by Sam Giancana
The timing was perfect for Mooney. While Bobby and Jack were hurriedly severing their ties to their benefactors, they continued to believe that they themselves were untouchable. With Marilyn Monroe, Mooney would show them just how truly vulnerable they were.
By June of 1962, Marilyn’s film career was losing momentum; she’d become unreliable and deeply troubled. Early that summer, Mooney told Chuck he’d had a former FBI agent and a detective working on Marilyn’s surveillance and in so doing had received a wealth of information about the starlet’s habits, her emotional state, and stormy love life. From what he’d learned, Mooney believed Marilyn’s use to Chicago and the CIA was dwindling.
Later, Chuck would surmise that Marilyn Monroe’s knowledge of CIA-Outfit collaborative efforts coupled with her increasingly severe emotional instability had become a dangerous combination. And that by July, thanks to a failing relationship with Bobby Kennedy, she had become not only expendable but—when Mooney received reports of her threats to Bobby Kennedy to “blow the lid off the whole damn thing”—a frightening liability, as well.
According to guys in the Outfit, it was at this time that the CIA, fearful of exposure by the vengeful, drug-addicted Monroe, requested that Mooney have her eliminated. And Mooney, smelling blood, seized on the CIA contract as a way to achieve another objective, as well. By murdering Monroe, it might be possible to depose the rulers of Camelot.
One week before her death, a distraught Marilyn Monroe flew in to Lake Tahoe’s Cal-Neva Lodge. Unbeknown to her, Mooney had orchestrated the invitation. Among the guests that weekend was a man Mooney jokingly referred to as “Peter the Rabbit” Lawford.
At dinner that evening, Mooney, Sinatra, and Lawford watched as Marilyn drank herself into near oblivion, pouring out her heart to an uncharacteristically sympathetic Mooney Giancana. She sobbed to Mooney that Bobby Kennedy had refused her phone calls—she’d even tried to reach him at his home in Virginia, something that sent the attorney general, recently hailed nationally as “Family Man of the Year,” into a rage. She was obviously crushed by the possibility that she was, as she put it, “nothing more than a piece of meat” to the two brothers.
That night at the Cal-Neva, seeing Marilyn draped nude across her bed, her blonde hair in a frothy wave cascading over one eye, had been a beautiful, if disheveled, sight, Mooney said. He stood at the foot of her bed, looking on as she spread her legs for him, running her hands enticingly along her thighs. He’d accepted the invitation. He’d had her before, he said—plenty of times—but more than ever, he’d wanted her now. Wanted to know that he could take whatever the Kennedys might have. Zipping up his silk trousers later, he’d laughed to himself. He’d had Marilyn Monroe’s body. What he didn’t tell Chuck was that he’d soon have her life.
One week later, Marilyn Monroe lay dead. It was all over the news that she’d committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates—a tragic end to an already tragic life. But Chuck heard another, more sinister story circulate among the Outfit guys who frequented the Thunderbolt lounge.
The week following Mooney’s tryst with Marilyn at the Cal-Neva Lodge, Chuckie Nicoletti told Chuck that Mooney had received word from the CIA that Bobby Kennedy would be in California on the weekend of August 4. That was what Nicoletti said Mooney had been waiting for. Mooney immediately flew to Palm Springs, California—ostensibly to attend a party. But in truth, Chuck imagined Mooney just wanted to be nearby when it happened, hoped to see Bobby Kennedy’s face for himself when the nation’s attorney general was implicated in the scandalous suicide of a rejected starlet.
Nicoletti said that three other planes also landed in California that week—in San Francisco—carrying four other men. Mooney had selected a trusted assassin, Needles Gianola, to coordinate the job. Needles, in turn, brought his sidekick, Mugsy Tortorella, on board and two other professional killers—one from Kansas City and one from Detroit. The four men had gone to California, under Mooney’s orders, to murder Marilyn Monroe.
Eavesdropping nearby, where the electronic surveillance equipment had been set up by Bernie Spindel, the killers patiently waited for the attorney general to arrive.
Bobby Kennedy finally did appear at Marilyn’s home, late on Saturday, accompanied by another man. Listening in on the conversation, Mooney’s men ascertained that Marilyn was more than a little angry at Bobby. She became agitated—hysterical, in fact—and in response, they heard Kennedy instruct the man with him, evidently a doctor, to give her a shot to “calm her down.” Shortly thereafter, the attorney general and the doctor left.
The killers waited for the cover of darkness and, sometime before midnight, entered Marilyn’s home. She struggled at first, it was said, but already drugged by the injected sedative, thanks to Bobby’s doctor friend, their rubber-gloved hands easily forced her nude body to the bed. Calmly, and with all the efficiency of a team of surgeons, they taped her mouth shut and proceeded to insert a specially “doctored” Nembutal suppository into her anus. Then they waited.
The suppository, which Nicoletti said had been prepared by the same Chicago chemist who concocted the numerous chemical potions for the Castro hit, had been a brilliant choice. A lethal dosage of sedatives administered orally, and by force, would have been too risky, causing suspicious bruising during a likely struggle, as well as vomiting—a side effect that typically resulted from ingesting the huge quantities necessary to guarantee death. Using a suppository would eliminate any hope of reviving Marilyn, should she be found, since the medication was quickly absorbed through the anal membrane directly into the bloodstream. There’d be nothing in the stomach to pump out. Additionally, a suppository was as fast-acting as an injection but left no needle mark for a pathologist to discover. In short, it was the perfect weapon with which to kill Marilyn Monroe.
Indeed, within moments of insertion, the suppository’s massive combination of barbiturates and chloryl hydrate quickly entered her bloodstream, rendering her totally unconscious. The men carefully removed the tape, wiped her mouth clean, and placed her across the bed. Their job completed, they left as quietly as they had come.
It was at this point that Mooney had hoped “Act Two” of the drama would begin—that next, Bobby Kennedy’s affair with the distraught, love-scorned starlet would be exposed.
But what Mooney hadn’t counted on were the lengths Bobby Kennedy would go to to cover up the affair. Nor could Mooney assist in the attorney general’s exposure by providing damning evidence of a compromising relationship with the starlet, due to the risk such an act posed to his own clandestine affairs with the CIA.
Nevertheless, Mooney had expected that hordes of police would be called in—Monroe’s neighbors and housekeeper questioned, her home searched, and the scandalous discovery made that Bobby Kennedy had been there just hours earlier. In the wake of the investigation, it might also be suspected that the attorney general, along with a confederate, had administered a lethal dose of sedatives into Marilyn Monroe’s bloodstream. That, to Mooney, would have been the ultimate victory. But that was not to be.
Instead, the killers listened over their wiretaps in the hours following the murder as a series of phone calls alerted Bobby Kennedy to Marilyn’s death and ultimately mobilized a team of FBI agents to avert the impending disaster that Mooney had anticipated would follow.
Kennedy and Lawford, unaware there were other intruders in Marilyn’s home that evening, seemed to believe Bobby and his doctor friend were to blame for her overdose and death. From the wiretaps, Needles and Mugsy learned that Kennedy had panicked at the prospect of being charged with the starlet’s murder and implicated as Monroe’s sexual playmate. He directed Peter Lawford and detective Fred Otash—ironically, one of the men involved in setting up surveillance of Monroe—to sweep the house before the authorities arrived.
Thus, there were to be no discoveries of Bobby’s visit to Marilyn’s home earlier in the day, no love notes or damning phone numbers connecting either Bobby or Jack to the dead sex symbol.
Chuck would later hear that Marilyn’s diary had disappeared that night and that J. Edgar Hoover’s agents had confiscated the highly damaging telephone records, leaving little of substance that would implicate Bobby Kennedy.
Ultimately, Marilyn’s death was termed a suicide and Bobby Kennedy was not mentioned publicly as either her lover or unwitting murderer until years later.
It had been easy for the public to swallow such a story. Suicide wasn’t surprising, given Marilyn’s known addiction to alcohol and pills. She was unstable—that was no secret—an emotionally disturbed woman who’d attempted to take her own life on numerous occasions. This time, she’d simply been successful.
Nicoletti told Chuck that J. Edgar Hoover’s men from the Justice Department eagerly stepped in to protect the attorney general. Like the underworld, the FBI had the President and the attorney general under surveillance. But this was a coup for Hoover; Nicoletti said that Hoover thought he had the goods on the Kennedys and, from this point on, would call the shots.
For years, there’d be whispered speculation about Marilyn’s death and, hearing countless theories, Chuck would always laugh cynically to himself. Some, like that offered by Peter Lawford, who insisted that Marilyn had merely committed suicide, were, to Chuck, simply obvious attempts to protect the Kennedys. Typically, the closer a theory about the CIA and Outfit collaboration came to the truth, the greater the effort to discredit its proponent.
By October, the story of the starlet’s murder was old news. That’s the way it was in the Outfit: Life went on. You listened, didn’t ask questions, tried not to think about the unpleasantries. And you got damned good at it, too.
Still, philosophical or not, Chuck found the FBI surveillance, now targeted at him and his family, especially demoralizing. Through the late summer and into the fall of 1962, he agonized about the constant stream of sedans parked outside his home or at the Thunderbolt Motel, and about the agents who sat at the bar sipping Coca-Colas.
His agony increased when Mooney suggested he sell the motel. “It’s too hot to even have a drink in the fuckin’ lounge,” Mooney complained. “It’s crawlin’ with G-men in there. So sell the joint . . . I’ll find somethin’ else for you to do.”
Although Chuck did as he was instructed, putting the Thunderbolt up for sale at half a million dollars in early October, the thought of being out of work sent him into a panic. He hadn’t forgotten his months of waiting for a job before the motel had come along. When and if it sold, he wouldn’t grovel for a handout; he’d press for the opportunity to go into something legitimate, preferably his lifelong dream of construction.
Chuck blamed the FBI for this turn of events in his life. As Bobby Kennedy’s personal army of FBI agents slammed into Chuck’s world with full force, he began to see his dreams for his children slipping away. With each new headline and television expose, little Mooney and Chuckie sustained further injuries to their psyches. And in the midst of his depression, Chuck dared not think about the sale of the motel, secretly hoping that, despite the FBI’s pressure, Mooney would tell him to take it off the market. It was better to go to work each day and face the G-men than not to go to work at all.
Anne Marie begged him to talk to his brother. “Please, Chuck, maybe there’s something he can do. There must be. Why should we suffer because of him? It isn’t fair,” she said tearfully.
But in the end, Chuck said nothing to his brother about their misfortune. Nor did he ask that the motel not be sold. It just wasn’t fair to burden Mooney further, he reasoned. Besides, his problems made theirs seem silly by comparison. He couldn’t imagine complaining to the country’s—the world’s—biggest Outfit boss about something he felt certain would be viewed as insignificant. “Mooney’s too big to be worried by us,” he explained impatiently to Anne Marie. “He’s got big things goin’ on . . . bigger than some damned motel in Rosemont, Illinois. He’s up to his eyeballs in international deals. And he’s got his own problems with the FBI. He sure as hell doesn’t need me goin’in and whinin’ about our little worries.”
Truly, for Mooney, the Thunderbolt was only one of hundreds of investments scattered across the globe; he gave its sale barely a second thought. Instead, he focused on a new venture, one that captured his imagination, if only momentarily.
In between business trips to Bern, Rome, Paris, and London, Mooney, the consumate deal juggler, made plans for what would be called the biggest star-studded occasion in Chicago’s history: the grand opening of the Villa Venice.
Northwest of Chicago, in Wheeling, Illinois, the Villa Venice had been just another joint among the string of joints Mooney owned. But after Mooney invested $250,000 in its refurbishing, the dowdy stepchild was transformed into the swankest nightclub east of Las Vegas.
Chuck and Anne Marie always enjoyed the atmosphere of a swank club, and this one rivaled the finest. A grand, canopied entrance awaited each patron’s arrival. And beneath the canopy, a line of smartly uniformed valets graciously greeted the fur-draped women and their tuxedoed escorts as they climbed from gleaming Cadillacs, limousines, and Lincolns.
Behind the club, a small river snaked through a grove of trees. Floating in the moonlight were brightly painted gondolas with Venetian-outfitted gondoliers eager to take romantic couples on a watery, violin-accompanied journey.
Inside, the ambience was equally breathtaking. A grand foyer opened onto a sumptuous room dotted with linen-draped tables, each topped by lush maidenhair ferns, flowers, and flickering candlelight. Thick burgundy carpets muffled the footfalls of dozens of elegantly dressed waiters.
Throughout the opening week, drinks flowed and the sounds of elegant, subdued laughter mingled with the tinkling of crystal glasses and champagne flutes. An ornate wrought-iron railing separated the club’s revelers from a gleaming hardwood dance floor, while onstage, stars such as Eddie Fisher, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., crooned for hundreds of admiring fans.
That week, Chuck and Anne Marie were stationed front row and center. At their table sat Butch Blasi, Mooney’s bodyguard, and his wife; Chuck English and his wife, Laura; Butch and Mary English; and the Potenzas.
Anne Marie, like the other women, was dressed to the nines. The scent of expensive perfume blanketed the smoke-filled air and there was a hushed excitement in the room, electrifying the night.
Other people were willing to pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars just to stand. And here Chuck was, sitting so close to the stage, he could smell Sinatra’s cologne. This was what being Mooney Giancana’s brother was all about, Chuck thought to himself as the uncertainty of his financial future and the problems with the G-men and Kennedys faded from consciousness. He leaned back to enjoy his front-row vantage point.
Glancing up toward the ceiling, Chuck caught sight of Mooney clowning around on the catwalk. Waving and making faces at the entertainers, he seemed on top of the world.
As Chuck watched Sammy Davis, Jr., onstage, he let his mind wander. He’d met Davis years earlier, when he’d accompanied Mooney’s New York fence, George Unger, backstage at an Atlantic City nightclub. Unger wanted to collect on a twenty-thousand-dollar debt owed by Davis for jewelry. Unger and Chuck hadn’t muscled Davis, but nevertheless the entertainer had been terrified at the sight of Mooney’s brother. The name Giancana was as good as any bullet ever invented, striking fear into the heart of a man well acquainted with Mooney’s Outfit tactics.
Davis was not the only celebrity who owed money to Mooney. Half of Hollywood was in his debt. Mooney said countless entertainers, sport figures and politicians owed him substantial amounts of money. How substantial, Chuck wasn’t sure, but his brother complained about it every time a particular name came up.
Mooney might not have had his financial concerns squared away with his Hollywood associates, but during the opening of the Villa Venice, he managed to wrestle major dollars from Chicago’s affluent gamblers. Guests of the Villa Venice desiring to indulge their interest in high-stakes gambling were shuttled eithe
r to a nearby Quonset hut—a prefab corrugated-metal building set up specifically for the occasion with roulette wheels, card games, and slot machines—or to the classy Vernon Country Club. Mooney had at last built a monument to his power in his own hometown and, although it had cost the Outfit’s boss a small fortune, it was apparent to Chuck and Anne Marie as they joined the club’s famous entertainers for a late-night party that the Villa Venice was worth every dime.
When journalists would later report that the famous celebrities had performed for free—as they’d claimed to nosy FBI agents—Chuck would chuckle. Mooney said different and in no uncertain terms—he’d paid various entertainers $75,000 each in cash for their appearances during the club’s grand opening month.
Mooney had an unwritten policy of always paying the people who worked for him, entertainers included, because he didn’t want to feel obligated. He didn’t ask for favors; he granted them. He hadn’t asked whether particular performers would do him a favor and come in for the club’s opening; he hadn’t called in a marker that had forced them to leave their other engagements. He’d told them. And they’d been happy to comply.
It was true that Mooney had grown disgusted with the insincere behaviour of some of the Hollywood names, but his dislike of them did nothing to cool his desire for profits. He made sure the biggest names were included in his extravaganza at the Villa Venice. He even went so far as to suggest to Los Angeles attorney and theatrical agent Sidney Korshak—a man once described in The New York Times as a major link between big business and the Outfit—that Dinah Shore be sent to Chicago. Not necessarily to sing, he told Chuck, but because she had a reputation as a great partier. Her absence at the opening was Mooney’s only disappointment. And so far as Chuck could tell, that was a mild disappointment indeed, because apart from a sexual tryst or two, using stars was all business. All business now, Mooney pocketed the rewards from the Villa Venice: $3 million in tax-free profit at month’s end.