Too many motivated people. JFK for obvious reasons. Giancana/Marcello for the persecution of the mob by the brothers. If I were at the Bay of Pigs I would have wanted to kill him.
Exactly, he had a long list of motivated enemies willing to do the deed for a myriad of reasons and someone(s) provided them the opportunity.
It is probably harder to believe that Mafiosi hit-men would have taken on the task due to the risk of capture. It is more plausible to have anti-Castro Cuban assassins shooting at JFK since they have absolutely no remorse in killing a foreign leader, and are willing to take extreme risks to make Castro look culpable. There was no shortage of bravery among Cubans after the BayofPigs. This dovetails with the likes of E. Howard Hunt & others involved with the BoP (including Poppy’s deflection of suspicion on Cuban exiles in Miami alluded to in J.E.Hoover’s memo).
These guys were willing to assume risk repeatedly. They returned to assassinate Castro in Miramar in 1966 and all died or were captured. So I don’t think Escalante’s story is implausible, but there’s always the issue of the removal of evidence pointing to the actual shooters and determining the ground crew at Dealey Plaza. The Dallas PD through incompetence or collusion, failed to maintain the integrity of the crime scenes, presidential limo, and JFK corpse. The FBI, Secret Service, and Warren Commission failed to track down all the possible evidence.