Gerry Patrick Hemming Dies (Miami Herald)

A '60s-era Miami soldier of fortune and a key figure for conspiracy theorists around the world, Gerald Patrick Hemming, is dead at 70.
His death was confirmed Thursday morning by the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C. His son, Felipe, told The Miami Herald that he was found dead in his North Carolina home on Tuesday evening.

A shadowy figure who enjoyed talking about paramilitary operations and anti-Castro activities during the 1960s, Hemming became known in his later years mostly for statements he made about the Kennedy assassination to the Warren Commission and to many investigative journalists.

Cold War figure Hemming dies (Fayetteville Observer)

A former soldier who trained Cubans to fight against Fidel Castro and had been a central figure in assassination probes of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. died this week in Fayetteville, family members said.

Gerald Patrick Hemming, 70, died in his sleep at his Haymount Manor apartment, his daughter, Kristi Hemming Roderick, said Thursday.

An exact date and cause of death is still being determined. Mr. Hemming will be buried with military honors at 2 p.m. Monday in Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery.

“My father was a Cold War freedom fighter,” Roderick said. “He put country first, which meant he wasn’t around as much as we like, but that’s OK, we loved him anyway.”

Born March 1, 1937, in Los Angeles, Mr. Hemming joined the Marines in 1954. Four years later, he left the Marines to go to Cuba, where he fought side-by-side with Fidel Castro to overthrow then president Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

I never met Gerry Hemming but I was on his email list for a few years, and we exchanged a few personal emails. I would like to end with a quote from one of his emails to me (dated April 15, 2006) which shows him to be a man who did not mince words. He is referring to Jim Garrison biographer and assassination researcher Joan Mellen and John Simkin's Education Forum, of which he was a member.

"Mellen-Head continues to maintain an intense hatred of RFK and company, and her attitude IS: that anybody who is CIA (and doesn't "Fess-up"to something) must be an evil-doer. Typical Commie-symp/wimp horseshit that I've been exposed to (and forced to put up with) even before fighting in Cuba, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, Haiti, etc. !!

And moreover, this is typical of the membership on Simkin's forum, which is just another apparatchik disinformatziya scheme for a bunch of wimp-ass arrogant suckers, none of whom have ever had the balls to put it on the line !!

Lou Ivon had some interesting things to say about Garrison & Mellen-head, and "Big Jimbo's" boasting of what exactly her relationship actually involved !!"

RIP, Gerry. My sincere condolences to his friends and family.