Maybe it is all the gangster movies I watched as a kid. Like James Cagney in White Heat. Or Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. Or what about Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon?
I don’t know. For me, there’s something weirdly fascinating about the world of organized crime. Probably because we never know the inside scoop about this. I mean, most of these guys rose from snot-nosed kids on the street all the way up to underworld empires. And they turned those empires into something that shaped history in unexpected ways.
Back then, the gangsters weren’t just thugs with guns. They were businessmen and strategists. And way before social media, those guys were often influencers of politics and culture. In unsettling ways.
Take Sam Giancana, for example. There was a scary guy. Giancana was a deadly mob boss. And he held a terrifying reach in most everything he did.
He was born Salvatore Giancana in Chicago in 1908. I’m not sure when he switched things over to Sam. Anyway, he didn’t exactly have a gentle start. A street kid in every way.
By his teens, he was already running with the 42 Gang, a group known for car theft and bootlegging. They were also known for their intimidation methods. Giancana quickly built a reputation. Everyone knew he was someone who could make money. And in the crime world, big money is power.
With that, Sam Giancana grew. By the late 1950s, he was running The Chicago Outfit. It was one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the country. Under his leadership, the Outfit controlled gambling, extortion, liquor distribution, and political influence stretching from Chicago to Louisiana. He even had claims in Havana.
As if that weren’t bad enough? Giancana was rumored to have connections to the CIA. Supposedly, he helped plan an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. There was also talk that he had influence over the election of President John F. Kennedy and possibly his assassination.
Of course, in the Kennedy story, nothing has been proven with certainty. But. The notion has never cleared in the circle that knows what it knows.
All those dastardly deeds eventually catch up to a fellow. He wasn’t caught for murder or racketeering, but for refusing to talk. From 1965 – 1966, he served a one-year sentence because he refused to testify before a federal grand jury investigating organized crime. This happened several times during the 1960s.
At one point, he fled to Mexico and was eventually forced back to the U.S.
He was set to testify one more time in June 1975. But then it happened. Just days before he was set to testify before Congress, someone silenced him permanently. Giancana was attacked in his Oak Park home. He died from multiple gunshot wounds.
He became just another ghost in the long, violent history of organized crime.
A good lesson for anyone in life. It is probably best to keep our noses clean.
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“Power doesn’t corrupt people. People corrupt power.”
— William Gaddis
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“The line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, but right through every human heart.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.”
— Matthew the Evangelist
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“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
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