Perry Russo

Perry Raymond Russo (14 May 1941 – 16 August 1995)[1][2] was the key witness for the prosecution in the trial of Clay Shaw in New Orleans in 1969. He claimed that in September 1963 he witnessed businessman and civic leader Clay Shaw conspiring with Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie to assassinate U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Perry Russo
Born
Perry Raymond Russo

(1941-05-14)May 14, 1941
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
DiedAugust 16, 1995(1995-08-16) (aged 54)
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Friend of David Ferrie

Russo was an insurance salesman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He attended Tulane University, received a bachelor's degree from Loyola University New Orleans in 1964, and attended one year of law school at Loyola.[2][3] He moved away from New Orleans in September 1965.[3] Russo came forward after his friend David Ferrie died on February 22, 1967, while being investigated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in regard to Kennedy's death. In four television and newspaper interviews that Russo gave,[4] he talked at length about Ferrie. He said that Ferrie had told him about a month before the assassination: "We will get him, and it won't be long," and on another occasion, "You know we can get Kennedy if we want him."

Russo said nothing in the interviews about Oswald, Shaw, or a conspiracy.[5] When a television reporter asked him on February 24 if Ferrie had ever mentioned Oswald's name, Russo said, "No. I had never heard of Oswald until the television [coverage] of the assassination."[6]

However, when he was interviewed by Garrison's office on February 27, Russo described a roommate of Ferrie's in New Orleans as having "sort of dirty blond hair and a husky beard … a typical beatnik, extremely dirty." When Russo was shown a picture of Oswald, he said that Oswald was the person whom Ferrie had introduced to him as his roommate sometime between May and October of 1963.[7] When shown a picture of Shaw, Russo said he saw him and Ferrie talking in a car at Ferrie's service station. But still Russo said nothing about Shaw or Oswald conspiring with Ferrie to murder Kennedy.[8] Russo added that if he were hypnotized he may have total recall on names and places and dates.

Garrison arranged to have Russo interrogated three times while hypnotized, the first time while also under an injection of sodium thiopental, known popularly as "truth serum". Now Russo described a conspiracy plot, with Shaw (using the alias "Bertrand") and a rifle-toting "Leon" Oswald at Ferrie's apartment when Russo was visiting in mid-September 1963. Russo said Ferrie told him, "We are going to kill John F. Kennedy" and "it won't be long."[9]

Testimony against Clay Shaw

At Shaw's preliminary hearing on March 15, 1967, Russo repeated the claims he had made under hypnosis. When asked on cross-examination why he had not gone to the authorities two months after the alleged meeting, when Kennedy was assassinated, Russo replied, "I had an involvement with school, which was more pressing to me."[3]

Russo named two witnesses who could corroborate his story of attending a party at Ferrie's apartment in September 1963 in which the assassination plot was made. The first, Russo's former girlfriend, appeared on an NBC News program about the Garrison investigation on June 19, 1967, and denied being at Ferrie's apartment, and said that she never even met Ferrie until 1965. The second, a friend of Russo's, told NBC News that he was at Ferrie's apartment then but saw nobody resembling Oswald or Shaw.[10]

Russo failed two polygraph examinations ordered by Garrison, on March 8 and June 19, and during the second he confessed to the polygraph operator that his story was not true.[11][12] Walter Sheridan, a former FBI agent and aide to Robert F. Kennedy who was investigating the Garrison accusations for NBC News, reported,

"In my conversations with Perry Russo, he has stated that his [preliminary hearing] testimony against Clay Shaw may be a combination of truth, fantasy, and lies. He says he wishes he had never gotten into this, but now he feels he has no choice but to go through with it. He said he’s afraid if he changed his testimony, that Garrison might indict him for perjury . . . Russo said ‘The hell with truth, the hell with justice. You’re asking me to sacrifice myself for Clay Shaw, and I won’t do it.’"[13]

At a press conference the day after the NBC broadcast, Russo accused Sheridan of attempting to bribe him into changing his story, and of alternating between promises and threats in seeking his help to "wreck the Garrison investigation." NBC News denied the allegations, and Sheridan said that Russo had solicited offers from them.[14]

Garrison had Russo testify two years later at the Clay Shaw trial, which ended in a not-guilty verdict after less than an hour of jury deliberation.

Later life

Time magazine in a story on the Garrison case published in July 1968, referred to "Drug Addict Perry Russo", erroneously conflating him with another prosecution witness, Vernon Bundy.[15][16] Russo filed a defamation suit against the magazine, and received a $15,000 out of court settlement ($92,000 in 2007 dollars).[17]

In August 1970, Perry Russo and another man were arrested for burglarizing a New Orleans residence, stealing property valued at eight thousand dollars, and being in possession of a stolen safe-deposit key. Garrison’s office declined to prosecute on the burglary and theft charges. Russo pled guilty to possessing the stolen key and was given a three-month suspended sentence.[18][19][20]

In 1971, two years after Shaw's not-guilty verdict, Russo told one of Shaw's lawyers that he never saw Shaw at Ferrie's apartment, and that Garrison's office had done "a complete brainwashing job" on him.[21][22] In a second, tape-recorded interview with a former Garrison investigator and two of Shaw's attorneys, Russo spoke of Garrison and his staff telling him before the trial that they had a contract with Life magazine for $25,000, and that "after the Shaw conviction" they would "either give that to me or see somehow that I got a lot of it for my trouble." Russo also said, "I guess I always knew [Shaw] had nothing to do with anything."[23] But to others, Russo continued to assert that he had seen Ferrie, Shaw, and Oswald conspiring to kill President Kennedy.[24][25]

Journalist James Phelan, who covered the Garrison investigation for The Saturday Evening Post, later explained,

"He [Russo] told me [in March 1967] that he was caught in the middle of this thing, that if he stuck to his story, Shaw and his friends and lawyers would clobber him. If he changed his story, then Garrison would charge him with perjury and chuck! — there would go his job with Equitable Life. He told me all he was concerned about was his own position, that he wished he'd never opened his mouth about it, wished he could go back to the day before he shot off his mouth up in Baton Rouge."[26]

Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK has Russo's testimony given by a character named "Willie O'Keefe". Stone has said that in addition to Perry Russo, O’Keefe was a composite of three other Garrison witnesses — David Logan, Raymond Broshears, and William Morris.[27]

Russo, who had been working as a driver for United Cab in New Orleans, died of a heart attack at age 54.[28][29]

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References
  1. Social Security Death Index.
  2. Transcript of Russo’s testimony at Clay Shaw's trial on February 10, 1969, HSCA Record 180-10097-10190, p. 10.
  3. Transcript of Russo's testimony at the preliminary hearing for the Clay Shaw trial, March 1967.
  4. Dave Reitzes, Perry Raymond Russo: Way Too Willing Witness.
  5. Perry Russo interviews.
  6. Transcript of Jim Kemp’s interview of Perry Russo on p. 213 of transcript of Russo’s testimony at Clay Shaw's trial on February 10, 1969, HSCA Record 180-10097-10190.
  7. After moving by himself to New Orleans in late April 1963, Lee Oswald lived at the home of his aunt, Lillian Murret, until he got his own apartment on May 10. (Warren Commission Report, Appendix 13: Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, p. 725–726.) Marina Oswald testified at the Clay Shaw trial that Lee had been home with her every night the couple lived in New Orleans (May 11 to September 23, 1963), except the one night he had been in jail.
  8. Andrew J. Sciambra, Memo to Jim Garrison, February 27, 1967.
  9. Perry Raymond Russo: First Hypnosis Session
  10. The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison, NBC News White Paper, June 19, 1967.
  11. Jefferson Parish Deputy Sheriff Roy Jacob, who administered Russo's first polygraph examination, personally told an NBC News reporter that Russo had failed it. The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison, NBC News White Paper, June 19, 1967.
  12. Edward O'Donnell, Memo to Jim Garrison, June 20, 1967.
  13. The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison, NBC News White Paper, June 19, 1967.
  14. George Lardner, Jr., "Russo Hints Of Secrets Up for Sale", The Washington Post, June 22, 1967, p. A7.
  15. "Jolly Green Giant in Wonderland", Time, August 2, 1968.
  16. Testimony of Vernon Bundy, Jr. in the preliminary hearing of Clay Shaw, March 1967.
  17. "The Last Testament of Perry David Russo", interview by Will Robinson and Marilyn Colman, The Lighthouse Report radio program, October 1992.
  18. "Witness in Clay Shaw Case Held on 3 Burglary Counts", UPI story, The New York Times, August 23, 1970, p. 58.
  19. "Perry Russo Convicted", Associated Press story, The New York Times, September 27, 1970, p. 58.
  20. John Seigenthaler, A Search for Justice, Aurora Publishers, 1971, p. 115. ISBN 0876950039.
  21. Memo by Edward F. Wegmann of interview with Perry Russo, January 27, 1971.
  22. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film, M. Evans, 1998, p. 305, footnote 20. ISBN 0871318792.
  23. Transcript of interview of Perry Russo by William Gurvich, Edward Wegmann, and Irvin Dymond on April 16, 1971, pp. 2–3, quoted by Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, p. 1375. ISBN 978-0393045253.
  24. "The Last Testament of Perry David Russo", interview by Will Robinson and Marilyn Colman, The Lighthouse Report radio program, October 1992.
  25. William Matson Law, "Conversations With Perry", 1998.
  26. James Kirkwood, American Grotesque, Simon & Schuster, 1970, p. 168. ISBN 0671206842.
  27. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film, Applause Books, 2000, p. 66. ISBN 978-1557831279.
  28. "Key Witness in '69 Shaw Trial Dies", New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 17, 1995, p. B1.
  29. "Coroner: Tests Still Out, Russo Had Bad Heart", New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 18, 1995, p. B2. The headline refers to toxicology tests.
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