America's Most Wanted and The Chicago Syndicate for 6-30-07

America's Most Wanted and The Chicago Syndicate have partnered on AMW's upcoming episodes for Fox.

Lyle Baade: In September of 1993, 59-year-old heart patient Lyle Baade got a new lease on life. A tragic twist of fate gave him the transplant he needed to survive—Lyle received the heart of a 16-year-old murder victim by the name of Benny Zweigle. Seven years later, alive and well in Arizona , Baade was attending a homeowner’s meeting. Suddenly, a disgruntled neighbor by the name of Richard Glassel burst into the room--opening fire on the homeowner’s committee. Witnesses say Baade sprang into action. It was almost as if Benny, the 16-year-old heart donor was acting from beyond the grave.

Vicki Ragins Hero: In December of 2004, Shahidah Harley, her five children, and her sister Sheba were headed home to Atlanta after Thanksgiving. Shahidah lost control of her car and swerved into a water-filled canal. At the same time, 57-year-old Vicki Ragins was on her way to her son’s for breakfast. She saw Shahidah sitting on the side of the road in shock that while most of her family escaped the canal, her 13-month-old was still trapped in the car. Vicki’s terrified of water, but that didn’t stop her from diving in and saving the child’s life.

Michel Barrera: Police say Michel Barrera is responsible for the armed robbery of two Florida banks, and the attempted murder of Miami-Dade police officers in 1998. Now, seven years later, there’s still no trace of Barrera—and police are looking to AMW to track him down.

Stepha Henry: Friends and family of Stepha Henry say it would be very unlike for her to run away. The 22-year-old law school hopeful from New York disappeared last month while vacationing in Florida . Hopefully this week, AMW viewers can re-unite her with her family.

New York/Florida Serial Rapist: In August of 2005, a 68-year-old homeless woman was raped in Westside Manhattan. Police say that they may have found the man responsible, and that he could be behind brutal rapes in Florida and New York . This week we’ll feature interviews with Jacqueline, the courageous 68-year-old New York determined to fight back.

Israel Corral: Cops say Israel Corral was responsible for distributing guns and drugs all over the city of Detroit . He’s made big bucks in the process. This week, police are hoping that AMW tipsters can help track him down.

Cyril Byrd: While attending a New Year’s party in 1998, police say Byrd opened fire on a crowd of people—striking and killing one man. Now, nine years later, Byrd is still on the run. Cops if he’s not still in Ohio , he could be in California.

Joseph Fontana: Cops say Joseph Fontana seemed like a good guy. But upon moving to Fort Walton Beach , Florida —his true identity was revealed. Fontana allegedly made a new friend with her two young sons. What his new friend didn’t know is that Fontana was sexually molesting the boys for years.

Duane Bedford: Duane Bedford was a Philadelphia man who police say has a hot temper. And on May 28, 2006, after a neighbor accused him of breaking a window—witnesses say that Bedford exploded, shooting and killing his long time acquaintance. A year later, we’re making it our job to track Bedford down.

Jason Brown: Jason Brown has been an “AMW Dirty Dozen” member for quite a while now. He earned his spot by allegedly killing a Dunbar armored car driver in front of a Phoenix , Ariz. Multiplex in 2005. Cops say Brown is a one of the worst of the worst, but AMW viewers have already provided some great tips that have this fugitive feeling the heat.

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Porn Dealer Says Street Tax Paid for Mob Protection

William "Red" Wemette, dressed like a prosperous small-town banker, told jurors Monday how reputed top mobster Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo shook him down for thousands of dollars so Wemette could keep his pornography shop open.

When Wemette threatened to stop paying the "street tax" of $250 a week, a collector told him, in a congenial way, that he "could have an accident," Wemette testified in the federal trial of five alleged mob figures. "My building could be burned down. Anything could happen," Wemette said he was told.

While Lombardo allegedly required the payments, Wemette said he never put any money in Lombardo's hands -- only those of underlings, including reputed hitman Frank "The German" Schweihs, who would visit Wemette at his porn shop in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.

Schweihs is too sick to stand trial, but Wemette identified Lombardo, both in court and from a photograph taken decades ago. "He looked a lot better then than he does now," Wemette said Monday. A wry smile spread across Lombardo's face.

Earlier in the day, an attorney for another man on trial, Anthony "Twan" Doyle, a retired Chicago police officer, punctuated the end of his opening statement by dismissively throwing the indictment in the case into an old-fashioned street sweeper's pushcart that the attorney had rolled into the courtroom.

The lawyer, Ralph Meczyk, said his client was a street sweeper not a street thug. Later on, Doyle got a job with the police department.

Doyle had a fierce loyalty to his badge and to his old friend, Frank Calabrese Sr., one of the five defendants, but never to the mob, Meczyk told the jury.

Prosecutors are expected to play secret tape recordings the FBI made of Doyle when he visited Calabrese Sr. in prison.

Calabrese Sr.'s brother Nicholas Calabrese, an admitted mob hitman, came under attack again Monday in the opening statement by the attorney for Paul Schiro. Schiro is accused of taking part in a mob hit on his close friend Emil Vaci, who allegedly was killed because mobsters worried he was testifying against them.

Schiro's attorney, Paul Wagner, said the only man linking his client to the slaying was Nick Calabrese, who will be the government's star witness. Wagner said it was Nick Calabrese who killed Vaci.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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Family Secrets Mob 101

It was Mob 101 in the Family Secrets trial Monday, and the prosecution's first witness started his history of the Outfit with its most notorious name: Al Capone.

With violence and savvy during the 1920s, Capone succeeded in uniting Chicago's underworld, which before Prohibition had been a morass of competing ethnic and racial groups, testified James Wagner, the president of the Chicago Crime Commission.

The five defendants on trial—some of whom are accused of running the modern-day mob—listened impassively, staring ahead or leaning over to whisper to their attorneys.

Wagner, a former FBI supervisor who spent his career investigating mobsters, testified with the tone of a college professor.

Capone and his organization figured out how to earn "vast sums of money" by catering to public demand for vices such as prostitution and gambling and then used that wealth in part to corrupt politicians, the legal system and law enforcement, Wagner said. Unlike New York's disparate crime families, the Chicago Outfit has been united under a single boss since Capone, its six mob crews carrying out its work, Wagner said. "That group he was able to form took control," Wagner said of Capone.

The government will rely on Wagner's primer on how the mob works to show jurors how the defendants used gambling, juice loans, street tax and violence to grow a crime empire that stretched to Las Vegas.

Many jurors took notes with their blue pens, writing as fast as Wagner spoke.

After working cases against the Genovese and Gambino families in New York, Wagner continued his mob-busting efforts in Chicago beginning in 1976, eventually heading an organized-crime squad for five years before his retirement in 2000.

On trial for racketeering conspiracy are reputed mob figures Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello, Frank Calabrese Sr. and Paul "the Indian" Schiro as well as former Chicago police Officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle. The men are accused of playing roles in the criminal enterprise that is responsible for 18 previously unsolved Outfit killings.

Wagner said the Chicago mob expanded from its traditional bookmaking and juice-loan operations to infiltrate labor unions and then used labor's pension funds to make loans to mob associates who built the gleaming mecca of gambling that Las Vegas became.

Its members expect absolute loyalty from one another. There is an elaborate "making" ceremony to get into the upper echelon of the Outfit, Wagner said, but no retirement parties. "There are no provisions for getting out once you're in," he said.

Before trial, defense lawyers had objected to Wagner's testimony. U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who is presiding over the landmark trial, limited Wagner to talking about the Outfit in general terms without providing any details he might know about the defendants.

That changed, however, when Lombardo's lawyer, Rick Halprin, made the strategic decision to question Wagner about his knowledge of a case involving labor racketeer Allen Dorfman and an attempt to bribe the late U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada.

Zagel then allowed prosecutors in a later round of questioning to ask who else had been convicted in the 1982 case. "It was Joseph Lombardo," Wagner said.

On Monday, jurors also saw a well-known photo of Lombardo with other reputed top mobsters at a restaurant in 1976, dubbed "the last supper" by lawyers in the case.

In his cross-examination of an Internal Revenue Service agent who recovered the photo in a search, Halprin made a point to note that Lombardo was the only participant wearing a suit. The lawyer has sought to portray his client as a non-violent businessman who is only associated with the mob, not a key member of the conspiracy.

But William "Red" Wemette gave jurors what the prosecution contends is a real-life taste of how Lombardo allegedly collected street tax.

Wemette told jurors that he knew the mob would come knocking when he went to open an adult bookstore called "The Peeping Tom" on Wells Street in the early 1970s. Wemette, who has been relocated by authorities because of his cooperation, exhaled deeply on the stand as he talked about doing business with Lombardo's reputed Grand Avenue street crew. The 58-year-old with thin, reddish hair and a thinner mustache wore a gray, three-piece suit.

Asked to define street tax for the jury, Wemette replied, "Basically it's permission to be in a business without being hurt by someone or possibly being burned down."

He described going to see a South Side mobster for permission to open his store and was instructed to meet up with Lombardo. "The instructions were, 'Go see Joey, he's a good boy,'" Wemette said. "'He'll take care of you.'"

Wemette said he eventually agreed to split the proceeds from peep shows in the shop with the mob because Lombardo was powerful and he didn't want to have an "accident."

Prosecutors showed Wemette a series of pictures of the men with whom he said he dealt, including an old mug shot of Lombardo in which the reputed mob boss appeared to be staring off into space. Lombardo, 78, stood up as Wemette was asked whether the man he was talking about was in court. "He looked a lot better then than he does now," Wemette said.

Testimony began Monday after the final two defense lawyers finished giving their opening statements. Attorney Paul Wagner told jurors that his client, Schiro, is a minor player in the case. Ralph Meczyk, the lawyer for Doyle, said his client is only a defendant because he's been a loyal friend to Calabrese.

Doyle was a good cop who came from the rough streets of the Bridgeport neighborhood, Meczyk said. He did not purposefully give Calabrese any damaging information on the Family Secrets case, as he is accused of doing, Meczyk said.

Doyle earned an honest living as an officer, the lawyer said, and before that pushed a street sweeper's cart for the city. Meczyk brought one of wooden carts into court, its metal wheels squeaking up the aisle. "He picked up maybe empty juice cartons," Meczyk said. "That's when he dealt in juice, ladies and gentlemen of the jury."

He told jurors that by the time the case was over, they would have an opinion about what the indictment in the case was worth and with that tossed a copy of the document into the cart with a thud.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Chicago Cop Only Friend to Mobster?

Friends of ours: John Fecarotta, Frank Calabrese Sr., Paul “The Indian” Schiro, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello, Nick Calabrese
Friends of mine: Michael Ricci, Anthony Doyle

The lawyer for retired police officer Anthony Doyle did his best Monday to explain away how his client wound up caught on tape telling alleged mob member Frank Calabrese behind-the-scenes details about an FBI investigation into a mob hit.

Prosecutors in the Chicago mob trial that began last week said it was because Doyle, of Arizona, is a mob associate who was feeding inside information in an attempt to help the mob scuttle the case against it for the hit on fellow mobster John Fecarotta Sept. 14, 1986. But Ralph Meczyk told jurors that Doyle knew Calabrese from growing up in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, that the two used to play handball together, and that Calabrese had gotten Doyle his first job at McCormick Place.

So when Calabrese, incarcerated in 1999 in Milan, Michigan, mentioned to someone that he’d like to see Doyle again, word was sent, Meczyk said. “Anthony (Doyle) is a little stunned, but pleased that his old friend remembers him,” said Meczyk.

Doyle drove to Michigan with Michael Ricci, of Streamwood, another retired Chicago cop, claimed Meczyk. Ricci since has passed away. Once the two arrived in Michigan, Calabrese asked Doyle, who worked in the evidence room of the Chicago Police department, to find out about the case, Meczyk said.

Doyle wasn’t pleased, claimed Meczyk, but passed along what he thought would be a useless bit of information - that the FBI had taken into its possession a blood-stained glove used during the hit.

“The issue is, really, what was (Doyle’s) intent? … One of the reasons he did it is it’s innocent, innocuous information,” claimed Meczyk.

And what about all that code talk Frank Calabrese used when talking to Doyle - code only a mobster would know?

“Anthony doesn’t know what’s going on, but he feigns that he does,” said Meczyk.

Federal investigators, said Meczyk, “want to turn friendship into a federal felony.”

Also Monday, attorney Paul Augustus Wagner gave his opening statements for defendant Paul “The Indian” Schiro, accused of helping to murder his friend Emil Vaci in Phoenix June 7, 1986. Paul Wagner said the only thing that ties Schiro to the murder is the unreliable word of the government’s star witness, confessed murderer Nick Calabrese, Frank Calabrese’s brother.

The attorney for Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, Rick Halprin, decided to withhold his opening statement until the prosecution rests.

Attorneys for Frank Calabrese of Oak Brook and James Marcello of Lombard gave their opening statements Thursday. All five defendants are charged with racketeering conspiracy in the commission of several crimes, including murder.

After Meczyk’s opening, prosecutors took testimony from James Wagner, a former FBI agent, about the structure and method of operation of the Chicago mob.

Thanks to Rob Olmstead

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Mr. Capone: The Real - and Complete - Story of Al Capone

While doing some research for a reader, I spoke with a friend of mine, Robert Schoenberg, who is the author of Mr. Capone: The Real - and Complete - Story of Al Capone. I know I have reviewed his book before, but with the Family Secrets Trial going on, this is another excellent book that gives you some historical background on the Chicago Outfit. In 1930 Al Capone was the most famous American alive. Mr. Capone reveals the real Capone and how he ran his operation. Schoenberg's scrupulous research shows that Capone was a man as calculating and brutal as his legend.

The NYTimes called it “fascinating,” the LATimes cited its “massive research” and “rich descriptions,” the Chicago Tribune said that readers will “revel in the old stories…and savor new tidbits,” The Washington Times said its “written with style and verve,” Chicago magazine called it “certainly the most thorough book on Capone yet published” and said that “Attention to detail, along with a sense of the period and a delightful writing style, makes Mr. Capone a treat for history, crime and Capone buffs.” The Detroit News simply called it “the definitive biography.”

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