Al Capone Love Song

A softer side of famed Chicago mobster Al Capone is on display this week as a Boston archives dealer attempts to sell an inscribed copy of an original song penned by the gangster for $65,000.

Capone apparently wrote "Madonna Mia" while serving time for income tax evasion in Alcatraz in the 1930s. After obtaining a copy of the lyrics last year, a suburban Chicago man has been working with musicians to record the love song and plans to release it Monday on his Web site. "It's a very touching Italian love ballad," said Rich Larsen of Prospect Heights, who runs Caponefanclub.com. "I think it shows that Capone actually had a softness in his heart and a gentle way about him in certain ways."

When he wasn't ruling Chicago's criminal underworld, Capone was a music fan. He loved opera and featured the hottest jazz musicians of the day in his clubs. Capone read music and could play the banjo and the mandola, which is similar to the mandolin. Larsen claimed Capone persuaded Alcatraz wardens to allow inmates to form a band, and Capone, for a time, made music behind bars.

"Madonna Mia," believed to be an ode to his wife, Mae, was the only song Capone is known to have written. The lyrics read, in part, "Madonna Mia, you're the bloom of the roses, you're the charm that reposes, in the heart of a song/Madonna Mia, with your true love to guide me, let whatever be-tide me, I will never go wrong."

The lyrics are signed by Capone in pencil and inscribed to a Jesuit priest who befriended the mobster in his final years. Capone died in 1947.

Thanks to Joel Hood

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Witness Testifies Behind Large Screen to Protect His Identity at Deputy US Marshal Trial

A witness in the trial of Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose was heard, but not seen, by courtroom observers as he testified from behind a large screen erected to protect his identity.

The witness, identified only as Inspector 1, is an officer of the U.S. Marshals Witness Security Program, and was in charge of a security detail when mobster Nicholas Calabrese came to Chicago on two occasions in 2002 and 2003 to cooperate with a federal investigation.

Proceedings took place behind an eight-foot-high gray wall that was erected this morning along the front row of the courtroom's gallery. About 15 spectators, including two disappointed courtroom sketch artists, stared at one side of the wall while listening to questioning about security procedures in place during Calabrese's two visits.

Ambrose, 41, was assigned to those security details and is on trial on charges he leaked information about Calabrese's cooperation to a family friend who allegedly passed the sensitive details on to organized-crime figures.

Prosecutors in the case successfully argued in pre-trial hearings last week that the identities of personnel from the Witness Security Program should be protected as they testify in court. Attorneys for Ambrose opposed the measures, saying that the presence of unusual security precautions would "sensationalize" the trial. But U.S. District Judge John Grady ruled that there were valid reasons to keep the identities of Witness Security Program personnel secret and ruled that a wall should separate courtroom observers seated in the gallery from the judge, jury, attorneys and witness. More hidden witnesses are expected to testify this afternoon from behind the screen.

Thanks to Robert Mitchum

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Peter Gotti Denied by Judge in Attempt to Overturn Conviction

Looks like Peter Gotti will be in jail until his dying day.

A federal judge Wednesday shot down the former crime boss' latest attempt to overturn his 2004 conviction for ordering a hit on mob rat Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano.

Manhattan Judge Harold Baer shrugged off the so-called Dopey Don's claims that prosecutors violated his rights by withholding details of a conversation between Gravano and his FBI supervisor Bruce Mouw.

"The fly in the ointment is the failure on [Gotti's] part to explain how the fact of an allegedly ongoing relationship between Gravano and Mouw could have impeached Mouw's credibility," Baer wrote. "Gravano did not testify at the trial and apparently his only role at the trial was as the target that [Gotti] had directed to be killed," Baer added.

Baer said Gotti's lawyers could have simply read media accounts of the recorded conversations between Mouw and Gravano.

Gotti, 69 and in poor health, was sentenced to 25 years for ordering a hit on Gravano - who was nabbed in a drug bust before it could happen.

Gotti already had begun serving a nine-year sentence on a Brooklyn racketeering conviction, and together with the 25-year term he began serving in 2005, he won't be eligible for release until 2032, when he would be 92.

Thanks to Thomas Zambito

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