Oswald's Postal Order & Handwriting

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Alwyn Cole did not testify that Oswald wrote the Hidell signature. He didn’t even mention it. 

I meant Charles C Scott. He testified everything written on that money order was by the same hand as the other Oswald handwriting items. That includes the Hidell signature since he didn’t exclude it. “The fillins on the front of the money order”, all by Oswald.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

6 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Greg,

I am not a handwriting expert, but in my amateur opinion, they are written by the same person.

I say this for three reasons:

1) The way the two sides of the letter H do not touch,

2) The way the letter H flows into the letter I. This is very unusuaI. and consistent in both signaturs

3) The offset dot above the letter i. Again, this is consistent in both.

In my amateur opinion.

Steve Thomas

Steve, you are right, they do look by the same hand, thanks, sorry. 

I reread your discussion, "Did Marina Order the Rifle?", at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24667-did-marina-order-the-rifle/.

Please correct if I have anything wrong here, but from your discussion I see Charles C Scott, handwriting expert, testified all "the fillins on the front of the money order" were written by the same hand as all the other Lee Oswald handwritings, i.e. by Oswald.

I don't see any expert testimony claiming the Selective Service card Hidell signature was by anyone else. If the two Hidell signatures were written by the same hand, as I agree with you they do look like, that means both would be by the Lee Oswald hand, which is how they both look according to both you and me (right?).

In your article you quoted where Oswald refused to confirm that the Selective Service Hidell was his signature when he was shown the card in his interrogation. 

Oswald would not confirm that. But I see you characterize Oswald as having also "denied" the Hidell signature on the Selective Service card was written by him. I cannot find any reference in any of the interrogations that you quoted where he "denied", as distinguished from refused to confirm, on the Selective Service Hidell signature. Do you have a quote where he "denied"? The point does not determine whether he did or didn't, just wonder if that was a small error in description at your end or a missed reading on mine. It doesn't matter. 

Back to what matters. I then looked up four samples of Marina's handwriting in English that you noted in the WC exhibits, mailed envelopes with Ruth Paine's name and street address written on the front in English by Marina.

I saw there that Marina's handwriting looks different to me from the writing of Oswald (Lee) and from the Selective Service Hidell signature. Would you take a look at Marina's handwriting compared to the Selective Service Hidell signature and give your opinion on this? Do you see any differently? Thanks.

So far as I can tell, no handwriting expert said the Selective Service card Hidell was by Marina, nor did any handwriting expert say the Selective Service card Hidell was written by a different hand than the Klein money order Hidell.

The Selective Service card Hidell signature looks like Oswald's hand, not Marina's. 

Therefore both of those Hidell signatures appear to be by the same hand--both either the hand of Oswald or someone writing like Oswald--neither are the writing of Marina because do not agree with the writing of Marina, and there is no expert testimony in conflict with both of those signatures being Oswald's, or claiming otherwise. 

What do you think? Is there some reason not to conclude both of those Hidell signatures were written by the same hand, Oswald, not Marina? 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

You did a complete 180 and deleted that comment the second I pointed out that Marina was was Ruth Paine on March 12th, the day the money order was mailed. Paine also testified that they were together in the mid-morning. 

Paine couldn’t keep straight what happened on the 12th vs. the 20th in her testimony. The 12th was the first day Paine visited Marina…is the idea that Paine could have innocently assisted Marina with a few errands that day, including a trip to the Post Office to drop off an anonymous letter that Paine didn’t even know about so intolerable to you that it would make you completely change your mind and go on the offensive that quickly? 

Your bias toward Paine is a little over the top sometimes, and this was one of those times. 

Tom, please see my most recent above just now to Steve Thomas, on the two Hidell signatures on the postal money order, and the Selective Service card. Do you agree or disagree that they look like written by the same hand, that that hand looks like Oswald's, and that that hand does not look like Marina's?

On that money order, whoever bought it did so during business hours at the main US Post Office on the morning of March 12, bought it at the window, paid for it, filled in the fillins, signed it "Hidell", and mailed it right there, same time.

It is excluded that that money order could have been prepared in advance or bought earlier than that morning, or mailed later than that morning.

And the writing on that money order--which was handwritten by someone in those moments following purchase before putting it in the mailbox that morning-- looks like Oswald's handwriting, was identified as Oswald's handwriting by expert testimony, and does not look like Marina's handwriting.

So of the two possibilities--either it was Lee (Oswald) at that postal teller's window who bought it, filled it in, signed it Hidell, and mailed it, even though his job-timings log at work that day filled out by him showed him at Jaggars (he fudged his time sheets at work as Steve R. pointed out must have happened) ... or it was Marina given a ride there by Ruth Paine, both of whom concealed that in testimony, and either Marina or Ruth highly skillfully and successfully forged all of the handwriting on the front of that money order to look so much like Lee's that the experts testifying before the Warren Commission were all fooled (by either Marina or Ruth).

It is that last item--the requirement that either Marina or Ruth must be supposed to have forged all of the handwriting looking exactly like Lee's handwriting, on that money order, which is the supposition that cannot be correct, which jumps the rails.

I suggest neither Marina nor Ruth had the ability, nor any training or experience, in on-the-spot perfect forgery of Oswald's handwriting. That that is unreasonable and excluded.

Therefore it was Oswald, in agreement with what the handwriting looks like.

Do you specifically disagree? Are you going to defend a suggestion that either Marina or Ruth forged Oswald's handwriting in the writing on that postal money order? 

The only way to have Ruth Paine and Marina in this is if you were going to say Ruth Paine and Marina drove Lee to the post office and back from Jaggars, lessening though not removing the amount of time Lee slipped away from Jaggars off the books that morning for that errand. And there is no evidence or reason to suppose that, or reason why that should be the case.

This has nothing to do with "bias toward [Ruth] Paine".

Edited December 7, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Steve Thomas]

6 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I saw there that Marina's handwriting looks different to me from the writing of Oswald (Lee) and from the Selective Service Hidell signature. Would you take a look at Marina's handwriting compared to the Selective Service Hidell signature and give your opinion on this? Do you see any differently? Thanks.

 

Greg,

I think you're right.

The Hidell signature on these two documents do not look like the Hidell signature written by Marina as provided in VOLUME VIII of the the HSCA Report pp. 374 and 375.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=961#relPageId=379

 

I cannot say for certain that the SS card and PO order form were signed by Marina.

All I can say is that the situation is... muddled

Steve Thomas

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 12/6/2023 at 10:36 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Hidell Oswald signatures.

On the top is the Selective Service card.

On the bottom is the rifle Postal Service Money Order.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

To me it looks like the bottom signature is a forgery of the top signature. Here's why I believe that:

1. The dot over the d (instead of over the i) in both signatures means either that 1) the two signatures were written by the same person, or 2) the signatures were written by different people, and one person tried to forge the other's handwriting.


2. The H is very distinctively written. The horizontal line in the H is represented differently in the top versus the bottom signature, in that the horizontal-line-in-the-H in the top signature has a peak, whereas the same element in the bottom signature doesn't. This strongly suggests that the signatures were written by two different people.
   
   This begs the question, which of the signatures is the forgery of the other. If the top signature is the forgery, then the forger added that extra peak to the H. If the bottom signature is the forgery, then the forger didn't bother to copy that peak. I think that the latter is more likely the case. I therefore believe that the bottom signature is the forgery.


3. Note that, in the bottom signature, steady pressure was applied to the pen across its full length. This is manifested by the fact that the line width and darkness is steady across the entirety of the signature. Compare that to the top signature, where the line width and darkness varies.
   
   What this tells us is that the top signature was written with a natural flow. In contrast, the bottom signature seems to have been written in a concocted flow. Again, this suggests  that the bottom signature is the forgery.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

4 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

To me it looks like the bottom signature is a forgery of the top signature.

 

The only thing suggesting that the two signatures were made by the same hand is that the slopes of the letters are roughly the same.

But all the other things I pointed out in my prior post far outweigh the slope issue. The slope could have easily been copied by a forger, or even just be a coincidence.

Regarding the peak in the signature representing the horizontal line in the H... whoever wrote that would have had to use determined effort to write it without the peak. I'm pretty sure that a handwriting expert would agree with that.

I believe that the expert who claimed the handwriting in the two documents was from one person was either a hack, or was pressured into lying in his testimony. Or was ignoring the signature.

 

[Tom Gram]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Or was ignoring the signature.

That’s exactly what the WC experts did, so it’s quite possible. Scott and McNally, that’s two out of three, are the only HSCA experts to give an opinion on the money order, and they did not go into anywhere remotely close to the same level of detail as Cole and Cadigan on specific handwriting features, etc. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but one thing I’d really like to see is any working papers from the HSCA handwriting panel, but I doubt anything like that still exists. 

Also, the HSCA experts did not claim that the SS card was written by the same person. Incredibly, they didn’t examine the Hidell SS card at all. 

More to say later but still at work. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Steve Thomas]

To the best of my knowledge (and I could be wrong), the handwriting experts did not compare the signature on the SS card with the signature on the PO money order rifle purchase; which is astounding to me, because the Hidell SS card is the sine qua non that ties Oswald to the rifle purchase.

That's why, when I read that Oswald declined to admit that the signature on the SS card was his, the hair on the back of my neck started to go up.

Something about that signature is very, very important.

Steve Thomas

 

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

...the Hidell SS card is the sine qua non that ties Oswald to the rifle purchase.

 

How so, Steve? Wasn't that card just something in one of his wallets?

 

[Miles Massicotte]

I assume Steve Thomas means it is the sine qua non because it is the only piece of physical evidence that connects Oswald to the Hidell name. There is also the Marine Corp card, but that doesn't have Oswald's face in it, it only bears the Hidell name. 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Miles Massicotte said:

I assume Steve Thomas means it is the sine qua non because it is the only piece of physical evidence that connects Oswald to the Hidell name. There is also the Marine Corp card, but that doesn't have Oswald's face in it, it only bears the Hidell name. 

 

Oh, okay. Never thought about that before.

But what about the post office box the rifle was shipped to? That was in Oswald's name, wasn't it?