CRIME: Deep Six for Johnny

They buried him in the classic style. His body was sealed in an empty 55-gal. oil drum. Heavy chains were coiled around the container, and holes were punched in the sides. Then the drum was dumped in the waters off Florida. It might have stayed on the bottom indefinitely—except that the gases caused by the decomposing body gave the drum buoyancy and floated it to the surface. Three fishermen found it in Dumfoundling Bay near North Miami Beach. Police checked out the fingerprints of the victim with the FBI and made the identification: John Roselli, 71, a Mafia soldier of fortune who had been involved in some amazing capers—and made the mistake of telling about them.

Someone had asphyxiated the old man, which should not have been hard, since he was suffering from emphysema. Suspicion quickly centered on the Mafia itself. During the final years of his life, Roselli made two cardinal errors. He called public attention to the operations of the Mafia and, much worse, he betrayed one of its members.

In June 1975, Roselli was called to testify before a special Senate Intelligence Committee that was looking into the excesses of the CIA. Customarily, members of the Mafia clam up when they get within 100 miles of a Senate committee. Roselli not only talked—he provided the details of a startling story.

Roselli described how he and his longtime mentor, onetime Chicago Mafia Chief Momo Salvatore ("Sam") Giancana, had been recruited by the CIA in the early '60s to assassinate Fidel Castro. It made a kind of amoral sense for the agency to turn to the Mob: when the Cuban leader took power, he closed down the Mafia's big moneymaking operations in Havana; Roselli had been running the swank Sans Souci gambling casino there. Roselli told the Senators that he also saw the killing of Castro as a "patriotic" endeavor, something he could do for his country. Both poisoned cigars and poisoned pills were considered by the CIA. For reasons that remain unclear, the mobsters muffed the job.

Five days before Roselli's testimony, Giancana had been murdered in his Oak Park, III., home by seven .22 bullets fired at close range into his face and neck. As it happened, Giancana was due to be called before the same Senate committee. The FBI now believes that Giancana was killed not because of his CIA-Castro connection but as a result of a bitter feud over dividing the Mob's spoils in Chicago.

The Third Man. During his testimony, Roselli not only talked freely about Giancana but also claimed that a third person took part in the anti-Castro plot: Santo Trafficante, now in his mid-60s, who has been identified as the Mafia chief in Florida. A man who abhors publicity even more than most of his colleagues, Trafficante took refuge for 18 months in Costa Rica to escape his notoriety. He returned to the U.S. shortly after Roselli talked to the Senate committee.