Marguerite Oswald conjured up a huge number of money-making schemes that capitalized on the president’s assassination. She would go on to sell everything from Lee Harvey Oswald’s clothes to recordings of his letters from Russia, which she read aloud herself. Strangest of all, she sold autographed business cards with her name on them, flogging them on a street corner for $5 a piece. According to Texas Monthly, she once even stated she’d like to sell Lee’s tombstone.
Although many people found this vulture-like behavior distasteful, Marguerite never saw it that way. She once told reporters, “I am the strongest person in this tragedy, because I have lost everything. But Marguerite Oswald fights the powers. … This woman was left with no one and no money. Yet she took the bull by the horns and found a way to survive and support herself. Her attitude is correct, and she will rob Peter to pay Paul occasionally. And Marguerite Oswald has survived.”
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Even at the Warren Commission, Marguerite expressed her anxiety to the judge that none of the pictures she submitted as evidence would be confiscated — citing their potential value to her as a source of income. “I volunteered to help my country in every way possible — to let the Commission have everything that I have,” she said. “But you must understand that these are very valuable pictures, sir. I am having people wanting rights to a book, and these pictures are very, very valuable to me.”
