Pat Speer

Tim, read again. Bill answered your question. "By the AP[/b.]"

Tim, one of Bugliosi's most sickening sins of omission is his use of Charles Givens to support that Oswald never came down for lunch. He would DESTROY any CT using such addled logic, but there it is. (Anyone not familiar with the Givens problem should read the section on Givens in chapter 4b at patspeer.com.)

John, you may not be 100% fair with everyone all the time. But that's just to say you're human. You're far more fair than most would be. I believe your involvement in this forum is its greatest asset. When you post you keep the forum lively and focused on learning. When you're absent for extended periods the forum almost always descends into name-calling and re-hashing old issues. You are the forum's leader. It is the Simkin forum.

Last week, I asked if anyone knew which nurse made a strange statement included in a 1967 William Turner article in Ramparts Magazine. Well, I heard back from Bill and he remembered the statement, and believes he got it from a Ramparts writer named David Welch, who'd interviewed a number of witnesses and assisted in the article. I googled Welch and found a reference to him in a Mae Brussell column, so he's almost certainly correct. The question now is what became of Welch, and if he took any notes on his witness interviews. Maybe if we put our heads together on issues like this we can rise above that other matter.

My sympathies are with John and Andy. They built this forum to attract educators and authors, so that they may intelligently discuss history and other topics. And now the forum has been flooded with buffs primarily interested in spewing their own opinions, and the educators and authors have fled. One way to stop this descent is for forum members to better educate themselves. There are hundreds of thousands of pages now up at the Mary Ferrell Foundation, most of them rarely read by educators, authors, and buffs. My humble suggestion: we should all spend some time researching over at MFF, and then report back here what we've've learned.

I certainly do not know where that fragment came from for sure, but it seems to me that if it came from the top of the head, then it should have left a pretty large hole and yet the Dallas doctors didn't see such a wound on the top of the head as I recall. The bone plate was in place so well that they never noticed a wound up there. They did however notice a large defect in the back of the head. Is there anything more to go on??? Bill The Dallas doctors were obviously wrong. They saw ONE wound. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to believe the wound they thought they saw on the back of his head was really on the top of his head (and that they were confused by seeing him laying on his back) than that one bullet hit Kennedy on the back of his head and failed to exit, with all the brain matter exploding forwards. Some, trying to make the case that the Harper frag came from the back of JFK's head, point out that the doctor who examined it in Dallas thought it was occipital. Well, guess what, the occipital bone is no closer to the supposed exit seen at Parkland (which is on the parietal bone) than the wound on the top of Kennedy's head in the autopsy photos (which is also on the parietal bone, only two inches further forward). The difficulties associated with head rotation are perhaps best illustrated by looking at the BOH photo. There are many who look at that photo and pronounce that it is incompatible with the right lateral photo. Wrong. Look at the location of the ear in each photo, and the large defect's relation to the ear. It's clearly the same wound, seen from different angles.

Why not assume the large piece of bone seen falling to the floor in the Z-film is the large piece of bone found on the floor by Kinney? And why not assume the large piece of bone seen flying through the air in the Z-film is the fragment found by Billy Harper, on this exact same trajectory? Dr. Mantik said that the Harper fragment was from two possible locations--the back of the head and the top of the head (as reported by Angel). He then said that, since the Harper fragment included the appearance of an entrance margin, it was unthinkable that it was the top of the head. Well, I dared to think the unthinkable, and have made the case at patspeer.com that the Harper fragment was BOTH on the top of the head, and an entrance.

To quote my old friend Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?'

Duke, if there is an early recorded statement of a nurse saying the trach tube pushed on the back of the head, it can be seen as support for my "theory." The doctors knew Kennedy had been riding in a motorcade. They would have assumed he'd been sitting up. While it's possible they assumed the neck wound was an entrance, and the head wound an exit, and put two and two together, Dr. Clark would later say that the head wound looked like a tangential wound--a wound of both entrance and exit. He also said the large wound was missing scalp--a sign of entrance. So...there was quite possibly something said by someone to make him think the bullet traveled upwards in the neck. In Six Seconds, Thompson lists the various statements of the doctors, and they do indeed suggest that something had traveled up or down the neck.

The Clark Panel, Dr. Lattimer, and Larry Sturdivan all proclaimed that the neck x-ray shows a bullet track in the neck above the exit on the throat. I noticed this same thing and discuss it on my webpage. The HSCA FPP, however, since they believed the bullet slightly ascended in the back to exit at the throat, had no explanation for a wound track's being in the neck above the exit, and concluded that this air in the neck was air backed up in the neck when Kennedy's tie momentarily sealed off the hole in his trachea. That smells of deception, IMO. I read dozens of books and articles on gunshot wounds and missile tracks, and never read anything about a false track showing up on an x-ray due to clothing sealing off the wound. It also seems more than suspicious that this air just so happened to back up in the neck in the direction of the low EOP entry.

While I'm not a doctor or nurse, it would seem to me that practitioners would not merely insert a tube and let it follow the path of least resistance, willy-nilly in any direction it chose to take. In a throat that hadn't perhaps been punctured antiorly, that could seemingly be as easily ipward as downward; that is, the tube would end up going out the mouth as easily as toward the lungs. Would there not be at least some effort toward ensuring that the tube was going in its intended direction, e.g., inserting it at an angle that would make it go toward the lungs rather than out the back of the head? I would think so, but while reading through the nurses' testimony, I re-read some of Perry's, and he said something about McClelland helping him put the tube in place. This implied that he'd momentarily had trouble. Keep in mind also that a number of the doctors--Perry, Clark, and Jones if I remember correctly--concluded on the 22nd that the throat wound was an entrance, and that the head wound was an exit. Now something made them feel comfortable with the idea the bullet traveled up the neck. What was it that led them to accept this seemingly unlikely possibility? If the tube followed the path indicated by the nurse and Turner, then we have our answer.

I've never heard this one before and think this would have been mentioned in the many detailed works on the autopsy and medical evidence before, if true. The damage was great, but never before mentioned in the throat or palate area. It is my guess is it is not accurate. I'd suggest you e-mail Turner and ask. Had it been said [whether correct or not] IMO the WC would not have included it. I'd say it is an anatomical impossibility or gross medical malpractice. The trachea leads to the lungs, not the brain. Jack My research led me to suspect there were two head wounds, and that the lower entrance near the EOP led down the neck to the throat wound. After coming to this suspicion, I found that 1) Richard Lipsey told the HSCA the low head wound and throat wound were connected 2) Tom Robinson told the HSCA and ARRB these wounds were connected 3) George Burkley told the Kennedy Library there may have been two head wounds. If, when the doctors were putting in the trach tube, the tube followed the permanent bullet track back up into the head, as suggested by Turner's statement, then this is confirmation of my theory.

In a June '67 article in Ramparts Magazine, William Turner wrote "a nurse at Parkland Hospital said that when doctors attempted a tracheotomy on the President, the damage was so great the tube pushed out the back of his head." Does anyone know which nurse said this? Or where Turner found this statement? I looked through the WC statements and testimony and found zip.

Jack, if you ever come across a tape of Sturdivan's testimony, and can make me a copy, I would be most grateful. I have a whole section on his testimony at patspeer.com, and have yet to settle the simple question of whether or not he said "800 feet per second" or "800 meters per second" at a key point in his testimony.

Tim, most of the hearings were broadcast on public television. It is an ongoing mystery to me why they have never been widely available. After comparing some of what I have to the transcripts, and exchanging a few emails with Larry Sturdivan, I think I know why. The questions asked by the congressmen were all scripted by Blakey and his staff. Some of the congressmen strayed from the script and came off as inarticulate. Similarly, many of the "experts" made mistakes or came off as inarticulate and confused. As a result, some of the questions and responses were were re-written for the transcripts. I suspect the HSCA may have petitioned PBS to keep the evidence for this away from the public.

Tom, do you have the breakdown for Oswald's 191?

Here's Michael Griffith's online summary of O'Donnell's discussion with the ARRB * Joe O'Donnell, a White House photographer who worked with Robert Knudsen, told the ARRB that Knudsen showed him autopsy photos that showed a grapefruit-sized hole IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD. This is yet another witness who saw a sizable wound in the rear of the skull. The evidence of a large wound in the back of Kennedy's head is important because the current autopsy photos show no such wound. In the autopsy photos the back of the head is virtually undamaged. Critics contend those photos have either been altered or the skull was cosmetically repaired before the pictures were taken, so as to conceal the large wound in the back of the head. A large wound in the back of the head, of course, would be characteristic of a shot from the front, not from behind. * O'Donnell further told the ARRB that one of the autopsy photos Knudsen showed him showed what appeared to be an ENTRY WOUND IN THE RIGHT TEMPLE. This is key because there were several reports out of Dallas of a small wound in one of the temples. O'Donnell's account strongly tends to confirm those reports. Also, a defect consistent with a wound of entry can be seen in the right temple area on the autopsy x-rays, according to three doctors who have examined them (one of whom is an expert in neuroanatomy and another of whom is a board-certified radiologist). New York Times September 15, 2007 Known for Famous Photos, Not All of Them His By MICHAEL WILSON Joe O’Donnell’s glowing legacy outlived him by less than a week. The man recalled by some as “The Presidential Photographer” with a knack for having a camera to his eye at just the right moment, became instead someone described as a fraud who hijacked some of the 20th century’s most famous images and claimed them as his own. Mr. O’Donnell, a retired government photographer, died on Aug. 9 in Nashville at age 85. Obituaries published nationwide, including one in The New York Times on Aug. 14, praised his body of work over several presidential administrations, most of them singling out one famous picture: little John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his slain father’s passing coffin on Nov. 25, 1963. That picture was later determined to have been taken by someone else, and a closer examination of photos that Mr. O’Donnell claimed as his own has turned up other pictures taken by other photographers. Retired news photographers all over the country, some into their 80s, reacted at the claims in the obituaries with shock and outrage as the only rights most of them have to their own pictures — bragging rights — were quietly taken by a man they never heard of. “The more I hear about this, the more upset I get,” said Cecil Stoughton, 87, a former White House photographer. “I don’t know where he’s coming from. Delusions of grandeur.” Mr. O’Donnell’s family said his claims to fame — made in television, newspaper and radio interviews, as well as on his own amateurish Web site — were not out of greed or fraud, but the confused statements of an ailing man in his last years. The only thing stolen, his widow and one of his sons said, was the soundness of his memory. While he was not formally diagnosed with a mental illness, he clearly became senile, his family said. For them, the backlash has been severe and threatens to overshadow what they say are Mr. O’Donnell’s legitimate works, especially his chronicling of the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. “I just wish people would realize he was an extraordinary photographer,” said his son J. Tyge O’Donnell, 38, who grew up taking this father’s pictures with him to school to show classmates. “Don’t hold getting old against him.” The story of Mr. O’Donnell’s colorful life and exaggerations continues to unfold. Tales he has told for decades have been questioned. Much of his travel history remains something of a mystery, because of difficulty in obtaining personnel information from the government from decades ago. The quest for authorship of a number of famous photos is also complicated by the times in which he worked, when many news and government photographers were not credited for their pictures. More discrepancies in Mr. O’Donnell’s work continue to surface, and there may be more challenges to their authorship. To date, the scrutiny has centered on the years in the 1950s and 1960s when Mr. O’Donnell photographed presidents and purportedly traveled with national leaders. The scrutiny has extended to pictures he took as a 23-year-old marine in Japan that he said had been hidden in a trunk in his home until he unearthed the negatives in 1985. The pictures were published in a book, “Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine’s Photographs From Ground Zero,” (Vanderbilt University Press). The authenticity of those pictures has not been disproved. If Mr. O’Donnell lied about his pictures, it is unclear why. He did not appear to reap financial gains from his claims. Perhaps desire for recognition played a role. He worked for the United States Information Agency, a government body that carried out overseas educational, cultural and media programs. While he was believed to have witnessed important moments in history, he remained unknown to the public. But his family insisted that he simply confused attending various events with photographing them. The controversy began with the obituaries describing his role in taking a famous picture of 3-year-old “John-John,” as was John F. Kennedy Jr.’s nickname, at the funeral. Stan Stearns, a 72-year-old wedding photographer in Annapolis, Md., knows that picture well. He took it. A photographer for United Press International, he kept a close eye that day on the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and her children. “I’m watching her, and she bent down, whispered in his ear,” Mr. Stearns recalled in a recent interview. “The hand went up. Click — one exposure. That was it. That was the picture.” Mr. Stearns quit in 1970 and has been shooting weddings and portraits since. “I am very, very proud to have contributed this photograph to history,” he said. But, it seems, so was Mr. O’Donnell. He said for years that he was at the funeral and that he photographed the boy. “I had a telephoto lens on my camera, and we were across the street behind what we called the ‘bull rope,’ that we had to stay there,” he said in an interview on CNN in 1999. The image showed on CNN that day was not his own. But neither was it the picture taken by Mr. Stearns, which leads to another complicating factor surrounding the John-John salute: several photographers captured the image that day, each distributed in different newspapers and magazines, many times without credit. The salute picture broadcast on CNN in 1999 was actually taken by Dan Farrell, then with The Daily News. Now 76, he recalled the picture in an interview last week. “You never want to miss one like that, you know?” Mr. O’Donnell often spoke of a picture, but his son said he never saw it. The complaints over the John-John picture expanded to a fuller investigation of Mr. O’Donnell’s career by a group of mostly retired photographers and reporters angered by his false claim. Several photographs at a Nashville art gallery called the Arts Company, which had represented Mr. O’Donnell and displayed more than 80 of his pictures, were found not to be his own. One of them, a famous image of President Kennedy piloting a yacht, is without question one taken by the photographer Robert Knudsen in 1962, said James Hill, the audio and visual archives specialist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Another renowned photographer, Elliott Erwitt, has become forever linked to the “Kitchen Debate” in Moscow in 1959, for his famous photograph of Vice President Richard Nixon poking Nikita S. Khrushchev in the chest during a heated exchange. He even attended an anniversary reception 25 years later, playfully poking Mr. Nixon in the chest. So Mr. Erwitt was stunned when he was shown a late-1990s video of Mr. O’Donnell speaking with a Nashville news anchor, and Mr. O’Donnell’s description of having taken the picture. “They were arguing,” Mr. O’Donnell told the reporter. “Khrushchev was very belligerent and said, ‘We’re gonna bury you.’ And Nixon reacted just as fast as he did, and pointed his finger at him and said, ‘You’ll never bury us.’ ” Of course, this was mistaken. Mr. Khrushchev’s famous line, “We will bury you,” was delivered three years earlier, in 1956 in Moscow before Western representatives. Watching Mr. O’Donnell’s interview last week, Mr. Erwitt said, “Unbelievable. The picture is so well known.” The list goes on. A picture the museum said was taken by Mr. O’Donnell of the Tehran Conference of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1943 is suspect. It has been credited in the past to the Associated Press and the United States Army Signal Corps, but its authorship remains unclear. Mr. O’Donnell was born on May 7, 1922, in Johnstown, Pa., his family said. He joined the Marines shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his son said. After the war and his trip to Japan, he worked for the State Department and later the Information Agency, upon its creation in 1953. An archivist’s paper for a 1998 National Archives conference on cold war documentation cites several of the assignments in 1948 that took Mr. O’Donnell “from the home of a truck driver in Arlington, Va., to the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina to small-town polling stations in Lancaster County, Penn.” In an interview, the archivist, Nicholas Natanson, said he had examined the collection of photographs taken at the Kennedy funeral and found none taken by Mr. O’Donnell. But he said some photographs had no credits. Pictures of Mr. O’Donnell standing beside several presidents were some of his proudest possessions, his son said, and there is archival evidence that he photographed Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. But while Mr. O’Donnell referred to himself in his later years as a White House photographer, he did not seem to have ever held that official title. He married four times, and had four children. He retired in 1968 after suffering a back injury in a car accident while working in a motorcade on an assignment. He moved to Michigan, where he owned an antiques store and acted as the sexton of a local cemetery, his son said. The family moved to Nashville in 1979, J. Tyge O’Donnell said. The Arts Company’s owner, Anne Brown, said Mr. O’Donnell was known in the Nashville community as a former presidential photographer, an image no one seemed to question. Mr. O’Donnell’s health had declined since Kimiko O’Donnell, 46 and also a photographer, married him nine years ago; they met in Japan, she said. “He wasn’t interested in showing any of his photos,” she said. “He had two rods in his back. Three strokes, two heart attacks. Skin cancers. Part of colon taken out.” It is practically impossible to say Mr. O’Donnell never sold another photographer’s work as his own, but it seems he did not make any substantial profits off any pictures in the last decade or so. “Where’s the money?” Mrs. O’Donnell asked. The museum owner, Ms. Brown, said she kept several prints Mr. O’Donnell claimed to have taken for sale in a box, but that she had sold only 9 or 10 over a period of years. When Ms. Brown learned of Mr. O’Donnell’s death, she uploaded to the Web site the dozens of pictures from a computer disk provided by his family years earlier. She also sent a press release about the “Presidential Photographer” to Ventures Public Relations, which sent it to news outlets with misidentified photos of John-John’s salute and President Roosevelt attached. The O’Donnells had one bit of what looked like good news these past weeks. Mrs. O’Donnell discovered, among her husband’s things, a photograph of John-John, saluting the president’s casket. Mr. O’Donnell had signed the back. But yesterday, the National Archives matched it to a picture in its collection, and while there is no photographer’s name attached, the picture has been credited as having been taken by someone with U.P.I. “That is disappointing,” Mr. O’Donnell’s son J. Tyge, said yesterday. “But it doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

Tim, I suspect there's a lot of wink-wink between the U.S. and Castro, and has been since almost day one. As with Saddam (prior to Bush) he's the monster we know. The Republican Party has paid lip-service to the anti-Castro crowd since Ike, afraid the whole time that if they help to over-throw him, and end up with a Bautista or a Papa Doc, they'll look pretty foolish. No one wants that. The Repubs NEED Castro in order to insure the support of the Florida Cubans, who have REGULARLY voted against their interests in hopes the Repubs will get rid of Castro. Bush and Cheney would never have been able to go into Iraq and create the current clustermuck, if their party (and family members) hadn't been blowing smoke up the anti-Castro crowd's rump form the past 30 years. Sickening. But...that's politics. One could make pretty much the same claim about the Dems and the poor. They have done almost nothing for the poor because if they did there would be no poor for them to rally.

Tim, I've met and talked to Brownlow on two separate occasions. I include him as a witness on my witness list at patspeer.com. He told me the same story each time. He was with his grandma in front of the Dal Tex. He heard four shots. He had NO IDEA where they came from, but, seeing people run towards the knoll, ASSUMED the shots came from the knoll. He stands on the knoll with Groden, selling his videos. Brownlow has interviewed many of the Dallas citizens on the periphery of the assassination, and sells videos of his interviews.. In my opinion he is very knowledgeable. I am totally surprised by the allegation he claims to have seen a shooter, and doubt he said anything so wild. Both times I spoke to him, a year apart, he mentioned that he personally liked Jean Hill and Beverly Oliver, but had extreme doubts they'd seen any shooters on the knoll.

Why didn't the Japanese continue on to California after nailing Pearl Harbor? Because it wasn't to their advantage... Bin Laden's war is with the West. That he has chosen to focus his attacks in places more accessible than the U.S. is to his credit. 1) Further attacks on U.S. soil will increase American resolve when it is clearly flagging... You don't spit in a man's face when you got him on the ropes. 2) Attacks in Iraq help assure the failure of Bush's policies, which will in turn lead to America's pulling out of Iraq. 3) Attacks in European countries supporting Bush's policies will lead to a public resentment of the U.S. Attacking Americans in Germany, for example, would lead to Germans questioning whether they want Americans there in the first place. smart, smart, smart. IMO, it's a big mistake to assume that Islamic terrorists are all drinking from the same water. Many of these groups are opposed to each other, and only a small number of them are under Bin Laden's control. As a result, it seems possible, even likely, that one or more of these groups will strike U.S. civilians in the next year. The level of hatred is so great among some that the objective gets lost in the hatred, and hatred and murder become the objective. This is true in every war. But in the war of ideas, Bin Laden is winning, and doesn't want to blow it by giving Americans another Alamo, Maine, or Pearl Harbor to rally round. He wants this to be Vietnam, not WWII. It's important to remember that Afghanistan was Russia's Vietnam, and that Bin Laden knows how to win such a war.

Not at all. In March of 2002 Bush said he didn't even think that much about bin Laden, and the gop won big in 2002. The Bush family and the bin Laden family are long-time business partners. Black markets thrive in chaos. Mission accomplished. This is 2007. Bush's political party suffered huge losses in 2006, and stands to suffer bigger losses in 2008. He is openly criticized on television, painted as a buffoon. The economy is suffering. The American people's confidence in his leadership has drastically taken a dive. He's been abandoned by his cronies. Even chumps like Rush Limbaugh take every opportunity to distance themselves from him. NONE of the presidential candidates of his party have made any efforts to rally his support. At a recent debate they mentioned "Reagan" by name something like 50 times while his name was only mentioned once. No president has been as reviled since Nixon. Mission complete failure. Heck, Halliburton has been unable to spend most of the money we've given them because Iraq has been too unstable for them to rebuild the infrastructure. What good is it to blow up a country if the no-bid contract construction companies you've hired to rebuild the country can't even make a buck?

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Bush and Cheney have cynically exploited Bin Laden's existence to expand Presidential power and reward their friends. But Bin Laden is undoubtedly a thorn in their side. Bush's failure to catch him has been a major embarrassment to his administration, and has hurt his party. Now, if Bush were to somehow "catch" Bin Laden just in time for the next election... I have to admit my suspicions would skyrocket.

Herb, you can't see the forest for the trees. This isn't a war of "let's see how many innocent people we can kill" or "let's see how much terror we can spread" it's a war to get the US out of the mid-east. Bin Laden is not stupid. He knows damn well that increasingly vicious attacks on US soil, against "innocent" entertainers respected world-wide, would DRASTICALLY increase support for US policies throughout the non-Arab world, and probably even backfire in the Arab world. It's a big messy situation, with psyops on both sides. It''s ridiculous, IMO, to think Bush is running the show. Bush's inability to catch Bin Laden, and his failed "war" against terrorism, has DAMAGED not only his own legacy, but his father's legacy. It has bankrupted the American economy, and cost the American people the good will of the international community. Even worse, for Bush personally, it has cost his base, the Republican party, control of congress, and most probably the White House. It has also cost him his friends. One after another Bush's cronies have resigned in disgust and disgrace. Powell, Ashcroft, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Armitage, Tenet, Card, Miers, Rove and now Gonzalez. Pretty much all that's left is Dick and Condi. Those still holding onto the pipedream that Bush, a man who recently called Australians "Austrians," is some sort of Sith Lord have got another think coming, IMO. History WILL show that Bush is a bonehead, and as bad as if not worse than our worst Presidents: Buchanan, Johnson, Grant, Harding, Hoover... The only thing that could change that is Bin Laden's attacking the US again, and giving Bush carte blanche to bomb the heck out of another Arab country. Thinking Bush is running Bin Laden, or has invented Bin Laden, is like thinking Bill Clinton was behind Ken Starr's investigation into his cigar manipulations. Bizarre.

Listen again. Zapruder is saying that "IF the shot came from my right ear..." Zapruder and Newman said the shots came from behind. Woodward said they came from her right and behind. Either all 3 heard a shot from just west of the TSBD, or they heard echoes reflecting off the arcade. In either case, none of their statements are suggestive of shots being fired from the picket fence.

I've commented on this before, Terry. While it's usually assumed LBJ had a close relationship with the oilmen, he really only had a close relationship with Connally, and Connally's friends, and they often weren't speaking to each other. My interest in this case was spurred on by something my mother told me--that LBJ had the Secret`Service tail my father in the late 60's. I thought this was nonsense, until i realized that my father's boss, a Texas oilman named Johnny Mitchell, was a close friend of CIA/mob go-between Robert Maheu's, and that Johnny Mitchell had called press conferences in the 60's, denouncing LBJ. In one very pointed press conference, mid-67 if I recall, Mitchell said that the Wildcatters weren't gonna support LBJ's policies in Vietnam, if this led to an increased reliance on foreign (read Arab) oil. IF LBJ thought (or knew) Texas oilmen were behind JFK's death, Mitchell's statements could have been taken as a warning. BTW, Mitchell and his brothers were close family friends of the Maceo brothers, the rum-running, gambling and drug-running bosses of Texas from the 30's to the 50's. The Maceos are purported to have had a close relationship with Carlos Marcello. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I no-longer believe my mother's story is nonsense.