Looking at the totality of Philip Melanson's work (and I am leaving out some of it), there are very few people who contributed as much or as at the high level that he did, writes Jim DiEugenio.

Jim DiEugenio pays tribute to the person Jim Garrison once called "the most important witness in the JFK case".

From the July-August, 1995 issue (Vol. 2 No. 5) of Probe

Just as we went to press, we were told by New Orleans sources that Perry Russo had passed away of a reported heart attack on August 16th.

Russo, of course, was the witness at the Shaw trial who stated that Ferrie, "Leon" Oswald, and a man he later identified as Clay Shaw, discussed the assassination of President Kennedy at Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans in September of 1963. Russo surfaced after Ferrie's death (Ferrie had threatened his life previously) and became a witness for Garrison at the preliminary hearing of Clay Shaw in March, 1967. Perry was brutally maligned by local Shaw allies like Rosemary James, and national media reporters who ended up having government ties e.g.Walter Sheridan, Hugh Aynesworth, and James Phelan (see p. 7, col. 1). Because he would not turn on Garrison he underwent a four year onslaught that altered his life permanently. He later became a taxi driver, working 80 hour weeks. He would always give researchers access to him and was a font of information on Ferrie, anti-Castro Cubans, and the New Orleans scene in general. In the summer of 1994, Perry got researchers Jeff Caufield and Romney Stubbs into Ferrie's apartment and reconstructed the scene at Ferrie's apartment that he testified to at the Shaw trial.