Lee Harvey Oswald Home Up For Sale

A home linked to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is up for sale. The boarding house was the location where Oswald stayed for about six weeks before the assassination in 1963.

The home has belonged to Patricia Hall and her family since 1942, but Hall decided it is time to sell — as long as the buyer preserves it and will offer the right price for the onetime home of the man who allegedly killed President John F. Kennedy. She explained:

“I understand the significance of the history of this house. It doesn’t matter if you believe in a conspiracy or the lone gunman. The fact is that Lee Harvey Oswald lived here.”

Oswald rented a five-by-14 foot bedroom in the house, then owned by Hall’s grandmother, Gladys Johnson. The bedroom was really just a small nook off the home’s dining room barely large enough to hold a twin bed.

Lee Harvey Oswald stayed at the home starting on October 14, 1963, while he worked a new job at the Texas School Book Depository. On the weekends, he returned to a suburb of Irving, where his wife lived.

The accused assassin returned briefly to the house on November 22, 1963, roughly 30 minutes after JFK was shot and killed. Johnson’s housekeeper told the Warren Commission at the time that Oswald hurried in, grabbed a jacket, then headed back outside. Soon after that, the man killed Officer J.D. Tippit. He was arrested at the Texas Theatre.

Hall recalled that her grandmother was crushed by the connection her boarding house had with Lee Harvey Oswald. She added:

“My grandmother was very embarrassed and humiliated that her home would be associated with someone that would do something like that. She began receiving death threats. She received a lot of hate mail.”

But despite the opposition she received, Johnson refused to vilify Oswald, who she had known as O.H. Lee. She added that the man kept his room tidy and was even granted access to her refrigerator. Hall explained, “She would only be true to what her observations were.”

Hall began letting people into the house to see Lee Harvey Oswald’s onetime room in 2008, keeping a donation box to help with restorations. And while she has considered selling the house for years, she decided that his year was the best time. The 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination is this year, a fact that is gaining attention in recent months.

With that in mind, Hall decided it was time. The house in Oak Cliff has nine bedrooms and two bedrooms, along with a two story garage apartment that has eight more bedrooms and two bathrooms. The house was built in 1935 and has a list price that will be revealed when it goes on the market on Sunday.

Would you consider buying a house that Lee Harvey Oswald once lived in?