John Mancino

Born in Los Angeles in 1952, I grew up in a middle class neighborhood as the oldest child in what would eventually become a family of seven Catholic children. As a young adult I became a sparring partner for heavyweight champions George Foreman and Ken Norton, and became good friends with Muhammad Ali. I was very interested in politics at an early age, and once worked to help elect Senator Robert F. Kennedy president. Early in life I was very interested in what really happened in Dallas in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated. I read everything I could get my hands on about the then-crime of the century, eventually interviewing and becoming friends with Marguerite Oswald, mother of accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry at the time of the Kennedy assassination; and David Lifton, author of “Best Evidence” on the JFK assassination. Beginning in early 1981, I became very disturbed by rising violent crime and formed a non-profit organization that led successful petition drives to keep the likes of assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, “Onion Field” murderer, Gregory Ulas Powell, and several members of the Manson Family in prison. Each of these infamous killers had been granted parole dates, two of which have, in fact, been released from prison. Our organization went on to successfully challenge a lower-court decision to release Powell in the 1980s, winning at the appellate court and the California Supreme Court, leading to Powell serving the remaining years of his life in prison. Recently, I have reorganized our non-profit, Citizens for Truth (in Justice), for the purpose of educating the public at large about crime generally, and violent crime specifically. I am also in the process of completing my manuscript on the assassination of President Kennedy, having signed with a widely known publisher.