Mob Recipes

Friends of ours: Frank Calabrese Sr., James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The German" Schweihs

Reputed mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr. would chat about "recipes" over the phone with his wife while he was in prison in Milan, Mich.

In one recorded conversation between Calabrese Sr. and his second wife, Diane Calabrese, she asks the aging gangster, "You talking about the German chocolate one?"

"Yes," Calabrese Sr. replies. But it's not food they're talking about, the feds say.

They're talking about illegal money collections from mob activities.

The fresh details came to light Friday night as federal prosecutors responded to a slew of pre-trial motions filed by the defendants in what some observers call the most important prosecution ever against the Chicago mob.

Such mob heavyweights as James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The German" Schweihs and Calabrese Sr. are on trial in a case that puts 18 hits at the Outfit's doorstep.

Calabrese Sr. and Marcello want any tape-recorded conversations between them and their wives while the men were in prison disallowed at trial because of marital privilege. The feds argue otherwise, saying both husbands and wives knew they were being tape-recorded during their prison phone chats and had no expectation of privacy.

In the case of Diane Calabrese, they suggest she helped further the illegal activity her loan-sharking husband allegedly was involved in. Diane Calabrese has not been charged with any crime.

Calabrese Sr.'s attorney, Joseph Lopez, dismissed the government's filing as "just more nonsense."

The feds contend that Calabrese Sr., known for talking in code, would refer to various collections as "recipes."

In one Nov. 11, 1999, phone conversation, Calabrese Sr. asks his wife: "Miss Engel was supposed to give you a recipe that you were supposed to send me, with all the different size of the, of the ounces of, of a flour and stuff."

"Yeah," Diane Calabrese replies.

"What happened?" Calabrese Sr. asks.

"She's working on it. She's, you know, a little slow," his wife replies.

In short, the feds contend, Calabrese Sr. is asking where the money from a specific collection is.

In another motion, prosecutors argue against a defense request to have separate trials for the defendants in the case, arguing in part that some witnesses are in danger and that making them testify more than once at multiple trials only increases the risk against them.

Without providing specific numbers, prosecutors point out that "a number of witnesses" have been placed in witness protection, while the FBI has moved others who feared retaliation from the mob.

Some grand jury witnesses went to jail rather than testify in the investigation, while others changed their grand jury testimony after they were threatened, the feds contend.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir