Judyth Vary Baker

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Judyth Anne Vary Baker, née Judyth Anne Vary (born May 15, 1943)worked with Lee Harvey Oswald at the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. She claims to have had an affair with Oswald that summer, during which she and Oswald were involved in a plot with David Ferrie, the CIA and a number of people traditionally associated with John F. Kennedy 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.

Baker was born in South Bend, Indiana to Donald William and Glorianne Whiting Vary. She was a student at Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida, with her sister Lynda. 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. Baker 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 Baker in the school and introduced her in 1958 to CIA asset 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 Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans). According to Baker, 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 researcher Dr. Mary S. Sherman in the spring of 1963, when she would have been only twenty years of age. Sherman was mysteriously murdered the next year.

Baker 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, 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 John F. Kennedy'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 Baker. 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.

In the summer of 1963, when she was in New Orleans, Baker claims to have begun a 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 Baker and Oswald 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 conspiritors are said to have included David Ferrie—a fellow with no expertise in biology whatsoever—and Sherman. The apartments of Ferrie and Sherman were supposededly the sites of the bioweapons work.

Vary says she was introduced to Jack Ruby, who said he'd known Oswald since the latter was a youngster. Additionally, vary claims that Oswald introduced her to Guy Bannister and Clay Shaw.

Oswald's documented trip to Mexico City was, according to Vary, 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.

Oswalds arrival in October 1963, according to Vary, reflected a change of focus in the murder plot from Castro to Kennedy. Vary states that Oswald was aware of the plot but told her that he hoped to thwart it. She also indicates that he worried he would become a patsy. According to Vary, Oswald identified his government contact (known as Mr. B) as CIA operative David Atlee Phillips, and said that Lyndon Johnson cronies Billy Sol Estes and Bobby Baker were connected to the assassination plot.

Following the assassination, Vary indicated that she received two phone calls from David Ferrie. The first, on the evening of the assassination, in which Ferrie told her that "everything's gone wrong," but that he would deliver Oswald from captivity. Two weeks later, after Oswald's murder, Vary said that Ferrie again contacted her and told her that she'd be killed if she went to the authorities, that she was being watched by Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello. Vary also said that Ferrie warned her not to continue her research or to do anything to call attention to herself.

Baker 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 Oswald. Baker had always been interested in writing, particularly poetry and screenwriting. The rest is best described in her essay, "My Boring Life".^[1] Baker claims to be the author of many novels, including 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 has been unable to produce copies of any of these supposedly published works.

Baker claims to have run several companies in the 1990s, 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). Baker also claims to have run a magazine of creative writing at about the same time she served as editor for a college magazine.

Baker moved back to the United States 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 Kennedy-related things by Edward T. 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, 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 at an unknown location in Sweden, having relocated after another series of threats.