Giuseppe Zangara

Giuseppe Zangara

Giuseppe Zangara

Giuseppe Zangara (September 7 1900 - March 20 1933) fired upon the United States President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.

Zangara was born in Ferruzano, Italy. He did a variety of menial jobs in his home town before emigrating with his uncle to the United States in 1923. On September 11, 1929, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

At some point in his life Zangara developed a very painful ulcer that remained untreated. Instead, Zangara, a poorly educated itinerant laborer with little money for doctors, was driven mad by the constant sharp pain in his stomach. It was difficult for him to work due to both his physical and mental conditions, and in his fevered mind came to believe the President of the United States was somehow supernaturally actively causing his pain. Other sources report that Zangara envied those who had more than he did, and sought the assassination of "all capitalist presidents and kings." Zangara began plotting to assassinate the current president Herbert Hoover, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to replace him before Zangara could act on his plan. Zangara would later say, "Hoover and Roosevelt — everybody the same."

On February 15, 1933, FDR was giving a speech in Bayfront Park in the city of Miami, Florida where Zangara worked as a brick layer. Zangara took a .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol and joined the crowd. However, being only five feet tall, he was unable to see over other people and had to stand on a wobbly wooden chair to get a clear aim at his target. Due to his awkward firing position, he missed the president after firing six shots, but two bullets managed to hit Chicago mayor Anton Cermak who was touring with FDR. Four other anonymous members of the crowd were also wounded. En route to the hospital, Cermak had allegedly told FDR, "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President."

Guiseppe Zangara

Guiseppe Zangara

Cermak died of an abdominal wound 19 days later, on March 6, 1933, two days after Roosevelt's inauguration, the only fatality of the shootings. Only two weeks later, on March 20, 1933, Zangara was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Penitentiary after being convicted of Cermak's murder.

Giuseppe Zangara's last words were spoken to the judge present at his execution, "You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care! Get to hell out of here, you son of a bitch [spoken to the attending minister]... I go sit down all by myself... Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere!... Lousy capitalists! No picture! Capitalists! No one here to take my picture. All capitalists lousy bunch of crooks. Go ahead. Pusha da button!"

Some believe that Zangara was not a lone nut and that he was a hitman hired by the Capone faction of the Chicago Mafia as a diversion for a second killer to shoot Cermak, an enemy of the Capone mob, not Roosevelt. Supporting evidence includes the facts that, in spite of the anarchist rhetoric he used to justify the act, Zangara was a registered member of the Republican Party, that Zangara was a practiced marksman firing at close range, yet he completely missed Roosevelt and that Cermak was in Florida only because he had backed the losing side in a gang war back home. Moreover, the two bullets recovered from Cermak's body had been fired from a .45 caliber handgun, much larger than the .32 carried by Zangara.

Whether Zangara was a crazed lone nut or a mob-connected killer or patsy may never be known, but Judge John H. Lyle, widely regarded as Chicago's most knowledgeable official on Mafia matters flatly stated: "Zangara was a Mafia killer, sent from Sicily to do a job, and sworn to silence."

Zangara is one of the assassins portrayed in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins.

See also

• List of assassins
• List of people who were executed