Remembering a Top Crime Reporter Who Covered Capone's Mob

Earl "Skip" Aykroid's father wasn't a gangster, but he got closer to the mob scene than many who lived to tell about it.

Aykroid's father, H. Earl Aykroid, was a reporter for the Chicago Herald and Examiner and later The Associated Press in Chicago. Skip, who lives in the northern Kane County village of Gilberts, didn't follow in his father's footsteps. "The closest I got was delivering the Sunday paper when I was a kid," Skip said.

Instead, he was in the uniform textile business for several years. But he still remembers the big stories his father covered in his heyday as a crime reporter in one of the nations most interesting crime cities.

When Skip was growing up in Park Ridge, sometimes he would overhear his father telling his mother about his days at the office -- coffee with notorious gangster Al Capone and chasing down leads from the city's top cops. "He'd bring stuff home, and we'd get to read it," Skip said. "In passing, he'd talk about certain things that happened over the years. Once I got to be old enough to understand, he'd tell (my sister and me) things."

The senior Earl got his start working for newspapers at an early age. With only an eighth-grade education, Earl started out as a copy boy for the Herald and Examiner at 18 in 1924. He got a full-time gig after scooping some of Chicago's veteran reporters by identifying a young drowning victim. Earl soon established his reputation around the city. "My dad was considered the top crime reporter of that time in Chicago in the '20s and '30s," Skip said.

Earl soon was getting phone calls from some of the criminals themselves. Skip said Capone called up the newsroom one day complaining that people weren't getting his side of the story. Earl was the one tapped to go and get it. The two soon were meeting on a regular basis for coffee or lunch and discussions about Capone's involvement in the Prohibition-era gang activity.

One of the lasting stories from Skip's father's police beat days is what occurred on Feb. 14, 1929. Most Chicago-area residents know the story: Seven people with ties to Bugs Moran's gang were shot in a north-side garage in a bloody massacre. The victims were lined up with their backs to their shooters, who they thought were police. The real police were never able to collect enough evidence to put anyone on trial for the murders. "Because of the relationship my dad had with Capone, they let him know so he could have the scoop," Skip said.

The story Skip heard was that Earl, a city editor at the time, and a photographer pulled up to the garage on Clark Street right as the shooters were pulling away. According to Skip, Earl and his staff photographer were among the first on the scene and discovered the fresh bodies lying on the garage floor. "My dad got a call in the morning that something was happening at this address," Skip said. "He was there before the police were there. They wouldn't have let them in after the fact."

The picture of the scene the reporter saw that day is now a family heirloom of sorts, passed down to Skip. Blood and brains splattered across the cement floor of the crime scene are still visible in the cracked black-and-white photo. "They were brutal in those days," Skip said.

When Skip was 12, he got a chance to ride along with his dad on a story. A helicopter had crashed off Roosevelt Road in Forest Park. According to reports, 13 people were killed when a shuttle helicopter crashed on its way to O'Hare Field (now O'Hare International Airport) from Midway Airport on Chicago's south side.

"I begged him to let me go," Skip said. Skip was told to wait in the car while Earl checked out the scene. "When he got back, I asked him what happened. He said, 'You're not going out there. There are body parts everywhere,'" Skip said.

Even though Earl was covering some pretty dangerous stories, Skip said he was never worried about getting hurt. "There were two things you didn't mess with back then: reporters and cops," Skip said.

Some families pass down quilts or jewelry from generation to generation. Skip has a more nontraditional legacy from his father: a couple of albums full of press clippings and gory crime scene photos that were passed down from his father. "He never made a lot of money," Skip said of his father, who died in 1988. "But he lived an interesting life."

Thanks to Cigi Ross

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Planning a Mafia Free Wedding

A Sicilian couple, already partners in a business aimed at bypassing the Mafia, are planning a wedding the bride and groom hope will pay nothing to the mob.

Fabio Messina, 30, and Valeria Di Leo, 29, say everything from the wedding dress to the travel agency for the honeymoon comes from suppliers on the "Addiopizzo" list, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. "Pizzo" is the local term for protection money paid to the Mafia.

Prosecutors estimate 80 percent of the businesses in Palermo give the Mafia its cut of the proceeds. But more people and business owners have been willing to take a public stand against organized crime in recent years.

"Addiopizzo" began as an underground movement of people placing stickers around Palermo. Then a few business owners took a public stand and a list was published.

Messina decided to open his store because he believed that those business owners needed some encouragement. The store he owns with Di Leo sells a wide range of goods but only from "Addiopizzo" suppliers.

''I thought it was right to give those traders who refuse to pay protection money an extra opportunity,'' he said.

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Blagojevich Case Goes to Family Secrets Mob Trial Judge

Fresh off handling one of Chicago's biggest mob cases in decades, U.S. District Judge James Zagel will preside over the corruption case against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And it's no accident.

Normally, prosecutors would have issued a new indictment against Blagojevich and a circle of aides, prompting the case to be randomly assigned to a judge. But instead prosecutors on Thursday added the former governor and four top associates to an existing indictment against Springfield power broker William Cellini. That ensured that Blagojevich would be tried before Zagel, who was randomly assigned the Cellini case when it was filed last fall.

Although there's at least a hint of judge-shopping in the move, Chicago lawyers said the decision by prosecutors was permissible and a clever way to keep the Blagojevich case before a judge with whom they are comfortable.

The move had another immediate impact: Terence Gillespie dropped out Friday as Blagojevich's lead attorney because he once helped represent Cellini.

Prosecutors have made no comment on the move, but it can't be argued that the charges against Cellini are unrelated to the schemes detailed in the former governor's sweeping indictment.

Zagel, a Reagan appointee who has served almost 22 years on the federal bench, is widely respected but is seen by many attorneys as generally pro-government.

Some attorneys—none of whom wanted to be quoted by name because they likely will have cases before him again—noting his background as a former director of the Illinois State Police in the 1980s, said he would be more law-enforcement-minded.

Allowing the Blagojevich case to go to a randomly selected judge, although certainly the usual procedure, would have carried some inherent risk for prosecutors. Some judges can be more independent than others, and some are just unpredictable.

The U.S. attorney's office recently was stung when U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur sentenced convicted former Chicago Ald. Edward Vrdolyak to probation and not prison. And the trial of former Gov. George Ryan before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer was seen by some critics, including one appeals judge, as an out-of-control spectacle with a jury that did as it pleased.

Zagel presided over the landmark Family Secrets trial of top Chicago Outfit bosses in summer 2007, winning praise from lawyers on both sides.

He recently wrapped up the case by sentencing several defendants to life in prison. It was a proceeding that needed careful management with some of Chicago's craftiest defense attorneys and a cast of mob characters including Joey "the Clown" Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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