Judyth A. Vary Baker
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Judyth A. Vary Baker claims to have been a top science student who had an affair with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, during which she and Oswald were involved in a plot with David Ferrie, the CIA and a number of people traditionally associated with JFK assassination lore to develop a biological weapon with which to assassinate the Cuban premier, Fidel Castro. She says the plot failed because the plotters could not make contact with an agent who was supposed to deliver the cocktail of viruses and carcinogens to Castro in Cuba.
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[edit] Early life
Judyth Anne Vary Baker was born May 15, 1943 in South Bend, Indiana to Donald William and Glorianne Whiting Vary. She has a sister named Lynda.
[edit] The saga begins
Judyth's story begins when she was a student at Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida, with her sister. Among fellow students who remember her, the opinion is that she was an "egghead," unconcerned and unaware of many of the popular teenager social behaviors. She appears to have been an excellent science student.
Judyth claims that her real passion, though, was cancer research. She started to conduct "cancer research" with mice. Col. Philip Doyle, a math and science teacher at Manatee High School, set up a special lab for Judyth in the school and introduced her in 1958 to CIA asset Dr. Canute Michaelson, who provided financial support for her initial work and was engaged in bioweapons research. That she received a fair amount of recognition for her academic prowess, attending national workshops for science students is indeed well-documented.
She claims her appearance at an international science fair brought her to the attention of other medical figures with military or intelligence backgrounds, as well as top officials of the American Cancer Society: Dr. Harold Diehl and Dr. Alton Ochsner (of the famed The Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans). According to Judyth, Ochsner was to become her principal behind-the-scenes mentor through her late teen years. However, she has no evidence of any connection with Ochsner. She claims to have begun work as an intern under the renowned researcher Dr. Mary S. Sherman in the spring of 1963, when she would have been only twenty years of age. Dr. Sherman was mysteriously murdered the next year.
[edit] More cancer research
She claims her lab was soon expanded and she received research materials from doctors at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Eli Lilly, Oak Ridge, et al. As of September 2, 1960, Dr. David Jacobus at Walter Reed was supplying her with chemicals and promising more.
She further claims she was forced to take a loyalty oath and, while still in high school, was required to learn conversational Russian at a local junior college from a Dr. Concevitch who sent her letters in yellow mailing envelopes. She still does not know why she had to learn it. She did, she claims, know that Michaelson had somehow targeted her for future intelligence use.
Her work brought her a letter from Florida Senator George Smathers, a close friend of JFK's, who encouraged her to write to the President and volunteer to put her talents to work in the service of her country. There is no evidence that Smathers personally knew anything about Judyth. Congressional staffs routinely scan local papers for people who have achieved something, and send form letters under the name of the congressman or senator.
She did indeed write the White House. Researcher Tony Marsh has discovered both her letter and a reply from a White House staffer. Both letters were routine, and neither mentions anything about any covert project.
[edit] Killers and the women who love them
Her life took a sharp turn in the summer of 1963, when she was in New Orleans. She claims to have begun a torrid sexual affair with Lee Harvey Oswald, notwithstanding having been married on May 2, 1963 to Robert Allison Baker III. Baker was a student working for an oil company and a future petroleum geologist. A meeting between Judyth and Lee was supposedly engineered by plotters who were intent on producing a bioweapon for the purpose of killing Fidel Castro. Both were supposedly given cover jobs at the Reily Coffee Company while they were carrying on an affair and working on a bioweapons project to produce a 'cocktail' to administer to Castro. The 'cocktail' would both knock out Castro's immune system and infect him with cancer, causing his death.
Other plotters included David Ferrie -- a fellow with no expertise in biology whatsoever -- and Dr. Mary Sherman, a physician at the Oschner Clinic. The apartments of Ferrie and Sherman were the site of the bioweapons work.
Oswald supposedly went to Mexico City on a mission to deliver the poison 'cocktail' to another plotter who would sneak it into Cuba to agents able to administer it to Castro. The plot was stymied, however, when no one showed up to collect the bioweapon material from Oswald.
[edit] Aftermath
She claims to have published, in 1964 a short story collection titled Her Way and Other Science Fiction Stories. The title story, originally called "Her Story," was, she says, co-written with Lee Oswald. Judyth had always been interested in writing, particularly poetry and screenwriting. The rest is best described in her essay, "My Boring Life," published here.
She claims to have written many novels, including one called "Six Foot Seven," written in 1967, which focuses on Oswald, his friend Gerry Patrick Hemming (the title is a reference to his height), and her feelings of betrayal at the whole JFK/Castro matter. She wrote it while in the Saltillo mountains and had many additional adventures while there.
She has been unable to produce copies of any of these supposedly published works.
In the 1990s she claims to have been running several companies, including the Living History Corporation (a for-profit corporation situated in the state of Florida, dissolved in 1991), the American Genome Society (a not-for-profit corporation situated in the state of Florida, with a Louisiana address, which solicited donations that were anywhere from $25 to $100), and the American Cream Puppy Breeders' Association (linked with her new dog breed, the American Cream Dog), not to mention running a magazine of creative writing at about the same time and editing for a college magazine.
She moved back to the U.S. from Norway, needed a job and soon found a welcome one as an instructor at Southwestern University in Lafayette, Louisiana. No sooner had she gotten there than she published another short story collection, A Place When the Sun Goes Down. She was also running many things out of her office at La Griffin Hall on university grounds.
She claims that in 1999 she completed a book about her alleged relationship with Oswald called From Dallas With Love: Lee Harvey Oswald and Judyth Vary -- Their Love. She first came forward by posting an ambiguous review of a book about JFK-related things by Ed Haslam at Amazon.com under the name "Avary Baker." Then she and her supporters took to the newsgroups. In 2002, due to real or imagined threats, she moved to the Netherlands. However, due to many complications, critics, and online boos, she has had to postpone publication of her book. In 2003, she presented her story in a segment of the History Channel series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." Currently, she is in an unknown location, having relocated after another series of threats.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Skeptical evaluation of Baker's claims by John McAdams, with copies of several primary sources from previous drafts of her book.
- [1] ISBN 1-4120-8876-3 Lee Harvey Oswald: The True Story of the Accused Assassin of President John F. Kennedy, by His Lover.
