And the Oscar goes to ... Gregory DePalma?

Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Gregory DePalma, Vincent "Chin"Gigante, Joe Bonanno, Gennaro Angiulo, Stefano Maggodino, Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce
Friends of mine: Ilario Zannino

Gregory DePalma, the powerful Gambino family captain, allegedly bragged about his Academy Award-caliber performance playing a desperately ill man looking for a sentence reduction. It worked; a federal judge jailed DePalma for less than six years instead of the 13-year maximum back in 1999.

There was just one problem: The federal government was secretly taping DePalma's post-sentencing review. And now he's back in court, allegedly battling another debilitating illness as prosecutors attempt to convince another jury that DePalma is a racketeer.

The 74-year-old mobster, sitting at the defense table with an oxygen tube in his nose and his feet resting on a small stool, is the latest Mafiosi caught in a medical controversy over competency to stand trial. The government inevitably insists the defendant is a healthy candidate for prosecution; the defense is equally insistent that he is not.

"Surveillance photos will show you Gregory DePalma on the move, an energetic, active man," Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Marrah said in his opening statement at the reputed mobster's trial in Manhattan.

Not so, said defense attorney John Meringolo. DePalma was "a broken-down man who has a big mouth and is living through the past," Meringolo argued.

Trying to dodge prosecution through illness _ the "Sicilian flu," as federal agents once derisively called it _ is a long-standing Mafia defense. The most famous of all was Vincent Gigante, the so-called "Oddfather" who avoided conviction for nearly three decades by publicly acting like a loon.

Gigante strolled through his Greenwich Village neighborhood in bathrobe and slippers, whether it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Gigante avoided conviction from 1970, when he first launched the ruse, until a 1997 conviction for racketeering and murder conspiracy.

FBI agents serving Gigante with a subpoena once found him standing naked in a running shower, clutching an open umbrella.

"With some of these guys, it would be hard to tell if it's dementia or just the way they are," said mob expert Howard Abadinsky. "They're that nutty."

The majority of cases run to heart problems rather than head cases.

Joe Bonanno, one of the founding fathers of New York City's mob, was summoned to testify in 1985 at a federal prosecution of the Mafia's ruling "Commission." Then 80, he was retired and living in Arizona - where he was definitely too ill to take the witness stand, said his lawyer, William Kunstler. The stress of testifying, Kunstler insisted, was too much for the octogenarian mobster. Bonanno did 14 months for contempt, coming out of prison in 1986. He died ... 16 years later, at the ripe old age of 97. Kunstler had died seven years earlier at 76.

Ilario Zannino, an associate of New England mob underboss Gennaro Angiulo, managed to avoid prosecution - albeit temporarily - after he was hospitalized with heart problems in 1985. He died in jail 11 years later at age 74.

Buffalo boss Stefano Maggodino, following his arrest, once claimed he was too sick to get fingerprinted. At a bedside arraignment, he told the assembled authorities, "Take the gun and shoot me. That's what you want!" He survived for another five years.

Not everyone lived as long as those three. Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce was arraigned by telephone in April 1985 from his Staten Island home, where he was laid up with heart disease and cancer. Dellacroce was dead before the end of the year.

"When you start to think of the lifestyles these guys live, there's a good chance it's not going to be so healthy," said Abadinsky. "One of the things that always fascinated me is that these guys didn't die earlier."

The Gigante case, with a mob boss feigning dementia to maintain his freedom, has become part of pop culture. Junior Soprano, on the hit HBO show, went from malingering to menacing mobster this year when he shot nephew Tony in a case of mistaken identity. The long-running hit TV show "Law And Order" did an episode using the Gigante premise. And author Jimmy Breslin did an entire book, "I Don't Want to Go to Jail: A Good Novel," that parodied Gigante with a character called Fausti ("The Fist") Dellacava.

"Gigante got a lot of exercise walking around the Village," Abadinsky said of the mobster who lived to age 77. "He just said he was nuts."

Thanks to Larry McShane

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Mob Boss Threatens Liza Minnelli's Former Manager

A New York mob boss allegedly forced Liza Minnelli's former manager to pay for a group of Mafia wives to go to Las Vegas, a federal jury was told.

The jury in the trial of Greg DePalma heard recordings made by federal agents that revealed DePalma forced Gary Labriola to use his American Express card to pay for the women's $12,000, eight-night stay at the Venetian Hotel -- then threatened him when some of the charges were rejected -- The New York Post reported Thursday.

"I'm with my friends now. I look like a (expletive) horse's ass," DePalma said in the recording made Oct. 21, 2003.

After DePalma threatened him, Labriola promised to take care of the bill. However, when notified two months later there was still an outstanding balance of $4,800 on the hotel's account, DePalma made a phone call -- again recorded -- saying if he had Labriola in his hands "I would strangle him." Labriola paid the remaining balance a short time later, the Post said.

DePalma, 74, is on trial for charges including extortion, loan sharking, assault and receiving stolen property.

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FBI Digs for Clues to Hoffa

Friends of ours: Sam Giancana, Sal "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone
Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa, Rolland "Red" McMaster

The digging continued Thursday at a Michigan farm where FBI agents are looking for clues to one of the great mysteries in US history, the disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.

The digging began Wednesday at the property outside of Detroit. One agent is describing the lead that led them to the farm as one of the best ever. The horse farm outside Detroit now being searched by federal agents is called "Hidden Dreams." The question is: are the remains of Jimmy Hoffa also hidden there? In 1975 when Hoffa seemed to have evaporated from earth, the farm was owned by one of his closest teamsters union allies. Authorities searched the farm at the time and found nothing. But the I-Team has learned that recently a federal prison inmate gave investigators new information that has sent them back to the farm digging for clues.

More than 50 federal agents, soil experts and college archeologists converged on Milford, Michigan to look for what the search warrant calls "the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa."

"I've been the agent in charge and this is the best lead I've seen come across on the Hoffa investigation. You can see from the amount of FBI and police department personnel out here that this is probably a fairly credible lead," said Daniel Roberts, FBI-Detroit.

FBI officials declined to give any details about the new information about why they are searching the farm almost 31 years after the last time they were in Milford right after Hoffa disappeared.

But here's what we know:

It was July of 1975 when Hoffa disappeared after a lunchdate at this suburban
Detroit restaurant.

He had called his wife from a phonebooth at an adjacent shopping center and was never heard from again.

One of Hoffa's closest union confidantes at the time was a man named Rolland "Red" McMaster. Now 93 years old, McMaster used to own this farm where the FBI has returned to begin a two-week excavation.

A former associate of McMaster's-now in federal prison-provided authorities with new leads that prompted them to look for Hoffa's remains on the farm.

The federal team working in Michigan includes two FBI evidence experts from the Chicago field office. So far they have found no evidence of Jimmy Hoffa at this location and are being assisted by anthropologists from Michigan State University in analyzing the dirt.

This is the third time in three years that federal agents have gone to a location to dig for Jimmy Hoffa clues, the previous operations unearthed nothing...

The federal prison inmate who provided the horse farm tip is said to have passed a lie detector test. FBI agents have paid a visit to the former farm owner, Red McMaster, who worked with Hoffa until the day Hoffa disappeared.

Law enforcement sources say they have long considered McMaster an important piece in the Hoffa puzzle because of his connections to the late Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and the fact that the Chicago mob had muscled control of the teamsters pension funds when Hoffa vanished. McMaster once speculated that Hoffa wasn't dead, that he "ran off to brazil with a black go-go dancer".

Chicago FBI agents are helping in the digging operation outside Detroit. In this Intelligence Report: why some investigators take a wait-and-see attitude about this latest chapter in one of the country's biggest mysteries.

The Jimmy Hoffa case is forever intertwined with Chicago, from the top hoodlums who are suspected of having a role in his disappearance to the FBI agents who spent their careers searching to solve the puzzle. Federal investigators who know the case inside out, tell the ABC7 I-Team that they are skeptical of the lead that has led authorities back to that suburban detroit Horse farm.

The James r. Hoffa file at FBI headquarters in Washington is thick. The "R." in Hoffa's name actually stands for "Riddle," his mother's maiden name. But former Chicago FBI agent, now private investigator, Joe Brennan says the riddle of what happened to Jimmy Hoffa was actually solved years ago.

According to Brennan, the FBI knew what happened to Hoffa en route to his last meal at a suburban Detroit eatery. Shortly after Hoffa called his wife from a payphone near the restaurant -- these were pre-cell phone days -- authorities believe he was from his behind the wheel of his own car in the parking lot. Agents believe he was stuffed into the trunk of a second car and driven away by two outfit hitmen, including a New Jersey hoodlum named Sal "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, who himself was silenced in a gangland hit a few years later.

Jailhouse snitches and mob insiders told the FBI that Hoffa's body was put into a 55 gallon oil drum, put on a truck and driven to New Jersey, where they say mob boss Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano was waiting for proof Hoffa had been taken out. According to an FBI source, Provenzano popped the lid of the drum, saw Hoffa's head under the platter, and sent the packaged remains to the Meadowlands Sports Complex or had it dumped in the Atlantic. That is why Brennan and other FBI agents who worked the case today are wary of the horse farm being Hoffa's final resting place.

The farm, once owned by a close Hoffa's union ally, was also a popular mob meeting spot, a well-secluded retreat for Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and Chicago hoodlums who had business to discuss with their Detroit counterparts led by Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone.

The farm is an unlikely location, say some veteran agents, for a body to buried. Nonetheless, dozens of FBI agents with heavy equipment have descended on this farm that was first searched in 1975 to no avail.

"There have been a number of leads out in this area that have been covered over the last 30 years," said Daniel Roberts , FBI-Detroit.

New Jersey mafia capo Tony Provenzano died by heart attack in 1988. Authors and armchair criminologists just assume that Provenzano had Hoffa killed to prevent Hoffa's return to the teamsters. But Joe Brennan and other FBI insiders believe Tony Pro was motivated by a personal grudge, that when he and Hoffa were in the same Pennsylvania prison in the late 60's and 70's, Hoffa disrespected the mob boss and that, on his last July 30, came to regret it.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Michigan Farm Subject of Hoffa Search

Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa

In one of the most intensive searches for Jimmy Hoffa in decades, the
FBI summoned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought in heavy equipment to scour a horse farm Thursday for the body of the former Teamsters boss who vanished in 1975.

Daniel Roberts, agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, would not disclose what led agents to the farm, but said: "This is probably a fairly credible lead. You can gather that from the number of people out here."

No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has ever been charged in the case. But investigators have long suspected that he was killed by the mob to keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out of prison for corruption.

The farm, just outside Detroit, used to be owned by a Teamsters official. And mob figures used to meet at a barn there before Hoffa's disappearance, authorities said.

Investigators began combing the area Wednesday, and the search continued Thursday and included the use of heavy construction equipment. Roberts said it would probably involve the removal of a barn. Authorities also led cadaver dogs across the property, and the FBI called in anthropologists and archaeologists from Michigan State University. Roberts said he expects the search to go on for at least a couple of weeks.

Hoffa was last seen on a night he was scheduled to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both now dead.

Over the years, Hoffa's disappearance spawned endless theories — that he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; that he was ground up and thrown to the fishes in a Florida swamp; that he was obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant that has since burned down.

In 2003, authorities searched beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit but turned up nothing. The following year, they pulled up the floorboards on a Detroit home and found bloodstains, but the blood was not Hoffa's.

A law enforcement official in Washington said the latest search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.

Among other things, there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A backhoe appeared that day near the barn organized crime members had used for meetings, and that location was never used again, the official said.

At the time of Hoffa's disappearance, the property was owned by Rolland McMaster, a longtime Teamsters official. It is now under different ownership and is called Hidden Dreams Farm. McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would find anything. "That farm was looked at with a fine-toothed comb in the '70s, when Hoffa was missing," Morganroth said. "There's nothing there."

McMaster was convicted in 1963 of accepting payoffs from a trucking company and, according to a 1976 Detroit Free Press account, served five months in prison.

Reporters were not allowed onto the property, which is surrounded by a white wooden fence just off a dirt road. Images from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt about 10 feet by 15 feet.

Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the time of Hoffa's disappearance. He said that to his knowledge, McMaster was never a suspect. Morganroth said FBI officials visited McMaster, 93, this week at his home in Fenton, where one of several horse-breeding farms he owns is situated.

"They were just asking about the farm itself — did he ever get any inkling?" he said.

In 1967, Hoffa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for jury tampering and fraud, but he refused to give up the Teamsters presidency. After he quit the job in 1971, President Nixon pardoned him.

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We're Not Mafia - Enron's Last Defense

Lawyers for Enron's indicted ex-chiefs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling made their final sympathy plea to keep the pair out of prison - claiming prosecutors treated them like common Mafia thugs.

In an impassioned six-hour closing argument, defense lawyers took turns trying to prove the two men did nothing wrong other than take down Enron in bankruptcy through their own management failures. "Bankruptcy is not a crime. Failure is not a crime," said defense lawyer Daniel Petrocelli.

He insisted that prosecutors tainted the trial process by unfairly building their case against Enron's executives as if they were "tackling a mob organization."

Petrocelli said Skilling was portrayed as "a mob chieftain" and his colleagues as gang "lieutenants" who ratted him out, gangland style. "They take down mob kingpins that way," Petrocelli said.

Petrocelli particularly was annoyed by ex-Enron executive Sherron Watkins, whose famous memo warned Lay about the company's impending collapse from accounting scandals. "She went on 'Good Morning America' and she said that Mr. Skilling was the mafia boss and (CFO Andy) Fastow was the assassin," Petrocelli said, referring to the prosecution's key witness. "She compared my client to a mob boss," he said.

Petrocelli said government witnesses - a string of other indicted Enron executives - were pressured by threats of long prison sentences. Those witnesses' testimony was not backed up by any documents, he said. "Documents don't lie; people do," Petrocelli said. "It's hard to create fake documents . . . but it's not so hard to create fake testimony."

Another defense lawyer for Lay, Bruce Collins, told jurors they must "decide whether Ken Lay is locked in a cage for the rest of his life."

Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, each face at least 25 years in prison if convicted of charges that they used off-the-books partnerships to manipulate Enron's finances. The jury is expected to begin deliberations today.

Thanks to Paul Tharp

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