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"We often give our enemies the means to
our own destruction."
-- Aesop
By midnight of July 19, 1975, Momo was dead. A "person or persons
unknown" had entered the sanctuary of his home and shot a .22 caliber bullet through
the back of his head and five more into his mouth. There being no signs of forced entry,
the killer had been someone Momo completely trusted.
Who did it is still unanswered. Common belief is that somebody fretted that Momo might
talk The CIA might have worried; the Outfit might have worried.
Chuck Giancana insists, however, that that was not the motive: "(My brother) never
would have revealed his vast knowledge of covert CIA operations or any of the thousands of
skeletons buried in the closets of Chicago’s outfit. Quite simply, the code of omerta
ran too strongly through his Sicilian veins." Omerta is the Outfit’s code
of silence.
Who then? Who put a bullet into Momo and ended his 50-plus years of crime? Suspects
range from Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo, who thought Momo had brought to much attention
to the Outfit, to Santo Trafficante, a Florida- based drug king and long-time partner of
Momo. Since he was aware that the FBI had already tied him to the Chicago mob (and was
looking for a reason to nab him) he might have felt his operations were the most
imperiled. Curiously, a .22 caliber handgun identified as the murder weapon was discovered
in Florida following Momo’s assassination.
But, who killed him -- and why -- is hardly the point when examining the life of Sam
Giancana. What is relevant is the lesson learned through his life and death. Stereotypical
as it seems, the way he lived begged for the kind of death he finally encountered. He
himself should have suspected it all along.
He had mumbled it many times: "Live by the sword, die by the sword."
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Sam Giancana's body at the Cook County morgue
(AP) |
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