Double-Dealer's Death

The rubout was executed neat Chicago gangland style. Two armed men --wearing ski masks and carrying a walkie-talkie to get word from a lookout --slithered into Rose's Sandwich Shop on the hairy, scary West Side. "Up against the wall!" they ordered the eight people inside. One of the gunmen then shoved a twelve-gauge shotgun under the chin of Richard Cain, 49. The hit man fired two blasts, blowing away Cain's handsome face. The killers quickly fled, accompanied by what witnesses later said was a mysterious "woman in blue."

Thus ended Cain's remarkable double-dealing life as a policeman and mobster. Cain was a Chicago detective in the 1950s, and later became chief investigator in the Cook County sheriffs office. In the mid-1960s he was dismissed from the sheriffs office for concocting a phony drug raid, and he became the chief operative of Chicago Mafia Overlord Momo Salvatore (Sam) Giancana. In 1966 Giancana left Chicago for Mexico to avoid federal heat and counseled the Chicago syndicate from his exile; Cain was a trusted aide.

For Cain, the line between the law and the lawless had always been fuzzy. Born in a tough neighborhood not far from where he died, the street-wise Cain left school after eighth grade, but did a good job of self-education. He learned five languages, mastered many of the techniques of eavesdropping and once studied law books for several months. When he later faced conspiracy and other charges, he creditably defended himself in court. Handsome and spectacled, Cain was polite, well read and intelligent. At the same time, he had a hedonist's love of flashy clothes and big cars, and surrounded himself with a stable of women--some of them prostitutes who gave him valuable information about vice rings.

In a taped conversation with officials of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1969, Cain admitted that his Mafia and police careers were inextricably linked. Through the influence of a Democratic politician in Chicago's inner city First Ward, he got a job as a detective in 1956. He soon became the Mob's bag man in the police department, paying off detectives to insure freedom of operation. He was finally compelled to quit the force in 1960, when he and another detective were discovered wiretapping the offices of Mayor Richard Daley's Commissioner of Investigations to secure possibly damaging information that might be used against the Mayor in a political campaign.

For two years afterward Cain was a private detective, and he developed his skills in electronic eavesdropping. He claimed that he worked with the CIA in Central America, training Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. By 1962 he was back in Chicago, where he worked for the election of Richard Ogilvie as Cook County sheriff. Cain said that he told Ogilvie: "I know the hoods. I am not afraid of the hoods, and I hate the hoods." Despite warnings about Cain's Mob connections, Ogilvie hired him, later made him chief of investigators.

Throughout his tenure in the sheriffs office, Cain was collecting $1,000 a month from Giancana to divert Ogilvie's attention from mob activities and to feed inside police information to the syndicate. But he also told the police about out-of-favor mob figures whom he wanted to have arrested in order to solidify his position within the syndicate.

Phony Raid. Cain's successful double-dealing broke down in 1964 after he planted $43,000 worth of drugs in a motel, then staged a "raid" and claimed to have "recovered" the drugs. When Ogilvie learned that Cain had plotted the phony raid to make himself look good, he fired him. During the FBI investigation brought on by Cain's dismissal, it was discovered that, while on the sheriffs staff, he had helped the Mafia smoke out a suspected stoolie in its midst by having a lie detector test administered privately to five bank robbers--for the benefit of the Mob. One robber flunked the test; he was later shotgunned to death, presumably by the Mob.

Cain was jailed in 1969 on charges of conspiracy, concealment of evidence and acting as an accessory to a robbery. Paroled in 1971, he resumed his role as Giancana's right-hand man, serving both as international courier and scout for gambling operations and investments in corporations in Europe and elsewhere.

For reasons still not clear, Cain's influence in the Mob had waned by early in 1973. Some longtime Mafia observers believe that Giancana and Cain had a serious dispute. Others believe that a band of jewel thieves he had fallen in with decided that he could no longer be trusted. Why was he killed? Said one Chicago police investigator: "He knew too much." Added Charles Siragusa, executive director of the Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission: "He may have committed the unpardonable sin--talking to both sides."

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