18 Facts About Perry Russo

Perry Raymond Russo was an American insurance salesman who became the key witness for the prosecution in the trial of Clay Shaw in New Orleans in 1969.

Perry Russo attended Tulane University, received a bachelor's degree from Loyola University New Orleans in 1964, and attended one year of law school at Loyola.

Perry Russo moved away from New Orleans in September 1965.

In four television and newspaper interviews that Perry Russo gave, he talked at length about Ferrie.

Perry Russo said nothing in the interviews about Oswald, Shaw, or a conspiracy.

When shown a picture of Shaw, Perry Russo said he saw him and Ferrie talking in a car at Ferrie's service station.

Garrison arranged to have Perry Russo interrogated three times while hypnotized, the first time while under an injection of sodium thiopental, known popularly as "truth serum".

Now Perry Russo described a conspiracy plot, with Shaw and a rifle-toting "Leon" Oswald at Ferrie's apartment when Perry Russo was visiting in mid-September 1963.

At Shaw's preliminary hearing on March 15,1967, Perry Russo repeated the claims he had made under hypnosis.

Perry Russo named two witnesses who could corroborate his story of attending a party at Ferrie's apartment in September 1963 in which the assassination plot was made.

The second, a friend of Perry Russo's, told NBC News that he was at Ferrie's apartment then but saw nobody resembling Oswald or Shaw.

George Lardner of The Washington Post who reported on the story said a week or two earlier that Perry Russo solicited a bribe from him in order to divulge "weaknesses" in his testimony.

Garrison had Perry Russo testify two years later at the Clay Shaw trial, which ended in a not-guilty verdict after less than an hour of jury deliberation.

Perry Russo pled guilty to possessing the stolen key and was given a three-month suspended sentence.

In 1971, two years after Shaw's not-guilty verdict, Perry Russo told one of Shaw's lawyers that he never saw Shaw at Ferrie's apartment, and that Garrison's office had done "a complete brainwashing job" on him.

Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK has Perry Russo's testimony given by a character named "Willie O'Keefe".

George Lardner of The Washington Post, noting that in June 1967 Perry Russo had invited him to "bribe him to disclose 'weaknesses' in his testimony", wrote that it was a "convenient device" for Stone to have eliminated Perry Russo from his script.

Perry Russo, who had been working as a driver for United Cab in New Orleans, died of a heart attack at age 54.