Warren Commission (08 of 26): Hearings Vol. VIII (of 15)United States. Warren Commission
History
Warren Commission (08 of 26): Hearings Vol. VIII (of 15)
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Now, whether this was an artifice on his part, you know, a mechanism, I
don't know--but it didn't--let me say it didn't trigger any reaction on
my part that this was symptomatic of a deeper emotional disturbance. I
thought that this was just symptomatic of a boy who had chosen one way
of reacting to a situation that other boys would react to in another
fashion.
Mr. LIEBELER. I understand that some statements have been made, based
apparently on the psychiatric reports or the observations of people
who worked with Lee Oswald here in New York when he was 13 years old,
to the effect that one might have been able to predict, from seeing
the boy at that time, that he might well commit an act such as the
assassination, or some similar violent act. Did you see any such
indication in Lee Oswald?
Mr. CARRO. No; naturally I didn't see it, and I would say that would be
extremely difficult in order to be able to make that sort of projection
or prediction. I have even, when I worked with the Youth Board as a
streetclub worker, I worked in the street where we had no psychiatrists
along with us and where we worked with much more psychotic and deeply
disturbed boys, who did kill somebody right along the line, possibly a
couple of months later, and even though, you know, the studies we have
done here in the city and everything shows that there are a great many
people who are extremely disturbed walking around, and the crutch that
just keeps them on their marginal--what do you call--on this marginal
living, where they just don't go out and commit some violent act, that
you don't know what it is, what the factors are that keep them from
just blowing up or exploding altogether.
I didn't see any particular behavior that would say that this boy would
someday commit this act. I have seen it, let's say, in the Puerto Rican
youth I am familiar with, the Negro youth, that sometimes they ascribe
this to a crying out of people to say that they exist and that they are
human beings, and they commit that violent act, just to get their one
day in the sun, the day when all the papers will focus on them, and
say, "I am me. I am alive."
I worked with this young man in the case of the killing, this Raymond
Serra, and this fellow, after blowing this boy's jaw up, he was
flashing the victory sign like this [indicating], and when we visited
him in jail he said, "Did you see my picture in the papers?" And the
paper played this up as a coldblooded killer. And they don't realize
that 2 days later, sensibility dawns on him, and these are the weakest,
the most remorseful kids. This is just the bravado at the moment.
And this is their one point in life where they draw everybody's
attention--most of these kids in private life come from broken homes,
and they take this opportunity to show that they are human beings.
Mr. LIEBELER. Are you suggesting that this is one of the factors that
motivated Oswald?
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