Mr. JENNER. All right, Marguerite was over at the house, and what
happened?
Mrs. MURRET. Before he married this girl that he did marry, there was a
young lady that he would invite over to our home quite often, you see,
so Marguerite was over at the house at that time.
Mr. JENNER. You are talking about your house?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; my house; and she was just visiting alone, and
it was a rainy day, and John and this girl friend--we were all in
the front room, so to pass the time, they were passing notes to one
another, and so the next day she told me about that, and she said that
they were passing notes about her, so I questioned John about it, and
he laughed. He has a very good disposition, and he laughed and he said,
"Well, of all things," and he said, "We were passing notes telling each
other what our bad traits are." He said, "She would pass me a note
telling me about a bad trait I had, and then I would pass a note back
to her and tell her a bad trait that she had." They were getting a big
bang out of that, but Marguerite was under the impression that they
were talking about her, and so I told her, I said, "Well, I believe
John," and she said, "Do you believe everything they tell you?" and I
said, "Yes; I believe what they tell me." Now, this was just last fall
that was.
Mr. JENNER. Was that just this last fall, in October?
Mrs. MURRET. No. Now, John was married in October, but I hadn't
seen--this was quite a while previous to that--maybe 2 years.
Mr. JENNER. Oh, this incident occurred then back in 1961, would you say?
Mrs. MURRET. About the time Lee defected to Russia. Probably about that
time, or after.
Mr. JENNER. Was it after 1959? That's when Oswald defected.
Mrs. MURRET. Let's see. I can't remember when that was now.
Mr. JENNER. He was mustered out in September of 1959, and he went to
Russia right after that.
Mrs. MURRET. I just can't remember that.
Mr. JENNER. Now, would you tell me about the Oswald marriage?
Mrs. MURRET. Well, I knew Lee Oswald. He was an insurance collector on
my route.
Mr. JENNER. Lee Oswald was an insurance collector?
Mrs. MURRET. For Metropolitan; yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. He collected insurance premiums?
Mrs. MURRET. For the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.
Mr. JENNER. Was that weekly or monthly, or what?
Mrs. MURRET. Weekly or monthly or yearly, sometimes semiannually, and
so forth. He collected policy payments for them. He was a very good
insurance man, I think.
Mr. JENNER. He was an energetic man?
Mrs. MURRET. He was.
Mr. JENNER. When you first knew him, he was married; is that right?
Mrs. MURRET. No; he was already divorced from his wife when he
collected in my area.
Mr. JENNER. He was already divorced from his wife?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. Had he had any children of that marriage?
Mrs. MURRET. I don't think he did.
Mr. JENNER. What is your recollection as to how Lee Oswald and
Marguerite became acquainted?
Mrs. MURRET. Well, I guess he just liked Marguerite enough to marry
her, and I believe Oswald was a Catholic--I'm not too sure of that--and
Marguerite was a Lutheran, so he had to leave his church, naturally.
Mr. JENNER. He had to leave the church?
Mrs. MURRET. Because he was divorced; yes. He was not recognized in the
Catholic church. He couldn't receive the sacraments, in other words. He
could go to mass.
Mr. JENNER. He happened to be Catholic?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Are you Catholic?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; I am.
Mr. JENNER. All right. So am I, and I just wondered if you were. Go
ahead.
Mrs. MURRET. So they were married in a Lutheran Church, Lee Oswald and
Marguerite. They were married at the Lutheran Church on Canal Street.
Mr. JENNER. I was going to ask you what your family was by way of
religion. You are Catholic.
Mrs. MURRET. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Have you always been Catholic?
Mrs. MURRET. Well, not always. I wasn't always a Catholic. My father
was Catholic, and my mother was a Lutheran, and we were baptized in the
Lutheran religion.
Mr. JENNER. You were baptized in the Lutheran religion?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; and my father, who was Catholic, he always saw that
we went to Sunday school.
Mr. JENNER. He would see to it that you went to the Lutheran Sunday
school, to the Lutheran church?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; he did. I always thought of my father as St. Joseph.
I don't know why, but I guess it was because he was so close to us
children. He would take us on Christmas eve night over to church, and
he probably did a lot better than a lot of women do today with a family.
Mr. JENNER. Well, he was undoubtedly quite a tolerant man then.
Mrs. MURRET. Oh, yes.
Mr. JENNER. Your mother had begun to rear her children as Lutherans, so
he continued that?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; he did.
Mr. JENNER. He didn't attempt to induce any of you to become converted?
Mrs. MURRET. No. John Pic--rather, Eddie Pic was a Lutheran too. About
the marriage to Lee Oswald, she seemed to be happy. He had everything
she wanted. They lived on Taft Place in the City Park section, and then
after that they built a home on Alvar Street. That was a new section
then. Right now it looks awful, but at that time it was a growing
section, and this was a new house, a little single house right opposite
a school, and it was a very nice place.
Mr. JENNER. What's the name of the school?
Mrs. MURRET. William T. Frantz, they call it.
Mr. JENNER. How do you spell Frantz?
Mrs. MURRET. F-R-A-N-T-Z, I think it is.
Mr. JENNER. There were two children born of that marriage; is that
right?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes, sir; two children, Robert, and then Lee was born
after his father died.
Mr. JENNER. Well, his father died in August 1939, and Lee was born on
October 18, 1939, about 2 months after; is that right?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes. Lee Oswald wanted to adopt John Edward, but my sister
wouldn't hear to an adoption by him, because she said he had a father,
and she was receiving this allotment for him from him, and she didn't
want to change his name.
Mr. JENNER. When she married Lee Oswald, I assume her alimony
terminated, did it?
Mrs. MURRET. I think so, but John still received his.
Mr. JENNER. The child support continued?
Mrs. MURRET. Oh, yes; now, what came in between there is what I started
to tell you, about John Pic. That was after she married Oswald. There
was a colored girl working in the grocery store, and John was in
there--he was about 2 or a little over 2 at the time, and this young
woman was in the store----
Mr. JENNER. Let me interrupt you there a moment. When you say John, are
you referring to John Pic?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; that was the Pic child, and this colored woman was
working in the store--you see, Marguerite didn't have any children
then, because she was just recently married or something, so this young
woman said to John--he was just a baby, and she said, "You're a cute
little boy. What's your name?" And he said, "My name is John Edward
Pic," like a child will do, drawing it out so that everybody could hear
it, and she asked this colored girl, "Whose child is this?" and the
colored girl told her, "That's Mrs. Oswald's boy," so that's how that
happened. I gather that she didn't know anything about the Pic child,
and so forth, so anyway, this young woman went home and she told her
mother that a very strange thing had happened in the grocery store,
and she said there was a darling little child in there, and she asked
him his name and he said he was John Edward Pic, and she said, "By
any chance, do you think he would be related to Eddie?" And she had
married Eddie, and Eddie didn't tell her that he had a child, or that
he was married or anything, and then this marriage was annulled--an
aunt of mine saw the annullment in the paper, because she used to read
everything in the paper, you know, and she's the one who knew about it.
My sister did tell me the story about that.
Mr. JENNER. That marriage was a happy marriage, was it?
Mrs. MURRET. The Oswald marriage?
Mr. JENNER. Yes.
Mrs. MURRET. I think so, as far as I know. I mean, I didn't get to go
over there very often, but we would visit. I had a lot of children, and
naturally I had to take care of them, and we never did have anything,
and of course they had a car and everything, and at times they would
drop by, but we didn't visit too often.
Mr. JENNER. They had a car and they had a home?
Mrs. MURRET. What's that?
Mr. JENNER. They had an automobile, you say, and they also had their
own home on Alvar Street?
Mrs. MURRET. Well, they were buying the home on Alvar Street, and
during that time was when Mr. Oswald was cutting the grass, I think,
and he took a severe pain in his arm, and she gave him some aspirin,
and in the meantime she called the doctor, and he said that was the
right thing to do, to give him aspirin and to rub his arm, so then it
seemed like he got worse, and while she was calling the doctor to come
out, he just toppled over.
Of course, the house wasn't paid for, and it seems like they had
insurance on their house that Lee never did take care of, or whatever
it was, and I think if they had done that, I think they would have been
safe in the house, but he neglected to do that, so they didn't have no
insurance on the house, or whatever it was.
Then she lived in the house, I think, over 2 years while Lee was a
baby, in this house, and then she sold it. I think she sold it, and she
bought another smaller house somewhere in that area. I don't remember
where, and then she sold that.
Mr. JENNER. Well, hold that for a minute. We will get to that later on.
When Mr. Oswald had his heart attack and died in August of 1939, did
your sister return to work?
Mrs. MURRET. Not right away.
Mr. JENNER. Not right away?
Mrs. MURRET. No; I think Lee was around 3 years old when she returned
to work. I never did ask her, you know anything about the insurance,
but he probably had a good amount of insurance on himself, being an
insurance man himself, I imagine. I don't know about that.
Mr. JENNER. Well, was that your impression, anyhow, that she did return
to work after a period of about 3 years?
Mrs. MURRET. About 3 years; yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. That would have been around 1942, approximately; is that
right?
Mrs. MURRET. I guess so. Now, I can't recollect what happened with Lee
after that, when she went to work, or where she worked. I know I took
care of Lee when he was that age.
Mr. JENNER. All right, I would like for you to tell me about that.
Mrs. MURRET. When Lee was a very small child?
Mr. JENNER. Around that period when he was 3 years old, during that
3-year period, was that during the period you took care of him?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes; that's when I took care of him. I offered to take
care of Lee for her. It seemed like he was--I don't know how that came
along, but it seems like there was someone else, I think, some lady and
her husband--I couldn't tell you who they were or anything like that,
but they were crazy about the child. She had told me about that and so
forth, but then I met her in town one day and she was telling me how
they felt about the child, but I told her, I said, "Well, I'll keep Lee
for a while, you know, as long as I could." I offered to keep Lee at
an age when he was a very beautiful child. Now, I wouldn't say he was
smarter than any other child his age. He might have been smarter than
some 3-year-olds and so forth, but he was really a cute child, very
friendly, and so I kept him and I would take him to town, and when I
would he would have on one of these little sailor suits, and he really
looked cute, and he would holler, "Hi," to everybody, and people in
town would stop me and say, "What an adorable child he is," and so
forth, and he was always so friendly, and, of course, I did the best I
could with him. The children at home liked him. John Edward and Robert
are the same age as my fourth and fifth children, so--in other words,
I had five children in 7 years, making them all around the same age,
from 7 to 19 months apart, so, of course, everybody was of school age,
grammar school. I had to get my own five children ready for school, and
I didn't have any help on that and it kept me pretty busy, and that's
why I guess it was that Lee started slipping out of the house in his
nightclothes and going down the block and sitting down in somebody's
kitchen. He could slip out like nobody's business. You could have
everything locked in the house, and he would still get out. We lived
in a basement house, and we had gates up and everything, but he would
still get out.
Mr. JENNER. What do you mean by a basement house?
Mrs. MURRET. Oh, that's one that's raised off the ground. The house has
a few steps going up to the door, and it has a basement underneath,
which a lot of people make into living quarters, underneath.
Mr. JENNER. All right. He was 3 years old when he was living with you
at your house, and at that time she had gone back to work; is that
right?
Mrs. MURRET. She had gone back to work; yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. What sort of work did she do?
Mrs. MURRET. She was a saleswoman. I think she worked in quite a few of
the stores in town.
Mr. JENNER. Here in New Orleans?
Mrs. MURRET. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. I assume her earnings were small?
Mrs. MURRET. What's that?
Mr. JENNER. I assume her earnings were small?
Mrs. MURRET. Oh, yes; they don't pay too much.
Mr. JENNER. What did she do with John Edward and Robert at this time?
Mrs. MURRET. Well, at that time John Edward and Robert were placed in a
home across the river some place. I wouldn't know the name of the home.
I visited with her one time, and she didn't like it too much, and so
she took them because they weren't keeping their clothes clean and so
forth. The children didn't look the way she wanted them to, and she put
them in the Bethlehem home. That's a Lutheran home.
Mr. JENNER. Is the Bethlehem home for Lutheran orphans?
Mrs. MURRET. No; it's not exactly an orphanage. It's for children who
have one parent.
Mr. JENNER. I think we will take a recess now for lunch, and we can be
back here at 2 o'clock.
(Whereupon the proceeding was recessed.)