Former Head of Chicago Organized Crime Division, Now Chief of River Forest

Frank Limon may be new to River Forest, but he doesn't exactly feel like an outsider.

The way everyone pulled together during the recent flood made him feel at home almost immediately, he said after his appointment last week as the village's new police chief.

That kind of spirit fits in perfectly with his own hands-on management and community relations style developed during his 31 years as a Chicago cop, learning to look and listen as a detective, working with communities as head of the city's CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) program, and supervising as many as 600 officers. He served as a deputy chief responsible for most of the West Side and later as an assistant deputy commissioner and head of the Organized Crime Division.

But despite his numerous awards, including 10 department commendations, Limon said he is proudest of his role in helping to break up a drug ring two years ago that distributed tainted heroin that killed over 300 people (60 of them in Cook County alone) before the operation was shut down. "Based on our investigation here in Chicago, we were able to track it down to the lab in Mexico where it was being manufactured," Limon said.

He added that his experience working with multi-agency task forces should come in handy here in River Forest, "especially at a time when you have a lot of gangs being pushed out of the city. You have to make sure you have officers from different suburbs sharing information. For drug dealers and other criminals, there are no boundaries."

And because he realizes there are times when there never seem to be enough cops when you need them - even in a relatively low-crime climate like River Forest's - he'll rely heavily on the public to provide the extra eyes and ears he'll need to do his job properly.

Which is why Limon plans "face to face" meetings with as many different citizen groups as possible in the coming weeks and months.

One thing Limon said his officers and village residents will find out very quickly is that he never really stopped being a street cop.

"I never liked sitting in a chair. I like to ride out on the street. Hands on for me means going out on the street with the police officers. I need to know exactly what's going on. For me to show up on a search with the Organized Crime Unit was not unusual. Nobody was surprised to find the chief himself on the scene," he said.

"I believe police officers and their supervisors must work as a team," said the new chief, who started in law enforcement in 1977.

"If my partner at the time predicted that in 2008 I was going to retire as chief of Organized Crime and become chief of River Forest, I would have told him he was crazy," Limon said.

Thanks to Patrick Butler

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Mob Boss Dies

Frank J. Valenti, Rochester's notorious mob boss who oversaw local organized crime during its heyday of gambling parlors, prostitution and extortion, died last Saturday at age 97.

While atop Rochester's organized crime mob hierarchy in the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Valenti was so infamous that the Democrat and Chronicle ran a regular update on his doings under the heading, "Spotlight on Rochester's Gambling Czar."

Mr. Valenti had been living in a nursing facility near Houston. His death was confirmed by four people, including retired law enforcers and people close to the family, who asked not to be identified. A death certificate was filed in Texas Wednesday.

Bart Maimone, who provided fuel to Mr. Valenti's construction business in the 1960s and '70s, said he would always remember Mr. Valenti as fair and generous, despite any criminal ties he may have had.

Once, Maimone said, he was prepared to go into business with a local company with organized crime ties and Mr. Valenti urged him not to. "He never wanted me to get involved with that," said Maimone, noting that he learned this week of Mr. Valenti's death.

Gentlemanly and handsome, Mr. Valenti fit a Hollywood stereotype of a gangster who could be both diplomatic and violently tyrannical.

That Mr. Valenti lived to almost a century may come as a surprise to those who saw him in 1964 when, for court appearances, he was disheveled, haggard and claimed he suffered from heart ailments and ulcers triggered by the constant attention from law enforcement. But Mr. Valenti often seemed able to appear on death's doorstep for court appearances, only to vigorously recover for meetings with his capos.

Mr. Valenti's travels read like a mob history. In 1957, he and his brother, Constenze "Stanley" Valenti, were two of the mobsters at the infamous Apalachin conference, a Mafia summit meeting held in Apalachin, near Binghamton.

Six years later, when mob turncoat and killer Joseph Valachi helped federal authorities detail the reach of organized crime, Frank and Stanley Valenti were two of the more than 300 Mafioso whom Valachi identified as central figures.

Mr. Valenti was considered to be "the most significant person" in organized crime in Rochester, said local lawyer and former district attorney Donald Chesworth, who was involved in mob investigations when he worked with the FBI in the 1960s.

With his charm, dapper attire and swept-back white hair, Valenti always seemed the center of attention within any crowd.

Rochester resident Diane Lamanna remembers meeting Mr. Valenti at a local restaurant/bar when she was a teenager. She was waiting for a friend when she struck up a conversation with him and complained about how she never had money. "He was polite," she said. "He was a total gentleman." After he left, Lamanna found a napkin he'd left her with a tip about a horse running in a race that evening. Bet on the horse, he'd written. She paid no attention. After she told her friends about the meeting, they informed her just whom she'd been talking to. And, sure enough, they checked and the horse had won.

Born in Rochester, Mr. Valenti ascended through the organized crime ranks as would-be challengers mysteriously disappeared or were slain.

"It was an interesting time and there were a lot of murders," said Hugh Higgins, an FBI special agent in Rochester during the mob era. "But they were killing one another."

Mr. Valenti moved to Pittsburgh in 1961 — "exiled" there according to news accounts — after a conviction on a voting fraud in Rochester. There, he became a prominent figure in organized crime, before returning to Rochester in 1964 and seizing control of gambling and prostitution. But Mr. Valenti apparently avoided drug trafficking, as that criminal enterprise began to grow, Mr. Higgins said. "It's a funny kind of world, but I think Frank had some morals."

The Rochester enterprise during the late 1950s and much of the '60s was linked to the Buffalo-based Maggadino crime family.

"They broke away from the Maggadino family and they were considered, quote, unquote, a 'renegade' group as far as La Cosa Nostra goes," said Richard Endler, a retired federal prosecutor. But Mr. Valenti also had connections with the powerful New York City-based Bonanno family.

Mr. Valenti was able to use that influence to instill fear in local bookmakers who always paid a portion of their illicit earnings to Mr. Valenti and his clan, said local lawyer Robert A. Napier, whose father, the late Robert C. Napier, defended many of those same bookmakers.

Napier said his father thought Mr. Valenti was able to use "more bravado than actual muscle" because of the Bonanno connection.

Constantly under police surveillance at his Henrietta home, Mr. Valenti grew wary of the law enforcement attention and in 1970 hatched a plot to direct police attention toward others. The ploy worked. "There were a bunch of bombings," Higgins said. "We always attributed it to civil rights leftist organizations. Turned out it was the mob."

Mr. Valenti groomed and schooled some young men who would become Rochester's organized crime leaders, including Salvatore "Sammy" Gingello, arguably the region's most famous Mafia underboss. "Valenti took Sammy under his wing," said former Rochester police Officer Ralph "Butch" Bellucco, who now has a private investigation business.

Mr. Valenti's basement was the site of initiation ceremonies, in which newcomers to the crime family agreed they would never spill Mafia secrets, would break laws only with the consent of their mob leaders, and would not sleep with a comrade's girlfriend or wife.

Some of those same neophyte mobsters decided to wrest control from Mr. Valenti when they decided he was pocketing too much of the illicit gains. In 1972, one of his closest associates was fatally shotgunned.

After a federal prison stint for extortion, Mr. Valenti moved to Arizona and stayed there for years. Meanwhile, Rochester erupted into violent gang wars between rival teams that, coupled with toughened law enforcement, destroyed the organized crime ranks. Mr. Gingello was killed in a 1978 car bombing.

Mr. Valenti was father of five daughters. His wife, Eileen, passed away years ago.

Thanks to Gary Craig

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Mob's Rule: Pay, Quit, or Die

Whatever it took - that was the mantra of Don Herion, who busted Chicago mobsters for more than 40 years. Now in retirement, he's telling Hollywood moviemakers how to portray Chicago crooks and criminals.

In his day as a Chicago vice cop, Herion seemed like a one-man police force who happily labeled himself a vigilante who did "whatever it took."

Herion still sounds and swaggers like Clint Eastwood. But don't even think about calling him Dirty Herion. Long before Herion became a movie cop, mouthing off to Patrick Swayze, decades before he played a tough detective in a Tommy Lee Jones film. From the late '50s in Chicago until the new millennium, Herion was the real thing.

"Probably in 1957, I was in uniform and there was some gambling," said Herion.

Almost 51 years ago on Chicago's West Side, Herion vividly remembers an assignment that changed his life. He was told to stand in a pool hall, in uniform and watch for people illegally booking bets.

"There's guys walking through the back door and they're dressed like in the Goodfellas. 'Yo, how you doin'?' 'Fine, what's up wit' you?'" he said.

Herion says his police superiors at the time made it clear he was just window dressing and to look the other way, which he did. But he promised himself to someday get revenge on the pool hall. "And I got even with him, I took the phone booth out and locked him up and I got him three times after that. That's when I started not liking these people," Herion said.

"These people" are the hundreds of Chicago Outfit figures that Herion pursued with a passion during his 38 years on the Chicago police force and eight years with the Cook County Sheriff's Police.

Sometimes, just as the mob did, Herion made up the rules as he went. "Normally, you should have a warrant and all of that stuff, but I didn't even know how to type out a warrant," Herion said.

Herion's headlines and TV appearances reveal the story of a bygone era where Outfit gambling was rampant but rarely resulted in long jail terms. Back then, bookmakers either ended up in a car trunk after a gangland hit or subjected to Herion busting down their back door.

"You'd screw them up. You'd blow a joint on them. They'd have to find a new place, new phones. It disrupted it and they didn't like that," he said. And if you were a wagering customer, the mob had a rule, which is also the title of a book Herion has written. "You pay. You can quit or you're gonna die," he said.

Herion says as he turned the screws on the mob, Outfit assassin Butch Petrocelli once threatened to kill him. "He was telling me he knew where my kids went to school. And I said a few things to him and that if he had a dog I'd fry his dog," Herion said.

Petrocelli ended up murdered by fellow mobsters with a blow torch. Even as Outfit bosses were toppled in last summer's Operation: Family Secrets prosecution, Herion says mob tactics have changed. Violence is less common. A gambler who doesn't pay may not have his legs broken.

"They would put his wife out in the street hookin' or something," Herion said.

Herion's colorful descriptions of mob lore have made him a valued Hollywood consultant. He consulted with Johnny Depp during the recent filming of Dillinger in Chicago. But for all his glory, the moment in time that 79-year-old Herion remembers most is that first gambling bust in 1957.

"From that pool hall, I never forgot it," he said.

In 2008, if Herion was still on the police force doing "whatever it took," he would probably have some explaining to do. But in retirement, Herion says he has come to realize being a vigilante doesn't make him Dirty Herion.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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