Sam Rinella was the proprietor of the Brown Derby restaurant in Chicago. Also a lynchpin in Al Capone's bootlegging operation, Rinella opened the Copacabana nightclub on December 26, 1946. It closed six months later. The club may have been financed with money from ex-Chicago Police Chief Hugh Duffy. An investigation closely followed Sam Rinella's December 1951 murder. Prosecutors sought to trace the investment sources from the ill-fated Copacabana.