LAURA KITTRELL MEETS
THE TWO OSWALDS

In 1955 Harvey Oswald briefly attended Warren Easton High School in New Orleans. Prior to withdrawing from school Harvey left a note, dated October 7, 1955, with the school that read as follows (note the spelling and grammatical errors that are consistent throughout his life):

To whom it may concern,

Because we are moving to San Diego in the middle of this month Lee must quit school now. Also, please send him any papers such as his birth certificate that you may have. Thank you.

Sincirely

Mrs. M. Oswald

A few days later Harvey quit high school and then left New Orleans for California. Additional information about his move to California comes from Texas Employment Commission employee Laura Kittrell, who interviewed both of the Oswalds in October, 1963 in Dallas. She remembered they looked remarkably similar. 

Laura interviewed Harvey Oswald on October 3, two weeks before he began work at the Texas School Book Depository on October 16. She described him as neat in appearance and articulate. Oswald told her that he had come up from New Orleans. He told her his first job was selling shoes (Dolly Shoe, 1955). In 1956 he moved to Encino, California and worked 6 months a motorscooter messenger boy (ETI Realty) before he joined the Marines. Her curiosity was aroused when Oswald told her he had lived in Russia and had a Russian wife. She noticed the woman with him was about to have a baby (Rachel Oswald was born on Oct 20) and remembered her as being quite short and wearing no makeup. During this interview, Laura asked Oswald what he liked best about Russia. He replied "The opera". On October 15 Harvey applied for work at the TSBD and was hired the following day.

A week later (Oct 22), while Harvey was working at the TSBD, another "Oswald" showed up for an interview. But Mrs. Kittrell realized this Oswald was not the same person she had previously interviewed. She realized these two young men were very, very similar--but different people. Mrs. Kittrell said, "the man I remember as (Harvey) Oswald, and the man I remember as the Teamster were much alike in size, shape and outline, generally, there was a marked difference between them in bearing and manner. The man I remember as Oswald was a trim, energetic, compact, well-knit person, who sat on the edge of a chair (Harvey). The man I remember as the Teamster, was sprawled over his chair and was rather messy looking (Lee)".

-- John Armstrong, 1997

Mrs. Kittrell gave a thirty-page statement to the U.S. Attorney in Dallas. Her statement was hand carried to the Warren Commission by the Secret Service. But her 30-page statement and subsequent 90-page manuscript in which she discusses her interviews of the two Oswalds, were ultimately ignored and suppressed.

-- John Armstrong, 1999

Following the assassination Laura Kittrell telephoned and wrote to the FBI about her meeting with Oswald. The FBI finally got around to interviewing Mrs. Kittrell on June 4, 1965, nearly a year after the Warren Report was published. And then, 30 years later in 1994, the U.S. government finally got around to allowing the American people access to her statement. Shown below is the bottom of page 8 and the top of page 9 of a ten-page July 18, 1978 memo from the HSCA's Gaeton Fonzi to Blakey.

According to an FBI report located at the National Archives by Mr. Armstrong in May 1999, the FBI had tracked Oswald's return trip to the U.S. from Mexico City, indicating that Oswald took a La Frontera bus from Mexico City and arriving at the border town of Nuevo Laredo on the morning of 10/3/63. Noting that Oswald also applied for unemployment compensation at the Texas Employment Commission that same day, the report found it "highly improbable that Oswald could have traveled" the 426 miles "from Laredo, Texas to Dallas, Texas on 10/3/63, in time to appear personally" before Laura Kittrell at the Texas Employment Commission. The agent who wrote the report was obviously unaware that two people were sharing the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald.

See the actual FBI report discussed above.