The Missing "People to Kill" Address Book Page: Did the Dog Eat That Too?

For decades, one of the more sensational stories attached to Lee Harvey Oswald has centered on a page that no longer exists.

According to the allegation, a missing page from Oswald’s small Russian address book once contained a handwritten heading, “People to Kill.” Beneath it were supposedly the names of Texas Governor John Connally, General Edwin Walker, FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty, Jr., and a vice president. Next to Hosty’s name, for added flair, Oswald allegedly wrote “I will kill this S.O.B.” The story becomes even more dramatic with the claim that Oswald drew a knife or dagger with blood dripping from its blade.

Author’s recreation of the purported missing page based upon the account provided to the author by Mike Howard.

If such a page existed, it would be extraordinary evidence. It would apparently document violent intent in Oswald’s own handwriting. It could affect interpretations of his hostility toward Walker, his correspondence with Connally, and his contentious relationship with the FBI. It has even been used to support the theory that Governor Connally, not President Kennedy, was Oswald’s true target in Dealey Plaza.

And because the page is missing, the story carries another implication: someone removed it because someone had something to hide.

There is only one problem.

There is no evidence that the page ever existed as described.

No photograph. No photocopy. No contemporaneous transcription. No tape recording. No investigative report documenting its discovery. And now, after a forensic examination of the address book itself, there is another problem for the story.

The address book paper does not support it either.

But before we get into those pesky little details, let's start at the beginning.

The Address Book

Oswald’s address book was a small, roughly 2½-by-4-inch Russian book that served two purposes. It was an address book, but it was also a working notebook.

Across its pages Oswald recorded names, addresses, telephone numbers, prospective employers, embassies, businesses, calculations, simple maps, reminders, and personal notations. Some entries are orderly. Others are crossed out, overwritten, crowded together, or abandoned. It was Oswald’s 1960s equivalent of a cell phone.

There are four missing page areas in the address book. That fact itself has received surprisingly little attention.

One reason may be the way Commission Exhibit 18 was reproduced in Volume XVI of the Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. The published exhibit does not reproduce every physical page of the book in one uninterrupted sequence. Page numbers are skipped throughout the reproduction, and blank or apparently non-evidentiary pages were not consistently shown. Unless someone examines the physical book or carefully reconstructs its pagination, the locations of the missing pages are surprisingly easy to overlook.

The first missing page area, however, is obvious. When the sheet was removed, a narrow strip of paper remained attached along the binding. This surviving offcut makes the removal physically unmistakable.

The first missing page area in Oswald’s address book. A narrow portion of the removed sheet remains attached along the binding. Photo courtesy of Gus Russo.

Because this missing page is so visually apparent, this article concentrates primarily on that location. The other three missing page areas were also subjected to forensic examination. Their individual locations, characteristics, and results are examined in my forthcoming book, Communistic Tendencies: The Writings and Beliefs of Lee Harvey Oswald.

But before asking what might once have been written on a missing page, there is a more fundamental question:

Where was the address book after Oswald’s arrest?

That question matters because some of the later stories about the alleged “People to Kill” page place the book somewhere it could not have been.

The Documented Chain of Custody

On November 22, 1963, at approximately 5:00 p.m., Dallas police executed a search warrant at Oswald’s rented room at 1026 North Beckley Avenue. Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander discovered the address book in the top drawer of the side table beside Oswald’s bed.

The possessions recovered from the room were placed on Oswald’s unmade bed, gathered into a pillowcase taken from the room, transported to Dallas police headquarters, and later photographed and catalogued on the office floor of Homicide Lieutenant J.C. Potts.

First page of the items recovered on November 22, 1963, from Oswald's room at 1026 N. Beckley Avenue. Potts Exhibit A-1, National Archives.

Detective H.M. Moore, who participated in the search, marked the address book with his initials. Those markings remain on the artifact today and provide another physical connection between the book and the Beckley Avenue search.

The initials "HMM" written by Detective Henry M. Moore. Author's photo. Photograph by Sean R. DeGrilla.

Several days later, shortly after 1:00 a.m. on November 27, FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty, Jr., received several items from Dallas Homicide Captain Will Fritz. One of them was specifically described in Hosty’s receipt as:

“One notebook recovered from room of Lee Harvey Oswald at 1026 No. Beckley on 11/22/63, with names and addresses.”

Receipt signed by FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty, Jr., documenting the transfer of Oswald’s address book from Captain Will Fritz at approximately 1:00 a.m. on November 27, 1963. Commission Document 102, p. 85.

That document anchors the address book to a documented chain of custody.

It also creates an immediate problem for a later version of the “People to Kill” story.

The Mike Howard Story

The earliest published account of the alleged list that I have located appeared thirty years after the assassination. On November 22, 1993, the Associated Press published a story by reporter Mike Cochran recounting Howard’s claim. The story appeared in newspapers across Texas, including The Paris News.

That account placed the address book somewhere else entirely.

According to the article, the book was supposedly discovered at Ruth Paine’s residence on November 24 while Marina Oswald was retrieving her belongings.

Retired Secret Service agent Mike Howard later described a similar account to me. According to Howard, Marina helped translate entries from the address book and pages were secretly read into a tape recorder.

That sounds extraordinary.

It should.

Howard, and his partner Charles Kunkel, were with Marina Oswald and her children at the Inn of the Six Flags in Arlington on November 24 after leaving Parkland Hospital following Oswald’s murder. Kunkel's report filed on December 3rd makes no such mention of finding Oswald's address book and having Marina translate the entries.

But Howard's presence with the family that day is not the issue.

The problem is the changing stories he has told about the address book.

In Howard's oral history interview for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on November 18, 2005, he states that during a conversation he had with President Johnson, "I can only tell you that we saw the note, and I saw it personally that said "I will kill this SOB John B. Connally."

Gus Russo interviewed Howard on August 29, 2016. Howard told Russo "I only told you about the missing page of the address book because I was mad at the FBI...My partner Kunkel bailed out Hosty many times. In one case, several people could have been killed. I am not going to tell you all I know about Hosty. I know who ordered the pages ripped out, but I will never say. It came from the top.  I know names, but I will never say them. I am sure I looked at the same address book that later had the page ripped out."

Howard’s account has all the hallmarks of an accusation designed to sound explosive while remaining impossible to verify. By making claims that are impossible to verify while withholding the very information that could substantiate them, Howard shields his story from meaningful scrutiny and leaves the reader with allegation rather than evidence.

I interviewed Howard on March 28, 2024. When I asked about the alleged recording, he could not provide the tape. He could not provide a transcription. He did not know where the recording was. I have located no contemporaneous report documenting this extraordinary episode.

There is an even larger problem.

The address book had already been recovered from Oswald’s room at 1026 North Beckley on November 22.

So how was the same book supposedly being discovered at Ruth Paine’s residence two days later?

Ruth Paine testified to the Warren Commission that she had never seen the address book. Marina Oswald likewise never testified that she participated in the translation and recording episode Howard later described.

So, what evidence supports Howard’s story?

Not the documented chain of custody.

Not Ruth Paine’s testimony.

Not Marina Oswald’s testimony.

Not a Secret Service report.

Not an FBI report.

Not the alleged tape.

Not a transcription of the alleged tape.

And I later gave Howard another opportunity to document what he claimed to have seen.

On May 28, 2024, I mailed him a self-addressed stamped envelope and asked him to sketch, to the best of his recollection, both the alleged “People to Kill” list and the knife with blood dripping from its blade.

He never responded.

This was not a request that Howard prove every detail of an event from 1963. I simply asked the man who claimed to have personally seen this extraordinary page to draw what he remembered seeing. I supplied the paper, the return envelope and the postage.

Nothing came back.

If someone claims that a death list written by Lee Harvey Oswald was secretly discovered and recorded, the burden is not on everyone else to prove that it did not happen. The burden is on the person making the claim to produce evidence that it did.

So far, that evidence has not appeared.

And as will be shown later in this article, Howard’s story also conflicts with the physical artifact itself.

And Then Came Another Story

In 2024, more than sixty years after the assassination, an entirely different explanation for the missing pages appeared.

In Rooms for Rent: The Story of Mr. Lee, Claudia McMichael, granddaughter of Gladys Johnson, who owned the Beckley Avenue rooming house, related an account in which an unidentified law enforcement officer supposedly entered Oswald’s room before Dallas authorities conducted their documented search.

According to this version, the unidentified officer entered Oswald’s room, pulled back his mattress, discovered a concealed notebook, began reading it, became increasingly alarmed by what he saw, tore pages from the notebook, concealed them inside his clothing, and left. Gladys Johnson never mentioned this extraordinary episode in her Warren Commission testimony, and I have located no contemporaneous account documenting it.

I contacted McMichael on March 13, 2025, seeking additional information about the allegation. I received no response.

The Page the FBI Supposedly Wanted Gone

This is where the alleged “People to Kill” story encounters perhaps its most serious problem. The supposed motive for destroying the page usually centers on FBI Special Agent James Hosty. The theory is straightforward. Oswald supposedly wrote Hosty’s name on a death list, accompanied by the threat “I will kill this S.O.B.” The FBI could not allow Director J. Edgar Hoover to discover this because Hosty had contacted Marina Oswald at Ruth Paine’s house only weeks before the assassination. Therefore, someone supposedly removed the page.

It sounds plausible until you look at the actual book.

Surviving page from Oswald’s address book containing information associated with FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty Jr. and the Dallas FBI field office. Photo courtesy of Zachary Womack.

Oswald recorded Hosty’s name and information connected with the Dallas FBI office, along with the license number of Hosty’s government vehicle. This page still exists. And here is where the story becomes especially interesting. The FBI was embarrassed by the Hosty entry. We do not have to speculate about that. The documentary record tells us.

What the FBI Did with the Hosty Page

On December 23, 1963, FBI Special Agent Robert P. Gemberling completed a major report on the investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald. It became Commission Document 205.

Material from Oswald’s address book was incorporated into that report.

But the Hosty entry was left out.

Not misplaced.

Not overlooked because nobody knew it existed.

Left out.

The matter eventually attracted the attention of the Warren Commission and, years later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The initial FBI explanation was that the address book material had been prepared as an investigative “lead sheet.” Entries were included if additional investigative work might be required. Because Hosty’s identity and his contacts with the Paine household were already known, the Hosty information supposedly required no further investigative attention.

There is a problem with that explanation.

The House Select Committee examined the December 23 report and found that other address book entries lacking obvious investigative significance had been included. The Committee concluded that the “no investigative significance” explanation did not adequately explain the omission.

Then the explanation became considerably more revealing.

When the FBI agent who prepared the underlying material was later reinterviewed, he acknowledged that the Hosty entry had been intentionally excluded from his later dictation. He maintained that the information did not require further investigative attention, but he also gave another reason.

By then, Hosty was being criticized in the press and inside the FBI hierarchy for his handling of the Oswald investigation. The agent knew the material would circulate within the Dallas FBI office. He explained that he did not want to cause Hosty additional “unpleasantness or exposure.”

Put aside the bureaucratic language.

The embarrassing Hosty information was intentionally omitted, in part, to spare Hosty additional embarrassment and exposure.

The House Select Committee did not conclude that this represented some larger sinister conspiracy. It did, however, specifically conclude that the evidence was consistent with one or more Dallas FBI agents attempting to protect Hosty from “personal embarrassment” by excluding his name from the report.

That distinction matters.

I am not arguing that the FBI directed an effort to alter or falsify Oswald's address book. I do not need to make that case. The documented actions surrounding the evidence are troubling enough on their own.

The Hosty information eventually appeared in Gemberling’s February 11, 1964 report, Commission Document 385. But it had been absent from the earlier report. This is enormously important to the “People to Kill” allegation. Because now we know how FBI personnel actually dealt with embarrassing Hosty information. They omitted it from the reporting. They did not need to physically destroy the page.

They Could Have Torn It Out

There is an even greater problem with the theory that a separate “People to Kill” page had to be destroyed to protect the FBI.

Hosty himself later described an opportunity to remove the actual page bearing his information.

In his 1996 book Assignment: Oswald, Hosty recalled that after agents James Malley and Gordon Shanklin sent him alone to Captain Fritz’s office to retrieve Oswald’s address book, another FBI agent told him that he believed they had done so specifically to give Hosty the opportunity “to tear out the page in Oswald’s address book that referred to me to keep the entry from reaching Hoover.”

Hosty did not tear it out.

The page survived.

Think about what that means. The FBI had possession of the book.

The embarrassing Hosty entry was known. The information was intentionally omitted from FBI reporting. According to Hosty’s own recollection, the possibility of physically removing the actual Hosty page was even contemplated. Yet the page remains in the address book today.

So why would someone secretly destroy a different page containing Hosty’s name while deliberately leaving behind the genuine page that documented Oswald’s knowledge of Hosty, his government vehicle, and the Dallas FBI office?

If FBI personnel were prepared to commit the extraordinary act alleged by the later story, physically destroying evidence in a presidential assassination investigation, why not remove the page that unquestionably documented the FBI connection?

They had the page. They could identify it. They possessed the book.

The embarrassment surrounding it was real. And yet they left it there. What does the documentary record show they actually did?

They used a much safer and simpler method.

They left the physical page in the book and initially left the embarrassing information out of the report.

That happened.

That is documented.

The alleged “People to Kill” page is not.

Testing the Paper

Paper remembers pressure.

When a person writes on one sheet, pressure from the writing instrument can be transmitted into sheets beneath it. The original writing may disappear if the upper sheet is later removed, while physical deformation in underlying paper can survive.

That offered a way to test the allegation.

If Oswald wrote several names, a threat, and a dagger drawing on a page while that page was still bound inside the address book, writing pressure could have been transmitted into the sheets beneath it, leaving impressions that might survive in the remaining paper.

The question was no longer simply whether the alleged page could be found.

The question became whether the surviving paper retained physical evidence consistent with what Howard claimed had once been written above it.

Oblique Lighting

The first examination used oblique lighting.

Before I filed my Freedom of Information Act request, I asked the National Archives to photograph the missing page areas using written instructions developed by researcher Zachary Womack and me.

Each of the four missing page areas was photographed under five lighting conditions: full illumination, elevated lighting from the top, near-parallel lighting from the top, elevated lighting from the bottom, and near-parallel lighting from the bottom.

The principle is simple.

When light moves almost parallel across a sheet of paper, tiny changes in its surface cast shadows. An impression that is almost invisible under ordinary illumination can become much more obvious.

Full illumination under oblique lighting conditions used to examine the first missing page area. National Archives.

The changing direction of illumination makes creases, surface texture, writing pressure, and other irregularities appear differently from image to image.

But what never appears is equally important.

There is no pattern of indented letters forming a list.

There is no surviving outline of a dagger.

There are no pressure marks corresponding to blood droplets.

And this was not limited to the first missing page location.

All four missing page areas were examined.

Across those locations, oblique illumination did not reveal physical impressions corresponding to the alleged “People to Kill” page.

That was the first result.

But I wanted to push the examination further.

Expanding the Examination

On September 7, 2024, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking permission to conduct additional examination of Oswald artifacts, including three-dimensional scanning of the address book.

The request was approved.

On May 16, 2025, researcher Zachary Womack, Mark Garrett, and I were presented with the address book at the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland, to conduct additional testing.

Infrared Examination

Infrared imaging tests a document differently from ordinary visible-light photography.

Certain inks and paper fibers behave differently under infrared wavelengths. Material that appears uniform to the naked eye may separate under infrared imaging. Alterations, overwritten material, or differences in reflectance may become easier to detect.

The missing page areas were photographed using a high-resolution infrared camera under conditions permitted by the National Archives.

Infrared examination of the first missing page area of Lee Harvey Oswald’s address book. Photograph by Sean R. DeGrilla.

The infrared examination revealed no concealed writing corresponding to the alleged list, no residual ink pattern, and no evidence of erased or altered writing associated with the claim.

But we pushed the examination one step further.

Inverted Contrast

The infrared photographs were also evaluated using inverted-contrast processing.

This process does not invent or reconstruct evidence. It simply changes the tonal presentation of information already present in the photograph, allowing subtle differences to become easier to recognize.

Inverted-contrast image of the first missing page area. Photograph by Sean R. DeGrilla.

If a trace of hidden writing, altered ink, or unusual surface behavior survived in the infrared data, inversion and contrast enhancement offered another opportunity to identify it.

Nothing corresponding to the alleged list emerged.

The infrared and inverted images therefore reinforced the negative result obtained under oblique illumination.

Still, one question remained.

Light-based imaging can reveal a great deal. But what if relevant evidence survived only as extremely subtle physical deformation of the paper?

For that, we needed to examine the surface in three dimensions.

Taking the Address Book Into Three Dimensions

Three-dimensional surface analysis changes the nature of the examination.

We were no longer simply asking what could be seen in reflected light. We could examine the geometry of the paper surface itself.

Using an Einstar Vega portable 3D scanner, Zachary Womack captured surface data from the address book, including all four missing page areas.

Three-dimensional scan of the missing page. Courtesy of Zachary Womack.

For the first missing page area, the resulting model could be viewed with the natural surface texture and then as a simplified three-dimensional surface.

Three-dimensional surface model of the first missing page area. Courtesy of Zachary Womack.

The simplified surface view is especially useful because much of the visual distraction created by ink and paper coloration disappears.

What remains is the physical surface.

Elevation.

Depression.

Pressure.

That is precisely where impressions produced by writing pressure, if transmitted into the surviving sheets strongly enough to persist, would be expected to appear.

The complete 3D examination found no indentation pattern, impression, or surface deformation corresponding to the alleged list or dagger.

At that point, the different methods began to reinforce one another.

Oblique lighting found nothing corresponding to the alleged page.

Infrared imaging found nothing corresponding to the alleged page.

Inverted-contrast examination found nothing corresponding to the alleged page.

Three-dimensional surface analysis found nothing corresponding to the alleged page.

Different technologies.

Different ways of interrogating the artifact.

The same result.

What Does “Nothing” Mean?

This is where precision matters.

The forensic examination cannot tell us the eventual fate of every piece of paper Oswald removed from this address book.

It cannot establish that Oswald never wrote violent words on some unrelated loose sheet of paper at another time.

It cannot tell us what might have been written on a sheet after it had already been removed from the notebook.

Those are not questions the surviving artifact can answer.

What the physical evidence can address is much narrower:

Was the alleged “People to Kill” material written on one of these sheets while that sheet was still bound inside the surviving address book?

The combined forensic examination produced no physical evidence that it was.

My conclusion from the examination is that the missing sheets were blank when they were removed from the book.

That conclusion also fits what is known about Oswald’s habits. Oswald repeatedly reused scraps of paper. His December 26, 1959 letter to his mother was written on scrap paper. Notes sent to Marina during her hospitalization in Minsk were written on scraps.

Pauline Bates recalled that Oswald sometimes composed portions of Inside Russia on remarkably small pieces of paper, testifying that, "Some of it was just little scraps of paper-whatever he could find."

Removing unused sheets from a small notebook for later use would therefore not have been unusual behavior for him.

And there is an important forensic distinction.

If Oswald removed a blank sheet first and wrote something on it later, no writing pressure from that later act could be transmitted back into pages that were no longer beneath it.

That mundane possibility has received far less attention than the sensational one.

The Missing Page That Almost Came Back

There was one point in my investigation when I thought I might actually have found one of Oswald’s missing pages.

During my March 23, 2024 interview with Dr. Ernst Titovets, I asked him about the final time he saw Oswald in the Soviet Union on May 22, 1962.

Titovets recalled Oswald producing his pocket-sized notebook and asking him to write down his home address. Oswald then wrote the address and telephone numbers of the American Embassy in Moscow on a separate scrap of paper and handed it to Titovets.

When I asked whether that scrap might have been torn directly from the address book, Titovets initially believed that it had.

For a brief period, the possibility was extraordinary.

A page removed from Oswald’s address book more than sixty years earlier might still exist.

Titovets searched for the paper.

And he found it.

Scrap of paper preserved by Dr. Ernst Titovets and initially considered as a possible missing page from Oswald’s address book. Courtesy of Dr. Ernst Titovets.

The answer came from the artifact itself.

The sheet was physically larger than a page in Oswald’s address book.

It was also plain paper, while the missing address book pages were graph paper.

It was not one of the missing pages.

That episode may seem like a small part of this investigation, but I think it illustrates something much larger.

When the evidence did not fit the theory, the theory had to be abandoned.

That is how this type of research is supposed to work.

Why the “People to Kill” Story Survived

There is a reason this story has endured. It has everything.

A missing page.

A death list.

Governor Connally.

General Walker.

The FBI.

A handwritten threat.

A bloody knife.

And a suggestion that government agents destroyed evidence.

It is almost perfectly constructed to become assassination folklore.

Once repeated enough times, the existence of the page itself can begin to feel established.

But repetition is not authentication.

Mike Howard’s account does not overcome the documented chain of custody.

The tape he described has not been produced.

A transcription has not been produced.

I have located no contemporaneous report documenting the alleged recording.

When I gave Howard the opportunity to sketch what he remembered seeing, he did not respond.

The later Beckley Avenue account requires an unidentified officer from an unidentified agency to secretly remove evidence without leaving behind any known contemporary documentation.

And then there is the Hosty problem.

The real Hosty page survived.

We know FBI personnel were embarrassed by it.

We know the Hosty information was intentionally omitted from reporting, in part because an agent wanted to protect Hosty from additional unpleasantness and exposure.

We know the House Select Committee on Assassinations later concluded that the evidence was consistent with Dallas FBI personnel attempting to protect Hosty from personal embarrassment.

And Hosty himself later recalled another agent suggesting that he had been given an opportunity to tear the genuine page from Oswald’s book before the entry reached Hoover.

Yet that page was not removed.

It is still there.

Why secretly destroy a second page to hide an FBI connection while preserving the page that actually documented that connection?

That question has never received a convincing answer.

The Bottom Line

The alleged list has never been produced.

A contemporary photograph of it has never surfaced.

The alleged tape recording has not surfaced.

No surviving transcription has been produced.

The documented chain of custody conflicts with important parts of the later account.

The genuine page containing Hosty’s information remains inside the address book. And the physical paper surrounding the missing page areas has now been subjected to multiple forms of forensic examination.

The result is consistent.

No impressions corresponding to a death list.

No concealed writing corresponding to the allegation.

No dagger.

No physical evidence of a “People to Kill” page.

Against that physical evidence we are asked to accept stories that emerged decades after the assassination. One requires a missing tape that nobody can produce and places the address book somewhere the contemporaneous chain of custody says it was not. Another requires an unidentified officer from an unidentified agency to secretly remove evidence without leaving behind any known contemporary documentation. Meanwhile, the supposedly crucial motive for removing the page, protecting the FBI from embarrassment over Hosty, is contradicted by the physical book itself.

The genuine Hosty page was never torn out.

And, ironically, the historical record tells us exactly what FBI personnel did when they wanted to minimize the embarrassment caused by that entry.

They left the page in the book and left the information out of the report.

That happened.

That is documented.

The “People to Kill” page is not.

For more than sixty years, the absence of paper created a space into which rumor, recollection, suspicion, and theory could be inserted.

Modern forensic examination finally allowed the surviving artifact to have a say.

Its answer was remarkably consistent.

Nothing was there.

Nothing ever was.

The tale of the "People to Kill" list belongs where the evidence places it: in the dustbin of assassination lore, alongside Oswald the FBI informant, the Mexico City imposter, and his New Orleans girlfriend.

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