Posted on 03/03/2019 1:19:16 PM PST by DeathBeforeDishonor1
Long before the murder, the girls and a role in The Godfather, Gianni Russo was a 13-year-old with a bum arm. Freshly sprung from Bellevues polio ward, he ditched his neglectful parents to sleep on flour sacks in the back of a Little Italy bakery and sell pens in front of the Waldorf-Astoria.
It was 1956 and one of his regular customers was mob boss Frank Costello. The don would throw Russo a fiver and rub the boys withered shoulder for luck.
After a few months of that, Russo objected to being touched. Costello respected the kids gumption and was even more impressed when he found out that Giannis great-uncle was Angelo Russo, a Sicilian kingpin who had been hanged by the Italian government in 1947 after having played a role in establishing New Yorks five crime families.
He was 16, Russo said, when he struck up an affair with the actress, then 33. Costello had asked him to keep an eye on her for the mob, which stashed its favorite moll in New York City while settling an issue she had with producer Darryl Zanuck on the West Coast. Monroe and Russo saw one another, on and off, for four years.
He claims to know how she really died. Russo showed The Post a photo of himself and the actress in 1962, at the CalNeva Lodge, a resort on the California-Nevada border. It was taken three days before she was found dead in Los Angeles of what coroners deemed to be a drug overdose, Russo said. The man behind the camera: Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Yeah, he was just a little too brag-ass to be believed.
I got that impression as well.
Actually, I missed that, or at least didn’t interpret it as a “go” signal.
What’s really interesting is that Russo the person had, or claims he has, mob experience. The Carlo of the movie looked like a minor character actor. If Russo isn’t a complete fabricator, then he’s a good actor for going down-role for the Carlo character.
As an aside, Howie Carr wrote that the guy who played Moe Greene was in real life associated with the White Bulger mobsters of Boston.
Some of the characters were obviously take offs of some real people. I always wondered who the actress was who was ruined by the Frank Sinatra type guy.
Maybe no one but maybe some one.
“You have to answer for Marilyn Monroe, Carlo.”
Always wondered, when a mobster dies they say he sleeps with the fishes.
When a fish dies, do other fish say he sleeps with the peoples?
Excellent read! Looks to be a book I'll buy. I never knew that "Carlo" in The Godfather movie was a real mob guy. Fascinating how he got the job and his relationships with gangsters and movie stars - particularly his affair with Marilyn Monroe. And then there's the bit about JFK doing lines of coke off the backs of stars, whoa!
MM was planning to go public about her fun sessions with JFK and RFK. Therefore the Pres. and his brother with help from others did in fact terminate MM.
It wasn't Bobby who did it. He went to visit her shortly before a mob gang of three went into her home and put a drug-laced suppository into her rectum which killed her, and they then staged it to look like a suicide.
Carlo went into the windshield removal business.
He’s wrong. It was me.
How do you ‘put’ a drug-laced suppository into someone’s rectum who is likely unwilling to have anything shoved into their rectum ?
Three big guys could do it. Have you ever used a suppository?
Everybody needs a backup career plan.
It helps if the victim is already drunk.
Now that would be an interesting book to read! So the Mafia killed her on whose behalf? The Kennedys?
The hottest actress in the world taking up with a polio victim half her age? Seems perfectly believable to me.
(OK, maybe she wasn’t the very hottest, but still.)
I will have to find the book, but it was a great read and it answered all the questions like means, motive and opportunity. Everything an investigator needs to solve a crime.
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