Mary S. Sherman
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Mary Stults Sherman (April 21, 1913 - July 21, 1964) was a prominent orthopedic surgeon in New Orleans whose murder remains unsolved.
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[edit] Biography
Sherman was born in Evanston, Illinois, to Walter Allen Stults and the former Monica Graham. She graduated from Evanston Township High School and attended the Institute de Mme Collnot in Paris, France. In 1934, she obtained her bachelor of arts degree from Northwestern University. The following year, she received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago. From 1935 to 1936, Sherman was an instructor at the University of Illinois French Institute in Paris.
In 1943, she obtained a medical degree from the University of Chicago. She interned at Bob Roberts Hospital at the University of Chicago. In 1947, she was appointed assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Billings Hospital, also affiliated with the university. In 1952, she relocated to New Orleans to become director of the bone pathology laboratory at The Ochsner Clinic Medical Foundation, a creation of surgeon Alton Ochsner. The next year she began her terminal position as associate professor at Tulane Medical School. A cancer researcher, she was also the senior visiting surgeon in orthopedics at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.
She was a member of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
[edit] Death
In 1964, Sherman was stabbed in the heart, arm, leg, and stomach. Her mattress had been set afire, but investigators determined that the massive burns inflicted upon her could not have come from the smoking mattress. There was a small fire in her apartment (The Patio, on St. Charles Avenue) and smoke, but her death was caused by a stab wound to the heart. There were hack marks made from a butcher knife on her torso. Her body was cremated.
[edit] Investigations of the Sherman murder
In 1995, Edward T. Haslam self-published Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory, which presented the first forensic analysis of Sherman's murder for public review. Roughly three years later, Judyth A. Vary Baker came forward claiming to have interned under Sherman in 1963, and to have been recruited, initially reluctantly, by both Ochsner and Sherman into an assassination plot against Fidel Castro, which had the backing of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Mafia in New Orleans. In 2007, Haslam expanded his investigation into Sherman's death in a new book published by TrineDay, Dr. Mary's Monkey, which included some of Baker's testimony and related documents.
Sherman's unsolved murder is sometimes grouped among deaths which are claimed to be linked to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but journalist Gerald Posner[1] argues there is no compelling evidence establishing any connection between Sherman's death and Kennedy's assassination.
[edit] References
- ^ Posner, Gerald. 2003. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. Anchor. ISBN 1400034620
- Mary S. Sherman on Spartacus
- "Mary S. Sherman", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 1 (1988), p. 741.
- "Sherman murder", New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 22, 23, 31, 1964.
- New Orleans States Item, July 21, 31, 1964
- Who's Who in the South and Southwest (1959)
- "Should We Believe Judyth Baker?" on the Kennedy Assassination website
