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Behind the Gemstone Files |
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The
Skeleton Key AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
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UPDATED
January 01, 2003 02:17 PM
Chicago gangster and racketeer. He started his criminal career as a gun runner for Al Capone in 1925. Giancana was arrested countless times on charges such as bookmaking, gambling, assault to kill, burglary, larceny, bombing and suspicion of murder. He was imprisoned for auto theft (30 days), operation of an illegal still (four years), burglary (5 years), and contempt of a federal grand jury (one year). In the early 1960s Giancana was considered head of the Chicago Mafia. He was thought to be involved in alleged CIA plots to assassinate Cuban premier Fidel Castro. An unknown gunman shot and killed Giancana in his Chicago home. Born 1908 - died 1975. TIMELINE: Double Cross May 24, 1908 - Momo Salvatore "Jimmy" Giancana, son of Antonio and Antonia Giancana, was born in Chicago's "Little Italy", a neighborhood also known "the Patch." 1931 - Charles "Lucky" Luciano seized power in New York, but was arrested five years later on charges of compulsory prostitution. Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey went after him and he was found guilty on 90 counts of direction of harlotry and extortion, and sentenced to 30-50 years in Clinton State Penitentiary. Frank Costello took control. Feb. 15, 1933 - Picking a nutcase was "as old as the Sicilian hills." Cermak had been mayor of Chicago and a Capone rival. "A real double-crosser," Mooney said. For years, he'd waged war on Capone on behalf of another mobster named Teddy Newberry. After an unsuccessful attempt on Capone enforcer Frank Nitti by Cermak henchmen in 1932, Paul Ricca, Capone's successor, turned the tables, killing Newberry. Cermak fled to Florida in 1932, in fear for his life. Ricca enlisted "a real patsy" named Joe Zangora to hit Cermak. Zangora, 33, had been sponsored by Diamond Joe from Sicily just five years earlier and had been put in Florida to work the sugar runs from Cuba. A sharpshooter in the Italian army and a heavy gambler, Zangora was deeply in debt and in trouble with his Chicago bosses. He was given a choice - hit Cermak or die. While riding in an open car with President-elect Teddy Roosevelt in Miami, Cermak was shot and Zangora was quickly caught. He immediately began spouting anti-capitalist political pablum, claiming he had missed his real target (though Roosevelt had been wounded). His political rants were a smoke screen; he had no connection to communism or fascism but, Sam said, was actually "a goddamned registered Republican." His Chicago syndicate connections escaped the attention of the press and were covered up by the paid-off cops and investigators. Three weeks later, Cermak died. Zangora was convicted of murder and sent to the electric chair. "Nice and neat," Sam grinned. "Nice and neat." Dec. 5, 1933 - Prohibition ends. 1934 - The Chicago gang became more ambitious and daring. Ricca, Nitti and Humphreys claimed to have gotten a foothold in Hollywood by financially backing fellow bootlegger Joe Kennedy's successful entry into the motion picture industry. They took their union rackets national, placing George Browne and Willie Bioff in power as president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators, giving Chicago absolute supremacy over Hollywood's film industry. To oversee California Ricca sent handsome, smooth-talking Johnny Roselli to negotiate millions in extortion. The Outfit sponsored stars like the Marx Brothers, George Raft, Jimmy Durante, Marie McDonald, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Jean Harlow, Cary Grant and Wendy Barrie - to name just a few. (3:101) In the early 1930s two minor Chicago labor racketeers, Willie Bioff and George E. Browne, began extorting money from local theater owners. Under the guise of donating money to area soup kitchens to feed the city’s Depression victims, the two men hit up one theater chain for $20,000. While celebrating this coup, Bioff and Browne got drunk and mouthed off in front of Chicago hood Nick Circella, alias Nick Dean, about their financial windfall. The two loud mouths soon became "employees" of the Chicago Outfit. With the backing of the Chicago mob Browne became president of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators. The membership consisted of motion picture employees, from stagehands and technicians in Hollywood to projectionists at local movie houses. Bioff and Browne extorted from, and dictated to, the biggest names in Hollywood’s motion picture industry including Louis B. Mayer and the Warner brothers. (The Guileless Gangster) 1935 - As for Huey Long, he had worked closely with the Outfit on everything from slot machines to casinos and became partners with Carlos Marcello in New Orleans, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in New York, Santos Trafficante in Florida and Paul Ricca in Chicago. But by 1935, Long had "gotten out of hand" and another loony assassin was dispatched. Long became too greedy, demanding over $3 million a year in payoffs from his "friends." "He was cutting into profits ... greed killed Huey Long," Sam said in January 1936. "It'll get you every time. Always remember, any profit is a good profit and always have somethin' for the other guy. That's what Long forgot." January 1936 - Sam "Mooney" Giancana started discussing politics. Everyone thought FDR was the finest man ever elected. "Yeah, he's the perfect president all right," Sam said. "He's on our side." "On our side?" Chuck asked. "The gang's, Chuck ... the gang's. If he wasn't, he'd be dead ... like Cermak. Like Huey Long. Plain and simple, we'd take him out. ... Long was on the take for years. Some of our friends in New York had him hit ... worked it out with a New Orleans boss. They figured it out so it would look like a loony did it. All the papers picked it up." He laughed. "You know, you'd think people would catch on." 1937 - Having made his successful push for power, Paul Ricca had nearly every local, county and state politician eating out of his hand. He also claimed to be a welcome guest at the White House, granting and requesting favors with equal aplomb. Giancana was captivated by the "style" of Ricca and Humphreys, listening intently as they planned everything from political fixes to murder to getting fellow bootlegger Joe Kennedy out of a nearly fatal scrape with Detroit's Jewish Mafia, the Purple Gang. The Purple Gang had put out a contract on Kennedy for bringing bootleg rum through their territory without permission. Kennedy, fearful for his life, went to Chicago to beg Esposito to intervene. Sam himself had watched as Esposita, Ricca and Humphreys toyed with the snobbish, aristocratic and aloof Boston mick before Esposito finally put in the phone call that save Kennedy's life. From then on, Joseph P. Kennedy was in the Outfit's eternal debt. (3:104-105) Summer 1937 - Aside from the growing union rackets, the Syndicate still cooked up the alky, but now they were selling it to licensed distributors - like Joe Kennedy. "Much of Joe Kennedy's so-called fancy scotch was, in fact, not so fancy after all, but rebottled still alcohol. 'One hand washes the other,' Paul Ricca told Mooney [Sam Giancana]. 'And right now, one of those hands is empty....all the distributors want cheap booze...and to give it to 'em, we need more stills and more alky.'" (3:120-121) Sam sent a soldier, Guido Gentile, to find some property out in the country - "way, way out, Guido." He found a "godforsaken place" in Garden Prairie, Illinois. January 1938 - Nine soldiers from the Patch were feeding the stills, cranking it out to feed the insatiable "legal" distributors, producing enough to supply connections along the East Coast to Boston (Joe Kennedy), north to Milwaukee and Detroit, and across to Cleveland. Giancana had more money than he'd ever seen in his life. (3:121) May 23, 1941 - Willie Bioff, one-time pimp and union thug, and George Browne were investigated for tax fraud in skimming money from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators (IATSEMPO) and Bioff was indicted. (Bioff Era- The IA's Dark Years). The control exercised by the Syndicate in the IATSEMPO would touch the lives of all those mentioned in the Gemstone Files - Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes, Joe Kennedy, Eugene Meyer, the Roosevelt sons. Joe Schenck (who "discovered Marilyn Monroe) was also nabbed and admitted more than "half a million dollars into [Franklin] Roosevelt's campaign for the Syndicate through Postmaster General Farley." Schenck was at the time a producer at Twentieth-Century -Fox. Roosevelt, according to Giancana, later repaid this debt by making labor gangster and Amalgamated CLothing Workers President Sidney Hillman a frequent White House guest and his most prominent labor advisor. In addition, Roosevelt promised to make "their boy" Harry Truman chairman of the Democratic National Committee and his vice-presidential running mate. Giancana said the Syndicate was afraid Bioff would start talking and, as a result, his life "wasn't worth two cents." Bioff did talk. On November 4, 1955, Retiree "William Nelson" who had lived rather quietly in his then-rural East Bethany Home Road neighborhood for six years died rather noisily. He walked out to his driveway, slipped behind the wheel of his pickup truck and turned the ignition key setting off a bomb that shattered windows three blocks away. Law officers never had any doubts about why "Nelson," actually former Al Capone henchman WILLIE BIOFF, was murdered; the extortionist had signed his own death certificate years earlier when he ratted on mob colleagues to save his own skin. Not that there was much left of it after the unsolved blast. Now Gray stucco apartments cover the spot at 1250 E. Bethany Home Road. Arizona mob historian/newspaper reporter Don Bolles (More on him in the 1970's) mentions "He apparently talked about extortion in movieland," Drachman's Experience's with Willie Bioff/Nelson Spring 1943 - The Outfit got involved in the control and distribution of black market ration coupons, stealing them from government offices and warehouses and getting them from corrupt politicians. (3:159) April 1943 - Giancana kidnaps Guzik; Gussie is noted as a Greek political fixer. (3:162) May 1946 - Giancana takes over Eddie Jones' black numbers racket in Chicago. (3:164) 1946 - Jack Ruby (Rubenstein) goes to Dallas as liaison between Marcello and Chicago. (3:193)
Mid-1955 - Sam Giancana: Joe Kennedy now had come to Chicago for another favor to ask, and when he strolled into the East Ambassador Hotel that evening in mid-1955, under cover of disguise, he bore a desperate frown. He needed to get out of a scrape. Frank Costello, the New York boss, had put a contract on his life for refusing to perform a number of owed favors for the Syndicate. Kennedy explained to Momo that he had meant no insult, but that he was just maintaining a distance from Costello should the Kennedy name be re-linked to the rackets and ruin his son’s career. "You know how it is," he told Momo, shrugging apologetically. Giancana made him squirm a little until, panicky, Kennedy blurted out what Momo wanted to hear. "If my son is elected President he’ll be your man. My son, the President of the United States, will owe you his father’s life. He won’t refuse you, ever. You have my word." Within the week, Momo talked to Costello. With the promise that they would have their own man in the White House, the mob called off the hit on Joe Kennedy. (Sam Giancana - The Kennedy Connection) |
Robert,
John & Joseph Kennedy (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)