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Oswald and the Order Forms - Gil Jesus - 15-12-2024
Oswald and the Order Forms
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"In mid-March, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald ordered a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver from Seaport Traders, Inc., using a coupon clipped from an unidentified magazine." -- Dale Myers
The handgun wasn't ordered in "mid-March", the evidence indicates that it was ordered before March 13th
We know that because the Warren Commission's Michaelis Exhibit 2 shows that the date on the Seaport Traders invoice for the handgun as 3/13/63.
While most people assume Oswald ordered the handgun at the same time he allegedly ordered the rifle ( March 12th ), the Commission provided no evidence of that.
In fact, Oswald's worksheet of March 12th, showed that all of Oswald's time at work that day was accounted for.
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Not only did the Commission fail to show that Oswald had the opportunity to order the weapons, it failed to explain why Oswald used two different methods to pay for the weapons.
Two different "M.O."s for payment
He allegedly purchased a money order to pay for the rifle in full, but sent a $10 cash deposit for the handgun with the remainder to be paid C.O.D., even though the C.O.D. order required a 50% deposit.
If he were at the post office buying a money order for the rifle, why didn't he buy one for the handgun as well ? Why would he send cash ( which would have been easily stolen ) through the mail ?
Strangely, the FBI never sought the shipping records of REA Express, the company through which the handgun had been shipped. Instead, it chose to use the Seaport Traders' copies of those records, which had much less information on them.
One of the pieces of information that REA could have supplied would have been to reveal the identity of the person actually received the weapon, paid the $19.95 remainder due to Seaport Traders and the shipping and COD ( $1.27 ) charges.
But failing to reveal the identity of the person who received the weapon from REA Express wasn't the only problem with the purchase of this weapon.
There is a problem with Oswald's access to the magazine.
An access problem
For Oswald to have ordered the handgun from a magazine, he would have had to order it from a magazine that was on the newsstands no later than March 12th.
In his blog, Solving the Mystery of Oswald's Seaport Trader Order, Oswald-killed-Tippit author Dale Myers concludes that the order blank used for the ordering of the handgun came from the April, 1963 edition of True Adventures magazine.
"The version with the cartoon on the reverse side of the coupon (as was the case in the coupon Oswald used) was printed in the April 1963 issue (Vol.32, No.3) of True Adventures." -- Dale Myers
From my own experience with magazines in the 1960s and 70s, I know that magazines didn't hit the newsstands until the 15th of the month prior to the month on the cover. If you had a subscription, the publisher would mail your copy to your home and you would receive it by the 12th.
If the order blank in evidence was from an April monthly magazine, it would not have been on the newsstand until March 15th, 3 days after the official record claims Oswald "ordered" the handgun.
So how does Oswald ( or anyone else ) order a handgun from an ad in a magazine that isn't going to be on the newsstand for another 3 days ?
This detail Myers fails to tell his readers. Instead he intermingles March 12th with the term, "mid-March". He contends that Oswald mailed the order in "mid-March".
"...we now know that the coupon he used came from an issue that had only become available to him at about the time he mailed the order – mid-March, 1963. -- Dale Myers
Of course, we know that the record shows that the handgun was ordered prior to March 13th.
Myers never provides evidence that the April edition of True Adventures was on the newsstand on or prior to March 12th.
He fails to mention Commission Exhibit CE 1855 ( Oswald's worksheet ) that shows that Oswald was at work on the 12th and that every minute of his day is accounted for.
By withholding the evidence of Oswald's worksheet proving he was at work when the order was placed, Myers presents an argument that is less than truthful.
If the magazine hit the newsstand anytime after March 12th, it's proof that the documentation regarding the purchase of the handgun currently in evidence is fake.
Neither Oswald ( nor anyone else ) could have ordered a weapon from a magazine that had not yet reached the newsstand.
If the order blank did in fact come from that magazine, and the magazine was purchased from a newsstand, then the Seaport Traders documentation is fake.
For the handgun documentation to be authentic, the weapon had to have been ordered after March 15th.
A discovery on November 23rd may have revealed that this was the case.
The blank order forms allegedly found in the Paine garage
During their search of the Paine garage on 11/23, Dallas Police allegedly found two "magazine ads" from Klein's Sporting Goods.
On pages 2 and 3 of Commission Document 578, we see that the "ads" are not ads at all, but rather blank order forms from the ads.
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We find that the initials of the officers who conducted the 11/23 search, Rose (GFR), Stovall (RSS), Moore (HMM) and Adamcik (JPA) are marked on the blanks and the date of discovery is noted.
Of these four officers, only one was asked about the "magazine ads" and only one question was asked of him.
Mr. BALL. Now, you also found a magazine advertisement from Klein's Department Store, Klein's in Chicago ?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes sir; that was in the same box as the photographs. ( 7 H 195 )
The line of questioning seems to indicate that a single ad was found.
But according to the FBI, Dallas Police Capt. Will Fritz turned over "two magazine ads" on December 2nd "bearing initials" GFR and RSS.
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So how did two "magazine ads" on December 2nd become one when Stovall gave his testimony on April 3, 1964 ?
In addition, there was another anomaly with this discovery.
The blank order forms were not listed on evidence list
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Like the "backyard photographs" that police allegedly found in their search of the Paine garage on 11/23, police failed to mention this discovery in their list of items confiscated as a result of that search.
Nowhere is it listed that police found "ads" or "order forms" from Klein's even though it was well known to police by Saturday afternoon that the rifle was sold by Klein's through the mail.
Allegedly found in the same box as the "backyard photographs", the blank order forms were significant evidence connecting Oswald to Klein's.
So why weren't they listed ?
In fact, they aren't seen in the photographs of the evidence recovered by police.
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Where did the blank order forms come from ?
In his report of 5/5/64, Dallas FBI SAC Robert Gemberling noted that "no action" was taken on finding their sources. ( FBI file # 105-82555, Sec 156, pg. 59 )
Although the FBI was not interested in establishing when and how these blank order forms came into Oswald's possession, private researchers were.
We can thank the work of researcher Paul Hoch for identifying the magazines from which the blank order forms came from.
n her article, Ordering the Rifle, which appeared in the March 1996 edition of Assassination Chronicles, Martha Moyer tells us that researcher Paul Hoch found these "ads" in the National Archives and that they weren't ads at all but blank order forms.
Moyer goes on to say that the blank forms contained the department numbers "425" and "222".
The "Dept. 425" form
According to Moyer, Hoch found that this blank order form had been torn out of the June 1963 American Rifleman magazine. The FBI reported that it had recovered a copy of the June 1963 American Rifleman from the Adrian Alba's Crescent City garage in New Orleans on 11/23. ( CD 75, pg. 265 )
In his report of 10 December 1963, Robert Gemberling notes that on page 59 of the June issue, "an order blank had been torn" from a Klein's advertisement ( CD 7, pg. 204 )
Hoch took the torn page 59 ( FBI # D-15 ) from the magazine and matched it up with the "425" blank found in the Paine garage ( D-85 ).
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The "Dept. 222" form
According to Moyer's article, Hoch found that the "Dept. 222" blank order form came from the August, 1962 edition of Sports Afield magazine. I was able to confirm this with the purchase of a copy. The Klein's ad was right on page 3.
The question then becomes, why did Oswald tear blank order forms out of gun magazines and keep them ? What value did these blank forms have to him without the accompanying ads ?
So far, we've seen Oswald connected with four different magazines:
August 1962 Sports Afield ( from which he tore a blank order form )
February 1963 American Rifleman ( from which he allegedly ordered the rifle )
April 1963 True Adventures ( from which he allegedly ordered the handgun )
June 1963 American Rifleman ( from which he tore a blank order form )
Timewise, all of these magazines would have been available to Oswald during the time he worked at the William B. Reily Co. in New Orleans from May 10th to July 19th, 1963.
Would Oswald have had access to such magazines during this period ? The evidence says yes, because right around the corner from Reily was a garage whose owner was a gun enthusiast and connected with the extremist group, the Minutemen.
The Magazine Man
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Oswald worked at the William B. Reily Coffee Company from Friday, May 10th to Friday July 19th, 1963. ( CE 1896 / 23 H 700-701 )
The owner, Reily, was a supporter of right-wing causes and Oswald was hired into the maintenance dept. as a lubrication technician.
According to witnesses, Oswald spent a lot of time at Crescent City Garage next door ( red arrow ). The garage served as a storage facility and it boasted among it customers, agencies of the US government.
Because the garage had a soft drink machine and Reily did not, the employees would walk over to the garage and purchase soft drinks.
But Oswald didn't spend time there drinking soda. He spent his time looking through gun magazines that the owner Adrian Alba had.
In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Alba described himself as a "gun enthusiast" ( 10 H 220 ), but according to Jim Garrison, Alba was a member of the paramilitary group The Minutemen and even took others to their meetings.
Talking guns, borrowing magazines
According to Alba, he and Oswald had many discussions about guns. He told the Commission that Oswald, "pursued the issue of ordering guns, and how many guns I ever ordered, and how long did it take to get them, and where had I ordered guns from----" ( ibid. )
This seems like a strange behavior for a man who allegedly ordered a rifle and a handgun just a few months earlier.
Alba also told the Commission that Oswald had offered to purchase a couple of rifle from him, but he wasn't interested in selling. ( ibid., pg. 221 )
Unable to purchase a weapon from Alba, Oswald then asked if he could borrow a magazine. Alba testified that Oswald, "borrowed the magazines and requested permission to take one or two off at a time, and kept them anywhere from 3 days to a week, and would make the point of letting me know that he was returning them. And then a few days later, he would ask that he borrow another magazine or two magazines. I would say that there were anywhere from three to five definite occasions I do remember of Lee Oswald asking to take this and that magazine and letting me know that he returned the magazines." ( ibid. pg. 225-226 )
This testimony indicates that Oswald borrowed anywhere from at least 3 to 10 magazines from Alba's garage.
It's during this timeframe in New Orleans that Oswald both shows an interest in ordering rifles through the mail and creates this fictional character, A.Hidell as the head of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. So the question then becomes, are the order forms currently in evidence proof that Oswald really ordered the weapons, or are they examples of his practicing making those orders which were never mailed ?
Evidence that Oswald was practicing filling out order forms
Alba allowed Oswald to borrow some of the magazines. I believe that among them were the February 1963 American Rifleman and April 1963 True Adventures magazine. Oswald practiced filling out the order forms but never cut them out of the magazines. Oswald used his prior Dallas post office box on the forms because he was practicing placing an order. During this practice exercise, he not only used the fictitious name "A. Hidell", but also the fictitious name "D.F. Drittal" as a witness for the handgun "purchase".
There are a couple of clues to support my theory that he was practicing.
The first lies in the mistakes he made on the Seaport Traders form.
https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WH_Vol17_678-ce-790.jpg
The second is that that he tore two additional order forms out of magazines that he returned to the garage. Those blank order forms were later found by Dallas Police among Oswald's belongings in the Paine garage.
They came from the June 1963 American Rifleman and the August 1962 Sports Afield.
https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blanks-found-in-Paine-garage.png
I believe he was practicing ordering guns. My theory is supported by evidence that those order forms were not mailed by Oswald.
Evidence Oswald never mailed the order forms
Several pieces of evidence exist that show that Oswald never mailed the order forms.
Firstly, the time and date of the sale of the money order and the postmark on the envelope conflict with Oswald's worksheet at Jaggers-Childs-Stovall.
Secondly, the fact that the money order was never paid on and contains only Klein's endorsement stamp for deposit.
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Thirdly, the fact that its number was out of sequence for that time period.
Fourthly, Oswald's $10 deposit on the handgun order did not meet Seaport's required 50% deposit for C.O.D. orders.
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Seaport Traders would have never shipped that handgun C.O.D. with only a $10 deposit.
When combined, all of this evidence casts doubt that Oswald mailed the envelope, the money order and the order blanks.
Conclusion
The evidence supports my theory that Oswald was practicing filling out order blanks for guns which he never intended to buy.
Firstly, he asked Adrian Alba how to go about ordering guns. ( 10 H 220 )
Secondly, Oswald borrowed gun magazines from Alba's garage and usually kept them anywhere from 3 days to a week. ( 10 H 225 )
Thirdly, he made obvious mistakes in filling out the order blank for the handgun. He hand wrote in orders for ammunition and a holster, then crossed them out.
Fourthly, when filling out the order form for the rifle, he failed to order ammunition, even though it was listed in the ad. This is key, because the clip came free with the ammunition.
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And the rifle when removed from the TSBD contained a clip.
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So where did he get the clip and ammunition ? The Commission never told us.
Fifthly, the order blank for the handgun came from a magazine that was not on the newsstands on March 12th. Meaning that that order form was filled out after March 15th.
Sixthly, he tore two other order forms out of magazines he borrowed from Alba to use as extras but never filled them out. Those were the two found in the Paine garage.
Seventhly, Oswald was at work when the money order was purchased ( 3-12-63 ), all of his time is accounted for that day, and there is no evidence that he left work.
Eighthly, the money order contains only a stamp for deposit and there are no stamps on it to prove that it went through a payment process.
Ninthly, Seaport Traders required a deposit of 10% for all C.O.D. orders. Oswald's "deposit" of $10 did not meet this criteria and thus Seaport would not have shipped the handgun C.O.D.
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A final word
All of this evidence leads me to believe that Oswald was practicing ordering weapons in New Orleans. The blank Klein's order forms found by the Dallas Police in the Paine garage are significant because they connect Oswald with Kleins ads in magazines from Alba's garage in New Orleans.
The Warren Commission never revealed the source of the magazines that Oswald ordered the weapons from. It never proved that he received them.
I believe that Oswald filled out those order forms, never removed them from the magazines, and returned the magazines to Alba's garage intact.
I believe that the authorities sent someone to the garage after the assassination and retrieved those magazines and the order blanks therein.
And there's evidence to support that theory. Evidence that I will cover in a future essay.