Up for auction "Marina Oswald Friend"

Ruth Hyde Paine Signed Magazine Page . This item is authenticated By Todd

Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.

ES-3059

Ruth

Hyde Paine (born September

3, 1932) was a friend of Marina Oswald, who was

living with her at the time of the JFK assassination. According to four government

investigations, Lee Harvey Oswald stored

the 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle that

he used to assassinate U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Ruth Paine's garage, unbeknownst to her and her husband, Michael Paine. Ruth Paine answered more than 5,000 questions

for the Warren Commission. There

were over 500 witnesses for the Warren Commission, and the average number of

questions asked for each witness was less than 300. Furthermore, Ruth Paine has

given more interviews than any other Warren Commission witness, always

consistent with her Warren Commission testimony. Paine was born Ruth

Avery Hyde in New York City, to her parents, William A. and Carol E. Hyde. She

went to Antioch College and

became a Quaker. Through her interest in folk dancing and music she met

her future husband Michael Paine. Though

strictly speaking not a Quaker, Michael attended meetings with Ruth. They

married on December 28, 1957. In 1959 Michael Paine got a job with Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, Texas and the Paines moved into a house in

the suburb of Irving (Michael

Paine's step-father, Arthur M. Young, invented the Bell Helicopter). As

liberals in Dallas, the Paines were isolated, and Ruth Paine was quite lonely. Ruth

Paine had been studying Russian since 1957. In the late 1950s she participated in

Quaker pen pal programs and the East-West Contact Committee, which sponsored

visits by three Soviets to the US. In 1963 she signed up to teach a summer

class in Russian at St. Mark's School in Dallas, but only one student signed up (William Hootkins, who became an actor and had a minor role in

the movie Star Wars as X-wing pilot Jek Porkins). Ruth

Paine met the Oswalds through her interest in the Russian language. She had

learned to read Russian, but she had difficulty with conversational Russian.

Also, she and Michael Paine were separated at this time. A mutual friend from

their Madrigal singing group, Everett Glover, invited her to a party at his

apartment on February 22, 1963 because he thought she would be interested in

meeting two interesting people who spoke Russian. The attendance of the couple,

Lee and Marina Oswald, was arranged by Oswald's friend, 51-year-old Russian

émigré George de Mohrenschildt, a

well-educated petroleum geologist with intelligence connections.  Ruth Paine drove Marina Oswald to New Orleans when the Oswalds moved there in May 1963 and

back to Dallas when they moved again in September 1963. When the Oswalds resettled

in the Dallas area, Marina and Lee's child, June, moved in with Ruth Paine in

the suburb of Irving, Texas while

Lee stayed in a boarding house under

the name O.H. Lee. The second Oswald child was born after Marina moved in.

Marina helped with the housework and Ruth's Russian studies while Lee visited

on weekends. Michael and Ruth had long been separated, but remained on good

terms. Michael was a frequent visitor and cared for his children deeply. At the

suggestion of a neighbor, Linnie Mae Randle, Ruth Paine told Lee Oswald about a

job opportunity at the Texas School Book

Depository. Lee

Harvey Oswald stayed at the Paine home with Marina and his children unannounced

on Thursday night, November 21, 1963—the night before President Kennedy was

assassinated. When Oswald left for work on the morning of November 22, he

brought a large package that he had kept in the Paine's garage with him to work

at the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald's coworker and friend, Wesley

Frazier testified that Oswald told him the bag contained curtain rods. The evidence demonstrated that the package

actually contained the rifle used by Oswald in the assassination. Eight

days after the assassination of President Kennedy, on November 30, 1963, Ruth

Paine inadvertently discovered evidence that Lee Oswald had attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker.

Among the letters that Ruth Paine repeatedly sent to Marina was a thick book of

household advice in Russian. The book contained an undated note left by Lee for

Marina on April 10, 1963 (the day of the Walker assassination attempt) that

Marina later testified she had concealed. Before the Kennedy assassination,

Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting.

Ruth Paine testified before the Warren Commission and has been

interviewed by a number of authors, including Johnson, William Manchester and Gerald Posner. She has appeared in numerous documentaries and

even a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. She also testified in Jim Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw. Paine was not called to testify before the House Select

Committee on Assassinations. After

the assassination, Marina and Lee Oswald's mother Marguerite briefly stayed

with Ruth Paine until Marina was taken into custody by the Secret Service.

Marguerite and Lee's brother Robert did not like Ruth Paine, which may have influenced

Marina Oswald. They thought Paine sought attention for herself, an opinion

Marina would later express before the Warren Commission. Ruth wrote to Marina incessantly, with

letters that took an almost desperate tone, but received no response except for

a Christmas card. They met

briefly in 1964 but afterwards they would never see each other again. Paine

heard news about Marina through author Priscilla Johnson McMillan until

McMillan's relationship with Marina broke off in the early 1980s. Ruth Paine

returned to Pennsylvania and became principal of a Quaker school, the Greene Street Friends

School located in Germantown. She soon moved to St. Petersburg, Florida and

earned a master's degree in psychology from the University of South

Florida. After working for the school system in Franklin County in

the Florida Panhandle, she

returned to St. Petersburg and worked for the Hillsborough County,

Florida school system until her retirement. She is active in

Quaker and liberal charities and organizations and lives in Santa Rosa, California. The

City of Irving bought the former Paine home in 2009 and has been restoring it

to its 1963 condition to be turned into a museum in time for the 50th

anniversary of the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 2013. Conspiracy

theorists have attempted to connect the Paines to various conspiracies going

back generations, since both Ruth and Michael Paine's relatives and ancestors

held important government and business positions. According to a declassified

CIA document, Ruth's sister, Sylvia Hyde Hoke, was listed as an employee of the

agency in the Falls Church, VA local directory in 1961. Ruth visited and stayed

with her sister in September 1963. Ruth admits that her sister may have worked

for "an outfit." Ruth's father, William Avery Hyde, was an insurance

executive who went to work for USAID (United States Agency for International

Development), which was and is a well known cover for CIA personnel.

Declassified documents show that Hyde had contacts with the CIA, which at least

considered him for use in an operation in Vietnam. Ruth's husband Michael Paine

was the son of Ruth Forbes Paine and George Lyman Paine Jr..

Ruth Forbes Paine was a close friend of Mary Bancroft, an OSS agent and at times a mistress of CIA

director Allen Dulles and Henry Luce Forbes Paine was also a student of Carl Jung. Ruth Forbes Paine later married Arthur M. Young, who was a member of Andrija Puharich's Roundtable Foundation. In Oliver Stone's JFK, the Paines are depicted as Bill and Janet Williams,

played by Gary Carter and Gail Cronauer. While most names in the movie JFK were

not changed, the Paines were renamed to avoid potential legal action. (The name

Janet Williams was used again in the 1993 TV movie Fatal

Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald, in which the role was played

by Quenby Bakke.)

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