WC defenders ignore or summarily brush aside the fact that on November 16-17, five days before the assassination, David Ferrie spent the weekend with Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello at Marcello's Churchill Farms estate. Supposedly, the two were discussing "defense strategy" for the final week of Marcello's deportation trial in federal court. However, strangely enough, Marcello’s attorneys were not there.. Humm. . . . Ferrie was no lawyer. It is very hard imagine what legal strategy Marcello and Ferrie could have discussed for two entire days; it is also hard to fathom how a weekend-long legal defense strategy meeting would not have included at least one of Marcello's attorneys. Dr. Richard Mahoney correctly and logically suspects that Marcello and Ferrie were finalizing some of the details of the planned assassination of JFK in Dallas (The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby, 2017 edition, p. 386).
Let’s see how MTG’s Mahoney Factoid holds up.
Ferrie was a highly intelligent guy and enough of a pilot to have flown for Eastern Airlines. When he was fired by Eastern on morals charges in 1961, he was represented by very high-profile New Orleans attorney G. Wray Gill in his efforts to be reinstated. When the initial effort to get Ferrie reinstated failed, Gill hired him as an investigator and law clerk from March 1962 to December 1963, with Gill continuing to represent Ferrie throughout 1963 in his efforts to be reinstated by Eastern. The hiring of Ferrie was in lieu of Ferrie paying Gill’s steep attorney fees. Gill's clients had included Carlos Marcello since 1951, and Gill would continue to represent the mobster until Gill's own death in 1972.
Ferrie was interviewed by the FBI on 11-25-63 and volunteered that "since the end of August, 1963 and up until November 22, 1963 he has been working on a case involving CARLOS MARCELLO who was charged in Federal Court in connection with a fraudulent birth certificate. FERRIE stated that the trial of MARCELLO began in Federal Court in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 4, 1963 and ended on November 22, 1963 and that he was in New Orleans working with Attorney G. WRAY GILL on the case during this period. He stated that on November 9 and November 16, 1963 he was at Churchill Downs which is a farm owned by CARLOS MARCELLO, mapping strategy in connection with MARCELLO's trial." (Marcello was acquitted of all charges.)
Ferrie was present at the defense table in the courtroom during the trial, which means he was intimately involved with the case. Gill told the FBI on November 27 that he worked closely with Ferrie on trial strategy. Churchill Farms was a secluded 4,000-acre estate used by Marcello for all sorts of dubious purposes. It’s apparently still in the Marcello family.
Lamar Waldron says in
The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination that Ferrie was with Marcello at Churchill Farms on November 9-10. He says nothing about November 16 and does not say who was in attendance. Exhaustive searches on Google and specifically at the Ed Forum turned up no discussion whatsoever about the supposed Mahoney bombshell or who was or was not in attendance when Ferrie met with Marcello.
November 9-10 and 16-17 were both weekends (Saturday and Sunday), so the court was not in session. The 32-page HSCA report on Marcello does not mention Ferrie at all and mentions Gill only once (in relation to something that occurred in 1970). The HSCA report on Ferrie says he was at Churchill Farms both weekends, ostensibly working on trial strategy, but says nothing further.
Richard D. Mahoney is a respected JFK author (and former Arizona Secretary of State!) who endorses a two-gunman “crossfire” view of the JFKA without attempting to flesh out the conspiracy. Mahoney’s book
The Kennedy Brothers says only that “Marcello had spent that weekend [November 16-17] at Churchill Farms closeted [
closeted?] with Lee Harvey Oswald’s associate and Cuban exile activist David Ferrie [
Oswald’s associate?]. The source for this is
Mafia Kingfish by John H. Davis. Mahoney says the HSCA “reached a similar conclusion about Marcello’s and Ferrie’s weekend together” (
what conclusion, apart from the fact they were together?). The only other thing he says is “Strangely, Marcello’s attorneys were not present” – for which he cites no source. There is no explicit suggestion that Ferrie and Marcello were hatching JFKA plans.
You can read Mahoney’s latest (March 2026) conspiratorial effort, “Will we ever get the truth about the JFK assassination?”, here:
https://journals.econsciences.com/index.php/JSAS/article/download/2721/3469/8949. There is a fair amount about Ferrie in connection with his book but, alas, nothing about being “closeted” with Marcello to hatch JFKA plans.
So is this a busted factoid? Eh, maybe, maybe not. The fact is, Marcello was in the middle of a criminal trial. Ferrie was the investigator for Marcello’s prominent attorney, who said he worked closely with Ferrie on trial strategy. Ferrie may have had a pilot relationship with Marcello dating back to 1961 (according to the HSCA), so perhaps the invitation was partly social. Churchill Farms was a huge estate used for lots of purposes. We don’t really know who was present when Ferrie met with Marcello; Mahoney cites no source for his claim that “Marcello’s attorneys were not present.” Ferrie is such a strange and mysterious figure, and Marcello figures so prominently in any Mafia-did-it JFKA scenario, that I would “never say never” – but to call it a "correct and logical" conclusion that Ferrie and Marcello were "finalizing some of the details" of the JFKA seems exceedingly far-fetched - albeit entirely MTG-like - to me; moreover, the conclusion is MTG's, not Mahoney's.
You just can't trust this MTG character. Someday the light bulb will go on for even the most trusting of you.
