From the link that you provided:
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/raliegh_call.htm
"One of the ladies, Mrs. Alveeta A. Treon, made a statement concerning the
events of that night to assassination researcher and attorney Bernard
Fensterwald some five years after the assassination, but then refused to
sign it on advice from her lawyer, according to Fensterwald.
The Sheriff and the FBI. How did we come to know Mrs. Treon's story of what she witnessed and recorded on that night in 1963 ? now known as The Raleigh Call? In September of 1965, Mrs. Treon and her family, along with her souvenir LD call slip, moved from Dallas to Springfield, Missouri. And it was a "casual mention," as she described it, to a friend of hers about her experience the night of Oswald's aborted phone call that set things in motion.
Mickey Owen, Sheriff of Greene County, MO
Sheriff Mickey Owen It was at a dinner with a man named Winston Smith that the "casual mention" occurred. Mrs. Treon described Smith as someone she and her husband had known for many years, with whom they had transacted real estate business, and who had helped them with their move from Texas to Missouri. As a result of the dinner discussion, Smith called Mrs. Treon back on January 15, 1968, and told her that he had mentioned her story to Greene County (MO) Sheriff Mickey Owen, and that the Sheriff was "interested in learning more about it." (Owen was Sheriff of Greene County from 1965 until 1980, and is pictured at right. )
When interviewed by the HSCA's Surell Brady, Smith confirmed Mrs. Treon's statement that he had contacted Sheriff Owen with the story, thinking it was something that law enforcement would be interested in. Smith knew the Sheriff through his employment at that time as a custodial officer of medical records at the Federal Penitentiary in Springfield.
After hearing some of the details of Mrs. Treon's narrative, Sheriff Owen thought it credible enough that it should be turned over to the FBI. He contacted Jim Mitchell of the FBI Springfield (MO) office, and later told investigators that Mitchell interviewed Mrs. Treon and "did some type of investigation." When the FBI visited her home, Mrs. Treon said the men "appeared interested in the information as though they were hearing it for the first time," and they took with them her LD call slip in order to make a copy of it. When some time had passed and the LD slip had not been returned to her, she contacted Sheriff Owen, who was able to get it back for her.
The Affidavit and Exhibit A. At some point in early 1968, someone with much (but, as it turned out, somewhat flawed) information about Mrs. Treon's testimony concerning the Raleigh Call, prepared a statement in proper affidavit form ("Mrs. Alveeta A. Treon, of lawful age, being first duly sworn, deposes and says as follows...." etc.). Attached to it was a copy of her LD call slip, marked "Exhibit A."
Who would have done this, and more to the point, who would have had sufficient legal standing and knowledge to write it in correct form? Sheriff Owen immediately comes to mind, and this is bolstered by the fact that the document is written in and for Greene County, Missouri. However, Sheriff Owen told the HSCA that "he did not recall helping her prepare any kind of affidavit about the information." (Below is an excerpt of the affidavit, photocopied from the actual carbon copy made at the time the affidavit was originally typed.)
Excerpt from Mrs. Treon's unsigned affidavit.
Another possibility, though perhaps less likely, is that the FBI may have prepared the affidavit after their interview with Mrs. Treon. They did, after all, take away with them her LD slip, which would become Exhibit A. But would they have prepared an affidavit headed "State of Missouri / County of Greene"?
Mrs. Treon never saw this document until about 10 years after her interview with the FBI, and she certainly never signed it (therefore it was never notarized). When attorney Bernard Fensterwald first sent me a copy of the affidavit, he told me that he assumed Mrs. Treon refused to sign it on advice from her lawyer, though this does not appear to have been the case.
It became clear that Mrs. Treon had not seen the contents of "her" affidavit when HSCA Special Counsel Surell Brady asked her about some of the things contained in it. Brady therefore sent Mrs. Treon a copy of the document, and asked her to respond to two sets of questions concerning it: "(1) Did you give the information in the affidavit? If so, when and to whom? Was the affidavit ever signed by you and notarized? (2) Is the information contained in the affidavit correct and accurate? If not, please indicate on the affidavit itself any inaccuracies or misstatements."
As it turned out, it would be a trash can that would provide Mrs. Treon with her biggest problem with what appeared in the document. Here is how the original, unedited version of the affidavit (written as if in first person by Mrs. Treon) describes the series of events after Mrs. Swinney failed to place Oswald's call:
A few moments later, Mrs. Swinney tore the page off her notation pad and threw it in the waste paper basket. I think the time of the Oswald call would be about 10:45 p.m. and Mrs. Swinney left at around 11:00 p.m. or just after.
When she walked out of the room, I got up from my position, walked to the waste paper basket and took the piece of paper out. It was just an unofficial piece of paper from a pad with details of the call. This is normal procedure. In a long distance call, an operator will scribble out details and only if the call is completed will she transfer this to an official ticket.
I immediately noted all the details made by Mrs. Swinney and made out a long distance call ticket. I threw this scrap of paper back into the waste paper basket. At the time I didn't even think about keeping it. All I wanted was a souvenir.
Upon reading the document, Mrs. Treon was particularly upset with the above "trash diving" characterization. It is good that she had the opportunity to set the record straight, because that section led some who read it to believe it was a very weak link in her story.
When all that was available to researchers was this unrevised, unedited, inaccurate copy of the affidavit (and its Exhibit A, the LD call slip), the "second hand" depiction of Mrs. Treon's going through the trash can for information about the call caused some to doubt that the call ever existed. In 1970, researcher Paul Hoch, among the first to comment on the Raleigh Call, used the trash can incident to conclude that an inebriated John David Hurt must have attempted to place a crank call into the jail to Oswald and that Mrs. Treon "picked up the wrong piece of paper ? the one relating to Hurt's attempted call to Oswald ? and recorded it as if it were the call from Oswald (probably to attorney Abt) which she had just witnessed." (See below for more on Hoch's theory.)
Mrs. Treon, however, unequivocally stated that whoever wrote up the affidavit document got that part of it very wrong. In the corrected copy of the affidavit that she returned to the HSCA, she wrote this about what Mrs. Swinney did with the LD slip she had written out: "I did not say this. I do not know what Mrs. Swinney did with her L.D. ticket."
And concerning the assertion that she relied on waste paper from a trash can for her information, she wrote this: "I did not say all this. I was asked if I knew what Mrs. Swinney did with her ticket. I said I had no idea, that tickets on L.D. calls not completed were not normally kept but I did not know what she did with it. I heard Oswald place the call ? give his name etc. as I was on the line." Mrs. Treon did suggest, though, that had the FBI asked her what Mrs. Swinney did with her LD call slip, it would have been logical for her to tell them that she probably threw it away, though she does not know that for certain.
