08/02/2023
For the past three years, I have been researching, writing, revising, and now rewriting a sprawling book about the life, times, crimes, trials, tribulations, and triumphs of Carlos Marcello, the longtime boss of the New Orleans Mafia.
In the pantheon of 20th-century American crime bosses, arguably none were as misunderstood or as elusive as the "Little Man" of the Big Easy. He was, some argued, the most powerful Mafiosi outside of New York City, and during his nearly 40-year reign as boss, the New Orleans syndicate, purportedly the first and oldest in the country, the Marcello crime family generated enormous wealth. New Orleans was, according to the Saturday Evening Post, "Cosa Nostra's Wall Street," a claim made all the more extraordinary considering Marcello ran his empire from the back of a nondescript motel in suburban Jefferson Parish.
Although my first manuscript was nearly complete, I determined that I needed to write an entirely new book for a few reasons, the most important of which was my acquisition of troves of documents and other material previously unreleased and unknown to the public. Some of these documents were among the 15,490 files released by the National Archives pursuant to the JFK Assassinations Records Act (13,173 files in December 2022 and a total of 2,317 in April, May, and June of this year). I've also uncovered details of his biography that are conspicuously missing in every other account of his life.
The only other major biography of Marcello, John H. Davis's 1988 bestseller "Mafia Kingfish," may have been a page-turner, but it's almost entirely a work of fiction, constructed out of sloppy research and discredited hearsay, a book written for the sole purpose of advancing a convoluted conspiracy theory about Marcello orchestrating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Davis's first cousin was Jacqueline Kennedy Onaissis, who became estranged from him after he wrote a gossipy book about their family, "The Bouviers"). "Mafia Kingfish" is no longer in print, likely because Davis and his publisher were successfully sued for defamation, but the book continues to inform practically every subsequent work written about Marcello.
That's a shame because the real-life saga of Carlos Marcello is, in my opinion, one of the most sensational and fascinating untold stories of the past century. It's a story about what it means to be an American, a story about the rise and fall of a great American city, New Orleans, and a story about a small-time gambling racketeer who was mistakenly labeled as "one of the principal criminals in the country" by a politician from Tennessee and a tabloid columnist from Washington, D.C.
It's about the makings of celebrity, about a man without a country, and about an overzealous, irrational, and paranoid group of government lawyers and federal agents willing to trample all over the Constitution and eventually kidnap a lifelong resident of the United States and leave him for dead in Central America by using fabricated and forged documents and fraudulent misrepresentations to foreign officials.
And it's about an uneducated man who dropped out of school in the fifth grade yet managed to outmaneuver, outwit, and outlast the Department of Justice, the "largest law firm in the world," at nearly every turn.
Before he was kidnapped off of the streets of New Orleans and whisked away to Guatemala, Carlos Marcello had managed to avoid deportation for over eight years, not through trickery or corruption, but by making his case in court. Two months after his kidnapping, he snuck back into the United States. The government never figured out how, but I know the answer.
While they continued to fight for his deportation and eventually secured a conviction against him through an undercover sting operation that today would easily qualify as entrapment (and had nothing to do with organized crime or his reputed role in the Mafia), Marcello stayed in the United States for the next 32 years, until he passed away in his sleep at his home in Metairie a month after his 83rd birthday.
Marcello was a career criminal and a Mafia boss, but his crimes were never as serious as the press and the government portrayed them to be. And his version of the mafia was vastly different than the criminal enterprises that flourished in big cities like New York and Chicago. At the end of his life, Marcello was a multi-millionaire, a fortune he made primarily in real estate investments and land development.
Famously, in 1979, Marcello told a Senate investigating committee that he was merely a "tomato salesman" for his company, Pelican Tomato, and made only $1,600 a month, which was clearly farcical. Later, it was revealed that the United States Navy was Pelican Tomato's biggest client. Today, his company, now known under a different name, is the fourth-largest food distribution company in the Gulf Coast.
But his legacy is much more than that, and since his death, his mystique has only grown.
This year, 2023, marks the 30th anniversary of Marcello's death and the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, which is why I intend to complete the final draft and send my book proposal to publishers and literary agents within the next couple of months. To accomplish this, however, I need more resources than I currently have, which is why I hope you will consider supporting my work through Patreon. Those of you who sign up to contribute $50/month for a year will receive customized merchandise every three months: a coffee mug, bandana, long-sleeve shirt, and tote bag. You can also pay for the entire year's subscription upfront and receive everything right away!
Check it out: http://www.patreon.com/lamarwhite
