It's Still the Chicago Way, New Books Prove Nothing Changes

“Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about Hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.”

Those were the profound words of Carl Sandburg, published in his book of “Chicago Poems: Unabridged (Dover Thrift Editions)” in 1916.

Ninety-one years later, Chicago’s landscape may have changed, but the sordid souls, who poisoned Sandburg’s time, live here in infamy.

That much is evident after sitting through last week’s Operation Family Secrets trial in federal court in Chicago. Five elderly men connected to the Chicago Outfit are charged with running mob rackets and torturing and killing 18 people the past four decades by strangulation, beating and shooting, with ropes, ball bats, blowtorches, shotguns, fists and feet. But the five hoodlums with witty nicknames such as the Clown, the Breeze, Little Jimmy and Twan, didn’t operate without help from outside their secret organization.

Just as in Sandburg’s day, when the hell-bent were called Big Jim and the Fox, the mobsters of our era admit they bribed police and public officials to protect their illegal businesses.

Two new books prove that nothing has changed. Despite the modernization of Michigan Avenue, lakefront beautification and regular police department announcements that crime is declining, the dirty business of public corruption at the behest of the Outfit thrives.

In her book “Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul.” author Karen Abbott writes about the open sex trade in Chicago’s Levee District on the near South Side in the early 1900s. It focuses on the turn-of-the-previous-century whorehouse, the Everleigh Club. The story amounts to a blueprint for the modern rackets that the Calabrese/Lombardo Outfit is now on trial for allegedly running.

In 1900, dance hall operator Ike Bloom was in charge of making sure the police allowed bordello operators, call girls and pimps to freely conduct their business. "So integral was Bloom to the web of Levee graft that his portrait, handsomely framed, hung in a prominent place of honor in the squad room of the 22nd Street police station,” writes Abbott.

Below Bloom’s picture was a price list of the appropriate bribes to be paid to police: “Massage parlors: $25 weekly; Larger houses of ill fame, $50-$100 weekly, with $25 additional each week if drinks are sold; Saloons allowed to stay open after hours, $50 per month; Sale of liquor in apartment houses without license …”

The architects were First Ward Alderman “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Democratic Party boss Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna.

In a second new book, “The Tangled Web: The Life and Death of Richard Cain - Chicago Cop and Mafia Hitman,” author Michael J. Cain reports on the devilish work of his brother Dick. In the late 1950s and ’60s, Dick Cain was a Chicago police vice detective and then chief investigator for the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.

Author Cain says his brother was also “a made Mafia soldier and a protégé and informer for legendary mob boss Sam Giancana.”

Dick Cain was a Chicago mobster, groomed by the mob to be a Chicago cop. “Dick was one of a very small number that reported directly to Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana,” writes Michael Cain.

Dick Cain distributed weekly mob bribes to other cops, according to his brother, and tipped Outfit bosses to gambling and prostitution raids. When independent, non-mob rackets were raided, Cain would be seen in the next morning’s newspapers posed with a Tommy gun, a la Eliot Ness.

Cain’s mob work stretched to Mexico and Cuba and probably included murders, admits his brother. Dick Cain was killed in 1973, five days before Christmas. Two gunman ambushed him in a West Side sandwich shop.

Richard Cain and Sam Giancana’s corrupt DNA was the same that Ike Bloom and his ilk had in 1900. And now a century later, the bad genes are on display in Operation Family Secrets.

Testimony revealed that modern-day Chicago cops were on the Outfit payroll. Mob informants testified they were tipped off by dirty cops about upcoming raids.

An alleged Chicago mob boss testified about his cozy relationship with politically connected labor union bosses and with the late First Ward Alderman Fred Roti, who was convicted of corruption.

Another accused mob boss, who once bribed a U.S. senator, last week implicated all 50 Chicago aldermen in a payoff scheme to allow illegal gambling in their wards.

An admitted Outfit hit man pinned a suburban firebombing on one of Mayor Daley’s close friends.

So nothing changes. We just keep writing about Chicago, after looking the town over for years and years.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Outburst in Court Leads to Judge Threatening Family Secrets' Defendant with Contempt

A federal judge warned Monday that he would hold alleged Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese in contempt of court if he continued to try to testify about evidence already ruled inadmissible at his racketeering conspiracy trial.

The warning followed a flare-up of emotion on the part of Calabrese, a convicted loan shark who is one of five alleged members of the Chicago mob on trial in the Operation Family Secrets case.

"I will not allow you to introduce evidence that is inadmissible," U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel told Calabrese in his second day on the witness stand. Zagel told Calabrese to stop trying to introduce evidence that "you personally think should be introduced" even though it already had been ruled out.

"You will not question my rulings in the presence of the jury," Zagel said. He said he would hold Calabrese in contempt it if happened again.

Earlier, Calabrese had blurted out a claim concerning an alleged robbery in which he had been the victim. When prosecutors objected -- evidence concerning the robbery had been ruled inadmissible -- Calabrese became upset. "Your Honor, how am I going to defend myself?" Calabrese asked Zagel.

At that, Zagel sent the jury out of the courtroom, admonished Calabrese and warned Calabrese's defense attorney, Joseph Lopez, against "your client's intention to get into evidence material that I'm quite sure you told him he could not get into evidence."

Calabrese, 70, is accused by federal prosecutors and witnesses of doubling as a mob hit man when not operating a loan sharking business. His brother, Nicholas, testified earlier that Frank Calabrese on a number of occasions strangled victims with ropes then cut their throats to make sure they were dead.

Also on trial are Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78, James Marcello, 65, Paul Schiro, 70, and Anthony Doyle, 62. They are accused of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that involved extortion, gambling, loan sharking and 18 long unsolved murders.

On Thursday, Frank Calabrese testified that he knew many people involved in organized crime, hung out with them and did business with them but did not belong to the mob. He denied ever committing any of the murders alleged in the indictment produced by an FBI investigation known as Operation Family Secrets.

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Mafia T-Shirts Cures Unemployment for One Man

A formerly unemployed man in Sicily is making a living hawking T-shirts sporting Mafia-inspired designs outside the theater seen in "The Godfather: Part III."

Salvatore Trippodo of Palermo says tourists -- perhaps influenced by the popularity of HBO's "The Sopranos" -- are loading up on the items, Italy's ANSA news service reported Friday.

One design features Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in "The Godfather." Others bear the omerta code of the Mafia -- often summed up as "don't see; don't hear; don't speak."

"The idea came to me when I was really depressed about my chances of ever finding a job," Trippodo told ANSA. "It's really hard to find work in Sicily and it's so easy to slip into doing something wrong; but with a bit of imagination, you can create your own job."

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From Eating Oatmeal as a Boy to Earning for the Mob

Chicago Outfit loan shark and accused hit-man Frank Calabrese Sr. didn't have the gall to wear his First Communion suit on the witness stand. It wouldn't have fit, anyway.

Instead he wore a pale sports coat just on the edge of ivory, like an older bride with plenty of miles, still yearning for the white on her big day.

Calabrese testified in his own defense in the "Family Secrets" trial on Thursday, explaining that as a boy, his family was so poor they ate oatmeal most every night, that he had to leave school in the 4th grade to help deliver coal. And, how he grew up with an intense desire to protect the weak against the strong, even when the weak owed him money from his juice loans and couldn't pay him on time.

"I hated bullies and I still hate them today," said the knightly Calabrese, led through his story by crafty defense lawyer Joseph Lopez.

Yet when court resumes Monday, Calabrese will face cross-examination by federal prosecutors, so the jury won't see Sir Frank of Chinatown, but a different Frank, the Frank on federal tape giggling about murders.

The jury will hear about his many alleged victims, dumped into holes like so many goo-goo dolls, those yellow rubber toys of years ago. Put your thumbs on their throats, squeeze hard, and their eyes bug out, the tongues protrude, they make a strange noise, which is the way his brother, Nicholas Calabrese, described the effects of Frank's heavy work in earlier trial testimony.

"Murder? No way. No way," Frank kept telling Lopez, also resplendent in a pink shirt and electric yellow tie, as Lopez directed him through more than two hours of testimony designed to give context to Calabrese's life and have his client repeatedly deny he killed anyone.

Lopez's theory is that Frank's son and his brother Nick conspired to rip off Frank's money and keep him in prison. It's an interesting theory. But on Monday, as those tapes are played, the tapes his son Frank Jr. recorded in prison conversations with his father for the FBI, the theory will have a side effect.

Calabrese's co-defendants -- Joseph Lombardo, Paul Schiro, Anthony Doyle and James Marcello -- will look up and feel the fork in them and know they're done.

Some of my colleagues have been tempted to say that the Chicago Outfit is done, too, but it is not. Today's web was woven long ago, when Paul "The Waiter" Ricca moved here from New York and quietly allowed Al Capone to play the loud baboon in the shiny suit.

Calabrese is an example of this influence, a portly squire from the Chinatown crew, which still reaches into the 11th Ward, home of mayors. His brother-in-law was the late Ed Hanley, president of the powerful international hotel workers union, who dabbled in wiseguys and politics from Chicago to Las Vegas.

Hanley got him a city job, and later Frank got Nick a city job running McCormick Place, and depending on what testimony you believe, they either killed a lot of people together or they didn't, but they made a lot of money.

Calabrese explained on Thursday that the Outfit is dedicated to money, composed of two kinds of men, those who earn, and those who do the heavy work.

"And what is the heavy work?" Lopez asked.

"Killing people," Calabrese said, "but I didn't kill people, I was an earner ... I earned millions ... I didn't have time to do that other stuff."

He did this, he said, by loaning money at high rates to gambling addicts who couldn't go into a bank and apply for loans.

Listening to him, I wondered how lousy he must feel, in prison now, with so much opportunity outside, as City Hall pushes quietly for a giant city-run gambling casino, one that would have its own "independent" gaming commission controlled by the mayor, so it won't be subject to bothersome state regulations.

Loan sharking is part of gambling, in casinos or on Rush Street, though scary collectors aren't featured in the commercials. Calabrese testified that in his loan-sharking business, he never threatened or hurt anyone, but they paid anyway, but not from fear.

Yet it was instructive, with Calabrese explaining the meaning of "the sit down," a meeting designed to settle disputes, like the time Butch Petrocelli (one of the alleged victims) "kept sticking his nose in there" to try and take away Calabrese's card games, Calabrese said.

"It was all done diplomatically," Calabrese said. "The head of this group sits there, the head of that group sits there. And someone very important, like [late Outfit boss] Joey Aiuppa sits there."

Lopez asked: "Was there any swearing or cursing?"

"Swearing or cursing? Oh, no. It was diplomatic," Calabrese said. The way he said "oh, no" was quite odd. It was something a PTA mom would say, not some Chinatown bone-crusher who sat meekly before the boss.

The jury stopped taking notes, and stared, transfixed, as if a penguin from the zoo were sitting in front of them reading "The Divine Comedy." And Calabrese faced them, in his almost white ivory jacket, blinking.

Thanks to John Kass

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Calabrese Delivers Longwinded Testimony

Frank Calabrese Sr. went from eating oatmeal for dinner as a child to making millions of dollars from illegal street loans but denied Thursday from the witness stand that he ever killed anyone for the Chicago Outfit.

Calabrese is an allegedly prolific hit man, accused of 13 murders in the Family Secrets mob case in federal court.

The 70-year-old man, who complained about his bad hearing, took the stand for two hours in the case to deny each murder he's accused of. He described a life of doing business with people in the Outfit and hanging around mobsters but not being part of the mob himself.

Calabrese was dressed conservatively, in a tie, suit coat and slacks, and often looked directly at the jury as he was questioned by his attorney, Joseph "The Shark" Lopez, outfitted in a hot pink shirt, matching pink socks, lemon tie and black suit.

In his questioning, Lopez made the distinction between people who were "earners" and people who did "heavy work," in other words, murder.

"Were you an earner or did you did you do heavy work?" Lopez asked.

"Joe, my earnings spoke for themselves," Calabrese said.

"I made millions. How would I have time to do it?" Calabrese Sr. said, referring to the murders he's accused of.

As his lawyer asked him questions, Calabrese would go on and on -- so much so that the judge told him to just answer the questions he was asked.

From the witness stand, Calabrese appeared to be struggling not to lose his temper as Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scully repeatedly objected to Calabrese's expansive answers.

At one point, Calabrese was asked about a club he belonged to. He answered but added, "Can I tell you how they raised money for the club?"

"No," Lopez said, trying to cut him off.

"Just asking," Calabrese said.

Calabrese said he was partners with mob boss Angelo LaPietra in the street loan business but insisted he did not report to LaPietra as his boss.

"He did never control me -- never," Calabrese said.

"Many people feared him," Calabrese said of LaPietra, a brutal mob killer who had such nicknames as "Bull" and "The Hook."

"Many people couldn't look him in the eye when they talked to him. I never had that problem," Calabrese said.

Calabrese has seen both his son, Frank Calabrese Jr., and his brother, Outfit killer Nicholas Calabrese, testify against him at trial.

His son put his life on the line and secretly recorded his father while they were both in federal prison in 1999 on another case.

Jurors have already heard excerpts from those extensive conversations, in which Frank Calabrese Sr. apparently describes mob murders in great detail.

Frank Calabrese Sr. will have to explain those conversations to the jury. He's also expected to blame his brother, Nicholas; his son, Frank Jr., and a second son, Kurt, for conspiring to frame him for the mob murders to keep him in prison, so they could steal his money with impunity.

Kurt Calabrese is not a witness in the case but quietly slipped into court Thursday to watch his father's testimony. At one point, the two locked eyes briefly, and Calabrese Sr. appeared a bit unsettled.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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