He is the money man behind the world's richest drug dealer, according to U.S. drug investigators.
Felix "Lic Vicc" Beltran was indicted in Chicago in 2015 on allegations he was chief financial officer for the notorious Sinaloa Cartel and its feared leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Even as El Chapo was arrested and continues to await trial in New York City, Felix Beltran had been a fugitive from justice in the Chicago case.
Until now.
The I-Team has learned that Beltran was arrested last Thursday in suburban Mexico City. 30 anti-organized crime agents raided a 9th floor apartment in the tony Santa Fe district southwest of downtown Mexico City where they say the Sinaloa CFO was hiding out.
Beltran is the son of Victor Manuel Félix Félix, "El Señor," who served as Chapo's chief financial officer and consiglieri until his detainment in 2011. According to authorities, "El Vic" served as his father's successor, handling most of the cartel's finances. Police say he was also in charge of the cartel's money laundering operation, and supervised the cartel's heroin production and export into the United States. Some reports have described him as El Chapo's "consigliere," the top advisor to a crime boss-usually associated with the Mafia.
As the I-Team reported in 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department described Félix Beltrán as "a high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel trafficker" and the newly installed head of the lucrative Mexico-to-Chicago trafficking operation. That same year, federal prosecutors in Chicago charged him with drug trafficking and money laundering, charges from which he remained a fugitive until his apprehension.
Authorities suspect that Beltran took over as leader of the cartel's Chicago distribution hub after the arrests of Pedro and Margarito Flores, twin brothers from Chicago who helped to bring down El Chapo himself.
Despite cutting off Sinaloa's head with the arrest of El Chapo, his cartel continues to reap major profits from exporting narcotics to Chicago investigators have said.
Federal prosecutors in Chicago declined to say whether they would seek Beltran's immediate extradition. There was a Chicago court filing in his case on Monday but it was ordered seal by Judge Ruben Castillo.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Ross Weidner.
Wednesday, November 08, 2017
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
Did Al Capone use the Hammond Distillery to Super Charge His Empire During Prohibition?
When the nation went dry, the Hammond Distillery went belly up. But is there truth to the rumors that gangster Al Capone moved the distillery’s product across the state line to help fuel his organized crime empire?
Rich Barnes, former president of the Hammond Historical Society, said he heard Capone purchased the distillery’s existing inventory when Prohibition began and sneaked it across the state line.
Before Prohibition killed the Hammond Distillery, it was arguably the second largest in Indiana, cranking out 25,000 to perhaps 50,000 gallons of alcoholic beverages daily.
The distillery was such a big operation in Hammond that its owner, John E. Fitzgerald, had a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, allowing the distillery to make large grain purchases to fuel production, Barnes said.
The early days
The Hammond Distillery was on the southeast corner of Calumet Avenue and 150th street, just north of the Grand Calumet River. It began operations in December 1901, according to Barnes.
In The Lake County Times’ first issue, on June 18, 1906, the Hammond Distillery said it had a capacity of 25,000 gallons daily, offering Hammond Bourbon, Hammond Sourmash, Hammond Rye Malt Gin, Hammond Dry Gin, Cologne Spirits and Refined Alcohol.
In 1909, Fitzgerald built a $50,000 plant that would eliminate the need to keep cattle at the distillery to consume the byproduct. Instead, the new building would have enormous evaporates that, it was said, would use 700 to 800 tons of copper. That would dry the slop so it could be shipped to farms for cattle feed.
On Dec. 16 1911, the distillery paid $40,742 in excise taxes to the federal government for a record-breaking shipment of whiskey, taxed at $1.10 per gallon. “Three revenue days like today would pay the cost of building the splendid Hammond federal building,” The Times reported that day.
Drying up
The push for Prohibition began before the Civil War, but accelerated in the progressive era, fueled by the push for women’s suffrage.
Jason Lantzer, assistant director of the University Honors Program at Butler University in Indianapolis, is considered one of the state’s top experts on the alcoholic beverage industry. “The temperance pledge card, there were several of those large national campaigns starting before the Civil War that (would) sweep the country,” Lantzer said. But a card in the wallet won't protect you from lure of saloons, the thinking at the time went, so Prohibition was needed to enforce abstinence.
“Until we remove the temptation, good people are going to (be) hurt by Demon Rum, and King Alcohol and John Barleycorn and all the other wonderful names they had for alcohol,” Lantzer said.
Finally, in 1917, the reformers succeeded in Indiana. “Indiana goes dry ahead of the nation, so we actually enact Prohibition in April 1917, giving brewers, distillers, saloons, everybody a year before they have to close down,” Lantzer said.
“We are not the only country to do that. Just about every nation has some sort of restriction on alcohol, and the rational is twofold — one is on the battleground that soldiers are not drunk, and the other is that grain can be better used for foodstuffs. So there is a definite slowing down on the national level,” Lantzer said.
Business shifts
The Hammond Distillery was hit hard by Prohibition, although World War I kept it in business. It got a government contract to produce alcohol for use in making smokeless gunpowder.
On Dec. 27, 1917, Peter W. Meyn, president of the Lake County Savings & Trust Co., bought the distillery for $65,500 “as an investment to locate a new industry,” The Lake County Times reported. Before Prohibition, the plant was worth five times that price.
Former saloons, a majority owned by breweries by the time Prohibition is passed, become ice cream parlors, selling ice cream and soft drinks, Lantzer said.
A lot of the breweries switched over to other products, whether near beer, which has such a low alcohol content that it didn’t violate Prohibition laws, or medicinal alcohol, or milk and other nonalcoholic beverages. “A lot of the breweries own their own canning and bottling infrastructure, so they switch over to canning and bottling, or at least try to,” Lantzer said.
Organized crime
Barnes said he heard that “Scarface” Al Capone moved alcohol across the state line to fuel his criminal empire. That has Lantzer intrigued.
“There’s this mythology that organized crime in the greater Chicago area, in Northwest Indiana, had to all been linked to Capone,” Lantzer said. “And there’s enough truth to that in that you do have definite Capone-owned or -operated outfits and purchases of different things, and it became very easy to mythologize that that was also by Capone. Whether or not we ever will be able figure out it was or not. But if had to do with organized crime it must have been linked to Al Capone.”
Here’s how it works: “This building was around in the 1920s, so it must have been used by Capone, or there are these stories that they were used by organized crime. Whether that actually happened, I don’t know, but that’s what I’ve been told, or that my uncle’s cousin told him that Capone came here on vacation or something,” Lantzer said of the mythology
Lantzer has heard the rumors, too.
“There’s a story that Capone owned or ran bootleg liquor out of the Paramount Theater in Hammond. Whether or not that’s true, I have no idea.”
May 8, 1929, brought the Capone empire into Hammond if it wasn't there already. That’s when the bodies of three gangsters were found in what is now Douglas Park. Two of them, Giovanni Scalise and Alberto Anselmi, had been implicated in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Right across the state line, in Calumet City, known then as West Hammond, the Capone gang or his organization owned several establishments.
Bootleggers
Could the Hammond Distillery have been in clandestine use during Prohibition? It’s feasible, Lantzer said.
Unless the distilling apparatus was scrapped, it would be easy to continue production, Lantzer said. “So if you’re Capone, you don’t have to bring all that malt in from, say, Canada, and you definitely don’t have to rely on people who were sort of figuring it out on their own, a sort of bathtub gin and moonshine and whatnot.”
What the Hammond Distillery had that other would-be producers didn’t was the know-how to make good alcoholic beverages. “The problem wasn’t the availability of things. If you’ve got corn, yeast and some sugar and can fashion a still, you can make yourself some alcohol. The problem was whether it would be good. Or whether you would kill your customers, because that doesn’t really breed a lot of confidence and repeat confidence when it gets around that Joe down the street bought from you and he’s dead now because he drank what you made,” Lantzer said.
Former alcoholic beverage sites were a target of frequent federal, state and local enforcement agencies. “They knew where those were. So it’s not uncommon for those places to get visited.”
“Maybe it’s fun to attach it to Capone, but maybe it’s a way to say that wasn’t really us, that was an outside element. I think that is something for the 1920s that we need more study on," Lantzer said.
Attacks at the distillery
The distillery saw repeated attacks.
In 1919, The Lake County Times reported, 10 barrels were stolen. In 1921, “whiskey bandits” stole 2,000 gallons after attacking the guards. In 1922, a barrel of whiskey was found in the gasoline tank of a new Auburn Six automobile at the distillery. Thirty bandits cleaned out the distillery in September 1923, and there had been other thefts earlier that year.
Prohibition agent Robert Anderson was shot to death at the Hammond Distillery on April 16, 1923. He had been stationed there less than a year. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a page dedicated to him on its website.
On Jan. 28, 1924, The Lake County Times published a banner headline, “Rob Hammond Distillery As Guard Gets Drunk.” Twenty armed bandits stole thousands of dollars worth of whiskey before the Prohibition agents could move it to another location.
After Prohibition
In 1933, Prohibition was repealed. The distillery was incorporated in December 1933 with 100,000 shares of stock to be listed at $10 apiece on the Chicago Board of Trade. The plan was to resume distiling operations at the building then occupied by Nowak Milling Corp., with Nowak moving its feed mill to another site.
In March 1934, the distillery was delisted from the Chicago Board of Trade, and plans were made to seek private financing.
On Aug. 15, 1934, the plug was finally pulled on the plan to restart the distillery.
When the plan to restart the distillery was announced, whisky was selling at $1.25 to $1.75 a gallon. A year later, the price had dropped to 40 cents as additional capacity came on line.
Nowak operated at the site until February 1938, when owner Maxwell M. Nowak told The Times he couldn’t afford to pay high taxes and still expect to make a profit.
Thanks to Doug Ross.
Rich Barnes, former president of the Hammond Historical Society, said he heard Capone purchased the distillery’s existing inventory when Prohibition began and sneaked it across the state line.
Before Prohibition killed the Hammond Distillery, it was arguably the second largest in Indiana, cranking out 25,000 to perhaps 50,000 gallons of alcoholic beverages daily.
The distillery was such a big operation in Hammond that its owner, John E. Fitzgerald, had a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, allowing the distillery to make large grain purchases to fuel production, Barnes said.
The early days
The Hammond Distillery was on the southeast corner of Calumet Avenue and 150th street, just north of the Grand Calumet River. It began operations in December 1901, according to Barnes.
In The Lake County Times’ first issue, on June 18, 1906, the Hammond Distillery said it had a capacity of 25,000 gallons daily, offering Hammond Bourbon, Hammond Sourmash, Hammond Rye Malt Gin, Hammond Dry Gin, Cologne Spirits and Refined Alcohol.
In 1909, Fitzgerald built a $50,000 plant that would eliminate the need to keep cattle at the distillery to consume the byproduct. Instead, the new building would have enormous evaporates that, it was said, would use 700 to 800 tons of copper. That would dry the slop so it could be shipped to farms for cattle feed.
On Dec. 16 1911, the distillery paid $40,742 in excise taxes to the federal government for a record-breaking shipment of whiskey, taxed at $1.10 per gallon. “Three revenue days like today would pay the cost of building the splendid Hammond federal building,” The Times reported that day.
Drying up
The push for Prohibition began before the Civil War, but accelerated in the progressive era, fueled by the push for women’s suffrage.
Jason Lantzer, assistant director of the University Honors Program at Butler University in Indianapolis, is considered one of the state’s top experts on the alcoholic beverage industry. “The temperance pledge card, there were several of those large national campaigns starting before the Civil War that (would) sweep the country,” Lantzer said. But a card in the wallet won't protect you from lure of saloons, the thinking at the time went, so Prohibition was needed to enforce abstinence.
“Until we remove the temptation, good people are going to (be) hurt by Demon Rum, and King Alcohol and John Barleycorn and all the other wonderful names they had for alcohol,” Lantzer said.
Finally, in 1917, the reformers succeeded in Indiana. “Indiana goes dry ahead of the nation, so we actually enact Prohibition in April 1917, giving brewers, distillers, saloons, everybody a year before they have to close down,” Lantzer said.
“We are not the only country to do that. Just about every nation has some sort of restriction on alcohol, and the rational is twofold — one is on the battleground that soldiers are not drunk, and the other is that grain can be better used for foodstuffs. So there is a definite slowing down on the national level,” Lantzer said.
Business shifts
The Hammond Distillery was hit hard by Prohibition, although World War I kept it in business. It got a government contract to produce alcohol for use in making smokeless gunpowder.
On Dec. 27, 1917, Peter W. Meyn, president of the Lake County Savings & Trust Co., bought the distillery for $65,500 “as an investment to locate a new industry,” The Lake County Times reported. Before Prohibition, the plant was worth five times that price.
Former saloons, a majority owned by breweries by the time Prohibition is passed, become ice cream parlors, selling ice cream and soft drinks, Lantzer said.
A lot of the breweries switched over to other products, whether near beer, which has such a low alcohol content that it didn’t violate Prohibition laws, or medicinal alcohol, or milk and other nonalcoholic beverages. “A lot of the breweries own their own canning and bottling infrastructure, so they switch over to canning and bottling, or at least try to,” Lantzer said.
Organized crime
Barnes said he heard that “Scarface” Al Capone moved alcohol across the state line to fuel his criminal empire. That has Lantzer intrigued.
“There’s this mythology that organized crime in the greater Chicago area, in Northwest Indiana, had to all been linked to Capone,” Lantzer said. “And there’s enough truth to that in that you do have definite Capone-owned or -operated outfits and purchases of different things, and it became very easy to mythologize that that was also by Capone. Whether or not we ever will be able figure out it was or not. But if had to do with organized crime it must have been linked to Al Capone.”
Here’s how it works: “This building was around in the 1920s, so it must have been used by Capone, or there are these stories that they were used by organized crime. Whether that actually happened, I don’t know, but that’s what I’ve been told, or that my uncle’s cousin told him that Capone came here on vacation or something,” Lantzer said of the mythology
Lantzer has heard the rumors, too.
“There’s a story that Capone owned or ran bootleg liquor out of the Paramount Theater in Hammond. Whether or not that’s true, I have no idea.”
May 8, 1929, brought the Capone empire into Hammond if it wasn't there already. That’s when the bodies of three gangsters were found in what is now Douglas Park. Two of them, Giovanni Scalise and Alberto Anselmi, had been implicated in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Right across the state line, in Calumet City, known then as West Hammond, the Capone gang or his organization owned several establishments.
Bootleggers
Could the Hammond Distillery have been in clandestine use during Prohibition? It’s feasible, Lantzer said.
Unless the distilling apparatus was scrapped, it would be easy to continue production, Lantzer said. “So if you’re Capone, you don’t have to bring all that malt in from, say, Canada, and you definitely don’t have to rely on people who were sort of figuring it out on their own, a sort of bathtub gin and moonshine and whatnot.”
What the Hammond Distillery had that other would-be producers didn’t was the know-how to make good alcoholic beverages. “The problem wasn’t the availability of things. If you’ve got corn, yeast and some sugar and can fashion a still, you can make yourself some alcohol. The problem was whether it would be good. Or whether you would kill your customers, because that doesn’t really breed a lot of confidence and repeat confidence when it gets around that Joe down the street bought from you and he’s dead now because he drank what you made,” Lantzer said.
Former alcoholic beverage sites were a target of frequent federal, state and local enforcement agencies. “They knew where those were. So it’s not uncommon for those places to get visited.”
“Maybe it’s fun to attach it to Capone, but maybe it’s a way to say that wasn’t really us, that was an outside element. I think that is something for the 1920s that we need more study on," Lantzer said.
Attacks at the distillery
The distillery saw repeated attacks.
In 1919, The Lake County Times reported, 10 barrels were stolen. In 1921, “whiskey bandits” stole 2,000 gallons after attacking the guards. In 1922, a barrel of whiskey was found in the gasoline tank of a new Auburn Six automobile at the distillery. Thirty bandits cleaned out the distillery in September 1923, and there had been other thefts earlier that year.
Prohibition agent Robert Anderson was shot to death at the Hammond Distillery on April 16, 1923. He had been stationed there less than a year. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a page dedicated to him on its website.
On Jan. 28, 1924, The Lake County Times published a banner headline, “Rob Hammond Distillery As Guard Gets Drunk.” Twenty armed bandits stole thousands of dollars worth of whiskey before the Prohibition agents could move it to another location.
After Prohibition
In 1933, Prohibition was repealed. The distillery was incorporated in December 1933 with 100,000 shares of stock to be listed at $10 apiece on the Chicago Board of Trade. The plan was to resume distiling operations at the building then occupied by Nowak Milling Corp., with Nowak moving its feed mill to another site.
In March 1934, the distillery was delisted from the Chicago Board of Trade, and plans were made to seek private financing.
On Aug. 15, 1934, the plug was finally pulled on the plan to restart the distillery.
When the plan to restart the distillery was announced, whisky was selling at $1.25 to $1.75 a gallon. A year later, the price had dropped to 40 cents as additional capacity came on line.
Nowak operated at the site until February 1938, when owner Maxwell M. Nowak told The Times he couldn’t afford to pay high taxes and still expect to make a profit.
Thanks to Doug Ross.
Author of "John F. Kennedy Assassination: A Mafia Conspiracy" Discusses His Theory
Jim Gatewood, author of "John F. Kennedy Assassination a Mafia Conspiracy," as well as several other books, was the guest speaker for the Kilgore Rotary Club on Wednesday.
Gatewood spoke about the Nov. 22, 1963
, assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, and discussed Mafia history and other facts which cement his theory that the Mafia was behind the assassination, in conjunction with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The Dallas historian gave historical facts about Mafia activity in Dallas, including details on the life of Benny Binion, now famous for opening the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas and a noted Dallas businessman around the time of the Depression.
Gatewood wove a tale which started back around the time of the Depression, and the path involved noted mobsters from New York, Dallas, Chicago and several other eastern U.S. cities, along with Texas historical figures such as Lone Wolf Gonzales and Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who helped gun down Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana.
He tied all of that history together with a story about Oswald and his involvement in the Mafia and his association with Cuban Freedom Fighters who were mad because JFK had supposedly issued an order to have Fidel Castro killed.
According to Gatewood, Oswald waited on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository with a look-alike, a Cuban Freedom Fighter who would take the shot if Oswald would not. There were also Cuban Freedom Fighters along the motorcade route to signal the pair when it was time to be ready to fire.
Gatewood said law enforcement in Dallas County knew about an assassination attempt and had their own shooter on the top of the County Records Building to look for snipers. That shooter fired on Oswald's gun after two shots had been fired at Kennedy, causing Oswald's third shot to hit the curb and ricochet into the guard rail.
Oswald hit the president and Texas Gov. John Connally with his first two shots and, according to Gatewood, was firing at Jackie Kennedy with the third shot to make an impact on the shooting that would earn him kudos with the mob.
Oswald missed his ride in a car to the Highland Park Airport, but his look-alike was able to get on the plane.
Jack Ruby, a noted mob figure in Dallas, told Oswald if he missed his plane he should meet him at his apartment, which was near the rooming house where Oswald lived. But, before he could get there, he met Dallas police officer J.D. Tippett and shot him. Then, Oswald was captured at the Texas Theater and Ruby was sent by mobsters to gun him down on Sunday morning, which was seen by millions on national television.
Ruby remained quiet, pleaded guilty to murder of Oswald and died of cancer in prison.
Gatewood offered to discuss his theory with anyone who wanted, and he said he has all of the documentation anyone would want to back up his theory.
Thanks to Greg Collins in 2009.
Gatewood spoke about the Nov. 22, 1963
, assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, and discussed Mafia history and other facts which cement his theory that the Mafia was behind the assassination, in conjunction with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.The Dallas historian gave historical facts about Mafia activity in Dallas, including details on the life of Benny Binion, now famous for opening the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas and a noted Dallas businessman around the time of the Depression.
Gatewood wove a tale which started back around the time of the Depression, and the path involved noted mobsters from New York, Dallas, Chicago and several other eastern U.S. cities, along with Texas historical figures such as Lone Wolf Gonzales and Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who helped gun down Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana.
He tied all of that history together with a story about Oswald and his involvement in the Mafia and his association with Cuban Freedom Fighters who were mad because JFK had supposedly issued an order to have Fidel Castro killed.
According to Gatewood, Oswald waited on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository with a look-alike, a Cuban Freedom Fighter who would take the shot if Oswald would not. There were also Cuban Freedom Fighters along the motorcade route to signal the pair when it was time to be ready to fire.
Gatewood said law enforcement in Dallas County knew about an assassination attempt and had their own shooter on the top of the County Records Building to look for snipers. That shooter fired on Oswald's gun after two shots had been fired at Kennedy, causing Oswald's third shot to hit the curb and ricochet into the guard rail.
Oswald hit the president and Texas Gov. John Connally with his first two shots and, according to Gatewood, was firing at Jackie Kennedy with the third shot to make an impact on the shooting that would earn him kudos with the mob.
Oswald missed his ride in a car to the Highland Park Airport, but his look-alike was able to get on the plane.
Jack Ruby, a noted mob figure in Dallas, told Oswald if he missed his plane he should meet him at his apartment, which was near the rooming house where Oswald lived. But, before he could get there, he met Dallas police officer J.D. Tippett and shot him. Then, Oswald was captured at the Texas Theater and Ruby was sent by mobsters to gun him down on Sunday morning, which was seen by millions on national television.
Ruby remained quiet, pleaded guilty to murder of Oswald and died of cancer in prison.
Gatewood offered to discuss his theory with anyone who wanted, and he said he has all of the documentation anyone would want to back up his theory.
Thanks to Greg Collins in 2009.
Friday, October 20, 2017
New Family Secrets Mob Bus Tour Hosted by @FrankCalabres15 Inflames Victims Families
A century-old code of silence practiced by the Chicago Outfit is being broken several days a week on a bus tour by a former gangster who is taking his personal mob knowledge to the streets.
The "Family Secrets Tour," hosted by Frank Calabrese Jr., is a two-hour guided expedition to mob murder sites around Chicago. "Frank Jr. takes you to the actual crime scenes he experienced firsthand while working as a member of his father's Chinatown crew," states a description of the tour.
Calabrese's new business, at $40.00 per person, began in early October and will "teach you what it was like to think, look, and act like a mobster and how to blend in with the mean streets of Chicago."
"Family Secrets" was the name of an FBI investigation into mob murders and rackets that began in 1998 when Calabrese Jr. wrote a letter to authorities offering to help prosecute his father. Frank "the Breeze" Calabrese was an Outfit boss and killer who controlled his mob crew-and his own family-with an iron fist.
14 mob bosses and associates ended up charged in the landmark case and Calabrese Jr. was a main witness. When the investigation and court cases were finished in 2007, federal investigators had solved 18 gangland murders dating back to 1970.
Now, ten years later, the reformed hoodlum is leading a new bus tour that takes patrons to locations where wayward mobsters were rubbed out. Calabrese Jr. gives his account of growing up in the mob and describes the hits, runs and errors of his family's murderous rackets.
"Don't do this to us. We've suffered enough" said Ellen Ortiz, whose husband Richard was murdered by Frank Calabrese Sr. in 1983. The widow Ortiz, 75, says junior's bus tour is "disgraceful."
Richard Ortiz was a Cicero bar owner whom Calabrese Sr. believed to be dealing drugs and floating juice loans without the blessing of the mob. The Outfit boss blasted Ortiz several times with a shotgun, obliterating his face. Now the thought of Calabrese Sr.'s son leading a tour to mark that murder and others grates on Ellen Ortiz. "It's not right, it's not right" she told the I-Team.
Her son, 12 years old at the time his dad was killed, now has a more direct observation of Calabrese's Family Secrets Tour. "He was the rat so I think the rat should just crawl back in his hole" said Tony Ortiz, now 46.
"The tour doesn't focus on murders -- it focuses on the evolution of the Chicago mob" Calabrese Jr. said in an interview with the ABC7 I-Team. He maintains the tours are therapeutic for him. "I haven't really thought deeply why the exact reason is I'm doing this. For a few reasons. I mean I want to make money too just like anybody else. I want to do good."
The son-of-a-mob-boss, who wrote a 2011 book about his experiences as well, said he is not trying to glorify Outfit life. "They have that right to say 'was he making money, you know?' I'm trying to take something that was bad and make it good for more than one reason" Calabrese Jr. said.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Christine Tressel.
The "Family Secrets Tour," hosted by Frank Calabrese Jr., is a two-hour guided expedition to mob murder sites around Chicago. "Frank Jr. takes you to the actual crime scenes he experienced firsthand while working as a member of his father's Chinatown crew," states a description of the tour.
Calabrese's new business, at $40.00 per person, began in early October and will "teach you what it was like to think, look, and act like a mobster and how to blend in with the mean streets of Chicago."
"Family Secrets" was the name of an FBI investigation into mob murders and rackets that began in 1998 when Calabrese Jr. wrote a letter to authorities offering to help prosecute his father. Frank "the Breeze" Calabrese was an Outfit boss and killer who controlled his mob crew-and his own family-with an iron fist.
14 mob bosses and associates ended up charged in the landmark case and Calabrese Jr. was a main witness. When the investigation and court cases were finished in 2007, federal investigators had solved 18 gangland murders dating back to 1970.
Now, ten years later, the reformed hoodlum is leading a new bus tour that takes patrons to locations where wayward mobsters were rubbed out. Calabrese Jr. gives his account of growing up in the mob and describes the hits, runs and errors of his family's murderous rackets.
"Don't do this to us. We've suffered enough" said Ellen Ortiz, whose husband Richard was murdered by Frank Calabrese Sr. in 1983. The widow Ortiz, 75, says junior's bus tour is "disgraceful."
Richard Ortiz was a Cicero bar owner whom Calabrese Sr. believed to be dealing drugs and floating juice loans without the blessing of the mob. The Outfit boss blasted Ortiz several times with a shotgun, obliterating his face. Now the thought of Calabrese Sr.'s son leading a tour to mark that murder and others grates on Ellen Ortiz. "It's not right, it's not right" she told the I-Team.
Her son, 12 years old at the time his dad was killed, now has a more direct observation of Calabrese's Family Secrets Tour. "He was the rat so I think the rat should just crawl back in his hole" said Tony Ortiz, now 46.
"The tour doesn't focus on murders -- it focuses on the evolution of the Chicago mob" Calabrese Jr. said in an interview with the ABC7 I-Team. He maintains the tours are therapeutic for him. "I haven't really thought deeply why the exact reason is I'm doing this. For a few reasons. I mean I want to make money too just like anybody else. I want to do good."
The son-of-a-mob-boss, who wrote a 2011 book about his experiences as well, said he is not trying to glorify Outfit life. "They have that right to say 'was he making money, you know?' I'm trying to take something that was bad and make it good for more than one reason" Calabrese Jr. said.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Christine Tressel.
Reports Claim Mexican Drug Cartels Sent an Illegal Immigrant to Start #CaliforniaFires
Acting ICE Director Tom Homan has announced that a suspected northern California arsonist, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, is a Mexican national who is in the United States illegally. This supports legal marijuana industry leaders’ fears that the Mexican drug cartels are behind the area’s recent deadly wildfires.
Earlier, Breitbart reported that Gonzalez is an illegal alien who has twice been deported back to Mexico. Several days ago, the news broke that ICE had formally issued a detainer for Gonzalez.
Authorities initially arrested Gonzalez after they observed him walking out of a park that had just been set ablaze. Gonzalez claimed he had started the fire because he was cold. It was 78 degrees outside at the time.
On October 14th, GotNews exclusively reported that both senior DHS officials and legal marijuana industry leaders suspected cartel involvement after observing the disproportionate impact the wildfires were having on the state’s legal marijuana crops.
Snopes subsequently set out to debunk GotNews’ reporting, labeling it “unproven.” Its researchers wrote “According to statistics published by the California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, arson (the cause claimed by Got News) was responsible for just 0.37 percent of the 291,282 acres of land burned by wildfires in the state in 2015 and 7.8 percent of fires overall.” Snopes neglected to mention that the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office arrested a suspected arsonist on October 15th.
Similarly, High Times rebuked GotNews’ original story as “actual fake news,” and attacked GotNews’ sources.
Full Details with links at GotNews.
Earlier, Breitbart reported that Gonzalez is an illegal alien who has twice been deported back to Mexico. Several days ago, the news broke that ICE had formally issued a detainer for Gonzalez.
Authorities initially arrested Gonzalez after they observed him walking out of a park that had just been set ablaze. Gonzalez claimed he had started the fire because he was cold. It was 78 degrees outside at the time.
On October 14th, GotNews exclusively reported that both senior DHS officials and legal marijuana industry leaders suspected cartel involvement after observing the disproportionate impact the wildfires were having on the state’s legal marijuana crops.
Snopes subsequently set out to debunk GotNews’ reporting, labeling it “unproven.” Its researchers wrote “According to statistics published by the California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, arson (the cause claimed by Got News) was responsible for just 0.37 percent of the 291,282 acres of land burned by wildfires in the state in 2015 and 7.8 percent of fires overall.” Snopes neglected to mention that the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office arrested a suspected arsonist on October 15th.
Similarly, High Times rebuked GotNews’ original story as “actual fake news,” and attacked GotNews’ sources.
Full Details with links at GotNews.
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