Long Unsolved Murders Focus of Chicago Mob Trial

Friends of ours: Tony Accardo, James Marcello, Frank Calabrese Sr. Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, Anthony Doyle, Frank "The German" Schweihs, Nicholas Calabrese, Tony "The Ant" Spilotro

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A gang of burglars decided in December 1977 to break into the home of Tony Accardo, one of the most powerful men in organized crime history, and rob his basement vault. Accardo was not amused.

Six men Accardo blamed for the heist were swiftly hunted down and murdered, according to papers filed by federal prosecutors in preparation for Chicago's biggest mob trial in years, scheduled to begin Tuesday. And that's only one of the grisly tales jurors are likely to hear at the trial stemming from the FBI's "Operation Family Secrets" investigation of 18 long-unsolved mob murders allegedly tied the Outfit, Chicago's organized crime family.

"This unprecedented indictment puts a hit on the mob," U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in announcing the charges in April 2005. "It is remarkable for both the breadth of the murders charged and for naming the entire Chicago Outfit as a criminal enterprise under the anti-racketeering law."

Reputed top mob bosses head the list of defendants -- James Marcello, Frank Calabrese Sr. and wisecracking Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo. Four co-defendants include a retired Chicago police officer, Anthony Doyle. All have pleaded not guilty.

Another defendant, alleged extortionist Frank "The German" Schweihs, has been tentatively dropped from the trial for health reasons.

Accardo, the notorious mob boss whose home was hit by the burglars, died in 1992 at age 86. He boasted that he never spent a night in jail.

The case has already made the kind of headlines that might seem the stuff of novels and movies. A federal marshal assigned to guard a star witness was charged with leaking information about his whereabouts to organized crime. The marshal has pleaded not guilty. That witness -- Nicholas Calabrese, brother of Frank Calabrese Sr. -- knows four decades of mob history from the inside and really does have a link to the movies. He is expected to testify against his brother.

Nicholas Calabrese pleaded guilty to several counts in May and admitted that he took part in 14 mob murders including that of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, known as the Chicago Outfit's man in Las Vegas. Spilotro, who inspired the character played by Joe Pesci in the movie "Casino (Widescreen 10th Anniversary Edition)," and his brother were beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.

Lombardo, 78, and Schweihs disappeared after the indictment was unsealed in 2005, setting off an intense FBI manhunt.

Crime buffs speculated that Lombardo was hiding out in the hills of Sicily or enjoying a life of ease in the Caribbean. In fact, after nine months on the run, FBI agents nabbed him in a suburban alley one frosty night in January 2006. Schweihs was captured deep in the Kentucky hill country in December 2005.

The Clown lived up to his nickname later when he appeared before U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who inquired about the aging man's health and asked why he hadn't seen a doctor lately.

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

In the 1980s, Lombardo was convicted in the same federal courthouse, along with then-International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Roy Lee Williams, of attempting to bribe Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada.

When Lombardo got out of prison he took out a newspaper ad denying that he was a "made guy" in the mob and disavowing any role in future organized crime activities. Lombardo defense attorney Rick Halprin scoffs at prosecutors' claims his client is a powerful organized crime leader. "Those things just aren't true," he said.

Experts say the Chicago crime syndicate is so deeply entrenched that it won't be decapitated even if the government gets a clean sweep of convictions.

Gus Russo, who describes the Chicago mob in his book "The Outfit," noted that the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act has helped crime-busting prosecutors make progress against the mob. "But, regretfully, greed is such a part of our culture that you're always going to have a criminal element and it will organize," Russo said. "This will hurt the mob but it won't end it."

The trial is expected to take four months. Among the security precautions, jurors' names are being kept secret and prosecutors say they have nine potential witnesses whose names have been kept secret out of concern for their safety.

Thanks to Mike Robinson

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We Get No Such Thing as An Soprano Ending

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

We get a basket of onion rings, hailed by Tony Soprano as Jersey's best.

We get shifty-eyed diner customers, one of whom (whoa, look out!) just shuffled off into the bathroom.

We get a 25-year-old Journey song on the jukebox.

We get Meadow's abysmal parallel parking effort, reminiscent of a teen's first driver's test, outside the diner.

We hear the diner's front door open, and now our hearts are pounding and we're gripping our chairs waiting for what happens next.

And we got a spooky blank screen.

Did the cable just go out? Come on, who's sitting on the remote?

Nobody's sitting on the remote. The cable didn't go out. The greatest show in television history just stopped.

As it turned out, creator David Chase was just toying with us. He'd sooner subject himself to the kind of fate received by Phil Leotardo earlier in the episode (crunnnnch!) than provide a neat and tidy conclusion to the Sopranos.

Sure, we knew Sunday's much-anticipated finale wasn't going to tie up all loose ends.

Nobody should have expected the crazy Russian who Christopher and Paulie Walnuts chased in the snow a few years ago to turn up again.

We shouldn't have expected to see Tony pay a price for ordering the hit on Ade.

We shouldn't have expected to learn what happened to, say, the nutty Goth son of the late Vito Spatafore.

Fine. But let's cut to the (David) Chase: Does Tony live or die?

Does Meadow find her family dead once she finally manages to park her car? Is she killed herself? Or does she simply walk in, take a seat and enjoy Jersey's finest onion rings with her family?

And what about that psycho cat who kept staring at Christopher's picture earlier in the show? That has to come into play somewhere, doesn't it?

Of course not.

The best we can figure is, Tony will be indicted. (If he lives, that is). But what about Silvio? He's toes-up in a hospital bed. Is he a goner? Or does he make the same sort of miraculous recovery from bullet wounds that Tony did?

I liked the last Sopranos episode, but it left me empty, and because of an interruption, it took an extra long time to discover the resolution, or rather that there was no resolution.

My 5-year-old daughter emerged from her bedroom halfway through the episode, still wired from a long day at Holiday World, unable to sleep. This was just before Phil's head got smashed. Needless to say, the television had to go off and the DVR had to go on. My little girl fell in the arms of my wife, who looked at my distraught facial expression and tried hard to keep from laughing. The end of the Sopranos would have to wait until Caroline was back in bed.

But even then, we were still left waiting for an ending that never came.

Thanks to John Martin

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The Sopranos Don't Stop Believin'

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

The songwriters of Journey's power ballad "Don't Stop Believin"' were "jumping up and down" when they learned a few weeks ago it had been licensed for use in the final episode of "The Sopranos." But even they couldn't believe how it would prove so integral to one of the most memorable final scenes in television history.

"It was better than anything I would have ever hoped for," said Jonathan Cain, Journey keyboard player, who watched at home with his wife and family.

Tony Soprano chose the song after flipping through a jukebox at a New Jersey restaurant where he dined with his family. The song played in the background as ominous characters flitted about and, right as Steve Perry was singing "don't stop," the HBO series did exactly that, for good. The ending infuriated some fans, amused others and intrigued all.

Cain, who wrote the song with Perry and Neal Schon, didn't know how it would be used when they agreed to the licensing. Cain kept the fact that it was going to be in at all a secret, then watched the episode with his family.

"I didn't want to blow it," he told The Associated Press on Monday. "Even my wife didn't know. She looked at me and said, 'You knew that and you didn't tell me?"'

Journey released the song in 1981, and it reached No. 9 on the singles chart. It has taken a life of its own since then, often reflecting the attitude people had toward Journey itself. "Don't Stop Believin"' brings back fond memories for many, is unbearably cheesy for others.

It's easy to imagine Tony Soprano, back in the day, taking a young Carmela to a Journey concert.

David Chase, creator of "The Sopranos," has an eclectic musical taste. He's curated two songtrack albums for his series, and made music a key part of the stories, particularly as the ending credits rolled. It's possible "Don't Stop Believin' " was part of the elaborate inside joke he made of the final episode.

It's also possible he found the end of the last verse too hard to resist: "Some will win, some will lose," Perry sings. "Some were born to sing the blues. Oh, the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on ... "

"Don't Stop Believin' " has been featured in a several television and movie scenes. It crept onto an iTunes top-10 list when, during the same week, it was on Fox's "Family Guy" and in a romantic scene on MTV's "Laguna Beach."

Sports teams have adopted it, too. After the Chicago White Sox used it in 2005, Perry sang it at the parade to celebrate the team's World Series victory.

Cain, who has a 13-year-old and twins aged 11, said the songwriters are careful about how they license the song, and have resisted several advertising campaigns. They debated its use in the film "Monster" with Charlize Theron but, in the end, "she's too cute to say no to," he said.

He was a little nervous Sunday when, as he watched with his children, the mob boss Phil was shot and viewers heard his head crunched as it was run over by an SUV. But he loved the final scene.

"It was very smart writing," he said. "I always love movies where you don't see the guy whacked. You wonder whether he's going to get whacked."

It could help Journey's visibility, too, as it did for singer Nick Lowe when his song "The Beast in Me" was used over the closing credits for "The Sopranos" very first episode. There had been some speculation that Chase would return to it for the finale.

"A lot more people knew Johnny Cash's version (of 'The Beast in Me') and this put Nick's version on the map," said Jake Guralnick, Lowe's American manager. "Nick's version is a lot more vulnerable."

Cain said it indicated that a wish he and Perry had -- that their songs would have a long life -- was coming true.

"It puts our feet in the cement," he said. "We're a staple in the American music culture. Like us or not, we're here to stay."

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David Chase Speaks on The Sopranos Finale

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

What do you do when your TV world ends? You go to dinner, then keep quiet. Sunday night, "Sopranos" creator David Chase took his wife out for dinner in France, where he's fled to avoid "all the Monday morning quarterbacking" about the show's finale. After this exclusive interview, agreed to well before the season began, he intends to go into radio silence, letting the work -- especially the controversial final scene -- speak for itself.

"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.

"No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God," he adds. "We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds, or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.' People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them."

In that scene, mob boss Tony Soprano waited at a Bloomfield ice cream parlor for his family to arrive, one by one. What was a seemingly benign family outing was shot and cut as the preamble to a tragedy, with Tony suspiciously eyeing one patron after another, the camera dwelling a little too long on Meadow's parallel parking and a man in a Members Only jacket's walk to the men's room. Just as the tension had been ratched up to unbearable levels, the series cut to black in mid-scene (and mid song) with no resolution.

"Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there," says Chase, 61, who based the series in general (and Tony's relationship with mother Livia specifically) on his North Caldwell childhood.

Some fans have already assumed that the ambiguous ending was Chase setting up the oft-rumored "Sopranos" movie, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. "I don't think about (a movie) much," he says. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, 'Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.

"I'm not being coy," he adds. "If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."

Another problem: over the last season, Chase killed so many key characters. He's toyed with the idea of "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems."

(Earlier in the interview, he notes that his favorite part of the show was often the characters telling stories about the good ol' days of Tony's parents. Just a guess, but if Chase ever does a movie spin-off, it'll be set in Newark in the '60s.)

Since Chase is declining to offer his interpretation of the final scene, let me present two more of my own, which came to me with a good night's sleep and a lot of helpful reader e-mails:

Theory No. 1 (and the one I prefer): Chase is using the final scene to place the viewer into Tony's mindset. This is how he sees the world: every open door, every person walking past him could be coming to kill him, or arrest him, or otherwise harm him or his family. This is his life, even though the paranoia's rarely justified. We end without knowing what Tony's looking at because he never knows what's coming next.

Theory No. 2: In the scene on the boat in "Soprano Home Movies," repeated again last week, Bobby Bacala suggests that when you get killed, you don't see it coming. Certainly, our man in the Members Only jacket could have gone to the men's room to prepare for killing Tony (shades of the first "Godfather"), and the picture and sound cut out because Tony's life just did. (Or because we, as viewers, got whacked from our life with the show.)

Meanwhile, remember that 21-month hiatus between Seasons Five and Six? That was Chase thinking up the ending. HBO chairman Chris Albrecht came to him after Season Five and suggested thinking up a conclusion to the series; Chase agreed, on the condition that he get "a long break" to decide on an ending.

Originally, that ending was supposed to occur last year, but midway through production, the number of episodes was increased, and Chase stretched out certain plot elements while saving the major climaxes for this final batch of 9. "If this had been one season, the Vito storyline would not have been so important," he says.

Much of this final season has featured Tony bullying, killing or otherwise alienating the members of his inner circle. After all those years viewing him as "the sympathetic mob boss," were we supposed to, like his therapist Dr. Melfi, finally wake up and smell the sociopath?

"From my perspective, there's nothing different about Tony in this season than there ever was," insists Chase. "To me, that's Tony."

Chase has had an ambivalent relationship with his fans, particularly the bloodthirsty whacking crowd who seemed to tune in only for the chance to see someone's head get blown off (or run over by an SUV). So was he reluctant to fill last week's penultimate episode, "The Blue Comet," with so many vivid death scenes?

"I'm the Number One fan of gangster movies," he says. "Martin Scorsese has no greater devotee than me. Like everyone else, I get off partly on the betrayals, the retributions, the swift justice. But what you come to realize when you do a series is you could be killing straw men all day long. Those murders only have any meaning when you've invested story in them. Otherwise, you might as well watch 'Cleaver.'"

One detail about the final scene that he'll discuss, however tentatively: the selection of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" as the song on the jukebox. "It didn't take much time at all to pick it, but there was a lot of conversation after the fact. I did something I'd never done before: in the location van, with the crew, I was saying, 'What do you think?' When I said, 'Don't Stop Believin',' people went, 'What? Oh my god!' I said, 'I know, I know, just give a listen,' and little by little, people started coming around."

Whether viewers will have a similar time-delayed reaction to the finale as a whole, Chase doesn't know. ("I hear some people were very angry, and others were not, which is what I expected.") He's relaxing in France, then he'll try to make movies. "It's been the greatest career experience of my life," he says. "There's nothing more in TV that I could say or would want to say."

Here's Chase on some other points about the finale and the season:

-After all the speculation that Agent Harris might turn Tony, instead we saw that Harris had turned, passing along info on Phil's whereabouts and cheering, "We're going to win this thing!" when learning of Phil's demise.

"This is based on an actual case of an FBI agent who got a little bit too partisan and excited during the Colombo wars of the '70s," says Chase of the story of Lindley DeVecchio, who supplied Harris' line.

-Speaking of Harris, Chase had no problem with never revealing what -- if anything -- terror suspects Muhammed and Ahmed were up to.

"This, to me, feels very real," he says. "The majority of these suspects, it's very hard for anybody to know what these people are doing. I don't even think Harris might know where they are. That was sort of the point of it: who knows if they are terrorists or if they're innocent pistachio salesmen? That's the fear that we are living with now."

Also, the apocryphal story -- repeated by me, unfortunately -- that Fox, when "Sopranos" was in development there, wanted Chase to have Tony help the FBI catch terrorists, wasn't true.

"What I said was, if I had done it at Fox, Tony would have been a gangster by day and helping the FBI by night, but we weren't there long enough for anyone to make that suggestion."

-I spent the last couple of weeks wrapping my brain around a theory supplied by reader Sam Lorber (and his daughter Emily) that the nine episodes of this season were each supposed to represent one of the nine circles of Hell from Dante's "The Divine Comedy." Told of the theory, Chase laughed and said, "No."

-Since Butchie was introduced as a guy who was pushing Phil to take out Tony, why did he turn on Phil and negotiate peace with Tony? "I think Butch was an intelligent guy, he began to see that there was no need for it, that Phil's feelings were all caught up in what was esentially a convoluted personal grudge."

-Not from Chase, but I feel the need to debunk the e-mail that's making the rounds about all the Holsten's patrons being characters from earlier in the series. The actor playing Member's Only guy had never been on the show before, Tony killed at least, one if not both of his carjackers, and there are about 17 other things wrong with this popular but incorrect theory.

Thanks to Alan Sepinwall

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Cast of The Sopranos Cheer Final Episode

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Hey, you got a problem with how "The Sopranos" wound up? Take it up with Christopher, if you dare.

"I think it's a great ending. It's a good way to go out," said Michael Imperioli, who played Tony's nephew, until he got whacked this season.

Imperioli and fellow cast members told reporters they were pleased with the finale as they walked the red carpet at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Sunday. "We're all heartbroken. We could go on forever. Me and Edie Falco wanna die on the set," Tony Sirico said, sporting his character Paulie's trademark silver wings.

The characteristically shy James Gandolfini, who played New Jersey mob boss Tony, was mum on his thoughts on the ending. He sported a beard and sunglasses and was sweating in the muggy South Florida weather as he smiled and waved to the large crowd of fans that gathered for his send-off.

Lorraine Bracco's character, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, didn't appear in the series finale. Melfi abruptly terminated Tony's therapy in last week's episode. "She ended a strong confident woman and I loved that," Bracco said at the cast party.

Steven Van Zandt, who played Tony's consigliere Sil, said cryptically of the finale, "We're not sure it's ending."

Series creator David Chase's dangling ending seems primed for the big screen. Although there's been no serious talk of making a film, "a couple of years from now, who knows?" Van Zandt said.

Arthur Nascarella, who played Carlo on the show, also didn't rule out the possibility of a future for the show. "Wait three years and get back to me," Nascarella said.

Thanks to Kelli Kennedy

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