The Strange Case of Edwin A Ekdahl

Edwin Albert Ekdahl is a cameo player in the saga of the Oswald Project, but one worth documenting. His ingress and egress into the life of Marguerite Claverie Oswald is a bit murky, but we will chronicle what we know.

Ekdahl was married twice, once to Rasmine and to the aforementioned Marguerite on May 5, 1945. He had one son Dewey (1931-1997) by Rasmine, and no children with Marguerite. He worked for EBASCO Services, Inc at the time of his death on January 26, 1953.

EBASCO is a descendant of a firm founded in 1905 by General Electric, and was engaged in engineering and consulting to the electrical energy industry. It was involved in a highly publicized safety case in the 1980s when Ronald Goldstein exposed numerous safety violations by EBASCO in a nuclear plant project. EBASCO retaliated by firing Goldstein.

All that can be ascertained about the dissolution of his first marriage is that he "separated" from Rasmine around 1941-1942. The FBI specifically sought to find a divorce decree in the Boston area for Ekdahl, presumably from Rasmine, but found none.

Considerably more information is available concerning his second marriage. Ekdahl sued Marguerite for divorce in Texas in 1948 after they had ceased living together on January 10, 1948. His suit claimed physical and mental abuse, and excess cruelties, with the added predicate that his heart condition prevented him from continuing to live with Marguerite.

The 12 man jury ruled in favor of the plaintiff on June 24, 1948, but awarded Marguerite 250 USD in attorney fees, and 1500 USD additional compensation. Oswald was granted her previous name, and ordered to pay court costs.

It is not clear what caused Marguerite to behave so violently, but Ekdahl's diary for 1944, which Marguerite stole, may have been the spark. Ekdahl specifically mentioned it in his lawsuit by requesting its return. Marguerite made numerous allegations of adultery and infidelity on the part of Ekdahl, something which she may have learned from the diary.

It is quite strange that a man with Ekdahl's high powered education and cosmopolitan background would marry the much simpler Marguerite. Perhaps his diary made demeaning descriptions along that line. The marriage is even stranger still given that he had a heart attack, and probably was not in the best shape to keep up with the younger Marguerite.

Ekdahl was 12 years older than Marguerite, born September 26, 1895; he died January 26, 1953 according to findagrave.com, and FBI investigations in 1964. He was still in the employment of EBASCO at the time of his death. His sister Elvira Elizabeth Larson was listed as closest next of kin and beneficiary of his insurance policy, living at 1095 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, Massachusetts.

There is discrepancy in Ekdahl's date of birth, with Armstrong giving it as 1887.

Ekdahl graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1916, and possibly served in World War 1, but was certainly a US Navy veteran of that era. He lived several years in China, presumably working for EBASCO, but it could easily have been for Navy intelligence.

EBASCO informed the FBI that it had no records on Ekdahl from 1943-53, but gave his social security number as 001-09-9471.

According to Dewey, Ekdahl had no further contact with Marguerite or her sons after the separation. However, Greg Parker's source states that Ekdahl was in New York City at the time Marguerite was there. Still to be determined is which Marguerite - Claverie or the short dumpy imposter?

Marguerite's sister Lillian Murret told the FBI that Ekdahl made a "fabulous" sum of money at 1000 USD per month which was about 5 times the median household income of the time. Yet the Ekdahls were reported as living in an apartment circa 1946. This living arrangement may not be so unusual given the post-war housing shortage.

Marguerite met Edwin in 1942, perhaps after his heart attack. Elvira came down to New Orleans to help care for his convalescence, and met Marguerite. One source reports Ekdahl taking the Oswalds to New York in July 1945 to meet the family.

Further research is needed to determine if Ekdahl was one of the New York connections which Marguerite had in moving there.

Linda Minor raised interesting questions about Ekdahl and possible associations with the Roosevelts in Texas, but that topic warrants a separate chronicle.

Reference

John Armstrong, Poage Library - JFK - John Armstrong Collection, 15poage-arm-09-04c-07_Ekdahl,
Box 9, notebook 4, page 11

Greg Parker, Edwin A. Ekdahl,   reopenkennedycase.com [forum], July 24, 2011, accessed 3/5/2017

Linda Minor, Colossal Failure to Research Ekdahl, Quixotic Joust [website], May 12, 2012, accessed 3/5/2017

Copyright 2017 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Some Notes on the Oswald Puzzle

Investigating the history of the family of Lee Harvey Oswald requires diving down a rabbit hole with limited light. We offer a few notes to help clarify the relations among the Oswalds - both real and fake.

John Armstrong made the most important advance in Oswald biography by discovering that 2 men sharing the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald were operated by the Central Intelligence Agency in its murder of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. To complicate matters further, there were at least 2 Marguerite Oswalds with a bonus Margaret thrown in for good measure.

To distinguish the 2 Oswalds, we follow Armstrong's convention designating HARVEY as the one who was framed as the murderer of President Kennedy and J D Tippit. LEE was the man who most likely murdered Tippit and was seen in the Texas School Book Depository by several witnesses.

Photographic evidence and facial measures, such as the eye-tooth ratio, confirm that 2 women used the name of Marguerite Oswald. Before proceeding, we need to backup to consider the father of LEE, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, about whom the CIA controlled Wikipedia has no entry. As soon as one is contrived, it will be from the usual sluice of CIA lies.

To date, we have uncovered very little information concerning Robert, Sr. who, according to his sister-in-law Lillian Murret, was known as Lee, and according to the best information we have, he was born March 4, 1896 in Louisiana; served in World War 1 in the army after which he was discharged with the rank of sergeant; and married Margaret Emma Keating on November 1, 1920, contrary to the marriage certificate's date of November 5. They were married until January 10, 1933, the date on which the final divorce decree was signed, although Keating filed for divorce on October 1, 1930.

Margaret died August 6, 1972, having reverted to the use of her maiden name - apparently she never remarried. She was born April 28, 1892 in New Orleans. Our impression is that Margaret came from a well-to-do family, having attended St Joseph's Academy boarding school in Mississippi for 8 years, and whose families were buried in substantial tombs.

Robert married Marguerite Frances Claverie July 20, 1933, barely 6 months after his divorce from his first wife Margaret, a marriage which would last until his death on August 19, 1939. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack at age 43, while other reports indicate a dying period in which he called for his first wife for reasons unknown. Based upon the grave stone, it seems that he was a man of modest means.

School records for Robert, Jr, and testimony of Lillian Murret indicate that his father was an insurance agent for Metropolitan Insurance.

We were surprised to learn that Wikipedia's fallacious biography of Lee Harvey Oswald failed to cite the dates of Marguerite's marriage to any of her husbands, but especially to LEE's father Robert.

Robert, Jr was born April 7, 1934, and baptized by the Lutheran church April 29.

When Robert, Sr died in 1939, it was the second husband, according to FBI records, who died while married to Marguerite, Edward John Pic having been the first. Special Agent Donald C Steinmeyer reported that Reverend Scherer stated that Pic had died and that he had not buried either him or Robert Oswald, Sr. A subsequent report of a church related charity corrects the error concerning Pic's death.

A report of the Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Orphan Asylum annotated with a date of December 9, 1941 reported that Edward John Pic had died, and that Marguerite was seeking to have her 2 year old son LEE committed on grounds of financial hardship. However, the report notes that she still had some insurance money, but found it necessary to obtain employment. The Asylum refused to take LEE apparently on grounds that he was too young.

A subsequent report from October 13, 1942 noted that LEE had reached the required age, apparently 3 years, for acceptance into the home, but was not admitted until 12/26/1943 where he remained until 1/29/1944.

Interestingly Pic voluntarily appeared before the Warren Commission in 1964. He was born August 21, 1907, and died January 22, 2002 in Mississippi. He was still working for his life long employer T Smith & Son in New Orleans for whom he was working when he married Marguerite.

According to his testimony to the Warren Commission, he married Marguerite in 1929. More precisely, and separately verified by the marriage license, he married her August 1, 1929 in Harrison County, Mississippi. They lived together for over 1 year, after which they separated sometime in 1931 when Marguerite was pregnant with John Edward Pic who was born January 17, 1932 according to his tombstone. Pic told the commission that he and Marguerite divorced 18 months after the birth of John whom his wife named rather than Edward John. If that statement is correct, they were divorced around July 1933 - a reasonably close approximation as we shall soon see.

According to Pic, he sent Marguerite 40 dollars month as child support until 1950, about the time John turned 18. The Warren Commission attorney Albert Jenner questioned him at length about where he sent payment since the Commission claimed that Marguerite moved around quite a bit. Pic stated that he managed to send payments, but could not recall several of the addresses Jenner mentioned. This lack of recall confirms Armstrong's thesis that there were 2 Marguerites which is why Pic did not recognize many of "her" addresses.

Another strange aspect of Pic's testimony is that he never saw his son after the age of 1 year other than in a picture sent to him by Marguerite when John was in the Coast Guard around age 18. What kind of father would completely forsake his son, especially if living in the same city, and providing child support?

That question may well be answered by Marguerite's sister Lillian (Murret) whose testimony to FBI agent Ernest C Wall, Jr states that Edward did not want a child, and consequently abandoned her and his unborn son, never providing a dime of support. This might be construed to explain his refusal to sign his testimony to the Warren Commission, and why Marguerite sued for divorce.

Another possible answer is that Edward Pic was not the father of John.

Just as strange is Jenner's leading question about how long it had been since Pic had seen Marguerite. Jenner told the witness that he had not seen his ex-wife in 37 years, which would mean that he last saw her in 1927 - 2 years before they were married - a statement with which Pic concurred. This discrepancy with facts is just one small sample of the many reasons why no thinking person trusts the Warren Commission or its fake report.

The facts prove, according to court order, that Marguerite filed for divorce against Edward John Pic, Jr, resulting in a final divorce decree dated June 28, 1933. In three weeks, Marguerite would marry Robert Edward Lee Oswald.

In yet another strange moment, Pic stated that Marguerite's second marriage broke up - something he had read about in the newspaper. Apparently he was not reading the same paper we read which stated that the beloved husband of Marguerite Oswald died at 6a on August 19, 1939.

Pic's testimony is problematic with respect to Murret's in regards to his financial support of his son. However, Murret's statements to FBI agent Wall alleging Pic's financial negligence may be constrained to the narrow period of time until the divorce was completed with stipulations for consummation that he support his son as he stated. If the IRS indeed investigated the issue of double claims of dependency for John Pic, it would lend further support to Ed Pic's testimony.

Pic waived his right to read and sign the testimony he gave. Thus we have no idea if the Warren Commission accurately reported it, or why he volunteered to appear before the Warren Commission.

At this point, we have yet to determine when the fake Marguerite Oswald entered the picture, or when the real Marguerite died. Some have stated that she changed her name to Keating, but that indicates confusion with Margaret Emma Keating, Robert, Sr's first wife.

We are perplexed about the absence of this biographical information with casual internet searches. There seems to be no reason for silence on the subject of Edward John Pic or Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. Yet we suspect that we have not uncovered the rest of the story.

Reference

John McAdams, TESTIMONY OF EDWARD JOHN PlC, JR [Warren Report excerpt], nd, accessed 3/4/2017

John Armstrong, John Armstrong Collection [Baylor University], various documents, accessed 3/4/2017

Copyright 2017 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.