Paul's Shoe Store

One of the photos of the “real” Marguerite Oswald, according to the Harvey & Lee theory of John Armstrong, was taken at Paul’s Shoe Store in Fort Worth in 1957. Armstrong’s book describes her as follows:

The tall, nice-looking, well-dressed Marguerite Oswald, the mother of Lee Oswald, appears as a quiet, pleasant, hard-working woman who got along reasonably well with co-workers. She was about 5'7" tall, average build, had dark hair with streaks of gray, did not wear glasses, and dressed well.

But what can the shoe store photo tell us about Marguerite’s true height? The one and only Marguerite Oswald’s height was listed as 5’2 1/2” inches on a 1965 passport and 5’3” on an undated driver’s license. I’ll use the 5’3” height just to make it simpler. If you are interested, the process I use to calculate heights from photos is found here:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-two-marguerites-part-1.html

Here is the Paul’s Shoe Store photo cropped and captioned with my results:

According to the following article, the average height of a man age 20-74 in the United States in 1960 (close enough to 1957 for our purposes) was just over 5’8”.

Washington Post Article

A woman in the same age range was just over 5’3”. As my analysis shows, assuming the 5’3” height for Marguerite, most of the people fall near the average range as you would expect. The short woman in the front is obviously very small at just under five feet. And the man in back on the right is a little over average for the time at just under six feet. The tallest woman, on the far left, is 5’7”.

But what happens if we add four inches as Armstrong believes is the case for this Marguerite who he thinks is the “real” Marguerite? The short woman is now just under 5’4” which seems reasonable. But the woman on the far left becomes 5’11” which would be unusual for a woman in any era even if wearing heels. The two men in the back on the left become 6’ and 6’ 1” respectively. And the tall man on the right becomes 6’ 3 ½”. What are the odds that three out of four unrelated men who work in a small shoe store in 1957 would be over six feet tall? I maintain that this photo completely supports the known height of the one and only Marguerite Oswald and does not support Armstrong’s assertions.