Leonardo DiCaprio will produce and star in Legacy Of Secrecy, a film that purports to reveal the truth behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner already solved nearly 20 years ago when it pinned it on anti-Castro homosexuals, case closed. Except Legacy Of Secrecy (based on the book of the same name by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann) asserts that New Orleans-based Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was the one who actually orchestrated the hit, stemming from Marcello’s confession to the FBI back in 1985—a confession that was subsequently covered up for over 20 years.
Marcello was a person of interest in the JFK assassination from the beginning, having been contacted (along with Florida mob boss Santo Traficante) by Jack Ruby just before it happened; however, the initial FBI investigation concluded that Marcello was a “tomato salesman and real estate investor”—and certainly not the most powerful figure in organized crime in Texas and Louisiana—which led the Warren Commission to completely dismiss him from its report.
But after years of compiling evidence about the involvement of various mob figures in events surrounding the assassination, the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Marcello "had the motive, means and opportunity to have the president assassinated," and since then many independent investigators (including the Committee’s chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey) have reached the conclusion that Marcello, Trafficante, and Sam Giancana were likely responsible. Marcello’s confessions also include setting Lee Harvey Oswald up through David Ferrie (played by Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone’s JFK) and putting Jack Ruby into business in Dallas, yet oddly enough, for all his efforts, he’s never had anybody play him in a movie.
DiCaprio will play FBI informant Jack Van Laningham, Marcello’s cellmate who was groomed by the FBI to become his confidant and secretly record their conversations (mostly prison yard rants like the one where he proclaimed, “Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I'm glad I did. I'm sorry I couldn't have done it myself!”). Of course, these were later contradicted by intercepted phone conversations where Marcello complained of those who would accuse him of murdering not only John Kennedy but also Robert Kennedy, but as always with these knotty JFK conspiracy theories, that’s where the fun begins.
Legacy Of Secrecy—which could possibly see release in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination—would also incorporate the book’s suppositions that the Mafia had a hand in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Watergate. As such, it would be DiCaprio’s second trip behind the veil of U.S. intelligence after his starring turn in Hoover, which means he’s now a big ol’ target for the Hollywood Star-Whackers.