Stephen Roy

In Full Metal Jacket, a character who undergoes a conversion is said to be "born-again, hard." You've certainly undergone such a conversion. Thanks for seeing this thing realistically and thanks for your words of support for my work. As I sometimes do, I Googled "David Ferrie" a while ago. About half of the hits were Judyth Baker. Half the hits on this piece of history are this unproven, made-up story. Now there's a potential film. And her own conference. And more books. Maybe buying the grave next to Oswald. I won't even comment again on her, too-liberally borrowing my intellectual property without full credit. This is getting out of hand. I wonder if her adoring legion of Facebook romance readers know that virtually the entire research community has turned their backs on her stories. In just the past few days, she's been discussed in several forums. People on the CT side like yourself, Barb Junkkarinen, Jim DiEugenio, Larry Hancock, Dawn Meredith, Greg Parker. People like Vince Palamara and Ralph Cinque. LNs like John McAdams, Dave Reitzes and many people from alt.assassination.jfk. When all of these people agree, it's worth taking notice. There are enough genuine mysteries that we don't need to be be creating new ones.

It's a work in progress right now. http://postdiluvianpictures.com/Site%207/Works-in-Progress.html

The most fascinating part of this document is that one of the causes of death was "Extensive burns of the right side of body with complete destruction of right upper extremity and right side of thorax and abdomen." ( p. 354, italics added) Haslam takes these bizarre circumstances, especially the extreme temperatures needed to eliminate a large part of her right side and thus lays the ground work for what he sees as the real way she died. == Review: Dr. Mary's Monkey By James DiEugenio Respected filmmaker and researcher Steve Tyler has looked into the Sherman case far more deeply, far beyond the needless melodrama and exaggerations of other books, and what he has found will cast this case in a much more realistic light. Her injuries were consistent with the crime scene, and there was no "linear particle accelerator" in New Orleans at the time.

I find it alarming that she's not only been able to push this story, writing multiple books and huckstering for money, but she's now trying to insert herself into the legitimate research community by holding conferences and co-opting a few well-known names. She has every right to research and fight for the things she believes, but not at the expense of polluting the evidence stream with notional stories.

Just for the record: The whole story is untrue. I've seen people speculate that maybe it's only partly true, but they're wrong too. She was a good science student, and she worked at Reilly Coffee in the summer of 1963, but she did not have a relationship - ANY relationship, ever - with Oswald, Ferrie, Sherman, Shaw, Ruby, etc. The whole story is untrue. The same goes for the story she based it on, Haslam's Dr. Mary's Monkey, which is also untrue. He never even comes close to providing evidence for his speculations, not least whether Ferrie and Sherman were even acquainted. There are important things to consider in the JFK assassination. These claims are not among them.

Wow! The summary is just as much baloney as the book! She's consistently wrong about everything.

Paul; The statements you quoted are from the Shaw trial, when the inconsistencies of earlier statements had been ironed out. Look at the earlier statements, as well as the HSCA-era statements, and read the critical analysis on both sides. If you were asked under oath to identify a stranger you saw relatively briefly six years earlier, you could positively identify him?

Well, Mark, the EVIDENCE I'd cite would be the many people in Clinton, Louisiana who saw Lee Harvey Oswald in the presence of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in a limousine there, with a license plate registered to the Trade Mart in New Orleans. The number of people who testified under oath that they were there was high - and included officials in the town, not just townspeople. That connection remains to be explained. Sincerely, --Paul Trejo Paul: You're glomming them all together, as if they all said exactly the same things. Some were strong on Shaw, some not. Some were strong on Ferrie, some not. Some were strong on Oswald, some not. There were not "many people" who claimed that the car was registered to the ITM, there was only ONE guy who claimed that. And there was no such car registered to the ITM, by the way. Not monolithic, and not 100% certainty.

Not to the extent that you think. Internally and with each other, both agencies were remarkably candid about all three men. A great deal of that material has already been released via HSCA and ARRB. Don't expect a fat Ferrie file in 2017.

"In February 1968, the CIA prepared a report on David Ferrie a synopsis of this file reached the period when David Ferrie was associated with the Cuban Revolutionary Front, the CIA deleted it." (David Ferrie was associated with the Cuban Revolutionary Front,DELETED FROM synopsis 1968 report above,GAAL) source http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/weberman/nodule11.htm Thanks. So I guess Weberman was the source. Weberman is a paradox. Based on topics with which I am very familiar, I can see that he often finds unique information. But by the same token, he sometimes misstates things (and doggedly resists my attempts at correction). BTW, if you copy and paste his info into a Word document, it becomes searchable.

Steven In your posts, it is difficult to figure who is saying what. What's your source for this: "In February 1968, the CIA prepared a report on David Ferrie that stated he was not a CIA employee, although a Office of Security file existed on him. When a synopsis of this file reached the period when David Ferrie was associated with the Cuban Revolutionary Front, the CIA deleted it." Deleted WHAT from WHAT?

Oh, goody. The real truth about everything. Just ask her manager.

Thanks for the info.

I want to encourage more activity in this forum. I want to have more rather than less and make up my own mind what I find relevant and interesting. Different people have different interests; if I find something irrelevant, I'll skip it. Palamara has done some good work over a long period of time, and he wanted to share an oddity he found. But no, it probably wasn't relevant to the case. I certainly agree on a legal presumption of innocence in the absence of a trial.

I don't believe a historical coincidence is out of bounds for posting or discussion. I think we should keep things as open as possible.

Vol 19, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits Page 690 Is this it? http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0354b.htm

Paul: Larry has been around a long time, done a huge amount of primary source document research, written several books, helped organize conferences and presented at them himself. With all due respect to your powers of theorization, this is not a case of two people with equivalent gravitas who just disagree. Larry has the chops. You need to listen more. He's right about Garrison's book: Garrison conceded writing it largely from memory, it contains provable mistakes, and a book written two decades later is not evidence.

"Some," at least. I think she burned some of his actual investigative files. At least some of them are said to have related to Banister's time with the NOPD, the many battles he had there. Other collections included the newspaper/congressional report files (the one Garrison referenced) and a collection of books on intelligence and red-hunting.

By the way, here's a link to what I mean about Hyde's church being an early gay-friendly group. Ferrie seems to have seriously joined it in about 1963. http://lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=96

Paul, if you mean me: I don't believe Banister's files ended up at INCA. They all seem to have been accounted for, given to family, right-wingers, etc. The Louisiana State Police made a listing of file names/numbers (which I have),and it strongly suggests that Banister's files were made predominantly from newspaper articles or congressional reports. Red-hunting stuff. I have little faith in things claimed in Dr. Mary's Monkey by Ed Haslam. The parts related to the usual New Orleans cast - Ferrie, Banister, Butler, Sherman - overlap with my research, and I can say with authority that Haslam gets things wrong or exaggerates.

That's a mistake. Stanley didn't talk to the FBI in 1963-4. It was 1967, as I recall, not long before his death.

Larry: You're right about the diploma mills ("ordination mills"). There was publicity about an HEW investigation in 1960, and Jack Martin claimed that the whole Carl Stanley thing was such an investigation. By about 1962-3, Ferrie went off with another offshoot of these groups. Although unspoken at the time, the one run by George Hyde was one of the first "gay-friendly" denominations. Hyde was celebrated until his recent death (and after) as an LGBT pioneer.

Paul: Again, I won't get into point by point debate. Feel free to disagree with me and move on. It's not impossible that there was a Banister/Ferrie cache of arms in 1963, but it just didn't happen. 1961, yes. 1963, no. I used the term respected researcher. Stone was a fine filmmaker, but he didn't garner much respect as a researcher, in this or in subsequent works. Let me be more blunt: Most respected researchers I've asked about Lewis (including most New Orleans experts) don't buy his account. At all. Let's drop it for now.

I guess some long-timers like me, including some well-known names on a list-bot, feel a need to be be highly skeptical of any late-arriving claimant to have been a witness. After such a long time, the onus is on them to prove their bonfides. By the same token, I think we feel a need to wave a caution flag when the bonafides don't inspire confidence. You're free to believe whomever you want, but there is some value in consulting the perspective and wisdom of those have been at this for a long time. I can't think of any respected researcher who endorses him. I don't wish to get involved in a time-consuming, multi-post, multi-page debate over many weeks. I first saw Lewis on a program hosted by James Earl Jones. I bought Flashback, looking for anything to corroborate it. Nothing. Nada. Nobody had ever heard of him. Worse still (and this is subjective), I just got the feeling, like Henry Lee said, of "something wrong."

It would take me a long time to list my exceptions to his story. There is no corroboration. Nobody I've interviewed ever met or heard of him. I can't believe that he kept silent for so long. Roscoe White - need I say more? There are lots of reasons, but one dealbuster for me is this: "7. Once, at Guy Banister's offices, Lee showed Ron a cache of illegal arms and explosives that Banister and Ferrie were accumulating on behalf of Cuban Exile revolutionary groups in New Orleans." In the summer of 1963? No way, did not happen. That's a gross misreading of the time sequence involving Banister and Ferrie. I do have his book, BTW.