Despite the sensational charges - racketeering and 18 murders - the trial of five alleged Chicago mobsters isn't exactly capturing the public's attention.
"There's an awful lot of attitude that we don't have to worry about the Outfit anymore," said James Wagner, head of the Chicago Crime Commission and a former FBI agent who battled the mob in New York and Chicago.
The five defendants all say they're innocent. In addition, Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo Sr., Frank Calabrese Sr., James Marcello, Paul "The Indian" Schiro and Anthony Doyle are all in their 60s and 70s, and the murders are alleged to have happened decades ago.
That may lead people to think the mob is ancient history, Wagner said. But he and another former FBI agent say that's not true. And while it may seem distant and irrelevant to suburban residents, experts say there are many reasons for the public to care about the outcome of such trials and the health of the mob, Wagner said:
James Stolfe, the owner of the popular Connie's Pizza, recently testified that he was threatened by two goons in the 1980s to pay "street tax" so he could stay in business - or else. Stolfe said he ended up paying $100,000 upfront and then $1,000 a month to Calabrese Sr. until 2002, not so very long ago.
"That's one example (of how the mob is still operating), but there are ... any number of businesses out there who are facing the same problem," Wagner said. "In all of those businesses, that's (the cost) passed on to the consumer."
"We're all paying an extra tax to support the Outfit," he said.
The link between unions and the mob is long and storied. The loser, Wagner said, is the average working member who gets stuck with contracts of questionable benefit while mobsters live high on the hog.
One illustration of this is the federal takeover of the Laborers International Union of North America because of pervasive mob influence. After the national takeover, the feds drilled down to its grass roots, its membership organizations. In Chicago, that was the Construction and General Laborers' District Council.
"The rights of members of the union to control the affairs of the union have been systematically abused," wrote federal trustees in 1999 court filings. "Those union members who might have opposed this corrupt state of affairs have been intimidated into silence."
At the time, the national union was made up of 21 locals and 19,000 members. Shortly before the takeover, the union's president was Bruno Caruso, who was "at least" an associate of organized crime, the trustees of Laborers International alleged. The group's vice president was John "Pudgy" Matassa Jr., a made member of the mob, they further claimed.
Besides serving as a "Who's Who" of mob leadership, union bosses spent thousands in union money on luxury meals and the like, the union trustees alleged.
Despite the court action against it in 1999, the Outfit fought tooth and nail to keep some hold on the unions. The fight lasted until 2004, when the court case was closed, shortly after forcing out several people alleged to be abusing union funds. The list included Joseph Lombardo Jr., son of Joseph Lombardo Sr., currently on trial.
In the last decade, dozens of people were convicted of abusing Chicago's Hired Trucks program, with truck companies paying city officials kickbacks to be in the program or, in some cases, to get paid for little or no work.
Some of the companies had mob ties "and therefore made a bundle of money off the improper management of the program," Wagner said. "Certainly a healthy percentage were connected to organized crime."
Those corruption costs are on top of the tax dollars that cover the labor and expenses of the FBI and U.S. attorney's office as they investigate the mob.
Gambling remains the life-blood of the mob, said Wagner and Peter Wacks, a former Chicago FBI agent who fought the mob for decades. "It's always been a big money-maker for them," Wacks said.
That remains true today. Along with the five men on trial now, numerous defendants pleaded guilty before the trial began to running a video poker ring until at least as late as 2003. "They've advanced, basically, like the rest of society has: electronically," Wacks said.
Another defendant, Nicholas Ferriola, admitted to operating a sports bookmaking operation, with "juice" loans made to losing gamblers.
Sports betting operations are particularly popular with the mob, Wagner said, because Illinois casinos do not allow them.
Even supposedly legitimate casinos are not immune to the mob. The proposed Rosemont casino was scuttled after the gaming board proved it had hidden investors tied to the mob. Taxpayers are still losing out on the proceeds of that casino license while the battle rages on in the appellate courts.
The Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin casino paid more than $3 million in fines in 2001 after it was discovered it gave an air handling system contract to the son of a mob figure. The son had no experience in the industry, Wagner said.
The Illinois Gaming Board also banned several organized crime figures from casinos, said Wagner, who once was an investigator for the gaming board. "We got them banned, including Donald Angelini," the mob's oddsman, Wagner said.
Other banned mobsters "were basically outfit loan sharks who were trying to collect money owed to them that people were betting at the boats," Wagner said.
While the Chicago Outfit is not as violent as it used to be, it still manages to bump off those it wants to keep silent or punish, Wagner said.
Two very public and brutal executions took place several years ago, reminiscent of the 18 now charged in the trial.
In 2001, Anthony Chiaramonti was gunned down in Lyons. In 2000, mobster Ronald Jarrett was shot to death in Bridgeport.
As recently as August 2006, mobster Anthony Zizzo disappeared, never to be seen again. While authorities can't prove Zizzo is dead, "there was some speculation that because of some of his associations with some of the defendants, that he might be subpoenaed" in the current trial, Wagner said. But as convincing as he thinks those arguments are about why people should still care about the mob, Wagner has one he thinks is even more convincing.
"For gosh sakes, 18 murders is a huge number ... even if it happened a long time ago," he said. "People should be outraged. ... They ought to be happy that, finally, these men are being brought to justice."
Thanks to Rob Olmstead
Monday, July 16, 2007
Sin in The Second City
Friends of ours: James “Big Jim” Colosimo
Karen Abbott started her first book scouring microfilm of the Chicago Tribune at the University of Georgia library. The sister of her great-grandmother had disappeared during a trip to Chicago soon after the two emigrated from Slovenia in 1905, and Abbott, an Atlanta-based journalist, was curious about the city and times that had claimed her. Her research led her to the Levee, Chicago’s red-light district, where many missing women were said to have ended up, and then to Ada and Minna Everleigh, madams of the infamous Everleigh Club. “It’s cheesy,” says Abbott, who spent three years writing Sin in the Second City, released this week by Random House, “but I came to think of them as family. I have pictures of them hanging up in my house right now.”
Little is known of the Everleighs’ background. They claimed descent from Kentucky aristocracy but are believed to have come from a Virginia family hit hard by the Civil War. Simms was their real name; Everleigh—a pun—was assumed, as were, the women insisted, their southern accents. “Just piecing together their whole background,” says Abbot, “they were ingenious in how they learned to present themselves.” After running a brothel in Omaha, the women moved to Chicago in late 1899 to establish a high-class bordello.
Ada and Minna bought a retiring madam’s mansion at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn and put out a call for women interested in work free from pimps, abuse, and indentured servitude. Madam Vic Shaw, the sisters’ greatest business rival, kept a professional whipper on staff.
The Everleighs hired women who were attractive, experienced, and drug- and alcohol-free; the minimum age was 18. Younger sister Minna instructed them in charm and culture, covering subjects ranging from literature to the art of seduction. She dressed them in couture and dubbed them the Everleigh butterflies.
House rules were strictly enforced under threat of immediate expulsion: no picking pockets, no knockout drops and robbery, and no boyfriends. The girls also had to pass monthly examinations for venereal disease. They were paid well and those dismissed were easily replaced from the Everleighs’ long waiting list of candidates.
To stay open the sisters had to placate crime lords and politicos alike. Ike Bloom, who fronted a sleazy Randolph Street dance hall, set a sum of ten grand a year for protection by the likes of Chicago Outfit founder James “Big Jim” Colosimo. “Tribute” was also paid to First Ward aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse John” Coughlin.
Visiting the Everleigh was an experience available only to the elite. The parlors were lavishly furnished with paintings, sculptures, a perfume fountain, a gold-leaf piano, and solid gold spittoons. Clients could enjoy rare wines, string orchestras, and fireworks. The dining room served gourmet fare. “A lot of the patrons came just for the meals,” Abbott says. “The girls were almost a side attraction.”
By most accounts the sisters were high-hatted and tough as nails but had hearts as gold as their gilded parlors. The soft-spoken Ada was considered the brains of the operation—she balanced the books and was responsible for hiring; Minna socialized in the parlors with guests and was known for her sass. “I wish I could be more like her,” says Abbott. “To not care what anybody thinks ever is sort of liberating.”
Entrance was by referral letter only, and clients were expected to spend a minimum of $50 per visit or face banishment (a three-course meal could be had for 50 cents at the time). High-profile guests included Prince Henry of Prussia, who made a special stop at the Everleigh during a visit to Chicago in spring of 1902. “It was more of a gentleman’s club,” says Abbott. “The cachet of being able to go there, just because they turned down so many people. It became an exclusive badge of honor just to be admitted.”
Occasionally the house was caught up in scandal. When Marshall Field Jr., son of the store founder, was found shot at his Prairie Avenue home on November 22, 1905, rumor spread that one of the Everleigh butterflies had done it. The coroner’s report backed the official story—that he’d shot himself while cleaning his hunting weapon—but gossips insisted he’d been wounded during a visit to the club the previous night and smuggled back home by the sisters.
Unlike earlier Everleigh narratives like Charles Washburn’s Come Into My Parlor
, Abbott’s account devotes a lot of space to the progressive politics of the era. The number of women who worked outside the home jumped from 3,100 to 38,000 in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910, she says: “Everybody was freaking out about women entering the workforce in such large droves, leaving their rural homestead and entering the big city.” Not all of them found legitimate work, and when women started disappearing the nation was gripped by a white slavery panic, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment. The only way a good white Christian girl could become a whore, Americans were convinced, was if she was seduced, drugged, and sold to a brothel.
Religious reformers descended upon the Levee, preaching and pamphleteering in an attempt to shame patrons and “save” the district’s women. The Everleigh sisters referred to these late-night missionaries as “firemen” and welcomed them to the house to talk to their girls. None of the butterflies were said to have shown any interest in leaving.
Abbott says the Reverend Ernest Bell started preaching outside the brothels in 1902 after he was propositioned in front of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He admonished the district’s sinners to repent despite being bashed and gassed by Levee pimps. “If I were a novelist I wouldn’t have been able to name him Ernest,” Abbott says. “I think he really believed in what he was doing and his motives were true and good and upright. He really believed he was saving women from Satan’s clutches.”
Others reformers, like Clifford Roe, an assistant state’s attorney, jumped on board to further their own political interests. “I think Roe was a bit more Machiavellian and manipulative with the facts,” says Abbott. He developed a side business lecturing and writing books with sensational titles like Panders and Their White Slaves.
The white slavery scare was also used as an excuse to attack the non-Protestant immigrants pouring into the country. Both Bell and Roe pointed the finger at foreigners in their condemnations of theatrical agencies, dance halls, and ice cream parlors. “Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners—French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians?” Bell wrote in his 1910 book Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls.
Chicago prosecutor Edwin Sims fought prostitution in Chicago and was the inspiration for the Mann Act of 1910, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. “I am determined to break up this traffic in foreign women. It is my sworn duty, and it should be done to protect the people of the country from contamination,” he told the Tribune in 1908.
“Some of the things the federal officials were saying I had to read twice,” says Abbott. “Like ‘War on Terror,’ they had their political talking points and they used them very effectively to manipulate the public and push their own agenda forward.”
Mayor Carter Harrison II, who usually turned a blind eye to illegal goings-on in the Levee, was eventually forced to reckon with the reformers’ growing political power. In 1911, after a friend from outside Chicago showed him “The Everleigh Club, Illustrated,” a leather-bound brochure with national distribution, he ordered the brothel’s closure.
Gradually the other brothels, dives, saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and opium dens of the district were also shuttered. On July 24, 1933, workers tore down the building that once housed the Everleigh Club, “heedless of the fact that they were wiping out one of the most lurid chapters in Chicago history,” according to a Tribune report from the time.
Although rooted in ignorance, the white slavery panic did give women, who were still a decade from suffrage, a rallying cause. “Through the end of it they started having hearings about women’s wages, [asking] how can a girl work in a factory for six dollars a week and not be expected to supplement her income doing nefarious things?” says Abbott. “The white slavery scare was a chance for [women] to insert themselves in political discourse.”
Meanwhile books like Roe’s, which included scenes of terrified harlots escaping brothels in flimsy negligees, made sexuality an acceptable topic of conversation. “Those narratives were like porn for puritans, but it was the first time people could discuss that, in a way, and not be considered untoward,” Abbott says.
As for the Everleigh sisters, after just over a decade doing business in Chicago, they’d amassed a million dollars in savings—$20.5 million today, Abbott estimates—and even more in jewelry, art, and Oriental rugs. They changed their name to Lester and moved to New York, where they bought a brownstone on the Upper West Side and founded a poetry discussion group with local ladies who knew nothing of their past. Minna died first, on September 16, 1948, at the age of 82. Ada lived until 95, dying January 6, 1960, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Thanks to Dan Kelly
Karen Abbott started her first book scouring microfilm of the Chicago Tribune at the University of Georgia library. The sister of her great-grandmother had disappeared during a trip to Chicago soon after the two emigrated from Slovenia in 1905, and Abbott, an Atlanta-based journalist, was curious about the city and times that had claimed her. Her research led her to the Levee, Chicago’s red-light district, where many missing women were said to have ended up, and then to Ada and Minna Everleigh, madams of the infamous Everleigh Club. “It’s cheesy,” says Abbott, who spent three years writing Sin in the Second City, released this week by Random House, “but I came to think of them as family. I have pictures of them hanging up in my house right now.”
Little is known of the Everleighs’ background. They claimed descent from Kentucky aristocracy but are believed to have come from a Virginia family hit hard by the Civil War. Simms was their real name; Everleigh—a pun—was assumed, as were, the women insisted, their southern accents. “Just piecing together their whole background,” says Abbot, “they were ingenious in how they learned to present themselves.” After running a brothel in Omaha, the women moved to Chicago in late 1899 to establish a high-class bordello.
Ada and Minna bought a retiring madam’s mansion at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn and put out a call for women interested in work free from pimps, abuse, and indentured servitude. Madam Vic Shaw, the sisters’ greatest business rival, kept a professional whipper on staff.
The Everleighs hired women who were attractive, experienced, and drug- and alcohol-free; the minimum age was 18. Younger sister Minna instructed them in charm and culture, covering subjects ranging from literature to the art of seduction. She dressed them in couture and dubbed them the Everleigh butterflies.
House rules were strictly enforced under threat of immediate expulsion: no picking pockets, no knockout drops and robbery, and no boyfriends. The girls also had to pass monthly examinations for venereal disease. They were paid well and those dismissed were easily replaced from the Everleighs’ long waiting list of candidates.
To stay open the sisters had to placate crime lords and politicos alike. Ike Bloom, who fronted a sleazy Randolph Street dance hall, set a sum of ten grand a year for protection by the likes of Chicago Outfit founder James “Big Jim” Colosimo. “Tribute” was also paid to First Ward aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse John” Coughlin.
Visiting the Everleigh was an experience available only to the elite. The parlors were lavishly furnished with paintings, sculptures, a perfume fountain, a gold-leaf piano, and solid gold spittoons. Clients could enjoy rare wines, string orchestras, and fireworks. The dining room served gourmet fare. “A lot of the patrons came just for the meals,” Abbott says. “The girls were almost a side attraction.”
By most accounts the sisters were high-hatted and tough as nails but had hearts as gold as their gilded parlors. The soft-spoken Ada was considered the brains of the operation—she balanced the books and was responsible for hiring; Minna socialized in the parlors with guests and was known for her sass. “I wish I could be more like her,” says Abbott. “To not care what anybody thinks ever is sort of liberating.”
Entrance was by referral letter only, and clients were expected to spend a minimum of $50 per visit or face banishment (a three-course meal could be had for 50 cents at the time). High-profile guests included Prince Henry of Prussia, who made a special stop at the Everleigh during a visit to Chicago in spring of 1902. “It was more of a gentleman’s club,” says Abbott. “The cachet of being able to go there, just because they turned down so many people. It became an exclusive badge of honor just to be admitted.”
Occasionally the house was caught up in scandal. When Marshall Field Jr., son of the store founder, was found shot at his Prairie Avenue home on November 22, 1905, rumor spread that one of the Everleigh butterflies had done it. The coroner’s report backed the official story—that he’d shot himself while cleaning his hunting weapon—but gossips insisted he’d been wounded during a visit to the club the previous night and smuggled back home by the sisters.
Unlike earlier Everleigh narratives like Charles Washburn’s Come Into My Parlor
, Abbott’s account devotes a lot of space to the progressive politics of the era. The number of women who worked outside the home jumped from 3,100 to 38,000 in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910, she says: “Everybody was freaking out about women entering the workforce in such large droves, leaving their rural homestead and entering the big city.” Not all of them found legitimate work, and when women started disappearing the nation was gripped by a white slavery panic, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment. The only way a good white Christian girl could become a whore, Americans were convinced, was if she was seduced, drugged, and sold to a brothel.Religious reformers descended upon the Levee, preaching and pamphleteering in an attempt to shame patrons and “save” the district’s women. The Everleigh sisters referred to these late-night missionaries as “firemen” and welcomed them to the house to talk to their girls. None of the butterflies were said to have shown any interest in leaving.
Abbott says the Reverend Ernest Bell started preaching outside the brothels in 1902 after he was propositioned in front of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He admonished the district’s sinners to repent despite being bashed and gassed by Levee pimps. “If I were a novelist I wouldn’t have been able to name him Ernest,” Abbott says. “I think he really believed in what he was doing and his motives were true and good and upright. He really believed he was saving women from Satan’s clutches.”
Others reformers, like Clifford Roe, an assistant state’s attorney, jumped on board to further their own political interests. “I think Roe was a bit more Machiavellian and manipulative with the facts,” says Abbott. He developed a side business lecturing and writing books with sensational titles like Panders and Their White Slaves.
The white slavery scare was also used as an excuse to attack the non-Protestant immigrants pouring into the country. Both Bell and Roe pointed the finger at foreigners in their condemnations of theatrical agencies, dance halls, and ice cream parlors. “Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners—French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians?” Bell wrote in his 1910 book Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls.
Chicago prosecutor Edwin Sims fought prostitution in Chicago and was the inspiration for the Mann Act of 1910, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. “I am determined to break up this traffic in foreign women. It is my sworn duty, and it should be done to protect the people of the country from contamination,” he told the Tribune in 1908.
“Some of the things the federal officials were saying I had to read twice,” says Abbott. “Like ‘War on Terror,’ they had their political talking points and they used them very effectively to manipulate the public and push their own agenda forward.”
Mayor Carter Harrison II, who usually turned a blind eye to illegal goings-on in the Levee, was eventually forced to reckon with the reformers’ growing political power. In 1911, after a friend from outside Chicago showed him “The Everleigh Club, Illustrated,” a leather-bound brochure with national distribution, he ordered the brothel’s closure.
Gradually the other brothels, dives, saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and opium dens of the district were also shuttered. On July 24, 1933, workers tore down the building that once housed the Everleigh Club, “heedless of the fact that they were wiping out one of the most lurid chapters in Chicago history,” according to a Tribune report from the time.
Although rooted in ignorance, the white slavery panic did give women, who were still a decade from suffrage, a rallying cause. “Through the end of it they started having hearings about women’s wages, [asking] how can a girl work in a factory for six dollars a week and not be expected to supplement her income doing nefarious things?” says Abbott. “The white slavery scare was a chance for [women] to insert themselves in political discourse.”
Meanwhile books like Roe’s, which included scenes of terrified harlots escaping brothels in flimsy negligees, made sexuality an acceptable topic of conversation. “Those narratives were like porn for puritans, but it was the first time people could discuss that, in a way, and not be considered untoward,” Abbott says.
As for the Everleigh sisters, after just over a decade doing business in Chicago, they’d amassed a million dollars in savings—$20.5 million today, Abbott estimates—and even more in jewelry, art, and Oriental rugs. They changed their name to Lester and moved to New York, where they bought a brownstone on the Upper West Side and founded a poetry discussion group with local ladies who knew nothing of their past. Minna died first, on September 16, 1948, at the age of 82. Ada lived until 95, dying January 6, 1960, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Thanks to Dan Kelly
Mob School
Frank Calabrese Sr. smiled broadly, sometimes chuckling, as his son, Frank Jr., underwent cross-examination Thursday, denying that hatred motivated his decision to cooperate against his father.
Testifying at the Family Secrets trial for a fifth consecutive day in court, the younger Calabrese said he still loved his father but worked secretly for the FBI in an effort to keep the reputed mob boss imprisoned. "I know he loves me, just not some of my ways," Calabrese, referring to his own drug use, said of his father. "I love him, just not some of his ways." But in a 1998 letter in which he offered his cooperation to a federal agent, the younger Calabrese wrote, "I feel I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever."
The elder Calabrese is on trial with three other reputed mob figures and a former Chicago police officer in connection with 18 long-unsolved gangland murders.
At times, Calabrese appeared flustered by the rapid-fire questioning of his father's lawyer, Joseph Lopez.
Calabrese, whose secretly recorded conversations with his father in a federal prison in Milan, Mich., dominated the trial this week, denied he steered his father into talking about several murders or the inner workings of the Chicago Outfit.
His father was trying to "school" him in the ways of the mob so that he could exert control of the father's criminal operation on leaving prison, the younger Calabrese said. "He's schooling me because I'm telling him I want to be involved," Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
Lopez hit hard at Calabrese's on-again, off-again estrangement from his father over the years. Calabrese acknowledged that despite his father's genuine concern for him, he stole $600,000 to $800,000 in cash stuffed in a duffel bag from him.
After his father discovered the theft several months later and came to confront him at his house, the younger Calabrese fled out a window. "I didn't want to be around him no more," Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
After they went to prison in the mid-1990s in a loan-sharking operation, Calabrese said he hoped his father would keep a promise to semiretire from the mob. But he decided to contact the FBI when it became clear that "he was not going to change his ways," he said.
The elder Calabrese had not worked outside of the Outfit since about the 1960s when he worked for the City of Chicago as a stationary engineer, his son said. He did have a remodeling business for a while, but it was funded with Outfit money, Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
The elder Calabrese is on trial with reputed Outfit members Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello and Paul "the Indian" Schiro, as well as Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer. The case centers on charges of conspiracy to commit the homicides as well as loan-sharking and illegal sports bookmaking.
The aging defendants have been the center of attention at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, as waves of spectators crowd the courtroom to take in a few minutes of the real-life mob tale.
Lopez, wearing a pinstripe suit and a pink shirt and tie, questioned Frank Calabrese Jr. repeatedly about his relationship with his uncle, Nicholas Calabrese, whom Lopez implied the younger Calabrese favored over his own father. Nicholas, one of seven defendants to have pleaded guilty in the case, also secretly recorded brother Frank Calabrese Sr. and is expected to implicate him in numerous murders.
Calabrese agreed with Lopez that at times he spoke with Nicholas Calabrese, as well as other uncles, about things he did not tell his father.
Frank Calabrese Jr. acknowledged that he lied to investigators in the 1990s in an unsuccessful bid to avoid prosecution in the loan-sharking case. Calabrese said he lied at his father's direction. "I did that for my father, for the crew, for myself," he said.
Calabrese said his father had confronted him several times while he was taking drugs and stealing family jewelry to feed his cocaine addiction.
His father expressed his concern about the thievery, telling him, "People will cut your hands off for doing things like that," Calabrese testified.
Earlier Thursday, in some of the last of numerous video surveillance tapes played this week in court, the elder Calabrese told his son that those who believed that Lombardo and others led the Chicago crime syndicate were wrong.
The elder Calabrese, believing his son was set to rejoin the Outfit as an active member on his release from prison in 1999, told him that they could be part of a better, stronger crime syndicate. Too many members of the Chicago mob were being too public about their roles, even bragging incorrectly that they were Outfit leaders, the elder Calabrese said in one videotaped conversation in the prison visiting room.
With a few "good guys," a stronger Outfit would arise, the elder Calabrese said. "It's not going to be the Christmas tree . . . it used to be," he said. "It's going to be a smaller Christmas tree that's going to have the loyalty that was once there."
Thanks to Liam Ford
Testifying at the Family Secrets trial for a fifth consecutive day in court, the younger Calabrese said he still loved his father but worked secretly for the FBI in an effort to keep the reputed mob boss imprisoned. "I know he loves me, just not some of my ways," Calabrese, referring to his own drug use, said of his father. "I love him, just not some of his ways." But in a 1998 letter in which he offered his cooperation to a federal agent, the younger Calabrese wrote, "I feel I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever."
The elder Calabrese is on trial with three other reputed mob figures and a former Chicago police officer in connection with 18 long-unsolved gangland murders.
At times, Calabrese appeared flustered by the rapid-fire questioning of his father's lawyer, Joseph Lopez.
Calabrese, whose secretly recorded conversations with his father in a federal prison in Milan, Mich., dominated the trial this week, denied he steered his father into talking about several murders or the inner workings of the Chicago Outfit.
His father was trying to "school" him in the ways of the mob so that he could exert control of the father's criminal operation on leaving prison, the younger Calabrese said. "He's schooling me because I'm telling him I want to be involved," Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
Lopez hit hard at Calabrese's on-again, off-again estrangement from his father over the years. Calabrese acknowledged that despite his father's genuine concern for him, he stole $600,000 to $800,000 in cash stuffed in a duffel bag from him.
After his father discovered the theft several months later and came to confront him at his house, the younger Calabrese fled out a window. "I didn't want to be around him no more," Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
After they went to prison in the mid-1990s in a loan-sharking operation, Calabrese said he hoped his father would keep a promise to semiretire from the mob. But he decided to contact the FBI when it became clear that "he was not going to change his ways," he said.
The elder Calabrese had not worked outside of the Outfit since about the 1960s when he worked for the City of Chicago as a stationary engineer, his son said. He did have a remodeling business for a while, but it was funded with Outfit money, Frank Calabrese Jr. said.
The elder Calabrese is on trial with reputed Outfit members Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello and Paul "the Indian" Schiro, as well as Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer. The case centers on charges of conspiracy to commit the homicides as well as loan-sharking and illegal sports bookmaking.
The aging defendants have been the center of attention at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, as waves of spectators crowd the courtroom to take in a few minutes of the real-life mob tale.
Lopez, wearing a pinstripe suit and a pink shirt and tie, questioned Frank Calabrese Jr. repeatedly about his relationship with his uncle, Nicholas Calabrese, whom Lopez implied the younger Calabrese favored over his own father. Nicholas, one of seven defendants to have pleaded guilty in the case, also secretly recorded brother Frank Calabrese Sr. and is expected to implicate him in numerous murders.
Calabrese agreed with Lopez that at times he spoke with Nicholas Calabrese, as well as other uncles, about things he did not tell his father.
Frank Calabrese Jr. acknowledged that he lied to investigators in the 1990s in an unsuccessful bid to avoid prosecution in the loan-sharking case. Calabrese said he lied at his father's direction. "I did that for my father, for the crew, for myself," he said.
Calabrese said his father had confronted him several times while he was taking drugs and stealing family jewelry to feed his cocaine addiction.
His father expressed his concern about the thievery, telling him, "People will cut your hands off for doing things like that," Calabrese testified.
Earlier Thursday, in some of the last of numerous video surveillance tapes played this week in court, the elder Calabrese told his son that those who believed that Lombardo and others led the Chicago crime syndicate were wrong.
The elder Calabrese, believing his son was set to rejoin the Outfit as an active member on his release from prison in 1999, told him that they could be part of a better, stronger crime syndicate. Too many members of the Chicago mob were being too public about their roles, even bragging incorrectly that they were Outfit leaders, the elder Calabrese said in one videotaped conversation in the prison visiting room.
With a few "good guys," a stronger Outfit would arise, the elder Calabrese said. "It's not going to be the Christmas tree . . . it used to be," he said. "It's going to be a smaller Christmas tree that's going to have the loyalty that was once there."
Thanks to Liam Ford
Son Hears How Mob Hit Men Killed His Father
Tony Ortiz sat on the edge of a bench in a federal courtroom in Chicago on Wednesday, eyes intent, as he listened to a secret prison tape recording of a reputed mob hit man, Frank Calabrese Sr.
Calabrese Sr. was allegedly describing how shotgun ammunition obliterated Ortiz's father, Richard, when he was killed in 1983.
"Tore 'em up bad," Calabrese Sr. said on the recording, played during the Family Secrets trial. "Big, big bearings," he said. "So them, them will f - - - - - - tear half your body apart."
Calabrese Sr. was describing the murder to his son Frank Calabrese Jr., whom he was grooming to take over his Outfit crew.
Instead, Calabrese Jr. was on the stand Wednesday, explaining the recordings he secretly made of his father while they were in prison in 1999. Calabrese Jr. wants his father, accused of 13 hits, in prison for good.
"God works in mysterious ways," Tony Ortiz said after the testimony.
Calabrese Sr. "bragged about the bullets tearing up my dad," Ortiz said. "It had to be tearing him up inside to see his son testify against him."
Calabrese Sr. contended Ortiz was killed because he was dealing drugs and doing juice loans without Outfit permission.
Tony Ortiz was only 12 when his father died and said he doesn't know what his father did, besides run a bar in Cicero. Ortiz, now 36 and with four kids of his own, just knows his dad didn't deserve to die, and so brutally.
Also slain was Ortiz's friend Arthur Morawski, who had nothing to do with Outfit life but happened to be with his friend in Ortiz's car.
"The Polish guy that was with him was a nice guy, OK?" Calabrese Sr. said on the tape. "But he happened to be at the wrong place."
Morawski sold Ortiz glasses for the bar Ortiz ran in Cicero on 22nd Street, the His 'N' Mine Lounge.
The two friends had just returned from the racetrack when Calabrese Sr. pulled up beside them with two Outfit killers in the car -- his brother and Outfit hit man Nick Calabrese, and the late reputed mob killer James DiForti.
Calabrese Sr. said the two gunmen froze when they pulled up to kill Ortiz. Calabrese Sr. said they had been stalking Ortiz for nine months.
Calabrese Sr. recalled how he had to nudge the men to leave the car. "OK now, out. Out, out, get out," Calabrese Sr. said on tape with a chuckle. "He was laughing about it," Tony Ortiz said. "That's what kills me the most."
Next to Ortiz in the courtroom was his mother, who wiped away tears, and his uncle, who sat stoically.
Calabrese Sr.'s attorney, Joseph Lopez, will begin cross-examining Frank Calabrese Jr. today. While Lopez hasn't addressed the Cicero killings, he has argued that much of the tape is a father making false boasts.
Calabrese Sr. detailed how the men prepared for the hit, from testing the shotguns to making sure the gunmen emptied their weapons into the victims.
Tony Ortiz said he got a little satisfaction watching Calabrese Sr.'s son testify against him.
"You can tell on the tapes he really loves his son," Ortiz said. "He still has the opportunity to talk to his son, although I doubt that will ever happen," Ortiz said. "I would give anything in the world to go out to the racetrack one more time with my dad."
Thanks to Steve Warmbir
Calabrese Sr. was allegedly describing how shotgun ammunition obliterated Ortiz's father, Richard, when he was killed in 1983.
"Tore 'em up bad," Calabrese Sr. said on the recording, played during the Family Secrets trial. "Big, big bearings," he said. "So them, them will f - - - - - - tear half your body apart."
Calabrese Sr. was describing the murder to his son Frank Calabrese Jr., whom he was grooming to take over his Outfit crew.
Instead, Calabrese Jr. was on the stand Wednesday, explaining the recordings he secretly made of his father while they were in prison in 1999. Calabrese Jr. wants his father, accused of 13 hits, in prison for good.
"God works in mysterious ways," Tony Ortiz said after the testimony.
Calabrese Sr. "bragged about the bullets tearing up my dad," Ortiz said. "It had to be tearing him up inside to see his son testify against him."
Calabrese Sr. contended Ortiz was killed because he was dealing drugs and doing juice loans without Outfit permission.
Tony Ortiz was only 12 when his father died and said he doesn't know what his father did, besides run a bar in Cicero. Ortiz, now 36 and with four kids of his own, just knows his dad didn't deserve to die, and so brutally.
Also slain was Ortiz's friend Arthur Morawski, who had nothing to do with Outfit life but happened to be with his friend in Ortiz's car.
"The Polish guy that was with him was a nice guy, OK?" Calabrese Sr. said on the tape. "But he happened to be at the wrong place."
Morawski sold Ortiz glasses for the bar Ortiz ran in Cicero on 22nd Street, the His 'N' Mine Lounge.
The two friends had just returned from the racetrack when Calabrese Sr. pulled up beside them with two Outfit killers in the car -- his brother and Outfit hit man Nick Calabrese, and the late reputed mob killer James DiForti.
Calabrese Sr. said the two gunmen froze when they pulled up to kill Ortiz. Calabrese Sr. said they had been stalking Ortiz for nine months.
Calabrese Sr. recalled how he had to nudge the men to leave the car. "OK now, out. Out, out, get out," Calabrese Sr. said on tape with a chuckle. "He was laughing about it," Tony Ortiz said. "That's what kills me the most."
Next to Ortiz in the courtroom was his mother, who wiped away tears, and his uncle, who sat stoically.
Calabrese Sr.'s attorney, Joseph Lopez, will begin cross-examining Frank Calabrese Jr. today. While Lopez hasn't addressed the Cicero killings, he has argued that much of the tape is a father making false boasts.
Calabrese Sr. detailed how the men prepared for the hit, from testing the shotguns to making sure the gunmen emptied their weapons into the victims.
Tony Ortiz said he got a little satisfaction watching Calabrese Sr.'s son testify against him.
"You can tell on the tapes he really loves his son," Ortiz said. "He still has the opportunity to talk to his son, although I doubt that will ever happen," Ortiz said. "I would give anything in the world to go out to the racetrack one more time with my dad."
Thanks to Steve Warmbir
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Romantic Fling and Side Deals Led to Spilotro's Murder
Mobster Tony "The Ant" Spilotro was pocketing money he made from side deals behind the mob's back and boasting that some day he would occupy the throne of organized crime in Chicago. Making things worse, Spilotro was having a romantic fling with the wife of a Las Vegas-based mob associate.
"Right then a nail went in the coffin," convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese is heard saying on a tape made secretly — by his own son — and played Tuesday at the trial of Calabrese and four others accused in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including Spilotro's. "Right then, that was one nail," Calabrese repeats.
Spilotro was known as the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas and inspired the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino." He and his brother, Michael, were murdered in June 1986 and buried in an Indiana cornfield.
Calabrese says on the tape that sex with the wife of a mob member violates a code. "That is a no-no, that is a no-no, that is a friend and that's a commandment," he tells his son, who secretly recorded the conversation to help the FBI gather evidence against his father.
In short order, Spilotro and his brother both were murdered — on orders from the big boss of the mob at the time, Joey Aiuppa, Calabrese says. "Joey Aiuppa had a meeting before they all went to jail and he told them he wanted him (Spilotro) knocked down," Calabrese says, then quotes Aiuppa as saying: "I don't care how you do it. Get him. I want him out."
Calabrese, 69, is on trial along with James Marcello, 65; Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70; and retired Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, 62. They are charged with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included the murders of the Spilotro brothers and 16 others.
Aiuppa was the top boss of the Chicago mob. He died in 1997 at age 89, shortly after his release from prison where he served time for a casino skimming conviction. Lombardo was convicted in the same case.
The tapes that have been played for three days now were made at the Milan, Mich., federal correctional center where Calabrese and his son, Frank Calabrese Jr., were serving time for a loan-sharking conviction.
Unknown to the elder Calabrese, his son was helping the FBI, saying he believed his father would never leave the mob and he wanted to "expose my father for what he is." Jurors also have seen videos made at the prison.
On one tape, Calabrese Sr. also says it was Aiuppa who got Edward Hanley a position with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. Hanley rose to become international president of the union, which represented employees ranging from bartenders to room maids.
Hanley, a one-time member of the AFL-CIO executive board, was repeatedly investigated by federal prosecutors but never charged. But experts often cited the union as an example of mob influence in labor.
On the tape, both Calabreses refer to Hanley — who retired from the union in 1998 and died in a Wisconsin auto accident — as "Uncle Ed" and the father says Aiuppa got him his first union job. "He started him off in the Cicero local," Calabrese Sr. says.
The tapes are a catalog of Chicago mob murders.
Calabrese Jr. interprets some of his father's remarks as confirming that he was on hand, watching from a scout car, when former mob enforcer William Dauber and his wife, Charlotte, were murdered in Lake County July 2, 1980. And likewise for the Sept. 14, 1986, murder of mobster John Fecarotta, allegedly by Calabrese Sr. brother Nicholas Calabrese, who has pleaded guilty to racketeering and is expected to be a prosecution witness.
Calabrese Jr. also testified that his father once drove him past a South Side parking lot and "gave me a nudge."
"I understood there was a dead body there," the son testified.
He apparently referred to the last remains of Michael "Hambone" Albergo, a mob figure whose body has long been sought by the FBI. Agents dug up a parking lot near U.S. Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, several years ago but have not said exactly what they found there.
Calabrese Sr. attorney Joseph Lopez said in his opening statement that they found "thousands of bones" but none traceable to Hambone Albergo.
"Right then a nail went in the coffin," convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese is heard saying on a tape made secretly — by his own son — and played Tuesday at the trial of Calabrese and four others accused in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including Spilotro's. "Right then, that was one nail," Calabrese repeats.
Spilotro was known as the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas and inspired the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino." He and his brother, Michael, were murdered in June 1986 and buried in an Indiana cornfield.
Calabrese says on the tape that sex with the wife of a mob member violates a code. "That is a no-no, that is a no-no, that is a friend and that's a commandment," he tells his son, who secretly recorded the conversation to help the FBI gather evidence against his father.
In short order, Spilotro and his brother both were murdered — on orders from the big boss of the mob at the time, Joey Aiuppa, Calabrese says. "Joey Aiuppa had a meeting before they all went to jail and he told them he wanted him (Spilotro) knocked down," Calabrese says, then quotes Aiuppa as saying: "I don't care how you do it. Get him. I want him out."
Calabrese, 69, is on trial along with James Marcello, 65; Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70; and retired Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, 62. They are charged with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included the murders of the Spilotro brothers and 16 others.
Aiuppa was the top boss of the Chicago mob. He died in 1997 at age 89, shortly after his release from prison where he served time for a casino skimming conviction. Lombardo was convicted in the same case.
The tapes that have been played for three days now were made at the Milan, Mich., federal correctional center where Calabrese and his son, Frank Calabrese Jr., were serving time for a loan-sharking conviction.
Unknown to the elder Calabrese, his son was helping the FBI, saying he believed his father would never leave the mob and he wanted to "expose my father for what he is." Jurors also have seen videos made at the prison.
On one tape, Calabrese Sr. also says it was Aiuppa who got Edward Hanley a position with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. Hanley rose to become international president of the union, which represented employees ranging from bartenders to room maids.
Hanley, a one-time member of the AFL-CIO executive board, was repeatedly investigated by federal prosecutors but never charged. But experts often cited the union as an example of mob influence in labor.
On the tape, both Calabreses refer to Hanley — who retired from the union in 1998 and died in a Wisconsin auto accident — as "Uncle Ed" and the father says Aiuppa got him his first union job. "He started him off in the Cicero local," Calabrese Sr. says.
The tapes are a catalog of Chicago mob murders.
Calabrese Jr. interprets some of his father's remarks as confirming that he was on hand, watching from a scout car, when former mob enforcer William Dauber and his wife, Charlotte, were murdered in Lake County July 2, 1980. And likewise for the Sept. 14, 1986, murder of mobster John Fecarotta, allegedly by Calabrese Sr. brother Nicholas Calabrese, who has pleaded guilty to racketeering and is expected to be a prosecution witness.
Calabrese Jr. also testified that his father once drove him past a South Side parking lot and "gave me a nudge."
"I understood there was a dead body there," the son testified.
He apparently referred to the last remains of Michael "Hambone" Albergo, a mob figure whose body has long been sought by the FBI. Agents dug up a parking lot near U.S. Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, several years ago but have not said exactly what they found there.
Calabrese Sr. attorney Joseph Lopez said in his opening statement that they found "thousands of bones" but none traceable to Hambone Albergo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)