Mary Sherman was a highly intelligent woman with many talents. She began her training by studying opera in Paris. She taught French at the University of Illinois as she worked on her medical studies. She then became an associate professor at the University of Chicago.

In 1952 the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in Jefferson, Louisiana appointed her Director of the Bone Pathology Laboratory. She also served as an orthopedic surgeon at the clinic. During this time she was also an associate professor of clinical orthopedics at nearby Tulane University in New Orleans.

During this time the work of Judyth Baker came to her attention and she was offered an internship at the Ochsner Foundation. Baker was an inquisitive worker and before the knew it she came across the less public work at the foundation. It was cancer research, but not looking for a cure.

They were working on finding a virulent form to infect Fidel Castro. Judyth Baker enthusiastically through herself into this work. It during this time that Baker came in contact with a whole new cast of characters already associated with the CIA backed study. They included David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Juan Valdez (not the Colombian coffee grower) and Lee Oswald.

It was during this time unhappily married Baker and unhappily married Oswald began developing a relationship. She says they both planned on divorcing their spouses and heading off to Mexico.

Lee Oswald became adept at handling this extremely dangerous material and attempted to get it into the hands of some Cuban exiles by way of Mexico. However because of the short shelf life of the toxic material the plan did not succeed.

Sherman became interested in this work because she was a firm anti-communist and wanted to help Cubans regain their county. She was a member of several organizations dedicated to this same result.

On July 21, 1964 Mary Sherman was brutally murdered in her home. She was stabbed multiple times and her body set on fire. This is the way Cuban security people operating in the United States often took care of people they saw as a threat. Some believed that Valdez was a double agent working for the Castro government and was the killer. No one was ever arrested.

Others have theorized that because of the condition of the body and the lack of evidence in her apartment that she may have been killed by the explosion of a particle accelerator in the lab.  That because the secrecy of the work she was taken home and the place arranged to look like a murder scene.  Some of the stab would appeared to have occurred post mortum, giving some support to the idea.  This thinking seems to be an outlier as most believe the Cuban retribution to be more likely.

   
BOOK: Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory

Dr. Mary's Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses Are Linked to Lee Harvey ... Assassination and Emerging Global Epidemics
by Edward T. Haslam

Get ready for the “Hottest cold case in America!” This updated paperback contains the same content as the 2014 hard cover edition which has 25 additional pages of revelations added since the original 2007 paperback. These new pages include documents from the FBI, CIA, CDC, and NOPD, plus the actual crime scene photos from the 1964 murder of Dr. Mary Sherman. The bizarre death of this nationally known cancer researcher sets the stage for this gripping exposé of medical professionals enmeshed in covert government operations. Following a trail of police reports, FBI files, cancer statistics, and medical journals, this revealing book presents a web of secret-keeping which swept doctors into cover-ups of contaminated polio vaccines, cancer outbreaks, the arrival of the AIDS virus, and a deadly biological weapon tested on both monkeys and humans. Add Lee Harvey Oswald to the cast of this secret bio-weapon project, and this dark tale connects Oswald’s summer of secrets to the intrigue surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy.