When did the DeMohrenschildt BYP appear?

[James DiEugenio]

Of course I am referring to the one with the cyrillic date on the back.

I thought it was the one that George found in his belongings upon his return from Haiti.  I thought that is when it first appeared.

But I have never claimed to be an expert on the pictures.

Am I right or wrong?

 

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Of course I am referring to the one with the cyrillic date on the back.

I thought it was the one that George found in his belongings upon his return from Haiti.  I thought that is when it first appeared.

But I have never claimed to be an expert on the pictures.

Am I right or wrong?

 

The "Hunter of Fascists" one?  I thought I read somewhere years ago he found it in as you say stored possessions, in Dalas I think after his return from Haiti.  Was he questioned about where and when he found it?  Maybe in Our Man in Haiti, Joan Mellen.  I'm curious, I'll look.

[Matt Allison]

Always interesting to stop and really ponder how bizarre that was; that George had that picture, with that inscription.

An entire book could be written theorizing about just that one thing.

[Pat Speer]

My recollection is that he found it upon his return from Haiti, inside the cover of a record album he'd loaned the Oswalds, which had been returned to his possession by...Michael Paine. So Michael Paine not only came forward late in life to say he saw the photo--something he never said in 1964--but was also responsible for handing off one of the photos to Demohrenschildt.

I'm on the fence about the Paines but this is most certainly curious. 

[Ron Bulman]

14 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Always interesting to stop and really ponder how bizarre that was; that George had that picture, with that inscription.

An entire book could be written theorizing about just that one thing.

It may be interesting but before thinking about a book I wonder why Jim asked the question.  Personal curiosity or something maybe he's working on?

[Mark Ulrik]

Jeff Carter's article on the BY photos could be a good starting point.

[Denny Zartman]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I'm on the fence about the Paines

What more would it take to convince you?

[Denny Zartman]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

My recollection is that he found it upon his return from Haiti, inside the cover of a record album he'd loaned the Oswalds, which had been returned to his possession by...Michael Paine. So Michael Paine not only came forward late in life to say he saw the photo--something he never said in 1964--but was also responsible for handing off one of the photos to Demohrenschildt.

I'm on the fence about the Paines but this is most certainly curious. 

Weren't the alleged filing cabinets in the Paine garage explained away as being boxes for record albums?

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, DeMohrenschieldt covers that in detail in his manuscript on Oswald, see this link.

http://22november1963.org.uk/george-de-mohrenschildt-i-am-a-patsy-chapter22

Its well worth the read not only on when and where he found it but what happened afterwards and how it became public.

[Steve Thomas]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Of course I am referring to the one with the cyrillic date on the back.

I thought it was the one that George found in his belongings upon his return from Haiti.  I thought that is when it first appeared.

But I have never claimed to be an expert on the pictures.

Am I right or wrong?

 

Jim,

I took some notes on this once. I hope this helps some.

GEORGE DE MOHRENSCHILDT
Staff Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. House of Representatives Ninety-fifth Congress Second Session March 1979

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscademo.htm

On the rear of the photograph was the notation "To my friend George from Lee Oswald," with the date "5/IV/63" and another notation "Copyright Geo do M", and an inscription in Russian reading "Hunter of fascists, ha-ha-ha!"(59) a handwriting panel engaged by the committee determined that the writing "To my friend George" and the Oswald signature were the writing of Lee Harvey Oswald.(60) The panel was not able to conclude whether the other writing was written by Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina Oswald, or George de Mohrenschildt.(61)

This is from Answers.com in an article about George de Mohrenschildt:

QUOTE

http://www.answers.com/topic/george-de-mohrenschildt

Another backyard photo

Days later, on April 1 1977, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt gave the House Select Committee on Assassinations a photograph taken of Lee Harvey Oswald, by his wife Marina, standing in his Dallas backyard holding two newspapers and a rifle with a pistol on his hip. The existence of this photograph, while similar to others which had been found among Oswald's effects on November 23 1963, was previously unknown. Jeanne de Mohrenschildt said it had been kept privately for almost 14 years.

On the back was written, "To my friend George from Lee Oswald, and the date “5/IV/63” [this

is in Russian/European convention with day in front and month in Roman numerals, and means 5 April, 63]

UNQUOTE

I remember reading in the past about the date as it was written was supposed to have some significance, because it was written in the Cryllic fashion.

George DeMohrenschildt interviewed by Edward Epstein

https://books.google.com/books?id=8eACAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=%22Hunter+of+Fascists%22&source=bl&ots=a7cuwxps2a&sig=DCtc-n07uCkvr2friSUsulEG4r8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ8Yzf3bnZAhXEs1MKHSqkD4oQ6AEITzAK#v=onepage&q=%22Hunter%20of%20Fascists%22&f=false

Epstein said DeMohrenschildt's last words to him were to try and get this photo from a Dallas Attorney named Pat Russell.

Oswald: The Secret Agent. An Interview with Edward Jay Epstein by Susana Duncan “Hunter of Fascists”, New York Magazine Mar 6, 1978 p. 59

https://books.google.com/books?id=8eACAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=%22Hunter+of+Fascists%22&source=bl&ots=a7cuwxps2a&sig=DCtc-n07uCkvr2friSUsulEG4r8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ8Yzf3bnZAhXEs1MKHSqkD4oQ6AEITzAK#v=onepage&q=%22Hunter%20of%20Fascists%22&f=false

The photos were taken on Sunday, March 31, 1963

The date on the back of the photograph is April 5^th

If the pictures were taken on March 31^st, why was the picture inscribed April 5^th? Why wait five days?

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

 

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. In 1963, and the last time we saw them.
Mr. JENNER. It was the last time?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. The very last time we saw them.
Mr. JENNER. This was around Eastertime?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Around Eastertime.
Mr. JENNER. In April?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. In April.

Mr. JENNER. This was on Easter Sunday?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Easter day. I don't remember it was Easter Sunday.
Mr. JENNER. Easter is always on Sunday.
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; maybe it was the day before, the day after, but I think it was on the holiday.

 

In 1963, Easter was on April 14^th.

 

Why didn't Lee give the photo to George on April 5^th?

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

 

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. I did not know even that he was interested in weapons 'til the day--which probably you will ask me later on--Easter, I think, when my wife saw his gun. I didn't know he was interested. I didn't know he had the gun. I didn't know he was interested in shooting or hunting. I didn't know he was a good shot or never had any impression.

Mr. JENNER. Mr. De Mohrenschildt, up to that moment, is it your testimony that you never knew and had no inkling whatsoever, that the Oswalds had a rifle or other weapon in their home?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Absolutely positive that personally I didn't know a damn thing about it, positive, neither did my wife.

 

Marina Oswald's HSCA Deposition TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1977

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/marinade.htm

 

 

Q. Do you have any recollection of him ever saying anything about these particular poses or the photographs?
A. Let me turn back what strikes my memories, George de Mohrenschildt came--I am not trying to confuse you, you know, give you a false statement. I try to get my memory to go. What strikes me, I think I was surprised that he showed pictures to George de Mohrenschildt because I thought the rifle and the gun, first of all I was always against it so, if in my memory I remember being surprised at him showing pictures like that to George, so apparently I saw them at the apartment.
Q. You remember him showing the pictures to George?
A. Something strikes my memory that how dare he show pictures like that to a friend.
Q. Would you think about it for a few moments and tell me if you can remember anything else about him showing either or both of these photographs to George de Mohrenschildt?
A. I don't want to cast shadows on somebody that is maybe innocent and comments they maybe did not make.
Q. I am not asking you to say anything good or bad about Mr. De Mohrenschildt, just simply tell me if you remember that particular incident, him showing these pictures to George de Mohrenschildt.
A. It is so hard to dig in your memory 13 years ago.
Q. Take your time.
A. I vaguely remember because it still strikes my memory it surprised me that he showed them to him, so apparently it was at the apartment.

 

George DeMohreschildt WC testimony. This was in 1964.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

 

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. “Right from the very first day my wife told Marina, "You have to learn English, you have to be able to communicate, and especially since you do not get along with your husband and you are going to leave him some day--you have to be able to support your child and yourself. You have to learn English and start immediately on it. We gave her some records to study English--not mine, but my wife's and her daughter's records, of Shakespearian English, how to learn English, and they obviously still have those records.”

 

 

Why would Lee inscribe a picture, and never give it to George?

Why would he write, “To my friend George in English”, but use the Cryllic for of writing for the date?

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

 

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. We gave her some records to study English--not mine, but my wife's and her daughter's records, of Shakespearian English, how to learn English, and they obviously still have those records.
Mr. JENNER. Yes, they were found in Mrs. Paine's home.
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. We even gave them a phonograph, I think, a cheap phonograph, to play the records.
Mr. JENNER. You gave them records?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

 

How did the photograph wind up in storage?

 

DeMohrenschildt, George. Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him. Chapter 5. A Ghost Visits: Finding a Photograph.

https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1523595 pp. 94-106

 

“Suddenly, she (Jeanne) rushed out of the warehouse with a crazy look on her face. “Look, look, what I found!” she shouted excitedly. She dragged me to a pile of open crates and I saw inside a slightly familiar looking green box. “What the hell is this?” I asked. “This is the box with the records I gave Marina before our departure,” she said.⁷ “How did they get there? We left them such a long time ago?” “I haven’t the slightest idea, I considered them lost.” Jeanne was short of words—this was so weird. “I had used them myself to learn English when I came to this country. They served me well. Then I loaned them to Marina long before our departure for Haiti.” “Remember how punctiliously⁸ honest Lee was,” I said. “He would not keep any of our belongings. But how the hell did the records get into this warehouse? Perhaps he remembered where we were planning to store our furniture? Or, possibly, maybe he had handed the package⁹ over to Glover, because he knew we had loaned him some of our furniture¹⁰ and it was Glover who finally added them to the rest of the stored boxes at the Southwest Warehouse?” This remains a mystery to this day, because we lost track of Everett, a good guy who apparently got so frightened by his very slight acquaintanceship with the “president’s assassin” that he moved somewhere without leaving a forwarding address.¹¹ My wife began taking the albums out of the box and as she opened each of them to see if the records inside were broken or not, she shrieked¹² almost hysterically. “Look, there is a picture of Lee Oswald here!” This was the same, very controversial picture of Lee, the one which appeared on the February 21, 1964, cover of the now-defunct Life magazine.”

 

Americainized version of dating vs. Cryllic version of dating

 

1. The “Hunter For Fascists” photograph in the possession of George DeMohrenschildt

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=961#relPageId=234&tab=page

A copy of this photo can be seen in the Thursday, 30 July 2015 23:01 article entitled, “ A new look at the enigma of the Backyard Photographs, Parts 1-3” by Jeff Carter in Kennedy’s and King

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-new-look-at-the-enigma-of-the-backyard-photographs-parts-1-3

 

 

2. CE 183

 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=561&tab=page

 

(16H pp. 537-538)

 

Letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to Marguerite Oswald, dated October 22, 1959, with envelope. (In the Index, this letter is given the year 1959, but the year 1959 is obviously a mistake. It should be 1961.). He mentions Marina in the letter. He spells Marina's maiden name as Proosakova. The typist spells it Proosakava. In his letter he writes, “For my birthday, Marina sent me a gold and silver cup with the inscription, “To my Dear Husband on his birthday 18/X/61 very nice don't you think, Marina is on her vacation (sic) now, she is spending it with her aunt in the city of “KHARKOV” about 600 miles South East of here.... We both agreeded (sic) that she should go to a new enviroment (sic) on her vaction (sic)...”

 

In the body of the letter, Lee Oswald uses the Americanized version of the date, October 22, 1961, but the gold and silver cup is inscribed with the Cryllic date of 18/X/61. This makes me think of the controversy over the DeMohrenschildt, “Hunter For Fascists” photograph. Also, in October, Lee and Marina had only been married for six months. Whey would they both agree that she should take her vacation 600 miles away? (My own thought is that with their astrological signs being squared, they really didn't get along. I wonder why they got married in the first place).

3. CE 13 Letter from Lee Oswald to the Russian Embassy in Washington. He uses the Americanized version of the date, July 1, 1963.

4. CE 14 Letter from Marina Oswald to the Russian Embassy. She uses the Cryllic version of the date, July 8, 1963

Steve Thomas

[David Andrews]

Dated April 5, not March 31, because of film developing time?

I'll note that smooth criminals don't date evidence.

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by David Andrews

[Pete Mellor]

FWIW Groden says he interviewed Marina and she stated that the photographs she took of Lee in the backyard were taken in the opposite direction to the extant pictures in evidence!

[Greg Doudna]

There is reason to believe de Mohrenschildt’s original story of first discovery of that Backyard Photograph among their stored belongings after their return from Haiti etc. is not true, and that It was given to de Mohrenschildt by Marina from Lee and Marina in April 1963. Michael Paine had nothing to do with it. I researched and wrote about this in my piece on the Walker shot ("Did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot at General Walker on April 10, 1963"?, https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1497) :

[start quote]

A print of one of the Backyard Photographs turned up years later in the belongings of Lee and Marina’s friends George and Jean de Mohrenschildt, claimed by George de Mohrenschildt to have been a belated discovery in their belongings found by George and Jean after they returned from Haiti in Nov 1966. On the back was an inscription in handwriting authenticated as Oswald’s reading, “To my friend George from Lee Oswald 5/IV/63”, that is, a date of April 5, 1963 using European reversal of numbers of month and day—only five days before the Walker shot. Another inscription on the back of that same print reads in different ink in Cyrillic letters (Russian), looking like Marina wrote it, “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!!!”

However according to author Edward Jay Epstein, on March 29, 1977, George de Mohrenschildt told a different story when Epstein interviewed de Mohrenschildt in Florida the morning of the same day de Mohrenschildt ended his life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. (At least it can be said suicide is what all the evidence looked like and police concluded, and de Mohrenschildt had a recent history of depression, commitment to a hospital for mental issues, and talk of suicide, although the timing looked suspicious, occurring just as HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi had located him and HSCA intended to subpoena de Mohrenschildt’s testimony, and other high-profile witnesses of interest to HSCA were turning up dead too.)

According to Epstein, de Mohrenschildt now said, to Epstein that morning, that he, de Mohrenschildt, had actually been given that Backyard Photograph by Marina sometime in early April 1963. De Mohrenschildt not only told Epstein his knowledge and receipt of the photo had happened at that time but that he had reported it to a contact at the time in the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas, both before and after the shot at Walker, and he (de Mohrenschildt) rued having done so, blaming his reporting of Oswald’s apparent involvement in the Walker shot as having been the ruin of him. The head of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas, J. Walter Moore, quietly denied some of what de Mohrenschildt claimed but was never interviewed by the FBI nor called to testify by the Warren Commission or any other investigation (Edward J. Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend [1992], 557-569).

In support of the truth of de Mohrenschildt’s last-day-of-his-life disclosure concerning when he had first knowledge of the Backyard Photograph which emerged years later out of his belongings, Epstein noted, “two of De Mohrenschildt’s friends told me that he had discussed the photograph, and the problems it raised for him, before he returned from Haiti [Nov 1966], and Marina Oswald subsequently testified that she had seen the photograph in De Mohrenschildt’s house in 1963”.

Concerning Marina’s testimony there is a discrepancy: according to Epstein, de Mohrenschildt said Marina had given that Backyard Photograph to him in April 1963. Marina, on the other hand, claimed she saw de Mohrenschildt had the photograph and was “surprised” to realize Lee must have given it to de Mohrenschildt. If the “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!” written on the back of the photo is from Marina, then that supports the de Mohrenschildt version and would be one of Marina’s prevarications along the way, distancings from certain details.

For her part, when shown the “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!” inscription, Marina said at first she thought she had written it but then explained to the Warren Commission that as she studied it more she saw the handwriting was not her way of writing, so she came to realize she had not written it by that logical deduction (“at first I thought it was maybe my handwriting, but after I examine it, I know it is not”).

[end quote]

Edited April 13, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Michael Griffith]

133-A, DeM, is significant because it is markedly clearer than 133-A, is even a bit clearer than 133-A, Stovall, is nearly twice as large as the other prints (except for 133-A, Stovall), and, oddly, was the only picture printed full negative, i.e., the only picture that was not cropped.

The HSCA PEP chose to assume that 133-A, DeM, was a copy of the 133-A negative, but the DeM print is noticeably clearer than either version of 133-A. The PEP admitted that 133-A, DeM, was “probably made in a high quality enlarger with a high quality lens." This was an admission that the DeM print almost certainly was not developed and printed in the same place that 133-A, 133-B, and 133-C were, which raises all kinds of questions about the photos' provenance. 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Jeff Carter]

The inscription “hunter of fascists ha-ha” is intriguing because it is not Marina Oswald’s handwriting, but the exclamation “ha-ha” is a figure of speech which she was known to use.  In a footnote to my article, the handwriting of the phrase is compared -  the DeMohrenschildt print with handwritten notes Marina jotted for Priscilla McMillan.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-new-look-at-the-enigma-of-the-backyard-photographs-parts-1-3#_n4