vault backup: 2026-10-09 23:53:07

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Carlos Marcello.md

@@ -14,13 +14,13 @@ tags:
   - CIA
   - 1960s
 category: "Organized Crime"
-summary: "Carlos Marcello was the boss of the New Orleans crime family who was identified by the HSCA as having both the motive and means to arrange President Kennedy's assassination - he had threatened Kennedy according to FBI informants, was deported to Guatemala by Robert Kennedy in 1961, returned illegally, and was eventually convicted on racketeering charges in the FBI's BRILAB sting in 1981."
+summary: "New Orleans crime family boss whom the HSCA found had the motive, means and opportunity to arrange President Kennedy's assassination; deported by Robert Kennedy in 1961, convicted in the 1981 BRILAB sting."
 born: 1910-02-06
 died: 1993-03-02
 location: "New Orleans, Louisiana"
 ---
 
-Carlos Marcello (born Calogero Minacori, February 6, 1910, Tunis, Tunisia - died March 2, 1993, New Orleans, Louisiana) was the boss of the [[La Cosa Nostra|New Orleans crime family]] from the late 1940s until his 1981 conviction, exercising informal control over organized crime in Louisiana and portions of Texas. He was identified by the [[HSCA|House Select Committee on Assassinations]] as having both the motive and the means to organize the assassination of President [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] and was the subject of multiple FBI informant reports documenting specific threats against the president.[^1]
+Carlos Marcello (born Calogero Minacori, February 6, 1910, Tunis, Tunisia - died March 2, 1993, New Orleans, Louisiana) was the boss of the [[La Cosa Nostra|New Orleans crime family]] from the late 1940s until his 1981 conviction, exercising informal control over organized crime in Louisiana and portions of Texas. He was identified by the [[HSCA|House Select Committee on Assassinations]] as having the motive, means and opportunity to have President [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] assassinated and was the subject of multiple FBI informant reports documenting specific threats against the president.[^1]
 
 ### Criminal Career
 
@@ -34,18 +34,20 @@ In 1961, Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]]'s aggressive pursuit of organized c
 
 FBI informant Edward Becker reported to the FBI in September 1962 that Marcello had made an explicit threat against President Kennedy at a meeting at Churchill Farms, his estate outside New Orleans. According to Becker, Marcello invoked a Sicilian proverb - "Take the stone out of your shoe" - to describe his intention to deal with Robert Kennedy through the president, and stated that any hit man used for the assassination would be a "nut" without apparent organized crime connections.
 
-The Becker report was not transmitted by the FBI to the Warren Commission. The HSCA later found the Becker meeting credible based on corroborating evidence and Becker's documented reliability as an informant.[^1]
+The Becker report was not transmitted by the FBI to the Warren Commission. The House Select Committee on Assassinations examined the published account that Marcello threatened the President at a meeting at Churchill Farms in September 1962. It identified the informant who claimed to have been present, learned that the FBI knew of his allegations for a year and a half before they were published in 1969 and possessed information indicating he may have met Marcello in the fall of 1962, and found that no substantive investigation was ever conducted. Director J. Edgar Hoover and other senior FBI officials knew that agents were acting to "discredit" the informant without a significant investigation of his allegations. The committee also found that the informant had a questionable reputation for honesty.[^2]
 
 ### HSCA Investigation
 
-The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that Marcello had "the motive, means, and opportunity" to organize Kennedy's assassination. The committee found:
+The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in January 1979 that Marcello had the "motive, means and opportunity to have President John F. Kennedy assassinated," and that it was "unable to establish direct evidence."[^3] The committee found:
 
 - Marcello had a documented, intense personal motive arising from the Kennedy administration's deportation and continuing prosecution
 - Marcello had the organizational resources to arrange an assassination using individuals without apparent organized crime connections
 - [[Jack Ruby]]'s connections to Marcello's New Orleans organization were documented
 - [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] had connections to New Orleans - his uncle and surrogate father Dutz Murret was a Marcello associate and bookie
 
-The committee could not prove that Marcello organized the assassination but found that the circumstantial evidence was "not inconsistent" with his involvement and that the FBI's failure to pursue organized crime leads had left the question unresolved.[^2]
+The committee named Marcello and Santos Trafficante, Jr. as the family bosses most likely to have been involved.[^4] Among the associations it found linking Oswald to Marcello's organization were Oswald's uncle Charles "Dutz" Murret, a minor underworld gambling figure who was an associate of organized crime figures affiliated with the Marcello organization; acquaintances of Oswald's mother, one of whom reportedly served at one time as a personal aide or driver to Marcello; and the person who arranged Oswald's bail in August 1963, an associate of two of Marcello's deputies, one of them [[Nofio Pecora]], who received a telephone call from Ruby on October 30, 1963.[^3] It described the existence of credible associations linking Oswald and Ruby to Marcello's organization as the critical evidentiary element, and stated that the FBI never maintained electronic surveillance of Marcello despite two attempts.[^3]
+
+The report concludes that "it may be said that it is unlikely that Marcello was in fact, involved in the assassination of the President," and adds that his motive and links to Oswald and Ruby, coupled with the failure of the 1963-64 investigation, "precluded a judgment by the committee that Marcello and his associates were not involved."[^3] The report also says that Marcello's organized crime career "has been based to a large extent on a policy of prudence; he is not reckless."[^3]
 
 ### BRILAB Conviction
 
@@ -56,4 +58,6 @@ In 1985, while incarcerated, FBI informant Joseph Hauser reported that Marcello
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: House Select Committee on Assassinations. *Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives.* Government Printing Office, 1979. Davis, John H. *Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.* McGraw-Hill, 1989.
-[^2]: Blakey, G. Robert, and Richard N. Billings. *Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime.* Berkley, 1992. Ragano, Frank, and Selwyn Raab. *Mob Lawyer.* Scribner, 1994.
+[^2]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, pp. 171-172 (Churchill Farms account, the FBI's handling, and the informant). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
+[^3]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1979), pp. 169-172 (Marcello; "unable to establish direct evidence" at p. 169; "unlikely" and "precluded a judgment" at p. 172). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
+[^4]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, p. 169 (Marcello and Trafficante as the most likely family bosses). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit