"Handsome Johnny" Rosselli may have been murdered because he was handsome.
John "Handsome Johnny" Roselli , named at birth, Filippo Sacco, was a member of the Chicago Outfit who helped that organization control Hollywood and the Las Vegas Strip. In the early 1960s, Roselli was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
On June 24 and September 22, 1975 Roselli testified before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCIA) led by Idaho Senator Frank Church about the CIA plan to kill Castro, Operation Mongoose. Shortly before Roselli testified, an unknown person shot and killed Giancana in the basement of his Illinois home. This happened just days before Giancana was to testify before the committee. Giancana's murder supposedly prompted Roselli to permanently leave Los Angeles and Las Vegas for Miami, Florida.
On April 23, 1976 Roselli was called before the committee to testify about a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Three months after his first round of testimony on the Kennedy assassination, the Committee wanted to recall Roselli. However, at this point, he had been missing since July 28. On August 3, Senator Howard Baker, a member of the new SSCIA, requested that the FBI investigate Roselli's disappearance.
On August 9, 1976, Roselli's decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfoundling Bay near Miami, Florida. Federal investigators suggested he may have been killed by Chicago mobsters for keeping an unfair share of the mob's gambling interests in Las Vegas. Some connected persons say that Giancana knew to much about the Chicago Outfit, and that Rosselli may spill the beans in lieu of being deported, since he was in the US illegally. At the behest of some members of the United States Senate, United States Attorney General Edward H. Levi instructed the FBI to find out if Roselli's earlier testimony regarding the CIA plot to assassinate Castro may have led to his murder.
The nationally syndicated columnist Jack Anderson claimed that Rosselli told him the story of who killed John Kennedy:
Anderson says that Rosselli heard that Fidel Castro had tortured his would be assassins and found out about the plot to kill him. Rosselli suggested Castro used the same schemers to retaliate against John F. Kennedy. Rosselli thought that Castro used these underworld Cuban elements, most from the Trafficante organization to arrange the killing of Kennedy. Rosselli further speculated that Lee Harvey Oswald was lined up as the assassin, or he was used as a decoy while the real culprits ambushed JFK from a closer range. Once Oswald was captured, the mob had to silence him, so Rosselli speculated that Jack Ruby, who had ties to Havana’s underworld, was ordered to eliminate Oswald. Anderson believed that Rosselli’s speculation induced the mob to silence Johnny Rosselli. Johnny’s Rosselli’s co-conspirator in the plot to kill Castro was Chicago Outfit member Sam Giancana who was murdered before he was scheduled to testify in June 19, 1975.
However there is one more theory floating around. There was an alleged hit man, Max "Chinky" Rothman, muscle for the Nig Rosen-Meyer Lansky-Willie Weisberg organization in Philadelphia , who hung around the Stardust Hotel, that had a son named Al Rothman. Al Rothman met a girl that worked at the infamous Blue Onion Drive-in, in Las Vegas. Rothman married her and got her a job as a cocktail waitress at the Desert Inn Hotel. She eventually ran into “Handsome” Johnny Rosselli and she chumed very closely. Sources this reporter talked to were inclined to surmise that Rothman could have been the murderer of Johnny Rosselli. And there is evidence that this could be the crime of marital retaliation. According to writer H. Albareli, Rosselli’s decomposed body was left with the infamous legendary message that Rosselli had crossed the line with Rothman’s wife.
