Latest news with #SamGiancana
Daily Mail
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
'I know a lot of dangerous secrets about the Kennedys. I will shock the world': Marilyn Monroe's ominous words before she was found naked and dead in bed... so was she murdered to silence her?
My god what a beautiful woman, thinks jazz singer and pianist Buddy Greco. He's sitting outside Frank Sinatra's bungalow in Lake Tahoe when a limousine pulls up and 'this gorgeous woman in dark glasses steps out'. It's Marilyn Monroe. She greets him with a big hug around the neck. He finds her 'smart, funny, intelligent, if fragile'. Along with English actor Peter Lawford and his wife Pat, they are guests of Sinatra for the weekend. Also invited are a number of Sinatra's other Hollywood friends and Mafia associates like Sam Giancana. Sinatra and the Lawfords are aware of what's been going on with Marilyn and the Kennedys – used and dumped by Jack and Bobby – and are hoping that getting her out of Los Angeles will distract her.
CBS News
20-06-2025
- CBS News
50 years later, John Drummond looks back on the murder of Chicago Outfit honcho Sam Giancana
Thursday marks 50 years since the murder of in infamous Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Giancana, known as "Momo," was 67 when he was murdered at his home in Oak Park, Illinois. As recounted by the Mob Museum, Giancana was cooking sausage when he was shot six times in the head — the first time from behind. A then-45-year-old reporter for Channel 2 News whose name you are sure to know remembers it all. John "Bulldog" Drummond, now 95, tenaciously found stories as a reporter — and now he stubbornly saves them in retirement. At home, Drummond has an immense file of TV scripts, court documents, and newspaper clippings on the many stories he covered over the years. "I have to go through and throw some of them out," Drummond said as he rifled through some vintage newspaper clippings. Drummond joined Channel 2 in 1969, and soon became famous for his stories on crooks, capers, and colorful characters — and in particular on organized crime and the Chicago mob. He retired as a staff reporter in 1997, Drummond regularly returned to the air on Channel 2 when the mob and organized crime were in the news. And he's still the reporter we turn to when it's time to revisit a story like that of Giancana. "Of all the mob bosses that I ever saw, he was more surly," Drummond said. Giancana was the notorious boss of the Chicago Outfit for 1957 to 1966 — only nine years, but an eventful nine years. As recalled by the Mob Museum, Outfit boss Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo stepped aside to make way for Giancana in 1957, after Giancana consolidated the city's illegal lottery rackets by violent means. In his first year as head of the Chicago Outfit, Giancana was the Outfit's representative in the national summit of Mafia bosses in Apalachin, New York, the Mob Museum recounted. The CIA even reportedly contacted Giancana and mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr. in a plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the Mob Museum recalled. When Giancana refused to testify before a grand jury in 1965 and was sent to Cook County Jail for a year, he had a television and refrigerator in his cell, archive CBS reports noted. Sam Giancana CBS Giancana lost control of the Outfit the following year. "A lot of people didn't like the way Giancana was running things anyway," Drummond said "He's got too much ink, too much publicity running around with Hollywood stars and things of that nature — flamboyant lifestyle." Giancana went off to Mexico. But in 1974, authorities there seized him in his bathrobe and slippers and had him deported back to the U.S., as Chris Wallace reported for Channel 2 News in 1975. Giancana returned to Chicago and appeared before another grand jury. Drummond was present for Giancana's last court appearance. But he was on vacation on June 19, 1975, when the big mob news broke in Oak Park. "Sam Giancana had been murdered in the basement of his house — shot about six times with a .22-caliber pistol," said Drummond. As Bill Kurtis intoned from the Channel 2 anchor desk at the time: "A gangland hit? Perhaps. Police aren't sure yet. But it is likely he knew his killer." Drummond covered Giancana's funeral at the Montclare Funeral Home on Chicago's Northwest Side. Fifty years later, Drummond remembers all the details like he is reporting them for the first time. Drummond believes the theory that Giancana's bodyguard and driver pulled the trigger. "Nobody was ever charged — so theoretically, it's a mystery," Drummond said. "Who killed Sam?" It's a tough question that a tenacious reporter will keep asking.
