Reclaiming History (293 page)

Dr. Einspruch told the HSCA he felt Odio’s emotional problems were “situational.” In addition to the obvious problem of her husband leaving her to fend for herself and four children, Einspruch said Odio was not doing well economically, “she was an immigrant, her parents were imprisoned…she had all the difficulties one might anticipate a displaced person would have.”
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The HSCA, after a thorough evaluation of all the evidence, stated that “the committee was inclined to believe Sylvia Odio” to the extent that “three men did visit her apartment in Dallas prior to the Kennedy assassination and identified themselves as members of an anti-Castro organization,” and that “one of these men at least looked like Lee Harvey Oswald and was introduced to Mrs. Odio as Leon Oswald.”
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As is normally not the case with those who are lying, the HSCA noted that Odio was consistent with her story over a period of many years, with only minor details changing.
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T
he most important question, of course, is the following: Even if we make the assumption that Odio is being truthful, as the HSCA concluded and the Warren Commission implied, did she mistakenly believe the Anglo among the three men was Oswald? As discussed earlier in this book, there is something phenomenally distinctive about each human’s physiognomy. So much so that, as mentioned earlier, no two people (other than identical twins) look almost exactly like each other. So much so that even animals recognize people they’ve seen before. Though there are factors that militate against identification, such as poor vision, distance, darkness and shadows, obstructions, oblique views, and so on, after you see and talk to someone close-up for several minutes, when you see that person again, particularly within a short period of time, a bell of recognition immediately goes off. This is why, if Odio is being truthful, it is extremely difficult to disregard her identification of Oswald.

The Warren Commission showed Odio several photos of Oswald. With two, she pointed out differences between the photo and Oswald. In one, Oswald looked shaven, she said, and on the night at her apartment, Oswald had a “little mustache” and he “did not look shaved.” In another, she said that although everything else was the same, the lips “did not look like the same man.” Also, “I am not too sure of that picture. He didn’t look like this…he was more smiling than in this picture.”
Yet, even with these two photos of Oswald
, she identified him as being the one in her apartment that night. And with other photos of Oswald, she made an unqualified identification. Asked whether one photograph of Oswald “was the man who was in your apartment,” she jocularly stated that “if it is not [Oswald], it is his twin.” Also, when shown New Orleans television (WDSU) footage of street scenes of Oswald in August of 1963, she identified Oswald, and added that “he had the same mustache.” When asked, “When did you first become aware of the fact that this man who had been at your apartment was the man who had been arrested in connection with the assassination?” she replied, “It was immediately.” “As soon as you saw his picture?” “Immediately, I was so sure.” When asked once again by Warren Commission counsel, “Do you have any doubts in your mind after looking at these pictures that the man that was in your apartment was…Lee Harvey Oswald?” she again replied, “I don’t have any doubts.”
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*

N
o one examining the evidence in the Odio matter can feel too sanguine about the conclusion he reaches, yet I feel that the slight preponderance of evidence is that Oswald was, in fact, the American among the three men who visited Odio. I say that for several reasons. One is that there is, as trial lawyers like to say, that unmistakable “ring of truth” to Odio’s testimony. An imperfect analogy is a U.S. Supreme Court justice’s observation about obscenity, that he couldn’t define it but he knew it when he saw it. Most of all, of course, is her positive identification of Oswald from photos and film. Moreover, her physical description of height and weight matches Oswald. The men telling her that they had “just come from New Orleans” and Leopoldo telling Odio that the American had been a marine, and that he was “kind of nuts,” all fit Oswald precisely. And the name Leon Oswald is clearly too close to be a coincidence. Unless Odio had fabricated this entire story, and had gotten these identifying details on Oswald through media accounts, these details speak loudly for the fact that the American was indeed Oswald.

The hypothesis of fabrication is difficult to square with the facts here. Odio certainly can’t be accused, for instance, of wanting to attach herself, for publicity purposes—as so many people do—to a high-visibility public event. To the contrary, she contacted neither the authorities nor the media about her belief that Oswald had visited her. Rather, she deeply feared her being associated with the incident. The only person she is sure she told, when he called her on the day after the assassination, was her psychiatrist.
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In this vein, when CBS’s Martin Phillips contacted her to be on a Dan Rather CBS television special on the assassination, she refused.
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It should be further noted parenthetically that Odio subsequently declined Mark Redhead’s further entreaties that she testify at the London trial, even though she was aware that the trial would be shown on national television in the United States and in many foreign countries, including England, France, Germany, and Australia. It simply stands to reason that if Odio had fabricated the aforementioned details about her visits that evening, this would be the work of someone who was intent on getting the story out. But, as we have seen, Odio did not do this. Nor has she ever attempted to profit, in any way, from her story, the first time she even granted a television interview being for a PBS
Frontline
special
thirty years later
.

Also, and perhaps most importantly, if Odio had fabricated her story, it is almost inconceivable that she would have said that before the assassination that Oswald was in the presence of two Cuban members of JURE, the anti-Castro group formed in Miami whose founder, Manolo Ray, had very close ties to Odio’s parents. In fact, as indicated earlier, the parents cofounded, with Ray, the MRP, some of whose members became the original nucleus for JURE.
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Indeed, Odio, herself a member of JURE, was actively involved in the anti-Castro movement and “desperate” to do anything she could to free her mother and father from their imprisonment in Cuba under Castro. She would never have thought that putting the presidential assassin in the company of JURE members before the assassination would be helpful to any of her dreams. In fact, why would Odio be trying to implicate
any
anti-Castro group in Kennedy’s assassination? Only by Odio saying that Oswald appeared at her door with
pro
-Castro Cubans would Odio or any other Cuban exile have any hope of igniting a U.S. response that would topple the Cuban dictator. The fact that the story she told could only, if at all, be prejudicial to her interests is circumstantial evidence she was telling the truth. Adding further credibility to Odio’s story is her telling her father and psychiatrist,
prior
to the assassination, of the visit by the three men. The fact that she did not mention the name Leon to her father, and may or may not have to her psychiatrist, is inconsequential, since prior to the assassination the name of the American who visited her that night had no significance. When her psychiatrist, Dr. Einspruch, called her on the day of or the day after the assassination, he recalls she did mention “Leon” to him as being Oswald.
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Finally, there is corroboration for Sylvia Odio’s story in the form of her younger sister, Annie, who answered the door when the three men came to the apartment. Annie Odio, without the emotional and psychiatric baggage that some feel corrodes the credibility of Sylvia Odio, also positively identified Oswald as being the American and one of the three men. When she first saw Oswald on television on the afternoon of the assassination, her first thought, she said, was, “My God. I know this guy, and I don’t know from where! But I’m not going to tell anybody because they’re going to think I’m crazy.” When Annie spoke to Sylvia later that day and Sylvia reminded her of the three men at the door, Annie then remembered where she had seen Oswald.
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My belief in Odio’s story, though I’m not prepared to take it to the bank, and though it admittedly does not rise to the status of certainty or even beyond a reasonable doubt, necessarily constitutes a rejection of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Odio’s story is not believable because Oswald could not have been at her door when she said he was. The distinction between literary fiction and nonfiction comes to mind. It is said that one advantage an author of fiction has is that he can give wings to his imagination, whereas in nonfiction one is restricted to the facts. However, to be good fiction a story should be somewhat believable. But nonfiction doesn’t have to be believable. If it happened, whether it is believable or not is irrelevant. The likelihood is that the event Odio described did, in fact, take place, most probably on the evening of September 24 or 25, 1963. In an April 28, 1964, letter to J. Edgar Hoover, Rankin, general counsel for the Warren Commission, wrote that “the only time [Oswald] could have been in Odio’s apartment appears to be the nights of September 24 or 25, 1963, most likely the latter.”
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With respect to September 24, the Warren Commission concluded
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that “under normal procedures” Oswald could not have received his Texas unemployment compensation check in New Orleans, which was dated and mailed on Monday, September 23, 1963,
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before 5:00 a.m. on September 25, 1963, a Wednesday (see earlier text). However, Marina told the FBI that Oswald received his unemployment check every Tuesday.
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In fact, the Warren Commission itself said that Oswald cashed the previous week’s check at the Winn-Dixie Store in New Orleans on Tuesday, September 17, 1963.
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If, then, Oswald had received his next check on Tuesday, September 24, it’s possible he cashed it at the Winn-Dixie Store between 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on that day, not, as believed, the following day, Wednesday, September 25.

If that happened, Oswald and his two Cuban friends could have departed New Orleans by automobile during the daytime on September 24 and reached Sylvia Odio’s door in Dallas, 530 miles away (approximately an eight-hour drive at 65 mph), by nine o’clock that evening, September 24. In fact, Marina told the Warren Commission that Oswald told her he intended to leave New Orleans the very next day after her departure on September 23, 1963, that is, September 24.
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(There was a conflicting story, however, that Oswald was seen leaving his apartment in New Orleans on the evening of September 24 carrying two suitcases,
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which, if true, would have made it impossible for him to have been in Dallas that evening.)

Odio testified that “they kept mentioning they had come to visit me at such a time of night…because they were leaving on a trip.” She said they added, “We may stay until tomorrow, or we might leave tomorrow night.”
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As we know, the next day Leopoldo called Odio after she returned from work (late afternoon or early evening) and they had the conversation about Oswald, Kennedy, and Castro. If this was the late afternoon or early evening of September 25, and Oswald was still with the Cubans, this would have given Oswald adequate time to drive thereafter with the Cubans from Dallas to Houston (at 240 miles away, approximately a three-and-a-half-hour drive at 65 mph), where Oswald could have then caught Continental Trailways bus number 5133 at 2:35 a.m. on September 26 bound for Laredo, Texas. This September 24, 1963, scenario would also be compatible with Mrs. Twiford’s belief that she sensed Oswald was calling her “from the Houston area,” somewhere “between seven and ten o’clock” in the evening. (If Oswald and the Cubans were at Odio’s door on September 25, however, since the incident took place at 9:00 p.m. in Dallas, he could not have called Twiford from the Houston area that evening.)

It’s pure speculation, but since we know the purpose of Oswald’s trip to Mexico was to reach Cuba, he could have easily conned the Cubans into believing that he was seeking to go to Cuba to further the Cubans’ goals, which they erroneously believed were the same as his. Believing Oswald was furthering their interests, they may have agreed to drive him as far as Houston. If they did drive Oswald to Houston, almost due south from Dallas, and if they were going to return to New Orleans, New Orleans would have virtually been straight east from Houston for them. Driving Oswald from Houston to Laredo, however, would have been completely out of the Cubans’ way.

The meeting at the door could also have happened on the evening of September 25. If it did, when Leopoldo called Odio after she came home from work on the day after the meeting at the door—which would be the early evening of September 26—Oswald couldn’t have still been in Dallas with his two Cuban friends (we know that on the evening of September 26 Oswald was on a bus, in Mexico, traveling to Mexico City), and would have had to have gotten to Houston on the evening of September 25 without their assistance.

Since the weight of the evidence in the Odio case is that the event Odio described did, in fact, take place, the countervailing evidence prompting the inference that her story is not believable should yield. It yields in this case, in my view, by accepting the probability that the seemingly airtight case the Warren Commission fairly and effectively constructed against Odio’s story is somewhere defective, be it in the documentary evidence(e.g., as to the earliest time Oswald could have received his unemployment check in New Orleans) or the recollection of witnesses as to the dates and times they saw or spoke to Oswald (e.g., the affidavit of Mr. and Mrs. McFarland and Mrs. Twiford, etc.), which would not be uncommon at all.

It bears repeating that the Warren Commission conceded that “between the morning of September 25 and 2:35 a.m. on September 26” Oswald’s whereabouts were “not strictly accounted for.”