JFK Assassination Forum

  Recruitment of LHO   
     LHO was recruited by a Marcello soldier who 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. They left New Orleans and settled in Mississippi eventually gaining control over a myriad of enterprises. They were involved with 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. 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.
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 the 26 mile stretch of 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 clubs like The Silver Slipper and The Gringo room, always stopping 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. 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 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.
Get an insight into Biloxi vice here:
https://biloxihistoricalsociety.org/casinos-gambling-liquor-and-vice

Messenger
     The soldier was a messenger between Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante Jr. whom he would meet at the Black Angus restaurant on Hwy 98 and at the Shrimp boat cafe on the harbor 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. I have read that this harbor was a location where shrimpboats would unload shipments of marijuana from Colombia bound for cities in the interior. 
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. Dixie mafia consisted of "other than Italian" lineages with the Croatians at the top. 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 some kind of trap.
Read about Cuban exile training camps here :
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=JMMOVE

Motivation     
     The mob was not happy with Kennedy due to his brother's crackdown on gambling and the Bay of Pigs failure was the icing on the cake. 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.
 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 has 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 and they attended weddings of family members. 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 businesses, that is the reason I believe nothing concerning his ownership of properties and his gambling apparatus in Mississippi has ever been found. The soldier oversaw much of the Mississippi operation and was involved with the Citizens Council. In 1978 the soldier attended a KKK cross burning in Tupelo, Mississippi 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 and there are known photos of him.
 

Oliver Stone's Ruth Paine

Stone told actor Gail Cronauer, who played Janet Williams, aka Ruth Paine, in a conspiratorial manner.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/oliver-stone-s-ruth-paine

DO-

Thanks for your collegial comments, and your explanation is as good as any.

I do wonder about a fragment leaving JBC's wrist and making what looks like a near-perfect bullet hole in JBC's pant leg.

I lean to Paul Landis finding CE-399 in the back of the JFK limo, 11/22.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

You don't seem to disagree with my observation that an intact bullet could not have passed through JBC's wrist bone but you don't seem to agree either.
The lack of hole through the bone, the small slit-like exit wound, the trail of metallic fragments through the wound and the irregular nature of the object certainly favours the explanation that a small fragment of bullet passed through the wrist rather than an intact bullet.

As for CE399...there isn't a scrap of evidence, that I'm aware of, placing CE399 anywhere near Parkland hospital on the day of the assassination and Connally recalls the slug that was in his leg being recovered in the operating theatre as he was being moved from the stretcher to the table. He recalls it making a sound like a "wedding band" hitting the floor and that a nurse picked it up. This is from a Robert Harris article [ https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-connally-bullet ]:

But there is an even better reason why we can be quite certain that CE399 was not the bullet that wounded Governor Connally. The real bullet was found on the second floor and recovered by a nurse, who then passed it on to officer Bobby Nolan, who then delivered it to the Dallas Police department. The confirmation of this begins with Governor Connally. This is from his autobiography entitled, "In History's shadow".

"..the most curious discovery of all took place when they rolled me off the stretcher, and onto the examining table. A metal object fell to the floor, with a click no louder than a wedding band. The nurse picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. It was the bullet from my body, the one that passed though my back, chest and wrist and worked itself loose from my thigh.

There was enormous significance to that scrap of metal, but I can't be certain how many years later I understood the importance of it. I have always believed that three bullets found their mark. What happened in the hospital demonstrated how easily a bullet could have been swept aside and lost.."

What the governor obviously didn't realize however, is that the bullet was not "swept aside". Certainly, the nurse who recovered it would not have just discarded the most important piece of forensic evidence she had ever handled. As it turned out, the Dallas District attorney arrived at the hospital, eager to find out how his old friend, Governor Connally was doing. It seems that he arrived at about the same time that the surgery on the governor was completed, when he ran into that same nurse who found the bullet. This is from an interview of Dallas District attorney, Henry Wade, by the Dallas Morning News.

I also went out to see (Gov. John) Connally, but he was in the operating room. Some nurse had a bullet in her hand, and said this was on the gurney that Connally was on. I talked with Nellie Connally a while and then went on home.

Q: What did you do with the bullet? Is this the famous pristine bullet people have talked about?

A: I told her to give it to the police, which she said she would. I assume that's the pristine bullet.

The nurse promptly carried out the district attorney's instructions, passing the bullet to the nearest uniformed officer in sight, who happened to be Dallas Hwy Patrolman, Bobby Nolan, who was standing in the hallway talking to Connally aide, Bill Stinson. This is from my interview of Nolan in 2010.

I was talking to a man who was one of governor Connally's aides. His name was - I think it was either Stinton or Stimmons (Bill Stinson). And he was an aide to the Governor. And she came up and told him that she had the bullet that came off of the gurney. Now I don't know what gurney. I think they meant Governor Connally's gurney. And she said, "What do you want me to do with it?" He and I were just sitting there in the hallway talking to me and said, "Give it to him"

Q. Was it a bullet fragment or a complete bullet?

Nolan: I don't know. It was a  - they told me that it was a bullet. And I don't know if it was a fragment of a bullet or a whole bullet because it was in a little, small brown envelope. And it was sealed and it was about, I'd say 2 by 3 inches. And it was in that envelope when I got it and I never did look at it or anything."

Q. Now when the nurse gave it to you, did she describe it as a bullet fragment or as a bullet.

Nolan: Uh no. She just said it was a bullet. That's all.

Nolan delivered the bullet to the Dallas Police department that evening, and the next morning, was interviewed by the FBI, who reported (emphasis is mine), Bobby M. Nolan, Texas highway patrolman, Tyler district, was interviewed relative to a bullet fragment removed from the left thigh of Governor Connally, which was turned over to him at Parkland Hospital in Dallas for delivery to the FBI.[/b]

The JFKA is the greatest detective story ever written, even as its repugnant horror seems to never fade away.

And even yet, new clues can emerge out of old cloth. Literally.

So recently, I was puzzling over Gov. JBC's already mysterious wrist-wound.

JBC's surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw, thought the wrist wound, which resulted from a slug entering the dorsal side---the wristwatch side---and which left the ventral side of the wrist, may have resulted from a separate projectile.

Recently I reviewed a photo of the hole in JBC's left pant leg, into which CE-399 is said to have temporarily buried itself, before popping out (after passing through JFK's neck, JBC's torso, and JBC's right wrist, and yes, both the WC and the more-skeptical HSCA accepted this explanation).

See the photo:



The Western Cartridge 6.50 slug has a diameter of a little more than 1/4". It is large slug, at about 1 and 1/4" inches long.

This is a neat, perfect hole CE-399 purportedly made in JBC's pant leg on 11/22, indicative of spiraling slug.

Gun enthusiasts know that a modern-era bullet is spiraling (a bit like a well-thrown football) as it leaves a rifle barrel, and one can see spirals on the inside of a gun barrel that impart the spin.

OK. So, it appears whatever bullet struck JBC in the leg had maintained its spiral, and was not tumbling.

OK, if the SBT is true, then a bullet passed through JFK's neck, then passed through JBC's torso (taking out four inches of rib), then fractured his wrist, and then still spiraling, made a perfect hole in JBC's pant leg to burrow into the leg itself.

Add on: A strange quote from JBC's wrist surgeon:

Dr. GREGORY. Yes; debridement is a surgical term used to designate that
procedure in attending a wound which removes by sharp excision all nonvital
tissue in the area together with any identifiable foreign objects.
In attending this wound, it was evident early that clot had been carried into
the wound from the dorsal surface to the bone and into the fracture. This
would imply that an irregular missile had passed through the wrist from the
dorsal to the volar aspect.

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/pdf/WH6_Gregory.pdf

An irregular missile? Does that describe a slug that must have been spiraling when it struck JBC's leg? Does that describe CE-399?

I wish I had a sensible answer to the wound pattern on JBC. For me, the SBT does not hold water---indeed, even if JBC was struck by a separate shot, his wound pattern is mysterious.

I have long pondered if JBC's wrist was struck by a shot from the GK smoke-and-bang show.

The wound to JBC's leg, however, poses yet new curiosities.

Dr. Gregory's long-forgotten quote that an "irregular" missile had passed through JBC's wrist is another oddity.

Last thought: Gov. JBC's twice said (WC and HSCA) slugs were entering the JFK cab limo as is from "automatic weapons" fire.

More later.

JBC's wrist injury shows no sign that a bullet passed through it, spiralling, tumbling or otherwise (a tumbling bullet would have blown his hand off).
If it did it would look something like this:



The bullet has to travel from one side of the bone, pass through it, and exit the other side of the bone.
Common Sense tells us it would create a hole through the bone where the bullet has passed.
JBC's wrist bone shows no such thing:



How to explain this lack of a hole through the bone?
I believe the bullet exiting JBC's chest hit the wrist bone and fragmented. A small fragment passed through the wrist bone creating  a "slit-like" exit wound in the creases of the under side of the wrist. The far larger fragment deflected away from the wrist and embedded itself in JBC's thigh.
This explains why there appears to be a large entry wound yet a small exit wound in the wrist. Something that was noted as being quite strange.
It also explains the number of metallic fragments seen throughout the wrist. Something that cannot be explained by assuming CE399 had anything to to with these injuries (spiralling OR tumbling).
It also explains the observation that the object that passed through the wrist was an "irregular missile".
And it also explains why there is no hole through the bone showing where a bullet passed through.

The large fragment of bullet that embedded itself in JBC's leg fell to the floor of the operating theatre as JBC was being moved from his stretcher onto the operating table. It was picked up by a nurse. (JBC recalls this in his memoirs)
Henry Wade, who was visiting his good friend Connally at the time, recalls the nurse bringing the slug to him and he told her to give it to the nearest police officer.
It appears the nurse then put the slug into an envelope and went into the corridor where she found Bill Stinson, Connally's Chief Aide, talking to Texas Highway Patrolman Bob Nolan. She told Stinson what she had and he told her to give it to Nolan who put the envelope in his pocket.
This large bullet fragment would go on to mysteriously transform itself into the four small fragments of bullet taken from JBC's wrist wound and labelled Q9 by the FBI lab, in Washington.

TG-

Possibly, if one takes into consideration the RFK assassination.

Members of SAVAK may have played a role, along with Middle East extremists, in the RFKA.

Tehran did not like RFK's stance on Iran.