Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (34 page)

After any crime that makes news, anywhere in the world, police reports flood in from people who claim to have seen or have information on the chief suspect. Some turn out to be genuine cases of mistaken identity, others mischievous. The Kennedy assassination sparked hundreds of Oswald sightings, most of which were eventually discounted. Some were of potential significance, either because of the apparent integrity of the witness reporting or because the detail provided appeared credible. Most of those sightings, though, were also eventually discarded, like jigsaw pieces that get into the wrong box.
9

In light of all the information now available, however, a recurring feature of such “
Oswald” reports deserves attention. Several of them stated that a man accompanying “Oswald” had looked Hispanic—perhaps Cuban. In some of the reports, the reference was specific.

A former New Orleans immigration inspector, testifying years later to the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “absolutely certain that he interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in a New Orleans jail cell” before April 1, 1963—before the authentic Oswald even arrived in New Orleans that year. The inspector was sure of the time frame and sure, too, that the man had been “claiming to be a Cuban alien.” Having established that this was a false claim, he pursued the matter no further.
10

In the second week of October in Dallas, just weeks before the President was killed, according to a Dallas citizen, a man described as “identical” to Oswald was present at a local meeting of the DRE, the anti-Castro group that crops up so frequently in this story. Also attending, apparently, was the extreme right-wing General Walker, whom the real Oswald had allegedly tried to kill several months earlier.

A mere five days before the assassination a citizen of Abilene, two hundred miles west of Dallas, picked up a note left for one of his neighbors, Pedro González. It was, the citizen was to recall, an urgent request to call one of two Dallas telephone numbers, and the signature read “Lee Oswald.” González appeared nervous when handed the note, and minutes later was seen using a public telephone. Previously, the citizen said, he had seen a man resembling Oswald at González’s apartment, accompanied by a second, older American from New Orleans. González, who headed a local anti-Castro group called the Cuban Liberation Committee, was known to be a friend of Antonio de
Varona, leader of the CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council.
11

De Varona had, within days of the Abilene incident, stayed at the home of a close relative of a woman whose Oswald sighting troubled official investigators and remains a focus of research to this day. The sighting is troubling because—if it occurred as reported—it linked Oswald indisputably to the anti-Castro movement, to CIA operatives, and to New Orleans.
12

The Odio Incident

It had been evening in Dallas, in late fall, when someone rang the doorbell at Apartment A, Crestwood Apartments. Inside, Silvia and Annie Odio were not expecting visitors. Annie went to the door first, peered out without releasing the night chain, then called to her elder sister. Silvia, glancing through the crack, saw that there were three men standing there—two Hispanics and an American. Though they were strangers, the way they introduced themselves—showing knowledge of her family and an associate—led her not to turn them away. The conversation that followed marked the start of a tantalizing puzzle. The Odio incident has been called “the proof of the plot.”

Silvia and Annie Odio came from a wealthy upper-class family that had long been prominent in revolutionary politics in Cuba. Their father, Amador, supported Fidel Castro in the underground fight to overthrow the Batista dictatorship, hoping that the outcome would be democratic government in his country. When Castro delivered communism, however, Amador had begun working against the new regime. Arrest followed, for harboring on his estate a man wanted for involvement in a plot to kill Castro. By 1963, Odio and his wife were political prisoners, their family scattered in exile.
Silvia, twenty-six years old, and Annie, seventeen, had joined the growing exile community in Dallas.

There, following in her father’s footsteps, Silvia had become politically active and joined the group Junta Revolucionaria (JURE). Though its members opposed Castro and communism, many in exile politics considered the group dangerously leftist. The men who came to the Odio sisters’ apartment in fall 1963 said they were members of JURE, which was why she agreed to talk to them.

Although Odio was to tell her story repeatedly to the authorities, she gave no press interviews until 1978, when she spoke with the author. Then, and on numerous occasions later, she relived a frightening experience. The author also interviewed her sister.

It had swiftly become clear during the conversation at the Odio apartment that one of the two Hispanics was the group’s leader. He was tall, looked about forty, and said his “war name” was Leopoldo. The second Hispanic, who was shorter and wore glasses, was addressed as “Angelo” or “Angel.” Like Leopoldo, he had an olive complexion and could have been either Cuban or Mexican. The third, much younger, man was American. He stood quietly by, saying little or nothing, as Leopoldo explained why they had come.

They had traveled from New Orleans, he said, and the three men did look weary and unshaven, as if after a long trip. As well as being JURE members, Leopoldo asserted, they were working with the blessing of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile. The men, who knew the underground name of Silvia’s father, mentioned details about events in Cuba that only an insider was likely to know. They were evidently familiar with recent plots to assassinate Castro. Leopoldo and his comrades were trying to raise funds for anti-Castro operations, he said, and wanted
Silvia’s help—specifically, in translating fund-raising letters to U.S. businessmen into English.

Impressed though she was by the visitors’ knowledge, Silvia Odio felt uneasy, leery of dealing with people she did not really know. She told the visitors she wanted no part in a campaign of violence, and the discussion ended inconclusively. The men left in their red car, supposedly to begin another long journey.

All the time the men had been at the apartment, the young American had said hardly a word. He had merely stood watching and listening, in Odio’s words, “sort of looking at me to see what my reaction was, like somebody who is evaluating the situation.” Eight weeks later, Silvia—and her sister Annie—were to react with fear and bewilderment when they saw pictures of the man arrested for shooting President Kennedy. The American in the group that came to their door, Silvia would say she recalled with a jolt, had been introduced as “Oswald”—“Leon Oswald.” She had a further, sinister, reason to remember him.

Leopoldo, who had introduced “Oswald” when the men came to the door, had telephoned Silvia less than forty-eight hours later. He again brought up the request for assistance, but also seemed keen to discuss something else. “What,” he asked, “did you think of the American?” Remembering how quiet the American had been, Silvia said she had not really formed an opinion. Leopoldo then made a number of remarks that Silvia found chilling at the time and more so, obviously, later.

He said of Oswald: “Well, you know, he’s a marine, an ex-marine, and an expert marksman. He would be a tremendous asset to anyone, except that you never know how to take him.” As she listened, Silvia Odio wondered what she was expected to say. Then Leopoldo went on: “He’s kind of loco, kind of nuts. He could go either way. He
could do anything—like getting underground in Cuba, like killing Castro.” Then: “The American says we Cubans don’t have any guts. He says we should have shot President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. He says we should do something like that.”

That was all. Leopoldo appeared to have little else to say, and the conversation ended. Silvia Odio never heard from him again. She had felt even during the phone call, she told the author, that there was something wrong, something sinister and deliberate about it. “Immediately,” she said, “I suspected there was some sort of scheme or plot.”

Silvia was at work when, just weeks later, news broke that the President had been shot in the city in which she and her sister lived. Her head filled with frightening thoughts. When broadcasts confirmed that President Kennedy was dead, her boss decided all the staff could go home. Silvia, who was prone to fainting fits, passed out on her way to the parking lot and was taken to a hospital.
13

Across the city, her sister Annie had watched the President drive past, waving to spectators, before the shooting. That afternoon, when she saw Oswald’s picture on the television, her first thought was, “My God, I know this guy and I don’t know from where… . Where have I seen this guy?” Soon, on being told her sister had been taken ill, Annie visited Silvia in the hospital—and at once said that she knew she had seen Oswald somewhere before but at first could not quite place him. Silvia, who had begun to cry, reminded her of the three men who had visited their apartment. She told Annie, too, about the disturbing call from Leopoldo.

There was a television in the hospital room, and now Silvia, too, saw pictures of Oswald. “Annie and I looked at one another and sort of gasped,” she told the author, “She said, ‘Do you recognize him?’ She said, ‘It is the same guy, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yes, but do not say anything.’ ”

The
sisters were frightened, worried that their encounter with “Oswald” and his two companions had somehow placed them in danger. With their parents far away in Cuba in Castro’s prisons, they felt very much alone. Silvia suffered from a physical condition that frequently caused blackouts when she was under stress—as when she learned of the assassination. Annie was a scared girl of seventeen. They decided to say nothing to the authorities of their disquieting experience, which only became known purely by chance, when another Odio sister mentioned it to an American friend.

A series of casual conversations finally brought the incident to the attention of the FBI, which at first expressed little interest. The matter was not pursued with vigor until the following summer, when the Warren Commission’s work was well advanced. When there was a serious follow-up, it emerged that there was every reason to believe the sisters’ account—not least when it emerged that she had discussed it with another witness
before
the assassination. Evidence was available, too, that she had reported the incident—again before the assassination—in a letter to her father in Cuba. Coupled with the fact that not only Silvia but Annie recalled the visit and said the mysterious American had resembled Oswald, the information was impossible to ignore.

“Mrs. Odio has been checked out thoroughly …” Warren Commission attorney David Slawson was to write. “The evidence is unanimously favorable, both as to her character and reliability and as to her intelligence.” His colleague Wesley Liebeler wrote—as to whether Oswald was at Odio’s home—“Odio may well be right. The Commission will look bad if it turns out that she is.” To Slawson, Odio was “the most significant witness linking Oswald to anti-Castro Cubans.”

There was a problem, though, one that the
Warren Commission never resolved. While the actual date of Odio’s encounter was never pinned down, investigation focused on the period September 24 and 29—in particular the middle of that time frame. This was a period when the authentic Oswald was ending his stay in New Orleans and setting off for Mexico City. He could not have been at Odio’s apartment, by any account of his movements, unless he had been flitting around the country not by bus—the way he reached Mexico City—but by some other very speedy form of transport. There was no evidence that Oswald had traveled by commercial airline.

Nevertheless, the Odio evidence remained troubling. In the dying days of the Commission, Chief Counsel Lee Rankin wrote to FBI Director Hoover, “It is a matter of some importance to the Commission that Mrs. Odio’s allegations either be proved or disproved.” On September 21, 1964, as the Warren Report was being finalized, Hoover reported that his agents had traced a man named Loran Hall, a “participant in numerous anti-Castro activities,” who said he had been in Dallas at the relevant time and had visited Silvia Odio along with two associates—Lawrence Howard and William Seymour. Hall said one of his friends
looked like
Oswald, and Hoover seemed satisfied that it was this resemblance that had led to all the fuss. On that basis, a last-minute passage was inserted in the Warren Report, implying that Odio’s account had been a matter of mistaken identity.

The FBI, however, had for a while withheld a crucial fact from the Commission. Faced with denials by his companions that they had been at the Odio sisters’ apartment, Hall had recanted his story. Then, when the FBI belatedly came clean—after the Warren Report had gone to press—the Commission, in turn, failed to include a correction in the volumes of evidence that accompanied the
Report.

Analysis done in recent times, though, suggests a solution to the knotty question of when the Odios’ Oswald encounter occurred, and how it may have fit into Oswald’s known movements. In her first conversation with the FBI, Silvia Odio had herself dated the visit to the apartment as having occurred in “late September or early October.” In his 2008 book on the assassination, the historian David Kaiser suggested the date of the visit may well have been as late as October 3—a day Oswald had been not en route
to
Mexico City but arriving back in Dallas.

If Professor Kaiser is right, the possible implications of the anti-Castro trio’s visit to Silvia Odio—and the pointed statement to her that “Leon Oswald” believed that President Kennedy should be killed—becomes additionally ominous. For the local press had reported only days earlier that a presidential visit to Texas—including Dallas—was planned for the third week of November.

Kaiser may indeed be right in thinking that the Odio incident occurred on October 3. Hotel records showed that Loran Hall and two male companions were in Dallas that day. Hall, whose “explanation” of the Odio matter—shortlived though it was—served to relegate the matter to the Warren Commission’s trivia pile, deserves a closer look. He turned up again in 1967, when the New Orleans aspects of the assassination case were aired publicly, and again muddied the waters with information that led in useless directions. In 1977, he gave evidence to the Assassinations Committee only with great reluctance. When he eventually did so, on a basis that ensured that he could not be prosecuted as a result of anything arising from his testimony, he maintained that he had never claimed to have visited Silvia Odio. In its final Report, the
Committee characterized his original tale as an “admitted fabrication.”