Photo courtesy of Roland Lane.
The Mafia did it.
That conspiracy theory around the JFK assassination is nothing new. But a book by the author of I Heard You Paint Houses claims to prove it.
Former homicide detective and medical malpractice lawyer Charles Brandt says he has solved the JFK assassination case and a subsequent cover-up conspiracy, and he lays it all out in a book released Sept. 27, Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up, and International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case.
Brandt’s 2004 book about Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran “closed the case” on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and was turned into a 2019 Netflix movie directed by Martin Scorsese.
The JFK book all started with the Hoffa book. The author served as chief of homicide for the state of Delaware in the ’70s. He met Sheeran in a subsequent career as the founder of a malpractice law firm. Brandt was asked to represent the Pennsylvania-based mafioso, who wanted early release from prison on medical grounds. Sheeran wound up getting out of prison with 30 years left on his sentence because of spinal stenosis.
“He was really in no condition to be a gangster anymore,” Brandt says.
At a celebratory lunch “at a known Mafia establishment,” Brandt picked up some unique phrases of dialog that he squirreled away for future use, and he thought that would be the end of his association with Sheeran.
But then Sheeran asked to meet with him.
“He said, ‘I read your book in jail. I want to tell my story, and I want you to write it,’” Brandt says.
Interrogation techniques Brandt learned as a homicide investigator came into play. “It’s a journey from establishing a rapport to them unburdening themselves,” Brandt says.
When Sheeran said two Sicilians, “lone cowboys,” killed Hoffa, Brandt knew he was lying but played along, he says.
“I said, ‘You mean a lone cowboy like Lee Harvey Oswald? The lone wolf ?’” Brandt says.
“And he froze. He waved his hand and said, ‘I’m not going anywhere near Dallas.’ I said, ‘Jesus Christ, neither am I!’”
That insinuation was not what Brandt had bargained for, and they were both a little spooked, he says. It was after midnight, so Brandt left, and when he recounted the conversation to his wife, she told him to stay away from Sheeran. And for many years, he did.
Then, one of Sheeran’s daughters contacted Brandt to try again because her father was at the end of his life. As a Catholic and former altar boy whose two aunts were nuns, he had been meeting with the monsignor and was ready to spill it.
Brandt interviewed Sheeran over the course of five years, mostly by phone from his home in Idaho. “I’ll never forget where I was when he told me he killed Hoffa and he was involved in the JFK killing,” he says. “I was walking out of a restaurant here in Ketchum, Cristina’s.”
The book lays out a conspiracy in Dallas by Oswald assassin Jack Ruby, his lawyer Melvin Velli, Oswald and “certain members of the Dallas Police Department, including Sergeant Patrick Dean, a known Mafia associate; and crime boss Carlos Marcello, a long-time enemy of JFK, and his New Orleans and Dallas Mafia,” according to a media release about the book.
“Tony Provenzano had given Frank a duffel bag with four rifles in it to drive to Maryland,” Brandt says.
Hoffa later informed Sheeran those rifles were to be used in the JFK assassination, Brandt says.
Brandt says he approached the case like a homicide investigator, and it only took him about four months to crack the case.
Earlene Roberts, who was the housekeeper of the Oak Cliff rooming house where Oswald stayed at the time of the assassination, “plays a pivotal role.”
The book also makes a case that the Warren Commission Report, released in September 1964, covered up the truth of the assassination, and that the slain president’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, assisted in that cover-up.
“Earl Warren was put in charge of that by LBJ and RFK for the sole purpose of hiding some deep, dark secrets,” Brandt says.
His first book, You Have the Right to Remain Silent, came out in 1988 and documented how U.S. Supreme Court Cases like Miranda v. Arizona had changed criminal justice.
After a lifetime in that field, Brandt says he wanted to make sure this JFK book was open-and-shut, giving readers no other option besides “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“The JFK book is bigger than the Hoffa book,” he says.
Charles Brandt calls Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorcese “Bob” and “Marty” and claims to have solved the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, a story laid out in the 2019 Netflix movie The Irishman. These are some of the claims of his new JFK book.
- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren covered up the “triple homicide” of JFK, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald in order to protect his friends.
- Namely, he suppressed the testimony of Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper of Oswald’s rooming house in Oak Cliff. Roberts reported seeing two Dallas police officers in uniform, beeping their car horn in front of the residence on Beckley at Zang to summon Oswald for his getaway.
- WFAA reporter Victor Robertson witnessed Jack Ruby making an early attempt to barge into Oswald’s interrogation on the third floor of the Dallas Police Department, armed and ready to silence JFK’s killer.
- Sgt. Patrick Dean, a Mafia associate, allowed Ruby into the secured basement of the Dallas Police Department to kill Oswald, which Ruby then did in front of the televised world.
- As attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy was in charge of the Department of Justice’s robust Organized Crime Division, which he immediately disbanded out of fear of being implicated in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.
- RFK refused to testify before the Warren Commission to help solve his brother’s murder. Instead, he withheld wiretap evidence.
- By allowing Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante to hold assassination conspiracy meetings with the CIA in public places like the Plaza Hotel in New York City and the Brown Derby in Los Angeles, the authorities handed the Mafia extortion material, which
it then used to silence the DOJ’s Organized Crime Division.
