Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile

[James H. Fetzer]

THE DISAPPEARING WITNESS: THE WOMAN IN THE CAR (WAS JUDYTH VARY BAKER)

NOTE: This is a nice example of the process of making a person who should be of enormous
interest "disappear" from official records, but where diligent research can uncover the history
of the sequence, as occurs here, beginning with the Clay Shaw trial and ending with the HSCA.
This is a nice illustration why depending on “official records” is unlikely to reveal the whole story.

THE MISSING WITNESS

During the trial of Clay Shaw, a man named Edwin Lea McGehee testified that a man resembling
Lee Harvey Oswald came into his barbershop in late August 1963 for a haircut, that he was able
to remember him because he had few strangers as patrons, and that a woman was driving him
in "a battered old car". The state acknowledged that it could not identify here and make it clear
that, in particular, it was not alleging that this woman was Marina Oswald (now Marina Oswald
Porter). The state wished it could have identified her.


Here's an extract from the trial transcript:



McGehee also testified, "The car might have been dark-green--but the make of it I just couldn't
remember, it was an old car, real old." It "resembled a Kaiser or Frasier or an old Nash." "There
was a woman sitting on the front seat", he recalled, "and in the back seat" he also noticed what
"looked like a [baby] bassinet". He suggested that Oswald [who was looking for a job] pay a visit
to State Representative Reeves Morgan, who worked as a guard at the East Louisiana State Mental
Hospital, who testified that Oswald visited him at his home outside of Jackson for 20 or 25 minutes,
and told him of his expertise as an electrician. It was late August or early September. Not called
was Morgan's daughter, Mary, a student at LSU in 1967, who told the New Orleans District Attorney
that "when Oswald was in the house talking with dad, she happened to walk towards the screen door
and sat on the porch and just casually noticed that there was a dark colored car parked under the tree
in front of the house." It was "an old car and the model was somewhere in the Fifties." She remembered
"seeing a woman in the car". Her and her father's testimony both appears to have been taken in 1967.



THE HSCA PUTS THE WOMAN BEHIND THE WHEEL

On 19 January 1978, Mr. McGehee was interviewed by Bob Buras and Patricia Orr of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations at his home in Jackson about the testimony that he had presented on 6
February 1969. He reiterated that Oswald had come in for a haircut in late August 1963 and that "a
woman in a battered old car had driven up at about the same time that Oswald had arrived. He did
not see Oswald get out of or into the car. McGehee was unable to remember the type of car that the
woman had been driving. A big black car pulled away shortly after Oswald left. He did not know if
Oswald got into it." Because of his "clean cut appearance", after Oswald explained to him that he
"really needed a job", McGehee referred him to his friend, Morgan Reeves, who worked at the East
Louisiana State Hospital, which might be looking for someone to work in its electrical department:



THE HSCA MAKES MARY MORGAN’S “WOMAN IN THE CAR” VANISH

The same staff members had also interviewed Morgan Reeves just a few hours earlier on the same
day. "He verified that his statements made at the Clay Shaw trial, which [they] went over with him,
were accurate and truthful" and that "Sometime in 'probably the latter part of August' Oswald came
to Morgan's home to talk with him about getting a job at East Louisiana State Hospital. He "believes
Oswald drove up to his home or had been driven to his home by somebody, because he had heard the
car come up the driveway just before Oswald came to the door. Unfortunately, [either] Mr. Morgan or
his daughter, who was present at the time, did not see the car or the possible driver."



STATEMENT BY JUDYTH VARY BAKER:

Multiple reports that LHO could drive were rejected by the Warren Commission, for Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald--who was under duress--consistently stated that LHO could not drive. But other reports from the Irving, Texas-based barber (Mr. Sasheen), the barber in Jackson, LA (Lea McGehee), and Mary Morgan, the daughter of Texas State Representative Reeves Morgan, among others, suggested that Oswald in fact could drive.

The HSCA was deeply concerned about these inconsistencies. There was no doubt that at least some witnesses had seen Marina and Lee Oswald together, with Lee driving. Judyth Vary Baker was also seen by two people -- Lea McGehee and Mary Morgan -- during the course of the second trip LHO made to the East Louisiana State [Mental] Hospital. That trip concerned the testing of a bioweapon for use against Fidel Castro. She was with him in the car when he had his hair cut by Lea McGehee and when Mary Morgan saw her.

In 1969 testimony, a woman closely associated with Oswald and who was also with him the trip to the hospital was with him. Lee drove the car. By 1978, however, that woman was now described as driving the car herself and was no longer closely associated with Oswald in one report and in the other, she had disappeared entirely from the record. The woman whom Garrison wanted identified became an inconvenient, disappearing woman by the time the HSCA investigators re-examined the witnesses. That woman was me.