28-09-2013, 11:30 PM
Dawn Meredith Wrote:Wow. No definitely not TMI.
Much food for thought here.
First, it is fine to say J's name now. Only when he was alive did he demand that total privacy. Jay (Harrison) was very aware that Mary was a fraud. He spend the last several months of his life in 05 trying to get this info out there. At least that is how I saw it during my visits to his home. I don't know how Walt (Brown) has dealt with this, if at all.
Tom Bethel did show up at Mary's home, according to her son Jimmy, and pretended to be doing a story on NO jazz. Later he admitted to the Ferrells that he was "working for" Clay Shaw. So no way JG sent him. (Wonder why he would admit this.) As far as finding JG "charming" that sounds like a sugar coated front to me. JImmy told me she sent him to NO when he was fifteen to be a spy in Garrison's office. (He remains plagued by this).
Did your interviews with her occur before or after talking with J? I am assuming it was her son Jimmy to whom she was referring , her other son had been killed.
In spite of the negative views of HL's book, I think his section on MF is fantastic. It covers who she truly was. The stuff about taking people's pic and side views, like mug shots has been verified by her son Jimmy, to me at many meetings in the late 90's and early 2000's when he was visiting J with a mutual friend and researcher Rachel Rendish.
The critical community has been conned by many a good agent, but there was none better than was Mary. I began to be suspicious of her after a very strange phone conversation in 1990. Around the Roscoe White story. She seemed utterly disingenious. Later would I learn bits and pieces of just how badly so.
Saint Mary being revealed, at last.
Dawn
Bethell admitted to Ferrell he was "working for" Clay Shaw? This is news to me. Is this also according to Jimmy?
When I spoke to Ferrell she stuck with the story about Bethell writing a jazz book. I transcribed the interview and quote therefrom (bracketed remarks in original):
Quote
...and he [Tom Bethell] took a vacation, and went to New Orleans, and he was intrigued with it, and decided to write a book about New Orleans jazz. And he did write the book, later. And it was published by the University of Californiait was a great book, on the clarinet player George Lewis. [George Lewis, A Jazzman from New Orleans, University of California Press, 1977jk]
And of course, Tom Bethell is like Tony Summers. They're both Oxford graduates, and they're both great writers. Tom Bethell is a great writer, and so is Anthony Summers.
But I didn't know he was working for Garrison. I had never heard of Garrison.
End of quote.
My conversations with Jay were two or three times before the Ferrell interview, and possibly once afterward. My Dallas trips tend to blur together. He took me to Tippit's grave and around back behind the house on Beckley, among other things.
Re: Bethell...what a worm. I loved the account in A Farewell to Justice where a "weeping" Bethell admits to his treachery when confronted by Garrison staffers. He later boasted about his treachery in a 1975 article.
Bethell made contact with numerous early critics between late 1966 and early 1967. Weisberg alludes to him early in Oswald in New Orleans. I have a 1966 letter he wrote to Vince Salandria somewhere but can't seem to find it at the moment.
In a January 1967 letter to Sylvia Meagher, L.A. Jones wrote that Bethell was staying with the Joneses. He was quite the freeloader, according to this letter. "He is physically dirty, he wears a shirt (usually one of ours) FOR ONE WEEK. He is extremely lazy. It takes both Penn and me to get him out of bed before noon. Or maybe 1 o'clock. He's arrogant about everything..."
Meagher wrote back a few days later. She did not refer to Bethell by name but it is clear who she means. "I had the pleasure of his company only for a mere five hours and of course he was extremely well-behaved, except that I thought he would never leave and I had nothing with which to feed him...why should you have to suffer him? Tell him about the many hotels in Dallas...but you and/or Penn probably are too much of a softie to do it."