http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20150816/COLUMNIST/150819753/2416/NEWS?p=all&tc=pgall



A Bradenton bank robbery and the killing of JFK


By Chris Anderson
Published: Sunday, August 16, 2015 at 5:14 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 16, 2015 at 5:14 p.m.
Jack Van Laningham was in a drunken stupor one day in 1984 when he took a remote control device from a hotel and stuffed it into a bag to make it look like he was carrying a gun.

Then he walked into a Bradenton bank and held up the teller for $1,800 and a car. He was on the run for two weeks before he finally gave himself up to the FBI. He received eight years for the crime and was sentenced to prison in Arkansas.

What happened in Bradenton that day may actually appease the conspiratorialists concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as it provides a possible link to the mob’s involvement.

Because if Van Laningham didn’t rob that Bradenton bank and go to prison, then he never would have met and befriended reputed mob boss Carlos Marcello, who allegedly told Van Laningham that he ordered the hit on JFK.

Van Laningham’s story is part of a book published in 2008 called “Legacy of Secrecy.'’ The father of Leonardo DiCaprio read the book and recommended it to the actor, whose production company is reportedly interested in making a movie. DiCaprio would play Van Laningham, while Robert De Niro would play the part of Marcello.

Van Laningham’s son Greg said his father, who lives in Southern California, is no longer talking to writers because he doesn’t trust them. The only people he is talking to now are the DiCaprios.

What’s amazing is that this isn’t the first time Bradenton has had a strange tie to the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination as a former Manatee High student named Judyth Vary Baker claims to have been the girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans.

A brilliant student while at Manatee in the 1960s who was performing intriguing cancer research, she says a plan was in place for her to develop a deadly strain of cancer that Oswald was going to take to Cuba and kill Fidel Castro with. The plan failed and the target became Kennedy. Baker still says Oswald was set up. All that is known for certain is that Baker and Oswald worked in the same coffee company together in New Orleans.

Van Laningham, meanwhile, served in the Army before marrying a lady from England. Together they had three kids, but the marriage split up and he ran off to Florida with a younger woman. He was drinking a lot and broke financially when he decided to rob the Bradenton bank.

Once he was inside the prison in Arkansas, he says the FBI coerced him into becoming an informant. He was sitting in the prison courtyard with Marcello on December 15, 1985 when Marcello went off about Kennedy.

Marcello, who was nicknamed “The Godfather,'’ despised Kennedy, and blamed him for once being deported to Guatemala. He was also upset with Bobby Kennedy for his stance against organized crime.

An FBI Confidential Source Report released by the National Archives said Marcello told Van Laningham the following: “Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did it. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.”

The FBI did not interview Marcello after the statement, and there was some question of his mental capacity at the time. He died in 1993 at age 83.

Marcello was a New Orleans mob boss who was tight with Santo Trafficante, the boss from Tampa. In 1975,

Trafficante was captured on a FBI wiretap saying to Marcello “Now only two people are alive who know who killed Kennedy.”

What Trafficante meant by that will forever be a mystery as he died in 1987.

Marcello was never mentioned in the 1964 Warren Commission Report, but the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Trafficante and Marcello had the “motive, means and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy though it was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello’s complicity.”

So what does all of this mean?

Maybe nothing, but the next time a remote control goes missing from a Bradenton hotel you never know what it could lead to.

Chris Anderson can be contacted at