The Underworld Podcast - The New Orleans Godfather and the JFK Assassination: Carlos Marcello

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Carlos Marcello went from a small time produce hustler to heading up the New Orleans Mafia with a massive gambling empire and a hand in every pie in the city's notorious underworld. He even found himself in business with the heavyweights from New York's five families. And though he tried to keep himself out of the spotlight, the Kennedy brother's war on America's mafia, with John as president and Robert as attorney general, made sure the FBI knew he was and stayed on his case. In fact, RFK once had him kidnapped and deported to Guatemala and Marcello was overheard swearing to get revenge. But how far did he go? Could he have been involved in the assassination of a president? All that and the story of Sean's first arrest for public indecency on Bourbon Street. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Available at the prepared foods counter. Get Summer Splash Savings now at Whole Foods Market. It's November 22nd, 1963, a pretty famous day in American history, and Carlos Marcello is sitting in court. Marcelo has climbed the ranks in the New Orleans Mafia to become not only the boss of the family, but one of the most powerful and wealthy mob figures in the country. He's built up his wealth and power through a gambling empire that dominates New Orleans underworld. And New Orleans, if you've never been, it has a pretty damn big underworld. In fact, Marcelo's gotten so big, he's really,

the highest of the heights in the National Mafia Syndicate, partnering in illegal casinos with legendary mob figures Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. The times, though, they are a changing. See, the mob had the run of the country for decades. Jag or Hoover and the FBI, they refused to even admit that there was a mafia. But in the late 50s, after the bust up in Appalachia, which was a huge meetup of mafia bosses from around the country,

the Fed started getting serious. The Joe Volaji hearings in the early 1960s, When a mob informant testifies in front of the Senate about the existence of the mob and how powerful it is, this lights a firestorm. And at the top of that firestorm is Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Even though the mob may very well have helped JFK get elected by helping him win Illinois, the Kennedy brothers have sworn to take down all the illegal mafias and their labor rackets. Bobby's even made New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello, one of his top public enemies.

That's what happens when you get too big. But on this day, in late November 1963, Marcelo is seeing in court fighting a deportation case. A couple of years earlier, Bobby Kennedy had federal agents essentially kidnap Marcelo, throw him on a plane, and drop him off from Guatemala. But he found his way back to town and then found his way back to the courthouse.

On this particular day, though, he's acquitted. And when he leaves the courthouse, he's told the shocking news. The president has just been. assassinated. Over the next several decades, countless questions will arise in the Kenley assassination about underworld involvement in the hit. Committees will be held, conspiracies will fly, and one name will come up time and time again. Carlos Marcello. This is the underworld podcast. Welcome back to another episode of The Underworld podcast where two journalists, myself, Danny Gold,

and Sean Williams, we reported all over the world and, you know, whatever, yada, yada, yada. Who cares? Sean, how is their will to live these days? Better than yours by the sound of it. I mean, I definitely want to live, but I'm about to plan a trip to a tropical island armed compound with no connection to the internet or anyone else. So I guess that's, I don't know if that's living or not, but it's all fun, isn't it? Oh, stop hyping up the danger like I'm some woman you men in a bar.

I can see right through you. It'll be fine. It works. You'll be fine. Maybe you'll get your wallet stolen. We'll have a good story for the podcast. No, no, I was going to say something about sticking a flat jacket picture on Tinder, but yeah, that's probably... Oh, yeah, no, I always do that. Anyway, as always, bonus episodes, which are like mini regular episodes or interviews go up every week or so, and you can get those on iTunes subscriptions or on Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcasts for the price of a cup of coffee.

Actually, lower than the price of a cup of coffee if you live in New York. But what else? Anything. Bueller, Sean. Yeah, I mean, we've got that five part coming up on the Arab-Israeli. conflict. So listeners can look out for that one. That's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, definitely email Sean your opinions on all that stuff and he's going to pick

the best emails to read. So that's Sean. Dot Williams at what is it? prodigy.net? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, firewire. So this is a bit of a different episode. We try really not to do the American mob stories because I feel like they've been done to death and

there's like half a dozen podcasts that do those. But in this case, we are going to make an exception because there hasn't been as much on this guy compared to say, you know, Lucky Luciano or Gotti and those people. And also, we want to capitalize on all the sort of conspiracy money that goes around and get a boost. So, you know, that kind of figures in here. And then also, my brother, no, actually did a lot of ghost writing here because I was in Chicago on a business trip learning how to secure loans from Teamster pension funds. Yeah, I mean, can we first get some sort of details from your trip to Chicago, like dive bars, all that kind of stuff before we kick off?

I don't know. There aren't, you know, that project will be out early next year. There's not that many sorty details. It is organized crime stuff, but it's actually a pretty tragic story. But we'll get around to that when it gets around. Yeah, I mean, I'm wrong in thinking that New Orleans was kind of one of the birthplaces of the mob. I remember reading something about the Sicilian Mafia, right? The Black Hand and extortionists in the 1800s, I think that's right.

But, like, yeah, I've actually been more. watching your honor the past couple of weeks. It's in New Orleans Mob Show, great acting. Pretty gigantic plot holes, but yeah, I recommend Brian Cranston basically playing water white. It's good. Yeah, I actually, I watched the, was it two seasons that it was pretty good. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of tails off in the end, but you know, I know Black Hand was active there and there was a Sicilian population. I don't think it's the birthplace of the mafia in America. I could be wrong about that. I didn't really look into it with this episode. But I definitely had a very active mafia and, you know, New Orleans is wild, so there was always vice and underground stuff

there and money to be made. But gambling, you know, gambling, prostitution, I feel like it was pretty much known for that for decades, even before recent times. But yeah, here we go. Caledgero Minacore, whose name gets Americanized to Carlos Marcello. He arrives in the U.S. He was born in Tunisia in 1910 to Sicilian parents, but they come to the U.S. the next year as illegal immigrants and settle in New Orleans where his father gets a farm.

And as soon as Marcelo becomes old enough to use a horse and cart, he delivers the family vegetables to the New Orleans French market where young Marcello runs into the city's criminal elements for the first time. And, you know, if you've ever been to farmers markets, they are breeding ground for all sorts of criminals and scams. It's like $9 for a dozen eggs. Like, are you fucking kidding me? $14 for a pound of free-range chicken, which is just completely it is criminal. Dale, can you insert the Seinfeld baseline there? It's insane when people think they can get away to the farmer's markets.

But yes, I feel like every old school mafia movie, it's like push cards and everything, right? Like that's how they start off in the Lower East Side. Young Marcello, he's bartering, he's making deals with the mob who control the markets to sell the goods. And New Orleans dating, like we said, way back when, had a pretty strong criminal culture. Bribery and political corruption were not only common. They were basically part of the system. So having the deal with the mob dudes in the market, it's just part of the game,

and Marcello, he fits right in. In 1928, an 18-year-old Marcelo moves away from home and rents a room in the French quarter, which also has a reputation as a breeding gone for criminals, and it's also where Sean first got arrested for public nudity. You know, if you want to tell that story, Sean. Yeah, I mean, technically it was in decency. There are, like, some details to mine out there,

but we can get to that further down the show, I reckon. Yeah, I mean, I think your major mistake was being so close to a school. But there, Marcelo gets involved with petty crime, mostly small-time burglaries. The following year, him and three buddies, they take down a bank and a robbery and they steal $7,000. And I, you know, I haven't looked up what the inflation numbers are, but it is a lot more valuable than $7 grand now. And it's probably more money than you have. So they take the money back to Marcelo's dad's farmhouse and acting on a tip. The cops come there.

They find all the money. Some reason, though, the bank is just happy to have the money back and they decide not to press charges, which, I don't know, incredibly weird, but it's 1920, so I guess, you know, anything goes. A few months later, he robs a grocery store. This time, he winds up behind bars and is sentenced to nine to 14 years, which I mean, between that and the bank robbery situation, it doesn't make much sense to me. His sentence is commuted.

He only serves five years. The governor does a favor for a politician on behalf of his parents who by then have, like, a pretty thriving business. After this incident, he goes back to work for his father. he lives at home, saves up enough money to buy a rundown bar. You know, every man who has to move back in with their parents and get a job

and sort of live under their roof, that's the dream, right? Just buying a rundown bar, making it your business. He gets to live that dream, and then he does what everyone who still is for the parents does too, which is sell weed out of that bar, which, you know, back then, huge deal. It was like, I don't know, selling fentanyl is now

risk-wise and penalty-wise, I think. But to be allowed to operate, Marcelo bribes a whole host of politicians and local officials, and this is where he really learns the dark arts of corruption, bribery, and political connections that are going to serve him really well throughout his career. He also pays the local mob guy who works for the New Orleans boss at the time, Sylvestero Carollo, aka Silver Dollar Sam,

which, you know, top nickname right there. That local mob dude, he takes a real liking to Marcello, and in turn, Marcelo starts helping out with the other, mob business. By the age of 26, he officially joins Corolla Solis, that Silver Dollar Sam, his mafia organization. Yeah, I felt like we stepped directly into a Scorsese movie

here. Also, that Silver Dollar Sam is awesome. Next week, we're going to have a few more amazing names. It's like a Premier League role call of them. So, yeah, look out for that one. But this is cool. I like it, a lot. It reminds me more of, like, the Sergio Leone one,

like once upon time in America. Oh, yeah. It kind of has that Western feel, too, you know, and push cards. Lowery side in the 1920s? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a wild, wild, long movie too. With Carlos' new mob connections, he works on expanding his new pinball

and veng machine company. And I think I've talked about this before on the podcast. It actually plays a role in one of the other productions on I'm working on right now. Vending machines, pinball machines, jukeboxes, they were all a huge mob racket

for decades going back to like, I don't know, the 40s or 50s, even 30s, I guess. Any coin operating machine like that, you know, that was all cash, it was passive income, hard for the IRS to get tight numbers on it. In a lot of cities,

vending machines were a completely mob-controlled situation. Cigarettes, I think, were often set to be the best because you could steal them, you know, and they have a high price and there's high taxes on them, then you just put them in the machines, load them up, and you're just making a killing. And usually they couldn't tell

if it was stolen cigarettes being in some bars vending machine, right? Organized crime guys, They always make sure their vetting machines too are the ones put in all the bars, restaurants and nightclubs, you know, whatever. The usual strong-arm tactics were basically use our machines or will blow up your restaurant.

That way they could set the rates that the owner of the bar or restaurant, whatever it is, takes out of their cut. And, you know, they did not give good rates, but you really couldn't go against them. That's exactly what Marcelo does, and his little empire starts expanding. Yeah, weirdly enough, the Patreon bonus is going up today, tomorrow is about a guy who did exactly this in 90s, Baltimore.

So plus change or whatever the French say. I don't really know what that phrase is. Yeah, it wasn't a thing that went away. I guess there's less coin-operated machinery now, and especially like in bars. But it's still happening now, I think. Yeah, it's a good business in general. But no, a lot of them I feel like take credit cards, right?

So I feel like that kind of tamperes it down a bit. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You're the one that spends your nights on the poker machine, so I don't really know that world so much these days. Yeah, I think with gambling, that is a big part of that. Remember, what's the, that was a big thing in Berlin, right? Or am I just thinking that the show is real? Yeah, yeah.

It's the shisha bars and the pokies and all that kind of stuff. Right, yeah. Germany doesn't, Germany still use cash, so they're a little bit behind the world for a lot of stuff. Well, the gambling machines too, right? I think those are, even if those aren't credit, they're, you know, mob gambling. Yeah, goes together. Sure. So back in New York at this time, the new mayor, Fiorillo LaGuardia, you know, the airport's named after him, vows to crack down on mafia campaign's gambling operations in that city.

So this is in the mid-30s. And his first target is the legendary mafia boss Frank Costello. He even has a press conference where he smashes up on a Castello slot machines in front of the media, which, you know, I love those old school politician press conferences where they just do wild stuff. I haven't seen a lot of those in a while, you know, like stepping on a, stepping on vials of crack and stuff. I really thought... I feel like that's an Eric Adams move. Yeah, I feel like he, you know, lighting something on fire. You gotta get those...

Dumping up a whole bunch of powdered fentadol into, like, I don't know, the toilet. It just seems like something that he would go for, and I'm sad that he's not doing it. I feel like an Eric Adams, like, Saudi police, like tie up would be a pretty cool promo video. Oh, yeah. I mean, after he's not mayor anymore, he'll definitely be over there posing and stuff with those guys. Dude, it's doing something weird. What an incredible weirdo. Costello, he's looking to get something going out of town away from all the heat,

and he eyes New Orleans as the new location for a slot operation. But he has to deal with Marcello because, you know, that's his racket. So Marcello, he's able to broker a deal between the Louisiana mob bosses and the New York mob bosses the share of the gambling profits. And this is kind of a big deal for Marcello because now he's in good with, like, the really big guys in New York who operated on a national level. In 1938, he gets caught selling 22 pounds a week to an undercover. cop, which at the time was the biggest pop bust in New Orleans history, which, you know,

kind of sounds like amateur numbers now, but back then, yeah, dude, it was a big deal back then, like to sell at all, you know, it wasn't a, it wasn't an easy thing. Like, people did life sentences for far less than that. Even into like the 60s and 70, probably 80s, too, and 90s. Jesus. But yeah, he gets off easy. He actually only spends a year behind bars thanks to all his political connections. And then the early 1940s, 1940s, 1942, outbreak of the U.S.

getting involved in War II, a lot of Marcello's sort of native-born mafia contemporaries, they get drafted for the war effort, but not him because he wasn't a citizen. So while all those guys are off fighting, he moves in and takes over some of their rackets and starts, you know, really building up his empire. At this point, he operates a number of bars and restaurants on Bourbon Street and around the city, and he also has a trucking business. So New Orleans is also a major place for troops to be passing through during World War II. since the New Orleans port

was like a big point for the troops to pass through. It's where it was an embarkation point and it's also a big supply port. So you have tons of goods passing through all manners of vice for the troops, gambling, women, booze, drugs, all that. And that leads

to really big earnings from Marcelo. Yeah, I guess if you're going to spend three months staring down Kamikaze pilots near Guam or something you're going to want to smoke. Although actually would they have been going out east to the Atlantic? So maybe it's U-boats off the Channel Islands, which is way worse. I'd want more of the smoke

if I was going to do that. But yeah, either way, money. Whatever your thing, it could be anything. Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things.

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Deepop, where Taste recognizes Taste. I don't know. You know, I just rewatch the Pacific, which is incredible, and doesn't get nearly enough credit, I think because Band of Brothers is also really, really good. Yeah. But I feel like I don't know where they leave from. Is it in New Orleans? I'm not even sure.

It might be somewhere in the South, but anyway, great series. 1944 at the age of 35, Carlos reaches his new heights when he's offered a partnership in an illegal casino in Jefferson Parish, which I think is technically like the greater New Orleans area. He's offered the partnership by Frank Costello,

who we mentioned earlier and Meyer Lansky. And this is like being called up to the Yankees from AAA, but one of the Yankees were actually good. So Costello and Lansky, they're like the elite of the elite of the USA Mafia world. Costello, he sits on the mafia commission, the syndicate, and he's the head of one of the five families. I think it was the Genovese family that he was on top,

or it was later called the Genovese family. And Lansky, he was partners with Costello and Lucky Dusciano. He had Bugsy Siegel by his side, and he's kind of seen as one of the architects of the modern mafia, as we know it today. He occasionally attends commission meetings as well, even though he wasn't technically on it since he wasn't Italian. He was Jewish.

This is a very big deal to be in a partnership with these two legendary mafia guys. and while this was in a legal casino, it wasn't like underground and like above some loft in a building, right? It's pretty public, and the mayor and police knew about it and they tolerated it. Carlos was greasing the palms of everyone,

anyone that was in New Orleans that could even stand in their way. So the casino itself turns into a major moneymaker and the top echelons of the national mob. They're very impressed with Marcello. In 1947, the reigning mob boss in New Orleans, Silver Dollar Sam. He calls a meeting of the minds of the top New Orleans mobsters to anoint a successor.

He's about to get deported back to Sicily since he, like Marcello, was not legal, which, I don't know, I feel like that seemed to happen a lot. Like, I've heard stories of mobsters back then just being deported all the time way back when? Yeah, I mean, I guess it hasn't happened there for a while, but Australia did it a few years ago in New Zealand. Really, really controversial. I think we touched on it in the show we did about the Kiwi Biker gangs, but I'm

going to try and follow up and do some in-person reporting on that soon. Pretty crazy, just deporting a bunch of crazy violent bikers to New Zealand, which is cool. So, yeah, we'll do a show on that. Yeah, find them in your hometown. But, yeah, the U.S. did that in the 90s, too, with a lot of Salvador and like MS-13. That's kind of how MS-13 spread and not really big in El Salvador, because a lot of them got deported in the 90s. And then they went back to El Salvador, which was a post-Civil War country with like no state. institutions that were functioning well, and they just kind of like started taking over

and transferring their sort of gang mentality and knowledge and structures into that country when they really didn't know how to combat it. Marcelo, though, he's about to take over because Silver Dollar Sam is sent back to Sicily, and while a few of the other gangsters want Sam's son to be the successor, Marcelo gets the backing of the commission in no small part due to his relationship with Costello and Lansky, and he becomes the new mob boss of New Orleans. Marcelo also gets a nickname at this time. They call him the little man because he was only five feet tall,

which probably seems like the kind of thing that people didn't call him to his face. But Marcello was said to be pretty under control, so maybe they did. I don't know. Marcelo at this point has also really smartened up and he's learned from the mistakes of other mobsters. He tries to avoid the limelight. He kind of sticks to himself. He operates out of a small run-down tavern in Jefferson Parish. And he tries to do everything he can to keep himself out of the headlines,

even though he's becoming one of those powerful and wealthiest gangsters in the game across the U.S. He also continues the New Orleans family's longstanding tradition of being somewhat independent from the national mob scene in the northeast in Chicago, and he requires all the outside mafiosos to get permission before even visiting Louisiana, which I don't know, the sources on Marcello seem to make this into a big deal, but I feel like that was pretty standard practice even back then for any gangster coming from out of town, hoping to operate in a territory where there already was active organized crime. The 1950s is a big turning point for the mafia as a whole in the U.S. I think we covered that in the cold open a little bit,

but the feds are really starting to get involved and actually doing stuff now. It wasn't like today, like the mafia's existence, it wasn't even a really known thing to the average American. I mean, we had Capone and stuff in Atlantic City and all that, but this wasn't like a widespread thing that people had knowledge of. and this is where we start seeing a lot more of these public committees we used to see back in the day where they were called these mobsters to testify. A senator from Tennessee has one of these hearings and calls in Marcello,

who gives the Fifth Amendment 152 times and even refuses to give his age or his marital status. He actually gets convicted of contempt of Congress, but he wins on appeal. However, this brings Marcello's business into the public view, and he finally starts to receive some attention from the media, and then, of course, law enforcement. At the end of this particular committee, the senator recommends that Marcello be deported

and deportation proceedings begin, but Marcello has a team of highly skilled lawyers fighting it. And the way the law worked back then, and maybe now, I've no idea, is that you could just keep filing motions to stay deportations over and over and over again to stall them. Soon after that, we get the McCallon Committee,

which RFK was the chief counsel of, and this is in 1957. And they're really focused on the labor racketeer aspect of organized crime. I think we actually got into the history of how the mob got involved in that in the Murder Inc episode. Yeah, I mean, this is sounding like the plot of On the Waterfront, right? Which is one of the greatest movies of all time. Just here, my controversial movie hot take, guys.

But yeah, we did get into it back then. It was pretty crazy. Right, they started as like leg breakers for the factory owners doing strikes, you know, until eventually smarting up and taking control of the unions themselves. Marcello, he gets called in, he gives them the old, you know, I'm not saying nothing. and RFK at one point allegedly tells some of his team that he's going to eventually get Marcello no matter what. A few years later, of course, his brother is elected president,

RFK's appointed attorney general, and his and the government's crusade against the mob really get going and they're publicly vowing all over to go after the mafia and put an end to it. So Marcello is not a U.S. citizen, and while he has a whole host of lawyers fighting his deportation orders, he still has to make regular routine visits to the immigration offices to maintain his resident alien status.

In 1961, Bobby Kennedy as the feds essentially kidnap him and put him on a plane before allowing him to talk to his family or lawyers. This is also made possible by the CIA, who's, you know, doing CIA things to have the Guatemalan authorities even allow this. They fly him to Guatemala.

Why Guatemala? Because Marcello had used a fake Guatemalan birth certificate for one of his schemes to avoid deportation. Uh, what? That seems like a pretty dumb move on his part there. I'm down for the movie where Marcello ends up being a spook for like United Fruits or saying, you want to write that one? No, I'm good.

The U.S. government, they knew it was fake, but they did this anyway. So one of the stories goes that upon arrival in Guatemala, he's driven out to the jungle and left there. And another story goes that he's basically thrown out of the plane over the jungle with a parachute, but none of these appear to be true, which, you know, makes it a little less of a good story. But the Washington Post reports that he was arrested upon his arrival in Guatemala, and was out of jail in a few days

and staying in the fans of the hotel. It's a quote from the post article here, you know, he reportedly told him to Quaidon several weeks later. They say I'm a crook, but let me tell you, it cost me $75,000 to stay out of jail here. I don't think that makes the point that you're not a crook, you know?

Yeah. I think that makes the point that you are a crook, if that's what you're saying. Also, this is what? This is the middle of the century and you're spending $75,000 U.S. dollars in Guatemala. I mean, what the hell is that in today's cash? Hey man, you know, you can't be buried with it, you know, you gotta spend it somewhere.

Why not a Guatemalan prison? So for a few weeks, we have Marcello's lawyers arguing the states that the birth certificate was fake and the deportation was illegal, while his lawyers in Guatemala arguing that the birth certificate is real, and please don't kick him out of Guatemala. This lasts for a few weeks until the Guatemalan government orders him kicked out of there and he's driven to El Salvador. A few months later, he's somehow back in the states and no one really knows how he got back in. but the thought is that it was through Honduras and that he caught a fly back from there. Back in the States, Marcello is, of course, enraged with Bobby Kennedy,

while Kennedy himself is looking to turn up the heat to get Marcello deported yet again. And Kennedy, he orders the FBI office in New Orleans to step up its investigation into Marcello, but the FBI office really does nothing. I feel like this whole thing has taken on a bit of a slapstick element at this point. Like, where is he?

What is he doing? Who is he paying? What are they playing out? It seems like the perfect segue if we're about to get into some bat-shick crazy conspiracy stuff. I don't know if that's where we're going or if that's what you've got planned

for the rest of the show. Oh, that's where we're going. Even I, I'm not a conspiracy guy, and there's some hints here. Awesome. The FBI is not really doing much. They keep sending reports back to Kennedy along the lines of he isn't involved in any rackets.

He's just the tomato salesman, which, you know, whenever he was called in front of those committees, that's what he would say. He would plead the fifth and say that he was just a tomato salesman, and they actually did own a tomato canning company. You know, my assumption there is that the FBI was on the take here, but I can't be sure. I've worked on another U.S. mobster story from around that time that talked about how the feds in the 60s and cities like New Orleans and other sort of mid-sized cities just didn't really make an effort or care that much. So we've got Marcelo Furies at the Kennedys. Kennedy vowed to go after the mob, and a lot of

mafioso is just across the country, kind of feeling betrayed by JFK because of the why they held belief that he was friendly with mafia bosses and that they helped him get elected. On November 22nd, 1963, Marcelo's in court. He gets acquitted in his deportation case, and as soon as he leaves the courthouse, he hears the news that JFK, uncle to our next president, just kidding, was assassinated. This is, of course, great news for Marcelo because not only does he hate the Kennedys, but Bobby Kennedy, while still Attorney General, just became a lot less powerful as it was well known.

Him and Lyndon Johnson were kind of not buds and didn't see eye to eye. So let's just say the mafia in general, they weren't really crying over the Kennedy assassination. Okay, so the mafia Kennedy hit theories. Yeah, strap in. Oh, okay. So you really are voting RFK Jr. I mean, we'll get him on the show, for sure.

I don't think, I mean, maybe I'd hire him as a personal trainer, but I don't think I'd vote for him for city council even. There's basically a whole lot of different threads and circumstantial evidence in this. And I'm going to go through some of them, but I'll probably end up doing like the Charlie Day mailroom meme. But obviously, the motivation for them up to go after Kennedy, it's pretty obvious. They're being pursued pretty stringently, and they legitimately felt betrayed by him. And obviously, they weren't unfamiliar with solving their problems by assassinating people. And they really were extremely powerful back then.

I mean, close to the height of their powers. So Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed Kennedy, is actually born in New Orleans, and he lives there for a few years before the family moves to Texas. Eventually they come back, and Oswald does his ninth and tenth grade years at school in New Orleans, before the family again moves back to Texas. But he drops out of school, he joins the Marines, and he eventually comes back to New Orleans on April 24th, 1963, seven months before Kennedy's assassination.

Wow, okay, so we really are going there. This is the sort of stuff that does huge numbers. I mean, we've got to put out a YouTube video with Comic Sans, and mobsters faces on the video and we'll be, I mean, we're going to be doing millions on this stuff, man. Oh, yeah, I mean, that's the plan. I mean, the YouTube title's got to be like,

did this mobster kill, kind of like something along those lines, you know? Five question marks. Yeah, so we're, yeah, this is a, this is a, this is a, you know, this is a real effort to get those conspiracy views. Christmas is coming up, guys. Yeah. Okay, so there's this guy Robert Blakely. He's this lawyer who, interestingly enough is the person

who helps put together the RICO Act. He's also a consultant on an organized crime committee that Lyndon Johnson had created, and the Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, which is a committee that was set up to investigate the killings of JFK and MLK. He wrote the book The Plot to Kill the President, where he talks about the mob connection to the assassination. And Blakely says that Oswald's uncle, Charles Dutz Murrett, was an ex-boxer slash promoter, who also was a bookie under the umbrella of the Marcello Crime family. And he says that on August 9, 1963, Oswald was arrested for disturbing the peace by handing out pro-caster relieflets,

and he ends up being bailed out by an individual with close connections to the Marcello organization. A few days after Kennedy's assassinated, Oswald while being transported to jail, he shot by Jack Ruby, and Jack Ruby was a Dallas nightclub owner, and Dallas was considered Marcello's turf as well as New Orleans, and he himself is alleged to have organized crime ties, Jack Ruby. He's originally from Chicago, and he was an associate of Chicago outfit, whose boss at the time Sam Giancana also hates Kennedy, and Giancano, like Marcello, was a big-time National Mafia player.

Ruby is also alleged to have connections to the Marcello organization. In the Warren Commission, which was created to investigate who killed JFK, they conclude that Ruby had no significant connection to organized crime. But Blakely brings up his point, and he says that the magic word there used by the commission is significant because he did have some connections. For one, the women he had in the strip club in Dallas, they're on a circuit,

and they would also work at the show bar in New Orleans, which was owned by Marcello, and Marcello sort of controlled that circuit. Hit the pause button, guys, if you want to, like, go and grab your pen and paper and maybe a tin four hat as well. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals

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Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Yeah, I probably could have written this better, but I didn't have time. Now, Ed Becker is a businessman with ties to Marcelo. He had gone to Marcelo's home a few times with Marcelo's nephew to try to get support for a business venture theirs. And he tells us to the 1977 House Committee,

this is from a 1979 Washington Post article, quote, The House staff report continued. It commented that Marcelo had made some kind of reference to President Kennedy's being a dog, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the dog's tail, and had said, quote, The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail, but that if the dog's head were cut off, the dog would die.

I mean, in fairness to Marcelo, that is literally true of a dog. I think it's true of a lot of animals, actually. Then we have this guy, Eric Reed. He's a mob journalist who said that during the Guatemala deportation incident, Marcelo said in Sicilian, LeVarsi Napitra di Las Scarpa, which is take the stone out of my shoe. I guess it's an old Sicilian cry for revenge,

and he had said it, you know, against the Kennedy brothers. Reed also says that Marcelo spoke of using a nut to do the job, and Becker backed up Reed's account. I mean, there's a reason these guys use euphemisms, right? I mean, like he can say take the stone out of my shoe, but he's not like shoot the president in the head. So, you know, he's kind of doing a good job if he did mean it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I kind of want to throw cold water on this a little bit. Marcel was extremely cautious what he had been that open with like one of his nephews associates, though. He was pretty angry. And then it's like, why would he take out JFK instead of Bobby? But I guess you could say that, you know, if Bobby was taken out, on them with everything he's got, but it seems a little suspect.

And finally, before we wrap up the conspiracy portion of this podcast, we have Frank Ruggano, a longtime lawyer for Santo Traficante, who was the longtime mob boss of Florida and, you know, Jimmy Hoffa, who is the mob-affiliated Teamsters president and a big union guy who you guys know it was killed later on. Yeah, before, before we wrap up the conspiracy portion of the podcast, did you know Marcelo's son is? It's Dr. Anthony. No.

Fouchy. You know, the pieces are falling into place. So, Ruggano tells the New York Post and PBS Frontline, this is in 1992, that the Kennedy assassination

was a conspiracy between Traficante, Marcelo, and Hoffa, who all famously despised the Kennedys. And he said that Hoffa told Traficante and Marcello that he wanted Kennedy dead

and that they agreed and said it was an acceptable idea. He also says that Traficante celebrated Kennedy's death and said, our problems are over, I hope Jimmy is happy. And a few weeks later, Marcelo told Regano, Jimmy owes me and he owes me big.

Kennedy went after Hoffa really hard, and he was indicted multiple times and did go to jail at one time. I forgot to mention that above. He was also famously known to despise both the Kennedys. And finally, in a deathbed confession, Traficante, after confessing that the mob did get rid of Hoffa, also said that, quote, Carlos messed up. We should have killed Bobby, not Giovanni. Which... Okay.

Yeah. I mean, there we go. So yeah, that's the evidence for the mob killing Kennedy, which, you know, out of all the Kennedy conspiracy theories, it kind of strikes me as the most plausible. But do not email me 7,000-word letters with your own theories. But feel free to send them to Sean. That's S-E-A-N-Williams at gmail.com. Thank you very much. Yeah.

I mean, I think we've put the whole Jimmy Hoffer thing to bed. I don't think there's going to be any more podcasts on him for a while. I can't wait for your next episode on Princess Diana. Yeah. But back to Marcello. Kennedy's dead. This point, things are looking up for him. His arch nemesis has been to Claude,

especially since JFK, again, like we mentioned, his VP and now President Lyndon Johnson, did not see eye to eye with IRFK. According to the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans, Marcelo's organization at this point is making up to $500 million alone, just in illegal gambling operations, and up to $1.1 billion total a year in the 60s, which, I don't know.

By the 70s, it's estimated $2 billion a year and is considered the largest industry in Louisiana. I don't know where he pulled these numbers from, but needs to say he's rich, he's powerful, he's doing good, doing better than all of us. The director of that commission, Aaron M. Cohn, he says that besides the gambling money, the cash came from diverse, legitimate interests,

including syndican-controlled bars and taverns, prostitution, professional burglaries, and hold-ups, narcotics, and trafficking and stolen commodities. Through it all, Marcelo remains like a pretty down-to-earth guy. He's not too flashy, you're conspicuous. He shakes hands with random strangers on the street, doesn't really have a lot of bodyguards.

But in 1964, we're going back in time a little bit. Carlos gets indicted again. This time for conspiracy to obstruct justice because a juror in his last trial comes forward and says he accepted a bribe to throw the deportation case and is willing to testify because Carlos' people never paid up. But the defense kind of works their magic and is kind of like, well, if he didn't get paid, it's not a bribe.

And he gets acquitted yet again the following year. A few months later, the reclusive Carlos goes to Manhattan to dine with some of the big mafiosos there in the city. The police happen to be monitoring it or walking by by coincidence. They arrest everyone. They immediately get bailed out. They return to the restaurant, this time with their lawyers to finish their meal, which is pretty funny.

But this little occurrence, it makes all the papers nationally, and it turns the low-key Carlos into an even big, local celebrity back in New Orleans. So much so that when he gets back to the city, there's a crowd waiting to welcome him. When a guy gets in his way, Carlos punches the guy who turns out being, there's actually a picture of this,

but he turns out to be a local FBI agent. Carlos is arrested for assaulting the FBI agent and he, you know, federal offense. He gets off the first time on a hung jury, but they get him the second time and his lawyers get the sentence reduced from two years to six months. I mean, I need to know,

firstly, how in the actual hell you get off beating up an FBI agent on a hung jury. And secondly, who is that lawyer and how can I hire him or her for my fourth coming trial in California? Which I still annoyingly cannot talk about. I think he wasn't

identified as, he didn't identify himself? I don't know. He probably just paid off a bunch of people. This is a quote from another article from the Washington Post, which seems to have a lot of Marcella content, quote, more than 30 leading Louisianans wrote the judge, wrote the trial judge to urge Clemency attest to Marcel's fine character.

The list included a sheriff, a former sheriff, a state legislator, two former state legislators, two former state police commanders, the president of a waterfront labor union, a bank president, two bank vice presidents, a former assistant district attorney, one chief juvenile probation officer, which what? A former revenue agent, three insurance agencies, five real estate men, five physicians, a funeral director, and six clergymen. So, you know, he was in bed with nearly everyone and had his sheriff friends. I mean, this guy, he's changed his name, he's paying the politics.

He's into real estate, never Instagrams, his crimes. He's, I mean, he's as close as we've got on this show to a perfect gangster, right? Yeah, I mean, you'll see. He ends up doing pretty well for himself, despite all the attention he ended up getting after a couple years. So, yeah. He again starts to appear for Congress during the Select Committee for Assassinations in the late 1970s.

Does the whole Stonewalling thing again? I mean, how many fucking committees are there for this guy? But after all this publicity, the government really turns up to heat and launches a massive investigation into him with the surveillance and the wiretaps, which up to that point had never really been utilized before with him. And the late 70s, it's really when wiretapping became a major tool against organized crime. The technology had gotten a lot better. And Rico being passed, I think, at the start of the decade, it allowed for a much more permissive

environment when it came to the legal sense of getting permission for these. Also, these guys just weren't as tuned in to the dangers of talking on the phone or getting their offices bugged as, you know, people are now. So the wiretaps on Marcello, they turn up a ton of incredible. discriminating shit about corruption and bribery at a major insurance scam that included him paying all political officials, and he gets indicted on a bunch accounts, including trying to help bribe a judge in California. On August 4th, 1981, he's convicted of one-count of conspiracy in the insurance trial.

Four months later, he's found guilty at three counts related to bribing the federal judge. In April, 1983, his appeal is denied for the insurance case, and he heads back to jail at the age of 73. He's in pretty bad health at this point, and he has multiple strokes and early onset also, Alzheimer's, and his reign is over as boss. In 1989, his conspiracy charge actually gets overturned on a technicality, and he's released from jail to spend the last few years of his life at home. And he dies four years later in 1993, at age 83,

which is, you know, not a bad run, all things considerate. So he leaves behind four kids, one son and three daughters. None appear to be involved in organized crime. Recently in 2016, his son Joseph was in one of the local New Orleans papers as selling a thousand acres in Jefferson Parish for 13.5 million. So in the article, it mentioned that Marcello family

is one of the largest landowners in Jefferson Parish and has been pretty active in selling and donating land in the last few years. So, you know, all in all, a pretty good mafia career for Marcello does a few years

in the start of his life, a few years at the end of his life, maybe kills a president and he invest in enough legitimate things that his family seems to still be pretty wealthy today. And that's kind of, you know, it's all you can ask for.

Yeah, and if there's any lesson you can take away from this show, It's that. Oh, that and do your own research, obviously. Yeah, definitely spend the next couple months getting deep into the weeds with Kennedy assassination theories. And, yeah, I guess that's it from us. As always, Patreon, iTunes, and next week, Sean will have some really weird stuff he's going to get into. Oh, yeah.

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