| Intro | American mobster and hitman |
| A.K.A. | Momo Giancana |
| Was | Criminal Mobster Gangster |
| From | United States of America |
| Type | Crime |
| Gender | male |
| Birth | 15 June 1908, Chicago, United States of America |
| Death | 18 June 1975, Oak Park, United States of America (aged 67 years) |
Sam Giancana (born Salvatore Giangana; June 15, 1908 – June 18, 1975), was a Sicilian American mobster, known for being the boss of the criminal Chicago Outfit from 1957 to 1966.
Table of Contents
Early life
Giancana was born on June 15, 1908, in The Patch on Chicago’s West Side to Sicilian immigrants from Partanna, in the province of Trapani. His father Antonino (later simplified to Antonio) Giangana, owned a pushcart and briefly an Italian ice shop, which was later firebombed by criminal rivals of his son.
Criminal career
Sam 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. The Outfit was initially wary of the 42ers, thinking them too wild. But Giancana’s reputation gained him the notice of Outfit 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. 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.
Family
Giancana married Angelina DeTolve, the daughter of immigrants from the Italian region of Basilicata, on September 23, 1933. They had three daughters, Antoinette, Bonnie, and Francine. His wife died in 1954, leaving him to raise his daughters. Giancana never remarried and was known as a good family man, despite frequent infidelities. All of the Giancana daughters have married at least once. As of 1984 at least one daughter, Antoinette, had taken the Giancana name again after her divorce.
Rise to power
During 1945, after serving a sentence at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana (during which he told his children he was away at college), 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 Lennard “Fat Lennie” Caifano, a made man of Giancana’s crew.
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 when Accardo resigned as front boss to become consigliere in 1957. But it was generally understood that Accardo and Ricca still had the real power. Giancana was required to consult them on all important Outfit affairs. No major business transactions, and certainly no “hits,” were performed without their approval.
Giancana was present at the Mafia’s 1957 Apalachin meeting at the Upstate New York estate of Joseph Barbara. Later, Buffalo crime boss Stefano Magaddino and Giancana were overheard by 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”.
Some journalists claimed that Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate “played a role” in John F. Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 presidential election.
Alleged CIA connections
It is widely reputed and was partially corroborated by the Church Committee hearings that during the Kennedy administration, the Central Intelligence Agency (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”. Documents released in 2017 showed the Giancana connection to CIA and to Robert Maheu.
Judith Exner claimed to be the mistress of both Giancana and JFK, and that she delivered communications between them about Castro. But Giancana’s daughter Antoinette has said that her father was performing a scam to pocket millions of CIA dollars.
Documents released during 1997 revealed that some Mafiosi worked with CIA on assassination attempts against Castro. CIA documents released during 2007 confirmed that during the summer of 1960, CIA recruited ex-FBI agent 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/Miami syndicate boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in prerevolution Cuba. 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.”
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.
According to the “Family Jewels”, Giancana asked Maheu to wire the room of his then mistress Phyllis McGuire, 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. Giancana and McGuire, who had a long-lasting affair, were originally introduced by Frank Sinatra. According to Antoinette Giancana, during part of the affair, McGuire had a concurrent affair with President Kennedy.
Downfall
Giancana’s behavior was too high-profile for Outfit preferences and attracted too much federal scrutiny. He also refused to share his lavish profits from offshore casinos in Iran and Central America with his subordinates. Both of these factors resulted in much resentment among the Outfit’s rank-and-file.
Giancana was the subject of many hours of wiretaps. On one, he was heard to say, “We’re whacking a lot of the wrong guys lately.”
When Giancana was called before a grand jury during 1966, he was ordered to stay silent, which put him in prison for more than a year. Meanwhile, Giancana was deposed as operational boss by Ricca and Accardo, and replaced by Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa.
International gambling success and dispute with the Outfit
After arriving in Mexico, Giancana managed to make money from various gambling operations, among them in Iran.
When Tony Accardo demanded that he give a share of the profits to The Outfit, Giancana refused, claiming that he did it all by himself and outside the Outfit’s jurisdiction. In response, Accardo asked someone to “explain him the facts of life. And I mean life.” Giancana, however, remained adamant and refused to pay.
After his release from prison, Giancana relocated to Cuernavaca, Mexico in order to avoid further grand jury questioning. He was arrested by Mexican authorities on July 19, 1974, and deported to the United States. He arrived back in Chicago on July 21, 1974.
Giancana had another meeting with the Outfit with no resolution. The Outfit requested he give them a share of his money, and he refused.
Death
After Giancana’s return to the U.S., the 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, which was investigating CIA and Cosa Nostra collusion, someone recalled the police detail. A gunman later entered Giancana’s basement kitchen and shot him in the back of the head as he was frying sausage and peppers. After Giancana fell to the floor, the gunman turned him over and shot him six more times in the face and neck. Investigators suspected the murderer was someone known to Giancana because, due to his heart condition, he would not eat rich foods and was therefore cooking for another.
Giancana was interred next to his wife, Angelina, 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.” 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.”
Other theory
Although longtime associate Dominic “Butch” Blasi was with Giancana the night he was murdered and questioned by police as a suspect, neither the FBI nor Antoinette Giancana considers him Giancana’s killer. Hitman Nicholas Calabrese told the FBI during the 2000s that he knew that Tony Accardo was part of the killing, and Angelo LaPietra got rid of the gun which used a suppressor made by Frank Calabrese, Sr. and Ronnie Jarret.
Another theory is that Santo Trafficante, Jr., the boss of the Trafficante crime family, ordered Giancana’s murder due to fears he was going to testify about the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA plots to kill Castro. Although Trafficante would have needed permission from Outfit bosses Accardo and Joseph Aiuppa, Giancana’s murder coincided with the discovery of the decomposing remains of Johnny Roselli in an oil drum floating off Miami; he had been shot and chopped up before being dumped in the sea. The killing was suspected to have been committed on Trafficante’s orders.
Despite rumors that CIA may have killed Giancana because of his links to the agency, former CIA Director William Colby has said, “we had nothing to do with it”.
In popular culture
Movies
- Giancana played a major role in the J. X. Williams movie Peep Show (1965).
- The HBO made-for-TV movie Sugartime (1995) depicts Giancana’s relationship with singer Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, with Giancana played by John Turturro.
- Peter Friedman played Giancana in the movie Power and Beauty (2002).
- Robert Miranda played Giancana in the television movie The Rat Pack (1998).
- Carmine Caridi played Giancana in the movie Ruby (1992).
- News footage of Giancana is featured in the movie JFK (1991).
- Giancana is portrayed with the name “Joseph Palmi” in the movie The Good Shepherd (2006), featuring Matt Damon. Palmi may be a mix of the several other mobsters (Santo Trafficante, Jr., Carlos Marcello, etc.) involved with the operation. Damon’s character, Edward Wilson, is depicted proposing that Palmi (Joe Pesci) assist in the assassination of Castro. Pesci also played Nicky Santoro in Casino, a character based on Tony Spilotro.
Literature
- Giancana is a major character in Max Allan Collins’s novels Chicago Confidential and Road to Paradise.
- Giancana plays a major role in James Ellroy’s fiction, most notably American Tabloid and its sequels The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s a Rover.
- Giancana is the subject of the biography Mafia Princess, written by his daughter Antoinette. The book was later adapted into the TV film Mafia Princess (1986), starring Tony Curtis as Giancana.
- Giancana is a character in Robert Randisi’s Rat Pack novels.
- Giancana is a notable character in Norman Mailer’s historical fiction Harlot’s Ghost.
- The fictional character “Sam” in Steve Peters and Kay Stephens’s novel The Outlaw Sandra Love (2013) is based on Giancana.
- The fictional character Louie Russo in Mark Winegardner’s novel The Godfather Returns may be based on Giancana.
- The book Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America tells the story of Giancana’s life. Written by his brother Chuck Giancana, and his godson and namesake Sam Giancana, the book includes revelations about the deaths of JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and RFK.
- In the 2013 novel The Outlaw, the protagonist Sandra Love is said to have had a four-year relationship with a man named Sam, the head of the Chicago Outfit during the early 1960s.
Music
- Influential rapper Kool G Rap once stated that the “G” in his name stands for Giancana. Kool G Rap released an album called The Giancana Story (2002).
- Giancana may be mentioned in the Shyne song “Edge”, on his second album, Godfather Buried Alive. “Fuck comma rap’s, Sam Giancana”, although this is sometimes rendered as “same G and canna”.
- Giancana is mentioned in the song “Dope money” by The Lox. “Bring Drama ’cause Giancana got Kennedy Killed”. “Dope money” is the sixth track on The Lox’s second album, Ryde or Die Vol. 1.
Television
- Giancana features in the first episode of the documentary series Mafia’s Greatest Hits, on the UK history TV channel Yesterday.
- Rod Steiger portrayed Giancana in the TV miniseries Sinatra (1992).
- Serge Houde portrays Giancana as a major nemesis of the Kennedy family in the television miniseries The Kennedys (2011).
- The character Mob Man (uncredited) from The X-Files episode “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”, who is present at a planning meeting on the assassination of JFK, is likely based on Giancana.
- Giancana is portrayed by Emmett Skilton in the 8-part AMC television miniseries The Making of the Mob: Chicago (2016).
- Giancana’s image is included in the opening credits of the Starz TV series Magic City (2012-13).
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