Prime suspect: Charles "Chuckie English" Inglesia In September 1966, FBI agents visited Sam Giancana's favorite hangout in an effort to track him down. Giancana had gone into hiding after serving a yearlong prison sentence. He had also been removed as Outfit boss around this time. The agents asked Giancana's henchmen if they had seen him. The encounter later made its way into two separate FBI reports. In one version, the agents reported that they were told by George Colucci and Chuckie English, two veteran Outfit members, that Giancana had been at the restaurant earlier but had left.27 English In another retelling of the same encounter found in a second report, the agents again wrote that Giancana had left the restaurant but added they were told this information by George Colucci and a second individual whose identity is redacted. The redacted individual's name was then followed by the informant symbol code "CG-REDACTED-PC," indicating the FBI considered this person to be a source. Based on the first report, there is no doubt that Chuckie English was the individual assigned the informant code.28 But was he really an informant? It wouldn't be unreasonable to think English might have been receptive to an approach from the FBI. English was very close to Sam Giancana and owed much his criminal success to him. After Giancana was replaced as Outfit boss, English fell from favor with the new regime and his criminal career sagged. (In fact, he was later murdered.) But if English did cooperate, why wasn't he consulted about Giancana's murder in 1975? An analysis done by the FBI right after the murder doesn't appear to include any Intel supplied by him. Presumably, English would have had something to say about the death of his friend and mentor. So what happened? Did English only flirt with the FBI back in 1966 but not follow through? Did he cooperate for a time and then stop altogether? Or did an overly hopeful FBI agent designate English an informant only to pad his statistics?29 Former FBI agent William Roemer includes an odd episode in his biography of Tony Accardo that may shed some light on the matter. Roemer oversaw the FBI's informant development program in Chicago in the 1970s. He later wrote books about his experiences. According to Roemer, after he left the FBI and retired to Arizona, he received a visit from Chuckie English. This was two years before English was murdered in 1985. In what must be the strangest request for a character reference in FBI history, English said that he had been sent by his Outfit superiors to ask Roemer if he thought Rocky Infelise, an up-and-coming mobster, was still involved in drug trafficking. (He had a previous conviction.) Apparently, Infelise was to get an Outfit promotion if Roemer said he was clean.30 Roemer This anecdote, as it's presented, seems improbable. Why would an old-time mobster go to the trouble to travel all the way to Arizona to consult Roemer, a retired FBI agent? Why would the Outfit want to put a target on Infelise's back? And how did English know where Roemer lived? The visit only begins to make sense if we presume a prior friendly relationship between the two men. The kind existing between, say, an informant and his handler. In one of his fiction books, The War of the Godfathers, Roemer's alter ego, Bill Richards, receives a similar visit in Arizona from a nameless Chicago mobster. But in the book, the visitor is also described by Roemer as one of his former informants.31 Could this character be based on English? A speculative interpretation would be that it's meant to recall English's real visit to Roemer in 1983. While the book is a work of fiction, it does incorporate true historical details into the story and leaves the impression sometimes that it's peppered with facts about real mobsters that the irrepressible Roemer couldn't responsibly include in his non-fiction books.
Copied from:
https://mafiahistory.us/rattrap/postgiancana.htmlSource info:
?Valin, Edmond, "Post-Giancana Outfit was
fertile soil for FBI informants," The American Mafia, mafiahistory.us, accessed Sept. 30, 2021.
Copyright © Edmond Valin
