Gangster confessed to killing pope John Paul I and would have killed John Paul II too

The nephew of one of the most notorious crime bosses has made a stunning claim.

Longtime Colombo gangster Anthony Raimondi claims he helped kill a pope to keep his mates out of hell.

Raimondi says that he went to Italy in 1978 with a team of hit men who murdered John Paul I, according to the New York Post.

They allegedly poisoned him with cyanide just 33 days into the pontiff’s reign, according to Raimondi’s new book, When the Bullet Hits the Bone.

The death of Pope John Paul I on September 28 1978 stunned the world, coming so soon after the 15-year reign of Pope Paul VI.

Raimondi is the nephew of notorious godfather Lucky Luciano.

He claims he was recruited for the murder at the age of 28 by his cardinal cousin, Paul Marcinkus, who ran the Vatican bank.

Raimondi’s job was to learn the pope’s habits and be on hand to observe as Marcinkus knocked out John Paul by spiking his nightly cup of tea with Valium.

I stood in the hallway outside the pope’s quarters when the tea was served, he writes, adding that the drug did its job so well that their victim wouldn’t have stirred even if there had been an earthquake.

I’d done a lot of things in my time, but I didn’t want to be there in the room when they killed the pope. I knew that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell.

Pope John Paul. Picture: UPISource:Supplied

Instead, he stood outside the room as his cousin readied a dose of cyanide, he claims.

He measured it in the dropper, put the dropper in the pope’s mouth and squeezed, Raimondi writes. When it was done, he closed the door behind him and walked away.

After the sleeping pontiff was force-fed the poison, a papal assistant checked on him, then cried out that “the pope was dying” — after which Marcinkus and two other cardinals in on the plot “rushed into the bedroom like it was a big surprise, Raimondi writes.

A Vatican doctor was summoned, who ruled that John Paul I had suffered a fatal heart attack.

They used Valium and the deadly toxin to kill the pope painlessly — and to curry favour in the afterlife, Raimondi claims.

Raimondi was the nephew of mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Picture: SuppliedSource:News Limited

To prove John Paul I didn’t suffer, Marcinkus and cohorts Pietro Palazzini and Antonio Ribeiro, also his cousins, needed Raimondi to testify on their behalf before God, he claims. 

They said when we die I would be their witness, Raimondi, now 69, told The Post.

They targeted the pope because he had threatened to expose a massive stock fraud run by Vatican insiders, according to the book.

The billion-dollar scam involved a forgery expert at the Vatican who faked the church’s holdings in blue-chip American companies such as IBM, Sunoco and Coca-Cola. Mobsters then allegedly sold the phony stock certificates to unsuspecting buyers.

John Paul I had vowed to defrock the perpetrators, which included Marcinkus and about “half the cardinals and bishops in the Vatican, Raimondi told The Post.

They would have been thrown out and subject to the laws of the US and Italy, he said. They would have gone to jail.

Had John Paul I “kept his mouth shut, Raimondi writes, he could have had a nice long reign.

The body was barely cold when a new plan was conceived to kill his successor, John Paul II, who appeared poised to take action against the scammers as well, Raimondi writes.

So the made mob man was summoned back to the Vatican and told to prepare for a second murder.

This guy’s gotta go, too,’ they said. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do? Just keep killing popes?

Ultimately, John Paul II decided not to act because he knew he too would die, Raimondi told The Post, then went on to become the second-longest-serving pontiff in modern history, until his death at 84 in 2005.

Lucky Luciano in an NYPD mugshot in 1936. Picture: NYPDSource:Supplied

His change of heart also prompted a booze-fuelled celebration among crooked cardinals and mobsters in Vatican City, according to Raimondi.

We stayed and partied for a week with cardinals wearing civilian clothes, and lots of girls, he writes. If I had to live the rest of my life in Vatican City, it would have been OK with me. It was some setup. My cousins all drove Cadillacs. I am in the wrong business, I thought. I should have become a cardinal.

What I said in the book I stand by till the day I die. If they take [the pope’s body] and do any type of testing, they will still find traces of the poison in his system.

Source: NewsAu