Early the next morning, April 25, Mrs. Lillian Murret’s telephone rang at 757 French Street, New Orleans.
“Hello, Aunt Lillian.”
“Who is this?”
“Lee.”
“Lee?” She was very much surprised.
“Yes,” was the laconic answer.
“When did you last get out? When did you get back? What are you doing?” The last Mrs. Murret had heard of her prodigal nephew, he had defected to the USSR with considerable publicity, to the great embarrassment of them all. They thought that what he had done was reprehensible, and they supposed that they would never be seeing him again.
“Well, I’m glad you got back,” Mrs. Murret said.
Lee asked his aunt if she could put him up for a while, and she agreed. When he arrived at the house, “he was very poorly dressed,” Mrs. Murret said later. He had no jacket, just a sport shirt, “and a very poorly pair of pants.”
“Lee,” she said, “you don’t look too presentable. I am going to buy you some clothes.” No, no, he protested. He had everything he needed. He had checked his luggage at the bus terminal.[6]
Lee was overjoyed by his reception. He had written the Murrets from Russia but had not had an answer. They were extremely conservative, they disapproved of his going to Russia, and he was afraid they might not welcome him to New Orleans. Anticipating this, Lee had confided to Marina that he suspected the Murrets lived beyond what his uncle’s earnings would support. Lillian’s husband, Charles Ferdinand, or “Dutz,” Murret, as he had been known since his prizefight days, was a steamship clerk, and Lee thought that his uncle might be engaged in some other activity on the side, like bookmaking. There is no evidence that this was so, but that was Lee’s way of accounting for their discomfiture at his going to Russia and the possibility that they might not be glad to see him. He thought they did not want to do anything that might bring attention to them. By confiding his suspicions to Marina, Lee had covered in advance his own embarrassment in case they refused to help him.
Lillian Murret had taken care of Lee both as a child and as a teenager, and if her own children had been jealous of him, they had never once shown it. The Murrets were a close-knit Catholic family, and the children were raised to be kind. They considered Lee different from other children and felt sorry for him. But Mrs. Murret says that they “loved Lee…. They have always loved him.”[7]
Only two of the five Murret children were at home now—John, or “Bogie,” four years older than Lee, who had attended Loyola and St. Louis Universities, had been a professional basketball player, and was working as a salesman for E. R. Squibb and Company; and Marilyn, Lee’s favorite cousin. Marilyn was a schoolteacher, tall, thin, and thirty-five, with straight dark hair. Marilyn shared Lee’s love of travel. She had spent three and a half years roaming the world on tramp steamers and had taught in places as far away as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. She liked Lee, Lee liked her, and they were pleased to see each other again.
It was six or seven years since Dutz had seen Lee. “He looked older,” he recalled, “but he hadn’t changed too much.”[8] But in Bogie’s view Lee had changed. He seemed really intelligent. Bogie thought Lee had grown intellectually, especially in his vocabulary, although he realized that Lee purposely picked his words to impress people. Still, Bogie says, “he was impressive.”[9] As for Marilyn, she had noticed even as a child that Lee would read an encyclopedia where anybody else would read a novel. She conceded that he was not outgoing, that he would be liked by some and “hated” by others, but she had always respected him precisely because he was “different.” He was “refined,” he loved nature, he liked to “sit in the park and meditate.”[10] And so once again, the whole Murret family was ready to help Lee if they could. Lee, as usual, stood on his pride, appeared to ask nothing, acting as if he did not want help and yet, as usual, accepting it.
They talked a little about Russia, but the Murrets noticed that Lee seldom spoke of the country unless they asked. They, for their part, did not pry. The person from whom he would take more frank talk than from anyone else was his sixty-three-year-old aunt Lillian. She was a small woman, a little plump, with a calm, unruffled look. She saw the faults of others but did not hold them to account for them. It was to Lillian that Lee owed most of his happy memories, and there was little she could say that would put him off. As soon as he arrived from the bus terminal, it was to her that Lee confided his plans. He wanted to stay with her a few days while he looked for work. When he found a job, he would send for Marina and the baby. Lillian asked what Marina was like. “Just like any American housewife,” came the reply. “She wears shorts.” Lillian was impressed by Lee’s eagerness to bring her to New Orleans.
He began looking for jobs right away. He got dressed, skipped breakfast, scanned all the want ads in the morning paper, and started off about 8:30 in the morning. He was out all day and came home just in time for supper at 5:30 or 6:00 P.M. After supper he sat down with the rest of the family and watched television. He generally went to bed early.
On one of his first evenings with the Murrets, Dutz drove Lee to the Continental Trailways terminal to pick up his bags. When they were home again, Lee refused to allow his uncle to touch anything. He unloaded everything himself and stacked it in the Murrets’ garage. The family attributed his insistence on doing it all himself to his being the old Lee they knew so well, the proud, independent Lee who did not need anything from anyone. But Lee may have had another motive. His rifle, and perhaps his pistol, were in the luggage.
On Sunday morning, three days after Lee’s arrival, they were talking about relatives. Suddenly, Lee turned to his aunt Lillian.
“Do you know anything about the Oswalds?”
She did not. “I don’t know any of them other than your father, and I saw your uncle one time. I don’t know anything about the family.”
“Well, you know,” Lee said, “I don’t know any of my relatives. You are the only one I know.”[11] He added that he had been embarrassed when Marina’s family in Russia had asked about his relatives and his descent. He had to admit that he did not know. After that, he realized that he missed not being close to his family and not knowing anyone on his father’s side.[12]
That very morning he boarded the streetcar that ran past the Murrets’ house to the end of the Lakeview line and the cemetery where his father was buried. The cemetery keeper helped him find his father’s grave.
Later that same Sunday the conversation turned again to the Oswalds. Lee sat down with a telephone directory and called every Oswald in the book to ask how he could contact his grandfather, Harvey Oswald.[13] Finally, he reached an elderly lady in Metairie who was able to answer his questions. Harvey Oswald was dead, she said, and so were all his four sons: Thomas, Harvey N., William Stout, and Robert E. Lee Oswald, Lee’s father. Her name was Hazel, the widow of William Stout Oswald. She had a large, framed photograph of R. E. Lee Oswald, which Lee was welcome to have.[14]
10
Testimony of Marilyn Murret, Vol. 8, pp. 159, 160, 177, 178. Marilyn adds that even as a boy, Oswald always knew “he was somebody” and knew that “he was exceptionally intelligent” (