The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK

by Mark Shaw

Overview

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy.

Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.

Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions:

• Why, shortly after his brother’s death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, “I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me”?
• Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby’s attorney?
• How does Belli’s Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence?
• What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant?

For fifty years, Shaw maintains, researchers investigating the president’s murder in Dallas have been looking at the wrong motives and actors. The Poison Patriarch offers a shocking reassessment—one that is sure to alter the course of future assassination debates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510704190
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	838,366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mark Shaw, the author of more than twenty books, was a criminal defense attorney before becoming a television legal analyst for Good Morning America. He went on to correctly predict the outcomes of both the Mike Tyson and O. J. Simpson trials for, among others, CNN, ABC, and ESPN. He wrote several columns analyzing the Tyson case for USA Today. In 2004, he analyzed the Kobe Bryant case for ESPN and USAToday.com. He lives in Superior, Colorado.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Book I

Chapter 1 The Dallas Assassinations 7

Chapter 2 Jack Ruby and Melvin Belli 17

Chapter 3 Jack Ruby on Trial 25

Chapter 4 The Doomed Assassin 33

Book II

Chapter 5 The Government Investigations 41

Chapter 6 Theories Abound 59

Chapter 7 Frank Ragano's Story 65

Chapter 8 Attacking Ragano 79

Book III

Chapter 9 A Lighter Shade of Gray 91

Chapter 10 Mickey 107

Chapter 11 Melvin Belli and the Mob 117

Chapter 12 Melvin Belli as Jack Ruby's Lawyer 127

Book IV

Chapter 13 Belli's Strange Defense of Ruby 147

Chapter 14 Belli's Curious Silence 165

Book V

Chapter 15 Motive, Motive, Motive 177

Chapter 16 Enemies Galore 185

Chapter 17 Bobby's Remorse 209

Chapter 18 Ultimate Responsibility 219

Chapter 19 The Poison Patriarch 229

Epilogue 247

Sources 251

Bibliography 263

Acknowledgments 271

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

"A clearly written...polemic on the corruption of power, built around an intriguing theory."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating and unique account of what happened in Dallas in 1963."
—Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino

"Daring: Shaw points the bony finger of recrimination at JFK's father."
—James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

"Ominous."
—The New Yorker

"This book...sheds light on one of the darker questions about the assassinations."
—G. Robert Blakey, counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and coauthor of The Plot to Kill the President

"A clearly written...polemic on the corruption of power, built around an intriguing theory."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating and unique account of what happened in Dallas in 1963."
—Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy and Casino

"Daring: Shaw points the bony finger of recrimination at JFK's father."
—James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

"Ominous."
—The New Yorker

"This book...sheds light on one of the darker questions about the assassinations."
—G. Robert Blakey, counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and coauthor of The Plot to Kill the President

From the Publisher

09/15/2013
Using as his fulcrum Melvin Belli's role as Jack Ruby's defense attorney at Ruby's 1964 trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, Shaw (Melvin Belli, King of the Courtroom) notes the degrees of separation among Ruby, Belli, and JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy. Where does responsibility for JFK's murder lie? You can either be satisfied with the title's answer or dig in! Shaw zealously explains his reasoning: Belli was a personal-injury lawyer, not a criminal defense attorney. So why was he selected to defend Ruby? Because he had ties to mobster Mickey Cohen, who had ties to mobster Carlos Marcello, who had ties to mobster Sam Giancana. These mobsters had underworld ties to Jack Ruby and his lowbrow Dallas nightclub. For them, Belli could defend Ruby as deluded and insane. You see, JFK was elected with the alleged help of Giancana's labor bosses bringing out votes. But then JFK's father made "an ill-fated decision–, one that changed the course of history…." It would be "hearsay" in a court of law, but Shaw quotes someone who quotes someone who quotes JFK that it was his father who told him to appoint brother Robert as attorney general. RFK's expanded mob prosecutions then made the mob feel betrayed. RFK thought he might be putting himself at risk in pursuing racketeers, but the mob decided to shoot the "dog" instead of its "tail." So it was all Joe's fault. VERDICT Shaw says that his information is "fresh," but it sounds familiar. Voracious conspiracy theorists can read it and decide.—MH

Library Journal

2013-09-01
Did a well-known society lawyer keep the secrets of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Title aside, only the final chapters of the book examine the toxic biography of Joseph P. Kennedy. Instead, Shaw takes an unusual route into the thicket of JFK conspiracy literature, focusing on the perturbing question of why the flamboyant civil attorney Melvin Belli, an associate of mobsters, would have been recruited to provide Jack Ruby's defense following his televised shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. Belli pursued a strange "psychomotor epilepsy insanity defense," here termed "absurd," which failed at trial; Ruby died in 1967 awaiting a new trial after his subsequent death sentence was overturned on appeal. Later, Belli avoided the topic, telling conflicting stories about how he came to represent Ruby. Gangster Santo Trafficante supposedly warned notorious mob attorney Frank Ragano--whose memoir, closely examined by Shaw, implicates Jimmy Hoffa and others in the conspiracy--to never ask Belli about Ruby. Thus, Shaw argues that "probing Belli's behavior before, during and after the Ruby case is essential to any search for the truth" about the killings. Certainly, Belli seems capable of obfuscation; the author portrays him as "a braggart of the first degree [and] a Mafia groupie." Shaw finds it suspect that Belli's trial gambit was to make Ruby look "crazy when no one else in the real world thought he was" and ultimately argues that Belli was a plant meant to subtly control Ruby. The problem, as with most JFK assassination conspiracy theories, is the difficulty of directly connecting Belli's curious behavior to the purported Mafia assassination conspiracy. A clearly written but fevered polemic on the corruption of power, built around an intriguing theory, but it lacks a smoking gun.

Kirkus Reviews