A memo from Burt Griffin to staff, March 13, 1964, stated that Laverne “Larry Crafard” was one of four persons who they suspected might be impersonating Oswald. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination]
There is nothing in that memo about impersonation. The Warren Commission was simply interested in mistaken identities.
But wait, there's more!
The article on DiEugenio's website claims that Laura Kittrell, a staff member of the Texas Employment Commission, interviewed a man who said he was Lee Harvey Oswald but whom she later believed was Larry Crafard.
So, let's look at Laura Kittrell and see if this claim has any validity.
The first mention of Laura Kittrell came right after the assassination, and it was not about her interviewing Oswald:
Kittrell did send a letter to the Warren Commission:
Kittrell's message is not online. Perhaps it might appear when all the Warren Commission files are digitized.
On June [or July] 4, 1965, Kittrell wrote a 14-page handwritten letter to Senator Robert Kennedy.
Here is a summary of her key points:
She had previously sent Robert Kennedy a 2-page letter on December 26, 1963, saying that "I could not have sent it any sooner because it took me until then to be sure of my information."
"In writing you, I said as little as I possibly could, taking care to state that my letter, containing as it did the name "Murray Chotiner" in connection with the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, should pass through as few hands as possible, and that that was why I was sending it direct to you."
She was concerned that she never heard from the Warren Commission but noted "I had long thought that they would get to me in due time. I dreaded the thought that they would, knowing almost certainly that it would mean the loss of my job (which I like very much) when it became known that I had side-stepped all channels of authority in writing directly to the Attorney General about matters which had occurred at my desk at the Texas Employment Commission."
The name Murray Chotiner keeps on popping up: "I had seen no way of going through channels without having the name "Murray Chotiner" mentioned again and again ..." Chotiner was a long-time aide to Richard Nixon.
"I wish to make it clear that this letter is not meant to accuse Mr. Chotiner of anything, it is meant for an accusation against the Warren Commission, and an extremely serious one, which I am prepared to back up, I shall come to that later."
Kittrell then contacted the U. S. District Attorney and told him about a handwritten letter about her interviews with the man she knew as Oswald. He said he would send over a Secret Service man to pick it up.
"At that time, I was only relieved that I was not asked to swear to anything, because I do not believe in swearing, and if I had been asked to swear, could only have refused."
"When the Warren Report came out that fall, I spent many hours looking up things in the meagerly indexed, twenty-six volumes, trying to figure out from the testimony of the Employment Service personnel, why I had not been called or questioned,"
"I found out several things: Some of Oswald's employment service records that just had to be there, weren't."
She wrote that on a counseling record card she wrote that Oswald was a "cold-blooded Marine." That card was never found. The Dallas Claims Investigation Report was also not found.
"When I wrote to the Warren Commission, I was perfectly aware, and said so, that I was going out on a limb in telling them of the notations I had made on his applications (the name of Murray Chotiner, I inadvertently noted down in the space for former employers of the man I remembered as Oswald, a fantastic and incredible error about which I painfully wrote to the Warren Commission and which it would take pages to explain here, so I won't, was one of those notations I recalled), that is, I was going out on a limb if some of his application cards, and especially this one, had been lost."
Kittrell then summarizes what was in her letter to the Warren Commission:
"A stranger, later believed by me to have been Oswald, had taken occasion to mention to me, at my desk at the Texas Employment Commission's Industrial Office on Ross Ave, in the early fall of 1863, the name of Murray Chotiner."
"A few days after this incident, a person whose name I remembered as Oswald, was sent to me by Mrs. Elrod, a claims investigator in the claims office, to be interviewed at length and to have his occupational classifications revised and expanded. He turned out to be the stranger I have already mentioned, a coincidence which brought up again the name of Murray Chotiner, a name by a most curious error, which I explained, I wrote into the young man's work history as being that of a former employer."
"That I had interpreted for this man an aptitude test battery. This was the same man who had told me some fantastic story about having worked in Russia (the most ridiculous think I had ever heard). The test had suggested to me a discrepancy between his statement that he had been a sharpshooter and a certain deficiency in physical qualities measured by the test. I said in my letter I remembered this man as having below average scores in one of more of these items."
"Instead of defending himself when I brought up as tactfully as I could the (to me glaring) discrepancy and apologized for the poor showing he had made, saying "well, a test isn't everything," He had said, firmly, "No ma'am, that test is right: the truth is I am not a very good shot. I just like guns, that's all."
At a subsequent interview, shortly after this, a man came to be interviewed who appeared to be of German descent and who may have been Oswald. His most recent employment was in New Orleans and his wife had just had, or was going to have, a baby. He told Kittrell he had just joined the Teamsters Union. She found it weird that someone who did not know how to drive had joined the Teamsters. She asked to see his card, but the man said they had not sent it to him.
Kittrell said in her letter that she was not sure this man was Oswald.
Kittrell wrote that "you would question whether a person who makes below average could hit the side of a barn."
"These then are the things the Warren Commission decided not to ask me about: My statements that a man I had good reason to believe was Oswald had mentioned the name of Murray Chotiner to me, and that I had written that name down, by an odd sort of error, in the place on the application which was reserved for a summary listing of former employment."
"My statement that I had interpreted for this same man a general aptitude test batter during which interpretation, both he and I had commented on his marksmanship, the first having shown him as being deficient in the physical speed one naturally associates with sharpshooting, and finally, my statement, apparently more puzzling to me that it was to them, that this same young man reminded me very much of a teutonic young warehouseman from New Orleans who could not drive a car, to whom I had talked at a somewhat later interview, and who had laughed very loudly when I challenged his claim that he had newly joined the Dallas local of the Teamsters Union."
"I gave them other [garbled' items which I will not go into there except to say that they could easily have been checked if I had been allowed to confront Mrs. Oswald as a person saying that I thought I remembered having seen her in the company of her husband and another man at the TEC office at a certain time (a pregnant woman talking on her hands to one companion, as though she were deaf, and then to the one apparently her husband, in normal conversational tone, a little out of my ear shot, is not the sort of thing I readily forget) Or if I had been allowed to talk with Mrs. Paine in their presence (to see if she would admit having called a Miss Kittrell at the TEC to tell her, "you can quit worrying about Mr. Oswald, he has gotten himself a job at the Texas School Book Depository, and if she at least remembered laughing when, having been told that Miss Kittrell would like to speak to Mrs. Oswald, she said that Mrs. Oswald didn't speak English, and then laughing again, when Miss Kittrell asked to put her on the phone anyhow, because she could talk to her in Spanish, and finally becoming exasperated at Miss Kittrell's responses to the information that Mrs. Oswald spoke Russian: "Russian? Why does she speak Russian?" And replying angrily "because she was born and reared in Russia, that's why," and then banging up the phone. My recollection is that I was thunderstruck to hear this, that his wife spoke Russian, I had been so convinced ... been to Russia.)
"Where are the two ten-page letters I sent to the Warren Commission via the U.S. District Attorney? They are not in the twenty-six volume Warren Report. Will you please at least find out where these letters are?"
Does any of this sound convincing?
The continual naming of Murray Chotiner is bizarre, and it does appear that Kittrell was a student of the assassination and was just feeding back talking points about Oswald's marksmanship. Of course, there is no paperwork from the Texas Employment Commission to back up her any part of her story.
Robert Kennedy's office sent Kittrell's 14-page handwritten letter to the FBI for investigation.
Kittrell told the agents the contents of her letters to Robert Kennedy, but the meeting became testy:
Kittrell wrote a 90-page manuscript and sent it to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). I am not exactly sure when she wrote it -- Peter Whitmey claims it was in 1966.
Here are some comments:
She continues with her Murray Chotiner madness. His name is mentioned on fifteen separate pages, sometimes more than once.
She described Oswald as wearing a motorcycle jacket when he appeared for an interview at the TEC.
Oswald supposedly told Kittrell that he had an undesirable discharge; that he had a job as a messenger boy in California for six months; one interview lasted one hour and forty-two minutes and Oswald told Kittrell that Murray Chotiner was a crook; and that he wanted to work with guns.
"When Mr. Oswald left that day, I was not sure that I would ever see him again, and rather hoped that I wouldn't. I did not really dislike him. It was just that he made me very, very nervous. I disapproved of what I imagined to be his lies, and the question or whether or not he had been sent to prison for killing someone was still unresolved in my mind."
This section beggars belief: (pages 45 - 46)
Kittrell wrote that Oswald told her "he was a man who loved to talk or think about guns." (pages 47 -48)
Oswald did not have a habit of talking about his "other than honorable" discharge. This all sounds like Kittrell got this from reading the Warren Report.
Kittrell wrote that Oswald had an "unusual kind of intelligence." (page 50)
During Oswald's second interview, in which he was given an aptitude test, this remarkable dialogue occurred: (page 54)
And, then if we really want to believe Kittrell, Oswald had some angry words for President Kennedy: (page 58 - 59)
Kittrell was scared -- scared that Oswald was going to inform Kennedy that he had been ill-treated: (page 60)
Kittrell then discusses a phone call she received, probably in November 1963: (page 64)
Her imagination was enabled. No kidding!
Kittrell then writes out a transcript of a phone call with Ruth Paine in which Paine tells her that Oswald had found a job at the TSBD: (page 64)
The transcript runs for three pages.
After the interview in which Oswald had supposedly talked about Kennedy, he returned for another interview. (page 72)
Oswald had joined the Teamsters Union. (page 77)
But Oswald didn't have a union card: (page 78)
Kittrell was skeptical about the Teamsters: (page 78)
Kittrell than wonders if this was Oswald or an imposter: (page 79)
On the one hand, it was Oswald: (page 80)
On the other hand, this Oswald wore a red-checkered shirt: (page 81)
Kittrell had written the Warren Commission about some of this: (page 82)
Kittrell notes that it might not have been the real Oswald since he was working at the Texas School Book Depository.
A few days after the assassination, Kittrell was interviewing someone for a factory job. (page 85)
Then it turns out that Eva Grant, Jack Ruby's sister, had visited Kittrell looking for a job. (page 87)
And then after the Warren Report was published, Kittrell had a realization: (page 88)
A conspiracy theorists' dream! Kittrell had identified Larry Crafard as the Teamsters fellow. But why on earth would Crafard impersonate Oswald at the Texas Employment Commission?
But Kittrell has doubts. She writes "sometimes I think he was Larry Crafard. I wish I could settle this in my mind, but I can't."
Kittrell does not believe that Oswald killed JFK: (page 90)
But Kittrell believes Oswald was part of some large conspiracy: (page 90)
Kittrell had a postscript to her report: (Page 90)
Note that Kittrell did not mention the name Crafard in her letter to Robert Kennedy but slips his name in at the end of her ninety-page report.
Kittrell sent this report to the HSCA, but she is not mentioned in their Final Report nor in their volumes of evidence. That indicates they felt her story was not worth mentioning.
However, Kittrell was interviewed by Gaeton Fonzi in July of 1978, and he wrote a ten-page memo.
Kittrell was also in touch with Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News. She told Golz a couple of new stories:
Kittrell repeated these stories to Fonzi, but she did not reveal the names of the two informants.
She did tell Fonzi about Oswald talking about his marksmanship:
While this is true, the Marines made an error and marked his score as marksman. So, I wonder if Oswald knew that he had actually made sharpshooter.
Kittrell told Fonzi about the third encounter in which she wasn't sure the man was Oswald:
She was "dirt tired." Of course, she also wrote this in her manuscript:
Gaeton Fonzi sent the notes of his interview with Kittrell to Peter Whitmey who writes that there was no mention on Crafard there either. Fonzi wrote him an email and said "I recall Kittrell and remember coming away from the interview with her thinking she went way up and way down on the scale of validity but I had a tough time figuring what was up or down. I don't recall anything about Crafard."
Whitmey also sent a couple of articles about Kittrell in The Fourth Decade to Crafard for his comments:
I contacted Curtis at his home in Oregon after sending him the article, and she emphatically denied ever posing as Oswald, and stated to me that he was far too self-conscious (because of some missing teeth) to have ever "laughed out loud" as described by Ms. Kittrell.
Especially relevant is the Commission staff giving attention to Crafard being a possible decoy for the set-up of Oswald. But not calling Kittrell to the stand. The dossier shows that Kittrell was asked by the person she interviewed in October 1963 if she had visited the State Fair. She said no. Crafard told the FBI that he came to Dallas with the State Fair on 15 October 1963 and was a roustabout for a side show. (Crafard Exhibit 5226, Warren Commission, [https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Crafard_Ex_5226.pdf] ). If it was Crafard, did he ask that question to ensure she would not remember seeing him in that role?
If what Kittrell said is true, then she would indicate two things.
Firstly, Crafard--as the Commission suspected--was impersonating Oswald in Dallas in November 1963.
Secondly, on the morning of 22 November 1963, the manager of the Texas Theater was in some way made aware of the police using his building for some purpose later in the day.
Overall, Kittrell’s actions and attention would make redundant any plan to involve her in painting a story of an unstable Oswald. She would be a woman who not only wasn’t duped but was dangerous.
Kittrell was dangerous? No, she was delusional. And, once again, the Warren Commission never "suspected" that Crafard was impersonating Oswald. As indicated above, they only felt that he might have been mistaken for Oswald.
Laura Kittrell's stories were used in the book Chokeholds in the chapter "Oswald was Impersonated."
It appears to me that Kittrell was a student of the JFK assassination and was reading the critical literature. Both the Warren Commission and the HSCA ignored her story, and that makes total sense.
Update:
Previous Relevant Blog Posts about Larry Crafard
Mort Sahl made up a quote about Larry Crafard that was used in the Chokeholds book.
A ridiculous article alleges that Crafard impersonated Oswald.
Garrison told a journalist that Larry Crafard was a gunman on the grassy knoll.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Chokeholds:
The book treats a Mort Sahl quote as if it was correct.
Chokeholds leaves out a lot of information about Aloysius Habighorst.
Bleau doesn't tell his readers about Roger Craig's credibility problems.
Bleau believes the Rose Cherami story.
Bleau claims the Shaw jury believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. This is just not true.
Bleau doesn't tell you everything about Lyndon Johnson's feelings towards the Warren Report.
Bleau leaves out some important details about the beliefs of Burt Griffin.
Bleau leaves out an important paragraph from Alfredda Scobey's article on the Warren Commission.
Bleau misleads readers on the testimony of John Moss Whitten.
Bleau gets it all wrong on Dr. George Burkley.
Bleau doesn't tell the whole story about John Sherman Cooper.
Bleau claims that J. Lee Rankin questioned the findings of the Warren Report. This is just not true.
Bleau tries to make it appear that Dallas policeman James Leavelle had doubts that Oswald could be found guilty at a trial.
Bleau gets it all wrong on the FBI Summary Report.
Bleau discusses the conclusions of the HSCA but leaves out it most important finding.
Bleau leaves out some important details about a Warren Commission staffer.
Was Oswald a loner? Bleau says no, and then says yes.
Bleau leaves out some important details about Malcolm Kilduff.
An introduction to Paul Bleau's new book, Chokeholds.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts about the Second Oswald
The book Chokeholds has a crazy story about Roswell.
Here is a simple solution to the incident at Bolton Ford.
A tape of Jim Garrison being interviewed by the HSCA.
Thornley misjudged Oswald's height. So what?
Jim Garrison believed it was important to find the man with a scar.
Oswald was not in New Orleans in 1962.
Add one part crazy, one part ridiculous, and what do you get?
He looked like Lee Harvey Oswald but he was someone else.
At a meeting with his investigators, Garrison discusses the two-Oswald theory.
Wade claimed to have seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. Which Oswald was it?
Was Garrison the second Oswald?
Yet more proof that Thornley was the second Oswald.
Garrison writes the HSCA about his theory.
Ashworth met an "Oswald" in a couple of locations.
A really ridiculous Garrison memo on the height of Lee Harvey Oswald.