$43.37

We are all aware of the fuss the authorities, and generations worth of Warren Commission apologists, made/make about Lee Harvey Oswald leaving the Texas School Book Depository so soon after the assassination. It was a sign, they said, that Oswald had done something wrong.

Something crossed my mind today. On Friday, November 22, 1963, Oswald was owed his wages. He collected his money each week in cash and on November 22 he was owed $43.37. Why didn't the authorities make a big deal out of him not collecting his wages?

Good point.

On a similar note, the document which sets out to explain the crosses on the map that was found suggests that one mark indicates the route he would take walking to work from his boarding house - which the FBI said was two miles from work...

Well... if he walked to work, you would have to assume he also walked home. Yet they have him on a bus and in a cab.

For that matter, why not ask Buell if he intended leaving soon and catch his "regular" Friday afternoon lift back to Ruth and Marina?

And if he did walk to work, but usually caught a bus home, why weren't the driver and other regular passengers tracked down for interviews?

My next question is this, Greg. If the rest of the Truly/Shelley employees were sent home early, or like Frazier left early, why is there nothing in the XXVI volumes that covers why none of them asked for, or got, their wages?

Yeah, the President's been shot, but I still need my money to get through the weekend, rent to pay, kids to feed, beer to buy.

There's no way all these men walked away from the TSBD that afternoon without getting paid, Greg. Who paid them and when?

What are the ticks on CE 1949?
Who the hell is Leslie Oswald?

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0392a.htm

EDIT: Just caught your Gordon Smith thread.

Lee, I'm pretty sure the next payday was November 29, so the warehouse workers weren't expecting any cash on November 22. William Weston, in "411 Elm Street", Fourth Decade, May 1994, Vol.1 No. 4, makes a great point that, since the warehousemen were all paid in cash, someone, assumedly O.V. Campbell, would have to make a trip to the bank and be carrying roughly $2000 in cash on Friday afternoons. A pretty risky business practice. And it may have been more than that, if others were paid more than Oswald. Personally I feel the cash method may have been a facile technique for compensating workers who were complicit in the plot- slip them an extra 50 or 100 over several months. In any case, that method lent itself to clandestine activities- were the TSBD involved in crating drugs or guns over the years, which I also suspect.

Anyways, here's XXII p. 110:

O.V. CAMPBELL, Vice President, Texas School Book Depository, Elm and Houston Streets, Dallas, Texas, furnished the following information:

LEE HARVEY OSWALD, while employed at the Texas School Book Depository from October 16 to November 22, 1963, was paid semi-monthly in cash. He received two payments of $104.41 each on October 31, 1963 and November 15, 1963. In addition he now has pay due him of $43.37 which is unclaimed.

on 11/27/63 by SA Bardwell D. Odum

Richard Gilbride wrote:Lee, I'm pretty sure the next payday was November 29, so the warehouse workers weren't expecting any cash on November 22. William Weston, in "411 Elm Street", Fourth Decade, May 1994, Vol.1 No. 4, makes a great point that, since the warehousemen were all paid in cash, someone, assumedly O.V. Campbell, would have to make a trip to the bank and be carrying roughly $2000 in cash on Friday afternoons. A pretty risky business practice. And it may have been more than that, if others were paid more than Oswald. Personally I feel the cash method may have been a facile technique for compensating workers who were complicit in the plot- slip them an extra 50 or 100 over several months. In any case, that method lent itself to clandestine activities- were the TSBD involved in crating drugs or guns over the years, which I also suspect.

Anyways, here's XXII p. 110:

O.V. CAMPBELL, Vice President, Texas School Book Depository, Elm and Houston Streets, Dallas, Texas, furnished the following information:

LEE HARVEY OSWALD, while employed at the Texas School Book Depository from October 16 to November 22, 1963, was paid semi-monthly in cash. He received two payments of $104.41 each on October 31, 1963 and November 15, 1963. In addition he now has pay due him of $43.37 which is unclaimed.

on 11/27/63 by SA Bardwell D. Odum

Thanks for the information, Richard. Kind of settles it for me on how often the TSBD employees were paid.

Don't understand why they got paid on a Thursday on the 31st of October and a Friday on the 15th of November. Between October 16 and October 31 Oswald worked 12 days and picked up $104.41. Between November 1 and November 15 he worked 11 days and picked up the same amount of $104.41.

I'm really left scratching head as to why the first TSBD warehouse register containing the names of all the Truly employees, as published in the Warren Commission volumes, coincidentally starts on the day that Oswald started - Wednesday October 16th:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0391a.htm

EDIT: Changed post because I couldn't count

Lee,

There are 12 paid days in the period listed. Add a two weekend and you have a fortnight.

I'm horrible at trying to explain this stuff, but it basically has to do with the start and finish of a pay period.

There is nothing in the date starting on 10/16. It is more likely, he was started on that date as it was the first day of the next pay period.

Richard might be able clarify further, if needed.

greg parker wrote:Lee,

There are 12 paid days in the period listed. Add a two weekend and you have a fortnight.

I'm horrible at trying to explain this stuff, but it basically has to do with the start and finish of a pay period.

There is nothing in the date starting on 10/16. It is more likely, he was started on that date as it was the first day of the next pay period.

Richard might be able clarify further, if needed.

Cool, so CE 1949 shows a work register that runs as the pay period as well?

You're right that the first period shows 12 paid days. The second period shows only 11 paid days, Greg, including a bank holiday:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0391b.htm

So why would he be paid exactly the same amount for his first pay period (Oct 16-31) and his second pay period (November 1-15) when the second pay period was one day less?

Lee,

like I said, I have trouble explaining how these things work

Though he worked 12 days in the first period and 11 days (including a public holiday in the second), his pay reflects a set period. It seems he was paid "bi-monthly" which may have a slightly different formula to a "fortnightly" period which would be a "set-in-stone" 10 work day period. It could be something like working out an annual rate and dividing that by 26 and then paying this "bi-monthly" which in turn would mean a different pay day depending on number of days in a month.

If you think that's complicated - some government payments here used to be paid according to the Julian calendar.

greg parker wrote:Lee,

like I said, I have trouble explaining how these things work

Though he worked 12 days in the first period and 11 days (including a public holiday in the second), his pay reflects a set period. It seems he was paid "bi-monthly" which may have a slightly different formula to a "fortnightly" period which would be a "set-in-stone" 10 work day period. It could be something like working out an annual rate and dividing that by 26 and then paying this "bi-monthly" which in turn would mean a different pay day depending on number of days in a month.

If you think that's complicated - some government payments here used to be paid according to the Julian calendar.

Okay, I think I'm getting there, Greg.

Suppose it beats getting paid by the Khmer Rouge calendar.

Suppose it beats getting paid by the Khmer Rouge calendar.

That's quite the interesting anomaly; I'd never noticed that Oswald (allegedly) received the same $104.41 for 12 working days and then 11 working days (which included a paid holiday on Veteran's Day November 11).

I would surmise that the TSBD cut the months in half, and had payday fall on a workday (not Fridays, as I'd assumed). So October with 31 days would have paydays on Tuesday the 15th and Thursday the 31st; November would have Friday the 15th and Friday the 29th. So Oswald, conveniently (nothing sinister implied) began working on the 1st day of the new pay period.

According to XXIII p. 692, an FBI re-interview of O.V. Campbell on March 24th, he re-iterated that "employees in the warehouse are paid in cash; are not required to sign any type of receipt for their pay"

BUT check out HSCA VIII p. 371, two photocopies of Oswald's pay receipts (hopefully this link is correct)

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docid=961&relpageId=375

which are both signed and undated

BUT it's not Oswald's authenticated signature (see Jerry Rose in Third Decade, "Double Agent Unmasked: A Reconstruction" Sept. 1987 Vol. 3 No. 6). Rose also determined that a copy of Oswald's employment application that was reproduced in Chief Curry's "Assassination File" was filled in not by Oswald, but by Detective V.J. Brian. In fact, Rose and Weston were entirely skeptical that the payroll ledgers were authentic, since they were painstakingly hand-ruled and contain the gaffe "Leslie Oswald". So their bottom line is that there was no legitimate documentation from the TSBD, in stark contrast to the wealth of data from Jaggers, and even Leslie Welding.

So O.V. Campbell's first statement that Oswald was paid $104.41 for each of his first two pay periods is probably a whole cloth fabrication; the TSBD didn't even keep pay records and what he said would go uncontested. Nobody could challenge his word and even the FBI got confused and needed to re-interview him on March 24.

Richard

Where did the salary receipts come from? Were they in Oswald's possession or the TSBD's?

Seems like a really professional organisation doesn't it? Cash doled out, undated receipts, and no signature requirements to prove you had received the cash.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=961&relPageId=375

Richard, your link didn't work for me.

Looking at it, and trying to recall the Julian date pay periods that use to apply to some government payments - I think this was the method they (the TSBD) may actually have used. You needed a set square, an astronomer and a crystal ball to work the damn things out.

On the payslips - It is quite obvious neither were signed by Oswald - but then, the space doesn't ask for a signature - it just asks for a name. I think the person who completed the rest of it, put the name there as well.

I also note the lack of a line for any date to be inserted. Bad practice, bad design to be sure.

They were less demanding times from a record-keeping perspective, though - look at the Ruby accounting system for starters as "exhibit A".

Though plenty of scope for suspicion re the TSBD exists, I can't say that this aspect is all that suspicious - but I would like to check out the claims being made about Oswald's application.

The Leslie Oswald "gaffe" is of course, open to all manner of claims. Judyth Baker for example, has been pointing to it as proof that Oswald modelled himself on actor Leslie Howard's portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel (i.e. he used the alias of Leslie Oswald in honor of Leslie Howard).

The reality is, she was unaware of this ledger entry and had merely seen "Leslie Oswald" listed in a FBI report on all the names associated with Oswald. She assumed this list was all the aliases he was alleged to have used. It was not. It was - as a I say - just all the names associated with him in any way.

Unless Oswald tapped Truly on the shoulder prior to that pay period and said, "Boss, I want to be known henceforth as 'Leslie Oswald' - please update your records accordingly." it was just a clerical boo-boo.

greg parker wrote:http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=961&relPageId=375

Unless Oswald tapped Truly on the shoulder prior to that pay period and said, "Boss, I want to be known henceforth as 'Leslie Oswald' - please update your records accordingly." it was just a clerical boo-boo.

I'm at the town library, had to grab a small winter work project and won't be back home for several hours. Those Mary Ferrell links don't always seem to cooperate; those payslips are at HSCA VIII p. 371. And I was wondering about them today.

It seemed that whomever filled in the numerical data also wrote Oswald's signature; the slant and stress (size of letters, thickness of pen stroke) looked the same to me. I guess that would have been O.V. Campbell. Apparently he recorded that he'd paid Oswald, and kept the receipt for whatever payroll record system they used.

12 8-hour days is 96 hours; 11 8-hour days is 88 hours. It doesn't make sense to me that he would receive only $108 + and then with a social security deduction take home $104.41. 108/96 is only about $1.12 and 1/2 per hour. Am I missing something?

Jerry Rose's brief article "Brian's Song" details the employment application duplicity at the DPD; it's in the Third Decade somewhere in 1988. The application itself is in Jesse Curry's book and I know I've seen it online somewhere- though that's no great help.

Rose & Weston deduced that the payroll ledger sheet containing "Leslie Oswald" was crafted first, as the lines were more carefully drawn. There are also mistakes for Frankie Kaiser's dental days & Billy Lovelady getting sick, they were originally given 8-hour days and then corrected with whiteout (if I remember correctly).

They also claimed that the typed portions (i.e. the names) had irregular spacing between them (one to the next) but I've never detected that. Their claim was that the typist would have manually pulled the paper up since the next name didn't fit the spacing mechanically given by the return gizmo.

Myself, I've accepted the payroll ledgers' authenticity. I imagine that "Leslie" came about due to a brain melt regarding Leslie Welding. Or maybe Haddon Aiken had just watched a Leslie Nielson movie.

This is still not making sense. Oswald's TSBD wage is $1.25 an hour. If he works 96 hours, he's entitled to $120, before deductions. If he works 88 hours, he's entitled to $110. He makes $10 a day.

The pay receipts at HSCA VIII p. 371 show him getting $108.34, with $3.93 (or 3.63%) deducted for Social Security, for a net take-home pay of $104.41. The receipts expressly show that nothing is taken out for withholding tax.

Texas has today and had then in 1963 no state income tax. It's written right into their 1876 state constitution.

There's money missing, and there's no ostensible reason why it was taken from his pay. The $108.34 very likely is based on his 88-hour work stint, but he got gyped out of $1.66, almost an hour and a half of work. For a guy who complained at DPD HQ that "How can I afford a rifle on the Book Depository salary of $1.25 an hour?" when he could hardly afford to feed his own family, $1.66 is a significant chunk of dough, it could go toward something.

There's an even greater disparity if the $108.34 was based on a 96-hour work stint, for which he should have received $120.

However the 108.34 figure was conjured up, it doesn't correlate to either work stint, which makes me think these pay receipts got written after the assassination, and weren't something the TSBD kept on file.

It's all a bit confusing. O.V. Campbell originally only handed two items over to the Dallas Police/FBI in late November 1963. One item was the application form which has not only dubious information on it, but also has a V.T. Brian version that was filled out on a blank version of a TSBD application form. Do we have any other examples of the excuse the Dallas Police gave for "copying" it; that they simply made a copy by hand? WTF? Here's us laughing at Greg's invented excuse for the Leslie Oswald appearing on the ledger, but this excuse is even worse.

"We required a copy - so we got someone to copy it by hand onto a blank form." This was 1963 and not 1863, right?

The second Oswald item handed over from the TSBD was his exemption certificate.

So when did the salary receipts turn up? What use were they to the TSBD undated? Why were they not published in the Warren Report and where did the HSCA get them from?

To add another slight variable to Richard's last post, the next fortnightly pay period was going to be 10 days so don't know whether Greg is right about how the employees getting the same each month was to simply ensure they got a non-variable amount each fortnight because some fortnight's would be 10 days, some 11 and some 12? But math ain't my forte...

Guys,

I can only repeat - it is difficult to explain to anyone - let alone get your own head around. The problem is the calendar and terms being used. You have reverted to the use of the English term "fortnight" which literally means "14 nights". In the US, the usual terms used for pay periods are "bi-weekly" or "semi-monthly". There is a difference.

I think this link illustrates the degree of difficulty in getting your head around "semi-monthly" pay periods.
http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/505169-datetime-math

Greg,

Do you believe that Oswald kept telling certain employers that his last job was the USMC as per the testimony of John Graef from JCS and the application form from the TSBD?

Lee David Farley wrote:Greg,

Do you believe that Oswald kept telling certain employers that his last job was the USMC as per the testimony of John Graef from JCS and the application form from the TSBD?

Lee,

I can believe it one level - that is - for shitty jobs like this, people tend to have no problem in fudging the truth on application forms. In this case, it could be as simple as that lie sounding more impressive than trying to explain why he left previous jobs.

We know that Oswald (or anyone pulling his strings - if such was the case) had no qualms about lying on forms. Look at his fraudulent discharge from the USMC, among a number of examples.

Never looked at the TSBD application too closely before - but that sig looks a bit a dodgy to me. I also wonder what opportunity he had in the USMC to learn clerical and accounting procedures and practices?

Mr. TRULY. Yes; he did. And he told me I asked him about experience that he had had, or where he had worked, and he said he had just served his term in the Marine Corps and had received an honorable discharge, and he listed some things of an office nature that he had learned to do in the Marines.
I questioned him about any past activities. I asked him if he had ever had any trouble with the police, and he said, no. So thinking that he was just out of the Marines, I didn't check any further back. I didn't have anything of a permanent nature in mind for him. He looked like a nice young fellow to me--he was quiet and well mannered. He used the word "sir", you know, which a lot of them don't do at this time.
So I told him if he would come to work on the morning of the 16th, it was the beginning of a new pay period. So he filled out his withholding slip, with the exception of the number of dependants.
He asked me if I would hold that for 3 or 4 days, that he is expecting a baby momentarily.
So some 4 days or so later--I don't remember the exact day--he told me that he had this new baby, and he wanted to add one dependent.
He finished filling it out. And I sent it up to Mr. Campbell who makes out the payroll for the company.
Mr. BELIN. Now, on October 15th you saw him fill out the application form for employment in his own writing?
Mr. TRULY. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. You also saw him fill out the withholding slip, except for the number of exemptions, in his own writing, is that correct?
Mr. TRULY. Yes, sir.

Truly confirms the 16th was the start of a new pay period and Belin confirms some suspicion about the provenance of the application.

I just checked the Social Security site for 1963 rates and 3.625% was the rate back then deducted from employees' pay.

And, HSCA VIII p. 235 is handwriting expert Joseph P. McNally's determination that the signature on the two pay receipts is not Lee Harvey Oswald's.

The $43.37 for assassination week works out to 4 and 1/2 days pay, i.e. 36 hours. It's 45 bucks with $1.63 taken out at the Social Security 3.625% rate. So even though everybody got credited with 8 hours on November 22, those cheapskates only paid the crew for 4 hours. With 8 hours LHO would have been due $50 before deductions.

But imagining that JFK had been assassinated on November 29, after the TSBD work day (!), would LHO have been due $100, from another 40-hour week? Or his standard $108.34?

Since the pay receipts at HSCA VIII p. 371 are catalogued as FBI Exhibit 422, it leads me to conclude that O.V. Campbell gave these to Bardwell Odum on November 27. Campbell had re-iterated in his March 24 interview that he'd already given the FBI all he had as far as Oswald records. And the FBI provided the HSCA with these pay receipts.

So the question seems to me to be whether Campbell or someone concocted these pay receipts after Oswald's murder. I would go with yes they were, because the $108.34 ($104.41 after deductions) doesn't jive with the hours listed on the payroll ledger, and he was owed more money in both periods. I'd think LHO would have noticed that, especially with his first payday, mentally calculating the amount he was due and anticipating that much.

Richard, this is from wiki:

A fortnight is a unit of time equal to fourteen days (two weeks). The word derives from the Old English: fēowertyne niht, meaning "fourteen nights".[1][2] Fortnight and fortnightly are commonly used words in Britain, Ireland and many Commonwealth countries such as Australia, India, New Zealand, and Pakistan, where many wages and salaries and most social security benefits are paid on a fortnightly basis.[3] The word is rarely used in North America, except regionally in Canada and in insular traditional communities (e.g. Amish) in the United States. American and Canadian payroll systems may use the term biweekly in reference to pay periods every two weeks. Neither term should be confused with semimonthly (in one year there are 26 fortnightly or biweekly versus 24 semimonthly pay periods).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnight

Oswald's pay = $1.25 x 40 x 52 = $2600/24 = $108.34 before deductions paid semi-monthly.

Richard Gilbride wrote:
The $43.37 for assassination week works out to 4 and 1/2 days pay, i.e. 36 hours. It's 45 bucks with $1.63 taken out at the Social Security 3.625% rate. So even though everybody got credited with 8 hours on November 22, those cheapskates only paid the crew for 4 hours. With 8 hours LHO would have been due $50 before deductions.

But imagining that JFK had been assassinated on November 29, after the TSBD work day (!), would LHO have been due $100, from another 40-hour week? Or his standard $108.34?

My best guess is that it would depend on whether his employment was going to continue. Termination would mean getting paid the exact dollar figure for actual hours worked versus the usual $108.34 if employment was ongoing.

I think you've nailed it Greg, that Oswald's pay = $2600/24 = $108.34 before deductions paid in semi-monthly installments.
That reverses my previous conclusion about the authenticity of the receipts- they're likely a legitimate shoebox-style records collection used by the TSBD to have shown they paid that particular employee on that particular semi-month.

Great work, on what became a perplexing conundrum. Coupled with Hadden Aiken's handmade payroll ledgers, I'd have to say the TSBD way of keeping track of business operations, regarding warehouse workers, was pretty hokey.

I'd have to say it's O.V. Campbell's signature on the pay receipts, and he likely was the person who handed out the cash on paydays. Would guess he drove down to their bank on payday afternoons to load up a briefcase.