LAUREL KITTRELL MEETS
THE TWO OSWALDS
From John Armstrong's "Harvey and Lee" presentation (NID97):
After Harvey quit high school, he worked briefly for J. R. Michels, and then left New Orleans for California. We know about his residing in California thanks to Texas Employment Commission employee Laurel Kittrell. She interviewed the two Oswalds in 1963 in Dallas. She remembered they looked remarkably similar. One Oswald told her he had been a motorcycle delivery person for a realty company in California in 1956--before joining the Marines. More of the Laurel Kittrell interview will follow.
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Laurel Kittrell, of the Texas Employment Commission, interviewed Harvey Oswald before he began work at the Book Depository on October 15. He told her he had come up from New Orleans. She described him as neat in appearance and articulate. He told her his first job was selling shoes. In 1956 he moved to Encino, California and worked 6 months a motorscooter messenger boy before he joined the Marines. Laurel Kittrell interviewed "Harvey Oswald", who first worked at Dolly Shoe in 1955, and wrote the infamous note to Warren Easton High School in October, 1955 stating "we are moving to San Diego". Her curiosity was aroused when Oswald told her he had lived in Russia and had a Russian wife. She noticed the woman with him was about to have a baby and remembered her as being quite short and wearing no makeup. During this interview, she asked him what he liked best about Russia. He replied "The opera".
A week later Oswald showed up for another interview. Harvey was then working at the T.S.B.D.. But Mrs. Kittrell realized this Oswald was not the same person she had interviewed before. The two Oswalds were very, very similar--but different people. She said, "the man I remember as (Harvey) Oswald, and the man I remember as the Teamster were much alike in size, shape and outline, generally, there was a marked difference between them in bearing and manner. The man I remember as Oswald was a trim, energetic, compact, well-knit person, who sat on the edge of a chair (Harvey). The man I remember as the Teamster, was sprawled over his chair and was rather messy looking (Lee)".
-- John Armstrong, 1997
Mrs. Kittrell gave a thirty-page statement to the U.S. Attorney in Dallas. Her statement was hand carried to the Warren Commission by the Secret Service. But her 30-page statement and subsequent 90-page manuscript in which she discusses her interviews of the two Oswalds, were ultimately ignored and suppressed.
-- John Armstrong, 1999
The FBI finally got around to interviewing Mrs. Kittrell on June 4, 1965. The U.S. government finally got around to allowing the American people access to her statement in 1994, more than thirty years after the assassination.
Shown below is an excerpt from two pages of her lengthy statement, which is FBI record no. 124-10057-10339; Agency file no. 62-109060-4052.
According to an FBI report located at the National Archives by Mr. Armstrong in May 1999, the FBI had tracked Oswald's return trip to the U.S. from Mexico City, indicating that Oswald took a La Frontera bus from Mexico City and arriving at the border town on Nuevo Laredo on the morning of 10/3/63. Noting that Oswald also applied for unemployment compensation at the Texas Employment Commission that same day, the report found it "highly improbable that Oswald could have traveled" the 426 miles "from Laredo, Texas to Dallas, Texas on 10/3/63, in time to appear personally" before Laurel Kittrell at the Texas Employment Commission. The agent who wrote the report was obviously unaware that two people were sharing the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald.
See the actual FBI report discussed above.
