Sam Giancana

Giancana was born Gilormo Giangana[nb 1] on May 24, 1908,[nb 2] in The Patch neighborhood of Chicago to Antonio Giangana and Antonia DeSimmona,[nb 3] Italian immigrants from Castelvetrano, Sicily, Italy. His father immigrated in 1905, while his mother immigrated in 1906;[7] he had seven siblings.[2] Antonia died in 1910 and his father married Mary Leonardi.[8] On September 23, 1933, Giancana married Angeline DeTolve, the daughter of immigrants from the Italian region of Basilicata. They had three daughters, Antoinette born 1935, Bonnie born 1938, and Francine born 1945.[2] Angeline died on April 23, 1954, leaving him to raise his daughters.[9][2]

Giancana joined the 42 Gang, a juvenile street crew working for political boss Joseph Esposito. (The 42 Gang's name was a reference to Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. They thought they were one better, hence 42) Giancana soon developed a reputation as an excellent getaway driver, a high earner, and a vicious killer. After Esposito's murder, in which Giancana was allegedly involved, the 42 Gang was transformed into a de facto extension of the Chicago Outfit with leaders such as Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti, Paul "the Waiter" Ricca, and Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo. He was first arrested in 1925, for auto theft. He soon graduated to "triggerman", and by the age of 20 had been the prime subject of three murder investigations, but never tried for any of them.[10] In 1929, Giancana was convicted of burglary and larceny, and sentenced to one to five years in the Joliet Correctional Center. He was released in 1932, after serving three years and nine months.[11]

During the late 1930s, Giancana became the first 42er to join the Chicago Outfit. From the early 1940s through the 1950s, he controlled most of the illegal gambling, illegal liquor distribution, and numerous other political rackets in Louisiana through longtime friend H. A. (Hol) Killian. Killian controlled the majority of the liquor license issuance by his associations with longtime New Orleans business associate Carlos Marcello. In 1939 Giancana was convicted of bootlegging, and sentenced to four years in Leavenworth Prison and Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex.[11]

After his release from prison in 1942, Giancana made a name for himself by convincing Accardo, then the Outfit's underboss, to stage a takeover of Chicago's African-American "policy" (lottery) payout system for the Outfit. Giancana's crew is believed to have been responsible for convincing Eddie Jones to quit his racket and leave the country. Giancana's crew was also responsible for the August 4, 1952 murder of African-American gambling boss Theodore Roe. Both Jones and Roe were major South Side gambling bosses. Roe had refused to surrender control of his operation as the Outfit had demanded, and on June 19, 1951, Roe fatally shot Leonard "Fat Lennie" Caifano, a made man of Giancana's crew.[12]

The Outfit's South Side "policy"-game takeover was not complete until another Outfit member, Jackie "the Lackey" Cerone, scared "Big Jim" Martin to Mexico with two bullets to the head that did not kill him. When the lottery money started rolling in for the Outfit after this gambling war, the amount this game produced for the Outfit was in the millions of dollars a year and brought Giancana further notice. It is believed to have been a major factor in his being "anointed" as the Outfit's new boss in 1957. Accardo joined Ricca in semi-retirement, becoming the Outfit's consigliere.[13] However, it was generally understood that Accardo and Ricca still had the real power. Giancana was required to consult Accardo and Ricca on all important Outfit affairs.

Giancana was present at the Mafia's 1957 Apalachin meeting at the Upstate New York estate of Joseph Barbara.[14] Later, Buffalo crime boss Stefano Magaddino and Giancana were overheard on a wiretap saying the meeting should have occurred in the Chicago area. Giancana claimed that the Chicago area was "the safest place in the world" for a major underworld meeting because he had several police chiefs on his payroll. If the syndicate ever wanted to hold a meeting in or around Chicago, Giancana said, they had nothing to fear because they had the area "locked up tight".[15]

Some journalists claimed that Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate "played a role" in John F. Kennedy's victory in the 1960 presidential election.[16][17]

Hyman Larner was an associate of Giancana's who helped expand the Outfit's gambling and smuggling operations to Panama and Iran,[18] moving the Miami operation's headquarters to Panama where money laundering was more easily facilitated by local banks. These operations were conducted as a partnership between the Mafia and the CIA. By 1966, this partnership had developed into arms smuggling to the Middle East for the Israeli Mossad, all via Panama.[19] Richard Cain, a corrupt police officer, also made "frequent trips" to and from Mexico as Giancana's courier and financial adviser.[20]

It is widely reputed and was partially corroborated by the Church Committee hearings that during the Kennedy administration, the CIA recruited Giancana and other mobsters to assassinate Fidel Castro. Giancana reportedly said that CIA and the Cosa Nostra were "different sides of the same coin".[21]

Judith Exner claimed to be the mistress of both Giancana and JFK, and that she delivered communications between them about Castro.[22] Giancana's daughter Antoinette has stated that her father was performing a scam to pocket millions of CIA dollars.[23]

Documents released during 1997 revealed that some Mafiosi worked with CIA on assassination attempts against Castro.[24] CIA documents released during 2007 confirmed that during September 1960, CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu to meet with the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob, Johnny Roselli. When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid that he was sent by CIA, instead portraying himself an advocate for international corporations. He offered $150,000 to have Castro killed, but Roselli refused any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he called Sam Gold and Joe. "Sam Gold" was Giancana; "Joe" was Santo Trafficante Jr., the Tampa syndicate boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in prerevolution Cuba.[25] Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, CIA was desperate to eliminate Castro. So, the agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castro—the Mafia, which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos".[26]

According to the declassified CIA "Family Jewels" documents, Giancana and Trafficante were contacted in September 1960 about the possibility of an assassination attempt by Maheu after Maheu had contacted Roselli, a Mafia member in Las Vegas and Giancana's number-two man. Maheu had presented himself as a representative of numerous international businesses in Cuba that Castro was expropriating. He offered $150,000 for the "removal" of Castro through this operation (the documents suggest that neither Roselli, Giancana, nor Trafficante accepted any payment for the job). Giancana suggested using poison pills to dose Castro's food and drink. CIA gave these pills to Giancana's nominee, Juan Orta, whom Giancana presented as a corrupt official in the new Cuban government and who had access to Castro. After six attempts to introduce the poison into Castro's food, Orta abruptly demanded to be relieved from the mission, giving the job to another, unnamed participant. Later, Giancana and Trafficante made a second attempt using Anthony Verona, the commander of the Cuban Exile Junta, who had, according to Trafficante, become "disaffected with the apparent ineffectual progress of the Junta". Verona requested $10,000 in expenses and $1,000 worth of communications equipment. How much work was performed for the second attempt is unknown, as the entire program was canceled soon thereafter due to the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.[27][28][29]

According to the "Family Jewels", Giancana asked Maheu to wire the room of his then mistress Phyllis McGuire, singer of the McGuire Sisters, whom he suspected of having an affair with comedian Dan Rowan. Although documents suggest Maheu acquiesced, the device was not planted due to the arrest of the agent who had been tasked with planting it. According to the documents, Robert F. Kennedy prohibited the prosecution of the agent and of Maheu, who was soon linked to the wire attempt, at CIA's request.[29] Giancana and McGuire, who had a long-lasting affair, were originally introduced by Frank Sinatra.[30] According to Antoinette Giancana, during part of the affair, McGuire had a concurrent affair with President Kennedy.[31]

When Giancana was called before a grand jury on June 1, 1965, he remained silent despite being granted immunity, which resulted in his jailing for contempt for more than a year, the duration of the grand jury.[32] Meanwhile, Giancana was deposed as operational boss by Ricca and Accardo, and replaced by Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa.[33]

After his release from prison in 1966, Giancana fled to Cuernavaca, Mexico in order to avoid further grand jury questioning.[34][35] He was arrested by Mexican authorities on July 19, 1974, and deported to the United States.[34][35] He arrived back in Chicago on July 21, 1974.[36]

Giancana mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery

After Giancana's return to the United States, police detailed officers to guard his house in Oak Park, Illinois, but on the night of June 19, 1975, shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the Church Committee,[37] which was investigating CIA and Cosa Nostra collusion,[38] a gunman entered the home through the basement and shot Giancana in the head and neck seven times with a .22 caliber pistol. At around 11 p.m., Joseph DiPersio, Giancana's caretaker, found his body on the floor of the basement kitchen where he was said to be frying sausage and peppers.[39][40] A week before his death, Giancana had gall bladder surgery in Houston.[39] Giancana was interred next to his wife, Angeline, in a family mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery, in Hillside, Illinois.

Within days of Giancana's murder, Michael J. Corbitt, the police chief of Willow Springs, Illinois, and a mobster associate, was told by Chicago Outfit's capo Salvatore Bastone that "Sam sure loved that little guy in Oak Park... Tony Spilotro. Yeah, he was fuckin' crazy about him. Sam put Tony on the fuckin' map, thought he was gonna be a big fuckin' man someday. Did you know that after Marshall Caifano got out of Vegas, it was Sam who wanted Tony Spilotro out there? Even lately, with all the problems with the skim and all, Sam always stood behind the guy. Tony was over to Sam's house all the time. He lived right by there. Did you know Tony even figured out a way where he could get in through the back of Sam's place without anybody seeing him? He'd go through other people's yards, go over fences, all sorts of shit".[41] When Corbitt asked for the reason for the murder, Bastone quipped, "There's never just one reason for shit like what happened to Sam. There's a million of 'em. Let's just say that Sam should've remembered what happened to Bugsy Siegel".[41]

• List of unsolved murders

• Giancana, Sam; Giancana, Chuck; Giancana, Bettina (March 20, 1992). Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. ISBN 9780446516242. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
• Giancana, Antoinette; Renner, Thomas C. (1984). Mafia Princess: Growing Up in Sam Giancana's Family. Morrow. ISBN 0-380-69849-8. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
• Godwin, John (1978). Murder U.S.A.: The Ways We Kill Each Other. Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-27721-3. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
• Roemer, William F. Jr. (1995). Accardo: The Genuine Godfather. D.I. Fine. ISBN 978-1-55611-467-0. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
• Organized Crime in Chicago: Hearing Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, March 4, 1983. U.S. Government Printing Office. March 4, 1983. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
• Brashler, William (1977). The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-010447-3.
• Cain, Michael J. (2007). The Tangled Web. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60239-044-7.
• Dark, Tony (2004). The FBI Files Sam Giancana. Chicago: H H Productions. ISBN 0-615-12720-7.
• Hersh, Seymour M. (1997). Dark Side of Camelot. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-35955-6.
• Inserra, Vincent L. (2014). C-1 and the Chicago Mob. Xlibris. ISBN 978-1-4931-8278-7.
• Morgan, John M. (1985). Prince of Crime. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 0-8128-8297-0.
• Nash, Jay Robert (1973). Bloodletters and Badmen. New York: M. Evans & Co. ISBN 0-87131-777-X.
• Sifakis, Carl (1982). Encyclopedia of Crime. New York: Facts On File. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3.
• Talbot, David (2007). Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. Free Press. ISBN 978-0-7432-6918-6.
• Thompson, Nathan (2003). Kings: The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers: an Informal History. The Bronzeville Press. ISBN 0-9724875-0-6.
• Zion, Sidney (1994). Loyalty and Betrayal: The Story of the American Mob. San Francisco: Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-00-638271-1.