Questioning America’s mystery
In 1974, during my first year at the UMKC School of Medicine, I had lunch with the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald. I became interested in the Kennedy assassination after attending a lecture in college and put together a slide and video presentation of my own. Still left with questions about the case, I decided to visit Dallas. When I first contacted Marguerite Oswald, she wanted to know how I got her phone number. It was listed in the Fort Worth directory. She had a grandmotherly appearance but had become cynical and bitter about history’s verdict on her son. She also refused to take a picture with me, and it was clear she had been burned over the past decade by freelancers and the tabloids.
However, she mellowed considerably when I invited her to lunch. She insisted her son had nothing to do with President John F. Kennedy’s murder, citing what she termed “inconsistencies” in the Warren Commission report. Oswald, a former licensed practical nurse, told me she couldn’t find work because of her name and sold her son’s memorabilia to support herself. Had I envisioned today’s eBay world, I would have snapped up the entire collection. The gray fedora that Jack Ruby was wearing when he shot Oswald was auctioned in 2009 for $53,775. Ruby’s murder weapon, a .38-caliber Colt Cobra Revolver that he purchased in 1960 for $62.50, went for $220,000 in 1991. Her parting words to me were, “You should change hotels every night you’re here. Now that you’ve been seen at my house, the people who killed my son may try to get you.”
Lou Kartsonis
M.D. ’77