Was the assassination rifle posted to the Neely Street address?

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

I was under the impression that Dorothea Myers volunteered the information to the FBI of her own free will. But as per the below document, the FBI appear to have been actively trying to locate Oswald in early March 1963. On March 11th 1963 the FBI went to his former landlady at Elsbeth street and she informed the FBI that the Oswalds had moved. From this we can deduce that the FBI then went to the post office thatt same day (March 11th 1963) and tried to find out from them where Oswald now was, and somehow the post office knew:

SOURCE: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57690#relPageId=111 

The official story is that the case on Oswald was closed at this time. This doesn't look like a case that has been closed, it looks like the FBI were constantly trying to keep track of where Oswald was. 

Correct. To my understanding, the impetus for officially reopening the Oswald case was the following:

When Marina’s 6-month pending inactive case period expired in February or March ‘63, Hosty first tracked down the 602 Elsbeth St. address on 3/4/63 through Marina’s immigration records at INS. On 3/11/63, Hosty contacted the Elsbeth St. landlord, Mrs. M.F. Tobias., who informed him that the Oswalds had been evicted from Elsbeth on 3/3 and left no forwarding address. Hosty supposedly also found out  from Tobias that Oswald had been drinking and abusing Marina, so he decided not to attempt to contact her until after a 60-day “cooling off” period. The evidence suggests that Hosty contacted Inspector Dorothea Myers that same day, 3/11, and somehow found out that the Oswalds had moved to 214 Neely St. Hosty allegedly verified the address on 3/14 by seeing the names Lee and Marina Oswald on the Neely St. letterbox. 

Hosty supposedly also reviewed the Dallas Field Office file on the Oswalds and noticed that Lee had subscribed to the Worker on 9/28/62. Hosty then submitted his 3/25/63 memo to headquarters requesting that Oswald’s case be reopened based on his Sept. ‘62 subscription to the Worker, and his relationship to Marina. The request was approved the following day.

By 5/15/63, the “cool down” period had ended so Hosty made another attempt to contact Marina, but discovered that the Oswalds had moved from Neely St. In one of the the most baffling pre-assassination memos, Hosty wrote to SAC Gordon Shanklin on 5/28, that “a check with the Postmaster reflects that the subjects have moved and left no forwarding address” The problem with this is that both Oswalds absolutely did leave a forwarding address, but their mail was forwarded from P.O. Box 2915, not 214 West Neely St. How would the “Postmaster” know the Oswalds had moved but left no forwarding address?

I think that the Neely St. landlord likely sent a form to the Post Office that has this exact language “moved and left no forwarding address” - (POD Form 3575-Z? I’d have to double check). This may also have been the source of the Dorothea Myers’s information: it was provided to the Post Office not by the Oswalds but by their Neely St. landlords. However, no such information was ever discovered after the assassination by the FBI, Postal Inspection Service, or anyone else. 

Again, the sole reason for Hosty’s alleged failure to track Oswald to New Orleans is the 3/11/63 information from Dorothea Myers that the Oswalds had moved my to 214 Neely St. There was no POD Form 3575 to Neely St. ever filed by either Lee or Marina, so I think your theory is a good one about the box delivery instructions. I’d like a bit more evidence (like a readdressed package) and/or more info on P.O. Box delivery instruction changes, but it’s definitely a very real possibility, IMO, whether it was initiated by Lee or Marina. 

[Guest]

1) Strange how 214 West Neeley was reported to be vacant on March 20 (see doc attached)

2) Not to mention the confusioin about the numbering of the houses on Neeley / West Neeley (same street)

212 Neeley (groundfloor), 214 West-Neeley (1st floor) = SAME BUILDING 

See different statements (2 pages) about the numbering, there is also 212 West Neeley.... etc

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95615#relPageId=99&search=neeley

How those people got their correct mail is a puzzle to me !

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans
Pictures removed to save space

[Tony Rose]

Quote

Hang on to thoughts about Oswald using the Hidell Selective Service card as ID for the post office or anywhere else.  Every American male of age 18 and over was carrying a Selective Service card in their wallet.  They all knew what they looked like.  And they all knew they didn't have pictures on them.

Whatever the card was ginned up for, it wasn't to use as a fake ID in the United States.

 

[Gerry Down]

21 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I think that the Neely St. landlord likely sent a form to the Post Office that has this exact language “moved and left no forwarding address” - (POD Form 3575-Z? I’d have to double check). This may also have been the source of the Dorothea Myers’s information: it was provided to the Post Office not by the Oswalds but by their Neely St. landlords. However, no such information was ever discovered after the assassination by the FBI, Postal Inspection Service, or anyone else. 

I agree with this theory. The Neely apartment landlord likely had some type of informal relationship with the post office where they would inform the post office of the names or any new tenants in case they were wanted felons (all the more likely to do this seeing how Marina was a russian speaker). They would effectively have been acting in the capacity of an unofficial informant but were not actually one. And therefore were not designated the usual  T-1 or T-2 on FBI documents. The landlord was probably doing it for their own benefit to make sure they got reliable tenants. 

Notice that the FBI document that references Myers does not say that Oswald left a forwarding address but simply uses the vague term that Oswald had “moved” to Neely street. This kind of language could have been employed to mask the fact that an informant, the Neely street landlord, had given the post office this information (that Oswald had "moved" to Neely street).

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57690#relPageId=112

This is probably why Myers was never interviewed and becomes a "ghost" as you put it. The FBI could not admit to how Myers got the information that Oswald had "moved" to Neely street as to do so would be to "out" the innocent Neely apartment landlord as an FBI informant. 

This explanation allows for Hosty to have been telling the truth that he did not know about PO box 2915. 

[Guest]

Having a little problem in retrieving this document, am I doin something wrong ? Just can't get to it at NARA 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans
Pictures removed to save space

[Gerry Down]

The main point of Tom Grams essay “Rethinking Oswalds Mail” is that when Marina left Dallas to join Lee in New Orleans, she closed down PO box 2915 and had the mail forwarded on to Ruth Paines house (probably because it was not certain at that point how permanent their new apartment at 4907 Magazine street in New Orleans would be). At the same time Oswald had sent a mail forwarding order to Dallas to direct their mail from PO box 2915 to the new address at Magazine street, but because Marina had already closed the PO box down, Lees mail forwarding order became null and void (because he was trying to direct mail from a PO box which Marina had already closed down - I think). When Marina arrived in New Orleans and told Lee what she had done (closed down their PO box 2915 in Dallas before she left for New Orleans and directed mail from that PO box to Ruth Paines house in Irving), Oswald sent a mail forwarding order to the Irving post office to direct all mail addressed to the Oswalds going to Ruth Paines house to go to their new apartment at 4907 Magazine street in New Orleans.

All this seems innocuous enough except, as Tom Gram points out in “Rethinking Oswalds Mail”, after the JFK assassination, the FBI tried to hide the fact that Oswald on May 15^th 1963 had directed his mail addressed to Ruth Paines house to be delivered to New Orleans. The Postal Inspection Service were happy to inform the Warren Commission about what Oswald did, but the FBI appear to have tried to hide what Oswald did. The FBI did not want the Warren Commission (and hence the public) knowing that Oswald had left a mail forwarding order pointing to his current location in New Orleans.

One possible reason for this is that Hosty was trying to track Oswald down in this timeframe and did not know where he had gone after having left Neely street. He was giving the Oswalds a cooling off period (due to their domestic problems) and was to resume looking for the Oswalds again around May 15^th. The standard procedure for the FBI was that if they could not locate a person of interest, in this case the Oswalds, they would go to the post office to see if they had left a forwarding address. Technically, if Hosty only went to the Dallas post office on May 15^th 1963 he would have found no forwarding address for Oswald (apparently because the forwarding address was from Oswalds PO box 2915 and not Neely street). Hosty claims he didn’t know about PO box 2915.

On May 15^th 1963 Oswald sent a mail forwarding order from New Orleans to Dallas to forward any mail for him from Ruth Paines house to his new address at 4907 Magazine street. However this mail forwarding order was sent to the Irving post office and not Dallas. Therefore even if Hosty had waited a few days and gone to the Dallas post office, he would not have uncovered this mail forwarding order because the order was at the Irving post office and not the Dallas one. This would have been an early opportunity for Hosty to discover that Oswald had moved to New Orleans, something he would not find out about until July 1963.

As you lay out in “Rethinking Oswalds Mail”, the Postal Inspection Service were quiet happy to talk about the May 15^th 1963 mail forwarding order for mail for Oswald to be forwarded from Ruth Paines house to 4907 Magazine street. The FBI and Secret service however tried to hide this mail forwarding order. The FBI, as they were leading the investigation, could have manipulated the Secret Service into not knowing about this May 15^th order. But they could not manipulate the Postal Inspection Service. And so you have this juxtaposition of the Postal Inspection Service willing to talk about the May 15^th 1963 mail forwarding order but the FBI not wanting to talk about it.

So why did the FBI try to hide the fact that Oswald was directing mail from Ruth Paines house to his new apartment in New Orleans? This did make me wonder that the FBI were trying to hide the fact that there was a forwarding mail order on file in Irving giving away the fact that Oswald had moved to New Orleans. And so Hosty should have known much earlier that Oswald was now in New Orleans. But of course this mail forwarding order was in Irving, and so Hosty could not have been expected to have found it.

So why did the FBI try to hide this from the Warren Commission? I don’t know.

P.S. Regarding the two different mail ordering forms for mail for Marina being directed from Ruth Paines house and from 4907 Magazine street to PO Box 30061? This looks to me like Oswald was secretly directing Marinas mail (mail going to Ruth Paines house and mail going to 4907 magazine street) to PO box 30061. I presume Oswald did this because he did not trust Marina to start writing again to ex-boyfriends in Russia and so he wanted to monitor all her mail. And the easiest way to do this was to direct it to PO box 30061 where he could open and read it.

[Guest]

I think once the FBI had a scenario that "worked" (ordering the guns and getting them to LHO),

they did not want any more "surprises".   They already had this rather complicated case, mail orders

including real and fake names, different addresses (including fake ones), different PO boxes,

forwarding orders, instructions, ....

Any more information could "complicate" things and trouble their scenario.

In the testimonies one often see the commission members stopping or de-routing people, often leading them in a certain direction.  They really wanted to keep them "on track", as did the FBI. 

I can see the FBI especially doing so when it was about a period on wich they had little information (or lost track...)

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Ian Lloyd]

Was Marina's English reading & understanding good enough at this time for her to be able to navigate her way through all these postal forms?

[Tom Gram]

11 hours ago, Ian Lloyd said:

Was Marina's English reading & understanding good enough at this time for her to be able to navigate her way through all these postal forms?

That's a great question. The most important one, the change of address from P.O. Box 2915 to Ruth Paine's house was filed on 5/10/63, which was the exact same day Ruth drove Marina down to New Orleans. Ruth almost certainly drove Marina to the Post Office and helped her fill out the form.

Marina later filed a change of address to P.O. Box 30061 in New Orleans, but Oswald did not, and the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Marina did not indicate "entire family or firm" on her form. Thus Oswald's primary mailing address was never changed to that box i.e. he continued receiving mail at 4907 Magazine St.

The change to P.O. Box 30061, like all of Marina's postal records, was buried and never entered into evidence, so we don't know if Oswald filled it out or not, but it's definitely possible that he did. 

[Guest]

She even got her baby baptised with some help, she always had friends one way or another, she was friendly with most neighbours (unlike Oswald) etc.  I think that way she was capable of doing pretty much everything she (or some else...) wanted to.

And ofter 11/22 there were a few occasions were she was talking with Robert Oswald, she had to use a dictionary for some specific words, but other then that I had the impression it went "ok", at least good enough to get along.

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Guest]

About the PO-box, I'm running in circles like a dog chasing his tail...

LHO usually used a fake address on the section 3 (special deliveries) for his Postbox-applications I believe ? 

For all I know that wouldn't be a problem (he did not have any special deliveries... ?).

Except for the time when he was allegedly (I'm taking a stand 😃 ) expecting his weapons to arrive. 

3/11 Dorothea Myers informs Hosty about Neely (so did JLH go to the postoffice to inform them on Neely ?)

3/12 order of the guns (coincidently 1 day after Dorothea...)

No we are still not sure because of the missing application

And what would the postoffice do when a special delivery comes in, but the sect 3 mentions a fake address, what would happen :

- back to sender ? 

- card in the PO box and package in the non-deliverable section where he can get it ?

- correct the address if they had one ?

Now linking to the mystery package, was Nassaustr one of LHO's fake adresses he had used in an PO box applic. sect. 3 ?
Well,  how did Dorothea know.... I see no other option but Oswald having told the Postoffice (seen what he was expecting to arrive) an adj. the applic.

And God knows on what PO box applic. perhaps Nassaustr was mentioned, do we even know if we have all of his PO boxes.

UNLESS he knew what the post-office would do in case of a fake adress for spec.deliveries with a PO-box, 

and as such knew he could pick it up where the Postoffice told him it would end up (the railway station or whatever...)

 

Anyway, way too much assumptions without certain documents that are still lost or gone.   But I'm affraid Dorothea somehow  left nothing behind on paper (except Hosty taking notes... bases on reality or not...), there is something strange about that contact, just one day before the 3/12.   If Oswald wasn't doing it, well somebody did it for him (and even before him one could say....), and Hosty would have had a major part in it (if so)

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Guest]

An every now and than LHO would go MIA for a couple of days to a week.

Usually YMCA is the answer (ato leave us finding out the days don't match...or a couple are still missing).

If Hosty wasn't his contact, he sure did give him a headache (or vice-versa).

The story of letting LHO and Marina a cooling period, I'm not buying.

That's just saying : now's your time to do whatever you have to do, and giving me an excuse for not knowing about it later on.

(well Hoover did not agree on that one).

 

[Guest]

March 3 : landlady says moved

March 3 : contacts postal authorities and learns about 214 Neely (March 3 is pretty fast as they only moved March 2 I believe ?)

March 14 : verification at location 214 Neely

 

They all seemed to know about 214 Neely on March 3.

So... why does Dorothea inform about Neely on March 11 ? 

Dorothea is moving in a strange way, and Hosty... I just don't know what to think about him. Unless the above is a mistake somehwere

and the contact was on March 11 iso 3, yet it is stated "that same day".

And rather hard to believe that all of this between March 3 and 14 is happening in coincidence with LHO alledgedly ordering his weapons on  March 12.

 

Sorry to bring this up again, have been looking for section 3 "corrections" but nothing so far

I still feel LHO or Marina went to the post-office and changed their adress, but the date is not sure and no documents are left/found to proof it

 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans
Pictures removed to save space

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

March 3 : landlady says moved

March 3 : contacts postal authorities and learns about 214 Neely (March 3 is pretty fast as they only moved March 2 I believe ?)

March 14 : verification at location 214 Neely

 

They all seemed to know about 214 Neely on March 3.

So... why does Dorothea inform about Neely on March 11 ? 

Dorothea is moving in a strange way, and Hosty... I just don't know what to think about him. Unless the above is a mistake somehwere

and the contact was on March 11 iso 3, yet it is stated "that same day".

And rather hard to believe that all of this between March 3 and 14 is happening in coincidence with LHO alledgedly ordering his weapons on  March 12.

 

Sorry to bring this up again, have been looking for section 3 "corrections" but nothing so far

I still feel LHO or Marina went to the post-office and changed their adress, but the date is not sure and no documents are left/found to proof it

 

The Dorothea Myers thing is a complete mystery. Her name appears nowhere in the records of the Postal Inspection Service from after the assassination, so she either just wasn’t working there anymore or was kept away from the assassination investigation for some reason.

It really is a hell of a coincidence that she supposedly informed Hosty about Neely St. one day before the alleged rifle purchase, but again, if the Oswalds changed their address I do not think it was done with a normal POD Form 3575, since the rifle was ordered to P.O. Box 2915 and that box wasn’t closed for another two months. I haven’t had a chance to look at the POD form list yet to look for potential updates to section three - but like you said it could have just been done with a new form. 

I do not know how else a Postal Inspector would have found out about Neely St. unless the Post Office was informed by the Elsbeth St. landlords - which is possible since the Oswalds apparently provided that address when they moved down the street, and there is a specific form that allows for landlords to do that, POD Form 3575-Z I believe. If that’s what happened though, the rifle would’ve still been delivered to the P.O. Box since the COA would’ve been from 602 Elsbeth to Neely St. 

Interestingly, Marina actually used 602 Elsbeth as a return address at least once, and also used a different P.O. Box that was supposedly Alex Kleinlehrer’s set up for some sketchy shell company. The whole deal was never properly investigated (the FBI just took Kleinlehrer’s word that he’d left stationary at Elena Hall’s place and Marina must have taken it and used it, but like everything else about mail and Dallas Marina was never asked) and the letters and other relevant documents were never given to the Warren Commission: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10062#relPageId=124

Also, the actual envelopes showing the Elsbeth return address and Kleinlehrer’s P.O. Box are either illegible or redacted, at least in the copies on MFF:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145505#relPageId=51

[Guest]

Can one download that 1960's POD form list some where ? I wouldn't mind taking a look, just don't have a list to check