There are several other clues which indicate that the QUICK article about a homosexual conspiracy represented Garrison's views.
1. "I found out that the night Ferrie and his two companions were waiting for a call in Houston and Galveston, a certain Breck Wall was also in Houston and then in Galveston. And now it gets interesting - Breck Wall is a close friend of Jack Ruby's - and oddly enough - Jack Ruby was also a homosexual, word of which has strangely enough to this day not gotten around."
and
"To get the full picture, one must know that Ruby had debts his whole life, and that he never thought of voluntarily paying off his debts. Now he paid $25 to a strip-tease dancer, hawked part of his nightclub for $2,000, and divided it up among those who had been waiting for months. But besides paying off debts, he did something else: at 11:44 PM he called Breck Wall in Galveston.
Today it is evident that Ruby had been given the order from Ferrie through Breck Wall to kill Lee H. Oswald."
The story about Ferrie ordering Ruby to kill Oswald through Breck Wall is a longtime Garrison favorite story. We have covered this in detail in this blog post.
Garrison also told the same story to James Phelan on March 5, 1967 when they met in Las Vegas. Here is an excerpt from his book Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels: (Page 148).
2. "I'm going to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the plot, but I will also prove that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't shoot alone. The real culprit is Manuel Garcia Gonzales. And the head of the plot is Clay Shaw."
and
"The fact that he planned the plot with Ferrie should be enough to get him ten years in prison. But I am more than happy to let him go if he would help me find the real shooter: Manuel Garcia Gonzales."
The story about Manuel Garcia Gonzales story originated from Dean Andrews who fed Garrison some fictitious names of people 'involved' with Oswald. Garrison became convinced that Gonzales was a triggerman in the JFK assassination:
New Orleans States-Item, February 18, 1967
Garrison told his men to find the elusive Gonzales. He sent investigators to Miami and enlisted the support of the Miami Police Department. Eventually, they did find a Manuel Garcia Gonzales - not surprising since it is not an uncommon name:
Of course, that wasn't the right Gonzales.
Dean Andrews ultimately admitted that he made up the name. Here is an excerpt of an investigative report from the Clay Shaw defense team of an interview with Dean Andrews and Richard Townley on April 19, 1967:
Dean Andrews stole the show in the NBC special, "The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison," when he was questioned about Gonzales: (PDF p. 40; original p. 35)
McGee: Where did you get those names?
Andrews: Out of the air.
McGee: In other words, these names were fictional as far as you were concerned?
Andrews: Well, I'm trying to see if this cat's kosher, you know?
McGee: So, you just picked two names out of the air?
Andrews: Right.
McGee: And why did you do that?
Andrews: Well, I don't know what he's up to ... he's pickin' me like chicken, shuckin' me like corn, stewin' me like an oyster, I mean he ain't puttin' nothin' down but air, so I give him two names, see which way he's going.
McGee: So, you made up two names to see what he was going to do with them?
Andrews: Right.
McGee: What did he do with them?
Andrews: I don't know. He hasn't done anything yet.
McGee: Have you had any occasion to have him talk to you about either of those names since then?
Andrews: Oh, about two weeks ago on a Saturday, we're talkin' and he picks up a weapon with an item number on it.
McGee: What kind of weapon?
Andrews: Pistol .. semi-automatic ... black, probably 7.6mm. I didn't examine it and he says that Mannie Garcia Gonzales in Miami or someplace down there, got busted for carrying a concealed weapon. And I told him Mannie Garcia Gonzales was never busted in his life. I didn't believe it. He put the weapon back down, we talked some more, and that was it. I left him.
McGee: Did he tell you that this was a weapon that was taken from this man ...
Andrews: ... from a Manuel Garcia Gonzales ... I don't know if this Manuel Garcia Gonzales he's talking about is for real, or the Mannie Garcia Gonzales is the name I pulled out of the air, that I couldn't say.
McGee: What was your conclusion from that conversation?
Andrews: Well, it that's the Manuel Garcia Gonzales that I told him, he got the right Ta-Ta, but the wrong Ho-Ho.
Of course, Manuel Garcia Gonzales was never found. The similarity between QUICK and Ramparts from June 1967 is striking.
This man, a Cuban exile, was picked out to be the killer. He is still hunted by Garrison. Vanished without leaving a trace: Manuel Garcia Gonzales.
3. "The main investigator who worked for me is one such man (his name is known to the editors). He knows all the gay boys in the French Quarter from his earlier days. He was one of them. He knows how they think, how they feel, and how they react. Although he has been married three times by now, he hasn't forgotten. And he did a good job.
He led me to Clay Shaw. And what kind of homosexual this man is has never been in any newspaper before. In his apartment, we found whips and chains, and there was blood on the whips and chains. We found a pair of shoes that previously belonged to a Chinese executioner, and we found a gun."
When I first read this paragraph, it wasn't quite clear who Garrison was talking about. Was it Bill Gurvich, or was it Louis Ivon who were chief investigators for Garrison? I quickly realized it was probably Pershing Gervais, who was Garrison's chief investigator in the early 1960s. He played a small role at the beginning of the investigation - we posted his recorded interview with Jack Martin on this blog.
There were indeed rumors that he was gay, and that he once owned a gay bar in the French Quarter. Here is an excerpt from a book about Frenchy Brouillette, Mr. New Orleans: The Life of a Big Easy Underworld Legend: (Page 164)
"Pershing's resume as a backstabber and sleazeball was humbling. A sample would read: ballot-stuffer, dirty cop, professional informant, sexual deviant, male prostitute, gay bay owner, political bagman, crooked chief investigator for the District Attorney's office, and finally an informant in the Witness Protection Program who later double-crossed the government."
and
"Pershing invested his whoring profits in the purchase of a gay bar aptly called The Dungeon, which had a reputation for rolling and blackmailing closeted businessmen and politicians." (Page 165)
Jim Garrison wrote about Pershing Gervais in his book, On the Trail of the Assassins: (Page 127 - 128)
"I felt that a completely honest, "square" D.A.'s office like ours could use a man like Gervais who had once gone wrong and was "born again." We needed some firsthand knowledge of the hidden underworld of the city, and Gervais seemed to know what was happening everywhere from Bourbon Street to the farflung edges of town."
and:
"During that time, Gervais had been a virtual tourguide for us as we began to strike at the strip joints, gambling operations, and other racketeer activities that had become synonymous with New Orleans."
What really solidified it was when I checked notes in the Patricia Lambert files from an interview she conducted with Gervais. She noted that he had been married three times, just like the QUICK article stated.
How many people knew all these details about Pershing Gervais in early 1967? It certainly sounds like this came from Jim Garrison.
Tomorrow's Post
How did QUICK Magazine know about Jim Dondson, a gay man who was with Clay Shaw the weekend of the assassination?
Previous Posts on the QUICK Article