False Witness (12 page)

Who was this man whose death was such a windfall for Garrison?

In a case cluttered with peculiar characters, David Ferrie was unique. His failure as a young man to become a priest was a great disappointment to him, and in later years he joined a sect known as the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America.
²⁰
Early pictures, before the disease alopecia left him hairless—and he began resorting to homemade reddish-brown wigs and eyebrows sometimes carelessly constructed—show an intense-looking dark-haired man with pleasant features. He taught high school in Ohio but soon turned to flying. He was an aviator of considerable skill, active and popular in the Cleveland Civil Air
Patrol, his chief avocation and the hub of his social life. When he moved to New Orleans, he continued to work with the organization there.
*

In 1953 Ferrie's flying talent caught the eye of famed aviator-industrialist and hero of two world wars, Eddie Rickenbacker. He was president of Eastern Airlines when he wrote in Ferrie's file, “This man's efforts bear watching and his qualifications justify his being used and helped whenever possible in line of duty—and even beyond.”
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Ferrie began working at Eastern in 1951, but he was out of step almost from the beginning. He resisted authority and, as one writer later put it, he had an aversion to soap. There were cumulative infractions and complaints. Then on August 11, 1961, he was arrested in New Orleans for a “crime against nature” involving a fifteen-year-old boy and indecent behavior with three others. Though the charges were dropped, the damage had been done. Eastern fired him.
²²
He appealed, and began working as an investigator-researcher for attorney G. Wray Gill and Guy Banister in return for a small salary and the help of both men in his case against Eastern.

Although critical of President Kennedy's handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Ferrie approved of Kennedy's civil rights and fiscal programs. He was anti-Communist and anti-Castro, but the rumors of his participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion have never been proved. He claimed he had never been to Cuba, and once remarked that Castro could be a friend of the United States.
²³
In 1961 he participated with anti-Castro Cuban leader Sergio Arcacha Smith in the so-called “raid” of an ammunition bunker in Houma, Louisiana.
^†
Since they had a key to the bunker and no report of theft was ever made by the company that owned it, this incident was more like a transfer. Martin's stories and Garrison's theories are
predicated on Ferrie's involvement with Smith and his group extending into the summer before the assassination. But it ended almost two years earlier, in October 1961, because of disapproval in the Cuban community over Ferrie's friendships with young boys.
²⁴
During the summer in question, Ferrie was fighting for his professional life and fulfilling his duties to Banister and Gill. His appeal of Eastern's firing, which prompted an exhaustive investigation by the FAA and two hearings in Miami, was not resolved until August 1963, when it was finally rejected.

The stroke that killed Ferrie may have been precipitated by the extraordinary stress he experienced in the last months of his life.
²⁵
His declining physical condition was obvious the Saturday before he died when two of Garrison's aides arrived at his apartment to interview him. He let them in, then “moaned and groaned with each step he took up the stairs” and told them “he had not been able to keep anything on his stomach for a couple of days.” Throughout the interrogation he was stretched out on the living room sofa. Nevertheless, he was relieved to see them. He had been calling their office, he explained, because he was worried about the rumors “that he was going to get arrested.”
*
Garrison's men were not encouraging; when they left, he was still frightened.

Ferrie expressed that fear repeatedly after Snyder's interview with him was published, which turned out to be the last five days of his life. On each of those days, Ferrie telephoned either Snyder or his wife, Barbara. Some days more than once. The calls, usually long, were baffled monologues in which Ferrie tried to figure out the reason for Garrison's campaign against him and sought reassurance that he wasn't going to be arrested. If that happened, he asked Snyder to arrange for him to take a lie-detector test. Snyder and his wife both agree about Ferrie's state of mind. “Ferrie was scared to death,” they say, “scared to death of Garrison, scared of being arrested.”
²⁶
Ferrie was frightened because of the newspaper reports of his 1961 “crime against nature” charge. His predilection for teenage boys was a matter of public record. Many would regard him
as a child molester, and they are not dealt with kindly in prison. Those last days, Ferrie was terrified by that, not (as Garrison and later Stone depicted) the fear of being murdered because of his knowledge of the assassination. He had no such knowledge.

In good spirits on Sunday, Ferrie called Dave Snyder and said he was going to meet with an attorney about his lawsuit. Reporters were continuing to pester him though and that evening he asked Louis Ivon (with whom he was friendly) for help to escape from them. Garrison said okay, hoping the favor might encourage Ferrie's cooperation, and Ivon put him up for the night at the Fontainebleau “to give him some rest.”
²⁷

Ferrie called Snyder the next day from an attorney's office. He asked for the dates that Oswald had been in New Orleans, which Snyder supplied. Afterwards, Ferrie visited Carlos Bringuier, who had scuffled with Oswald in 1963, and inquired about Oswald's associates and the date the alleged conspiracy supposedly began. But Bringuier, who later would recall Ferrie's difficulty in walking, was unable to help him. That same day, Ferrie stopped by the FBI office. He later told Snyder that the agents were laughing about Garrison's “investigation.”
²⁸

He was at the New Orleans Public Library on Tuesday “perusing” the Warren Report, looking for facts to fill in the blanks. Talking to Barbara Snyder that evening, he spoke again of his fear of arrest and his bewilderment over Garrison's targeting him. He also complained of headaches. Meanwhile, Snyder had heard from
Washington Post
reporter George Lardner, Jr.; he wanted to interview Ferrie, who was balking. Snyder agreed to help and that evening he, too, had his final telephone conversation with Ferrie, assuring him Lardner was okay. Ferrie, “oozing good-natured confidence,” agreed to speak to him.
²⁹

Lardner, the last man to see Ferrie alive, arrived at his apartment about midnight, stayed until almost 4:00
A.M
., and found him “in a good mood.” Ferrie impressed Lardner as an “intelligent, well-versed guy [on] a broad range of subjects.”
*
Garrison's probe, Ferrie told
Lardner, would end up being a “witch hunt.” One last time, Ferrie declared that he “never knew Oswald and had no recollection of ever having met him.” Twice Ferrie voiced his concern about being arrested. He asked Lardner to withhold most of what he said for fear of antagonizing the district attorney, which might “trigger” his arrest. Lardner later said they parted on “a cheerful note.”
³⁰

Ferrie was found the next morning lying on his back in bed naked with a sheet pulled up to his chest. The first Garrison aides on the scene were Asst. D.A. Alcock and Louis Ivon, who had been watching the apartment all night from across the street.
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The notion that he committed suicide was based solely on two typewritten messages found among his belongings, which were undated and unsigned. One was a bitter criticism of society, especially its judicial system; the other, an aggrieved statement about a ruined relationship.
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These communiqués were written by a tormented man, but
when
he wrote them, and to
what end
is unknown. Had Ferrie shot, hanged, or poisoned himself, thrown himself beneath the wheels of a moving vehicle, or fallen on a sword, they might be properly interpreted as “suicide notes.” But Ferrie had died of a ruptured blood vessel, sleeping in his bed. When last seen, he was cheerful. Despite the debilitated condition of his body, he spent his last two days on earth dragging himself around the city, gathering information for the
500,000 lawsuit he intended to file against his enemies. He was a man with a mission, with a reason to live.

Though no evidence supported it, Garrison theorized that Ferrie had deliberately overdosed on his thyroid medication, Proloid, a medical improbability due to the slow-acting nature of the drug. One doctor recently said that Ferrie could have swallowed an entire bottle of it without an immediate effect. Garrison persisted in his contention, however, and pressured the coroner to return a suicide verdict. Dr. Chetta refused. The autopsy pathologist, Dr. Ronald Welsh, in a 1993 interview with me, said he had been outraged by Garrison's campaign to make something out of nothing and corrupt the scientific process.
³³

But that was only part of it.

With David Ferrie dead, Garrison could do what he couldn't do while Ferrie was alive: brand him a conspirator in the president's murder without fear of legal repercussions.

Garrison immediately announced that he and his aides had made the decision that very morning “to arrest” Ferrie “early next week.” That was not true. But for twenty-seven years, no one in the Garrison camp admitted it publicly. In 1994 James Alcock went on record with the truth. “To my knowledge,” he told me, speaking each word deliberately, “there was
no
intent to arrest David Ferrie.” Alcock should know. He was one of those Garrison said was present when the “decision” was made.
³⁴

Alive, Ferrie had required careful handling. As he told George Lardner that last night, Garrison realized he had “a tiger by the tail.”
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Ferrie had endured arrest by Garrison in 1963, knew it had been triggered by a hostile alcoholic who was at it again, and this second time around Ferrie was preparing to strike back with legal action. His death removed that threat. And the blinking neon conspirator's sign that Jack Martin had hung around Ferrie's neck would now glow brighter from the grave.

Had Ferrie lived, Garrison's case against Clay Shaw might have died before its birth in Garrison's imagination. Not only did Garrison have no evidence against Ferrie,
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he had no witness linking Ferrie and Shaw. The loss of his principal suspect should have signaled the end to Garrison's case. He had had nothing to begin with, and now he had a way out. Many expected him to take it. Instead, he elevated Ferrie into a key figure in the Kennedy assassination, which paved the way for the first of Garrison's four miraculous recoveries. For it flushed out a former friend of Ferrie, a pliant and crucial witness who would soon provide a legal foundation for a case against Clay Shaw. At the time he proclaimed David Ferrie “one of history's most important individuals,” Garrison was wholly unaware of this man. His name was Perry Raymond Russo.

*
James Alcock, dispatched to Houston, was told to “bring Ident Kit” with “photos”; and “Minox camera with enlargement attachment and flashlight” (Jim Garrison, memorandum, “Investigative Assignments,” Jan. 7, 1967).

*
On January 20, Lewis faked a drive-by shooting in which he was the “target” and anti-Castro Cuban Carlos Quiroga was the “gunman.” After doing poorly on a lie-detector test, Lewis admitted making the story up because he thought it would please Garrison.

†
See note, page 206.

*
Garrison himself told Richard Billings that Jack Martin invented stories and that he harbored intense hostility toward David Ferrie (Billings Personal Notes, Dec. 29, 1966, p. 4).

*
The discovery in 1993 of a photograph taken at a Civil Air Patrol cookout with Ferrie and Oswald both in it, though not together, was heralded as a major breakthrough by Garrison advocates, who believe it established a definitive link. But it
established
only an overlap of association with that organization, which from the outset was a possibility David Ferrie never denied, but didn't recall. (See note p. 28, and chapter 15, note 10). The owner of the picture, John Ciravolo, attributes no historical importance to it because, he said, it proves nothing. “I'm in the picture,” Ciravolo pointed out, “and I'm sure David Ferrie wouldn't remember me either” (Ciravolo, telephone conversation with author, July 9, 1997).

†
Ferrie also built a miniature “submarine” out of a B-25's reserve gas tank, with the quixotic notion of attacking Cuban harbor installations with it. It ended up in a garbage dump.

*
Twice during this interview Ferrie asked Asst. D.A. Andrew Sciambra to arrange for him to meet with Garrison personally. Sciambra countered by offering to relay to Garrison whatever Ferrie had to say. Ferrie replied that he wanted to talk to Garrison himself and “look him in the face” (Andrew Sciambra, memorandum dated Feb. 28, 1967, regarding David Ferrie interview with Sciambra and Louis Ivon on Feb. 18, 1967).