Mobster's Son Testifies Against Dad at Trial

Frank Calabrese Jr. had barely introduced himself and testified that he lettered in football at Holy Cross High School before his father sneered and leaned over to whisper into his lawyer's ear.

The start of his testimony Tuesday was one of the most anticipated moments of the trial -- code named Family Secrets because defendant Frank Calabrese Sr.'s son and brother had done the unthinkable, squealing on a reputed mob brother and blood relative.

The 47-year-old Calabrese Jr., stricken with multiple sclerosis, limped into court on a cane, taking the witness stand a mere 10 yards from his father. Even though Calabrese Sr. swiveled his chair for a direct look at his son, the two did not appear to make eye contact.

He was on the stand for just 45 minutes before jurors were sent home for the holiday, but Assistant U.S. Atty. John Scully led the younger Calabrese through a quick personal history: how he joined the family's mob business as just a high schooler and now operates a pizza joint. He said he's been living near Phoenix running a strip-mall restaurant that serves pizza "Chicago style."

The balding Calabrese testified in a white casual shirt with thin green stripes, his remaining hair buzzed close. He leaned into the microphone to answer each question and occasionally paused to take sips from a water bottle.

Calabrese testified he was a teenager when he joined the 26th Street crew, collecting quarters from peep-show booths in mob-controlled pornography shops with his uncle Nicholas. It is Nicholas Calabrese, Frank Calabrese Sr.'s brother, who is expected later in the trial to implicate his brother in as many as 13 decades-old gangland slayings.

Eventually, Calabrese Jr. said, he graduated to keeping the books -- gambling, juice-loan and street-tax records -- with his father.

Once, Calabrese said, his father took him along when he slapped around an associate nicknamed "Peachy" for spending Outfit gambling money. Another time, his father had him use a flare to ignite kerosene against the garage of someone who wasn't following orders. "He wasn't taking care of his obligations to us," Calabrese said.

The elder Calabrese, 70, sat with a sarcastic smile through much of the testimony, talking repeatedly to his lawyer, Joseph Lopez. His son appeared to focus mostly on the prosecutor asking questions from a few feet away. In the son's brief time Tuesday on the witness stand, no mention was made of the hidden recording device Calabrese wore to secretly tape conversations with his father while the two were imprisoned in Michigan in the 1990s.

That promises to be the highlight of the son's testimony in the trial's coming days. But Calabrese revealed how his relationship with his father soured.

Calabrese said he was moving from job to job and using powder cocaine when he went to one of his father's hiding spots and stole $200,000 in cash to help open a Lake Street restaurant. Later, he went back for hundreds of thousands of dollars more, he said. "I blew all the money," he said. "I just would spend it all wildly."

On discovering the thefts, his father slapped him and threatened him, Calabrese testified. At one point, his father drove him to an Elmwood Park garage where Outfit "work cars" were kept. "He pulled out a gun and stuck it in my face and said, 'I'd rather have you dead than disobey me,'" Calabrese said. "I started crying. I started hugging and kissing him.

"I said, 'Help me. Help me do the right thing,'" he said.

After court Tuesday, Lopez, the elder Calabrese's lawyer, told reporters that his client had not been fazed by the son's testimony. "He's happy to see his son," Lopez said.

Asked why the elder Calabrese appeared to be smiling during parts of his son's testimony, Lopez replied, "He's a happy-go-lucky fellow." But another government witness Tuesday painted a starkly different portrait of the elder Calabrese. James Stolfe, the soft-spoken co-founder of the well-known Connie's Pizza restaurant chain, said he made "extortion payments" to Frank Calabrese Sr. and the Chicago Outfit for 20 years beginning in the 1980s.

Stolfe said he sold his 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire to buy his first Connie's location on West 26th Street near Chinatown, and he operated for nearly two decades before the mob paid a visit. Stolfe said he thought the two men, one large and one small, were salesmen, but he quickly learned differently.

Stolfe didn't have time to talk, he said he told them. "They said, 'Find time,'" he said.

The two demanded $300,000 -- or else, Stolfe testified. "They said that it was no joke, and if I didn't pay that I was gonna get hurt," he said.

Stolfe said he went to Calabrese, whom he knew from the Bridgeport neighborhood where the two had grown up, to intercede on his behalf. Strangely enough, Stolfe said, Calabrese had just been to his office for the first time in years, the only hint in Tuesday's testimony that Calabrese was in on the extortion from the beginning.

Calabrese said he would see what he could do, Stolfe said, and soon said the payment "only" had to be $100,000. Fearing that he could be beaten or his business burned down, Stolfe said, he agreed to pay. He said he handed over the first payment of $50,000 cash to Calabrese.

That prompted the prosecutor to ask Stolfe if he saw Calabrese in the courtroom. Calabrese, in a gray jacket over a black shirt, didn't stand up but stuck up a hand and waved toward the witness stand as Stolfe pointed him out.

The white-haired Stolfe, 67, said he confided in only his close associate, Donald "Captain D" DiFazio, about the payoffs, keeping even his wife in the dark.

Stolfe said he eventually put Calabrese on the payroll as a "spotter," ostensibly to keeptrack of pizza delivery trucks. In reality, it was to hide the monthly payoffs of about $1,000.

Stolfe acknowledged Tuesday that he had lied to a grand jury investigating Calabrese in 1990, concealing the nature of the payoffs to Calabrese and his relationship with the reputed mobster. He told jurors Tuesday that he had been intimidated by Calabrese. Stolfe said Calabrese even invited himself on his family vacations.

On cross-examination, attorney Lopez tried to portray the two as pals. "Did anyone put a gun to your head and say you had to go play handball with him?" Lopez asked.

The attorney pointed out that when Stolfe halted the payoffs in 2002 when the Family Secrets investigation became public, no one burned down a Connie's Pizza restaurant. Prosecutors also called DiFazio to the stand, who testified that he carried the payoffs to the mob for years. For the final payoffs, DiFazio said, he gave the cash-filled envelopes to Frank Calabrese Jr., who was already wearing a wire for the feds.

DiFazio, testifying with a gravelly voice and heavy Chicago accent, said he is still director of special events for Connie's. "I'm supposed to be at Taste of Chicago," he said.

He said he still lives in Bridgeport and described each mob figure he testified about as "another tough guy."

He said he was once confronted by Anthony "Tony the Hatch" Chiaramonti when Connie's sought to open a location in Lyons. Those plans were scrapped, DiFazio said. "The name speaks for itself," he said of Chiaramonti, who was gunned down at a chicken restaurant in the suburb in 2001.

On cross-examination, Lopez sometimes made small talk with DiFazio, who wore an expensive-looking suit. The attorney, who had exchanged his trademark pink socks for red ones Tuesday to match a blazing red tie, said he had heard DiFazio is a sharp dresser.

"You were a tough guy, too, weren't you?" Lopez asked. "The whole neighborhood was filled with tough guys."

DiFazio finally gave in. "Absolutely," he said.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Bookie Refuses to Testify in Court Against the Mob

A host of hit men, henchmen, burglars, gamblers and loan sharks who have crossed paths with the Chicago Outfit over the years are scheduled to testify at the Family Secrets mob trial, but at least one career bookie wants to take a pass.

Joel Glickman, 71, was taken into custody late Monday after defying an order from U.S. District Judge James Zagel to testify. Glickman had been slated to tell jurors that he paid between $1,300 and $2,000 a month in "street taxes" to defendant Frank Calabrese Sr. and other reputed mob figures to run his gambling operation.

Zagel reminded Glickman, who wore a black short-sleeve shirt unbuttoned at the neck, that he had been granted immunity from prosecution to talk about his history with the mob, but Glickman was steadfast in his refusal to answer any questions posed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Markus Funk.

"I respectfully refuse to testify," Glickman said calmly several times before Zagel found him in contempt of court and ordered him taken into custody. Zagel warned he would bring Glickman back to the courtroom Tuesday to ask him again whether he wishes to answer questions.

Loraine Ray, Glickman's attorney, declined to comment on her client's reasons to remain mum despite immunity. According to documents filed by prosecutors in the case, Glickman was to testify that he had dozens of gamblers as regular customers in the 1970s and made about $150,000 a year.

If Glickman continues to refuse to testify, Zagel could arguably hold him in custody throughout the expected three-month trial, if not longer, legal experts said.

After court Monday, Calabrese's attorney, Joseph Lopez, said Glickman has "no reason whatsoever" to fear his client. The relationship between the men ended in the 1960s, Lopez said. "I hope he changes his mind and comes to court," Lopez said. "I hate to see the man locked up for this."

Before Glickman's exchange with the judge, jurors did hear from a number of witnesses Monday, all of them testifying against Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, who is among the five defendants being tried on sweeping charges of racketeering conspiracy.

At the heart of the conspiracy case are 18 decades-old gangland slayings. But despite that, the trial isn't expected to produce many "CSI" moments.

Key evidence will come mostly from witnesses and secret government recordings, not the advanced scientific analysis of DNA, ballistics or fiber evidence. Yet jurors looked on Monday as an old-fashioned fingerprint was projected onto a large screen at the front of the courtroom.

It appeared on a copy of a title application for a 1973 Ford LTD, signed for by the generic-sounding ACME Security Service. But under the "Se" in "Service," investigators say, is a print from the left middle finger of Lombardo. And the car in question was one of two allegedly driven from the scene of the murder of federal witness Daniel Seifert. The shotgun slaying in front of Seifert's wife and young son is the lone murder with which the reputed Outfit leader has been charged.

The FBI agent who found the print more than three decades ago was on the stand. He's now a thin, retired, white-haired man who keeps busy with "a little bit of farming."

Roy McDaniel told jurors he is a former supervising fingerprint specialist with the FBI who has made "several million" comparisons. He said he had 40 years of experience, testified in court nearly 100 times and even played a role on the FBI's disaster team that processes prints at the scenes of plane crashes and other disasters.

McDaniel testified about his work with a hint of a Southern accent. "You have [fingerprints] before you were born, and you will have them until you decompose after death," he said.

McDaniel said he took control of more than a dozen documents related to the Ford LTD that were retrieved from the Illinois secretary of state's office in Springfield and sent to Washington D.C. It was October 1974, about a month after Seifert had been ambushed and gunned down outside his Bensenville plastics business. Seifert had agreed to testify against Lombardo and others in a pension fraud case months before he was killed.

McDaniel told the jury how he sprayed the title application with a solution, dried it and then steamed it to make latent prints visible. The marks left on the document by a finger's friction ridges matched a finger on FBI fingerprint card 673515E, the one carrying the prints of Lombardo, McDaniel said.

"Only that one finger, of everybody in the world, could've made that particular print," McDaniel said as jurors watched the overhead screen or on their own TV screens near their seats.

On cross-examination McDaniel acknowledged that he had only attempted to match the print to the defendants in the case who Seifert was set to testify against.

Lombardo leaned back in his chair most of the day, occasionally standing so witnesses could identify him. To some he returned a nod or even a hand wave as he sat back down.

Others who testified included several former employees of a North Side CB radio store who told jurors that in the months after Seifert's death, they told authorities that Lombardo had routinely bought police scanners from them before the murder. A scanner was found in the Ford after the gunmen abandoned it at a car dealership.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Mobster's Fingerprints Matched By FBI

Friends of ours: Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo

A retired FBI fingerprint analyst testified today that a fingerprint from reputed top Chicago mobster Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo appeared on an application for a car title for a Ford LTD that was used by the killers in the 1974 murder of government witness Daniel Seifert.

Roy L. McDaniel, a 40-year veteran of the FBI laboratory, told jurors in the Operation Family Secrets mob trial that he identified a fingerprint that matched the left middle finger of Lombardo after he received the material in October 1974.

Police recovered the car after the Sept. 27, 1974, murder of Seifert, who was to be a witness at a federal criminal trial against Lombardo, his former close friend.

Lombardo was accused of helping rip off a Teamster pension fund, and prosecutors say Seifert was the only witness who could link him to two checks they said were part of the scheme. When Seifert was killed, the case against Lombardo was dropped.

The brown Ford LTD was recovered at an Elmhurst car dealership where prosecutors say the hit team met after killing Seifert. It had been outfitted as a so-called Chicago Outfit “work car,” equipped with four switches under the dashboard that let the driver turn off all exterior lights of the car, so it could be driven completely dark at night. The license-plate holders were on spring-loaded flip brackets, so the plates could be quickly switched, according to prosecutors.

The owner of the car, listed on the title application as Acme Security Service, turned out to be fake. But there were other prints on documents related to the purchase of the car that were examined by the FBI that did not match Lombardo’s prints or those of anyone else the FBI was looking at.

Lombardo’s attorney, Rick Halprin, elicited that information during his questioning, apparently in an effort to show that other people handled the documents besides Lombardo and that the FBI doesn’t know who they are.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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How Much Power Does the Chicago Outfit Posess?

The "Family Secrets" trial of a group of alleged Chicago mobsters has drawn attention to the Windy City's gangland heritage and raises questions about the strength of today's "Outfit."

Is the shadowy organization - the modern-day legacy of Al Capone - on its last legs, or is it as strong as ever? Observers disagree.

Retired reporter John Drummond, who chronicled organized crime for WBBM-TV for decades, said the Outfit has been weakened through recent federal crackdowns and the aging of kingpins. Reputed mob boss Joseph "the Clown" Lombardo, one of the Family Secrets defendants, is in his late 70s. "I think they are pretty much in disarray," Drummond said. "Nobody wants to take over the mantle of leadership because of the scrutiny that they'd be under."

Jim Wagner, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, was less optimistic. The former FBI agent said the mob's influence remains as pervasive as ever and includes illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution as well as legitimate white-collar businesses that launder dirty money. "My concern is that people have the misunderstanding that this trial, as important as it is, represents an end of the Outfit, and nothing could be further from the truth," Wagner said. "The money's still there, and therefore the influence is still there."

All Illinoisans are affected by organized crime, Wagner said, because the crime syndicate's participation in any enterprise adds a layer of cost that is passed on to taxpayers or consumers.

The Illinois Gaming Board's 2001 decision to block a casino from being built in Rosemont centered on allegations that the project was tainted by mob influence. Late Rosemont mayor Donald Stephens was dogged for years by allegations that he had associated with Chicago mob chief Sam Giancana, but Stephens denied any connection beyond purchasing property from him in the early-1960s.

The sweeping Family Secrets trial that began in June in U.S. District Court is expected to offer an insider's view into the Chicago Outfit's past misdeeds. The alleged racketeering conspiracy at the heart of the case includes 18 long-unsolved murders and a myriad of crimes ranging from extorting "street taxes" from businesses to making "juice loans," or loan-sharking.

Probably the most notorious killing is that of Anthony Spilotro, who was found buried with his brother in an Indiana cornfield in 1986. In the 1995 movie "Casino," Joe Pesci's character - and his grisly end - is based on Spilotro.

Such displays of brutality generally are a thing of the past for organized crime, author and crime historian Richard Lindberg said. He said that's because mob hits tend to attract law enforcement attention. "The lesson that (mobsters) learned is that violence is bad for business," he said. "Once you stop seeing bodies being found in trunks at the airport or in ditches on the side of country highways, then the mob becomes invisible."

Even if the traditional Italian-American mob may be waning, experts say other kinds of gangs have moved into the Chicago region, possibly with the old syndicate's blessing. They include ethnic crime organizations from Eastern Europe and Asia. The new gangs are even more discreet, Lindberg said.

"What's happened, some people will tell you, is that the government has put too much priority on the traditional mobs, and the other ethnic groups are probably doing very well for themselves," Drummond, the retired reporter, said.

Chicago cannot shake its underworld history, particularly the image of Capone (1899-1947), whose bootlegging empire was the precursor to today's mob. Image-conscious city officials have tried to downplay that era, but it refuses to die.

Few Capone-related sites even survive today, but Don Fielding said his "Untouchables" bus tour continues to thrive. He said guides hit the highlights of Scarface's career. "I hope the trial goes on for years," Fielding said. "It gives people this little sense of intrigue."

In its central exhibit about the city's origins, the Chicago History Museum acknowledges the power that Capone wielded but frames him in a negative context. The display includes a graphic photograph of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, in which several of Capone's rival gang members were sprayed by machine-gun fire. "Part of what the museum is about is to promote a fuller understanding of the history of Chicago," museum historian Sarah Marcus said. "If you are choosing to erase portions of history, first of all, people are going to know you're doing it. And second of all, you have a responsibility to confront some of the less pleasant and disturbing aspects. ... It's not all sunshine and roses."

Thanks to Mike Ramsey

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Replacement for "The Sopranos" Found

The Hollywood Reporter said Wednesday a four-part movie about Saddam Hussein's life will air on HBO. It makes perfect sense that the cable network would buy a mini-series about Iraq. There's nothing HBO likes better than a shoot-'em-up with no ending.

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