Frank "The German" Schweihs, Chicago Outfit Mob Enforcer, Dies Awaiting Trial

Frank "the German" Schweihs, a reputed Chicago Outfit enforcer once described as one of the most feared men in the city, died Wednesday in a North Side hospital after being transferred from the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he was awaiting trial.

Schweihs, 78, was cancer-stricken and too ill to face charges in last year's landmark Family Secrets case, one of the biggest mob trials in Chicago's history. The frail Schweihs was scheduled to go to trial Oct. 28. He appeared at recent hearings in federal court in a wheelchair.

On Wednesday, Schweihs died in Thorek Memorial Hospital, said jail spokesman Vincent Shaw.

Schweihs initially went on the lam after the sweeping indictment came down in 2005, but authorities were able to track him down in an apartment complex in a small town in Kentucky late that year.

His upcoming trial had been threatened when Schweihs signed a do-not-resuscitate order that might have forced officials to move him from the downtown jail, which has no medical facility. But Schweihs rescinded the order.

During the Family Secrets trial, in which five of Schweihs' co-defendants were found guilty, witnesses testified that Schweihs was a henchman for capo Joey "the Clown" Lombardo. Schweihs was identified during the trial as being involved in the 1974 hit in Bensenville on Lombardo business partner and federal witness Daniel Seifert.

Schweihs' last court appearance June 10 was memorable, as he complained loudly and barked at federal prosecutors. One of them, Assistant U.S. Atty. Markus Funk, who was part of the trial team on Family Secrets, had looked in his direction as he spoke with his attorney Ellen Domph.

"You makin' eyes at me?" Schweihs snarled. "Do I look like a [expletive] to you or something?"

In a recent court filing, prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge James Zagel to seat an anonymous jury to hear the Schweihs case, noting that he used violence to rise in the Outfit starting in the 1960s.

"Throughout this phase of his life, Schweihs continued to use seemingly irrational brutality for 'effect,' portraying himself as the consummate 'tough guy' at every opportunity," the government's brief stated.

Trial testimony during last year's Family Secrets case made it clear that Schweihs was someone who others linked to the mob feared most.

Michael Spilotro, who was killed in a mob hit along with his brother, once told his daughter that if she ever saw Schweihs around their home, she was to call 911 immediately. Brothers James and Mickey Marcello, defendants in the case, had another nickname for him: "Hitler."

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Minimum $20,000,000.00+ Profit Earned by the Chicago Mob

It took a calculator for the government to figure out this Family Secret. Since the 1960's, a Chicago Mob street crew turned a tidy profit of more than $20 million, according to documents filed today by prosecutors in federal court. And that is a "very conservative figure," according to T. Marcus Funk, the case prosecuting attorney.

The government forfeiture motion obtained by the ABC7 I-Team says that the Operation Family Secrets defendants are responsible for repaying $20,258,556.00 in ill-gotten gains from various organized crime rackets including gambling, extortion and shake-down schemes. In some cases, authorities say, the crime business relied on murder as a final solution to organizational disputes.

Today's filing is a pre-sentence motion in the case of former Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle, who was convicted last summer and is due to be sentenced by Judge James Zagel on October 1. Doyle was a "juice loan collector for the South Side/26th" according to prosecutors. His sentencing date will be the first of the major defendants.

"The evidence at trial established that, as charged in the Indictment, DOYLE joined the charged conspiracy in the 1960's as a juice loan collector who was supervised by Outfit street crew boss and enforcer/hit man Frank Calabrese Sr." states today's motion. Calabrese Sr. was convicted in the dramatic mob trial, along with top Outfit boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and James "Little Jimmy" Marcello. All are awaiting sentencing and expected to be hit with similar, $20 million forfeiture orders.

"Before or at the time of sentencing, the United States requests that this Court enter a preliminary order of forfeiture against the defendant [Doyle]," states the government motion. "He is jointly and severally liable with his co-defendants, representing the $20,258,556.00 in proceeds."

"The figure is based on all the evidence we introduced," Funk told the I-Team. "Notably, it excludes the juice loan money that they earned. That was too difficult to calculate" he said.

"It only includes those unlawfully obtained proceeds that the government has been able to trace in the context of the 'Family Secrets' investigation" states the forfeiture motion. "Additional gambling, extortion, and street tax activities have not been included in this figure. Moreover, the figure entirely excludes any of the Outfit's lucrative juice property subject to forfeiture pursuant to the provisions of [federal law]."

As the I-Team reported last September, Click Here to Read the Past Report Anthony "Twan" Doyle was a Chicago cop for 21 years. Sixty-two-year old Doyle is a hulking figure, whose rigid jaw line helps carve an imposing presence. Doyle is a longtime friend and associate of Chicago Outfit boss Frank Calabrese, who was responsible for at least 13 gangland murders, according to federal prosecutors.

Numerous times in 1999, Calabrese paid for Doyle to come to a federal prison in southeastern Michigan. Doyle discussed Chicago mob business with Calabrese, who is known as Frank "the Breeze." Neither man knew the FBI was secretly taping the meetings.

The visits alone violated Chicago police rules that prohibit associating with felons. And when Doyle gave Calabrese information he'd requested about a police murder investigation, straight from a department evidence computer, that was also criminal.

Investigators believe that Doyle sensed Chicago police were on to his relationship with Calabrese and that Doyle tendered his resignation from the police department in 2001 before a federal grand jury could indict him. That way, Doyle was able to receive his Chicago police pension of $2,800 a month, or $34,000 a year.

Since retiring, Doyle has collected nearly $200,000 in pension payments from the city. The director of the police pension board wrote in a letter to ABC7 that they are aware of Doyle's conviction and plan to address the forfeiture of his pension once he is sentenced.

Doyle began his defense last June with a trash bin, his lawyers demonstrating for the jury that he started as a city sanitation worker and made it to the police force.

His birth name is actually Passafume, which is Italian. But when he decided to join the Chicago police force, which is historically Irish, he became Anthony Doyle. His police records list him as "Irish/Italian." But through the ethnic transformation, his nickname stayed the same: Twan.

A twan is a popular Chinese doughnut. Literally translated, it means "rice glog."Of course, police are known to be fond of their doughnuts, and Officer Doyle grew up in a section of Chinatown where twans are sold.

Doyle asked to be freed on bond until sentencing, offering to post his home in Arizona; his daughter's home and the homes of two retired Chicago policemen as bond. Judge James Zagel denied that motion and he has been in custody since the Family Secrets conviction.

Doyle was the only mob defendant not accused of murder.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Ann Pistone

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Carl "Tuffy" DeLuna, Convicted Outfit Gangster, Dies at 81

Carl Angelo “Tuffy” DeLuna — whose legacy is that of both a notorious Kansas City mob leader and a gentleman — has died.

DeLuna passed away Monday at the home of his daughter, Carla Allen. He was 81.

To his family, he was “a caring, giving man. He touched a great many lives and he will be deeply missed,” they wrote in his obituary.

To most people, DeLuna was one of the top guys in “The Outfit,” an organized crime unit in Kansas City in the 1970s and ’80s.

DeLuna served 12 years in federal prison on multiple racketeering and other convictions related to skimming profits from Las Vegas casinos during those decades.

He was being investigated for murder in 1978 when the FBI picked up leads that he had been manipulating Teamsters union pension funds and stealing from the casinos, according to Gary Hart, who was the supervisor in charge of the FBI’s investigation into organized crime in Kansas City in the late 70s.

After being released from prison in 1998, DeLuna gambled at Kansas City area casinos until the Missouri Gaming Commission banned him in 2005. But even the man who headed the investigation that eventually put DeLuna in federal prison called him a “perfect gentleman.”

“He was a very respectful guy,” Hart said. “He went down one pathway, and we went down another. We agreed to disagree agreeably.”

DeLuna’s family was hospitable when FBI agents searched his house on Valentine’s Day 1979, according to Hart. “Carl and his family were perfect hosts for all the agents,” he said. “It was not a hostile environment.”

He treated everyone with the same respect, Hart said, “other than the usual things that mob guys are accused of.”

Thanks to Meredith Rodriquez

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The Last Steps of John Dillinger

One of the most famous cases in the FBI's 100-year history celebrates an anniversary today: On July 22, 1934, the gangster John Dillinger was killed in Chicago, moments after leaving the Biograph Theater, where, ironically, he had watched a gangster film starring Clark Gable. In the Depression years of the early 1930s, Dillinger’s bank robberies, shootouts, and jailbreaks earned him nationwide notoriety, but to the Bureau, he was just Public Enemy #1. And after months of pursuing him, a tip led Melvin Purvis, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Chicago office, to the Biograph on a hot Sunday night.

The day before, Purvis and Special Agent Samuel A. Cowley, who had been appointed by Director J. Edgar Hoover to head the Dillinger investigation, had met with a woman calling herself Anna Sage, a friend of Dillinger’s girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. She was hoping that her cooperation with the authorities would earn her reward money and keep her from being deported to her native Romania. She told Purvis that Dillinger planned to take both her and Hamilton to a Sunday evening movie at the Biograph or the Marbro.

Stakeouts were arranged for both theaters. A hand-written document from the FBI Dillinger file, a diagram of the Biograph, illustrates the placement of some 20 men around the theater and across the street. The diagram shows the letters “A,” “B,” and “C” outside the theater box office, with an “X” next to each letter. A legend identifies the significance of the letters: “Dillinger companion,” “Dillinger,” “informant.”

The informant—Anna Sage—called Purvis at 8:30 p.m. that Sunday to say they were going to the Biograph. Two hours later, Dillinger emerged from the theater with his two companions. Purvis, standing nearby, lit a cigar. It was the signal for his men to move in. As they did, Dillinger realized what was happening and reached for his pistol. Agents fired, and Dillinger was hit. He staggered, then fell.

Dillinger’s death signaled the beginning of the end of the Gangster Era, but the nation’s fascination with those times lives on. A new movie about Dillinger, directed by Michael Mann, is scheduled for release next July. The film, Public Enemies, stars Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Purvis. Mann, a Chicago native, spared no expense to re-create the Biograph Theater and the look and feel of 1930s-era Chicago for the film. “Getting it visually right requires a lot of dedication,” he explains, thanking us for our “spectacular cooperation” in helping to make the film authentic.Ross Rice, spokesman in the FBI's Chicago field office, says that when he compared the movie sets with archival photos from those days, “you couldn’t tell the difference. I felt like I was stepping back in time.” On Lincoln Avenue, where the Biograph still stands, the film crew “essentially rented out the entire block,” Rice says. The façade of every building was redone to look exactly as it did on that steamy night when Dillinger went to see Manhattan Melodrama. Attention was paid to every detail, from the streetlights to the trolley tracks right down to replacing the bricks on the street. Mann says the film also strives for “period-accurate psychology,” to help illuminate inner thoughts and motivations of Purvis and Dillinger. That process included talking with agents while doing research for the film. Their “zeal and passion,” Mann says, helped him understand just how badly Purvis wanted to catch Public Enemy #1.

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Carlos Marcello, New Orleans Mafia Don, Played Roll in JFK Assassination According to Lawsuit by Forensic Intelligence Analyst

A New Jersey paralegal with a longstanding interest in government corruption filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the F.B.I. on Monday, seeking the release of the full case file on a murderous Brooklyn Mafia informant — papers she believes may shed light on the possible involvement of a dead New Orleans crime boss in the killing of President John F. Kennedy.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington by the paralegal, Angela Clemente, asks the Federal Bureau of Investigation to make public any documents it may still hold related to the mobster, Gregory Scarpa Sr., who for nearly 30 years led a stunning double life as a hit man for the Colombo crime family and, in the words of the F.B.I, a “top echelon” informant for the bureau.

In her suit, Ms. Clemente asked the bureau to release all papers connected to Mr. Scarpa (who died of AIDS in 1994 after receiving a blood transfusion), especially those related to Carlos Marcello, a New Orleans don suspected by some of having played a role in the Kennedy assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Ms. Clemente filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Mr. Scarpa’s file in April, and the F.B.I. acknowledged her request in a letter on June 9, saying that bureau officials would search their records for relevant papers. Ms. Clemente’s lawyer, James Lesar, said that the F.B.I. had not yet told her if it would release the file or not, but that under federal law, a lawsuit can be filed compelling the release of records 20 working days after such a letter is received.

John Miller, a spokesman for the F.B.I., did not return phone calls on Monday seeking comment on Ms. Clemente’s suit. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said officials would review the suit and respond if needed in court.

In pursuing the Scarpa file and its potential to flesh out Mr. Marcello’s possible role in the Kennedy killing, Ms. Clemente is following a trail blazed in part by G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame who also served as the chief counsel and staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which from 1977 to 1979 investigated the killings of President Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While the Warren Commission said there was no link between Mr. Marcello and the president’s death, Mr. Blakey’s report to the House was considerably more circumspect, saying the F.B.I.’s “handling of the allegations and information about Marcello was characterized by a less than vigorous effort to investigate its reliability.”

Ms. Clemente is in possession of several heavily redacted papers from the Scarpa file, which suggest, however vaguely, she said, that Mr. Scarpa, who spied on numerous gangsters for the F.B.I., may also have spied on Mr. Marcello.

Professor Blakey, reached by phone at his office at Notre Dame on Monday, said he had seen the papers, adding that no matter what the unredacted versions might eventually reveal, he was convinced that he should have seen them 30 years ago, while conducting his Congressional investigation. “The issue here is not what’s in them,” Professor Blakey said, “so much as that they seem to have held them back from me. I thought I had the bureau file on Marcello — now it turns out I didn’t, did I? So I’m not a small, I’m a major, supporter of what Angela is trying to do.”

Ms. Clemente, 43, often refers to herself as a “forensic intelligence analyst.” She has been researching Mr. Scarpa for nearly a decade as part of a broader project on the improper use of government informants. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has said her work on Mr. Scarpa was instrumental in helping the office file quadruple murder charges against Mr. Scarpa’s former F.B.I. handler, Roy Lindley DeVecchio.

The charges against Mr. DeVecchio were dropped midtrial in October when Tom Robbins, a reporter for The Village Voice, suddenly showed prosecutors taped interviews he made years ago with the main prosecution witness, Mr. Scarpa’s mistress, suggesting that she had changed her account and damaged her credibility.

Faced with the sudden demise of years of investigative work, Ms. Clemente went back, she said, to the redacted papers she already had. She said she was intrigued, after additional study, to discover references to Mr. Scarpa’s apparent involvement in F.B.I. projects in New Orleans in the late 1950s and early 1960s — well before his publicly acknowledged role in helping the Kennedy administration learn the whereabouts of three slain civil rights workers by traveling to Mississippi to threaten a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

She said the F.B.I. had fought her “tooth and nail” in her efforts to obtain the full Scarpa file for Mr. DeVecchio’s trial. The F.B.I. did not return phone calls seeking comment on that allegation as well. “And that,” she said, “is what really piqued my curiosity.”

Thanks to Alan Feuer

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