Sam Giancana
From The Kennedy Assassination Resource
AKA: Sam Gold
Sam Giancana was the head of organised-crime in Chicago, with an interest in Cuban racketeering. He had a reputation for brutal murder of opponents. His own organised-crime operation was reckoned to have an annual income of two billion dollars, although by mid 1963, Robert Kennedy had FBI agents watching Giancana 24 hours a day, making it difficult for him to run his business.
He claimed to have influenced Chicago's vote on Kennedy's behalf in the presidential election of 1960, but felt he had been betrayed when the Kennedy brothers subsequently tried to break up the Mafia's business interests and targeted him, amongst others, for prosecution.
During the Presidential campaign of 1960, Joe Kennedy had meetings with several gangsters including Carlos Marcello and John Roselli who was a golfing friend of Joe's. A subsequent FBI wiretap revealed Roselli and Giancana discussing the "donations" they had made during the primaries. Giancana was a friend of Judith Campbell Exner while she was having an affair with JFK and later became her lover. According to Exner, JFK and Giancana met at least twice during the campaign and she acted as a courier several times, carrying sealed envelopes apparently containing large sums of money in cash.
In late 1960, the CIA was involved in talks with the Mafia at the highest level on the subject of killing Castro. At least one of these meetings involved Allen Dulles, then the Agency's Director and later a member of the Warren Commission. Giancana, using the name Sam Gold, was one of the Mafia members involved; another was John Roselli, using the name John Rawlston. A third was Santo Trafficante, using the alias Joe Pecora. Trafficante had masterminded the mob's Cuban gambling empire and seems to have had connections with Jack Ruby, who was known to close associates of Giancana when he opened his first club in Dallas.
In 1961, Giancana implied publicly that he had access to information about JFK's personal life.
Several years later, his half-brother, Chuck claimed that Giancana had had Marilyn Monroe murdered to expose both Kennedy's affairs with her and so "depose the rulers of Camelot."
[edit] Mysterious Death
Along with Roselli and another Mafia member Charles Nicoletti, Giancana was due to testify to the House Assassinations Committee about the connection between the CIA's assassination plots against Castro and the assassination of JFK. All three died violent deaths before they were able to testify. Giancana was found at home face-up in a pool of blood. He had been shot seven times; once in the back of the head, and six times in a neat circle round his mouth. Zack Shelton, the FBI agent in charge of tracing the weapon that killed Giancana discovered it had originated from a Miami gun shop. The shop was a CIA front operation, and Shelton was quickly told to 'leave it alone' by his superiors.
