The tasks Lee had to accomplish were these: He had to get the feel of the trigger action of this particular rifle, which was new to him and more powerful than any he had used before; and he had to learn to work the bolt smoothly so as not to disturb the alignment of the barrel. He also had to adjust the sight so that all his shots landed within a fairly small radius. It was the first time he had owned a four-power sight, and he had to get used to it. According to experts, learning to use a telescopic sight is easy (General Walker calls it “very easy”) and a skill that vastly enhances accuracy. It has been estimated that a man of Oswald’s training and experience would be able to adjust to the new rifle and scope, “would be capable of sighting that rifle in well, firing it,” with only ten rounds of practice.[14]
Oswald was apparently confident in his ability to handle firearms. Small-game hunting with his brothers in his early years seems to have given him an ease and familiarity with guns. His training in marksmanship in the Marine Corps, at Camp Pendleton, California, was intensive, and he learned to sight, aim, and fire from a variety of positions at targets up to five hundred yards away.
In December 1956, at the end of his training, Oswald was tested and scored 212—two points above the minimum for “sharpshooter” on a scale of expertise ranging in ascending order from “marksman” to “sharpshooter” to “expert.” By civilian standards he was an excellent shot. Two and a half years later, in May 1959, on another range where the details of weather, light, quality of rifle, and ammunition are not known, Oswald scored 191, only one point over the minimum for “marksman.” But those test results would establish him, by civilian standards, “as a good to excellent shot.” Moreover, he now had a four-power telescopic sight, which would more than compensate for a lack of recent practice.
On Friday, April 5, two days after his first practice session with his new rifle, Lee signed out of work at 5:05 and arrived home just as Marina was about to take the baby for a walk. Out of breath, Lee announced that he would like to join them; go on ahead, he said, and he would catch up with them. Marina pushed the baby slowly in her stroller, and Lee caught up with them before they had walked two blocks. He was moving even more rapidly than usual, and Marina could not help noticing that he was carrying his rifle, clumsily wrapped in his green Marine Corps raincoat.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Target practice,” he replied and asked her to walk him to the bus stop.
Marina was angry and disappointed. As often happened between them, he had promised her something, then yanked it away, in this case the pleasure of a walk. When they came within sight of the bus stop, she burst into open reproach.
“Instead of coming with us, you go someplace to shoot.”
“It’s none of your business. I’m going anyway!” He caught a glimpse of the bus over his shoulder and started sprinting.
“Don’t bother to come home at all,” she shouted after him. “I won’t be waiting for you. I hope the police catch you there.”
As the bus flashed by, she saw a sign in front: “Love Field.” But by the time she got to the bus stop, Lee had leaped aboard and was gone.
Lee was too secretive to show his face on a rifle range, and there is no evidence that he did so at any time following his return from Russia. So anomalous was he, however, that he was perfectly capable of climbing onto a crowded bus carrying a rifle poorly concealed in his raincoat. It was about nine o’clock when Lee returned home. He said he had been practicing, and Marina told him to watch out for the police. He said that where he had been, there was no one around to hear him practice.[15]
Marina had said that she watched Lee clean the rifle three to five times that week. The first time was March 31, the day she took his photograph, when he cleaned the rifle “on the sofa” although he did not fire it that day. Thus it is possible that the evenings of Wednesday, April 3, and Friday, April 5, are the only occasions Lee ever practiced firing the Mannlicher-Carcano. However, Saturday was his last day at work, and he may have practiced on Sunday, April 7. Marina could not have seen him clean the rifle after that—Lee did not have it at home.
Marina detested the rifle. She dreaded it and found its presence in the apartment distasteful. Terrified lest it go off, she never went near it, never touched it or moved it no matter where it might be. Compulsive housekeeper though she was, she did her cleaning in a careful circle all around it. Yet she did not ask any questions. Lee had said he was going hunting, and it made sense to her that he might go target-shooting first.
Sometime that first week of April, on Thursday or Friday, the 4th or 5th, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt came to call. George was away in New York, and Jeanne, anticipating that they would soon be leaving Dallas for good, had already quit her job. She had free time during the day and the use of George’s convertible, and she paid her first visit to Marina on Neely Street. Somehow as she was showing Jeanne around, Marina was drawn, not to Lee’s “office” but to a clothes closet where he was keeping his rifle.
“Look at that!” Marina said. “We have barely enough to eat and my crazy husband goes and buys a rifle.” She told Jeanne that Lee had been practicing with it.
Jeanne’s father had been a gun collector, and she knew her way around rifles. Instantly, she spotted something that meant nothing at all to Marina: Lee’s gun had a telescopic sight. She said nothing to Marina, but she filed the fact away in her mind; when George got back from New York, she seems to have told him that poor as the Oswalds were, Lee had bought a rifle with a scope and had been practicing.[16]
Marina’s worst worry that week had nothing to do with the rifle or with her husband’s target practice. She was upset because he was talking in his sleep again—the first time in six weeks. She did as he had told her and woke him each time he started talking. But during those last days of March and early in April, she sometimes had to wake him twice a night. She was beginning to be afraid that he was ill.
Saturday, April 6, was Lee’s last day at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. He worked from 8:00 A.M. to 5:30 P.M., then returned home. He still had not told Marina that he had been fired. On Sunday, April 7, he vanished. He left the apartment with his rifle and stayed out all day. When he came home for supper at six that night, he no longer had the rifle. He left the apartment again after supper, and Marina does not remember at what hour he came home.
Lee’s activities that Sunday will never be known. But General Walker was due back in Dallas early the following week, and it is almost certain that Lee was keeping watch on his house at No. 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard. He was ready to put his plan into action, and he later explained to Marina that he buried his rifle near Walker’s house that Sunday, in a wooded spot beside some railroad tracks that he had picked out and photographed exactly one month before. Lee’s hiding place, rendered better hidden still by large stacks of underbrush nearby, was in a park running northeast to southwest of Walker’s house, 25 to 30 feet above street level next to a footpath 90 feet from the curb line of Turtle Creek Boulevard. By the most direct auto route, it was not quite half a mile from the point where the footpath met the curb line to the Walker house. On foot, however, the spot could be reached by walking east or southeast from the rear of the house, and the distance was somewhat less.[17]
14
Warren Commission Report, p. 192; Testimony of Sergeant James A. Zahm, Vol. 11, p. 308. Robert Oswald, who taught his brother how to shoot and had a similar Marine Corps record, noted that his marksmanship was only “average” when the two went small-game hunting in the summer of 1962, after Oswald’s return from Russia, because he was unfamiliar with the .22 he was using. But providing his brother had enough practice, Robert believes that he was capable of the feats attributed to him. While Oswald may have practiced only on April 3 and 5, he could also have practiced all or part of April 7 to 10.
15
Conversations with Marina Oswald Porter plus Exhibit No. 2694, Vol. 26, pp. 59, 60, and No. 1156, Vol. 22, p. 197.
16
Both de Mohrenschildts remembered that this episode occurred during their visit to the Oswalds’ apartment on Saturday night, April 13. (For George’s recollection, see Vol. 9, p. 249; for Jeanne’s, see