Return of the Bishops

"Everything about Tommy Baumler was dark."

-- Timothy Wyllie

Greetings, boys and girls. You may remember my long series of articles (or a series of long articles, mejor dicho) concerning New Orleans, Lee Harvey Oswald, and a veritable apostolic succession of wandering bishops who operated out of Guy Banister's office in the Big Easy. You may recall such names as David Ferrie, Jack Martin, Carl Stanley ... and Thomas Jude Baumler. Well, you'll never believe it, but Tommy Baumler's name came up again in the most bizarre place of all these bizarre places.

He was the lawyer who incorporated the Process Church of the Final Judgment.

Take a breath.

For those of you who need some background on Tommy Baumler, here is an excerpt from my series of articles posted here on the wandering bishops (more may be found in volume one of Sinister Forces):

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Jack Martin remained a bishop with the American Orthodox Catholic Church to the end of his days, even going so far as to bring in another Banister associate, the corpulent attorney and unapologetic racist Thomas Jude Baumler, to the Orthodox fold, consecrating Baumler a bishop in August of 1974, nearly eleven years after the Kennedy assassination and seven years after the beginning of the Garrison investigation and the deaths of both Stanley and Ferrie. From personal correspondence with an individual involved with this affair, I learned that Baumler had already been ordained a priest by Stanley years before; in other words, prior to Stanley’s death in March, 1967. Baumler’s status in New Orleans society was assured; he came from an old family and was associated with one of the famous Mardi Gras “crewes”.

In addition, according to my informant, Baumler was also a Mason and belonged to the same lodge – the Etoile Polair Lodge of the French Grand Orient – as Mafia don Carlos Marcello, the man for whom David Ferrie was working on the day of the assassination. My informant goes on to insist that Martin could be relied upon to furnish FBI files on
“future applicants for Holy Orders”, a strange capability for a hopeless drunk. It is widely rumored that Martin had a source at FBI headquarters in New Orleans who provided him these files, but he also made it known that he was an investigator for the District Attorney’s office – something of which the DA was presumably not aware. Yet he had an income of some kind, for he was known to travel extensively throughout the United States for years on one errand or another involving the bishops, a true “wanderer”.

What was Baumler’s interest in Carl Stanley and the American Orthodox Catholic
Church? Why was it attractive to become consecrated the Bishop of Baton Rouge-New Orleans in this minuscule, obscure church as late as 1974? Soon after his consecration, he went on to consecrate another bishop, this time William Francis Forbes, in October of 1974. It was Baumler, after all, who told J. Gary Shaw in 1981 that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for Guy Banister. He even told Jim Garrison investigator Harold Weisberg in 1969 that he personally met the elusive Oswald himself.

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Now, in a book entitled Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, (Feral House, 2009) former Process member Timothy Wyllie goes into some detail about the founding of the movement and much of the day-to-day events in the lives of its members. It is a fascinating tale for those who are interested, and contains over 100 pages of art, articles, and other disjecta membra of that notorious group. It is on page 74, however, that he drops the name Tommy Baumler and describes the man perfectly. There can be no doubt. In 1967 -- while a priest of the American Orthodox Catholic Church, a Freemason, a hypnotist, a racist -- and as the Jim Garrison investigation into his friends David Ferrie and Jack Martin for their alleged role in the Kennedy assassination was heating up, Tommy Baumler was hanging out with the Process and even going so far as to suggest a name for their group: The Church of Christ and Satan. Wyllie says they had to talk him out of it, and finally settle on the name The Church of the Final Judgment.

Readers may remember the hysteria surrounding the Process from its earliest days. There were accusations that it was a mind-control cult, that they were devil-worshipers, that they were involved with ritual murder, etc etc. The fact that they were involved to a degree with Charles Manson didn't help; the fact that Charlie once famously proclaimed that he was Robert Moore (the co-founder of the Process) didn't help much either, or the interview with Charlie that appeared in the Process magazine. The fact that issues of said magazine bore such themes as Death and Fear was probably another clue to the already paranoid.

But then throw in the Son of Sam connection (made famous by Maury Terry, but to be fair was also bruited about by David Berkowitz himself long after his sentencing, and corroborated by self-described former members of the Process) and you have a truly sinister fantasy. The Process and Charles Manson; the Process and the Son of Sam cult. Okay, that will do.

Then toss in the "dark" Tommy Baumler and the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and you are deep inside Sinister Forces territory.

Pleasant dreams!