Thursday, April 28, 2011

King of the Crescent City: A brief paper on the life of Carlos Marcello

FOREWARD: This being a paper for my history class, it is very brief and does not cover every aspect of Marcello's life. Notably brief in this paper is Marcello's alleged involvment in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. For a more detailed reading about Carlos Marcello, check out any of the books located at the bottom of the paper that I used as sources.

Also, this paper serves as an excellent companion piece to my earlier paper: Who Killa De Chief?: The Mafia, the Assassination of David Hennessy, and the Crescent City Lynchings. Combined, these two papers briefly document the rise and fall of the Mafia in New Orleans.



Born on February 6, 1910, Calogero Minacore would live in Tunis, Tunisia until he and his mother would travel later that year to the United States. It was there where Calogero’s father, Guiseppe Minacore, was able to work as a field hand and had saved enough money to not only bring his wife and newborn son to the United States, but also to purchase a small farm near Algiers, Louisiana. It was while Guiseppe was working on a sugar plantation that he was forced to change his name. The owner of the plantation was also named “Minacore”, so to avoid confusion Guiseppe changed his name to Joseph Marcello. His wife would choose the name Louise Marcello. The name they chose for their son would not only be remembered and associated with organized crime, but also with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. It was barley into the first year of his life when little Calogero Minacore would then on be known as Carlos Marcello.

Both John and Louise would eventually become naturalized citizens, and the rest of the Marcello children (Carlos would have six brothers, and two sisters) would automatically become citizens due to being born on U.S. soil. But for some reason they never bothered to have Carlos naturalized, an oversight that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Marcello grew up working with his father on their farm. He would bring the vegetables they would grow by cart to the various produce markets, most of which were dominated by the local Mafia, located in the French Quarter.

Just about the same time Marcello would be exposed to the Mafia, its longtime leader, Charles Matranga, would retire. Matranga survived a bloody war with the rival Provenzano Mafia faction and a mass lynching over the assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy to become the undisputed leader of the Mafia in New Orleans. In 1925, Matranga retired and Sylvestro Carolla would become leader of the New Orleans Mafia. Nicknamed “Silver Dollar Sam” the scarred, sleepy eyed Carolla continued the tradition that the New Orleans Mafia seemed to have on assassinating public officials by murdering a narcotics agent by the name of Cecil Moore. Unlike his predecessors, Carolla wasn’t subjected to a lynching, but rather a light two year prison sentence. By the time Carolla was boss the 18th Amendment had passed, making the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol illegal. While the American public was distracted by the violence generated by prohibition in New York and Chicago, the violence generated by Carolla and his organization to dominate bootlegging in New Orleans gained little attention.

In 1928, at the age of 18, Marcello left his family’s farm and moved into the French Quarter. Marcello would commit petty crimes until 1929 when he organized a $7,000 bank robbery with three young accomplices. The bank was not far from his family’s farm. His father agreed to hide the stash of money. Fearing the consequences, one of Marcello’s younger brothers, Pete, called the cops and told them where the money was hidden. Marcello, his three accomplices, and even his father were arrested. But the bank, just happy to get all of the money back, dropped all charges.

It wasn’t long before Marcello would be planning his next robbery. In order to get money for guns to hold up the same bank he held up months earlier, Marcello and two other teenage accomplices robbed a grocery store. The score being a success, the gang started to plan their bigger robbery. All was going well until Marcello’s youngest accomplice (13 years old) was recognized by the grocer they had robbed three weeks before and was arrested. The boy spilled the whole plot and Marcello was arrested and turned out to be the only one of the three to be convicted for assault, robbery, and grand larceny. On May 28, 1930, at the age of 20, Marcello entered Angola prison. Marcello was eventually pardoned by puppet Governor O.K. Allen after serving only four years of his nine to twelve sentence.

After Marcello left prison he went back to work for his father. He only did this until he could afford to put a down payment on a rundown bar in Gretna. Marcello named it “The Brown Bomber”, and brought his brother Peter in with him to help run the place. Marcello would soon use his bar as a front for selling marijuana. Through regular payoffs to the Mafia, Marcello was able to keep his bar protected from raids by the local police. Marcello would eventually meet Frank Todaro, an underboss in Carolla’s organization. Marcello started working for Todaro and married his daughter, Jacqueline. It was after his marriage that Marcello and his brother Vincent set up the Jefferson Music Company, where the Marcello brothers would strong arm bars and restaurants in New Orleans to supply their establishments with pool tables, pinball machines, and jukeboxes from Marcello’s company.

It was a chance meeting between New York mob boss Frank Costello and Governor Huey Long that helped drive Marcello’s successes. Costello wanted to expand his slot machine empire into New Orleans and Long, being the virtual dictator of the state, wouldn’t mind the payoff. A meeting between Long, Costello, and Carolla took place to bring Costello’s slot machines into Louisiana. Marcello’s Jefferson Music Company was recommended as a primary vehicle to help install Costello’s slot machines. While this was good news for Marcello, it was soon shattered by trouble with the authorities. Marcello was still selling marijuana out of his bar, where an undercover federal agent had purchased 23 pounds of it. Marcello was sentenced to a year and a day at Atlanta State Penitentiary. But through the political connections of Carolla, Marcello ended up only serving nine months.

After serving a brief stint in Atlanta, Marcello returned to enforce the use of Costello’s slot machines in New Orleans. Marcello, now 30 and a father, reaped the benefits of this highly profitable business. Marcello would also gain interest in the casino business as it gained popularity.

On May 5, 1947, the upper echelons of the New Orleans Mafia gathered at the Black Diamond nightclub to anoint Marcello as boss of the New Orleans Mafia. After Carolla beat the rap for murdering a federal narcotics agent, the Justice Department would use any means necessary to rid New Orleans of him. Much like Marcello, Carolla was not a U.S. citizen. The Justice Department would use this against Carolla and ordered deportation proceedings against him in the mid 30s. But the already slow process was delayed by World War II. But now that the war was over, the government wasted no time in deporting the New Orleans mob boss. Carolla, along with New York Mafia bigwig Charlie “Lucky” Lucaino, faced exile in Italy. At thirty seven years old, Carlos Marcello became Mafia boss of New Orleans.

From 1950-1951 the United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, easier remembered as the Kefauver Committee, had investigated the Mafia throughout the United States. The Committee brought Carlos Marcello before it on January 25, 1951. The expansion of Marcello’s empire into: Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, California, Alabama, and even the Caribbean and Central America made him an essential target for the committee. While sitting in a New Orleans courtroom Marcello would invoke his right of the Fifth Amendment 152 times. While he was well within his rights to plead the fifth, the corruption that had been established in Louisiana outraged Senator Estes Kefauver, the chairmen of the committee. Not being able to establish his citizenship, the United States issued its first deportation order against Carlos Marcello in 1953.

Marcello had another problem besides his approaching deportation order. His old headquarters, the Willswood Tavern, had been exposed by the Kefauver Committee as his base of operations. Marcello would relocate from the Willswood Tavern, where Al Capone’s old chef Provino Mosca worked, and moved to the Town and Country Motel on Airline Highway. A one story building behind the motel and restaurant would serve as Marcello’s new fortress.

Not long after the Kefauver Committee, a group of concerned New Orleans citizens invited ex-FBI agent Aaron Kohn down to investigate the NOPD. Kohn had plenty of experience of brining rural bank robbers like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson to justice, but this is the first time that Kohn would go head to head with an urban mobster. While investigating the NOPD, Kohn discovered that all of the vice and corruption in the city led back to Carlos Marcello. Kohn received ridicule from the NOPD, former FBI colleagues, and even from New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Kohn was quoted saying: We have been in repeated public conflicts with Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who denies the existence in our city of probable organized crime. He and his staff have blocked out efforts to have grand juries probe the influence of the Cosa Nostra and other syndicate operations. The corrupt Garrison would later achieved fame as the only man who ever tried a person in the Kennedy assassination. Kohn eventually was able to get two grand juries to indict high level NOPD officers on corruption charges. He was also able to get Marcello in the crosshairs of the McClellan Committee, which was investigating corruption in labor and management. This is where Marcello’s infamous feud with the Kennedy brothers would begin.

The McClellan Committee was formed on January 30, 1957, with Robert F. Kennedy appointed as Chief Counsel, and his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, a member of the committee. At first the committee was only concerned with corruption in organized labor. It was here where Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was brought before and grilled by the Kennedy brothers. It was after the discovery of the secret Apalachin meeting in New York on November 14, 1957, which exposed the existence of the Mafia to the country, that shifted the committee’s focus to organized crime. (Marcello wasn’t at the Apalachin meeting that was uncovered by police, but sent Dallas Mafia boss Joe Civello to the meeting in his place) Marcello was brought before the committee and again reprised his role of pleading the fifth amendment. While Marcello was able to walk out of the courtroom with his head high, knowing that he beat another government committee, Robert F. Kennedy would not forget the brash Marcello.

On the early morning of January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro would overthrow U.S. supported “President” Fulgencio Batista, and took control of Cuba. In the months after the revolution, Castro would disassemble the empire that the Mafia had built in Havana. Castro closed all of their casinos and racetracks, and chased all elements of the Mafia out of his country. He even placed Florida Mafia boss Santo Trfficante, Jr. under arrest and held him in an abandoned casino for months. This is when the “pact with the devil” was formed. The CIA and the Mafia worked together on several occasions to have Castro assassinated. Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, his subordinate Johnny Roselli, Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., and New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello were the major players in the alliance that the Mafia had with the CIA. Not only did these Mafia bosses work with the CIA, but they also funded several anti-Castro exile groups as well. It is believed by some that it was this alliance between these three groups that was the driving force responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A year after Castro took power; President John F. Kennedy defeated former Vice President Richard Nixon in the race for the presidency. Robert Kennedy was made Attorney General, and was eager to prosecute the mobsters who escaped them years earlier. To help stall his deportation case Marcello acquired a fake birth certificate that stated he was from Guatemala. While the government was aware that this birth certificate was a forgery, Attorney General Robert Kennedy decided to use this against Marcello. On the morning of April 4, 1961 Marcello, along with his lawyer, paid his tri-monthly visit to the INS office in New Orleans. Marcello was arrested and then kidnapped by INS agents. Marcello was told that he was being immediately deported to where his birth certificate said he was from, Guatemala. Not only was this illegal because the government knew that Marcello’s birth certificate was a forgery, but as part of his deportation order Marcello was supposed to have been given a seventy two hour notice before he was deported. Marcello was not allowed to call his family, or get anything from his home. He was immediately put on a plane and was left for dead in the jungles of Guatemala. Marcello stayed in exile for two months before sneaking back into the United States. In his book, The Enemy Within, Robert Kennedy wrote: If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.

After sneaking back into the country, Marcello eventually turned himself in to the authorities on June 2, 1963. He was released the same day and was allowed to return to his home and go about his daily activities. Even though the “kidnap deportation” was illegal, Kennedy had Marcello called to testify before the reconstituted McClellan committee, but he avoided this on the basis of illness caused by his ordeal in Guatemala. His brother Joe and Joe Poretto, one of Marcello’s top men, were however summonsed to the hearing. They both, like Marcello did in the past, plead the Fifth Amendment. On October 30, 1963, Attorney General Kennedy publicly announced the indictment of Marcello on charges of falsifying his Guatemalan birth certificate, and perjury. From this moment on, several witnesses would claim that whenever the Kennedy name was brought up around Marcello, he would burst into violent outbursts, where he would swear revenge against the Kennedy brothers.

This paper being long and out of control enough, and realizing that this is a paper on the life of Carlos Marcello rather than trying to implicate him in the Kennedy assassination, I’m only going to briefly mention Marcello and the Kennedy assassination.

In the summer of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald returned to his native city of New Orleans. His mother, a former prostitute, and his uncle were the few members of his family that would still talk to him after his defection to Russia. Oswald’s uncle was Charles “Dutz” Murret, a bookmaker closely connected to Marcello. People have claimed to have seen Oswald in the presence of David Ferrie. Ferrie was a pilot, a scientist, and a paralegal. Ferrie was connected to Marcello because he was helping Marcello with his upcoming deportation case. Ferrie also trained the Cubans that stormed the Bay of Pigs, and hated Kennedy after the failed invasion. After his summer stay in New Orleans, Oswald moved to Dallas, which was controlled by Marcello.

On November 22, 1963, right at the precise moment President Kennedy was assassinated, Marcello was in a New Orleans courtroom facing yet another trial related to his deportation. It was in the middle of The United States vs. Carlos Marcello when a bailiff approached judge Herbert W. Christenberry and whispered something into his ear. The judge then told the court that President Kennedy had been shot. Soon after, Marcello and his brother Joe would be found not guilty on the counts of “conspiracy to defraud the United States government by obtaining a false Guatemalan birth certificate" and "conspiracy to obstruct the United States government in the exercise of its right to deport Carlos Marcello." But the courts were not finished with him yet. On October 16, 1964, Marcello was indicted in connection with jury tampering at his trial for the forged birth certificate. He eventually came to trial on this charge on August 17, 1965, but once again the jury found in his favor.

After beating two major court cases, and with the Kennedy brothers out of office, Marcello’s organization would continue to prosper. Not having to fear deportation at the moment, Marcello no longer had to tip toe around the government. His next run in with the law would be on October 1, 1966. Marcello, after returning to New Orleans from a brief Mafia summit in New York that was raided by the police, punched FBI agent Patrick Collins. Marcello was brought to trial for this and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. But keeping with tradition, he only served six months in a medical facility in Springfield, Missouri.

Again, while this paper is about the life of Carlos Marcello, and not the implication of his involvement in assassinations, it should be noted that Marcello had connections to James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan, the assassins of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Marcello was known for his stance against civil rights, and was known to fund the KKK. According to witnesses Ray was seen at the Town and Country Motel on December 17, 1967. Also, when the FBI raided Ray‘s apartment, agents found a map with the address of LA gangster Johnny Roselli circled on it. Only after a few months after King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy was assassinated as well. In 1968, Robert Kennedy was gearing up to run as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. The Mafia feared that Kennedy would reopen the investigation into his brother’s death, and that he might further pursue organized crime if he were elected. Kennedy was later shot by Sirhan Sirhan, who worked as a groom at the Santa Anita race track controlled by LA gangster Mickey Cohen, who was a close friend of Marcello.

While Marcello was never officially connected to any of these assassinations, he was called before The House Select Committee on Assassinations on January 11, 1978. After the Watergate scandal broke in 1972, the Watergate Committee was formed to investigate. After finding out about CIA and FBI involvement in the scandal, the Church Committee and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were both formed to investigate the various intelligence agencies of the United States. When suspicions arouse that these very agencies could be involved with the Kennedy assassination the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed in 1976 to reinvestigate the JFK/MLK assassinations, and the attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace. Marcello was called as a witness and not a suspect, so his testimony was given under a grant of immunity, so he didn‘t have to hide behind the Fifth Amendment. It was at this time when a number of Marcello’s associates started to turn up dead. Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana was shot in the back of the head in his basement on June 19, 1975. Johnny Roselli’s decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in a bay near Miami on August 9, 1976. Roselli had been strangled, shot, and his legs were sawn off. Chicago Mafia hitman Charles Nicoletti was found dead in his car with three gunshot wounds to the back of his head on March 29, 1977. Finally, Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. What all of these men had in common (besides being involved with the Mafia and allegedly in the Kennedy assassination) was that they either testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or they were due to testify. Marcello and his associate in Tampa, Santo Trafficante, Jr., would be the only two major Mafia figures to survive the committee hearings. The Committee would later conclude that Marcello had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy.

Joseph Hauser was an insurance swindler who was introduced to Marcello in 1976. It was Marcello who helped him dupe insurance companies in New Orleans. But Hauser was eventually caught and pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges. Seeing their opportunity the FBI, who longed to convict Marcello, approached Hauser and told him that if he would cooperate with the authorities, all of his charges would be dropped. Hauser would have to participate in Project BRILAB (short for bribery and labor), a nationwide sting set up to get Marcello. The operation began on April 2, 1979. Hauser, aided by two undercover FBI agents, set themselves up as representatives of a fictitious West Coast insurance company and set out to induce Marcello to use his influence to get key officials in the labor movement and the state and municipal governments to award major insurance contracts to the company, in return for a share of the huge commissions payable on these agreements. Hauser and the FBI agents would wear wires and Marcello's office at the Town and Country Motel complex would be bugged. The FBI recorded fourteen hundred reels of recorded tape of conversations with Marcello. The sting eventually ended and Marcello would be charged with racketeering, conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and interstate travel to engage in racketeering. The main witnesses for the government were Hauser and the two undercover FBI agents, Larry Montague and Michael Wacks. On August 4, 1981, Marcello was found guilty of violating the RICO statute, the next day he was also found guilty of trying to bribe a federal judge. Between the BRILAB sting, and the bribing of a federal judge, Marcello faced seventeen years in prison. Marcello was moved from prison to prison, never staying in the same place for more than two years.

In 1989, Marcello suffered a series of strokes. He had become severely disabled and had been showing the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. A 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Carlos’s BRILAB conviction. After serving six and a half years, Marcello was freed to the care of his family. He would eventually lose the power of speech and he regressed to his infancy. He was rarely in public and died on March 3, 1993.

After Marcello’s arrest and death there was a power vacuum in the New Orleans underworld. None of Marcello’s brothers wanted to take control of his organization, and most of them officially retired from crime. Remnants of Marcello’s organization allied themselves with men connected to the Gambino Crime Family in New York and the Bruno-Scarfo Crime Family in Philadelphia. The east coast mobsters worked with former Marcello members Anthony Corolla, Nick Karno, and Frank Caracci to take control of New Orleans. Silver Dollar Sam’s son, Anthony Carolla, told the eastern mobsters: Sure, go ahead. Come on in. You won’t get any heat from the Marcellos. They’re finished. They don’t mean nothin around here anymore.

According to Marcello-era criminal Frenchy Brouillette, Anthony Corolla leading a Mafia family in New Orleans was as effective as George W. Bush leading the United States.




The New Orleans Mafia lost a major source of illegal revenue when 4th term Governor Edwin Edwards legalized casino gambling in the early 90's.

Marcello was initially buried in Westlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum, but was moved two years later to Metairie Cemetery.


Sources
-Mafia Kingfish-John H. Davis
-Legacy of Secrecy-Lamar Waldron
-Mr. New Orleans-Michael Randazzo V
-Deep Water: Joseph Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia-Thomas Hunt
-The Enemy Within-Robert F. Kennedy













2 comments:

  1. He was actually dug up and relocated. He was originally buried in Westlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Gretna, LA. He is now located at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

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