Mr. JENNER. Lee was at the Halls' on that occasion?
Mrs. GIBSON. No; I think we took him there.
Mr. JENNER. All right, he was not at the YMCA.
Mrs. GIBSON. No.
Mr. JENNER. He was not staying at the Halls'?
Mrs. GIBSON. No; he came to our apartment.
Mr. JENNER. So he must have been staying somewhere in Dallas?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; he must have been. He came to our apartment. I don't
ever recall taking him back to any place in particular, or picking
him up at any place in particular. See, that is my problem. But I do
remember the visit when she was in bed, and we told them that we would
help them move. And I guess he must have called us or come to visit
us about moving, and we took our car and I think, I don't know if we
rented a trailer, I think they rented a trailer in Fort Worth, I am not
sure, and left it in Dallas.
Mr. JENNER. Let's get it sequentially. You left your apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Lee came to your apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. In the morning was it?
Mrs. GIBSON. Morning or early afternoon.
Mr. JENNER. And then you left your apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You, your husband, and Lee?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And where did you go?
Mrs. GIBSON. To drop the baby off.
Mr. JENNER. Your baby?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. With a sitter?
Mrs. GIBSON. No; to Mrs. Taylor, Gary's mother.
Mr. JENNER. All right.
Mrs. GIBSON. From there we went to Fort Worth to Mrs. Hall's, and then
Lee and Gary went to rent a trailer, and I stayed with Marina.
Mr. JENNER. Was Mrs. Hall home on that occasion?
Mrs. GIBSON. No.
Mr. JENNER. Where was Mrs. Hall?
Mrs. GIBSON. I don't know. I guess she was in New York. So, they came
back with the trailer and we started to load up all the stuff, and
Alex----
Mr. JENNER. Kleinlerer?
Mrs. GIBSON. Kleinlerer came by, I guess to supervise the moving, to
see that nothing was taken of Mrs. Hall's, and he watched us move and
we got all their stuff out, and we took them to their apartment in Oak
Cliff, Elsbeth apartment, to move them in there. By then it was early
evening, and then we left them there. We looked over the apartment and
we left them there.
Mr. JENNER. Your husband rented that trailer?
Mrs. GIBSON. I think Lee did; didn't he? I don't think Gary paid for
it. Did Gary pay for it? I can't imagine Gary paying for it. He might
have, but I don't see it.
Mr. JENNER. Apart from that, did Lee thank you for spending the day?
Mrs. GIBSON. Very briefly, thank you, and that was all. Marina was not
happy with the apartment at all. She said it was filthy dirty, it was a
pigsty and she didn't want to stay there. Lee said it could be fixed up.
Mr. JENNER. What was their attitude toward each other on that occasion?
Mrs. GIBSON. They were arguing.
Mr. JENNER. During the day when you reached the Elsbeth Street
apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. Not too much during the day but after she saw the
apartment she was very unhappy with it and they were arguing very much
when we left.
Mr. JENNER. Was it your impression she had not seen it?
Mrs. GIBSON. No; I don't believe she had; no.
Mr. JENNER. What was your impression of the apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. It was a hole. It was terrible, very dirty, very badly
kept, really quite a slum. It had possibilities to be fixed up. It was
large, quite large, built very strangely, little rooms here and there,
lots of doors, lots of windows. The floor had big bumps in it, you
know. It was like the building had shifted and you walked up hill, you
know, to get from one side of the room to the other. It was not a nice
place; no.
Mr. JENNER. Was it a brick structure, wooden?
Mrs. GIBSON. It was brick outside, dark red brick. It was a small
apartment building. I think two stories, overrun with weeds and garbage
and people.
Mr. JENNER. Did you visit the Oswald's in that apartment thereafter?
Mrs. GIBSON. No.
Mr. JENNER. Do you know whether your husband did?
Mrs. GIBSON. I think he told me when I came back to Dallas in December
that he visited them once.
Mr. JENNER. I take it then that sometime after November 3, you left
Dallas?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; I left Dallas the latter part of November.
Mr. JENNER. And just to orient you, where did you go?
Mrs. GIBSON. I went to Tucson, Ariz.
Mr. JENNER. You were with your aunt?
Mrs. GIBSON. No; I was by myself.
Mr. JENNER. Had you lived in Tucson?
Mrs. GIBSON. Before that, no; not really. I had been to boarding school
there a few years, and I lived in Tucson 1 year with my aunt in a house
that we rented, and her husband, but I had not lived in Tucson before
this.
Mr. JENNER. Let's identify her. What was her name?
Mrs. GIBSON. Mrs. Tilton.
Mr. JENNER. What was her full name?
Mrs. GIBSON. Do you want her first name?
Mr. JENNER. Yes.
Mrs. GIBSON. Nancy.
Mr. JENNER. Nancy Tilton?
Mrs. GIBSON. Nancy Sands Tilton.
Mr. JENNER. And her married name?
Mrs. GIBSON. Mrs. Charles Elliott Tilton III.
Mr. JENNER. And in previous years you had as a young girl, even as a
child, lived with her; had you not?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. That was a good many years?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; 14 years.
Mr. JENNER. Fourteen years. Was that in Arizona or Florida?
Mrs. GIBSON. It was all around. I lived in Vermont in the summer,
Arizona in the winter, Florida sometimes. It depended.
Mr. JENNER. Your aunt was a person of means I gather?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You have already mentioned that you saw Lee Harvey Oswald
when you returned from Arizona?
Mrs. GIBSON. I am not sure if it was then or if it was right before I
left.
Mr. JENNER. Before you left for what?
Mrs. GIBSON. Arizona.
Mr. JENNER. And where did you see him?
Mrs. GIBSON. At the apartment. He came by to pick up a manuscript that
I had of his.
Mr. JENNER. That is at your apartment?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. I show you a document that is in evidence in this
proceeding as Commission Exhibit No. 95. Would you examine that and
tell me whether that is the manuscript to which you have made reference
several times.
Mrs. GIBSON. I believe it is. Yes; it is.
Mr. JENNER. Tell me the circumstances under which you first saw that
document and how it came into your possession?
Mrs. GIBSON. I asked Lee if he had written anything on Russia that I
could read, if he had any material, and he said yes, he did; that he
had a manuscript that he had written on general life in Russia and I
asked him if I could read it and he said yes and he gave it to me. He
brought it over one evening. I have no idea of the date or the time.
Mr. JENNER. Was it reasonably early in the course of your acquaintance
with the Oswalds?
Mrs. GIBSON. I think it was before they moved to Dallas, to Oak Cliff.
Mr. JENNER. Did you ever discuss the manuscript with him?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; I did. I told him he should publish it and he said
no, that it was not for people to read.
Mr. JENNER. Did you ever discuss its contents with him?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; a little bit. I asked him questions about it.
Mr. JENNER. Can you recall any of the inquiries you made of the
discussions you had with him regarding the substance of it?
Mrs. GIBSON. Well, I asked him, I believe on this manuscript that it
was said that you could not move from town to town.
Mr. JENNER. In Russia?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; and he was telling me why.
Mr. JENNER. What did he say?
Mrs. GIBSON. He said that the housing problem was so difficult there
that once you got an apartment or a room in one city, that you had
to wait in line in another city to get housing, therefore, you were
not allowed to leave from one city to another unless you already
had housing and a job. But for him it was easier because he was an
American, and I guess as he said they were trying to impress him a
little bit.
Mr. JENNER. In that connection did he imply that he was free to move
about the country as he saw fit?
Mrs. GIBSON. Freer than Russians I would imagine. He did imply that he
was freer than they were.
Mr. JENNER. To move around?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Did he say that he had at any time left Minsk to go
anywhere else?
Mrs. GIBSON. I believe he had been to Moscow.
Mr. JENNER. Was that in connection with his efforts to return to this
country?
Mrs. GIBSON. I have no idea. I think it was just to see the countryside.
Mr. JENNER. Would you look further through that manuscript and see if
your recollection is refreshed as to any other discussion you had with
him?
Mrs. GIBSON. Well, we talked a little bit about clothing and food.
Mr. JENNER. That is a generalization. Tell me what you talked about.
Mrs. GIBSON. Well, he said that the Russian people were very impressed
with his clothing, that they did not have the quality or the style
that he had. Also the sparseness of fruits, vegetables there. He told
them about the supermarkets we had here and how plentiful fruit and
vegetables were, how expensive butter and everything was in Russia,
like that, your dairy products, aside from milk, butter, and cottage
cheese, and all these things were extremely expensive and, well, like
gold. Education we talked about, how much higher their educational
standards are.
Mr. JENNER. Than ours?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. What did he say in that connection?
Mrs. GIBSON. They are much higher, that everybody is trained there to
do something. That they have what would be considered, well, like your
elementary school, and after you finished this required, oh, I don't
know what it is, 8 or 9 years of school, you take this test, and if
you pass this test you are admitted into what is considered college.
If you don't pass it, you are able to choose a vocational school that
you can go to to train you in some vocation, oh, like bricklayers or
electricians or plumbers or something like this. You are allowed to
choose whatever you want. You hear, he said, that women are laying
streets, let's say, in Russia and he said that isn't because they are
made to but this is because what they have chosen to do, what they want
to do. That is about the general gist of what he had to say.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall something about a time when little June was
baptized?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. Tell us about that, please.
Mrs. GIBSON. Well, one evening there was a knock at the door and I went
to answer it and Mrs. Hall and Marina and June were outside, and Mrs.
Hall came in and told me that she had just brought Marina and June to
Dallas.
Mr. JENNER. Did Marina and the baby come in the apartment, too?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And Mrs. Hall said this in the presence of Marina?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Was your husband home?
Mrs. GIBSON. No. She said that they brought the baby to Dallas to be
baptized without Lee knowing it because he would object, and that
Marina had been brought up in Russia with religion, although it was
against the law there, and that she wanted her child to be baptized,
and that Lee objected so strongly to it that she did it on the sly,
and she asked me please not to tell him. And she left a box of clothes
of his there for me that she had bought him. It was his birthday, I
believe, the next day.
Mr. JENNER. Lee's birthday?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. All right. Now, he was born on the 18th of October 1939, so
this was the occasion when he was living at the YMCA?
Mrs. GIBSON. His birthday was the next day or something, or a couple of
days.
Mr. JENNER. He was at the YMCA from the 15th through the 19th, 1962?
Mrs. GIBSON. I am getting my days messed up, because I thought she
stayed with us while he was at the YMCA. She must not have. You know,
I can't place when she stayed with us. I can just place the period of
time that she stayed with us, you know, that it was not over 3 or 4
days.
Mr. JENNER. Could it have been right following his leaving the YMCA?
Mrs. GIBSON. It possibly could have been. I really don't know. But like
I said, that is something I forgot. Now that you know his birthday, you
can place when she was baptized and when she brought this box to me.
Mr. JENNER. She was baptized the day before his birthday?
Mrs. GIBSON. I am not sure if it was the day before or 2 days or 3
days, but it was real close to his birthday.
Mr. JENNER. Real close?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. The records indicate the baptism occurred on the 17th of
October, 1962.
Mrs. GIBSON. Then it must have been the day before.
Mr. JENNER. Which is the day before his birthday, but the occasion you
remember it was about his birthday time?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. They left a box of clothing or some gift?
Mrs. GIBSON. Oh, it had a shirt and a pair of sox and general things.
Mr. JENNER. These were new?
Mrs. GIBSON. Brand new.
Mr. JENNER. A gift?
Mrs. GIBSON. A gift; yes. From his wife.
Mr. JENNER. Didn't it seem strange to you at that time with him at the
YMCA they didn't ring him up or go by the YMCA and leave this birthday
gift?
Mrs. GIBSON. She didn't want him to know that she was in Dallas because
she didn't want him to know she had baptized the baby.
Mr. JENNER. Did Lee speak with you on that subject?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes; I guess it must have been the next day that he
dropped by and I gave him the box, and I didn't say anything about
this, but I think he had heard it. I think he had talked to Marina or
something on the telephone.
Mr. JENNER. He became aware when he came by the next day, which would
be his birthday, that they had----
Mrs. GIBSON. I think she told him on the telephone that she had
baptized the baby, and he asked me if I knew, and I said yes, and he
said, "Why didn't you tell me?" And I said, that it was not any of my
business.
Mr. JENNER. I am a little bit confused. He came by the next day, that
is the day after Mrs. Hall and Marina were there?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And he came by to pick up his birthday gifts?
Mrs. GIBSON. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At that occasion you didn't say anything to him about the
baptism?
Mrs. GIBSON. No.