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As a.result of allegations made by Judyth
Vary Baker, a woman who was born in Indiana
in 1943, lived in New Orleans in 1963 and.now
lives incognito in Europe, the story of Oswald's
five months in New Orleans has, in the words .
of author Edward T. Haslam, "morphed into
an 800-pound gorilla" that includes a "siz-
. zling little romance between a beautiful young
woman and a soon-to-be-accused assassin."
Because the CBS news show "60
Minutes," concluding that her claims were
not adequately corroborated, decided not
to run a potentially dynamite episode on
her, Judyth Vary Baker (hereinafter usually
"JVB") first came to the attention of the
public in November 2003, when the History
Channel broadcast Episode 8 of Nigel Turner's
nine-part documentary The Men Who Killed
Kennedy. The documentary emphasizes dis
crepancies and inconsistencies in the Warren
Commission's Oswald-was-the-single-assassin
theory. Entitled "The Love Affair," Episode 8
recounted JVB's story and included interviews
with her.
JVB appears to care so much about Lee
Harvey Oswald that she is even willing to
defend Oswald against claims that he was
sexually inadequate, or that he lacked sexual
experiences with various women before marry
ing. JVB describes herself as"the last lover of
Lee Harvey Oswald."
Her story, reduced to its essence and omit
ting numerous interesting factual details, is
that while living as a young woman (at first
unmarried, then newly married) in New Orleans
in 1963 she became a friend and then a lover
of Oswald, who was also married; that she
frequently traveled around New Orleans with
Oswald and spent lots of time with him there;
that the two of them ate together at restau
rants and shacked up in hotel rooms, and that
occasionally she went on double dates with
Oswald; that through Oswald she met, among
others, David Feme, Guy Banister and Jack
Ruby; that in New Orleans she, together with
Feme, Oswald, prominent local physicians and
various other persons, clandestinely worked in
secret laboratories on a hush-hush CIA plot to
kill Fidel Castro by devising and then dosing
him with an ultravirulent cancer virus; that
this plot involved breeding horrific cancer
viruses and carrying out lethal experiments
on mice and later monkeys; th§t both she and
Oswald had cover jobs, ostensibly working for
Reilly Coffee Co. but in reality working with
others on the secret CIA plan to assassinate
Castro by means designed to make Castro's
death appear to be of natural causes; that
Oswald was a loyal undercover agent for U.S.
intelligence agencies; that Oswald sent anony
mous warnings to the FBI in time to prevent
the assassination, warnings which were
unheeded; and that Oswald was framed for the
JFK slaying, and murdered to prevent him from
defending himself.
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In 2007, JVB's claims again came to public
. attention when Edward T. Haslam published
his book, Dr. Mary's Monkey. Haslam, whose
father had been a prominent New Orleans
physidan, investigated the grisly unsolved
1964 murder of Dr. Mary Sherman in New
Orleans, and discovered to his amazement
that his "inquiry would connect some of the
city's most prominent citizens to 'lone nut' Lee
Harvey Oswald, to the Mafia and to forces high
inside the U.S. Government"
Dr. Sherman, one of the nation's leading
cancer researchers, was, according to both
Edward Haslam and JVB, part of the top
secret, CIA-based research project to develop
dangerous cancer viruses to infect Castro.
In his 1967 Playboy interview, it should be
noted, Jim Garrison named Dr. Sherman as one
of the physicians who worked with Feme on
cancer viruses and expressed the view that her
association with Feme was probably not "com
pletely unrelated" to her gruesome murder.
Haslam interviewed JVB while working on
his book, and several chapters and the appen
dix of Dr. Mary's Monkey examine JVB's story.
A previous version of Haslam's book, privately
printed in 1995, and entitled Mary, Feme, and
the Monkey, was written before Haslam ever
heard of JVB.
Haslam's book draws three broad conclu
sions about JVB, all favorable to her. First,
yes, there is a Judyth Vary Baker) and she is
who she says she is, the woman who was born
in 1943 and lived in New Orleans in 1963.
Second, JVB did know Oswald in New Orleans
in 1963, and she did work with Oswald as a
fellow employee of Reilly Coffee Co. Third,
JVB had been trained to handle cancer viruses
before she went to New Orleans.
JVB's story again made the news in
September 2010, when her Me & Lee: How
I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey
Oswald, was published. This 600-page auto
biographical book, a must-read, is plentifully
interspersed with photographs of persons,
places and documents. Although JVB's claims
may possibly involve hoax, fraud or mental
derangement, or may be part of a disinforma
tion campaign designed to confuse assassina
tion researchers, on the whole Me & Lee is a
believable book. Based on what we now know
of long-concealed CIA crimes, conspiracies and
depravities, JVB's story has the ring of truth.
To date, however, the story has not been
proved to be either true or false.
The fiercest critics of JVB's story are the
usual suspects—the Warren Report's diehard
true believers, the people who never learn. I
agree, therefore, with the reviewer who writes:
"Judyth Baker seems to be a credible charac
ter in this story."
Was Oswald Innocent?
JVB acknowledges that she never saw
Oswald again after he left New Orleans
(although she says they stayed in contact
by long-distance phone calls until two days
before JFK was assassinated). Since she
was not with Oswald during the two months
just before the assassination, is she correct
in insisting that Oswald was innocent and
framed?
At this point it is impossible to say. But
Lee Harvey Oswald was and is entitled to a
presumption of innocence. His rights were not
respected. He received cuts to his head and
eye injuries while being arrested. He never
had a chance to defend himself or contest the
evidence said to indicate his guilt
His plaintive cry to the public for help, "I
do request someone to come forward to give
me legal representation," was ignored, and
he never got a lawyer. He was murdered while
a handcuffed prisoner in police custody and
while in a police station in the presence of 70
officers.
Unlike the assassins of Lincoln, Garfield
and McKinley, Lee Harvey Oswald had no
known motive to kill a president. Whereas
assassins John Wilkes Booth, Chartes Guiteau
and Leon Czolgosz gloried in their murderous
deeds, Oswald strongly denied assassinating
anyone.
Lee Harvey Oswald's public statements
denying guilt, made during the twadays
between his arrest and his murder by Jack
Ruby, deserve to be remembered: "I emphati
cally deny these charges." "I didn't shoot any
one." "I haven't shot anybody." "Ididn't kill
anybody." "I'm just a patsy."
Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.
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