After Two Plus Months of Testimony, Jury Begins Deliberations Today

Deliberations are set to get under way Tuesday morning in the Family Secrets trial, as jurors begin to sift through more than two months of testimony on whether the five defendants played roles in a conspiracy to further the goals of the Chicago Outfit.

Before leaving the courtroom in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse last week for the Labor Day weekend, jurors determined they would work from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily as they try to reach a verdict.

Federal prosecutors contend that reputed Outfit figures James Marcello, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr. and Paul "the Indian" Schiro as well as former Chicago Police Officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle should be convicted in a racketeering conspiracy spanning four decades.

All are charged in Count 1, the racketeering conspiracy charge, which takes up 18 pages of the indictment and alleges that an enterprise known as the Outfit collected street tax, operated illegal gambling businesses, made juice loans, obstructed justice and protected itself with violence and murder.

During the trial, Marcello and Lombardo were accused of being mob bosses, while Calabrese, accused in 13 of the 18 slayings in the case, was alleged to have been a leader of the mob's 26th Street, or Chinatown, crew.

Much of the case could depend on how jurors view the testimony of the government's key witness, Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, whose accusations implicated each defendant. Prosecutors urged jurors to believe the account of a man they described as an Outfit soldier who admitted to taking part in 14 murders.

Defense lawyers urged the panel to reject Nicholas Calabrese's testimony, calling him a liar and a killer who invented information against their clients in a bid to one day win his freedom. Much of his testimony detailed murders he allegedly committed with his brother.

Jurors also heard hours of secretly made recordings of four of the five defendants allegedly discussing Outfit business.

A pool of 17 jurors -- nine women and eight men -- heard the closing arguments last week.. But two of them are expected to be dismissed after having given the court a note indicating they had made up their minds already about the case, a no-no for jurors.

U.S. District Judge James Zagel ordered that the identities of the jurors be kept secret even from the lawyers and prosecutors, who know them only by number. Court officials have not yet disclosed which 12 jurors will be involved in the deliberations and which are alternates.

If jurors convict the men of racketeering conspiracy, their deliberations would not be over. At that point, lawyers would make another round of arguments, and the jury would then decide which defendant can be held accountable for which murder in the case.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Rat Pack' Party Girl Will Confront Former Cop/Mafia Hit Man in Court

Janie McCormick, of Vadnais Heights, will finally get the chance to throw the book at the former New York hero cop turned Mafia hit man who allegedly bamboozled her out of $45,000 of her life savings.

The book in this case is "Breaking My Silence,'' the title of McCormick's soon to be self-published memoir of her life as a childhood sex abuse victim and former Las Vegas "Rat Pack'' party girl during the 1960s and early '70s. The tale was supposed to first be a script that convicted rogue cop Louis Eppolito reportedly pledged to write himself and turn into a movie.

McCormick, whose encounter with the corrupt former cop before his federal racketeering trial was the subject of a 2005 column, was informed last week by federal authorities that they want her to testify against Eppolito at his federal tax-evasion trial.

The timing couldn't be better for McCormick. The book should be out shortly after the trial starts Sept. 24. "I want to look at that rat fink face to face,'' says McCormick, now a 66-year-old great-grandmother living the suburban life. "If I have the book in my hands, I just might throw it at him."

Eppolito, 57, and his former New York Police Department detective partner, Stephen Caracappa, were convicted last year of federal racketeering conspiracy charges for setting up or carrying out at least eight mob-directed slayings while they wore the badge.

The charges shocked even a city long accustomed to cyclical and high-profile police corruption scandals. The two men were sentenced to life prison terms. But a judge tossed aside the convictions a month later on the grounds that the five-year statute of limitations on racketeering had expired. The two men remain in custody pending appeal.

Before the New York trial, Eppolito and his wife were indicted in Las Vegas - where the two rogue cops relocated after their retirements - on charges the couple avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in income taxes. The couple has denied wrongdoing.

The undeclared income came mostly from Eppolito's work selling movie scripts to Hollywood as well as his appearances as a character actor. Eppolito played bit roles in notable Hollywood films, including the classic mob flick "Goodfellas'' and Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway.''

Receipts of the $45,000 McCormick allegedly paid Eppolito for the busted movie deal are part of the evidence federal prosecutors are expected to present at trial.

McCormick, who borrowed against a house-cleaning service she operated in the White Bear Lake area, Dust Busters of Minnesota, was forced to declare bankruptcy and set aside her quest to tell her story. The alleged scam nearly derailed the quest and also her desire to raise awareness about prostitution and sexual exploitation.

Surprisingly, Eppolito is barely a footnote in the book, which is told in a gritty and blunt style. It's a name-dropper sure to raise eyebrows, if not some controversy.

McCormick discloses in the book how a stepfather molested her. In dialogue-rich narrative, she also chronicles how that abuse, which stretched from when she was a toddler to adolescent years, paved the road to prostitution.

That journey ultimately led her to become, as she describes it, a member of the elite "Queen Bee'' club of casino call girls working Sin City.

She was dubbed "Baby Jane'' by the hotel casino pit bosses who matched her with high rollers, and most of McCormick's clients "were show business personalities or millionaires good for the hotel business,'' she writes in the book.

She describes liaisons with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Vic Damone and comedians Joe E. Lewis and Jerry Lewis, whom she describes in the book as "one of the nicest men I ever met.''

She also relates how legendary golfer Sam Snead recruited her one time to keep rival Arnold Palmer up all night before the morning of a major Vegas tournament. Snead ended up winning it. McCormick recalls she got an expensive chinchilla jacket for her work.

She also details a traumatic abortion, an abusive "house pimp'' and shoddy silicone breast implants that led to a double mastectomy later in life.

Media communications and libel law attorney Mark Anfinson, hired by McCormick to vet the book, calls it "powerful and compelling stuff.''

"I'm very surprised that a publishing house has not picked this up,'' Anfinson said. "When you review copy for invasion-of-privacy concerns, you want to remain detached. But it was exceedingly hard to do with (the book) because it was so moving. It has a ring of authenticity as you go through it.''

McCormick hopes the book will give her some credibility as she tries to persuade legislators to enact tougher laws and enforcement directed at the demand side of the sex trade - the "johns.'' She believes, as others do, that American law enforcement has mostly given the customer a pass. She cites Sweden and Norway as countries that do a better job of going after the men who drive the trade.

She's dead right. As she writes in her book about the Rat Pack stars and other well-heeled Las Vegas clientele: "I often thought about how these men passed us working girls around like dessert trays ... I also wondered, after spending thousands of dollars on some dames, [how] these guys could go back to their wives and kids, hold up their heads, and look at themselves in the mirror.''

Thanks to Ruben Rosario

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Family Secrets Closing Argument: Required Reading on The Chicago Way

As the Family Secrets trial was put into the hands of the jury, City Hall offered up poetic symmetry in choosing a book for all Chicagoans to read as part of its One-Book-One-Chicago program:

"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, a social commentary about witch hunts and innocent people caught up by the mob.

No, not the mob on trial in Family Secrets, the other mob, the mob as in the commoners, the ignorant, uninformed, superstitious peasants easily manipulated into burning the innocent politicians -- um, ah, I meant those innocent witches -- at the stake.

If city fathers truly want something Chicago should read, how about the transcript of Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars' closing argument in the Family Secrets trial on Thursday?

It has been a trial of Outfit history, 18 unsolved murders, fear and betrayal, with hit man Nick Calabrese testifying about the murders he committed with three of the five defendants.

Think of a pitcher tossing a perfect game and you'll see Mars delivering that closing argument, throwing heat, following through with near-perfect mechanics, fitting all the defendants into the conspiracy.

Mars doesn't look like a Major League ballplayer. He's a bit below average in height, a graying guy in a gray suit, like a million other guys you see on the train. He doesn't seek publicity, and doesn't go out of his way to schmooze reporters. But he's clearly big league. And after what he accomplished, if the jury acquits any of the federal primates, we might as well change the name of this city to something more fitting, like Andriachiville or Tootsie-Town.

"Our system works only when those who should be held accountable are held accountable," Mars told the jury.

He named those charged with racketeering and murder conspiracy: Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr., James Marcello and Paul "the Indian" Schiro.

For weeks, Schiro was the scariest man in the courtroom, hardly moving an eyelid, still as a lizard, the iceman. Schiro is serving another federal prison term, having pleaded guilty for being part of the Outfit-sanctioned jewelry heist crew led by former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt.

Mars had special contempt for the fifth defendant, accused Outfit debt collector and former Chicago Police Officer Anthony "Twan" (Passafiume) Doyle.

Doyle is not accused of murdering gangsters, but of leaking police secrets about key murder evidence to his Chinatown confederate, Frank Calabrese Sr., in taped prison visits in which electric shocks, cattle prods and physical examinations for Calabrese's brother Nick were discussed. That famous tape involved Outfit code, talk of "purses," defined by the feds as evidence, and a "doctor," defined by the feds as reputed Outfit street boss Frank "Toots" Caruso, who is not charged in this case.

"And one corrupt cop who tried to help the organization and be the inside man. He knows exactly what the purse is. He knows exactly who the doctor is. ... Let's give the guy a physical, let's give him a prod," Mars mocked, reminding the jury of what Doyle said on that tape.

The others on trial put on a defense because they had no choice. But Doyle could have taken a plea deal and served five years or so. He didn't take the deal, though I presume his lawyer will still receive a nice fee and Doyle will have time to ponder what it means to be, in his words, a chumbalone.

A few days ago, Marcello's lawyer, Marc Martin, joined the other defense lawyers in ripping into Nicholas Calabrese, calling him a liar and questioning his testimony, particularly about Marcello's involvement in the sensational 1986 murders of Outfit brothers Anthony and Michael Spilotro. Nick testified that the men waiting for the Spilotros in a suburban home wore gloves. Martin argued the Spilotros would have fled after seeing one gloved hand.

"They weren't going to get out of the house no matter what they thought," said Mars, adding that Marcello and his accomplices "could have worn T-shirts that said, 'We're Here To Kill the Spilotros.' It didn't matter. They weren't getting out of there."

Marcello sat without expression, offering his profile to the jury, looking at himself on the courtroom screen. It was an FBI surveillance photo taken at a Venture parking lot, Marcello with Outfit bosses Joe Ferriola, Sam Carlisi and Rocky Infelice next to some shopping carts.

They weren't in a restaurant with checkered tablecloths. And I thought of those who say there is no Chicago Outfit; and of inside men placed in inside spots, in the police evidence storage section or as lords of the detective squads, while honest cops get passed over for promotions, or are squashed like bugs for the slightest infractions.

I'm still waiting for City Hall to choose an appropriate book for official city reading, perhaps "CAPTIVE CITY: Chicago in Chains." by Ovid DeMaris, "The Outfit" by Gus Russo or "Chicago: City on the Make" by Nelson Algren.

Or, better yet, that closing argument by Mitch Mars in a crucible of a case, in which the Chicago Way was boiled down, reduced to its base elements.

Thanks to John Kass

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