C2C - Dr. Mary's Monkey

Investigator Ed Haslam discussed his research into a 1964 murder of a cancer researcher which links to the JFK assassination and the contamination of the polio vaccine. In describing the complex web of intrigue that he had uncovered, he said, "I look at it as a very sane, clearheaded investigation into a very crazy subject."

Haslam traced his interest in the story to the strange murder of noted cancer researcher Dr. Mary Sherman in New Orleans. Intrigued by the sensational nature of her demise and the quick closing of the police inquiry, he unearthed clues which actually suggested that Sherman had been the victim of "what I will politely call an 'industrial accident.'" He speculated that Sherman’s involvement in underground research using monkey viruses was ultimately the cause of her death.

In explaining the origins of this research, he noted that early polio vaccines had been grown using monkey kidneys. In turn, this practice accidentally tainted up to 100 million doses of the vaccine with a cancer-causing monkey virus. In an attempt to develop a benign strain of this virus, researchers secretly used a linear particle accelerator to mutate the disease. It is this high voltage piece of equipment that Haslam thinks caused the unusual and extreme burns found on the body of Mary Sherman.

Ed Haslam spent his first 35 living in New Orleans. He personally heard and saw things that involved the investigation into the Kennedy Assassination, the murder of one of his father colleagues, and claims of biological weapons to be used for political purposes. For most of the 1970s he worked with the legendary piano-player Professor Longhair, considered by many to the one of the Founding Fathers of Rock-and-Roll for his contributions to the style in the 1940s.

When Longhair died in 1980, Haslam got out of the music business to pursue a career in advertising. It was during this time that he stumbled upon hard evidence connecting people involved in the JFK assassination investigation to the medical community in New Orleans. But the time was not right to speak out. In the 1980s Haslam's advertising career took him to Detroit where he managed advertising campaigns for the Chrysler Corporation - and where he made presentations to then-Chairman Lee Iacocca.

For the next 4 years in Detroit, he managed the advertising for several divisions of Rockwell International and later the Michigan State Lottery. In his final days in Detroit, as the AIDS epidemic fixed itself upon the media landscape, Haslam started questioning what he had seen and heard in New Orleans. He began work on a research project known as Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory.