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00:02Tonight, the murder of a notorious mob kingpin.
00:06Sam Jean Conner is the very personification of the mafia in America in the 1960s.
00:13He's not only the head of the Chicago outfit, he is America's celebrity gangster.
00:18He's known to hobnob with a lot of Hollywood celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe.
00:24When Sam Jean Conner's murdered, it's front page news.
00:27But 50 years later, the identity of Sam Jean Conner's killer remains a mystery.
00:34Solving Sam Jean Conner's murder could open up a Pandora's box.
00:37With every mob murder, it's never one thing. It's always a combination of things.
00:43Now, we explore the top theories surrounding the assassination of a mob legend.
00:50Everyone benefits from Sam Jean Conner's murder.
00:52Police think that this is a mob hit.
00:56But maybe the CIA had something to do with it.
00:59Jean Conner was killed before he can share everything he knows.
01:03There's someone who doesn't want him to talk.
01:07Why was Sam Jean Conner killed?
01:09And who ordered his murder?
01:27June 19th, 1975.
01:31Shortly before midnight, police respond to an emergency call from a modest home in Oak Park, Illinois.
01:38At the scene, they find a dead body in a pool of blood.
01:42This man has been shot seven times, once in the back of the head, five times in the neck, and
01:48once straight through the mouth.
01:50When police start to investigate the scene, they notice $1,400 in his pocket.
01:55And behind the body is a pan of partially cooked sausages that are still on the stove.
02:02So they think, okay, well, this wasn't a robbery gone wrong.
02:05They quickly realize that this is not just your average victim.
02:09This is Sam Gianconner, one of the bosses of the Chicago Outfit.
02:16He's a household name.
02:17He's in the papers all the time.
02:19He's on TV.
02:20He's dating movie stars.
02:22He's hanging out with Frank Sinatra.
02:25But all the while, people also know that he's a mobster.
02:30This is one of the biggest mob hits in American history.
02:35And a lot of people do seem to benefit from Giancana's death.
02:38He's connected to everything.
02:40And maybe someone wants to take out Giancana because of what he did.
02:44Everybody knows the Chicago Outfit, the federal government, the CIA.
02:49There's so many people that would have been happy to see him gone.
02:54And there really aren't any obvious clues as to who the killer was or what the motive was for the
02:59shooting.
03:00So what we're left with is a mystery that is now over 50 years old.
03:05But Giancana's past as a mob kingpin provides a long list of potential suspects and motives.
03:13Sam Giancana was born in 1908.
03:15He grows up in the Little Italy section of Chicago known as the Patch.
03:20This is kind of a poor, run-down area of the city.
03:24And he doesn't have a great childhood.
03:26So Sam at an early age turns to a life of crime.
03:30The police believe by his early 20s he may have killed already three men.
03:34Many folks simply called him Mooney, which is another word for being crazy.
03:39Giancana is someone who's very willing to play into this idea that he's crazy.
03:44This is really a persona that he build a way to seem tough.
03:51Al Capone allegedly took a liking to a young Sam Giancana.
03:55And he was viewed as a rising star in the Chicago Mafia.
03:59A famous crime associated with the Chicago outfit is the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
04:04Not only is it alleged that Sam was there as a driver, but also as a shooter.
04:09In 1931, Giancana's mentor, Al Capone, is arrested for tax fraud and sentenced to prison.
04:17Giancana spends the next 20 years looking to replace him as the head of the Chicago Mob.
04:25Sam is rising through the ranks.
04:27And by 1957, he is the head of the Chicago Mob.
04:31They expand their empire under Sam's control outside of Chicago.
04:35They start taking over not only Las Vegas, but all the way down to Cuba.
04:40Sam and the outfit are raking in millions of dollars a year.
04:44Sam Giancana is the epitome of what it meant to be an American crime lord, Mafia Don.
04:51And he controlled a national syndicate that was second to none.
04:55Everybody in America knew who Sam Giancana was.
04:57And he loved that. And he ate it up.
05:00But in the late 1950s, Giancana makes a fateful decision.
05:04He becomes directly involved with the federal government.
05:09Outside of traditional organized crime, he has a relationship with the CIA.
05:15He's allegedly taking meetings with JFK while he's president.
05:20Giancana was trying to play everything against the middle and expected that the White House would take a kinder approach
05:26to organized crime.
05:27But it was the exact opposite.
05:29He has been connected to organized crime essentially from his childhood.
05:33And the feds want to find out exactly what he knows.
05:36In 1965, after years of trying, federal agents believe they finally found a way to bring down Giancana.
05:44They put him before a grand jury investigating the Chicago mob's alleged racketeering and narcotics operations.
05:53They give him immunity from prosecution.
05:55They say, if you talk, you're not going to get prosecuted.
05:58You don't have to plead the fifth and you're going to be okay.
06:02They ask him questions.
06:04He doesn't answer them.
06:05And he wants it being put in jail for a year for contempt of court.
06:09But the other members of the mafia don't like this public attention at all.
06:13After Giancana is released from prison, he ends up going into exile in Mexico in 1974.
06:19He gets deported back to the United States.
06:22And upon his arrival, he's subpoenaed.
06:25He's been called in to testify for a U.S. Senate inquiry looking into the CIA's activities,
06:33specifically the possibility that the mob worked with the CIA to kill Fidel Castro.
06:41That caused great concern from a lot of very powerful, dangerous individuals.
06:48On the night of his murder, Giancana throws a party at his home in Oak Park.
06:53All of the guests leave by 10.30 p.m.
06:56Living upstairs is Joseph DiPersio, who's 82 years old.
07:00He lives there with his wife and they're kind of like the caretakers for Sam and the property.
07:09Around 11 p.m., DiPersio calls down to Giancana just to do a quick check, make sure he's doing all
07:13right.
07:14But there's no response.
07:15So DiPersio heads down to the unit.
07:18He walks down into the basement kitchen.
07:22And Giancana's on the ground, blood everywhere.
07:25He immediately calls the police.
07:27The police come and question DiPersio.
07:30He doesn't have a lot of answers.
07:31He doesn't even hear the shots being fired.
07:34Police start to piece things together.
07:36And one of the early theories that emerges has nothing to do with mob business.
07:41It's all about his personal life.
07:45Oddly enough, one of the clues that leads investigators down this path is that pan of partially cooked sausages.
07:52He had just recently had gallbladder surgery.
07:54And the last thing you want to do after having a surgery like that is eating very greasy, very fatty
07:59food.
07:59Whoever those sausages were for, they're not for Giancana.
08:03He was preparing this meal for somebody that he cared about and trusted enough to turn his back to.
08:09It shows you how much he had let down his guard, that somebody was there that he felt comfortable with,
08:15that he wasn't afraid of.
08:17But the way that the murder was carried out suggested a lot of anger and animosity.
08:24Looking at the overkill of this crime, seven shots to the head, one in a mouth, just seems like something
08:31personal.
08:31Not a professional hit.
08:38In 1977, FBI investigators learn of a possible reason for such anger.
08:44A source tells the bureau that Giancana was having an affair with the wife of Chicago mobster Tony Spolatro.
08:52This would not have been the first time that he slept with another mobster's wife.
08:56Giancana is a notorious womanizer.
08:58And Nancy Spolatro was considered to be quite the knockout.
09:01Tony Spolatro was this little five-foot-three, demonic, crazy man that was running around Chicago, putting people's heads in
09:10vices and popping people's eyeballs out and getting a reputation for extreme violence.
09:17If all of this sounds familiar, it's because Joe Pesci's character in Casino is said to be based off of
09:23Tony Spolatro.
09:24He's really known for his ruthless behavior.
09:28And Tony Spolatro, at one time, lived a couple blocks from Sam Giancana.
09:33He knew how to sneak between the backyards to get into his house.
09:36If Giancana betrayed him by sleeping with his wife, you can imagine that this would clearly send Spolatro just flying
09:44into a murderous rage.
09:46While Tony Spolatro may have had a strong motive, some claim there's one detail that doesn't add up.
09:53Despite the initial suspicions pointed at Spolatro, a lot of people are skeptical.
09:58about that theory.
09:59In 1975, at the time that Giancana was murdered, Spolatro was not a full-time resident of Chicago.
10:06He was living full-time in Las Vegas.
10:08And Sam Giancana knows that Tony is a violent psychopath.
10:13He certainly wouldn't have his back to him cooking him sausage and peppers.
10:18In 1965, Sam Giancana spends a year in prison for refusing to testify against the mafia.
10:26However, once he's released, he finds that he's not welcome back in Chicago.
10:32The leadership of the Chicago Outfit thought, maybe it's time that Sam move on.
10:37Because he was more of a liability than he was an asset.
10:41He's exiled to Mexico, and Sam is not retired at this point.
10:46Sam continues to be Sam, and Sam is very good at making money.
10:49A lot of mobsters think very small.
10:53Sam Giancana was a mobster who thought big.
10:57The world was his oyster.
10:59He starts getting involved with Mexican casinos and bringing in money through them,
11:04and ultimately throughout Central and South America.
11:07And then he extends to other crimes like prostitution and narcotics, extortion, kidnapping,
11:13everything else you could think of.
11:15According to the book Double Cross, which is written by members of the Giancana family,
11:19Giancana starts getting involved in narcotics trafficking with men from Colombia,
11:24who will later go on to become the Medellin Cartel, which is led famously by Pablo Escobar.
11:30He's raking in millions from narcotics.
11:33And then he goes even further.
11:35He extends his reach to the Caribbean and even the Middle East.
11:39He opens up offshore gambling boats.
11:41He's making millions and millions of dollars.
11:44And he's not giving one penny to the Chicago outfit.
11:47This does not sit well with organized crime groups.
11:51In Italian-American organized crime, even if you are an individual earner,
11:57that money still needs to go back to your crime family.
12:01It doesn't matter if you're doing it out of state.
12:03It doesn't matter if you're no longer our leader.
12:06You belong to us until the day you die.
12:09He tells them, I'm not giving you anything.
12:12I made money for you.
12:13You sent me down here to Mexico.
12:15I'm going to continue to make money for myself and for my family.
12:17The mob was furious with Sam for not cutting them in on all the money he was making in Mexico.
12:25At the same time, the Mexican government wanted to become friendly with Cuba and was concerned that this American had
12:34been attached to a plot to kill Fidel Castro.
12:37The authorities came to his place in Mexico and they literally arrested him in his pajamas and sent him back
12:46to Chicago.
12:48Even when Giancana returns to the Chicago Outfits territory in 1974, he refuses to pay tribute.
12:56There were a lot of people in Chicago when he came home that felt someone needs to go sit with
13:00Sam Giancana and tell him the rules of the game again.
13:03He might have forgotten them. We got to remind him.
13:06There is physical evidence that ties the Chicago Outfit potentially to this crime.
13:13In the initial investigation into this murder, it did not look like a mob hit because the shooter used a
13:20.22 caliber pistol.
13:23It just doesn't seem like a mob gun.
13:26The mob up to that point used larger caliber weapons.
13:29They're famous for using a Tommy gun which shoots .45 caliber.
13:32Al Capone himself carried around a .45 caliber Colt 1911 that he called Sweetheart.
13:39However, in 1977, Time Magazine releases an article which talks about how from 1975 to 1977,
13:47the .22 seemed to be the preferred weapon for mob hits.
13:53In August of 1975, landscapers in a town called River Forest, Illinois,
13:59happened to find in the woods a discarded .22 caliber pistol.
14:03River Forest is pretty much right next door to Oak Park where Sam Giancana lived and was murdered two months
14:09prior.
14:10And this particular .22 has been modified with a homemade silencer.
14:15If we add a silencer to a .22 caliber handgun, we can get that shot down to like 30 decibels,
14:22which is about like the sound, like a whisper.
14:25And so this would explain why the person doesn't hear anything.
14:29It's not because he's old.
14:30It's not because he's watching TV.
14:32It's because of that silencer.
14:34They did a ballistics test on this weapon and it was the weapon used to kill Sam Giancana.
14:40The location of the discarded gun may point to one mafia trigger man in particular.
14:53If you're going to use that gun, then you've got to come in close.
14:56So it's believed that Sam was killed by someone he knew really well.
15:00And interestingly, the gun is found on a road that would lead you from Sam's house to one of his
15:08closest allies, Dominic Blasi, also known as Butch.
15:14Blasi did live in River Forest and was probably Sam Giancana's most trusted soldier and confidant, a guy that he
15:23trusted with his life.
15:24Blasi is somebody that has literally been by Giancana's side for decades.
15:29He actually was one of the pallbearers at Sam Giancana's funeral.
15:34It was the common perception by both the press and local law enforcement that Butch was the one who killed
15:42Giancana.
15:45When police question him, he swears that he was there earlier in the evening, but that when he left, his
15:51friend was still alive.
15:53He always denied it and was pretty adamant in his denials until he died in the early 90s.
15:58But they always tap your best friend to kill you in that world.
16:02And Blasi was Giancana's best friend.
16:05Whether Blasi was the actual gunman or not, the question now becomes, what was the reason behind it?
16:10What is the motive?
16:11One of the best motives we've got comes in the early 2000s during testimony by Nick Calabrese, who was a
16:19longtime hitman for the Chicago Outfit.
16:22He claims that the Chicago Outfit's main issue with Giancana was not paying them their cut.
16:29The problem with this, though, is why was this hit so personal?
16:34Why was there this level of overkill?
16:37He shot in the back of the head. That would have killed him.
16:40But then he shot five more times in the neck and the one shot in his mouth.
16:44A lot of researchers insist that what happened to Giancana was a mob hit, but the nature of it wasn't
16:53over money.
16:57The coroner's report on the 1975 murder of Sam Giancana indicates he was first shot in the back of the
17:05head.
17:06Then the shooter delivered six more bullets into his face and neck.
17:11It's a signature of the mafia that when they are going to kill somebody who they believe is snitching to
17:16the government to deliberately put a series of bullet shots around his mouth.
17:22That last shot, that coup de grace is basically saying, hey, keep your mouth shut.
17:26And it's a warning to others to also do the same.
17:28The Giancana family has been relatively vocal that Giancana's murder really had nothing to do with the money.
17:35It had to do with the fact that he was being subpoenaed in front of the church committee.
17:39The church committee is the Senate committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church that is tasked with investigating the CIA.
17:48Specifically, whether there was any collusion between the CIA and the mafia.
17:53Within months of returning to Chicago from Mexico, Giancana is told he's expected to appear under oath before the church
18:01committee.
18:03Giancana is somebody that has a track record of not ratting anybody out.
18:07In the 60s, he's jailed for a year for contempt because he doesn't say anything.
18:14But by 1975, Giancana has been painted into a corner.
18:18He's tried to plead the fifth, but there's no way to know whether the Senate will let him get away
18:23with that.
18:24Does he want to risk being thrown in jail for another year?
18:28This is a 67-year-old man.
18:31It might be Giancana doesn't want to risk having to go to prison again because he doesn't have that much
18:37life left.
18:38So it's very possible that he's going to try a whole nother tactic in front of the church committee.
18:44And that might be telling the truth.
18:47Giancana's death happens just five days before he's set to appear.
18:52All of this ties into the idea of the code of Omerta.
18:56Omerta is the oath of silence that you take when you become a member of the Mafia.
19:00To break Omerta is to basically sign your own death warrant.
19:09The mob is afraid of what's coming next, that he may actually say something.
19:13I mean, he's an old school gangster.
19:15He might have kept his mouth shut, but it seems like an easy answer just to take him out.
19:19As a longtime member of the Chicago Outfit, Giancana's fate rested in the hands of one man, Tony Accardo.
19:28Even when Sam Giancana was boss, there was still a boss above the boss.
19:33And that boss was Tony Accardo.
19:35Nobody in America held the amount of power, the amount of influence that Accardo held in that time period.
19:43Tony Accardo witnessed Al Capote, this larger than life figure,
19:48who winds up drawing a great deal of attention to himself.
19:53And Tony Accardo realizes that you should keep your head low.
19:56He wanted to be the boss without holding the title.
20:00So he created all these acting bosses and street bosses and day-to-day bosses that would run the family
20:06for him.
20:07Despite Sam Giancana being made the boss of the Outfit in 1957,
20:11Accardo is actually the real guy calling the shots and Giancana is just sort of the face of the Outfit.
20:18Accardo spared Giancana's life in 1966 by exiling him to Mexico.
20:24When Giancana returns in 1974 and is immediately subpoenaed,
20:30the real head of the Chicago Outfit may have been less forgiving.
20:34When the FBI gets involved in the investigation of Sam Giancana's death,
20:39they immediately look to Tony Accardo and they identify him as a potential suspect.
20:45Accardo was very unhappy with the idea that Giancana was now back in Chicago.
20:51And whoever killed Sam Giancana had to get the okay of Accardo.
20:55But it turns out that he may have had a lot more to do with it than just orchestrating the
21:01affair.
21:02In the early 2000s, the FBI learns that Chicago Outfit hitman Nick Calabrese
21:08and his nephew Frank Calabrese Jr. are both willing to turn state's evidence.
21:14They spilled the beans on a lot of unsolved murders.
21:18And that turned into the biggest mob prosecution in Chicago history, Operation Family Secrets.
21:25Nick Calabrese goes to the FBI and tells them one of the biggest, juiciest secrets of all time.
21:32According to him, Tony Accardo felt strong enough about Giancana that he wanted to do his own house cleaning.
21:40It's an extraordinary claim.
21:42Tony Accardo hadn't just authorized the hit on Sam Giancana.
21:48He had carried out the hit on Sam Giancana.
21:53If Accardo went out of his way to commit this hit himself, this is big.
21:59Mob bosses do not commit their own hits.
22:04It is likely that Accardo believed that Giancana was about to blow everything wide open.
22:11Yeah, he was old.
22:13He might have looked like your grandfather, but he could still pull a trigger.
22:16This theory makes sense.
22:19Accardo is another person who Giancana probably would have trusted,
22:23would have likely allowed willingly into his home late at night.
22:28Alongside Giancana, the church committee also subpoenaed two other famous mafia associates,
22:35Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and mobster Johnny Roselli.
22:40Jimmy Hoffa was friendly with Giancana and Roselli,
22:42and he was supposed to testify at the church committee about six weeks after Giancana was murdered.
22:48Jimmy Hoffa ended up disappearing and never being found.
22:51Johnny Roselli does testify, and he just drops a bomb.
22:56He says that the mob was actually working with the CIA.
23:01Until this point, this is all rumors.
23:03This is the first time that we're actually confirming that there is a connection between the CIA and the mob.
23:10After testifying, Johnny Roselli goes missing.
23:14He's eventually found dismembered, death by asphyxiation,
23:17in a 55-gallon oil drum floating in the bay not far from Miami.
23:22Sam Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa, and Roselli,
23:25all three of them murdered either before they testified or after they testified.
23:31This seems to suggest that the mafia was willing to silence anybody who was willing to cooperate with Congress.
23:36So the message was clear. You don't break the code of silence.
23:43The murder of mobster Sam Giancana in June 1975 comes at a time of intense scrutiny on government corruption in
23:52America.
23:53President Richard Nixon has resigned in the Watergate scandal,
23:57and illegal activity by American spy agencies is being exposed by the media.
24:02Some believe that Sam Giancana's murder wasn't just about protecting mob secrets.
24:09Is it possible he was killed to protect the CIA?
24:14After the Watergate scandal, one of the things that came to light was the improper use of CIA surveillance and
24:21things of that nature.
24:22And so the church committee was set up to oversee what was going on with the CIA.
24:29Today, the church committee is considered to be one of the biggest oversight investigations in all of U.S. history,
24:36because they uncover a series of plots, including the plot to kill Fidel Castro by the CIA and the mob.
24:46These alleged ties between the CIA and the mafia lead to the church committee calling people like Johnny Roselli and
24:53Sam Giancana to testify.
24:55In June of 1975, the CIA is in big trouble.
25:00They know exactly what they've done, and they know that it's about to all come out.
25:06So, not only do we have the mob not wanting Sam Giancana to talk, but we also have the CIA
25:11not wanting him to expose that relationship between them.
25:14There are a number of people, including Giancana's oldest daughter, Antoinette Giancana,
25:19who have claimed that the CIA was somehow involved in the murder of Sam Giancana.
25:31So, we're in the midst of the Cold War, and both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations are very concerned about
25:38this charismatic revolutionary Fidel Castro,
25:41who aligns closely with the Soviet Union.
25:45Before Fidel Castro takes control of the Cuban government in the 1950s,
25:49mafia figures own most of the major casinos and hotels in Havana.
25:55Mobsters are essentially kicked out of Cuba during the revolution,
25:58and Fidel Castro becomes a common enemy for the CIA and the mafia.
26:04The CIA felt like the best people to kill Castro were the most dangerous killers that they could find on
26:11the streets.
26:12This was an unholy alliance.
26:15Conducted in total secrecy, this partnership becomes known as Operation Mongoose.
26:21We'll never know for sure what Giancana would or would not have said during his testimony,
26:27but due to Roselli's testimony, we do get a very clear picture of the collaboration between the CIA and the
26:34mob.
26:34Roselli tells an extraordinary story that has the nation on the edge of their seats.
26:40He was recruited by the CIA in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.
26:47And the two key players in this are Roselli and Giancana.
26:51Sam Giancana feels that the CIA and the mob are two sides of the same coin.
26:55They both want the same thing, and they're both not above murder.
27:00Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana ran a casino in Havana known as San Sioux Sea.
27:08And so they claimed that they still had contacts in Cuba that could get close enough to Fidel Castro.
27:17During Johnny Roselli's testimony, he says that the CIA was willing to pay these mobsters $150,000,
27:23which is $1.6 million in today's money.
27:28Giancana and Roselli actually hire someone to put poison pills in Fidel Castro's food.
27:35The assassin winds up backing out.
27:37When the poisoning fails, then Roselli and Giancana think,
27:43all right, well, let's bring in some armed commandos to assassinate him.
27:47But that didn't work either.
27:49These CIA documents are declassified several decades later.
27:53And you just walk through the documents, you go,
27:55oh, Roselli was right, Roselli was right, Roselli was right.
27:58The assassination attempts on Castro fail, but we do see other collusion between Sam and the CIA.
28:07At this time, he's dating Phyllis McGuire, who's a musician, a national celebrity.
28:13He believes that Phyllis McGuire is cheating on him with comedian Dan Rowan.
28:17The CIA bugged the bedroom of Dan Rowan to appease Sam Giancana.
28:23Now, you have not only the CIA working with gangsters,
28:27you have the CIA help a gangster deal with an emotional problem with his girlfriend.
28:33So what we're looking at in 1975 is that this direct testimony of Giancana
28:39might simply blow the top off this story.
28:42Essentially, Giancana has the power to completely take down the CIA.
28:48The CIA might want to take out Giancana before he can take out them.
28:53The media and the public really quickly start to draw a connection between the CIA and Giancana's murder.
28:59If all of this information was being presented to the committee, who else could it possibly have been?
29:05Case in point, the Time Magazine article, which talked about how the .22 caliber pistol
29:10was becoming the preferred weapon of choice for mob hits,
29:14also points out that the .22 caliber has been the pistol of choice for the CIA for years and years.
29:21It reached the point where Frank Church felt the need to come out and make a statement
29:25that these theories that are being bandied about couldn't be further from the truth.
29:30They do uncover several other assassinations orchestrated by the CIA.
29:34But when it comes to the death of Sam Giancana, Senator Church says it's probably mob-related.
29:41Despite these denials, it makes sense.
29:43I mean, it would be certainly something you'd want to investigate.
29:48In 1975, Sam Giancana is subpoenaed by the Church Committee to testify about the CIA's involvement with organized crime
29:58to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
30:02But the committee is also tasked with investigating the possible connection between the CIA
30:07and one of the most consequential events in U.S. history, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
30:15It's something that is one of the darkest days in American history, and we still don't know 60 years later
30:21what exactly happened.
30:22In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson creates the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
30:31and they conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald is a lone actor in the assassination. No one else is involved.
30:39An awful lot of people were bothered by the Warren Commission not looking at other scenarios
30:46and argued that there were more plausible theories than the lone gunman.
30:50And one of them has to do in part with the idea that Sam Giancana was involved.
30:56By bringing Giancana to Washington in 1975, these investigators were hoping to find out whatever Giancana may know about Castro.
31:06But while they're at it, they could also ask him about the JFK assassination.
31:10It's really not a crazy conspiracy theory, the way that sometimes it's made out to be,
31:15because we know there were quite a few people that had connections to Giancana that were within the radius of
31:21that assassination.
31:22Imagine if Giancana testified and said, hey, not only did the CIA use me for Castro, but they also used
31:30me to kill JFK.
31:31Now, whether it is the government or the mafia that killed him, either way, Sam dies because he knows too
31:38much.
31:44Most everyone is in agreement that Lee Harvey Oswald is the one who shot the president.
31:51But did he really act alone?
31:54There is a lot of strong evidence that maybe the mafia is also involved.
31:59You sound crazy connecting all the dots there, but it makes sense.
32:03Lee Harvey Oswald grows up in New Orleans.
32:06His uncle is a bookie who works for Carlos Marcella, who is in charge of the mob in New Orleans,
32:12and a friend of Sam Giancana.
32:14Lee Harvey Oswald, when he's a teenager, is mentored by this person, David Ferry, who is also a private investigator
32:22that works with Carlos Marcella.
32:26After the assassination of Kennedy, Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, who was a well-known mafia associate of Giancana's.
32:35In 1975, after Johnny Roselli testifies before the church committee, his lawyer floated that Johnny would not only be willing
32:45to talk about Castro, but he also knew something about the JFK assassination.
32:50And it was at that point that Roselli winds up being murdered, just like Giancana.
32:55The really interesting twist here is that Sam Giancana and the mob helped get President Kennedy elected.
33:05It's pretty much acknowledged historically that Sam Giancana helped the Kennedy campaign both in West Virginia and to some degree
33:16in Illinois with the election there.
33:19Giancana was telling other mobsters, I'm supporting Kennedy because I think he'll go easy on us.
33:27Sam Giancana does all this work behind the scenes to get John F. Kennedy elected President, expecting that his life
33:33is going to get easier, and it does not.
33:35The mob became very angry and bitter at the fact that almost immediately, when Kennedy got into office, he came
33:45after the mafia with an assault that had never been bigger or more widespread.
33:50A year later, in 1961, JFK's younger brother, Bobby Kennedy, who's serving as Attorney General, goes after Jimmy Hoffa, who's
33:57the head of the Teamsters, which has connections to the mob.
34:00RFK also goes after New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcelo, who gets deported to Guatemala.
34:05So Giancana allegedly vows to take revenge on JFK.
34:10Giancana was known as a very violent guy, one of the most violent people that the Chicago mob had ever
34:17known that you don't fool around with Sam Giancana or you're going to find a bullet in your head.
34:24In 1992, Sam Giancana's brother and his godson publish Double Cross.
34:30The book claims to reveal the mob boss's most shocking secrets, including what he allegedly said about the Kennedy assassination.
34:39In his book, Double Cross, Chuck Giancana says, one day, Sam said to him, look, we, meaning we, the mob
34:50and the CIA, took care of Kennedy together.
34:55He states that Sam told them that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA plant and that it was Giancana that
35:02ordered the murder of John F. Kennedy.
35:05So to break it down in its most simple form, Oswald was the patsy and then Ruby was the guy
35:10sent to take him out.
35:11And that's a typical mob protocol. You assign somebody to do the job and then you assign somebody to get
35:17rid of the guy that did the job.
35:19There's no way for Chuck Giancana to corroborate his story. And there's no way that we will ever know what
35:25Sam Giancana might have testified to in 1975.
35:28But if that is what Sam Giancana was going to say, that is an explosive issue.
35:36If Sam Giancana really had something to do with the assassination of JFK in collusion with the CIA, that is
35:44information that the CIA does not want out and it is good reason to kill Sam Giancana.
35:53Since he first became the head of the Chicago mob, Sam Giancana has kept the Chicago Police Department in his
36:01pocket.
36:01But as he prepares to go on the witness stand in 1975, this once close relationship may have sealed his
36:10fate.
36:12Since Giancana set to testify in front of a Senate committee, federal prosecutors have a vested interest in keeping him
36:19alive.
36:20In fact, on the night of Giancana's murder, there are two officers that are stationed directly outside of his house.
36:27At about 1030 on the night of the shooting, they left.
36:32The skeptics would argue what they did was leave him unprotected.
36:39It's really extraordinary that within about an hour or so, after the cops leave, they're called back by the housekeeper
36:48saying that Sam Giancana has been murdered.
36:51And then when asked to investigate it, the Chicago PD put it off to the local police department who don't
36:57have the experience or the resources to find out who killed Sam Giancana.
37:02So this brings up a lot of questions. Why were they not there? Why won't they investigate it?
37:06There's people who believe that Chicago police deliberately leave the case unsolved because they have something to hide.
37:18It's very possible when you consider the history of the Chicago Police Department that they played some role in the
37:25conspiracy to get rid of Giancana.
37:27The Chicago Police Department is probably one of the most notoriously corrupt organizations in the history of law enforcement.
37:35Chicago police and their connection to the mob goes back all the way to the gangland days of the 1920s
37:41and the 1930s.
37:42When Al Capone was in charge and was able to pay off officers and to pay off judges to make
37:49sure that they looked the other way when crimes were being committed.
37:52And that would be ludicrous to argue that every Chicago policeman was corrupt.
37:56But by the time of the Giancana murder, reporters noted there had only been two gangland murders that had been
38:03solved.
38:04Sam Giancana himself bragged to his associates that he had many policemen in his back pocket.
38:12An amazing character named Richard Cain is the perfect example of this intermingling between law enforcement and the mafia in
38:22Chicago.
38:23Richard Cain was a Chicago cop who was a great police investigator.
38:28And so they say, wow, he's a terrific cop.
38:31But actually, secretly, he was on the payroll of Sam Giancana and always had been.
38:39His police training came in really handy for the mob because he would put mobsters through lie detector tests, not
38:47to try and get them on a crime, but to see if they were talking about the outfit.
38:54Cain winds up going to jail.
38:55And what does he do when he gets out?
38:57He goes straight to work for Sam Giancana again.
39:00And he's Sam Giancana's driver for a couple of years.
39:03And then he's shot in the face with a shotgun inside of a sandwich shop.
39:06But it wasn't just cops who were corrupt in Chicago.
39:11Other parts of the justice system were on the take.
39:14During the investigation, there's a judge who is actively stonewalling the progress of the police.
39:19He refuses to allow police to investigate Giancana's desk.
39:23When the police finally opened the desk drawers, they find the guest list at one of the weddings of Giancana's
39:31daughters.
39:32And this judge was on the guest list.
39:34So what we're looking at is a law enforcement system in Chicago that is consistently been corrupt when they had
39:43to deal with organized crime.
39:44Now, historians have researched this, and there's really no hard evidence tying the Chicago Police Department with the death of
39:52Sam Giancana.
39:53It is possible, though, that Chicago police feared that Giancana would eventually spill the beans about activities between police and
40:02the mob.
40:02And since he's no longer the main power broker, there's no reason to be nice anymore.
40:06And if that were the case, Giancana may have ended up paying the ultimate price.
40:11It's still considered an open homicide.
40:15We don't know who killed him, but there were a lot of people who wanted Sam Giancana dead.
40:23This is a man who has infiltrated American business, the CIA.
40:28It's hard to imagine a mobster more enmeshed with the United States government.
40:33You can't help but wonder, if we could just figure out who killed Sam Giancana and why, it might help
40:40us solve some even larger mysteries.
40:42It's a thread that you could pull, and the next thing you know, the whole ball of yarn is gone.
40:5050 years later, the unsolved murder of Sam Giancana still raises as many questions as there are suspects.
40:58It remains one of the most elusive and intriguing murders in the annals of organized crime,
41:05particularly for the secrets it may hold about a truly tumultuous period in our history.
41:12I'm Lawrence Fishburne.
41:14Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.
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