JFK: Lee Harvey Oswald, Judyth Vary Baker, Dr. Mary Sherman and the SV40 plot against Castro

Any New Orleans list of best physicians from the 1960s would include Dr. Alton Ochsner, Sr., and Dr. Mary Sherman. Both Ochsner and Sherman had roots and degrees from the Midwest. Both schooled or trained in Europe during their formative years, migrated to New Orleans to practice medicine and were on the faculty at Tulane Medical School. Both died in New Orleans. Today, Ochsner is a local medical legend; Sherman is an unsolved New Orleans murder mystery.

Ochsner was one of the physician founders of the medical complex which bears his name and an early proponent of the link between smoking and lung cancer. He was a chest surgeon interested in all cancers and was elected national president of the American Cancer Society. He was also known for his ultraconservative politics, except when lobbying for federal funds to expand his hospital.

Early in her career, Sherman published several papers pertaining to viral research beginning in the 1940s. After medical school, she finished a residency in orthopedics – a tough row to hoe for a female physician in those days. In ‘52, Ochsner recruited Sherman to New Orleans. He offered her a partnership at Ochsner Foundation Hospital, her own cancer laboratory and a faculty position at Tulane.

From 1952 until her death in ‘64, Sherman, a widow before moving South, lived in an apartment on St. Charles Avenue near Louisiana Avenue. She was on the staff of several local hospitals but really thrived in her research laboratory, working with bone and soft tissue cancers. She published several research papers and served on expert committees dealing with bone pathology and cancers.

The late Don Lee Keith, a writer and editor of New Orleans Magazine, called me a couple of times over the years to discuss Sherman’s death. Keith reconstructed the crime scene in his mind and was the first to smell a conspiracy with a cover-up. He was obsessed with Sherman’s murder and wrote about it several times.

Former aide to Professor Longhair and advertising executive-turned-author Edward “Ed” T. Haslam has expanded on Keith’s earlier work. He has written Dr. Mary’s Monkey, a required book for conspiracy lovers. It’s also an interesting read for those with memories of the New Orleans medical profession during the 1960s and ‘70s and really for anyone who wants an armchair visit back to the New Orleans of that era.
As with Ochsner and Sherman, a Tulane Medical School position brought author Ed Haslam to New Orleans in the 1950s, but the appointment was for his physician father. He moved here with his family at a young age and attended several local schools including the New Orleans Academy, Jesuit High School and Tulane University.

Haslam has woven Sherman’s murder into a conspiracy tale involving a clandestine mouse laboratory operated by David Ferrie on Louisiana Parkway; a heavily guarded linear accelerator located Uptown; monkeys from Tulane Medical School; a young high school science fair winner and Lee Harvey Oswald’s secret lover; and a plot to kill Fidel Castro with cancer causing monkey cells orchestrated by a right wing marriage between Carlos Marcello and Alton Ochsner, Sr. – the stealth viruses were then dumped in Haiti where they simmered for almost two decades before erupting into a worldwide epidemic of various cancers and AIDS.

Dr. Monroe Samuels performed Sherman’s autopsy. Samuels documented the cause of death as a heart penetrating stab wound to the chest. The autopsy documented multiple other stab wounds to the abdomen, left arm and right leg. Her sexual organs were also lacerated postmortem.

Even more fascinating to Keith were the burn injuries. I can remember Keith reading me the autopsy report over the telephone a couple of decades after Sherman’s death. A copy of this autopsy report is reprinted in Haslam’s book.

The only remaining portion of Sherman’s right arm was a piece of her upper arm bone. The rest of the extremity was burned to a crisp. The body was discovered in Sherman’s bedroom and the bed was smoldering. However, neither Keith nor Haslam believed the fire was intense enough to have caused almost complete thermal destruction of an arm.

Haslam hypothesizes that government forces installed a huge clandestine linear accelerator on the Uptown grounds of the old U.S. Public Health Hospital. Sherman conducted experiments there to mutate monkey viruses to assist a CIA plot headed by Ochsner to mutate monkey viruses. Something went wrong with the linear accelerator and Sherman suffered a severe but non-fatal burn. If she had been taken to an emergency room, the nature of her burn injuries would’ve exposed their occult plot. One of her comrades sacrificed her with a knife wound to her chest. Her charred body was then moved to her apartment, more stab wounds were inflicted to make it look like a crazed sex killing and then her bed and body were set on fire.