Mary Stults, the daughter of a voice teacher, was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1913. A highly intelligent student, at the age of sixteen she went to France to study at the L’Ecole de M. Collnot before working on a masters at the University of Illinois. At this time she married Thomas Sherman.
Mary Sherman went on to do graduate work at the University of Chicago. As Edward Haslam points out in Dr. Mary’s Monkey: “In 1937, it (University of Chicago) produced the first sustained nuclear reaction for UC physicist Enrico Fermi. This is where Mary Sherman did her post-graduate work. She was trained at the headquarters of nuclear, bio-chemical, and genetic research in America.” During this period Sherman did ground-breaking research into botanical viruses which lived in soil.
Mary Sherman became Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, and practiced medicine at UC’s Billings Hospital. Sherman’s research was brought to the attention of Dr. Alton Ochsner and she was invited to become a partner in the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans where he was carrying out research into the causes of cancer. She was also offered the post of Associate Professor at the Tulane Medical School. Sherman accepted Ochsner’s proposal and started work for her new employer in 1952.
Sherman’s career prospered and she was elected to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS). Soon afterwards she was appointed as chairman of the Pathology Committee of the AAOS. Edward Haslam argues in Dr. Mary’s Monkey (2007) that Sherman was involved in carrying out secret research into developing a vaccine to prevent an epidemic of soft-tissue cancers caused by polio vaccine contaminated with SV-40. This work included using a linear particle accelerator located in the Infectious Disease Laboratory at the Public Health Service Hospital in New Orleans. According to Haslam there was a second-lab working on this project. This was being run by David Ferrie on Louisiana Avenue Parkway.
Mary Sherman was murdered on 21st July, 1964. She had been stabbed in the heart, arm, leg and stomach. Her mattress had been set on fire, but her massive burns could not have come from the smoking mattress. The crime has never been solved. Sherman’s death occurred on the day the Warren Commission came to her city (New Orleans) to obtain testimony about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In 1995 Edward Haslam published Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. In 1999 Judyth Baker revealed her involvement in an anti-Castro conspiracy to individuals outside her family and to CBS Sixty Minutes investigators. In late 2000, newsgroups learned who she was and began speculating on what she had to say. She asserted she had been (at first unwittingly) recruited by Dr. Alton Ochsner and Dr. Mary S. Sherman into a get-Castro project that had the backing of the CIA and of the Mafia in New Orleans.
Judyth was offered a summer medical internship with Dr. Sherman by Ochsner: she accepted, and came to New Orleans in April, 1963. There, she met Lee Harvey Oswald, who introduced her to Sherman’s friend, David Ferrie. Judyth accidentally learned about the clandestine side of the project before Ochsner, who was out of town, was able to steer her to the legitimate side. She then became a willing participant in the project. At the same time, Oswald and Judyth began to fall in love. Neither had a happy marriage (Judyth was recently married to a man who promptly left her alone in New Orleans,and who in other ways neglected her). Oswald became linked to the project, partly to be close to Judyth.
According to Judyth Baker the research into the biological weapon was hidden by using two or more secret mini-labs which were set up when Ochsner’s Clinic made a massive move into new facilities in March, 1963. Equipment, animals, etc. were ‘misplaced’ during the move, the second-largest in the history of New Orleans. The basic project was set up March 23, 1962, using conventional facilities, which then expanded out of the loop for its final phases.
Baker adds that Lee Harvey Oswald learned how to handle the materials safely and keep them alive. He volunteered to courier the materials to Mexico City, where a medical student, doctor or intern was scheduled to take the materials to Cuba. Oswald made frantic efforts to get the materials, which had a short shelf-life, into Cuba himself when his contacts failed to appear. The project, in fact, had been called off because of Hurricane Flora, which devastated Cuba at this time. Oswald was ordered to Dallas: his “desire to go to Cuba” was never mentioned again by him. His transit visa to go to Cuba was approved in mid-October, but by then, Oswald had no more need to go to Cuba: he never used the approved visa, which arrived too late to be of any use in saving the biological materials.
Judyth Baker claims that she and Lee Harvey Oswald planned to divorce and marry in Mexico after he had done all he could to help thwart the plans of an assassination ring, which he had volunteered to investigate. He believed he would have the help of the CIA to escape after providing information, but instead, due to his Pro-Castro activities in New Orleans, which had been under the handling of Guy Bannister (in order to identify Pro-Castroites in New Orleans), Oswald became the perfect patsy, even though he was on record as having admired John F. Kennedy.
According to Judyth, Oswald volunteered to continue to penetrate the ring, even when he realized his life was in danger. Oswald could only speculate on who organized the conspiracy. He was aware that Mafia, Texas oil moguls, and conservative racists put up money to finance an assassination ring that seemed to include a wide variety of planners and participants. He was kept from learning the identities of the leaders, but expressed opinions that Carlos Marcello (godfather of New Orleans and Dallas) and his Mafia friends in Chicago and Miami, along with anti-Castroites and elements of the Secret Service and CIA, were well able to assassinate Kennedy, if those at the highest levels in government cooperated to allow the assassination to take place for their benefit. Oswald told Judyth he would do what he could to try to get the mission aborted, and that he had others who were going to help him to abort the assassination.
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, Judyth Baker claims that she received a phone-call from David Ferrie warning her that she would be killed if she told anyone about her knowledge of these events.
In 2007 Edward Haslam published Dr. Mary’s Monkey, an updated account on the death of Mary Sherman. Haslam believes that Sherman was involved in carrying out secret research into developing a vaccine to prevent an epidemic of soft-tissue cancers caused by polio vaccine contaminated with SV-40. This work included using a linear particle accelerator located in the Infectious Disease Laboratory at the Public Health Service Hospital in New Orleans. Haslam argues that Sherman had an accident while using the linear particle accelerator. This explains why her body was so badly burnt. In an attempt to cover-up her secret research, Sherman was stabbed in the heart and then moved under cover of darkness to her apartment. A small fire was then started in an attempt to explain the burns on her body.