The Caped Factoid Buster (that would be me) must once again emerge from the Factoid Busting Cave and demonstrate to you pathetic folks what sanity - or insanity, as the case may be - actually looks like when it comes to Conspiracy Factoids. This happens to be one of the Caped One’s favorites because it, like so many others, can be traced to Factoid Master John Armstrong.
The “missing tooth” photo was taken by Sidney Edward Voebel in the English 202 class at Beauregard Junior High School, most likely in 1954. According to an FBI memorandum dated 12-3-1963, Voebel did not recall the exact date the photo was taken but believed it was during the 1954-55 school year. Voebel’s recollection was that he was not a member of the English 202 class at the time but was going from classroom to classroom taking photos for the school yearbook. (Voebel was interviewed several times by police and FBI, as early as 11-25-1963, because he was also affiliated with Oswald in the Civil Air Patrol.)
Voebel recalled that Oswald had “turned and faced the camera in a clown-like attitude.” Voebel surmised that Oswald saw him come into the room and clowned around because he knew him. He described Oswald’s action as “spontaneous” and not staged. On the other hand, the English 202 teacher who had taught both Voebel and Oswald, Helen DuFour, described Voebel as a “showoff” who would “often disrupt the class.” So possibly he encouraged Oswald or Oswald reacted because he knew Voebel would enjoy his antics. Presumably because of Oswald’s clowning, the photo did not appear in the yearbook. (Voebel died at age 31 in 1971.)
Voebel told the FBI he had made the photo available to WDSU-TV in New Orleans. (It seems odd that Voebel would still have had this 1954 photo in 1963, recalled Oswald being in it, and immediately made it available to WDSU, but we’ll leave this mystery for another day. Possibly Voebel was actually Umbrella Man, ya think?) WDSU told the FBI it had provided the negative to LIFE Magazine, but it provided prints to the FBI on 12-3-1963. (There is confusion about payment. Armstrong says Voebel received $75 from LIFE, others say $25 from WDSU.)
When Voebel was first interviewed by the FBI on 11-25-1963, before the photo was known, he recalled a fight between Oswald and brothers Mike and John Neumeyer but provided no details. He subsequently told the FBI it appeared that Oswald’s tooth had pierced his lip and that he (Voebel) had put ice on it in the school restroom; nothing was said about a missing tooth until he testified to the Warren Commission (see below) on April 7, 1964. Likewise, fellow student Bennierita Smith described Oswald during her WC testimony (see below) as suffering a tooth through his lip; nothing about a missing tooth. Fellow student Dmitri Bouzon described a bloody lip; again, nothing about a missing tooth. Perhaps most significantly, Oswald’s aunt Lilliam Murret described a “tooth through the lip,” causing mother Marguerite to take Our Innocent Patsy to the dentist for repairs. Consistent with this injury, a pale scar was observed on Oswald’s upper lip at his autopsy.
Here is where everything goes awry: When Voebel testified before the WC, he described for the first time a wild brawl involving Oswald and John Neumeyer. The brawl occurred because Oswald had picked on John’s younger brother Mike. The “protracted” fight extended “across lawns and sidewalks, and people would run them off, and they would only run to the next place, and it continued that way from block to block, and as people would run them off of one block, they would go on to the next.”
Does this sound to you, My Fellow Factoid Fans, like a plausible fight between two junior high school kids? Or does it sound more like Voebel the showoff as described by his former teacher Helen DuFour? Well, let's see what the Neumeyers themselves had to say ...
Mike Neumeyer had been interviewed by the FBI on 11-25-1963. He only “vaguely” recalled Oswald at all. The only incident he recalled was that Oswald had been picking on him (he was in the 6th grade, Our Innocent Patsy was in the 9th), whereupon his brother John had fought Oswald. He recalled no details of the fight at all, only that John had won.
The FBI then spoke with John Neumeyer on 11-27-63. Did he describe a brawl, you ask? Uh, no. John recalled that he was in either the 7th or 8th grade at the time – like Mike, younger than Oswald. This fight was his only contact, ever, with Oswald. To quote the FBI report: “NEUMEYER recalls that OSWALD struck him a few times and that ended the fight.”
Hmmm, not exactly the block-by-block brawl described by Voebel, who was either fabricating or suffering from the common malady of conflating memories. What actually occurred was recalled by Bennierita Smith in her WC testimony. Robin Riley, a small but older friend of the Neumeyers who was not a student at Beauregard, had belted Oswald after the Neumeyer encounter:
Mrs. SMITH. One fight really impressed me, I guess because there was this boy – he wasn't going to Beauregard, this boy he had the fight with, and he was a little guy. I think his name was Robin Riley. He hit Lee, and his tooth came through his lip.
Mr. LIEBELER. Through the upper part of his lip?
Mrs. SMITH. Oh, gee, I don't know whether it was a bottom –
Mr. LIEBELER. But it actually tore the lip?
Mrs. SMITH. Yes; it actually tore the lip, and I remember – what is that boy's name? – the blond fellow that was on television that knew him so well?
Mr. LIEBELER. Are you thinking of Edward Voebel?
Mrs. SMITH. That is him.
Mr. LIEBELER. V-o-e-b-e-l?
Mrs. SMITH. He took him back in school, and I guess they kind of patched his lip up, but he was – he more or less kept to himself, he didn't mix with the other kids in school other than Voebel. He is the only one I remember.
(Robin Riley became a minor actor in Hollywood. He died in 1983. His death certificate is in the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University, but sloppy Armstrong misspells his name as Reily.)
At the WC, Voebel also suggested for the first time that Oswald might have actually lost a tooth, although he was not definitive on this:
JENNER. But you do remember that you attempted to help him when he was struck in the mouth on that occasion; is that right?
Mr. VOEBEL. Yes; I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out.
In the hands of Factoid Master Armstrong, this testimony by Voebel definitively establishes that Oswald lost a tooth, the gap thereafter appearing in the classroom photo. Armstrong’s version blends everything together: a lengthy fight with John Neumeyer, witnessed by numerous students, in which Oswald’s lip was bloodied (uh, no) and Oswald being clocked “a few days later” by Robin Riley, who accosted him on the school steps and ran away. To make everything work, Armstrong assures us the fights occurred in November 1954 and the classroom photo was taken “shortly after the fight.” Armstrong has no way of knowing any of this.
(Armstrong also states, “Forty years later Johnny Neumeyer and John Lane still remembered the fight, but neither man remembered whether or not Oswald lost a tooth.” Really? I could find no basis for this statement in the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University, nor even any indication as to who John Lane is or was. Moreover, in 1963, only nine years after the fight, John Neumeyer had only recalled that the older Oswald had hit him a few times and this had quickly ended the fight.)
The truth is pretty obvious, is it not? Oswald did not lose a tooth in a fight. He was clocked by Robin Riley, causing a tooth to penetrate his lip and leave the scar observed at autopsy. Edward Voebel, God love him, was a confused, blathering showoff by the time be testified to the WC, his story having become considerably grander than in all previous interviews. The photo is simply Oswald clowning around, either with a pen cap over his tooth or, more probably in my estimation, a piece of chewing gum over his tooth as most of us did numerous times as kids (and some of us still do as aged adults because it is, in fact, wildly humorous). It’s possible that the “gap” is simply a photographic artifact of his funky front teeth as the OP suggests, but given the circumstances of the photo I lean toward the pen cap or chewing gum.
This additional truth is obvious, is it not? Armstrong will stop at nothing, and stoop to anything, to promote his wacky theory. (The photo is Lee, not Harvey, just in case you were wondering.) He cannot be trusted. His work cannot be trusted. Everything I have stated here is in documents in the John Armstrong Collection; he had it all. I have yet to fact-check one Armstrong-fueled factoid that stood up to scrutiny.
This additional truth is obvious, is it not? The “missing tooth” factoid will never die. It is enshrined in Conspiracy Gospel and will live forever. And you will continue to mentally masturbate over it because that's the extent of your interest in the JFKA. It's fun! It's a hobby! Who cares if anything makes sense? The fact that the autopsied and exhumed Oswald had his front teeth merely demonstrates the breadth and depth of the insidious, multi-faceted, almost-impossible-to-comprehend Conspiracy of All Conspiracies!
Back to the cave, I remain, as ever,
The Caped Factoid Buster
