Anniversary of JKF Assassination Evokes Alumna’s Memories of Scary Times

Rosemary James

Tomorrow may be the 51st anniversary of the JFK assassination, but Rosemary Powell James ’59 remembers it like it was yesterday. As the States-Item reporter who broke the national story of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the assassination and who covered the resulting trial of his scapegoat Clay Shaw, James also remembers the absurd aftermath that played out in the Big Easy.

“If you told this story in any other city, people would not believe it ever happened. It was like falling down the proverbial rabbit hole, with Garrison’s string of surprise, certifiable lunatics on parade every day. It was paranoiac-schizophrenic–engineered fiction,” remembers James. “The long-range tragedy of the short-term tragedy is that, because Garrison was so full of that well-known waste material, he ruined the chances of a realistic inquiry by any serious investigator.”

Among reporters covering the case, the consensus was that out-of-town elements of the American Mafia were behind the assassination – and Garrison’s reaction to those who suggested as much raised suspicion that he was protecting local mob figures who might have had roles as facilitators.

“I mentioned this to Garrison,” James told both CNN, when she was interviewed for its documentary series, The Sixties, and Tom Brokaw when he came to her home in 2013 to interview her for a two-hour NBC News special and companion book, Where Were You? America Remembers the JFK Assassination, excerpts of which also appeared on Everything Changed: JFK’s Life and Death. “Garrison came at me hard, saying he was going to haul me before a grand jury. I shot back, ‘If I were you, I would not. I have uncovered a lot about you that I can’t wait to report.’ That was the last I heard of it.”

That wasn’t exactly true, though. Things had started happening. There was surveillance. Threatening phone calls. And then, one day, she came home to find two of the pups from her litter of Maltese on her front step. Someone had drowned them.

“I was certain Garrison’s goons did it. He had these crazed groupies who freaked out over anything bad said about him. I never was scared of Garrison, but I was truly afraid of those out-of-control fanatics,” she says. “It was all-consuming, very absorbing, for everybody who covered it. And it went on for a while.”

In the end, of course, Clay Shaw was acquitted and Garrison, the city of New Orleans and James herself moved on. And James never expected to end up where she did.

ARTICLE: Find out where Rosemary James ended up and how she got there.