David Ferrie was a person of interest to Garrison from the start. He was a pilot for Eastern Airlines until he was fired for activities with underage boys. He then worked for Wray Gill, who was an attorney for Carlos Marcello. On the day of the JFK assassination, Ferrie was in a New Orleans courtroom on the last day of a trial in which Marcello was acquitted.
That evening, Ferrie and two friends drove to Houston for a weekend of fun. One of his companions, Al Beauboeuf, was a particularly good roller skater and he wanted to try his hand at ice skating. And so Ferrie took him ice skating.
Garrison makes it all sound ominous. He wonders why Ferrie would drive through a thunderstorm to get to Houson. Well, I talked to Al Beauboeuf. He is now 74 years old and he told me - well, if you knew David Ferrie, he would fly right into thunderstorms. And so driving in a car through some rain definately woudn't faze him.
You can read more about David Ferrie in my book.
Garrison put him under surveillance in 1967.
This surveillance yielded nothing. Well, there was nothing to find, really. Here's one of several memos.
But wait, there's more.
That's not all.
The David Ferrie story, as told by Garrison and other conspiracy authors, presents a very inaccurate portrait. He had very little to do with anti-Cuban politics after his dismissal from Eastern Airlines - thereafter his time was spent trying to get reinstated. None of Ferrie's friends had ever seen Clay Shaw, nor had they ever seen Perry Russo. He was an intelligent man who would help a stranger change a tire in a restaurant car park. And, while I don't condone consorting with underage boys, they never turned on him. He taught them to fly, and encouraged in their intellectual pursuits.
Bottom line: Ferrie was not a conspirator in the JFK assassination. But, read my book for the full story.