A look at what Frank Sturgis’ gun running associate Mario Silverio and Norfolk native Malcolm Jerry Hoy might have been up to in Dallas.
In April 2022, we published a piece called, JFK Assassination “Witness” from Norfolk Used Tammy Murphy’s Great Uncle as a Reference.
The full post is linked above. The short version is summarized below.
Mr. Lindsey subsequently thought Hoy’s story was a little odd and eventually contacted the FBI.
The FBI eventually got around to interviewing Malcolm Jerry Hoy, who was now living in Los Angeles in the Summer of 1964, and seemed to lose interest quickly in what Hoy had to say, even though his answers to questions by the FBI did not exactly line-up with the assassination story he told the mechanic.
A few other inconsistencies and odd behaviors suggest Malcolm Jerry Hoy went to Dealey Plaza that day for a reason, and that his presence at the killing of the President was not due to chance.
There are more details about what Hoy saw or did not see at the link, as well as links to Hoy’s FBI files. (His land lady said Hoy, as her renter, put bullet holes in the floor of a closet with a 22 rifle, which she did not appreciate, among other annoyances.)
Malcolm Jerry Hoy’s Reference
The part of Hoy’s FBI file that piqued our interest was one of the names he listed as a personal reference.
Originally from Norfolk, Virginia, and then after three years of Army Service, Hoy moved to Dallas in the Spring of 1963 and found employment as a spot-welder at the General Motors, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac Division in Arlington Texas.
Malcolm Jerry Hoy listed three references. Mr. Baker (no first name), Mr. Battelman (no first name) and Senate Candidate Louis B. Fine of Norfolk, Virginia.
“Senate Candidate Louis B. Fine” (B is for Bernard, and we have also seen Benard) is the uncle of New Jersey’s first lady, Tammy Snyder Murphy.
Louis B. Fine was a well-connected lawyer, and Tammy’s uncle via his marriage to her aunt (her father’s sister.) In an era when Teamster’s President Jimmy Hoffa consistently had Robert F. Kennedy on his tail, Louis was the counsel for Teamsters Local 882 in Norfolk.
There are a few items in Louis B. Fines biography that suggest he might have mob connections, but we want to get to Watergate Burglar, Frank Angelo Fiorini, better known as Frank Sturgis.
Frank at Watergate, Frank at Bay of Pigs, Frank at the JFK Assassination, Frank from Norfolk, Virginia too.
Frank was everywhere a Cold War soldier-of-fortune needed to be during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, presumably at the behest of the CIA at least some of the time.
There is no dispute Frank Sturgis was a Watergate Burglar, only whether he was “burgling” for Richard Nixon, the official story, or the CIA, the likely story.
In the milieu of the April 1961 Bay of Pigs (Cuba) invasion, Frank played various supporting rolls after Fidel Castro took over in 1958, including “bombing” Cuba with anti-Castro leaflets, weapons smuggling, and the recruiting and training Cuban expatriates for “Free-Cuba” missions, like the Bay of Pigs.
The degree of Frank Sturgis’ involvement in the JFK Assassination is highly disputed.
Frank’s “sometimes” girl friend told the NY Daily News in 1977 that he was directly involved in the JFK Assassination planning and execution and even testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Frank was one of the shooters.
According to Frank’s testimony to the Committee, he was in Miami on the day Kennedy was murdered.
Whether Frank Sturgis was in Dallas or Miami or somewhere else, he does seem to have played some role in the assassination. Frank’s nephew, Jim Hunt, who has written a book about his uncle and been interviewed by Ed Opperman on the Opperman Report podcast, says Frank did have a roll in the JFK Assassination but was unsure of what it might have been.
Similarly, St. John Hunt, the oldest son of E. Howard Hunt (Watergate burglary co-conspirator), suggests there was a “second team” involved in the assassination, of which E. Howard Hunt was a member.
Members of the second team were the assassins on the bench, ready to “play” if needed, but otherwise support the first team, including sowing confusion and engaging in misdirection once the first team did the deed.
Like Malcolm Jerry Hoy, the 21-year-old Army veteran and spot-welder who worked at the Dallas General Motors plant, who gave different stories to his mechanic and the FBI, Frank Sturgis was from Norfolk, Virginia.
Frank from Norfolk
Frank Fiorni was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1924. He claimed his family moved to Philadelphia when he was about 7 years old. He was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1945 and went back in Norfolk and joined the Norfolk Police Department.
In the 1945 to 1948 period, Frank’s CIA file indicates he was manager of the Virginia Tavern (east Main Street, Norfolk) and owner/manager of The Whitehorse Tavern (also East Main Street Norfolk) and a Naval Reservist at the Norfolk Naval Air Station.
1948 to 1952 – US Merchant Marine. US Army, stationed in Germany, honorable discharge 1952.
1952 to 1954 – owner/manager of Tophat Nightclub, Virginia Beach, Va.
At sometime in this period Frank Fiorini legally changed his name to Frank Sturgis, which was the maiden name of his mother, who lived in Norfolk.
We have not found anything in the JFK files that put Malcolm Jerry Hoy in the same Norfolk tavern as Frank Sturgis, but we think we found a Sturgis associate in the GM Plant where Hoy worked starting in June 1963 and ending in May 1964.
Cuban Revolutionaries in Dallas
The GM Plant was also where SNFE (Fort Worth unit) Financial Secretary Mario Silverio was employed as of late 1964.
The Second National Front of Escambray (SNFE) was a political group that opposed Fidel Castro and primarily consisting of exiled Cubans. (The SNFE are also referenced as Operation Alpha 66 or just Alpha 66.)
In the early 1960s, the SNFE had its national headquarters in Miami (where Frank Sturgis was living at the time) and sub-units in various cities.
According to an FBI memorandum dated December 3, 1964, members of the Dallas and new Fort Worth SNFE units voluntarily informed the FBI the Fort Worth office had been formed and provided a list of the organizations officers.
Mario Silverio was listed as “Financial Secretary” and his employer was listed as General Motors, Arlington, Texas.
Mario Silverio Villamia, aka Frank Guzman, aka Frank George, aka John Jordan, etc.
We cannot say with 100% certainty that Mario Silverio of the SNFE and GM Plant is the same person as Mario Silverio Villamia, but we are confident he is the same person.
Mario Silverio Villamia was arrested in 1958, with twelve other individuals, by the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco for conspiracy to smuggle guns and equipment to Cuba.
Two of the key players that were arrested and indicted were Dr. Carlos Prios Socarras, the former President of Cuba (1948 to 1952), and Robert R. McKeown.
One of the key players that was arrested, but not indicted, was Frank Sturgis.
One Degree from Oswald and Ruby
The Socarras/McKeown gun smuggling syndicate was large and successful and, in-all-likelihood, a CIA sponsored enterprise. Weapons and equipment, including jeeps, radios, and uniforms were absconded from National Guard armories and manufacturer warehouses that were worth millions.
[Who was supporting who in Cuba can be confusing in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Former President Socarras supported Castro because Castro wanted to depose Fulgencio Battista who deposed President Socarras in 1952.]
Castro was so pleased with McKeown, he reportedly offered him a seat in the new Cuban government. From “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: How the CIA Set Up Oswald” by Mark Lane, Hustler, October 1978 (safe link – does not go to Hustler.)
Investigators for the Warren Commission considered McKeown to be an important witness.
McKeown was known to have had contact with Jack Ruby circa 1958 when Ruby asked McKeown for a letter of introduction to Cuba’s new “Presidente”, Fidel Castro. McKeown is also believed to have been approached by Lee Harvey Oswald, a few months before the assassination, who reportedly offered McKeown $10,000 for four semi-automatic rifles with scopes.
The Warren Commissioners declined to interview Robert McKeown despite the requests from the investigators doing the actual work.
According to the same article linked above, Oswald’s “friend” George DeMohrenschildt, called McKeown right after the assassination and tried to persuade him that the “Lee Harvey Oswald” that tried to buy the rifles was not the real Lee Harvey Oswald.
Typical of persons of interest in subsequent investigations, such as the House Select Committee on Assassinations, DeMohrenschildt “suicided” himself on March 29, 1977. Two days later, Carlos Prios died under mysterious circumstances.
Frank Sturgis was not indicted.
As mentioned above, Frank Sturgis was part of the 1958 CIA sponsored operation that armed Fidel Castro. Frank was in Cuba in the Summer of 1958 when Battista had him arrested and then deported. American authorities arrested Sturgis when he arrived in Miami, where he was based at the time.
Unlike McKeown and the other co-conspirators, Sturgis was not indicted. (The rest of the crew got relatively light sentences with McKeown only receiving a 90-day sentence.)
Frank Sturgis was in the thick of the effort to arm Castro’s forces in the Escambray Mountains. Various sources have Sturgis and Prios and Mario Silverio Villamia and others in the ring, coordinating from Miami where most in the ring were living at the time. A few sources say CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, Frank’s future Watergate co-conspirator was involved in the effort.
As a member of the local SNFE and a member of a major Cuban gun smuggling crew that included McKeown, Sturgis, Prios and Hunt in 1958, which had ties to Ruby and possibly Lee Harvey Oswald, Mario Silverio’s employment at the GM Plant in Arlington, Texas should have put him in the right place, and at the right time, to place him on the list of “Potential Assassination Plotters.”
As vast conspiracy lists go, Mario Silverio Villamia, does not make many lists.
The Garden State’s Governor’s wife is from Norfolk, Virginia. Watergate Burglar Frank Sturgis was too.
So was Wallace Groves, a key player in the Lansky Syndicate.
So was Julius Salsbury, the top mobster in Baltimore, who disappeared in 1970 after receiving a 15-year prison sentence. (After 50 years, in 2021, his daughter revealed he fled to Israel and died in 1994.)
So is Victor Oppleman, another relative of Tammy Snyder Murphy and a key, hardly mentioned player in the cabal that manifested the “Russiagate” plot against President Trump.
Norfolk, Virginia and its surrounding towns does not show up a lot in the JFK files but it does show up in many different conspiracies.
Jack Ruby’s brother Sam was stationed with an intelligence unit during World War II at nearby Langley Field. His job was to monitor the Norfolk docks for signs of Nazi saboteurs and communists handing out pamphlets.
Members of the Rosenberg Spy Ring also passed through Langley Field, where the top secret Norden bombsight was being developed, and which ended up in Nazi hands. (See: Harry Gold, Another Reluctant Red Patsy for the Gibson Island Syndicate – Fort Monmouth Weapon’s Exfiltration Franchise – Part II)
Our “conspiracy theory” is that Norfolk was a central hub for joint-venture skullduggery between organized criminal syndicates and intelligence agencies.
Frank Sturgis likely straddled the syndicates and agencies.
The Dallas 1963 appearance of Malcolm Jerry Hoy, with Tammy’s Teamster lawyer, Senate Candidate uncle as a reference, should prompt some consideration that Uncle Louis had some joint venture connections.
The broad conspiracy theory is that the joint venture, alternatively, the “Deep State”, which has been doing business for decades, needs to be protected at all costs, up to the present, even if it means creating a pandemic and padding body counts, like New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy did when he ordered Covid patients into New Jersey nursing homes in March 2020.
Phil is looking pretty “haggard” over the past few months, like someone pulled his Deep-State club card.
