Sam Giancana

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Sam Giancana
Born June 15, 1908
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died June 19, 1975
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Sam "Momo" Giancana (June 15, 1908 — June 19, 1975) was a famous and powerful mafioso and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-66. Among his nicknames included "Mo", "Mooney" and "Sam the Cigar"

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[edit] Early life

Born Momo Salvatore Guingano (Americanised to Giancana} in Little Italy, Chicago. Sam Giancana was arrested more than 70 times in his life. However, he was imprisoned only twice. Giancana's nickname "Momo" was derived from the slang term "Mooney" (which meant "crazy") as Giancana had long had a reputation for unstable and unpredictably violent behavior.

[edit] Criminal career

Giancana began his criminal career in the 1920s on Chicago's West Side when he was recruited into a violent street gang called "The 42s"[1] He soon developed a reputation for being an excellent getaway driver, a high earner and vicious killer. These qualities gained him the notice of Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, then boss of the Chicago Outfit.

After serving a term in the Illinois State Prison System, Giancana made a name for himself by forcing Chicago's African-American bookmakers to pay a "street tax" to the Outfit. Giancana's crew is believed to have been responsible for the murder of Teddy Roe, an African-American mob boss from the South Side, Chicago. Roe had allegedly refused to pay the street tax Giancana had demanded and had fatally shot a member of Giancana's crew.

The amount of money that the Southside gambling war had produced for the Outfit was staggering and brought him further notice. It is believed to be have been a major factor in his being anointed as the Outfit's new boss when Tony Accardo retired in 1962.

[edit] Possible Intelligence Connections

It is widely reputed and partially uncovered in the Church Committee Hearings Giancana and other mobsters had been recruited by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who had taken power in January 1959. Giancana was himself reported to have said that the CIA and the Mafia are "different sides of the same coin." It is also widely reputed that at roughly the same time Joseph P. Kennedy recruited Giancana to help mobilize labor union voter and financial support behind his son, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy in the latter's bid to secure the Democratic nomination for the 1960 Presidential election.

There are also strong suggestions that during his presidency, JFK maintained close links with Giancana and the Chicago Outfit as he continued the practice of covertly using the Mafia in a bid to assassinate Castro. The two men also shared the same lover, Los Angeles socialite Judith Campbell who allegedly acted as a courier between the two men, passing both money and information.

[edit] Downfall

Giancana was forced to step down as boss of the Outfit in 1966. The reasons are believed to have been because of his refusal to share the profits of his casinos in Central America and Tehran with his subbordinates. This was a major violation of Outfit protocol.

There was also his excessively high-profile personal behavior (openly associating with various popular entertainers like singers Phyllis McGuire and Frank Sinatra) and his serious legal problems. These problems were serious enough to have had the FBI place Giancana under close, intense and relentless surveillance.

In response to these setbacks, the dethroned Giancana spent the next seven years (1967-74) in exile on a lavish estate in Cuernavaca, Mexico until the Mexican government (under pressure from the US Justice Department) had him deported to the United States.

[edit] Murder Victim

Shortly after returning to Chicago, Giancana was murdered on 19 June 1975 while frying Italian sausage and peppers in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. His murder took place shortly before he was scheduled to appear before a Senate committee investigating CIA and Mafia links to plots to kill Fidel Castro.

The unknown assassin somehow slipped past the surveillance of the house by the FBI and the Chicago police and shot Giancana in the head seven times with a silenced .22 caliber handgun. Some have alleged that the CIA was responsible for the shooting as Giancana had a somewhat troubled history with the agency. However, CIA Director William Colby has been quoted as saying, "We had nothing to do with it."

Most investigators believe Colby's claim, suggesting that it seems much more likely that Giancana's onetime friend and Chicago Outfit boss Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa ordered the hit on the disgraced former Godfather.

Giancana had reportedly continued in his refusal to share the profits from his offshore gambling operations. According to former Outfit associate Michael J. Corbitt, Aiuppa seized control of Giancana's casinos in the aftermath of the murder. It is widely believed that longtime friend and associate Dominick "Butch" Blasi was his assassin. Other suspects are Harry Aleman, Chuckie English, and Anthony Spilotro.

Giancana was interred next to his wife in a family mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery (Hillside) in Hillside, Illinois.

[edit] In popular culture

Giancana is the subject of several biographies, one of which, Mafia Princess, was written by his daughter Antoinette and filmed in a poorly reviewed TV movie starring Tony Curtis as Giancana. A 1995 HBO movie named Sugartime depicts Giancana's relationship with Phyllis McGuire of The McGuire Sisters, with Sam being played by John Turturro. Other movie portrayals of Giancana include Oscar winner Rod Steiger in the miniseries Sinatra and Robert Miranda in the HBO movie The Rat Pack. Cable company TNT is working on a six hour miniseries of the life of Sam Giancana.

[edit] Further reading

  • Brashler, William. The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1977. ISBN 0-06-010447-3
  • Giancana, Sam and Chuck. Double Cross: The Explosive, inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. New York: Warner Books, 1992. ISBN 0-446-51624-4
  • Giancana, Antoinette and Renner, Thomas C. Mafia Princess. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1984.
  • Hersh, Seymour M. Dark Side of Camelot. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997. ISBN 0-316-35955-6
  • Morgan, John M. Prince of Crime. New York: Stein and Day, 1985.
  • Nash, Jay Robert. Bloodletters and Badmen. New York: M. Evans & Co. 1973.
  • Sifakis, Carl. Encyclopedia of Crime. New York: Facts On File, 1982. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
  • Zion, Sidney. Loyalty and Betrayal: The Story of the American Mob. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1994.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Anthony Accardo		 Chicago Outfit Boss
1957-1966		 Succeeded by
Sam Battaglia
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/a/m/Sam_Giancana_e2c7.html"