LEE HARVEY OSWALD, GUILTY - OF ADULTERY!

ME & LEE: HOW I CAME TO KNOW, LOVE AND LOSE

LEE HARVEY OSWALD (Walterville, OR.: TrineDay, 2010).  By Judyth Vary Baker

Rev. by Hugh Murray

     In the late 1990s Judyth Vary Baker began to publicly assert that she had been Lee Oswald’s lover during the summer of 1963 when both resided in New Orleans.  In the library of articles and books about Kennedy and Oswald no writer had ever mentioned Judyth Baker in over 30 years of research.  She suddenly appears to announce that she was Oswald’s secret lover as they worked on a secret Project in 1963, one to expedite the growth of cancer so it could be used as a bio-weapon.  Oswald was then 24-years old while Judyth had just turned 20.  What?  Oswald – one of the men most studied in all American history, from the picture of his pubic hair in the Warren material to having his body exhumed years after his burial for even further study!  And in all these studies, no one had ever mentioned Judyth Vary Baker.  Is this book by Judyth a joke? 

     Some greeted her claims with skepticism.  Prof. John McAdams of Marquette U., who generally supports the Warren Report conclusions, analyzed her assertions under the google title, “Judyth Vary Baker hoax.”  One of her own sons stopped talking to her and requested that Judyth publish her volume as “historical fiction.”(559)  Moreover, Judyth had studied Creative Writing at a university: was Me & Lee a product of her course?  In the book’s Afterword, researcher Jim Marrs writes of Judyth’s effort, “The basic question,…,is whether or not her story is true or untrue.  It is either one or the other.”(566)  I disagree.

            In an effort to answer this “basic question,” I quote a few paragraphs though this may be tedious for the reader:  “By the end of the week [of 14 June 1963, Oswald’s wife, Marina]…had two visitors.  Ruth Paine [with whom Marina had stayed in Texas] wrote to Mrs. Ruth Kloepfer, a fellow Quaker who lived in New Orleans, ostensibly asking her to check on Marina and June [daughter of Marina and LHO].  Mrs. Kloepfer just happened to be married to a Tulane professor, Dr. Henry Warner Kloepfer, and they would just happen to move from Pine Street to Louisiana Avenue Parkway – close to David Ferrie – not long afterwards.  The first visit to 4905 Magazine involved only Mrs. Kloepfer and her daughters.  Marina was unaware that Dr. Kloepfer was a geneticist with Tulane Medical School, who was involved in the [bio-weapon] Project.  Dr. Kloepfer’s name, address and phone numbers were later found in Lee’s address book.”(339)

            Then “Friday, September 20, 1963… When Ruth Paine did not arrive on the morning of the 20^th, as planned, Lee’s anxiety soared.  …  Would he have to leave [the very expectant] Marina and Junie alone in New Orleans the next morning?  What if she went into labor while he was gone?  Worried about these issues, Lee contacted Dr. Warner Kloepfer to help, should he need to leave before Ruth Paine arrived.  Dr. Kloepfer was on the faculty of Tulane Medical School so he had access to doctors in town.  Both he and his wife spoke Russian, and they had already visited Marina and June twice, ostensibly because of their Quaker connections with Ruth Paine.

            “Later that evening, Ruth [Paine] arrived with her small children…”(492)

            Judyth Baker also writes about 20 Sept. 1963, “Once Lee dropped off the bioweapon…in Mexico, he would have money to disappear and would send for me to join him.”[492]  Then Judyth and Lee might live happily ever after in Mexico.  Indeed, the underlying theme of the book is the romance of two young people, each ensnared in unfulfilling marriages.  They meet, work together, fall in love, and prepare to break with their marriage partners to begin a new life.

            On 22 August 2013 I telephoned Karol Kloepfer, one of the daughters of Dr. and Mrs. Kloepfer, to ask her impression of those paragraphs concerning her family.  Her short response was simple: “Lies, lies, lies.”  I had already emailed her copies of the paragraphs with which I opened this essay.  Karol elaborated that neither parent spoke Russian.  Her sister Ruth Ann (hereafter Ruanne) had studied Russian during her freshman year at Tulane, but it was mainly grammar, and her spoken ability was quite limited.  Karol had been on a tour of Europe, visiting many places including Moscow, but she too was not conversant in Russian.

            The reason Ruth Paine of Texas had made contact with Karol’s mother, Ruth Kloepfer, was because Mrs. Kloepfer was the clerk of the small NO Quaker organization which met at the Tulane U. Baptist Student Union center for Sunday services.  The Quaker clerkship rotated among its members.  Though Mrs. K had received the request from Texas earlier in the summer, because she did not speak Russian, she decided to wait until Karol had returned to NO from travelling abroad to try to meet the Russian woman.  In those days university semesters began in September, and it was not until late August that Karol arrived back in the US.

            In 1951 when the Kloepfers first arrived at Tulane U., Dr. K. was quite poor and had 4 children.  They lived in the barracks on campus beside the NROTC cannon on Freret Street.  (Just across the street was the TU history department, also located in a barrack, which I frequented to attend classes as a history major in the 1950s and early 60s).  When Dr. Kloepfer had saved enough, he moved his family to a 4-bed-room house on Pine Street which they rented.  After his wife returned to work, they saved more, and were finally able to purchase a home on Louisiana Ave. Parkway, into which they moved in September 1964, nearly a year after the Kennedy assassination.  They never knew David Ferrie.

            Dr. K was a geneticist.  He was also a Quaker and a pacifist.  He had been a conscientious objector during the draft.  He was a leader of the NO Council for Peaceful Alternatives.  Karol adamantly denies that her father would be involved in any Project to inject a speed-growing cancer into humans, - Fidel, John Kennedy, ANY human.

            After I had finished reading Me & Lee in August 2013, I tried to telephone Ruanne Kloepfer, Karol’s younger sister.  However I had spoken to her about some of these events in 1992 or 1993.

In the 1990s I was researching for an article on the Kennedy assassination.  Someone had sent me an issue of the Councilor, the publication of the segregationist White Citizens’ Council.  Featured in that issue were photos taken in the spring of 1963 of a peace march along St. Charles Ave. sponsored by the New Orleans Council for Peaceful Alternatives, a ban-the-bomb group.  Perusing the pictures, I recognized several marchers, including Ruanne Kloepfer and her boyfriend at that time, Mel Jones.  I was unable to detect anyone who resembled Oswald in the photos.

            I had telephoned Ruanne in 1992 or 93 to ask about any connections with Oswald.  She told me in the 1990s more about the meeting on Magazine St. of September 1963.  Anger in her voice resonated over the decades when discussing Lee Oswald.  The only time she saw him was the time that she, her mother Ruth and her sister Karol had driven to Oswald’s apartment at the request of fellow Quaker, Ruth Paine.  This was on 22 September 1963, according to the testimony presented by her mother to the Warren Commission.

            While the very pregnant Marina, Mrs. Kloepfer, and Karol were in the living room with June in her crib, in another room, Lee and Ruanne chatted.  Ruanne was a 19-year old, and a strikingly attractive dark blond.  Ruanne suddenly became convinced Lee was coming on to her.  She was furious.  She had not come to visit Lee Oswald!  Her mother, her sister, and his pregnant wife and daughter were in the very next room.  And he is trying to make it with her.  The nerve of this Oswald!  When I spoke with her about this, Ruanne was then residing in California, but the outrage stirred even her Quaker soul.  I thought I might reconfirm my conversation with her when I completed reading Me & Lee in August 2013.  Too late.  Ruth Ann Kloepfer Peters had died in July 2013.

            Karol’s version of the meeting was different.  Here I shall try to reconcile the two versions.  This is what I surmise happened during the visit by the Kloepfers to the Oswald residence on 22 September 1963.  Mrs. K, Karol, and Ruanne arrive around midday.  Lee opened the door and let them in.  They all congregated in the living room.  “Lee was sitting next to Marina on the sofa, and had his arm around her.  He was very polite and kind to her.  It looked to me like he loved her …I saw no sign that they were not a happily married couple.”[email from Karol K., August 2013]  September in New Orleans can still be quite hot, and Lee offered to get coffee or Coke or water for the group.  Because Marina was pregnant, Ruanne went to help Lee.  That is when Lee came on to Ruanne.  That is when she became furious.  They return to the living room.  In her email, Karol denies that that occurred.  She asserts that they were all in the living room for the full hour of the visit.  Yet, Karol maintains, “Ruanne was so mean to Lee that I cannot imagine that he would ever try anything, even if he had been alone with her…Ruanne is just not the kind of teenager who would attract men.”  In late August 2013 I called another of Ruanne’s former boy friends, Robert Bullard.  He too certainly found her attractive, and certainly the kind of young woman who would attract men.

            I suspect that when Ruanne and Lee returned to the living room with the drinks, then Ruanne turned on him.  She was mean, but did not want to raise the issue of why she was mean.  Instead, according to Karol, she continually berated Lee for preparing to leave his pregnant wife and child.  She could then express her fury without raising the sensitive issue of what had just occurred in the other room.  By contrast, Karol simply saw Lee and Marina as a happy couple.

            After an hour-long visit, the Kloepfers left the apartment.  As they were planning to alight into their auto, the station-wagon of Ruth Paine pulled up.  This was in the afternoon, not in the evening.  The Kloepfers met and said hello to the Quaker from Texas.  Then the Kloepfers drove off from the Oswalds.

            Neither Dr. Kloepfer in testimony decades ago, not Karol in August 2013 could explain why Oswald had written Dr. K’s information in his address book.  Judyth actually presents a plausible reason – Lee was worried about the pregnant Marina.  What if Ruth Paine had not arrived?  Dr. K was on the faculty of Tulane Medical School, and might find an appropriate doctor for her.  (Although if Lee is working for Dr. Ochsner so closely, why not ask Dr. O?)  

            If Karol and Ruanne are correct, Baker’s paragraphs are lies, lies, lies.  I emailed Mrs. Baker and asked for the sources she used for those paragraphs.  She told me, Lee and David Ferrie.

            In the Baker book, by September 1963, Lee and Judyth are in love, about to divorce their mates, and embark on a fantasy adventure in Mexico.  Yet, on 22 Sept.  63 Lee is coming on to the attractive Ruanne K.  Did Lee tell that to Judyth?  Did JFK tell Jackie about his flings?  Did Bill tell Hillary?  If Lee, and David, would lie to Judyth about the Kloepfer visit, what about Kloepfer’s role in the Project?  Or even the justification for K’s move to La. Ave. Pkwy.?

            Baker has the K’s visiting the Oswalds in June 1963.  Both K girls stated there was only one visit, that of 22 September.  I suspect this may simply be a memory lapse by Judyth over the decades.  I now stress that Judyth never saw the Kloepfer’s on any occasion so all her information about this is second hand, hear-say.

            Should then one dismiss the book because of the “lies, lies, lies”?  I think not.  A few paragraphs based upon hear-say from Lee and David may make one more skeptical of the assertions of those two men as told to Judyth.  But what of the personal account by Judyth?  What about her own personal experiences revealed in this book?  Is it credible that a 20-year old was involved in cancer research to develop a bio-weapon?  Would the US government have been involved in such research?  Improbable, but both are surely possible.  A 20-year old performing cancer research?  Might as well believe the National Inquirer!  Wait!  On the Kennedy assassination, sometimes the National Inquirer has been more reliable than the NY Times.  Judyth makes a strong case that she was precocious, and she drops names like Dr. Harold Urey of the Manhattan Project as well as Dr. Alton Ochsner who were interested in her experiments.

            I have always been bewildered by the witnesses who placed Oswald in line to register to vote in Clinton, Louisiana, and in other towns north of NO.  Baker presents most interesting explanations for these previously inexplicable activities.  Indeed, she states that she accompanied Lee on one mission to the state mental hospital in Jackson, La.

            Judyth errs when in a footnote she declares that Congressman Wilbur Mills represented Florida.(100)  Wrong.  He represented a district in Arkansas.  I thought she was wrong again when she discussed the Sandinistas.(394, 416).  Why is she writing about Reagan-era groups and placing them in 1963?  Then I laughed.  In the 1970s after passage of the FoI law, I sent for my FBI file.  I remember being amazed when I read some 5 pages in the file devoted to a meeting I attended.  A friend at Tulane did not want to go to a meeting alone, asked me, so I tagged along.  It was some group of Nicaraguans trying to oust Somoza.  I really had no interest in Nicaragua and was simply at that one meeting because of a friend.  Indeed, I had forgotten all about it until I read my FBI file.  The young man who asked me to go, was in the Tulane Air ROTC, and later I was told would join the intelligence unit.  Perhaps, he was on an early training mission.  The meeting had meant nothing to me; I had literally forgotten all about it until I read the file.  But, whether called Sandistas or not, there were people in NO seeking to overthrow Somoza in the late 50s early 60s.  Judyth is correct.

            Baker portrays Oswald and Ferrie as strong anti-Castro operatives, yet she maintains that both were hearty supporters of JFK.  She even asserts that Lee may have warned of plots to kill Kennedy in Dallas in early November 1963.  However, was Ferrie really pro-Kennedy?  I recall reading that in 63 Ferrie addressed a group on the Gulf Coast in which his comments were so incendiary toward Pres. Kennedy that the leaders of the group interrupted his speech and concluded the meeting.  They deemed it too hateful toward the President.  Perhaps, Ferrie merely pretended to be pro-Kennedy around Judyth.  Surely Banister was no Kennedy fan.  Nor was Marcello.  Where did Oswald really fit in?

            I would conclude that it is possible Judyth did do scientific research in New Orleans to discover a way to expedite the growth of cancer, - to develop a bio-weapon.  She was quite precocious.  She surely knew New Orleans.  She may well have had an affair with Lee Oswald.  But, as he did not inform her of trying to pick up Ruanne Kloepfer, what else did he not tell her?  And what did he tell her that might not have been true?  Note how Baker dismisses Lee’s affair with Sylvia Duran, who worked at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City around 27 September 1963.  “Lee told me that he slept with Duran to get her cooperation, hoping for vital information and help from her.  He didn’t have to tell me about her, but by now, we never hid things of that nature from each other.”(501)  Poor Lee!  How many did he have to bed?  The things he had to do for his country!  Of course, Lee did not tell Judyth of his attempt to seduce Ruanne K in late September 1963.

            In addition to her description of the Kloepfers, wherein I find her totally inaccurate, there is Judyth’s analysis of subversion in New Orleans.  In her footnote #10 on page 445, she writes:  “Lee originally wanted to hold this [FPCC leafleting] demonstration a week later, but Banister told him the staged ‘fight’ had to be scheduled while District Attorney Jim Garrison was out of town, apparently doing his duty with the National Guard.  Banister insisted that Lee’s activity, if Garrison were in town, would have incited the D. A. to use the new and untested Communism Control Act against Lee to gain more popularity against a ‘Communist.’  But that could uncover the whole ploy.  Instead, Banister – the committed racist – wanted Garrison to test the new law against the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) which openly supported local desegregation and Martin Luther King.  Banister got his way: the new law was used as an excuse to raid and ruin the SCEF office in early October, with three arrests, and Garrison right on top of it.”

            I recall the incident quite well.  I had been teaching, and instead of coming directly home that afternoon, I played some tennis.  Upon arriving home late, my mother sneered.  “Huh!  I thought they had rounded you up too!”  I had no idea what she was referring to, but quickly ran to the radio and TV.  The raid on SCEF and two attorneys did occur, but it was not under the auspices of DA Garrison.  This was a project of the Louisiana un-American Activities Committee (LUAC) whose chair was Democrat state representative Jim Pfister.  He lived a few doors down the block from us, and his wife was my mother’s Avon lady.  The case eventually was appealed to the US Supreme Court, and when SCEF sought to retrieve its records, I think they were located in the offices of Mississippi Democratic Senator Eastland, who was on another anti-subversion committee in the national Senate.  As I recall, the raiders used a hatchet on the door to the home of attorney Ben Smith.  Banister was one of the investigators involved with LUAC.  Garrison was not the lead character in the roundup.

Baker is good at pointing out the proximity of the office of La. Congressman Willis, who then headed the national HUAC, to the Reily Coffee business where both Judyth and Lee Oswald worked.(275-76, ftnote #4)  But Garrison was not the chief “on top” who led the anti-red raids of 3 October 1963 on SCEF in New Orleans.  That was a project of LUAC.  I do not know why Baker seeks to place the onus of the SCEF raid upon Garrison, when Banister was probably more involved.  But once again, Judyth would not have known this – it would have been hear-say, from Lee, or David, or both.

            Quibbles.  In addition to the Kloepfer and SCEF paragraphs, I have a series of minor quibbles with the authoress.  For April 30, 1963 she has Ferrie explaining that after JFK there would be VP Lyndon Johnson, and next Richard Nixon.  The FBI’s J. Edgar could not stop the plotters because the Mafia knew he was Madame Hoover to Clyde Tolson.  I suspect this is simply Monday morning quarterbacking written to make it appear that it is a prediction.  In November 1962 Nixon decisively lost the governor’s race in California to Democrat Pat Brown.  In April 63, most would have presumed Nixon’s his prospects as a national politician were dead.  Few were referring to Hoover as Madame (though Ferrie, because of his gay and Mafia contacts, just might have).  Still, these assertions seem out of place and time.(184)  More likely criticism of that era, was that Hoover was insufficiently anti-communist.  I recall in my neighborhood on Sunday’s after church all the car windshields would have flyers warning of the communist menace emanating from Moscow, New York, and Washington, and that included Hoover.  The flyers were distributed by the NSRP, the National States’ Rights Party.  The NSRP gained national attention beating Freedom Riders in Alabama in 1961, and one of its leaders was convicted of bombing a Black church in Birmingham.  Though most of the whites in the neighborhood were Roman Catholic, the church with the neon Bible was nearby, and apparently some of its members were sympathetic to the NSRP.

            I was surprised to see the letter of Hale Boggs positing that he and Dr. Alton Ochsner were working for the success of President Kennedy’s visit to NO in the spring of 1963.(577)  Ochsner was on the Right.  Hale Boggs, father of Cokie Roberts, was often attacked as a Left-winger.  There was a photo of him in the 1930s with a raised arm and the clenched fist of the Popular Front salute.  This was used by his political opponents as proof that Boggs was pro-Communist.

            I nearly laughed when I read Judyth’s report of David Ferrie discussing Communists on the docks in NO.  NO was the #2 port in the US at that time.  Ferrie said the NO docks were OK because they were controlled by the mob.  Baker does not mention it, but in the 1950s there had been a powerful film, “On The Waterfront,” with Marlon Brando, about corruption in the New York waterfront unions.  The NO dockers were affiliated with the ILA, the same as NY and the East Coast.  NO was not controlled by Harry Bridges  and the left-wing ILWU.  The impression I had at the time was the NO docks were not nearly as corrupt as those portrayed in the Brando film.  Like other AFL unions of that era, in NO there were separate white and Black ILA unions.  When integration issues surfaced in NO, many in the white union also joined the White Citizens’ Council.  By contrast, some in the Black union were supporting integration efforts.

            Baker has Lee defying segregationist mores by sitting at the back of busses.  Yet, for someone like Banister, with whom he worked, integration was Communism.  Was Lee pretending to be an integrationist?  He was surely pretending to be pro-Castro.

            Judyth has Lee telling her that donuts from the French Quarter were called beignets (benyays).(308)  I had thought that was the word for tourists.  Natives knew if you got donuts at the Café du Monde or the Morning Call, they would not be the round ones served at Walgreen’s or K & B drug stores.  Admittedly, not all natives would call them donuts, so this is not an error, just an anomaly.

            There is a strange contradiction in Judyth’s conscience that is all too human.  After working all summer on The Project  - how to accelerate the growth of cancer in mice, then in simians, she finally realizes they are going to use human guinea pigs to insure that the procedure works on (kills) people.  She begins to compare the Project to gassing prisoners at Auschwitz.  She suddenly finds The Project morally repugnant, contrary to the Hippocratic Oath, and on 30 August 63, she writes a note to her boss, and the likely director of The Project, Dr. Alton Ochsner informing him of her ethical conclusions, (in effect comparing him to Dr. Mengele).  Dr. Ochsner was not pleased.  David Ferrie soon informed Judyth that Ochsner was now her “enemy.”  Despite earlier promises that if she did the summer work on the Project, he would help her enter Tulane Medical School, Ochsner now would not now help her in any way.

            Even after her self-righteous rebuke of her chief, even after she compares The Project to experiments in concentration camps, on Saturday 31 August Judyth accompanies Lee Oswald on a trip to the mental hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, so she can complete blood tests on a Project “volunteer” who had been injected with cancer!(476-81)

            The role of Lee and Judyth in the Project was nearing an end anyway.  Her employment would have terminated after the Jackson tests in early September even without her blast against her boss.  Lee would still have to transport the cancer bio-weapon to Mexico, and he, or someone else, would then try to get the material into Cuba so it could be used on Fidel.

            Yet, by insulting Dr. Ochsner, she lost all the promised benefits that were to reward her hard work all summer on the secret Project.  She would receive no recommendation from the world-famous doctor.  And because everything had been secret, there would be no publications, not even a paper trail to prove that she had conducted this research.  Yet, two days prior to the end of her employment in the Project, she blasts her boss in an act of conscience.  And then, the very next day, she goes to Jackson to finish testing a human “volunteer” in the deadly experiment.  Overnight, she changes from Catholic moralist to pragmatic scientist.  OR - perhaps, she simply wanted to travel to Jackson with Lee.

            Weird.  Contradictory.  But all of us do act in such weird and contradictory ways on occasion.    

            After reading the entire book, I found only a few errors that I could identify.  In addition to her description of the Kloepfers, wherein I find her totally inaccurate, there is her interpretation of Garrison in the SCEF raid in New Orleans.  I question her portrayal of the political ideas of David Ferrie toward Pres. Kennedy.  I am unsure about her depiction of Oswald’s view of the President.  Nevertheless, Judyth Baker could have been Oswald’s co-worker and secret lover during the summer of 1963.  She could have accompanied him to Jackson, Louisiana.  Indeed, her explanation of his activities in Clinton and Jackson might be the best at ending the mystery of these otherwise inexplicable events.

            Jim Marr’s Afterword continued: “Even if [Me & Lee] is only partially true, it speaks volumes about the activities of Lee Oswald and many others in New Orleans during the summer of 1963.”(566)  I read this book with wary eyes, looking for something that would tip my view one way or the other.  Other than the sections on the Kloepfers, I found nothing where I could say, ah ha, this is all lies.  A few unsubstantiated paragraphs in a 600-page book, is insufficient for me to brand it as fiction.  If one dismisses her descriptions of the politics of Ferrie and Lee, there may be left a core that could be true.  A core that may help explain the events north of Lake Pontchartrain in Clinton and Jackson.  At worst, even if it were entirely historical fiction, it is the kind that provokes thought and research.  Nevertheless, it may be the true love story of a couple struggling amid the weird conflicts to so many of us recognize as life.  (If you want to read a view directly contrary to Prof. McAdams, see James Fetzer’s blogspot, 14 reasons to believe Judyth Vary Baker.)