"Chicago Overcoat" Film Locations

In "Chicago Overcoat," Lou Marazano (Frank Vincent), a has-been hit man who hung up his weapons in the 1980s, comes out of retirement 20 years later to resume his career as a triggerman for the Chicago Outfit. John Bosher, who co-wrote the movie with fellow alums from Columbia College Chicago, says they looked for locations that represented the gritty underbelly of Chicago. Here are descriptions of a few of the more than 50 locations of the film, which is being screened as part of the Chicago International Film Festival, gathered from a phone interview with Bosher.

--Franco's Ristorante, 300 W. 31st St.: This corner spot in Bridgeport is used for exterior shots of the place where the gangsters hang out.

Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland Ave.: The filmmakers removed the modern-day decor of this late-night spot and transformed it into a gathering place for the gangsters that looks like a 1980s strip club. Additions included poles for the strippers and a stage with a glass floor lit from below.

La Villa Restaurant & Banquet, 3636 N. Pulaski Rd.: This Italian restaurant stands in for the interior of Franco's Ristorante.

Nicky's Carry Out, 3501 S. Western Ave.: Lou takes his young grandson to this small McKinley Park spot to introduce him to a Chicago-style hot dog and a serving of life's lessons.

George's Automotive Repair, 3209 W. Barry Ave.: Lou and a young member of his crew mosey in to this neighborhood shop to shake down the owner. They do a bit of damage when he refuses to pay a street tax.

Alley at Franklin and Superior streets: Dumpsters stand against the brick wall of this dark alley where Lou gets back to work as a hit man.

Under the Dan Ryan Expressway at Cermak Road and Halsted Street: Imposing columns tower over this secluded space where Lou has a rendezvous with disgruntled members of the Outfit. The filmmakers wanted to give the shoot-out the feel of a scene in a Hollywood Western.

Police station, 2259 S. Damen Ave.: An abandoned Chicago Police station was cleaned up, furnished and rehabbed as a room where Lou is interrogated and placed in a lineup. Windows that had been boarded up were opened, and a Metro Police station sign was put up so as not to confuse the fictional police officers who behave badly in the film with Chicago's finest.

Thanks to Nancy Maes

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Eliot Ness and Al Capone Move to Turkey

If this column were written regularly in Turkish and I were a columnist of greater importance, I would have sworn that the man opposite me had been reading my mind. The man opposite me is, of course, the Turkish Prime Minister.

I warned our bosses more than a year ago that our group might face “corporate consequences” if we did not “behave.” We did not. And we suffered terrible corporate consequences. Last month, I expressed my concern that our boss, Aydın Doğan, might face prison if we did not behave. I compared Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vs Aydın Doğan to Vladimir Putin vs Mikhail Khodorkovsky. And a few days ago Prime Minister Erdoğan likened Doğan to Al Capone. That’s a bad sign.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 5, Erdoğan played the Turkish reincarnation of Eliot Ness, the Bureau of Prohibition agent and the man who finished off Capone as he compared the $3.2 billion tax case against Doğan with the U.S. pursuit of the famous gangster on tax-evasion charges in the 1930s. Erdoğan said: “In the U.S. there are also people who have had problems with evading taxes. Al Capone comes to mind. He was very rich, but then he spent the rest of his life in jail. Nobody raised a voice when those events happened.”

Now, what should we make of that? That champion tax payer Doğan is in fact Turkey’s public enemy number one? That he is a gangster engaged in mob wars and massacres but never leaves behind evidence so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes? That the only way to nail him was to send him a crippling tax fine? That, Doğan, like Capone, could also spend the rest of his life in jail despite his wealth?

The truth is, by using the Capone analogy, Erdoğan has unwisely confessed that his problem with Doğan was about a matter “other than taxation,” but that taxation was the only way to hit Doğan. What could that “matter” be? Drug smuggling? Racketeering? Mass killings of business rivals? Torture? Bombs and subversion? It’s just too obvious, and even my cat could tell you the truth if he could speak (in fact, he tried to scratch an answer on the rug, but I should not mention his argument here lest he be carted off to pet prison).

What else does WSJ’s Erdoğan quote tell us? Why did the prime minister say that “Capone spent the rest of his life in jail and nobody raised a voice when those events happened?” Could it be because Erdoğan is annoyed by the international reaction against the tax case, including senior EU officials warning that this case will come under the press freedom heading in this year’s annual progress report?

Apparently, Erdoğan expects everyone, especially the West, to remain silent about Doğan just as everyone was silent about Capone in the 1930s. That is hardly surprising, since the first one to criticize the international chorus of complaints about the Doğan affair was, ironically, Erdoğan’s minister for the EU, Egemen Bağış. According to Messrs. Erdoğan and Bağış, it was wrong of Doğan to voice complaints “to foreigners” about the most unprecedented tax fine in Turkish fiscal history.

In Erdoğan’s ideal world, his Western friends must treat Doğan like others treated Capone in the 1930s. Naturally, in his fairy tale, Erdoğan is the good-hearted patriot Ness fighting against public enemy number one. What heroic roles Bağış and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek would assume is difficult to guess, given the bizarre analogy. But I heard my cat meow-laughing loudly when Şimşek said that the tax fine was “purely technical.”

I have no idea what kind of car or cars Doğan drives, but they may be seized soon too. How do I know? From mob history. Scarface Al’s bullet-proof Cadillac was seized by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1932 and was later used as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's limousine. And what happens when the likes of Capone are totally eliminated from the scene? After Capone was jailed for income tax evasion in 1932, the Chicago mob flourished, establishing itself as one of the most innovative criminal associations in the country. That should be a message for Erdoğan. In a world with increasingly easier access to information, Erdoğan may even regret having fixated on one man, since the thousands of different voices that constitute the Doğan Media Group today may flourish and become a powerful, combined voice for “the opposition” tomorrow.

Thanks to Burak Bekdil

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Will Disbanded Chicago Police Gambling Unit Allow for a Mob Revival in the City?

The I-Team has learned that the Chicago Police Department's renowned gambling unit has been disbanded. It's a decision that some call a bad bet.

Here we are at the height of the football wagering season with the Bears on a roll and the Chicago Police Department has given up on its famed gambling unit.

The end of the line for the storied gambling squad came in a shake-up of the vice control unit six months ago. But only when the I-Team started asking questions was it revealed to the public.

Dial the number listed for the Chicago Police gambling squad and you get a recorded message saying the extension is not available.

"It was my decision," said Commander Ernie Brown, CPD Organized Crime Division.

Organized crime commander Ernie Brown says gone are the days of secret outfit wire rooms where sports bets were booked on banks of phones; mob bookies ran parlay cards for the weekend sports action; and customer records were kept on dissolving paper.

"That problem simply doesn't exist at the magnitude and at the level that requires a single purpose team for just gambling," said Brown.

Police say there is no longer a need for teams of specialty cops battering down doors and ending up on the front pages. "I just can't figure it out because those people are out there and they're always going to be out there. There's money in that stuff, you know, lots of money," said Don Herion, retired gambling detective.

The celebrated gambling squad was best known for it's for decades of deployment out of the old Maxwell Street station on the West Side.

When retired Sgt. Don Herion worked it in the 60, 70's and 80's, the squad had 35 or 40 officers. "How could you not work on the mob and gambling?" said Herion.

Herion spent four decades chasing mob bookmakers and their bosses for the Chicago police and the Cook County sheriff before retiring in 2000. Herion says the mob will never retire its gambling operation and the Chicago police shouldn't have closed theirs.

"It seems to me that they almost just legalized it by having no one chase bookmakers. If you don't have anybody chasing a dog you're not going to catch a dog are you?" said Herion. Police say officers absorbed by the vice unit will still chase illegal gambling if they see it or receive a complaint.

"Basically what it was is I would like to refer to it as being hybridized," said Brown.

Former IRS criminal investigator Phil DiPasquale says the feds would frequently depend on Chicago police gambling intelligence and that you can't work gambling cases part-time. "For three years I looked at a guy's phone records and knew he was doing it&most people don't want to spend three years going through phone records to catch somebody," said DiPasquale.

DiPasquale spent more than a year undercover working to nail south suburban outfit gambling boss Albert "Caesar" Tocco. DiPasquale says mob bosses like the late Caesar Tocco would love to know the CPD gambling unit has folded. "He'd probably have a party," said DiPasquale.

Herion, who wrote a book about outfit gamblers and now consults on Hollywood crime movies, says bookies are more tech-savvy and it may be that they have just outsmarted Chicago police who last year made less than 100 gambling arrests.

"If they're going to wait for a phone call they may get one about three guys shooting dice in an alley or something but I can't see anything worthwhile Mob-wise," said Herion.

Police say they hope the new hybrid vice cops will be able to stop dogfight gambling and work illegal online betting cases.

"I just want the public to rest assured that we haven't abdicated or withdrawn ground on illicit gambling, what we've done is refocused our activities and allowed those officers who engaged in gambling enforcement to do other things along with enforcement of gambling laws," said Brown.

Illinois state police and Cook County haven't had a dedicated gambling unit for several years. The sheriff's vice unit focuses on internet sex crimes and human trafficking according to a spokesman. Now that Chicago is without one, only the FBI and IRS actually gather gambling intelligence here, usually in large organized crime cases. So with this weekend's kickoff a few days away illegal wagering may never have been easier.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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The Story of Old Chicago Gangster Ma Barker

Kate "Ma" Barker (October 8, 1873 January 16, 1935) was an American criminal from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the Midwest gripped the American people and press. Her notoriety has since subsided, trailing behind Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.

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Genovese Crime Boss & WWII Hero, Carlo Mastrototaro, Dies at 89

The man frequently identified as a kingpin of organized crime in the Worcester area for much of the latter half of the past century and a highly decorated World War II combat veteran died Monday at his home in Worcester.

Carlo Mastrototaro, 89, of 40 Hancock Hill Drive, died peacefully surrounded by family members, according to his obituary.

In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Mastrototaro would only describe himself as a “retired businessman,” determinedly steering clear of specifying what he did before retiring.

“Different things” was all he would say. Reminded that law enforcement officials and other sources had labeled him a powerful figure in the New England mob, he responded, “Not everything said about me is true.”

A Worcester native, Mr. Mastrototaro, for the most part, stayed out of local headlines. He owned several restaurants in the area over the years and occasional stories referred to arrests and convictions for, among other things, racketeering, wire fraud and gambling.

Thomas J. Foley, former superintendent of the Massachusetts state police, said that Mr. Mastrototaro answered in the 1980s and 1990s to the Genovese crime family in New York with the tacit approval of Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence, regarded as the head of the New England Mafia until his death in 1984.

One of his convictions was in 1971 in Baltimore federal court after he was tried for aiding and abetting in the transportation of three stolen U.S. Treasury bills. The man who stole the treasury bills, Boston and Providence mob figure Vincent “Big Vinnie” Teresa, testified against Mr. Mastrototaro in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Two years later, Mr. Teresa wrote a tell-all book called “My Life in the Mafia,” in which he described Mr. Mastrototaro as “the boss of Worcester” and “the fourth most powerful boss in the current New England hierarchy of crime.”

There are numerous references in the book to Mr. Mastrototaro, some linking him to Mafia-backed casinos that operated in Haiti and pre-Communist Cuba, as well as to Meyer Lansky, a notorious figure in mob annals who was regarded as a financial genius.

Despite his testimony that helped convict Mr. Mastrototaro, Mr. Teresa, who died in 1990 while in the federal witness protection program, had an obvious admiration for the Worcester resident. “He was as honest as they come in the mob when you dealt with him,” Mr. Teresa wrote. “If you had a cent and half coming from him, it didn't make a bit of difference if you didn't show up to collect for six months. When you got there, the money was there waiting for you.”

Far less well-known about Mr. Mastrototaro was his distinguished record as a Marine serving in the Pacific during WWII. That service earned him a Purple Heart and the Silver Star, the military's third highest award for valor in the face of the enemy.

In his later years, Mr. Mastrototaro spent time at the Leatherneck Lounge on Lake Avenue and on rare occasions, friends say, he would open up about his military service from 1939 to 1944.

The Silver Star, he confided, stemmed from fighting in the Mariana Islands in the fierce Battle of Saipan in June and July 1944. On watch late one night while others in his platoon were asleep in foxholes, he detected shadows from behind, yelled a warning to fellow Marines, then jumped up and opened fire. He killed eight or nine Japanese on the perimeter of the platoon's camp.

Mr. Mastrototaro and several others in his company were badly wounded by mortar fire a few weeks later in the Battle of Tinian, also in the Marianas. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and later sent home with a medical discharge. His wounds, he told friends, actually saved his life. Much of his company was wiped out when they moved on to the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Mr. Mastrototaro helped found the Marine Corps League chapter in Worcester and was a member of several veterans' organizations.

Thanks to Jay Whearley

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