Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: So Dianne Stillman, thank you again for giving us this time.
Speaker 2: The book is all about the relationship between Lee Harvey
Speaker 2: Oswald and his mother American Confidential, and it is a
Speaker 2: bizarre story, this kind of symbiosis between Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 2: and his mother, and it doesn't get a lot of publicity.
Speaker 2: I remember at one point thinking, well, this is sort
Speaker 2: of a natural assumption that Lee Harvey Oswald's mother. Oh,
Speaker 2: she must have been so embarrassed by the actions of
Speaker 2: her son, and she must have gone into hiding virtually afterward,
Speaker 2: and so afraid that she was that you know, that
Speaker 2: reporters were going to hound her, and that she didn't
Speaker 2: want the limelight. She'd put her hand up in front
Speaker 2: of cameras. They just made all these assumptions, and then
Speaker 2: I went reading about it and it was exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2: We should tell us a lot about Mark Oswald. But
Speaker 2: why don't you talk about what happened like starting the
Speaker 2: day of the accusation of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me just backtrack for one second. When when
Speaker 3: Lee Harvey Oswald got back from Russia. He found out well,
Speaker 3: his mother told him that he that she was writing
Speaker 3: a book about his defection, and he was like, wait
Speaker 3: a second, I just I wrote my own book and
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get it published myself. So they were
Speaker 3: like dueling mother and sons two book projects. And I
Speaker 3: guess he talked her out of trying to do anything
Speaker 3: with hers, and he went ahead and tried to have
Speaker 3: his own manuscript typed up, and nothing ever happened with
Speaker 3: it in any rate. So she was trying to, you know,
Speaker 3: attract attention to herself about her son's defection before he
Speaker 3: was killed. Not that she didn't have a right to
Speaker 3: tell her story, but I mean, these these are people
Speaker 3: who she see herself was not a big reader, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not like she always wanted to be
Speaker 3: a writer at any rate. So when Lee was after
Speaker 3: Lee was killed, she really sought the limelight. She did
Speaker 3: go ahead and write another book called after Math of
Speaker 3: an Execution, a booklet. Actually, when she started selling a
Speaker 3: Deally plaza along with other memorabilia about Lee, she would
Speaker 3: sell like photos of him with her autograph. She I
Speaker 3: think she ended up selling or she included some letters
Speaker 3: that he had written from Russia in this book after
Speaker 3: Math of an Execution. But she really uh sought fame
Speaker 3: and recognition herself, and she courted reporters. I mean even
Speaker 3: after before Lee was killed and after JFK was assassinated,
Speaker 3: she contacted One of the first things she did was
Speaker 3: contact Bob She for a reporter at CBS. He was
Speaker 3: stationed in Dallas at the time, and she called up
Speaker 3: and said, I need a ride to the jailhouse. He
Speaker 3: was like, who's this and she said, I'm Lee Harvey
Speaker 3: Oswald's mother, And you know, so it was kind of
Speaker 3: like the scoop of the sanctuaries. So he went and
Speaker 3: picked her up and drove her there and and you know,
Speaker 3: he's often talked about how bizarre that was and how
Speaker 3: much he was how much that whole the whole encounter
Speaker 3: was all about Marguerite. He just you know, it was
Speaker 3: just kind of like her show, the Marguerite Oswald shows.
Speaker 3: Have said that, Yeah, she.
Speaker 2: Wanted to pay day for every every time she spoke.
Speaker 2: And when we talk about selling off Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 2: memorabilia or selling photos of Lee Harvey Oswald with her
Speaker 2: signature on there, that would be pretty much whenever she
Speaker 2: would run out of money, she would go down to
Speaker 2: Dealey Plaza and just hawk her wares up and down
Speaker 2: the sidewalk until she could get enough money that she could,
Speaker 2: you know, get by for a while. But she wasn't
Speaker 2: She really wasn't interested in and then in any long
Speaker 2: term thing. And she certainly wasn't interested in contributing to history.
Speaker 2: And this pamphlet is like so lame. It's funny about
Speaker 2: the Bob Sheefer story that maybe the last time she
Speaker 2: ever talked to a reporter without getting a checked first.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's true. I mean there might have been
Speaker 3: a you know, a couple of a couple of people
Speaker 3: here and there, but she generally asked for She would
Speaker 3: often ask for payment in advance of interviews, but nobody
Speaker 3: you know that most were reporters, did you know? She
Speaker 3: was of course besieged by reporters, right, you know, from
Speaker 3: legitimate publications and most of you know, these weren't people
Speaker 3: who would work over cash for an interview.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, they did have it to give, you know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't so and then what was she do you
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know this. I was actually
Speaker 2: I was trying to find it what typically she would
Speaker 2: ask for. You know, I was assuming she was going
Speaker 2: to pro rate that, you know, from like a local
Speaker 2: reporter to a national story or something like that. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't find even a number. But I just know
Speaker 2: that everybody said the same thing, that she wanted money. Uh.
Speaker 3: And then she said that and she you know, there
Speaker 3: was a woman named Gene Stafford, a very good writer
Speaker 3: who wrote a book called The Mother in History, who
Speaker 3: who went to see her a number of months uh
Speaker 3: after Lee was killed. And she was originally on assignment
Speaker 3: for I think it was for McCall's magazine, and then
Speaker 3: it became her book, A Mother in History. But she
Speaker 3: said that when this was like in nineteen sixty four
Speaker 3: or something, and she said that when she went to
Speaker 3: Marguerite's house, Marguerite pointed out a new Buick sky Buick
Speaker 3: Skylark I think it was in the driveway and said,
Speaker 3: be that's the that's esquire money. Sure there was like
Speaker 3: a new car in the driveway.
Speaker 2: And and this is this is her psychology. Is that Okay,
Speaker 2: Lee Harvey Osley her son did this horrible thing. But
Speaker 2: she never she never, I don't know of a time.
Speaker 2: Maybe you could tell me. I don't know of a
Speaker 2: time when she didn't continue to defend Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 2: as being some just following a previous pattern as sort
Speaker 2: of this helicopter mom. Uh, that she was, that she
Speaker 2: was always defending him as being a victim. Uh, and
Speaker 2: that he was he was the victim of a conspiracy
Speaker 2: to kill him, and that he was completely innocent.
Speaker 3: That's right. She just continued her pattern of you know,
Speaker 3: from whether it was LEAs you know, truancy at school
Speaker 3: or you know, getting in trouble on the playground or
Speaker 3: even like roughing up a neighbor's toddler whom he was babysitting.
Speaker 3: You know, my son can do no wrong. So it
Speaker 3: was that was that was the That was her presentation,
Speaker 3: you know, in the stage after JFK was killed, and
Speaker 3: she never once, I didn't I haven't come across anything.
Speaker 3: And all my years of you know, looking into research
Speaker 3: and so on, she never went to express remorse for
Speaker 3: the death of JFK.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Never, she would say things like, well, my son should
Speaker 3: be buried at Arlington too, because he did the country
Speaker 3: a favor. JFK had Addison's disease and she put him
Speaker 3: and he put him out of his misery. Things like that.
Speaker 3: She never even stopped to express remorse, regardless of saying
Speaker 3: she didn't have to say my son, as my son
Speaker 3: didn't do it. She could have just said, oh, this
Speaker 3: is a terrible thing, but she didn't appear to have
Speaker 3: been upset by it.
Speaker 2: And I think in doing so too, that again she
Speaker 2: went out of her way to interact with the press,
Speaker 2: so just saying I'm so sorry it happened, and then
Speaker 2: kind of closing the doors on that chapter of her
Speaker 2: life and moving on. That would there was no money
Speaker 2: in that, you.
Speaker 3: Know, she really tried to cash in on it. And
Speaker 3: I mean I get that she you know, because she
Speaker 3: had this series of menial jobs throughout her life that
Speaker 3: she didn't have any money, you know, even then after
Speaker 3: a Ruby had killed Otball. But so the only thing
Speaker 3: she had, the only thing that she could sell was
Speaker 3: her son's notoriety in her own, you know, by proxy,
Speaker 3: and she did try to do.
Speaker 2: That and his shirts and like anything she had, you know,
Speaker 2: pre Etsy, pre Internet, she would still find a way
Speaker 2: to sell articles of clothing. They had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the JFK assassination. It was just for the ghouls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, yeah, Varry macabre and she uh. I
Speaker 3: have a picture of her in my book, standing in
Speaker 3: front of her own her her library and her house
Speaker 3: which is filled with books about all the books about
Speaker 3: Oswald at that time. And you know, of course there
Speaker 3: were many even then, and you know, who can blame
Speaker 3: a mom for hat first acquiring those. But she's standing
Speaker 3: the pictures of her kind of standing. She's proud, She
Speaker 3: looks kind of proud of it. He's not remorseal. I mean,
Speaker 3: once again, it's not like, oh, this terrible thing happened
Speaker 3: and my son's associated with it.
Speaker 2: It's like my son the assassin. Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think this is anybody who's a parent, anybody
Speaker 2: who's spent any time raising children, no matter what you are,
Speaker 2: but anytime it's been around of children to a degree
Speaker 2: would feel slightly invested in their successes and their failures.
Speaker 2: And the fact that she didn't see this as a
Speaker 2: failure or she treated it just as much as a
Speaker 2: success as if he had won an oscar.
Speaker 3: Uh. Yeah, I think it was more like that, like, well, that's.
Speaker 2: What I mean. Is like, to me, there's no difference
Speaker 2: she's treating she treats his assassination of JFK no different
Speaker 2: than if Lee Harvey Oswald had won an Academy award,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, because he had become important at that point,
Speaker 3: he was important, and that importance, you know, extended to her.
Speaker 3: They became it was just like he always planned. In
Speaker 3: my view talking to me, Ma, you know, look look
Speaker 3: when I did.
Speaker 2: And I think this fame thing that you're talking about
Speaker 2: is where it's like they were. He was trying to
Speaker 2: one up her desire for fame, and that she was
Speaker 2: always encouraging him to become increasingly more famous. In a way,
Speaker 2: his point is proven, I could shoot the President of
Speaker 2: the United States, and that's what If that's what I
Speaker 2: took to become famous, that would be okay with mom,
Speaker 2: which is so twisted right in its own way. And
Speaker 2: yet when I see portrayals of Marguerite Oswald on television,
Speaker 2: I think she she comes off as kind of cranky
Speaker 2: or domineering or intrusive. She wasn't. She was, She was
Speaker 2: every bit. It seems like whatever the sociopathic tendency that
Speaker 2: Lee Harvey Oswald had, or that he weaponized by becoming
Speaker 2: a sociopathic narcissist, that whatever it was that he had.
Speaker 2: She was the one that gave it to him.
Speaker 3: He was the one that what I didn't hear what
Speaker 3: you said that.
Speaker 2: That he that she was the one who infected him
Speaker 2: eventually with this is to make your point that whatever
Speaker 2: he had and I didn't quite realize it, that whatever
Speaker 2: was that he had, as you know, narcissist narcissists are.
Speaker 2: You know, they have a million narcissists out there, and
Speaker 2: she was clearly a narcissist. She just hadn't weaponized it
Speaker 2: in the way that Lee Harvey Oswald did where he
Speaker 2: became a narcissist sociopath. And that's the difficult But it
Speaker 2: starts with her.
Speaker 3: Oh, it all starts with her.
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