the money either. This explains what Frazier says he saw and heard--a bag which no way was large enough to hold a rifle, but was holding something more than a lunch, and Lee told him Marina was making him curtains.

The marks that you note look like possible writing just below the label, in checking photos of the full mailer is it sure that is writing at all? It looks like other speckled black or dark spots from the poor photo quality. So the reconstruction I suggest is this brown mailer arrived unmarked and sealed inside the package that was correctly addressed to LHO and which arrived to the Paine house and was received by Marina. (The owed-postage may have been an accident or oversight on the part of the mailer.) If it was a large sum of money, no wonder LHO does not delay by even a day to get out to Irving to take possession of it.

The assumption that Lee was breaking up with Marina might be legend rather than reality. Marina herself, though saying she had quarreled with Lee over the phone a few days earlier, also told the Warren Commission that Lee was not particularly upset more than normal with her even though Marina was (she said) not speaking to him--she told the Warren Commission she was not actually overwhelmingly angry inside at Lee, but was "smiling inside". Lee had asked her that Thursday night to leave the Paine house immediately and live with him--offered to rent an apartment for the two of them Friday the next day, also a washing machine (!--sudden access to money that perhaps had just by coincidence arrived in a package of cash?). The leaving of the ring with Marina Fri. morning--Marina said Lee had left his ring at home one other time one day for practical reasons, not because they were breaking up. Some men leave rings off if working with unknown kinds of machinery, for safety reasons. 

This scenario perfectly matches what Frazier saw. Frazier so insistently without budging always said that Lee's paper bag was too small to hold a rifle, and could not have held a rifle. The scenario explains Lee's otherwise-unexplained access to the $170, as well as rendering credible his offer to rent an apartment for Marina and himself complete with purchase of a washing machine for Marina, the very next day. The scenario explains what WAS in the package that Frazier, his sister Linnie, another woman in the neighborhood, and Marina--four witnesses--each said they saw, Lee carrying a paper bag that held something larger than his lunch (but not large enough to be even a broken-down Mannlicher-Carcano rifle). The scenario makes Oswald's answer truthful to Fritz in denying he took curtain rods to work (though Oswald did not volunteer to Fritz that he carried a bundle of cash in a package in his lunch bag). The scenario gives at least one plausible reason why Oswald--or anyone--might intentionally mail a package with no postage and a non-existent address on it to himself. 

It also offers an interesting possible explanation for one other thing--why whatever was in the package addressed to Oswald at the non-existent "601 West Nassaus" with no postage--why whatever its contents were (it was empty when found in the Irving post office dead-letter room) were never reported. No, after the assassination and Oswald's arrest someone recognized the name Oswald and opened the package, was pleasantly surprised at its contents, helped themself to it and never reported the windfall. Instead, someone in the post office put the rubber-stamped message which I see to the left of the postmark: "Received in bad condition", i.e. a claim that the mailer had been received by the post office already opened with its contents missing. Then whoever did this left the mailer with the Oswald address on it for someone else to discover and deal with. 

To the right of the envelope mailer, in the area of Holmes', or some FBI agent's, initials, there is a line maybe 3 or 4 inches long drawn parallel to the edge with "X"'s drawn at each end. Is the meaning of that a notation by an investigator of where the mailer had originally been opened and resealed by Oswald?

This theory leaves unexplained why Lee would receive a large sum of cash just before Nov 22, and who would have sent it. But apart from those unanswered questions, would this scenario account for key facts which otherwise have been so baffling up to now? 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Ron Bulman]

Lee received a large sum of cash just before Nov 22?  News to me, sources?

[Michael Clark]

I did not read the whole thread but I saw that someone asked about where Frazier’s testimony could be found..... http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/wit.htm

 

[Greg Doudna]

Just now, Ron Bulman said:

Lee received a large sum of cash just before Nov 22?  News to me, sources?

No verification whatsoever, its entirely a reconstructed, argued, speculation on my part, for reasons given in my comments above. A proposal proffered in an attempt to resolve some longstanding incongruities.

There is this indirectly though: he offered to rent an apartment and buy a washing machine the very next day for Marina, the day after a package had arrived addressed to Lee. He left $170 in cash with Marina the day after that package was received, a sum more than 3 weeks' gross pay from his job. He also was reported to have told a car salesman at a car dealership, Albert Guy Bogard at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury, in early November that he expected to be coming into some money soon. That is usually supposed to have been an impersonator of Oswald since the date the salesman thought that happened, Nov. 9, conflicts with testimony of Ruth Paine that Oswald could not have been there that day. That objection was however removed by another salesman in that dealership, Eugene Wilson, who clearly and convincingly corrected that, as reported in a Dallas newspaper article, that his colleague salesman and the Warren Commission report had been mistaken on the date by one week, and that in fact Oswald's visit to that dealership had occurred Nov. 2, one week earlier than the Warren Commission reported for what the WC said could not have been Oswald (http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/W Disk/Wilson Eugene/Item 01.pdf). The correction on the date removes the objection and it becomes clear that that was no impersonator test-driving the car at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury; it was Oswald. The objection that Oswald could not drive is no objection--on the basis of much testimony he could drive, just could not drive very well and had no driver's license, but he could drive poorly. Although it is possible Oswald could have just been bragging, the fact is the salesman who took Oswald for a test drive in a car, Bogard, said Oswald spoke of coming into some major money soon. For what its worth. 

[Rob Clark]

10 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

To the right of the envelope mailer, in the area of Holmes', or some FBI agent's, initials, there is a line maybe 3 or 4 inches long drawn parallel to the edge with "X"'s drawn at each end. Is the meaning of that a notation by an investigator of where the mailer had originally been opened and resealed by Oswald?

 

 

The only slight problem I see with your theory is this package fitting inside the package Frazier said he saw....

[Greg Doudna]

4 hours ago, Rob Clark said:

The only slight problem I see with your theory is this package fitting inside the package Frazier said he saw....

That would be a point if the mailer envelope were hard case or hard shell. But the mailer envelope is pliable and could be rolled inside the paper bag Frazier said he saw Oswald carrying, especially if the mailer envelope contained currency which would be of relatively little bulk or stiffness. As a guess the mailer looks maybe 20" x 14" for its outside dimensions, allowing for the wrapping paper inside said to have measured 18" in length. A 5" or 6" inch width paper bag would seem adequate to hold the mailer envelope if it were folded or rolled in thirds lengthwise.

[Denis Morissette]

Anyone was able to make a transcript of the tapes?