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Hello.
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My name is Dave Emory, and it's my pleasure to
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be joined by Ed Haslam, the author of Mary Ferry
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and the Monkey Virus, The story of an underground medical laboratory,
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published in softcover by the Wordsworth Press and copyright nineteen
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ninety five. We've been detailing events that were going on
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in the city of New Orleans and which overlapped the
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city of New Orleans the Tulane University, I should say,
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we've been talking about doctor Alton Oxner, an individual with
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more connections than a switchboard, very prominently connected in not
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only the city of New Orleans but also to Tulane University,
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both in turn very significant for America's political, national security,
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and economic connections to Latin America. Oxner was basically in
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charge of the Information Council of the America's, a right
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wing propaganda outfit with apparent intelligence connections that was involved
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with setting up an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald in
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which he proclaimed his Marxist Leninist sympathies and that had
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much to do with tainting Oswald read and an event
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well known to researchers into the Kennedy assassination.
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We have been talking about an individual who.
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Was working for Alton Oxner and also for Tulane University.
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Doctor Mary Sherman, one of the foremost names in American medicine,
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although sadly overlooked in the nineteen fifties and sixties, someone
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by the way, whose work is still frequently cited in
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contemporary medical journals, although she's been dead for more than
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thirty years. Is that not true?
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That is true? That is true.
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We have also been speaking about David Ferry, the initial
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focus of Jim Garrison's investigation, an individual who was involved
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with the US intelligence community's efforts against Fidel Castro, and
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who also may very well have been involved with some
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of the events surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. We were talking
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about allegations by Perry Russo that David Ferry and I
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personally believe these are absolutely accurate, that David Ferry, Clay
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Shaw Oswald, and some anti Castro Cubans were discussing how
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President Kennedy could be killed.
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And we've been talking about Guy.
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Banister's Detective Agency and apparent intelligence front for which Lee Harley,
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with which Lee Harvey Oswald was involved, for which David
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Ferry certainly worked and which also, as we've seen, was
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connected with the Information Council of the America's Ed Butler
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and through that to Alton Oxner. As you mentioned, Ed
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Oxner in many ways was sort of the glue that
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stuck many of these elements together. Now, the title of
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your book talks about Mary Ferry and the monkey virus,
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and indeed it is fascinating and I think potentially enormously
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important fact that Mary Sherman, the brilliant cancer researcher, the
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medical pioneer, was apparently working with David Ferry on a
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very strange project. Could you tell us about that?
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Sure.
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When Garrison reconvened his investigation into the Kennedy assassination in
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nineteen sixty six, his primary target was David Ferry because
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David Ferry had been associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and
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he had been involved in training anti Castro Cubans for
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an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. That made him an
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extremely suspicious person from Garrison's point of view. In the
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process of investigating David Ferry, Garrison found out a lot
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of things about Ferry that most people didn't know. One
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of the most interesting things was that Ferry was for
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some reason running a secret cancer lab, and while Ferry
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himself was a loose cannon with no formal medical training,
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the scale of the laboratory was remarkable because it had
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nearly two thousand mice in it, and it was determined
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by Garrison's investigators that Ferry was involved with doctor Mary
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Sherman in this effort. Now, the inclusion of doctor Mary Sherman,
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one of the most prominent cancer researchers in America, a
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professor at a medical school, a director of a cancer lab,
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and a graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School
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put a very serious twist on David Ferry's cancer research. Further,
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they found a document in Fairey's apartment when they arrested him,
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which explained how to use viruses to cause cancer. And
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Garrison was really only allowed one unedited interview during his
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nineteen sixty jfk assassination. That was an interview in Playboy magazine,
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and in that October issue of Playboy magazine, Garethon stated
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in unequivocal terms that his investigators had determined that David
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Ferry was involved in this secret cancer experimentation with doctor
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Mary Sherman.
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Bear in mind that Mary Sherman worked not only in
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Tulane Medical School. She taught there was an associate professor,
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but she worked for Alton Oxner's clinic. In fact, Oxner
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brought her to New Orleans.
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And that combination between David Ferry and Mary Sherman was
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not only bizarre in terms of trying to understand what
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forces would pull these disparate people together. I mean Mary Sherman,
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highly respective medical professional, and David Ferry, this loose cannon
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who was running around as a contraband pilot and private
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investigator for Guy Banister and training Cubans to assassinate Castro.
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I mean, what forces would pull them together? And that
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was really the kruck of what drove me on the book.
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The second thing was that also meant that Fairiy's cancer
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experiments were not loose hair brain things. They were being
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conducted by a professional who really knew what she was doing.
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And it wasn't until we found this treatise. In fact,
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looking I looked for over a year for this document
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that Garrison had mentioned in the Playboy interview, and we
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finally found it in the National Archives because Garrison had
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given the document to the House led Committee on assassinations
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in nineteen seventy nine, and the National Archives had followed
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it away and it was released as part of this
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JFK Assassination papers that came out after Oliver Stone's movie,
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so we were able to get the actual document. And
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when you start to study that document, the first thing
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you'll understand is that David Ferry did not write it.
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It was written by a leading edge, top of the
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line cancer researcher working at the very highest levels of
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American medicine. And how David Ferry I got it is
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a question. But what it really meant was the capability
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that they had in their hands was to induce and
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create and transfer cancer from animal to animal.
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And specifically they were injecting mice with monkey viruses to
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induce cancer.
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That was correct, and that bit of information came to
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me from people very close to the Garrison investigation who
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I went to school with in New Orleans.
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All Right, you mentioned Fello named Nikki Chetta, the son
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of the coroner for New Orleans at that time.
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That's right. When Kaishar was acquitted in March of nineteen
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sixty nine, Chetta, who was a classmate of mine, was
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furious over it. And we were all kind of furious
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over it in one way or another because we had
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seen how much the press had distorted and misrepresented everything
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that was going on, and so Chetta really tried to
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set the records right by telling us his classmates what
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was going on. And his perspective on the investigation was
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through the eyes of his father, and his father was
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the coroner of the city in New Orleans. And when
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David Ferry died several days after the Garrison investigation became public,
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doctor Chetta went over to Garrison. I mean doctor Chetta
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went over to Ferry's apartment to investigate the scene and
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pronounce the cause of death, etc. On Ferry. And it
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was at that time that he observed all these women's
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dresses in fairies closet, these priests investments which a fairy kept,
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and all this medical equipment that was there in his
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apartment with a group of mice. And Chetta's further explanation
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was that they had investigated other landlords and they had
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found out that Ferry had thousands of mice and was
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working on some sort of big scale cancer project.
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And we could note too that as something of an
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aside before we get to the laboratory that when the
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House Select Committee on Assassinations turned in its final report,
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as badly compromised as it was, among the recommendations to
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the US Department of Justice was that they begin investigating
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David Ferry and the anti Castro Cubans in New Orleans,
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vindicating Garrison after all the explitive deleted that was heaped
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on his head. I also think that Oliver Stone deserves
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a mighty tip of the hat for his I consider
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them heroic efforts.
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In JFK.
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He took a few artistic liberties in a few places,
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but it was basically historically accurate, and he got the
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Garrison treatment. He was dumped on and continues to be
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dumped on.
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Yeah, before the movie was even released, I.
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Know, and I think both Garrison and Oliver Stone deserved
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a much more prominent place in American history than they
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will ever receive. They're both to me, this was not
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a little corny. They're both to me real heroes. Back
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the subject of this clandestine laboratory, which is the major
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focal point of your book, and as you began to
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develop the story, it appears that the relatively small number
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of mice in David Ferry's apartment did not constitute the
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laboratory itself, but rather an adjacent building was the real laborator.
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Could you tell us about that adjacent apartment or nearby
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apartment and how you came across that.
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Well, this is another fluke in my life which is
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as interesting and unusual as the day I found Drive
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Banister's files without looking for him. I was not looking
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for David Ferry's apartment either. I was pursuing a pretty
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girl who I had met on a college campus at Tulane,
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and she had just rented this new apartment not far
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from campus, and I went over there and she had
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just just moved in, and the only piece of furniture
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she had in there was a waterbed. And it turned
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out that, I mean, the apartment was really unusual in
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that everything the floors had been stripped and revarnished, and
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the walls had been sanded and repainted, and everything was
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an absolutely ment condition. But it still smelled. There was
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this strange smell in there. And so this girl I
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was dating Barber went downstairs at one point and talked
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to the old woman who lived in the basement, and
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the old woman who lived in the basement indicated that
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there was something very strange going on up there, and
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she kept saying this single sentence over and over again
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about those horrible men and the terrible things they did
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to those animals. Well, this was an unusual experience in
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my life, but it wasn't significant until I began my
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investigation fifteen years later and discovered that David Ferry lived
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across the street. Then I had to look at this
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apartment in relationship to David Ferry. And one of the
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other things that I was told when I was at
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the apartment was the apartment had been taken off of
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the market for about five years. Why would you take
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a piece of rental property off the market for five years.
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It is not a way to make money, that's right.
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It's not a way to make money. But it turned
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out that Faerriy's apartment across the street, which also had
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the same smell of mice in it, was also taken
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off the market for five years.
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Well, we should bear in mind that it was in
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this laboratory that David Ferry was working with doctor Mary
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Sherman of the Lay Medical School on the ox Or
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Medical Clinic on injecting mice with monkey viruses to induce cancer.
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More about this laboratory and how you came across it
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did well.
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The first thing about the laboratory is the size of it.
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It was estimated that Faerry had two thousand mice. Now,
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if you say, okay, how do you house two thousand mice.
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Let's say we put five mice in a cage. That's
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four hundred cages of mice. Now just imagine in the
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apartment or house that you're sitting in listening to your
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radio right now, imagine putting four hundred cages of mice
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into that facility, and imagine the task of feeding them
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and cleaning up their cages after they've pooped in peace
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and stuff on there, and imagine the smell, and then
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imagine injecting them with cancer causing monkey viruses. You are
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not going to want to live in that apartment. And
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that's why nobody lived in that apartment. It was a
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dedicated lab, but it was located across the street from
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Fairies from Fairies apartment, so that Fairy could keep an
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eye on it and can go over and make observations
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on it. So it was closely connected with Fairy, and
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Fairy kept some mice back at his apartment, and my
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guess these are mice he kept for breeding and control reasons,
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and they were not injected with the monkey viruses.
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You mentioned an apparent to anti Castro Cuba named Miguel
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who was also sort of shepherding this laboratory, and you
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also discussed the possibility that the lab may have doubled
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as a safe house.
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Yes, all that's accurate. One of the things that Barbara
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had told me was that there was this man upstairs
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who had invited her to this bar, and she told
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me the location of the bar, and I knew from
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being around New Orleans, so that was one of the
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ground zero spots with anti Castro Cubans gathered, and I
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suggested that it would not be an appropriate thing for
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her to go with him, but the guy. I met
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the guy later when he came down to see her
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one day, and he worked in very suspicious circumstances, etc.
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And I really believe my conclusion, if I can just
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make it brief here, is that he was left there
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to shepherd this property back on to the market. And
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he had been one of the anti Castro Cubans that
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had been associated with David Ferry, who lived across the street,
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and that they were all part of this underground railroad
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that brought these exiles up from Miami so that they
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could be trained by Guy Banister and then sent back
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on you know, military missions or paramilitary missions against Fidel
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Castro in his government.
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Now, the lab, as you mentioned, was across the street
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from David Ferry's apartment, so he could keep an eye
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on it. It also was very essentrally located, strategically located
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with regard to Mary Sherman's apartment and also with regard
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to the path that she would take to get to
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work at Tulane.
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If you just sort of looked at a map of
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the city of New Orleans and over on the left
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was Auschner Clinic and you put an a there, and
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over on the right was to a medical school, which
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is kind of downtown, you could to be there. This
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laboratory in David Ferry's apartment was almost dead center between
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the two. And then if you just came down two
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miles down Louisiana Avenue straight down from that lab, you
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were at Mary Sherman's apartment. So it was two miles
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from Mary Sherman's apartment, and it was directly on the
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major road connecting her two offices. There was plenty of
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access and plenty of propinquity on it.
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You mentioned you theorize about the possibility that it may
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have been under the auspices of Guy Banister's detective agency
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an apparent intelligence front, among other things, that the laboratory
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was set up.
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Can you tell us a little about that. Sure.
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The puzzling question that really bothered me throughout the entire
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book is why would Mary Sherman associate herself with David Ferry?
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And the possibility came up that maybe she had not
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done so voluntarily. Maybe this association was really an association
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between other people who were not in the picture that
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these two people both reported to and Mary Sherman reported
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to Alton Oschner and David Ferry reported to Guy Banister. Well,
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maybe it was the association between Alton Oshner and Guy Banister,
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which we've already established through the files, etc. That was
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the real reason for Mary Sherman and David Ferry to
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be associated together.
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Now, Mary Sherman met an unhappy end just before the
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Warren Commission came to New Orleans to investigate the New
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Orleans connections to the assassination. Could you tell us a
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little bit about Well, we're going to get to the
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precise physical circumstances. But this took place when it was
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a June of nineteen sixty.
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Four, It was July twenty first, nineteen sixty four, and
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it was a front page murder story. And if you
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ask anybody in New Orleans, the murder Mary Sherman is
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the most sensational murder story that's ever happened down there.
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In we're going to get more get into the exact
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physical circumstances of her killing. As you began to pursue
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the David Ferry Mary Sherman connection and in turn began
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to look into the murder of doctor Mary Sherman, you
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contacted a fellow whom you referred to as Big Mike,
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who was well connected with law enforcement in New Orleans.
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And in your book, you just got the Big Mike
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got quite a surprise as he began trying to find
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out about that murder.
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Yeah, the Mary and Sherman and the investigation into the
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Mary Sherman murder was shut down. I mean obviously in
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over and from above with a lot of power, and
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it disappeared everybody ran for cover after the power came down,
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and that was in nineteen sixty four. In nineteen seventy two,
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seven years later, I asked a man who was an
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investigator for the District Attorney's office if he could secure
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a or actually volunteered to secure a copy of the
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police report on Mary Sherman. He had not been in
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town in nineteen sixty four when the murder happened, and
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therefore he had not seen how badly it was shut down.
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And he thought it was going to be a routine
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thing because he pulled police reports on murders all the time,
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because that's what he did for a living. And I
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asked him. Our first conversation was on Wednesday about six o'clock,
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and on Friday, at about five o'clock I talked to
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him the second time. And the first time in our
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conversation he was confident and buoyant and he was going
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to get this report for me and there wasn't going
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to be a problem and anything else. And by Friday
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he was screaming at me on the telephone, saying, what
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the hell did you get me into? I have never
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seen flack like this. I have done nothing for the
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last forty eight hours except explain why I want to
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see this report? And he said, do you know how
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stupid I sounded when I told him it was a
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teenager who asked me for it. He was a friend
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of my daughter's, and any rate, Big Mike tried to
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get the report and it blew up in his face.
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And all it did for me was confirmed that the
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rum brings that I had heard about, all the political
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heat and the cover up on the Sherman murder were
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in fact true, and that's why I had to pursue it.
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Later, speaking of cover ups of the doctor Mary Sherman
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murder in the Frank Aviot as a piece of propaganda,
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not journalism, but in the book Case Closed by Gerald Posner,
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one of the pieces of othal that the author floats
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in an attempt to debunk the notion that there was
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a conspiracy behind Kennedy's assassination is the notion that the
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many curious deaths and suspicious murders that took place in
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connection with the investigation into Kennedy's assassination were not suspicious
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at all.
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On page one thirty five of.
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Your book, you quote a section from a Posner chapter
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called the non Mysterious Mystery Deaths, in which he describes
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the death of doctor Mary Sherman as follows. Doctor Mary
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Sherman house fire had no connection with the case, though
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she was acquainted with David Ferry. According to the medical records,
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she was killed in an accidental fire. That is, shall
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we say, less than accurate. Can you tell us how
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Mary Sherman died? What were the wounds and the injuries
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that killed her?
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Well, first of all, I want to say that Posner's
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comment is a bold face lie. It is not an
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00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:50.079
erroneous comment. It's a bold face lie because he says
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the medical records say or the medical records show. Well,
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I guarantee you that I have the medical records. They're
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published in full in the hendix in my book. And
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the medical records say, and the police reports say that
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Mary Sherman was murdered. She had thirteen stab wounds on
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her and her body was set on fire, okay, and
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her right arm was missing. And for Posner, if you've
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ever seen him on television, you know how he talks
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in this sort of certain everything is absolutely true, He's
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completely right on everything, and he throws out all this information.
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You know that nobody could possibly challenge. He said this
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thing about Mary Sherman with that same level of confidence.
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Well, we should perhaps just that, perhaps he was simply
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given incorrect information just to cover ourselves legally, go ahead.
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Yes, but he should not have said that the medical
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records show, all right. He may he had the right
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to say, you know, I think Mary Sherman died in
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the house fire, all right, but he should not have
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said the medical record show, because that's not what the
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medical records show. The medical records show that Mary Sherman
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had a you know, approximately eight to thirteen depending on
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how you account them, stab wounds on her, and the
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cause of death, as determined by the coroner, was a
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stab wound to the heart.
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Not an accidental death in a fire. Now, one of
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the things you point out in your book and investigating
383
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the murder of doctor Mary Sherman, which again took place
384
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just before the Warren Commission came to New Orleans, is
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that there appears to have been a cover up concerning
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her death.
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In particular, some of the people that were.
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Involved with discovering and or identifying the body had their
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professional connections obfuscated, despite the fact that the professional connections
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00:22:39.240 --> 00:22:42.200
of other people were accurately stated people who were irrelevant.
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I'm thinking of Carol and Tally and Juan Valdez, among others.
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00:22:46.279 --> 00:22:48.640
And let's start with a victim. Can you imagine a
393
00:22:48.680 --> 00:22:52.119
police report about a murder where it doesn't even say
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where the victim.
395
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Worked, and of course you work at Tulane Medical School.
396
00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:59.759
She also was working for doctor Alt Knoxner's clinic, and
397
00:22:59.799 --> 00:23:03.240
as we are now discovering, she also was involved in
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00:23:03.279 --> 00:23:07.000
an underground laboratory with of all people, David Ferry injecting
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00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:09.240
mice with monkey viruses to induce cancer.
400
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Go ahead.
401
00:23:10.119 --> 00:23:15.519
The homicide report has deals with five people who are
402
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:19.000
really essentially irrelevant to the investigation and are only put
403
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:23.000
in there to raise suspicions about Mary Sherman being a lesbian.
404
00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:25.279
And all five.
405
00:23:25.119 --> 00:23:27.920
Of those people it is clearly stated where they were.
406
00:23:29.559 --> 00:23:33.839
The person who identified the body, however, who is doctor
407
00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:37.240
Caroline Tally, who is a pediatrician to a medical school
408
00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:42.200
and perhaps also or she at least lived next door
409
00:23:42.240 --> 00:23:43.880
to the Aushner Clinic. I don't know if she worked
410
00:23:43.920 --> 00:23:45.759
there or not, but she was a close friend to
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00:23:45.799 --> 00:23:49.920
Mary Sherman. Her professional relationships are not mentioned. It does
412
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:52.279
not say that she worked for to a medical school.
413
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:55.000
The person who reported the fire Mary Sherman's next to
414
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our neighbor was Juan Valdez, a Cuban exile who worked
415
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:05.000
at the International Trademark building. Of course, clay Shaw had
416
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:09.160
formerly been the general manager of the International Trademark and
417
00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:12.359
by the way, clay Shaw was brought into the Trademark
418
00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:16.240
by Ted Brent and the hotel, which is on the
419
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:20.039
grounds of the Oschner Clinic is called the Brent House
420
00:24:20.519 --> 00:24:26.160
because Ted Brent donated approximately a million dollars to the foundation,
421
00:24:26.240 --> 00:24:27.200
clinic and hospital.
422
00:24:27.559 --> 00:24:30.319
Dude, you also mention that another Sherman neighbor, David Gentry,
423
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:31.599
was an acquaintance of Oswald's.
424
00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:34.440
Well, he wasn't the Sherman neighbor, but he was the
425
00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:38.359
last person other than the maid and janitor to see
426
00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:42.079
Mary Sherman alive, and Mary Sherman had picked up some
427
00:24:42.839 --> 00:24:45.440
he worked at a story that she frequented, and it
428
00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.720
turned out that he was Lee Harvey, Oswald's next door neighbor.
429
00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:51.799
Now you've alluded to the.
430
00:24:54.119 --> 00:24:59.119
Homophobic perhaps one could say quote lesbian angle.
431
00:24:58.839 --> 00:25:04.799
On quote cover to this, the press made a sensational.
432
00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:08.640
Quasi case or at least, they presented the killing as
433
00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:13.279
some sort of lesbian jealousy situation. And this appears to
434
00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:14.960
have been simply a red hearing. Can you tell us
435
00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:15.279
about that?
436
00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:20.960
Sure, we've just summarized it's a red herring. The press
437
00:25:20.960 --> 00:25:23.440
said what the police told them, and that was that
438
00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:26.480
Mary Sherman had been slashed to death and then set
439
00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:29.599
on fire by an intruder. Then it was determined that
440
00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:31.799
there was no forced entry, and then it was assumed
441
00:25:31.799 --> 00:25:35.119
that Mary Sherman had let the intruder in and she
442
00:25:35.240 --> 00:25:37.319
must have had a reason for doing that at night,
443
00:25:37.799 --> 00:25:40.599
and that intruder must have had some form of personal
444
00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:43.039
relationship with her. That's why they slashed her up and
445
00:25:43.079 --> 00:25:46.440
set her on fire. And that was the entire explanation
446
00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:50.799
that the public was given about the Mary Sherman murder. Well,
447
00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:54.079
when you get the autopsy report and you start to
448
00:25:54.119 --> 00:25:57.720
analyze what happened to Mary Sherman, and you start to
449
00:25:57.759 --> 00:26:00.359
study the kniphounds, and you start to study the learned,
450
00:26:00.759 --> 00:26:06.599
you come to the inevitable and inescapable conclusion that Mary
451
00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:09.400
Sherman could not have died in her apartment.
452
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:14.079
We're going to talk about how Mary Sherman died where
453
00:26:14.119 --> 00:26:16.519
she died, in the significance of that in the next
454
00:26:16.599 --> 00:26:19.559
segment of our interview, because we're almost out of this time.
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For this half hour i've been speaking with that Haslm,
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the author of Mary Ferry and the Monkey Virus, The
457
00:26:24.359 --> 00:26:27.119
Story of an underground medical Laboratory, published in soft cover
458
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:31.440
by Wordsworth Press, copyright nineteen ninety five. For Ed Haslm,
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00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:33.039
this is Dave Emory. Thanks for listening.
1
00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:08.199
Hello.
2
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My name is Dave Emory, and it's my pleasure to
3
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be joined by Ed Haslam, the author of Mary Ferry
4
00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:15.919
and the Monkey Virus, The story of an underground medical laboratory,
5
00:00:15.919 --> 00:00:19.239
published in softcover by the Wordsworth Press and copyright nineteen
6
00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:22.920
ninety five. We've been detailing events that were going on
7
00:00:22.960 --> 00:00:24.839
in the city of New Orleans and which overlapped the
8
00:00:24.839 --> 00:00:28.160
city of New Orleans the Tulane University, I should say,
9
00:00:29.079 --> 00:00:32.640
we've been talking about doctor Alton Oxner, an individual with
10
00:00:32.679 --> 00:00:36.359
more connections than a switchboard, very prominently connected in not
11
00:00:36.399 --> 00:00:39.479
only the city of New Orleans but also to Tulane University,
12
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both in turn very significant for America's political, national security,
13
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and economic connections to Latin America. Oxner was basically in
14
00:00:51.119 --> 00:00:54.679
charge of the Information Council of the America's, a right
15
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wing propaganda outfit with apparent intelligence connections that was involved
16
00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:01.320
with setting up an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald in
17
00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:05.439
which he proclaimed his Marxist Leninist sympathies and that had
18
00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:09.560
much to do with tainting Oswald read and an event
19
00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:12.879
well known to researchers into the Kennedy assassination.
20
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We have been talking about an individual who.
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Was working for Alton Oxner and also for Tulane University.
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Doctor Mary Sherman, one of the foremost names in American medicine,
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although sadly overlooked in the nineteen fifties and sixties, someone
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by the way, whose work is still frequently cited in
25
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contemporary medical journals, although she's been dead for more than
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thirty years. Is that not true?
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That is true? That is true.
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We have also been speaking about David Ferry, the initial
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focus of Jim Garrison's investigation, an individual who was involved
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with the US intelligence community's efforts against Fidel Castro, and
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who also may very well have been involved with some
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of the events surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. We were talking
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about allegations by Perry Russo that David Ferry and I
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personally believe these are absolutely accurate, that David Ferry, Clay
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Shaw Oswald, and some anti Castro Cubans were discussing how
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President Kennedy could be killed.
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And we've been talking about Guy.
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Banister's Detective Agency and apparent intelligence front for which Lee Harley,
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with which Lee Harvey Oswald was involved, for which David
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Ferry certainly worked and which also, as we've seen, was
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connected with the Information Council of the America's Ed Butler
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and through that to Alton Oxner. As you mentioned, Ed
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Oxner in many ways was sort of the glue that
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stuck many of these elements together. Now, the title of
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your book talks about Mary Ferry and the monkey virus,
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and indeed it is fascinating and I think potentially enormously
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important fact that Mary Sherman, the brilliant cancer researcher, the
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medical pioneer, was apparently working with David Ferry on a
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very strange project. Could you tell us about that?
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Sure.
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When Garrison reconvened his investigation into the Kennedy assassination in
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nineteen sixty six, his primary target was David Ferry because
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David Ferry had been associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and
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he had been involved in training anti Castro Cubans for
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an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. That made him an
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extremely suspicious person from Garrison's point of view. In the
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process of investigating David Ferry, Garrison found out a lot
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of things about Ferry that most people didn't know. One
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of the most interesting things was that Ferry was for
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some reason running a secret cancer lab, and while Ferry
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himself was a loose cannon with no formal medical training,
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the scale of the laboratory was remarkable because it had
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nearly two thousand mice in it, and it was determined
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by Garrison's investigators that Ferry was involved with doctor Mary
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Sherman in this effort. Now, the inclusion of doctor Mary Sherman,
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one of the most prominent cancer researchers in America, a
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professor at a medical school, a director of a cancer lab,
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and a graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School
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put a very serious twist on David Ferry's cancer research. Further,
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they found a document in Fairey's apartment when they arrested him,
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which explained how to use viruses to cause cancer. And
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Garrison was really only allowed one unedited interview during his
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nineteen sixty jfk assassination. That was an interview in Playboy magazine,
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and in that October issue of Playboy magazine, Garethon stated
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in unequivocal terms that his investigators had determined that David
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Ferry was involved in this secret cancer experimentation with doctor
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Mary Sherman.
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Bear in mind that Mary Sherman worked not only in
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Tulane Medical School. She taught there was an associate professor,
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but she worked for Alton Oxner's clinic. In fact, Oxner
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brought her to New Orleans.
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And that combination between David Ferry and Mary Sherman was
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not only bizarre in terms of trying to understand what
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forces would pull these disparate people together. I mean Mary Sherman,
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highly respective medical professional, and David Ferry, this loose cannon
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who was running around as a contraband pilot and private
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investigator for Guy Banister and training Cubans to assassinate Castro.
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I mean, what forces would pull them together? And that
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was really the kruck of what drove me on the book.
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The second thing was that also meant that Fairiy's cancer
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experiments were not loose hair brain things. They were being
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conducted by a professional who really knew what she was doing.
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And it wasn't until we found this treatise. In fact,
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looking I looked for over a year for this document
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that Garrison had mentioned in the Playboy interview, and we
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finally found it in the National Archives because Garrison had
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given the document to the House led Committee on assassinations
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in nineteen seventy nine, and the National Archives had followed
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it away and it was released as part of this
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JFK Assassination papers that came out after Oliver Stone's movie,
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so we were able to get the actual document. And
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when you start to study that document, the first thing
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you'll understand is that David Ferry did not write it.
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It was written by a leading edge, top of the
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line cancer researcher working at the very highest levels of
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American medicine. And how David Ferry I got it is
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a question. But what it really meant was the capability
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that they had in their hands was to induce and
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create and transfer cancer from animal to animal.
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And specifically they were injecting mice with monkey viruses to
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induce cancer.
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That was correct, and that bit of information came to
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me from people very close to the Garrison investigation who
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I went to school with in New Orleans.
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All Right, you mentioned Fello named Nikki Chetta, the son
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of the coroner for New Orleans at that time.
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That's right. When Kaishar was acquitted in March of nineteen
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sixty nine, Chetta, who was a classmate of mine, was
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furious over it. And we were all kind of furious
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over it in one way or another because we had
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seen how much the press had distorted and misrepresented everything
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that was going on, and so Chetta really tried to
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set the records right by telling us his classmates what
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was going on. And his perspective on the investigation was
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through the eyes of his father, and his father was
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the coroner of the city in New Orleans. And when
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David Ferry died several days after the Garrison investigation became public,
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doctor Chetta went over to Garrison. I mean doctor Chetta
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went over to Ferry's apartment to investigate the scene and
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pronounce the cause of death, etc. On Ferry. And it
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was at that time that he observed all these women's
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dresses in fairies closet, these priests investments which a fairy kept,
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and all this medical equipment that was there in his
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apartment with a group of mice. And Chetta's further explanation
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was that they had investigated other landlords and they had
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found out that Ferry had thousands of mice and was
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working on some sort of big scale cancer project.
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And we could note too that as something of an
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aside before we get to the laboratory that when the
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House Select Committee on Assassinations turned in its final report,
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as badly compromised as it was, among the recommendations to
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the US Department of Justice was that they begin investigating
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David Ferry and the anti Castro Cubans in New Orleans,
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vindicating Garrison after all the explitive deleted that was heaped
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on his head. I also think that Oliver Stone deserves
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a mighty tip of the hat for his I consider
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them heroic efforts.
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In JFK.
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He took a few artistic liberties in a few places,
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but it was basically historically accurate, and he got the
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Garrison treatment. He was dumped on and continues to be
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dumped on.
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Yeah, before the movie was even released, I.
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Know, and I think both Garrison and Oliver Stone deserved
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a much more prominent place in American history than they
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will ever receive. They're both to me, this was not
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a little corny. They're both to me real heroes. Back
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the subject of this clandestine laboratory, which is the major
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focal point of your book, and as you began to
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develop the story, it appears that the relatively small number
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of mice in David Ferry's apartment did not constitute the
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laboratory itself, but rather an adjacent building was the real laborator.
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Could you tell us about that adjacent apartment or nearby
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apartment and how you came across that.
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Well, this is another fluke in my life which is
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as interesting and unusual as the day I found Drive
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Banister's files without looking for him. I was not looking
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for David Ferry's apartment either. I was pursuing a pretty
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girl who I had met on a college campus at Tulane,
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and she had just rented this new apartment not far
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from campus, and I went over there and she had
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just just moved in, and the only piece of furniture
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she had in there was a waterbed. And it turned
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out that, I mean, the apartment was really unusual in
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that everything the floors had been stripped and revarnished, and
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the walls had been sanded and repainted, and everything was
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an absolutely ment condition. But it still smelled. There was
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this strange smell in there. And so this girl I
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was dating Barber went downstairs at one point and talked
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to the old woman who lived in the basement, and
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the old woman who lived in the basement indicated that
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there was something very strange going on up there, and
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she kept saying this single sentence over and over again
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about those horrible men and the terrible things they did
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to those animals. Well, this was an unusual experience in
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my life, but it wasn't significant until I began my
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investigation fifteen years later and discovered that David Ferry lived
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across the street. Then I had to look at this
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apartment in relationship to David Ferry. And one of the
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other things that I was told when I was at
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the apartment was the apartment had been taken off of
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the market for about five years. Why would you take
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a piece of rental property off the market for five years.
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It is not a way to make money, that's right.
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It's not a way to make money. But it turned
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out that Faerriy's apartment across the street, which also had
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the same smell of mice in it, was also taken
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off the market for five years.
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Well, we should bear in mind that it was in
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this laboratory that David Ferry was working with doctor Mary
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Sherman of the Lay Medical School on the ox Or
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Medical Clinic on injecting mice with monkey viruses to induce cancer.
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More about this laboratory and how you came across it
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did well.
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The first thing about the laboratory is the size of it.
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It was estimated that Faerry had two thousand mice. Now,
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if you say, okay, how do you house two thousand mice.
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Let's say we put five mice in a cage. That's
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four hundred cages of mice. Now just imagine in the
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apartment or house that you're sitting in listening to your
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radio right now, imagine putting four hundred cages of mice
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into that facility, and imagine the task of feeding them
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and cleaning up their cages after they've pooped in peace
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and stuff on there, and imagine the smell, and then
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imagine injecting them with cancer causing monkey viruses. You are
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not going to want to live in that apartment. And
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that's why nobody lived in that apartment. It was a
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dedicated lab, but it was located across the street from
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Fairies from Fairies apartment, so that Fairy could keep an
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eye on it and can go over and make observations
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on it. So it was closely connected with Fairy, and
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Fairy kept some mice back at his apartment, and my
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guess these are mice he kept for breeding and control reasons,
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and they were not injected with the monkey viruses.
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You mentioned an apparent to anti Castro Cuba named Miguel
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who was also sort of shepherding this laboratory, and you
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also discussed the possibility that the lab may have doubled
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as a safe house.
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Yes, all that's accurate. One of the things that Barbara
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had told me was that there was this man upstairs
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who had invited her to this bar, and she told
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me the location of the bar, and I knew from
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being around New Orleans, so that was one of the
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ground zero spots with anti Castro Cubans gathered, and I
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suggested that it would not be an appropriate thing for
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her to go with him, but the guy. I met
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the guy later when he came down to see her
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one day, and he worked in very suspicious circumstances, etc.
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And I really believe my conclusion, if I can just
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make it brief here, is that he was left there
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to shepherd this property back on to the market. And
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he had been one of the anti Castro Cubans that
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had been associated with David Ferry, who lived across the street,
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and that they were all part of this underground railroad
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that brought these exiles up from Miami so that they
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could be trained by Guy Banister and then sent back
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on you know, military missions or paramilitary missions against Fidel
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Castro in his government.
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Now, the lab, as you mentioned, was across the street
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from David Ferry's apartment, so he could keep an eye
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on it. It also was very essentrally located, strategically located
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with regard to Mary Sherman's apartment and also with regard
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to the path that she would take to get to
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work at Tulane.
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If you just sort of looked at a map of
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the city of New Orleans and over on the left
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was Auschner Clinic and you put an a there, and
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over on the right was to a medical school, which
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is kind of downtown, you could to be there. This
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laboratory in David Ferry's apartment was almost dead center between
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the two. And then if you just came down two
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miles down Louisiana Avenue straight down from that lab, you
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were at Mary Sherman's apartment. So it was two miles
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from Mary Sherman's apartment, and it was directly on the
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major road connecting her two offices. There was plenty of
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access and plenty of propinquity on it.
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You mentioned you theorize about the possibility that it may
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have been under the auspices of Guy Banister's detective agency
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an apparent intelligence front, among other things, that the laboratory
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was set up.
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Can you tell us a little about that. Sure.
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The puzzling question that really bothered me throughout the entire
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book is why would Mary Sherman associate herself with David Ferry?
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And the possibility came up that maybe she had not
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done so voluntarily. Maybe this association was really an association
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between other people who were not in the picture that
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these two people both reported to and Mary Sherman reported
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to Alton Oschner and David Ferry reported to Guy Banister. Well,
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maybe it was the association between Alton Oshner and Guy Banister,
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which we've already established through the files, etc. That was
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the real reason for Mary Sherman and David Ferry to
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be associated together.
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Now, Mary Sherman met an unhappy end just before the
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Warren Commission came to New Orleans to investigate the New
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Orleans connections to the assassination. Could you tell us a
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little bit about Well, we're going to get to the
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precise physical circumstances. But this took place when it was
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a June of nineteen sixty.
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Four, It was July twenty first, nineteen sixty four, and
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it was a front page murder story. And if you
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ask anybody in New Orleans, the murder Mary Sherman is
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the most sensational murder story that's ever happened down there.
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In we're going to get more get into the exact
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physical circumstances of her killing. As you began to pursue
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the David Ferry Mary Sherman connection and in turn began
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to look into the murder of doctor Mary Sherman, you
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contacted a fellow whom you referred to as Big Mike,
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who was well connected with law enforcement in New Orleans.
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And in your book, you just got the Big Mike
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got quite a surprise as he began trying to find
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out about that murder.
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Yeah, the Mary and Sherman and the investigation into the
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Mary Sherman murder was shut down. I mean obviously in
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over and from above with a lot of power, and
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it disappeared everybody ran for cover after the power came down,
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and that was in nineteen sixty four. In nineteen seventy two,
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seven years later, I asked a man who was an
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investigator for the District Attorney's office if he could secure
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a or actually volunteered to secure a copy of the
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police report on Mary Sherman. He had not been in
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town in nineteen sixty four when the murder happened, and
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therefore he had not seen how badly it was shut down.
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And he thought it was going to be a routine
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thing because he pulled police reports on murders all the time,
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because that's what he did for a living. And I
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asked him. Our first conversation was on Wednesday about six o'clock,
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and on Friday, at about five o'clock I talked to
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him the second time. And the first time in our
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conversation he was confident and buoyant and he was going
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to get this report for me and there wasn't going
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to be a problem and anything else. And by Friday
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he was screaming at me on the telephone, saying, what
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the hell did you get me into? I have never
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seen flack like this. I have done nothing for the
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last forty eight hours except explain why I want to
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see this report? And he said, do you know how
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stupid I sounded when I told him it was a
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teenager who asked me for it. He was a friend
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of my daughter's, and any rate, Big Mike tried to
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get the report and it blew up in his face.
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And all it did for me was confirmed that the
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rum brings that I had heard about, all the political
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heat and the cover up on the Sherman murder were
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in fact true, and that's why I had to pursue it.
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Later, speaking of cover ups of the doctor Mary Sherman
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murder in the Frank Aviot as a piece of propaganda,
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not journalism, but in the book Case Closed by Gerald Posner,
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one of the pieces of othal that the author floats
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in an attempt to debunk the notion that there was
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a conspiracy behind Kennedy's assassination is the notion that the
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many curious deaths and suspicious murders that took place in
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connection with the investigation into Kennedy's assassination were not suspicious
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at all.
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On page one thirty five of.
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Your book, you quote a section from a Posner chapter
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called the non Mysterious Mystery Deaths, in which he describes
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the death of doctor Mary Sherman as follows. Doctor Mary
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Sherman house fire had no connection with the case, though
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she was acquainted with David Ferry. According to the medical records,
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she was killed in an accidental fire. That is, shall
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we say, less than accurate. Can you tell us how
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Mary Sherman died? What were the wounds and the injuries
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that killed her?
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Well, first of all, I want to say that Posner's
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comment is a bold face lie. It is not an
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erroneous comment. It's a bold face lie because he says
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the medical records say or the medical records show. Well,
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I guarantee you that I have the medical records. They're
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published in full in the hendix in my book. And
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the medical records say, and the police reports say that
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Mary Sherman was murdered. She had thirteen stab wounds on
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her and her body was set on fire, okay, and
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her right arm was missing. And for Posner, if you've
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ever seen him on television, you know how he talks
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in this sort of certain everything is absolutely true, He's
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completely right on everything, and he throws out all this information.
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You know that nobody could possibly challenge. He said this
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thing about Mary Sherman with that same level of confidence.
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Well, we should perhaps just that, perhaps he was simply
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given incorrect information just to cover ourselves legally, go ahead.
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Yes, but he should not have said that the medical
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records show, all right. He may he had the right
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to say, you know, I think Mary Sherman died in
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the house fire, all right, but he should not have
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said the medical record show, because that's not what the
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medical records show. The medical records show that Mary Sherman
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had a you know, approximately eight to thirteen depending on
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how you account them, stab wounds on her, and the
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cause of death, as determined by the coroner, was a
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stab wound to the heart.
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Not an accidental death in a fire. Now, one of
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the things you point out in your book and investigating
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the murder of doctor Mary Sherman, which again took place
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just before the Warren Commission came to New Orleans, is
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that there appears to have been a cover up concerning
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her death.
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In particular, some of the people that were.
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Involved with discovering and or identifying the body had their
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professional connections obfuscated, despite the fact that the professional connections
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of other people were accurately stated people who were irrelevant.
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I'm thinking of Carol and Tally and Juan Valdez, among others.
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And let's start with a victim. Can you imagine a
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police report about a murder where it doesn't even say
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where the victim.
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Worked, and of course you work at Tulane Medical School.
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She also was working for doctor Alt Knoxner's clinic, and
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as we are now discovering, she also was involved in
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an underground laboratory with of all people, David Ferry injecting
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mice with monkey viruses to induce cancer.
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Go ahead.
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00:23:10.119 --> 00:23:15.519
The homicide report has deals with five people who are
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really essentially irrelevant to the investigation and are only put
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in there to raise suspicions about Mary Sherman being a lesbian.
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And all five.
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Of those people it is clearly stated where they were.
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The person who identified the body, however, who is doctor
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Caroline Tally, who is a pediatrician to a medical school
408
00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:42.200
and perhaps also or she at least lived next door
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to the Aushner Clinic. I don't know if she worked
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there or not, but she was a close friend to
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Mary Sherman. Her professional relationships are not mentioned. It does
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not say that she worked for to a medical school.
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The person who reported the fire Mary Sherman's next to
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our neighbor was Juan Valdez, a Cuban exile who worked
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at the International Trademark building. Of course, clay Shaw had
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00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:09.160
formerly been the general manager of the International Trademark and
417
00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:12.359
by the way, clay Shaw was brought into the Trademark
418
00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:16.240
by Ted Brent and the hotel, which is on the
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00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:20.039
grounds of the Oschner Clinic is called the Brent House
420
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because Ted Brent donated approximately a million dollars to the foundation,
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clinic and hospital.
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00:24:27.559 --> 00:24:30.319
Dude, you also mention that another Sherman neighbor, David Gentry,
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00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:31.599
was an acquaintance of Oswald's.
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00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:34.440
Well, he wasn't the Sherman neighbor, but he was the
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00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:38.359
last person other than the maid and janitor to see
426
00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:42.079
Mary Sherman alive, and Mary Sherman had picked up some
427
00:24:42.839 --> 00:24:45.440
he worked at a story that she frequented, and it
428
00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.720
turned out that he was Lee Harvey, Oswald's next door neighbor.
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00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:51.799
Now you've alluded to the.
430
00:24:54.119 --> 00:24:59.119
Homophobic perhaps one could say quote lesbian angle.
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00:24:58.839 --> 00:25:04.799
On quote cover to this, the press made a sensational.
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00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:08.640
Quasi case or at least, they presented the killing as
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00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:13.279
some sort of lesbian jealousy situation. And this appears to
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00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:14.960
have been simply a red hearing. Can you tell us
435
00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:15.279
about that?
436
00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:20.960
Sure, we've just summarized it's a red herring. The press
437
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said what the police told them, and that was that
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Mary Sherman had been slashed to death and then set
439
00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:29.599
on fire by an intruder. Then it was determined that
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00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:31.799
there was no forced entry, and then it was assumed
441
00:25:31.799 --> 00:25:35.119
that Mary Sherman had let the intruder in and she
442
00:25:35.240 --> 00:25:37.319
must have had a reason for doing that at night,
443
00:25:37.799 --> 00:25:40.599
and that intruder must have had some form of personal
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relationship with her. That's why they slashed her up and
445
00:25:43.079 --> 00:25:46.440
set her on fire. And that was the entire explanation
446
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that the public was given about the Mary Sherman murder. Well,
447
00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:54.079
when you get the autopsy report and you start to
448
00:25:54.119 --> 00:25:57.720
analyze what happened to Mary Sherman, and you start to
449
00:25:57.759 --> 00:26:00.359
study the kniphounds, and you start to study the learned,
450
00:26:00.759 --> 00:26:06.599
you come to the inevitable and inescapable conclusion that Mary
451
00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:09.400
Sherman could not have died in her apartment.
452
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:14.079
We're going to talk about how Mary Sherman died where
453
00:26:14.119 --> 00:26:16.519
she died, in the significance of that in the next
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segment of our interview, because we're almost out of this time.
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For this half hour i've been speaking with that Haslm,
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the author of Mary Ferry and the Monkey Virus, The
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00:26:24.359 --> 00:26:27.119
Story of an underground medical Laboratory, published in soft cover
458
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:31.440
by Wordsworth Press, copyright nineteen ninety five. For Ed Haslm,
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this is Dave Emory. Thanks for listening.
