My question is really, how did Michael/Don Vito handle the situation where a family member has been whacked? For example, what do they tell Connie when Carlo dies? Is there a body? If there is a body, Connie isn't too stupid to realize what happened to her husband. As a matter of fact, she outright accuses Michael of murdering her husband. But, what about people like Fredo? Tessio? How is Carlo's death explained to others besides Connie? Did they have some kind of secret way of doing away with these people?

~~ Lollie

Depends who they are talking to. For instance when Sonny wants to know whether Paulie was killed, All Clemenza needs to say is "Paulie? You ain't gonna see him no more." When Tessio dies, I suppose they tell family members that he died at someone else's hand. As for the females in the family (except that Carping Harpie Kay) they know better than to ask about the family business.

Also they invent cover stories... as in "Fredo drowned."

Lollie, we're not shown the disposal of bodies in most cases. That's faithful to real life: an important victim should disappear so that the authorities will be kept guessing about what really happened to him. And a missing corpse leaves no clues as to who killed him. But it leaves the questions you're asking. Seems to me that Carlo's body was never found because Connie screams at Michael and Kay: "Read the papers, read the papers." This tells me that the only clue she had to Carlo's sudden disappearance was newspaper reports of the whacking of the other Dons. Michael didn't try to make them disappear because he needed the other Mafiosi (including members of their Families) to know that they had a new boss. I'm guessing he told Connie that Carlo "just took off," maybe even hinting that he ran off with his mistress, whom Connie knew all about.
Fredo's disappearance has troubled many on these boards. Do a search--you'll find several intersting threads.

I have another guess. Since Connie was sure that Carlo was dead, maybe Michael told her so. Because the ongoing Mafia war was widely reported in newspapers, he might just tell Connie that Carlo died bravely defending the family from its enemies, or was set up by Those enemies, or something like that. It would sound natural.

I don't think your scenrio would have worked with Carlo. I'm sure Clemenza didn't just stop the car with Paulie dead and call the police. There would have been too many unexplainable questions to answer. If Carlo had "died bravely," then the body would have been found and a proper burial could occur. I'm fairly confident that Clemenza/Michael ordered that Carlo's body never be found.

Of course his body would be never found. "Brave death" was actually a bit of humour. I don't mean that there was any bury. I mean that Carlo was told to be a victim of Family's enemies. He might just not return from some important task, and Michael might not explain anything, because he wouldn't know how he died. What was important, Carlo has to be killed by enemies at war, and Mike was not responsible for it.
I think he could not tell that Carlo run away with mistress, because if Connie souted "you killed my husband", then she knew for sure that Carlo was dead.

Well, Connie seems to get over Carlos death, by geting married about two other times hahaha

You've got to understand who these people are and the environment in which their family members conduct their lives. They are not like you and me and their family environments, despite appearances, are not like ours. They lie to themselves, to each other, and to their family and members. As has been pointed out on this board, Kay knew what she was getting when she got involved with and eventually married Mike. Do you think Connie believed that all the people at her wedding were just other olive oil hucksters? She didn't just start reading the papers the day after Carlo was killed. In their business, nothing has to be explained because the questions are never really asked. Remember from the novel - even such polite inquiries about how Mike's day went were deemed uncomfortable. Kay did ask Mike about Carlo's death at the end of GFI and what did she get as an answer? A lie! It's that simple for those people. The actual made members of the family understand when someone gets killed or just disappears. The other family members just accept it and keep cashing the checks.

But why should anyone tell her they were? I believe Vito just didn't report who they were, and she understood it as well as others.
But the question we discuss is that Connie did not accept the fact silently! When questions are not asked, of course no explanation is necessary. But this was not the case with Carlo, whose disappearance required explanation. We don't know who said, and what, to Connie. We know that when she saw Michael, she said "you killed my husband". That means, she was informed that he is dead. And whatever explanation was given, it didn't satisfy her. You do not really think it was written in the papers that Michael killed everyone? Just a new Mafia war. But she knew enough to conclude who did it. And she didn't believe that Carlo was anyone else's victim, because for many years she lived in expectation that her husband will be killed.
In her furious state she demanded his answer, and revengefully did everything to spoil, if not ruin, his personal happiness by disclosing his crimes to Kay.
It took a week for her to regain her senses and remember who and where she was, and then, as we know from the novel, she apologized to Mike and assured Kay that there was no truth in what she said.

My point exactly. In the end, she just accepts it. She can be forgiven for an inital emotional outburst; that's just typical human pathos. How she found out that Carlo was dead? Who knows. Remember, since GFI is just a movie (edited, also)the screen play can allow the audience to make any number of assumptions about outcomes the reasons for which are not portrayed on the screen.

Sincerely, I rarely ever refer to the movie to find actual truth... But the novel doesn't give much detail here also. All that we find is: Connie had flown home with her mother, the children left in Vegas. She had restrained her widow's grief until the limousine pulled into the mall. Then, before she could be restrained by her mother, she ran across the cobbled street to Michael Corleone's house.
That gives us to understand that Connie was informed about Carlo's death, about him being killed, while she was in Vegas, and knowing it she went home. If we suppose that Carlo's body was found, perhaps disguised as a victim of other family, then she might learn it from papers, radio, TV, and guess anything she liked about it's causes. If Carlo's body was never found, then someone, maybe not Michael, maybe Tom, phoned and told her(or told her mother to tell her) that Carlo was dead. In such a case explanation was necessary, and the most convenient one to give is that Carlo was killed somehow in this war. Then, Connie just didn't believe it. She knew enough to suspect Michael.