JFK Trivia
Strange events, coincidences and just plain weird happenings.
Amaze your friends! Confound the skeptics! It’s time for friends for Kennedy Trivia revolving around the assassination. Actually, more like one mystery piled upon another.
Texas oilman, D.H. Byrd was the owner of Texas School book depository. Interestingly enough, he was the founder of the Civil Air Patrol. Lee Oswald was a member of the CAP as a teenager. Ironically enough, he would be in the same building owned by Byrd the day of the assassination and later implicated in the crime.
The person hired to write the final draft of the Warren Commission Report was a German named Otto Winnacker. He was brought to the US after WWII under Operation Paperclip. He was officially one of 26 Nazi historians that worked personally for Adolph Hitler, compiling the history of the Third Rich. A former Nazi finished the final report.
Lee Oswald, through being a defector to Russia, got a loan from the State Department for almost $500. Him, his wife Marina, and their month old Daughter June, traveled back to America on the SS Maasdam, a Holland America luxury liner. There is an SS Maasdam ship still in service, though a completely rebuilt vessel from the one Oswald and family sailed on.
Oswald’s Mother, Marguerite Oswald's tax returns from 1956-62 are held in the National Archives and are unavailable to the public. They are sealed. Curiously, they are marked, “referred…postponed in full.”
Interestingly, John and Minnie Smith have their tax returns from 1957-62 also classified as well. They are also marked, “referred…postponed in full.” Researchers have no idea who the Smith’s were or why their tax returns are sealed for a similar period.
Marilyn Murret was Lee Oswald’s aunt and she testified before the HSCA. Oddly, they asked the CIA for permission to interview her. She is suspected of being a CIA operative. Why else would they need the CIA’s consent to interview a private citizen? Her 23 pages of testimony have never been released. Also marked, “referred…postponed in full.”
Jim Garrison attempted to look at Michael and Ruth Paine's income tax records but discovered their returns are sealed from 1956-1958.
Lee Harvey Oswald, after defecting to the Soviet Union, received a notice that he had been given an “undesirable discharge” from the Marines. He wrote a scathing letter to the Secretary of the Navy complaining about this as a “gross injustice.” The Secretary of the Navy at that time was John Connelly, the future governor of Texas, and whose path would later cross with Oswald in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
Oswald’s mother Marguerite was married three times. The last husband was Edwin Ekdahl. They were divorced in June of 1948. His attorney was Fred Korth. Korth would later go on to have a successful career in Washington DC and replace John Connally as Secretary of Navy. He resigned the position five weeks before the assassination.
One of the Warren Commission members who later became its biggest critic was Congressman Hale Boggs. In his words,"We have not been told the truth about Oswald." In 1972 his plane went missing in Alaska. He and the pilot were never heard from again. Congressman Boggs was taken to the airport for the first leg of the trip by a young, up and coming man in the democrat party named…Bill Clinton.
Lucky Lee. While in the marines, Oswald was court martialed twice. Once, for accidentally shooting himself in the arm with a .22 and the second time for an altercation with a non-commissioned officer. His combined punishment amounted to 48 days in confinement (brig), and a fine of $105. Neither of these punishments resulted in him losing his security clearance. His medical records show he was treated for a venereal disease but was not kicked out of the service because, as his record states, his infection occurred, “in the line of duty, not due to his own misconduct.”
From the House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA) final report on the Kennedy assassination: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."
To avoid a media frenzy at the time, Oswald was buried quietly under the name "William Bobo." His final resting place is at Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas.
Both Lee Oswald and Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth have much in common. Both men were born 100 years apart. Both wrote speeches on the main issue of their eras, but never delivered them. Both accidentally shot themselves with handguns. Both were arrested for petty crimes before the main crimes that would later make them famous.
Oswald’s favorite soft drink was Dr. Pepper.
After Jack Ruby killed Oswald on live television he was placed in the same holding cell that Oswald was in just a few moments before his death.
In Dallas on the day of the assassination was the confluence of three future presidents. Lyndon Johnson, in the motorcade; George Bush, Sr., in Dallas for a campaign stop; Richard Nixon for a business meeting. Both Bush and Nixon were in Dallas the day before and flew out the morning of the assassination.
George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian émigré and oil businessman was asked by a CIA contact to befriend the Oswald’s after they came back from Russia. His wife Jeanne was a member of a Dallas business organization. A fellow member was Abraham Zepruder, the man who would film the last moments of John Kennedy’s life. Before that they both worked for Navdis, a Dallas fashion company.
John Jay McCloy was a member of the Warren Commission. He was the High Commissioner of Germany after the war and decided who would be prosecuted for war crimes and who would be given a pass. One such pass was given to Walter Dornberger who worked with Wernher von Braun on the V-2 rocket program. He later went to work for Bell Labs. One of his fellow employees was Michael Paine. Paine’s wife Ruth helped Lee Oswald get his job at the schoolbook depository building.
John Jay McCloy was the moving force behind the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. One of his cohorts in that disgraceful period was the AG of California, the esteemed Earl Warren. Later they would team up for fun and games on the Commission supposedly investigating JFK's assassination.
In 1948 Marguerite Oswald bought a house. In 1950 she wrote a letter to her son John Pic telling him she was behind two months in rent. The Warren Commission never resolved the discrepancy of why she was paying rent when she owned a house or how she could have done that on her small salary.
Lee Oswald allegedly made a paper bag from packaging paper and tape from his place of work. This bag was supposed to be used to sneak the rifle into the School Book Depository building the day of the assassination. A similar paper bag was found in the Dallas Post Office “dead letter” department after the assassination. It had the right name but the wrong address and insufficient postage. Two bags for one gun? Oswald is supposed to be making his own bags so what is this one doing in the mail? Who mailed it to him?
Ms Geneva Hine was working in the credit office, 2nd floor of the Texas School Book Depository when just before the motorcade turned on to Elm when she noticed the power and telephones were out. In her words, “I was alone until the lights went out and the phone became dead because the motorcade was coming near us.” She gave her testimony to the Warren Commission who took no further investigation of the matter.
Lee Oswald is supposed to have mail ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano and given the shipping address to his post office box in Dallas, Texas. However, he used his alias Alex Hidell on the shipping address. His post office box application only allowed mail to his name, Lee Oswald. So the rifle would never have gotten to Dallas for him to pick up and would be marked, returned to sender.
Missing code books. Kennedy press secretary Pierre Salinger in his book A Memoir, recalled being with other cabinet members on their way to Japan when they learned of the assassination. They were told to return to DC by someone at the White House code named STRANGER. Onboard was Secretary of State Dean Rusk who wanted to know who this person was. They went to get the code book but it was missing. They eventually found out who it was—Major Harold Patterson. It’s a mystery as to why the code book was missing from a USAF plane.
Likewise, JFK researcher John Judge met an Air Force B-52 pilot that told him when he was in the air and learned of the assassination, he searched for his code book and it was missing from the safe. The conspiracy runs deep.
Various Sources
Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, Executive Session transcripts, 26 volumes; Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong; JFKcountercoup; KennedyandKing.com