Partner and co-founder of Murder Inc. Jay Bloom speaks at a media event for the Las Vegas Mob Experience on Monday, June 8, 2010, at the Tropicana. Behind Bloom are, from left, Janice Sachs, wife of Al Sachs, granddaughter of Benjamin Siegel Millicent Rosen, Meyer Lansky grandchildren Cynthia Duncan and Meyer Lansky II, Tony Spilotro’s wife Nancy Spilotro, Murder Inc. partner Louis Ventre and Sam Giancana’s daughter Antoinette Giancana.
Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011 | 8:14 p.m.
Even before it has opened to the public, there has been a whacking of sorts at The Mob Experience.
Saying he’s grown tired of Antoinette Giancana’s untethered approach to fulfilling her role as a spokeswoman for the long-awaited organized crime-themed attraction, Jay Bloom has cut loose the daughter of notorious Chicago mob head Sam “Momo” Giancana.
Effective Friday, Giancana is no longer a paid consultant for the nearly completed, high-tech shrine to organized crime at the Tropicana.
Items belonging to Sam "Momo" Giancana are displayed at the Las Vegas Mob Experience preview center at the Tropicana on Monday, Aug. 2, 2010.
Antoinette Giancana, daughter of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, during an interview at the Las Vegas Sun offices Jan. 25, 2010.
The Mob Experience, originally expected to open in December, instead begins welcoming visitors in early March.
It was assumed that Giancana would long serve as one of the more prominent family members recruited by Bloom to help publicize the $25 million attraction (The Sun is involved in a cross-promotional agreement with the attraction in which it shares photo and video content in exchange for brand placement). Two years ago, Bloom signed Giancana as one of the first well-connected offspring of reputed organized crime figures when building a lineup of consultants that includes Millicent Rosen (daughter of Benjamin Siegel), Vincent and Nancy Spilotro (the son and widow of Tony Spilotro), Jan Sachs (widow of Al Sachs) and Meyer Lansky II and Cynthia Duncan (grandchildren of Meyer Lansky).
Instead, as of Friday, Giancana has been lopped from the project. The self-dubbed Mafia Princess, who has written a book about her remarkable life bearing that very title, ran afoul of Mob Experience officials last week by going public with a claim that she was still owed compensation for artifacts once owned by her father.
This collection included furniture that has been assembled in a re-creation of the Giancanas’ living room, photos and documents she’d provided to The Mob Experience after she entered into her contractual commitment to Bloom. Giancana has also complained that Murder Inc., the company Bloom heads that oversees The Mob Experience, missed payments and even bounced a check, which Bloom says never happened.
“She had sold us these items, but then changed her mind and told us she wanted instead to lease them to us for 10 times more than we’d already paid for them,” Bloom said Sunday. On Friday, he turned over documents that included a copy of a cashier’s check made out to Giancana for $23,300, the amount listed on a bill of sale bearing the signature of A.G. McDonnell (Giancana’s legal married name), which lists all of the Giancana items being displayed in The Mob Experience.
Bloom is certain he is the owner of the Giancana collection, saying, “Sam Giancana played an important role in the history of organized crime in this country, and those items will be on display at The Mob Experience.”
Giancana did not return a phone message Sunday.
The relationship between Giancana and Bloom has never been ideal, as Bloom has frequently complained of Giancana’s attempt to separate herself from the other hired family members. He has chafed at her public affection for Mayor Oscar Goodman, which resulted in her visiting the mayor in his City Hall office in September (during which she presented him with a gift basket), and appearing with Goodman on a panel discussion of organized crime at Clark County Library on Jan. 25.
Goodman, of course, is the leading proponent of The Mob Museum on Stewart Street in downtown Las Vegas also set to open this year. Giancana’s actions created what Bloom described as “brand confusion,” and a breach of her contract to appear and speak publicly solely on behalf of The Mob Experience.
“She’s a bit of a renegade and a bit of a maverick,” Bloom said, also referring to an infamous Maxim magazine interview of all consulting family members in which Giancana turned surly and offered “no comment” to many of the questions (a move that particularly rankled Millicent Rosen). “She was not acting in good faith. She had a difficult time with the fact that we had Lansky, Siegel, Spilotro and Sachs represented. She wanted to be the star, and she let it affect her performance.”
In an odd twist, there is talk that the 75-year-old Giancana might make a run at “Dancing With the Stars,” filling a role as a sort of mobbed-up Cloris Leachman. Maybe that will happen.
If so, she’ll again be dancing to her own tune.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
