No Goodfellas in this Sordid Crew

Chicago mob trial exposes zero honour among thieves
By Josh Casey
Outfit enforcer 'Butch' Petrocelli before and after his alleged murder by the Calabrese brothers.


Forget about the clichés and the movies, the wiseguys and their broads, the snappy suits and sharp one-liners. Most of all forget about the men of honour concept laid bare for the risible oxymoron it always was in what has been billed as the biggest mob murder trial in U.S. history.

Instead, what has been playing out in the 25th Floor courtroom in front of Judge James B Zagel is a story of men barely above the morality of hyenas, who kill each other by the most barbaric methods for the flimsiest and most debased of motives.

And even those motives, such as they are, rarely seem to be more than the crude suppositions of simple minds reacting to rumour and guesswork no more profound than fishwives gossiping on a street corner. The difference is that gossips might sometimes smear a reputation a little, but with the characters exposed in the ‘Family Secrets’ trial, it can result in medieval murder, nearly always over money, or the notion that the victim might have betrayed them or might do so sometime in the future. And if they got it wrong - so what? The guy shouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time…

And that is what separates them from civilised citizens. It was once written by a political philosopher that the rule of law succeeded not generally because of a citizen’s fear of the consequences of not abiding by it, but because the majority of citizens recognised and accepted the necessity of restraints required for civil co-existence.

That essentially is the measure of decent people as opposed to those who reject restraints and disregard the rules others accept and comply with, however resentfully from time to time. We would all rather drive at whatever speed we felt like now and then, not wear crash helmets or seat belts, even party naked in the park from time to time, and might feel like wringing the neck of that noisy neighbour on the odd occasion. But that is a figure of speech; we don’t actually plan to force men to the ground and strangle and cut their throats open for any reasons, let alone unsubstantiated reasons all rooted in greed.

The difference with the people depicted in this trial is that they just will do that and so much worse, and without regard for either the rules of society, humanity, or for life itself.

In the movies, bad guys don’t get killed, they get ‘whacked’. It is usually depicted as exciting, even sexy: the set-up, the tension, the shooting, over and done, he had it coming anyway…ratatatat! A body in the street…the screeching of tyres…Warren Beatty, Harvey Keitel, Lee Marvin, Pesci, and DiNiro have kept us appallingly entertained with their apparently cinema verite depictions of gangsters who terrify and excite in the same measure, along with other actors and film makers who have used their skills to insinuate the image of these semi-romantic outlaw figures in our minds.

The reality of the Family Secrets crew is of two men wrenching on either end of a rope looped around a man’s neck, each with a foot braced against the victim’s skull, throttling him to death and then slicing his throat open for good measure. Butch Petrocelli, himself an Outfit enforcer, forced to the ground, strangled, his throat slashed, then doused in lighter fuel and burned. Or the Spilotro brothers, again held down and strangled and beaten with fists, boots and knees, or the unspeakable murder long ago of a man hung from a meat hook pierced through his rectum, then tortured to death over three days.

This is not the territory of the Godfather or The Soprano’s, the former risibly portrayed hoodlums as noble peasants elevating themselves by the only means available through some imagined re-creation of an alternative Roman Empire (a notion re-attributed to defendant, Frank Calabrese, in the testimony of his son recently), and the latter escaping all true evaluation by rarely departing from a slick caricature in black comedy.

Better cinematic representation can be found in The Funeral, a largely overlooked almost Shakespearean tale directed by Abel Ferrara, featuring the extraordinary talents of Christopher Walken and the late Christopher Penn in whose character is distilled the despair and depravity of the gangster’s life and fate. The two actors portray siblings in a criminal family of the 1930s, but the awful moment of truth of this film is stolen in just a few seconds of masterful portrayal by Annabella Sciorra. Playing Walken’s screen wife at a time of violent crisis, she talks to a younger woman while tearfully despairing of and rejecting the inevitability and brutality of their occupations, speaking words to the effect of: “…all because they have failed to rise above their illiterate and savage origins…”

That was the message underpinning the entire film - and it serves the so-called ‘Family Secrets’ trial in Chicago also - both portray gangsters as they should be seen, as squalid, uncivilised savages, not as handsome, slick suited outlaws. Such men (whether those in the courtroom or not, the jury have yet to decide) are just sadistic thugs who commit murder not for noble cause but for squalid greed and that should never be forgotten.

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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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