Daughter of mobster tells of life with mafia

Press, 26 April 1984, Page 14

Daughter of mobster tells of life with mafia

NZPA-AP Chicago Her childhood Santa Claus was played by a loan shark. Her first lover was a family priest. Her father was mob kingpin. According to Ms Antoinette Giancana, that is what growing up was like as the daughter of Sam (“Momo”) Giancana, a man describey by crime experts as the most powerful mobster since Al Capone. As Giancana’s daughter, she luxuriated in the world of mafia privilege and power: Paris fashions, Las Vegas nightclubs, and Hollywood celebrities. But Ms Giancana was daring. She said she paid for her indiscretions — beatings from her father, a backroom abortion, suicidal moods, shock treatments in a mental hospital, and ostracism from her family. Now, Ms Giancana, aged 48, is rebelling once again, breaking a mafia code of silence. This time, she is on the road promoting her book, “Mafia Princess: Growing Up in Sam Gian-

cana's Family," touted as a “Daddy Dearest” version of life in the inner sanctum of the mob. The book, co-written with Thomas Renner, was “a dream I had when my father was alive,” she said. “That was a constant threat I used when we got in battles.”

Renner is a reporter who specialises in organised crime news.

Ms Giancana, who is married to a lawyer but uses her family name, said she and her father argued violently when she brought up the possibility of writing a book. It would endanger her life, he told her. But she said, “The man is dead. He poses no threat to me at all. We both disappointed each other.”

In 1975, Giancana was killed in an apparent gangland hit — five .22 calibre bullets in the neck and one in the mouth by an assailant who came calling one summer night at his suburban Oak Park home. Before his death, Giancana had been linked to alleged C.I.A. plots to kill the Cuban President, Dr Fidel Castro. He had been scheduled to testify before a senate sub-committee less than a week after he was killed.

Giancana was also reputedly involved in bootlegging. gambling, narcotics, and extortion as boss of a multi-million-dollar empire.

Ms Giancana names names in her book. But her memories are not of violent acts or diabolical minds. In fact, her childhood was sheltered. There were no newspapers in the house. She attended private schools. Her father, who loved antique music boxes, gave the Church hefty donations. Talking about her father’s business was taboo. She recalls that when she was four years old, her father to prison, and her mother said, “Daddy’s going to college.” While Giancana was away, one of his enforcers, a bookmaker and loan shark, played Santa Claus for her, answering her prayers for ice skates. She said her first sexual encounter, at 15, was with a family priest who counselled her father and accepted his gifts. As a teen-ager, Ms Giancana said she eventually learnt some details of her father’s business and the fear and clout he wielded. Politicians and celebrities came courting. A Giancana request for entertainment at a fund-raiser brought out

top stars. She received personal studio tours from a movie mogul. "I was proud of his being able to give me the life he had given us." she said. But father and daughter had different ideas about the life of a mafia princess. "He was terribly traditional." said Ms Giancana, who worked briefly as a model. "No matter what I would have done (he would have said). ‘Why aren't you home and taking care of the kids?'

"I blame him for not letting me live as I thought I should." she said.

"In one sense (my heart) goes out to the man, who was incapable of handling me,” she said. "There is a double feeling, the love and hate. There is a sorrowful kind of love."

Though they never reconciled. Ms Giancana attended her father’s funeral.

“I was numb with pain the way he went,” she said. “I was actually beside myself that someone would have the guts to do it the way they did it.

“When I am with these people at weddings or wakes, I look among them with my piercing eyes and wonder: ‘Which one of you did it?’ I feel it is somebody I know.”