John Abt representing Lee Oswald

John Abt

In my paper Anatomy Of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations the name John Abt pops up quite a few times. Some people, like Will Fritz, said Oswald wanted Abt to represent him on Friday. This was rubbish as I already shown in that paper that the record stated Oswald made his very first two phone calls in the early afternoon of the 23rd (pages 225 & 226 from the PDF linked to above), almost 24 hours after being dragged in after his arrest in the Texas Theatre. One of those calls was an attempt to call New York. That by itself is a good indicator that Oswald wanted to contact Abt on the 23rd.

In the pages below (thanks to Malcolm Blunt) Abt tells of a CBS reporter contacting him on Saturday morning that Oswald wanted Abt to represent him and unless Oswald himself would make that request not much was going to happen.

Click the images to enlarge them.

Then there is a video segment (starting at 5:25, on the third floor of Dallas City Hall, it shows Oswald being escorted through the corridor on his way from Fritz’s office to the jail elevator.

It is shot on Nov 23rd after Oswald’s first interrogation roughly at 11:30, he is in his white t-shirt only and then stops just before entering the door to the jail elevator and being pulled in by the D.P.D. detectives. But Oswald manages to talk to one of the reporters be it for a few seconds. The audio is sadly missing as the microphone was not plugged in. Denis Morissette and I were discussing this segment since this part was ‘new’ to me and he had brought it to my attention.

Later on in the same video segment we can see A.B.C.’s Bob Clark as the man whose microphone Oswald was talking in to and eventually there is a different microphone pushed forward to catch Clark’s voice.

This is the moment where Oswald asked to get in touch with John Abt. Clark talks about this moment in this PBS video (at 46:00) from 2003.  Oswald stated into Clark’s dead microphone “I want to contact Mr. Abt of New York City, to serve as my attorney”.

Saturday Nov 23rd at about 11:30 Oswald made the very first statement that he wanted John Abt to represent him and not any earlier. This by itself is supported by the reports from Saturday morning by Will Fritz himself, James Bookhout and Thomas Kelley made up on the 10:30 interrogation.

Add on Dec 13 2021.

Then there is a document which I found at the Harold Weisberg archive by Peggy Simpson which seems to have been sent before midday on the 23rd and makes mention of Oswald’s request for John Abt during the above mentioned happening in the corridor.