Legacy of Secrecy (95 page)

options.22

One option was his friend William Harvey, and CIA files reveal that

Rosselli resumed meeting with William Harvey in the fall of 1967. In

addition, one of Johnny Rosselli’s codefendants hired prominent Los

Angeles attorney Grant Cooper as his attorney of record. Cooper would

soon mysteriously come into possession of illegal copies of the grand

jury’s testimony against Rosselli and the others. These transcripts would

give Rosselli and his associates leverage over Cooper the following

year—when Cooper volunteered to represent Sirhan Sirhan for shoot-

ing Bobby Kennedy.23

With his new spate of legal problems, Johnny Rosselli needed Carlos

Marcello’s help more than ever. The charges Rosselli faced could result

in his deportation, and Marcello had a long track record of success in

that area. Though in the summer of 1967 Bobby Kennedy wasn’t actively

talking about seeking the presidency, the press still speculated he might

run in 1968. The prospect of a Bobby Kennedy presidency would be

daunting to Rosselli, since the information he’d asked Ed Morgan to

convey to Earl Warren and Jack Anderson could be contained in memos

Bobby might see if he made it to the White House. It wouldn’t be difficult

for a Mafia expert like Bobby to learn that Rosselli was Morgan’s source,

and Rosselli could ill afford to have Bobby in a position where he could

use trusted federal agents to secretly explore Rosselli’s connections to

the CIA and JFK’s murder.

For Carlos Marcello, keeping Rosselli out of prison would help to

ensure that Marcello’s role in JFK’s murder would never become public.

Rosselli could still be of use to Marcello, potentially in Las Vegas (for

casino deals) and in Los Angeles, where Bobby Kennedy was a frequent

visitor. After Marcello heard about Hoffa’s contract on Bobby, the god-

father would have known that Rosselli’s ties to Los Angeles could help

to insulate him or Hoffa from any action they might need to take against

Bobby, if he decided to run for president.

In late August 1967, Carlos Marcello would have worried about a two-

part series slated for
Life
magazine that tied him to Jimmy Hoffa and Dis-

trict Attorney Jim Garrison.
Life
, America’s leading photo-news weekly,

was preparing a major exposé about Marcello’s Spring Hoffa effort, and

for most Americans it would be their first exposure to the New Orleans

godfather.

J. Edgar Hoover learned of the forthcoming article because on August

7, 1967, he called the New Orleans FBI office, which replied the following

day with an Urgent teletype. It confirmed that the FBI had interviewed

one of Marcello’s brothers and three Marcello associates about stories

that had surfaced soon after JFK’s murder. As detailed in Chapter 3,

one story described Oswald’s receiving money at Marcello’s Town and

Country Motel restaurant and another story was about a horse trainer

who’d heard one of Marcello’s brothers say, “The word is out to get the

Kennedy family.” Hoover apparently wanted to be prepared in case

word broke about Carlos Marcello’s ties to JFK’s murder.24

Life
magazine editor Richard Billings had been dealing with Jim Gar-

rison since late 1966, but assigned another writer to do the two-part

series on the Mafia. FBI veteran William Turner quotes FBI files as saying

that writer was “‘a great admirer of the Director [Hoover] and a very

strong backer of the Bureau’ who had been ‘utilized’ on ‘many differ-

ent occasions.’”25 While Hoover no doubt tried to influence the articles,

much of their content appears to have originated with Walter Sheridan,

Bobby Kennedy’s confidant.

Part I of the
Life
series appeared in the September 1, 1967, issue and

behind a cover highlighting the psychedelic posters of Peter Max and

Rick Griffin, readers got their first detailed look at Carlos Marcello

and his “empire of Organized Crime.” In addition to a dramatic, full-

page, close-up photograph of Marcello looking powerful, the article

detailed Marcello’s Spring Hoffa bribe attempts with details only Walter

Sheridan could have provided.26

From Sheridan and Bobby’s perspective, the series appears to have

had at least three goals. The first was to stall Marcello’s Spring Hoffa

attempts by exposing his efforts. The second was to outline Marcello’s

470

LEGACY OF SECRECY

massive power and influence, as part of the greatest national exposure

the publicity-shy Marcello had ever received. The article covered Mar-

cello allies like Sam Giancana, who,
Life
notes, was still influencing the

Chicago Mafia “from a hideout in Mexico,” aided by “Richard Cain,

a well-known former Chicago policeman.” Though the article doesn’t

mention it, Giancana was helping to run the Mexican side of the heroin

network that supplied Marcello. The article does not mention the CIA-

Mafia plots that involved Giancana and Cain.27

It’s interesting that an article featuring information from Sheridan,

and that was certainly approved by Bobby, highlighted Marcello, Hoffa,

and Giancana—three people whom Bobby suspected in his brother’s

murder. However, Part I of the
Life
series didn’t mention JFK’s assas-

sination at all. The first public effort to tie Marcello to JFK’s murder was

still two years away, in Ed Reid’s 1969
The Grim Reapers
, though the
Life

article did mention mob lawyer Sidney Korshak.

Bobby and Sheridan’s third goal became clear the following week,

when
Life
ran Part II. In addition to providing more information about

Marcello’s criminal empire, this part of the story attempted to character-

ize Jim Garrison as being close to Marcello. Thus, the
Life
series can be

seen as part of Sheridan’s quest on Bobby’s behalf to discredit Garrison.

However, Part II contains nothing linking Marcello to JFK’s assassina-

tion, and (like Part I) nothing tying David Ferrie to Marcello.28

Because the
Life
series appeared after the NBC and CBS attacks on

Garrison, the stories generated no follow-up from other news media

about Marcello, Ferrie, and JFK’s assassination. By November 1967,
Life

would return to largely supporting the Warren Report in its JFK assas-

sination anniversary issue. The next national magazine to feature Mar-

cello would not appear until the following year, when Bobby Kennedy

would take an even more direct role in guiding a Marcello story, shortly

before his own murder.

Marcello weathered the
Life
series with no lasting damage or follow-

up in the national media, and would soon reactivate his Spring Hoffa

efforts. Marcello’s charge of hitting an FBI agent was mired in the legal

system and many months away from trial, so he quickly resumed his

normal routine, which John Davis described as being “the chief execu-

tive of an invisible state.” Based on FBI files, Marcello would often sit

in his office at the Town and Country Motel, taking calls and seeing

visitors ranging from prominent businessmen to the representatives

of governors to other Mafia bosses. The requests ranged from “fixing a

federal judge” to “helping a gang of drug smugglers” to complex casino

and real estate deals.29

Other times, Marcello would authorize, or order his men to arrange,

a hit. For example, in 1967, one of his “prominent syndicate gamblers,

Harry Bennett, was shot dead by unknown killers not long after . . .

Marcello’s aides discovered he had met with a federal prosecutor and

offered to help him in the government’s investigation of the Marcello

organization.” Like Marcello’s other hits, this case was never prose-

cuted. Two years later, after Bennett’s assistant crossed Marcello, police

discovered his “bullet-riddled body” in the same spot where Bennett’s

body had been found.30

In these hits and in Marcello’s business dealings, his careful use of

intermediaries, along with his power and fearsome reputation, insulated

him from blame and stymied investigators. As Davis wrote, Marcello

and his associates “seemed to feel he could get away with almost any-

thing,” including murder—and to a large degree, they were right.31

PART FOUR

Chapter Thirty-eight

On July 17, 1967, an American career criminal named James Earl Ray

arrived in Montreal after escaping from a Missouri prison almost three

months earlier. Ray was forty years old, and a repeated loser whose only

forte seemed to be an ability to escape from custody. He came from an

extremely dysfunctional family of ten children, headed by an alcoholic

mother. Born in the small town of Alton, Illinois, about twenty miles

from St. Louis, Ray was first arrested in 1949, shortly after an early

discharge from the Army. His theft of a typewriter netted him only a

ninety-day sentence, but his $11 robbery of a cab driver in 1952 resulted

in his being “shot by police and sentenced to two years in jail,” according

to author Philip Melanson. Forging money orders in 1955 earned Ray a

stay in Leavenworth until early 1958. His 1959 robbery of $120 from a

Kroger grocery store in St. Louis got him a twenty-year sentence in the

Missouri state penitentiary, in Jefferson City. After three failed escape

attempts, he finally succeeded on April 23, 1967, supposedly by hiding

in a bread truck making a delivery to the prison.1

While in prison, Ray was described as having “superior” intelligence;

though his achievement level was only that of a high school sophomore,

he read a variety of books and magazines ranging from James Bond

stories to
Time
. According to one of Ray’s brothers, and confirmed by

six of Ray’s fellow inmates, Ray dealt drugs—apparently amphetamines

(“speed”)—in prison. When
Playboy
asked him in 1977 about prison

drug dealing, Ray only replied “I’ve never been any type of big operator

in drugs in Missouri.” (Note his use of the qualifier “big,” and the fact

that Ray limited his answer to the state of Missouri.)2

Accounts vary greatly about whether Ray made only pocket money

or a substantial amount in prison, but he was said to have a supplier out-

side of prison. According to Congressional investigators, one of Ray’s

1. From this point forward, any use of the term “Ray” refers to James Earl Ray, and not to

Cuban exile leader Manolo Ray, who is not connected or related to James Earl Ray in any

way.

476

LEGACY OF SECRECY

associates in prison at the time of his escape was John Paul Spica, who

had been convicted for a 1963 contract murder. After having been in

the same cell block and same tier as Ray, Spica testified that “he was

acquainted with Ray.” However, their relationship was more than

a simple acquaintance, since “prison officials and other inmates . . .

indicated a much closer friendship between Spica and Ray than Spica

admitted.” Ray himself wrote that he “got to know . . . a St. Louis guy

named John Paul Spica, who was doing life for conspiracy to commit

murder. He was said to have heavy mob connections.”3 A major player

in the St. Louis mob in 1967 was Morris Shenker, Jimmy Hoffa’s chief

attorney at the time, and a key part of Carlos Marcello’s Spring Hoffa

attempt. 4

According to the Justice Department, between James Earl Ray’s April

23, 1967, escape from prison and his July 17 arrival in Montreal, he

lived in Chicago, where he worked for “eight weeks as a dishwasher

and cook’s helper” at a restaurant in nearby Winnetka. Ray apparently

wanted more money than his meager salary provided, so, the week of

June 19, he quit his job and left town with a small amount of savings

and a 1959 Chrysler he’d bought for $200. On July 14, 1967, Ray bought

a similarly priced 1962 Plymouth in East St. Louis, transferred the tags

from his old car, and headed for Canada the following day.

From that point until his capture in June 1968, Ray’s extensive cross-

country and globe-spanning travels and activities far surpass anything

he (or his family) had ever done before, or anything one might expect of

a criminal with his background. According to the 1977 Justice Depart-

ment Task Force, which analyzed the FBI’s original investigation, “a

good deal of mystery still surrounds James [Earl] Ray . . . particularly

the means by which he financed his life style and travels. . . . The Bureau

should have pursued this line of the investigation more thoroughly.”

The Justice Department concluded that “the sources for Ray’s funds still

remain a mystery.”5

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) attempted

to track Ray’s funds, and strongly suspected that Ray participated in a

July 13, 1967, bank robbery of $27,230 in Alton, Illinois, along with one

of his brothers, who was convicted years later for a similar robbery.

However, the Justice Department found that the FBI had “investigated

the possibility that Ray participated” in the robbery, “but it was estab-