David Ferrie - Allegations of Involvement in The Kennedy Assassination

Allegations of Involvement in The Kennedy Assassination

On the afternoon of November 22, 1963 — the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day Marcello was acquitted in his deportation case — New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister and one of his employees, Jack Martin, were drinking together at a local bar. On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a heated argument. According to Martin, Banister said something to which Martin replied, "What are you going to do — kill me like you all did Kennedy?" Banister drew his .357 magnum revolver and pistol-whipped Martin several times. Martin, badly injured, went by ambulance to Charity Hospital.

In the ensuing days, Jack Martin told reporters and authorities that David Ferrie might have been involved in the assassination. Martin told the New Orleans police that Ferrie "...was supposed to have been the getaway pilot in the assassination." He said that Ferrie had threatened Kennedy's life, even outlining plans to kill him, and that Ferrie might have taught Oswald how to use a rifle with a telescopic sight. Martin also claimed that Ferrie had known Oswald from their days in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol, and that he had seen a photograph, at Ferrie's home, of Oswald in a Civil Air Patrol group.

Martin's accusations soon got back to Ferrie, who contacted several of his former Civil Air Patrol associates. Former cadet Roy McCoy told the FBI that "...Ferrie had come by looking for photographs of the cadets to see if Oswald was pictured in any photos of Ferrie's squadron."

Jack Martin also told bail bondsman Hardy Davis that he had heard on television that Ferrie's New Orleans library card had been found in Oswald's possession when he was arrested in Dallas. Davis reported this to Ferrie's employer, the lawyer G. Wray Gill. (In fact, no such library card was found among Oswald's possessions.) Ferrie subsequently visited both Oswald’s former New Orleans landlady and a former neighbor about this report. Ferrie was able to produce his library card for FBI agents who interviewed him on November 27, 1963.

Martin also claimed that Ferrie had driven from New Orleans to Texas on the night of the assassination. (In fact, Ferrie and two friends drove 350 miles (560 km) to the Winterland Skating Rink in Houston, about 240 miles (390 km) from Dallas, that evening.) Ferrie said that "...he had been considering for some time the feasibility and possibility of opening an ice skating rink in New Orleans" and wanted to gather information on the ice rink business. "He stated that he introduced himself to Chuck Rolland and spoke with him at length concerning the cost of installation and operation of the rink." However, Rolland said that he never spoke to Ferrie about running an ice rink. Rolland said that Ferrie had spent his time at the rink's pay phone, making and receiving calls.

On November 25, Martin was contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Martin told the FBI that Ferrie might have hypnotized Oswald into assassinating Kennedy. The FBI considered Martin's evidence unreliable. Nevertheless, FBI agents interviewed Ferrie twice about Martin's allegations. Ferrie claimed that in June 1963, he had been involved in an altercation with Martin, in which he had thrown Martin out of the office of lawyer G. Wray Gill. The FBI also interviewed about twenty other people in connection with Martin's allegations. The FBI said that it was unable to develop a substantial case against Ferrie. (An inquiry by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, conducted a decade and a half later, concluded that the FBI's "...overall investigation of the 544 Camp Street issue at the time of the assassination was not thorough.")

Some of this information reached Jim Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans, who had become increasingly interested in the assassination after a chance meeting with Louisiana Senator Russell Long in late 1966. Garrison said that Long told him: "Those fellows on the Warren Commission were dead wrong. There's no way in the world that one man could have shot up Jack Kennedy that way."

In December 1966, Garrison interviewed Jack Martin. Martin claimed that during the summer of 1963, David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Lee Harvey Oswald, and a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles were involved in operations against Castro's Cuba that included gun running activities and burglarizing armories. Garrison would later write: "The Banister apparatus ... was part of a supply line that ran along the Dallas—New Orleans—Miami corridor. These supplies consisted of arms and explosives for use against Castro's Cuba."

According to testimony by Banister's personal secretary, Delphine Roberts, Ferrie and Oswald were frequent visitors to Banister's office in 1963. She remembered Ferrie as "one of the agents." "Many times when he came into the office he used the private office behind Banister's, and I was told he was doing private work. I believed his work was somehow connected with the CIA rather than the FBI..." The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated Roberts' claims and said that "because of contradictions in Roberts' statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined."

As Garrison continued his investigation, he became convinced that a group of right-wing extremists, including Ferrie, Banister, and Clay Shaw, were involved in a conspiracy with elements of the CIA to kill John F. Kennedy. Garrison would later claim that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy's attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam. Garrison also believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie had conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination.