The mystery of the Furniture Mart sighting of Lee and Marina Oswald and their children and its solution

[Greg Doudna]

12 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Thanks, Greg. This is indeed one of the "Oswald sightings" that has the ring of truth, and your November 11th solution makes a great deal of sense. As an "Oswald impersonation," the incident makes no sense at all.

There is, as you note, a veritable cottage industry of "Oswald sightings." Whether they make any sense seems irrelevant, so long as they can somehow prop up Harvey & Lee or at least make Oswald seem a Man of Mystery.

I tried to trace the "Lee Oswald" signature on a restaurant guest book in Wisconsin. I discovered a guy from the town named Lance (!) Oswald who went by Lee, but he wouldn't respond to me even when I tried through the pastor of his church. So, alas, that remains yet another "out of place Oswald" of conspiracy lore.

This last item you mention is interesting Lance. I delayed because wanting to recheck the documents of that story on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site but for some reason the MFF site continues to be completely gone as it was all yesterday and again this morning (all I get is a blank screen "cannot connect to server" error message). My question was whether there was a "Harvey" in that restaurant signature in Wisconsin. If not, it sounds like that local Lee Oswald is the obvious identity of that signature, with no reason to suppose faraway Lee Harvey Oswald in the first place was the reference? One more instance of no reason for mystery? I agree with Gerry, well done on that. 

[Gerry Down]

26 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

This last item you mention is interesting Lance. I delayed because wanting to recheck the documents of that story on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site but for some reason the MFF site continues to be completely gone as it was all yesterday and again this morning (all I get is a blank screen "cannot connect to server" error message). My question was whether there was a "Harvey" in that restaurant signature in Wisconsin. If not, it sounds like that local Lee Oswald is the obvious identity of that signature, with no reason to suppose faraway Lee Harvey Oswald in the first place was the reference? One more instance of no reason for mystery? I agree with Gerry, well done on that. 

The signature was "Lee Oswald, Dallas, Texas". I cant find a good picture of that signature atm. Can someone that has a good image of this signature post it on here again? I'd like to compare it to Oswalds other signatures. Here is a poor copy of the signature:

 

Some of Oswalds other signatures are discussed on this thread: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/mexico-city-part-1

Great PDF by the way on the furniture mart. Half-way through it atm. 

Edited January 18, 2023 by Gerry Down

[Larry Hancock]

The Mary Ferrell Foundation site is up and available as of today/Wednesday....I've not had a problem with it this week but have only been on a few times.

[Guest]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:44 AM, Gerry Down said:

The signature was "Lee Oswald, Dallas, Texas". I cant find a good picture of that signature atm. Can someone that has a good image of this signature post it on here again? I'd like to compare it to Oswalds other signatures. Here is a poor copy of the signature:

 

Some of Oswalds other signatures are discussed on this thread: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/mexico-city-part-1

Great PDF by the way on the furniture mart. Half-way through it atm. 

Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Gerry Down]

2 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

You are jogging my memory. I didn't recall seeing the guest register, but now I do. I recall discovering Lance "Lee" Oswald and assuming he must be the guy. I was surprised a fellow elderly Lance would completely ignore me, but he did. I would assume the "Dallas, Texas" was a joke. Do we know the date of the guest register? The "Dallas, Texas" looks like different handwriting. My guess would be that "my" Lee signed the register with his real town but someone added Dallas as a joke after the Lee Harvey Oswald became infamous.

On November 27, 1963 Detective KENNETH HENNING, Special Assignment Squad, Milwaukee Police
Department, advised SAs RICHARD C. THOMPSON and ALEXANDER P. LE GRAND that he had just
received word from his Captain, JOHN J LAVIN, that the name of. LEE OSWALD, Dallas, Texas,
appeared in the guest book of the Fox and Hounds Restaurant, Hubertus, Wisconsin, under date of
September 14, 1963. HENNING said that Captain LAVIN requested that the information be given
immediately to the FBI.

On November 27, 1963 MARTIN WEBER, Assistant Manager, Fox and Hounds Restaurant, Hubertus,
Wisconsin, advised SA's LE GRAND and THOMPSON that two guest registers were maintained at the Fox
and Hounds. One was in a dining  room and the other in a small hall where a number of antiques were
also on display. WEBER pointed out that the register in the dining room of the Fox and Hounds was of the
loose leaf type. The register in the hall consisted of loose leaf pages which were not bound together.

He produced first the book and then the pages from the hall and SAs LE GRAND and THOMPSON observed
that the name of LEE OSWALD appeared on the 7th line of one of the pages kept in the hall. WEBER made
this and other pages made out in the month of September, 1963, available to the FBI for investigation. He
said that he had no idea whether LEE OSWALD had, in fact, been at the Fox and Hounds nor did he
recognize any of the other persons registered on the same page.

Mrs. PATRICIA STANLEY, Manager, Fox and Hounds Restaurant, confirmed the information previously
furnished by WEBER and said she had no idea whether LEE OSWALD had been at the Fox and Hounds.
She searched out-dated reservation tickets (now used for scrap paper) but found nothing of
significance pertaining to September 14, 1963.

The guest book page tearing the name of LEE 0SWALD was forwarded to the FBI Lab, and under date of
November 29, 1963 the Lab reported as follows:

"It was concluded that the questioned name and address on line 7 of Q64 was not written by LEE HARVEY
OSWALD, K4 and K5 in this case."

The Lab identified Q64 as the page of the guest register of the Fox and Hounds Restaurant and Line 7 as
"LEE OSWALD, Dallas, Texas."

At 1:30 p.m. on November 30, 1963 a woman telephoned the Milwaukee Office to state that she was one
of a party of six who had dinner at the Fox and Hounds Restaurant on the previous Sunday. She said that,
after having a few drinks, the party looked over the guest register and one of the men inserted the name
of LEE OSWALD in a blank line found in the register. The unknown caller described the room at the Fox and
Hounds in which the register was kept. She declined to identify herself or the man that made the entry,
saying that she was too ashamed to do so.

(FBI report MI 62-1178)

[Gerry Down]

The "T" on "Texas" does not look like one of Oswalds "T"s. I think anyway. 

[Guest]

On 1/18/2023 at 12:41 PM, Gerry Down said:

At 1:30 p.m. on November 30, 1963 a woman telephoned the Milwaukee Office to state that she was one
of a party of six who had dinner at the Fox and Hounds Restaurant on the previous Sunday. She said that,
after having a few drinks, the party looked over the guest register and one of the men inserted the name
of LEE OSWALD in a blank line found in the register. The unknown caller described the room at the Fox and
Hounds in which the register was kept. She declined to identify herself or the man that made the entry,
saying that she was too ashamed to do so.

Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

At 1:30 p.m. on November 30, 1963 a woman telephoned the Milwaukee Office to state that she was one
of a party of six who had dinner at the Fox and Hounds Restaurant on the previous Sunday. She said that,
after having a few drinks, the party looked over the guest register and one of the men inserted the name
of LEE OSWALD in a blank line found in the register. The unknown caller described the room at the Fox and
Hounds in which the register was kept. She declined to identify herself or the man that made the entry,
saying that she was too ashamed to do so.
(FBI report MI 62-1178)

OK, although an anonymous unverified call is not quite ideal, in this case it makes sense as what happened. The signature is not from the famous Oswald, and it also means Lance's fellow Lance the local "Lee Oswald" had nothing to do with it, since the local Lance/Lee Oswald would not also have written "Dallas, Texas". Therefore it was a prank and someone called the Milwaukee FBI office and confessed to it: at the restaurant on Sun Nov 24, 1963 (the day Oswald was killed by Ruby and the top news story), one of the party found a previous blank line and filled it in as a joke, after a few drinks. The woman has enough of a conscience to make the phone call letting the FBI know what happened but avoids trouble to herself and her friend who did it by not telling their names. Undoubtedly something similar happened in the Oak Ridge case.  

[Greg Doudna]

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

In his 1967 book Oswald: The Truth, I think German journalist Joachim Joesten made some good points about the Oswald impersonation at the Furniture Mart:

          Despite this stern, and unwarranted, slap at Dial R. Ryder, the Commission isn’t quite sure that this man is really a perjurer and forger, as the next item on its agenda shows: 

          "Possible corroboration for Ryder’s story is provided by two women, Mrs. Edith Whitworth, who operates the Furniture Mart, a furniture store located about one and a half blocks from the Irving Sports Shop, and Mrs. Gertrude Hunter, a friend of Mrs. Whitworth. They testified that in early November of 1963, a man who they later came to believe was Oswald drove up to the Furniture Mart in a two-tone blue and white 1937 Ford automobile, entered the store and asked about a part for a gun, presumably because of a sign that appeared in the building advertising a gunsmith shop that had formerly occupied part of the premises. When he found that he could not obtain the part, the man allegedly returned to his car and then came back into the store with a woman and two young children to look at furniture, remaining in the store for about thirty to forty minutes. 

          "Upon confronting Marina Oswald, both women identified her as the woman whom they had seen in the store on the occasion in question, although Mrs. Hunter could not identify a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald and Mrs. Whitworth identified some pictures of Oswald but not others. Mrs. Hunter purported to identify Marina Oswald by her eyes, and did not observe the fact that Marina Oswald had a front tooth missing at the time she supposedly saw her. After a thorough inspection of the Furniture Mart, Marina Oswald testified that she had never been on the premises before."

          This story is extremely revealing of the elaborate arrangements that went into the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald. Not only does "Oswald" here again appear on the scene, but Marina and her two children also get into the act. Evidently, the plotters had at their disposal a young woman who looked even more like Marina than her "husband" looked like Lee Harvey. (History, since then, has tragically revealed the identity of this hapless woman, but this is a matter of such consequence that I propose to explore it in another book at a later date.) On no other assumption can it be explained that both these witnesses identified Marina as the woman they had seen while the Oswalds clearly were not involved. The fact that Lee Harvey at no time owned a car and couldn’t even drive, as well as Marina’s missing front tooth, which both women failed to see, affords sufficient proof of that. 

          Observe also the elaborate frame-up technique. A man goes into a furniture store to ask for a gun part on the flimsy pretext that there had once been a gunsmith shop in the same building. This action was clearly designed to fix this incident in the mind of the store owner who would not easily forget such a foolish query. When told that there were no gun parts for sale in this place, the customer comes back with a woman who strikingly resembles, but is not, Marina Oswald and with two young children who might easily be mistaken for Rachel and June. They stay in the store thirty to forty minutes without buying anything —much longer than ordinary customers normally would do, evidently for the purpose of creating a strong and lasting impression of a family not to be mistaken for another. To the recollection of a young man interested in guns thus is added, in the minds of the two witnesses, the picture of a family not yet in a position to buy furniture but which will soon be able to. Thus an instinctive association of ideas is created between shooting and monetary gain. 

          The Report goes on: "The circumstances surrounding the testimony of the two women are helpful in evaluating the weight to be given to their testimony, and the extent to which they lend support to Ryder’s evidence. [The implication: if Whitworth and Hunter aren’t to be believed, Ryder is finished for good - J. J.] The women previously told newspaper reporters that the part for which the man was looking was a 'plunger,' which the Commission has been advised is a colloquial term used to describe a firing pin. This work was completely different from the work covered by Ryder’s repair tag, and the firing pin of the assassination weapon does not appear to have been recently replaced. At the time of their depositions, neither woman was able to recall the type of work which the man wanted done." 

          What does it matter? If, as every circumstance of this episode suggests, this was merely another item in a well-planned frame-up campaign, the purpose of that man's visit to the Furniture Mart was simply to have a few more witnesses attest to Oswald’s concern with guns and to his financial prospects about to improve substantially. Now comes a most revealing item: 

          "Mrs. Whitworth related to the FBI that the man told her that the younger child with him was born on October 20, 1963, which was in fact Rachel Oswald’s birthday. In her testimony before the Commission, however, Mrs. Whitworth could not state that the man had told her the child’s birthdate was October 20, 1963, and in fact expressed uncertainty about the birthday of her own grandchild, which she had previously used as a guide to remembering the birthdate of the younger child in the shop." 

          This paragraph again demonstrates the deep-rooted bias of the Commission and its total unwillingness to pursue any clues pointing toward conspiracy or frame-up. For it would indeed be too much to assume that mere coincidence was at stake here. The mention of that birthdate, on that occasion, is cogent evidence that the man in question either was Lee Harvey Oswald, or somebody exceptionally familiar with Oswald’s circumstances. If it was not Oswald-and the Commission arrived at the firm conclusion that it was not - then this incident is hard evidence of frame-up. 

          On the other hand, note how the Commission, again most unfairly, tries to create the impression that Mrs. Whitworth is a poor old soul who just doesn’t know what she is talking about. Why, in her testimony before the Commission "she could not state" what she had previously told the FBI. Why couldn’t she? Obviously because, in the meantime, she, too, had been subjected to some of that pressure and harassment which practically all witnesses whose testimony in some way ran counter to the official version have experenced. Or she was simply overawed by the Commission and got bewildered. Who could blame her? But she did tell the FBI and that’s in the record. 

          What the Commission has to say about the circumstances that preclude the couple in question having been the Oswalds makes more sense: 

          "Mrs. Hunter thought that the man she and Mrs. Whitworth believed was Oswald drove the car to and from the store:  however, Lee Harvey Oswald apparently was not able to drive an automobile by himself and does not appear to have had access to a car. 

          "The two women claimed that Oswald was in the Furniture Mart on a weekday, and in midafternoon. However, Oswald had reported to work at the Texas School Book Depository on the dates referred to by the women and there is no evidence that he left his job during business hours. In addition, Ruth Paine has stated that she always accompanied Marina Oswald whenever Marina left the house with her children and that they never went to the Furniture Mart, either with or without Lee Harvey Oswald, at any time during October or November of 1963. There is nothing to indicate that in November the Oswalds were interested in buying furniture."

          In spite of the somewhat cagey wording used by the Commission--as though it wanted to leave a possible way out for itself in another seemingly inexplicable incident--the incontrovertible fact of the matter is that the visitors to the Furniture Mart on that day cannot have been Oswald and family, for the records of the Book Depository prove that Lee Harvey was on the job every weekday during the period in question. Inevitably, then, somebody else, or rather two other persons, had been impersonating Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald on this occasion--unless Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter, dreaming in unison in broad daylight, just had imagined the whole thing. And so the Commission, in sheer desperation, snatches at this straw and clings to it for dear life: 

          "Finally, investigation has produced reason to question the credibility of Mrs. Hunter as a witness. Mrs. Hunter stated that one of the reasons she remembers the description of the car in which Oswald supposedly drove to the furniture store was that she was awaiting the arrival of a friend from Houston, who drove a similar automobile. However, the friend in Houston has advised that in November 1963, she never visited or planned to visit Dallas, and that she told no one that she intended to make such a trip. Moreover, the friend added, according to the FBI interview report, that Mrs. Hunter has 'a strange obsession for attempting to inject herself into any big event which comes to her attention' and that she 'is likely to claim some personal knowledge of any major crime which receives much publicity.' She concluded that 'the entire family is aware of these tall tales Mrs. Hunter tells and they normally pay no attention to her.'"

          Here the Warren Commission really goes the limit in unfair treatment of a witness that cannot even be described as hostile but who merely wants to tell the truth as she experienced it. On the say-so of an unidentified "friend" in another city, without at least confronting Mrs. Hunter with these disparaging remarks, without even remembering the corroborating evidence of Mrs. Whitworth, the Commission concludes that this witness is given to spinning tall tales and that, therefore, the whole episode related above presumably did not take place. And, in the process, poor Ryder is also relegated to limbo. (pp. 78-83)

Michael, what do you think of the identification I showed in my paper of the blue and white mid-1950s sedan Lee and Marina were seen driving to the Furniture Mart, with the Michael Paine blue and white '55 Olds at Ruth Paine's house? In your insistence upon having impersonators for Lee and Marina in this incident instead of, well, Lee and Marina on Nov 11, how do you suppose your unseen, never-identified orchestrators handled the car in which your impersonators arrived? Do you think the impersonators borrowed Michael Paine's car from the Ruth Paine house without anyone noticing, or do you think it was an impersonated blue and white car too?

I think my paper pretty much makes Joesten in 1967 obsolete on this one. The problem with the Warren Commission rejection of the authenticity of the Furniture Mart visit is not solved by Joesten's massively complex micromanaged multiple-impersonators scenario while never questioning the impossible date the Furniture Mart women gave as premise, but rather on the realization that the Furniture Mart women had the date mistaken. Simple solution, get the date right, clears everything up, no? What not to like?

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

"It was concluded that the questioned name and address on line 7 of Q64 was not written by LEE HARVEY
OSWALD, K4 and K5 in this case."

Is there any other information/discussion available anywhere on the handwriting? At a glance and from memory - not very reliable I know - it looks a heck of a lot like Oswald’s real handwriting. 

[Gerry Down]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Is there any other information/discussion available anywhere on the handwriting? At a glance and from memory - not very reliable I know - it looks a heck of a lot like Oswald’s real handwriting. 

That's what I thought too when I first looked at it. 

[Gerry Down]

Just finished reading the PDF on the furniture mart incident. This incident has always bothered me so it’s great to see someone take up the task of investigating this further.

If your assertion that this is the first time someone has proposed that it was possibly Michael Paines car, then that potentially moves this sighting that bit closer to fact then it has ever been before.

Having said that, I came across a few weaknesses to the sighting being of the Oswalds:

• Michael had the key to the Olds car that was parked in front of Ruth Paines house and when asked about keys to the car gave no indication that Ruth Paine had one in the house. Your document states: “All of this resulted in Ruth’s certainty that Lee and Marina never went to the Furniture Mart or Irving Sports Shop, which was the conclusion of the Warren Commission.”. If Ruth had a key to Michaels car in her house, then she would not have been so certain that the Oswalds did not go anywhere in a car without her knowledge. In fact, upon hearing the story of the Oswalds at the furniture mart in a blue and white car, Ruth should have spotted straight away (if indeed she did have a key to Michaels car in the house) that it was possible that the Oswalds had taken her key of Michaels car behind her back and gone to the furniture mart. Ruth Paine was/is an intelligent woman. It would seem she should have spotted this, or at least mentioned it to the investigators if only to say that there was a second car parked outside the house but there was no key to it in the house which the Oswalds could have taken without her knowing. In short, there seems to be no mechanism for Oswald to open the car, start it and drive off. And for that reason, Ruth Paine seems to never even have entertained the idea that they could have taken Michael Paines car. You would also have to question if Michael would give a key to Ruth in any case as there was a divorce going on and she might try to claim the car as part of the divorce if she had a key.
• The furniture woman was sure the car was a Ford and specifically said it was not an Olds. Can you post a picture of a 1950s Olds alongside a 1950s Ford so that we can see how similar the two cars are and if it was possible the furniture woman could have mistaken an Olds for a Ford by virtue of the fact both might have had fins (if indeed a 1950s Olds has fins)?

You’re possibly placing too much weight on the color of the car being blue and white that the Oswalds were allegedly in. I’d imagine this color combination was poplar back then. There is a film taken of 1026 North Beckley I believe on the weekend of the assassination and it shows possibly a blue and white car, with fins, parked in the driveway. Though admittedly the car could simply be an all white car. This car could belong to one of the rooming houses residents or belong to a law enforcement officer, FBI agent etc, collecting evidence from the house that weekend. The 1026 North Beckley car can be seen in this film: https://youtu.be/c-Sjmkhh_Hs

 

By the way, Marina Oswald did have a ponytail in Nov 1963 as can be seen in this image: https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10009913

If the sighting is indeed the Oswalds at the furniture mart, here is what I think happened…

Remember, this is the weekend that Oswald was writing the USSR embassy letter on Ruth Paines typewriter. And Oswald left that letter on the desk almost inviting Ruth Paine to read it, which she did. The reason Oswald did this was because in this timeframe Oswald was trying to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, separate them, as Lee didn’t like Ruth. Lee was hoping that Ruth would read the letter and see that Oswald had been in Mexico City when Marina had told Ruth that Lee was in Houston looking for work.

One possibility is that, as an additional way to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, Oswald may have taken Michael Paines car on Nov 11^th and coaxed Marina into it in the promise that he was going to get the rifle fixed so that he could sell it and put down a deposit for a new apartment. And with this promise Marina reluctantly agreed to go in the car. In this scenario, the whole purpose of the car journey by Oswald was to get caught by Ruth Paine. When Oswald went to the furniture mart he asked about the gunsmith. When told there was no gunsmith there, Oswald then stalled and started looking at furniture and dragged Marina into the shop. He also seems unusually talkative inside the shop, something he didn’t usually like being. Oswald was happy on this occasion to be talkative if it meant dragging out the visit as long as possible. This would explain why Marina looked sullen inside the furniture shop – she knew that with every passing second the chances of them getting back to Ruth Paines house before Ruth Paine did were diminishing. I don’t think Oswald really was looking to fix the rifle, but that this was more of a ruse than anything else to have an excuse for the car journey. Therefore the furniture mart incident does not necessarily validate the Irving Sports Shop incident as I don’t think Oswald was serious about having anything done to the rifle, though I agree that he may have been intending on selling it. A further clue that Oswald might have been intending on selling his rifle is the fact that he had only 4 bullets left over. No need to buy a new box.

This made me inclined to think that maybe the time of 2pm might be correct for when the Oswalds were in the furniture mart, though I understand that this might clash with your study of the temperature on those days. In this scenario, Oswald was dragging out the car journey as close as possible to when Ruth Paine would be returning to her house. Further proof LHO was intending to move to a new apartment in Nov 1963, and so would need furniture, was that he had the phone number in his address book of a guy who had an apartment up for rent that month. I forget the guys name atm, but I think he was a bus driver who lived in the Oak Cliff area. I was surprised not to see that in your PDF as further proof backing up Oswald was actively looking for a new apartment that month. The whole idea of getting this new apartment was to further distance Ruth from Marina. The new apartment was somewhere in the Oak Cliff area, so would be a good bit away from Irving.

It is very difficult to see how Oswald could have got a key to the car. The only thing I can think of is that Michael Paine gave Lee a key to practice with the car. Then after the assassination Michael retrieved the key from Ruth Paines house while the police were there and pretended he had the key all the time rather than admit he had given a key to Oswald to commit an illegal act – drive without a license. And this would have worked but for the fact that the furniture women came forward with their sighting of Oswald in Michaels car. There is something odd about Michael Paine having a second car parked outside Ruth Paines house that is not explained in your PDF, which I presume is the case because Michael and Ruth Paine themselves never fully explained the situation with this car. Maybe Michael did indeed buy the car for Oswald to get practice with and never told this to Ruth, and so the only time Lee could get practice was when Ruth was out of the house. If Ruth had caught the Oswalds out in this car, Ruth would be angry at Marina because Marina would have been keeping this secret from Ruth - that Michael and Lee had a secret arrangement regarding the car where Lee could use it to practice. Everyone knew about this secret agreement - except Ruth.

[Greg Doudna]

4 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Just finished reading the PDF on the furniture mart incident. This incident has always bothered me so it’s great to see someone take up the task of investigating this further.

If your assertion that this is the first time someone has proposed that it was possibly Michael Paines car, then that potentially moves this sighting that bit closer to fact then it has ever been before.

Having said that, I came across a few weaknesses to the sighting being of the Oswalds:

• Michael had the key to the Olds car that was parked in front of Ruth Paines house and when asked about keys to the car gave no indication that Ruth Paine had one in the house. Your document states: “All of this resulted in Ruth’s certainty that Lee and Marina never went to the Furniture Mart or Irving Sports Shop, which was the conclusion of the Warren Commission.”. If Ruth had a key to Michaels car in her house, then she would not have been so certain that the Oswalds did not go anywhere in a car without her knowledge. In fact, upon hearing the story of the Oswalds at the furniture mart in a blue and white car, Ruth should have spotted straight away (if indeed she did have a key to Michaels car in the house) that it was possible that the Oswalds had taken her key of Michaels car behind her back and gone to the furniture mart. Ruth Paine was/is an intelligent woman. It would seem she should have spotted this, or at least mentioned it to the investigators if only to say that there was a second car parked outside the house but there was no key to it in the house which the Oswalds could have taken without her knowing. In short, there seems to be no mechanism for Oswald to open the car, start it and drive off. And for that reason, Ruth Paine seems to never even have entertained the idea that they could have taken Michael Paines car. You would also have to question if Michael would give a key to Ruth in any case as there was a divorce going on and she might try to claim the car as part of the divorce if she had a key.
• The furniture woman was sure the car was a Ford and specifically said it was not an Olds. Can you post a picture of a 1950s Olds alongside a 1950s Ford so that we can see how similar the two cars are and if it was possible the furniture woman could have mistaken an Olds for a Ford by virtue of the fact both might have had fins (if indeed a 1950s Olds has fins)?

You’re possibly placing too much weight on the color of the car being blue and white that the Oswalds were allegedly in. I’d imagine this color combination was poplar back then. There is a film taken of 1026 North Beckley I believe on the weekend of the assassination and it shows possibly a blue and white car, with fins, parked in the driveway. Though admittedly the car could simply be an all white car. This car could belong to one of the rooming houses residents or belong to a law enforcement officer, FBI agent etc, collecting evidence from the house that weekend. The 1026 North Beckley car can be seen in this film: https://youtu.be/c-Sjmkhh_Hs

 

By the way, Marina Oswald did have a ponytail in Nov 1963 as can be seen in this image: https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10009913

If the sighting is indeed the Oswalds at the furniture mart, here is what I think happened…

Remember, this is the weekend that Oswald was writing the USSR embassy letter on Ruth Paines typewriter. And Oswald left that letter on the desk almost inviting Ruth Paine to read it, which she did. The reason Oswald did this was because in this timeframe Oswald was trying to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, separate them, as Lee didn’t like Ruth. Lee was hoping that Ruth would read the letter and see that Oswald had been in Mexico City when Marina had told Ruth that Lee was in Houston looking for work.

One possibility is that, as an additional way to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, Oswald may have taken Michael Paines car on Nov 11^th and coaxed Marina into it in the promise that he was going to get the rifle fixed so that he could sell it and put down a deposit for a new apartment. And with this promise Marina reluctantly agreed to go in the car. In this scenario, the whole purpose of the car journey by Oswald was to get caught by Ruth Paine. When Oswald went to the furniture mart he asked about the gunsmith. When told there was no gunsmith there, Oswald then stalled and started looking at furniture and dragged Marina into the shop. He also seems unusually talkative inside the shop, something he didn’t usually like being. Oswald was happy on this occasion to be talkative if it meant dragging out the visit as long as possible. This would explain why Marina looked sullen inside the furniture shop – she knew that with every passing second the chances of them getting back to Ruth Paines house before Ruth Paine did were diminishing. I don’t think Oswald really was looking to fix the rifle, but that this was more of a ruse than anything else to have an excuse for the car journey. Therefore the furniture mart incident does not necessarily validate the Irving Sports Shop incident as I don’t think Oswald was serious about having anything done to the rifle, though I agree that he may have been intending on selling it. A further clue that Oswald might have been intending on selling his rifle is the fact that he had only 4 bullets left over. No need to buy a new box.

This made me inclined to think that maybe the time of 2pm might be correct for when the Oswalds were in the furniture mart, though I understand that this might clash with your study of the temperature on those days. In this scenario, Oswald was dragging out the car journey as close as possible to when Ruth Paine would be returning to her house. Further proof LHO was intending to move to a new apartment in Nov 1963, and so would need furniture, was that he had the phone number in his address book of a guy who had an apartment up for rent that month. I forget the guys name atm, but I think he was a bus driver who lived in the Oak Cliff area. I was surprised not to see that in your PDF as further proof backing up Oswald was actively looking for a new apartment that month. The whole idea of getting this new apartment was to further distance Ruth from Marina. The new apartment was somewhere in the Oak Cliff area, so would be a good bit away from Irving.

It is very difficult to see how Oswald could have got a key to the car. The only thing I can think of is that Michael Paine gave Lee a key to practice with the car. Then after the assassination Michael retrieved the key from Ruth Paines house while the police were there and pretended he had the key all the time rather than admit he had given a key to Oswald to commit an illegal act – drive without a license. And this would have worked but for the fact that the furniture women came forward with their sighting of Oswald in Michaels car. There is something odd about Michael Paine having a second car parked outside Ruth Paines house that is not explained in your PDF, which I presume is the case because Michael and Ruth Paine themselves never fully explained the situation with this car. Maybe Michael did indeed buy the car for Oswald to get practice with and never told this to Ruth, and so the only time Lee could get practice was when Ruth was out of the house. If Ruth had caught the Oswalds out in this car, Ruth would be angry at Marina because Marina would have been keeping this secret from Ruth - that Michael and Lee had a secret arrangement regarding the car where Lee could use it to practice. Everyone knew about this secret agreement - except Ruth.

Gerry, these are some interesting comments and thoughts and analyses. Rather than engage them all, I will just let most of them stand as some different angles to look at the same facts. But I will make a couple of comments. It does look like Michael Paine bought that '55 Olds from his coworker with an idea of helping out Oswald, and if Lee liked the car working out something for that to become Lee's car. That would be why he immediately took it over to Ruth Paine's house, for Lee's benefit (presumably after he got his driver's license which was imminent). Oswald did not have a car key on him when arrested according to the police reports. If the car was unlocked parked outside (nothing valuable on the seats, and it was an old car, could be left unlocked?) maybe a key could be left inside the car somewhere, such as under a floor mat? But Michael must have left a key with Ruth in any case, and the simplest mechanism is that Marina knew the key's location and obtained it for Lee. I noticed Ruth at first said she had no certainty where they were during the 5 hours she was gone on Nov 11. Only in a late written statement when the Warren Commission was trying to nail down loose ends (and maybe asked Ruth if she would write it to help to that end) does Ruth produce a stronger statement now giving reasons why she does not believe they went anywhere Nov 11, but that is how she frames it, as her "belief" (my characterization of her having "certainty" would be accurate for days other than Nov 11 but may be overstating the written record re Nov 11; note to self to slightly soften or clarify that in a next edit). In fact she explicitly expressed lack of certainty re Nov 11 before she expressed "belief". Her "belief" that they did not go anywhere Nov 11 was based, she explained, on what they had told her they planned, what they told her after she returned, and that they were there when she left and returned, such that she "believed" they had not gone anywhere. She does not use the word "certain" for Nov 11, that was my word. It would be accurate to say she was "certain" they did not go to the Furniture Mart or Sports Shop any day other than Nov 11, and on Nov 11 she did not "believe" they went there either. Incidentally, Marina's account (either to WC or HSCA, I forget which) for Nov 11 is that Lee made about ten drafts of his Soviet embassy letter that weekend (not just the one that Ruth picked up and stashed) and that was what he was still working on on the morning of Nov 11. I think all that Ruth testified and wrote concerning Nov 11 is consistent with her "belief" that they did not go anywhere even if she did have a key to the '55 Olds at home somewhere among her things.

On confusion of a blue and white '55 Olds (Michael Paine's car) as a 1957 Ford or Chevrolet or Plymouth, with Mrs. Hunter saying when asked that it was not an Olds, I just chalk that up to Mrs. Hunter's mistake on make of the car. To see what these cars look like, look up "1955 Oldsmobile sedan" or "1957 Ford sedan" etc. on Google Images to get a quick comparison. I did try to make a back-of-the-envelope rough calculation of odds that a random car in Texas in 1963 would be a blue and white sedan but gave up because of too many gaps in data. But partial data I did find (from memory): 90% of cars on the road were American made in 1960 (compared to maybe only half today). Blue was the color of about 10% of cars in a recent year though since we are talking two-tone blue and white that complicates that. I could not find data on two-tone colors frequencies, or the frequency of how many cars were two-tones, but I took wild guesses that 25% were two-tones and 50% of two-tones had white tops. Something like 10% of cars were station wagons then (down to close to zero today). I forget all the variables but I came up with something like ca. 3% odds from random accident that a car would be a blue and white American-made sedan but could not document or defend that calculation very well so did nothing with it. The match of the colors of the car seen at the Furniture Mart and of Michael Paine's '55 Olds is so striking it is difficult for me to believe Ruth Paine was aware of that detail of the Furniture Mart story (otherwise she would have figured that out at the time?). We know the FBI and Commission exhibits telling the detail of the blue and white color of the sedan of the family seen by the women at the Furniture Mart but did Ruth Paine?  

[Gerry Down]

6 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The match of the colors of the car seen at the Furniture Mart and of Michael Paine's '55 Olds is so striking it is difficult for me to believe Ruth Paine was aware of that detail of the Furniture Mart story (otherwise she would have figured that out at the time?). We know the FBI and Commission exhibits telling the detail of the blue and white color of the sedan of the family seen by the women at the Furniture Mart but did Ruth Paine?  

As far as I know, Ruth Paine has said she is well read on the JFK assassination. I think she said that in the recent Max Good documentary. And in the WC report itself, page 316, it states that the car involved in the furniture mart incident was blue and white, stating that it was a 1957 Ford. So the likelihood is that Ruth Paine is well aware that the furniture mart car is blue and white. So why she has not made this connection in all these years is unclear. Perhaps she has made that connection privately but has not aired it publicly because she does not want to call in to question Marinas honesty. 

Its worth bearing in mind that there was a divorce going on at the time between Michael and Ruth Paine and as I understand it, Ruth was the more reluctant of the two of them to have the divorce. Its possible Ruth was well aware during all the testimony she gave regarding the furniture mart incident that Michael Paines car was a candidate for the car the Oswalds could have taken. But possibly out of hope that she and Michael might get back together, she was not willing of her own volition to bring up Michael Paines car in case it got Michael Paine in trouble. So she held off ever mentioning Michael Paines car unless the WC brought it up of their own accord to her (which they never did) or Michael Paine volunteered information about it to the WC of his own accord (which he never did). And so unless Ruth Paine was specifically asked about it, she was going to pretend Michael Paines blue and white car parked outside her home didn't even exist. 

Your theory that the key to the car could have been hidden inside the car itself is plausible. Michael Paine may have left the key inside the car and told Oswald where it was in case he wanted to practice his parking in the street area near Ruth Paines house as, like as stated in your document, Oswald had difficulty parking. Ruth could have conveyed to Michael that Oswald was ok driving but had difficulty parking and so Michael may have given Lee access to the car specifically to practice his parking. The only reason I could think of after the assassination that Michael would want to conceal this fact (other than the fact it would be illegal to even practice parking on a public street without a driving license) would be that Michael did not want to give the impression that he was friends with Oswald. Michael wanted to create distant between him and Lee after the assassination, not give the impression they were friends. There is a precedent of Michael Paine being less than forthcoming. It was not until decades after the assassination that he admitted to being shown one of the backyard photos by Oswald. That was something he really should have admitted to the WC at the time of his questioning. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Gerry Down

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Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette