Thomas Mallon - Mrs. Paines Garage: and the Murder of John F. Kennedy

Contents

for Dan Frank

with lasting thanks and affection

Acknowledgments

I am grateful, of course and above all, to Ruth Hyde Paine for her unfailing and sometimes stressful cooperation in recollecting the events of 1963 and other periods of her life.

Michael Paine, Marin Paine, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Raymond Entenmann, Ruth Carter Stevenson, and John McAdams all provided interviews and important assistance.

I am indebted to Steven Tilley and Matthew Fulgham of the National Archives and Records Administration; Patricia ODonnell of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College; Paula Stewart of the Amon Carter Museum; Lisa Pena of the Mary Couts Burnett Library (Texas Christian University); and the staff of the Irving, Texas, Public Library.

I would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for a grant in 20002001.

My agent, Mary Evans, provided deft assistance at a number of points; and I owe thanks to Andrea Barrett, Lucy Kaylin, Martin Beiser, and Fran Kiernan for reading the manuscript and offering suggestions.

Dan Frankand Bill Bodenschatzmade this book possible.

Westport, Connecticut

August 12, 2001

Mrs. Paines Garage

AFFIDAVIT IN ANY FACT

THE STATE OF TEXAS

COUNTY OF DALLAS

BEFORE ME, PATSY COLLINS, a Notary Public in and for said County, State of Texas, on this day personally appeared RUTH HYDE PAINE/W/F/31, 2515 W. FIFTH STREET, IRVING, TEXAS. Who, after being by me duly sworn, on oath deposes and says:

I have lived at the above address for about 4 years. My husband, Michael and I had been separated for about a year. In the early winter of 1963, I went to a party in Dallas because I heard that some people would be there that spoke Russian. I was interested in the language. At that party I met Lee Oswald and his Russian wife Marina. About a month later I went to visit them on Neely Street. In May I asked her to stay with me because Lee went to New Orleans to look for work. About two weeks later I took Marina to New Orleans to join her husband. Around the end of September I stopped by to see them while I was on vacation. I brought Marina back with me to Irving. He came in 2 weeks, later, but did not stay with his wife and me. Marinas husband would come and spend most of the weekends with his wife. Through my neighbor, we heard there was an opening at the Texas School Book Depository. Lee applied and was accepted. Lee did not spend last weekend there. He came in about 5 pm yesterday and spent the night. I was asleep this morning when he left for work.

RUTH HYDE PAINE

SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN TO BEFORE ME THIS 22 DAY OF November A. D., 1963.

PATSY COLLINS

Notary Public, Dallas County, Texas

Part One November 21, 1963

One

There would be bad news from Dallas tomorrow. But as 5:30 approached on this warm Thursday afternoon, Ruth Paine had little time to think about her pending divorce. As usual, she was in the midst of errands, driving her station wagon back from the supermarket with groceries for her own small, sundered family as well as the other oddly intact one that had been grafted onto it these last several months.

A copy of the divorce petition, which Ruth had filed eight days ago, was right now being postmarked near the offices of her lawyer in the Rio Grande National Building downtown. The dated facts in itthat she and Michael had been married on December 28, 1957, in Pennsylvania, and produced two children, Lynn (b. 1959) and Christopher (b. 1961), before separating on or about September 1, 1962were more accurate than the supposed crux of the document, its declaration that her husband, now the defendant, had about six months before their said separation, commenced a course of unkind, harsh, cruel and tyrannical treatment... of such a nature as to render their further living together insupportable.

The legal boilerplate hardly described the painfully civilized breach between Ruth and Michael, or the temperate good will he showed whenever he now visited from his own apartment over in Grand Prairie. The two of them probably still saw more movies together than the average couple living under one roof. But the law was the law, and it required stern lies in the matter of divorce, even one arrived at as quietly as this.

Driving down Fifth Street, crossing Westbrook Drive, Ruth was surprised by a picture of domesticity that suddenly came into view. There, up ahead, under the oak tree on her own front lawn, stood Lee and Marina, playing with Junie in apparent contentment. The Oswalds, in contrast to the Paines, might bitch and bicker with each other much of the timeLee had bawled out Marina over the phone just three nights agobut their own separation was partial, temporary, and economic. Most nights Lee lived in a rooming house downtown, on North Beckley, closer to the book-warehouse job that Ruth had helped him get last month; Marina and Junie, and now four-week-old Rachel, stayed here with her in Irving, joined by their Papa on weekends, when the population of the four-room house would swell to seven. Ruth expected the situation to last until Christmas, perhaps a little longer, after which she would have to deal with missing Marina as she still dealt with missing Michael.

It was odd that Lee should be here tonight. He never came out before Friday, and never failed to call and ask permission before he made the trip. As soon as Ruth parked in the drivewaythe garage was too full of the Paines and the Oswalds things to house the carMarina came over to apologize for her husbands unexpected presence. Thats all right, Ruth answered, in Russian, the only language Marina spoke and the one in which Ruth herself, thanks to Marinas live-in presence, at last found herself becoming fluent.

Ruth also spoke Russian to Lee, and as he entered the house, on his way to the kitchen with some grocery bags, she greeted his helpful gesture with the news that had so many local people excited in one way or another.

Nahsh President Preyehdid y gorodoo.

Almost forty years later, Ruth Paine remembers him responding with no more than an uninflected Da, a sort of verbal shrug most accurately translated as Uh, yeah. And yet, despite his evident indifference, she knows that Lee Oswald had understood her to say: Our President is coming to town.

The small ranch house invited in all the late afternoons light. The living room picture window, facing the street, went from the foundation to the roof, and from the kitchen Ruth could look out on the sunlight lowering itself upon the backyard, with its swing set and long clothesline, where she and Marina had hung so many diapers all fall. As Ruth went about preparing supper, she heard no signs of quarreling from Lee and Marina, either elsewhere in the house or out on the lawna relief, considering how harshly the young man had berated his wife three nights ago over the phone. The scolding had been prompted by a call Marina had asked Ruth to dial the night before that, Sunday, to WH 3-8993, the number of Lees rooming house in Dallas. Hed given them the number himself, but now he wanted it stricken from Ruths address book. Until theyd used it Sunday night, the two women hadnt known he was registered with his landlady as O. H. Lee, not Lee H. Oswald, the person Ruth had of course asked for.

Marina may have been upset by the incident, but she wasnt wholly surprised. Lee had these fantasies of being a great man, a big shot, she explained to Ruth; they drove him into foolish games like this one with the alias, when he should be sticking to the hard business of being twenty-four years old with no higher education or skills but a wife and two little girls to support.