'Assassination Theater' Tells How the Mob Killed JFK

Show playing in The Loop connects leaders of The Chicago Outfit to the crime of the century and names the real shooters

It was the crime of the century.

Anyone over the age of 60 remembers exactly where they were on November 22, 1963 when they found out President John F. Kennedy was shot during a parade in Dallas. You remember where you where, how your teachers and parents reacted and the widespread grief citizens of the United States felt. Just like anyone older than 25 remembers September 11, 2001, the date of Kennedy’s assassination is one ingrained in your memory.

But as sure as you are about where you were that day and how you heard, there has been an unprecedented amount of uncertainty behind how the tragic event unfolded.

Yes, the Warren Commission ruled a year later that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the murder of the president, firing three shots (in six seconds, with a zig-zagging bullet) from the sixth floor of the Book Depository as the President’s motorcade passed Dealey Plaza. There was no conspiracy, just a lone gunman that took out the most powerful man in the world.

But as the years have passed, that explanation just doesn’t hold up. Recent polls have consistently showed more than 60 percent of Americans do not believe Oswald acted alone, and 77 percent say we will never know how it happened. According to a witness of the actual event, some polls show up to 93 percent of the country believes there was a conspiracy involved.

There have been numerous theories as to who was responsible. Some say it was the CIA, Fidel Castro supporters, the KGB or even then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson who masterminded the crime.
But “Assassination Theater,” a theatrical work based on actual investigative journalism, makes a strong case that it all comes down to the mob. The Chicago Outfit in particular.

Play actors Michael Joseph Mitchell, Mark Ulrich, Ryan Kitley and Martin Yurek enthrall the audience as they portray the big names associated with the mob, the FBI, U.S. government and ‘Overworld’ leaders such as Johnson and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who you’ll find reluctantly accepted the role of leading the investigation and only at the insistence of Johnson. Every bit of the play connects to an actual statement or stance the characters made in real life. There’s no fiction to this, just a really, really good account of what very well may have happened.

Without giving too much away, the show makes a case that it was the mob who organized the hit on JFK and the FBI played a big part in the cover-up. While the Warren Commission claimed Kennedy was shot by only Oswald, who was on the sixth floor of the book depository, this account says there were at least three shooters: one in the Dal-Tex building across the street, another in the Book Depository but on the other side of the building and the third, James Files, from behind the fence in the grassy knoll.

Files, who is still living as a prisoner in Joliet, admits he was the assassin who fired the “kill shot” and specifically detailed the crime to Zack Shelton, a former FBI agent played by Ulrich. Watch the play and you’ll find out just how everything he admitted to checked out when more and more evidence was uncovered.

To this day, anyone can still go to Dealey Plaza and find the angle from the grassy knoll was a straight shot to the spot where the president was hit. Hitting the target from the sixth floor of the Book Depository would be much more difficult.

The story is taken from the perspective of Hillel Levin, an investigative reporter played by Mitchell and Shelton. While Levin was interviewing Shelton in 2007 about a break-in at a reputed Chicago mob leader’s home in the late 1970s, Shelton asked him why he wasn’t doing anything on “the real story.”

“The real story,” aka how the mob killed JFK. They had the motive: the number of indictments against mob leaders had risen 500 percent during the Kennedy years. There’s evidence of Files, and his accomplices, being in Dallas the week of the shooting. And the discrepancies between the president’s first autopsy at Parkland Hospital in Dallas and the one later that day at Bethesda in Maryland have always shown that something fishy was going on.

Find out more about the role of Jack Ruby (the strip club owner who shot Oswald two days later on national television) and how the mob may have also played a role in the death of Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and attorney general, while he was running for president five years later by watching for yourself. For Chicago history buffs, you’ll also be intrigued by the mob’s connection to the death of former Mayor Anton Cermak.

‘Assassination Theater’ runs until January 10 at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in The Loop.

You really need to watch this five times to gather all the jam-packed information included in the performance. I consider myself to have above average knowledge of the case, having studied it in both high school and college and having visited the site in Dallas to speak to locals, including witnesses. But even I wish I could have hit the pause button a few times during the show. To allow every bit of information to sink in. Because it’s that juicy. It’s that important.