Opening Of Shaw Trial

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31908, 8 February 1969, Page 13

Opening Of Shaw Trial

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) NEW ORLEANS,

Feb. 7. The New Orleans District Attorney, Mr Jim Garrison, today told an all-male jury at the opening of the Clay Shaw trial today that the State would prove that President John F. Kennedy was murdered as a result of a conspiracy, and that he fell backwards from a fatal shot fired from the front. Presenting the State’s opening statement in its attempt to convict Shaw, a 55-year-old retired businessman, of conspiring with Lee Harvey Oswald and others to murder President Kennedy, Mr Garrison said he would prove the shots in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas came from “different guns from different locations.” The State, he said, would produce evidence that after the assassination on November 22,1963, Oswald ran down the grass in front of the Texas School-book Depository Building and climbed into a station waggon with another man at the wheel, “and that this station waggon pulled away and disappeared into the traffic on Elm Street.” The Warren Commission’s report issued in September, 1964, concluded that Oswald, acting alone, fired the fatal shots from a sixth-floor window of the depository building and that he escaped by taxi-cab and bus. The taxi-driver—now dead —who testified that he carried Oswald told the Warren Commission he remembered

Oswald because he gave him a nickel tip. Mr Garrison indicated the State would show that Oswald carried his rifle into the depository building and that he was one of those doing the shooting. But Oswald had not fired the fatal shot itself, because Oswald was behind President Kennedy, he said. Reading verbatim from a written statement, Mr Garrison told the jury that President Kennedy “was murdered not by a lone individual behind him but from a conspiracy.” The chief defence lawyer, Mr F. Irvin Dymond, told the jury he would prove that Shaw’s main accuser, Perry Raymond Russo, was lying when he told a preliminary hearing in 1967 that he heard Shaw conspiring to kill the President with Oswald and Ferrie in the fall of 1963. Mr Dymond said it was only after Ferrie died of a cerebral hemorrhage in early 1967, and it was apparent that with Oswald also dead, the conspiracy story could be pressed, that “the cockroaches came out of the woodwork.”

“We will show you that this witness, Russo, is totally unworthy of belief,” Mr Dymond said. Reading in a calm, baritone voice and standing in front of the chain-smoking, whitehaired Shaw, Mr Garrison said the evidence would show that in June, 1963, Shaw attended a party given in the French quarter apartment in New Orleans of David W. Ferrie, “an accomplished airplane pilot,” and discussed the murder of the President. Mr Garrison said that Shaw was overheard talking with Ferrie and others to the effect that the President should be killed and the murder could best be done with a rifle. “At

this point, the defendant, Clay Shaw, suggested that the man doing the shooting would probably be killed before he could make his escape,” Mr Garrison said. “The defendant . . . turned to Ferrie and asked if it might not be possible to fly the gunman from the scene of the shooting to safety. Ferrie replied that it would.”

Later in June that year, Mr Garrison said, Shaw was seen talking to Oswald on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. “The defendant arrived at the lake front in a large, black fourdoor sedan and was met by Oswald, who had walked there. They had a conversation which lasted about 15 minutes.

“At the conclusion, the defendant gave Oswald what appeared to be a roll of money ... in shoving the money into his pocket, Oswald dropped several leaflets.” These yellow leaflets were identical with “Fair Play for Cuba Committee’ literature taken from Oswald by harbour police earlier that month, Mr Garrison said. He said the State would show’ that in late August Clearly September, 1963, Oswald wanted to get a job in a state hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, and had learned that he had to register to vote to be employed. Soon after, Mr Garrison said, Shaw, Oswald, and Ferrie drove into Clinton, Louisiana, in a black Cadillac and parked near the registrar’s office. The State would show that Oswald got out of the car and into line to register. The State would produce witnesses to say that they saw the parked car, and could identify the three men. Mr Dymond said that Shaw “never laid eyes" on either Oswald or Ferrie.