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During one exchange, Rankin asked Marina if she had known at one time that Lee had "gone to live" with a certain woman. Marina frowned. "How do you mean, live with this woman?" she asked coldly. Rankin put in quickly: "As a tenant." That was different. "No," said Marina.
The last day was the most difficult. The commission asked Marina to identify some 145 exhibits, most of them Oswald's personal possessions. There were his letters and notebooks, the mailorder rifle he had bought. She identified them all, including the bloodstained clothes he was wearing when he was shot. From time to time Marina wept, but she quickly regained her composure. And at last it was over.
The Mother. Marina Oswald was the first witness to appear before the Warren Commission. But as the commission continues to delve deeply into the secret life of Lee Harvey Oswald, she may not necessarily be the most important. For there is evidence that the dominating figure in that life was his mother. This week, at her own request, Marguerite Claverie Pic Oswald Ekdahl, 56, a practical nurse, is scheduled to appear before the commission along with her lawyer, Mark Lane, a New Yorker with an unquenchable passion for the defense of underdogs and liberal causes.
There is not much doubt about the mother's purpose: to defend her son's name. She has been doing that ever since the assassination.
A short, stout woman with grey hair drawn back in a bun, Marguerite has hardly been hostile to the publicity that has come her way since Nov. 22. "I am an important person," she says with obvious relish. "I understand that I will go down in history too." She rents one side of a small duplex house in Fort Worth. It is a clean place, with blistering wallpaper, an ancient TV set, a picture of the Christ Child that stands in one of the bookshelves, a hissing gas heater in one corner. She was at home last week when a reporter went by. "Here," said Mrs. Oswald genially, "have a press release."
The handout related how Mrs. Oswald had sent a wire to President Johnson asking for legal representation for her son at the investigation proceedings. "You know what I got back?" she asked the reporter. "You know? I got back a note from the White House saying that in the future I ought to direct such messages to the Warren Commission and not the White House at all. Can you imagine? Why, I've got as much right as any citizen to write the President of the United States, to petition him, and let me tell you this, Mr. Johnson should also remember that I am not just anyone, and that he is only President of the United States by the grace of my son's action."
Whisked Away. "My son was a human being," she continued, "and like any human being, he could shoot somebody. Maybe he was involved. Maybe there were others involved too. But I heard my son say on television that he did not do it, and I want to see the evidence first before I will accept the final fact that he shot the President.