During the past three years, I have been researching, writing, and rewriting a book about the life and crimes of Carlos Marcello, the reputed boss of America's "original" Mafia family in New Orleans. I've collected and read more than 150 books and nearly two terabytes of digitized documents: Court pleadings and opinions, transcripts, photographs and videos, thousands of archival news reports, and
more than 100,000 declassified government documents and files, many of which have never before been available to the public. I've interviewed members of Marcello's family, including his only son Joe C., as well as his former lawyers, employees, and friends. Robert Blakey, a former staff attorney for Bobby Kennedy's Department of Justice and the author of the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations' Final Report, which named Marcello as one of only three people who had the "motive, means, and opportunity" to potentially conspire with Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (the other two were reputed Florida Mafia boss Santo Trafficante and Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa). I've filed two Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI. In April 2023, I received 1,500 pages of documents from my first request and notified my second request would be granted. (Unfortunately, it appears the FBI destroyed the documents I requested). I've also obtained a 270-minute-long audio recording of the late Shreveport lawyer Michael Maroun, one of Marcello's closest confidantes for more than 45 years. Only days after Marcello's death in 1993, Maroun, intending to write a book about the "real Carlos Marcello," began dictating notes to himself. The recording's existence had never been known to anyone outside of Marcello's small inner circle. Maroun details, among other things, the incredible story of Marcello's "kidnapping" and deportation to Guatemala in April of 1961 and of accompanying him on a treacherous journey from Guatemala and through the jungles of El Salvador to the capital of Honduras, disclosing, for the first time, how Marcello ultimately snuck back into the United States. Although I have been steadily working on this project for three years and had initially intended to complete a final manuscript in early 2022, my efforts were complicated by the delayed release of more than 13,000 documents pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 and the FBI's delayed response to my FOIA requests. I am glad I waited, though. The new documents included several significant details that were critical to my book, and as a consequence, I've decided to revise and rewrite most of the manuscript, which is the work I'm doing now. This year, 2023, marks the 30th anniversary of Carlos Marcello's death and the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, which is why the next few months and your support are critical for me.
— Lamar White, Jr.
