Partial Transcript of Witness Testimony Given to Chicago Mob Jury

The weekend has arrived and jurors in Chicago's biggest mob trial in years have gone home without determining individual responsibility, if any, of the defendants for the murders mentioned in the charges.

The jury has already found all five defendants guilty of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that involved illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and a wave of 18 murders.

If the jurors find that any of 4 men are individually responsible for specific murders, those defendants will face a maximum of life in prison. The maximum sentence for racketeering conspiracy alone is 20 years.

The jurors went home today after getting Federal Judge James Zagel to agree to help them refresh their memories about witness testimony by sending them a portion of the transcript.

Zagel didn't reveal what portion of the written transcript of the 10-week trial the jurors had requested.

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Difronzo Family Secrets

John DiFronzo was implicated in outfit murders and other crimes during the recent mob trial of the century, but he wasn't charged. The I-Team has learned more about the man they call "No Nose."

You can call him "No Nose," or you can call him "Johnny Bananas" as he is sometimes known. But to the thugs, hustlers and hoodlums who report to him in the outfit, federal authorities say 78-year-old John DiFronzo is known as the boss. And they say DiFronzo's top lieutenant has the same last name because it's his younger brother.

A finger to the nose: that's mob sign language for John "No Nose" DiFronzo, according to feds. The pantomime act was caught on covert jailhouse tapes of meetings between Chicago Outfit bosses that were used as evidence during this summer's Family Secrets trial.

Authorities say DiFronzo's position is so important to the mob, that his underlings don't want to implicate him by speaking his real name.

So, they signal his nickname "No Nose," awarded to DiFronzo decades ago after a Michigan Avenue fur heist when part of his sniffer was severed as he jumped through a plate glass window.

John DiFronzo cut his teeth with the mob's Elmwood Park crew. He and his wife once lived in a Grand Avenue apartment house that they own, where their name is still on the front mailbox.

No Nose's rap sheet stretches back to the 1950s and features dozens of arrests and convictions. During the Family Secrets trial, federal prosecutors portrayed DiFronzo as a top outfit leader, and for the first time, said he was involved in the 1986 gangland murders of Anthony Spilotro -the mob's Las Vegas boss - and his brother, Michael, who were found six feet under an Indiana farm field.

The only evidence of DiFronzo's role in the Spilotro hit was from mob snitch and star witness Nick Calabrese. Law enforcement sources say they didn't want to risk losing a case against DiFronzo.

In one 2003 conversation between mobster brothers Jimmy and Michael Marcello, feds say they discussed No Nose.

James: "it quieted down on this guy, they didn't have what they thought they were gonna have or something like that?

Michael: I guess. That's what we heard. They thought they had something now they're not so sure."

DiFronzo is now atop the mob's flow chart that started with Scarface and continued through the Big Tuna, according to former federal agent and ex-Chicago crime commission director Bob Fuesel. "Their spots change, but they're still the same outfit that we know about from the days of Capone through Accardo for 50 years up until John DiFronzo today," Fuesel said.

DiFronzo was unreachable in River Grove or at his corner lot vacation home in Lake Geneva. His longtime lawyer, Carl Walsh, declined to comment Wednesday.

The FBI said a gag order prevented them from answering why DiFronzo hasn't been charged with the murders that prosecutors say he committed.

Do they even know where he is? "There is no reason for us to know his whereabouts because he hasn't been charged with anything," said Ross Rice, FBI spokesman.

Mob investigators say No Nose will lean on his brother, Peter DiFronzo, to help manage outfit rackets. Peter DiFronzo is a convicted warehouse thief who did time at Leavenworth. He and his brother are both fully initiated "made" members of the Chicago Outfit, according to the Chicago Crime Commission.

FBI records state that Peter and No Nose operate a west suburban construction and waste hauling firm, a politically connected company that "obtained contracts through illegal payoffs or intimidation."

When the I-Team visited D and P Construction Tuesday, Peter DiFronzo thought we were there to survey for new sewer lines. When told that the I-Team was there on an outfit investigation, he claimed to no know nothing and drove off in a new Cadillac Escalade.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Family Secrets Judge Trusts Jury

After a week off, jurors went back to work at Chicago's biggest mob trial in years Thursday, and the judge refused to poll them on whether news stories may have biased them.

U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel said it would be a mistake to treat jurors "as if they were some delicate object that must be encased in glass" and that he had reviewed recent news stories and saw no problems. "The system is that we trust the jurors unless we have some definitive evidence that that trust is not justified," Zagel said.

The five defendants already have been convicted by the jury of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that involved illegal gambling, extortion, loan sharking and 18 murders that went unsolved for decades.

Among the victims was Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, long the mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character in the movie "Casino." He and brother Michael Spilotro were beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield in June 1986.

Other victims were strangled, beaten and shot to keep them from leaking secrets to the FBI, according to witnesses at the 10-week Operation Family Secrets trial.

The jury now is deciding what, if any, individual responsibility four of the defendants have in specific murders that are listed in the indictment. Only one of the defendants, retired Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle, 62, is not accused of taking part in any of the murders.

The other defendants are James Marcello, 65, Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78, and Paul Schiro, 70. Each faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is found responsible for any of the murders.

Marcello has been described by prosecutors as a major figure in the mob. Calabrese was previously convicted of loan sharking, Lombardo of conspiring to bribe a senator and Schiro of being part of a jewel theft ring headed by Chicago police department's former chief of detectives.

All the defendants except Doyle have been in custody for more than a year. Doyle was taken into custody after he was found guilty on the racketeering conspiracy charge and now is being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a block from the courthouse.

Zagel said Thursday that he would consider a defense request to free Doyle on bond pending sentencing, but not until after the jury reaches its decision on whether Calabrese was responsible for murder.

Prosecutors say the husky, broad-shouldered Doyle was a collector for Calabrese's loan sharking business while also working as a police officer. The government also has videotapes of Doyle visiting Calabrese in prison and discussing what prosecutors describe as a mob murder investigation.

Zagel said Wednesday he thought the deliberations might go on for a long time, but on Thursday indicated he was as much in the dark as anyone. He said the jurors have sent no signal to him on how they are progressing. "When the jury hasn't said anything that could mean in the next 10 minutes or the next 10 days," Zagel said.

Thanks to Mike Robinson

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Delay in Jury Delibertations Should Be Minimal Say Legal Experts

A defense attorney at Chicago's biggest mob trial in years said Friday he is unhappy about a delay in jury deliberations, but experts suggested its impact on the case is likely to be minimal.

Professor James B. Jacobs of New York University School of Law said in a telephone interview that "trial judges have a great deal of leeway in managing their juries and granting delays and adjournments."

"Sometimes a juror gets sick and they suspend jury deliberations," he said. "I can say for sure that it's not automatically impermissible. Does it raise an issue in the event that the defendants are convicted? Sure."

He said defense attorneys might be able to argue the delay prejudiced jurors "because it broke the flow of the discussions or increased the risk the jurors might discuss the case" with outsiders. "But I think the presumption is that the management of the trial is properly up to the trial judge," he added.

Professor John R. Kroger of Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who as a federal prosecutor handled organized crime cases, said trial adjournments are common enough but "it's a little unusual for jury deliberations to be adjourned."

Some judges who must leave during jury deliberations arrange for another judge in the same courthouse to handle any matters that arise.

"I don't know why the judge chose not to go that route here," Kroger said. But he suggested defense attorneys' protests might yield little.

"I doubt there's any real appellate issue there as long as the judge ensures when the jury returns that they haven't been discussing the case during the adjournment and that they haven't been following media reports," he said. "In that case there should be no problem with them returning after a week off."

Lombardo and three co-defendants could face life sentences if jurors find them responsible for specific murders. The fifth defendant convicted, retired Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, is not accused of directly taking part in any of the murders.

If the jurors do not find the four defendants responsible for specific murders, they still face 20-year maximum sentences on for racketeering and some who were convicted of other offenses such as obstruction of justice, tax fraud and gambling could be subject to more time.

Thanks to Mike Robinson

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It Can't Be Whitey

If that's Whitey Bulger, I'll eat my scally cap.

Our favorite fugitive serial-killer-cum-FBI-informant, Whitey - Jimmy, to you - has been on the lam for 12 years, and it has become an article of faith that every couple of years the FBI trots out somebody saying they almost caught their former stool pigeon.

The latest story is great stuff altogether because it comes with video.

Better yet, it comes with all sorts of undeniable plausibilities.

Can't be Whitey. Too much hair. And Whitey's too vain to put on all that weight.

Ah, but isn't that a perfect disguise?

Can't be Whitey. He wouldn't go to Sicily because his erstwhile criminal associates in the Mafia would find and kill him.

Ah, but isn't that just what our Jimmy, who spent all those years in Alcatraz studying counterintelligence, would do? Hide among the enemy and they won't look for you.

The latest installment of "Is That Whitey?" has provoked the wrong question. The real question is, "Is That Cathy?"

Cathy Greig, Whitey's moll, would be 56. The woman in the pictures looks a lot older than that. Whitey spent his entire life with women who looked like his daughters, and now we're supposed to believe he's spending the winter of his years with someone who looks like Barbara Bush? That doesn't sound like our Jimmy. Besides, Cathy had a ton of plastic surgery before she and Whitey hit the road. Guess who paid for it?

As for Whitey fearing La Cosa Nostra, his long, eventually obvious association with the FBI suggests he did not consider his LCN goombahs to be the brightest bulbs. Whitey hung around for seven years after the Globe's Spotlight Team exposed him as a rat for the FBI, so he had concluded that the local franchise of the LCN was either too stupid or too incompetent to kill him.

If they couldn't or wouldn't kill him in Quincy, why would he fear them in Sicily, where the dons have a lot more to worry about than exacting revenge against some low-rent Irish gangster who gave up Larry Baoine's barbooth game in Lowell? The Mafia hasn't been able to kill even a fraction of its own members who have violated the code of omerta, which translates from the Italian to "I ain't doin' time."

Still, if it was Whitey, you've got to appreciate his sense of irony in selecting Taormina as the place for him and Cathy to dress up and play Ozzie and Harriet on vacation.

Taormina was the name of the restaurant in New York's Little Italy where the Teflon Don, John Gotti, used to hang out. The payphone at Taormina had a sign that said "WARNING - THIS PHONE IS BUGGED."

Who needs bugs when you've got rats? Whitey always loved sticking it to the Italians.

Pat Nee and Howie Winter, who besides being retired gangsters are standup guys, told the Globe's Shelley Murphy they're convinced the fellow in the photos is not Whitey.

Chip Fleming, who used to work intelligence for the Boston police, and who knew Whitey as well as anyone, doesn't think it was, either.

That's good enough for me. But there are state cops and DEA agents, who really want to catch this guy, who think it is.

This whole episode shows just how much of a secular society we have become. It used to be, every few years, some peasant in some Third World hamlet would see an apparition of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Now we have Whitey sightings every few years. But - did you notice? - none of the Whitey sightings are in places you'd never want to go.

Jimmy, if you're reading this online somewhere, take some friendly advice: Head for Montenegro. The wine is cheap, the beaches are spectacular, you can buy the local cops with a case of beer, and, trust me, no one will come looking for you, because the airport at Podgorica is a dump.

Thanks to Kevin Cullen

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