Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile

[James H. Fetzer]

JUDYTH OFFERS MORE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE EVIDENCE FOR "HARVEY & LEE"

NOTE: In an astute email to Judyth, Pamela observes that Armstrong begins and ends
with the thesis that there were two LHO's, rather than objectively examining evidence
and then allowing readers to weigh and evaluate. That is circular reasoning, and it
complicates any discussion, especially something as complex as this. She is right, of
course, as we are in the process of discovering. Here is more about his "evidence".

JUDYTH REPLIES:

JIM: Notice that Armstrong ONLY refers to the alleged "Oswalds" as "HARVEY" and
"LEE", so be sure you bear that in mind in discussing his work.

JUDYTH: ==yes==

JIM: It is an interesting psychological ploy to induce a presumption that there
ACTUALLY WERE two of them, which our new discoveries seriously undermine.

JUDYTH: ==And it's the same-old, same-old that Lifton uses. Repeat something over and
over and the reader, after a hundred pages, believes it. I might add, repeat ANYTHING
often enough and SOMEBODY will adhere to it.==

JIM: I want to nail down this "missing tooth" fiasco by Armstrong, where he has Lillian
Murret paying for "MARGUERITE" to take LEE to the dentist, when she was HARVEY'S
AUNT, yet according to Armstrong, HARVEY HAD ALREADY MOVED AWAY. This is a
colossal blunder that undermines the integrity of his whole story.

JUDYTH: ==Lillian Murret gives us a clear picture that her sister returned with the same
"Lee" she -- Lillian -- had always known and also loved.==

On page 123 of Vol. VIII, Lillian Murret tells us that her sister, Marguerite, came to New
Orleans with Lee from New York and lived for 2 or 3 weeks with the Murrets.

Mrs. Murret.
Well, that must have been 2 weeks, 3 weeks. She was looking for a place to stay, and Robert
was coming out of the service, and so that's when she found this place over on Exchange Alley
before Robert came in, and she met Robert at my house, and they went right over to the
apartment at Exchange Alley that she had found, but Robert left. He wouldn't stay in New Orleans.

<snip>

Mr. Jenner.
What was Lee doing during that time?

Mrs. Murret.
He was going to school.

Mr. Jenner.
When they came back from New York and stopped at your home and lived with you temporarily,
did he go to school?

Mrs. Murret.
Yes; he did. That's when she enrolled him at Beauregard Junior High.

Jenner reminded Mrs. Murret that Marguerite and Lee had at first lived elsewhere before finding the
apartment at Exchange Place, and it becomes clear that the arrival of Robert from the service is
linked to Lillian's memory about Exchange Alley: Robert didn't like it there and moved to Texas,
which he considered his home territory.

Mr. Jenner.
Now, tell me about Lee Harvey Oswald during the couple of weeks that he spent at your house.
Did you notice any change in him from the time you had known him previously? He would now have
been about 3 years older; isn't that right?

Mrs. Murret.
Yes, sir; like I said, they had just come from New York, and she had told me about him not
wanting to go to school, but she enrolled him over at Beauregard School, which wasn't too far from
my home. It's a school ...

pg. 124

Mrs. Murret.
....on Canal Street, and it's just a few blocks after you get off of the bus from Lakeview, so she
enrolled him there, and she gave him my address for the school, and I think, or I'm quite sure, that
while he was there he was having trouble with some of the boys at the school.

Lillian then describes the problems Lee H. Oswald had at school, and she mentions that he's called
"Lee." she says he didn't start trouble, others did. Here we see the pasaage that Armstrong says
shows the person is "Harvey" -- called a "Yankee" and sitting in the back of the bus.

Within this passage (underlined) we see that Lillian gave Marguerite money to take Lee to the dentist.
In her version, the tooth did not get knocked out, but this may be a separate incident:

Mrs. Murret.
Well, I can only tell you what I was told. I don't know anything myself that happened, but I can
tell you what he told me, or what he told her of what happened. He said that they were calling him
"Yankee," and so forth, names like that, and this one time he got into the bus and he sat in a seat
in the Negro section, which he didn't know, because he had come from New York, and he didn't
know that they sat in special seats, so he just got on the bus and sat down where he could.'

==Armstrong makes an error at this point, saying that the "New York" "Harvey" just didn't know
about the segregated buses, as "Lee" -- raised in the "south" -- would. But he's wrong. Lee had lived
in Texas, prior to moving to New York, and while there were some segregation issues there, the Ft.
Worth area did not have a significant "black" population, as did New Orleans, but, rather, a Hispanic
population of concern. ==

"The bus stopped in front of the school, and you can hardly get a seat anyway, so he just ran to the
bus and jumped on and got a seat, like I said, in the Negro section, and the boys jumped him at the
end of the line. They jumped on him, and he took on all of them, and of course they beat him up,
and so he came home, and that was the end of that. He didn't say anything to me about that.

"Another time they were coming out of school at 3 o'clock, and there were boys in back of him and
one of them called his name, and he said, "Lee," and when he turned around, this boy punched him
in the mouth and ran, and it ran his tooth through the lip, so she had to go over to the school and
take him to the dentist, and I paid for the dentist bill myself, and that's all I know about that, and
he was not supposed to have started any of that at that time."

"Now, at the Beauregard School at that time, they had a very low standard, and I had no children
going there and never did. My children went to Jesuit High and Loyola University, but they did have
a very bad bunch of boys going to Beauregard and they were always having fights and ganging up
on other boys, and I guess Lee wouldn't take anything, so he got in several scrapes like that."

==We do not even have to go that far into it, folks.

When LEE returns to New Orleans, he is supposed to be "Harvey." Yet his aunt always
calls him "Lee." Everybody in New Orleans calls him "Lee". Nobody says, "Welcome back,
Harvey, long time no see." Nobody ever, ever says, "He asked me to call him Harvey."

Just one teacher said that. Upon her elderly shoulders rests the entire thesis that "Harvey"
attended Beauregard. It does not suffice that she mentions Voebel as "Harvey's" friend.
Do you see any record of a "Harvey" at Beauregard?

I don't--show me one in Armstrong's book. The witness clearly says "Harvey" lived where
"Lee" lived. So we are supposed to believe that the "two Oswalds" both attended the same
junior high school and even lived at the same address?

Is Armstrong's "song and dance" even remotely credible?==

JVB