The JFK 100
"I'm a Dead Man!"
Joe Pesci as Jim Garrison's suspect, David Ferrie
Joe Pesci as Jim Garrison's suspect, David Ferrie
It's possible that the real David Ferrie might have said such a thing to Lou Ivon, as former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims in his second book on the assassination, On the Trail of the Assassins.(2) It's curious, however, that in his first book, the DA has Ferrie saying the same thing, not to Ivon, but to an associate named Allen Campbell.(3)
David Ferrie
"Dave had been sick for a long time," recalls Ferrie friend Layton Martens. "He had such high blood pressure. I remember him having spontaneous nose-bleeds all the time. . . . With the Garrison thing, his health deteriorated rapidly."(4)
When anti-Castro activist (and noted Lee Harvey Oswald antagonist) Carlos Bringuier saw Ferrie within days of the alleged phone call to Lou Ivon, Ferrie "looked real sick. He told me, 'I feel very sick. I should be in bed. My physician told me to stay in bed. I have a big headache. Garrison is trying to frame me.'"(5)
He told a number of other acquaintances that he was dying, speculating that he had encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Only days after this alleged conversation with Lou Ivon, Ferrie died of a ruptured berry aneurysm -- a burst blood vessel in the brain.
So it appears that Jim Garrison, in his memoirs, distorts the words of a dying man in order to falsely implicate him in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And Oliver Stone does the same.
You may wish to see . . .
The JFK 100: Who Was David Ferrie?
NOTES:1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 86. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.
2. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 160.
3. Jim Garrison, A Heritage of Stone (New York: Berkley, 1970), pp. 110, 208 fn. 59. Garrison's cited source for the remark is an NODA interview with Allen Campbell, May 14, 1969 -- two and a half months after the Clay Shaw trial ended.
4. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), p. 402.
5. Gerald Posner, Case Closed (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 436.
The JFK 100: Who Was David Ferrie?