27-09-2013, 09:15 PM
Dawn Meredith Wrote:John: As you know I loved your book. Could not put it down.
Re the very little info you were able to garner from Mary Ferrell, I am wondering if you have had an opportunity
to read Joe McBride's book? I believe he is the first researcher-aside from Harry Livingstone in Killing The Truth- to really burst through the sham that was Mary Ferrell.
Any thoughts on this?
Dawn
Well, Dawn, since you asked...
[This post wound up being longer than anticipated -- sorry about that.]
Joe very kindly sent me a copy of his book some months back, and I read the Ferrell sections with great interest.
My first inklings that there were doubts about Mary Ferrell were when Livingstone's book came out -- whenever that was, mid-90s I guess. I was then fairly new to the critical community. At the time, I balanced what I knew about HL, with the vigorous defenses of MF that appeared along with the accompanying condemnation of HL's book. But I came to no conclusions. An agnostic, as it were.
A year or two later I heard more suspicions, more like certainties, from "J" -- I think it's okay to use his name now, but I'll cautiously err and omit it. I met him through your Pfluegerville friend. So, doubt began piling upon doubt.
I interviewed Mary Ferrell in person on two occasions, both over a Dallas conference weekend, Nov. 17-18, 2000. I did not know her and set the interviews up through Robert Chapman. I briefly describe these interviews in the intro to my book. What I did not mention was my sense that the whole interview situation was somewhat controlled.
First of all, the evening was not conducive to an interview. It was late, the end of a long day of the Lancer conference. I was tired, MF's suite was filling with admirers and others. They were drinkin' champagne. I had barely introduced myself, and described what I wanted to do, when the conversation was steered to the topic of Jim Garrison. I did not bring it up (though I would have eventually).
Immediately, Mrs Ferrell described her initial contacts with Tom Bethell in 1966. Bethell contacted her on JG's behalf. Quoting from my transcript of that interview: "...in December of 1966, Garrison had heard about me through Tom Bethell, I presume. Possibly Penn Jones, because he knew about him. And he called. And he went through a series of, you know, 'go to, let me give you a pay phone number, and you go to a pay phone and call this pay phone in New Orleans, and I'll call you back.' I mean, it was really, you know, playing spy games."
So, right away she was portraying him as a paranoid, a kook.
She described going to New Orleans a few months later. All of this, by the way, was speaking without notes or any other apparent memory aid. She told me she met with Garrison in his office and he showed her evidence against Shaw that, as a non-participant, she should not have seen -- impropriety on his part, in other words.
Leaving the courthouse that afternoon, she told me her son and daughter-in-law, who were with her, said that JG was great, then asked what she thought. "He's the most charming man I've ever met," Ferrell said she replied. "But, poor dear, he's let this assassination drive him crazy!"
MF corresponded with Sylvia Meagher beginning, to the best of my knowledge, in 1970. MF's first letter, which appears to be the beginning of their acquaintance, describes her activities on 11-22-63, which more or less square with what she told me 30 years later, then segues to a discussion of Garrison. Sylvia, of course, was at this time on the record as opposing the DA, whose case by then had concluded.
"We spent two whole days in Garrison's office completely spell-bound by his charm," Ferrell wrote in this 1970 letter. But at the end of the first day, leaving the courthouse, the son and daughter-in-law asked what she thought.
"I said, 'Yes, he is the most charming man I've ever met but I've never felt as sorry for anyone in my life.' They were appalled and wanted to know what I meant. I said, 'The man is completely insane. He has let this drive him crazy.' Of course, I was later to decide that he had been insane long before he ever heard of Kennedy or the assassination."
Okay -- maybe this is no big deal. But of course MF was not a shrink and thus not qualified to make any assessment of JG's psyche. And it bothered me that she directed our conversation straight to Garrison (as if I had a pro-Garrison agenda she wanted to torpedo) and really dumped on him. It also bothered me that she used almost exactly the same language to me as she did in a 30-year-old letter to SM. Maybe that just means she has consistently quoted herself accurately. But the overall anti-Garrison tone, which I had not invited, disturbed me. I definitely felt like she was trying to influence me.
Finally -- and I've already gone on longer than I meant to, but in for a penny, in for a pound -- that night in her room, I observed as she screened phone calls and told Chapman, who was answering the phone, that she did not want to speak with so-and-so. Maybe she was tired. Maybe she was too busy entertaining and enjoying her bubbly. But when I later attempted to follow up with phone interviews I never did get through. Either she wouldn't answer the phone, or had an excuse why she could not talk. Closest I came: she answered the phone, but once I ID'd myself said she had to rush her son to the hospital because he broke his arm. I had met her son. He was older than me. Old enough to get himself to the hospital. In fairness, she followed up with an email apologizing for being so abrupt on the phone. But all future attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
Maybe it all means nothing, and I'm reading too much into it. At the time, I thought I was the one who failed -- I felt bad she was so underrepresented in the book. Someone even phoned me in 2007 and read me the riot act over this. How could you leave her out, etc etc.
I'm sorry if this post is an instance of TMI. And I'm sorry to ramble on like this. It might not even be what you were asking about. I guess I have wanted to share these anecdotes for a long time!