The five-bedroom, 3,283-square-foot bungalow in Oak Park that onetime Chicago Outfit chief Sam Giancana owned — and the home in whose basement Giancana was slain in a 1975 crime that never has been solved — sold on Jan. 22 for $900,000.
Built in 1929 and designed by architect A.J. Fisher, the house is located on Wenonah Avenue in southern Oak Park. Giancana and his wife, Angeline, bought the house in 1945, and he kept living in the house after her death in 1954.
Giancana, who headed the Chicago Outfit crime syndicate from 1957 until 1966, was called before a federal grand jury investigating organized crime in 1965, and after he refused to testify, he was jailed for contempt of court for more than a year. The once-dapper Giancana then fled to Mexico, and he remained outside the U.S. for the next eight years before Mexican authorities deported him to the U.S. in 1974. Several months later, Giancana finally did speak to the grand jury on and off at several different occasions.
And despite police’s efforts to guard Giancana’s house, he was shot multiple times and killed about 11 p.m. on June 19, 1975 by an unknown assailant while in his basement kitchen, cooking sausage and peppers. Owing to a phone call from an anonymous caller about two hours later, the Tribune’s Weldon Whisler broke the news in the next morning’s newspaper with a front-page story.
The murder has never been solved, and theories have run wild about the identity of the potential assailant or assailants, ranging from mob figures fearful of what Giancana had told or would tell a federal grand jury, to those concerned about ongoing congressional hearings into his dealings with the CIA, including a possible plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro
Giancana’s three daughters sold the house in 1976 to Robert and Jane Warner for $69,500. Then, the most recent sellers bought the house from the Warners in 1990. The most recent sellers first listed the house in late 2022 for $1.1 million, cut their asking price to $975,000 in early 2023 and then relisted it for $1.05 million in July. They once again cut their asking price to $975,000 in October and then to $925,000 in November before finding a buyer.
The $900,000 sale price is more than 16 percent above the $772,080 value that the Cook County Assessor’s office assigns to the home.
The house has five bathrooms, hardwood floors, Pella windows, designer light fixtures, a first-floor primary bedroom suite and a living room with rounded windows, a wood-burning fireplace and a marble mantel. Other features include newly installed hardwood floors upstairs and a lower level with eight-foot ceilings, maple hardwood floors and a workout studio that doubles as a second bedroom. The home also has a rebuilt rear porch and stairs, a tear-off tile roof, new copper gutters and downspouts and a Kichler outdoor lighting system.
Public records do not yet identify the buyers. Listing agents Cathy Mead and Stephanie Alfini did not respond to requests for comment.
The house had a $25,113 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
