Preying on a Mobster's Paranoia

Chicago Outfit assassin Frank Calabrese Sr. was stewing in prison in 1999, trying to figure who was ratting him out for crimes worse than the loan-sharking that had landed him there.

First on his list of prime suspects was fellow mobster James DiForti. Calabrese Sr. couldn't stop gabbing about how DiForti could hurt him.

Calabrese Sr. covered every angle with his son, Frank Jr., who was locked up with him in federal prison in Milan, Mich. He quizzed two crooked cop friends for intelligence on DiForti, who was out on the street.

Calabrese Sr. -- so paranoid other mobsters made fun of him for always talking in code -- had not one but three nicknames for DiForti: "Poker," because DiForti liked to play poker; "Tires," because DiForti once had a tire store; and "rota," Italian for tires.

There was only one error in Calabrese Sr.'s thinking.

DiForti wasn't the snitch. FBI agents, preying on his paranoia, had played a mind game on him. And while Calabrese Sr. focused on DiForti, he missed the informant right under his nose -- his son, Frank Jr., who was secretly recording his father.

The mind game served two purposes. Calabrese Sr.'s focus on DiForti kept him talking about misdeeds -- much of it being recorded. And it kept the real informant safe from his father's suspicion. Agents had little doubt Calabrese Sr. would have had his son killed.

The FBI mind game is the untold story of the Family Secrets investigation, pieced together through court records and an exclusive interview with one of the key agents involved at the start of the case, Kevin Blair.

In an interview last week, Blair, now an FBI supervisor in Southern California, downplayed his own role and praised the work of fellow agents. But as one of the early agents on the case, Blair came up with the name for the investigation, Family Secrets.

Without the turmoil within the Calabrese family, the case would never have been made. Frank Calabrese Jr. also testified against his father at trial. Frank Calabrese Sr.'s brother, Nick, cooperated and told jurors how he and his brother killed for the mob.

Family Secrets began when Frank Calabrese Jr. wrote a letter in 1998 to the FBI, telling them he wanted to cooperate. "I feel I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever," he wrote.

Frank Calabrese Sr. wanted to restart the Calabrese mob crew when he got out and wanted his son, who was going to released sooner, to pave the way. "It scared Frank Jr., and he realized he didn't want his father to ever get out again," Blair said.

After the FBI got the letter from Calabrese Jr., Blair was sent out to talk to him. The two men had a history. He had arrested Calabrese Jr. in 1995 on the very case that landed him in prison with his father. The arrest had gone smoothly, and Blair believes that set the tone for the FBI's further relationship with Frank Calabrese Jr., who was part of his father's crew but wasn't involved in the violence.

"When we arrested Frank Jr., it was one of those very polite, very professional things," Blair said. "We treated him like a gentleman. He treated us like gentlemen."

The tone of the arrest was designed to put Calabrese Jr. in the frame of mind to cooperate. "He knew we were treating him differently than his father was," Blair said.

Frank Calabrese Jr. got his father to talk about the murder of John Fecarotta and other slayings while he secretly recorded him. It was beyond the FBI's best hopes. "I just have to rate this guy as the best informant I've ever come across," Blair said.

Calabrese Jr. "did it with extreme risk, inside the walls of a prison. He did it with the ultimate sincerity, to make sure a bad man stayed in prison," Blair said.

The FBI also had two informants who fed false information into the Cicero crew to have them believe the FBI had an informant within the mob.

One informant, who court records show is the late private investigator Sam Rovetuso, went to Cicero mob chief Michael Spano Sr. and said an FBI agent had approached him, wanting to talk. Rovetuso said he referred the agent to his attorney, who sent Rovetuso a letter with a list of topics the FBI wanted to discuss. Rovetuso, who was wired up, showed Spano Sr. the letter.

The whole story was a lie, right down to fake attorney stationery the FBI created. The idea was to get Spano Sr. talking and worried there was a snitch within his crew, given the FBI's interest in certain topics.

A second informant also told mobsters the FBI had an Outfit snitch. This informant had credibility within the Cicero crew, because the informant had been passing along true intelligence on law enforcement activity for years.

The Outfit came to believe the FBI's informant was reputed mobster James DiForti. DiForti was charged in 1997 with murder but had not gone to trial for two years -- a delay that stoked the suspicions of many mobsters.

The suspicions made their way to Frank Calabrese Sr. who clearly became obsessed with DiForti. Calabrese Sr. became so obsessed that agents eventually went to warn DiForti his life could be in danger and asked if he would cooperate. DiForti declined, shutting the door in the agents' faces.

He would die of natural causes in 2000.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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The Complete Public Enemy Almanac

THE COMPLETE PUBLIC ENEMY ALMANAC - New Facts and Features On the People, Places, and Events of the Gangster and Outlaw Era: 1920-1940

If American crime had a golden age, it was between 1920 and 1940—the roller-coaster years when a rural nation became urbanized and the nineteenth century finally gave way to the twentieth. The same forces that reshaped society also changed the face of crime, and soon the Progressive movement that battled urban decay led to the unintended consequences of increased police and political corruption, drunkenness transformed from a working-class vice to a middle-class rebellion, and organized crime established nationally.

The Completely Public Enemy Almanac is the ultimate reference book for the gangster era, with many unique features:

* A highly original and revisionist history of the period, covering the entire nation
* A unique, unmatched collection of gangster and outlaw biographies
* Hundreds of illustrations and period photographs
* A full, first-ever crime chronology of the period
* Dozens of short features on everything from the shift from local to federalized law enforcement to the history of body armor and goofy schemes to deal with "motorized bandits"
* The origins and meanings of such terms as the "one-way ride," "X marks the spot," "the real McCoy," "G-Man," "Public Enemy," and many more
* Innovative lists, including the Chicago Crime Commission's "body count" of gang-style murders during the period
* New light on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre , the Kansas City Massacre, the deliberate killing of Pretty Boy Floyd, the mysterious death of Baby Face Nelson, and other events
* An exhaustive bibliography (including numerous short reviews) of every true-crime book published about gangsters and outlaws of the twenties and thirties

Meticulously documented, lavishly detailed, exhaustively researched, and written with an eye for the truths that have remained largely hidden, The Complete Public Enemy Almanac provides a reliable source of information about the violent and lawless era of the twenties and thirties.

WILLIAM HELMER, a former senior editor at Playboy, is the author of The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar and is coauthor of Dillinger: The Untold Story Expanded Edition, Baby Face Nelson: Portrait of a Public Enemy, and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre: The Untold Story of the Gangland Bloodbath That Brought Down Al Capone. He lives in Boerne, Texas.

RICK MATTIX, an expert on the criminal gangs of the twenties and thirties, is a prominent researcher and consultant to authors and television documentaries. The coauthor of Thompson, the American legend: The first submachine gun and Dillinger: The Untold Story Expanded Edition, and author of numerous magazine and journal articles, he lives in Bussey, Iowa.

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Secret Societies

Sylvia Browne’s research, combined with her amazing communication with her spirit guide Francine, has uncovered the fact that many secret societies affect the lives of each of us every day...whether it be in the areas of religion, politics, economy, government, crime, or other worldwide influences. Throughout her lecture tour, Sylvia shares her knowledge of the conspiracies, coverups, long-held secrets, misinformation, and power manipulations of secret societies in both the past and present and how they can affect us today and in the future.

Sylvia explores it all, and even gives us information on a powerful secret society that no one has even heard about. You will learn about secret societies that have good intentions, those that do not, and the ones to watch, which have goals that could help or hinder us. Some will really raise the hair on your neck!

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The Fed's Secret Weapon to Bust the Mob

The end of the Operation Family Secrets trial in Chicago has also brought an end to one of the government's secret weapons against the mob.

The secret weapon has a name: John Scully.

For 25 years, Mr. Scully has been a gangbuster for the United States attorney in Chicago, a workhorse prosecutor who put away dozens of organized crime figures with piercing arguments, a devotion to justice and a gentlemanly style.

Scully timed his retirement for the end of the Family Secrets trial last week. He talked with the I-Team about the case and his career.

"The family secrets trail that just ended, was that the highlight of your career, would you say?" ABC7's Chuck Goudie asked.

"Yes," Scully answered. John Scully is a man of few words, maybe because those he does speak carry so much weight.

Just ask Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese and "Little Jimmy" Marcello, three of the Chicago Outfit bosses who Scully helped to convict last month of their roles in decades of criminal rackets and eleven long-unsolved gangland murders.

"There have been very few mob murders solved over the years," Scully said. "This is the result of the work of an awful a lot of people for an awful long period of time, resulted in basically in the solving of a number of cases."

After the Family Secrets victory last week, Scully's retirement was one of the first things they noted. "I can't think of retiring on a higher note," said Pat fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney.

Sixty-year old Scully is a South Sider who graduated from De LaSalle High School. He attended the Naval Academy and was assigned to ship duty during the Vietnam War aboard the U.S.S. Hull, a destroyer that put Captain Scully right off the coast of Vietnam for months.

When Scully received his law degree from the University of San Diego after the war, his enemies changed, from the North Vietnamese to North Side Chicago mobsters and their outfit brethren on 26th Street, from Grand Avenue, Cicero and Elmwood Park.

In 1993, Scully prosecuted the On Leong gambling ring based in Chinatown, a major case that exposed payoffs to the mob, Chicago police and even a Cook County judge.

Five years ago, he took down William Hanhardt, the once-successful chief of detectives for the Chicago police. Hanhardt was sentenced to 15 years for operating a nationwide jewelry theft ring, and he was an outfit operative with a badge.

"A perfect cop in the mind of an awful amount of people. He cleared so many cases and did police work that resulted in a number of people being prosecuted and being prosecuted legitimately," Scully said. "He just never took his skills against the Chicago Outfit."

At the time Hanhardt went to prison, Scully was already working on a cloak-and-dagger investigation targeting the upper crust of the outfit.

It began with a letter from Frank Calabrese Jr., son of mob boss "Frank the Breeze." It was a letter so secret that Scully's long-time trial partner, Mitch Mars, didn't reveal it to others in the office for months.

"What was the danger at that point?" Goudie asked.

"Frank Jr. was cooperating, and it was going to be against his father who was a killer in the Chicago mob," Scully answered.

In 2002, with Frank Jr. still undercover, his uncle Nick Calabrese stunned prosecutors by offering to cooperate as well, admitting that he had committed at least 14 mob hits. "There was not the realization on the part on our office or the FBI that he had been involved with murders," Scully said.

Scully said he is amazed that murderer Joey "the Clown" Lombardo took the witness stand and tried to talk his way out of the charges.

"As you sat there and looked at him, could you get the clown image out of your head?" Goudie asked. "No, I didn't have the image of Joey 'The Clown,' I had the image of Danny Seifert," Scully said.

Seifert was the Bensenville business owner that Lombardo murdered in 1974 to prevent him from testifying in a case that Scully had assisted.

"Did you feel threatened by these people?" Goudie asked.

" No, that has never been a part of the Chicago outfit's background, at least in recent years, over the last 30 or 40 years& going after agents, going after prosecutors, going after police officers," Scully said.

Scully's retirement became effective while the jury was deliberating. He was given special permission to remain at the government table. Then when the verdicts came in, he packed up and went home.

Scully said he has no plans for the big salaries that some of his colleagues receive after retiring to private practice. He plans to spend time with his grandchildren.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Ex-FBI Agent Chooses Bench Trial

A former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation waived his right to a jury trial on murder charges yesterday, instead putting his case in the hands of a judge whom the F.B.I. once investigated when he was a student. The former agent, Roy Lindley DeVecchio, has been charged with helping a prized informer from an organized crime family commit four murders in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

As jury selection was set to begin yesterday, lawyers for Mr. DeVecchio asked for a bench trial before the judge overseeing the case, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of State Supreme Court. Justice Reichbach warned the lawyers that he had been investigated by the F.B.I. while a student at Columbia University, where he organized student protests in the 1960s. Mr. DeVecchio was undeterred. The trial was set to begin on Oct. 15.

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