LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK by Mark Shaw
Monday, November 11th, 2013 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory in his latest book The Poison Patriarch that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.
Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother’s death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, “I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me”? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby’s attorney? How does Belli’s Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant?
For fifty years, Shaw maintains, researchers investigating the president’s murder in Dallas have been looking at the wrong motives and actors. The Poison Patriarch offers a shocking reassessment—one that is sure to alter the course of future assassination debates.
Mark Shaw is a California attorney turned author after careers as a Midwestern criminal defense lawyer, newspaper co-publisher and television personality. Curious about the theological aspects of conversion and other spiritual topics, he graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary with a Masters degree in theological studies in 2008 at the ripe young age of 63.
Mark is the author of more than 20 published books, the most recently released being The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK. Other books include Stations Along the Way: The Spiritual Transformation of Former Hitler Youth Leader Ursula Martens, Down for the Count,chronicling Mike Tyson’s rape trial, and Larry Legend, a biography of basketball legend Larry Bird. Mark is also the author of How to Become a Published Author or Poet “Idea to Publication.” This book serves as the foundation for “How to Become a Publisher Author: Idea to Publication” seminars and workshops Mark has conducted through the United States as well as in Paris and Taiwan. Mark Shaw has also had a long career in the entertainment industry not only as a writer and producer, but as an on-air television personality.
An avid collector of Ernest Hemingway books and a suffering fan of the Chicago Cubs, Mark is married to Wen-ying Lu and they currently reside in Burlingame, California. More about Mark is available at www.markshawbooks.com.
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