Salvatore Giancana was a Sicilian American mobster, notable as being boss of the criminal Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966.
Background
Giancana was born on May 24, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Antonino Giangana, a Sicilian immigrant street peddler, and Antonia DiSimone. The family lived in a tenement on South Aberdeen Street in a neighborhood known as "The Patch, " west of downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Career
By Giancana's late teens he was head of a violent street gang known as "The 42's, " which carried out beatings and other tasks for more established gangsters. Giancana became a driver, or "wheelman, " in the underworld wars that racked Chicago in the 1920's. His first arrest and conviction came in 1925, for auto theft. Before he was twenty he had been arrested in three murder investigations, one for the slaying of a black man who ran for committeeman in the largely Italian Twentieth Ward. By 1963 Giancana had been arrested sixty times and had served prison sentences for auto theft, burglary, and moonshining. After his release from prison in 1932, he came to the attention of Paul ("The Waiter") Ricca, a figure of growing importance in the organization of Al Capone. Giancana became Ricca's chauffeur, and when Ricca went to prison in 1944, Giancana became the driver for his successor, Anthony Accardo. Giancana was declared 4F (unfit for service) at the beginning of World War II, after a Selective Service interviewer concluded he was a "constitutional psychopath with an inadequate personality manifested by strong antisocial trends. " Giancana's wartime businesses included the forging of rationing stamps, and by 1945 he had moved with his wife and daughters to the affluent suburb of Oak Park. Giancana took over the illegal lottery gambling operation of a black man he had met in prison and led other Italian-American mobsters in the seizure of several numbers operations in Chicago's black neighborhoods. He attended the alleged Mafia conclave at Appalachin, New York, in 1957, but escaped through the woods before state police closed in. When Anthony Accardo began stepping back from mob operations in the late 1950's, Giancana emerged as the most visible boss in "The Outfit, " as the Chicago Mafia was known, and one of the most celebrated criminals in America. He personified the Mafia's emergence from the relatively minor rackets of Italian urban ghettos and its infiltration of labor unions, gambling casinos and legitimate businesses. The new mob often relied more on corrupt politicians and police than on its own thugs. Giancana held a hidden interest in several gambling casinos, provided capital for loan sharks and bookmakers, settled underworld disputes, and extorted tribute from less powerful mobsters. Giancana bragged of his friendship with singer Frank Sinatra, and he and McGuire were frequent guests at a Lake Tahoe casino, half of which was owned by Sinatra. Sinatra eventually sold his interest in the casino after being confronted by the Nevada State Gaming Commission. Giancana became one of the most conspicuous targets of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's assault on organized crime in 1961, and two years later FBI agents began to follow him around the clock. When he sued the Justice Department to stop it, the attendant publicity made his Oak Park home a tourist attraction. He eventually lost the case. Robert Kennedy's campaign against Giancana was somewhat ironic. His brother John had been elected president in 1960, thanks partially to massive vote fraud in sections of Chicago under the political sway of The Outfit. In 1965 Giancana was sentenced to a year in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in Chicago. Upon his release, Giancana left the country and lived in Mexico until 1974. When he returned to Chicago he again was subpoenaed by a grand jury; he appeared on four occasions, but apparently said nothing of substance. He was also subpoenaed by a Senate committee that was looking into the various CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. On the night of June 19, 1975, a few days before he was to testify before the Senate committee in Washington, Giancana was preparing a snack in the basement of his Oak Park home. Someone with a . 22 caliber pistol killed him with a shot in the back of the head, and then pumped six more bullets into him. The Chicago Crime Commission later identified three possible motives: Giancana had tried to reclaim his old rackets in Chicago; he had refused to share profits from his foreign operations; or someone feared he would cooperate with the Senate committee. No arrest was ever made in his murder.
Achievements
Membership
Member of the Chicago Outfit
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Although Giancana was described by a former FBI agent in 1983 as "a tough, swaggering, flamboyant murderer, " Giancana possessed what biographer William Brashler described as "a beguiling, lilting charm. "
Connections
Giancana married Angeline DeTolve on September 26, 1933; they would have three daughters. After his wife's death in 1954, he became a notorious ladies' man. His most famous affair was with Phyllis McGuire, youngest member of the McGuire Sisters, whom he met in Las Vegas in 1960.