on January 25-27, 1971 Judge Herbert Christenberry held a three-day hearing to determine if perjury charges against Clay Shaw should proceed. In an earlier blog post, I went through Perry Russo's testimony at that hearing in which he pleaded the fifth.
The day before he testified, Russo stopped by the law offices of Irvin Dymond for a discussion. Here is a memo of their conversation:
Some pretty incredible stuff in this memo:
- Russo said Shaw was "absolutely not" at the supposed conspiracy meeting at Ferrie's apartment. Perhaps it was Guy Banister. Interestingly, Russo is not ready to admit that the meeting never happened.
- Garrison's office wanted to pin other murder charges on Shaw.
- Russo says he was upset that Shaw was arrested only on the basis of what Russo's statements. He was led to believe there was other evidence against Shaw.
- There was a "terrible scene" when Lt. O'Donnell gave his report on Russo's lie detector test. See our earlier post on this for more details.
- Russo said Garrison's office knew how Judge Haggerty would rule on admission of documents. The staff were "completely shocked" when Officer Habighorst's fingerprint card showing that Shaw had admitted his alias was Clay Bertrand was not allowed. (We'll be doing a post on this)
On January 29th 1971, Perry Russo went back to visit with Shaw's attorneys for a lengthy interview. He was also interviewed on March 26, 1971, and on April 16, 1971. We will be posting highlights of these transcripts in the near future.