Giacalone was even forced to drop one witness she had planned to call. He was Matthew Traynor, a longtime friend of Gotti, a drug dealer, bank robber, and convicted perjurer. He was doing time for a bank robbery and sought to reduce sentence by testifying against Gotti. After preparing him to testify, Giacalone caught him in a lie and dropped him from the case.
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Traynor then contacted the defense and offered to tell things about Giacalone. What he said shocked the courtroom. He testified that Giacalone had given him drugs so that he would lie about Gotti. He said he had often been stoned when they prepared his testimony. Once, Traynor said, he told Giacalone that he needed "to get laid," and she "gave me her panties out of her bottom drawer and told me to facilitate myself.... She said, 'Make do with these.' "
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The angered prosecutor objected vehemently and brought 17 witnesses to rebut Traynor's testimony. However, it was clear the jury did not buy all the testimony meant to buttress Giacalone's reputation.
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The verdict was a foregone conclusion. The discredited witnesses were a dream for the defense. Gotti and all his associates, even Willie Boy Johnson, were found not guilty on all counts. Amid the backslapping on the Gotti side, the crime boss, called out, "Shame on them," pointing at Giacalone and her co-prosecutor. "I'd like to see what the jury's verdict would be on those two."
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Gotti strode out in triumph. It was the beginning of his sobriquet as the "Teflon Don," one against whom charges could not stick. Much later it was learned that one juror had been "reached" before the trial so that no verdict would have been possible in any case.
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Certain memoirs by FBI people and others made it clear they were not unhappy with Giacalone's defeat. However, some prosecutors vowed to make Traynor pay for his lies, on the theory that, "Maybe Diane is a bitch, but she's
our
bitch." They confronted Traynor, and he admitted to perjury in exchange for a limited additional sentence of five years to be added to his bank robbery time.
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Diane Giacalone kept whatever bitterness she felt to herself. Some time later she quit her prosecutor's post and moved on to a legal position with the local transit authority.
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Giancana, Sam "Momo" (19081975): Syndicate leader
He was, a police report stated, "a snarling, sarcastic, ill-tempered, sadistic psychopath." That was a young Sam "Momo" Giancana, a man who would become for a time the most powerful Mafia boss west of the Mississippi. If he never was truly the most powerful (he was kept in check by the two most powerful "elders" in the Chicago Outfit, Paul "the Waiter'' Ricca and Tough Tony Accardo), Giancana qualified nonetheless as the most ruthless of the top bosses in organized crime. He was also perhaps the screwiest, originally nicknamed ''Mooney" because he was considered as nutty as a "mooner." (Giancana himself corrupted that into "Momo," which was a much safer moniker to use around him.)
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Some observers saw Giancana's involvement in various CIA plots to assassinate Cuban Premier Fidel Castro as a sign of Giancana at his mooniest. There is considerable evidence that certain other leading mafiosi in that CIA madness were in it solely to milk funds out of the U.S. government, but Giancana was a firm believer in the viability of the caper. In another of his unstable moments Giancana was said to have put out a "contract" on Desi Arnaz because he produced the television show called
The Untouchables
, which glorified federal agent Eliot Ness and vilified, from Giancana's viewpoint, the Italian gangsters of the Capone mob. If a murder order was given to hit men to get Arnaz, it apparently was withdrawn. It is known that quite a few Giancana-ordered murder assignments were canceled by Ricca and Accardo.
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Yet there is no doubt that Giancana brought about the deaths of scores of men; considering he bossed the Chicago Outfit, the most dog-eat-dog crime family in the country, the total could be in the hundreds. A graduate of the juvenile 42 Gang, probably the worst of its ilk in the Chicago of the 1920s, Giancana started his arrest record in 1925 and, through the years, was arrested more than 70 times. The charges included: contributing to delinquency, burglary, larceny, assault and battery, fugitive, damage by violence, assault to kill, conspiracy to operate a "book," possession of concealed weapons, suspicion of bombing, gambling, possession of a fictitious driver's license, and murder. The prime suspect in three murders before he was 20, he was indicted for one of these when he was 18, released on bail and then never tried when the key witness somehow got himself murdered. He did three prison terms early on, for auto theft, operation of an illegal still, and burglary.
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Like other members of the 42 Gang, Giancana's greatest wish was to be noticed by the Capone mobsters, who used some of the 42 boys for minor chores such as stealing a car when one was needed for a job. Giancana captured the most attention because he was an excellent "wheel man" who considered no obstruction too large when he was driving, especially in making an escape from the scene of a crime. Eventually, Giancana came under the wing of Tony Accardo and Paul Ricca, serving both at times as chauffeur. Ricca especially was impressed by Giancana's bearingthat
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