The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee

by Paul R. Gregory

Overview

The closest friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and his Soviet wife Marina upon the couple’s arrival in Texas breaks a sixty-year silence with a riveting story of his time with JFK’s assassin and his candid assessment of the murder that marked a turning point in our country’s history.




Merely two hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, television cameras captured police escorting a suspect into Dallas police headquarters. Meanwhile at the Universityof Oklahoma, watching the coverage in the student center, Paul Gregory scanned the figure in dark trousers and a white, V-neck tee shirt and saw the bruised and battered face of Lee Harvey Oswald. Shocked, Gregory said, “I know that man.” In fact, he knew Oswald and his wife Marina better than almost anyone in America.

After sixty years, Paul Gregory finally tells everything he knows about the Oswalds and how he watched the soul of a killer take shape.

 Identified by the FBI as a “known associate of LHO,” Gregory soon faced interrogations by the Secret Service. Later he would testify before the Warren Commission. Here, in The Oswalds, he offers the intimate details of his time spent with Lee and wife Marina in their run-down duplex on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth, Texas, and his admission into the inner world of a young marriage before candidly assessing the murder that marked a turning point in our country’s history. His riveting recollection includes memories both casual and deadly serious, such as the dinner at his parents’ house introducing Marina to the “Dallas Russians,” a front-yard incident of spousal abuse, and a further rift in the marriage when he exposed to Marina that Oswald was not the dashing, radical intellectual whose Historic Diary would be a publishing sensation. And Gregory also gives a fascinating account of his father’s role as an eyewitness to history, serving as Marina’s translator and confidante in the first four days after the assassination.

As a scholar and skilled researcher, Gregory debunks the vast array of assassination conspiracy theories by demonstrating that Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone—that the Oswald he once called a friend had the motive, the intelligence, and the means to commit one of the most shocking crimes in American history.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635768213
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	154,202
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Paul Gregory is a Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a pioneer in the study of Soviet and Russian economics. A student of the fabled Harvard Russian Research Center, he received his PhD from Harvard in 1969. His textbook on the Russian economy was used to teach more than two generations of students. In addition to his scholarly work, he has been an active blogger on Russian affairs for Forbes, The Hill, and other media platforms. He lives in Palo Alto, California. 

Table of Contents

Part I The Assassination

1 I Know That Guy 3

2 My Turn for Questioning 15

3 Lee Is Dead 28

4 Moscow Panics 32

Part II Oswald in a Worker's Paradise

5 A Suicide Attempt 39

6 Seeking a Wife 45

7 Three Years Behind the Iron Curtain 57

Part III The Gregory Connection

8 Oswald Returns 67

9 Seeking Pete 69

10 "Paul, Meet Lee and Marina Oswald" 74

11 My Russian Tutor 79

12 Lee Lurks 83

13 Hanging Out 93

14 The "Dallas Russians" 104

15 Abuse 109

16 Disagreements on Cuba 112

17 Under Surveillance 117

18 From Friends in Minsk 121

19 A Would-Be Pharmacist 125

20 Dinner with Russians 128

21 "Capitalism-All for the Rich!" 135

22 A $35 Paycheck 138

Part IV Lee Wreaks Havoc

23 As the Good Samaritans Look On 145

24 My Mistake 149

25 "Outing" Lee 153

26 Shooting General Walker 158

27 The Persecuted Radical 164

28 A Visit to Dealey Plaza for Myself 172

Part V Eyewitness to History

29 Pete Gets the News 177

30 The Oswald Women 179

31 "Marina, Get a Hold on Yourself" 184

32 A Wary Marina 191

33 Where Is the Money for Little Me? 197

34 The FBI and Secret Service Clash 201

35 Marguerite's Bayonet 209

36 Wiretaps and Winding Down 214

37 Defending "the Boy" 217

38 The Gregorys' Christmas 226

Part VI Lone Assassin?

39 Did Oswald Act Alone? 231

40 Oswald's Motive 238

41 Intelligence and Means? 244

42 Soul of a Killer 249

43 Why JFK? 252

Epilogue 255

Acknowledgments 259

Sources 261

Index 279

About the Author 287

Editorial Reviews

10/10/2022

Gregory (Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives), a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, examines in this disappointing memoir the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the summer of 1962, a Texas employment agency sent Oswald to the office of Gregory’s father, who taught Russian at the Fort Worth public library, for certification that he was fluent in Russian. Later, Gregory’s father introduced his 21-year-old son to Oswald’s Russian wife, Marina, who tutored him in Russian to help him pass a college minor. Gregory visited the couple at their Fort Worth apartment from June through mid-September, where he witnessed Oswald’s need for control: “Lee kept Marina in isolation.” Though Gregory last saw the couple in the fall of 1962, a year before the assassination, he suspected that Oswald murdered Kennedy because he wanted “to become a part of history.” Gregory’s narrative, which leans on his personal observations to assess Oswald’s character and motives, leaves important questions unanswered; for example, he never explains why Oswald didn’t confess in the two days between his arrest and his murder by Jack Ruby, if his motive was to become infamous. This thin account adds little to a much scrutinized subject. Agent: Peter Bernstein, Bernstein Literary. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Nearly sixty years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, conspiracy theories abound. In his revelatory book, Paul Gregory offers a compelling, credible account of why we should reject them and go ‘no further’ than Oswald himself. Gregory actually knew Oswald, one of the very few people who can stake that claim, and gives us a clear-eyed, often chilling portrait of a demented loner with the mind and motives of a killer.”

—Mark K. Updegrove, author of Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency   

 

“An invaluable record of life with JFK’s assassin. Insightful.”

—David Pietrusza, author of 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon—The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies 

 

“The Oswalds offers the most vivid portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald that has ever appeared. Could Oswald really have acted alone? Paul Gregory, who was the assassin’s friend—really, his only friend—puts that question to rest. An astonishing account—and a major contribution to our history.”

—Peter Robinson, the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the host of Uncommon Knowledge 

 

“At last, a book, deeply felt and remembered, by someone who really knew Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina before the assassination of President Kennedy. Paul Gregory makes a powerful case that Oswald acted alone, an inadequate man wanting to make a name for himself in history. A true cracker of an account.”

—Robert Service, author of Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin 

 

“Paul Gregory’s compulsively readable memoir is filled with shocking revelations, among them that when the twenty-one-year-old Universityof Oklahoma student Paul Gregory first started taking Russian language lessons from the twenty-one-year-old Marina Oswald, there was always the same six-month-old Time magazine on prominent display in the extremely modest duplex. The cover photo was Time’s Man of the Year for 1962: President John F. Kennedy. Paul Gregory relates that Lee Harvey Oswald had carried this old copy with him when he and Marina emigrated from the Soviet Union to Dallas. No novelist would construct such a scene. History is unbelievable.”

—John Batchelor, host of CBS Eye on the World    

  

“Some sixty years ago, an insignificant school dropout who had failed at almost everything he had tried to do, Lee Harvey Oswald, brought his Carcano rifle to the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas and became one of the most infamous criminals in history.  Ever since then, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 has been engulfed in a morass of falsehoods and ludicrous conspiracy theories. This book finally sets the record straight about Oswald, building on the earlier seminal work of Priscilla Johnson McMillan. . . . Paul Gregory, who later became one of the world’s leading experts on the economy of the former Soviet Union, happened to know Oswald (and later Oswald’s Soviet-born wife, Marina) exceedingly well.  In this book, Gregory brings to bear his authorial skills and academic expertise in showing how the pathetic young man he had known in Texas could have committed such a monstrous crime.  Gregory’s book offers a definitive personality sketch of Oswald and a great deal of evidence that should put an end, once and for all, to the notion that shadowy forces intent on murdering the president would have enlisted such an unreliable and tempestuous loser. . . . Gregory’s book will stand the test of time.”

—Mark Kramer, Director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University   

 

“An engrossing psychological portrait based on Gregory’s time as Oswald’s only friend. There are many conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. Gregory shows that the key to what happened was completely banal—the disturbed mind of one insignificant individual."

—David Satter, author of Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union 

"An informative view of a killer’s marriage and lethal motivations."

—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2022-09-10
An inside look at a troubled relationship reveals truths about a notorious crime.

Some six decades after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Gregory offers his reflections on the time he spent with Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife, Marina, shortly after their arrival from the Soviet Union. Refuting prominent conspiracy theories that have implicated various foreign and domestic powers, the author makes a convincing case that Lee acted alone. “The army of assassination buffs are wasting their time on missing bullets, Oswald doppelgangers, and Soviet, Cuban, or Mafia assassinations,” he writes. “We need to look no further than Oswald himself.” Focusing on the interactions he observed between Lee and Marina, Gregory documents his impressions of Lee’s capacity for violence, desperate need for recognition, and uncanny effectiveness at manipulating others in order to achieve his warped goals. The author is particularly effective in countering the notion that Lee was unintelligent and incapable of plotting the assassination without the help of others. “We misjudge Oswald by focusing on his working-class attire and simple manner of speech,” writes Gregory, “all the while not noticing his street-smart intelligence, craftiness, and wiliness.” A clear portrait emerges of a disturbed individual who had the motivation and means to carry out an attack intended to make him famous. Ultimately, Gregory doesn’t provide any groundbreaking revelations about the Oswalds’ marriage or who else may have been involved in plotting the assassination. Works by such authors as Priscilla McMillan, Norman Mailer, Gerald Posner, and Thomas Mallon have already provided a thorough understanding of the dynamics of Lee and Marina’s relationship and the serendipitous events that gave an ambitious deviant a chance to make his mark on history. Nevertheless, Gregory delivers a lucid, insightful summary of these topics, and this book will serve as an excellent introduction to more in-depth considerations.

An informative view of a killer’s marriage and lethal motivations.

Kirkus Reviews

Paul Gregory offers a compelling, credible account of why we should reject [conspiracy theories] and go no further than Oswald himself. [Gregory] gives us a clear-eyed, often chilling portrait of a demented loner with the mind and motives of a killer.”

author of Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presi Mark K. Updegrove

An invaluable record of life with JFK’s assassin.”

author of 1960 David Pietrusza