What has blocked the Marcello-Trafficante solution to the JFK assassination? The legacy of Garrison?

[Jon Pickering]

What is weird in this debate is how murderers, pimps, gun molls, extortion artists, prison rats, head breakers, racketeers, all hustlers and XXXXX - ie., the Mafia - are given credibility. Is this an attempt to deflect? Anyone in the 'mob did it club' wanna explain?

[David Boylan]

What is the source that Herminio Diaz-Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard? I have him as a CIA asset and later working for Army Intel.

[Paul Brancato]

Really the answer to your question Greg isn’t that complicated. It’s blocked for the same reason that other explanations are blocked - Russia, Joint Chiefs, CIA. There is no shortage of information and published material on the Mafia angle. WC blocked all other routes for clear reasons, a decision that was essentially made on day 1. The Mafia angle isn’t any more blocked than any other angle. In fact it was given more air than the other alternatives by Blakey and his Congressional investigation. This has nothing to do with Garrison, and the attempts to rewrite history and smear the only private citizen to ever attempt to break the WC log jam, at great cost to his personal life, by suggesting that he steered the ship away from Marcello for personal reasons are misguided. Mort Sahl said it best - to me personally a few years ago - “Garrison was a true American Hero”. Mort’s life was similarly upended by his belief that Government elements were behind the assassination. 
Once you open the floodgates and look at Trafficante and Marcello you stare at the belly of the beast. If the Mafia supplied assassins in Dealey Plaza, it could only have been at the behest and with the protection of elements of our own National Security State. 

[Paul Brancato]

9 minutes ago, David Boylan said:

What is the source that Herminio Diaz-Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard? I have him as a CIA asset and later working for Army Intel.

I’m not answering, just looking forward to wherever Greg comes up with, because as you point out if Trafficante’s bodyguard pulled the trigger it opens up the can of worms into Army Intelligence, which clearly was well represented in the Dallas Police force, and leads inevitably in my opinion to the Colonels on the ground in Dallas. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Paul Brancato

[Greg Doudna]

Ruby

Paul Brancato--you raise several good questions or points and I will try to respond the best I can one at a time. Your point or question on Ruby in his Warren Commission interview suggesting the John Birch Society and Walker, but not a mob role, took me back to restudying that testimony of Ruby. I think Ruby did have a mob role he wanted to tell... as follows. 

First I admit it is possible to read Ruby in several different ways. Here is what I see as the facts concerning Ruby:

• Ruby was fearful for his life and the lives of his family members if he spoke what he believed was the truth (as opposed to him not being fearful and making that up to bluff Earl Warren into moving him to D.C.). Earl Warren thought Ruby's fears were imaginary and that Ruby was in no more danger in police custody than Oswald. oh wait...
• Ruby alternated between sticking to his standard story of spontaneous action without premeditation in killing Oswald, and claiming that he had been "put in this position" by others. 
• There was hardly any attempt by the Warren Commission questioners at cross-examination or follow-up questions to Ruby's account as was the case with the lengthy questioning of, for example, Curtis Craford. No in-depth questioning of Ruby's associations, who he recognized in photos, nailing down his travels, his contacts, if and how well he knew the relevant mob bosses in his circles such as Civello, Marcello, and Trafficante (just wasn't of interest to ask). Earl Warren's position basically was, "we are here to let you say whatever you have to say" without cross-examination or further followup, and that would be that. 
• Ruby had sought earnestly to be questioned and polygraphed by the Warren Commission early on, two or three months before Earl Warren and crew arrived to Dallas to question him just as they were wrapping up their investigation on their timeline. Ruby's earnest early requests had been ignored. Warren explained that had been out of consideration for Ruby in light of Ruby's trial in process, so as not to prejudice the outcome (for which Ruby was found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair). But the trial had ended, and still there was lackadaisical delay, which Warren explained as being partly out of concern for Ruby in not wanting to bother him (!)--the witness wanting to be questioned. The rest of the reasons, Warren explained, were they had other things to attend to and just hadn't gotten around to it. ("And I wish we had gotten here a little sooner after your trial was over, but I know you had other things on your mind [!], and we had other work, and it got to this late date. But I assure you, there is no desire on our part to let this matter go to any late date for any ulterior purpose...") (Further comment: after Oswald was killed, Ruby himself was just about the single potentially most important witness there was, if his unconvincing alibi story was NOT as presented. If Ruby had been interviewed early and questioned thoroughly Ruby's testimony could have produced further leads which would have required running down. Those leads could reasonably be anticipated to have been in large part underworld or mob leads. Having Ruby interviewed for the first time by the Warren Commission at the tail-end of the WC's investigation, when there was no time to run down leads Ruby might newly raise, no interest in doing so, and no further questioning or followup of the things Ruby did speak of, seems in agreement with Hoover's policy taken over by the Warren Commission that mob-role questions in investigation of the assassination were not to be pursued.)  
• Ruby said time after time in the most direct way that he could not speak fully and openly there out of fear for his life and that of his sisters and brothers, and that he had more to tell if he could be transferred into federal custody where he would be safe. Warren's response was to very considerately offer to end the interview if Ruby felt it was unsafe for him to continue speaking (!). Ruby asks to be taken to Washington, D.C., just as many other Warren Commission witnesses were subpoened to come to Washington. Warren: "No; it could not be done ... we have no place there for you to be safe when we take you out, and we are not law enforcement offices, and it isn't our responsibility to go into anything of that kind." Ruby: "my life is in danger here ... I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything and why my act was committed, but it can't be said here... Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger at the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be reluctant to go on speaking, even though you request me to do so?" Warren (sympathetically): "I think I might have some reluctance if I was in your position, yes; I think I would. I think I would figure it out very carefully as to whether it would endanger me or not. If you think that anything that I am doing or anything that I am asking you is endangering you in any way, shape, or form, I want you to feel absolutely free to say that the interview is over." Ruby: "What happens then? I didn't accomplish anything." Warren: "No; nothing has been accomplished." Ruby: "Well, then you won't follow up with anything further?" Warren: "There wouldn't be anything to follow up if you hadn't completed your statement." 
• Ruby believed he was going to be killed immediately after Warren left because he already had said too much. That did not happen--the immediate part that is. Ruby told Earl Warren if he did not take him, Ruby, to Washington, D.C. he would not see him alive again. Warren assured Ruby he did not think that was the case. As it happened Ruby, a nonsmoker, developed an extraordinarily rapid onset of lung cancer which killed him just before he was to be transferred where his new trial would begin. Ruby, his attorney, and a number of Dallas police thought Ruby's cancer was foul play. 
• Ruby believed he was going to be blamed by history for the JFK assassination and that that was part of a plan to blame Jews, through him, as a whole and would trigger a new holocaust or pogroms against Jews. Ruby claimed John Birch Society types were already saying that--that he, Ruby, had killed Kennedy. 
• Ruby was insistent that he be polygraphed or given truth serum, and pleaded with Earl Warren first to be able to testify in a safe space in federal custody not in police custody in Dallas (since polygraph testing does not develop a story but checks a witness's story already developed for truthful vs. lying). As is now known, the later panel of nine polygraph experts convened by HSCA in the late 1970s to review the polygraph that was done on Ruby just ripped it to shreds and found the examiner's procedures in some ways indistinguishable from if an examiner was trying to create polygraph measurements deemed truthful from a lying witness. Whether or not that was the case the panel found the Warren Commission polygraph examination worthless in determining whether Ruby's answers to the relevant questions were truthful or lying. The unanswered question of course is whether Ruby's insistence on being polygraphed was because he wanted his alibi story of no premeditation judged truthful, or whether Ruby wanted it discovered that he was lying causing further inquiry and federal witness protection for him to spill as-yet-unspilled beans. As Matt Allison and Paul B. have mentioned, at least two of the questions Ruby was asked to which he answered "no", judged truthful in the Warren Commission polygraph examination, were fairly clearly dishonest on the basis of other information, namely did he ever do business in Cuba, and did he go to Parkland Hospital after the assassination (where Seth Kantor, who knew him, told of seeing him and talking to him there). 

To answer your question Paul B., I think the John Birch Society and Walker were raised by Ruby because, first, mentioning those names would not get him killed (his life was not threatened by either of those), but second and more importantly, not knowing who exactly ordered the assassination or what the game-plan was after Ruby saw himself becoming the blamed patsy for the assassination of Kennedy, he focused on anti-semitism as that larger game plan as the "why" he, Jewish, had been selected to be set up. Ruby believed he had been set up by others (which he said repeatedly--inconsistent with a claim to have acted spontaneously on his own without prompting from others, if one thinks about it). Ruby did not raise LBJ as responsible for the JFK assassination in his Warren Commission testimony which he did in his secret notes smuggled outside of jail--indicating he was not telling everything he thought he knew in that Warren Commission interview--and he also did not speak of organized crime which defined the circles in which he had lived and breathed his entire life. Therefore my interpretation of Ruby's mentions of the John Birch Society, Walker, and (elsewhere apart from his WC testimony) LBJ, were unsubstantiated conclusions or beliefs on Ruby's part, not based on knowledge.   

But I think Ruby was trying as hard as he could to get the dense Earl Warren to quit being so gullible in believing his very unconvincing alibi story (of the spontaneous unplanned decision to walk to the Dallas police station and try to shoot Oswald, eighty minutes after he says he believed Oswald would already have been moved, and by an extraordinary freak accident of history, succeeded)--and that he did attempt to point Earl Warren to a mob role, in the way he kept trying to focus Earl Warren's attention on McWillie. Not that Earl Warren expressed interest or curiosity or had followup questions. But Ruby kept talking about McWillie. 

Ruby starts talking of McWillie. Warren responds as if Ruby is rambling; Warren has no questions or interest in what Ruby is saying about McWillie and when Ruby comes to a pause, tries to return Ruby's focus to Oswald. 

Warren: Well, I will go back to the original question that I asked you. Did you ever know Oswald?

Ruby: No; let me add--you are refreshing my mind about a few things. Can I ask one thing? Did you all talk to McWillie? I am sure you have.

Voice: Yes. 

(Unclear who in the room answered "yes".) Ruby continues talking more about McWillie from the past. Ruby asks Secret Service agent Elmer Moore who was in this room in the Dallas jail as the interview is conducted, if he had talked to McWillie in person. Earlier when Ruby asked Elmer Moore why he was there, Moore replied: "Well, I am assigned to the Commission, Jack." Ruby: "The President assigned you?" Moore: "No; my chief did. And I am not involved in the investigation. I am more of a security officer." 

Ruby: did you meet McWillie?

Moore. I didn't.

Rankin: He was checked by the Commission in connection with this work.

What was so important to Ruby that he felt the need to keep on talking about McWillie? From Spartacus Educational on McWillie:

"Lewis McWillie worked as a professional gambler in Memphis, Tennessee (1932-36). Later he worked in Jackson, Mississippi, and Dallas, Texas (1940-58). Then he moved to the Deauville Casino in Cuba. A fellow worker at the casino was John Martino. McWillie was also a business associate of Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky and later ran the Tropicana Casino in Havana. In August 1959 Jack Ruby visited McWillie. When Fidel Castro took control of the island McWillie was arrested and then deported to the United States. After a period in Miami Meyer Lansky placed him inside of his Tropicana Casino in Las Vegas. In 1961 Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli recruited McWillie to look after Frank Sinatra's Cal-Neva Lodge in Nevada."

 Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-up, 61:

"Meanwhile, the [Warren] Commission's chronicle for [Ruby on] Sunday, November 17 [1963], failed to include a reported trip made by Ruby to Las Vegas even though the FBI spoke to witnesses who confirmed Ruby's presence in Las Vegas. [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57014#relPageId=30] Ruby's special Las Vegas connection was Lewis McWillie, the syndicate gambler Ruby had visited in Cuba in 1959. Ruby made a series of phone calls in 1963 to McWillie, who was closely associated with Meyer Lansky's hoodlum empire and was installed in Las Vegas as pit boss at the Thunderbird casino. On May 10, 1963, Ruby had a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver shipped to McWillie, according to the records of Dallas gun dealer Ray Brantley. Ruby didn't want his personal Las Vegas mission to become known, and Ralph Paul, a back-room business associate of Ruby's, told the Warren Commission that Ruby could be very secretive about his comings and goings. Ruby didn't want his club employees to know when he slipped out of town, in order to keep them from stealing his profits, Paul said (. . .) Two days after the Las Vegas trip Ruby turned up in [tax attorney Graham] Koch's office on November 19 and said he had a connection who would supply him money to settle his long-standing government tax problems..."

A psychiatrist examining Ruby reported that Ruby claimed to him he had been "framed into killing Oswald" and "they got what they wanted on me", an odd way to express spontaneous sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline as being what prompted him (Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 341 citing an unpublished "Examination of Jack Ruby" of psychiatrist Werner Tuteur). Summers also quotes from a letter Ruby smuggled out of jail in which Ruby wrote, "Don't believe the Warren Report, that was put out to make me look innocent" (Summers p. 341 citing Ramparts Feb 1967, p. 26).

In summary, I think Ruby did not fully know who was behind the JFK assassination but did know of and believe he had been used by mob figures who had him kill Oswald and perhaps help in several other ways. It is always possible (and this is what Warren Report supporters will say) that if Earl Warren had, say, "humored" Ruby by taking him to Washington, D.C. and into safe federal custody, that it would have been for nothing: Ruby would have had nothing concrete to say, just more unverifiable claims that LBJ did it and impending holocaust against the Jews. But the claim of impulsive overwhelming sympathy for Jackie and Caroline combined with absolutely extraordinary freak accident in timing renders Ruby's alibi story lacking credibility on its face--it simply is just not to be believed--no matter how Ruby gave an appearance of sticking to that story during his various interviews, all the while in the custody of Dallas county sheriff's deputies whom he believed were not able to protect him or family members from what he understood to be the most direct threat to his and their lives if he told what he actually did know. What he actually did know, of course, was the true circumstances of why he killed Oswald--that part of the JFK assassination plot at least--and any speaking of that on Ruby's part would go to very dangerous Mob figures, which would mean certain death unless he could get federal witness protection. 

Finally, see this powerful article from a reporter who was in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963, making the mob connection to Ruby and the Hoover/Warren Commission coverup of Ruby's mob connections about as plain as can be: http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm.

[Jon Pickering]

It's clear the perps ran a phony parallel plot designed to leech attention from their commanding role in John Kennedy's murder, and, bring the righteous ire of Americans onto the heads of any sap and sucker who could be plausibly construed as a civilian 'Kennedy hater' local to Dallas or New Orleans. The mob, rejects from Castro's Cuba, the oilmen, the cadet leaders, the Eastern pilot, various hustlers, mercenaries, Agency boobs, undercovers, the whole of New Orleans' gay community, some of them willing, even eager, some not - but all were to become 'guilty' parties to the eye of many citizens, yet, more wasteful to the reader, the carefully crafted legends of sponsored JFKA 'researchers'. Oswald was merely one of a gaggle of patsies in the JFKA. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Jon Pickering

[Eddy Bainbridge]

My disagreement with Greg is his emphasis, not on his reading of the facts. Yes, the evidence to me points to Mafia involvement. No, that doesn't provided a satisfactory answer to the mystery. Robert Blakey would not have been so furious with the CIA if all they did was fail to come out and agree the Mafia did it. 

If 'the mafia did it' is a partial answer, then we require the failure of the State ever since to face a reckoning, before I would begin to consider the case closed.

In the proposed scenario parts of the State stand accused of the grossest of negligence. I think its culpability is worse than that.

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Eddy Bainbridge said:

My disagreement with Greg is his emphasis, not on his reading of the facts. Yes, the evidence to me points to Mafia involvement. No, that doesn't provided a satisfactory answer to the mystery. Robert Blakey would not have been so furious with the CIA if all they did was fail to come out and agree the Mafia did it. 

If 'the mafia did it' is a partial answer, then we require the failure of the State ever since to face a reckoning, before I would begin to consider the case closed.

In the proposed scenario parts of the State stand accused of the grossest of negligence. I think its culpability is worse than that.

I still believe that one of the most revealing articles ever written about the assassination was the Jack Anderson/Drew Pearson article claiming the people tasked with killing Castro killed Kennedy instead. It was put out after Bobby came out against the war, almost certainly at the request of LBJ. 

It thereby served as cover for LBJ--if the Warren Commission was a cover-up, it was a cover-up designed to protect Bobby. But that just wasn't true. While Bobby may have told someone they should try to kill Castro, he would never have approved the use of the mob in doing so. In any event, the participation of CIA-affiliated anti-Castro Cuban/mob figures in the assassination, should it have been revealed, would almost certainly have led to the CIA being dismantled.

And there wasn't anyone in the agency who would ever let that happen. Richard Helms would spend the rest of his life claiming those doubting Oswald was a lone assassin were victims of Russian propaganda. He saw the whole assassination in terms of how it could be used against the CIA. There can be no doubt that he, among others, would thereby have ordered a full-on cover-up of anything linking Oswald to the CIA, or anything suggesting CIA-affiliated scumbags were involved. I mean, Kennedy was dead. I'm sure he saw his role not as finding Kennedy's killers, but protecting the agency from fallout. 

So, yes, an LBJ/CIA-cover-up of what was essentially a mob hit makes perfect sense to me. 

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

On 3/12/2022 at 7:49 AM, David Boylan said:

What is the source that Herminio Diaz-Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard? I have him as a CIA asset and later working for Army Intel.

David--Fabian Escalante, http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027-1.html (about halfway down on the page). 

[Greg Doudna]

12 hours ago, Jon Pickering said:

It's clear the perps ran a phony parallel plot designed to leech attention from their commanding role in John Kennedy's murder, and, bring the righteous ire of Americans onto the heads of any sap and sucker who could be plausibly construed as a civilian 'Kennedy hater' local to Dallas or New Orleans. The mob, rejects from Castro's Cuba, the oilmen, the cadet leaders, the Eastern pilot, various hustlers, mercenaries, Agency boobs, undercovers, the whole of New Orleans' gay community, some of them willing, even eager, some not - but all were to become 'guilty' parties to the eye of many citizens, yet, more wasteful to the reader, the carefully crafted legends of sponsored JFKA 'researchers'. Oswald was merely one of a gaggle of patsies in the JFKA. 

Jon--who do you think the perps were on the ground in Dealey Plaza given that you seem certain that the perps were not the overwhelming associations in the background of Ruby's silencing of Oswald as part of the on-the-ground cleanup? 

Pat Speer's comment sounds pretty sensible--what not to like as a basic explanation?

[David Boylan]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

David--Fabian Escalante, http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027-1.html (about halfway down on the page). 

Greg,

Blast from the past. That was my transcription from a VHS tape. I should have remembered this. I still think that is old info. Escalante did not get everything right. He knew a few things.

Edited March 14, 2022 by David Boylan

[Ron Bulman]

49 minutes ago, David Boylan said:

Greg,

Blast from the past. That was my transcription from a VHS tape. I should have remembered this. I still think that is old info. Escalante did not get everything right. He knew a few things.

Did he know Trafficante nor Marcello had the power to authorize the hit without repercussions ?  That came from above them.

[James DiEugenio]

The reason no one buys this as the main engine in the case is that, as time goes on, its been torn to shreds.  For Larry to somehow vouch for it at this late date and for John Davis also is kind of unfathomable.  The following is form my review of the Waldron first book.

 

Ragano tried to get cute and was a bit too specific about Trafficante's convenient deathbed confession to him. He said it occurred on March 13, 1987 in Tampa. He says the ailing Don called him and asked him to come down and pick him up. When Ragano arrived to take him for a spin, the dying 72-year-old Mob boss trotted out to the car in pajamas and robe. He told Ragano that he and his underworld cohorts had erred. They should have killed Bobby, not John. His conscience cleansed by his confession to his consigliore, Trafficante passed away a few days later.

Unfortunately for Ragano, Tony Summers checked up on his belatedly revealed tale. According to Summers, who sources several witnesses, Trafficante was living in Miami in March of 1987 and had not been to Tampa for months. He was very ill at the time and was receiving kidney dialysis and carrying a colostomy bag. Further, Summers interviewed at least two witnesses who placed Trafficante in Miami on that day. There are also hospital records that put him in Miami's Mercy Hospital for dialysis treatment on both the day before and the day after the Ragano "confession". And Trafficante's doctor in Tampa said he was not there on March 13th. (Vanity Fair 12/94) Now, from Miami to Tampa is about 280 miles. To think that a 72 year old dying man would drive four hours one way and then four hours back -- between dialysis treatments -- to do something he could have done with a call on a pay phone strains credulity to the breaking point. To postulate that he would fly the distance is just as bad. Did he buy two seats in order to put his colostomy bag next to him? Ragano told Summers he could produce other witnesses. But only if he was sued for libel. Since it is next to impossible for a family to sue for a deceased member over libel, Ragano was being real gutsy.

Edited March 16, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

No one on God's Green Earth or in the JFK community should use Gianni Russo as a source for anything, Mark Shaw is one too many. The following is from Don McGovern's review of Shaw's last piece of crud book.

In various articles and interviews, Russo reported that the movie star was a great lover—the best, he often asserted: she simply wanted to please her partner. But then, during a 2020 Howard Stern interview on October the 6th, Russo told the vulgar shock jock that Marilyn was not really a good lover because “she was like a baby.” He also reported to Stern that Marilyn was in her mid-20s during their affair and did not have a great body: she was slightly fat. He also told Stern during that interview: “I was with her for three days.” Wait a minute: I thought the affair with his slightly fat, rotten lover lasted four years. Like most inveterate fabulists who frequently create anecdotes from the whole cloth of their imaginations, he simply could not keep his fabrications aligned. As I have already demonstrated, Gianni Russo was still a youngster when Marilyn was in her mid-20s. Besides, any man who alleged that Marilyn in her mid-20s was unattractive is—well, pick any pejorative you like.

Like the inveterate fabulist Robert Slatzer, Russo claims a photograph proved his purported relationship with Marilyn. In the photographic panel displayed below, on the left is the aging, former actor seated beside his cropped photograph; and on the right is the actual photograph which includes another unidentified man also looking sideways at Marilyn. Russo has invariably asserted the following about that photograph:

1. The shirtless man facing away from the camera, looking sideways at Marilyn, is him.
2. Mafia don Sam Giancana snapped the photograph.
3. Giancana took the photograph at Cal-Neva Lodge in July of 1962 during Marilyn’s purported Weekend from Hell, the now infamous weekend of July 28^th.

In July of 1962, Russo was 18 years old and he would not leave his teenage years until mid-December of 1963. By his own admission, at age 18, Russo was building masonry walls in the Greater New York Area. So, how could he also have been in California cavorting with a ganglord and the world’s most famous actress? Besides, the man in the photograph appears to be older than eighteen, possibly in his mid to late twenties, and his face cannot be seen. Plainly, then, the man in the photograph could be almost any man, and the photographer could have been anybody; but the real problem with that snapshot follows the photograph.

After the publication of Russo’s book by St. Martin’s Press in 2019, lawyer Donna Morel began to investigate Russo, specifically, his sensational revelations about Marilyn Monroe, his alleged relationship with the actress, and his assertions about her death. Donna uncovered two newspaper articles that she provided to me along with a press release pertaining to a series of photographs that had been taken at Cal-Neva Lodge that infamous July weekend; and the press release appeared to contradict several of Russo’s assertions. After diligent hunting and research, Donna located an individual who was a guest at the Cal-Neva Lodge the weekend of July the 28^th in 1962 and was also married to one of the entertainers who performed briefly at the lodge that weekend. The source Donna located, now past the age of 85, requested anonymity; therefore, hereafter I will refer to that individual as the Married Guest.

Donna attempted to get in contact with this witness and, eventually, in May of 2019, Donna received a telephone call and a story about Russo’s photograph that completely contradicted the yarn spun by the Hollywood Godfather. Recently, Donna graciously provided me with the Married Guest’s telephone number. On Tuesday, August the 10^th, 2021, at 10:00 AM, I engaged Donna’s source in a 90- minute conversation. The story I received confirmed what Donna had already reported to me. The individual to whom Donna and I spoke took the photograph, not Sam Giancana, who, according to the actual photographer, was not even at Cal-Neva that weekend. The Married Guest admitted to knowing the ganglord well and humorously commented: “Sam Giancana never took a photograph of anybody in his entire life!”

As you have probably already assumed, the man in the photograph was most certainly not Gianni Russo; the man was an employee, a roadie who worked for an entertainer who performed that July weekend. Unfortunately, the Married Guest could not recall the roadie’s name, but commented that he was a nice man, not boy. Furthermore, when I asked if Robert Kennedy was at Cal-Neva that weekend, I received laughter and a firm “absolutely not.” To my question about the presence of mobsters other than Sam Giancana, I received a precise answer: “There were no mobsters there.” To my question regarding the alleged yarns about all the bad things that happened to Marilyn Monroe that weekend, the Married Guest replied: “Nothing bad happened to Marilyn. It was a big party and everybody enjoyed themselves, including Marilyn.” According to the Married Guest, the blonde movie star “was a very funny gal, but she did get drunk one night.” Before we ended our dialogue, my conversational partner expressed dismay and amazement with Gianni Russo’s stories. Truly, everyone who listens to Russo talk should be dismayed and amazed, a statement that will become even clearer as we proceed. I also hasten to denote this: two reliable sources who were also guests at the Cal-Neva Lodge that weekend, Betsy Hammes and the actor Alex D’Arcy, told Donald Spoto virtually 30 years ago that Giancana and his gang were not there. Their testimony has been completely ignored, not only by Mark Shaw, but the entire risible Marilyn-Was-Murdered-World.

Edited March 16, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Let me add two other evidentiary points that should be brought into play: first, the whole idea of Oswald being bailed out that summer in New Orleans by an agent of Marcello is rendered false by the ARRB. The HSCA knew the guy was not working under Marcello at that time, he had left two years prior.  And there is no way he was a surrogate father to him either.

Fourth, the whole Becker story about Marcello and "the stone in my shoe" and cutting off the dog's tail etc, that is going to be rendered dubious.  There is a guy working on a book right now on the subject.

Edited March 16, 2022 by James DiEugenio