Dr Mary's Monkey
by Edward Haslem
Chapter 5
A Bishop in His Heart
David Ferrie has become a character of almost comic book proportions. A brilliant man rejected by society, he was a collection of contradictions. A man of high moral aspirations who was compromised by personal cravings. A respected airline pilot who became a tattered Bohemian rebel. The son of a police captain who helped defend a Mafia boss against prosecution. From his orange wig haphazardly glued to his head to his grease paint eyebrows, to his wardrobe of religious vestments, to his home brewed cancer experiments, to his burning desire to help teenage boys, to his ability to land planes in jungle clearings at night, to his violent schemes against Castro, to his friendship with Lee Harvey Oswald, to his unrewarded genius, he was the most colorful figure dredged up during the JFK investigations. Today Ferrie has emerged as the keystone in several JFK theories, including:
𛲢The Garrison Case. Ferrie's trip to Texas on the afternoon of November 22,1963 triggered Garrison's suspicion that Ferrie was involved in the JFK assassination, perhaps as a getaway pilot. Next, based on additional evidence , Garrison suspected Ferrie may have been a prime organizer of the plot. Garrison finally concluded that a high level faction within the CIA was ultimately responsible for Kennedy's death, and that Ferrie had played a lesser role. Ferrie's relationship with the CIA is well known. He trained pilots for the CIA sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion, and flew covert missions into Cuba.
𛲢 The Mafia Hit. In his book Mafia Kingfish, John Davis presented the theory that the Mafia killed John Kennedy in an effort to neutralize Bobby Kennedy, the president's brother and U.S. Attorney General. Bobby was prosecuting certain Mafia leaders, particularly Carlos Marcello, reportedly the head of the Mafia in Louisiana, and some say the entire nation. Davis proposed that Ferrie planned and organized the plot to kill the President on Marcello's instructions. That Ferrie had some form of relationship with Marcello is beyond question, but the extent of that relationship is still unclear. Ferrie was sitting with Marcello in federal court the moment Kennedy was assassinated.
Descriptions of Ferrie from those who knew him range from " a living god" to a "sexual deviant capable of any form of crime." Unfortunately , most books which reference Ferrie devote little time to to examining who he was, and what made him that way. What do we really know about him today? What made him tick? Why was he experimenting with cancer? And who was he really mad at? Castro? Kennedy? Or God?
Much of what I am about to describe comes from a report none of us were supposed to see(my favorite kind of report:) DC). It was a private investigation on David William Ferrie prepared by Southern Research Company Inc. of New Orleans, beginning in the winter of 1963, six months before Oswald arrived in New Orleans, nine months before the raid on the anti- Castro guerilla training camp, and eleven months before the JFK assassination. I do not know who authorized it or why, but I am told it was Eastern Airlines, which was building a case in order to dismiss Ferrie. An advertisement at the bottom of the report describes the Southern Research Company as " A firm principally staffed by former agents of the FBI."
In 1938 he entered St. Mary's Seminary in Cleveland, where he studied for the priesthood for three years. Then in 1940 just prior to graduating, he had a nervous breakdown. This was his first failure in a long series of attempts to become a priest. Later, when he applied for readmission, he was rejected. Having known him for three years, St Mary's did not want him back. He seemed to have a problem with authority.
In 1940, Ferrie's objective changed fro becoming a priest, to becoming a teacher. He entered Baldwin Wallace College, and did student teaching at Rocky River High School from 1940 to 1941. A department chairman summarized his performance with a tongue in cheek statement: " His interest in teaching students is very closely tied up with his religious faith." When questioned years later about her evaluation, she remembered Ferrie clearly, but this time she was less charitable. She quickly portrayed him as having an inflated self image when in fact, he was " the poorest teacher they had ever had." From there, she went straight after his personality describing him as " tricky, a bluffer, shrewd and probably a liar." She added that she received "complaints about his psychoanalyzing his students.," but never had " complaints involving moral problems." However, she expressed her own doubts about his moral character, advising that he kept away from girls and young boys. He seemed to have " a particular interest in the younger students, more than a teacher should have."
In August 1941, Ferrie made a second attempt to become a Catholic priest and entered St. Charles Seminary in Carthagena Ohio. There he stayed for three years. During this time his father bought him a plane, and he learned how to fly. In 1944, on the eve of ecclesiastical accomplishment , the faculty refused to allow him to continue his religious studies. Having spent six years of his life in seminaries studying for the priesthood, he was again formally rejected from a life of prayer. Ferrie was shattered.
An unsigned memo found in Ferrie's file at the St Charles Seminary told the faculty's side of the story. It began, "We had serious misgivings about admitting him to our seminary after learning he had been refused re-admittance to St Mary's in Cleveland." Attempting to give a balanced portrayal, they described Ferrie as a "paradox" saying "many of ways were likable." They even assumed some responsibility for their part in Ferrie's tragedy by pointing out that they had renewed his relationship for over three years, but alas " there was surely an element of instability in his character somewhere." Then they described what became a familiar pattern in Ferrie's life, initial success both socially and scholastically, the achievement of a leadership position amongst his peers, growing conflict and jealousy, backstabbing, self-pity, exaggeration, manipulation, misuse of leadership and trust, excessive criticism, threats, and contempt of authority.
In a tone that approached apology, the anonymous author said there was no single event of magnitude, but rather a pattern of minor infractions, mostly of the rules of the house, but also "emotional instability", especially his "inclination to suspicion and rash judgment and uncharitable conclusions" that indicated "he would not fit into a religious community."
The final stroke: "When corrected, his attitude seemed to be that the rule should be changed rather than he should be forced to observe it." On November 27,1944, the faculty of St Charles Seminary refused to allow him to continue his quest for priesthood "due to the questionable ness of his disposition." He was unfit for the Society of the Precious Blood.
In 1945, Ferrie was treated by a psychiatrist and began a period of relative stability. He lived at home, worked teaching English and Aeronautics at Benedictine High School, and began his long relationship with the Civil Air Patrol. This calm lasted through 1948, though the seven traffic violations from this stretch showed he was still having some trouble with "the rules of the house."
In 1948, he became involved in a series of serious misconduct incidents at the Civil Air Patrol which eventually drove him from Ohio. In the first case, he appropriated a squadron airplane which had been grounded by the U.S. Air Force and flew it, after dark and without landing lights, from Columbus to Cleveland. Identifying himself as a lieutenant in the U.S.Air Force during the incident got him into even hotter water. The CAP commander tried to have Ferrie dismissed from CAP, but the paperwork was "lost". So Ferrie was still on their books in 1950 when two CAP cadets signed papers reporting that Ferrie, their instructor, had taken them to a house of prostitution in a nearby town. Ferrie was not charged with a crime , but his dismissal from CAP became imminent. Ferrie negotiated his disastrous situation into a transfer to Louisiana. When the Louisiana branch asked for his personal file, the Cleveland office found it missing, but could not prove it was stolen.
Ferrie did have his friends and allies along the way. One was a well known female pilot who hired Ferrie to fly her ex-husbands twin engine plane on business trips down to Texas. She considered Ferrie a near genius whose piloting skills were above reproach. She personally felt he did much for the Civil Air Patrol, building up their squadron to one of the largest in Ohio. She blamed his problems at CAP on jealousy from other instructors and blamed them for stealing his personal files to remove his many letters of recommendation.
In 1951 David Ferrie finally bailed out of Ohio and headed for his new home in New Orleans. There he moved into the French Quarter and before long was living on Bourbon Street. It must have been quite a change for someone who spent six years in a seminary!
Ferrie's life in New Orleans was successful for most of the 1950's. He landed a good job with Eastern Airlines and learned to fly big jets. He wore the Eastern uniform, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Captain.
The life of a pilot is an unusual one. Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of fear and stress. When they are traveling, pilots are required to rest a certain number of hours for each hour of flying time. This creates long layovers which are full of idle hours.
Ferrie appears to have made good use of his time. His ability to teach himself intellectually complex subjects proved to be his major strength.He began his study of bio-chemistry and took a correspondence course in psychology and hypnotism, albeit from a un-accredited medical school in Italy. He listed himself in the phone book as Dr. David Ferrie.
He continued his involvement with the Civil Air Patrol and reached the rank of Captain. There he met a cadet named Lee Harvey Oswald.
Towards the end of the 1950's another personal tragedy entangled Ferrie. His hair started falling out in clumps. Before long all of the hair on his body including his eyebrows and eyelashes was gone. He compensated for this by wearing a crude homemade wig glued to his head and false eyebrows painted on his face. It is unclear whether his study of bio-chemistry was related to his hair loss as some have suggested. But what is clear is that something happened in the 1950's that set his beast of unrest in motion again. With it came the awakening of a violent and intolerant political temperament. A glimpse of this can be seen in a letter that he wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Defense: " There is nothing I would enjoy better than blowing the hell out of every damn Russian, Communist, Red, or what have you. Between my friends and I, we can cook up a crew that can really blow them to hell...I want to train killers..."
Someone in the government must have seen the value in an airline pilot who wanted to train killers, because Ferrie started moonlighting as a pilot for the CIA. The precise extent of Ferrie's relationship with the CIA is not fully known. Many of the documents are still classified. But it was widely reported that he flew numerous missions in and out of Cuba, first supplying Castro with arms to fight Batista and later supplying the anti-Castro underground with weapons.
Castro came to power on January 1, 1959. Within a year he had seized American assets(casinos, factories and oil refineries), openly embraced Communism, and militarily allied himself with the Soviet Union. Ferrie felt personally betrayed and set out with a vengeance to destroy Castro and his Communist dictatorship. This hatred led Ferrie into a long and complex relationship with the anti- Castro Cuban underground here in the United States. He firebombed targets inside Cuba, and traveled to Guatemala to train Cuban exiles to fly planes in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Back in Washington D.C. events were unfolding that would greatly impact Ferrie's life. Kennedy's White House and the CIA had very different ideas about how to stop Communism, especially the expansion of Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere. This policy dispute erupted into open conflict between the two camps. Many of the CIA's activities were untraceable even by the CIA inspector general. These "unvouchered expenditures" essentially meant that the CIA was refusing to be controlled by the White House. The situation oscillated between insubordination and treason. In 1975 when the Senate Intelligence Committee finally looked into these activities, Chairman Frank Church likened the CIA's activities to " a rogue elephant rampaging out of control." Actually the problem was even deeper. The question: Who is running the government???[a question still being asked in the confusion of 2020,as we have all been witness to the chaos directed at our president over the now 4 plus damn years!!! DC]
The stakes were enormous. The pressures unbelievable. The players believed nothing less than the destiny of the planet was at stake. The CIA's plan for keeping the Soviets at bay was to put a gun to their head. Batteries of American missiles armed with nuclear warheads sat in Turkey on the U.S.S.R's southern border. All major Soviet cities including Moscow, were now ready to burst into flames of a nuclear nightmare with 30 minutes of an order from Washington. Kennedy ordered them removed, but the Pentagon did not comply. The Soviets were very unhappy about such intimidation and were anxious for an opportunity to show the Americans just what it felt like to have someone point a nuclear missile at them. Castro gave them the opportunity.[those bolded underlined words sound familiar to the current crisis. DC]
Castro was determined to break America's grip on his island. In his words, "It is time to tell the Yankees that we are not your plantation, your gambling casino, or your whorehouse." In order to discourage an American military overthrow of his government, Castro offered his island to the Soviets as a launching pad for their nuclear missiles. The Soviets wasted little time moving them into position.
In early April of 1961 American Intelligence started picking up unusual radio signals from the Camaguey Mountains in central Cuba. But the radio signals were too weak to analyze properly. They were simultaneously receiving reports from the anti- Castro guerillas inside Cuba that some large facility was under construction in a deep ravine in the jungle in the Camagueys. Were the Soviets moving nuclear missiles into Cuba? The CIA needed better intelligence. They needed hard evidence. The CIA decided to send a team into Cuba to collect radio signals from a mountain top in the Camagueys.
Ferrie was ordered to come to Washington, where he met with General Charles Cabell, one of the top people at the CIA. The general explained the mission to Ferrie and a young aeronautic electronics expert named Robert Morrow. They would leave from the west coast of Florida at night on April 16, 1961. Ferrie would fly the plane, with Morrow as co-pilot, and land in a clearing in the jungles. Guerillas would meet the plane and take them to a location to record the radio signals. At last, Ferrie was doing something really important.
The mission went as planned, until their party was discovered by Cuban army troops, who strafed the plane as it was taking off. Ferrie was wounded in the incident. The intelligence they collected did get back to Washington, just in time for the biggest debacle in the history of the CIA.
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a disaster. At the last moment President Kennedy had refused to supply U.S. military air support for the invasion, which landed at dawn on April 17,1961. Castro won the day and solidified his control of Cuba. Hundreds of invading Cuban exiles were killed on the beach. Over 1200 were captured. Kennedy was furious at the CIA believing they were trying to manipulate him into an act of war. He fired Dulles, Cabell and Bissell, the top brass at the CIA, and ordered his brother Bobby, the U.S. Attorney General to oversee the CIA, and to dismantle its system of unaccountable expenditures.
These events led Ferrie into a very complex world of covert operations where the lines between official and unofficial, between legal and illegal, became increasingly unclear.
By 1961, Ferrie lived in a three level house near New Orleans International Airport, where he worked. Ferrie said his mother lived on the main floor, which looked like a normal middle class house with sofas, paintings, books and the like. Here Ferrie held CAP meetings. The entire top floor was David's personal territory, and was strictly for his medical interests. It contained a medical library with various diplomas hung on the walls, a psychiatric couch, medical equipment like microscopes and test tubes, and about 20 caged mice for his medical experiments. In the basement sat the sawed off remains of a World War II fighter plane, which he used as a primitive flight simulator to teach flying.
This was, frankly, as good as life ever got for David Ferrie. From here we follow a descent that can only be described as tragic.
As the story was told to me by ex-CAP cadets, one night Ferrie got drunk and, in an attempt to impress a young boy, borrowed a plane and went for a joyride, buzzing the sleeping city of New Orleans at tree top level. Some say he had sex with the boy during the flight. FAA officials were waiting at the airport when he returned. They set in motion an effort to pull his commercial license. He was also booked on "decency charges" concerning his relationship with the teenage boy. About the same time, he lost his position with the CAP through insubordination and misconduct. Again the basic ingredients were young boys. Ferrie insisted on sleeping in the cabin with the teenage cadets, and threw a beer party for them on the beach, both violations of CAP rules. Ferrie left the CAP and started his own flying club for teenage boys, called the Falcons, and held meetings in his home.
Ferrie's religious ambitions also re-surfaced in 1961. He became a member of the clergy of the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America, an independent offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church headquartered in a a house in louisville Kentucky. It was from this fountain of legitimacy that Ferrie sought to his rank as Bishop.
On November 30, 1961, wearing a wig Scotch taped to his head and accompanied by sidekick Jack Martin, Ferrie arrived in Louisville expecting to be consecrated as a Bishop of the Church. It was not to be. The Archbishop who was supposed to perform the ceremony had heard of Ferrie's dismissal from Eastern Airlines, refused to consecrate him, and chastised him for the reports of his unnatural sexual behavior. The Archbishop's criticism went further still, telling Ferrie he intended to excommunicate him from the Church for behavior unbecoming to a Church official. Ferrie was furious and departed in anger. In January 1962, the Archbishop officially excommunicated Ferrie from the Church, advising him by letter that he had been "degraded and cast out of the clergy and Church in America."
Ferrie's battle with Eastern Airlines had lasted for several years. A doctor who had examined him for the Airline described him as having a " psychotic personality and no sense of responsibility." He eventually lost his job. His life fell into a spiral. He moved from his tri level house by the airport to a small apartment in town. His hair had now fallen out completely, and he began wearing a home made orange wig which some said was made of monkey hair. He replaced his natural eyebrows with dark grease paint. When combined with his newly purchased wardrobe of second hand clothes, his appearance created an unforgettable impression on those he met.
We enter 1963. Ferrie made one final attempt at getting someone to recognize his religious talents(yeah raping alter boys DC] , his fourth attempt at the clergy. This time it was from the Orthodox Catholic Church, another offshoot Catholic sect, which split from the Church over a doctrinal dispute in 1709. The worldwide head of this church was reported to be an Archbishop in Geneva Switzerland, who was identified in the Southern Research report as a translator at a disarmament conference.
The Chancellor of the North American Province was Bishop George A. Hyde who lived in Washington D.C. and ran a small seminary out of his house. Hyde had three young male novices and expected another three shortly. Each person in the house held an outside job and contributed his income to Hyde to run his house. Using the title Friar Hyde, he offered his services to the Washington D.C. Juvenile Court, which responded by placing a young boy in his home. Hyde said, " If I am successful, I would like to take in other boys like him."
Early that summer Ferrie told Hyde of his desire to become a priest and asked Hyde to ordain him. After considerable discussion, Hyde agreed to the request saying the next opportunity would be at the Bishop's conference in Kankake Illinois. Hyde recommended David Ferrie as a candidate for ordination, but requested the hosting Bishop to ordain him, since he could not attend. Ferrie was scheduled to be ordained a priest of this church on July 19, 1963.
Just two days before Ferrie's scheduled ordination, Jack Martin, Ferrie's old sidekick in New Orleans, arrived at the the Bishop's Rectory in Kankake Illinois, and told the Bishop that David Ferrie had been arrested several times on charges of homosexuality and that he was presently appealing one such allegation in the Louisiana Court of Appeals. Martin picked up the phone, called the Clerk of Court in New Orleans, and handed the phone to one of the priests to verify the information. The Bishop refused to ordain Ferrie.
Back in New Orleans, Ferrie's involvement with the increasingly desperate anti- Castro Cuban underground was escalating. His main employment was working as a "private investigator" for a right wing extremist named Guy Bannister, who was heavily involved in covert anti-Communist activities throughout Latin America. Ferrie also served as a private investigator and personal pilot for accused Mafia boss Carlos Marcello(and others). By July of 1963, Ferrie's assistance to the anti- Castro Cuban underground included the military training of a dozen Cuban exiles at a rural camp located about forty miles from New Orleans. Their target was Castro himself. By this time, Kennedy had explicitly prohibited paramilitary raids on Cuba by desperate exile groups. On July 31, 1963, the FBI raided this training camp, arrested and / or detained eleven people, mostly Cubans and a few mobsters, and confiscated a large quantity of military weapons. The military weaponry included over a ton of dynamite, aerial bomb casings, detonators, and the ingredients to make napalm. It is believed that the mission of this group was the assassination of Fidel Castro and that it was one of many projects organized by the Cuban exile Dr. Orlando Bosch, a fanatical terrorist and saboteur who began his career as a medical doctor.
While there is no evidence that Ferrie was present when the FBI raided the camp, he is believed to have been closely involved and to have procured the explosives and military hardware for the operation from an explosives bunker at the Schlumberger Tool Company.
Had ordinary people been caught with that same equipment and in those circumstances, they would have been sent to prison for years. For some reason, the FBI released these eleven saboteurs and attempted to cover up their detainment. It should be noted that Ferrie employer Guy Bannister had run the FBI's Chicago office and was a close professional associate of J. Edgar Hoover.
Into this caldron walked one of Ferrie's old CAP cadets, who had just returned to New Orleans with his pregnant wife and baby daughter. Lee Harvey Oswald had been off in the Marines for several years, and had lived for several more years in the Soviet Union, where he had met his young bride. In New Orleans, Oswald got a job at the Reily Coffee Company, located around the corner from Guy Bannister's office where Ferrie worked. Oswald was seen several time with Ferrie that summer.
ð›²£ó €ª Oswald and Ferrie were seen together at Bannister's office at 544 Camp St.
𛲣 Ferrie and Clay Shaw took Oswald up to Jackson, Louisiana to try to get him a job in the Southeastern Louisiana State Hospital, a mental hospital staffed with doctors from both Tulane and LSU medical schools. As part of that effort, Shaw and Ferrie brought Oswald to nearby Clinton, Louisiana, to register to vote.
𛲣 Ferrie had a party at his apartment. His guests included Clay Shaw, Lee Oswald, Perry Russo, and several Cuban exiles. Ferrie got drunk and discussed how President Kennedy could be killed if he was caught in a crossfire of high powered rifles.
In the months that followed, Ferrie spent his time helping Carlos Marcello defend himself against racketeering charges brought by Robert Kennedy and the U.S.Justice Department. On November 22, 1963, at the moment of the assassination, Ferrie was sitting in federal court in New Orleans with Marcello as the judge prepared to read the jury's "not guilty" verdict.
Later that afternoon, Ferrie mase a sudden trip to Texas. Jack Martin( who had just been pistol whipped that afternoon by his employer Guy Bannister) called the D.A's office to say that Ferrie may have been involved in Kennedy's assassination. In response, the New Orleans D.A.'s office raided Ferrie's apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway. There they found aerial bomb casings, maps of Cuba, a small portion of his medical equipment, and a dozen or so mice in cages. Ferrie was picked up for questioning by the D.A's office when he returned to New Orleans. The New Orleans D.A's found the circumstances of his trip suspicious, and Ferrie's explanation of the trip unbelievable. They turned Ferrie over to the FBI for further questioning. The FBI promptly released Ferrie with what amounted to a public apology.
At this point let me state that I cannot say if David Ferrie was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. And more importantly, it is not critical to the issue we are discussing.
However we are exploring the life and activities of a man who was running an underground medical laboratory which was said to have been using monkey viruses to develop a biological weapon. The fact that Ferrie was suspected of being involved in the Kennedy assassination is why we know as much about him as we do, and is how we know of his involvement in covert medical experiments with Dr Mary Sherman and others. Later, in 1966, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison reopened his investigation into the Kennedy assassination at the suggestion of U.S. Senator Russell Long.Garrison found Ferrie to be central to his investigation.
Here are some comments about Ferrie from Garrison's 1967 Playboy interview:
After the assassination, as a matter of fact, something psychologically curious happened to Ferrie. He dropped out of anti-Castro exile activities, left the pay of the CIA, and drifted aimlessly while hie emotional problems increased to the point where he was totally dependent on huge doses of tranquilizers and barbiturates. I don't know if Ferrie ever experienced any guilt about the assassination itself, but in his last months, he was a tortured man.
I had nothing but pity for David Ferrie while he was alive, and I have nothing but pity for him now that he's dead. Ferrie was a pathetic, and tortured creature, a genuinely brilliant man whose twisted drives locked him into his own private hell. If I had been able to help Ferrie, I would have, but he was in too deep, and he was terrified.
For a long time afterward, Ferrie kept the remaining mice in hutches in his dining room, nursing plans for attaching small incendiary flares to them and parachuting them into Cuba's sugarcane fields.
David Ferrie perennially was being defrocked, first of his priesthood, then of his air, then of his Civil Air Patrol captaincy and then of his position as an Eastern Air Lines pilot. It is unlikely that he was unaffected by this accumulation of bitter experience. This man with a brilliant mind and a face like a clown was a dangerous man.
In February of 1967, only a few days after Garrison's investigation was made public, David Ferrie was found dead in his disheveled apartment. The Coroner ruled that Ferrie died of natural causes. To this day, speculation continues about the cause of his death. Some argue that he was murdered, some argue that he took his own life. The only three names mentioned in Ferrie's handwritten will are his brother, his friend Alvin Beauboeuf, and Rev George A. Hyde.
Considering all the things he lost during his life, it is interesting to note that his religious garments hung in his closet until the end.
In January 1993, I flew to New Orleans to assist Gus Russo in his investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald for the PBS television show Frontline. Before I left for New Orleans, I called Perry Russo. Perry had been Garrison's key witness, who testified that he was in Ferrie's apartment when Ferrie plotted to kill Kennedy. In 1993 Perry was a cab driver in New Orleans, so I asked him to pick me up at the airport. Once in the cab I asked him to tell me everything he knew about Ferrie, starting with the first time he met him.
Peffy began at the beginning and talked for nearly an hour. His descriptions were detailed and insightful. His story began back in high school, when he coached a neighborhood basketball team. One of the boys on his team was the object of David Ferrie's affection. The boy had moved in with Ferrie. As a favor to the boy's parents, Perry Russo infiltrated Ferrie's group with the intention of bringing his friend home. To do this, he had tp break Ferrie's considerable psychological grip on the youngster. Throughout his tale, Perry Russo told me of both his successes and his failures in a balanced manner. I asked questions as we went along. He was quick to say "I don't know" when he did not know, and he struggled to remember details about the things he could. It was clear to me that Perry never really liked Ferrie, but he came to respect him. His descriptions were particularly helpful.
The David Ferrie that Perry Russo talked about first was Captain David Ferrie, the successful commercial airline pilot. It was Perry who described Ferrie's house by the airport room by room: the middle class apartment on the main floor, the fighter plane in the basement, and his medical suite above. It was here that Ferrie was most at home, among his diplomas, reclining couches, microscopes, test tubes, medical books and mice. It was here he plotted to cure cancer and to rid the world of Communism.
When Ferrie lost his airline job in 1961, he also lost his affluent lifestyle. Perry's before and after descriptions contrasted a proud man who meticulously wore uniforms with a broken man who shopped exclusively at thrift stores. As Perry described Ferrie's small apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway, it became clear that the bulk of Ferrie's furniture, his medical equipment, and his airplane related paraphernalia did not make the transition to 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. So I asked Perry about this. He said he remembered asking, "What happened to all Dave's stuff?" to either Ferrie himself or to one of the boys who hung out at his apartment. Perry was told Ferrie had stashed his extra "stuff" in another apartment nearby.
Two days later Perry Russo picked up Gus Russo and myself, and drove us over to Ferrie's apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway. While Gus asked Perry questions about Garrison and the Kennedy assassination, I got out of the car and walked around, checking the distance between that building and the one I knew, checking the angles, and taking pictures. When I got back in the car, Perry mentioned that Ferrie's apartment had remained vacant for four or five years after his death in 1967.
Those were the same years that my girlfriend Barbara's apartment had been vacant! Two rental apartments, both on the same street within a dozen houses of each other, both with the lingering smell of animals,and both voluntarily taken off the market(without rent) for years at a time! There had to be a connection! My conclusion could only be that Ferrie had been involved in both apartments, and used 3225 Louisiana Avenue Parkway as his underground medical laboratory.
Having placed Barbara across the street from Ferrie's known rental, lets revisit the subject of her upstairs neighbor Miguel. I do not want to make too much of him. It is possible he was a real "nobody", but there are a few points worth noting.
First consider his claim that he worked occasionally "At a service station in Jefferson Parrish," From 1964 to his death in 1967, David Ferrie operated a service station in Jefferson Parish.
Secondly, Miguel said he worked as "a mechanic." Within the covert operations circles in which David Ferrie ran, the word "mechanic" was a commonly used euphemism for "assassin."
Thirdly, Perry Russo testified in court that, in September 1963, he heard David ,Ferrie, Clay Shaw, and several Cubans discuss shooting President Kennedy with high powered rifles. The location of this incident was Ferrie's apartment at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. When I interviewed Perry Russo about David Ferrie, he said the Cubans frequently showed up at Ferrie's apartment. They just appeared. No phone calls. No cars. Always late at night. Always in groups. Always from the back staircase.
Ferrie's address sounds like it's in the next block from Barbara's 3225 Louisiana Avenue Parkway abode, but the numbers are misleading. There is no cross street, and both are on the same block.
How did the Cubans know when to show up? Were they staying in Miguel's apartment down the block? Was Miguel one of them? It is clearly stated by both Garrison in On the Trail of the Assassins, and by Turner and Hinckle in Deadly Secrets(and in many other books) that Ferrie was part of the secret war against Cuba, and that those activities included an underground railroad which transported militant Cuban exiles to guerrilla warfare training places like Bannister's camp outside New Orleans.
Now, where would you lodge a group of guerilla's who had just come from a week of combat training in the swamps? At your mother's house? No, you would need to have a safe house. A secure place that was basically empty so it could be used as needed for a stopover. A place just like the apartment across the street from Ferrie, close to the operation, but far from high traffic areas where it might attract unwanted attention. All of which made me wonder if our neighbor Miguel might not have been " part of the scenery", an artifact of the underground Cuban railroad left in position to keep an eye on things, and to make sure no one got too curious about the apartment building where those terrible men did horrible things to those animals...
next
Mary,Mary
