Marguerite Oswald
July 19, 1907 - Jan. 17, 1981
"Lee Harvey Oswald, my son, even after his death,
has done more for his country than
any other living human being."
As with all things, I am judging Lee Harvey's mother, Marguerite Oswald, to be crazy simply from something I saw in a movie. In this case it was a throwaway line in Oliver Stone's well-made but historically innacurate 1991 epic JFK. Stone really doesn't expand on it other than to say she was bonkers. So what was so crazy about her, anyways?
repeatedly declares, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. And
he's shot down. That's not the American way of life.
A man is innocent until he's proved guilty."
I read a good bit of Mama Oswald's testimony to the Warren Commission and found it unremarkable. She seems like a cranky old lady trying to get some representation for her son, but it doesn't reveal her to be any crazier than the average old lady.
Lee's father had died two months before he was born and his mother mostly raised him and his two brothers by herself. While living in New York, Young Lee was diagnosed with psychotic tendencies in 1953 and was recommended for psyhciatric help, but his mother opted to suddenly move to New Orleans instead. What could possibly go wrong?
Because his mother moved around so much, he had lived in 22 different homes by age 18. Depending on who you ask, there was or wasn't a series of "uncles" coming around, some with mafia connections. Lee therefore either did or didn't have connections to the New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, who either did or didn't employ Jack Ruby, the man who either did or didn't shoot Oswald many years later. Allegedly.
(JFK's central character, Jim Garrison, was a gambler and apparently owed money to Marcello. As a result, he was quick to brush off any mob connection to the JFK assassination. This fact is one of many missing from Stone's film.)
killed the President he would have said so.
That's the way he was brought up."
In 1964, Marguerite released a record album on Folkways records in which she read her son's letters he'd written while living in Russia. Nothing more American than making a fast buck off your recently-dead son. Papa Joe Jackson would be so proud. It must be terrible...I'd love to hear it.
I was fascinated to find a photographic analysis of photos of Marguerite Oswald from the 1950s. Turns out there were several different Marguerite Oswalds, including fakes and doubles, and the thing was a cover-up before it was even a cover-up. God as my witness, there are some people who believe that they (whoever they are) were planning the JFK assassination while Oswald was still in grade school.
There's nothing about this case that doesn't fit. The most unbelievable nuggets of information somehow all seem to make sense in the enormous scope of it all. Maybe that's why Marguerite Oswald doesn't really seem all that crazy to me.
and that he is only President of the United States
by the grace of my son's action."
**For the record, I am on the fence about the JFK assassination. I was once a believer in a huge conspiracy, but time has shown me that freaky things can and do happen every day. The career of Carrot Top is proof enough of this. There is simply too much money in perpetuating wild theories which can never be proven, and there's a good chance that a lot of the disinformation has come from the government itself in an effort to distract us all from more current shenanigans.**
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