Mr. JENNER. On her person?
Mrs. PAINE. No; I never saw her bruised.
Mr. JENNER. At no time that you have ever seen her or known her, have
you ever seen her bruised?
Mrs. PAINE. At no time.
Mr. JENNER. So that there has been no occasion when you have seen it,
or been led to believe, she had been subjected to any physical abuse by
her husband?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Was there any discussion during these 15 days of any
occasion when Marina had gone off to live with someone else?
Mrs. PAINE. No. I think she told me that in the fall.
Mr. JENNER. I see. As long as I have raised that, would you please give
us the time and the occasions and tell us what occurred?
Mrs. PAINE. What she told me?
Mr. JENNER. What she said. When was this?
Mrs. PAINE. This probably was in October. She told me that the previous
year she had----
Mr. JENNER. 1962?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. She had in the fall, she had gone to a friend's home,
left Lee. She described his face as she left, as shocked and dismayed
and unbelieving.
Mr. JENNER. Unbelieving?
Mrs. PAINE. In a sense that she was truly walking out on him.
Mr. JENNER. Yes. Excuse me. Did she put it in those terms, that she was
leaving?
Mrs. PAINE. She was leaving; yes.
Mr. JENNER. She left him?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; and went to stay with a friend. Then moved to the
home----
Mr. JENNER. Did she name the friend?
Mrs. PAINE. She did not name the friend; no. The friend's name came up
in another connection, but I had no way of making the connection until
after I learned about this to whom she referred.
Mr. JENNER. Do you now recall the name?
Mrs. PAINE. She went to Katya Ford's.
The CHAIRMAN. To the Fords?
Mrs. PAINE. To Katya, being the friend, Mrs. Ford.
The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Ford.
Mrs. PAINE. And then moved. She did tell me this. She had moved on the
weekend to a different home. Then Lee came there, pleaded for her to
come back, promised that everything would be different. She went back
and she reported--as she reported it to me, things were no different.
Mr. JENNER. Were not different?
Mrs. PAINE. Were not different.
Mr. JENNER. Did you undertake a discussion with her as to what the
things were that were disturbing her?
Mrs. PAINE. That offended her that much? No; I did not.
Mr. JENNER. That led her to leave her husband?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Mr. JENNER. There was no discussion of that?
Mrs. PAINE. No.
Mr. McCLOY. Did you ever witness any altercations?
Mrs. PAINE. Indeed I saw them argue a good deal.
Mr. McCLOY. Sharp arguments?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. But no violence of any kind?
Mrs. PAINE. No physical violence.
Mr. McCLOY. Any profanity?
Mrs. PAINE. I am not sure I know Russian profanity. He was very curt
and told her to shut up quite a great deal.
Mr. JENNER. In your presence?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. In the presence of others?
Mrs. PAINE. Particularly in New Orleans the first time when we went
down, when I took her to New Orleans in May, he was very discourteous
to her, and they argued most of that weekend. I was very uncomfortable
in that situation, and he would tell her to shut up, tell her, "I said
it, and that is all the discussion on the subject."
Representative FORD. What were the kinds of discussions that prompted
this?
Mrs. PAINE. I can't recall that, and I have already had my brain
picked trying to, with other people trying to, to recall what was the
difficulty. I do recall feeling that the immediate things they were
talking about were insufficient reason for that much feeling being
passed back and forth, and I wondered if I wasn't adding to the strain
in the situation, and did my best to get back to Texas directly. But
the--well, I do recall one thing, yes--we arrived with a big load of
blackberries that we bought from a vendor along the street.
Representative FORD. On the way down?
Mrs. PAINE. On the way down, on the road, and ate them, and then,
he, one morning, started to make blackberry wine, and she bawled him
out for it, what a waste of good blackberries, and she said, "What
do you think you are doing? Ruining all this." And he proceeded, and
argued about it, but thought he should, you know, defend himself. On
this occasion she was making the attack in a sense and didn't think
he should do it this way, and then, so, under fire and attack, he
continued. But then the next day she observed that he had tossed it all
out and lost heart after the argument, and decided it wasn't----
Mr. DULLES. He tossed out the wine?
Mrs. PAINE. He tossed it out; yes.
Mr. JENNER. You detected, then, irritability as between them. Is that a
fair statement?
Mrs. PAINE. That is accurate.
Mr. JENNER. And anger rose to the surface pretty easily?
Mrs. PAINE. Very easily.
Mr. JENNER. What was your impression? Of course he hadn't seen her then
for a couple of weeks.
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Tell us about it--when she came in. Did they embrace?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. We arrived at his uncle's in one section of New
Orleans, and had a very friendly half hour or so----
Mr. JENNER. Was he there?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; he was there. He introduced her and little June, and
played with June, on his shoulders, perhaps. At any rate, he was very
glad to see the baby, and was congenial and outgoing. We talked with
the relatives for a short time.
Then the uncle drove them to the apartment--I was following with my
children in my car--drove to the apartment he had rented, which was in
a different section of the city. And Lee showed her, of course, all
the virtues of the apartment that he had rented. He was pleased that
there was room enough, it was large enough that he could invite me to
stay, and the children, to spend the night there. And he pointed out
this little courtyard with grass, and fresh strawberries ready to pick,
where June could play. And a screened porch entryway. And quite a large
living room. And he was pleased with the furniture and how the landlady
had said this was early New Orleans style. And Marina was definitely
not as pleased as he had hoped. I think he felt--he wanted to please
her. This showed in him.
Mr. JENNER. Tell us what she said. What led you to that conclusion?
Mrs. PAINE. She said it is dark, and it is not very clean. She thought
the courtyard was nice, a grass spot where June could play, fenced in.
But there was very little ventilation. We immediately were aware there
were a lot of cockroaches.
Mr. JENNER. Was she aware of this, and did she comment on that?
Mrs. PAINE. I don't know as anything was said. He was pretty busy
explaining. He was doing his best to get rid of them. But they didn't
subside. I remember noticing that he was tender and vulnerable at that
point, when she arrived.
Mr. JENNER. He was tender?
Mrs. PAINE. Hoping for--particularly vulnerable, hoping for approval
from her, which she didn't give. It wasn't a terribly nice apartment.
And she had been disappointed, because when we first arrived she
thought that the home we were going to was the apartment.
Mr. JENNER. She thought the Murrets' home?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. So when we came up to the Murrets' home, she said,
"This is lovely, how pleased I am." So that she was in--disappointed by
contrast with the apartment that she really had to live in.
Representative FORD. She expressed this?
Mrs. PAINE. She expressed her disappointment; yes; and didn't meet his
hopes to be pleased with it.
Mr. DULLES. As compared with their previous place of residence, how was
the New Orleans apartment? It was bigger, I gather.
Mrs. PAINE. It was larger. It was darker, less well ventilated. It
was on the first floor, the other was upstairs. I would say they were
comparable in cost and in attractiveness.
Mr. JENNER. What about vermin?
Mrs. PAINE. I didn't see any vermin at the first place. But then I
didn't spend the night there.
Mr. JENNER. So the welcoming was cordial?
Mrs. PAINE. The welcoming was cordial.
Mr. JENNER. They seemed to have a fine relationship at that moment?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. But as the weekend progressed, and she saw the new
apartment, all the time you were there, you were aware of friction and
irritability?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Going back to the 15 days again, was there any discussion
during this period, again, on the subject of Mr.--of Lee Oswald wishing
Marina to return to Russia?
Mrs. PAINE. I believe I made definite, but only verbal, an invitation
for her to stay on with me, past the time of the baby's birth, if she
wished to.
Mr. JENNER. I take it--I will get into that. But I take it your answer
to my question first is yes.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now, tell us what that discussion was.