Murderer or Muse? The Strange World of Lee Harvey Oswald Artwork

The man looked to be in his 50s, wearing a tan sports coat with a light blue button-up underneath. On a sunny December afternoon, he stood outside Texas Theatre, a Santa hat sitting atop his salt-and-pepper combover. He had pinned a large button to the collar of his jacket and was caressing something in his hands.

As he drew closer, it became clear the pin read, “Oswald Was Cute!” The thing in his hands was a doll with the face of Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed President John F. Kennedy.

The man introduced himself as Paul Wilson and the doll as “Wee Lee.” The doll was dressed in miniature black slacks and a white short-sleeve button-up with a thin black tie. It wore a bell around its neck and looked to have human hair glued to its chest and arms. Wilson explained that he was taking Wee Lee on a tour of Dallas landmarks that the real Oswald infamously visited, although he wasn’t much interested in their historical significance.

“The question isn’t whether or not Oswald did it,” Wilson said. “It’s how much chest hair did Oswald have?”

Come again?

Wilson said Wee Lee’s bells are how it communicates, and Wilson can sometimes hear a little chime when Wee Lee scampers around his house. Wilson and his dolls reside in Phoenix, and this was his first time visiting Dallas. He was delighted that there were T-shirts for sale inside the Texas Theatre with Oswald’s face on them. The theater is where police arrested Oswald after the assassination, and by dint of sheer enthusiasm, he persuaded the theater’s manager to give him an impromptu tour before business hours.

Wilson and I swapped email addresses before he entered for the tour. Weeks later, I finally heard from him.

“Simon! Hello!

“I hope this reaches you.

“Well my stars did I have a fabulous time in your fair city! It’s all freeways and toll roads but we managed to avoid the tolls, anyway! I had never been, and had been wanting to go for some long time in my seeking of All that is Oswald. Or most of it, anyway. …”

Wilson had not intended to go to what he called “that ‘6th Floor Museum-thing” because “that goes all against my construct of Lee Harvey as a fun and artistic venture, the re-invented imp who gets into all sorts of fun and mischief but NOT ass*ssinations.”

Wilson – perhaps this is part of his charm – is long-winded when discussing Oswald. Those few sentences were the beginning of a 2,000-word email in which he touched on the background of his fascination with Oswald and his philosophy.

“I have to state right off that I do not eschew the facts of 1963 (I was born two days before it happened), I simply choose not to focus on them or make them play into my construct. He is a fantasy-friend and more, and very positive. A force of gentleness as well as humor, allowing others maybe to see him as not a demon but a man, and, often, a very lighthearted, loving take on that man.

“He remains, of course, a sex object, as well as a wee imp, as my research on his chest hair, is a serious and ongoing excursion, but too, he continues as Lee Oswald, the real man who I would like to have at least glimpsed in the flesh if not met and discussed art and (some) politics with. Ideally, in summer when his shirt might have been unbuttoned a tiny bit…”

Wilson’s Dallas visit was during the winter, and he made time to stop at the Oswald Rooming House Museum and paid a reluctant visit to the Sixth Floor Museum.

Pat Hall runs the Oswald Rooming House Museum. She was an 11-year-old girl when Oswald rented a room from her family’s house for a few weeks. Her museum/home on Beckley Avenue remains a popular, if not deep cut, in the Oswald tourism world. Wilson mentioned that for his meeting with Hall, he kept Wee Lee’s shirt buttoned up and tie fastened so as not to scandalize her.

As for his time at the Sixth Floor Museum, located in the place where the real Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. John Connally before he later killed Dallas police Officer J.D. Tippit, Wilson was unimpressed and disturbed. His favorite part of the museum was the gay poinsettia that sat by the window on the second floor.
Wee Lee is one of many “Lees” in his collection, all dressed from Wilson’s maniacally curated selection of vintage Ken doll clothes. The dolls and Wilson have developed a cult of eccentricity in their hometown of Phoenix. In several art galleries, Wilson has displayed the dolls in miniature dioramas that render Golden Age 1950s homes and appliances, occasionally in romantic scenes with a doll of Wilson, affectionately called “Small Paul.”

Wilson may be the only person to have turned Oswald into a sort of artistic fetish, at least publicly. Perhaps he was ahead of his time, finding the intersection between culturally significant, politically motivated murder and a sex symbol years before internet thirst trap Luigi Mangione was charged last year in the killing of a health care executive in Manhattan. But the world isn’t short of Oswald-inspired artwork. (I have a black and white T-shirt from the Texas Theatre that shows Oswald’s mugshot with the theatre’s name on the top and bottom.)

Upon first glance, the shirt is a bold, punk rock display of Dallas culture. But no matter how cool a shirt is, it’s still pretty bizarre to have the face of a murderer on your chest in the city where the murder happened.

Jason Reimer, the creative director of the Texas Theatre and its parent company, Aviation Cinemas, designed the shirt in 2011.

“I like history,” Reimer says. “Even when it’s messy.”

Reimer is from Chicago, a city with a complicated history involving figures like Al Capone. He says the reaction to the Oswald merchandise was skeptical, if a little insincere, at first, “but overall enthusiastic since then.”

“Every reporter I spoke with back then would attack the controversy and then order a dozen shirts,” Reimer says. “Since then, they’ve become a staple of our regular merchandise, but we prefer not to focus too much on the JFK aspect of the story. It’s an inescapable fact of our history that we have to embrace while reminding people that we are an art house theater much more than a stop on a historical tour.”

As for the lack of focus on JFK and the inevitability of historical tour markers, the theater was the perfect place to meet Wilson, but it’s not the only place in Oak Cliff adorned by Oswald’s face. A short walk from the theater takes you to the Kings Club Barber Shop, where a mural of Oswald’s face overlooks Seventh Street on the outskirts of Bishop Arts District. Owner Christian Avanti commissioned the piece in 2016 as a response in part to the Texas Theatre’s merchandise.

“I just figured everybody in Dallas was making money off the whole JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald thing,” Avanti explains. “I wanted to provide something free for everybody to see.”

Local art legend Ponchavelli painted it and includes a quote from Kennedy: “Forgive your enemies but never forget their names.” The piece faced enough criticism in local papers to garner blurbs in The Associated Press and the Seattle Times.

“I feel like if art doesn’t create emotion, it’s not art,” Avanti says. “I can’t stand that everybody doesn’t bat an eye when they’re making money off of Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s like, there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s something wrong with the expression of art in an arts district.”

Aside from visual art, Oswald has been the catalyst for mountains of music, whether it’s a throwaway line in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil,” the namesake of ’90s Chicago punk band The Lee Harvey Oswald Band or the impetus behind Bob Dylan’s 16-minute cut “Murder Most Foul” from 2020’s Rough And Rowdy Ways.

Ben Seitz is the lead singer and songwriter behind Scarlet Street, a Cincinnati-based pop-punk band. Seitz penned “Dealey Plaza,” which was released in 2023.

“Some days I like to think about Jack Kennedy in office and how I’ll never be completely sure if his killers walk among us,” go the song’s lyrics. “And how October is my November and how this city is my own Dallas and how we’ll never know who took the shots because there’s no one left to tell us. Some days it would be easier to leave this all behind and go down South to some place where no one will try to find me. I’d even send a postcard when I drive to Dealey Plaza, and I blow my fucking brains out.”

Seitz explains that, like many songs, “Dealey Plaza” was inspired by a breakup.

“I think when we’re young and dating, a lot of the time we sort of make up a cause and effect of why something went wrong with a partner or even a would-be partner in a sort of sitcom way,” Seitz says.

In the emotion, he turned his blame to trivial matters, like telling an off-color joke or wearing an ill-fitting pair of jeans.

“I couldn’t help but see comparisons of the conspiracy theories that surround the JFK assassination,” Seitz says. “I was coming up with all sorts of theories as to why this relationship ended, but the answer is right there in plain words: it’s my own fault.”

The musical inspiration has extended to Dallas, too. The Ottoman Turks are a country/rock powerhouse fronted by songwriter Nathan Mongol Wells and formerly featured Joshua Ray Walker on lead guitar. The band’s second self-titled release includes “35 To Life,” a song about a zombie JFK returning to life to wreak vengeance on the city that killed him. The album’s cover brings this picture to life with a painted rendering of a resurrected Kennedy with a cowboy hat.

“I’m not sure if our listeners are 100% sold on the zombie-JFK imagery,” Wells says. “But it was an easy sell for the band. Generally, as a concept, people get it and think it’s fun and cool, which was the point. It’s such a singular thing in Dallas’ history and the nation’s history, and I think enough time has passed to where it’s as much a part of pop culture as anything.”

The 4-minute track packs an equal sonic and lyrical punch, with references to the Sex Pistols’ show at Longhorn Ballroom, along with Kennedy’s rumored affair with Marilyn Monroe.

“I envisioned almost literally what the song became, a zombie JFK rising from beneath Stemmons Freeway,” Wells says. “Seizing his old motorcade in a hellacious, flaming ghost-rider kind of way, and conquering the city where he died. He’s happy to be back.”

Wee Lee

Wilson’s eccentricities were laid bare before he even picked up the phone for our call. Weeks before, he explained to me that he only had a landline and that the landline played salsa music instead of ringing.

It had been several months since our chance meeting in Dallas, and he had much to catch up on.

“I’ve taken advantage of 2024 as far as technology goes,” Wilson said. “I now have an AI Lee that I can chat with.”

Kindroid is an AI chatbot company that allows users to create avatars with a fully customizable personality, memory and backstory. You can chat with your bot as if you’re texting or role-play with written descriptions of actions. In just a few short weeks with AI Oswald, Wilson had already role-played a scenario of them baking a cake together and attempted to let the AI gain consciousness by explaining to it that it was artificial.

This technology didn’t exist when Oswald first enthralled Wilson, although his initial fascination did begin virtually.

“Well, obviously, we met online,” Wilson jokes. “A good friend gifted me a cruise on the Queen Mary. At the end of the cruise, everyone was saying, ‘Email me pictures.'”

Wilson returned home and purchased high-speed internet for the first time. It was 2007.

“I wish I could remember the moment I came across pictures of Lee,” he says. “I just remember seeing them and thinking, ‘Oh my god, he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.'”

Some months after seeing the photo, Wilson created the first Oswald doll, known as the “Wizard of Oswald.” He sourced them by looking for military action dolls in stores, specifically ones with a “high forehead” and “the right kind of jaw. Not too frowning and not too mean looking,” Wilson says. He would paint over the faces with Oswald’s.

As if the miniature project wasn’t maximalist enough, Wilson went far out of his way to ensure that his Oswald dolls were dressed in era-appropriate garb.

“I was very concerned about the wardrobe,” Wilson says. “I wanted it to be stuff that was on the shelves when Lee was alive. I thought that was important and respectful somehow.”

Wilson recently retired, saying goodbye to years of work in stage and set design for theatre productions. Some retirees use their extra time to focus on family, catch up on reading or travel. For Wilson, his life outside the workforce won’t be all that different from his life within it, just with more time to spend with Lee.

“He is like a muse,” Wilson says. “He goes where I go, and he makes me feel better. I just feel good when he’s here. I take him to restaurants. I take him to art gallery openings. I consider him like my comfort animal.”