In all of New Orleans’ history, few of the city’s denizens have been so notorious as Lee Harvey Oswald, whom the Warren Commission identified as the lone gunman who assassinated President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
Because Oswald was shot dead two days later, myriad questions were left unanswered, such as whether he acted alone, and whether he might have been a pawn of an amorphous conspiracy that, depending on which story you have heard, involved the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA or, perhaps, a combination of these. No such plots have been proved, but that hasn’t stopped skeptics from theorizing.
The most vocal proponent of a conspiracy was Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison, who attracted worldwide attention with his 1966 claim of an elaborate New Orleans-based conspiracy to assassinate the 35th president. The central figure in this plot, he said, was Clay Shaw, the retired director of the International Trade Mart.
After a 1969 trial that attracted worldwide attention, a jury deliberated less than an hour before acquitting Shaw.
But the speculation continues. Among those who have been asking questions is Bobby Brettel, 61, of River Ridge, who sent an email to Curious Louisiana asking about Oswald’s New Orleans ties.
“I’ve been following it for years. I think there’s more to the New Orleans situation than is being told,” said Brettel, who used to produce Draft Scrapbook, a football newsletter.
Born on Alvar Street
Oswald last lived in New Orleans in 1963. His mother, Marguerite, died in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1981, when she was 73. Two brothers moved away and have since died. No relatives remain in New Orleans.
In 1939, when Lee Harvey Oswald was born, his family was living at 2109 Alvar St. His father had died of a heart attack two months earlier, and Marguerite Oswald was cash-strapped and nomadic. After three moves, the family moved into half of a double at 831 Pauline St. in the Bywater neighborhood, according to Doug MacCash’s 2013 Times-Picayune story tracing Oswald’s domiciles.
The Oswalds moved out in 1942, relocating to Dallas and New York City. But Marguerite Oswald and her sons returned to New Orleans in 1954, and Lee attended P.G.T. Beauregard Junior High School (now Thurgood Marshall School).
By then, he had become a disciplinary problem. He moved to Fort Worth later that year, and he dropped out of school shortly before his 16th birthday. About that time, he lived in an apartment at 126 Exchange Place, just off Canal Street.
After lying about his age in an unsuccessful attempt to join the Marine Corps, he enlisted when he was 17.
A Marine in the USSR
Claiming his mother needed medical care, he received a hardship discharge from the Marines in September 1959. A month later, Oswald, who had taught himself basic Russian while a Marine, went to the Soviet Union and applied for citizenship, saying the knowledge he had gained in the Marines might help the USSR.
In this Nov. 22, 1963 file photo, Marina Oswald, second left, stands with her mother-in-law, Marguerite Claverie Oswald, in the police station in Dallas where her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald is being held, accused in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In separate interviews with The Associated Press, Warren Commission staff counsel Burt Griffin and fellow staff counsel David Slawson pointed to a series of personal rejections behind Oswaldâs deadly action: Weeks after he made an unsuccessful attempt in Mexico City to get a visa to Cuba, his wife Marina rejected his attempts to reconcile their rocky marriage. It was during his visit, the night before the shooting, to the suburban Dallas home where his wife and two young daughters were staying that he packed up his disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to take to work the next day, the Warren Commission determined. That next morning, he removed his wedding ring, left his money with his wife, and departed to carry out the assassination. "If she had taken him back,â Slawson said, âhe wouldn't have done it." (AP Photo)
He was put to work operating a lathe in a Minsk factory. Shortly thereafter, Oswald started to reconsider his decision to live abroad, and in May 1962, he asked the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to return his passport so he could return to the United States. By then, he had met and married Marina Prusakova, a pharmacology student, and they had a daughter.
The family settled in New Orleans, at 4905 Magazine St. During this period, he worked at Reily Foods Co. and handed out “Hands Off Cuba!” fliers from the pro-Fidel Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the Central Business District. He got into a fight on Aug. 9, 1963, with Carlos Bringuier, a Cuban exile who led an anti-Castro group, the Student Revolutionary Directorate, and two of Bringuier’s friends. All four were arrested, and Oswald was fined $10 for disturbing the peace, according to neworleanshistorical.org.
'Love and Lose Lee'
During this period, Judyth Vary Baker, a fellow Reily Foods employee, claimed she and Oswald were lovers. She has written a book, "Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald." She later gave walking tours; MacCash, who took one, said, “The overall theme of the tour was that Oswald was a misunderstood American hero, swept up in an incredibly complex Cold War plot beyond his control.”
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a fight on Canal St. on Aug 9, 1963, when a group of Cuban exiles tried to stop him for distributing pro-Castro pamphlets. This photo is a New Orleans Police Department booking mug.
The Oswalds moved to Dallas, where their second daughter was born. He got a job at the Texas School Book Depository. He shot and killed Kennedy from a sixth-floor window of that building as the presidential motorcade passed, according to the Warren Commission.
Edward T. Haslam discussed another theory in his book, “Dr. Mary’s Monkey.” He said Oswald and Baker worked under the supervision of Dr. Mary Stults Sherman, a cancer researcher, and Dr. Alton Ochsner, a founder of the medical colossus bearing his surname, to develop a biological weapon.
Sherman was murdered and her body set ablaze in her St. Charles Avenue apartment in July 1964; her killing remains unsolved. Ochsner died in 1981.
Covert research?
“Haslam believes Sherman was involved in covert research that involved the use of a linear particle accelerator, which he says electrocuted Sherman and burned away half of her body," Adriane Quinlan and Naomi Martin wrote. "His theory connects Sherman to Oswald associate David Ferrie (a figure in Garrison’s assassination inquiry) and a vast government cover-up.”
Rosemary James, who covered Sherman’s killing for The States-Item, is skeptical: “He tried to link her murder to the Kennedy assassination, but there was no evidence.”
Which leaves Oswald. The notion that a 24-year-old acted alone to kill a president has disturbed assassination buffs for more than a half-century. One such individual was Louis Heyd Jr., Orleans Parish’s former criminal sheriff, who had an office down the hall from Garrison’s.
"We hate to admit a country as great as the U.S. could let one little asshole kill the president of the USA," Heyd said in a November 2013 Times-Picayune story. "He was just this one little burp. Just a little burp who did it."
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