Carlos Joseph Marcello (; born Calogero Minacore ; February 6, 1910 – March 3, 1993) was an Italian-American crime boss of the New Orleans crime family from 1947 to 1983. Aside from his role in the American Mafia, he is also notorious for the reason that G. Robert Blakey and others have alleged that Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante Jr., and Sam Giancana conspired in the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in retaliation for federal investigations and prosecutions that threatened both the power and the multibillion-dollar profits of organized crime. Early life Marcello was born on February 6, 1910, to Sicilian immigrants Giuseppe and Luigia Minacore, in Tunis, French Tunisia. With his family, Marcello immigrated to the United States in 1911 and settled in a decaying plantation house near Metairie in Jefferson Parish, a suburb of New Orleans. His father adopted a different family name to avoid confusion with his supervisor on the sugar plantation where he had started work. His overseer, also Minacore, chose the appellation Marcello. The family changed all their other names, and Calogero Minacore became Carlos Joseph Marcello. He had eight siblings: Peter, Rose, Mary, Pascal, Vincent, Joseph Jr., Anthony and Salvador Marcello. Young Marcello turned to petty crime in the French Quarter. He was later imprisoned for masterminding a crew of teenage gangsters who carried out armed robberies in the small towns surrounding New Orleans. At the time, local newspapers compared him to the character of Fagin from Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. This conviction was later overturned. However, the following year he was convicted of assault and robbery and was sentenced to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish for nine years. He was released after five years. In 1938, Marcello was arrested and charged with the sale of more than 10 kg (23 pounds) of marijuana. Despite receiving another lengthy prison sentence and a $76,830 fine, Marcello served less than ten months and only paid a $400 fine thanks to a deal cut with former Governor Huey Long. On his release from prison, Marcello became associated with Frank Costello, the leader of the Genovese crime family, in New York City. At the time, Costello was involved in transporting illegal slot machines from New York City to New Orleans. Marcello provided the muscle and arranged for the machines to be placed in local businesses. Louisiana crime boss By the end of