Nick Calabrese, Chicago Mob Hitman who Turned Government Witness has Died #FamilySecrets

Nick Calabrese

Former Chicago mob hitman Nicholas Calabrese has died, a source said Monday.

A source confirmed to CBS 2's John Drummond that Calabrese had died. Calabrese was 80.

Calabrese was infamous as a top assassin for the Mafia in Chicago. Among the 14 murders in which Calabrese told federal prosecutors he took part were those of brothers Tony "the Ant" and Mike Spilotro. Tony Spilotro was the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character in the 1995 movie "Casino."

Calabrese later became known for turning on his brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., in the Operation Family Secrets probe that took down several prominent organized crime figures.

Frank Calabrese Sr. was known as a brutal loan shark. During the Operation Family Secrets mob trial in 2008, he was charged with 13 murders.

During that trial, Nick Calabrese gave graphic details about how his brother strangled his victims and then slit their throats.

Frank Calabrese Sr. was convicted of seven murders and, two years later, was sentenced to life in prison. Frank Calabrese Sr. died in prison in 2012.

In addition to Frank Calabrese Sr., fellow Outfit figures James Marcello, Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo, Paul "The Indian" Schiro, and Anthony "Twan" Doyle were the main defendants at the trial, and were convicted on conspiracy and racketeering charges. A jury also found Frank Calabrese Sr., Marcello, and Lombardo responsible for 18 murders in all.

Meanwhile, Nick Calabrese was sentenced to 12 years and four months in prison in 2009 for the 14 murders to which he admitted.

Nick Calabrese was most recently said to be in the federal witness protection program.

Thanks to CBS Chicago.

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Defendants in the Operation Family Secrets Trial #TheyGotCaught

Defendants in the "Operation Family Secrets" trial included Frank Calabrese Sr. (clockwise from left), Joey Lombardo, Anthony Doyle, Paul Shiro and James Marcello. The men are pictured during an Aug. 15, 2007, court hearing in Chicago. Verna Sadock/AP

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Family Secrets Mob Book by @JeffCoen is Indispensable to Know How Chicago Truly Works

If you're interested in understanding the real Chicago—and there can be no serious understanding of this completely political city without examining the Chicago Outfit—then you'll soon have a great new book on your shelves:

"Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" (Chicago Review Press) by Chicago Tribune federal courts reporter Jeff Coen.

Yes, Coen is a colleague of mine who is well-respected in our newsroom. But the reason I recommend this book is that I've followed Coen's work chronicling this case. His careful eye and clean writing style have produced years of compelling Tribune stories and now this authoritative account of one of the most amazing Chicago Outfit cases in history.

It involves the FBI's turning of Chicago Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese into a top witness and informer. Calabrese's access and insight into unsolved murders, offered up at trial by the expert killer and brother of a Chinatown Crew boss, were more than astounding. And, in a creepy but necessary way, illuminating.

Calabrese, a deadly though perpetually terrified hit man, testified against the bosses about more than 18 gangland murders in the federal Family Secrets case. Now mob bosses including his brother Frank, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Jimmy Marcello, and fellow hit man Paul Schiro will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Later this week an Outfit messenger boy—Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer who worked in the evidence section and who visited Frank Calabrese in prison to discuss the FBI's interest in an old bloody glove—also will be sentenced.

From the witness stand, Doyle gave Chicago one of my favorite words, "chumbolone," the Chinatown Crew's slang for idiot or fool. He deserves a long sentence. Federal mob watchers consider him to be close to the Outfit's current overall reputed street boss, Frank "Toots" Caruso.

Outfit helpers like Doyle, placed in sensitive government posts, in politics, in law enforcement, in the judiciary, in city inspection and business licensing bureaucracies, have long allowed the Outfit to form the base of the iron triangle that runs things.

"Doyle was one of the most interesting aspects of the case," Coen told me this week. "Here you have a police officer as a mole telling the Outfit when evidence in a murder was being sought by the FBI. I don't think the public is aware of the effort that goes into placing people in low-key clerical positions that give them great access, people that can fly under the radar."

Doyle learned the FBI was interested in a glove worn by Nick Calabrese in the murder of John Fecarotta, who himself received an Outfit death sentence for botching the 1986 burial of brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro.

"If Nick doesn't drop that glove, the FBI doesn't have the physical evidence to tell him he'd be going away forever," Coen said. "Without the glove, they wouldn't have Nick."

Nick's testimony involved the planning and surveillance of his victims, and the final end that came to them, either by a remote-controlled car bomb on a suburban highway ramp, or shotguns from a van along a country road near Joliet, or the laying on of hands and feet and ropes in a suburban basement.

The movie "Casino" depicted Outfit brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. That's how many of us thought they were killed, until Family Secrets revealed that they were actually beaten and strangled in a Bensenville basement.

In the gangster movies, the hit men are usually the roughest characters. But Calabrese wasn't a movie hit man, he was a real one, so frightened that he wet himself during his first killing.

On the witness stand and in the book, he comes off like what he is, a nerd of homicide, a man plagued by a sickening fear that settled on him at the first one and became like a second skin, and he found one way to deal with that fear—meticulous planning.

"He was nothing like a movie hit man," Coen said. "During testimony, he looked like somebody you'd bump into at a store in your neighborhood. But if the bosses pointed him at somebody, they could sleep, knowing the murder would be done."

On my shelf, there are books I consider to be indispensable to truly knowing how Chicago works. There is:

• Clout: Mayor Daley and His City
  by Len O'Connor,
• Captive City : The Startling Truth about Chicago and the Mafia
  by Ovid Demaris
• The Outfit
  by Gus Russo

And now, there is Jeff Coen's Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.


Thanks to John Kass

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Family Secrets Jury Deliberations Were Systematic, Often Contentious

The anonymous jury that decided the Family Secrets case was exhausted.

After methodically working through stacks of evidence to convict four mob figures and a former Chicago police officer of racketeering conspiracy, jurors had become bogged down during a second round of deliberations.

For the first time in three months, personality conflicts flared and jurors snapped at one another as they tried to decide if the four mobsters could be blamed for 18 gangland slayings stretching back decades.

"There were times when we all looked out the window for a while and no one talked to each other," one juror recalled.

Two years after the landmark Family Secrets mob trial gripped Chicago with its lurid details of mob mayhem, jurors who sat in judgment have finally broken their silence.

Two of the jurors -- a man and a woman -- spoke last week to a Tribune reporter at a Loop restaurant, insisting their identities remain secret out of continued concern for their safety.

Even two years after the summerlong trial in 2007, few of the jurors know the names of one another, they said. Their identities had been publicly concealed to protect them from possible retaliation by the Chicago syndicate and to shield them from the news media.

Instead, jurors addressed one another by nicknames. Some took on names of characters in the trial, while others won monikers that might have been passed on by the mob itself. A tall juror became "Shorty" and another was called "Puzzles" because he often sat solving them during trial breaks.

As they began their deliberations, jurors pored over their notes -- one juror filled 16 pads of paper -- and sorted through carts of prosecution evidence -- documents, photos and even ski masks worn by hit men.They wrote questions on large "post-it" notes and stuck them to the wall. When they ran out of space, jurors took down decorative pictures to make more room for their notes.

The two jurors said the panel began the initial deliberations by deciding whether a criminal enterprise known as the Chicago Outfit existed. Then they considered the alleged role of each of the defendants they had spent months staring at from the jury box.

"I found them all to look mild-mannered and pleasant and grandfatherly," the female juror said of defendants James Marcello, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr., Paul "the Indian" Schiro, and Anthony "Twan" Doyle, the ex-Chicago cop.

The man said most of the jurors began to figure out the importance of the trial after hearing about the infamous murders of mobster Anthony Spilotro and his brother, Michael, whose bodies were found in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.

The jurors said the first round of deliberations went smoothly. If anyone was uncertain, others would calmly go back over the testimony, according to the two. The evidence was strong, they said, and jurors took four days to convict all five defendants on a host of counts, voting by a show of hands.

The jury was surprised, though, to find out that their work was not over after three months, the two said.

They again placed notes on the wall, building a chart with the 18 murder victims on one side and the four mobsters on trial across the top. They placed check marks by the defendant's name if they felt he could be held responsible for a particular murder.

"There was a lot more talking and a lot more disagreement," the female juror said. "People were passionate about Round 2."

The jurors said the panel delved more deeply into the centerpiece of the prosecution case -- the testimony of mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese. The former hit man admitted committing 14 murders himself and linked the four mobsters -- including his own brother -- to many of the gangland killings.

To some jurors, Calabrese was a tortured man who calmly named names as he recounted murders he was forced to commit with other Chicago Outfit members, but others on the jury wouldn't rely on his word alone to find blame in a killing. "Fundamentally, Nick was himself just like one of those guys in the room," the female juror said. "Some people just weren't able to get past it."

The result, the jurors said, were strained arguments and frazzled tempers.

The male juror was among the leaders who thought Calabrese was believable because other evidence corroborated his testimony. He recalled one instance when Calabrese fought tears on the witness stand as he recounted how an attempt to blow up the car of a businessman targeted by the mob almost resulted in killing the man's wife and child. "That was either the best acting job ever or somebody who's facing some serious demons," the juror said.

The jury wound up finding Lombardo, Marcello and Frank Calabrese Sr. responsible for 10 of the murders, but deadlocked on the other eight slayings. The two jurors said the jury deadlocked on murders that relied only on the word of Nicholas Calabrese.

The jury found Marcello responsible for the Spilotro killings, but it was close, they said. Calabrese testified Marcello drove him to a house where the brothers had been lured by the promise of mob promotions and helped beat them to death in the basement.

Calabrese had alone put Marcello at the murder scene, but the jurors said there was just enough evidence to buttress his account. Relatives of the Spilotros had testified that Marcello called their home the day the brothers were killed and that Michael Spilotro worried enough about the meeting to have left his jewelry at home. But there were discrepancies in the government evidence, the jurors noted. Calabrese had put a mobster at the murder scene who was actually under FBI surveillance at the time, making his presence there impossible. But the jurors said they chalked it up to a memory lapse and moved on, confident they had made the right decision.

The jurors said they weren't surprised to see Marcello, Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr. each sentenced to life in prison this year. Both said they supported the controversial 12-year prison sentence that U.S. District Judge James Zagel imposed on Nicholas Calabrese.

The male juror said he thought the judge had done a good job explaining his decision, even though some family members of victims found the sentence unfair. No one would dispute that Calabrese was a killer, he said. "You have to look at what he was able to bring forward on all of this -- he gave people answers," the juror said. "But I'm glad I didn't have to make that call."

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Convicted Family Secrets Cop to Petition Police Pension Board to Keep Pension

Chumbolone (pronounced chum-buh-LOAN), my favorite Chicago political word that explains exactly what politicians think of us taxpayers, has finally made it to the big time, with its own listing on urbandictionary.com. And as a bonus, today there's even more chumbolonian news.

The corrupt cop Anthony "Twan" Doyle -- who first uttered the word from a federal witness stand and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for being a messenger boy for bosses of the Chicago Outfit -- will petition the police pension board on Thursday in the hopes of keeping his pension.

"I'm not going to diminish his conviction and say it's insignificant, because it's not," said Twan's lawyer, the criminal defense whiz Ralph Meczyk. "But one event erased the career of a hardworking copper, and as far as his pension goes, it shouldn't be a complete loss.

"It's not going to be easy, I know."

Meczyk is scheduled to appear before the police pension board, one of the groups that mysteriously gave Mayor Richard Daley's nephew $68 million of city pension cash to invest, and the mayor says he knew absolutely nothing about it. The mayor thinks we're chumbolones.

Twan's gambit, that he was a good cop despite the Outfit messenger boy stuff, probably won't work. But given precedent, it's worth a try.

Just last February, convicted serial arsonist and former Chicago Fire Department Lt. Jeffrey "Matches" Boyle sought to recover his $50,000-a-year city pension despite the arson convictions.

Boyle's legal theory? When he set the fires, he was off duty, not on city time. The city fire pension board asked Boyle what his years as a firefighter taught him about being a good arsonist. "The hotter it got, the more it would burn," Boyle said. A clean answer without ambiguity. But he didn't receive his pension.

The reason I called Meczyk was to inform him that "chumbolone" had made it to urbandictionary.com, and to ask Meczyk to get all his friends and clients to go online and vote a jolly "thumbs up" for the word.

"I like chumbolone," Meczyk said. "You popularized it. And it's such a Chicago thing, it's part of Chicagoese now. I haven't met anyone, almost, who doesn't like the word, except for one person."

Who?

"Twan."

Oh.

Twan was known as the big silent guy with the big biceps who hung around with reputed mob street boss Frank "Toots" Caruso in Chinatown.

Twan had been picked up on federal recordings, visiting convicted Outfit boss Frank Calabrese Sr. in prison and talking about murder evidence while joking about using a cattle prod on mafioso cooperating with the FBI. But Twan testified he had no idea what Calabrese had been saying. He said he only kept nodding and agreeing out of good manners.

"I gave him lip service," Twan said from the witness stand, shrugging. "I didn't know what he was talking about. I don't wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid."

Search for the word on urbandictionary.com, and you'll see it right next to the condom ad and the photo of a curvy young woman selling T-shirts that say: "Make Awkward Sexual Advances, Not War."

Here's the Web site's definition:

Chumbolone -- idiot, stupid -- Popularized by Chicago newspaper columnist John Kass after first hearing the word spoken in testimony by mob messenger boy Anthony "Twan" Doyle during a 2007 federal trial. While working for the mob, Doyle got himself hired into the Chicago Police Department evidence department in order to remove or destroy DNA and other evidence of mob homicides.

Some readers insist that chumbolone is not a proper word. Others say it refers to a tasty Italian cake. One reader in particular really doesn't want me to use it.

"Twan doesn't like you using the word," Meczyk said. "He really doesn't like it."

Really? Why?

"He never said. He's quite stoic in this regard," Meczyk said. "He's in prison, but he's no chumbolone."

Thanks to John Kass

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Chicago Mobsters Ordered to Pay Restitution

Chicago mob bosses convicted in the landmark Family Secrets trial have already been ordered to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Now they'll have also to pay up with their bank accounts.

Judge James Zagel late Monday afternoon ordered more than $24 million in fines and restitution to be paid, including $4.3 million to the relatives of 14 men who had been murdered by the mob. The gangland killings were the centerpiece of a prosecution that dismantled the Outfit's upper echelon in 2007.

Zagel's order means that Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese, James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Paul "The Indian" Schiro are responsible for paying restitution for the murders, some of which occurred in the 1970's and 80's.

The court-ordered repayment is intended to cover the loss of income by the murder victims.

The government had estimated that the murder victims' lives, by way of lost earnings, were valued at $7.4 million. Prosecutors wanted the above four defendants and convicted corrupt Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle to split the restitution tab. But Zagel let Doyle off the hook for most of the money.

"I expressed at sentencing that, in my view, Doyle was not an active or full member of the conspiracy in the 1960s," wrote Judge Zagel."None of those murders occurred after February 1999, the latest date at which there is little doubt over Doyle's participation in the conspiracy. Accordingly, I apportion 1% of the total restitution amount to Doyle, or $44,225.73. As to the remaining $4,378,347.16, I hold Defendants Calabrese, Sr., Marcello, Lombardo, and Schiro jointly and severally liable."

In addition to the restitution, forfeitures totaling $20,258,556 were imposed on the men as payback of ill-gotten profits from years of mob schemes, scams and rackets.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Will Leniency to Nick Calabrese End the Chicago Outfit's Foundation of Fear

Chicago Outfit hit man turned star government witness Nicholas Calabrese, who killed at least 14 men and wet his pants on his first murder assignment near Sox Park decades ago, stood in court to talk about fear.

"I chose my path in life," he told U.S. District Judge James Zagel before he was sentenced as the last man in the historic mob prosecution known as Family Secrets. "I was always with fear, and underneath that fear, there was a coward."

Not the Hollywood image of the Outfit hit man, but then Hollywood has always glamorized the mob. American audiences, so numbed by living in an increasingly bureaucratic culture, demand recognizable archetypes to fulfill escapist fantasies. It's Tony Soprano they want, the politically incorrect and unrepentant white guy who takes what he wants. But that's Hollywood, and Nick Calabrese is from Chicago, and he testified to wetting himself as a grown man, when he strangled Bones Albergo years ago with his brother Frank.

He's been afraid since he was a kid, afraid of Frank, afraid of failing at his work. That fear forced him to become meticulous in his planning of murders, so fussy about details that he sounded more like a grandmother at a quilting convention than some archetypal gangster.

That fear led him to become the first "made man" ever to testify against the Outfit, in the most significant prosecution of the mob in modern Chicago's history.

Outfit bosses Frank Calabrese, Joseph Lombardo and James Marcello have been sentenced, as have enforcer Paul Schiro and Chicago cop Anthony "Twan" Doyle. On Thursday it was Nick Calabrese's turn.

The families of his victims came up first, testifying tearfully about fathers who were shotgunned or strangled or tortured, never to see their kids grow up, graduate, marry and start their own families. Some wept, others spat out their hatred at Calabrese, and all asked Zagel to let him rot in prison.

It would have been the easy thing to do. Yet Zagel's job isn't about emotion, but rather about logic and the law, and he began to speak slowly, eloquently about leniency.

Not leniency to Calabrese, but leniency to all the other families of other victims unknown, future victims of other killers who might receive some small measure of justice if the law showed some mercy on Calabrese, to persuade men like him to testify in court.

"There is a phrase used in state courts, when individuals are charged with murder: 'Against the peace and dignity of the people of the state of Illinois,' " Zagel said. "And murder is a kind of war, and the organization you are involved in engages in that war, with faction against faction, and against the people."

Zagel noted that in another federal courtroom in April, Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose will go on trial for allegedly being an Outfit messenger, guarding Calabrese and sending the bosses information about murder sites visited by Calabrese and FBI agents when the investigation began.

I wrote about the beginning of Family Secrets before it was called Family Secrets, back on Feb. 21, 2003, when Calabrese was quietly swept into the federal witness protection program, when the Outfit began to tremble, and I listed some of the murders that would be solved. I knew the Outfit bosses were worried. What I didn't know was how easily they could penetrate the federal shield.

The Outfit "will not forgive or relent in their pursuit of you," Zagel said to Calabrese, adding that even when he's a free man, Calabrese will never draw a secure breath.

He was sentenced to 148 months in prison, but given the time he's already served, Calabrese will be out in about four years. He should be available to testify in other trials.

Without Calabrese's testimony, there would have been no prosecution, and the big bosses would be out on the street, ordering hits, spreading corruption, sending their political errand boys to carry messages to local governments.

Watching him sitting at the defense table, an old man in jeans, glasses and a gray sweat shirt, trying to keep his lips from quivering and losing, it became clear that while the Chicago Outfit relies upon corrupt politicians to protect it, the Outfit was built on what was obvious in Nick Calabrese's eyes:

Fear.

Thanks to John Kass

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Family Secrets Ex-Chicago Cop Gets 12 Years in Federal Prison

A former Chicago police officer accused of joining forces with the mob and collecting loan shark debts and extortion payments was sentenced today to 12 years in federal prison.

Anthony Doyle, 64, was among five alleged mob bosses and associates convicted of racketeering at the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial.

U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who presided over Chicago's biggest mob trial in decades, said during Doyle's sentencing that he had a decent career as a Chicago police officer, but "picked the wrong people to try to help."

Prosecutors describe Doyle as a "sleeper agent" for the mob who, defying police rules, visited convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. in prison and fed him inside police information about a major murder investigation.

It was part of an effort by Calabrese to thwart the investigation, they say.

Even before that, Doyle doubled as a collector of "street tax" payments Calabrese charged to businesses and extortion "juice loan" debts, according to federal investigators.

Unlike three of his four co-defendants including Calabrese, however, Doyle has not been held responsible for any of the 18 mob murders outlined in the indictment. But prosecutors do have secretly made tapes of the husky, broad-shouldered Doyle sitting in a prison visiting room discussing mob business with Calabrese.

Defense attorneys had said the already jailed Doyle has suffered enough and should be sentenced to no more than time served -- in other words, released immediately. Prosecutors dismissed that request as "without merit."

Doyle is the last of the trial defendants to be sentenced. Still to be sentenced, though, is Nicholas Calabrese, Frank's brother, an admitted mob hit man who became the government's star witness in hopes of avoiding a death penalty.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Anthony Doyle, Called a Chicago Outfit "Sleeper Agent" by the Feds

Calling him a "sleeper agent" for the Chicago Outfit, federal prosecutors this week will ask that a former Chicago police officer be given a longer than-normal prison sentence for his role in mob-related rackets.

Anthony "Twan" Doyle was convicted in the government's Family Secrets trial and is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday afternoon by Judge James Zagel. In a motion for a stiff upward departure from the sentencing guidelines, Asst. U.S. Attorney Markus Funk is asking that the judge consider Doyle's decades-long role as "an Outfit associate and Outfit juice loan collector."

Doyle, who changed his last name from Passafume so he would appear to be Irish, joined the historically-Irish Chicago Police Department merely as a cover for his role in the mob, according to prosecutors.

"In his role as a 'sleeper agent,' Doyle continued to advance the Outfit's criminal interests by passing Outfit-related messages" from imprisoned mob bosses to their underlings on the outside, according to the court filing.

The government contends that "Doyle ignores his established life-long association with the Outfit claiming instead that he merely engaged in a momentary staggering lapse of judgment.

Doyle's attorneys will ask that he be released immediately for "time served" since being convicted "followed by an extensive period of supervised release."

Doyle claims that he deserves such consideration because of his impoverished upbringing and his "vulnerability to abuse in prison," due to the fact that he was once a police officer. He also cites the loss of his police pension as a reason for supervised release and the impact on his wife in Arizona, who is suffering from cancer. "Its difficult for Ms. Doyle to care for their dog Rocco while she works" states a motion filed on behalf of Doyle, who contends his wife may be set upon by "transients as well as indigenous wildlife like mountain lions" in Arizona.

A separate motion filed by Mr. Doyle's attorneys asked for a delay in Thursday's sentencing so that a psychiatrist could examine him. The motion itself was sealed, but some details were revealed in Judge Zagel's order denying the request.

"The request for a psychiatric examination to determine the possible effect certain mental conditions had upon defendant's conduct is untimely" wrote Judge Zagel."All of the facts cited in support of the motion were known or should have been known months or even years ago. I have consistently delayed the sentencing dates for this and other defendants to allow investigation but the time I have allowed has been ample and this new request should have been made well before the time it was made."

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob by Jeff Coen

Painting a vivid picture of the scenes both inside and outside the courtroom and re-creating events from court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes taken day after day as the story unfolded in court in 2007, this narrative accurately portrays cold-blooded—and sometimes incompetent—killers and their crimes. In 1998 Frank Calabrese Jr. offered to wear a wire to help the FBI build a case against his father, Frank Sr., and his uncle Nick. A top Mob boss, a reputed consigliore, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were eventually accused in a total of 18 gangland killings, revealing organized crime's ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. After a series of other defendants pled guilty, those left to face off in court alongside Frank Sr. were James “Little Jimmy” Marcello, the acting head of the Chicago mob; Joey “the Clown” Lombardo, one of Chicago’s most colorful mobsters; and Paul “the Indian” Schiro. A former Chicago police officer who worked in evidence, Anthony "Twan" Doyle, rounded out the list. The riveting testimony and wide-angle view provide one of the best accounts on record of the inner workings of the Chicago syndicate and its control over the city's streets.

The author, Jeff Coen, is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covering federal trials and investigations from the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in downtown Chicago. He was present in the courtroom throughout the Family Secrets trial, and his pieces on the case were featured in a popular series in the Chicago Tribune. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

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Do You Want to be Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's Chumbolone?

The Tribune has commissioned a new poll asking taxpayers whether they support Mayor Richard Daley's 2016 Olympic dream. But the pollsters didn't call me, so I conducted my own poll on the cheap, while shaving.

Just look at yourself in the mirror, while trying to shave that stubborn stubble from under your nose, and ponder whether it's smart to give the Daley gang billions of dollars to run the Olympics. There's only one question in the Kass poll. Just ask yourself:

"Does wanting the Olympics in Chicago make me a big chumbolone?"

"Chumbolone" is the immortal term uttered by corrupt Chicago cop Anthony Doyle, convicted of being a messenger boy for imprisoned Chicago mob bosses in the Family Secrets trial. In those prison visits, he insisted he didn't hear anything. All he did was nod when the boss was talking, over and over, nodding like some Chinatown-crew bobblehead doll.

"I didn't know what he was talking about," Doyle explained from the witness stand. "I don't wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid."

And there you have it.

We want the glitzy Olympic party. But we think we won't have to pay for it. And when Mayor Fredo talks about his Olympic dream, we nod like chumbolones.

For almost two decades now, Daley has run the city and Cook County. His administration is an encyclopedia of corruption and insider deals for friends and family. He'd drink with white guys with Outfit connections every Christmas Eve, guys who received $100 million in affirmative-action contracts from his administration, and he didn't know how it happened.

As of Sunday, it has been 1,615 days since the mayor promised he'd find out who promoted ex-gangbanger Angelo Torres to run his scandal-plagued Hired Truck program that cost taxpayers at least $40 million. We're still waiting.

There are so many such deals that counting them would be like trying to count the flies on a chunk of liver sausage in an alley in July. All this on his watch. Just imagine what he'll do with all that Olympic gold.

These days, corruption is important again, since the former governor, Mr. Dead Meat, got busted for trying to sell President Obama's Senate seat. But when will we realize that the governor of Illinois—no matter who sits in the chair—is just a measly nose hair compared to the boss of Chicago?

And if it's not outright corruption, it's incredible arrogance born of absolute political power with no dissent.

Just the other day, the mayor said he wasn't going to tell the people of his city what large "shovel-ready" public works projects he wanted out of the Obama White House. Or, is it the Cellini/La Hood U.S. Department of Transportation sending all that federal cash?

"Oh, yes, we have our list," said the mayor. "We've been talking to people. We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you know, the newspapers, the media is going to be ripping it apart."

Translation: Why do I have to tell the chumbolones what I'm going to do with their tax money? They're my chumbolones. Not yours. They're mine! Mine!

Just imagine how he'll react when asked about who got cut in on some Olympic village deal. Don't ask me no questions, you chumbolones, he'll say.

Daley has already sold off the Skyway to a private management firm, and Midway Airport, and all the city's parking meters, blowing long-term assets for short-term cash. At this rate, if one of his guys gets a lobbying deal in Dubai, he might sell off all the water in Lake Michigan in the middle of the night, and everyone will wake up to the sound of fish flopping in the mud.

Such private management contracts shield information about lucrative subcontracts and, for instance, whose political brother-in-law with the room-temperature IQ gets hired after cashing in his second six-figure government pension.

Pestered by reporters about the wisdom of selling everything he can get his hands on, Daley got angry and trashed his entire city workforce, the same workforce that he's been managing for almost 20 years now, the same workforce that puts his stooges in office.

"They're not customer-related. They're gonna leave at 5 o'clock. They're gonna leave at 4:30 or 4. I'm sorry. We are on the time clock. They walk out. But in the private sector, when you have a customer, you're gonna stay there making sure they're happy and satisfied," said Daley, who regularly takes three-day weekends to his Grand Beach estate when he's not jetting off on free vacations to Paris, Geneva, Rome, Beijing, Mumbai and elsewhere.

The next day, he whined that reporters had twisted his words. "I'm a ping-pong ball for the media," he said. "But don't misinterpret what I say to try to bring confrontation against city workers."

Don't misinterpret? It was on tape. He must think we're chumbolones.

So with Daley pushing the Olympics and all the gold that flows with it, look yourself in the eye while shaving the stubble under your nose (unless, of course, you're a woman). Either way, you can still take the Kass poll. Just ask yourself:

Do I really want to be Daley's Olympic chumbolone?

Thanks to John Kass

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Joey the Clown Given Life in Prison

Reputed mob boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo was sentenced Monday to life in federal prison for serving as a leader of Chicago's organized crime family and the murder of a government witness in a union pension fraud case.

Lombardo, 80, was among three reputed mob bosses and two alleged henchmen convicted in September 2007 at the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial which lifted the curtain of secrecy from the seamy operations of Chicago's underworld.

"The worst things you have done are terrible and I see no regret in them," U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel said in imposing sentence. He also sentenced Lombardo separately to 168 months for going on the lam for eight months after he was charged.

Lombardo grumbled that he had been eating breakfast in a pancake house on Sept. 27, 1974, when ski-masked men beat federal witness Daniel Seifert in front of his wife and 4-year-old son and then shot him to death at point-blank range.

"Now I suppose the court is going to send me to a life in prison for something I did not do," Lombardo said. He said he was sorry for the suffering of the Seifert family but added: "I did not kill Danny Seifert."

In a last-minute effort to bolster his alibi, he read from two documents signed by Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano, now serving a 15-year sentence for wiretapping stars such as Sylvester Stallone and bribing police to run names through law enforcement databases. Pellicano was originally from Chicago.

Lombardo was one of the best-known figures in the Chicago underworld. His lawyer, Rick Halprin, told jurors during the trial that he merely "ran the oldest and most reliable floating craps game on Grand Avenue" but was not a killer.

Witnesses said he was the boss of the mob's Grand Avenue street crew — which extorted "street tax" from local businesses and engaged in other illegal activities.

He was sent to federal prison along with International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Roy Lee Williams and union pension manager Allen Dorfman after they were convicted of plotting to bribe U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., to help defeat a trucking deregulation bill. Cannon was charged with no wrongdoing in the case.

Lombardo was later convicted in a Las Vegas casino skimming case.

Seifert was gunned down two days before he was due to testify before a federal grand jury. His two sons spoke at the sentencing about the pain of losing their father when they were still children.

Joseph Seifert recalled how he saw mobsters "chase my father like a pack of hungry animals" before shooting him.

Nicholas Seifert said that he succumbed to depression over the killing. "I felt like a coward for many years for not seeking revenge for what those men did to my father," he said.

Lombardo used a wheelchair in court. Halprin declined to say what health problems his client has but said he needed to be sent to a prison where he would get adequate medical care.

Zagel acknowledged that he thought carefully about Lombardo's age in deciding on a sentence. But he said he wanted one that would not "deprecate the seriousness of the crime."

Zagel has already sentenced Calabrese to life and reputed mobster Paul Schiro to 20 years. Schiro was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison seven years ago after pleading guilty to being part of a gang of jewel thieves run by the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives.

Still to be sentenced are James Marcello, reputedly one of the top leaders of the mob, and Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer who became an enforcer for Frank Calabrese. Also still to be sentenced is Nicholas Calabrese, Frank's brother and an admitted hit man who became the government's star witness.

Thanks to Mike Robinson

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Operation Family Secrets Mob Trial Sentencing to Continue This Week

Federal agents tried for more than three decades to penetrate the deepest secrets of Chicago's organized crime family -- the names of those responsible for 18 ruthless murders aimed at silencing witnesses and meting out mob vengeance. They even called the investigation Operation Family Secrets.

Their patience was rewarded six years ago when a mob hit man began to spill the family secrets as part of a deal to keep himself out of the execution chamber. And starting this week, three aging dons of the Chicago underworld convicted in September 2007 as a result of that testimony are due to receive long sentences -- quite likely life.

Two alleged henchmen also convicted after the 10-week Family Secrets trial are expected to get long sentences as well.

"These were the main guys who ran the crime syndicate -- they were ruthless, they were absolutely ruthless," says retired police detective Al Egan, also a former longtime member of an FBI-led organized crime task force.

Wisecracking mob boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 80; convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr., 71; and James Marcello, 66, all face a maximum of punishment of life in prison.

Former Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, 64, and convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 71, weren't convicted of any murders but the jury found them guilty of participating in what prosecutors say was a long-running conspiracy that included killings, gambling, loan-sharking and squeezing businesses for "street tax."

The case is a major success for the FBI in its war on the mob.

"It led to the removal or displacement of some of the most capable guys in organized crime," says author John Binder whose book, "The Chicago Outfit," tells the story of organized crime in the nation's third largest city. And it sends a strong message to members of organized crime: Do you really want to be the guy at the top? Because we're going to get you in the future."

Lombardo is the most colorful defendant. He was sent to federal prison in the 1980s for conspiring with International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Roy Lee Williams and union pension fund manager Allen Dorfman to bribe Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., to help defeat a trucking deregulation bill. Cannon was never charged with any wrongdoing and the bill became law with his support.

When Lombardo got out, he resumed life as the boss of the mob's Grand Avenue street crew, prosecutors say. He denies it but his attorney, Rick Halprin, told the trial he ran "the oldest and most reliable floating craps game on Grand Avenue."

When the Family Secrets indictment was unsealed, Lombardo went on the lam for nine months. And when he was brought before Zagel, the irrepressible clown quickly lived up to his nickname. The judge asked him why he had not seen a doctor lately.

"I was supposed to see him nine months ago," Lombardo rasped, "but I was -- what do they call it? -- I was unavailable."

"A little joke now and then never hurts," he told the trial. But the jury found him responsible for gunning down a federal witness.

The jury also found Calabrese responsible for seven murders.

His own brother, Nicholas Calabrese, 66, testified that Frank liked to strangle victims with a rope and slash their throats to make sure they were dead.

Nicholas Calabrese became the government's star witness after he dropped a bloody glove near the scene of a mob murder. He agreed to talk out of fear that agents would match his DNA to that on the glove and he would be sentenced to death.

Among other things, he said his brother Frank liked to give names to their mob hits.

One was known as "Strangers in the Night," he testified. That was because the Frank Sinatra song was playing on the jukebox while two men were strangled in 1978 in a suburban Cicero restaurant.

Marcello was at one time the mob's big boss, according to federal investigators.

The jury held him among those responsible for the murder of Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, at one time the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino."

Spilotro and his brother Michael were found buried in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield.

Doyle is the only one of those convicted at the trial who is not accused of direct involvement in the murders.

Schiro was sentenced to prison for 5 1/2 years in 2002 for being part of a gang of jewel thieves run by the former chief of detectives of the Chicago police department, William Hanhardt. Prosecutors claimed he was to blame for a mob hit in Phoenix. But the jury deadlocked on the case.

Nicholas Calabrese is to be sentenced Feb. 23.

Thanks to CBS2

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Restitution Filing Doubles Value Requested for Mob Murder Victims

In a separate court filing, the lives of 14 mob murder victims have gone up in value.

Federal prosecutors originally filed court motions last fall citing the earnings potential of victims and the monetary loss to their relatives. At that time, restitution to be paid by top Chicago mobsters convicted in Operation Family Secrets was put at $3.9 million.

Updated figures filed in federal court on Friday put the restitution at $7,450,686.00. Prosecutors say the increased value is based on new information provided to experts who figured the restitution. Government lawyers are asking the court to force lead mob defendants to split that figure five ways and be made to pay survivors of those who were rubbed out by assassins.

The convicted hoodlums who are being asked to pay up are: Frank Calabrese Sr., James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, Paul "The Indian" Schiro and Anthony "Twan" Doyle.

All of the men are due to be sentenced by the end of February, at which time Judge James Zagel is expected to impose restitution and also $20 million in fines that the government has requested.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Family Secrets Mob Trial Sentencing Dates Set

A federal judge has set sentencing dates for five men convicted in September 2007 at Chicago's Operation Family Secrets mob trial.

They were convicted of a decades-long conspiracy that allegedly included loan sharking, squeezing victims for "street taxes" and a series of mob murders.

Judge James Zagel on Tuesday set the sentencings of Paul Schiro and Anthony Doyle for Jan. 26, Frank Calabrese on Jan. 28, Joseph Lombardo for Feb. 2 and James Marcello on Feb. 5.

Zagel set Feb. 23 for sentencing Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, an admitted hit man who became the government's star witness.

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Anthony Doyle, Former Chicago Cop in the Family Secrets Mob Trial, Pleads for Release from Jail

A former Chicago cop who secretly worked for the Chicago mob says enough is enough: he should be released from jail.

He is Anthony Doyle who was convicted of aiding and abetting the outfit in Operation Family Secrets.

One-time cop Anthony Doyle hasn't even been sentenced yet, but according to a motion filed late on Monday by his lawyers, he's been punished enough by waiting 15 months at the federal lockup for his court date.

When the Family Secrets mob trial started, Anthony "Twan" Doyle was portrayed as a poor city sanitation laborer who worked his way up to the Chicago Police Department.

In a motion filed Monday, Doyle's lawyers described him as a police hero who should be immediately freed from prison despite last year's conviction as a mob associate.

He was born Anthony Passafume but reputedly changed his name to "Doyle" to fit in with a historically Irish Chicago police force. After Doyle retired, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 2001 and volunteered as a county sheriff's deputy.

Among the acts of heroism Doyle's lawyers cite in Monday's get-out-of-jail request is this: Doyle claims that he rescued a Japanese bicyclist who was stranded in the desert under a cactus and survived by drinking his own urine.

Doyle also asks for the court's mercy so he can tend to his wife who lives condo about 60 miles from Phoenix. When the I-Team recently paid a visit to Catherine "Cassie" Doyle, she declined to speak with ABC 7.

In Monday's motion, Doyle contends that his wife had two strokes and has heart trouble and that he stands to lose his $30,000 a year city pension which supports her.

Doyle was originally scheduled to be sentenced on Monday and the other four major 'Family Secrets' defendants were set to be sentenced before Christmas. But in a ruling late Monday afternoon, Judge James Zagel has postponed all the outfit sentencings. Defense attorneys said they were entitled to more time because the government made last minute changes in pre-sentence reports.

That means Doyle will stay in jail along with lead defendant Frank Calabrese who we learned Monday recently had heart surgery.

A hearing is scheduled for today.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Sentencing of Mob Handyman, Thomas Johnson, Kicks Off Chicago Outfit Sentencing Season

'Tis the season to be sentenced for the Chicago Outfit.

By the time the New Year rings in, more than a half dozen hoodlums will have guaranteed reservations at the Holiday Pen.

Mob handyman Thomas Johnson on Tuesday became the first of several Operation Family Secrets defendant to be sentenced this month. Johnson, of Willow Springs, was handed a 30-month prison term and three years of supervision after pleading guilty to his role as an Outfit handyman. U.S. District Judge James Zagel also fined Johnson $7500. He will surrender on March 3, 2009 to begin serving his sentence.

"It is undisputed that Johnson for over seven years engaged in illegal conduct for and with Outfit associate Michael Marcello and his (Michael Marcello's) brother, Outfit boss James Marcello," stated federal prosecutors in sentencing reports. "Johnson's full-time employer was Cicero-based 'M&M Amusements,' which was a large-scale illegal gambling business operating for the financial benefit of the Chicago Outfit."

In Johnson's plea agreement, he admitted rigging video poker machines so that they could be used for actual wagering. "Johnson and others did so by installing a 'knock-off' button or switch which enabled the bar owner to keep track of winning and losing plays. Johnson and his co- conspirators then placed these illegally-altered machines at dozens of bars, restaurants, and clubs throughout Chicagoland" stated prosecutors.

Johnson's talents were not limited to tinkering on machines. He was also a skilled bookkeeper, according to federal investigators. "He created two sets of written documents during the weekly accountings held with the proprietors where the gambling machines were located. Johnson would record the true amount of income retrieved from the machines, and split this figure with the proprietors as agreed. On 'settle-up day,' Johnson also created another set of written records ("collection reports") which falsely recorded a lower amount of income generated by the machines, namely 50% of the actual income generated" authorities said.

Johnson's pleaded guilty of conducting an illegal gambling business and tax fraud. Government agents estimated that he cheated the IRS out of nearly $1.69 million.

Attorneys portrayed Johnson, 53, as little more than a mob stooge, who was a "minor participant, if not a minimal participant. In a court filing, they said Johnson's "involvement was limited to participating in a non-violent illegal gambling operation. Furthermore, within the gambling operation, Mr. Johnson was a low level employee. Mr. Johnson regularly visited business owners participating in the gambling operation to collect proceeds and collection reports from the machines. In return, Mr. Johnson was paid $2,400.00 per month."

The Family Secrets defendants who were convicted at trial will be up for sentencing next week, including former Chicago Police Department officer Anthony Doyle and Paul "The Indian" Schiro, both on Dec. 10

The namesake of the USA vs. Frank Calabrese case as it is officially known, Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese, will be sentenced on Dec. 11 in the Dirksen Building courthouse.

He will be followed by Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo on Dec. 15 and James "Little Jimmy" Marcello on Dec. 17.

The key witness in the landmark case, one-time Outfit assassin Nick Calabrese, will be sentenced on Jan. 26, 2009. Nick Calabrese, who has admitted his role in more than a dozen gangland hits, turned government witness and fingered his brother Frank in the mob plots.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff

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Family Secrets Mobsters Seeking Gifts of Leniency and Mercy During Holiday Season Sentencing

It's not even October but several top Chicago Outfit bosses are already thinking about Christmas and hoping they'll receive gifts of leniency.

In rat-a-tat succession this December, five mobsters who were convicted in the milestone Operation: Family Secrets prosecution last year are now scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel.

The pre-Christmas list of defendants who will stand before Judge Zagel begins with Anthony "Twan" Doyle, a former Chicago police officer. Doyle is to be sentenced Monday, December 8. Doyle's sentencing and the others will take place in Zagel's courtroom on the 25th floor of the Dirksen Federal Building, 219 S. Dearborn in downtown Chicago.

An Italian-American who was born "Passafume," the ex-cop changed his name to the Irish "Doyle" when he joined the Chicago Police Department. He was convicted of being the Outfit's "go-to guy" during some of his 21 years on the police force. The jury found that Doyle was part of a racketeering conspiracy that used violence to achieve its goals.

Next up in court will be Paul "The Indian" Schiro, who is due to be sentenced Wednesday, December 10. Schiro was convicted on racketeering charges.

The following day, Thursday December 11, lead defendant Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese, Sr. will be sentenced. It was Calabrese Sr.'s son and brother who both turned government witnesses and brought down the elder's Outfit street crew like a house of parlay cards. Nearly one year ago, a federal jury blamed "The Breeze" for nearly a dozen gangland murders and on Dec. 11 Calabrese Sr. is will face a sentence that will likely keep him locked up for the rest of his life.

The pre-holiday sentencing will continue the following week, on Monday December 15, when Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo will appear before Judge Zagel. Lombardo was also convicted of racketeering in connection with the old, unsolved mob murders, including those of notorious Las Vegas boss Anthony "Ant" Spilotro and his brother Michael. The Spilotros were found buried in an Indiana cornfield in 1986 after a dispute with their Outfit superiors. "The Clown" is known for his courtroom antics, such as peering out from behind a homemade newspaper mask, wise-cracking with lawyers and judges and once leading news crews on a downtown chase through a construction site. He is likely to be less jovial on Dec. 15, when he faces what will be tantamount to a life sentence.

The final sentencing for the five major Family Secrets defendants will be Wednesday, December 17. James "Little Jimmy" Marcello will also face the potential of life in prison for his role in mob killings and the collection of Outfit "street tax." The mob crew strong-armed protection money from businesses, ran sports bookmaking and video poker businesses as well as loan sharking operations. They rubbed out some of those who might have spilled their secrets to the FBI.

Admitted mob hitman Nick Calabrese, brother of Frank "The Breeze," will be sentenced Monday, January 26, 2009. Nick Calabrese had a hand in at least 15 gangland hits before turning informant. His cooperation was key to the original indictment of 14 Outfit bosses and soldiers and the success of the prosecutions.

Several lower-echelon members of the mob crew have already been sentenced. Also, Judge Zagel has denied defense motions for new trials.

Sentencing Dates

Anthony Doyle Sentencing Dec 8

Paul Schiro Sentencing Dec 10

Frank Calabrese Sr. Sentencing Dec 11

Joseph Lombardo Sentencing Dec. 15

James Marcello Sentencing Dec 17

Nicholas Calabrese Sentencing Jan 26, 2009

Frank Schweihs -- Died before trial.

Already Sentenced

Michael Marcello -- 8 1/2 years prison
Nicholas Ferriola three years in prison
Joseph Venezia -- 40 months prison
Dennis Johnson -- 6 months in prison

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Mystery of Juror Excused from Family Secrets Mob Trial Revealed

The Chicago Mob is an illicit business, notorious for its myths, mystery and folklore.

One baffling moment in the recent history of the Outfit now has an explanation. The incident occurred last year near the end of the Operation: Family Secrets prosecution of five members of the Outfit.

One juror, an alternate, was excused from the panel without explanation by trial Judge James Zagel.

In a ruling on defendants' post-trial motions Wednesday, Judge Zagel, for the first time, disclosed the reason for the juror's dismissal. She seemed to be frightened of the mob.

Zagel wrote that the female juror's posture and demeanor "revealed at best discomfort and perhaps anxiety or panic." When she asked the judge if any threats had been made against her during the trial, he excused her. None of the defense attorneys objected at the time.

There have been numerous cases the past 75 years in which the Outfit tried to buy justice and influence judges and juries when hoodlums were on trial. Mob bosses have also been known to silence witnesses and intimidate jurors.

For those reasons, the names of jury members impaneled in the Family Secrets case were not made public, and they were anonymous. But, considering the well-documented history of Outfit intimidation and violence against those working for justice, we now know that at least one juror seemed unwilling to take the risk.

The five members of the Chicago Outfit were all convicted last year in the government's landmark mob case and Wednesday were all denied new trials by Judge Zagel.

In a written order handed down by Zagel, the guilty verdicts for murder, conspiracy and racketeering will stand against Outfit bosses Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese Sr, James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello and Outfit soldier Paul "the Indian" Schiro. Mob associate and former Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle was found guilty of racketeering. His post-trial motion was also denied.

Judge Zagel said in his order that the motions were being denied "because there was ample evidence to support the jury's verdict" and that the jury was within its right to believe government recordings and witness testimony.

Specifically, Zagel noted Joe Lombardo's testimony on the witness stand worked against him and that Lombardo's advertisement in a newspaper stating he was no longer in the Outfit was "nothing more than a stunt."

The defendants argued that Judge Zagel should have granted a mistrial when he received a note during the trial from a juror saying that other members of the jury had formed opinions about the case before all the evidence had been heard. The defendants' motion stated that "some [jurors] also mentioned that they would be very upset if they had to deliberate for more than a few days while waiting on a decision that should already be made or close to being known." After receiving the note, Judge Zagel questioned each juror, dismissed two of them and says that he stands by his determination that the rest of the jury was not tainted.

Lombardo, Marcello, Schiro and Doyle also argued they were entitled to a new trial because a juror observed Calabrese threaten to kill Assistant US Attorney T. Marcus Funk, during closing arguments. Zagel stated jurors were able to differentiate between the defendants, so it would not have clouded their judgment.

Zagel acknowledged that Funk did "misstate some of the evidence in his closing argument." But the judge denied Schiro's motion for a mistrial because Funk and co-council Mitch Mars pointed out the mistake.

Zagel said he disagreed with several of the defendants' complaint that media coverage leading up to and during the trial tainted jurors and that the identities of the jurors should not have been anonymous.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Ann Pistone

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Minimum $20,000,000.00+ Profit Earned by the Chicago Mob

It took a calculator for the government to figure out this Family Secret. Since the 1960's, a Chicago Mob street crew turned a tidy profit of more than $20 million, according to documents filed today by prosecutors in federal court. And that is a "very conservative figure," according to T. Marcus Funk, the case prosecuting attorney.

The government forfeiture motion obtained by the ABC7 I-Team says that the Operation Family Secrets defendants are responsible for repaying $20,258,556.00 in ill-gotten gains from various organized crime rackets including gambling, extortion and shake-down schemes. In some cases, authorities say, the crime business relied on murder as a final solution to organizational disputes.

Today's filing is a pre-sentence motion in the case of former Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle, who was convicted last summer and is due to be sentenced by Judge James Zagel on October 1. Doyle was a "juice loan collector for the South Side/26th" according to prosecutors. His sentencing date will be the first of the major defendants.

"The evidence at trial established that, as charged in the Indictment, DOYLE joined the charged conspiracy in the 1960's as a juice loan collector who was supervised by Outfit street crew boss and enforcer/hit man Frank Calabrese Sr." states today's motion. Calabrese Sr. was convicted in the dramatic mob trial, along with top Outfit boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and James "Little Jimmy" Marcello. All are awaiting sentencing and expected to be hit with similar, $20 million forfeiture orders.

"Before or at the time of sentencing, the United States requests that this Court enter a preliminary order of forfeiture against the defendant [Doyle]," states the government motion. "He is jointly and severally liable with his co-defendants, representing the $20,258,556.00 in proceeds."

"The figure is based on all the evidence we introduced," Funk told the I-Team. "Notably, it excludes the juice loan money that they earned. That was too difficult to calculate" he said.

"It only includes those unlawfully obtained proceeds that the government has been able to trace in the context of the 'Family Secrets' investigation" states the forfeiture motion. "Additional gambling, extortion, and street tax activities have not been included in this figure. Moreover, the figure entirely excludes any of the Outfit's lucrative juice property subject to forfeiture pursuant to the provisions of [federal law]."

As the I-Team reported last September, Click Here to Read the Past Report Anthony "Twan" Doyle was a Chicago cop for 21 years. Sixty-two-year old Doyle is a hulking figure, whose rigid jaw line helps carve an imposing presence. Doyle is a longtime friend and associate of Chicago Outfit boss Frank Calabrese, who was responsible for at least 13 gangland murders, according to federal prosecutors.

Numerous times in 1999, Calabrese paid for Doyle to come to a federal prison in southeastern Michigan. Doyle discussed Chicago mob business with Calabrese, who is known as Frank "the Breeze." Neither man knew the FBI was secretly taping the meetings.

The visits alone violated Chicago police rules that prohibit associating with felons. And when Doyle gave Calabrese information he'd requested about a police murder investigation, straight from a department evidence computer, that was also criminal.

Investigators believe that Doyle sensed Chicago police were on to his relationship with Calabrese and that Doyle tendered his resignation from the police department in 2001 before a federal grand jury could indict him. That way, Doyle was able to receive his Chicago police pension of $2,800 a month, or $34,000 a year.

Since retiring, Doyle has collected nearly $200,000 in pension payments from the city. The director of the police pension board wrote in a letter to ABC7 that they are aware of Doyle's conviction and plan to address the forfeiture of his pension once he is sentenced.

Doyle began his defense last June with a trash bin, his lawyers demonstrating for the jury that he started as a city sanitation worker and made it to the police force.

His birth name is actually Passafume, which is Italian. But when he decided to join the Chicago police force, which is historically Irish, he became Anthony Doyle. His police records list him as "Irish/Italian." But through the ethnic transformation, his nickname stayed the same: Twan.

A twan is a popular Chinese doughnut. Literally translated, it means "rice glog."Of course, police are known to be fond of their doughnuts, and Officer Doyle grew up in a section of Chinatown where twans are sold.

Doyle asked to be freed on bond until sentencing, offering to post his home in Arizona; his daughter's home and the homes of two retired Chicago policemen as bond. Judge James Zagel denied that motion and he has been in custody since the Family Secrets conviction.

Doyle was the only mob defendant not accused of murder.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Ann Pistone

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