Speaker 1: With the man, my friends of Miami.
Speaker 2: I am not a stranger here because very good many
Speaker 2: years I used to come down here. I haven't been
Speaker 2: here for seven years, but on my coming back, I
Speaker 2: have firmly resolved not to make it the last time.
Speaker 3: An The President Elect finishes his impromptu talk and prepares
Speaker 3: to drive onto the railway station when the startled onlookers
Speaker 3: suddenly realize what has happened. Pandemonium range and the crowd,
Speaker 3: led by American legionnaires in that glistening helmets counts Assassin Zangara.
Speaker 3: William Sinnett, one of the injured, makes his way out
Speaker 3: of the crowd. On the left, Mayor Sermak, critically wounded,
Speaker 3: is carried to mister Roosevelt's car, Resting in the arms
Speaker 3: of the President Elect. He has rushed to a hospital.
Speaker 3: They've cut him. The secret Service man road 'em on
Speaker 3: the rail of the car and hustle him away to jail.
Speaker 2: Lay As.
Speaker 3: Now the heroine, the woman who's courage all the world
Speaker 3: a fraud. She probably saved mister Roosevelt's life by deflecting
Speaker 3: the assassin's aim. Missus w f Cross of my appare.
Speaker 3: My first dog was to get his I knew he
Speaker 3: was shooting at the President, so my first dog was
Speaker 3: to get the pistol up in the air so he
Speaker 3: wouldn't hurt any.
Speaker 4: Of the bout. Then why do you killed, mister Rusevelt?
Speaker 4: What for in your mind? I told her before, I.
Speaker 2: Have an titiness all the time on the mind of
Speaker 2: the competition is to kill.
Speaker 4: In mere I suffered in this king of the stomach
Speaker 4: for the competition.
Speaker 1: So moses to the company that just don't know how
Speaker 1: this is sickening and in my stomach it makes your work.
Speaker 1: He Joe, you'll get a chance tonight. You would shoot
Speaker 1: the president tonight?
Speaker 4: I can't shoot, no move.
Speaker 1: If you'll give you a chance, to give me a chance,
Speaker 1: I should again. You hate you don't like him for
Speaker 1: president as a man did?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Then the president?
Speaker 5: Right, Hello, and welcome back. It's been a little bit
Speaker 5: since I've done a show, but that is because I
Speaker 5: have been hard at work on the book, which is
Speaker 5: actually done at this point. What I'm doing now is
Speaker 5: I am going through the editing phase, and I'm finding
Speaker 5: that some of my earliest writings, particularly on the Winterland
Speaker 5: and on the Three Tramps, which I did almost two
Speaker 5: years ago. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. So I'm
Speaker 5: taking probably next week or so to basically go through
Speaker 5: those two chapters and rewrite and add some stuff to them,
Speaker 5: because they just don't match the quality of the rest
Speaker 5: of the book. So that being said, today what we're
Speaker 5: going to do is we are going to take a
Speaker 5: little break from the assassination, but not really, not really,
Speaker 5: because the assassination's story, as I've said before, begins in
Speaker 5: the late eighteen hundreds and this falls well within that timeframe.
Speaker 5: This we're today, we're going to talk about the assassination
Speaker 5: of Mayor Anton sermac the mayor of Chicago, who made
Speaker 5: some unholy alliances that ended up getting him killed. The
Speaker 5: I don't know what is he called, is the protagonist,
Speaker 5: the antagonist? Whoever? The bad guy is right, the bad
Speaker 5: guy in the story is Giuseppe is Agara, a funny guy.
Speaker 5: And so you know, let me just not even try
Speaker 5: to give you my interpretation. What we're gonna do is
Speaker 5: we're gonna go over this series of articles by John
Speaker 5: Toohe called the Guns of Zangara really fascinating stuff. I
Speaker 5: consider this to be like the first of a series
Speaker 5: of parallel assassinations started with Mayor Anton Sermac. Then it
Speaker 5: moved on to Huey Long, and then Kennedy, Robert Kennedy
Speaker 5: and the rest.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 5: Here we go The Guns of Zangara by John Toohe.
Speaker 5: Almost seventy years ago, an enigmatic Italian immigrant bricklayer named
Speaker 5: Jauseeppe Zangara momentarily leaped onto history stage and took a
Speaker 5: misguided shot at President elect Franklin Roosevelt and accidentally killed
Speaker 5: Chicago's reform Mayor Anton Surmac, or so the story goes.
Speaker 5: But over the next six and a half decades, the
Speaker 5: shooting only created more questions than it answered. Who was
Speaker 5: Zangara and who was his intended victim, Anton Surmac And
Speaker 5: did the Chicago mob order the killing? The recent discovery
Speaker 5: of lost government records can now answer those questions and
Speaker 5: forever seal the case of the Guns of Zangara. Like
Speaker 5: most mob murders, it started over money, greed, and the
Speaker 5: lust for power. In nineteen thirty one, the labor rackets
Speaker 5: business in Chicago was worth one hundred and forty five
Speaker 5: million dollars or about a half a billion dollars in
Speaker 5: today's value. In fact, unions were such easy prey for
Speaker 5: gangsters that before prohibition, the mob saw control of labor unions,
Speaker 5: not bootleg beer, as the quickest route to riches. Now,
Speaker 5: in nineteen thirty one, with repeal closing in in the
Speaker 5: national depression curbing the outfit's gambling business, al Campone pulled
Speaker 5: out all the stops in his drive to control the
Speaker 5: labor unions in Chicago. Capone's goons invaded so many unions
Speaker 5: union locals that Frank Lesh, president of the Chicago Crime Commission,
Speaker 5: estimated that two out of every three unions in Chicago
Speaker 5: was run by Capone. As Capone terrorized his way into
Speaker 5: more teamster locals, the union bosses fled out of suburban
Speaker 5: to planes to live under mobster Roger Tuwohe's protection. The
Speaker 5: Twohe brothers, Roger, Tommy, and Eddie were the last serious
Speaker 5: threat to Capone's might. The brothers, safely tucked away in
Speaker 5: the still mostly undeveloped portion of northern Cook County, had
Speaker 5: grown rich from prohibition in gambling and the ability to
Speaker 5: avoid big political payoffs and long drawn out beer wars.
Speaker 5: By nineteen thirty two, they had the money, the manpower,
Speaker 5: and the fire power to take over the entire Chicago
Speaker 5: Teamsters organization without having to split any of the proceeds
Speaker 5: with Capone. Paddy Burrell, the Teamster's vice president, called a
Speaker 5: meeting of all the locals threatened by Capone and gave
Speaker 5: them a choice. They could stand alone against Capone and
Speaker 5: lose their unions in probably their lives, or they could
Speaker 5: move their operations under the Tuohe's protection. They would still
Speaker 5: lose a large portion of their treasury to the Tuohe's,
Speaker 5: but at least they'd be alive. Most of the union
Speaker 5: bosses knew Roger Toohe from their childhood. He had a
Speaker 5: solid reputation as a union organizer in his youth, and
Speaker 5: compared to Capone, at least he was still evil, but
Speaker 5: at least he was the lesser of two evils. The
Speaker 5: bosses would go with Towohe. After the meeting, Burrell sent
Speaker 5: union boss Jerry Horn to Roger's house with seventy five
Speaker 5: thousand in cash for a defense fund. Tooe used that money,
Speaker 5: plus an additional seventy five thousand from his own pocket,
Speaker 5: to hire an army of thugs, killers, and goons to
Speaker 5: fend off Capone's pending assault. To Wohe's defiance didn't come
Speaker 5: without a price. The Capones killed one of the brothers
Speaker 5: and attempted to kidnap his children, And then on October
Speaker 5: twenty fifth, nineteen thirty one, the unbelievable happened. Al Capone
Speaker 5: was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to ten
Speaker 5: years in prison. That same day, Matt Kolb, Toohe's business
Speaker 5: partner and financier as well as the source of Towohe's
Speaker 5: enormous political clout, was gunned down by Capone gunmen inside
Speaker 5: the speakeasy the Club Morton. With Kolb dead, the price
Speaker 5: for political protection went through the roof to wohe would
Speaker 5: have to find a cob replacement soon, and Anton Cermak
Speaker 5: was just off on the horizon. Tony Cermak was not
Speaker 5: a very nice man, wrote Judge Lyle of Chicago's mayor.
Speaker 5: He appeared to take his lack of polish. He was uncouth, gruff, insolent,
Speaker 5: and inarticulate. He could engage in no more intelligent discussion
Speaker 5: of the larger political issues of the day than he
Speaker 5: could have the Einstein theory of relativity. In personal confrontation,
Speaker 5: Sirmac was known as the bully and an intimidator. With
Speaker 5: a violent temper who'd never walk away from a dispute.
Speaker 5: He liked very few people, and he trusted virtually no one.
Speaker 5: As his power grew, so did his paranoia. He wasn't
Speaker 5: a backslapper. He was elected because of a political survivor
Speaker 5: who simply outlasted his opponents. Those he couldn't outlast he
Speaker 5: blackballed in the Illinois State House. As president of Cook
Speaker 5: County and later as mayor, Sirmak used wiretaps, stole mail,
Speaker 5: used secret surveillance and informants to get intelligence on the
Speaker 5: weakness of his enemies, and he took great care to
Speaker 5: know who his enemies were. He admitted to authorizing beatings
Speaker 5: of anyone that got in his way. Anthony ten percent
Speaker 5: Tony Sirmak was born May seventh, eighteen seventy three, in
Speaker 5: a Bohemian village about fifty miles outside of Prague. The
Speaker 5: family immigrated to American eighteen eighty four, settling in a
Speaker 5: Chicago slum on the fifteenth and on fifteenth in Canal,
Speaker 5: the infamous valley that had also produced the Tuohi brothers,
Speaker 5: and later in nineteen hundred moved to Braidwood in southern Illinois,
Speaker 5: where the elder Sermac worked as a coal miner. In
Speaker 5: eighteen eighty nine, Tony Sermak returned to Chicago at age sixteen.
Speaker 5: Sirmak was a hustler who saw his opportunity in the
Speaker 5: rough and tumble world of Chicago's ethnic politics. He organized
Speaker 5: the huge Bohemian community into a powerful voting machine, and
Speaker 5: before he was old enough to vote himself, Tony Cermak
Speaker 5: was a political power. Sormak was also a greedy man
Speaker 5: who wanted to be rich in the roads. He used
Speaker 5: to riches was to form an organization called the United Societies,
Speaker 5: a high sounding name for nothing more than a shakedown operation.
Speaker 5: Every brewer and boose seller, dance hall operator, and saloon
Speaker 5: keeper was a member, as were most of the area's gunmen, pimps, prostitutes,
Speaker 5: and gamblers that worked along twenty second Street later renamed,
Speaker 5: oddly enough, Sirmak Road. They paid, They paid to belong
Speaker 5: to Cermak's organization because Sirmak had the police and the
Speaker 5: politicians in his pocket. In nineteen twenty eight, Sirmak, who
Speaker 5: was still the spokesman for organized liquor interests, decided to
Speaker 5: become mayor of Chicago. On election day, April seventh, nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty one, word went out from higher ups in the
Speaker 5: copone organization down to the goons and speakeasy owners to
Speaker 5: support Sirmak. If Sirmak won, the bosses said the reformers
Speaker 5: would loosen up. Sirmak did win. He trounced Thompson's six
Speaker 5: sixty seven five twenty nine to four seventy five six thirteen,
Speaker 5: the largest margin ever recorded in the Chicago mayoral election
Speaker 5: to date, but he double crossed the people too. On
Speaker 5: his first day in office, Sirmak promised the people of
Speaker 5: Chicago that he would rid their city of gangsters before
Speaker 5: the Century of Progress Exhibition opened in the summer of
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty three. But Tony didn't want to get rid
Speaker 5: of organized crime in Chicago. He wanted to corral it,
Speaker 5: to dominate it, to run it, to own it, to
Speaker 5: grow rich from it. And he figured all he had
Speaker 5: to do was give it another face. So tourney Tony
Speaker 5: Surmak threw hist around the city's multimillion dollar gambling rackets.
Speaker 5: The first thing he did to corner the gambling market
Speaker 5: was to close down the competition seemingly overnight. Sirmak's police force,
Speaker 5: which he dominated with his handpicked loyalists, raided hundreds of
Speaker 5: syndicate gambling dens and casinos and shut them down. Independent
Speaker 5: gamblers there were still a few in those days who
Speaker 5: refused to throw in with Sirmak were run out of business.
Speaker 5: Once Sirmak had smashed the gamblers into submission, he would
Speaker 5: need someone dependable to act as as collector and street boss.
Speaker 5: The mayor's personal bagman enter Teddy Newberry, a lifelong gangster
Speaker 5: who had been with Bugs Moran and then the iOS,
Speaker 5: and finally with Capone until his career ended. After several
Speaker 5: months of acting as Sirmak's street supervisor, Teddy Newberry sat
Speaker 5: down with Anton Sirmak in the summer of nineteen thirty
Speaker 5: one and worked out a deal, as Newberry and Sirmak
Speaker 5: saw it. With Capone and most of his top men
Speaker 5: behind bars or on the run from the law, what
Speaker 5: was left of the syndicate would easily fall apart. The
Speaker 5: fact that Roger tuohe was winning his shooting war against
Speaker 5: the mob, was another plus for them. All that was left.
Speaker 5: According to Newbery, the top of the Chicago Syndicate was
Speaker 5: to kill the head and then watch the body die.
Speaker 5: The head of the Syndicate in nineteen thirty three was
Speaker 5: Frank Nitty. Once Nitty was dead, all other hoods would
Speaker 5: fall into line, or so they thought. Francisco Nitty, or
Speaker 5: Frank Nitty, as he preferred it, was a small built,
Speaker 5: pensive little man with ulcers and a nervous twitch. He
Speaker 5: was born outside of Palermo in Italy, but he avoided
Speaker 5: discussing his Sicilian background, always calling himself an Italian instead.
Speaker 5: Nitty had gotten a full formal education in Italy before
Speaker 5: coming to the United States, which gave him a working
Speaker 5: knowledge of advanced chemistry, and he was also said to
Speaker 5: be a talented watchmaker. Although the newspaper referred to Nitty
Speaker 5: as the Enforcer, those who knew the real story, the
Speaker 5: nickname was almost comical. In fact, as far as anyone knows,
Speaker 5: Nitty never killed anyone. He made his way up through
Speaker 5: the ranks of the syndicate because he was smart, cunning,
Speaker 5: and obnoxious. At Midmoreing on December twentieth, nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 5: Tony Cermak summoned two members of his special squad to
Speaker 5: his office, Harry Miller and Henry Lang. Miller and Lang
Speaker 5: were crooks, gangsters, and badges always had been. Harry Miller,
Speaker 5: who had once been dismissed from the force for trafficking
Speaker 5: and narcotics, was one of the notorious Miller brothers who
Speaker 5: headed up the Valley Gang. Henry Lang was a bagman
Speaker 5: for former Mayor Bill Big Bill Thompson and TODP. Miller
Speaker 5: that a little bitty needed to know about being a
Speaker 5: crook when he came on the force by quote special
Speaker 5: political appointment back in nineteen twenty seven. Now through political
Speaker 5: poll they were both detective sergeants on his Sirmak's Special Squad,
Speaker 5: a group of tough cops of questionable background tossed together
Speaker 5: to carry out Cermak's every whim. As Lang would later
Speaker 5: testify under oath, Sermak called them to his office and
Speaker 5: handed them a slip of paper with Frank Nitty's name
Speaker 5: and office address on it. Teddy Newberry was there, sitting
Speaker 5: on the mariaral desk, smoking one of his small cigars.
Speaker 5: Newberry told the pair that he and the mayor had
Speaker 5: decided that it was time for Frank Nitty to die
Speaker 5: and they had to do the killing. The slip of paper,
Speaker 5: he explained, was where Nitty would find where they would
Speaker 5: find Nitty the most of the morning. Newberry said that
Speaker 5: once Nitty was dead, he would pay Miller and Lang
Speaker 5: fifteen thousand dollars each, good money for a pair of
Speaker 5: cops who were supposed to be making less than one
Speaker 5: hundred dollars a week. The detective left City Hall and
Speaker 5: drove to Nitty's office at the Lasal Whacker building at
Speaker 5: two twenty one North Lasal. Took the elevator to the
Speaker 5: fifth floor and walked to room five five four, where
Speaker 5: Nitty kept a cramped three room office. Inside the office
Speaker 5: was Nitty in several underlings. Lang and Miller lined the
Speaker 5: hoods up against the wall, and very quickly Lang fired
Speaker 5: five shots in to Nity's leg, growing back, and neck.
Speaker 5: Then Lang walked into the ante room and fired a
Speaker 5: single shot through his own hand. The story would be
Speaker 5: that Nitty resisted arrest and lunged for Lang's service revolver
Speaker 5: and had to be shot. The mistake in shooting Nitty
Speaker 5: was that they didn't kill him. While it was true
Speaker 5: the shooting had spooked what was left of the mob's leadership,
Speaker 5: Sirmc and Newberry knew that once Nitty had recuperated, the
Speaker 5: the outfit would strike back. What they needed now was
Speaker 5: a street fighter to fend off those pending attacks. Ender
Speaker 5: Roger Toohe. Anton Sermak, who had known Toohe for Roger
Speaker 5: Toohe for decades, wanted Tuohe to join forces with him
Speaker 5: and Teddy Newberry to help them jointly run the underworld
Speaker 5: in Chicago in the Midwest. In nineteen fifty nine, Toohe
Speaker 5: so told the Illinois Parole Board that in early nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty three, Newberry and Sirmak called him down to city
Speaker 5: Hall for discussion. In a meeting in the Mayor's office,
Speaker 5: Sirmak and Newberry urged Toohe to wage a larger war
Speaker 5: with the mob, but Towohe laughed it off, saying he
Speaker 5: didn't have the strength to fight the Nity organization, which
Speaker 5: could muster at least five hundred governmen within a week's time.
Speaker 5: Sirmak said, you could have the entire police department. Tooe
Speaker 5: eventually agreed, and Sirmak lived up to his end of
Speaker 5: the bargain. He sent word down to his police commanders
Speaker 5: that Roger to Wohe was to be cooperated with in
Speaker 5: his war against the syndicate for control of the Chicago Teamsters.
Speaker 5: The number of the Pumpan men killed after Cermak took
Speaker 5: office tripled. In two years, some one hundred gangsters were
Speaker 5: killed in ambushes and street fights. For a while, the
Speaker 5: hoods fell at a rate of one ganglan murder a day,
Speaker 5: with most of the dead coming from syndicate's ranks. James Doherty,
Speaker 5: a crime reporter for the Shago Tribune, recalled it was
Speaker 5: a war chiefly between the Irish and the Italians. I'm
Speaker 5: Irish and I'd come into my office in the morning
Speaker 5: after another shootout and I would say to my coworker,
Speaker 5: who was Italian, well that's one to my side. And
Speaker 5: the next day would come to my saying, well it's leveled, Jim.
Speaker 5: We chuck one up on our side last night. For
Speaker 5: a while, it was going well for the upstarts, almost
Speaker 5: too well. The tuoehe's gunned down the syndicates lead laborer
Speaker 5: plunderer Red Barker, the government jailed the equally deadly Murray Humphries,
Speaker 5: and Sirmac's boys shot down Frank Nitti. They were so close.
Speaker 5: They had chased the syndicate out of the teamsters and
Speaker 5: had ready access to the pension funds they owned City
Speaker 5: Hall and the cops. Then the tide started to turn. First,
Speaker 5: Teddy Newberry's dead body showed up up on the bitter
Speaker 5: cold evening of January seventh, nineteen thirty three. He was
Speaker 5: found lying face down in a ditch in Porter County, Indiana.
Speaker 5: After Newberry was killed, Tony Cermak lost his nerve. Tony
Speaker 5: was absolutely certain that the outfit had pegged Louis short
Speaker 5: Pants Capanya al Capone's former bodyguard was going to kill him.
Speaker 5: He may have been right, according to newsman Jack Late
Speaker 5: in nineteen thirty three, the syndicate's hitman tried to blow
Speaker 5: up Sirmak's car early one morning in the middle of
Speaker 5: Chicago's Loop. After that, Sirmak beefed up the security forces
Speaker 5: and moved from the Congress Hotel to the Morrison Hotel,
Speaker 5: where he paid for a private elevator that went NonStop
Speaker 5: to his penthouse suite. He increased his city police guard
Speaker 5: from two to five officers and had detective sent to
Speaker 5: protect his daughters, and hired on own private bodyguards to
Speaker 5: augment his city police detail, and then took a midnight
Speaker 5: train to Miami, where he owned a home. The job
Speaker 5: to end the union war with twohe's in takeout. Anton
Speaker 5: Surmak fell to Paul Rica, acting boss. Since Nidi had
Speaker 5: been shot, Rica determined that the only way to deal
Speaker 5: with Sermak was to kill him. But knocking off the
Speaker 5: mayor of the nation's second largest city would bring down
Speaker 5: more heat on the mob than Sirmak could ever have gathered, unless,
Speaker 5: of course, the murder could be thumbed off on a nutcase.
Speaker 5: The nutcase they found was Joseeppe Zangara, a hapless Italian
Speaker 5: immigrant with a gambling problem who was into the outfit
Speaker 5: for his eye teeth. Zegar was born September seventh, nineteen
Speaker 5: hundred in Furuzano, a small and very poor village in Calabria, Italy.
Speaker 5: His mother died while he was still a small boy.
Speaker 5: His father remarried to a woman with six daughters, and Zangara, small, fragile,
Speaker 5: seldom smiling, and deathly quiet, was lost in the horde
Speaker 5: that was his new family. By all accounts, Zingara's father
Speaker 5: was an odd man, angry at the world. He had
Speaker 5: constant problems with authority, and he beat his children. It
Speaker 5: was no surprise to anyone when, at the age of six,
Speaker 5: after Zangara's stepmother entered him into public school that his
Speaker 5: father withdrew him. Two months later, when my father come
Speaker 5: he say me like this. He say me, you don't
Speaker 5: need school, you need work. Zangar Of the Child went
Speaker 5: to work beside his father building roads. Later he learned
Speaker 5: the work of bricklayer, which was in Italy of that
Speaker 5: time still most in art form and required years of apprenticeship. Apparently,
Speaker 5: Zangara had an aptitude for the trade, and at the
Speaker 5: age of seventeen was already a mason. No small feet.
Speaker 5: Zangar Of the somber and unhappy child drew into Zangara,
Speaker 5: the somber and unhappy man, enraged at the world because
Speaker 5: he was poor and because he was taken from school
Speaker 5: as a child. He talked about his unhappiness openly and
Speaker 5: often during his trial, perhaps if for no other reason,
Speaker 5: he finally had someone to listen to him. In nineteen seventeen, Zangar,
Speaker 5: then seventeen, was drafted into the Italian infantry and stayed
Speaker 5: in the army for five years. While in the service,
Speaker 5: he was arrested on October twenty fourth, nineteen twenty one
Speaker 5: for carrying a knife. He was tried and convicted, but
Speaker 5: the sentence was suspended. Discharged from the military in nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty three, Zangara sailed to the United States from Naples,
Speaker 5: arriving in Filmiladelphia aboard of the liner Martha Washington on
Speaker 5: August eighteenth, nineteen twenty three, five days before his twenty
Speaker 5: third birthday. He went to Paterson, New Jersey, moved in
Speaker 5: with an uncle, Vincent Cafaro, a bricklayer, who landed Zangar
Speaker 5: a job with the construction company that he had worked
Speaker 5: for as a skilled laborer and a member of the
Speaker 5: Brick Layers Union Number two and Patterson, Zengar earned as
Speaker 5: much as twelve dollars an hour, an extremely high hourly
Speaker 5: rate when the national income was less than fifty six
Speaker 5: hundred dollars a year. He filed a declaration to become
Speaker 5: a citizen of the United States, doing so only because
Speaker 5: it was required by his union that all members of
Speaker 5: be United States citizens, or at least have filed to
Speaker 5: become citizens. The names of the witnesses on the declaration
Speaker 5: two men, disappeared with most of the official information that
Speaker 5: surrounded Zengara's background, but on September eleventh, nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 5: Zanngar became a United States citizen and registered as a
Speaker 5: Republican later that month. On September twenty eighth, someone named
Speaker 5: Jim Zeppe Zengar of Paterson, New Jersey, was arrested for
Speaker 5: running a mass of one thousand gallons still in rural
Speaker 5: New Jersey. When arrested, Zangara used the name Sam Lavari,
Speaker 5: but later changed that to Luigi di Bernardo. Arrested with
Speaker 5: him was Tony Agostino, a known racketeer in northern New Jersey.
Speaker 5: On May twenty sixth, nineteen thirty, Zangara and de Bernardo
Speaker 5: pleaded guilty to owning the still and was sentenced to
Speaker 5: one year and day at the Atlanta Federal Prison. During sentencing,
Speaker 5: United States Attorney Philip Foreman later a federal judge asked,
Speaker 5: your real name is Zengara, isn't it? And Zangara answered
Speaker 5: that it was the fact that the prosecutor knew Zengar
Speaker 5: by sight implies that Zeenara wasn't a stranger around the
Speaker 5: federal courthouse. Di Bernardo Zengara entered Atlanta Federal Prison on
Speaker 5: May twenty sixth, nineteen thirty, and was paroled seven months later.
Speaker 5: On December twentieth nineteen thirty. Later, in the Secret Service
Speaker 5: investigated the Cermak shooting. They accepted Zangara's explanation for the
Speaker 5: missing seven months, as has been in Central America. Even
Speaker 5: more remarkably, when Philip Foreman the US at Turne and
Speaker 5: he informed the Secret Service about Zangara's time in prison,
Speaker 5: the agents pulled Zegara's prison photo and compared it to
Speaker 5: a picture taken in Florida when he was arrested and
Speaker 5: determined that quote they seemed to match. However, our Zangara
Speaker 5: has a lower forehead, but otherwise they match. However, the
Speaker 5: investigating agent never followed up on the lead. When nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty one rolled around, Zangara started to change. He lost
Speaker 5: interest in his job and avoided people even more than
Speaker 5: he did in the past, and then, without any apparent reason,
Speaker 5: he left New Jersey for Florida. When he departed from
Speaker 5: New Jersey, he left hurriedly, leaving all of his possessions
Speaker 5: in the boarding house in Florida, Zengara became a gambler,
Speaker 5: a degenerate gambler, betting most on the horses. When he
Speaker 5: gave up on the horses, Zengora turned to the dogs,
Speaker 5: and in one incident, lost two hundred dollars in one night,
Speaker 5: a huge amount of money for anyone in the depression
Speaker 5: racked America of nineteen thirty three, but a small fortune
Speaker 5: to an out of work bricklayer. On February twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty three, Chicago City Hall announced that His Honor Anton J.
Speaker 5: Cermak of Chicago would make an appearance in the Miami
Speaker 5: Park at night to greet the arrival of President elect Roosevelt.
Speaker 5: Thousands were expected to turn out for the event. It
Speaker 5: was a godsend for the mob. Rika sent down word
Speaker 5: to Dave Yaris, a transplanted Chicago hood, that they were
Speaker 5: going to wax Cermac and Yoris had to line somebody
Speaker 5: up to take the fall for the murder. A patsy
Speaker 5: Yaris reported back that they had just the man they needed,
Speaker 5: dead Broke Zangara took a slot in Dave Yaris's highly
Speaker 5: secretive heroin smuggling operation in or about early nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 5: when he was spotted regularly around the municipal docks. According
Speaker 5: to Reverend Elmer Williams, a Chicago minister who exposed political
Speaker 5: corruption in the Windy City during the component nitty reigns,
Speaker 5: Zangora worked in Rika's narcotics processing plant in extreme South
Speaker 5: Florida as a mule, transporting narcotics up to New York,
Speaker 5: a city he knew well. In New York, Zangara turned
Speaker 5: the dope over to distribution specialists like Bugsy Siegel in Brooklyn,
Speaker 5: Longea's Willman in Jersey, and others. He would collect the
Speaker 5: money for delivery and then return to Florida to to
Speaker 5: run the entire cycle all over again. According to both
Speaker 5: Williams and Jack Late, while Zangara was on one of
Speaker 5: his runs to New York, he got spotted in a
Speaker 5: mob casino in Manhattan by a group of the New
Speaker 5: Jersey Hoods that he had cheated back in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 5: Now the boys from New Jersey had a make on him,
Speaker 5: and they brought their complaint to Rika. Since technically Zangara
Speaker 5: was under Chicago's protection, the New Jersey hoods wanted him
Speaker 5: so they could kill him even if New Jersey didn't
Speaker 5: want him. Zangara had now been uncovered as an unreliable worker,
Speaker 5: a detriment in a racket as violatile as narcotics, so
Speaker 5: Yaris would have to deal with him. The boy sat
Speaker 5: Zangara down and explained his two choices. The mob could
Speaker 5: kill him right then and there, or Zangara could take
Speaker 5: his chances and shoot Cermak for them. Shooting Sermak, they explained,
Speaker 5: had its upside. Maybe the cops would kill him, maybe
Speaker 5: the crowd would rip him to pieces. Or maybe he'd
Speaker 5: get lucky. Maybe he'd get caught. After he killed Sermak.
Speaker 5: He could pretend he was insane, and at the most
Speaker 5: he might get ten, maybe fifteen years on a farm
Speaker 5: for the mentally insane, and then he could walk all
Speaker 5: debts forgiven. Someone had checked. Florida, second only to Texas,
Speaker 5: as Jack Ruby later pointed out, had the most lenient
Speaker 5: laws on the books in dealing with the mentally unstable criminals.
Speaker 5: Zangara may have actually believed that he was going to
Speaker 5: get away with it. When the Secret Service went into
Speaker 5: Zangara's room after the shooting, they found only a few
Speaker 5: personal items in his travel bag, which was left on
Speaker 5: his bed neatly packed. It included clothes and three books,
Speaker 5: The Wayman Brothers Easy Method for Learning Spanish Quickly, Italian
Speaker 5: Self Taught and English Italian Grammar Book, and several newspaper
Speaker 5: clippings about Roosevelt's trip to Florida and one about the
Speaker 5: Lincoln assassination conspiracy. But of course, the Mob had no
Speaker 5: intention of letting Zangara walk away. According to Roger Tuohi,
Speaker 5: the second after Zangara fired into Sermak, a Mob assassin
Speaker 5: would plug Zangara and disappear into the crowd. The Miami
Speaker 5: Police secret Service or Cermak's private guards would get the recognition.
Speaker 5: Whoever it was, the American public would hail them as
Speaker 5: a hero. Jack Late, a top Chicago reporter, noted that
Speaker 5: had Sirmak escaped Angara's bullets, another triggerman would have gotten them.
Speaker 5: Late was right, of course, except there weren't going to
Speaker 5: be any mistakes because Paul Rica, the mob's acting boss,
Speaker 5: wouldn't leave room for one to happen. Rica was sending
Speaker 5: his best killers down to Florida to make sure the
Speaker 5: hit went off correctly. Three Fingers Jake White and Frankie Rio.
Speaker 5: Two days before Anton Cermak was shot at Chicago, beat
Speaker 5: cop spotted White sitting inside the main terminal the Chicago Railroad.
Speaker 5: Within minutes, several car loads of detectives were inside the
Speaker 5: station and had White and his companion Frankie Rio and
Speaker 5: Ward politician Harry Stockstein up against the wall for a
Speaker 5: body search. The officers found nothing on the three smirking
Speaker 5: Hoods except a bag of donuts, and were forced to
Speaker 5: release them. White and Rio explained that they were on
Speaker 5: their way to Miami, Florida for a short vacation. On
Speaker 5: February fourteenth, nineteen thirty three, a day before the shooting,
Speaker 5: Zangara went to Davis pawnshop in downtown Miami and spent
Speaker 5: eight dollars on a thirty two revolver and ten bullets.
Speaker 5: Gordon Davis, the Miami pawnbroker who sold zangar has Gone
Speaker 5: along with ten bullets, admitted that he had a criminal
Speaker 5: record in Chicago and that he had known about Zangara
Speaker 5: for a long time. Gordon said he didn't ask Zangor
Speaker 5: why he felt the need to purchase the revolver. I
Speaker 5: ain't no wet nurse pal, he told Secret Service investigator
Speaker 5: while still in the story. He placed five bullets in
Speaker 5: the chamber and kept five in his pocket. Then Zangara
Speaker 5: started talking Sermak. On the day of the shooting, about
Speaker 5: eleven thirty in the morning, Zangara went to Bostik Hotel
Speaker 5: at two seventeen South Miami Avenue near the Park and
Speaker 5: rented a room. He paid a dollar for the night
Speaker 5: and was assigned to room four. Before he entered the room,
Speaker 5: Zangara asked to see all of the existent entrances to
Speaker 5: the hotel. Then he went to his room, left the
Speaker 5: door open, sat on the edge of the bed, and
Speaker 5: stared down the hallway towards the front door of the hotel.
Speaker 5: By six point thirty that evening, Zangora was gone. What
Speaker 5: Zangara knew, although it has never been established how he knew,
Speaker 5: was that the hotel was owned by Horace and May Bostik,
Speaker 5: close friends to Anton Sermak, and that they expected the
Speaker 5: mayor to drop by that evening before going to greet
Speaker 5: the President. Zangara's object in coming here, may Bostik later
Speaker 5: told Secret Service was to kill Cermak. From the hotel,
Speaker 5: Zegara walked several blocks to cigar manufacturing plant owned by
Speaker 5: Andrea Valenti, an immigrant from Sicily who had once lived
Speaker 5: in Chicago. Zangara and Valenti left the plant about seven
Speaker 5: thirty pm, walking to Bayfront Park. With them were Steve
Speaker 5: Valenti and Lorenzo Grandi, all Sicilian immigrants. The Valentes and
Speaker 5: Grandi were arrested after the Cermaki shooting, questioned and released
Speaker 5: with forty acres of palm trees and open lawns edged
Speaker 5: onto Biscayne Boulevard. Bayfront Park was a perfect place for
Speaker 5: a political rally and an assassination. At its south end,
Speaker 5: the park held an amphitheater with some eight thousand seats.
Speaker 5: At the very end of the amphitheater was a flat
Speaker 5: backstand bandstand and in the back of that stage where
Speaker 5: were dignitaries, including Cermak, where they waited for the President
Speaker 5: elect's arrival by the time. By the time Tangara arrived,
Speaker 5: the park was jammed to standing room only crowd of
Speaker 5: about fifteen thousand people. They had miscalculated badly. No one figured,
Speaker 5: not even the police on such a large turnout. Desperate Zangara,
Speaker 5: the Valentes and Grandi began to push, shove, and kicked
Speaker 5: their way through the crowd so they could reach the bandstand.
Speaker 5: Anton Cermak wasn't feeling well that night. While in Chicago.
Speaker 5: Some bad water from a nearby canal had seeped into
Speaker 5: his hotel's water reserves, and Sermak had drunk it, giving
Speaker 5: him a stomach infection. A lesser man would have canceled
Speaker 5: the Knight's engagement, but Tony Sermac had always been an
Speaker 5: extraordinary man. Yet, when a bodyguard handed him as bulky,
Speaker 5: black bulletproof vest, Cermak said he didn't want it. It
Speaker 5: was too humian outside and he was too weak to
Speaker 5: carry its weight. At nine to twenty five that evening,
Speaker 5: Roosevelt's car entered the park and stopped next to the
Speaker 5: bandstand area where Sermak and the other dignitaries were seated.
Speaker 5: It was warm that night, the humidity that hung in
Speaker 5: the air was almost stifling. The coconut trees and royal
Speaker 5: palms that covered the park were bathed in red, white,
Speaker 5: and blue lights, giving the entire scene an eerie feel
Speaker 5: to it. At that same moment, Zangara and his party
Speaker 5: had pushed their way up to the second aisle from
Speaker 5: the bandstand and were less than thirty five feet away
Speaker 5: from Roosevelt's car, where Zangara had a clear view of FDR,
Speaker 5: whose back was to Zangara. Roosevelt was lifted out of
Speaker 5: his seat and slid on the top of the trunk.
Speaker 5: Dressed in a white suit with a soul floodlight beaming
Speaker 5: down on him, he was the perfect target. He spoke
Speaker 5: to the crowd for about eight minutes, and when the
Speaker 5: speech ended, looked up onto the reviewing stand and saw
Speaker 5: Sermak sitting in the front row and wave for him, Tony,
Speaker 5: come on down here, smiling broadly. Sirmak stood up from
Speaker 5: his chair and walked down to FDR. As he did,
Speaker 5: his bodyguards rose up with him and stepped up to
Speaker 5: join him, but Sirmak told him to stay on the stage.
Speaker 5: It was, he said later, unseemly for the mayor of
Speaker 5: Chicago to have more bodyguards than the president of the
Speaker 5: United States. Sirmak walked up to Roosevelt's side of the car,
Speaker 5: the side facing Zangara, and the two politicians shook hands
Speaker 5: and chatted for about three minutes. They shook hands and
Speaker 5: agreed to talk later. It was now about nine to
Speaker 5: thirty five. Sirmac stepped away from the car and turned
Speaker 5: to his right and briefly embraced Secret Service agent Clark
Speaker 5: with his left arm. Sirmak and Clark had known each
Speaker 5: other when Clark was assigned to the Chicago office of
Speaker 5: the Secret Service. There was a brief exchange, a quick
Speaker 5: joke between them, and then for some unknown reason, Sirmak
Speaker 5: walked towards the crowd to his left, away from the stage. Perhaps,
Speaker 5: as Judge Lyle suggested, Sirmak spotted Harry Hochstein, the politician
Speaker 5: who was questioned in the Chicago train station with Nitty
Speaker 5: Shooter the night before. Harry Hockstein had grown rich off
Speaker 5: of city policies to ford a mini mansion in the
Speaker 5: upscale neighborhood of Riverdale next to Frank Nitty's place. In fact,
Speaker 5: it was Hochstein's home that the outfit meet in nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty four and decided to go through with the Brown
Speaker 5: and buy off Hollywood extortion scandal, and a year later
Speaker 5: in December, met there again and decided to kill union
Speaker 5: boss Tommy molloy. Hochstein, it was widely known, was run
Speaker 5: by Frankie Rio. Whatever the reason, Sirmac took clearly over
Speaker 5: a dozen steps away from the stage where he was
Speaker 5: sitting and walked toward the position where Angara was standing.
Speaker 5: The very second Sermak stepped away from the car. A
Speaker 5: group of local bisiness and carrying with them. An immense
Speaker 5: imitation telegram welcoming FDR to Florida surrounded the car, unknownly,
Speaker 5: forming a human shield around the President elect. At that moment,
Speaker 5: a tall, blonde woman who had been sitting in the
Speaker 5: first aisle got up and left her seat. Zangara leaped
Speaker 5: up onto the empty seat, drew his revolver from his
Speaker 5: pant pocket, and fired rapidly, letting off five rounds, pointing
Speaker 5: the gun to his left at Sirmak and not to
Speaker 5: his right at Roosevelt. The first bullet hit Sermak in
Speaker 5: the right armpit, causing Sermak to grab his chest with
Speaker 5: both arms and slowly sink to his knees. Several other
Speaker 5: bystanzers were struck by bullets as well. Zangari said over
Speaker 5: and over, and the Miami police agreed that he never
Speaker 5: got off more than three rounds from the pistol. Furthermore,
Speaker 5: Zangari's pistol was manufactured to fire five rounds, yet police
Speaker 5: recovered seven bullets from the scene of the shooting. The
Speaker 5: direction of Zangara's gun when fired was almost the only
Speaker 5: point that eyewitnesses agreed on. Zangara was shooting at Sermak,
Speaker 5: not Roosevelt as United States Representative elect from Florida, Mark
Speaker 5: Wilcox and Chicago and Robert Gore, who were both standing
Speaker 5: only a few feet from Cenara, told a radio interview
Speaker 5: or minutes after the shooting he was shooting at Sermac.
Speaker 5: There is no doubt about that. The killer waited until
Speaker 5: mister Roosevelt sat down and then fired. Reports went out
Speaker 5: of the wires at once that Sirmak had been shot
Speaker 5: by Chicago gangsters, but after the first day there were
Speaker 5: no other mentions of gangsters being involved in the shooting. Later,
Speaker 5: while Roosevelt waited in the halls of the Jackson Memorial
Speaker 5: where Sirmak was being treated, he pointed out to his
Speaker 5: Secret Service detail that not one of the six persons
Speaker 5: shot were near him when they were in fact hit.
Speaker 5: In fact, he pointed out that there were at least
Speaker 5: thirty feet away from him, but only two or three
Speaker 5: feet away from Surmac, and added Roosevelt Zangara had not
Speaker 5: fired off a single shot at him while he had
Speaker 5: a full eight minute windows. During his speech, Roosevelt concluded
Speaker 5: that Zangara was a Chicago gangster sent to kill Cermak,
Speaker 5: and said as much for the rest of his life.
Speaker 5: In nineteen fifty seven, Roger turot He told the Illinois
Speaker 5: Parole Board that what really happened in Miami that night
Speaker 5: was that when Zingara started shooting, there was mass confusion.
Speaker 5: People were screaming and running, ducking and falling. Everything was
Speaker 5: just happening, just the way it was supposed to happen.
Speaker 5: The two syndicate killers, three finger Jack White and Frankie Rio,
Speaker 5: both wearing badges from Cicero Police Department, waited until Sirmak
Speaker 5: fell wounded and stepped out from the crowd with their
Speaker 5: forty five's at the ready. In a few more seconds,
Speaker 5: uniform police, secret service, plane clothes detectives, and Cermak's hired
Speaker 5: private detectives would all have their weapons drawn so White
Speaker 5: and Rio didn't stand out in the mob. They fired
Speaker 5: their forty five caliber guns towards Zangara in an attempt
Speaker 5: to silence him, but the shots missed and nicked several
Speaker 5: bystanders instead. They then slipped out of the crowd of
Speaker 5: ten thousand, confused and frightened onlookers, and disappeared. All eyes
Speaker 5: were on Zangara anyway, as the angry crowd leaped on
Speaker 5: him Before police could pull him to safety the rabble,
Speaker 5: they had torn off most of the little man's clothes
Speaker 5: and beaten him badly on the face and chests. Yet
Speaker 5: Zangara never released his grip on the pistol despite the beating.
Speaker 5: When the police were finally able to reach him, they
Speaker 5: disarmed him, handcuffed him, and tossed them into the trunk
Speaker 5: of a nearby truck, while three enormous Miami policemen sat
Speaker 5: on him all the way to jail. The Chicago Police
Speaker 5: Department was certain that the shooting was a mob hit,
Speaker 5: and requested the Miami police round up eighteen Chicagoans, all
Speaker 5: known to be in Miami, twelve of whom were known
Speaker 5: Syndicate associates and hold them for questioning. However, the arrests
Speaker 5: were never made. When Chicago reporters followed the lead, it
Speaker 5: turned out that the request had been canceled by the
Speaker 5: Syndicate's favorite States Attorney, Thomas Courtney, who defended his actions
Speaker 5: with the confusing statement quote, My only interests were to
Speaker 5: learn if there were any Chicago gangsters involved. Apparently there
Speaker 5: were not. From his jail cell, Zangara told a Miami
Speaker 5: police detective that he had to kill, but he wasn't
Speaker 5: specific on who he had to kill because if he
Speaker 5: didn't keep quiet, he said, my friends will kill me tomorrow.
Speaker 5: In sharp contrast to his lifelong behavior, after his arrest,
Speaker 5: Zangara was voluble and excitable, shooting defiant looks into press cameras.
Speaker 5: At times, he was almost giddy with joy. The local
Speaker 5: jailer suspected he was having a mental breakdown, yet doctors
Speaker 5: who examined him that night declared that he was normal
Speaker 5: in every respect, even saying just hours into their investigation,
Speaker 5: the Secret Service was already convinced that Zangara was a
Speaker 5: communist and followed that lead extensively and solely, even though
Speaker 5: when he asked for his views on socialism, anarchism, fascism,
Speaker 5: and communism, Zangara replied that they were all foolish. Yet,
Speaker 5: despite the lack of evidence for it, the government's investigators
Speaker 5: concluded that Zangara was motivated in the shooting by his
Speaker 5: political beliefs. From his hospital bed in Miami, Anton Sermak
Speaker 5: insisted that he was Zangara's target. When his secretary arrived
Speaker 5: from Chicago's Sirmak said, you're alive. I figured maybe they
Speaker 5: shot up the office in Chicago too. He rallied again
Speaker 5: when his family arrived, and arose long enough to sign
Speaker 5: a four point two million teachers payroll. But on February
Speaker 5: twenty seventh, Sirmak caught pneumonia of the lungs, which caused
Speaker 5: the area around the right lung to almost double in
Speaker 5: size up until he lapsed into a coma. Sirmak believed
Speaker 5: that he would recuperate, but at six fifty seven am
Speaker 5: he died. In all Sirmak held out for nineteen days
Speaker 5: in a heroic struggle against colitis, pneumonia, and finally gangrene.
Speaker 5: Sirmak didn't die from his bullet wounds, but it was
Speaker 5: close enough for Zangara to be placed on trial from murder,
Speaker 5: represented by three court appointed lawyers who, although experts in
Speaker 5: their field of civil law, not one of them had
Speaker 5: ever tried a criminal case before. The lawyers allowed their
Speaker 5: client to plead guilty to murder. When he did, the
Speaker 5: court sentenced him to death. Just sixty days after he
Speaker 5: was tried. Zangara strutted to the electric chair, which when
Speaker 5: he sat in it kept his feet from touching the floor.
Speaker 5: The guards placed a hood over his head while Zangara
Speaker 5: gazed out of the room at reporters, but state officials asked,
Speaker 5: no pictures, Well, goodbye, audios to the world, go ahead
Speaker 5: and push the button Viva Italia. Just seconds before the
Speaker 5: switch was pulled, Zangara turned to the prison's ward and
Speaker 5: Leo Chapman and smiled. Chapman had been one of Zangara's
Speaker 5: very few visitors in jail and had become convinced that
Speaker 5: the tiny man wasn't insane at all and that he
Speaker 5: was a member of some sort of secret criminal syndicate.
Speaker 5: As Chapman had walked from his cell to the death
Speaker 5: chamber of with Zangara, he and the Miami Police Commissioner
Speaker 5: asked Zangara if he was part of an organized group
Speaker 5: that plotted to kill cermac No. I have no friends,
Speaker 5: he replied, it was my own idea. But now Zangara
Speaker 5: grinned slyly at Chapman and said, Viva Camora, one of
Speaker 5: many Italian words for the mafia. He then leaned back
Speaker 5: in the chair. In twenty three hundred volts snuffed out
Speaker 5: Zangara's strange life. When he told Zangara was dead, William Sinnott,
Speaker 5: the New York Policeman, who was injured in the shooting, said,
Speaker 5: I still believe he was a member of some secret society.
Speaker 5: He was no more shooting at mister Roosevelt that night
Speaker 5: than I was, and should be investigated further ed. Kelly
Speaker 5: was Chicago's next mayor. When reports found to tell him
Speaker 5: he was Chicago's new mayor, Kelly was gambling at a
Speaker 5: mob owned racetrack in Havana. When asked if he thought
Speaker 5: that the Syndica had anything to do with Sir Max killing,
Speaker 5: Kelly put down his racing form and said, boys, let's
Speaker 5: stop that from now on. There's no such thing as
Speaker 5: organized crime in the city of Chicago, and that, ladies
Speaker 5: and gentlemen was the guns of Zangara by John T.
Speaker 5: Twohe now, I found this to be a fascinating story.
Speaker 5: Let's let's hop over to Wikipedia. Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Let me see.
Speaker 5: Let's look up Jinzeppe's Angara. We'll go to Wikipedia and
Speaker 5: we'll see what the official story has to say about
Speaker 5: mister Zangara. All right, So, giuseeppe's Angara September seventh, nineteen
Speaker 5: March twenty, nineteen thirty three was an Italian immigrant and
Speaker 5: naturalized United States citizen who attempted to assassinate the President
Speaker 5: elect of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on February fifteenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty three, seventeen days before Roosevelt's inauguration, During a
Speaker 5: night's speech by Roosevelt in Miami, Florida, Zangara fired five
Speaker 5: shots with a handgun he had purchased a couple of
Speaker 5: days before. He missed his target and instead injured five
Speaker 5: bystanders and killed Anton Surmak, the mayor of Chicago. What
Speaker 5: a fucking crock of bullshit. What a crock of bullshit.
Speaker 5: This is fucking Wikipedia for you. Okay, let me see.
Speaker 5: Here we go conspiracy theory. While accounts focus on Sermac
Speaker 5: and the other victims being random casualties of an attempt
Speaker 5: to assassinate Roosevelt, a conspiracy theory emerged sometime before nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety nine, originating in Chicago, asserting that Zangara was a
Speaker 5: hired killer working for Frank Nitti, who was the head
Speaker 5: of the Chicago Outfit crime syndicate John William tuohe author
Speaker 5: of numerous books on organized crime in Chicago. After reviewing
Speaker 5: secret Service records described in detail in a two thousand
Speaker 5: and two article, his interpretation of how and why Cermac
Speaker 5: was the real target, and the relationship of the shooting
Speaker 5: to the rampant gang violence in Chicago. The theory is
Speaker 5: enhanced by numerous researchers citing their analysis of court testimony
Speaker 5: asserting Sirmac had directed an assassination attempt on Nitty less
Speaker 5: than three months earlier. The conspiracy theory suggests that Zangara
Speaker 5: had been an expert marksman in the Italian Army sixteen
Speaker 5: years earlier, who would presumably hit his target, though sidestepping
Speaker 5: any issues about Zangara's progressive age and health issues since
Speaker 5: the time he was in the war, his short stature
Speaker 5: requiring him to stand on a jostle chair, his experience
Speaker 5: being with a rifle rather than with a pistol from
Speaker 5: a great distance, and his own statements regarding his target.
Speaker 5: Raymond Moley, who investigated Zangar, believed he was not part
Speaker 5: of any larger conspiracy than he intended to kill Roosevelt.
Speaker 5: What a fucking crack of bullshit? Like do you see
Speaker 5: how they just twist everything? I love how they like
Speaker 5: go And despite the fact that there's all this evidence,
Speaker 5: it is still conspiracy theory, all right, in popular culture.
Speaker 5: In nineteen sixty a two part storyline entitled The Unhired
Speaker 5: Assassin on the TV series The Untouchables. Actor Joe Mantel
Speaker 5: played the part of Guzeppe Joe Zangara this episode while depicting.
Speaker 5: This episode, while depicting Zangara's story throughout, focuses mostly on
Speaker 5: Nitty's plan to kill Cermak, with initial fictionalized attempt in
Speaker 5: Chicago that is foiled by Elliott Ness and his agents
Speaker 5: at the end of part one. In part two, another
Speaker 5: attempt is made using a contract hitman and ex army
Speaker 5: rifleman in Florida, which again fails to thank Ness. Suddenly
Speaker 5: Zangara's failed, an unrelated obsession with killing Roosevelt unintentionally achieves
Speaker 5: Nitti's goal. The two part story was later edited together
Speaker 5: as a feature length movie retitled The Gun of Zangara
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety three reboot of The Untouchables. Oh I
Speaker 5: see the Gun of Zangara singular as compared to the
Speaker 5: Guns of Zangara plural conspiracy. Zangara plays a significant role
Speaker 5: in the background provided for Philip K. Dick's nineteen sixty
Speaker 5: two novel The Man in the High castle, this alternate
Speaker 5: history novel sets. I'm not going to read that. That's nonsense. God,
Speaker 5: I fucking hate official stories, and I fucking hate Wikipedia,
Speaker 5: and I fucking hate anybody who denies the truth, which
Speaker 5: is exactly what's going on here. But that, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 5: is going to wrap it up for today. I'm getting
Speaker 5: back to the book. Like I said, I'm rewriting two chapters.
Speaker 5: I'm hoping you haven't done the next week or two,
Speaker 5: but I wanted to just hop in, drop a little
Speaker 5: bit of history for you and then get back to
Speaker 5: the writing. I'll have another show what days Today, Today's Friday.
Speaker 5: I'll have another show sometime early next week or middle
Speaker 5: of next week. But yes, I do hope to have
Speaker 5: the book completely finished and ready to go. God I
Speaker 5: would say one week from today, but that's optimistic. Let's
Speaker 5: say two weeks from today, and that's probably give me
Speaker 5: a little bit of room. So thank you guys for
Speaker 5: tuning in. If you haven't pre ordered the book, I
Speaker 5: highly suggest that you do, so go to buy me
Speaker 5: at coffee dot com slash jfkbook. You can order it
Speaker 5: there and you'll get my notes a bunch of chapters
Speaker 5: in advance and access to my JFK research chat. So
Speaker 5: thank you for tuning in and I will talk to
Speaker 5: you very soon.