The death of the former US president has been a public concern for decades, as many unanswered questions remain. Among them, it is not clear what reason Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspect in his murder, had for killing the elder Kennedy. Now they are trying to answer the why in a documentary that is being prepared.
It was one of the most painful events in the history of the United States when then-President John F. Kennedy was shot at an event in Dallas. Since what happened, many people have speculated about the motive of the alleged killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, for his actions, but the topic still generates a lot of controversy. Some say the mob wanted revenge because the president had sworn to fight organized crime, while others believe the CIA, the Pentagon, Fidel Castro, the Soviets, or even Vice President Lyndon Johnson hired someone to kill him.
However, thanks to a documentary currently being made, we can now get one step closer to the truth. It has already been known that, according to many, the mafia may have had something to do with the organization of the murder, but the details have remained secret until now. However, producer-screenwriter Nicholas Celozzi, who is a relative of the infamous Chicago mob leader, Sam Giancana, and director David Mamet, now wants to show in a film how Kennedy's last 48 hours were spent, and to what extent the mafia took the lion's share in the assassination of the former president.
The Chicago mob
Sam Giancana built his criminal empire across America, which almost rivaled that of Al Capone. Although he had many mobsters working for him, in November 1963 he asked his brother Pepe - who was just a speck of dust in the mafia machine - to be his driver. The other gangsters were out of town. As Pepe later learned, these men were on their way to Dallas to complete a job assigned to them by Giancana. All Pepe could piece together from the conversations he overheard at his brother's villa was that their job was to help Lee Harvey Oswald kill John F. Kennedy and then make sure Oswald was taken down before he spit on them.
As Celozzi reported to the Daily Mail , Pepe told him how the mafia organized the "mission". Although Giancana trusted only a few people, including his brother, he still revealed the details of the murder. As the film's director, David Mamet, explained, they got inside information thanks to Pepe. This is how the work titled 2 Days/1963 was created.
Was it Oswald or not?
Although in 1964 the report of the Warren Commission, which investigated the murder case, stated that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably solely responsible for what happened, 15 years later the United States Commission on Assassinations - which was created to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of the President and Martin Luther King - came to the conclusion that Kennedy was probably the victim of a conspiracy.
In 1991, Oliver Stone already made a film about the assassination entitled JFK, in which he listed several possibilities. In addition to the mafia, he raised the involvement of the CIA and the FBI, as well as the possibility that the Dallas police and the Cuban separatists might have had something to do with the case. Although among the ones he mentioned, the mafia seems to be the most reasonable explanation for what happened. It's also a strange coincidence that Jack Ruby, who shot and killed Oswald just two days after the assassination, had numerous ties to the mob. Although the Warren Commission accepted Ruby's argument that he acted on impulse and did not plan the murder, according to Celozzi, Ruby was one of the people involved in organizing the attack on Kennedy. As he explained, in addition to Ruby, Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti were also up to their necks in mud in the case.
One is 19, the other is almost 20
Roselli was a member of the Chicago Mafia, whose hands reached as far as Las Vegas and Hollywood. He made friends with Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, and even tried his hand at film production. In the early 1960s, he was commissioned by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, the communist leader of Cuba, with poisoned pills. According to Pepe, Roselli trained as a sniper while helping organize the training of anti-Castro mercenaries at a secret camp in Florida. Roselli and Giancana were both involved in running mob-dominated casinos in Cuba, and both were deeply affected when Castro shut them down. And according to a CIA document made public in 2007, they were not overjoyed when Kennedy blew off the mission to eliminate Castro.
Besides Roselli, however, there was also Nicoletti, who had a reputation as a cold-blooded assassin. He first used a gun at the age of 12 when he shot his own father, allegedly in self-defense, as he drunkenly chased him with a knife in hand. According to rumors, he was so used to the violence that he could eat without a problem while holding his victim's head in a vise.
Their boss, Sam Giancana, didn't have a spotless record either. He was once the driver of the infamous mob boss, Al Capone, and was considered a true wild man. While other mob bosses made do with little, Giancana wanted all the limelight for himself. His famous lovers also contributed to this, as Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner also had affairs with the mob boss, just when they were also John F. Kennedy's lovers. Giancana was rumored to have used the Mafia's power over the union vote to help elect Kennedy, but it didn't sit well with them when the president authorized his brother Robert to launch a crackdown on organized crime as attorney general. They saw it as a direct threat that they could be summoned at almost any time, which prompted Giancana to take drastic measures.
Kennedy's assassination
In November 1963, Giancana enlisted the help of his brother Pepe to transport him while Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti were already preparing for Dallas.
It is really important to know that these two were nervous wrecks. They didn't even have an idea of how they were going to make it happen
Celozzi stated, adding that Roselli was constantly worried about his stomach ulcer, but he didn't care so much that he could be caught at any moment.
As Pepe explained, Roselli kept asking him if he would ever see it again, knowing that in their world, dangerous missions like this often lead to the liquidation of the perpetrators. According to Pepe, Roselli's job was to shoot Kennedy if Oswald missed, while Nicoletti had the honor of eliminating Oswald once he had killed the president. However, after shooting Kennedy, Oswald fled the building and fell asleep when he saw Nicoletti and JD Tippit, a corrupt Dallas cop, waiting in the car to pick him up. He was followed and finally caught up an hour later in a residential area. According to Celozzi, there was even an eyewitness who claimed to have seen two men sitting in the car.
From what Pepe told me, I know that Nicoletti yelled at Oswald to get in, and he said, 'Fuck me, you're trying to kill me'
Celozzi recalled.
As Oswald was adamant, Tippit, the cop, got out of his car, but Oswald shot him after a brief exchange. As Pepe explained, the man wanted to run away from the scene, but Nicoletti chased him. Several witnesses testified that they saw two men running away, which is perfectly consistent with what Pepe said. Nicoletti eventually couldn't keep up with Oswald, so he let him run. According to Pepe's theory, when Oswald was arrested and began to be interrogated, Sam Giancana had to bring in Jack Ruby as a last resort to close the case.
According to the information, Ruby helped the mafia, but he was not known as a mobster. Diagnosed with cancer and told by doctors he only had six months to live, he probably didn't need to be told twice to take on the mission. Although the Warren Commission accepted at the time that he acted out of sudden impulse, the investigation years later already established that he had strong mafia connections, and they also discovered that he had been trying to get close to Oswald since his arrest. According to the committee, the most likely explanation for the murder is that Jack Ruby literally hunted down Oswald in the name of organized crime.
The perpetrators didn't last long
After that, Jack Ruby sat behind bars for three years, he died in prison from a pulmonary embolism caused by lung cancer, just like the other mafia members who organized the assassination didn't last long. Sam Giancana was killed in 1975 and Johnny Roselli in 1976, weeks before they were to testify before a committee investigating abuses by US intelligence services. The former was shot dead while he was cooking in the kitchen, and the latter - Roselli would have been interrogated specifically for the assassination of the president - was found in two pieces, stuffed inside a barrel, floating at sea. And Nicoletti, the second assassin, was shot dead in 1977 when he was called to testify. According to Celozzi, there is no doubt that all three were murdered by the Mafia.
Since Giancana's brother Pepe passed away in 1996, many have wondered why Celozzi waited so long to reveal the story. Although in 2011 he had already filmed a documentary about the mafia boss, for which he interviewed the family members, it did not contain nearly as strong allegations as Pepe presented about what happened. As Celozzi explained, he had to be careful what he said at the time, as Sam's daughter Bonnie was uncomfortable with stories about her father, and there was a mob boss who would have taken the statements in the film very poorly.
As Sam's daughter Bonnie noted, Pepe's account of events is 85 percent true. Celozzi added that Francine — Bonnie's older sister — told him that she remembers their father being home when the former president was shot, which was very strange to her. Francine explained that her father and Pepe were watching TV when the news of Kennedy's death was announced, when Giancana turned to her brother and said:
Okay, fine, let's go. It's taken care of.
According to Celozzi, together with Mamet, they are trying to convey in the most authentic way what the last 48 hours of the president looked like, but they leave it up to the viewers to believe what is said in the film. Although nearly sixty years have passed since Kennedy's assassination, it is almost certain that we will no longer know the whole truth, and speculations will remain until then.
Featured image: President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jackie Kennedy, with Texas Gov. John Connally, on Nov. 22, 1963, the day the president was assassinated. Bettmann/Getty Images
