[tense dramatic music] [gunshot]
- Tonight, the murder of a notorious Mob kingpin.
- Sam Giancana is the very personification
of the Mafia in America in the 1960s.
- He's not only the head of the Chicago Outfit,
he is America's celebrity gangster.
- He is known to hobnob with a lot of Hollywood celebrities
like Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe.
- When Sam Giancana's murdered,
it's front-page news.
- But 50 years later,
the identity of Sam Giancana's killer
remains a mystery.
- Solving Sam Giancana's murder
could open up a Pandora's Box.
With every Mob murder,
it's never one thing.
It's always a combination of things.
[gunshot] - Now we explore
the top theories surrounding the assassination
of a Mob legend.
- Everyone benefits from Sam Giancana's murder.
Police think that this is a Mob hit,
but maybe the CIA had something to do with it.
- Giancana was killed
before he can share everything he knows.
There's someone who doesn't want him to talk.
- Why was Sam Giancana killed, and who ordered his murder?
[dramatic orchestral music]
[intense dramatic music]
- [Laurence] June 19th, 1975.
Shortly before midnight, police respond to an emergency call
from a modest home in Oak Park, Illinois.
- [Claire] At the scene, they find
a dead body in a pool of blood.
This man has been shot seven times.
Once in the back of the head, five times in the neck,
and once straight through the mouth.
- [Sami] When police start to investigate the scene,
they noticed $1,400 in his pocket.
And behind the body is a pan of partially cooked sausages
that are still on the stove.
So they think, "Okay,
well, this wasn't a robbery gone wrong."
- They quickly realize that this is
not just your average victim.
This is Sam Giancana,
one of the bosses of the Chicago Outfit.
[suspenseful orchestral music]
- [Matthew] He's a household name.
He's in the papers all the time.
He's on TV.
He's dating movie stars.
He's hanging out with Frank Sinatra.
But all the while, people also know that he's the mobster.
- This is one of the biggest Mob hits in American history,
and a lot of people do seem to benefit
from Giancana's death.
- He's connected to everything,
and maybe someone wants to take out Giancana
because of what he knows.
The Chicago Outfit, the federal government, the CIA.
There's so many people
that would've been happy to see him gone.
- And there really aren't any obvious clues
as to who the killer was
or what the motive was for the shooting.
So what we're left with
is a mystery that is now over 50 years old.
- [Laurence] But Giancana's past as a Mob kingpin
provides a long list of potential suspects and motives.
- [Matthew] Sam Giancana's born in 1908.
He grows up in the Little Italy section of Chicago
known as "The Patch."
This is kind of a poor, run-down area of the city,
and he doesn't have a great childhood.
So Sam, at an early age, turns to a life of crime.
- The police believe by his early 20s,
he may have killed already three men.
Many folks simply called him "Mooney,"
which is another word for being crazy.
- Giancana is someone who's very willing
to play into this idea that he's crazy.
This is really a persona that he builds,
a way to seem tough.
- Al Capone allegedly took a liking to a young Sam Giancana,
and he was viewed as a rising star in the Chicago Mafia.
- [Matthew] A famous crime associated with the
Chicago Outfit is the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.
Not only is it alleged that Sam was there as a driver,
but also as a shooter.
- [Laurence] In 1931, Giancana's mentor, Al Capone,
is arrested for tax fraud and sentenced to prison.
Giancana spends the next 20 years looking to replace him
as the head of the Chicago Mob.
- [Matthew] Sam is rising through the ranks,
and by 1957, he is the head of the Chicago Mob.
They expand their empire under Sam's control
outside of Chicago.
They start taking over not only Las Vegas
but all the way down to Cuba.
Sam and the Outfit are raking in millions of dollars a year.
- [Scott] Sam Giancana is the epitome
of what it meant to be an American crime lord, Mafia Don,
and he controlled a national syndicate
that was second to none.
- [Scott] Everybody in America knew who Sam Giancana was,
and he loved that, and he ate it up.
- [Laurence] But in the late 1950s,
Giancana makes a fateful decision.
He becomes directly involved with the federal government.
- Outside of traditional organized crime,
he has a relationship with the CIA.
He's allegedly taking meetings with JFK
while he's president.
- Giancana was trying to play everything against the middle
and expected that the White House
would take a kinder approach to organized crime,
but it was the exact opposite.
- He has been connected to organized crime
essentially from his childhood,
and the Feds want to find out exactly what he knows.
- [Laurence] In 1965, after years of trying,
federal agents believed they finally found a way
to bring down Giancana.
They put him before a grand jury
investigating the Chicago Mob's alleged racketeering
and narcotics operations.
- They give him immunity from prosecution.
They say, "If you talk, you're not gonna get prosecuted.
You don't have to plead the Fifth,
and you're gonna be okay."
- They ask him questions, he doesn't answer them,
and he winds up being put in jail for a year
for contempt of court.
But the other members of the Mafia
don't like this public attention at all.
- After Giancana is released from prison,
he ends up going into exile in Mexico.
In 1974, he gets deported back to the United States,
and upon his arrival, he's subpoenaed.
- He's been called in to testify for a US Senate inquiry
looking into the CIA's activities,
specifically the possibility that the Mob
worked with the CIA to kill Fidel Castro.
- That caused grave concern from a lot of very powerful,
dangerous individuals.
[tense uneasy music]
- [Laurence] On the night of his murder,
Giancana throws a party at his home in Oak Park.
All of the guests leave by 10:30 p.m.
- Living upstairs is Joseph DiPersio, who's 82 years old.
He lives there with his wife,
and they're kind of like the caretakers for Sam
and the property.
- [Sami] Around 11:00 p.m. DiPersio calls down to Giancana
just to do a quick check, make sure he's doing all right,
but there's no response.
So DiPersio heads down to the unit.
- He walks down into the basement kitchen,
and Giancana's on the ground, blood everywhere.
He immediately calls the police.
- The police come and question DiPersio.
He doesn't have a lot of answers.
He doesn't even hear the shots being fired.
- Police start to piece things together,
and one of the early theories that emerges
has nothing to do with Mob business.
It's all about his personal life.
[gas flame whooshes]
- [Sami] Oddly enough, one of the clues
that leads investigators down this path
is that pan of partially cooked sausages.
He had just recently had gallbladder surgery.
And the last thing you wanna do
after having a surgery like that
is eating very greasy, very fatty food.
Whoever those sausages were for, they're not for Giancana.
He was preparing this meal for somebody
that he cared about and trusted enough to turn his back to.
- It shows you how much he had let down his guard,
that somebody was there that he felt comfortable with,
that he wasn't afraid of,
but the way that the murder was carried out
suggested a lot of anger and animosity.
- Looking at the overkill of this crime,
seven shots to the head, one in the mouth,
this seems like something personal,
not a professional hit.
[tense thoughtful music]
- [Laurence] In 1977,
FBI investigators learn of a possible reason for such anger.
A source tells the Bureau that Giancana was having an affair
with the wife of Chicago mobster Tony Spilotro.
- This would not have been the first time
that he slept with another mobster's wife.
Giancana is a notorious womanizer,
and Nancy Spilotro was considered
to be quite the knockout.
- [Scott] Tony Spilotro was this little 5'3"
demonic crazy man that was running around Chicago,
putting people's heads in vises
and popping people's eyeballs out,
and getting a reputation for extreme violence.
- [Claire] If all of this sounds familiar,
it's because Joe Pesci's character in Casino
is said to be based off of Tony Spilotro.
He's really known for his ruthless behavior.
- And Tony Spilotro at one time
lived a couple blocks from Sam Giancana.
He knew how to sneak between the backyards
to get into his house.
- If Giancana betrayed him by sleeping with his wife,
you can imagine that this would clearly send Spilotro
just flying into a murderous rage.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Laurence] While Tony Spilotro
may have had a strong motive,
some claim there's one detail that doesn't add up.
- Despite the initial suspicions pointed at Spilotro,
a lot of people are skeptical about that theory.
- In 1975, at the time that Giancana was murdered,
Spilotro was not a full-time resident of Chicago.
He was living full-time in Las Vegas.
- [Matthew] And Sam Giancana knows that
Tony is a violent psychopath.
He certainly wouldn't have his back to him
cooking him sausage and peppers.
- In 1965, Sam Giancana spends a year in prison
for refusing to testify against the Mafia.
However, once he's released,
he finds that he's not welcome back in Chicago.
- The leadership of the Chicago Outfit
thought maybe it's time that Sam move on
'cause he was more of a liability than he was an asset.
- He's exiled to Mexico,
and Sam is not retired at this point.
Sam continues to be Sam,
and Sam is very good at making money.
- A lot of mobsters think very small.
Sam Giancana was a mobster who thought big.
The world was his oyster.
- He starts getting involved with Mexican casinos
and bringing in money through them,
and ultimately throughout Central and South America.
- And then he extends to other crimes like prostitution
and narcotics, extortion, kidnapping,
everything else you could think of.
- [Sami] According to the book Double Cross,
which is written by members of the Giancana family,
Giancana starts getting involved in narcotics trafficking
with men from Colombia,
who will later go on to become the Medellin Cartel,
which is led famously by Pablo Escobar.
- He's raking in millions from narcotics,
and then he goes even further.
He extends his reach to the Caribbean
and even the Middle East.
He opens up offshore gambling boats.
He's making millions and millions of dollars,
and he's not giving one penny to the Chicago Outfit.
- This does not sit well with organized crime groups.
In Italian-American organized crime,
even if you are an individual earner,
that money still needs to go back to your crime family.
- "It doesn't matter if you're doing it out of state.
It doesn't matter if you're no longer our leader.
You belong to us until the day you die."
- He tells him, "I'm not giving you anything.
I made money for you.
You sent me down here to Mexico.
I'm gonna continue to make money for myself
and for my family."
- The Mob was furious with Sam for not cutting them in
on all the money he was making in Mexico.
[uneasy dramatic music]
- At the same time, the Mexican government
wanted to become friendly with Cuba
and was concerned that this American
had been attached to a plot to kill Fidel Castro.
The authorities came to his place in Mexico,
and they literally arrested him in his pajamas
and sent him back to Chicago.
- [Laurence] Even when Giancana returns
to the Chicago Outfit's territory in 1974,
he refuses to pay tribute.
- [Scott] There were a lot of people in Chicago
when he came home
that felt someone needs to go sit with Sam Giancana
and tell him the rules of the game again.
"He might have forgotten them, and we gotta remind him."
[tense thoughtful music]
- There is physical evidence that ties the Chicago Outfit
potentially to this crime.
- In the initial investigation into this murder,
it did not look like a Mob hit
because the shooter used a .22-caliber pistol.
Just doesn't seem like a Mob gun.
- The Mob, up to that point, used larger caliber weapons.
They're famous for using a Tommy gun,
which shoots .45-caliber.
Al Capone himself carried around a .45-caliber Colt 1911
that he called "Sweetheart."
- However, in 1977, Time magazine releases an article
which talks about how, from 1975 to 1977,
the .22 seemed to be the preferred weapon for Mob hits.
In August of 1975,
landscapers in a town called River Forest, Illinois,
happened to find in the woods
a discarded .22-caliber pistol.
River Forest is pretty much right next door to Oak Park,
where Sam Giancana lived and was murdered two months prior.
And this particular .22 has been modified
with a homemade silencer.
- [Matthew] If we add a silencer to a .22-caliber handgun,
we can get that shot down to, like, 30 decibels,
[gun shot thuds]
which is about like the sound of like a whisper.
And so this would explain why
DiPersio doesn't hear anything.
It's not because he's old,
it's not because he's watching TV.
It's because of that silencer.
- They did a ballistics test on this weapon,
and it was the weapon used to kill Sam Giancana.
- [Laurence] The location of the discarded gun
may point to one Mafia triggerman in particular.
[ominous uneasy music]
- If you're gonna use that gun,
then you've gotta come in close.
So it's believed that Sam was killed
by someone he knew really well.
And interestingly, the gun is found on a road
that would lead you from Sam's house
to one of his closest allies, Dominic Blasi,
also known as "Butch."
- Blasi, he did live in River Forest
and was probably Sam Giancana's most trusted soldier
and confidant, a guy that he trusted with his life.
- Blasi is somebody that has literally been
by Giancana's side for decades.
He actually was one of the pallbearers
at Sam Giancana's funeral.
- It was the common perception by both the press
and local law enforcement
that Butch was the one who killed Giancana.
[tense thoughtful music]
- [Claire] When police question him,
he swears that he was there earlier in the evening,
but that when he left, his friend was still alive.
- He always denied it and was pretty adamant in his denials
until he died in the early '90s.
But they always tap your best friend
to kill you in that world.
And Blasi was Giancana's best friend.
- Whether Blasi was the actual gunman or not,
the question now becomes: what was the reason behind it?
What is the motive?
- One of the best motives we've got comes in the early 2000s
during testimony by Nick Calabrese,
who was a longtime hitman for the Chicago Outfit.
He claims that the
Chicago Outfit's main issue with Giancana
was not paying them their cut.
The problem with this, though,
is: why was this hit so personal?
Why was there this level of overkill?
He's shot in the back of the head,
that would've killed him,
but then he's shot five more times in the neck
and the one shot in his mouth.
- A lot of researchers insist
that what happened to Giancana was a Mob hit.
But the nature of it wasn't over money.
[pounding dramatic music]
- [Laurence] The coroner's report on the 1975 murder
of Sam Giancana indicates he was first shot
in the back of the head.
Then the shooter delivered six more bullets
into his face and neck.
- It's a signature of the Mafia
that when they are gonna kill somebody
who they believe is snitching to the government,
to deliberately put a series of bullet shots
around his mouth.
- That last shot, that coup de grace,
is basically saying, "Hey, keep your mouth shut,"
and it's a warning to others to also do the same.
- The Giancana family has been relatively vocal
that Giancana's murder
really had nothing to do with the money.
It had to do with the fact that he was being subpoenaed
in front of the Church Committee.
- The Church Committee is the Senate committee
led by Idaho Senator Frank Church
that is tasked with investigating the CIA,
specifically whether there was any collusion
between the CIA and the Mafia.
- [Laurence] Within months
of returning to Chicago from Mexico,
Giancana is told he's expected to appear under oath
before the Church Committee.
- Giancana is somebody that has a track record
of not ratting anybody out.
In the '60s, he's jailed for a year for contempt
because he doesn't say anything.
- [Claire] But by 1975, Giancana has been painted into a corner.
He's tried to plead the Fifth, but there's no way to know
whether the Senate will let him get away with that.
- Does he wanna risk being thrown in jail for another year?
This is a 67-year-old man.
It might be Giancana doesn't wanna risk
having to go to prison again
because he doesn't have that much life left.
- So it's very possible that he's going to try
a whole nother tactic in front of the Church Committee,
and that might be telling the truth.
Giancana's death happens just five days
before he's set to appear.
All of this ties into the idea of the code of Omerta.
- [Scott] Omerta is the oath of silence that you take
when you become a member of the Mafia.
To break Omerta is to basically sign your own death warrant.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Matthew] The Mob is afraid of what's coming next,
that he may actually say something.
I mean, he's an old-school gangster.
He might have kept his mouth shut,
but seems like an easy answer just to take him out.
- [Laurence] As a longtime member of the Chicago Outfit,
Giancana's fate rested in the hands of one man.
Tony Accardo.
- Even when Sam Giancana was boss,
there was still a boss above the boss,
and that boss was Tony Accardo.
Nobody in America held the amount of power,
the amount of influence that Accardo held
in that time period.
- [Thomas] Tony Accardo witnessed Al Capone,
this larger-than-life figure
who winds up drawing a great deal of attention to himself.
And Tony Accardo realizes that he should keep your head low.
- He wanted to be the boss without holding the title.
So he created all of these acting bosses and street bosses
and day-to-day bosses that would run the family for him.
- [Sami] Despite Sam Giancana the boss of the Outfit
in 1957, Accardo is actually the real guy calling the shots,
and Giancana is just sort of the face of the Outfit.
- [Laurence] Accardo spared Giancana's life in 1966
by exiling him to Mexico.
When Giancana returns in 1974 and is immediately subpoenaed,
the real head of the Chicago Outfit
may have been less forgiving.
- When the FBI gets involved
in the investigation of Sam Giancana's death,
they immediately looked to Tony Accardo,
and they identify him as a potential suspect.
- Accardo was very unhappy with the idea
that Giancana was now back in Chicago,
and whoever killed Sam Giancana
had to get the okay of Accardo.
- But it turns out that he may have had
a lot more to do with it than just orchestrating the affair.
[tense suspenseful music]
- [Laurence] In the early 2000s,
the FBI learns that Chicago Outfit hitman Nick Calabrese
and his nephew Frank Calabrese, Jr.
are both willing to turn state's evidence.
- They spilled the beans on a lot of unsolved murders,
and that turned into the biggest
Mob prosecution in Chicago history.
Operation Family Secrets.
- Nick Calabrese goes to the FBI
and tells them one of the biggest
juiciest secrets of all time.
- According to him, Tony Accardo
felt strong enough about Giancana
that he wanted to do his own housecleaning.
- It's an extraordinary claim.
Tony Accardo hadn't just authorized
the hit on Sam Giancana.
He had carried out
the hit on Sam Giancana.
- If Accardo went out of his way to commit this hit himself,
this is big.
Mob bosses do not commit their own hits.
It is likely that Accardo believed
that Giancana was about to blow everything wide open.
- Yeah, he was old.
He might have looked like your grandfather,
but he could still pull a trigger.
[gunshot] - This theory makes sense.
Accardo is another person
who Giancana probably would've trusted,
would have likely allowed
willingly into his home late at night.
- [Laurence] Alongside Giancana,
the Church Committee also subpoenaed
two other famous Mafia associates.
Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and mobster Johnny Roselli.
- [Scott] Jimmy Hoffa was friendly with Giancana
and Roselli, and he was supposed to testify
at the Church Committee
about six weeks after Giancana was murdered.
Jimmy Hoffa ended up disappearing
and never being found.
- Johnny Roselli does testify, and he just drops a bomb.
He says that the Mob was actually working with the CIA.
- Until this point, this is all rumors.
This is the first time that we're actually confirming
that there is a connection between the CIA and the Mob.
After testifying, Johnny Roselli goes missing.
He's eventually found
dismembered, death by asphyxiation,
in a 55-gallon oil drum floating in the bay,
not far from Miami.
- Sam Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa, and Roselli.
All three of them murdered either before they testified
or after they testified.
- This seems to suggest that
the Mafia was willing to silence anybody
who was willing to cooperate with Congress.
- So the message was clear.
You don't break the code of silence.
[gunshots]
- The murder of mobster Sam Giancana in June 1975
comes at a time of intense scrutiny
on government corruption in America.
President Richard Nixon has resigned
in the Watergate scandal,
and illegal activity by American spy agencies
is being exposed by the media.
Some believe that Sam Giancana's murder
wasn't just about protecting Mob secrets.
Is it possible he was killed to protect the CIA?
- After the Watergate scandal,
one of the things that came to light
was the improper use of CIA surveillance
and things of that nature.
And so the Church Committee was set up
to oversee what was going on with the CIA.
- Today, the Church Committee is considered
to be one of the biggest oversight investigations
in all of US history because they uncover a series of plots,
including the plot to kill Fidel Castro
by the CIA and the Mob.
- These alleged ties between the CIA and the Mafia
lead to the Church Committee
calling people like Johnny Roselli
and Sam Giancana to testify.
In June of 1975, the CIA is in big trouble.
They know exactly what they've done,
and they know that it's about to all come out.
[uneasy dramatic music]
- So not only we have the Mob
not wanting Sam Giancana to talk,
but we also have the CIA not wanting him to expose
that relationship between that.
- [Thomas] There are a number of people,
including Giancana's oldest daughter, Antoinette Giancana,
who have claimed that the CIA was somehow involved
in the murder of Sam Giancana.
[Castro speaking in foreign language]
- So we're in the midst of the Cold War,
and both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations
are very concerned about this charismatic revolutionary,
Fidel Castro, who aligns closely with the Soviet Union.
- Before Fidel Castro took control of the Cuban government
in the 1950s, Mafia figures own most of the major casinos
and hotels in Havana.
Mobsters are essentially kicked out of Cuba
during the revolution,
and Fidel Castro becomes a common enemy for the CIA
and the Mafia.
- The CIA felt like the best people to kill Castro
were the most dangerous killers
that they could find on the streets.
This was an unholy alliance.
- [Laurence] Conducted in total secrecy,
this partnership becomes known as Operation Mongoose.
- [Sami] We'll never know for sure what Giancana would
or would not have said during his testimony,
but due to Roselli's testimony,
we do get a very clear picture
of the collaboration between the CIA and the Mob.
- Roselli tells an extraordinary story
that has the nation on the edge of their seats.
He was recruited by the CIA
in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.
And the two key players in this are Roselli and Giancana.
- Sam Giancana feels that the CIA
and the Mob are two sides of the same coin.
They both want the same thing,
and they're both not above murder.
[tense suspenseful music]
- Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana
ran a casino in Havana known as "Sans Souci,"
and so they claimed that they still had contacts in Cuba
that could get close enough to Fidel Castro.
- During Johnny Roselli's testimony,
he says that the CIA was willing to pay these mobsters
$150,000, which is $1.6 million in today's money.
Giancana and Roselli actually hire someone
to put poison pills in Fidel Castro's food.
The assassin winds up backing out.
- When the poisoning fails, then Roselli and Giancana think,
"All right, well, let's bring in some armed commandos
to assassinate him."
But that didn't work either.
- The CIA documents are declassified
several decades later,
and you just walk through the documents,
you go, "Oh, Roselli was right.
Roselli was right.
Roselli was right."
- The assassination attempts on Castro fail.
But we do see other collusion between Sam and the CIA.
At this time, he's dating Phyllis McGuire,
who's a musician, a national celebrity.
He believes that Phyllis McGuire is cheating on him
with comedian Dan Rowan.
- [Larry] The CIA bugged the bedroom of Dan Rowan
to appease Sam Giancana.
Now you have not only the CIA working with gangsters,
you have the CIA help a gangster deal with
an emotional problem with his girlfriend.
So what we're looking at in 1975
is that this direct testimony of Giancana
might simply blow the top off this story.
- [Claire] Essentially, Giancana has the power
to completely take down the CIA.
The CIA might wanna take out Giancana
before he can take out them.
- [Sami] The media and the public really quickly
start to draw a connection between the CIA
and Giancana's murder.
If all of this information
was being presented to the committee,
who else could it possibly have been?
Case in point, the Time magazine article,
which talked about how the .22-caliber pistol
was becoming the preferred weapon of choice for Mob hits,
also points out that the .22-caliber
has been the pistol of choice for the CIA
for years and years.
- It reached the point where Frank Church
felt the need to come out and make a statement
that these theories that are being bandied about
couldn't be further from the truth.
- [Matthew] They do uncover several other assassinations
orchestrated by the CIA,
but when it comes to the death of Sam Giancana,
Senator Church says it's probably Mob-related.
Despite these denials, it makes sense.
I mean, it would be certainly something
you'd want to investigate.
- [Laurence] In 1975,
Sam Giancana is subpoenaed by the Church Committee
to testify about the CIA's involvement
with organized crime to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
But the committee is also tasked
with investigating the possible connection between the CIA
and one of the most consequential events
in US history,
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
- It's something that is
one of the darkest days in American history,
and we still don't know
60 years later what exactly happened.
- In 1964,
President Lyndon B. Johnson creates the Warren Commission
to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
and they conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald
is a lone actor in the assassination.
No one else is involved.
- An awful lot of people
were bothered by the Warren Commission
not looking at other scenarios,
and argued that there were more plausible theories
than the lone gunman.
And one of them has to do in part with the idea
that Sam Giancana was involved.
- By bringing Giancana to Washington in 1975,
these investigators were hoping to find out
whatever Giancana may know about Castro,
but while they're at it,
they could also ask him about the JFK assassination.
- [Scott] It's really not a crazy conspiracy theory,
the way that sometimes it's made out to be.
'Cause we know there were quite a few people
that had connections to Giancana
that were within the radius of that assassination.
- Imagine if Giancana testified
and said, "Hey, not only did the CIA use me for Castro,
but they also used me to kill JFK."
Now, whether it is the government
or the Mafia that killed him,
either way, Sam dies because he knows too much.
[pounding dramatic music]
[tense uneasy music]
- Most everyone is in agreement that Lee Harvey Oswald
is the one who shot the president.
But did he really act alone?
- There is a lot of strong evidence
that maybe the Mafia is also involved.
You sound crazy connecting all the dots there,
but it makes sense.
Lee Harvey Oswald grows up in New Orleans.
His uncle is a bookie who works for Carlos Marcello,
who is in charge of the Mob in New Orleans,
and a friend of Sam Giancana.
Lee Harvey Oswald, when he is a teenager,
is mentored by this person, David Ferrie,
who is also a private investigator
that works with Carlos Marcello.
- [Scott] After the assassination of Kennedy,
Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby,
[gunshot]
who was a well-known Mafia associate of Giancana's.
- [Thomas] In 1975,
after Johnny Roselli testifies before the Church Committee,
his lawyer floated that Johnny
would not only be willing to talk about Castro,
but he also knew something about the JFK assassination.
And it was at that point
that Roselli winds up being murdered just like Giancana.
- The really interesting twist here is that Sam Giancana
and the Mob helped get President Kennedy elected.
[crowd applauding]
- It's pretty much acknowledged historically
that Sam Giancana helped the Kennedy campaign
both in West Virginia and to some degree in Illinois.
With the election there,
Giancana was telling other mobsters,
"I'm supporting Kennedy
because I think he'll go easy on us."
- [Matthew] Sam Giancana does all this work behind the scenes
to get John F. Kennedy elected president,
expecting that his life is gonna get easier,
and it does not.
- The Mob became very angry and bitter
at the fact that almost immediately
when Kennedy got into office,
he came after the Mafia with an assault
that had never been bigger or more widespread.
- [Sami] A year later, in 1961,
JFK's younger brother Bobby Kennedy,
who was serving as Attorney General, goes after Jimmy Hoffa,
who's the head of the Teamsters,
which has connections to the Mob.
RFK also goes after New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello,
who gets deported to Guatemala.
So Giancana allegedly vows to take revenge on JFK.
[tense thoughtful music]
- [Thomas] Giancana was known as a very violent guy,
one of the most violent people that the Chicago Mob
had ever known, that you don't fool around with Sam Giancana
or you're gonna find a bullet in your head.
- [Laurence] In 1992, Sam Giancana's brother
and his godson publish Double Cross.
The book claims to reveal the Mob boss's
most shocking secrets, including what he allegedly said
about the Kennedy assassination.
- In his book Double Cross,
Chuck Giancana says one day Sam said to him,
"Look, we," meaning "we," the Mob, and the CIA,
"took care of Kennedy together."
- [Matthew] He states that Sam told him
that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA plant,
and that it was Giancana
that ordered the murder of John F. Kennedy.
- [Scott] So to break it down in its most simple form,
Oswald was the patsy,
and then Ruby was the guy sent to take him out.
And that's the typical Mob protocol.
You assign somebody to do the job,
and then you assign somebody to get rid of the guy
that did the job.
[light tense music]
- There's no way for Chuck Giancana
to corroborate his story,
and there's no way that we will ever know
what Sam Giancana might have testified to in 1975.
But if that is what Sam Giancana was going to say,
that is an explosive issue.
- If Sam Giancana really had something to do
with the assassination of JFK in collusion with the CIA,
that is information that the CIA does not want out,
and it is good reason to kill Sam Giancana.
- [Laurence] Since he first became the head
of the Chicago Mob,
Sam Giancana has kept the Chicago Police Department
in his pocket,
but as he prepares to go on the witness stand in 1975,
this once-close relationship may have sealed his fate.
[tense dramatic music]
- Since Giancana's set to testify
in front of a Senate committee,
federal prosecutors have a vested interest
in keeping him alive.
In fact, on the night of Giancana's murder,
there are two officers that are stationed
directly outside of his house.
- At about 10:30 on the night of the shooting, they left.
The skeptics would argue
what they did was leave him unprotected.
- It's really extraordinary
that, within about an hour or so after the cops leave,
they're called back by the housekeeper
saying that Sam Giancana has been murdered.
- And then asked to investigate it,
the Chicago PD put it off to the local police department,
who don't have the experience
or the resources to find out who killed Sam Giancana.
So this brings up a lot of questions.
Why were they not there?
Why won't they investigate it?
- There's people who believe that Chicago police
deliberately leave the case unsolved
because they have something to hide.
[tense mysterious music]
- It's very possible when you consider
the history of the Chicago Police Department
that they played some role
in the conspiracy to get rid of Giancana.
The Chicago Police Department
is probably one of the most notoriously corrupt
organizations in the history of law enforcement.
- Chicago police and their connection to the Mob
goes back all the way to the gangland days of the 1920s
and the 1930s, when Al Capone was in charge
and was able to pay off officers and to pay off judges
to make sure that they looked the other way
when crimes were being committed.
- Now, it would be ludicrous to argue
that every Chicago policeman was corrupt.
But by the time of the Giancana murder,
reporters noted, there'd only been two gangland murderers
that had been solved.
Sam Giancana himself bragged to his associates
that he had many policemen in his back pocket.
[tense uneasy music]
- [Thomas] An amazing character named Richard Cain
is the perfect example of this intermingling
between law enforcement and the Mafia in Chicago.
Richard Cain was a Chicago cop
who was a great police investigator,
and so they say, "Wow, he's a terrific cop.
But actually, secretly, he was on the payroll
of Sam Giancana and always had been.
- His police training came in really handy for the Mob
because he would put mobsters through lie detector tests,
not to try and get them on a crime,
but to see if they were talking about the Outfit.
- Cain winds up going to jail.
And what does he do when he gets out?
He goes straight to work for Sam Giancana again,
and he's Sam Giancana's driver for a couple years.
And then he shot in the face with a shotgun
inside of a sandwich shop.
- But it wasn't just cops who were corrupt in Chicago.
Other parts of the justice system were on the take.
- [Claire] During the investigation,
there's a judge who is actively stonewalling
the progress of the police.
He refuses to allow police to investigate Giancana's desk.
- When the police finally opened the desk drawers,
they find the guest list
at one of the weddings of Giancana's daughters.
And this judge was on the guest list.
So what we're looking at is
a law enforcement system in Chicago
that is consistently been corrupt
when they had to deal with organized crime.
- [Sami] Now, historians have researched this,
and there's really no hard evidence
tying the Chicago Police Department
with the death of Sam Giancana.
It is possible, though, that Chicago police feared
that Giancana would eventually spill the beans
about activities between police and the Mob.
And since he's no longer the main power broker,
there's no reason to be nice anymore.
And if that were the case,
Giancana may have ended up paying the ultimate price.
- [Thomas] It's still considered an open homicide.
We don't know who killed him, but there were a lot of people
who wanted Sam Giancana dead.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Claire] This is a man who has infiltrated American business,
the CIA.
It's hard to imagine a mobster
more enmeshed with the United States government.
You can't help but wonder if we could just figure out
who killed Sam Giancana and why
it might help us solve some even larger mysteries.
- It's the thread that you could pull,
and the next thing you know,
the whole ball of the yarn is gone.
- 50 years later, the unsolved murder of Sam Giancana
still raises as many questions as there are suspects.
It remains one of the most elusive
and intriguing murders in the annals of organized crime,
particularly for the secrets it may hold
about a truly tumultuous period in our history.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.
[tense uneasy music]