Ed Becker
Ed Becker was a Las Vegas promoter, businessman, private investigator and author.
Ed Becker was a Las Vegas promoter, businessman, private investigator and author.
Biography
[edit]He was the entertainment director at the Riviera Hotel and Casino under Gus Greenbaum at Las Vegas.[1] In 1956 he met singer Frank Sinatra through a cousin of Sinatra's, they became friends.[2] In the 1960s he began to work part-time for private investigator Julian Blodgett, a former FBI agent.[3] He later founded his own investigative firm, Ed Becker Associates.[4]
Becker was hired as a researcher for Ed Reid's book The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America (1970).[5] He came to know Reid through their mutual friend Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun.[6] By the 1970s he was involved in business with Jerris Leonard.[7] He co-authored with the journalist Charles Rappleye All-American Mafiosi: The Johnny Roselli Story, published in 1991 by Doubleday.[8][9] Becker had known Roselli personally from his days in Las Vegas. He was introduced to Sidney Korshak through him.[10]
He was one of a plethora of people interviewed for the book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (1995) by Nicholas Pileggi, later adapted into the film Casino by Martin Scorsese.[11] He contributed the afterword to a 2000 Barricade Books edition of Hickman Powell's 1939 biography of Lucky Luciano, Lucky Luciano: The Man Who Organized Crime in America (original title: Ninety Times Guilty).[12]
Becker is known for his allegations related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He claimed that at Marcello's farmhouse in Louisiana in September 1962, in the presence of himself and two Marcello associates, Marcello described his intent to assassinate the President. According to Becker, Marcello shouted the Sicilian curse "Take that stone out of my shoe!" and went on to explain "Don't worry about that Bobby son-of-a-bitch. He's going to be taken care of", elaborating that "the dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail", which implied that President Kennedy would be assassinated in order to get the Attorney General Bobby Kennedy off the mafia's back. Becker added that Marcello told him they would get a "nut" to do it so that it could not be traced back to them. According to Becker he informed the FBI of this at that the time, but the FBI denied it had any records indicating such a thing. When Marcello was brought before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s he rejected Becker's allegation.[13][14] He repeated the allegation when he was interviewed for a 1988 episode of The Kwitny Report, discussing the American mafia and Kennedy's assassination.[15]
Becker died in 2007.[5]
Authored works
[edit]- (with Charles Rappleye) All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story. Barricade Books. 1995. ISBN 978-1-56980-027-0.
- Afterword to Powell, Hickman (2000). Lucky Luciano: The Man Who Organized Crime in America. Barricade Books.
References
[edit]- ^ Summers, Anthony (2005). Sinatra: The Life. Knopf. p. 358.
- ^ Carpozi, George (1991). Poison Pen: The Unauthorized Biography of Kitty Kelley. Barricade Books. pp. 260–1.
- ^ Summers, Anthony (1993). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 327.
- ^ Carpozi, George (1991). Poison Pen: The Unauthorized Biography of Kitty Kelley. Barricade Books. p. 260.
- ^ a b "Murdering the Mayor of Paradise". NPR. 1 November 2018.
- ^ Russo, Gus (2006). Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers. Bloomsbury USA. p. 312.
- ^ Munari, Geno (2021). Las Vegas' Dunes Hotel-Casino: The Mob, The Connections, The Stories. Trine Day. p. 235.
- ^ Talbot, David (1 December 2005). "The top five books on the Kennedy assassination". Salon.
- ^ Smith, John L. (22 November 2013). "Figures in Kennedy assassination had many links to Las Vegas". Las Vegas Review-Journal.
- ^ Russo, Gus (2006). Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers. Bloomsbury USA. pp. 142 & 214.
- ^ Pileggi, Nicholas (1995). Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. Simon & Schuster. p. 9.
- ^ Becker, Ed (2000). "Afterword". Lucky Luciano: The Man Who Organized Crime in America. Barricade Books.
- ^ Goldfarb, Ronald (13 March 1993). "What the Mob Knew About JFK's Murder". The Washington Post.
- ^ Goldfarb, Ronald L. (1995). Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime. Random House. pp. 286–7.
- ^ Frewin, Anthony (1993). The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Annotated Film, TV, and Videography, 1963-1992. Greenwood Press. p. 65.
External links
[edit]- Becker on The Kwitny Report episode "Mafia Involvement in the JFK Assassination?" in 1988.
- Becker in the Jack Anderson documentary American Expose: Who Murdered JFK?' (1988).