JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate > JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate

The Lone-Gunman Theory: An Extremely Fragile House of Cards

<< < (5/5)

Michael T. Griffith:

--- Quote from: Michael T. Griffith on January 23, 2026, 01:25:15 PM ---Still more examples:

-- If Silvia and Annie Odio were not mistaken, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

In September 1963, two Hispanics using the "war names" of Leopoldo and Angelo visited the apartment of Silvia Odio in Dallas, Texas. Leopoldo and Angelo were accompanied by an American whom they introduced as "Leon Oswald." Silvia's sister Annie was in the apartment at the time and witnessed the meeting. "Leon" the American said virtually nothing. Leopoldo did most of the talking. He wanted Silvia, whose father had been deeply involved in anti-Castro efforts, to help in the anti-Castro cause. Silvia declined because she did not want to be involved with a group that would commit violence. The three men sat a few feet from Silvia, so she got an up-close prolonged look at them.

Within 48 hours after the visit, Leopoldo phoned Silvia and told her that the American, "Leon Oswald," was an expert marksman and a former Marine. He said Oswald believed the Cubans should have shot JFK after the Bay of Pigs:

"He said that the Cubans, we did not have any guts because we should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs." (10 HSCA 27)

Disturbed by such talk, Silvia told Annie about the troubling phone call.

Silvia Odio wrote to her father about the encounter and also told several of her friends about it.

Soon after the assassination, Silvia and Annie independently recognized Oswald on TV as the "Leon Oswald" who had visited Silvia's apartment two months earlier. They were both very frightened and worried about their safety. They feared that the two anti-Castro Cubans and the American had been involved in JFK's death.

David Slawson, the WC attorney who interviewed Silvia Odio, said Silvia was "checked out thoroughly” and that “the evidence is unanimously favorable, both as to her character and reliability, and as to her intelligence." WC attorney William Coleman agreed with Slawson about Silvia Odio. Both Slawson and Coleman went so far as to suggest in an internal memo, based on the evidence they had uncovered, that Oswald, despite his public posture as a Castro sympathizer, was actually an agent of anti-Castro exiles. We now know that WC chief counsel J. Lee Rankin and WC attorney Wesley Liebeler also believed Silvia Odio was credible.

Silvia Odio and her story posed a serious problem for the WC, since her sister Annie was in the room when Leopoldo introduced the American as "Leon Oswald." The WC asked the FBI to check into the matter. The FBI provided a fraudulent explanation for the Odio incident. The FBI explanation was based on a fabricated story told by Loran Hall, who said that he and two associates were the ones who visited the Odios, and that one of his associates looked a lot like Oswald. This gave the WC an excuse to conclude that the Odio incident was a case of mistaken identity.

Forced into a corner by the force and character of Odio's account, WC apologists have resorted to the lame claim that she was prone to hyper hysteria and panic attacks to the point of being mentally ill, even though she was educated and earned a good income, even though her sister Annie backed up every essential part of her account, and even though the WC attorneys who investigated the matter believed she was credible.
--- End quote ---

What makes Odio's account so deadly to the lone-gunman theory is the phone call she received from Leopoldo soon after the visit, when Leopoldo told her that "Leon Oswald" was a crazy sharpshooter who thought anti-Castro Cubans should have killed JFK after the Bay of Pigs. The phone call was the main reason she and her sister were so disturbed when they saw Oswald on TV after he was arrested.

The phone call was clearly an attempt to frame Oswald for the assassination weeks before it occurred. This is why lone-gunman theorists have to find any excuse, no matter lame, to reject Silvia Odio's account.

Even if one wants to swallow the WC's spurious claim that the three men who visited the Odio sisters were Loran Hall, William Seymour, and Lawrence Howard, this does not explain the phone call. It is pretty hard to argue that Silvia "misunderstood" what the caller said, much less that she just made up the account of the call.

BTW, when the FBI showed Silvia photos of Hall, Seymour, and Howard, she said none of them looked like the three men who came to her apartment.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page