After receiving Mrs. Cole's letter from the Secret Service, the FBI located and interviewed her son, William Henry Timmer (Mrs. Cole had divorced and remarried when William was young). In a 7-page FBI report Timmer, who was two years younger than LHO (Timmer was born 5/14/1941), indicated that he meet Oswald in the City Park in Stanley, North Dakota in the summer of 1953. Oswald introduced himself to Timmer as 'Harv' or "HARVEY Oswald." This is the first known occasion where where the young, Russian-speaking youth, who often spouted Communist propaganda while growing up as a teenager, identified himself as "HARVEY." The second occasion would occur six months later, in January 1954, in Myra DaRouse's homeroom class at Beauregard Jr. High School in New Orleans.

HARVEY Oswald spent a lot of time with Timmer during the next two months of the summer of 1953. They went swimming at the reservoir, rode their bicycles at the city park, and visited the small library. HARVEY told Timmer that he had been all over the country. Timmer was impressed by this kid "from the big city" who talked of gang fights in New York City and of making weapons with razor blades stuck in potatoes. HARVEY carried a pamphlet in his back pocket and on one occasion showed it to Timmer and remarked, "I'll bet you've never seen anything like this". It was a pamphlet on Marxism. Where would young Oswald get such a pamphlet? From his father and his uncle in New York City, who were, according to the woman who spoke with Mrs. Tippit, "Hungarians and spent all of their time on Communist activities."

While young William Henry Timmer and Oswald were riding their bicycles, Timmer's mother, Alma Cole, saw Marguerite Oswald (the impostor) in a dress shop that was owned by her cousin, Francis Jelesed. Francis, who also saw Mrs. Oswald at the Jelesed’s restaurant, described her as loud and said that she wanted everyone to know that she was from Texas. She described Mrs. Oswald as having grey hair, glasses, and no more than 5’3” tall. Alma Cole remembered that Mrs. Oswald wanted people to call her son “Lee Harvey” rather than just “Lee.” Mrs. Cole recalled that her son William was with Oswald when he (Oswald) stole a book, written by Karl Marx, from a small library in a room of the Memorial Building in Stanley. The book was Das Kapital, which (HARVEY) Oswald showed to Palmer McBride several years later in New Orleans. Following his "defection" to the Soviet Union in 1959, HARVEY Oswald told UPI news reporter Aileen Mosby the story of his discovering Das Kapital in the library in Stanley, North Dakota.

In 2000, researcher Gary Severson published three detailed articles in the The Fourth Decade magazine examining the question of Oswald in North Dakota.  John Delane Williams was his co-author for the first two articles.  The researchers interviewed a number of N.D. residents, one of whom seemed to remember someone posing as Marguerite Oswald.  Near the end of Part Two, the researchers wrote: “Thus we could conclude that an Oswald look-alike was in Stanley [North Dakota] in the summer of 1956 (or 1955), who was very suspicious in behavior, with no visible means of support, and who said he was hired by the government to seek persons to go to Cuba.”

The three articles can be read in their entirety at the following links:

Oswald in North Dakota?  Part One


Oswald in North Dakota?  Part Two


Oswald in North Dakota?  Part Three


In an additional piece in The Fourth Decade, Mr. Severson examined in detail whether a retirement film for a Life Magazine executive contained a tribute to the organization’s efforts to cover up the true facts of the assassination of JFK.  The article can be read at this link:

Three Gunshots at Life?