Kennedy Assassination
On January 14, 1992, a New York Post story claimed Marcello, Trafficante, Jr., and Jimmy Hoffa had all been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Frank Ragano was quoted as saying that at the beginning of 1963, Hoffa had told him to take a message to Trafficante and Marcello concerning a plan to kill Kennedy. When the meeting took place at the Royal Orleans Hotel, Ragano told the men: "You won't believe what Hoffa wants me to tell you. Jimmy wants you to kill the President." He reported that both men gave the impression that they intended to carry out this order.
In his autobiography, Mob Lawyer (1994), (co-written with journalist Selwyn Raab), Ragano added that in July 1963, he was once again sent to New Orleans by Hoffa to meet Marcello and Santo Trafficante concerning plans to kill President Kennedy. When Kennedy was killed, Hoffa apparently told Ragano, "I told you that they could do it. I'll never forget what Carlos and Santo did for me." He added: "This means Bobby is out as Attorney General." Marcello later told Ragano, "When you see Jimmy (Hoffa), you tell him he owes me and he owes me big."
In 1981, Marcello, Aubrey W. Young (a former aide to Governor John J. McKeithen), Charles E. Roemer, II (former commissioner of administration to Governor Edwin Washington Edwards), and two other men were indicted in U.S. District Court in New Orleans with conspiracy, racketeering, and mail and wire fraud in a scheme to bribe state officials to give the five men multi-million dollar insurance contracts. The charges were the result of an Federal Bureau of Investigation probe known as BriLab. U.S. District Judge Morey Sear allowed the admission of secretly-recorded conversations that he said demonstrated corruption at the highest levels of state government. Marcello and Roemer were convicted, but Young and the two others were acquitted.
Marcello stayed out of prison in BriLab while his conviction was being appealed. He reported to prison in 1983, when his appeal was denied. On one conversation intercepted by the FBI, Marcello complained to his Dallas Underboss about those who accused him of murdering the Kennedy brothers. He was heard to say this about them, "Sure I have arguments with people, but then I make up with them."
Read more about this topic: Carlos Marcello
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