William Roemer

During retirement, Roemer was neighbors with New York City mobster Joe Bonanno, in Arizona. In the 1996 HBO movie Sugartime Roemer appears as a CIA agent who recruits Sam Giancana to assist the US in killing Fidel Castro. Of course that is artistic license because Roemer worked for the FBI, not the CIA, and that is not how the CIA recruited the Mafia. The movie Sugartime is based on Roemer's 1989 book, Man Against the Mob.

William F. Roemer Jr then joined the FBI in 1950 and served there for 30 years before retiring in 1980. When J. Edgar Hoover created the Bureau's Top Hoodlum Program in 1957, Roemer was personally selected for the task. The program consisted of surveillance of organized crime figures. Roemer also developed (or tried to develop, "flip") several mob informants. Richard Cain, a disgraced former cop turned mafioso, was one of those. With his efforts, he helped the Feds put away Outfit bosses like Sam "Teets" Bataglia and Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio within a year of their rise to leadership. Roemer also tried over a period of time to "flip" Outfit "hitman" Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti, to no avail. Roemer was indirectly related to the death of William "Action" Jackson who was the victim of a grisly gangland murder after Roemer was observed trying to make Jackson an informant and the Chicago Outfit suspected him of snitching. Roemer relocated to Arizona and was assigned to Joe Bonanno, and helped the FBI convict him. Roemer mentions how he had to go through Bonanno's trash to obtain torn pieces of paper written by Bonanno outlining his daily agenda and having to wiretap the different phone booths Bonanno used to relay his messages.

William Roemer was born on June 26, 1926 in Indiana, USA.

William F. Roemer Jr. was born in Indiana to William F. Roemer (March 4, 1894 – September 25, 1971), a former Jesuit seminarian, and Carmel Luther Roemer (May 7, 1904 – April 23, 1980).