Oswald's Jail Phone Calls:

Reader

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

the return of the phantom call

One reason I don’t ask for subscription fee is that I would then feel obliged to churn out articles on a regular basis. At the point that this happens, it becomes content filler, produced under “contractual obligations”.

That’s not me.

I have a chaotic life. I work at a chaotic desk. My research materials are in a chaotic state. I write these articles when the time, the mood, and the right story cross paths.

Which is all by way of explaining why you might not see anything from me for a month or two, and then suddenly, two articles in two days.

So, this article comes about because, as the name says, the Phantom Phone Call has reared its misconstrued head again, here and at the deliriously self-flatulating* JFK Education Forum.

I am not going to do a review of what has been written, or name names. Despite regularly criticizing this person’s work, I do actually like and admire him. It’s just his penchant for weaving conspiracy into every nook and cranny of the case while ignoring simple explanations that drives me nuts.

What follows is simply what the records reflect, and my own conclusions from those facts.

Saturday at around 1:40pm, Oswald tries unsuccessfully to contact Abt. (per jailer Eaves)

Oswald makes a local call straight after the above failed attempt (per jailer Beddingfield)

Oswald makes another unsuccessful attempt to reach Abt at around 4:22pm, and upon request, is given a scrap of paper and pencil to write down the contact numbers for future attempts

Oswald makes another call at about 8pm. This was connected and lasted about a half an hour.

From the testimony of Ruth Paine

Mrs. PAINE – Always. Then about 3:30 or 4 I got a telephone call.
Mr. JENNER – The phone rang?
Mrs. PAINE – The phone rang; I answered it.
Mr. JENNER – Did you recognize the voice?
Mrs. PAINE – I recognized the voice but I don’t recall what he said?
Mr. JENNER – What did the voice say?
Mrs. PAINE – The voice said: “This is Lee.”
—
Mrs. PAINE – I really call the first two one, but it was twice dialed.
Mr. JENNER – Fix the time, please.
Mrs. PAINE – It was around 9:30 in the evening.
Mrs. PAINE – I said, “Well, Hi.” And he said he wanted to ask me to call Mr. John Abt in New York for him after 6 p.m. He gave me a telephone number of an office in New York and a residence in New York.
Mr. JENNER – Two telephone numbers he gave you?
Mrs. PAINE – Yes.
Mr. JENNER – One office and one residence of Mr. John Abt. Did he say who Mr. John Abt was?
Mrs. PAINE – He said he was an attorney he wanted to have
—
Mrs. PAINE – I really call the first two one, but it was twice dialed.
Mr. JENNER – Fix the time, please.
Mrs. PAINE – It was around 9:30 in the evening.

So… according to Ruth, she got two calls from Oswald – the first around 4pm and the second at 9:30pm.

Yet according to Beddingfield, Oswald made a local call before 2pm after his 1:40 attempt to get Abt. Beddingfield has to be mistaken. Oswald got Abt’s contact numbers to pass on to Ruth after the 4:22pm attempt to get Abt.

Now, on the face of it, we have a mystery call at 8pm and an undocumented call to Ruth at 9:30pm.

This is how false mysteries are created – by accepting all evidence as equal and as accurate.

The first clue is that there is zero indication that this 8pm call was a collect call to another state. Someone was simply mistaken in their timing – either Ruth Paine by claiming 9:30 – or Lt Lord who said he started the ball rolling at 8pm for another call, and jailer Popplewell who confirmed Lord. On balance, it looks like Ruth was out in her timing. Either way, there was no call to NY at 8:00 pm – the number for the Communist paper was just another option to get to Abt.

Note that Popplewell states at the end of his affidavit that “The telephone sheet is used for writing names of prisoners who use the phone, but due to the large volume of prisoners that weekend, it was possible I forgot to write Oswald’s name down on the record sheet, I have been unable to locate a sheet with his name on it.

Imagine that? a full-to-the-brim jail and only the phone record of the main guy is missing. Make of that what you will. My best guess is it was “souvenired”. Scraps of alleged Oswald detritus – mainly just scraps of paper bearing his name were being either pocketed from trash bins and kept, or sold like a semi-valuable baseball card. And some of that was faked!

I will reveal why he wanted Abt in the rewrite of my book.

*Back at the start, I described the Education Forum as “deliriously self-flatulating”.

The Urban Dictionary gives the following definition of “self-flatulating”

The act of farting in bed and pulling the covers over your head to see if you can gag yourself. A form of self-mutilation but limited to nasal passages.

That is the essence of the Education Forum experience. It is not for first-time gaggers.