The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK

An “ominous” investigation into how the corruption of the Kennedy clan inadvertently led to the events of November 22, 1963 (The New Yorker).
 
Investigative journalist Mark Shaw maintains that researchers who have studied the murder of President John F. Kennedy have been deciphering the wrong motives and clues, and ignoring the real players. In The Poison Patriarch, he focuses not on why the president was assassinated, but why his brother, Robert, wasn’t.
 
His persuasive theory leads directly to family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby; Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.
 
In what Wiseguy author Nicholas Pileggi calls a "fascinating and unique account of what happened in Dallas in 1963," Shaw addresses these confounding mysteries: Why was Belli, an inexperienced attorney chosen to defend Jack Ruby? How did Belli’s Mafia ties influence his legal strategy, which led to Ruby’s conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? How was his insistence that RFK be appointed attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant? And why, after his brother’s death, did RFK tell a colleague, “I thought it would be me”?

“Shed[ding] light on one of the darker questions about the assassinations,” (G. Robert Blakey, coauthor of The Plot to Kill the President), The Poison Patriarch is destined to alter the debates over one of the most controversial, shocking, and defining moments of the twentieth century.
 

• Denial of Justice: Dorothy Kilgallen, Abuse of Power, and the Most Compelling JFK Assassination Investigation in History
• The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What's My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen
• The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination
• JFK - An American Coup: The Truth Behind the Kennedy Assassination
• The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded
• At The Cold Shoulder of History: The Chilling Story of a 21-year old Navy Hospital Corpsman Who Stood at the Shoulder of JFK during the Bethesda Autopsy
• Melvin Belli: King of the Courtroom
• A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
• H.L. Hunt: Motive & Opportunity
• The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination: The Definitive Account of the Most Controversial Crime of the Twentieth Century