The Kennedys were out to destroy Carlos Marcello and his two-billion-dollar empire. But the Boss also knew how to set up a politically sensitive Mafia "hit." A young former marine marksman whom everyone thought unhinged and even crazy was an occasional employee. A defector to the Soviet Union, he had recently returned to the United States with a young Russian wife. Lee Harvey Oswald was the perfect fall guy. Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald after the event, was closely connected to the Marcello crime family and was never allowed to tell his side of the story. Carlos Marcello was born Calogero Minacore in Tunisia to Sicilian parents, who then immigrated to Louisiana in 1911. He started in a life of crime from a young age, running gangs of teenage criminals around the state of Louisiana, earning him comparisons to the character Fagin from Oliver Twist. He moved up in the ranks of organised crime, finally becoming 'Godfather' of the New Orleans mafia, a position he would hold for the next 30 years. In 1959 Marcello appeared on a committee in front of then-Senator John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, investigating organised crime. Vaccara puts together compelling evidence that shows how the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath maps onto classic "hits" ordered by the Sicilian mafia, and presents his case that Carlos Marcello was the man who engineered both the assassination of the president and the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald in cold blood in front of scores of reporters and on live national television. Lee Harvey Oswald may have been, as he so famously said, just a 'patsy', but how did Jack Ruby make it to the location of Oswald's transportation without press credentials, and why was he dead of a pulmonary embolism due to fatal lung cancer just days after being given a clean bill of health by prison doctors? In its investigation, the HSCA noted the presence of "credible associations relating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to figures having a relationship, albeit tenuous, with Marcello's crime family or organization." Their report stated: "The committee found that Marcello had the motive, means and opportunity to have President John F. Kennedy assassinated, though it was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello's complicity." AUTHOR: Stefano Vaccara is a renowned journalist from Sicily who now lives and works in New York City, and runs the Italian-language newspaper La Voce. He is also teaches courses on Mafia history at the City University of New York. b/w photographs
