Jim Brading: Where He Is Today

Immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy, Eugene Brading (Jim Braden) had an upturn in his personal finances.

Brading later reported a large increase in revenue from an oil well he had an interest in back in Louisiana. He reported the large increase in revenue from the well for the month of November 1963.

A month later, in December of 1963, Brading became a charter member of the exclusive (and very expensive) La Costa Country Club in southern California. Later that year, 1964, Brading and his old syndicate oil friend Roger Baird established the "B and B Cattle Company." The company was set up in Chicago and was presumably named after them, "B and B," though neither of the two men are listed as corporate officers. It was also during this same period that Brading made a substantial investment in two lots in Coral Gables, Florida.

In 1965, Brading's lengthy parole was finally terminated. He soon bought a new home near the La Costa Country Club which he had joined, and he also bought a house for his parents in Santa Barbara.

And it is at the La Costa Country Club that the mysterious trail of Jim Braden, or Eugene Hale Brading, finally ends.

The La Costa Country Club, which Brading had joined as one of its 100 charter members in January of 1964, is one of the more notorious Mafia properties in the nation.

The most powerful force behind La Costa is Moe Dalitz, one of Meyer Lansky's single closest associates. Moe Dalitz had been the leader of the early Mayfield Road Gang in Cleveland, and had been the founder of the actual Cleveland Syndicate, one of the most powerful forces in the national crime syndicate.

Moe Dalitz had been one of the Mafia's biggest investors in Las Vegas, and it had been Dalitz who had personally helped set up the Howard Hughes empire in Las Vegas. Dalitz had sold much of his own holdings to Howard Hughes in the late 1960's.