Carlos Marcello

Carlos "The Little Man" Marcello alias Calogero Minacori (born February 6, 1910 in Tunis , Tunisia , † March 2, 1993 in Metairie , Louisiana ) was an Italian-American mobster of the American Cosa Nostra and from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, the official head of the New Orleans Crime Family . His name is still mentioned today in connection with the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy because, according to a thesis that differs from the official version, he is being considered as the commissioner of the murder.

Life

Early years

Marcello was the son of Sicilian parents who were staying in what was then the French protectorate of Tunisia. In 1911 the family emigrated to the USA and settled near Metairie in Louisiana .

Carlos was first noticed as a petty criminal in the French Quarter of New Orleans , then he was later imprisoned as the head of a gang of armed robbers. During this time, local newspapers compared him to the character of Fagin by Charles Dickens from his novel Oliver Twist . A few more circumstances came together and Marcello was sent to Louisiana State Penitentiary for nine years and released after serving five years.

Rise in the mafia

In 1938 Marcello was arrested for drug possession (23 US pounds of marijuana ). This time he managed to avoid a lengthy prison sentence; he paid a fine of $ 76,830 and was released in less than ten months. At this point in time contact developed with the New York mobster Frank Costello from the Luciano family . Costello needed local staff to help transport his illegal gambling machines to New Orleans.

When exactly Marcello was accepted as a full member of the Mafia is unknown. He eventually rose to head the New Orleans Mafia when his boss Sylvestro "Sam" Carolla was expelled to Italy in 1947.

In any case, he controlled illegal gambling. As z. B. Gus Greenbaum , with the help of his buddies Bugsy Siegel , Mickey Cohen, and Jack Dragna , gained control of the Trans-America Race Wire Services, a horse racing news agency , in the southwestern United States, when Marcello wanted that monopoly through the Complete takeover of Continental Press . However, owner James M. Ragen refused and was murdered on August 15, 1946.

A not entirely risky approach: Ragen was one of the Ragen's Colts  - an Irish-Italian criminal gang from Chicago . One witness was murdered and another disappeared without a trace. In addition to Dave Yaras , Leonard Patrick , Willie Block , Gus Alex , Shlomo Daffodyl and Strongy Ferraro are also believed to have been involved in the murder .

Marcello also had contacts with Meyer Lansky and skimmed the casinos in New Orleans as ordered. Later - when the mobsters got active in Las Vegas - he did the same there. Later, his assertiveness was also in demand in some real estate deals in Florida .

Usually the Five Families and the Chicago outfit were a dominant influence on the smaller families in the rest of the United States at the time. Marcello was the kind of local boss who could get away from it. His influence was so great that foreign mafia members were only allowed to come to New Orleans with his permission.

On Apalachin Meeting - a meeting of all major bosses - November 14, 1957, he did not attend, so his leadership was not initially evident in the mafia.

His failure to attend Mafia meetings was nothing out of the ordinary. Marcello entertained z. B. close contacts with Joseph N. Gallo and was represented by him at conferences in New York.

Battle with the Kennedys

Marcello's role as the leading mafioso did not go unnoticed. On March 24, 1959, he had to testify before a Senate committee under Robert F. Kennedy , but made use of the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution and refused to testify.

This was of no avail to him at first, because the authorities had found out that he might never have become a citizen of the United States and initially deported him to Guatemala .

He returned within a few weeks and successfully resisted further attempts to deport him again .

Marcello was legally represented by G. Wray Gill , who employed David Ferrie as a private investigator . At that time , Marcello financed Cubans in exile who had fled Cuba. As a mercenary, Ferrie had flown Cuban exiles to Cuba for secret sabotage operations , which had been financed by Marcello, as part of Operation Mongoose , which was supported by the CIA .

There is a well-founded thesis that Ferrie carried out an order in Guatemala that supplied Marcello with Guatemalan documents.

There is evidence that Marcello spent the weekends of 9/10 during the trial. and 17./18. November 1963 with Ferrie, and he had attended most of Marcello's trial dates.

About Jimmy Hoffa - boss of the Teamsters -Gewerkschaft - donated Marcello 500,000 US dollars to the Republican Party to Richard M. Nixon to help replace the Kennedys (members of the Democratic Party).

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas . Prosecutor Jim Garrison - who, like Marcello, was from New Orleans - sought a judicial investigation in March 1967 to establish that the Kennedy assassination was the result of a CIA conspiracy.

From this - especially through Ferrie - there would have been a connection to Marcello, but the Mafia involvement in the Kennedy murder, Garrison described as a " myth ".

Others, however, pursue this thesis, which is viewed as a conspiracy theory, according to which the assassination attempt was a reaction to the considerable pressure of persecution that Robert Kennedys in particular, as Minister of Justice, exerted on leading figures in the Mafia. In addition to Marcello, Sam Giancana (head of the Chicago outfit ) and Santo Trafficante, Jr. (head of the Trafficante family ) are mentioned in particular .

According to a statement by his lawyer Frank Ragano, Trafficante is said to have said to him in Italian on March 13, 1987 in Tampa :

“Carlos [Carlos Marcello] screwed it up. We shouldn't have killed Giovanni [John F. Kennedy] . We should have killed Bobby [Robert Kennedy] . "

Since Trafficante was not in Tampa on that day, but in Miami , this statement is considered implausible.

Money laundering and corruption

Even after that, the investigative authorities failed to put an end to Mafia bosses and other bullies of Marcellos caliber. The money laundering practiced by the Mafiosi also played a role , as was organized in particular through the Key Biscayne Bank , which was founded in 1964 by Charles Rebozo . This in turn was in contact with Meyer Lansky through Richard Fincher. When Fichner tapped the phone, it turned out that he had regular contact with Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. ( Vincent Teresa - another high-ranking Boston Mafioso - later admitted using Rebozo's bank to launder money.)

Even assassination investigator Garrison was accused (e.g. by the author Gerald Posner ) of failing to crack down on the mafia and of maintaining contact with Carlos Marcello himself. Marcello had invited Garrison to Las Vegas and helped with the acquisition of a property. When a grand jury was convened in 1965 to investigate Mafia activities in the city, Garrison declared that Marcello was an "honorable businessman" and that there was "no organized crime in this city".

Garrison called the allegations that he was on good terms with organized crime, "amusing" and referred to his cleansing of the red light district; that Marcello was a "boss" he only found out during the anti-Mafia campaigns under Justice Minister Robert F. Kennedy. In addition, Marcello is not known to him personally.

Marcello was only able to prove something in 1981, when various people were charged, in particular, with bribery . Marcello was sentenced to a long sentence and served in the Federal Correctional Institution, Texarkana , and his younger brother Joseph Marcello, Jr. was named acting boss while incarcerated.

The end

In the spring of 1989, Marcello suffered a series of heart attacks, was released early and retired. Marcello, Jr. also resigned as an underboss and Sylvestro's son, Anthony Carolla , became Marcello's successor.

Carlos spent the last years of his life in his Metairie home and died of natural causes on March 2, 1993.

literature

• John H. Davis: American Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy . New York: Signet, 1989, ISBN 0-451-16418-0 .

Web links

• Carlos Marcello in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Court TV Crime Library: Out of Africa by Thomas L. Jones at www.crimelibrary.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ aboutthemafia - New Orleans mafia shows signs of life?
2. ↑ Nicholas Pileggi : Anatomy of the Drug War . In: New York Magazine , January 8, 1973. Retrieved December 22, 2011. 
3. ↑ "Racketeer's deportation ruled valid" , Associated Press in Meriden Record , May 20, 1961st
4. ^ Drew Pearson , "JFK, Macmillan got along famously, finally," St. Petersburg Times, April 10, 1961.
5. ↑ "Marcello: Underworld's man without a country" , Associated Press in Owosso Argus-Press , August 2 1965th
6. ↑ "Carlos Marcello, 83, Reputed Crime Boss In New Orleans Area" , The New York Times , March 3 1,993th
7. ^ Davis, John H .: Mafia Kingfish (1988), Chapter 23, German edition: Mafia. Shadow history of the USA , Zurich (1989) The number of pages is missing
8. ↑ Thomas J. Jones, "Carlos Marcello: Big Daddy in the Big Easy . " trutv.com. Retrieved May 7, 2010. (English)
9. ↑ James D. Perry: Kennedy, John F. Assassination of . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, p. 392.
10. ↑ "Carlos e 'futtutu. Non duvevamu ammazzari a Giovanni. Duvevamu ammazzari a Bobby ”. Frank Ragano and Selwyn Raab: Mob Lawyer . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1994.
11. ^ Vincent Bugliosi: Reclaiming History. The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. WW Norton, New York 2007, p. 1182.
12. ^ Gerald Posner: Case Closed. Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. Random House, New York 1993, pp. 426f
13. ↑ Jim Garrison: On The Trail Of The Assassins. 1992, note p. 288 (missing in the German edition from 1988)
14. ↑ The New York Times , March 31, 1981, p. 16.
15. ↑ The New York Times , July 8, 1981, p. 18
16. ↑ "Carlos Marcello, 83, Reputed Crime Boss In New Orleans Area" , The New York Times , March 3., 1993