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Another Key Witness Conveniently Silenced: Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana was a top-level mobster linked to the CIA’s anti-Castro assassination program. It was documented by Senator Frank Church’s investigation that the CIA had gone to mobster Johnny Roselli to get the cooperation of Giancana and Santo Trafficante, another top Mafia leader, in their covert efforts to eliminate Castro once and for all.
Bear in mind that the guy who we’re talking about here was a ruling king of the mob. Giancana—nicknamed “Sam the Man”—was not just a big name in Chicago where he was headquartered, but with big casinos in Nevada, giant hotels in Miami Beach, and a lot of major business interests in Hollywood and even Mexico, his name carried a lot of heat. His house was like a fortress, he knew everything about everybody because he knew that’s what kept him alive, and you can bet he knew how to protect himself and what was his. His house had also been placed under twenty-four-hour FBI surveillance by the government and that came from a direct order from the Attorney General’s office of Robert Kennedy.430 Giancana was even followed by the Feds when he was on the golf course and bullied back at them about the harassment of the constant surveillance.
And even though he was extremely well-protected and under constant surveillance, they got him anyway. Here’s how they did it:
That night, while cooking in the kitchen of his Chicago home—which was described by many as a “fortress” or “bunker”—Giancana came under the gun. According to both his daughter and the police, who stated that Giancana was invulnerable in his own home due to the security systems and impregnability of the structure, only someone he knew or trusted could have gotten to him. Giancana would have to have let them in, gone back to cooking, and then been surprised when the assailant—or assailants—pulled a .22 pistol.431
Here’s another description of that murder, and note the particular point that what Congress was specifically investigating was the CIA’s use of the Mob for its anti-Castro black ops in Cuba:
Giancana was next called to testify before a United States Senate committee investigating Mafia involvement in a failed CIA plot to assassinate Castro. Before he was scheduled to testify, Giancana flew to Houston, Texas, and underwent gall bladder surgery. He returned to his Oak Park home on June 17, 1975. Two days later, Sam Giancana was shot once in the back of the head and several more times up through the chin with a .22-caliber pistol while cooking in his basement. Though theories abounded as to who killed him [rival Mafiosi, CIA operatives nervous about his future testimony, one of many former girlfriends], no one was ever arrested in connection with the murder.432
A better question, actually, would be how the hell did somebody even get close enough to kill him without being picked off first by a Mafia bodyguard or a Federal agent?
This is exactly what happened—and when:
| June 19, 1975 | Members of the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee arrive in Chicago for the purpose of escorting Sam Giancana to Washington for his appearance before the committee. |
| June 19, 1975, 9:00 p.m. | Two “law enforcement officers” are observed outside Sam Giancana’s home by his neighbors in Oak Park, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. |
| June 19, 1975, 11:15 p.m. | Three surveillance cars reportedly leave the area of Sam Giancana’s home. |
| June 19, 1975, 11:30 p.m. | Sam Giancana is murdered inside his home. |
| June 20, 1975 | The Chicago Tribune reports the murder of Sam Giancana. Allegations are made that the murder was sanctioned by the CIA. |
| June 21, 1975 | The Chicago Tribune reports that Giancana’s house was under surveillance on the night that he was killed.433 |
The murder of Sam Giancana right before he was to testify was big stuff and everyone knew it. And that was the elimination that set the stage for a major congressional investigation. But there were a few more “convenient witness deaths” of high-profile people, even while that investigation was being formed.
430 “Sam Giancana: Biography,” retrieved 12 May 2013, bio. True Story: biography.com/people/sam-giancana-9542088?page=2
431 Craig Roberts & John Armstrong, JFK: The Dead Witnesses (Cumberland Press International: 1994), 105.
432 “Giancana: Biography,” bio. True Story, A+E Networks.
433 Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 218, citing Antoinette Giancana, John R. Hughes, DM OXON, MD, Ph.D. & Thomas H. Jobe, MD, JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations, (Cumberland House: 2005).