Jack van Laningham was a cellmate of Carlos Marcello, and criminals, like other people, will talk when there is nothing else to do. They got talking about the Kennedy assassination and, according to van Laningham Big Daddy in the Big Easy told him, “I had the little bastard. He was a thorn in my shoe.”

About Lee Oswald, Marcello said, “he was my man. He did what the hell I told him to do.” About Jack Ruby who owed Marcello a considerable amount of money from clubs that failed before the Carousel Club, Marcello said that the debt would be cleared by rubbing out Oswald. Was this the braggadocio of a mobster in jail, or was he telling the truth? Some of it fits.