Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

 I know it is jolting to hear that Oswald didn’t own a rifle. But, he didn’t, and the evidence for it is strong and layered. I’m going to give you the list, and if you are an Oswald defender, it is very important that you get onboard with this.

First, Oswald said he didn’t. And if he did, and someone used his gun to shoot JFK, he would have put it that way to the police. “Yes, I own a rifle, but I didn’t shoot anyone with it. Someone else must have taken it and done it just to frame me.”  He wasn’t going to lie to the police.

Second, Marina, when first asked by Dallas Police if Oswald owned a rifle, she said that he used to but it got sold. If he currently owned one, she wouldn’t have said that. She would have referred to the rifle that he owned. But, since he didn’t own one, she wanted to give them something that pertained to a rifle.

Third, everything about the purchase of the rifle, and its odyssey afterwards, is riddled with incongruities. He supposedly played hooky from work to go to the Post Office to get the money order, but John Armstrong found his work ledger from Jaggars/Chiles/Stovall that day, and he completed 9 printing jobs during the time he was supposed to be away. The whole issue of a rifle for A. Hidell going to the P.O. Box of Lee Harvey Oswald has never been explained or resolved. Try to imagine it. He goes to the counter and says, “I’m here to get my rifle. I’m A. Hidell.”  Postal clerk: “Well, this box belongs to Lee Harvey Oswald, and you’re not listed.”  Oswald: “Well, that’s me too; it’s my other name.” And then what? He pulls out his military ID for LHO and his draft card for Alek Hidell? You think that would have resulted in them handing the rifle over to him?

I don’t believe Oswald had a P.O. Box. He never said he did. They cost money, and he was as poor as a church mouse. And he didn’t one. What for? Postal Inspector Harry Hines said that the only things that went to the P.O. Box were Russian and Socialist newspapers. Bull shit. Oswald didn’t spend money on that. And if he read Russian and Socialist newspapers, why weren’t any found in his boarding room? But, the kicker is that when he wrote his fail-safe letter to Marina, before he, supposedly, went out to shoot Walker, he told her, in Russian, that if the worst happens, she should do these 10 things right away. And first on the list was go to the P.O. Box. Why would that have been on the list at all, let alone be the first thing? The truth is that he never wrote that letter, and he never went out to shoot Walker. The plotters wrote the letter, and they put the P.O. Box first on the list to substantiate him having a P.O. Box.

The stuff that John Armstrong found about the claimed mail-order of the rifle is so wild, it’s comical. For instance, after sneaking away from work to go the post office, Oswald, for some reason, walked to a distant letter box to mail the letter. Then, the letter reached Kleine’s Sporting Goods in Chicago the very next day, even though at the time, the Post Office had no overnight delivery at any price. Read John Armstrong because it is one of the most brilliant pieces of research ever done. 

https://harveyandlee.net/Guns/Guns.html

Then, as I have told you, neither Ruth nor Marina claimed that Oswald took a rifle with him to New Orleans. Then, the rifle that never went to New Orleans could not have come back because the story that Oswald snuck it into Ruth Paine’s station wagon, just hoping that it would wind up in her garage and stay there is no credible because no one would do that. And when I say no one, I mean not one of the 8.3 billion people on Earth would do it. Nobody would do that. Oswald had friends in New Orleans. If he owned a rifle, he could have left it with one of them. And that’s what he would have done if he had owned one, which he didn’t. Ruth Paine was going to be housing and feeding his pregnant wife and his daughter. And some mother that Ruth was. She put her own two young kids in her car to sit through that long drive from Dallas to New Orleans. Then, as soon as they got there, they had to pack up the car with Marina’s stuff and drive back. What a cruel thing to do to her kids. Some people think Ruth had a sex thing for Marina, and maybe they’re right.

But, Marina must have appreciated what Ruth was doing for her. So, if Oswald said, “Let’s sneak my rifle into her car and then you sneak it in to her garage” Marina would have said Yebat tebya.  Look it up.

And what about the Michael Paine, who was the most accommodating ex-husband in the history of marriage. He let Ruth drag his kids to New Orleans and back, and return with two more mouths to feed. Can you name a single other estranged husband who let his estranged wife do that? And then the tales he told about the many times he moved the stuffed blanket around in the garage; always wondering what it was but never peeking. Was it tent poles? Other camping equipment?  A military shovel?  Who knows? His job was to pay the bills and keep everyone fed. He even did the shopping.

Supposedly, Oswald did use the rifle when he was in Dallas. He repeatedly went to the shooting range to practice, and he sometimes shot diagonally at other people’s targets, just to be an asshole. But even among lone-nutters, there is a growing community of them who admit that that whole story is a lie. Davie Reitz, whom I have communicated with, is one of them. He has admitted that it’s a lie. After all, Oswald had no car. So, how did he get to Irving for that if the rifle was stored there? How did he get the rifle out of the garage? How did he get to the range? (This was before Uber.) How did he get back to the Paine house to sneak the rifle back in the garage? And then how did he get back to Oak Cliff? And remember: Oswald, at that time, had no friends. No friends, no friends, no friends, no friends, no friends, no friends, no friends.

And Oswald did NOT own a rifle. He said he didn’t, and he didn’t. Every Oswald defender needs to know that and proclaim it.