Former Mafia hit man talks Kennedy killing

Lee Harvey Oswald was never supposed to make it out of the Texas School Book Depository alive on Nov. 22, 1963, according to a self-proclaimed former Mafia hit man.

“The dummy was supposed to be shot coming out the front door,” David Steece said Friday during an autograph session for his book, “Paradox,” at Hastings Books, Music and Video in Jacksonville.

Steece, a former member of a New Orleans organized crime family, said Oswald was hypnotized and given a clunky old rifle that would make such a noise when fired that everyone would point to the window where he fired from on that fateful day.

Oswald actually hit Kennedy with one shot, Steece claimed, saying he was a “pretty good shot.”

However, the fatal shot came from the front of the motorcade, not the rear, Steece said. The hit squad had set up two .307-caliber sniper rifles on tripods at two different locations. They used 7-grain ammunition and silencers, he said.

The shooters were flown out of town on a private plane, he said. The pilot vanished two days later to South America, and his wife later joined him there. Steece claimed to have visited the wife before she left Dallas.

Mob Experience fuels conspiracies

The Las Vegas Mob Experience will feature some tantalizing organized crime links to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Jay Bloom, managing partner of the attraction that opens at the Tropicana in December, said his group has acquired a videotaped death-bed confession of a 96-year-old mobster who told his family he had information about Kennedy's death in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.