Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders
Mike Rothmiller, Douglas Thompson

 Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders draws on secret Los Angeles Police intelligence files, a cache of FBI documents released to Mike Rothmiller in 2021, and extensive interviews carried out by the authors with prime sources including many who worked with Frank Sinatra and many more who tracked his long and fatal association with the American Mafia.

                        Sixteen days after the assassination of John Kennedy on November 30,1963, while the singer was ‘consoling’ the President’s widow,  the 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped at gunpoint out of his hotel room in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.  A $240,000 ransom was demanded from his father.

                        The FBI, Nevada and California law enforcement, went into action.  Frrank secretly contacted his mafia friends for help.  The Mafia who believed they could free young Frank much faster through their underworld connections. Nine people died being beaten for information.

                        Meanwhile, it turned out that a couple of students who’d never been heard of were the kidnappers; Frank Jr. walked free in four days, the students arrested and convicted. Others died for not giving information they didn’t have.                                    

Frank Sinatra was the catalyst for many deaths, feuds and mob warfare. Adopted by the Mafia hierarchy, they promoted his career and ‘watched his back’. In return, Sinatra played to the Mob’s tune. To a degree never revealed before.

                        Astonishingly, the new information shows that Sinatra also offered to work as a spy for the CIA. He approached the agency twice saying he could meet anyone they wanted and  had access to the British Royal Family. He wasn’t being altruistic. The inside sources says Sinatra wanted the CIA to intercede to stop an investigation into his gaming licence in Las Vegas  being reviewed.  The CIA declined his offer because they were already working with the Mob and were concerned Sinatra would learn of the Mafia’s connection to the CIA and leak it.  The CIA believed the Mob was more valuable than Sinatra.

                        Troubled that the FBI were looking into his ongoing Mob connections — the file had been open since the early 1950s —  Sinatra asked again to work for the CIA. Again, he thought the CIA would stop any FBI investigation into his activities.  The source said the CIA again turned him down. Of course, the Mafia knew and approved Sinatra’s flirting with these particular Federal authorities — their big enemy, and his, was J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI who had him atop their surveillance list. As did Mike Rothmiller’s former employer, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).