Ch. 11. Clay Shaw, Permindex Director

Clay Shaw, under the name of Clay or Clem Bertrand, was overheard planning the assassination of President Kennedy with David Ferrie and Bettit, alias Leon Oswald, during the middle of September, 1963, in New Orleans. New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, produced a witness who told a three-judge criminal district court panel March 14, 1967, he heard Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie plotting to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

Perry Raymond Russo, 25, an insurance salesman from Baton Rouge, testified he was in Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans in September, 1963, and listened to a discussion of how to kill Kennedy and make a getaway. Russo said the plot involved "triangulation of crossfire," diversionary shooting and the sacrificing of one man as a scapegoat to allow the others to escape. Russo, a part-time college student who lives with a younger cousin near the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, was described as "a nice young kid" by a neighbor. A fellow student at LSU said he was "a quite type who is interested in politics."

Under questioning by Garrison, Russo said Oswald was introduced to him as "Leon Oswald" and Shaw as "Clem Bertrand". Shown a photograph by Garrison, Russo identified Leon as Lee Harvey Oswald. Asked if Clem Bertrand was in the courtroom, Russo pointed at Shaw. At Garrison's direction, he stepped from the witness chair, walked around the defense table and held his hand over Shaw's silvery white hair. Shaw, 54, calmly smoking a cigarette, didn't move.

He is the former Managing Director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans. Russo said he first met Oswald at a party and the next time he saw him was in Ferrie's apartment where Oswald was "wiping or cleaning a bolt action rifle. It had a sight on it for hunting." Garrison showed Russo a rifle and asked if it had similarities to the one Oswald held in Ferrie's apartment. Russo said: "The difference to my mind is that this end (front) was not nearly so bubble shaped." He said the weapon had the same bolt action, but a shinier stock, and its telescopic sight was larger than the one on the rifle Oswald had.

Russo said he had seen Clay Shaw, alias Bertrand, in May, 1963, when Kennedy dedicated a new wharf in New Orleans. "I was in school," Russo said. "The President was coming down to make a speech. At that time I saw Bertrand. While the President was speaking, I was looking around. Bertrand was one of the few not looking at the President." Police estimated 20,000 people attended the dedication.

Russo said that after he contacted Garrison following Ferrie's death, the District Attorney took him to "a house on Dauphine Street." Shaw lives at 1313 Dauphine Street. "He stuck his head out the door and I said, 'That's the man'," Russo said, referring to Bertrand. Garrison asked, "Do you recall anything unusual happening at Ferrie's apartment in 1963?" Russo replied, "Sometime around the middle of September I went to the house and at that time there was some sort of party in progress. There were eight or nine people there. As the party dissipated, it narrowed down to three people besides myself because I had no ride home." 

Russo testified that Ferrie, 49, a free-lance pilot who was under investigation by Garrison at the time of his death, did most of the talking about the proposed assassination. Ferrie, pacing the floor, said the attempt should have three gunners in order to provide "a triangulation of cross-fire", Russo testified. He quoted Ferrie as saying that one man would have to be sacrificed as a scapegoat.

Ferrie, Russo added, was to be the get-away pilot flying into Mexico to refuel for a flight to Brazil. Objections were raised by Bertrand, Russo said. He said Bertrand argued that as soon as the shots were fired "the world would know about it" and once the plane landed in Mexico there would be no way to get out. Under cross-examination by Shaw's attorneys, Russo said that when he saw Oswald in news pictures and on television after the assassination, he "could not be sure" he was Leon Oswald, the man he knew as one of the conspirators. 

Russo was asked if he thought Oswald was "Leon Oswald" when he first saw the assassin's picture. "I gave it thought, but I couldn't be positive of the man," he said. "I was not definite. It was probably the same man. It crossed my mind they were one and the same but I could not be definite."187 "I knew Leon Oswald, who had whiskers," Russo said. "He was dirty. His hair was ruffled up."

A second witness said he saw two men - whom he now can identify as Oswald and Shaw - in conversation near Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans in 1963. Vernon Bundy, 29, who said he was a former heroin addict, walked over to Shaw in court, put his hand over Shaw's head, and identified him as the man he saw with Oswald at the lake front. 

Bundy said one of the men he saw was young, the other much older. He said he heard the "young guy" ask the older man, "What am I going to tell her?" The witness then said the older man handed over " a roll of money or it appeared to be. The young guy put his hand in his right pocket where he had a bunch of pamphlets."

District Attorney Garrison asked Bundy to identify the pictures. Bundy said one was of Lee Harvey Oswald, the other of "the Shaw who has been in the papers lately." Bundy said the pictures were of the same men he saw at the lake front in 1963. Then he pointed out Shaw in the courtroom as one of them. Under questioning by Garrison, Bundy described the "Older man" he saw as "about 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2 but I'm not sure because I'm squatting down. He was distinguished dress, gray hair." He said the younger man was "a junkie or beatnik guy. He was nasty. He needed a haircut and a shave. In fact, he needed everything."

Asked if a man named Layton Martens was Ferrie's roommate at the time, Russo answered, "No sir." Asked what was the name of the roommate, Russo replied, "The roommate at the Louisiana Avenue Parkway apartment was Leon Oswald." Layton Martens' name as David Ferrie's roommate was supplied by Clay Shaw, alias Clay Bertrand, through his attorneys at the hearing. Layton Martens bore a resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald according to the evidence developed in the Clay Shaw proceedings. Russo said he saw Oswald at the apartment three or four times. Asked the last time he saw him there, Russo said, "In the middle of October or late September, 1963."

There are two compelling reasons to believe that Seymour and not Lee Harvey Oswald was the participant in the conspiracy conversation overheard by Russo. First, Russo testified that the Leon Oswald involved in the conversation with Ferrie and Bertrand was the roommate of David Ferrie. It is unquestionable at the time in question, Lee Harvey Oswald was living with his wife and daughter on Magazine Street in New Orleans. Secondly, Lee Harvey Oswald was rather neat and usually clean and clean-shaven, whereas the Leon Oswald at Ferrie's apartment was dirty, unshaven and at least, poorly groomed.

The State of Louisiana during Shaw's trial produced over fourteen witnesses who said that in the latter part of August or the early part of September, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie went to Jackson, Louisiana, a small town located not far from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While in Jackson, he (Oswald) talked to witnesses in reference to his getting a job at the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, and registering to vote in that parish so as to get the job. Witnesses were produced who talked to Lee Harvey Oswald or someone masquerading as him.

The state proved that shortly thereafter, still in late August or early September, 1963, the defendant, Clay L. Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald and David W. Ferrie drove into Clinton, Louisiana, which is very close to Jackson, in a black Cadillac, parking the Cadillac near the Voter Registrar's office on St. Helena Street. While the defendant, Clay L. Shaw and David Ferrie remained in the car, Lee Harvey Oswald got out of the car and got in line with a group of people who were waiting to register. The witnesses testified that they saw the black Cadillac parked in front of the Registrar's office and identified the defendant, Clay L. Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald and David W. Ferrie as the individuals in that car.

Garrison introduced documentary evidence that during the year 1966, the U.S. Post Office letter carrier for that route delivered at least five letters to Clay Shaw's address which were addressed to "Clem Bertrand," the name used by the defendant at the meeting between himself, David Ferrie and William Seymour in Ferrie's apartment in mid-September 1963. None of the letters addressed to "Clem Bertrand" were ever returned to the postal authorities for any reason.195 

On cross-examination, testimony of Clay Shaw at this trial in New Orleans on February 27, 1969 connected Walter Jenkins and tied the Rome and Swiss corporations into American subsidiaries and showed them active during the murder. The pertinent testimony follows:

Q. Do you know Tommy Cox of Dallas, Tex? 

A. Yes, I met him in New Orleans around Mardi Gras some 10 years ago. He was an occasional visitor here and we corresponded. 

Q. Have you ever visited Dallas? 

A. Yes. The last time in 1966. . . .