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In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins interviews bestselling author Mark Shaw about his explosive new research into the JFK and RFK assassinations — and the hidden role of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Shaw breaks down newly uncovered FBI documents, including Marcello’s alleged 1985 prison confession claiming involvement in JFK’s murder. We explore Marcello’s long-running war with Robert Kennedy, the suspicious death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, and significant inconsistencies in the official story of RFK’s assassination. This conversation challenges the lone-gunman narrative and exposes how organized crime, politics, and government investigations may have collided to shape American history.
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0:10 The Kennedy Connection
21:37 Sirhan’s Background Uncovered
31:56 The Role of Marcello in Assassinations
44:54 The Quest for Justice
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Transcript
[0:00] Aaron Cohen began to expose a goings-on in Louisiana, which eventually came to the attention of Robert Kennedy and a Senate committee investigating corruption.
[0:11] Through Robert Kennedy’s efforts in the Justice Department, our organized crime and racketeering section really was established. That was a Robert Kennedy brainchild. To concentrate a group of prosecutors, who were specially trained to engage in traditional organized crime investigations. Marcello and other mobsters who appeared before the committee refused to acknowledge the existence of the mafia. Even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover seemed to concur. For the reason for Marcello’s absence, he was still subpoenaed to appear before the McClellan Committee. Marcello defiantly pleaded the Fifth Amendment to 66 questions that Robert Kennedy directed toward him. His arrogance and contempt for the proceedings provided even more incentive for Robert Kennedy to attack the mafia.
[1:02] Marcello even refused to answer the question of where he was born. This very withholding of information became the weapon that Robert Kennedy would use to go after Marcello. Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective with a special guest today. Man, you know, recently, guys, I had always just gone along with the fact Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Sirhan Sirhan acted alone. And those investigations were all legit and they were accurate.
[1:36] And, you know, over the last year, there’s been a lot of stuff come out and I’ve started looking into this and I’m beginning to wonder myself. And so I was able to find Mark Shaw, who we have sitting here, who has done more work than maybe anybody on this whole thing. And he’s come up with some really compelling evidence on a mob connection on Carlos Mosello. So welcome, Mark. I’m really glad to have you on the show. Thank you, sir. So Mark, God, I was looking over your credentials here. You’ve been doing this for 30 years or so, or your whole life, I guess. And, and you’ve got him. Oh, you got 30. I know where I got the number 30. You got 30 books out there. You’ve done, and you’ve really, you’ve done a bunch of them on the JFK investigation and murder. So, guys, I’m going to put up his website, put a link on his website, and you’ll see what all those books are. So, if you want to really take some more deep dives into the JFK thing.
[2:32] Go to that and get some of his books. And this book is a little more about the RFK. See, I just really always assumed Sirhan Sirhan did it, Mark. I don’t know what to say. It’s just that’s the only information I ever heard was Sirhan Sirhan did it. And they got the video of him doing it. So there’s no doubt, I guess, I don’t know if he did it or not now. So let’s, uh, uh, and Carlos Marcello was so involved in all this. Let’s start unpacking this a little bit, if we will, if we could like, okay, let’s talk a little bit about Carlos Marcello. How does he figure into both of them? Well, I felt like you did. You know, I grew up when I was real young, when JFK was assassinated, I just took what J Edgar Hoover said about Oswald alone. You know, I’d never even thought about it for years and years and years. And then I practiced law with Melvin Belli, who, you know, that name, the famous lawyer in San Francisco. Yeah. And I wrote a biography of him and I started to learn about his mafia connections.
[3:32] And his main client, for instance, was Mickey Cohen, who you I’m sure you know that name. Yeah. Oh, yeah. West Coast racketeer, killer, all of that. And I started to wonder about Belli’s representation of Jack Ruby. So I looked into that and that led me to the 1960 election. and some of the mafia, Joe Kennedy, bringing them in to win Chicago so they could get JFK elected. So that made me wonder about all that. I wrote a book called The Poison Patriarch about that. And then I found out about this Dorothy Kilgallen that was the most credible reporter to have ever covered the JFK assassination. So that got me into writing these different books. The Reporter Who Knew Too Much was the first one, and it did well, and so I kept going and going. But today we want to talk about the Marcello effect, I would call it, on both the JFK assassination and now the new evidence that I have in the book Abuse of Power coming out December 2nd, indicating that Marcello was not only responsible, in my opinion, for JFK’s assassination, but also Robert Kennedy’s. And I think the most amazing news to your listeners, as it was to me when I found out about it earlier this year, when the JFK assassination records were released, finally, after all these years, I came across a FBI file.
[4:58] And basically, the long and short of it is a confession by Carlos Marcello. And it happened on March 4th, 1985. I’ve got it in front of me. When Jack Ronald Van Landingham, an inmate at the Seagalville Federal Institution, Pareto Institution in Texas, said the following. He was in the company of Carlos Marcello and another inmate at the Federal Corrections Institute yard in Texarkana, Texas, in the courtyard, engaged in conversation. Carlos Marcello discussed his intense dislike of former president John Kennedy, as he often did. Unlike other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion, Carlos Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself. Now, you have to pause and really think about those words.
[5:53] Would Marcello have done that? Because, as you know, most mafia were supposed to keep their mouth shut. Was he just bragging? What was he doing this? or, you know, what was his motive for saying that to this Van Leningham, who actually was a government’s plant who they had put in there to set up Marcello, trying to get information about him regarding the JFK assassination. So I was a little bit dubious of it. And I went, though, back into some research and everything. And I found out more about why this happened. And it seemed to be more credible to me all the time. And then I found out that there was actually an auto recording.
[6:35] And I think you know that what they had done is give this snitch a transistor radio with a microphone in there. And so the confession was audio taped. Now, the location now of that audio tape, which has never been released, I want to talk about a little bit later. But this changes everything because I feel like, in fact, that it validates a lot of my research and that of Dorothy Kilgallen in my first four books. Because we always pointed the finger at Marcello, And Kilgallen, who was the only reporter to have interviewed Jack Ruby, and Jack Ruby sent her to New Orleans, the home of Carlos Marcello. And things go on from there to where Dorothy, finally in 1965, 60 years ago, is mysteriously killed right as she’s writing a book for Random House implicating Marcello. So Marcello is in the middle of all of that. And if you know if you’re if you and your listeners know his history it was frank costello in new york who set up marcello in new orleans now i’ve interviewed several people down there who knew him and he was not somebody that you want to mess around with that’s for sure and it’s it’s very i always look at motive like you did when you were a detective and marcello obviously and now shut up for a minute uh marcello had obviously the strongest motive to have eliminated uh jfk.
[8:02] When Bobby Kennedy became attorney general, the first thing that he did was go after they swore that they would never go after the media or go after the mafia if they’d help him elect JFK president. First thing he did was was deport Marcello to Central America, where he almost died. Marcello spent two agonizing months in exile. After making his way through the rugged Central American jungle, Marcello somehow got back to Louisiana. How exactly Marcello was able to re-enter the U.S. is uncertain. Investigator Ed Becker believes Marcello used his connections to sneak back into the country. When he got back in the United States, Robert Kennedy charged him with racketeering.
[8:43] And Marcello knew that Bobby Kennedy was going to keep going after him. So what did he think? Smart man that he was.
[8:52] If I kill Bobby Kennedy, which I want to have happen, then Jack Kennedy will come after me with everything the government has. But if I eliminate JFK, Bobby Kennedy will be powerless. And that’s exactly what happened. Now, we’re going to tie that in a little bit, if I may, to what happens five years later when Robert Kennedy is running for president of the United States. And he’s in California at the Ambassador Hotel. He’s just won the California primary. And if you’re Marcello, you’re smart enough to say, wait a minute, I can’t let that guy become president because I know he knows that I set up his brother for the assassination. He’s going to come after me. And we’ll talk about how I have then connected that into his involvement in the Robert Kennedy assassination. Richard, was it Richard Van Leningham? He was a white collar criminal that was already in prison with. So he had credibility within the prison. And I know these guys sit around on those tables outside and in a communal area many times and talk, I’ve got a buddy that used to talk to a guy, all the mob bosses down in Springfield, down at the hospital prison. So all that, all that really, really rings true. And now you tell me they’ve got a, the actual, the actual audio tape is there. So that’s, uh, as most interesting, I had, I’d seen that clip before, uh.
[10:16] Where it’s, you know, it claimed, but I didn’t know, you know, in this day and age, who knows if anything’s true or not, but there’s an actual audio tape that that’s dated and signed and gone into evidence. So that’s, uh, that is the most interesting little thing. And, and, you know, for our, our list, there’s a lot of them a little bit younger. Dorothy Kilgallen was a pretty well known reporter in New York city. And I think she was on a TV show for a while. And, and she was like i’m trying to compare her to somebody in modern time she was uh she was like almost too big to kill in many ways too big reporter to kill yeah her her career uh overwhelms diane sawyer, oprah uh you know all of those barbara walters and all of that wrote a newspaper column uh read by 200 000 people every day for the hearse corporation was on what’s my line the uh The famous quiz show that was on for 15 years. She covered the Dr. Sam Shepard case and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case and all of that. Very close friend of JFK’s. She was the real thing. And the New York Post called her the most powerful female voice in America. And as I mentioned to you before, I was in New York City this past weekend where they renamed the street at East 68th Street and Park Avenue, Dorothy Kilgallen Way in honor of her.
[11:38] The biggest thing, though, that we need to know there is that she was at the Jack Ruby trial. A lot of these experts like me, supposedly, weren’t in Dallas. Dorothy was there right away. She interviewed Jesse Curry. He told her the shots came from the overpass.
[11:52] She did experiments to see whether Oswald could shoot Kennedy from the sixth floor depository. She was really on this, but interviewing Jack Ruby made all the difference because basically, I think he told her his involvement in the JFK assassination. And where did he send her? Where did he send her? He sent her to New Orleans. And she went ahead and investigated Marcello down there, connected him to Jack Ruby, connected him to Lee Harvey Oswald. And then as the fall of 1965 came along, she made a big mistake. She let the wrong people, who I believe included Marcello, know she was writing a book for Random House, a tell-all book that would expose him for his involvement in the JFK assassination and J. Edgar Hoover for covering the whole thing up. And a few, very few days later, she was found dead in her townhouse in New York City in Manhattan, in a bed she never slept in, wearing her eyelashes, makeup, everything. It just didn’t make any sense. She was found dead there. And I have proven through my books, especially the reporter who knew too much and collateral damage and others, that she was poisoned because the autopsy only showed one, and there was a cover-up, only showed one barbiturate in her system, and the new autopsy showed there were three.
[13:12] I interviewed Dr. Michael Bodden this past summer, and he admitted to me they didn’t know what happened to Dorothy Kilgallen, but unfortunately, they let the media know that she had overdosed on drugs and so on and so forth, which ruined her reputation at the time.
[13:27] Yeah, that’s a no-brainer. Just slip that out, and it just takes over everything. The myth is much more powerful than the truth, and the lie of running around the world before the truth gets out of bed. So that was really smart. And I always thought about this, and you just explained something to me. Why kill JFK?
[13:50] Because RFK is the one that personally, he attacked Sam Giancana. You know, he said things like, what are you going to giggle like a little girl? He personally attacked Hoffa. He was personally, you know, going after Marcello. I mean, he made it personal. Why not go after him? Well, now you explained it, that go after him, you know, kill one brother. You better kill them all and go after him. You take out, you know, the president. Then the next, uh, and Lyndon Johnson’s not going to do anything. He’s not going to really allow too much to, to go on there. Plus he got rid of, uh, RFK pretty quick and RFK immediately, you know, went head to head with Johnson. So that was, that was brilliant on their part. So he really explained something to me.
[14:35] This whole thing started with this book, I think, The Enemy Within, which is Bobby Kennedy’s book. And if you go in there and look at what he says about the mafioso, their slick back hair, they’re giggling. I mean, you talk about hatred coming towards him with that. You know, Bill Alexander, who was one of the prosecutors of Jack Ruby, when I interviewed him, he said, you know, Bobby Kennedy had a lot more enemies than JFK. I thought Bobby would get killed. Yeah. And, and, uh, you know, finally in 1968 he was, but, uh, yeah, Bobby, Bobby brought all that on the Kennedy family and, and everything with regard to his hatred for the mafia and for sure. Yeah. Really? I tell you, there’s a, there’s a trail of dead women behind these Kennedys and mob guys. It seems like, can I tell you just a quick story? Sure. When I was a correspondent for good morning America, I covered trials for them and everything like that. So they sent me to Atlantic City to interview Angelo Bruno.
[15:36] That’s probably a name people know, the big mafia boss in Philadelphia, about them getting into the gambling in Atlantic City. So I went to his, I couldn’t get him, but I got his lawyer. I went to their office and I interviewed the lawyer. And he told me things we couldn’t believe. It was on Good Morning America the next morning. Huge audience for it. The producer sent me, said, stay there and see if you can interview him again. Then I went, I called his office, secretary came on. I said, is such and such there in a silence and said, wait a minute, are you okay? Are you crying? She said, yes, Mark. I guess you don’t know. When my boss started his car this morning, you can’t mess around with those guys. You know that. No, no, you can’t. You can’t. Oh, you can’t. So Marcello especially was, I’ve done an awful lot of research on him and that’s one guy you couldn’t mess around with. Yeah, really. He was, he was scary.
[16:28] So uh let’s talk a little more about the uh just a little bit more about the jfk thing i think that ruby it’s really interesting that ruby spilled a lot to dorothy kilgallen now was that part of what she was writing in her book or how much of that had already gotten out that was going to be a part of the book for sure i think she was going to nail marcello and hoover but also she’s the one who exposed the Jack Ruby Warren Commission testimony, before it was supposed to be released. So she was making enemies all the way along in terms of, and she wrote all these columns, the Oswald file must not close and everything else. But, you know, yes, that would have been in the book for Random House. And unfortunately, I will tell you, all of her notes about the JFK assassination and the manuscript for the book, Right after she died, there was a raid on her apartment, and those papers have never been found. I’ve tried to find them everywhere. I still hope they’re out there, and someday we will. But they were confiscated and probably burned. Wow. That was my next question. What happened to her manuscript and her notes and everything? Now, let’s switch a little bit over to RFK. How is Sirhan Sirhan? It was so interesting. I thought he was.
[17:45] In my mind, I think a lot of people felt like I did. And he was like a busboy or some low-level employee there in the hotel, which gave him access. And, you know, he just was able to stumble into RFK walking off the stage and kill him and get close enough to shoot him like that. But this started, he was talking about this whole deal with the Santa Ana racetrack and Mickey Cohen and Los Angeles hoodlums and all that. That’s so fascinating. The Ambassador Hotel Los Angeles, on June 5th, 1968, headquarters for the Robert Kennedy for President campaign. Victorious in the crucial California primary, Kennedy addresses an enthusiastic crowd in one of the hotel’s ballrooms. My thanks to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.
[18:31] As he turned and went by me, he turned to the right toward the kitchen. When he did come through, lots of television cameras and stuff, and we were going into a press conference. He was shaking hands with the two busboys, talking with him, and it was at that time that the shots started. We’ve made sure they recorded that Senator Kennedy has been shot. He’s been shot? That’s right. I just heard this crackling noise, and was shaking violently, and I thought it was being electrocuted. That was my impression. Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible? Is that possible? I saw him laying on the ground. I knew he wasn’t going to live. Everybody else, just please stay back. 25 1⁄2 hours after he is shot, at 1.44 a.m. on June 6, Robert Kennedy dies.
[19:27] Immediately following the shooting, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind the 24-year-old Sirhan B. Sirhan, using an eight-shot, .22-caliber revolver, was the one who killed Kennedy and wounded five others. There were 77 people in the pantry that night, witnesses. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. An open-and-shut case. Or was it? Greg Stone has spent over a decade looking into the Kennedy assassination. He is one of a number calling for a reinvestigation of the case, a call based on seeming inconsistencies in the physical evidence, and on a belief that the original investigation is flawed, a belief that is remarkably shared by former LAPD Sergeant Paul Chiraga, the first police officer on the scene the night of the shooting. When asked if he thinks there has been a cover-up inside the LAPD, I would have to come to that conclusion. If there is a cover-up, the question is why? To hide a conspiracy or to conceal slipshod police work? Who really shot Bobby? A much simpler question 20 years ago. I don’t think we have to accept the idea that the stain of bloodshed is going to be ever across our country. Well, every time I finish a book, I tell my wife, that’s it. I’m done. But I’d always been quizzical about the Robert Kennedy assassination. It just didn’t make sense to me, especially with regard to Sir Han.
[20:44] So it’s amazing, really, in many ways, where I find my material. People all around the world send me tips and things like this. And so about a year ago, somebody said, look into Sirhan Sirhan, his job in California at Santa Anita Racetrack. So I did. And I found this account, which is in the book. And the link is to it on YouTube and also other parts of it. Internet. It’s been out there for years. But it’s an account by John Shear, who was a paddock captain at Santa Anita Racetrack. My grandparents, my mom would stroll me out to the track of the paddock area. A hot walker would come by and greet my family, greet me. And that man’s name was Sir Han Sir Han.
[21:38] This young man comes right at the bar and he says, I’m looking for work. Do you need anybody. So I looked at me, the guy not much taller than me. I said, the only job we have is a hot walker. A hot walker is a man or a person that walks the horses after they’ve exercised. They’re washed off and they walk them around in a ring until they’re cooled out. And I said, well, that’s the only job I have and it pays 200 a month. I said, if you’re interested, I need a hot walker. He said, I’ll take it. We call him Saul. Very quiet and he was like subservient in a way. Not only would he walk the horses, he’d clean all our racing tack, he’d sweep out our little office, he’d sweep the shed row, he’d do all this work for nothing, because he liked to work. We were in the tack room one day. A friend of mine and I, we were sitting in the office there, and he was reading the Los Angeles Times.
[22:28] And on the front page, I think it was, he said, oh, he shouted out, like, hey, Bobby Kennedy is arming Israel, or something like that, he said there. As soon as he said that, at Sirhan Sirhan, he went into a rage. He roared and shouted and he screamed, and how wicked of a man he is, a man should be dead, he’s killing my people, because he is Palestinian. My friend and I were looking at him with our mouths wide open, because he’d been from a mouse to a lion in a matter of seconds. And finally I said, so calm down, calm down. I said, what do you know about politics? He rattled every senator and congressman in the United States and what state they was from. He knew everything about politics.
[23:10] So he calmed down, eventually calmed down. We’re over at Hollywood Park. I saw him going up the steps with these people, and I said, it’s funny, I saw my wife later on that evening, I said, you know, I saw a soul at the racetrack. We all dressed up, we had money, and he doesn’t seem to be working yet. He had a couple of hoodlums with him. I can’t remember who they were. I’ve seen these people before. I think they’d been thrown off the track once. The day that Kennedy was shot, I was working the racetrack, and they flashed his picture on the TV. They said, do you know this man? So my wife saw it and she saw who it was. Called Hollywood Park, and they said, I’d like to talk to my husband. It’s very, very important. So they got me to the phone, and she said, guess what? Bobby Kennedy’s just been shot, and guess who shot him? Saul. You have to tell somebody. So I put the phone down in a hurry. I ran down to the security office, and I told him, I said, I know the man who shot Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy. I told him who he was, said he worked for me.
[24:07] Actually, he was a hero, because one day a horse in the paddock area got loose. And went after a little six-year-old girl. And John Shear put himself between the horse and the little girl and saved her life. All of his bones were broken and everything else, but he was a real hero. So I started reading this account, and it said that he was at Santa Anita Racetrack. And one day, this man, kind of a subservient-type man, quiet and everything, came in there and said, I need a job. And and john sheer said well the only thing i have is a hot walker and it pays two hundred dollars a month he said i’ll take it so sir han sir han then was a stable boy like or whatever you want to call it hot walker for several uh for several years he talked about how um he was subservient how he was shy how he was easily manipulated um things like that about his behavior and everything but But they really liked this guy. The only thing that happened was at times when Robert Kennedy’s name would be, and people read about this in the book, when Robert Kennedy’s name came up, he kind of went into a little bit of a rage. I think John Shearer’s word, he went from a mouse to a lion.
[25:29] And John Shearer didn’t understand that exactly. So he did have that ill feeling to Robert Kennedy. So now we move towards the day that Robert Kennedy is killed.
[25:40] John Shearer is at Hollywood Park and he’s watching and he sees Sir Han in the accompaniment of two men, one on each side, hefty guys, kind of looking like they are controlling where he’s going. He has on a brand new suit even though he’s unemployed and it just looks like to to uh um to uh john sheer what’s going on here it looks like you know he’s in in control of a couple guys and plus i i believe they’re ones that had been thrown out of santa nita racetrack so rfk is killed on the screen on the la uh television is do you know this man with a photograph of Sirhan? Well, of course, John Shearer knows. And this is where, again, a little chill when I read this and watched this video.
[26:34] He said, I called, my wife had me call Hollywood Park and I told the authorities, whoever it was there, probably the security people, that I knew who he was. And I knew him because I knew him at Santa Anita Park and so on and so forth and everything. And I expected then that they would give that information to the LAPD or the FBI, and I’m pretty much sure they did, and they would get back to me. They never did. They never followed up. And the kicker there then is that he says in his videotape, you know, what was most interesting, though, is for the next year, my wife and I would pick up the phone and hear a click.
[27:11] And we knew that somebody was watching what we were doing. So if you go on and take that on through, okay, what I did was I started to figure out if Marcello could be connected to Sirhan.
[27:25] And I started to think, how could that happen? Because Marcello’s in New Orleans. This is happening in L.A. But the kicker was Mickey Cohen, who was the close associate of Carlos Marcello, ran the racketeering business on the West Coast, and that included Santa Anita Racetrack and Hollywood Park. So I tried to put two and two together there, that how could that connection have occurred? And what really triggered my more interest on that was the fact that one of the hotels that Mickey Cohen controlled with racketeering was the Ambassador Hotel. And he knew all the workings of the Ambassador Hotel.
[28:09] So we go on forward, and then Sirhan is arrested. He’s there when Robert Kennedy is killed. He’s arrested for murder. And one of the most amazing things to me, and I think you will find it true as well, because you were a superb detective and you would look into every element of a crime. When Sirhan was arrested, he had four $100 bills in his pocket, even though he was unemployed. Floyd. That had never been explained until I believe I have with all the corroborative evidence in abuse of power. Because obviously, who paid that kind of money at that particular point? Now, John H. Davis, who I think is one of the best researchers of Carlos Marcello, Mafia Kingfish and everything, people should read that book too. Because he sets up the whole thing also with regard to Sir Han, Marcelo, Mickey Cohen, everything, but nobody paid any attention to him back in the day. So then Sir Han is, there’s another interesting aspect of Sir Han. When he’s arrested, one of the detectives says they were amazed at how cool he was, how calm he was. All right. Well, who does that go back to? It goes back to Lee Harvey Oswald, And it certainly goes back to Jack Ruby, because I had shown that when when he found he was really excited and smoking, even though he didn’t smoke and everything. But when he found out Oswald was dead, he relaxed completely.
[29:39] So there’s some connections in there that I’ve been able to put together. Sirhan then is given counsel, terrible representation. And I have listed in the new book about 25 different reasons why I believe Sirhan Sirhan should be either given a new trial, paroled, whatever it is, because he’s been in prison too long. And as RFK Jr. Says, he doesn’t believe that he was accountable, Sirhan was, for his father’s death. Now, over the years, RFK Jr. Has changed his story a lot. At first, he said it was the mafia and Marcello, as his dad did when JFK died. Then he switched to the CIA. And so I agree with some of what RFK Jr. Says with regard to Sirhan not being accountable and needing a new trial and being paroled or whatever. On the other hand, I can’t go along with what he believes happened because I believe Marcello, again, he could not let Robert Kennedy become president. No question about that.
[30:41] Really? It’s kind of interesting here as you compare the two murders. In both of them, the alleged trigger man were the same, almost the same personality type. They were meek, humble, unassuming, uh, even had the same kind of a, a hang dog look, kind of a down, downcast look. Good point. And just the same kind of person. And, and then you take Jack Ruby that gets into it. He’s the kind of guy that’s, that’s, uh, you know, he’s a follower. He’s not a.
[31:13] We’ll do what somebody else gets him to do. I mean, all these guys are like that. They’re not people that go out and act on their own. It doesn’t seem just, that’s just my, you know, armchair analysis of these guys. I understand maybe how Oswald came to the attention of Marcello because he was down there. He was down in New Orleans. He was on that free Cuba committee. He was on the streets of New Orleans. I understand. And it was down in Dallas. I understand how they may find that guy. How did they find Sirhan Sirhan? And how did they choose him and develop him on out to do this? Because obviously it appears to me that maybe somebody groomed him on out. How did was Mickey Cohen involved in that?
[31:51] Well, one of the things Cohen controlled were the racketeering part of L.A. And that’s been proven through the years. But, you know, when you’re looking at a patsy, and I believe there’s a patsy involved in Dorothy’s death, as we could talk about maybe another time, a patsy in JFKs and RFKs, okay? You look for somebody that can be easily controlled and there has to be something, maybe there’s a couple of things that, that connect you to believing, okay, we could compromise this guy. First of all, Sirhan is poor. Second of all, he he has a hatred for RFK. OK. And the other thing is, and it’s been proven that he had gambling debts. All right. So he’s vulnerable.
[32:37] Oswald was vulnerable. You can. And I think I’ve discovered that the real modus operandi by Marcella, who was a smart guy, was to use patsies with these three deaths, including Dorothy Kilgalland’s using her one of her best friends to set her up. You pick these guys out and and then you use muscle to convince them that it’s in their best interest to go ahead and go forward, because there isn’t a reason in the world why Sirhan would have gone ahead to the Ambassador Hotel that Cohen controlled.
[33:12] And then he’s, you know, it’s always been the question of the ballistics. He’s standing in front of Robert Kennedy and Robert Kennedy is shot from the back. I have new ballistics tests in the new book, In Abuse of Power, showing that that almost is impossible for. Now, Sirhan had a gun. Sirhan shot the gun. There’s all kinds of questions about the bullets, just like there was with Oswald and so on and so forth. But I think there’s enough evidence there for, you know, there to be an investigation of, again, of Sirhan’s accountability. And I’m hoping Bobby Kennedy, I’d like to provide closure for Bobby Kennedy Jr. Here if he wants it, because I think this is the most compelling evidence that will tell him, yeah, you’re right about Robert. You’re right about Sirhan Sirhan. Now, let’s get this guy out of prison after 60 some years. Interesting. You know, you, you talk about Carlos Marcello and using these patsies, uh, a friend of mine, Ron Rosson is a kind of an expert on, uh, Carlos Marcello has never written anything, but believe me, this guy, he knows a lot of stuff about New Orleans mob, but going way back to the turn of the century and everything. And, and Ron told me that, and I believe I found that somewhere else that, uh, one of the first known crimes of Carlos Marcello when he was young was not something he did. He got two other young guys to go rob a grocery store. He set it up and then I gave him the guns and everything and then met him afterwards.
[34:38] So, uh, this guy started out using people early, didn’t he?
[34:43] Well, and he, you know, that’s why, you know, I look to see what his financial situation was with his empire in 1963, and he was pretty much a millionaire. But by 1968, I mean, he was almost a billionaire. All this property owned everything that he did. I mean, he’s not going to let Bobby Kennedy become president and tear all that down. He just think about, you know, common sense here and logic with regard to the motive that he had. That’s why it’s so disturbing. And I mentioned, I think, a little bit earlier, this task force on government secrets and so on and so forth. Boy, when I found out they were going to look into the assassinations, I was euphoric. And so I wrote several letters to Congressman Luna telling her of my research and said, I want to contribute to your investigation. And here’s the material I have about JFK and the confession. Here’s the material I have about Bobby Kennedy and so on and so forth. I sent several letters. I even had a short conversation with her about perhaps inviting me to one of the hearings and all of that. And then all at once, bang, that just stopped.
[35:48] And they will not look into that kind of research. They don’t want anything to do with Marcello, even though I gave her the confession and all of that. And now worse is that a couple colleagues of mine and myself, we’ve tried to get her with all the power she has to go into that Texas court and get the audio tape, and she refuses to do so. In fact, I don’t know if you know one of her comments recently.
[36:14] I want to be clear, the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets is not here to provide the definitive account of what happened on November 22nd.
[36:27] 1963. Well, why in the world are you there? Sounds like the Warren commission all over again. Yeah, it does. You know, you, uh, you said something, something that kind of caught my attention there. And I want to follow up on, uh, the, uh, ballistics test out of the gun at the ambassador hotel. Now, did it, did it show there was more than one gun fired for sure. More than one gun was fired in that because, you know, I miss a hotel. There shouldn’t be, but one gun fire because no law enforcement shot anybody shot at anybody.
[36:58] Well, uh, I’m going to say the same thing I’ve said about, uh, what happened with the, the rifle and the shots in daily Plaza and all of that. I know expert on that. As far as the shots being fired at the Ambassador Hotel, that has been a question for many, many years as to what happened. Now, Sirhan had a gun and he supposedly shot. And these new ballistics tests that I put in the new book show that they were scattered all over the place. But you’ve got you’ve got, you know, you’ve got Noguchi, the autopsy guy, Cyril Weck. I don’t know if you ever interviewed Cyril Weck, the foremost forensic guy in the world.
[37:40] You’ve got a new ballistics test and everything saying that Sirhan was standing in front of Bobby Kennedy. And the shots came from behind the shoulder and the neck and killed Bobby Kennedy. Well, there’s no way he could have, you know, shot Bobby Kennedy unless he turned all the way around and put his gun up that way or Bobby Kennedy shifted. But those are speculation and i don’t deal with speculation so i think when you put everything else together i think uh sir han was set up as a patsy uh and marcello is so smart i’m not going to forget you said that because i think it’s important that early on he wanted a grocery store rob and so he got two other guys to do it yeah that’s mafia at its best isn’t it oh yeah yeah that’s how it works man that is how it works we sit here and watch it in kansas city or i did back in the day when when they were something you know i mean they had you know the boss had his underboss tuffy the luna take care of all the street business you know you could see it i mean we got tapes you know listen to him telling talking to people and taking care of all the street business say well i’ll carry this back to unk or zeo as he called him so that’s you know that’s mafia at its best and and marcello was a master at it sounds to me like and he learned from Frank Costello, but he learned from somebody who helped form the mobs. Right. Exactly. Exactly. For sure. If, if Sirhan were to have a trial, if they were to have a retrial.
[39:07] Was there, is there some kind of particular smoking gun kind of evidence that might come out that would, you know, have ever like people on the jury go, Oh, wow.
[39:17] Well, I think the John Shearer account for sure is very, very important. Uh, and then I think, uh, you would, you would look into motive again, you’d look into motive of Marcello. How am I going to get rid of Bobby Kennedy Jr. And in the book, I say that when Bobby Kennedy completed that speech in the ambassador hotel and just won the California primary, looked like he was going to be president and said, it’s on to Chicago and everything. I’ve put in there, and I guess this is some of my better writing, the long arm of Carlos Marcello reached into that ambassador hotel and changed the smile on his face into one of death. Because, you know, I believe that’s what happened. Marcello, motive wise, everything else. I think that would be the kicker, the smoking gun. And you could, You know, you’re a former detective. I lay out in my books, like I try to have the reader read it by I lay out the evidence like a prosecutor would. Yeah. OK. And that’s what you did as a detective when you went into when you into the courtroom, you know, the evidence against the accused. And so I think that’s what what would happen here. I think a first year prosecutor or defensive attorney, I’m sorry, first year defense attorney could present all of this evidence and all of these things happening. with some other interviews and so on and so forth. And I think Sirhan would be released the next day.
[40:38] Yeah, interesting. Now, you are an attorney yourself, and you’ve been in the courtroom, and you’ve reported on a lot. Did you get the trial transcript from Sirhan’s trial?
[40:49] I’ve partially looked at it. It’s so lengthy, but I will tell you this as well. His legal representation, you know, go back to Oswald just a second. Who did they get for him? A lawyer.
[41:04] Mafia connected Melvin Belli. Melvin Belli. He was a cream of the crop back then. Absolutely. But he’s connected to the mafia, and I think he had orders. He wouldn’t let Oswald testify. Made him look crazy and everything. Now we go to Sirhan. they get in a lawyer that’s connected to johnny roselli oh really okay yeah and so you know the the representation was terrible they finally uh i think uh unfortunately uh he he confessed to what had happened but it didn’t really make any sense as to what occurred so he never had a chance and again i’m all about justice just as you are you know fighting for justice with these uh with these people that I’ve, you know, written about in my books. In fact, I was on a radio show not too long ago, and I was asked, why do you keep doing this, fighting for justice? And I said, well, they’re just like my clients when I was a criminal defense lawyer and a public defender.
[41:58] You know, Oswald and Sirhan and Dorothy Kilgallen and JFK, they deserve justice. And unfortunately, And as I said, when we first talked, we needed detectives like you that would go after the evidence and not do what you called it, cherry pick, because all of these people have written these books about JFK assassination and Dorothy and RFK. What they do is they pick a sensational headline and then they fit the evidence to that. That’s not how you do it. You go out and grind out the evidence and everything like that. And then you come up with some sort of conclusion or how you’re going to prove what happened. And that’s one of the problems that we have today. I think that there aren’t more detectives like you on the job. Interesting. It’s, um.
[42:45] I don’t know, you know, and J. Edgar Hoover, you think about that, he was such a politician that wanted to hang on to his power and his position that I could see where he would be motivated to if powers, political powers, powerful people wanted him to sit on that and finish it, that he would do that. Did you find any much more about that? I mean, it really, he’s so, he was so secretive. It’d be hard to find any kind of smoking gun there.
[43:16] First of all, he and Frank Costello used to meet in the, in Central Park in New York City and talk about J. Edgar Hoover’s gambling debts. So, but as far as Hoover, what does he have to do when JFK dies? He cannot possibly let anybody believe there’s a, I hate to use the word because I don’t like a conspiracy. It’s got to be one person. And so right away, he’s yelling out, Oswald alone, Oswald alone. And he doesn’t want anybody, even though he knows about Marcelo and his connections and so on and so forth, and how the Kennedys betrayed him and the other mafioso when the 60th election happened, he can’t let that happen. So he just covers all that up. What happens when you get to Robert Kennedy? He doesn’t want anybody going back into a full investigation of Robert Kennedy’s death. And especially with Sirhan. So what is it again? It’s Sirhan alone. Yeah. And that’s and same thing happens with Dorothy Kilgallen’s death. So he was a very smart man. You mentioned the word. He was more of a politician than he was. Yeah. And then the police enforcement officer. Yeah. He was always watching his back. Don’t they say that Hoover had this black book with all of the dirty, you know, information about everybody? And that saved his, his job all the way through the, those years, that guy. Help him get those big, uh, appropriations from Congress and build the FBI.
[44:43] And it’s the first, it was like a personal power, which a lot of people that rise to that position, they want to hang on to that personal power.
[44:50] And that’s, you know, that’s what, that’s a good way to do it is having to hang on to those secrets. And he was a master. Well, Mark Shaw, this is a most interesting, uh, abusive powers, a book guys, uh, I’d highly recommend you get this. You’re going to learn more than you ever want to know about the, these two murders. There’s been a lot of books about JFK, but there’s a lot of different angles and everything. And I had a guy on here not too long ago that said that his father worked with the CIA and that he was part of a team who went to Dallas the weekend that JFK was killed. So there’s just a lot of stuff out there. And I’m not sure what to think sometimes, but this has definitely been well researched. I can tell you that I got the book and it’s definitely well researched and footnoted.
[45:40] And, uh, you know, the, the evidence is out there and some of it’s hidden, uh, some of it, you, you find out from a couple of different places and you can’t get that tape to support that FBI transcript. And that was a FBI document that you got that had that statement by Marcello in it. You just can’t get the tape. You need to tape to really support that, make sure That wasn’t just that guy making, you know, how prisoners are, they’ll make shit up in order to get a break. And, and he got the tape with Marcello’s voice and his voice on it. You know, that would, that would make that irrefutable. So it’s, there’s a lot of stuff in this book, guys.
[46:17] Mark, you got any last words here? You got any last words here? Well, thank you very much. And I want people to know my email is mshaw, I-N, at Yahoo. I answer every email because I’ve gotten tips over the years and so on and so forth that way. I don’t expect everybody to agree with my evidence and conclusions. But I’ll tell you, I think what’s different here is nobody has ever really looked at the connection between JFK’s death and Robert Kennedy’s death five years later and looked at both of those in the context of the other. Because when you do that, you get a different perspective of what happened and why and why Marcello is the most logical person to have decided those Kennedy brothers could not live. Yeah. If you do a thing we call a Venn diagram, you know what a Venn diagram? That’s where people have these different connections and you draw a circle around all the ones that have been connected to each other. Well, you’ll put circles around Sirhan Sirhan and JFK and RFK and Oswald and Marcello and you start drawing those circles. You see Marcello’s in all those circles.
[47:26] I am not smart enough to know what that was called, but when we’re done, if you open up the book and go back to about the last 20 pages, there’s a circle there with Marcello and all of them in there. I just didn’t know what it was called. I did it at three o’clock in the morning, so you’ll see it there. All right. I’ll do that. Yeah, we learned that in an intelligence school I went to back in like 1978, 77, something like that. What’s it called again? V-E-N-N. V-E-N-N, V-Vector, E-N-N, Venn Diagram. I’ll tell my wife, she’ll think I’m really smart.
[48:05] Yeah, that’s what we got going here. Hey, thanks so much. It’s a Venn Diagram. All right, Mark, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you, sir. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. You just have to search around for it. I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.