Santo trafficante biography

Born: November 15, , Tampa, Florida
Died: March 17, , Houston, Texas
Nicknames: The Silent Don
Associates: Sam Giancana, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Johnny Rosselli, Robert Maheu

Santo Trafficante Sr. was a Florida mobster who survived a series of vicious gang wars to become the leader of a powerful Mafia crime family based in Tampa. His son, Santo Trafficante Jr., took over the crime family and became tangled in a web of conspiracies to kill the leader of revolutionary Cuba and, it is rumored, President John F. Kennedy.

Trafficante’s father was the lucky survivor of what was called the “Era of Blood,” when rival gangs based in Tampa fought for control of Prohibition-era nightclubs and, crucially, the local numbers rackets called “bolitas.” Battling Mob rivals in South Florida essentially weakened each other financially and, through murder, the number of available soldiers. Trafficante Sr. hung back and developed relationships with politicians and his Mob colleagues in New York and Chicago. By the time Prohibition and the Era of Blood ended, he was the top man in the Florida Mafia, operating with the blessing of exiled Mob boss Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Frank Costello of the Five Families, and Meyer Lansky of the national Syndicate.

In , Santo Sr. sent his son, already a family underboss, to Cuba to invest in the growing number of nightclubs and casinos in the island nation. The Trafficante family formed a strong alliance with the Batista government in Cuba and profited from their investments, although they never achieved the goal of dominating gambling on the island.

In , Santo Sr. died of natural causes (at a time when some of his remaining rivals were still being violently dispatched), and his son took over leadership of the crime family. According to Scott M. Deitche in The Silent Don, the family was profiting not only from its offshore casinos but from narcotics trafficking. It was clear t

Primary Sources

(1) Robert Maheu, Next to Hughes ()

In the winter of , however, the CIA still thought it could pull off the invasion (of Cuba). But it thought the odds might be better if the plan went one step further - the murder of Fidel Castro. All the Company needed was someone to do the dirty work for it. Professional killers. A gangland-style hit.

It was then that the CIA conceived the notion to let the mobsters do it themselves. They'd had a grudge against Castro ever since he'd forced them out of the Havana casinos. It was even rumored that Meyer Lansky had put a million-dollar bounty on Castro's head. CIA Director Alien Dulles passed the ball to his deputy director, Richard Bissell. Bissell handed off to the CIA security chief. Colonel Sheffield Edwards. And then I received the call

Though I'm no saint, I am a religious man, and I knew that the CIA was talking about murder. O'Connell and Edwards contended that it was a war - a just war. They said it was necessary to protect the country. They used the analogy of World War II: if we had known the exact bunker that Hitler was in during the war, we wouldn't have hesitated to kill the bastard. The CIA felt exactly the same way about Castro. If Fidel, his brother Raul, and Che Guevara were assassinated, thousands of lives might be saved.

But in my mind, justified or not, I would still have blood on my hands. I had to think about it. The deal carried a pretty big price tag. I kept thinking about my family. What kind of danger would it put them in? If anything went wrong, I was the fall guy, caught between protecting the government and protecting the mob, two armed camps that could crush me like a bug

Rosselli's first response was laughter. "Me? You want me to get involved with Uncle Sam? The Feds are tailing me wherever I go. They go to my shirtmaker to see if I'm buying things with cash. They go to my tailor to see if I'm using cash there.

Home/JFK Assassination/Events and Stories/Confessions/Santos Trafficante - It Should Have Been Bobby

Santos Trafficante was a Tampa-based crime boss who was among those who lost out on gambling revenues when Castro took power in Cuba, and Trafficante was jailed there and eventually deported. He subsequently became involved in the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro, along with Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana.

Trafficante is believed to be responsible for the murder of rival Albert Anastasia in When Johnny Roselli was brutally murdered in during the time of his Church Committee appearances, Trafficante was suspected by some.

Anti-Castro exile Jose Aleman told HSCA investigators that in late , Trafficante had told him that Kennedy would not be re-elected, because "he is going to be hit." Aleman believed that from the context of the conversation, Trafficante meant that the "hit" would come from Jimmy Hoffa.

In the early s', Frank Ragano told journalists a story, repeated in his book Mob Lawyer, that Ragano had taken a message from Hoffa to Trafficante and Carlos Marcello to carry out the murder of the President. Ragano wrote that in a seriously-ill Trafficante told him that he and Marcello had carried out the other, but that he had misgivings - "I think Carlos f**ked up in getting rid of Giovanni (John) -- maybe it should have been Bobby."

While some including HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey find Ragano's account persuasive, others do not. Ragano was contacted by the Assassination Records Review Board to see if his sole-sourced story could be corroborated. He produced handwritten notes regarding the assassination referred to in his book as contemporaneous, but as the Review Board wrote "he could not definitively state whether he took them during the meetings of the s or later when he was working on

Sicilian-born American mobster

Santo Trafficante Sr. (May 28, &#; August 11, ) was a Sicilian-born mobster, and father of the powerful mobster Santo Trafficante Jr.

Santo Trafficante Sr. gained power as a mobster in Tampa, Florida and ruled the Mafia in Tampa from the s until his death in Trafficante was heavily involved in the operation of illegal bolitalotteries. During his reign, Trafficante was a well-respected boss with ties to Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Thomas Lucchese.

During the s, Trafficante Sr. maintained a strong alliance with Tommy Lucchese, the boss of the Lucchese crime family in New York City. Lucchese would help train his son Trafficante Jr. in the mafia traditions.

Trafficante died of stomach cancer on August 11, ; he was a member of L'Unione Italiana, and he was buried in L'Unione Italiana Cemetery in Ybor City. His son, Santo Trafficante Jr. subsequently took over the crime family.

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