THE WASHINGTON POST Sunday, September 12, 1976 The Calculated Rise And Abrupt Descent Of Johnny Roselli By Rudy Maxa Until last month, Johnny Roselli lived comfortably with his sister and brother-in-law in a Miami suburb. A friend estimated he earned about $25,000 annually from a cigar shop he owned in the lobby of Las Vegas Frontier Hotel. He suggested last year when his attorney suggested he hire a bodyguard, after the murder of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, his partner in CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. If anybody wants to kill me at my age, the 71-year-old Roselli said, So what difference does it make? He played golf several times a week, sipped white wine with dinner, and—until somebody decided Johnny Roselli should wind up in an oil barrel in Miami's Dumfoundling Bay—considered employment in the new gambling casinos beginning to open in the oil-rich Middle East. In the late 1920s Al Capone and his friends chose Miami as the chic spot for organized crime figures to buy a winter home. Just across a strip of ocean was Cuba, a gambling and vice mecca. The mobsters from the north were treated like visiting celebrities by Florida press and society, while some members of the local police force began developing a taste for the finer things in life. In the 1940s the sheriff of Dade County (which includes most of the Miami area) admitted to the Kefauver organized crime committee that, since he had become sheriff on an annual salary of $2,500 five years earlier, his personal fortune had increased from $2,500 to $70,000. One of the sheriff's deputies said he collected $50,000 in bribes from Miami beach gamblers in a month. Some months spent as much as $1 million to bookmaker's operations. In 1946 a bookmaker's operation was fined almost $26 million. It took the Miami police force a racketeer feel at home. For the last two years, Johnny Roselli set up his home in a residential, suburban suburb of Miami. But Roselli made his retirement haven because he had family there. His brother-in-law, a government missile expert, lives in a sprawling white home that at first glance, resembles every other house in the neighborhood. But it is different. The carefully curtained windows, the extra lock on the front door, and spotlights on all sides of the house give it the look of a suburban fortress. Inside, the furniture is pale blue Mediterranean, the carpet a thick white. Roselli's relatives did not shun him. Roselli was left to them. He left the Plantation at 11 p.m. on July 28 when a short, stocky old friend of his came to pick him up. His sister said he was home for dinner that afternoon. Early reports said his legs were sawed off, perhaps after being severed from the body. His arms were cut off. Heavily weighted, Roselli was stuffed in a 50-gallon oil drum and dumped into Dumfoundling Bay. His brother-in-law reported Roselli's car—a red 1975 Chevrolet Impala in very good condition—found in Miami International Airport. Ten days after Roselli's disappearance, the coroner's report wrong. The drum that contained Roselli's body was a secret floated to the surface after a fisherman found it. The body inside the oil drum was not placed in the drum. The coroner's report said Roselli's body was cut up. The body was not cut up. The coroner's report said