by Russo, Gus
The degree to which the Bureau had been placed on the defensive was made abundantly clear when SAC Marlin Johnson took the witness stand, under subpoena from Leighton. While his subordinates languished in the audience, Johnson stole a page from Curly Humphreys’ bible.
“Does William Roemer work for you?” Leighton asked.
“I respectfully decline to answer the question on instructions from the U.S. attorney general, order number 260-62,” Johnson answered.
For a brief moment, it was as though the court had entered a parallel universe, where Bobby Kennedy’s men were forced to plead their version of the Fifth Amendment for Giancana’s probers. Johnson repeated the plea thirteen times, and the Bureau offered no defense, insistent that the court lacked jurisdiction. Judge Austin quickly ruled in favor of Mooney, who broke out a huge cigar in Austin’s chambers, blowing smoke in Johnson’s face as they signed the required paperwork. Per the ruling, the G was instructed to keep a reasonable distance when following their prey - and Marlin Johnson was fined $500 for contempt.
Although Mooney gloated over what was one of his few victories inside a court, his grin was quickly erased by a cold dose of reality. In a mere few weeks, the appellate court reversed the decision (and the contempt fine), and Cook County sheriff (and future governor of Illinois) Richard Ogilvie added his men to the FBI’s lockstep carnival. Now, Mooney’s home became a local attraction, as hundreds of curious mob-watchers showed up daily to watch Mooney curse at his tormentors. The circuslike goings-on did not go over well with the Humphreys-Accardo-Ricca triumvirate.
Giancana’s biographer William Brashler neatly summarized the reaction in the Outfit’s inner sanctum, writing, “Through it all the Outfit seethed . . . Accardo and Ricca were severely critical. . . Meetings were held without him [Giancana] in which strong underbosses railed about Giancana’s lack of cool. Names like Sam Battaglia, Jack Cerone, even Giancana’s own enforcer Willie Daddano were brought up as possible replacements.”
The Clubhouse Closes
After spending all of six weeks in Chicago, Giancana headed West once again to continue his rolling party with Sinatra and McGuire, wasting no time in making front-page news in Nevada. According to his FBI file, Mooney, with Phyllis in tow, guested at Sinatra’s Palm Beach home, then went on to Las Vegas, where the mob boss cavorted with Eddie Fisher and Dean Martin, both of whom “made a big fuss over Giancana.” From there, Mooney traveled to the Cal-Neva, where Phyllis and her sisters were scheduled to sing the week of July 27. According to McGuire’s manager, Victor LaCroix Collins, the trio became involved in a drunken celebration at McGuire’s Chalet 50. Collins got into a disagreement with McGuire, whom he attempted to force back to her chair. When she missed the chair and hit the floor, Mooney raced across the room and punched Collins above the eyebrow, cutting him with one of his ostentatious diamond rings. The argument then escalated to an all-out brawl.
Hearing the ruckus, Frank Sinatra burst in and, in one telling, held Collins while Mooney punched him or, according to another, separated the two. Collins has said that Sinatra then warned Collins that the hoods would put a contract out on Collins for the affront to their boss.
“The only way they’ll get me is from long distance with a high-powered rifle,” Collins answered, “because none of them has the guts to hit me face-to-face. I’m not afraid of nothing, wop.”
With that, the singer bellowed that because of the fight, he would now lose the Cal-Neva and his money.
“What do you mean, your money?” Collins shot back. “You don’t have a dime in the place. It’s all Mafia money and you know it.”
As Sinatra predicted, the coverage of Mooney’s presence at the Lodge, a violation of his Black Book listing, would indeed cause Sinatra to forfeit the Lodge, his 9 percent interest in the Sands, and his Nevada gambling license. The Gaming Board’s decision was guaranteed after Sinatra launched into a tirade against a board investigator who called to hear Sinatra’s version.
“Fuck you,” Sinatra yelled. “I don’t have to take this shit. Do you know who I am? I’m Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra!”
When the board immediately ordered Sinatra to divest himself of his Nevada interests, Mooney realized he would now never recoup his Cal-Neva investment. D.C. detective and Giancana confidant Joe Shimon remembered running into Mooney soon after the board’s decision. “He told me that Frank cost him over $465,000 on Cal-Neva,” Shimon told Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley. “He said, ’That bastard and his big mouth. All he had to do was keep quiet, let the attorneys handle it. . . but no, Frank has to get him on the phone with that damn big mouth of his and now we’re going to lose the whole damn place.’”
Then governor of Nevada Grant Sawyer recalled how President Kennedy was making a stop in Las Vegas to speak at the Convention Center during the Cal-Neva flare-up. In the limousine from McCarran Airport, Kennedy asked Sawyer, “What are you doing to my friend Frank Sinatra?”
“Well, Mr. President,” Sawyer answered, “I’ll take care of things here in Nevada and I wish you luck on the national level.”
As early as 1961, the FBI had heard Sam express concern about his Cal-Neva investment. Speaking with Johnny Rosselli at the Armory Lounge, Mooney had said, “I’m gonna get my money out of there [Cal-Neva] . . . [or] I’m gonna wind up with half of the joint and no money.” Now, according to a source close to Mooney Giancana, the hot-blooded boss did not take the loss of his getaway retreat lying down. According to the source, who wishes to remain anonymous, the idea of killing Sinatra was again revived, this time by Mooney himself. “From what I was told,” the source says, “Mooney was furious that Sinatra refused to give back his investment, so he put out a contract. Frank begged the New York boys to intercede for him again, and Mooney called it off.” Shortly after the Lodge’s closing on Labor Day,4 Giancana was at the Armory Lounge with aides Charles Nicolletti, James “Cowboy” Mirro, and the source when who should arrive, drunk to the gills, but Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Mooney snarled. “That motherfucker is lucky to be alive - and he comes here?” In short time, the inebriated duo were escorted to their waiting limousine and whisked to O’Hare Airport, where a commercial plane had been kept waiting.
While Mooney continued to self-destruct, so too did Curly’s marital bliss. With Jeanne having spent much of the last year on her own in Switzerland and Key Biscayne, Curly once again began skirt-chasing. According to government informants, Curly was becoming a frequent habitue of a “twist” club called The Scene, and the Playboy Club, where he began dating club “bunnies.” His FBI file notes that “he was observed . . . on three occasions early this year in company of young women apparently not his wife.” Humphreys’ dalliances may have been warranted, given the treatment he was receiving from his young wife on her infrequent visits.
The Bureau’s illegal Plumb mike planted in Curly’s new apartment now became more a fount for FBI voyeurism and less for insight into Outfit business, its ostensible raison d’etre. “[Jeanne] appears extremely unhappy in her new apartment at Marina City because of its lack of room and its location,” noted one Bureau report. “I was used to large homes, with animals,” Jeanne says. “There was no way I was going to be happy in an apartment, no matter what the address was.” Another file notes how Jeanne demolished one of the expensive balcony windows: “She had pounded the window twenty times before she even got it to crack . . . Humphreys advised his wife that she was a maniac.” From another report: “Source advised that over the weekend, Humphreys’ wife became extremely intoxicated and apparently attempted to throw Humphreys off their fifty-first storey balcony.”
“I don’t remember trying to throw Murray off,” Jeanne now says, “but there was one time when I was trying to bash him with a frying pan and he locked himself in the bedroom. I climbed out on the balcony in my nightgown and tried to break the bedroom window to get to him.”
On August 28, 1963, the Humphreys’ amour fou marria
ge was dissolved in Chicago divorce court. Curly agreed to pay Jeanne a staggering $18,000 per month alimony, on top of the $6,000 he was sending to Clemi in Oklahoma. However, Curly maintained a cordial relationship with Jeanne, much as he had with Clemi. His FBI file illustrates many instances in which he continued to visit Jeanne in Florida, and to tend to her legal problems, including “fixing” a case for her.
On the occasions where the pair attempted to rekindle their marriage, the Peeping Tom agents memorialized the goings-on for J. Edgar Hoover. A report filed six months after the divorce noted that on one recent visit “Humphreys cabareted her until the early morning and then brought her to his apartment where he became enamored of his former wife.”
“I was impossible to live with, there’s no denying it,” Jeanne Humphreys says about the breakup today. “I found out years later, when I began having seizures, that I had been been in the early stages of a form of epilepsy that made me uncontrollable. After I was finally diagnosed, I was put on medication that stopped the outbursts, but as a side effect I acquired diabetes.” Jeanne adds that her husband shared some of the blame for the failure of their marriage. “Murray was extremely jealous,” she says. “When we were in Italy for Lucky’s [Luciano] funeral, he wanted to kill an Italian that he thought was flirting with me.”
Bobby’s Reign Cut Short
It was just after 10:30 A.M., Pacific time, on November 22, 1963, when Johnny Rosselli was awakened at the Desert Inn by a call from Hollywood. The caller was an old friend, a producer at Columbia Studios named Jonie Tapps. When told that Jack Kennedy had been shot, Rosselli thought he was dreaming. “I didn’t believe it at first,” Rosselli later testified, “because I was in a deep sleep.” Rosselli soon accepted the news after Tapps persuaded him to turn on his radio.
“I got shocked,” Rosselli told Congress thirteen years later, careful to censor his language. “I said, ’Gosh Almighty, those damned Communists’ . . . You know, that was the first thing that came to my mind because a few months before that, Castro had made a speech, and I read it in the newspapers, and it sounded just like him, that he was threatening the establishment here.”5
Johnny had expounded on his theory three weeks after the assassination with fellow hood Jimmy Fratianno. During their chat, Fratianno lamented that the press was openly speculating that organized crime was responsible for the hit. “You know, Johnny,” Fratianno said, “the more of this bullshit I read, the more I’m convinced that we’ve become fucking scapegoats for every unsolved crime committed in this country. What’s this mob the papers are always talking about, for Christ’s sake? It’s against the fucking rules to kill a cop, so now we’re going to kill a president.”
“No question in my mind,” answered Rosselli. “I think [Castro] hit Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs operation . . . But it’s got nothing to do with us.” Of course, Johnny Rosselli, unlike virtually everyone else monitoring the tragedy that day, also had firsthand knowledge of the secret White House assassination plots that could have motivated “those damned Communists.” Rosselli’s opinions were shared by many in the American intelligence establishment, especially those who had worked with the Outfit on the Castro assassination plots, which were hidden from the official investigators into Kennedy’s murder - the repercussions were just too awful to contemplate.
Throughout the country, the FBI huddled around their illegal surveillance apparatuses, trying to learn if organized crime had finally gotten even with the hated Robert Kennedy. What they consistently heard convinced them that the country’s underworld would never even contemplate such an action. In Buffalo, local boss Stefanno Magaddino lamented, “It’s a shame we’ve been embarrassed before the whole world by allowing the president to be killed in our own territory.” He added that Kennedy was one of the nation’s greatest presidents and, as noted by the eavesdroppers, “blames the assassination on his brother, Robert Kennedy.” In Miami, a bug in the home of Charles Costello heard that boss voice a different lament: “It’s too bad his brother Bobby was not in that car too.” In northern Pennsylvania, the G heard Russell Buffalino agree, saying, “They killed the good one [Jack]. They should have killed the other little guy [Bobby].”
In Key Biscayne, Jeanne Humphreys had just been coming home from a boating party when the phone rang. It was Curly in Chicago.
“Did you hear what happened?” Curly asked. After Jeanne responded that she had, Curly said, “That’s no concern of ours.” Then after a pause, “We’re not connected with it, but they got the wrong one.”
In Chicago, Mooney had spent the morning with aide Chuckie English and singer Keely Smith. The FBI heard the don say, “Attorney General Robert Kennedy will not have the power he previously did.” That weekend, the Giancana family was glued to their television set like most of the world. While watching the assassination coverage, Mooney’s daughter Antoinette remembered what her father had said after the 1960 double cross: “Someday Jack will get his, but I will have nothing to do with it.” When the eventual actually happened, Antoinette recalls her father being saddened, but saying little. Three days later, after the pro-Castro Lee Oswald was charged in the murder, Mooney was again with English and the two engaged in a bit of twisted wordplay worthy of The Sopranos:
English: “This twenty-four-year-old kid was an anarchist. He was a Marxist Communist.”
Giancana: “He was a marksman who knew how to shoot.”
Hearing the Outfit discuss Kennedy’s killing, Agent Roemer concluded the same as his fellows around the country, later writing his summation of the atmosphere in the Outfit’s inner sanctums: “The mobsters discussed the Kennedys constantly . . . But never in any way did they indicate they were interested in assassination . . . After the assassination, they talked about it frequently. They weren’t at all unhappy about it, but they gave absolutely no indication that they knew about it in advance or that they had anything at all to do with it.”
After Jack Kennedy’s murder, his brother Bobby retreated not only from his work at Justice, but from life itself. Convinced that the vendettas against the people on his ’list’ (either Castro or the mob) had backfired on his brother, Bobby fell into a deep depression. His withdrawal, and the subsequent appointment of a do-nothing attorney general by the new president, Lyndon Johnson, briefly encouraged the underworld, but J. Edgar Hoover, with congressional legislative support, let it be known that the pursuit of the nation’s underworld would continue.
In the spring of 1965, a federal grand jury investigating organized crime in Chicago deposed Mooney Giancana. The FBI listened as Curly Humphreys counseled Mooney and the other hoods about pleading the Fifth. With the belief widespread that the illegal bugs would sink the government’s case, few in Chicago feared this umpteenth grand jury probe. However, no one suspected that the G would grant Giancana immunity, thus forcing him into a no-win situation: If he still refused to talk, he would be cited for contempt; but if he talked honestly about organized crime in the Windy City, the Outfit would hit him faster than he could say stool pigeon.
Mooney’s first instinct was to put the word out on the streets that he would pay $100,000 to the man who could extricate him from his dreadful situation. When help was not forthcoming, Giancana believed it was time to tell his lawyer, D.C. power attorney Edward Bennett Williams, about the many governmental secrets (and those of the Kennedy family) to which he had been privy. Williams shrewdly contacted Bobby Kennedy’s close friend and chief of Organized Crime at Justice, William Hundley, to give him the bad news. The Justice Department, still populated by many of Bobby Kennedy’s disciples, agreed to cut a deal, promising to ask Mooney only a handful of benign questions about petty crime. It looked as if Mooney had obtained a sweetheart deal, but as it turned out, the don had second thoughts once on the witness stand. Leaving the courtroom to meet his attorneys (lawyers are barred from the grand jury), Mooney gave them the bad news.
“I couldn’t make myself answer the questions,” Mooney told his stunned attorneys.
It became clear to his team that the code of omerta (silence) was all-encompassing, preventing Mooney from even admitting that he had ever even bootlegged a bottle of beer.
Mooney chose to keep quiet and accept imprisonment. It is unclear whether the government or the Outfit was happier to have Mooney out of commission. When Giancana was released a year later, the Justice Department prevented the state’s attorneys from going after him again. When the original judge in the case, William E. Campbell, later learned of the CIA plots with Giancana, he became convinced that the spy agency had prevailed with Justice to let sleeping dogs lie.
If the loss of the gang’s front man induced no grief among the bosses, such was not the case when one of the Outfit’s guiding lights breathed his last later that year. The loss of Curly Humphreys, combined with the semiretirement of Accardo and Ricca (and the death years earlier of Jake Guzik), dictated that Al Capone’s heirs turn their focus away from the grandiose expansions for which they were famous, in favor of merely struggling to maintain the status quo.
1. Located among the staff files of the Kefauver Committee is a report stating that Curly met his Intelligence Unit contact once a month at venues such as the Roosevelt Club coffee shop or the Bismarck Hotel. “The sole purpose of the meet,” the committee’s report stated, “is to chat and make a drop [payoff].”