JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Gerry Down on May 11, 2021, 04:17:50 PM
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At 1 hour and 15 minutes in on this video (the 1993 PBS documentary):
https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-who-was-lee-harvey-oswald/
The PBS doc says that LHO used make calls from a payphone across the street from the 1026 north Beckley rooming house. The documentary distinguishes between this payphone and the phone inside the rooming house itself (which it says Ruth Paine called to try to get through to Oswald).
This payphone is never mentioned in JFK research. Who was the source for the PBS documentary that said LHO used make calls from this payphone? I've never heard any eyewitness say there was even such a payphone there, let alone that Oswald used make calls from it.
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At 1 hour and 15 minutes in on this video (the 1993 PBS documentary):
https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-who-was-lee-harvey-oswald/
The PBS doc says that LHO used make calls from a payphone across the street from the 1026 north Beckley rooming house. The documentary distinguishes between this payphone and the phone inside the rooming house itself (which it says Ruth Paine called to try to get through to Oswald).
This payphone is never mentioned in JFK research. Who was the source for the PBS documentary that said LHO used make calls from this payphone? I've never heard any eyewitness say there was even such a payphone there, let alone that Oswald used make calls from it.
LHO was very frugal. If he used a pay phone right across the street from one that he could use for free, then it was most likely because the one in the rooming house was busy and he didn’t want to wait for it to be freed up. Or he wanted more privacy than he could get at the phone in the rooming house.
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LHO was very frugal. If he used a pay phone right across the street from one that he could use for free, then it was most likely because the one in the rooming house was busy and he didn’t want to wait for it to be freed up. Or he wanted more privacy than he could get at the phone in the rooming house.
The phone in the rooming house was reportedly a "communal pay phone" and not a free one. I've never heard of a pay phone in a private residence but apparently they had one there. There were 17 residents in that house/home so I imagine it was often difficult to use the phone.
From Bugliosi/"Reclaiming History."
"But in a telephone conversation, Mrs. [Kaye] Puckett told me that none of the seventeen tenants of the rooming house in 1963 had their own phone. She said they all shared "one communal pay phone on the wall in the hall back near the kitchen, and with all of them having only this one phone, it was in use a lot."
Puckett ran the place that "her family has owned since 1939, and was married with three children and living at the rooming house in 1963."
And: "Mrs. Johnson recalled that he [Oswald] arrived home about half-past five every afternoon and made a phone call in a foreign language, switching to English if anyone came near enough to the pay phone on the wall to overhear him."
So it makes sense that if Oswald wanted to make a call and not be overheard he would go to another phone. Since he had to pay for the use of the phone in the house it didn't matter if he had to pay for another one.
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The phone in the rooming house was reportedly a "communal pay phone" and not a free one. I've never heard of a pay phone in a private residence but apparently they had one there. There were 17 residents in that house/home so I imagine it was often difficult to use the phone.
From Bugliosi/"Reclaiming History."
"But in a telephone conversation, Mrs. [Kaye] Puckett told me that none of the seventeen tenants of the rooming house in 1963 had their own phone. She said they all shared "one communal pay phone on the wall in the hall back near the kitchen, and with all of them having only this one phone, it was in use a lot."
Puckett ran the place that "her family has owned since 1939, and was married with three children and living at the rooming house in 1963."
And: "Mrs. Johnson recalled that he [Oswald] arrived home about half-past five every afternoon and made a phone call in a foreign language, switching to English if anyone came near enough to the pay phone on the wall to overhear him."
So it makes sense that if Oswald wanted to make a call and not be overheard he would go to another phone. Since he had to pay for the use of the phone in the house it didn't matter if he had to pay for another one.
Thanks for the correction. It makes sense to me that it was a pay phone. That would eliminate some of the issues that would be likely with a free one.
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Thanks for the correction. It makes sense to me that it was a pay phone. That would eliminate some of the issues that would be likely with a free one.
I can imagine the owners/landlord wouldn't want the renters to be able to make free calls all day. Not worry about paying for them.
Marina said that Oswald was worried that the landlady would find out that he had lived in the USSR. And that the FBI might find out where he lived. So it's understandable that he would switch to English to try and hide that fact.
From "Marina and Lee". This is after Marina asked Ruth to phone the rooming house so she could talk to Oswald. Ruth did but when she asked to talk to a Lee Oswald she was told no one by that name lived there. Oswald would be oddly (to me) furious with Marina over the call. He thought it would get him "into trouble."
Here's the account:
"The next day, Monday, November 18, Lee called as usual at lunchtime. "We phoned you last evening", Marina said, "Where were you?"
"I was at home watching TV. Nobody called me to the phone. What name did she ask for me by?"
Marina told him. There was a long silence at the other end. "Oh, damn. I don't live there under my real name."
"Why not? Marina asked.
Lee said he did not want his landlady to know he had lived in Russia.
"It's none of her business," Marina retorted.
"You don't understand a thing," Lee said. "I don't want the FBI to know where I live, either....You and your long tongue," he said; "they always get us into trouble."
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Doesn't look like a pay phone to me
(https://i.postimg.cc/26R0KYKd/beckley-hall-phone.png)
From a Beckley house tour
I didn't see any pictures of a phone on the wall yet
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Nice carpet. I'd say Oswalds DNA could still be vacuumed out of it.
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Doesn't look like a pay phone to me
(https://i.postimg.cc/26R0KYKd/beckley-hall-phone.png)
From a Beckley house tour
Pucket: They had "One communal pay phone on the wall in the hall back near the kitchen."
I imagine they had more than one phone? And that the owners had a personal/private one and another separate one for the renters/residents.
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Pucket: They had "One communal pay phone on the wall in the hall back near the kitchen."
I imagine they had more than one phone? And that the owners had a personal/private one and another separate one for the renters/residents.
But I have yet to see a photo of the pay phone
Any CE# for it?
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Nice carpet. I'd say Oswalds DNA could still be vacuumed out of it.
The carpet is a sh*t-brown crumpled mess.
The chair-seat covering is nice if you like paisley.
I doubt if investigators would 'vacuum' up DNA (unless they worked for OJ's prosecutors)
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The PBS doc says that LHO used make calls from a payphone across the street from the 1026 north Beckley rooming house.
No one ever testified to that AFAIK.
If you take PBS and remove the P you may have just described the source.
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The picture of the phone is the same one that was in the Beckley house when I took the tour about 2 years ago. It is not a pay phone. And, I don't recall a "hall back near the kitchen." The large room that contained the sofa, chairs, TV, the phone in the picture open up right to the kitchen IIRC.
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Both Earline Roberts and Gladys Johnson, the wife of the co-owner of the house (apparently she either owned it or the property it was on (it's not clear) before she married), testified that they never saw Oswald go out at night. Johnson said that she spent most of her evenings in the "back" of the house and wouldn't know about all of the goings of the tenants. Roberts said she never saw Oswald leave at night.
From Johnson's testimony:
Mr. BALL. Did he go out nights, any?
Mrs. JOHNSON. I just really never did see that man leave that room.
Mr. BALL. After he came back from work?
Mrs. JOHNSON. Yes; he stayed very closely but he did tell me he would be leaving to go home over weekends--no; he didn't say "home," he said I will leave to go to Irving over weekends and won't return until Monday."
From Robert's testimony:
Mr. BALL. Did he go out any at night?
Mrs. ROBERTS. No.
Mr. BALL. Did he stay home every night?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes---he stayed home every night---I didn't ever know of him going out. If he did, he left after I went to bed and I never knew.
If Oswald did go out to use the pay phone across the street - and according to Marina he regularly called her after work - it seems that Roberts would have seen him leave for at least some of these calls. So the "He used a pay phone across the street" claim seems suspect.
Johnson's testimony: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/johnso_g.htm
Roberts testimony: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/robertse.htm