Mr. CARRO. I am sorry.
Mr. LIEBELER. Or did you think that the fact that he had this different
kind of truancy was a reflection of some sort of mental disturbance on
Oswald's part, or would you say that it was just as much a function of
environment, the environment that he found himself in here in New York?
Mr. CARRO. Well, I don't think there is any question in my mind
that there was an inability to adapt, to adapt from the change of
environment. One of the things that probably influenced me in this is
that I came to New York City when I was 9 years of age and when I came
here I didn't speak a word of English, and I lived in what we call East
Harlem, in an area where there was a Puerto Rican community within a
Negro area, and I recall when I went to school there were four Puerto
Rican boys in a class that was otherwise all Negro, and I used to
virtually run home every day in the first 2 months I lived in the city,
because at one point or another the Negro boys would be waiting for me
outside to take my pencils, my money, and anything that I had in my
hands.
I remember my mother bought me a pair of skates and I don't think I was
downstairs for 10 minutes with the skates--I don't think I was down
there for 10 minutes before they took them away from me. And I just
stayed upstairs and waited for my mother at 5 o'clock.
Then eventually I made friends with the other three boys, and when
somebody took my books, one of the other boys stayed with me, and I
fought with the Negro boys until things worked out--and, as I remember,
things didn't work out. I had to transfer to another school.
But I can see this kind of reaction taking place. You meet the
situations. Either you meet them head on or you retreat from them.
Now he apparently had one or two incidents where he was taunted over
his inability to speak the same way that the kids up here speak and
to dress the same way or even comb his hair--you know, here the kids
wore pegged pants and they talked in their own ditty-bop fashion. There
is no--that this kid was a stranger to them in mores, culture and
everything else, and apparently he could not make that adaptation, and
he felt that they didn't want any part of him and he didn't want any
part of them, and he seemed self-sufficient enough at the time that I
recall that I asked him. He felt he wasn't learning anything in school
and that he had other, more important things to learn and do.
Now, whether this was an artifice on his part, you know, a mechanism, I
don't know--but it didn't--let me say it didn't trigger any reaction on
my part that this was symptomatic of a deeper emotional disturbance. I
thought that this was just symptomatic of a boy who had chosen one way
of reacting to a situation that other boys would react to in another
fashion.
Mr. LIEBELER. I understand that some statements have been made, based
apparently on the psychiatric reports or the observations of people
who worked with Lee Oswald here in New York when he was 13 years old,
to the effect that one might have been able to predict, from seeing
the boy at that time, that he might well commit an act such as the
assassination, or some similar violent act. Did you see any such
indication in Lee Oswald?
Mr. CARRO. No; naturally I didn't see it, and I would say that would be
extremely difficult in order to be able to make that sort of projection
or prediction. I have even, when I worked with the Youth Board as a
streetclub worker, I worked in the street where we had no psychiatrists
along with us and where we worked with much more psychotic and deeply
disturbed boys, who did kill somebody right along the line, possibly a
couple of months later, and even though, you know, the studies we have
done here in the city and everything shows that there are a great many
people who are extremely disturbed walking around, and the crutch that
just keeps them on their marginal--what do you call--on this marginal
living, where they just don't go out and commit some violent act, that
you don't know what it is, what the factors are that keep them from
just blowing up or exploding altogether.
I didn't see any particular behavior that would say that this boy would
someday commit this act. I have seen it, let's say, in the Puerto Rican
youth I am familiar with, the Negro youth, that sometimes they ascribe
this to a crying out of people to say that they exist and that they are
human beings, and they commit that violent act, just to get their one
day in the sun, the day when all the papers will focus on them, and
say, "I am me. I am alive."
I worked with this young man in the case of the killing, this Raymond
Serra, and this fellow, after blowing this boy's jaw up, he was
flashing the victory sign like this [indicating], and when we visited
him in jail he said, "Did you see my picture in the papers?" And the
paper played this up as a coldblooded killer. And they don't realize
that 2 days later, sensibility dawns on him, and these are the weakest,
the most remorseful kids. This is just the bravado at the moment.
And this is their one point in life where they draw everybody's
attention--most of these kids in private life come from broken homes,
and they take this opportunity to show that they are human beings.
Mr. LIEBELER. Are you suggesting that this is one of the factors that
motivated Oswald?
Mr. CARRO. Well, I am saying that this is a young man who apparently
was trying to find himself and really had been--you know, he had been
knocking about a great deal from here to Russia and everywhere, and he
had come back disgruntled, and nobody paid any attention to him. Some
people are prone to this.
I wouldn't speculate on what drove Oswald to do this. I would say in
my experience I have encountered many a boy who will do things like
this to attract attention to themselves, that they exist, and they want
somebody to care for them. It is hard to say what motivated him. I
don't really know. I had no inkling of that at that stage.
As a matter of fact, he said when he grew up he wanted to go into the
Service, just like his brothers, who were in the Service, and he said
he liked to horseback ride; he used to collect stamps. But certainly
these things that he said were the normal kind of outlet, the things
any normal boy of 13 years of age would do. There was nothing that
would lead me to believe when I saw him at the age of 12 that there
would be seeds of destruction for somebody. I couldn't in all honesty
sincerely say such a thing.
Mr. LIEBELER. Let me ask this, Mr. Carro: After you became aware of the
fact, after it was called to your attention that Lee Oswald had been
under your supervision as a probation officer, did you have occasion to
review the records of the case before you----
Mr. CARRO. No; I had no--there was nothing to review. Those
kind of records were all kept in the children's court. The only
recollection--and they were not furnished to me. The newspaper guy who
came to see me seemed to have gotten, as I mentioned--there were five
reports made, and they are sent out to different institutions. I don't
know. I am not privy to how newspapermen get their information, but he
seemed to have a better knowledge. He was just in a sense corroborating
what I may have said at a particular point and all that, with me,
and I had nothing to really go on, you know, that would refresh my
recollection, except this conversation with this social worker, a
friend of mine, who knew of the case, because they had gotten it from
me, who called me to say that.