Sinatra: The Mob, JFK, Women

Authors Chronicle Roles They Say Each Played In His Life

(CBS)  "What we've established is, we think, we've established with good witnesses that, in fact, she was a woman who took money for sex and who knew Giancana before she knew JFK, and that it was Giancana personally who put her into JFK's company. Sinatra was, as it were, in the middle."

"Unfortunately," Swan says, picking up the story, "the Kennedy White House under Bobby Kennedy then went after Giancana, intensely. And Giancana blamed Sinatra. He blamed his intermediary.

"(At a hotel) in early 1961, Sinatra sent down for room service and what came up on the room service platter when he opened it was the skinned head of a lamb, a very frightening threat if you know anything about the Mafia."

Summers and Swan interviewed comedian Jerry Lewis, who says Sinatra worked as a courier for the Mafia and was nearly caught in a New York airport carrying a suitcase stuffed with $3.5 million.

They also chronicle Sinatra's tumultuous marriage to Ava Gardner, for whom Summers says Sinatra had an "absolute obsession," even asking Gardner for reconciliations minutes before marrying two other wives.

"When she died in 1990," Summers continues, "he forced himself to go and perform. It's one thing we're leaving out here, is the extraordinary talent and the marvelous professionalism of this man. He went and performed at Albany, N.Y., carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels, and he sang. He was really mourning Ava on stage."