A year later the Warren Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, reported that Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy. Marina and Lee Oswald had two children, Rachel and June. Though her testimony was enough to convince the Warren Commission that her deceased husband had acted alone, later in her life Marina expressed her doubts about her husband's guilt. The whole series of frustrations had now brought him to this final stage, Robert Oswald writes in his memoir. It was in Minsk that, in 1959, she met an American, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had defected to the USSR at the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets were running high. Seven months later, a far greater target would be scheduled to pass by the very building where he worked. That never happened. We stayed with her for the summer. Although disillusioned with the Soviet Union, Lee Harvey Oswald remained "Marxist," even . She looks a bit like Helena Bonham Carter, who, coincidentally played her mother, Marina in a 1993 TV movie about the Oswald family. Now he is the author of The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, out on Nov. 15 with Diversion Books. She needed a translator fast. Yet I recall that his companion for the evening, a Russian woman named Anna Meller, couldnt resist asking the question we all secretly wanted answered why had Lee defected to the Soviet Union? Oswald has three children, two daughters, and one son. Until I was 23, I didnt even know there were alternative theories. My biggest concern was that people at the office had my home address and phone number and I didn't want it leaked to The National Enquirer I have two small children, I'm divorced, I didn't want people to harass the kids. Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, and . According to the story, Rachel was a miserable, lonely child - her dogs had been poisoned, she had never been asked out on a date, she had no friends, her family couldnt even afford to buy albums for her record player. Further still, being attached to a world-shattering crime, however obliquely, is not the life everyone wants to live, and certainly not a widow with two young mouths to feed. It's not a matter of being ashamed, it's a matter of wanting to be judged as June Oswald and not "the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald.". As America's obsession with her father goes on, a daughter tries to set the record straight. I do blame him for having beat my mother, and not being a good father or a good provider. And I'll tell you why: It could come up at any minute. Lee did. Her tone told me all I needed to know; Lee had been deeply insulted and mortified by my response. In 1963, according to Marina, her husband tried to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a far-right politician, while the family was living in New Orleans; the Warren Commission would later confirm that Oswald attempted to assassinate the general. Hours after the Kennedy assassination, my parents and I experienced the shared horror of realizing that the Lee Oswald we knew, the one who had been in our house and sat at our dinner table, was the same man who had just been accused of killing the president. And then at one point, while hes asking my mother questions about Lee, he starts to cry. All of our family pictures were confiscated.. The Mind of Oswald, p.171, Trafford on Demand Pub. We were just trying to be a normal family. The doctors advised Marina against viewing Oswalds body, which was yellow and pale, his face bruised, but Marina insisted; she wanted to see the wound that killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) was the assassin of John F. Kennedy, unless even if you believe the claims of the conspiracy theorists. (Rachel went on to graduate from nursing school and find a job in the field.) Perhaps a visit might remind them of better times. In conversation, Rachel could be both reserved and outgoing, and though she speaks with a slow drawl, her dark eyes, high cheeks, and thick, heavy eyebrows make it clear she is of Slavic descent. A few days later, my father decided to check up on Oswald and his wife, and because I was around their age and home for the summer, he took me along. The Highly Unusual Funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald. As a 21-year-old college student, I returned to my hometown of Ft. Worth for the summer of 1962. Updates? Over the years, despite public-opinion polls, many others have agreed. My family tried to put those tragic events behind us, but over the ensuing decades, as I became an academic and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, I felt compelled to combine my memories and the historical record to present my own sense of Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald's childhood did not take place in any one town or city. After Marina returned to Six Flags, humiliated by the rushed service, my father consoled her by translating a telegram from a group of college students. It was distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. And she's just welcoming them with open arms. Lee, who controlled the budget, would then haggle over prices, particularly with meat. But she was not too happy that I had found her and at that moment in time was not interested in. As the familys translator of choice, my father was now part of the plan to get the Oswald women out of the dingy hotel room and into a safe house that Robert had arranged at his in-laws farm, north of the city, so Marina could be questioned. Bouhe was impressed that Marina spoke educated Russian and that her grandmother had attended an exclusive girls school. As we drove, I began telling them about how I met Oswald, the evenings driving around Fort Worth, the Dallas Russians and how a college kid got caught up with an accused assassin. The job, after all, could have made her the family breadwinner. A: It was unusual. We usually left with only one bag of groceries, which kept the Oswalds going for a week. So I ended up supporting him. Because we had never agreed on a fee for my lessons, my father and I decided to pay Marina $35. There were a lot of things leading up to that that they wanted Mom to do, and Mom in recent years has gotten more and more involved, I guess because she's getting older and trying to rectify some of the things she may have done unintentionally - like stating publicly that Lee did it. In a bar filed with pretty women, Rachel was striking enough to turn heads. I always felt that the Cubans were being pushed into the Soviet Bloc by American policy. On 22nd November 1963, Marina told the commission that she believed her husband was guilty of shooting President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper's nest. I remember my sister and I going to his hotel room and seeing 12 books about my father on the nightstand. We support the idea of independent revolution in the Western Hemisphere, free from American intervention. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? Marina would later tell the Warren Commission, through a translator, about his imagination, his fantasy, which was quite unfounded, as to the fact that he was an outstanding man. Perhaps he chose what seemed like the only remaining shortcut to going down in history. Q: When were you actually told about your father and the assassination? The public was prohibited from Rose Hill Cemetery, and no friends or other relatives showed up.. Are they going to take after some ancestor we don't even know? A: I think there definitely is circumstantial evidence that could imply he had something to do with it because of the characters he was hanging out with in New Orleans. For all I know it's still tapped. One of the latest authors to wade into the conspiracy waters is Norman Mailer, whose book "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery" will be published next month. A: The "second spirter," right. On the morning of November 24, while being transferred from a jail cell to an interrogation office, Oswald was shot by a distraught Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby. Moreover, Marina is convinced that her mobile phones are tapped by the Secret Service and the Secret Service wants to assassinate her. One guy tracked me down to the Chili Parlor and for a while was coming in several nights a week. People sent us money following the assassination, because Mom was young with two small children and didn't speak the language. I hear they burn for murder. Looking at her, I was struck again by the peculiarity of the moment. Q: Do you and Rachel argue much about this? In September he went to Mexico City, where, according to the Warren Commission, he tried vainly to get a visa for Cuba and to get Soviet permission to return to the U.S.S.R. 9 Gonzaga with late scoring burst, game-winning putback in 77-75 win over USF, Spokane Prosecutor Larry Haskell did not renew contract of deputy prosecutor who ran against him in primary election. My father now understood that the woman on the other end of the line, Marguerite Oswald, must have taken his class to communicate with her daughter-in-law, Marina, who spoke little English. This image shows Oswald family members during the graveside funeral service for Lee Harvey Oswald at the Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas on Monday, November 25, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was alleged to have murdered the 35th president of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I also had an interview for Rachel Oswald, but haven't located it. A postcard to Paul Gregory from the Oswalds, November 1962. Q: And if someone were to show scientifically that Lee Oswald was or wasn't involved, that wouldn't make a difference to you? For seven years Rachel was a waitress at the Chili Parlor while she put herself through nursing school. The scene at the Executive Inn was worse than my father had expected. Great!" It was Nov. 22, 1962. I just remember crying a lot because Mom was crying. Lee, who had been on his best behavior and even wore a sports jacket to dinner, suddenly became agitated and defensive. It sounds as if most people are not aware you're Lee Oswald's daughter. The writers portray me as this traumatized, victimized kid - theres a scene of me having a birthday party that no one comes to - just me in my birthday hat all by myself. Audrey was born after her family moved from Russia to the United States. But anonymity exacted a curious price of its own, as June faced myriad graceless references to her father, mother and family. What Happened To Lee Harvey Oswald's Wife? Q: Where do you stand today as far as your perception of what really happened out there in Dealey Plaza? As far as his portrayal in the movie, let me tell you - Gary Oldman is an actor.
