Samuel "Mad Sam" DeStefano (September 13, 1909 − April 14, 1973) was an American mobster who was associated with the Chicago Outfit.

Chicago-based Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, such as William F. Roemer Jr., considered DeStefano to be the worst torture-murderer in the history of the United States.

Not long after his birth, Sam DeStefano and his family moved to Herrin, Illinois, where his father worked in the local coal mine.

After the labor-related turmoil surrounding the Herrin Massacre, the DeStefano family moved north to Chicago's Little Italy.

[citation needed] One of the earliest reports on DeStefano is from September 12, 1926, when he was arrested in Chicago and turned over to the Niles Police Department as a fugitive for breaking out of jail.

[citation needed] In November 1927, DeStefano and fellow gang member Ralph Orlando were in court on charges of assaulting a 17-year-old girl.

In August of that year, DeStefano appeared at a hospital on Chicago's West Side with bullet wounds, which he refused to explain.

While in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in the 1940s DeStefano met Outfit members Paul Ricca and Louis Campagna.

In 1952, city officials discovered DeStefano had omitted his criminal record from his Civil Service application; however, they chose not to prosecute him.

Using stolen money from his days as a bank robber, DeStefano began investing in Chicago real estate.

[citation needed] By the mid-1950s, DeStefano's influence extended to city officials, prominent judges, and law enforcement officers.

The reason was simple: DeStefano enjoyed when debtors did not pay on time, since he could then bring them to the sound-proof torture chamber he had built in his basement.

[citation needed] Under normal circumstances, the Outfit would have distanced itself from DeStefano due to his sadistic, irrational behavior.

Dorso said he once saw DeStefano roll on the floor, with spit running from his mouth, begging Satan to show him mercy and screaming over and over again, "I'm your servant; command me.

[7] One informant who was close to DeStefano described him as a highly emotional, temperamental individual, extremely egotistical and concerned with his personal appearance.

On February 22, 1972, DeStefano was sentenced to three and one-half years in prison for threatening the life of a witness, mobster turned informant Charles Crimaldi, an accomplice in the Foreman murder.

In a secret meeting, the boss of the Chicago Outfit, Tony Accardo, gave DeStefano's crew permission to kill him.

Before the meeting began, Sarno allegedly entered the lot and shot DeStefano twice with a shotgun, hitting him in the chest and tearing his left arm off at the elbow, instantly killing him.