Comprehensive information and links about 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. After serving in the Tyrolian Alps in the Great War, Zangara did a variety of menial jobs in his home town before emigrating with his uncle to Paterson, New Jersey, in the United States in 1923. On September 11, 1929, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Zangara, a poorly educated brick layer, was driven mad by the constant sharp pain in his abdomen, later attributed to adhesions of the gall bladder. 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. Further, he was a very lonely man -- he blamed authority figures for his pain, but the side effects of his condition included chronic flatulence, while his outspoken and impatient nature likely pushed other people away. Other sources report that Zangara envied those who had more than he did, and sought the assassination of 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,

On February 15, 1933, FDR was giving a speech in Bayfront Park in the city of Miami, Florida where Zangara was living, working the occasional odd job, and living off his savings. Zangara took a .32 caliber pistol, purchased at a local pawn shop, 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 members of the crowd were also wounded. En route to the hospital, Cermak had allegedly told FDR,

Cermak died of a complications brought about by 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 "Old Sparky," the electric chair at Florida State Penitentiary after being convicted of Cermak's murder. According to Florida law, because Zangara intended murder it was irrelevant that his intended target was not who he killed; 1st Degree Murder was applicable. Also according to Florida law, a convicted murderer could not share cell space with another prisoner before his execution, but another convicted murderer was already awaiting execution at Raiford. Zangara's sentence required prison officials to expand their waiting area, and the "death cell" became "Death Row."

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 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. Others claimed to have seen the frugal Zangara gambling with large amounts of cash. Judge John H. Lyle, widely regarded as Chicago's most knowledgeable official on Mafia matters flatly stated: "" Such conspiracy theories tend to be more emotional than logical, for Cermak had been in Miami more than a week, and a professional hit man would likely not await the moment when he was standing next to the president-elect, surrounded by policemen, and in front of thousands of witnesses to pull an $8 revolver out of his pocket. Still, Chicagoans genuinely mourned the passing of Cermak, and attributing his death to some tangible, conspiratorial reason, instead of an accidental collision with a deranged assassin's bullet, was likely part of the city's necessary grieving process.

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