CRIME: New Mafia Killer: A Silenced .22

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Nineteen other victims are listed by the FBI in the case of the .22 hits. Almost all were dispatched with multiple shots to the head from a .22-cal. automatic pistol. All had in some way crossed the Mob. The most noteworthy:

> Sam Giancana, 66, retired Mafia boss, who was shot in the basement of his Chicago home in June 1975. Investigators believe Giancana was slain for refusing to share the take from Caribbean gambling ships, a fringe benefit that he acquired in the early 1960s.

> Jack Molinas, 43, master fixer of college basketball games in the nationwide point-shaving scandal of 1961, and later the producer of hard-core sex films. He was shot in the head in his Hollywood Hills home in August 1975 for cheating Mafia loan sharks.

> Tamara Rand, 54, San Diego businesswoman, murdered at home in November 1975 to keep her from telling what she knew about Mob-dominated gambling casinos in Las Vegas.

> Edward Lazar, 40, accountant and mortgage-company president, gunned down in February 1975 in a Phoenix parking garage the night before he was to appear before a grand jury investigating land speculation.

> Augie Maniaci, 66, Milwaukee swindler, who was executed in September 1976 in an alley behind his home. Maniaci was an FBI informant.

> Vincent Capone, 39, a small-time gambler and loan shark slain in Hoboken, N.J., in August 1976 while his Cadillac was stopped for a red light. Two killers hit him with 15 shots. He was reportedly about to turn state's evidence in an investigation of New Jersey Mobster John DiGilio.

> Frank Chin, 48, professional wiretapper gunned down with six bullets to the head in a New York City apartment building Jan. 20. Also a potential state's witness against the Mob, Chin (TIME, Feb. 21) had been hired by DiGilio to screen the gangster's offices for police eavesdropping devices.

> Arthur Milgram, 48, head of a company that sells New York State lottery tickets through vending machines, executed on Feb. 8 in a Queens parking lot. Milgram was reportedly about to squeal on Mafia loan sharks who were trying to take over his business.

The grim prospect of a professional coast-to-coast gang methodically exterminating potential court witnesses and FBI informants has led the bureau to assign agents in 20 field offices to the case. Findings so far have strengthened the FBI'S hit-team suspicions. Two .22 pistols discarded after killings were traced to a Miami sporting-goods store that went out of business a few months ago. FBI lab tests show that the .22-cal slugs that killed Capone and Chin came from the same weapon —which has not been found. But both men were also linked through their mutual connection with DiGilio. The New Jersey gangster is currently appealing a prison sentence for conspiracy to rifle the files of the FBI's Newark field office —files that some officials think may have tipped off the Mob that Bompensiero and Maniaci were informants.

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