Another (broad) analogy:
John Gotti ordered the murder of John Favara, his neighbor who accidentally ran over and killed Gotti's son. Gotti made sure he was in Florida when the murder went down. Everyone on the planet know he'd ordered the hit, but Gotti didn't care. He made no pretensions to "legitimacy." Michael did.
The Roth assassination took place in a very public place too while the john favara kidnapping/murder was pretty much unseen except by a diner owner who was eventually visited by a few gotti thugs and then he promptly moved away. I agree it was stupid by Mike but in the end nobody could really tie him to anything especially since Rocco was pretty much on a suicide mission anyway
