Brandt based his book on extensive interviews with Sheeran who died in 2003. The Irishman admitted to whacking Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1975 on Bufalino's orders, and participating in the mob's assassination plot against President John F. Kennedy.
Brandt recounts his conversations with Sheeran concerning the Kennedy assassination:
I realised he was talking about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. It was always rumoured that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, wasn't working alone and that the mob was behind it. So I asked Sheeran and his face turned to stone, he raised his right hand at me and just brushed me off, saying "I'm not going anywhere near Dallas." I was sure he had something to do with it and kept asking. It was a classic mob hit - Oswald thought he would get away, but Jack Ruby then killed him. Eventually Sheeran admitted to taking three rifles to Baltimore - he understood these had then gone to Dallas.Robert DeNiro will play the role of Sheeran who is responsible for over 25 hits many of which were on behalf of Bufalino.
Scorsese and DiNiro aren't the only Hollywood heavyweights tackling the role of the Mafia in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Leonardo DiCaprio will star in and produce the film adaptation of the 2008 book Legacy of Secrecy in which authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann rather conclusively establish that three mob bosses – Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli – were responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as reported by Terri Schwartz for MTV: "DiCaprio will play FBI informant Jack Van Laningham, who befriends the southern mafia leader, Carlos Marcello, a man the book fingers as the potential mastermind of the 1963 murder (he reportedly even confessed involvement)."
With regard to Marcello's confession to Laningham regarding the Kennedy assassination, in reviewing Legacy of Secrecy last year for the Herald Sun James Campbell wrote the following:
The strongest evidence the authors produce is Marcello's confession to an FBI informant in the 1980s. "The FBI had managed to get an informant inside Marcello's cell and Marcello trusted this guy," Waldron said. According to a 1985 memo quoted in the book, the informant told the FBI: "On December 15, 1985, he (the informant) was in the company of Carlos Marcello and another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institute, Texarkana, Texas, engaged in conversation. Carlos Marcello discussed his intense dislike of former President John Kennedy as he often did. Unlike other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion Carlos Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, 'Yeah, I had the son of bitch killed. I'm glad I did it. I'm sorry I couldn't have done it myself.'"
Robert Blakey, a mob buster for Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the principal architect of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, is the author of The Plot To Kill The President in which he too concludes that the Mafia assassinated JFK as reported by David Talbot for Salon:
Blakey would emerge as the Warren Report's most authoritative critic and a firm believer that Kennedy had died as the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by Marcello and his Mafia ally, Santo Trafficante, the Florida godfather who had been driven t of the lucrative Havana casino business by Castro and who had been recruited in the CIA plot to kill the Cuban leader.
Anytime some mob apologist delusionally waxes romantic about how patriotic the Mafia is, just remember that the boys likely were the ones who whacked the President. Now how patriotic was that?
