Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination
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Author Dick Russell investigated the circumstance of de Mohrenschildt’s death and learned from Jeanne de Mohrenschildt that there was much there to be investigated. Instead, it was quickly and officially ruled a suicide. He asked her, point blank, if she thought her husband had taken his own life:
Nobody that knew him does, that’s my answer.3
Dick Russell tried to get the story out of her, but here is all that she would say:
I have a few other little facts that prove he didn’t.4
And here’s what Jeanne was apparently referring to: Attorney Mark Lane attended the Coroner’s Inquest in Florida, because the untimely death was far too coincidental. What he learned was amazing. There was a tape recording of George de Mohrenschildt’s
murder—a maid had been instructed to make an audio tape of a television soap opera and had done so. So the tape recorder was running and audio recorded the shooting death of George de Mohrenschildt The shotgun blast can be clearly heard. Attorney Mark Lane heard it as it was played for the Grand Jury at the Coroner’s Inquest.
But there are also some other sounds on the tape recording that are extremely pertinent to the manner of his death. Lane describes them:
They claimed he committed suicide. But if you listen to the tape, you hear this: You hear a little noise, then you hear silence and then you hear
1 Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 173.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
‘Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep,’ a little more noise, and then you hear the shot. The ‘Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep’ was a security system, on medium mode. One mode is—if it’s on fully armed—if anyone opens a door or window, a siren goes off and the police are notified. On another mode, it’s off entirely. But on the medium mode, it goes ‘Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep’ to show that someone has opened the door and come into the house. Just before de Mohrenschildt was shot, that’s what happened.1
It’s a game-changer piece of evidence—and you can listen to it yourself—it’s available on the Internet.2
I talked to the District Attorney when I listened to that tape. I was down there just before the Coroner’s Inquest. And I said, “Does that sound like someone came into the house?” He said, “We’re not going to go into that.” And I said, “Why?” He said, “You understand why. This is bigger than all of us. We have to do what we have to do.” I said, “I don’t understand that.” And he said, “Well, listen, you can’t speak at the Coroner’s Inquest, you’re just gonna be a spectator.” I said, “I know that.” And so he played the tape and told the Coroner’s Jury—a cross-section of the folks in the area—that this was a suicide, etc. And this woman on the Coroner’s Jury said, “That ‘Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep,’ that sounds like my security system! Somebody apparently went into the house!” And he said “We’re not going into that!” And so they ruled that it was a suicide, and that was the end of that. But I think there are some very serious questions as to whether he was murdered.3
Another thing to consider with seriousness is this: George de Mohrenschildt, by all accounts, was a suave, debonair, extremely sophisticated gentleman who moved seamlessly through the higher social strata. It is rather preposterous to presume that he would:
A. Choose a shotgun as a means of committing suicide, and
B. Leave his shotgunned corpse and the easily predictable accompanying bloodbath of a mess for his daughter and their host to return home
to find.
On May 11, 1978, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt gave an interview to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she said that she did not accept that her husband had committed suicide. She also said that she believed Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent of the United States—possibly of the CIA—and that she was convinced he did not kill John F. Kennedy. She then went on to say:
They may get me too, but I’m not afraid.4
1 Mark Lane, in: “G. de Mohrenschildt—The Security Alarm,” excerpted from Inside Edition (with Bill O’Reilly), CBS Television, accessed 26 Nov. 2012: http://youtu.be/37dtEpvyUJU
2 “G. de Mohrenschildt—The Security Alarm”: http://youtu.be/37dtEpvyUJU
3 Ibid.
4 Simkin, “George de Mohrenschildt”
We agree with Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, and as she also said:
It’s about time somebody looked into this thing.1
Conclusions Based On Evidentiary Indications
It cannot be stated to a degree of complete certainty, but incongruities at crime scene indicate that George de Mohrenschildt was probably murdered and that his murder was to prevent his testimony regarding the true nature of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Conclusion
Probable national security assassination, directly linked to JFK assassination.
1 Ibid.
Victim
Carlos Prío Socarrás, President of Cuba (1948–1952)
Cause of Death
Gunshot wounds
Official Verdict
Suicide
Actual Circumstances
Found shot outside his home in Florida, just as he was being sought to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Inconsistencies
1. There is a dearth of information on this particular case.
2. Victim played a key role in anti-Castro operations.
3. He knew Jack Ruby and Frank Sturgis; had many links to mafia.
4. Was a witness of special interest to Congress, and;
5. Was shot before he could testify about what he knew.
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President Carlos
Prío Socarrás,
April 5, 1977
Another witness sought by the House Select Committee on Assassinations was former Cuban President, Carlos Prío Socarrás. He was murdered less than a week after George de Mohrenschildt and Chuck Nicoletti were eliminated.
Prío Socarrás was Cuba’s last elected President, serving from 1948–1952. He reportedly never kept his campaign promise of removing the mafia from Cuban politics and, in fact, reportedly had links to the mafia himself. It has also been noted that he apparently gained noticeable wealth during his presidency. General Fulgencia Batista ousted Prío Socarrás in 1952, and Prío Socarrás fled to the U.S. Then, in 1953, Castro ousted Batista and remained in power for many decades.1
Apparently, the reason Batista, whom history denounces as a dictator, found it so easy to throw a military coup against Prío Socarrás, was because he was even more corrupt than the dictators:
The ‘Cuban Democracy’ tenure of Carlos Prío (1948–1952) has often been described as the most corrupt in the island’s history, a time when political gangs (and some American counterparts) ran rampant.2
The legendary gunrunner, Robert McKeown, put it this way about the former President, an old buddy of McKeown’s:
Prío got out of Cuba with a helluva lotta money, and he didn’t give a damn how he spent it either. I carried $100,000 in cash in my goddamn inside coat pocket a lotta times.3
Prío Socarrás was found dead from gunshot wounds outside his Miami Beach home on April 5, 1977. The official ruling was suicide, but little is known about the incident. Author David Miller in his article, “Did the CIA Kill Carlos Prío?” suggested that Prío Socarrás had been murdered to keep him from testifying.4
1 The Cuban History, “Pres. Prío Socarrás (1948-1952),” accessed 29 Nov. 2012: http:www.thecubanhistory
.com/2011/12/president-carlos-prio-socarras/
2 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 136.
3 Ibid, 136-137.
4 The Cuban History, “Pres. Prío Socarrás”
Prío Socarrás had already been linked in testimony to both Jack Ruby and Frank Sturgis, both persons of “keen interest” to the Committee, and had also apparently been involved in the CIA’s bungled Bay of Pigs intelligence operation that attempted and failed to wrestle back control of Cuba from Fidel Castro.1
1 Ibid.
I may have faults, but being wrong ain’t
one of them.
—Jimmy Hoffa, 1961 Teamsters’ Convention
Victim
Jimmy Hoffa, top labor leader in country; major connections to mafia; arch-enemy of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy
Cause of Death
Disappeared; missing person; presumed dead
Official Verdict
Declared “legally dead” on July 30, 1975 (after seven years). Law enforcement agencies still (as recently as early 2013) investigate the matter as an open case.
Actual Circumstances
In typical mafia fashion, Hoffa was lured to his death by two people whom he thought he could trust: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and Russell “The Old Man” Bufalino.
Inconsistencies
Contrary to the popular media notion that we do not know what happened, Sheeran’s verified “deathbed testimony” revealed exactly what happened to Hoffa.
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Jimmy Hoffa always managed to make his opinions known, even under fire at a Government hearing. The above “finger” was reportedly directed at Robert Kennedy, who had been grilling Hoffa on his connections to Organized Crime. Hoffa could not use the 5th Amendment as a shield because he was the President of a labor union. So instead, he claimed a poor memory, in exchanges that became increasingly heated— and led to the above gesture.
Jimmy Hoffa,
July 30, 1975
Overview
The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
Labor leader; very popular President of the powerful two-million member Teamsters Union, with its billion-dollar pension fund that was used to make “sweet loans” to mafia “fronts,” such as casinos and hotels in Las Vegas. Strong ties to mafia (nationally, but his actual power center was Detroit and Chicago). Bitter enemy of the Kennedys, especially Bobby (they openly despised each other).
• Disappeared and presumed murdered.
• Last seen at The Red Fox restaurant outside of Detroit, after lunchtime on Wednesday, July 30, 1975.
• Team of over 200 FBI agents conducted a massive search and investigation—for years—but never solved the crime.
• Body was never found. The most massive search in modern history never determined what happened to Hoffa’s body.
• The FBI was confident of the identity of Hoffa’s killers. Their “certain suspects” list was:
• Frank “The Irishman” Sheehan (hitman)
• Chuckie O’Brien (stepson of Jimmy Hoffa)
• Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio
• Gabriel “Gabe” Briguglio
• Stephen “Steve” Andretta
• Thomas “Tom” Andretta
• Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano
• Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone
• Russell “The Old Man” Bufalino (boss of the Bufalino Crime Family of Pennsylvania and large parts of New York, New Jersey, and Florida for thirty years; 1959–89)
• “Deathbed testimony” of long-time hitman Frank Sheeran revealed that Hoffa had asked mob leaders Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante to get rid of JFK and that, shortly after that request, Sheeran was directed to deliver high-powered
He was referred to by everyone—including himself—simply as “Hoffa”—and Hoffa was one tough cookie. Believe it or not, at one time, Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as The Beatles or the President of the United States—and, in some ways, was possibly more influential and powerful than both of them put together. He was the nation’s most prominent labor leader during decades of battle—waged openly and fiercely—between big business and millions of working-class Americans. Hoffa was a hero to the millions, but was the openly declared enemy of big business. Even Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, Hoffa’s arch-enemy, acknowledged Hoffa’s lofty status:
He’s not just the most powerful man in labor; he’s the most powerful man in the country, next to the President.1
And he earned that reputation the hard way—by proving it. He started out unloading trucks at a pay of 32 cents-per-hour under horrendously unfair working conditions. Then, one hot afternoon, when loads of fresh strawberries came in on the trucks, young Hoffa gave the signal and the men sat down instead of unloading them. As the strawberries sat there ripening in the hot sun, the company was only left with two choices: let them rot or listen to the workers’ demands. What came to be known as the big gamble of The Strawberry Boys paid off and a new union was born that day.
During the years of union organizing that followed, strikes and knock-down-drag-out brawls were just another day at work for these guys. Hoffa had his skull cracked open dozens of times by tough “Union-busters” and “Strike-breakers”; tough thugs hired by the big companies to come in and break heads. Hoffa took it. . . . The men followed him. The cops were on the side of the companies, so arrests were part of the game. Arrests were so expected that Hoffa would line up a Magistrate to approve bail for his boys on an immediate basis. During one free-for-all, Hoffa’s right hand man was arrested twenty-six times during a twenty-four-hour period; he just kept fighting and getting collared by police—then he’d post bail and go right back to the picket line, jumping back into the ongoing brawl.
He grew up hard and tough and stayed that way, developing a reputation for fearlessness that cemented itself into the Hoffa legend. If a gang of union toughs and mob guys went marching off to have lunch or a few beers, you could bet the ranch
1 Arthur A Sloane, Hoffa (MIT Press: 1991), 134-135.
• rifles to David Ferrie (Marcello’s private pilot) to be used in Dallas.
• One of the first things that Bobby Kennedy did after his brother’s murder was direct his top assistant at the Justice Department, Walter Sheridan, to check for the involvement of Jimmy Hoffa.
that it was Hoffa marching out in front of the pack. He was short and stout, but was solid as a rock and took quick, frantic steps right up to his dying day. Hoffa was packed with a powerful, confident energy that screamed “I lead—you follow, or get the hell outta my way.” He had a mouth that would tell you exactly what he thought of you before you were halfway through a sentence. You might mess with the U.S. Government—you might mess a little bit with the mob—but you did not mess with Hoffa or his union.
His union was the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and represented over two million hard-working truck drivers, warehouse workers, and others crucial to maintaining the steady flow of daily business in America. Teamsters were synonymous with Hoffa—he lived and breathed it, and the rank and file union members loved him back in return. And if your company needed trucks to pick up or deliver anything at all, then you needed the Teamsters. So if a truck brought it, Hoffa controlled it. And he could shut down your whole business quicker than you could say “Labor Dispute” or “Informational Picket Line.”
So, suffice to say that Hoffa knew his way around and was not afraid of trouble. But the Teamsters weren’t always that strong—Hoffa built it. For two decades he organized workers and consolidated small unions into stronger regional groups. Membership increased tenfold. Then he transformed the regions into one huge national group, leveraging the new “strength in numbers” to secure rights for workers.
Against all odds—and incredible hostility from the big companies—Hoffa managed to engineer a national umbrella contract covering every driver—the National Master Freight Agreement—that guaranteed every driver in the union a decent wage under decent conditions. That achievement, as well as the pension to add to their Social Security for retirement, made Hoffa a hero to millions of working-class Americans.
But the Teamsters Union was also synonymous with the Mafia. For years, the mob used the billion-dollar union pension fund as their own private cash register, making very cozy loans to shell companies for mob bosses nationwide, with very lucrative “points” given as bonuses to the mob guys who handled the loan deals. And nobody was better at it than Hoffa; in fact, he invented the whole enchilada. It was loans from the pension fund that developed Las Vegas in the 50s and 60s. They financed a s
tring of huge, expensive casinos that were the largest of their era, including Caesar’s Palace, Circus Circus, the Dunes, the Desert Inn, and the Stardust.
The mob influence with the union led to the attention of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and his war on organized crime. Hoffa and Kennedy became bitter enemies, squaring off against each other in televised committee hearings, where their hatred for each other was so thick in the air that you could just sit there and watch it smolder. In 1960, Bobby Kennedy said:
But there was no group that better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his lieutenants.1
1 Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within (Harper: 1960).
No one has described the actual context of the Hoffa-Kennedy war better than longtime mobster and Hoffa associate, Frank Sheeran:
You see, you’ve got to keep in mind that when Bobby Kennedy came in as Attorney General, the FBI was still basically ignoring so-called organized crime. . . . For years and years since Prohibition ended, the only thing that the so-called mobsters had to contend with was the local cops, and a lot of them were on the pad (bribed; on the payroll). . . . Then Bobby Kennedy gets in and a bad dream turns to everybody’s worst nightmare. All of a sudden everybody that’s going along minding their own store starts getting indicted. People are actually going to jail. People are getting deported. It was tense.