Dr. Mary’s Monkey

by Edward T Haslam

  IN 2001, I HAPPENED TO LIVE IN BRADENTON, the small town on the west coast of Florida where Judyth was raised. When Judyth said that she would be visiting Bradenton soon to see her aging mother, we agreed to meet.

  I took the day off from work so I would not be distracted by business matters. We met in the lobby of the central library and drove to a local restaurant where we could talk. Judyth picked a restaurant where she knew the owner. When we got there, she introduced me to the owner, who remembered her fondly, and we were shown a table in the back where we could talk. For the next several hours, Judyth displayed binders of documents she had collected and neatly organized over the years, and told me her story, page by page. It was only then that I really began to understand the dimensions of what she was saying.

  Finally, I looked at her carefully, studying her pensive blue eyes and her coke-bottle-thick glasses, and said, “You are telling me that you personally stood in David Ferrie’s apartment with Lee Oswald at your side, day after day, and worked with cancer-causing monkey viruses so that you could develop a biological weapon to kill Fidel Castro?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I felt that Judyth’s story was an important development. So I called the writer who had said that I had “everything except a witness,” and told him about Judyth. He had written a book about the JFK assassination. He assured me that Judyth was a walking, talking disinformation machine sent by the CIA to cause chaos and confusion among the JFK assassination research community, and that the documents that I had seen were probably forgeries.

  “If these documents are fake,” I countered, “they are the best forgeries I have ever seen. I’m talking about 30-year-old newspapers and faded ink.”

  “Langley does great work,” he quipped.3

  “You once told me that my only problem was that I didn’t have a witness,” I retorted. “Now my problem seems to be that I do have a witness.”

  I begin my discussion of Judyth this way to show how skeptical I was of her. It was clear to me that Judyth’s road to acceptance was going to be a difficult one. Was she crazy? Was she an impostor? Had she made up her story after reading my book? Would people think Judyth and I were some sort of tag team, secretly coordinating our stories?

  These are fair questions for the person who has heard her story from others, and has not seen her evidence presented properly. If you harbor some of these thoughts, know that I did too. It is reasonable to be suspicious of claims that challenge our understanding of history. But it is unreasonable to ignore evidence because it might change one’s mind or challenge the positions that one has taken in public. History shows us that new information is rarely welcome. And Judyth has new information.

  It’s time to get to the core questions about Judyth Vary Baker. I consider these three most important:

  1. Is “this Judyth” the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida? Or is she an impostor?

  2. Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963? If she has no reasonable proof to support this claim, then there is little point in pondering her story.

  3. Was Judyth trained to handle cancer-causing viruses before she went to New Orleans in 1963? If 1 and 2 above are true, then this point would qualify her as a suspect for the “technician” role.

  If the answers to all three questions are “yes,” then we need to pay attention to what Judyth has to say, even if it conflicts with both the official and the unofficial stories concerning Oswald and his role (whatever it was) in the assassination of JFK. Even if it disagrees with the self-appointed Oswald experts. And even if it disagrees with some of the things I originally concluded in Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus. Let’s tackle these questions right now — one at a time.

  1. Is she the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida?

  Judyth showed me that collection of newspaper articles when we met in 2001. Several had photos of her. Most of the articles were published in the Bradenton Herald, one of the local newspapers in the Bradenton, Florida area.

  A year later, in February 2002, I started working for the Bradenton Herald. My role was to handle its market-research materials, but my position gave me access to the news library and microfilm collection. This microfilm collection had been copied about 10 years earlier, and the copy had been given to the Bradenton Public Library. The public could see the microfilm collection at the public library, but the original microfilm was kept in the news department’s research library on the upper floor of the Herald, which was not open to the public. No one could have anticipated that I would start working there and would have access to the original microfilm collection. If I could find Judyth’s newspaper articles there in the off-limits microfilm collection, I could settle the “forgeries” issue once-and-for-all. I got Judyth to send me a list of publication dates for the articles she had.

  In the microfilm library I indeed found all of the Bradenton Herald newspaper articles that Judyth had shown me. She had also shown me two other newspaper articles, which I will be discussing later in this chapter.

  So the answer to our first question: “Yes, she is definitely the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida.” Her maiden name was Judyth Anne Vary, and she was frequently referred to as Judy in the press of the day. She is easy to recognize in the photos. Bradenton was proud of her. “Judy” was going to find the cure for cancer.4 She presents copious evidence to support all of this in her book.5

  2. Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963?

  It might help the reader to know that there has never been any dispute over the fact that the person that the press has referred to as Lee Harvey Oswald worked at a coffee company in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. This is reported by the Warren Commission and acknowledged throughout the JFK assassination research community. In fact, I have never heard anyone dispute it. Beyond that, I personally heard Boatner Reily, later the president of that same coffee company, state that they (the Wm. B. Reily Coffee Company) had turned over their employment records of Lee Harvey Oswald to the U.S. Government immediately after the assassination. What is less clear to the casual reader is whether Lee Oswald worked for the Standard Coffee Company or for the Wm. B. Reily Coffee Company, since the names differ on various documents. Both companies were owned and operated by William B. Reily and his family. It is odd that a supposed defector sporting an undesirable discharge from the Marines would work for William Reily, one of the most visible members of the ultra-conservative anti-Communist business community in New Orleans. But he did. Lee Oswald worked for Reily. So did Judyth Vary Baker.

  Here is her old W-2 tax form, submitted by Wm. B. Reily & Co. to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which shows that she did:

  This document was provided to me directly by Judyth Vary Baker, who scanned it from the original. I accept it as authentic.6 I have blocked out her Social Security number to protect her privacy. I did, however, compare that social security number with a variety of other documents which Judyth provided to me, such as her college transcripts, and I assure the reader that the numbers match.

  The name on the document is Judyth Anne Baker. The person we now know as Judyth Vary Baker was known as Judyth Anne Vary until she married Robert Baker, becoming Judyth Anne Baker in 1963. Back then it was not common for women to incorporate their maiden names into their married names.

  W-2 forms are mailed out in January of the following year — in this case, in January 1964 for the 1963 tax year. The address on the form shows where the form was mailed, not where the person lived while employed. Judyth left New Orleans in September 1963, after her employment with Reily ended, and returned to Florida. The Ft. Walton address on Judyth’s W-2 form was her husband’s family’s residence, which he used as his official address while attending the University of Florida in Gainesville.

  The amount of money shown on the W-2 form is consistent with Judyth’s pay stubs from Reily, of which I also have copies. It should be emphasized that Judyth was referred to Reily by the same employmen
t agency that referred Lee Oswald, and that she started work on the same day. Judyth worked directly for Reily’s Vice President William I. Monaghan, an ex-FBI agent who later testified to the Warren Commission about Oswald. But Monaghan did not mention Judyth to the Warren Commission, nor did he mention that another person was hired on the same day that Oswald was hired.

  A simple gumshoe investigation of a murder suspect would have started with friends and associates, particularly at the place of employment. A gumshoe investigation of Oswald would have checked out Reily Coffee, found Judyth, and realized that she was close to Oswald. They started on the same day and arrived at Reily together each morning, though they frequently clocked in at different times due to Lee’s other activities in the neighborhood. We even find Judyth’s initials written on Lee’s timecards. Figuring out the connection would not have been difficult.

  Consider these obvious points: Neither Lee nor Judyth owned a car. Reily Coffee was located on Magazine Street. Both Judyth and Lee lived along the Magazine Street bus route and rode the bus to work. Day after day, Lee would get on the bus at the 4900 block of Magazine. Several blocks later Judyth would get on at the corner of Marengo Street, and sit next to Lee. Bus drivers recognize their regular customers. The bus driver could have easily confirmed that Judyth and Lee sat together every morning, read the newspaper, and talked — and that they got off the bus together near the Reily Coffee Company. This would not have been difficult for an investigator to sort out.7

  Who was this young woman who talked to the accused assassin of the President on a daily basis? What did she know about him? What did she know about the assassination? Did she have prior knowledge? These are good questions, and a competent investigator would have asked them. So why were they not asked?

  Did the Warren Commission send in a gumshoe to investigate Oswald at Reily? No, they asked the ex-FBI agent that hired Oswald about him.8 And that ex-FBI agent did not mention that his own secretary, whom he had also hired, had started on the same day and arrived at his front door with Oswald every morning. How convenient! This raises the question: Did Monaghan intentionally withhold information from the Warren Commission? If he did, was he instructed to do so? And by whom? Was Judyth being shielded in order to protect the bio-weapon project and the people behind it?

  Several years after the Warren Commission “investigation,” the investigators working for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison tracked down another young woman, Anna Lewis, a waitress who worked at Thompson’s Restaurant — a favorite gathering spot for the anti-Castro crowd around Lafayette Square in downtown New Orleans. At the time, Anna was married to David Lewis, who had worked for another ex-FBI agent: Guy Banister.

  Today we have video testimony from Anna Lewis recorded in 2003, and made available on the Internet by Dutch JFK researcher Wim Dankbaar. In this interview, Anna clearly states that she knew Lee Oswald and that Oswald was a regular customer at Thompson’s in 1963. Further, she states that she and her husband socialized with Lee and Judyth together on a number of occasions. More importantly, Anna Lewis admits that she lied to District Attorney Garrison and his investigators when they asked her about Oswald.

  Had Anna Lewis told Garrison the truth, Garrison could have easily tracked down Judyth. Garrison was already suspicious of Ochsner and his role in the media depiction of Oswald. If Garrison had had access to Judyth, and if Judyth told Garrison what she now tells us — that she and Lee were working on a biological weapon project under the direction of Dr. Alton Ochsner, Garrison’s investigation (and his whole life) might have turned out very differently. But she didn’t. Anna Lewis lied to Garrison because she was afraid. Meanwhile, Judyth hid silently because she was afraid.

  Two critical pieces of evidence were unavailable to the American people, and their elected representatives (like Garrison), at the time they were pondering who had killed their President. Now that we know differently, is it time to reconsider our history?

  3. Was Judyth trained to handle cancer viruses before going to New Orleans?

  The short answer is “yes,” and the evidence to support this is abundant. The photo to the right, taken by the Herald-Tribune (a newspaper in the Bradenton area), shows Judyth in her cancer lab with her mice during high school. The numerous newspaper articles published in the Bradenton Herald tell a similar tale. Judyth was a star science student who wanted to find a cure for cancer. Everyone wanted her to succeed. After creating lung cancer in her mice faster than anyone known to medical science, Judyth was given introductions, financing, opportunities, chemicals, tuition, and training. Her training was world-class.

  I know a man in Bradenton who remembers Judyth from high school. He was in an independent-study science class with Judyth, and saw her on a regular basis during their senior year in high school. His comments to me are worth noting: “If you’re telling me that Judyth wound up in some secret lab doing some heavy-duty experiments, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. She was always very intense and took herself very seriously.”

  In upstate New York, the Buffalo Courier-Express reported on the cancer-research training program that Judyth attended at the Roswell Park Cancer Center.

  This article not only proves that Judyth was trained in cancer research techniques at one of the most prestigious cancer institutes in the country, but it also identifies Dr. Edwin Mirand as running the program. Dr. Mirand was half of the “Grace and Mirand” medical research team that wrote “Human Susceptibility to a Simian Tumor Virus,” an article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science in 1963.

  This article has been referenced in everything I have published on this subject since 1995. Since we have proof that Judyth personally knew and studied under these national experts in cancer-causing monkey viruses in 1961, 34 years before I published anything on the subject, this contradicts claims that Judyth read my book and then refashioned herself as a character in it. She did not. All the evidence indicates that she was trained to handle cancer-causing viruses, lived in New Orleans, and knew Lee Oswald decades earlier.

  This may be intoxicating news for those concerned about Judyth’s credibility and what she can tell us about Lee Oswald, but it is sobering to those of us worried about the fate of the biological weapon. This means that Judyth Vary Baker really did have the technical skills to handle the cancer-causing monkey viruses that might be used to create a biological weapon. Yes, Judyth Vary Baker had the technical qualifications to be the technician that did the bench work in the Ferrie-Sherman medical laboratory. Hearing Judyth admit that as a 19-year-old she assisted Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman, and Dr. Alton Ochsner in their efforts to develop a biological weapon is ... literally mind-boggling. Yes, I have my witness.

  Letter envelope postmarked May 24, 1963 from Robert Baker in Hopedale, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, to Mrs. Robert A. Baker (Judyth Vary), 1032 Marengo, New Orleans (her apartment near Oswald’s).

  HAVING CONFIRMED THE IDENTITY OF today’s Judyth Vary Baker, our next step is to ask what else she said?

  Here is a brief summary of the parts of Judyth’s story that are relevant to our inquiry. A more in-depth account is given in the Appendix entitled “ Judyth’s Story”:

  Judyth went to New Orleans in 1963 at the invitation of Dr. Alton Ochsner. Ochsner had known Judyth for several years, and had previously arranged for her to be trained at the famous cancer research center discussed above.

  Ochsner promised Judyth early-admission to Tulane Medical School in return for her services in Dr. Mary Sherman’s cancer lab at Ochsner Clinic. Ochsner also provided her with cancer research papers on state-of-the-art discoveries such as cancer-causing viruses. Judyth wound up working under Sherman’s direction in the underground medical laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment instead of in Dr. Mary’s cancer lab at the Ochsner clinic.

  Judyth met Lee Oswald at the Post Office in what she thought was a chance encounter. In hindsight, she realized that this had to have been intentional, since Lee was
already working with David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman and Dr. Alton Ochsner on the bio-weapon at the time. Lee introduced her to “Dr. David Ferrie” the following day, and helped Judyth find an apartment.

  When Judyth went to meet Dr. Ochsner in a room within the bowels of Charity Hospital, Lee Oswald accompanied her to the appointment, and went in first to meet with Dr. Ochsner alone.

  Lee was working with ex-FBI agent Guy Banister at the time, as has been reported by many sources. Lee took Judyth to meet Banister in his office to satisfy her concerns that the bio-weapons project was really a secret government operation. Banister confirmed that Lee was working with them on a “get-Castro” project.9

  When Judyth went to Dr. Sherman’s apartment for a private dinner, David Ferrie was the only other guest. Sherman and Ferrie discussed the nature of their project with Judyth. They deemed the idea of using cancer-causing viruses to kill Castro as ethical, since it might prevent World War III. Lee phoned Judyth that same night at Sherman’s apartment. Dr. Mary Sherman was the operational director of “the project.” Ferrie and Oswald were participants.

  Lee escorted and transported Judyth all over town, including to Dr. Sherman’s apartment, where Judyth routinely dropped off “the product,” and provided reports for Sherman’s review. Lee was “the runner.”

  Judyth and Lee were given cover-jobs at Reily Coffee Company, where they were allowed to slip out several afternoons a week to work in the underground medical laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment. 10

  LEE OSWALD’S CONNECTIONS TO THE MAFIA in New Orleans were much stronger than have ever been reported publicly.11 Judyth and Lee ate gratis at restaurants owned by Carlos Marcello, and went to his headquarters (500 Club and Town & Country Motel).