Oswald's signature at the Atomic Energy Museum: Solved?

[Lance Payette]

OK, this Serious and Dedicated Researcher will share with you dilletantes one last effort to bust a factoid that defies easy pooh-poohing, to wit: Oswald’s name on the visitor register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on Friday, July 26, 1963. See the image below, or you can see it more clearly at Bill Kelly's site: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/lee-h-oswald-at-atomic-energy-museum.html. While I do not claim to have reduced this factoid to rubble, I have discovered aspects that I have not seen previously discussed. (I am ignoring all that Judyth Vary Baker says about this subject because I find her tales “vary” preposterous.)

Some background information

1.  On July 26, JFK delivered a TV address to the nation in which he proudly announced the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR. This may or may not be relevant, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

2. On July 26, Oswald, Marina and baby June were living in an apartment on Magazine Street in New Orleans. New Orleans is 596 miles from Oak Ridge, a drive of nearly 9 hours.

3. At about noon on Saturday, July 27, Oswald, Marina and June were driven to Mobile, Alabama, a trip of less than two hours, by Dutz and Lillian Murret, accompanied by their daughter Joyce and her two children. Oswald had been invited by his cousin Eugene Murret to deliver a talk to the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College in Mobile; Eugene’s letter of invitation, dated July 6, specifically mentioned 7 PM on Saturday, July 27 as the time and date for the talk: CE 2648, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2648.pdf. The family stayed in two motel rooms, for which Dutz paid. Lillian testified to the WC that the family left Mobile about 2 PM on Sunday, July 28, and Dutz testified they arrived home Sunday evening.

4. Mobile is 506 miles, a drive of nearly 8 hours, from Oak Ridge. Adding 2 and 3 together, there is no possibility that Oswald was at the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge on July 26.

5.  The American Museum of Atomic Energy opened in Oak Ridge in 1949. It was quite a big deal. You can see historical photos and a discussion here: https://atomicscout.wordpress.com/tag/oak-ridge-atom-industries/. In 1955, the only pre-JFKA year for which I could find data, it reported 89,000 visitors: https://web.ornl.gov/info/reporter/no157/winter_2016.pdf (see page 5). If the museum were open six days a week, that’s close to 300 visitors per day. Keep this figure in mind.

The mysterious visitor register

A. As best I can tell, the Oswald entry was brought to the attention of the FBI by Marvelle Awalt, who telephoned the Dallas FBI office on March 25, 1964. She said she had visited the museum on July 26 and then again more recently. On the recent visit, she looked for her signature from July 26. It was then that she noticed the Oswald entry. CD 897, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11293&relPageId=498. Curiosity #1: On the July 26 sheet, neither Mrs. Awalt’s name nor that of her friend appears at all. Mrs. Awalt said they had signed “the register for individuals from Texas,” as though there were separate registers for each state. Many of the signatures on the July 26 sheet are from Texas, but not all of them. Perhaps there were registers for different areas of the country.

B. The director of the museum, Harold T. Byck (died 1980), provided the register sheet to the FBI’s Oak Ridge office the same day, March 25.  The sheet was sent to the FBI Laboratory on March 26. On April 2, the FBI Laboratory determined that the handwriting was not Oswald’s. CD 835, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11233#relPageId=4 (these minimal entries seem to be all there is).

C. The name immediately above the Oswald entry is that of Franklin Pierce Wood, Jr. (died 1993), a longtime Southern Methodist University official who told the FBI on April 10, 1964 that he had visited the museum on July 26 with a group of other adult students from a seminar they were attending. He had signed the register between 1:15 and 1:45 PM while waiting for a tour to start but didn’t know who had signed below him and didn’t recall Oswald. CD 1066, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11462&relPageId=624. This is almost surely the Wade family, the Texas family responsible for the July 26 entries above Wood’s, and there would seem to be nothing out of the ordinary about them: https://www.croleyfh.net/obituaries/Junior-Calvin-Wade?obId=1176814. Junior Calvin Wade was a longtime Texas educator and presumably at the same seminar as Wood.

D. The entry says “Lee H. Oswald.” Curiosity #2: This is pretty much how Oswald always signed his name unless the document specifically asked for his middle name. Whoever made the entry got this right.

E. Curiosity #3: The FBI Laboratory concluded this was not Oswald’s signature, but it is curiously close. It certainly isn’t obviously not his. Indeed, the CT community has noted the similarity between this signature and the one on the “comrade Kostin” letter that Oswald typed on Ruth Paine’s typewriter on November 9, 1963 and sent to the Soviet embassy in Washington on November 12. CE 15, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=57. The CT community suggests the July 26 entry was actually written by Ruth, but the November letter was Item 48 in the HSCA handwriting panel’s analysis and the signature was determined to be Oswald’s (with the caveat that the panel did not have the original of the letter): https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/html/HSCA_Vol8_0114a.htm. In any event, Ruth was in Irving on July 26; she left with her two children on July 27 to visit relatives in the East. Irving to Oak Ridge is 837 miles, 13+ hours.

F. The address on the July 26 entry is “Dallas Rd, Dallas, Texas.” There actually is a Dallas Road, but it’s a short residential street that goes nowhere. Note that the entry has a comma after Dallas – i.e., “Dallas, Rd” and that the first Dallas is written much more clearly than the second (which looks like "Dalls"). My guess would be that whoever made the entry thought the first column was supposed to be the city and state, wrote “Dallas” with a comma, realized the mistake, and made it “Dallas, Rd” because the whole thing is fictitious anyway.

G. No other handwriting on the sheet appears to be similar to the Oswald entry.

H. The person added “USSR” next to the name and underlined it. This is strongly suggestive of a prank, just in case we don’t get the joke that, yes, this is that Lee Harvey Oswald.

I. We know from the above that the museum had hundreds of visitors daily. Curiosity #4: Looking at the sheet, one would think the museum was empty as a tomb. The sheet has entries from July 21 to July 29, as though only a couple of people were attending daily. As Mrs. Awalt’s statement to the FBI suggests, there had to be numerous visitor registers.

J. The Oswald entry is the last one for July 26. This suggests to me that there may have been a blank line and that the Oswald entry may have been added at a later date.

K. On the Oswald entry, note that “7-26-63” is in a curiously tidy script that doesn’t mesh with the other handwriting on the entry in terms of size or darkness. Oswald consistently spelled out the date on everything he wrote – e.g., July 26, 1963 – although here he presumably would have followed the format of the other entries. Note the similarly small and tidy handwriting of the entry below the Oswald entry. A good guess would be that this person wrote 7-26-63, realized that was the wrong date, left the rest of the line blank, and then made the entry below for 7-27.

L. On July 26, Oswald had done nothing that would have made him newsworthy since his return from the USSR. It is highly unlikely that he would have been in the forefront of anyone’s mind, prankster or otherwise. I can think of no conspiratorial reason for adding Oswald name to the obscure visitor register of an obscure museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

K. The only other comparable document I know about is CE 2480, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2480.pdf, the registration sheet of the hotel in Mexico City where Oswald registered on September 27, 1963. You will note that he signed this “Lee, Harvey Oswald.” The explanation for this is CE 2478, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2478.pdf, his Mexican tourist card. It was issued in the name of “Lee, Harvey Oswald,” even though he signed it Lee H. Oswald.

My tentative conclusion:

The entry was made long after July 26 – indeed, after the JFKA. This is why the entry says Dallas even though Oswald was living in New Orleans on July 26. Someone saw a blank line on the sheet, possibly with the 7-26 date, and added an entry for the then-famous Oswald of “USSR” and “Dallas” fame. It may well have been a museum employee who never imagined it would actually surface thanks to someone like Mrs. Awalt. No other explanation, conspiratorial or otherwise, makes sense to me.

I might add that several years ago I researched the heck out of the factoid about the guest sheet of a restaurant (or bar, I can’t remember which) that “Lee Oswald” had signed in some little town in Wisconsin. A guy named Lance Oswald (eek!) in that very town at that very time went by the name Lee Oswald, and I satisfied myself that he was the source of the signature. Through his pastor and other people who knew him, I begged him to get in touch with me (a reputable attorney and scarcely a crackpot) and simply confirm this. Alas, I never heard a word and didn’t want to be accused of harassment. Such is the reputation of JFKA wackos that he understandably wanted nothing to do with me. Ditto with the National Postal Museum – they were entirely helpful until it became clear my inquiries were JFKA-related.

[Charles Collins]

OK, this Serious and Dedicated Researcher will share with you dilletantes one last effort to bust a factoid that defies easy pooh-poohing, to wit: Oswald’s name on the visitor register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on Friday, July 26, 1963. See the image below, or you can see it more clearly at Bill Kelly's site: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/lee-h-oswald-at-atomic-energy-museum.html. While I do not claim to have reduced this factoid to rubble, I have discovered aspects that I have not seen previously discussed. (I am ignoring all that Judyth Vary Baker says about this subject because I find her tales “vary” preposterous.)

Some background information

1.  On July 26, JFK delivered a TV address to the nation in which he proudly announced the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR. This may or may not be relevant, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

2. On July 26, Oswald, Marina and baby June were living in an apartment on Magazine Street in New Orleans. New Orleans is 596 miles from Oak Ridge, a drive of nearly 9 hours.

3. At about noon on Saturday, July 27, Oswald, Marina and June were driven to Mobile, Alabama, a trip of less than two hours, by Dutz and Lillian Murret, accompanied by their daughter Joyce and her two children. Oswald had been invited by his cousin Eugene Murret to deliver a talk to the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College in Mobile; Eugene’s letter of invitation, dated July 6, specifically mentioned 7 PM on Saturday, July 27 as the time and date for the talk: CE 2648, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2648.pdf. The family stayed in two motel rooms, for which Dutz paid. Lillian testified to the WC that the family left Mobile about 2 PM on Sunday, July 28, and Dutz testified they arrived home Sunday evening.

4. Mobile is 506 miles, a drive of nearly 8 hours, from Oak Ridge. Adding 2 and 3 together, there is no possibility that Oswald was at the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge on July 26.

5.  The American Museum of Atomic Energy opened in Oak Ridge in 1949. It was quite a big deal. You can see historical photos and a discussion here: https://atomicscout.wordpress.com/tag/oak-ridge-atom-industries/. In 1955, the only pre-JFKA year for which I could find data, it reported 89,000 visitors: https://web.ornl.gov/info/reporter/no157/winter_2016.pdf (see page 5). If the museum were open six days a week, that’s close to 300 visitors per day. Keep this figure in mind.

The mysterious visitor register

A. As best I can tell, the Oswald entry was brought to the attention of the FBI by Marvelle Awalt, who telephoned the Dallas FBI office on March 25, 1964. She said she had visited the museum on July 26 and then again more recently. On the recent visit, she looked for her signature from July 26. It was then that she noticed the Oswald entry. CD 897, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11293&relPageId=498. Curiosity #1: On the July 26 sheet, neither Mrs. Awalt’s name nor that of her friend appears at all. Mrs. Awalt said they had signed “the register for individuals from Texas,” as though there were separate registers for each state. Many of the signatures on the July 26 sheet are from Texas, but not all of them. Perhaps there were registers for different areas of the country.

B. The director of the museum, Harold T. Byck (died 1980), provided the register sheet to the FBI’s Oak Ridge office the same day, March 25.  The sheet was sent to the FBI Laboratory on March 26. On April 2, the FBI Laboratory determined that the handwriting was not Oswald’s. CD 835, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11233#relPageId=4 (these minimal entries seem to be all there is).

C. The name immediately above the Oswald entry is that of Franklin Pierce Wood, Jr. (died 1993), a longtime Southern Methodist University official who told the FBI on April 10, 1964 that he had visited the museum on July 26 with a group of other adult students from a seminar they were attending. He had signed the register between 1:15 and 1:45 PM while waiting for a tour to start but didn’t know who had signed below him and didn’t recall Oswald. CD 1066, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11462&relPageId=624. This is almost surely the Wade family, the Texas family responsible for the July 26 entries above Wood’s, and there would seem to be nothing out of the ordinary about them: https://www.croleyfh.net/obituaries/Junior-Calvin-Wade?obId=1176814. Junior Calvin Wade was a longtime Texas educator and presumably at the same seminar as Wood.

D. The entry says “Lee H. Oswald.” Curiosity #2: This is pretty much how Oswald always signed his name unless the document specifically asked for his middle name. Whoever made the entry got this right.

E. Curiosity #3: The FBI Laboratory concluded this was not Oswald’s signature, but it is curiously close. It certainly isn’t obviously not his. Indeed, the CT community has noted the similarity between this signature and the one on the “comrade Kostin” letter that Oswald typed on Ruth Paine’s typewriter on November 9, 1963 and sent to the Soviet embassy in Washington on November 12. CE 15, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=57. The CT community suggests the July 26 entry was actually written by Ruth, but the November letter was Item 48 in the HSCA handwriting panel’s analysis and the signature was determined to be Oswald’s (with the caveat that the panel did not have the original of the letter): https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/html/HSCA_Vol8_0114a.htm. In any event, Ruth was in Irving on July 26; she left with her two children on July 27 to visit relatives in the East. Irving to Oak Ridge is 837 miles, 13+ hours.

F. The address on the July 26 entry is “Dallas Rd, Dallas, Texas.” There actually is a Dallas Road, but it’s a short residential street that goes nowhere. Note that the entry has a comma after Dallas – i.e., “Dallas, Rd” and that the first Dallas is written much more clearly than the second (which looks like "Dalls"). My guess would be that whoever made the entry thought the first column was supposed to be the city and state, wrote “Dallas” with a comma, realized the mistake, and made it “Dallas, Rd” because the whole thing is fictitious anyway.

G. No other handwriting on the sheet appears to be similar to the Oswald entry.

H. The person added “USSR” next to the name and underlined it. This is strongly suggestive of a prank, just in case we don’t get the joke that, yes, this is that Lee Harvey Oswald.

I. We know from the above that the museum had hundreds of visitors daily. Curiosity #4: Looking at the sheet, one would think the museum was empty as a tomb. The sheet has entries from July 21 to July 29, as though only a couple of people were attending daily. As Mrs. Awalt’s statement to the FBI suggests, there had to be numerous visitor registers.

J. The Oswald entry is the last one for July 26. This suggests to me that there may have been a blank line and that the Oswald entry may have been added at a later date.

K. On the Oswald entry, note that “7-26-63” is in a curiously tidy script that doesn’t mesh with the other handwriting on the entry in terms of size or darkness. Oswald consistently spelled out the date on everything he wrote – e.g., July 26, 1963 – although here he presumably would have followed the format of the other entries. Note the similarly small and tidy handwriting of the entry below the Oswald entry. A good guess would be that this person wrote 7-26-63, realized that was the wrong date, left the rest of the line blank, and then made the entry below for 7-27.

L. On July 26, Oswald had done nothing that would have made him newsworthy since his return from the USSR. It is highly unlikely that he would have been in the forefront of anyone’s mind, prankster or otherwise. I can think of no conspiratorial reason for adding Oswald name to the obscure visitor register of an obscure museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

K. The only other comparable document I know about is CE 2480, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2480.pdf, the registration sheet of the hotel in Mexico City where Oswald registered on September 27, 1963. You will note that he signed this “Lee, Harvey Oswald.” The explanation for this is CE 2478, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2478.pdf, his Mexican tourist card. It was issued in the name of “Lee, Harvey Oswald,” even though he signed it Lee H. Oswald.

My tentative conclusion:

The entry was made long after July 26 – indeed, after the JFKA. This is why the entry says Dallas even though Oswald was living in New Orleans on July 26. Someone saw a blank line on the sheet, possibly with the 7-26 date, and added an entry for the then-famous Oswald of “USSR” and “Dallas” fame. It may well have been a museum employee who never imagined it would actually surface thanks to someone like Mrs. Awalt. No other explanation, conspiratorial or otherwise, makes sense to me.

I might add that several years ago I researched the heck out of the factoid about the guest sheet of a restaurant (or bar, I can’t remember which) that “Lee Oswald” had signed in some little town in Wisconsin. A guy named Lance Oswald (eek!) in that very town at that very time went by the name Lee Oswald, and I satisfied myself that he was the source of the signature. Through his pastor and other people who knew him, I begged him to get in touch with me (a reputable attorney and scarcely a crackpot) and simply confirm this. Alas, I never heard a word and didn’t want to be accused of harassment. Such is the reputation of JFKA wackos that he understandably wanted nothing to do with me. Ditto with the National Postal Museum – they were entirely helpful until it became clear my inquiries were JFKA-related.

Well done Lance. After reading your synopsis with all the evidence suggesting that this was nothing more than a prank and showing conclusively that LHO couldn’t have been there at that time, it is quite easy for me to Pooh Pooh this one!

[Tommy Shanks]

Fantastic, Lance. Wish someone could cross-post this at the Ed Forum so we can watch them read and weep.

[Michael T. Griffith]

OK, this Serious and Dedicated Researcher will share with you dilletantes one last effort to bust a factoid that defies easy pooh-poohing, to wit: Oswald’s name on the visitor register of the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on Friday, July 26, 1963. See the image below, or you can see it more clearly at Bill Kelly's site: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/lee-h-oswald-at-atomic-energy-museum.html. While I do not claim to have reduced this factoid to rubble, I have discovered aspects that I have not seen previously discussed. (I am ignoring all that Judyth Vary Baker says about this subject because I find her tales “vary” preposterous.)

Some background information

1.  On July 26, JFK delivered a TV address to the nation in which he proudly announced the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR. This may or may not be relevant, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

2. On July 26, Oswald, Marina and baby June were living in an apartment on Magazine Street in New Orleans. New Orleans is 596 miles from Oak Ridge, a drive of nearly 9 hours.

3. At about noon on Saturday, July 27, Oswald, Marina and June were driven to Mobile, Alabama, a trip of less than two hours, by Dutz and Lillian Murret, accompanied by their daughter Joyce and her two children. Oswald had been invited by his cousin Eugene Murret to deliver a talk to the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College in Mobile; Eugene’s letter of invitation, dated July 6, specifically mentioned 7 PM on Saturday, July 27 as the time and date for the talk: CE 2648, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2648.pdf. The family stayed in two motel rooms, for which Dutz paid. Lillian testified to the WC that the family left Mobile about 2 PM on Sunday, July 28, and Dutz testified they arrived home Sunday evening.

4. Mobile is 506 miles, a drive of nearly 8 hours, from Oak Ridge. Adding 2 and 3 together, there is no possibility that Oswald was at the Atomic Energy Museum in Oak Ridge on July 26.

5.  The American Museum of Atomic Energy opened in Oak Ridge in 1949. It was quite a big deal. You can see historical photos and a discussion here: https://atomicscout.wordpress.com/tag/oak-ridge-atom-industries/. In 1955, the only pre-JFKA year for which I could find data, it reported 89,000 visitors: https://web.ornl.gov/info/reporter/no157/winter_2016.pdf (see page 5). If the museum were open six days a week, that’s close to 300 visitors per day. Keep this figure in mind.

The mysterious visitor register

A. As best I can tell, the Oswald entry was brought to the attention of the FBI by Marvelle Awalt, who telephoned the Dallas FBI office on March 25, 1964. She said she had visited the museum on July 26 and then again more recently. On the recent visit, she looked for her signature from July 26. It was then that she noticed the Oswald entry. CD 897, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11293&relPageId=498. Curiosity #1: On the July 26 sheet, neither Mrs. Awalt’s name nor that of her friend appears at all. Mrs. Awalt said they had signed “the register for individuals from Texas,” as though there were separate registers for each state. Many of the signatures on the July 26 sheet are from Texas, but not all of them. Perhaps there were registers for different areas of the country.

B. The director of the museum, Harold T. Byck (died 1980), provided the register sheet to the FBI’s Oak Ridge office the same day, March 25.  The sheet was sent to the FBI Laboratory on March 26. On April 2, the FBI Laboratory determined that the handwriting was not Oswald’s. CD 835, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11233#relPageId=4 (these minimal entries seem to be all there is).

C. The name immediately above the Oswald entry is that of Franklin Pierce Wood, Jr. (died 1993), a longtime Southern Methodist University official who told the FBI on April 10, 1964 that he had visited the museum on July 26 with a group of other adult students from a seminar they were attending. He had signed the register between 1:15 and 1:45 PM while waiting for a tour to start but didn’t know who had signed below him and didn’t recall Oswald. CD 1066, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=11462&relPageId=624. This is almost surely the Wade family, the Texas family responsible for the July 26 entries above Wood’s, and there would seem to be nothing out of the ordinary about them: https://www.croleyfh.net/obituaries/Junior-Calvin-Wade?obId=1176814. Junior Calvin Wade was a longtime Texas educator and presumably at the same seminar as Wood.

D. The entry says “Lee H. Oswald.” Curiosity #2: This is pretty much how Oswald always signed his name unless the document specifically asked for his middle name. Whoever made the entry got this right.

E. Curiosity #3: The FBI Laboratory concluded this was not Oswald’s signature, but it is curiously close. It certainly isn’t obviously not his. Indeed, the CT community has noted the similarity between this signature and the one on the “comrade Kostin” letter that Oswald typed on Ruth Paine’s typewriter on November 9, 1963 and sent to the Soviet embassy in Washington on November 12. CE 15, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1133#relPageId=57. The CT community suggests the July 26 entry was actually written by Ruth, but the November letter was Item 48 in the HSCA handwriting panel’s analysis and the signature was determined to be Oswald’s (with the caveat that the panel did not have the original of the letter): https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/html/HSCA_Vol8_0114a.htm. In any event, Ruth was in Irving on July 26; she left with her two children on July 27 to visit relatives in the East. Irving to Oak Ridge is 837 miles, 13+ hours.

F. The address on the July 26 entry is “Dallas Rd, Dallas, Texas.” There actually is a Dallas Road, but it’s a short residential street that goes nowhere. Note that the entry has a comma after Dallas – i.e., “Dallas, Rd” and that the first Dallas is written much more clearly than the second (which looks like "Dalls"). My guess would be that whoever made the entry thought the first column was supposed to be the city and state, wrote “Dallas” with a comma, realized the mistake, and made it “Dallas, Rd” because the whole thing is fictitious anyway.

G. No other handwriting on the sheet appears to be similar to the Oswald entry.

H. The person added “USSR” next to the name and underlined it. This is strongly suggestive of a prank, just in case we don’t get the joke that, yes, this is that Lee Harvey Oswald.

I. We know from the above that the museum had hundreds of visitors daily. Curiosity #4: Looking at the sheet, one would think the museum was empty as a tomb. The sheet has entries from July 21 to July 29, as though only a couple of people were attending daily. As Mrs. Awalt’s statement to the FBI suggests, there had to be numerous visitor registers.

J. The Oswald entry is the last one for July 26. This suggests to me that there may have been a blank line and that the Oswald entry may have been added at a later date.

K. On the Oswald entry, note that “7-26-63” is in a curiously tidy script that doesn’t mesh with the other handwriting on the entry in terms of size or darkness. Oswald consistently spelled out the date on everything he wrote – e.g., July 26, 1963 – although here he presumably would have followed the format of the other entries. Note the similarly small and tidy handwriting of the entry below the Oswald entry. A good guess would be that this person wrote 7-26-63, realized that was the wrong date, left the rest of the line blank, and then made the entry below for 7-27.

L. On July 26, Oswald had done nothing that would have made him newsworthy since his return from the USSR. It is highly unlikely that he would have been in the forefront of anyone’s mind, prankster or otherwise. I can think of no conspiratorial reason for adding Oswald name to the obscure visitor register of an obscure museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

K. The only other comparable document I know about is CE 2480, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2480.pdf, the registration sheet of the hotel in Mexico City where Oswald registered on September 27, 1963. You will note that he signed this “Lee, Harvey Oswald.” The explanation for this is CE 2478, https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2478.pdf, his Mexican tourist card. It was issued in the name of “Lee, Harvey Oswald,” even though he signed it Lee H. Oswald.

My tentative conclusion:

The entry was made long after July 26 – indeed, after the JFKA. This is why the entry says Dallas even though Oswald was living in New Orleans on July 26. Someone saw a blank line on the sheet, possibly with the 7-26 date, and added an entry for the then-famous Oswald of “USSR” and “Dallas” fame. It may well have been a museum employee who never imagined it would actually surface thanks to someone like Mrs. Awalt. No other explanation, conspiratorial or otherwise, makes sense to me.

I might add that several years ago I researched the heck out of the factoid about the guest sheet of a restaurant (or bar, I can’t remember which) that “Lee Oswald” had signed in some little town in Wisconsin. A guy named Lance Oswald (eek!) in that very town at that very time went by the name Lee Oswald, and I satisfied myself that he was the source of the signature. Through his pastor and other people who knew him, I begged him to get in touch with me (a reputable attorney and scarcely a crackpot) and simply confirm this. Alas, I never heard a word and didn’t want to be accused of harassment. Such is the reputation of JFKA wackos that he understandably wanted nothing to do with me. Ditto with the National Postal Museum – they were entirely helpful until it became clear my inquiries were JFKA-related.

This makes no sense to me at all. First off, you have no evidence that there was a blank line in the visitor register for July 26 or that the entry was made after the assassination. You don't want to admit there was a concerted effort to impersonate and frame Oswald before the assassination.

Two, why oh why oh why would anyone have wanted to create a fake Oswald entry in the Oak Ridge visitor register after the assassination? Why? How would that be a "prank"?

Three, you glaze over the fact that the entry's handwriting is close to Oswald's handwriting and that the entry duplicates how Oswald usually wrote his name when his middle name was not requested. Figure the odds that a "prankster" would "just happen" to get that right.

[Tommy Shanks]

None of the other details matter in light of Lance offering conclusive evidence that Oswald himself could not have physically been present at Oak Ridge on the day question.

[Lance Payette]

This makes no sense to me at all. First off, you have no evidence that there was a blank line in the visitor register for July 26 or that the entry was made after the assassination. You don't want to admit there was a concerted effort to impersonate and frame Oswald before the assassination.

Two, why oh why oh why would anyone have wanted to create a fake Oswald entry in the Oak Ridge visitor register after the assassination? Why? How would that be a "prank"?

Three, you glaze over the fact that the entry's handwriting is close to Oswald's handwriting and that the entry duplicates how Oswald usually wrote his name when his middle name was not requested. Figure the odds that a "prankster" would "just happen" to get that right.

Well, let's turn your Conspiracy Logic back on you: If the conspirators were interested in "impersonating and framing Oswald" before the JFKA, precisely HOW would adding his signature to the obscure visitor register at the obscure Atomic Energy Museum in Tennessee on July 26, 1963 - a place he could not physically have been on that date - and then leaving the signature to be discovered by some Texas housewife, by pure happenstance, eight months later have furthered that objective?

Hmmmm?

If the conspirators were interested in "impersonating and framing Oswald," why would they have written a road, city and state where he was not actually living on July 26, 1963 Why would they have entered "USSR" beside his name - does this seem like something the actual Oswald would have done on a visit to a museum?

Hmmmm?

Even by the lenient standards of Conspiracy Logic, this makes no sense at all. The conspirators would have to have been drooling morons.

"Look, men, we need to impersonate and frame this Oswald patsy before the assassination. Bugsy, get over to the Atomic Energy Museum in Tennessee and write his name and address on the visitor register. No, I don't know where he's living now. Who the hell cares? Just make something up. Just so they know who we're impersonating and framing, add something about Russia if there's room."

"How will that impersonate and frame him, Big Louie? I don't get it."

"That's why I'm the brains of this outfit, Bugsy. Just do as you're told."

Here in the real world, we attempt to make reasonable inferences from the available evidence. I have noted (i) the fact that the Oswald entry is the last 7-26 entry; (ii) the dissimilarity in handwriting between the date on the Oswald entry and the remainder of the entry; (iii) the similarity in handwriting between the date on the Oswald entry and the 7-27 entry immediately below it; (iv) the fact that Oswald had done precisely nothing in the year since his return from the USSR to put him in the forefront of anyone's mind on 7-26; (v) the fact that on 7-26 Oswald was living in New Orleans, not Dallas, and had not been living in Dallas for more than two months; (vi) the fact that "Dallas, Rd" suggests an error by whomever made the entry and that, even the intent was to refer to Dallas Road, this is a very short residential street that has no connection whatsoever with Oswald; (vii) the connection between Oswald and both "Dallas" and "USSR" was far more prominent after the JFKA than on 7-26; and (viii) the way "USSR" was added next to the name and underlined pretty much screams "PRANK!" and not a serious effort at "impersonating and framing."

Ergo, a post-JFKA prank is a pretty reasonable inference - and far more reasonable, certainly, than your Conspiracy Logic.

I cheerfully noted that "Lee H. Oswald" is how Oswald typically signed his name and that the signature is at least not absurdly dissimilar to his. Would samples have been in the public domain by early 1964? I don't know - possibly. Or perhaps this is just pure coincidence. In my Big Louie and Bugsy scenario, they would have had to know these things - but not where he was living. Not only was he not in Dallas, they didn't even have an actual address for when he had been living in Dallas earlier in the year (hence "Dallas, Rd"). Is that plausible? If you theory is that this was not Big Louie and Bugsy but an actual Oswald impersonator - perhaps the Harvey & Lee thing? - the same objections apply: The impersonator knows how to more-or-less fake Oswald's signature, but he has no clue where he's living and no clue that it would be physically impossible for him to be at the museum on 7-26; he just flits around the country adding Oswald's signature to obscure museums in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and obscure restaurants in Hubertus, Wisconsin because this will somehow "impersonate and frame Oswald."

Ya think? This all makes sense to you?

My guess would be, this was a prank for the self-amusement of no one but the goof who did it and perhaps someone who was with him or her at the time ("Watch this, Shirley! Hee hee hee."). That's why my guess would be someone affiliated with the museum. There was surely no expectation that it would be discovered by Mrs. Awalt eight months later and became a JFKA Mystery in the fertile (i.e., well-fertilized) minds of CTers.

Be sure to get back to us if you have something to say that Actually Makes Sense.

(FWIW, your intrepid researcher has determined that the signature on the line below Oswald is that of the Turners of 3020 Canal Ave., Groves, Texas. This is an exceedingly humble home in a rather tiny town on the far east side of Texas, 4+ hours south of Dallas. There are lots of Turners in Groves. The most recent obituary at that address is Randy, but he was too young to be visiting the museum in 1963. I can't quite make out the name on the register. The Turners seem to be humble, blue-collar folks, which is all the more reason to suspect they either plotted the JFKA or were at least traversing the country impersonating Oswald.)