He said his name was Lee Osborne, and two days later he returned to put down $4 cash on the order. On June 4 he paid the remaining $5.89 in cash and picked up a thousand copies of the handbill. He also ordered, from the Mailers’ Service Company on Magazine Street, five hundred copies of a yellow, 4-by-9-inch membership application for his New Orleans “chapter” of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, once again under the name of Lee Osborne. He picked up that order, paying $9.34 in cash, on June 5. Finally, about the same time, he ordered three hundred copies of a 2½-by-3½-inch membership card in the same New Orleans “chapter.” John Anderson, who took the order at Mailers’ Service, recalled that “Osborne” at first was not satisfied because he wanted heavy, “card-type” paper for his membership cards rather than the “thick paper” the company had used. However, he accepted the order, paid $3.50 in cash, and went off with the cards.[6]
Vincent T. Lee, national director of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, replied to Lee’s letter on May 29. It was the longest, warmest letter he had ever received from the head of any organization. It offered him, for the first time in his life, a real chance to work with a political group. And it offered advice.
Vincent Lee counseled Lee against opening an office and suggested that he work out of a private home instead, using a post office box as his address. He also suggested that Lee used only first-class mail on committee business and never put a full name on the return address on the envelope. He sent Lee a membership card in the FPCC, a copy of its constitution and bylaws, and he closed his letter: “Naturally I would like to communicate with you a great deal more concerning yourself so that we can get to know you and possibly be of some assistance…. We hope to hear from you very soon and are looking forward to a good working relationship for the future…. Fraternally, V. T. Lee.”[7]
Lee, of course, did not tell Marina about the letter right away—she as yet had no idea what he was up to—but he was elated by it. In one regard, however, the letter must have been a disappointment. Vincent Lee wrote that he had gone through the committee’s files and could scarcely conceive of a chapter “with as few members as seem to exist in the New Orleans area,” but he would gladly issue a charter if Lee could come up with enough members. Nor did he send the application forms and membership cards that Lee had requested. It was probably just after he received the letter that Lee decided to print up his own forms and cards.
Marina might have guessed that he was again becoming involved in “politics,” for the blow she was dreading had fallen. Less than two weeks after her arrival in New Orleans, and even before he wrote to the FPCC, Lee told her that he did not love her. She was “in his way,” he said, and he still meant to send her back to Russia.
“I’ll go to Cuba, then China, and you will wait for me in Russia,” he told her in his coldest tone. “I love to travel and with you I can’t.”
But his behavior was inconsistent. Sometimes he went a whole day without speaking, then spent the next day making up to her. He would take her and Junie to the park, do the laundry, mop the floor. He would even hang up the wash, while Marina leaned out the window and shouted directions, and Junie waved at her “Papa.” He often told Marina how much he had missed her. And he was proud of her when he took her to the Murrets. They thought that Marina and Lee were a “cute,” “family-conscious” and “devoted” couple.[8] But Marina was anxious. She was afraid that Lee was nice to her only because he would soon be getting rid of her.
She was not entirely helpless, however—she did have a friend. Two weeks after her arrival in New Orleans, Marina wrote to Ruth Paine: “As soon as you left, all ‘love’ stopped. I feel very hurt because Lee’s attitude toward me is such that every minute I feel as if I am tying him down. He insists that I leave America, and this I don’t want at all. I like America very much and I think that even without Lee I would not be lost here. What do you think?”[9]
Ruth had invited Marina to stay with her in October, when the new baby came. So far she had said nothing about a more permanent haven. But Marina was intuitive. Ruth was her hope of salvation.
The strain on her began to take its toll. On Saturday morning, June 1, Lee took Marina and June to the Napoleon Branch of the public library, the branch nearest their apartment, to look for books in Russian for Marina. All they found were some novels in English translation. But Lee took out two books for himself: The Berlin Wall by Dean and David Heller, and The Huey Long Murder Case by Hermann Bacher Deutsch. They walked along for a bit, with June in her stroller; then Marina and the baby waited outside while Lee ducked into a store and had his photograph taken—evidently for a passport.[10] The three walked along farther and crossed the street.
“Don’t go so fast,” Marina said. “I don’t feel well.” Lee kept on walking, thinking it was only a joke. She leaned against a storefront. “Wait a minute, Lee,” she called out. Next thing she knew she was lying on the sidewalk and Lee had his arms around her. He carried her inside the store, and some strangers brought her to with ammonia.
“You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” Lee encouraged her. “Can you walk?”
Marina nodded, and they went home. He put her to bed, brought her some juice, and tiptoed around the rest of the day, taking care of June. “Shhh, Junie, Mama’s sleeping,” Marina heard him say.
Later that same week, on June 4, Marina received a letter from the consular section of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. It asked that she come to Washington if possible and, otherwise, that she write the embassy her reasons for wishing to return to the USSR.[11]
Marina turned the letter over and stared at it a long time. What puzzled her was the address. It had been mailed directly to her at 4907 Magazine Street, New Orleans. When Lee came home that night, she asked how the embassy knew her new address. He told her that he had sent it. Marina thought she heard her death knell toll again.
Later that same night, she at last discovered what Lee was up to.
“Come here. I want you to sign something,” he said.
“What is it?”
“My card for this organization about Cuba.”
“What organization? The one with only one member?”
“It’ll help me to have this card. People will believe in me more. They’ll think I have a real organization.”
He wanted Marina to sign a membership card in the New Orleans “chapter” of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, not in her own name but with the alias he had been using for several months.
“I won’t do it,” she said.
“You’ve got to.” He grabbed her and held her hard by both hands.
“Sign it yourself. I won’t,” she answered. “I’m not going to get mixed up in your affairs.”
He pleaded with her. “There have got to be two handwritings. You’re my wife. You never help. You never support me. And I ask so little of you. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
Marina remembered the letter that had arrived from the Soviet Embassy that day. “What will you do to me if I don’t sign? Will you beat me?” she asked.
6
Exhibits No. 1411, Vol. 22, pp. 800–802 (including photographs of the application forms and membership cards), and No. 2548, Vol. 25, p. 773.
10
A number of things may have stimulated Oswald’s interest in Castro, and his wish to travel to Cuba, among them Castro’s own triumphal tour of Russia and several articles in the