The best evidence Ferrie and Clay Shaw were close acquaintences

[Lance Payette]

My Amazon review of Carpenter's book, FWIW:

Customer Review

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile but overwhelming with extraneous and unnecessary detail
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2025
Format: Kindle Verified Purchase

This is an exhaustive and exhausting effort. It reads as though compiled from Shaw's calendar and correspondence. The level of extraneous and unnecessary detail is like no book I've ever read. Seemingly every meeting Shaw ever attended, every speech he ever gave, every letter he ever wrote. "And then he did this ... and then he did this ... and then he did that," but with little insight or context. When you're done, there are perhaps 200 pages comprising a good, solid, well-researched biography of Shaw, with plenty of details that I as a longtime JFK assassination buff didn't know and found very interesting. It's just that it's all buried beneath so much extraneous and unnecessary detail that I finally found myself skipping through large portions on my Kindle and then pausing when there was finally something more substantive than "And then he did this ... and then he did this ... and then he did this." It is definitely a worthwhile book but desperately in need of an editor or publisher with the sense to say "250 pages and not one page more."

I see you started the same thread at the Ed Forum. I'm guessing you'll have a much more receptive audience since there is a 2022 Pena thread in which DiEugenio, Simpich and Boylan were practically orgasmic. I have a hard time believing DeBrueys was central to the JFKA and completely lying about his non-relationship with Pena, or that Oswald was openly consorting with DeBrueys, Customs agents and INS agents. All of which leads me to think the Ferrie-Shaw stuff is likewise nonsense.

[Gerry Down]

Very much so. Possibly more than you want to know. But not with Ferrie.

Do you think Ferrie could have been supplying young men from the parties at his house to Shaw? Would that be the kind of thing Shaw would have been known to be into?

[Fred Litwin]

I think this is all very silly. Both Shaw and Ferrie denied knowing each other. None of their friends said they knew each other.

They were in very different social circles.

The only person to say they knew each other was Perry Russo, and, as we know, he has zero credibility.

fred

[Lance Payette]

Being a Serious JFKA Researcher, I went back through my Kindle edition of Carpenter's book. He does not mention the Habana Bar or Pena, presumably because the book was published in 2014 and Pena's HSCA testimony did not become public until the 2017 document release.

He does mention Ferrie 523 times and I, as a Serious JFKA Researcher, scrolled through all 523 references. Carpenter does not shy away from the various folks who said they had seen Ferrie and Shaw together, or from the several who knew one or both of them very well and said they had never heard one mention the other. Carpenter doesn't state a firm conclusion, but there just doesn't seem to be any solid evidence. Many people apparently believe the confusion is that Ferrie was seen in the company of Bannister - who, like Shaw, was tall and gray-haired.

The book gives you a sense of how very important, respected and even beloved Shaw was. Yes, he was heavily into the gay scene and the book recounts one of his kind-of-clumsy efforts to pick up a young guy, but he certainly didn't "need" Ferrie and would have descended far below his social, economic and intellectual class to have openly associated with him. The Shaw who emerges from the book simply would not have descended to the level of frequenting the Habana Bar with Ferrie.

FWIW, when Ferrie was first asked about Clay Shaw, his response was "Who's Clay Shaw?"

I think I'm going to bump my Amazon review to 4 stars. Carpenter worked 18 years on this book, and it is really quite astonishing.

[Fred Litwin]

I debunk a lot of the Ferrie knew Shaw nonsense in this blog post.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/the-scholarship-of-james-dieugenio

[Tommy Shanks]

Excellent work, Fred. Not sure why Gerry is suddenly clinging to Orest Pena's tall tales.

[Gerry Down]

Excellent work, Fred. Not sure why Gerry is suddenly clinging to Orest Pena's tall tales.

How do you know they're tall tales?

I don't see anything tall about these tales. Pena is just saying he saw two people coming in to a bar together. Seems kinda mundane to me.