DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF News) — Robert Edward Lee Oswald Jr., the older brother of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, has died in Wichita Falls.
An obituary in the Wichita Falls Times Record News reported the elder Oswald was 83 at the time of his death. It made no mention of his brother’s infamous place in history. The only mention of Lee in Robert’s obit said, “he spent his youth in Louisiana with his brothers Lee and John Pic before joining the Marine Corps in 1952 at age 18.”
Robert paid for his brother’s casket after he was gunned down by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after the Kennedy assassination. Years later Robert told ABC News he had come to believe that his brother had killed the president and did so by himself.
“This is mind over heart,” Oswald told ABC. “The mind tells me one thing, the heart tells me something else, but the facts are there.”
In 1981 Oswald fought the exhumation of his brother’s body. When the assassin’s original $300 casket was auctioned Oswald sued and won. He was awarded $87,468.
The Wichita newspaper reports Oswald was buried in a private service and is survived by his wife, Vada; his daughter, Cathy Barrett; his son, Robert Oswald; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.