Shortly after her meeting with Ochsner, Judyth is introduced to Dr. Mary Sherman herself. This time, Judyth is invited to dinner at Sherman’s apartment. When Judyth arrives, she finds David Ferrie waiting for her inside Mary Sherman’s apartment. Now Mary is gracious and attentive. The conversation is a smorgasbord of cancer talk, of why we need to kill Castro before he nukes us, and, more importantly, of why we need to do it soon, before Ochsner’s Texas friends run out of patience and decide to kill Kennedy instead.
Judyth’s confusion over the politics subsides when Mary shows her a collection of microscope slides of a “galloping cancer” that Mary had developed by exposing the cancer-causing monkey viruses to radiation. Judyth knows enough about cancer to realize that she is holding the world’s most aggressive cancer cells in her hands. She’s hooked.
Before the night is over, Lee Oswald calls Mary Sherman’s apartment just to check in. Judyth is given a key to Sherman’s apartment so that she can drop off “the product” of their experiments when Mary is not there.9 Judyth is instructed to address Sherman as “Dr. Mary.” The trio joke about their names: “Mary, Ferrie and Vary.”
Judyth’s detailed description of the bio-weapons work she was doing at Ferrie’s apartment places Dr. Mary Sherman at the operational center of the project, not on the edge as I had originally suspected. The ensuing chapters of Judyth’s book detail their two- or three-day-per-week routine at David Ferrie’s apartment.
The basic routine at the Ferrie-Sherman lab was that Judyth and Lee were given cover jobs at the Reily Coffee Company.10 Judyth would conceal Lee’s various comings-and-goings at the building (for him to work with Banister and do other things) by punching his time card for him when he was not there. Lee was given a key to Adrian Alba’s garage, next door to the Reily Coffee Company.11 Then, three days per week, in the afternoons, Judyth and Lee would meet at David Ferrie’s apartment for their cancer-virus work. There was obviously a large supply of mice somewhere nearby, because cardboard trays of 50 mice would be brought to the apartment by some Cubans for processing.
Judyth’s job was to look for the mice with the most aggressive tumor growth. Judyth terminated the mice, dissected them, removed their tumors, ground the tumors in a blender to make “the product,” and then cleaned up Ferrie’s kitchen to laboratory standards.12 The Cubans who always seemed to be nearby then disposed of the mice carcasses.
Judyth identifies the two Cubans that brought the cardboard trays of mice to Ferrie’s as Carlos and Miguel. Is this the Miguel of Chapter 4 whom I met in 1972 when he lived in the apartment above Barbara? Were these two Cubans inoculating “the product” back into the mice after its return from being irradiated at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital?
Were they the people responsible for raising the sick mice in the Little Lab on Louisiana Avenue Parkway until the tumors were ready to be harvested?
Judyth was grinding up tumors in Ferrie’s apartment when she was supposed to be working at Reily’s. Her supervisor at Reily (William I. Monaghan) covered for her by picking up her workload, and punching her time clock when she was not there. “The product” (tumor extracts) was then delivered to Dr. Mary Sherman’s apartment, for analysis later the same day. (Mary Sherman lived near the corner of Louisiana Ave. and St. Charles Ave., a short bus ride down Louisiana Ave. from David Ferrie’s apartment.) Sherman had a microscope and a device for holding test tubes that she jokingly called “ Ferrie’s wheel.”
Next, the extracts were “enhanced” by exposing them to more radiation at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital. The roasted viruses were then re-injected into other mice (and monkeys) to see which viruses were “best” at producing deadly tumors. On occasions when Dr. Mary Sherman did not have time to return home to pick them up, Lee Oswald was asked to take the products of Judyth’s experiments from Ferrie’s apartment directly to her at the Children’s Hospital. The Children’s Hospital was next door to the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, home to the linear particle accelerator and guarded by U.S. Marines.
I want to emphasize that Judyth was led into this bio-weapon project with patriotic zeal. We have heard over and over that these experiments were to develop a cancer-causing virus to kill Fidel Castro — or so Judyth was told. Judyth was hoping to develop the knockout punch to rid the world of a Communist dictator who had threatened the United States with nuclear missiles. She believed what she was told. She was not told that the project was run by maniacs who may actually have wanted to rid the world of its promiscuous, impoverished and unproductive underclass by perfecting a sexually-transmitted disease. Nor was she told that the project might give the Mafia and others a covert means to silence inconvenient witnesses as they awaited trial. Personally, I doubt Judyth would have cooperated under these latter circumstances. She has a conscience. Eventually it got her into trouble with Ochsner, and destroyed her promising future.
But Judyth does say that Mary Sherman expressed concerns over the safety of the project to her, and that she also thought Alton Ochsner was overconfident in his belief that he could control who got their hands on his biological weapon. Given that the genetically-altered monkey viruses were being couriered around New Orleans by people (like Lee Oswald and David Ferrie) with conspicuously close contacts to the Mafia (and who knows who else?), I think Mary’s concerns about the safety and control issues were well founded.
The Sherman-Ferrie-Vary experiments successfully created aggressive cancers in mice and (at Judyth’s suggestion) these new cancers were tested on monkeys. They worked, killing the monkeys quickly. But there was a missing link — they needed to know if their cancer cocktail would actually kill a human. It was decided to test their concoction on a prisoner from Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary who had “volunteered” for the experiment. They brought him to the Jackson State Mental Hospital (near Clinton, Louisiana) where he was injected with their new bio-weapon, and died.
Upon discovering that the “volunteer” had no idea what he had signed up for, the outraged Judyth wrote a letter protesting the use of their product on an unwitting human patient, and delivered it to Dr. Ochsner’s secretary.13 In doing so, she violated the security rules that Ochsner had mandated (Don’t write anything down!), jeopardized his reputation, and forever crossed-swords with one of the most powerful men in American medicine.
It was a serious tactical error on her part, but Judyth has always been very strong-willed and uncompromising on certain issues. Dr. Ochsner was equally strong-willed and uncompromising in his response, before slamming the telephone down: “You and Lee are expendable!”
From there, the situation fell apart rapidly. Lee and Judyth were released from their cover-jobs at Reily The game-plan had been that Judyth would enter Tulane Medical School, and Lee would go to Mexico to work as a CIA informant. But Lee was ordered to return to Dallas, and Ochsner reneged on his offer to place Judyth in Tulane Medical School. Judyth watched Lee read a newspaper as she drove off with her husband back to Florida.
Judyth fell deeply in love with Lee Oswald that summer and recounts numerous trysts that they had, ranging from the back of a Volkswagen van parked in the Orleans Garage to a suite at the Royal Orleans Hotel provided by their friend Clay Shaw.
David Ferrie had also grown found of Judyth, and arranged a job for her back in Gainesville, Florida doing laboratory work. Ferrie also arranged for Judyth to stay in contact with Lee by phone calls which used the Mafia’s sports-betting phone lines, which were supposedly untraceable.14 Judyths phone conversations with Lee Oswald continued until Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1963.
During the final emotional phone call, Lee made it clear to Judyth that there would be a real attempt to kill President Kennedy on Friday at one of three locations in Dallas. Lee told Judyth that he believed a man named David Atlee Phillips was organizing it.15 He told Judyth to remember the name.
However he got there, Lee was now inside the assassination plot trying to kill President Kennedy, and considered it his duty to stay in pos
ition and undercover until it was over, telling Judyth, “If I stay, there will be one less bullet fired at Kennedy.” Lee did not know if he would make it out alive, but if he did, he was prepared to elope with Judyth. They would go to Merida (a city in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula), where they could both get quickie Mexican divorces from their respective spouses, and then Lee would marry Judyth. If he didn’t make it out alive, he encouraged her to go on with her life and have babies.
It is a fact of history that both Jack Kennedy and Lee Oswald were murdered within the week. Judyth remained with her husband Robert, and had her babies — five of them.
After the assassination, David Ferrie spoke to Judyth for the last time. In that phone call, he told her in blunt language that if she opened her mouth, she too would be killed — as Lee had been. Judyth took Ferrie’s warning seriously, and maintained her silence for decades.
This is the basic outline of Judyth’s story. She tells it differently, and in much more detail. Her book is 700 pages long. Having known her now for six years, it is clear to me that Judyth loved Lee, and that she suffered the horror of seeing the man she loved murdered on national television. She is very angry about all of this. Who wouldn’t be?
She has chosen to come out of hiding after more than 35 years, at considerable risk to herself. Personal risk and legal risk. She admits that she was party to the murder of the patient in the Jackson mental hospital. She admits to developing a biological weapon intended to murder Fidel Castro. She has placed herself at the center of a heated, and often angry, debate over the murder of the President, on the side of the accused assassin. She has been treated disgracefully in Internet newsgroups, and subjected to vicious insults from people hoping to humiliate her back into silence. She begrudgingly accepts all this as the price that she has to pay to tell the world about the Lee Oswald she knew — about his wit, his intellect, his sensitivity, his liberal political leanings, his admiration of President Kennedy, his courage, his innocence in JFK’s murder, and especially the personal risk he took (and price he paid) in hopes of preventing President Kennedy’s assassination. Her take: Lee infiltrated the plot to kill President Kennedy, was set up as the patsy, and was then murdered to protect the real assassins by silencing him.
I EMPATHIZE WITH JUDYTH as a person. She has paid a terrible price both for what she did in the 1960s, and for what she says today. I hope you will read her story for yourself, if you are able to obtain it, and make your own decisions about her story.16 I hope 60 Minutes will complete their story about Judyth. I hope the History Channel will re-instate “The Love Affair” episode in The Men Who Killed Kennedy series for a wider audience to see. The public has the right to hear what Judyth Vary Baker has to say, and the right to make up its own mind about the government’s highly contested claims that Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy — whether alone (1964) or as part of a conspiracy (1972).
In 2006 Judyth sent me an email saying there was something else she wanted to discuss and asking me to call her. I did. In the middle of the hour-long conversation, Judyth started talking about a letter from Guy Banister that she had seen lying on a desk in Congressman Willis’ office in New Orleans, one that she thought might be important. With her typical love of detail and analysis, she began explaining about a note that was handwritten in the margins of the letter, and took off on a tangent that I did not follow.
“Judyth! Time Out!” I interrupted. “What were you doing in Willis’ office?”
“Oh, Monaghan used to send me over there to deliver messages ... a couple of times a week. They were always in sealed envelopes so I didn’t know what the content was. I think it was INCA-related information.17 Willis was hardly ever there, but the staff all knew who I was. Monaghan took me over to introduce me to the staff so they would know who I was when I showed up with an envelope. It was on Lafayette Square, right by Reily’s.” In the summer of 1963, Congressman Willis was Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).18
NOW, LET ME SEE IF I am following this:
In the morning, the young cancer-researcher rides the bus to work with the “defector” who is about to be accused of assassinating the President. In the afternoon, she goes to the underground medical laboratory run by a known Mafia-asset to develop a biological weapon. In between the two, she works at a cover-job under the supervision of an ex-FBI agent, who sends her on errands to deliver “envelopes” to the office of the Congressman who chairs the House Committee on Un-American Activities.19
What was in all those envelopes from the coffee company? Coffee? Would violating the Neutrality Act by conspiring to murder Fidel Castro be considered an Un-American Activity? Would developing a biological weapon be considered an Un-American Activity? Would someone be willing to bribe the local Congressman (or his staff) to make sure that it was not? You have to wonder if Congressman Willis even knew his office was being used in this manner? Or whether he was a key player who organized the others? Or whether he was just Marcello’s tool?
Whatever the answers may be, they lie in the buildings around Lafayette Square — within a stone’s throw of where the Warren Commission held its hearings in New Orleans.20 Next to the Federal court house. Under the noses of the most powerful Congressmen in the land. With the cooperation of former members of the FBI. With the knowledge of the CIA. With the participation of the press. With the cooperation of leaders of American medicine.
In hospitals guarded by Marines. With the help of organized crime. And in the name of freedom. With flag-waving allegiance to colors and slogans that mask a contempt for law. With smoldering hatred and flaring impatience. With the cynical belief that you really can’t tell the people what you need to do, because they might not let you do it. That you can’t trust democracy to produce the right answers or the right leaders. That it as patriotic to intervene illegally in the politics of our own country as it is for us to intervene illegally in the politics other countries. These are the lessons of our Labyrinth. And we have Judyth Vary Baker to thank for bringing them to our attention.
~~~~~~~~~~
1 Frankly, I would prefer that Judyth present it herself. I have watched her for five years. She has tried and tried to get her story out. In fact, in 2003 the History Channel presented an excellent documentary which featured Judyth Vary Baker as part of their legendary series entitled The Men Who Killed Kennedy. This well-produced narrative presented Judyth and her story clearly and powerfully, but it was bundled with two other episodes which erupted into lawsuits. Though I never saw news of any legal complaint involving Judyth’s story, it was withdrawn along with the other two episodes. This was not because it was not popular. Over 50,000 copies of the DVD were sold in the first week. A week later all three were withdrawn. If that DVD were still available, I would not feel the need to provide such a detailed review of her story; but right now it is not.
2 Judyth’s father was an electrical engineer who invented various TV components. After the family moved to Florida, the money from selling his patents ran out.
3 Judyth was considering becoming a nun. Her family strongly objected. Her father drove to the college and essentially kidnapped her in the middle of the night, bringing her home to Florida.
4 Tulane University was on a traditional semester schedule. Judyth’s university in Florida switched to a new trimester schedule in 1963. The result was that Judyth’s campus shut down (cafeterias, etc.) three weeks earlier that normal. Due to Judyth’s problems at home, she headed to New Orleans early.
5 Lee Oswald advised Judyth that this Royal Castle was a favorite dead-drop spot for Bobby Kennedy’s agents who were spying on Carlos Marcello, who was not only the local Mafia boss, but one of its national leaders.
6 Complicating Judyth’s story (and her life) was the impending arrival of Robert Baker, her fiancé. She explains this part of her story in detail in her book, but it is extraneous to our discussion here, and. I therefore ignore it.
7 Also, Lee’s mother dated Sam Termine when Lee was a te
enager. Termine had been Carlos Marcello’s chauffeur.
8 Imagine how easy it would have been to discredit a whistleblower if she had first been rounded up in a brothel and then photographed at the Mafia boss’ motel. Who would believe such a person? Was all this a safety precaution?
9 Remember Elmener Peterson, Mary’s maid? Judyth was given her work schedule, so that she could arrange her visits when Elmener was not there. I wish I had known about Judyth when I spoke to Alvin Alcorn.
10 We have no way of knowing if the Reily management knew about the events going on in their building. Until we do, I will assume that they did not. But professional investigators might want to explore this question.
11 Was Lee able to borrow cars from Alba’s garage to carry out his activities? Imagine how difficult it would be to track his activities in different cars belonging to different people each time he went somewhere!
12 The question of whether there were actually mice in David Ferrie’s apartment in the summer of 1963 has been the subject of debate in the news groups and on the Internet. One JFK researcher, who has interviewed a lot of Ferrie’s “young male friends” about this, points out that none of them recall seeing mice at Ferrie’s apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway in the summer of 1963. Even Perry Russo, a witness that I interviewed who had seen Ferrie’s mice at a previous apartment, said that he did not see any in Ferrie’s apartment when he attended a party there in the summer of 1963. So I asked Judyth whether David Ferrie kept mice in his apartment. Judyth said that she did see a small collection of live mice in Ferrie’s apartment the first time she went there (April 27, 1963), but he removed them when he cleaned up his apartment for the party (April 28, 1963). After that, she did not see any mice living in cages in Ferrie’s apartment on a regular basis. I think the answer is simply that once they cranked up the secret lab work, he realized that having a bunch of people seeing mice at his apartment was not good security, so he moved the few mice he had in his apartment to the apartment across the street. Judyth told me that the mice she used for her research sessions in Ferrie’s apartment were brought there in cardboard boxes from another location somewhere nearby. Each box contained about 50 mice. They were all killed and disposed of the same day.
Dr. Mary’s Monkey Page 30