Dixie Mafia con artists extorted Carlos Marcello

This report wraps up our 4-part series on the mysteries surrounding the murder of Jefferson Downs jockey James Sibille, and this chapter begins as the first, inside the 1975 racketeering trial of reputed mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello.

In a surprise move shortly after noon Friday, January 24, 1975, government attorneys in the prosecution of Carlos Marcello and two others on extortion charges asked for and received a long weekend recess in the trial so that they could “evaluate new evidence.”

A short time before the prosecution requested a recess, Federal District Judge Herbert W. Christenberry gave the government’s star witness in the trial, Jose Antonio Gonzalez, a 32-year-old Puerto Rican, a four-and-a-half-year prison term for making false statements to the Small Business Administration in an application for a loan for the defunct Crash Landing nightclub in Metairie.

Those connected with the Marcello prosecution speculated that the prosecution would enter court Monday morning and ask Federal District Judge James A. Comiskey to dismiss the case against Marcello, Samuel A. Labruzzo, and Peter G. “Jerry” Brown.

The three men stood trial before a jury in Judge Comiskey’s court on charges of attempting to take over the Crash Landing through extortion and the use of racketeering methods.

When Gonzalez testified one week earlier, defense attorneys showed he had given false testimony and admitted to lying under oath. In April 1974, the Defense said, Gonzalez referred to himself as a “good con man” in open court.

Wednesday, January 22, Judge Christenberry ordered Gonzalez taken into custody again and placed in the House of Detention under a $100,000 bond and set his sentencing on the false statement for the following Friday.

Before Judge Christenberry for sentencing, Gonzalez said he had read the transcript of his testimony for the government before Judge Comiskey’s court and termed Gonzalez a “better liar than Baron von Münchhausen.”

Testifying in the Marcello case, Gonzalez had insisted he was an attorney himself, but Judge Christenberry told him, “I’m satisfied you’re not an attorney.”

The judge said he had been at the bar for 50 years and on the bench for 27 years and “in all that time I have seen no individual come close to you as a liar.”

To this comment, Gonzalez answered, “That is true.”

During the Marcello trial, among other testimony, Gonzalez admitted making many false statements on applications for bank loans and claimed that he graduated from the University of Puerto Rico Law School.

Judge Christenberry pointed out that Gonzalez lived under protective custody for about nine months and called this service an “unconscionable expenditure by the government of taxpayers’ money.”

The judge added, “What we need is something to protect the taxpayers from you. You have been fortunate, but your good fortune has run out.”

Gonzalez told the judge that he had repented for the things he had done.

“Do you know who Baron von Münchhausen was?” Judge Christenberry asked the defendant. Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring in 1760, the minor celebrity became known in German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales about his military career.

“No, sir,” Gonzalez replied, “I do not know of him.”

“Well, you’ve outdone him,” Judge Christenberry said, “And you should check into it and learn who he is.”

After the hearing, Judge Christenberry made a point of stating that the United States attorney did not bring the Marcello case on behalf of the Eastern District of Louisiana. He said that it “would be well for the public to understand that.” The Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force had brought the Marcello prosecution.

The judge continued, “I cannot see where his testimony can be of any benefit to the government, so I’m not giving him any credit for his testimony.”

The maximum term in prison Gonzalez could have received was five years. Judge Christenberry told him he was giving him six months’ credit for having pleaded guilty and not burdening the government with the expense of a trial.

That Friday in the Marcello trial, testimony from Raymond D. Young, a former talent agent for the Crash Landing, established that a man found dead from an overdose of narcotics was under subpoena to testify for the defense. During cross-examination of Young, Sanford Krasnoff, attorney for Labruzzo, brought out that the court subpoenaed a person identified as Bryan Johnson several weeks earlier, before police found him murdered.

Young denied knowing anything about the death.

Krasnoff also questioned the witness regarding two other deaths, Jefferson Downs jockey James Sibille and an unnamed Mobile, Alabama newspaper executive. Young denied any knowledge of those deaths and denied telling patrons of the Crash Landing that Carlos Marcello and his New Orleans mafia were responsible.

A retired New Orleans police officer told me something not recorded in the court transcripts. Local law enforcement considered both Raymond Young and Jose Gonzalez professional con artists and associated them with the Dixie Mafia, a loosely connected group of southern criminals for hire. Instead of the Marcello associates extorting money from Young and Gonzalez, the police officer said, “It was the other way around. The con men extorted them, knowing the government was looking to get something on Carlos.”

A jury acquitted Carlos Marcello and his associates of all charges. Raymond Young received two years for fraud. The judge gave Gonzalez five years, to run concurrent with the earlier sentence, and the judge revoked his probation for lying to the court, giving him a total of ten years.

However, parole boards released both men less than two years later.

In January 1993, another court convicted Young again, this time on tax evasion charges. Out on bail and facing up to thirteen years in prison, he went on a scuba diving trip and vanished, faking his death.

In 2000, after seven years on the run, a viewer of the television show Unsolved Mysteries spotted Raymond Young in Costa Rica, living with Jose Gonzalez. Arrested, Young returned to Florida in April 2001. A judge sentenced him to another seven years in prison and charged his wife Anne with helping him escape and attempting to cash in two life insurance policies.

Jose Gonzalez escaped his home before authorities arrived. They had warrants to extradite him for robbing a bank. In 1977, he opened a cafe next door to a National Savings and Loan in Pasto, Columbia. Tunneling from his cafe into the bank vault, he reportedly left the country with 82 million pesos, roughly 2.2 million dollars.