The Recruitment Of Lee Harvey Oswald

[Ben McKenna]

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The Recruitment of LHO
     LHO was recruited by a Marcello soldier who had some type of association with the Oswald family which lived in his hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, the place where LHO's Great Grandfather and Father are buried. In 1963 the Mississippi based Marcello soldier was working as a roughneck in oilfields near Dallas, His wife was an elementary schoolteacher in Dallas. Much like Calogero Minacoris (Carlos Marcello), he was from a Sicilian family that emigrated from Palermo in the late 1800's. His family left New Orleans and settled in Mississippi around 1920, eventually gaining control over a myriad of enterprises. They were involved with the lumber, seafood, and mercantile businesses throughout south Mississippi. They also controlled vice on the Mississippi coast. They were involved in illegal liquor, tobacco, gambling, and extortion of dock workers in Gulfport. In the 1970's these docks became a major conduit for the importation of tons of Peruvian cocaine hidden in banana shipments. It is very likely that his uncle was a consigliere of Marcello and he himself had a very close relationship to Carlos Marcello "The Little Man". As a young man the soldier's family lived on the same street in New Orleans as the Marcello family and though Carlos Marcello was a couple of years older the two were childhood friends. They were known to have raided fruit & vegetable carts in the French quarter and having robbed merchants. Eventually they worked their way up to stealing cargo and extorting money from immigrant dock workers on the New Orleans docks.
Read more about Carlos Marcello here:
https://www.crimelibrary.org/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/marcello/1.html

 Collections
     Upon returning from service in WWII he began working as an enforcer/messegero and was entrusted with handling large sums of cash collected along a 26 mile long stretch of hwy 90 along the Mississippi Gulf Coast from casinos, restaurants, hotels, and bars which displayed Marcello's gambling machines and pinball machines in their lobbies. He always carried the cash in a small paper bag and He always carried a loaded Colt .45 loaded with hollow point bullets and had Brass knuckles in his pocket. He collected every Saturday morning from restuarants, bars, motels, and nightclubs like The Silver Slipper, The Gringo Room, and The Silver Dollar Club. He always stopped at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop for a coffee in Biloxi where he would meet Croatian mafia kingpin Mickey Gillich Jr. who owned a strip club across the street. He too had to provide money for the soldier to put in his paper bag since all of the gambling machines in his businesses belonged to Marcello. Gillich was of Croatian Slavic descent from a large family, he had raised himself up from a poor upbringing in the city's Point Cadet to become a wealthy entrepreneur along the Biloxi strip. He owned a string of motels, nightclubs that doubled as strip joints and gambling dens, and even a Bingo parlor. He was known and trusted by every member of the Dixie Mafia and was an associate of the Italian mafia. He died at age 82 of cancer in his Biloxi home on April 28, 2012. The soldier would start his duties at 8am and finish his collection route by 12 noon at which time he would deliver the paper bag of money to an accountant sitting at a table behind a green door at a secure location on Hwy 90 they called (The Casino or The Castle) who would count it wrap it up and at that point another courier would deliver 60 miles away down Hwy 90 to New Orleans. The operation was run in a very strict manner, like a bank. It should be of note that the money the soldier collected came from a few different mechanisms to include slot machines, poker tables, roulette wheels, alcohol sales, cigarette sales, and even pinball machines.
Get an insight into Biloxi vice here:
https://biloxihistoricalsociety.org/casinos-gambling-liquor-and-vice

The Messenger
     The soldier was a messenger between Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante Jr. whom he would meet with at the Black Angus restaurant on Hwy 98 in Panama City at the base of the Hathaway bridge and at the Shrimp boat cafe on the harbor across from the Cabana motel in Panama City. The Black Angus was considered a good meeting point due to it's security features such as copper film over the windows to counter attempts at bugging from outside. This harbor was a location where shrimp-boats laden with marijuana from Colombia would unload their cargo bound for cities in the interior. Some of the loads are said to been as large as 25 tons. This type of activity continued unchecked for years until the Coast Guard began tracking boats in 1976. The Panama City harbor played host to many kinds of smugglers over the years from Jamaican rum, Colombian Marijuana, and Peruvian Cocaine. A trader from China is known to have docked there in his Chinese junk ( A type of wooden ship) so he could sell his unique wares he would bring from the orient.
You can read more about the mob in Panama City here:
https://insider-magazine.org/inside_the_dixie_mafia.htm

 Distinctions
     It is of note that the Italian mafia in New Orleans and the Croatian/Yugoslavian mafia in Biloxi are two separate entities who did interact but did not share familial connections. While the Italians from Palermo were the leading force all of the other organizations or families fell under them in the organized crime hierarchy. Dixie mafia consisted of "other than Italian" lineages with the Croatians at the top and the Yugoslavian, Slovenian, Austrian, Bosnian, German, British, and other families falling under them. The Italian mafia consisted of old Sicilian Italian families who had emigrated from Palermo in the late 1800's. The Dixie Mafia consisted of interlocking networks of organized crime operating in the Gulf States involved in criminal activities ranging from financial fraud and marijuana/gun smuggling  to human trafficking and murder-for-hire, they are known for their ruthlessness and their unpredictability.
Read about the Croatian Mafia here:
https://www.biloxihistoricalsociety.org/croatian-arrivals-sinj-croatia-gillich-and-gilich

 Bay of pigs
     The soldier was involved with providing lumber from lumber suppliers in Poplarville, Mississippi for the Lake Pontchartrain Laplace Cuban exile training camp among others and his family profited from Havana casinos run investments managed by Santo Trafficante Jr. His brother was an accountant who worked directly under Meyer Lansky at his office in the Fontainbleu hotel in Miami and his uncle was a straight man accountant who worked at a bank in New Orleans and very likely worked for Marcello also. They were involved with laundering U.S. funds through Batista-era resorts until the 1959 revolution disrupted their operations. Oswald's handlers were associated with Cuban exile training camps on Lake Pontchartrain and elsewhere on the northern Gulf of Mexico. The soldier was just one of a handful of facilitators. Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, and David Ferries may have been other handlers. These men apparently were used by the New Orleans, Chicago, and Florida mafias to lure LHO into their plot.
Read about Cuban exile training camps here :
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=JMMOVE

 Motivation     
     The mob was not happy with JFK due to his brother's crackdown on gambling and the Bay of Pigs issue was the final straw. Sam Giancana, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante Jr. agreed to remove him from office and Marcello enlisted the help of one of his closest friends, the soldier from Mississippi who had the means and motivation to do the job. The soldier was a Catholic KKK member with experience as a soldier in WWII. He was involved with gambling and bookmaking. He had a stake in the outcome as members of his family had interests in New Orleans, Biloxi, and Havana casinos and many legitimate businesses along the Northern Gulf of Mexico.
Read about The Bay of Pigs invasion here:
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Bay_of_Pigs.html

Family
The soldier's family had an interest in The Jolley Trolley casino in Las Vegas, Nevada and were involved in chicken fighting and bookmaking. The soldier and his wife had some kind of long term friendly association with Oswald, possibly through the Catholic church. She was an elementary school teacher who was helping LHO overcome a learning disability which he struggled with. He and his wife were devout Catholics who attended mass every Sunday. In some ways they were like family to Carlos Marcello who ran his businesses in a very streamlined manner, with close family members running everything under his expert direction. He gave his associates great authority over their operations. He used straight-men to run his business finances, Lawyers to handle his legal matters, and enforcers to collect his money. The soldier was a small, but important cog in the Mississippi operation that delivered a steady stream of cash to Marcello. The soldier was also involved with The Citizens Council and attended a KKK cross burning in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1978 where he met with Imperial wizard of the KKK Bill Wilkinson, and this is where the trail gets cold. There is no further mention of him anywhere. Below is the only known photograph of him and three of his associates. Can you guess which one he is?
https://imgur.com/a/MTWbOcg


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   https://imgur.com/gallery/lets-play-with-high-voltage-BBKiqkB       
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Additional reading on the subject of organized crime influence between Panama City and New Orleans:
https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/classics/dd_biloxi_confidential/1_index.html

https://www.facebook.com/groups/393752928140093/posts/1780789599436412/

THIS PAGE IS CONSTANTLY BEING UPDATED AS WE REVIEW NEW DATA. REFRESH THE PAGE TO SEE UPDATES.
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TIME PERIOD: 1880-1978

LOCATIONS: DALLAS-NEW ORLEANS-BILOXI-PANAMA CITY-MIAMI-HAVANA

KEYWORDS: BELLE CHASE-LAPLACE-GULFPORT--CARLOS MARCELLO-MYER LANSKY-FONTAINBLEU HOTEL-HAVANA-LUCKY LUCIANO-TAMPA-IBOR CITY-PROVENZO FAMILY-SAM COROLLA-FRANK COSTELLO-PHILLIP KASTEL-MOSCAS- FRANK GAGLIANO-GUY BANISTER-DAVID FERRIES-BAY OF PIGS-MATRANGA FAMILY-POPLARVILLE-CUBAN EXILE TRAINING CAMPS-JFK-TROPICANA CASINO-JMMOVE-BILOXI-NINO DIAZ-CUBA-CHICAGO-CIVIL AIR PATROL-CLAY SHAW-BAY OF PIGS-CITIZENS COUNCILS-


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[Benjamin Cole]

BM--

Since you blocked out the "soldiers" face, it is hard to guess who he is.

Side note from AI

"The original Krispy Kreme store in Biloxi, Mississippi, opened in August of 1967. This was the first Krispy Kreme location in the entire state of Mississippi."

[Ben McKenna]

Krispy Kreme in Biloxi was a central meeting location for everyone in town to include mobsters. Mr. Gillich was known to sit at the counter reading a newspaper as he drank his coffee across the street from his strip club.
Other locations in Biloxi that are central to my theory are The Gringo Room, The Broadwater Beach Hotel, and Baricev's restaurant. The amount of gambling in this region during that period was epic. Robert Kennedy put the families that once controlled all of this in a panic.