A Farewell to Justice

by Joan Mellen

  Ferrie’s death also brought to Jim Garrison E. Carl McNabb, who had flown those missions with Ferrie. McNabb thought he had better warn Garrison that in dealing with Ferrie, he was also dealing with the CIA. McNabb wished to convey from his own experience how closely the various intelligence agencies worked together: “One organization would loan me out to the other.”

  So lean that he seemed to be without a shadow and able to evaporate at will, pale, bone-thin, and chain-smoking, thriving on danger, McNabb, like Garrison, like Oswald, was another person in this story who never or scarcely knew his father. Like Ferrie, he had flown under the Soviet radar, setting down on Cuban beaches by the dark of the moon, infiltrating and exfiltrating. Now McNabb joined Jim Garrison’s efforts. He was nicknamed by volunteer and former FBI agent, William Turner “Jim” for Garrison and “Rose” for the Rose Bowl.

  Reading of Ferrie’s death, a young insurance salesman in Baton Rouge named Perry Raymond Russo wrote to Jim Garrison. The letter never reached him. Frightened that he might himself be arrested, Russo then contacted the Baton Rouge sheriff’s office. Call a newspaper, he was told. “We will get him and it won’t be long,” Russo quoted Ferrie to the Baton Rouge State-Times. The February 24, 1967, headline read: “Local Man Says He Recalls Remark By David Ferrie About Getting JFK.” The story of Russo’s acquaintance with Ferrie appeared on a Friday. On Saturday, Moo Moo Sciambra drove up to Baton Rouge.

  There is no doubt that Ferrie knew Russo. In Ferrie’s self-serving statement defending himself against charges he had shielded the runaway Alexander Landry Jr., he refers to “one Perry Russo” as a “hard” character, who hangs out at a bar frequented by “known homosexuals, sex perverts and dope addicts,” typical Ferrie charges against the young men whom he feared might do him harm.

  On that Saturday, Russo told Moo Moo Sciambra about a gathering he had attended at the apartment of David Ferrie. The guests included an older man named “Clem Bertrand” and a figure named “Leon,” who seemed to be Ferrie’s roommate, so close did they appear. This man Russo identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. That Oswald had visited David Ferrie’s apartment is corroborated by John Wilson, who also saw Oswald at Ferrie’s apartment. That Oswald was sometimes called “Leon” is corroborated by Sylvia Odio’s testimony, and by those to whom Oswald was introduced by Kent Courtney as “Leon.”

  That night the group sat discussing the ways and means of assassinating President Kennedy, Russo said. Both “Bertrand” and Ferrie discussed what their alibis would be for the day when Kennedy was shot. “Bertrand” would be in California, Ferrie at Southeastern Louisiana College at Hammond. All these men shared a hatred of Kennedy, including Russo, who had taunted one of his liberal Loyola professors when Kennedy died: “Your boy’s been shot!” Russo gloated.

  Now on Saturday afternoon, Moo Moo removed from his briefcase a sheaf of photographs. “Tell me anybody you know,” he instructed Russo. Russo identified Ferrie at once. He knew Miguel Torres, Emilio Santana and a Cuban named Julian Busnedo. Oswald’s picture appeared. “Yeah, I know him,” Russo said. “That’s David Ferrie’s roommate, but he was a little dirtier. He was “unshaven” and had a “bushy beard.” As soon as he had climbed the stairs to Ferrie’s apartment that night, Ferrie had introduced him to “Leon Oswald.”

  “I knew the guy,” Russo told Loyola classmates after the assassination.

  The last photograph was of a gray-haired man.

  “That’s Bertrand.” Russo said. “Clem Bertrand.”

  "Clem Bertrand?” Sciambra said. “It wasn’t Clay?”

  No, he was called “Clem,” Russo insisted. When Sciambra asked whether Russo had seen this man with Ferrie on other occasions, Russo recounted how he had observed “Clem Bertrand” at Ferrie’s gas station on Veteran’s Highway in, he thought, 1965. Bertrand had been driving a 1959 Thunderbird convertible, an automobile Clay Shaw did own until 1964. He had also spotted Bertrand at the Nashville Avenue wharf when John F. Kennedy came to New Orleans to give a speech.

  Sciambra invited Russo to New Orleans to talk to Jim Garrison. When Russo balked, Sciambra appealed to his “civic duty.” By 9:30 Monday morning, February 27, 1967, Russo was at Tulane and Broad. Police artists worked to create a portrait of “Leon Oswald.” Once stubble was sketched onto the face, Russo identified the figure as Lee Harvey Oswald.

  But that was not the more important of the police composites sketched. Robert Buras, a police officer of unimpeachable integrity, worked as the artist. Buras’ great talent at school had been in art, his favorite subject. Now, as Russo provided the description, Buras drew the person Russo called “Clem Bertrand.” Finally Russo was satisfied.

  What Buras had produced turned out to be an exact likeness of . . . Clay Shaw.

  Through Perry Russo, Jim Garrison could establish that Clay Shaw had lied when he said he did not know David Ferrie; that Shaw knew Oswald; that Shaw was indeed the “Clay Bertrand” who had telephoned Dean Andrews; and that Shaw had been discussing the implementation of the assassination three months before the murder. Garrison wanted more details of that extraordinary gathering at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. That afternoon, at 3:28 P.M., in a session supervised by Dr. Nicholas Chetta, Russo was placed under sodium pentothal. The purpose, as Lou Ivon puts it, was “to add to what we already had.” Sciambra did the questioning, mentioning the name “Bertrand,” which he would not have done had Russo himself not already on Saturday mentioned that a person of that name had been present during the discussion of the assassination at Ferrie’s apartment. He used the name “Clay,” only for Russo to correct him. Russo insisted he had met not Clay Shaw, but “Clem Bertrand.” He knew “a Bertrand and he is a queer.”

  Russo described “Clem Bertrand” as “a tall man with white kinky hair, sort of slender.” At the Nashville Avenue wharf, he had stood out because he was the only person not looking at President Kennedy. Shaw was “hawking some kid who was not too far away from him,” Russo said. At the gathering, Ferrie had said, “We are going to kill John F. Kennedy” and “It won’t be long.”

  Dr. Chetta was persuaded: “There’s not a chance at all that what this kid said is not true. It had to have happened.” Another session and hypnosis would follow, but Russo never wavered in his story.

  Yet Jim Garrison still was not satisfied. The next day Moo Moo drove Russo to 1313 Dauphine Street. Russo knocked at the door, and there he was, “Bertrand,” with his big hands, chiseled face, and chiseled hair. By the end of the day, February 28th, 1967, Garrison requested two subpoenas. One was for Clay Shaw. The other was for James Lewallen, whom Russo had told him had been in bed together with Ferrie and Shaw. During a lie detector test, Lewallen had failed on the question of whether he had sex with either Ferrie or Shaw.

  For Richard Billings, who continued his own investigation, Russo’s friends Ken Carter, Niles Peterson, and Ted and Jerry Kirschenstein corroborated that Oswald had been the bearded “roommate” at Ferrie’s. Garrison also had identifications of Shaw as Bertrand not only from the Cosimo’s bartender but from Joe Oster, who said that Shaw, not David Ferrie, had been the man the levee board policeman had spotted with Oswald. Shaw was Bertrand, Oster said. In his interview with the Garrison office, Dauenhauer had revealed that Shaw lied. Shaw was also lying when he denied he knew Andrews. Gordon Novel told Jim Garrison that he and Dean Andrews had met with Shaw about Novel’s opening a food concession at the International Trade Mart. Novel knew as well that Andrews and Shaw had met in the steam room of the New Orleans Athletic Club.

  There was further corroboration later that Shaw had been lying from a former Shaw secretary, Mrs. Jeff Hug, who said Andrews had visited Shaw’s office one day and picked up an envelope of money. Shaw had also lied about his alibi. He had not been “en route” to San Francisco when the assassination occurred, but in bed at the St. Francis Hotel with a man named James Dondson. That Shaw was in San Francisco confirmed the essence of Russo’s testimony.

  Jim Garrison discovered that o
n November 11, 1963, Shaw had solicited a speaking engagement from the director of the San Francisco World Trade Center, Monroe Sullivan. That Shaw flew to San Francisco was very unusual, since, frightened of flying, he generally took the train. On the Monday after the assassination, Shaw appeared in Portland, Oregon, where he was scheduled to speak at an import-export conference, a “lone, grim, meditative figure.” Only one other person turned up for the conference, canceled in the wake of the president’s death. The evidence of Shaw’s involvement in a conspiracy that led to the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald was already considerable.

  Garrison had lost David Ferrie. Now he wanted Clay Shaw arrested at once. This arrest, he hoped, would “detonate a chain reaction” and other witnesses would come forward. He waited at his refuge from the office’s many leaks, the New Orleans Athletic Club, where he was interviewed by French journalist Bernard Giquel. “Through the famous Looking Glass, the black objects can appear to be white and the white objects can appear to be black,” Garrison said. He did not volunteer much else.

  On March 1st, David Ferrie was buried. His sole living relative, his brother Parmely, did not attend. On that same day, J. Edgar Hoover designated Jim Garrison “as a person not to be contacted without prior Bureau approval.” Russo’s story was already known to the Bureau. Division 5 ordered a review of files relating to “who knew where and with whom Oswald was living during this last month in New Orleans.”

  In the late morning, the sheriff handed Clay Shaw a subpoena. Lester Otillio again drove Shaw to Tulane and Broad “for questioning.” The plan was that Shaw be given a lie detector test. “If he passes the box, we’ll see what happens,” Garrison said. While Shaw waited in a room with a one-way mirror, so that he could be observed without knowing it, Sciambra brought Russo in to make one final identification. Once more Russo identified Shaw as “Clem Bertrand.” Life photographer Lynn Pelham photographed Shaw to determine his mood. Shaw seemed “very nervous.” Then Sciambra questioned him, producing photographs of Dante Marochini and Jim Lewallen.

  “What would you say if we told you we had three witnesses proving you knew David Ferrie?” Sciambra said.

  “I’ve never seen Ferrie in my life,” Shaw said. He again insisted that he never met Oswald. Sciambra produced photographs of various Cubans, all of whom Shaw denied knowing. Then Sciambra requested that Shaw take a lie detector test, implying that he would be arrested if he declined. It was, John Volz says, a not uncommon practice to offer a suspect the option of taking a polygraph; if he was telling the truth, he might not be arrested. Later Shaw would claim he refused because he did not want his private life exposed, although his homosexuality was an open secret in New Orleans.

  Shaw had assembled a legal team well before his March 1st arrest. With Edward F. Wegmann out of town, Salvatore Panzeca, whom Shaw describes in his diary as a “dark-haired Italian boy” with a “bantam cock attitude,” arrived. "Está maricón?” Panzeca said, interviewing his client in the men’s room. “Si,” Shaw replied. Panzeca then told Jim Garrison he would not permit a lie detector test unless he could “review all the questions that would be asked.” He preferred to wait until the next day, he said.

  “You must be kidding,” Garrison said. He planned to arrest Clay Shaw “for conspiracy to kill the president of the United States.” In panic, Panzeca looked over at his Tulane classmate, Garrison assistant Al Oser. Oser looked grim.

  Lou Ivon read Clay Shaw his rights at 5:30 on the afternoon of March 1st, arresting him for conspiracy, a “felony” committed “from April 24, 1963, the date of Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrival in New Orleans, to November 22, 1963.” William Gurvich, pleading it was his birthday, insisted on making the announcement to the press as Garrison staff members exchanged glances.

  An hour later, Ivon had a search warrant ready. It listed the certainty of Shaw’s being “Clay Bertrand,” probable cause being the meeting recounted to Sciambra by Russo in Baton Rouge. At that event, Shaw had discussed the killing of President Kennedy as well as “the means and manner of carrying out this agreement.” Ivon also swore under oath that the information offered by Russo under sodium pentothal only “verified, corroborated and reaffirmed his earlier statements.”

  At 8 P.M., Clay Shaw, handcuffed and with Edward Wegmann by his side, was brought to Central Lock-Up where he was fingerprinted. The booking officer, Aloysius Habighorst, knew nothing about Jim Garrison’s case and had never heard the name “Bertrand.” While, as was customary, Wegmann waited in the doorway, Habighorst questioned Shaw as he typed the booking card. He was born in New Orleans, Shaw said, although in fact his birthplace was Kentwood. Shaw’s CIA personnel file reveals the same error, as he maintained the consistency of his self-invention.

  “What names other than Clay L. Shaw do you use?” Habighorst said. It was a routine question.

  “Clay Bertrand,” Shaw said. Habighorst typed “Clay Bertrand” onto the Bureau of Identification fingerprint card. The booking sheet also carried the “Clay Bertrand” alias. Habighorst sat openly in view and could not unobserved have copied the alias from the field arrest report written by Ivon. No one, including Clay Shaw’s attorney, saw him refer to any other documents as he typed the booking card.

  The search of Clay Shaw’s house produced a chess set on a lacquered board and a calorie counter, revealing that Shaw’s interests in more than literary matters coincided with Jim Garrison’s. Downstairs, the walls were covered with pale green silk, the floors with Oriental carpets. Upstairs, it was as if an entirely different man lived here. Attached to the beams in the ceiling over the bed in the master bedroom, just as Dr. Lief’s patient had described them, were huge hooks with chains fitted with wrist straps hanging free, hooks large enough to hang a human body.

  On the ceiling were bloody palm prints. Many hands had been suspended there, William Alford thought, and he wondered whether anyone had died or been seriously injured in this room. A black gown bore “whip marks,” William Gurvich noticed. Five whips bore traces of blood. A cat-o’-nine-tails sat in the closet.

  “Let’s dust and lift those prints,” Alford said. Ivon refused. The boss didn’t want to make Shaw’s sexuality an issue.

  At 11:15, Garrison’s investigators emerged from 1313 Dauphine Street with five cardboard boxes containing ropes, whips, chains, marble phalluses, the black cape, a black hood and black lacquer Asian-type sandals with white satin linings that had never touched pavement, belying the later contention that these were Mardi Gras costumes. Shaw’s notebooks contained the names of European aristocrats.

  Jim Garrison sent the phalluses, whips and chains to Robert Heath, the head of psychiatry at Tulane. Heath concluded that Shaw’s motive for becoming involved in a conspiracy to murder President Kennedy “could very possibly have been rooted in his “sadistic, homosexual abnormality,” a thesis Jim Garrison rejected.

  “I don’t want that factor to enter this case,” Garrison reiterated, even as, privately, he called Shaw a “Phi Beta Kappa sadist.” Nor would he investigate whether violent sex crimes had emanated from behind those red doors at 1313 Dauphine Street. He did not pursue complaints against Shaw stemming from sexual evenings when violent practices were rumored to have gotten out of hand.

  Alford’s suspicions about those bloody handprints had been well founded. Shaw’s maid, Virginia Johnson, would reveal that there had been a “mysterious death or killing of somebody in the house,” and although the coroner had come to pick up the body, there had been no police investigation. Al Oser discovered that only two weeks before Shaw’s arrest, the police were called “because Clay Shaw, a white male, and two colored males were on the patio naked and using wine bottles on each other.”

  Among the first people Shaw notified after his arrest was Fred Lee Crisman, Tommy Beckham’s mentor. He was in trouble, Shaw told fellow CIA operative Crisman. In addition to their political affiliations, Shaw and Crisman had sexual proclivities in common. Crisman would describe himself as “being sadistic in sexual practice pref
erences.”

  Clay Shaw’s friends at once insisted that Jim Garrison had arrested him only to further his own career. Garrison denied this charge vehemently: “I’d have to be a terribly cynical and corrupt man to place another human being on trial for conspiracy to murder the president of the United States just to gratify my political ambition,” he said. He told CBS reporter Joe Wershba, “I have nothing personal against this man. I have more in common with Clay Shaw than with many members of my staff. He loves music, he writes plays. . . .”

  Yet even Garrison’s own friends wondered at the arrest of the respectable director of the International Trade Mart, a socialite who escorted rich women, like funeral home heiress Muriel Bultman, nicknamed “the fruit fly,” to opera and theater; Shaw the playwright; Shaw who flew businessmen to Latin America to help make their fortunes; Shaw the war hero. Could this man have been involved in the murder of the president?

  “Is this another Wilmer?” Jack Bremermann wrote jokingly to Garrison, referring to Wilmer Thomas whom Garrison had put up for Tulane student body president. He received no reply. G. Wray Gill, according to David Ferrie’s godson Morris Brownlee, seemed troubled, exhibiting “personal fear.”