Dispatches from Guatemala: How David Ferrie Helped To Dismantle RFK's Case Against Carlos Marcello

Part one of a two-part series detailing the extensive investigation that the eccentric, elusive pilot conducted for Marcello's legal defense team.

David Ferrie, the eccentric, beguiling airline pilot who became the chimera of JFK assassination conspiracists, vividly recalled where he was when he first learned the news out of Dallas on November 22, 1963. Known for his peculiar appearance—wearing an outlandish wig and painted-on eyebrows due to alopecia—and immortalized by Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK," plenty of others could corroborate his account. He was hard to miss. On that afternoon, Ferrie was 510 miles away from Dealey Plaza, seated in Judge Herbert Christenberry’s courtroom in New Orleans, watching the final day of brothers Carlos and Joseph Marcello’s trial for conspiring to defraud the federal government.

Before November 22, 1963, Christenberry, who had once served as a stenographer and political aide to Louisiana's legendary governor Huey P. Long, was best known for ordering the desegregation of Louisiana State University. Still, the government’s case against Carlos Marcello, the reputed boss of the New O…