Judyth Vary Baker -- Claims to Have Been Oswald's Girlfriend in New Orleans in 1963

If Judyth Vary Baker is telling the truth, it will change the way we think about the Kennedy assassination. Judyth offers an account that integrates much that has been written about the assassination into a more or less coherent whole, and puts myriad facts about the assassination in an entirely new light. She has recently been in the Netherlands, getting some attention in the Dutch media, and has opened a museum dedicated to telling her story. She was the subject of “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” which aired in November, 2003 on the History Channel. Her supporters have promised a book. She may turn into someone important on the JFK assassination scene.

Primary Sources on Judyth

Key sources on the “Judyth” story include:

– an essay sarcastically titled “My Boring Life,” a response to David Lifton’s claim that Judyth has fabricated her story to add some interest to a her boring life.

– a biographical blurb written to her high school classmates and posted on the web page of Manatee High School. There were two versions of the blurb posted, one a bit “sanitized” after it apparently occurred to Judyth that her original version contained some things that are hard to swallow. Space constraints have forced her blurb off the current version of the high school alumni page.

– an outline, titled “Deadly Alliance,” sent to publishers and researchers. Carefully formatted and polished, this is the “official” version of her story – at least it was when it was written. In this essay, “the Judyth account” or “Judyth’s account” refers to “Deadly Alliance.”

– a draft of the final chapter of her book, titled “Before the Silence Came: Lee’s Last Telephone Calls.”

– a rambling version of her story and a response to critics written in November 2003.

– Yet another web page from Judyth, including several photos, and samples of Judyth’s artwork.

– An interview she did with Dutch radio. The narration is in Dutch, but Judyth speaks in English.

– A current (as of May, 2007) web page on Judyth. It contains links to several video clips, including Judyth’s segment in the 2003 documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy

Judyth’s saga begins when she was a student at Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida. Among fellow students who remember her, opinion is about evenly split between remembering her as “intelligent” and remembering her as “weird,”

but she appears to have been an excellent science student who conducted “cancer research” with mice.

She received a fair amount of recognition for her academic prowess, attending national workshops for science students. But her life took an important turn when she came to the attention of Dr. Canute Michaelson in 1958. Michaelson (supposedly a “CIA asset” engaged in bioweapons research) somehow targeted her for future intelligence use.

She was thus drawn into the orbit of very sinister people and eventually into a plot that had the intention of killing Castro, but ended up killing JFK instead.

The “interesting” time in her life was the summer of 1963, when she was in New Orleans. It was there that she began, she claims, a torrid sexual affair with Lee Harvey Oswald, in spite of having been recently married to Robert Baker, a student and future petroleum geologist who was working for an oil company. What brought Judyth and Lee together was a plot, centered in New Orleans, to produce a bioweapon for the purpose of killing Fidel Castro. The plotters got them both “cover” jobs at the Reily Coffee Company while they were carrying on an affair and trying to produce a “cocktail” to administer to Castro. The “cocktail” would include both a virus designed to knock out Castro’s immune system, and cancer cells that would infect him and cause his death.

Other participants in the plot included David Ferrie – every conspiracy author’s favorite suspect – and Dr. Mary Sherman, a physician at the Ochsner Clinic. The research was done in the apartments of Ferrie and Sherman.

Oswald’s famous trip to Mexico City was, according to Baker, for the purpose of delivering the poison “cocktail” to an agent who would see to it that it got into Cuba and was administered to Castro.

Oswald made it to Mexico City, but unfortunately the agent never arrived to claim the materials, and the plotters decided to kill John Kennedy instead. However, instead of using their sophisticated bioweapon concoction on him, they decided to simply shoot him. Oswald, who liked Kennedy, was an unwilling participant in the plot, but never defected nor told the authorities about the plan. He was in Dealey Plaza as a shooter, but intentionally missed Kennedy, although other shooters, of course, killed the President.

Some readers may be tempted to stop reading right now, given the sheer implausibility of the tale.

That the CIA would need to develop a bioweapon to kill Castro is farfetched, since they had a variety of poisons that would have killed him – including some that would do so without it being obvious he was in fact murdered.

Further, when the CIA wanted scientific research done, they were able to recruit top-notch Ph.D.-level university talent. Their research on toxins was headed by a renowned biologist. For the MK/ULTRA project (dealing with “mind control”) they recruited top university scientists.

Yet we are supposed to believe that this particular project was carried out by a high-school dropout (Oswald), a college student with no advanced science classes (Baker), a fellow who had a mail order doctor’s degree from an institution in Italy (Ferrie) and a reputable doctor (Sherman) who was in fact an orthopedic surgeon.

Ferrie, at one point, did own some mice, and told his friends he was engaged in “cancer research.” But then he also, at one point, had a large tank in his back yard which he claimed he was going to convert into a submarine to attack Castro’s Cuba.

And somehow the plotters couldn’t supply a proper facility, so the research was done in the apartments of two members of the team. Real CIA research was done in university labs, or at secure military installations.

Judyth’s supposed encounter with Michaelson would have taken place when she was a first semester sophomore in high school. Given the CIA’s ability to recruit top-notch Ph.D. talent, it’s a bit odd to be told that they were scouting high school students.

The notion of injecting Castro with cancer cells is pretty far-fetched. Knocking out his immune system would have resulted in his death without any additional ingredient in the “cocktail.”

Judyth’s treatment of scientific issues is pretty slipshod. For example, in one e-mail she asked rhetorically “I would like to see a list of people involved in this case who died of lung cancer, especially if they did not smoke, such as Jack Ruby. And how many heart attacks (sodium morphate).”

She further explained to researcher Gary Buell that:

Gary, David Ferrie told me about it. I actually believed at that time that there was nothing Dave did not know. In medical matters like this he described this as a method he could use to commit suicide and people would think it was a heart attack. There would be no way to discern it wasn’t a natural death.

Buell investigated this, and found that there is no such thing as “sodium morphate.” But if there is no such poison that can induce a heart attack, where did Judyth get this? Her apparent source is a crackpot conspiracy essay that appeared in 1975 titled “The Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File.” That document states that sodium morphate is “a favorite Mafia poison for centuries. Smells like apple pie, and is sometimes served up in one, as to J. Edgar Hoover. Sometimes in a pill or capsule. Symptoms: Lethargy, sleep, sometimes vomiting. Once ingested, there is a heart attack – and no trace is left in the body.” Thus a poison Ferrie supposedly told Judyth about in 1963 is nowhere in the medical literature, not part of crackpot conspiracy literature until 1975, but all over the internet by the time Judyth was sending out her e-mails circa 2000.

“Deadly Alliance” says that the virus in the “cocktail” on which the little band of researchers was working was the AIDS virus, but she told various Dutch media outlets that she was working with SV-40 (Simian Virus 40).

This latter virus, which contaminated early batches of Polio Vaccine, does not cause cancer in humans and isn’t the AIDS virus nor a related one. Thus it wouldn’t in fact be of much use in a bioweapons program. When she was interviewed for “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” in 2003, the virus to knock out Castro’s immune system had been replaced by a plan to expose Castro to repeated doses of radiation to help the cancer along.

How the CIA – which failed to even once expose Castro to any of the toxins it had – was going to arrange for the repeated doses of radiation is something Judyth didn’t explain.

Even if Baker’s account sounds implausible, one might take it seriously if she has actual evidence to support her story. Indeed, she does have “evidence.” For example, she has employment records showing that she did work at the Reily Coffee Company at the same time Lee did. She has a green glass, of the sort that Reily gave to customers as a premium, that she says that Lee stole and gave to her, and which she treasures. How do we know that Lee gave it to her? She says he did.

Does the Book Clear Things Up?

The release of her book (which was quickly withdrawn) might seem to have been an opportunity for Judyth to bring coherence and plausibility to her story – although nothing could wipe out the extensive paper trail showing its previous twists and turns.

Unfortunately for Judyth, the book merely added more baroque complexity to her account, and more complexity meant more contradictions and more incredible elements.

Several of these surround a science fair that she attended in 1960. Barb Junkkarinen dissects Judyth’s claims in her essay Judyth vs. History.

She has a letter from Senator George Smathers commending her for her prowess in the sciences. She says this shows that people in high places had noticed her and were slating her for a covert mission. But it is, in reality, evidence that senators have staffs who comb newspapers for names to which letters can be sent to ingratiate the senator with constituents.

There is at least one witness who confirms part of Judyth’s account. Anna Lewis, the former wife of one David Lewis, confirms Judyth’s claim that she and Lee went on several dates with Anna and David. This might seem like solid corroboration, but David Lewis was in New Orleans during the Garrison investigation, and was telling all kinds of stories – stories which even the Garrison people came to reject.

But he said nothing at all about any “double dates” with Lee and Marina Oswald. So to believe Anna Lewis, we have to believe that her husband told the District Attorney’s office a bunch of implausible tales, but concealed one genuinely explosive thing that he knew.

Interestingly, Anna Lewis, with her important “corroboration” of Judyth’s story, doesn’t appear in “The Men Who Killed Kennedy.”

The dates with David and Anna Lewis don’t appear in the earlier versions of her story.

For example, she told researcher Robert Harris that she and Lee double-dated with an old girlfriend of hers from high school and the girlfriend’s fiancé. The two got married in September of 1963. Harris grew suspicious of the story when Judyth could not recall the name of the woman, in spite of their supposedly having been best friends in high school.

Judyth told Harris that Marina was constantly alone at night, due to the attention Lee was paying to her. But Marina told Ray and Mary La Fontaine that Lee never failed to come home after work and was almost never late.

Marina said the same thing in her testimony at the Clay Shaw trial.

It in fact is unlikely that Judyth or anybody else spent evenings out with Lee Oswald in the summer of 1963.

She also claims to have at least one handwriting sample from Lee, in the form of inscriptions written in the margins of a book.

The inscriptions are, conveniently, written in pencil, which means they cannot be dated as ink inscriptions could be. Are they in Lee’s handwriting? Judyth says they are, but when Judyth’s supporters, known to critics as “Team Judyth,” are asked about the verdict of questioned documents experts, they simply claim that “preliminary reports” are favorable.

Since it has been several years, one has to wonder why there isn’t a definitive assessment.

Interestingly, early on she wasn’t mentioning any handwriting samples from Lee. For example, in an e-mail she wrote in late July 2001 she claims:

She then claims to have “hundreds of documents and other items.”

In another e-mail she claimed to have Lee’s “shower shoes.”

But in spite of mentioning such inconclusive pieces of evidence, she failed to say anything about the writing samples.

The “shower shoes” are interesting. In fact, the Warren Commission did indeed enter a pair of Lee Oswald’s flip-flops into evidence as Warren Commission Exhibit 148. But these flip-flops remain in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

Perhaps Lee had another pair of flip-flops. But why would a wife trying to conceal an adulterous affair keep a pair of her lover’s shoes?

The “shower shoes” appear to be yet another example of Judyth latching onto some piece of assassination trivia and weaving it into her narrative.

Judyth does have several love letters that she says she wrote to Lee. Unfortunately, the name of the addressee has been torn off each of the letters, and Judyth’s word is the only evidence they were actually written to Lee. Robert Baker’s second wife, Rose Boory-Baker, provides a suggestion as to the real nature of the letters.

I have seen those letters. Judy wouldn’t even have them if I had not sent them to her daughter years ago. She left those personal letters in Norway when she flew the coop. There is nothing in the letters between her and Bob that would give any type of evidence of which you are implying. Quite frankly, how in the heck are you going to present a love letter from Judy to “Lee” when she tore off the name. She wrote many love letters to Bob. Gosh, if I knew now what I knew then [sic], the box would have never been sent . . . .

If Judyth’s pieces of “evidence” point to a pretty prosaic life, independent sources show her life to have been much more mundane than she portrays it. For example, her former husband remembers that, rather than being mysteriously “set up” with the job at Reily Coffee Company, she got it when she got tired of flipping hamburgers at a local burger joint.

After the summer in New Orleans, she and her husband were at the University of Florida in Gainesville. According to Robert Baker:

Back in Gainesville, we heard about the assassination during the school term – like everyone else I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. Later in the day or the next day, she brought home a newspaper and was studying it closely and said, “I think I may have seen this guy. He was a stocker or something. I think I saw him in the back room.” [capitalization corrected]

Her classmates at Manatee High School do indeed remember her doing cancer research, but it was a rather amateurish sort. One day, all her mice escaped, and the “experimental” and “control” groups got mixed up.

To prevent this happening again, she started color coding the mice – something no serious researcher would do since it violates the notion of a “double blind” research design.

Judyth can’t resist adding implausible scenes to her account. Consider, for example, how she supposedly met Lee Oswald.

He was standing behind me [at the post office] for general delivery, April 26, when I went to get a letter from the general delivery.

As I got the letter, I reached for it, and dropped the newspaper, and when Lee picked it up, without realizing it, I thanked him in Russian. I was always practicing Russian (which I’d been required to learn to level of conversational by my doctors, etc – and which is on record at Manatee (then Jr.) Community College–) – so now Lee heard me saying, “Karashaw, tavarish!” in Russian, and he answered me quickly, “That’s not a very wise thing to do, to be speaking Russian in a place like this.”

Judyth supposedly learned Russian because the conspirators who were controlling her demanded that she do so, but she could never give a coherent account of why they would do that.

But a worse problem stems from the fact that Judyth maintains that both she and Lee were being controlled, at the time they met, by the plotters. The mystery is why the plotters would not simply invite both to (say) the Café du Monde, sit them down and say “Judyth, this is Lee. Lee, meet Judyth.” Why did they meet in a vastly improbable chance encounter? Or if the encounter was “set up” (as Judyth claims to suspect), why such an elaborate plot to have them meet? And why would Judyth speak Russian to a random stranger at the post office?

By 2003, when Judyth was interviewed for “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”, the business about speaking Russian to Lee was missing, and instead Judyth explained that Lee was so “clean cut” that when he offered to walk her home she agreed.

Judyth’s story implicates quite a lot of people in the plot to kill Castro – and then Kennedy – and virtually all of the people she implicates have had a more-or-less prominent place in JFK assassination conspiracy books.

Ochsner was an important physician in New Orleans who founded the Ochsner Clinic, one of the nation’s top treatment centers. Ochsner was part of the New Orleans civic elite, and therefore knew Clay Shaw and served on some of the same civic projects as Shaw. Further, Ochsner was anti-Communist (as was, of course, virtually all the New Orleans civic elite), and was a key supporter of the Information Council of the Americas (an anti-Communist propaganda organization), so in the reverse McCarthyism that is typical of left-leaning conspiracists, he is suspect. According to Judyth’s account:

Her appearance [as a teenager] at an international science fair brought her to the attention of other medical figures with military or intelligence backgrounds, as well as top officials of the American Cancer Society: Dr. Harold Diehl and Dr. Alton Ochsner (of the famed Ochsner Cancer Clinic in New Orleans). Ochsner was Judyth’s principal behind-the-scenes mentor through her late teen years.

Interestingly, there was no “Ochsner Cancer Clinic,” but rather only an Ochsner Clinic – although of course the latter could treat cancer as it could treat most diseases.

Author Thomas Karnes (Tropical Enterprise) describes Ochsner as a consultant to the US Air Force “on the medical side of subversive matters.”

In early May, Judyth was told Ochsner had set up both Ferrie’s home-based cancer lab, as well as a smaller lab in the apartment of Dr. Mary Sherman, a luminary at Ochsner’s Clinic. The labs were devoted to “the medical side of subversive matters,” i.e., a form of biological warfare.

In the first place, the Air Force isn’t the same thing as the CIA, and it’s the latter, not the former, that Judyth has as a key mover in the plot. But worse, Judyth (and her coauthor Platzman) fail to mention the source of the “medical side of subversive matters” quote. In fact, it first appeared in the conservative tabloid Human Events, which identified Ochsner in a 1967 article as “a world-traveled consultant to the surgeon general of the U.S. Air Force on the medical side of subversive matters . . . .” Thus Ochsner’s connection to the Air Force wasn’t something revealed by declassified top secret documents, but rather something he seems to have bragged about to Human Events. Whatever that phrase meant, it didn’t mean a secret bioweapons program.

Further, Ochsner had an outstanding reputation as a humanitarian

– a fact that left-leaning conspiracists, obsessed with his anti-Communism – never bother to discuss.

A favorite villain of conspiracy writers, Banister could hardly be left out of Judyth’s story:

Often Lee would go through The Crescent City Garage, next door to Reily’s, to get to the offices of ex-FBI man, now-CIA operative, Guy Banister, who was deeply involved in anti-Castro causes. This necessitated his befriending garage owner Adrian Alba.

Why Oswald would have to go through the garage to get to Banister’s office is hard to fathom, since it would be much easier to just walk out on Magazine Street and then up Lafayette. A further mystery is why he would have to befriend Alba to do so. Judyth here seems to be taking a piece of assassination lore (Oswald really did befriend Alba, and the two discussed firearms), and weaving it into her story.

Judyth claims that “Banister used Lee to collect the names of Communist sympathizers at area colleges” and that “Lee sometimes used a work area on the second floor of the 544 Camp building that housed Banister’s offices.” Further, “Judyth saw Lee sign out guns from Banister’s weapons storeroom on the third floor of 544 Camp Street in New Orleans. Lee also kept his own guns there.”

In fact, Banister’s office was at 531 Lafayette Street, in the same Newman Building as 544 Camp, but with no connection with the offices at 544 Camp. To get from Banister’s office to 544 Camp, one had to leave the building and walk around the corner.

In spite of extensive investigation by the Secret Service, the FBI, the Garrison office, the House Select Committee, and private researchers, no one has ever placed an Oswald “work area” on the second floor of the Newman Building, nor a “weapons storeroom” on the third floor. No one has placed Oswald at 544 Camp offices, with only one exception.

Banister’s secretary Delphine Roberts did indeed claim that Oswald had an office there,

but Roberts suffers from an extreme lack of credibility. She failed to come forward with her story until the late 70s, in spite of having been interviewed numerous times prior to that. Further, the building’s landlord, Sam Newman, the janitor and all the other tenants denied ever seeing Oswald there.

Secret internal CIA documents, now released, show Banister not to have been any sort of CIA operative. He was, at the time Kennedy was shot, a washed-up former FBI agent who dabbled in anti-Castro and racist politics and had a drinking problem.

While Judyth was in Lee’s company, she met Jack Ruby twice, in May and June of 1963, once at Ferrie’s apartment and once at The 500 Club, a Marcello hang-out. Ruby worked with Banister and Marcello in running guns to Cuban exiles.

Judyth knew Ruby as “Sparky” Rubenstein. When Lee was killed, she did not know that Jack Ruby and Sparky Rubenstein were the same man! The shock of seeing Lee killed on TV caused her to avoid all further coverage of the assassination. . . .

In the first place, it’s extraordinarily implausible that Judyth could have been introduced to Jack Ruby as “Sparky Rubenstein” in the summer of 1963. Ruby had had the nickname since early childhood, and he became incensed at the mention of it. His sister told the Warren Commission that Ruby would fight when called by it.

Reporter Hugh Aynesworth, who worked for the Dallas Morning News in 1963, says that “Never did I ever hear anybody in Dallas call Jack Ruby ‘Sparky.’ I knew him reasonably well, [and] was acquainted with scores of others who interacted [with] him in various ways.”

The notion that Ruby was involved in “gun running” is an old one in conspiracy literature, and has been based on extremely flimsy evidence. There is only one documented instance when Ruby was in New Orleans in 1963: in June he traveled to the city to hire stripper Janet Conforto (stage name “Jada”) to work in his club. Neither Ferrie nor any of his roommates and friends have ever mentioned Ruby and Ferrie being together in New Orleans.

When first introduced to Judyth, Ruby already knew Oswald. He told Judyth “I’ve known him ever since he was a little boy, when he was at parties and things like that.”

According to Judyth, Ruby was the “bag man” who brought money from Texas to finance the New Orleans plot.

Judyth portrays Ruby as having a compassionate side, in spite of the nefarious activities in which he was involved.

Sparky was a very circular thinker, and had never had much education, but he wasn’t stupid. He understood that the means existed to mentally and physically torture somebody so that nothing would show. This knowledge terrified him: he could imagine it happening to each of us for getting involved as we were. I’ll never forget that he said he’d rather shoot any of us than see us go into a situation that might mean this kind of unseen and unknown torture. Certainly, he was ordered to kill Lee in the end. But if he had to convince himself that it was for the best, this is how he would have been able to do it: saving Lee from a fate worse than death by a mercy killing.

New Orleans mob boss Marcello has been a hardy perennial among assassination suspects, and we could hardly expect Judyth to overlook him. Oswald’s uncle Dutz Murret had an apparent peripheral connection to the Marcello organization, which has provided conspiracy writers with a means of connecting Oswald with Marcello. Quoting the Judyth account:

Judyth personally met other plotters, including Banister, Shaw, and Marcello, though, as a girl of 19 or 20, she was often treated as if she were wallpaper. Wallpaper with ears, a 160 IQ, and the ability to do cutting edge cancer research.

Lee told Judyth that he first met Sparky when he was just 15, and that he spurned Ruby’s attempts to recruit him into Mob business. Even so, he ran errands for his uncle, Dutz Murrett [sic], who ran a bookmaking operation for Marcello. Judyth accompanied Lee on one such errand.

Lee told Judyth that he was trusted by Mob figures, up to and including Marcello, for his ability to keep his mouth shut. Marcello told Ruby to look after the boy when the family moved to Texas.

Needless to say, the established historical record, and even the “historical record” as recounted in conspiracy books, provides no corroboration for this. It’s exceedingly unlikely that Lee, living in New Orleans at age 15, would have met Ruby, who lived in Dallas. And Lee’s Uncle Dutz took a decidedly negative view of his nephew in New Orleans in 1963, being put off by Oswald pro-Castro sympathies and his failure to get a job and support his family.

Of particular note was Lee’s remarks that Carlos Marcello wanted to make sure his deportation trial (fueled by a personal vendetta run by Bobby Kennedy to kick Marcello out of the country for good) was going to end in New Orleans in his favor – the very day Kennedy visited Dallas. “Just to show how much power he really has,” Lee told me, “he is going to time it to coincide with –” Lee broke off, but of course I understood.

Meaning, Marcello would deal a double dose of venom: if he could manage it, Marcello would time the very hour of his victory over Bobby Kennedy with Jack Kennedy’s assassination.

That Marcello could control the exact time of his legal vindication is, or course, absurd. He was doubtless elated merely to be vindicated.

I ate with Lee downtown, we had free access to The Five Hundred Club, a free tab, had to pay nothing, same for Court of Two Sisters and a couple of other places run by Marcello’s people, where we could come in as long as it wasn’t night-time and order anything we wanted, tab on Marcello.

Like Banister, Ferrie is an absolutely essential figure to include in any New Orleans-based plot. According to Judyth, soon after she arrived in New Orleans:

Lee arranged for Judyth to meet David Ferrie, who she would soon learn was an associate of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, a CIA-operative who flew missions into Castro’s Cuba, and an “amateur cancer researcher.”

In “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”, Judyth vividly describes Ferrie wearing an airline pilot’s uniform and cap. In reality, Ferrie had been fired by Eastern Airlines in September, 1961, and never flew for them or for any airline again.

Ferrie did indeed do detective work for Marcello, but Ferrie was not a “CIA-operative” nor did he ever “fly missions into Castro’s Cuba.” Both are common conspiracy book factoids. Ferrie did apparently fancy himself a “cancer researcher” at one point, but lacked the knowledge and training to do any serious research. Even worse, his amateur “cancer experiments” ceased long before the summer of 1963, and Judyth’s claim of lab mice in Ferrie’s apartment at that time is flatly contradicted by several witnesses who knew Ferrie.

Judyth’s account continues:

Ferrie had lost his job as an Eastern Airlines pilot because of his homosexuality. The 15-year-old Lee had spurned Ferrie’s homosexual advances when Ferrie captained Lee’s Civil Air Patrol Unit (CAP).

Lee and Ferrie taught combat techniques to Cuban exiles at the CIA-established training camp at Lake Pontchartrain (other camps were in Florida), and portions of these training sessions were filmed. Judyth saw this film in Ferrie’s apartment.

This “training camp” account apparently stems from Robert Tanenbaum, who was for a short time Deputy Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and who claims to have seen such a film. Not surprisingly, no such film exists, and there is no evidence it ever existed beyond Tanenbaum’s assertion. Judyth appears to have gotten wind of the Tanenbaum claim and written it into her story.

Shaw and Ferrie knew each other well. Judyth accompanied Lee to an airfield where Ferrie took the other two men on a flight to Canada.

This appears to be taken from the testimony of a Garrison investigation witness named Jules Ricco Kimble , whose stories proved too wild for Garrison to use during the Clay Shaw trial, perhaps melded with elements drawn from a bogus Ferrie “flight plan” supplied to the Garrison investigation by a convict named Edward Girnus. The “flight plan” was discussed in William Davy’s book Let Justice Be Done which is critiqued on this web site.

Ferrie is woven all through the Judyth story. Judyth claims, for example, to have traveled to Jackson, Louisiana (near Clinton) as part of a notorious expedition that included Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald. The real purpose of that trip, according to Judyth, was to test the lethal “cocktail” intended for Castro on an unfortunate patient in the local mental hospital. The “Clinton trip” is, of course, another staple of the conspiracy literature that doesn’t hold up under historical scrutiny.

Further, Judyth’s account of the mental patient got “enhanced” a bit when she talked to “The Men Who Killed Kennedy.” In that documentary, she claimed the experiments were carried out on a group of prisoners from Angola Prison, an entire “convoy.” A car containing David Ferrie, Lee Oswald, Clay Shaw, and an orderly entered the gates of the Jackson mental hospital immediately behind the prisoners.

And just as the plot against Castro got “adjusted” to include multiple doses of radiation rather than a virus to destroy the immune system, the 2003 account has an experimental subject in the Jackson hospital exposed to a “high dosage x-ray.”

Ferrie’s relationship with Judyth extended through the days following the assassination, which Judyth says Ferrie opposed. According to the outline “Deadly Alliance:”

Lee and Judyth had made plans for an escape and rendezvous in Mexico. Judyth tells of Ferrie sobbing uncontrollably during phone calls with him because it had all gone so wrong.

Earlier versions of Judyth’s account add other dimensions to Ferrie’s role. Judyth told researcher Louis Girdler that Ferrie showed her the “manual” for the CIA’s top secret MK/ULTRA program. Unfortunately, there was never any such thing as a “manual” for the highly sensitive program that researched “mind control.”

Further, it’s absurd to think that the CIA would give such information to a New Orleans oddball. Even trusted agents would not have been shown any MK/ULTRA materials unless they had a clear “need to know.” Judyth backtracked a bit, and in a later version of her story said Ferrie had “MK/ULTRA materials”

or “MK/ULTRA” documents.

But this is equally implausible.

While many conspiracists have rejected Jim Garrison’s “case” against Clay Shaw, Judyth embraces it wholeheartedly. She claims that Shaw “represented Texas money in New Orleans.” Shaw is portrayed as a thoroughly cold-blooded fellow by Judyth. For example, it is he who is behind the trip to Jackson and Clinton.

Lee and Judyth were heartsick over the plan to treat a prisoner/mental patient, but were powerless to stop it. Several days after the first trip, Lee took Judyth to the hospital to see the test subject. Shaw OK’d it, as he wanted her professional assessment of the patient’s condition.

Lee and Judyth began to realize that they were trapped. They could not back out of the plot for fear they would be killed.

Based on a message from H.L. Hunt conveyed to a Shaw associate, those involved with the labs had reason to fear for their lives once they had outlived their usefulness.

But Shaw apparently did have a compassionate side. According to Judyth’s account:

At the end of August, Shaw paid for the last of several hotel trysts for Judyth and Lee. According to Judyth, Shaw felt sorry for them.

And our feelings had been out of control for quite awhile now. We were so desperate we even slept together in a red van that was being overhauled in Adrian Alba’s garage for the City of New Orleans (or some such thing). We roasted – and almost got heat stroke doing that (funny now).

That’s how Clay Shaw learned about our plight, that we needed a place to go. He arranged for us to have meetings in hotels, and the first week we got to do this was the week between July 27 and ending August 2^nd.

It seems that Shaw, who didn’t mind the cold-blooded killing of a mental patient, couldn’t stand for a couple of adulterous lovers to lack a place to shack up!

Judyth can’t pass up an opportunity to portray Shaw’s death as mysterious. She claims that “Clay Shaw died suddenly of cancer in 1972. . . . He was being treated for an undisclosed illness at Ochsner’s Hospital just prior to his death.” In fact, Shaw died after a long bout with cancer, not of any “undisclosed” illness.

Judyth has also claimed that Guy Banister was killed by conspirators, saying that in the aftermath of the assassination “. . . everybody was so afraid. . . . . Banister holed up for months and quit his work entirely – they killed him (called it a heart attack, but my mafia friends tell me he had a bullet in him).”

In reality, neither Banister’s death certificate nor the police report of his death mentions any bullet wound.

Of the 8 persons Judyth knew who were connected to the New Orleans cancer project, 5 were dead by 1967. After 1972, only she and Ochsner remained – and she was in hiding.

This might seem sinister – unless of course the five dead people were not actually people Judyth knew, but rather got included in her story at least partly because they died “mysterious deaths.”

Judyth cannot resist tying everything together, and she suggests that the “cocktail” that was intended for Castro got recycled:

However, these [bioweapons] materials certainly didn’t vanish, and I suspect they were also involved in Jack Ruby’s death, perhaps Clay Shaw’s, and others.’ I would like to see a list of people involved in this case who died of lung cancer, especially if they did not smoke, such as Jack Ruby. And how many heart attacks (sodium morphate).

As we have seen, the business about “sodium morphate” is scientific nonsense Judyth picked up from some Internet conspiracy web site.

No conspiracy theory would be complete without someone from the CIA, and one key suspect featured in many conspiracy books is David Atlee Phillips, a propaganda expert serving as chief of Cuban operations in Mexico City. To quote Judyth’s account:

At a meeting arranged by Ochsner’s group, INCA, held to prepare for a radio interview of Lee, someone accidentally uttered the name “David Atlee Phillips.” Lee came to believe his CIA handler, “Mr. B.,” was actually Phillips. Judyth waited in the car as the meeting took place at Reily’s.

Of course, this creates a huge problem, since Phillips was working at the Mexico City CIA station during the summer of 1963, and could hardly have been the handler of Lee Oswald in New Orleans. So the “outline” fudges a bit and admits “Mr. B may not have been Phillips.”

I could hear him crying. We were in the very depths of hell. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t even stand. I leaned against the phone and cried, too.

“Even if I wanted to, which I do not,” Lee said, his voice trembling, “I couldn’t. Not only me – they’d come after my family. They’d find you. You’d all die – ”

“I’m going to get out alive,” Lee said, trying to choke back his emotions. “You’ll see – ”

Thus Phillips is firmly present in the early version of Judyth’s story. She seems to have backed off when she – or some member of Team Judyth – noted the implausibility of Phillips as Lee’s “handler.”

Judyth has rather firmly insisted that Lee Oswald was sent to the Soviet Union as a “fake defector” at the behest of the CIA.

The CIA person in charge of this supposed operation was James Jesus Angleton, fabled and controversial Chief of Counterintelligence. Oswald, at the time he defected to the Soviet Union, had applied to and been accepted at Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. According to Judyth:

Lee told me he was told to “apply” there (without adding at this time other details I know), but that he had the choice of either destination, the college or Russia – he had been groomed to go into Russia so that eventually he could be sent into Cuba. Lee personally felt if he had chickened out of going to Moscow and decided to go to A.S. in Switzerland, instead, which was supposed to be his ‘choice,’ he felt he would have been eliminated by Angleton.

This was one of the very few names Lee gave me, he did not trust this person Angleton, he worried a great deal how to get Angleton to stay off his back when he returned from his so-called defection, as others who returned were all under suspicion. He worked out a magnificent solution.

I have details on what he did. Actually I brought up this person after that, only got the full name (James Jesus Angleton) much later after he commented more extensively on his return from Russia. I know I supposedly was not supposed to hear any of these names, but this is one that I DID hear. [Emphasis in original, capitalization corrected]

No fake defector program has ever been discovered by scholars studying the CIA, even in the wake of a massive release of documents in the 1990s. But what is most bizarre about this is the notion that Oswald would have known Angleton’s actual name, rather than some alias.

H.L. Hunt was a Texas oil millionaire, an extreme conservative, and thus, in the minds of many conspiracists, a likely plotter. We have already seen that Hunt supposedly passed a message to plotters in New Orleans making it clear that plot members who had “outlived their usefulness” would probably be killed. Judyth’s account explains the motivation of “Texas Money” in standard conspiracist terms:

This group – led by H.L. Hunt – detested JFK’s Cuba policy, as well as his integrationist stance, but mostly they were threatened by his vow to repeal a major tax windfall, the oil depletion allowance. They wanted a man in the White House they could control, i.e., LBJ, and they needed to get him there fast, as the Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes scandals threatened his continuation as Vice President.

Ragano was a lawyer who defended mobsters, and claimed to have relayed assassination orders from Jimmy Hoffa.

Roselli was a mobster involved in CIA plots against the life of Castro.

Judyth described the involvement of both men to researcher Rich DellaRosa. But DellaRosa came away skeptical. Quoting DellaRosa:

We exchanged e-mails and at one point she rambled on about knowing Carlos Marcello and attorney Frank Ragano. Having met and spoken with Frank Ragano, I asked her some questions. She failed every one. I am certain that she did NOT know Ragano, and probably never knew Marcello either. She described Ragano as being tall and “looking like a movie star.” No offense to Frank, but he wasn’t tall and was a bit homely. I suggested that perhaps she meant Johnny Roselli. She replied that no, she also knew Roselli and it was Ragano who looked like a movie star. There were other things. Once she was aware that I had met Ragano, she never mentioned him again. [Emphasis in original]

She would, apparently, have been prudent never to mention Roselli or Ragano in the first place.

After the plot to kill Castro failed, the plotters turned to “Plan B,” the assassination of Kennedy. Oswald, according to Judyth:

. . . had penetrated the assassination ring, and was in too deep to withdraw without retribution to his family, to me, and others whom he loved and cared about. He stood his ground and sent information to the FBI to the very last. But J. Edgar Hoover didn’t want Kennedy to live. JFK was going to force him to retire. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was Hoover’s next-door neighbor, literally, for years in Washington, made Hoover Director of the FBI for life when he came into office after JFK was murdered.

Lee Oswald’s Girlfriend in New Orleans? Secret CIA Bioweapons Researcher?

Should We Believe Judyth Baker?