Those who knew him say 80-year-old Vaughn “Curly” Fitzgerald loved to play cards and shoot pool. Fitzgerald, a World War II veteran, was shot and killed by police Oct. 16, apparently while trying to foil an armed robbery on his property at 3307 Kishwaukee St.
Although police are tight-lipped about numerous details, it is widely believed a high-stakes “executive” card game was the target of robbers armed with handguns-not the first such game Fitzgerald has allegedly played. He was formally charged with keeping a gambling place in 2002, but the case was dismissed in 2004.
Responding to this year’s Oct. 16 Kishwaukee Street 911 call, reporting an armed robbery in progress, Officer Cheryl Buntjer, a veteran of more than 18 years, was first to arrive on the scene. Officer Jeffrey Oberts, a seven-and-a-half-year veteran, arrived shortly thereafter.
Police say officers witnessed two gunmen attempting to flee the scene. One of the men, Byron Starks, was ordered to the ground as he surrendered to police. A second suspect eluded officers.
Police Chief Chet Epperson stated Fitzgerald then fired two shots at Starks, hitting him once, before officers were able to take Starks into custody.
Epperson reported officers identified themselves and ordered Fitzgerald to drop his weapon several times.
“The first officer by the doorway fires her weapon at the armed subject, as he continues to point the barrel at her and the subject that was just shot, and a third officer behind this female officer,” Epperson recounted at a press conference Oct. 17.
Fitzgerald, who was hearing impaired, was allegedly told to drop his weapon again. Fitzgerald’s rifle barrel then allegedly swung in the direction of Oberts, who responded by firing his weapon at the property owner. Fitzgerald is then said to have retreated behind an entryway, and the area was quickly secured, according to Epperson, before medical response was summoned.
Starks, whom Epperson described as “a victim of a shooting,” was said to be in “guarded condition” by the chief. Epperson reserved commenting about whether Starks is cooperating in the investigation.
Coroner Sue Fiduccia indicated Fitzgerald was struck “more than one time” in the torso.
Per procedure, Buntjer and Oberts were placed on leave pending a grand jury investigation. Epperson said the shooting incident is tentatively slated to go before the grand jury Oct. 31.
Based on the information he’d received, Epperson said Buntjer and Oberts “acted appropriately, professionally and used the proper amount of force in this incident.
“I would have been very upset if they had not done what they did last evening,” the chief added during the Oct. 17 briefing.
Fitzgerald’s family, along with their attorney, were said to have been present at the press conference, but have been unwilling to speak with the media.
The morning after the incident, Mayor Larry Morrissey (I) said, “We don’t want [officers] to have to use deadly force, but in the situation where their lives are at risk, when they’re following the protocol that they’ve been trained on, they need to use deadly force when it’s appropriate and when the circumstances justify it.”
The use of deadly force by police is not the only matter being investigated. Epperson told The Rock River Times gambling and the armed robbery are also facets of the investigation.
According to Deputy Chief Greg Lindmark, Starks was charged Oct. 22 with armed robbery and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. His bond was set at $1 million, according to police, who would not release Starks’ mugshot “due to the nature of the investigation.”
Judge Gary Pumilia, who dismissed the case against Fitzgerald in 2004, will arraign Starks Nov. 29.
Starks’ rap sheet reflects a number of prior charges, including disorderly conduct, aggravated discharge of a firearm, battery, attempted criminal damage to property and home invasion.
A press release issued Oct. 23 states, “The victims of the robbery were involved in a card game at the time of the incident,” and that further charges related to the incident are possible.
In 2002 the alleged gambling related to the charge against Fitzgerald was said to have occurred at 5526 Linden Road, a property owned by son Gregory and his wife Patricia.
Fitzgerald, the owner of nine properties in Winnebago County, is known to have hosted many such card games throughout the region. A prior charge against him, alleging he’d kept a place of gambling, was dismissed in 2004 after the search warrant was quashed. Reportedly, police were unable to turn over video evidence, which was part of a separate ongoing investigation into a sports betting operation.
Rockford Police and the FBI began that joint investigation into a bookmaking business in August 2000. Evidence leading to guilty pleas from nine local men included wire taps and surveillance.
This year, U.S. District Court Judge Philip G. Reinhard sentenced Joseph F. “Pep” Fiorenza, along with sons Nicolas T. and Rick J., John P. “Tiger” Frisella, Frank C. Giardono, Nick Provenzano, Charles A. Purin, John F. Salamone and Joseph W. Saladino for their roles in the gambling ring.
Epperson wouldn’t say how many suspects were involved in the Oct. 16 incident, or who had been present. Instead, he described the occurrence as “another incident involving the use of illegal firearms.
“Police business today, here and throughout this country has changed dramatically because of the continued heightened use of illegal firearms,” Epperson told reporters. “Illegal firearms, which Rockford police officers confiscate from dangerous criminals every day.”
Asked whether Fitzgerald possessed a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID), the chief answered, “That’s still under investigation.”
Asked the same question five days later, Epperson said he still didn’t have an answer.
Mayor Morrissey reported about a third of Rockford shootings this year have been perpetrated by convicted felons, who are not legally able to possess firearms. Morrissey believes there’s a lack of reporting when guns change hands after the initial sale.
“I have nothing against people who are lawfully using guns,” asserted Morrissey, who said he hunted while growing up and still has a FOID in his wallet. “The vast majority of cases where guns are being used in the commission of crimes; these are folks who don’t have a Firearm Owner’s Identification card.”
Asked if any other weapons had been recovered from the crime scene, the chief responded, “It’s still under investigation.”
Asked if thieves had gotten away with any cash, Epperson again replied, “It’s still under investigation.”
Rockford regional FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G.B. Jones was also summoned to the scene in the early morning hours of Oct. 17, although he could say no more about any possible federal involvement.
The Rock River Times asked Chief Epperson why the FBI had been called in. After a 6-second pause, he responded: “Well, the gambling did take place, and some of the names of the individuals who were there rose some attention. …There has been some investigations in the past.”
During the 2004 case against Fitzgerald, court records show Rockford Police Detective Jeffrey Stovall indicated the illegal card games were part of a gambling operation known as the “Soccer Club.”
Stovall’s affidavit also reports a confidential source identified brothers Salvatore “Sam” Galluzzo and Natale Galluzzo to be running the Soccer Club. The local daily identified Salvatore Galluzzo as an alleged Mob figure in 1984.
Asked who was present at the card game, Epperson said: “I know who was there. I don’t want to comment, because it’s an ongoing investigation.”
Stovall’s 2002 affidavit indicates sites hosting the high-stakes games are commonly equipped with surveillance systems for security. Players are typically buzzed-in from the outside after being identified, according to Stovall.
Asked whether an on-site video surveillance system had yielded any evidence from the incident, the chief responded, “If it was there, it’d be part of the investigation, so I wouldn’t want to comment about that.”
During this summer’s blockbuster Family Secrets trial in Chicago against the Chicago Mob, Department of Justice exhibits included surveillance photos of Salvatore Galluzzo with Frank G. “Gumba” or “Fat Frank” Saladino.
Saladino was found dead April 25, 2005, apparently of natural causes, when authorities raided his Hampshire, Ill., hotel room during the simultaneous arrests of numerous reputed Chicago Mobsters related to Operation Family Secrets indictments.
Saladino was also named as a co-conspirator in the Rockford sports gambling ring, which many argue is a clear indication Rockford is a territory of the Chicago Outfit.
Prosecutors said Saladino was involved in five of the Family Secrets trial’s 18 murders.
At the press conference where Phil Nicolosi was named the Republican appointee for Winnebago County State’s Attorney June 24, he was asked by The Rock River Times, considering his Italian-American heritage, if he’d pursue the prosecution of organized crime in Rockford. When that question was asked, many Italian-Americans in the room groaned loudly in protest.
“I intend to prosecute vigorously any crime that’s committed in this county,” Nicolosi pledged confidently in response, which elicited supportive laughter from those who had protested.
Although all the local media were present in the room, most did not report on those questions or the response of Nicolosi or those present at the press conference.
Before taking over for Paul Logli as state’s attorney, Nicolosi was an attorney for Nicolosi & Associates. Gerlando “Gino” Galluzzo, son of Salvatore, is a partner with the firm. Paul S. Nicolosi, the state’s attorney’s brother, is also a firm partner and a past business associate of Salvatore and Natale Galluzzo, as reported in the Nov. 2-8, 2005, issue.
Asked what impact the list of those involved in the Oct. 16 shooting might have on his prosecution of the case, Phil Nicolosi responded: “Since I have not gotten the police reports, I don’t know, officially, the names of the parties that were there. What I will tell you is, if there is any party that’s there that I, you know, have either an acquaintance of or prior relationship with, I would recuse myself and then, in all likelihood, if I felt there was even an appearance of a conflict, ask the Attorney General’s office to step in.”
Phil Nicolosi could not be reached by police the night of the incident. He said the reason he could not be reached was the officer who had his personal home phone number was on vacation.
Thanks to Stuart R. Wahlin
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
In Italy, Organized Crime Does Pay
Organized crime represents the biggest segment of the Italian economy, accounting for more than $127 billion in receipts, according to a report issued Monday.
The new figure reflects a trend that has been under way for a few years, the annual report says. The figure last year was $106 billion, making it not quite the biggest segment of the economy.
The report also said the line between legitimate business and criminal activity was becoming harder to discern.
The annual report was released by the Confesercenti, an association of small businesses. It says that through various activities — extortion, usury, contraband, robberies, gambling and Internet piracy — organized crime accounts for 7 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product.
“From the weaving factories, to tourism to business and personal services, from farming to public contracts to real estate and finance, the criminal presence is consolidated in every economic activity,” the 86-page report said.
The report also points to a disturbing trend of collusion in which big businesses participate, especially in public works. “The businessmen prefer to make a pact with the Mafia rather than denounce the blackmail,” the report said.
The report comes on the heels of a visit to Naples by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday, when he condemned “deplorable” mob violence that he said had insinuated itself into everyday life.
Recent news reports have described threats to journalists in Sicily and the Campania region from organized-crime families.
Usury represents the most lucrative activity by organized crime, with syndicates taking in $43 billion while racketeering brings in $14 billion, the report estimated. Illegal construction nets about $19 billion.
The businesses most afflicted by organized crime are in the south — in Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia, the report found.
The report says 80 percent of the businesses in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Palermo regularly pay protection money, known as “pizzo.”
Thanks to Peter Kiefer
The new figure reflects a trend that has been under way for a few years, the annual report says. The figure last year was $106 billion, making it not quite the biggest segment of the economy.
The report also said the line between legitimate business and criminal activity was becoming harder to discern.
The annual report was released by the Confesercenti, an association of small businesses. It says that through various activities — extortion, usury, contraband, robberies, gambling and Internet piracy — organized crime accounts for 7 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product.
“From the weaving factories, to tourism to business and personal services, from farming to public contracts to real estate and finance, the criminal presence is consolidated in every economic activity,” the 86-page report said.
The report also points to a disturbing trend of collusion in which big businesses participate, especially in public works. “The businessmen prefer to make a pact with the Mafia rather than denounce the blackmail,” the report said.
The report comes on the heels of a visit to Naples by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday, when he condemned “deplorable” mob violence that he said had insinuated itself into everyday life.
Recent news reports have described threats to journalists in Sicily and the Campania region from organized-crime families.
Usury represents the most lucrative activity by organized crime, with syndicates taking in $43 billion while racketeering brings in $14 billion, the report estimated. Illegal construction nets about $19 billion.
The businesses most afflicted by organized crime are in the south — in Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia, the report found.
The report says 80 percent of the businesses in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Palermo regularly pay protection money, known as “pizzo.”
Thanks to Peter Kiefer
"Family Businesses" Endorse Rudy
The National Italian-American Foundation met in Washington Friday and endorsed Rudy Giuliani. They feel very grateful to him. After Rudy Giuliani got finished prosecuting their relatives there were a lot of job openings in the family businesses.
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Rogues' Hall of Fame
Johnny Roselli was the mob's ambassador-without-portfolio, corrupting the film industry's unions in Hollywood and becoming the go-to guy in Las Vegas and Miami. After testifying before a Senate committee and emerging as a player in the mob's long-rumored involvement in JFK's assassination, his body washed up off Miami.
Meyer Lansky was the mob's gambling czar and set up casinos in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Hot Springs, Ark., New Orleans, Las Vegas, Florida and Cuba. Refused citizenship in Israel, he retired to Miami. Immortalized by actor Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth in "The Godfather II."
Vito Genovese sought to dethrone Lucky Luciano as capo di tutti capi; conspired to assassinate mob rival Frank Costello, leading to the ill-fated mob conference in Apalachin, N.Y., that put the Mafia under the eye of investigators. Died in federal prison after mob cohorts reportedly set him up on a heroin rap.
Paul Castellano, Gambino's heir, ran meat and poultry businesses and lived sumptuously in a Todt Hill, S.I., mansion known as "The White House." Dapper Don John Gotti supposedly orchestrated his Dec. 16, 1985, assassination outside a Manhattan steakhouse.
Frank Costello was a Tammany Hall fixer and diplomat whose gravel-voiced persona supposedly was the inspiration for Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in "The Godfather." Lived on Park Avenue and in Sands Point, L.I.; retired after Vito Genovese's failed assassination bid in May 1957.
Carmine Galante, a feared hit man and dope dealer, assumed the reins of the Bonanno crime family in the '70s; was gunned down at an Italian restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where his bullet-riddled body lay crumpled on the ground, a cigar still hanging from his mouth.
Mickey Cohen, head of Los Angeles gambling rackets, maintained a host of powerful friends, including Frank Sinatra - who once appealed to him to get mobster Johnny Stompanato to stop dating Ava Gardner. Depicted by Harvey Keitel in the 1991 film "Bugsy" and by Paul Guilfoyle in 1997's "L.A. Confidential."
Carlo Gambino infiltrated the garment industry while heading the country's largest and most powerful mob family, yet managed to avoid the limelight - and the scrutiny of cops - by living quietly at 2230 Ocean Parkway in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Died of a heart attack in 1976.
James Ralph "Bottles" Capone was the lesser-known and benignly named brother of the Windy City's uber-gangster, Al "Scarface" Capone. Lived with a sister at Martha Lake, near Mercer, Wis., and was said to have had numerous arrests - but no felony convictions. He reputedly owned a vending machine business in western Chicago.
Charles "Lucky" Luciano, considered a visionary in mob history, helped engineer the five-family crime structure in New York City. Given 30 years for running brothels, he served only a decade behind bars, with the proviso that he be deported to Italy.
A Story for Martin Scorsese to Bring to the Big Screen
Are you familiar, as the lawyers say, with a man named Alphonse Persico, known as Allie Boy? How about Nicky Black, Wild Bill, Joe Waverly, Joey Brains and Joe Brewster? Or Lawrence Mazza, James Delmasto, John Pate and Carmine Sessa?
If not, good luck following the blockbuster murder case on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court before a spellbound audience of journalists, promoters, authors, conspiracy theorists, gadflies and some who answer to three or more of those designations. You need a scorecard just to track the players.
Fortunately, their nicknames give them away: All are figures associated with the Mafia, that fetishistically documented secret society responsible for long-ago crime waves, more recent cinematic masterpieces and, above all, an enduring modern marketing bonanza. Some are dead and some are living; in their lives the press loved them all.
These latter days find the waning wiseguys reduced to walk-on roles in an ensemble gathered for the trial of Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor. Mr. DeVecchio, 67, has been charged with helping his prized Mafia informer kill four people in the 1980s and early 1990s. Prosecutors say he disclosed confidential information to set up assassinations.
This contemporary Mafia trial’s more prominent players include a 1960s campus radical turned dapper judge whose taste in courtroom décor runs to the eccentric, an aspiring author planning a book with a self-styled love, dating, sex and relationship coach and an amateur private investigator who was choked (not fatally) in a strange, unexplained attack last year.
The publicity circus surrounding big mob trials was already in full churn last week. Satellite trucks idled on Jay Street. Photographers ascended stepladders to gain some purchase over their rivals. A high school class visited the courtroom on a field trip. Mr. DeVecchio, free on $1 million bond, mingled with his supporters. And tabloid newspapers reflexively chronicled every twist under headlines such as “Weird Mafia Love Triangle” and “G-Man and G-Strings; Plied With Bimbos: DA.”
The basic accusations against Mr. DeVecchio date to the Bensonhurst war for control of the Colombo crime family in the early ’90s, when Mr. DeVecchio led an F.B.I. squad charged with crippling the Colombos. His informer was Gregory Scarpa Sr., proprietor of the Wimpy Boys Social Club and a capo in the family.
After the war ended, federal prosecutors admitted that Mr. DeVecchio had passed confidential information to Mr. Scarpa. Investigators for the Department of Justice failed to turn up evidence to support criminal charges or even disciplinary action, and Mr. DeVecchio soon retired.
In a way, his new trial can be considered the triumph of the hangers-on, the true believers and the Mafia aficionados.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has credited Angela Clemente, a single mother from New Jersey, amateur private eye (and victim of that unexplained choking) with research that helped revive the case. The office has also acknowledged the work of Peter Lance, a writer who attends the trial in pinstripe suits, telling anyone who will listen his theories linking the case to global terrorism. But at center stage is the main prosecution witness, Linda Schiro, aspiring author of a book tentatively titled “Marriage, Mafia Style.” Supporting testimony is expected from her son, Gregory Scarpa Jr., who is in prison for racketeering. Mr. Scarpa is a prolific informer who has at times claimed to have the goods on his own father and on Ramzi Yousef, orchestrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Mr. DeVecchio’s defense lawyers speak of a darker side to all this Mafia obsession. Over the years, they argue, Ms. Schiro has tried time and again to sell the story of her life as the common-law wife of the senior Mr. Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994.
With each new telling and each new potential co-author (including the love and dating coach, Sandra Harmon), she has sharpened her portrayal of Mr. DeVecchio. In her evolving accounts, defense lawyers argue, Mr. DeVecchio has gone from a man who met privately with her husband to a man she heard giving orders to kill.
“That’s pure fantasy,” said a defense lawyer, Douglas Grover, in his opening statement. “She’s making it up.”
Prosecutors built the groundwork for her credibility last week with testimony from a Mafia expert and from F.B.I. agents who had worked with Mr. DeVecchio.
The Mafia expert, Sgt. Fred Santoro of the Police Department, seemed well at ease. A product of Bensonhurst himself, he lent the trial an old-time touch by cracking wise on Mafia policies for drug-dealing (frowned upon) and murder (get permission first). The federal agents recounted their suspicions about Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with his informer.
By the end of the week, a real live Mafia associate cried on the witness stand, to the evident delight of the gallery. The witness, Lawrence Mazza, told of hunting Colombo rivals, armed to the teeth in a frequently repainted station wagon.
The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, interjected with his own questions. He knew a thing or two about the F.B.I.; its agents had once counted him among the most dangerous protest organizers at Columbia University. When the witness mentioned a newspaper account of one killing, Justice Reichbach offered a qualification.
“Just because it appears in the newspapers,” he said, “doesn’t make it so.”
The writers packed into the gallery laughed and laughed. The judge leaned back in his big leather chair. The scales of justice glowed over his shoulder, in neon, bright red and blue.
Thanks to Michael Brick
If not, good luck following the blockbuster murder case on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court before a spellbound audience of journalists, promoters, authors, conspiracy theorists, gadflies and some who answer to three or more of those designations. You need a scorecard just to track the players.
Fortunately, their nicknames give them away: All are figures associated with the Mafia, that fetishistically documented secret society responsible for long-ago crime waves, more recent cinematic masterpieces and, above all, an enduring modern marketing bonanza. Some are dead and some are living; in their lives the press loved them all.
These latter days find the waning wiseguys reduced to walk-on roles in an ensemble gathered for the trial of Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor. Mr. DeVecchio, 67, has been charged with helping his prized Mafia informer kill four people in the 1980s and early 1990s. Prosecutors say he disclosed confidential information to set up assassinations.
This contemporary Mafia trial’s more prominent players include a 1960s campus radical turned dapper judge whose taste in courtroom décor runs to the eccentric, an aspiring author planning a book with a self-styled love, dating, sex and relationship coach and an amateur private investigator who was choked (not fatally) in a strange, unexplained attack last year.
The publicity circus surrounding big mob trials was already in full churn last week. Satellite trucks idled on Jay Street. Photographers ascended stepladders to gain some purchase over their rivals. A high school class visited the courtroom on a field trip. Mr. DeVecchio, free on $1 million bond, mingled with his supporters. And tabloid newspapers reflexively chronicled every twist under headlines such as “Weird Mafia Love Triangle” and “G-Man and G-Strings; Plied With Bimbos: DA.”
The basic accusations against Mr. DeVecchio date to the Bensonhurst war for control of the Colombo crime family in the early ’90s, when Mr. DeVecchio led an F.B.I. squad charged with crippling the Colombos. His informer was Gregory Scarpa Sr., proprietor of the Wimpy Boys Social Club and a capo in the family.
After the war ended, federal prosecutors admitted that Mr. DeVecchio had passed confidential information to Mr. Scarpa. Investigators for the Department of Justice failed to turn up evidence to support criminal charges or even disciplinary action, and Mr. DeVecchio soon retired.
In a way, his new trial can be considered the triumph of the hangers-on, the true believers and the Mafia aficionados.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has credited Angela Clemente, a single mother from New Jersey, amateur private eye (and victim of that unexplained choking) with research that helped revive the case. The office has also acknowledged the work of Peter Lance, a writer who attends the trial in pinstripe suits, telling anyone who will listen his theories linking the case to global terrorism. But at center stage is the main prosecution witness, Linda Schiro, aspiring author of a book tentatively titled “Marriage, Mafia Style.” Supporting testimony is expected from her son, Gregory Scarpa Jr., who is in prison for racketeering. Mr. Scarpa is a prolific informer who has at times claimed to have the goods on his own father and on Ramzi Yousef, orchestrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Mr. DeVecchio’s defense lawyers speak of a darker side to all this Mafia obsession. Over the years, they argue, Ms. Schiro has tried time and again to sell the story of her life as the common-law wife of the senior Mr. Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994.
With each new telling and each new potential co-author (including the love and dating coach, Sandra Harmon), she has sharpened her portrayal of Mr. DeVecchio. In her evolving accounts, defense lawyers argue, Mr. DeVecchio has gone from a man who met privately with her husband to a man she heard giving orders to kill.
“That’s pure fantasy,” said a defense lawyer, Douglas Grover, in his opening statement. “She’s making it up.”
Prosecutors built the groundwork for her credibility last week with testimony from a Mafia expert and from F.B.I. agents who had worked with Mr. DeVecchio.
The Mafia expert, Sgt. Fred Santoro of the Police Department, seemed well at ease. A product of Bensonhurst himself, he lent the trial an old-time touch by cracking wise on Mafia policies for drug-dealing (frowned upon) and murder (get permission first). The federal agents recounted their suspicions about Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with his informer.
By the end of the week, a real live Mafia associate cried on the witness stand, to the evident delight of the gallery. The witness, Lawrence Mazza, told of hunting Colombo rivals, armed to the teeth in a frequently repainted station wagon.
The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, interjected with his own questions. He knew a thing or two about the F.B.I.; its agents had once counted him among the most dangerous protest organizers at Columbia University. When the witness mentioned a newspaper account of one killing, Justice Reichbach offered a qualification.
“Just because it appears in the newspapers,” he said, “doesn’t make it so.”
The writers packed into the gallery laughed and laughed. The judge leaned back in his big leather chair. The scales of justice glowed over his shoulder, in neon, bright red and blue.
Thanks to Michael Brick
RICO Laws Heading to Australia
Tough anti-racketeering laws used in America to defeat the Mafia are likely to be introduced in Australia to smash lawless Queensland bikie gangs.
This follows a warning from the Australian Crime Commission of increasing motorcycle gang involvement in the manufacture and trafficking of drugs, extortion, theft, identity fraud, illegal gambling, money laundering, prostitution, car rebirthing, arson and murder.
"Most Australians would be absolutely horrified if they knew what a deep hold the bikies have on all kinds of criminal activity in Australia," said Queensland senator Ian Macdonald. Senator Macdonald is chairman of a federal parliamentary committee investigating organised crime.
The committee has recommended the introduction of so-called RICO laws, based on the American Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. The powerful Act gives US crime investigators wider powers to investigate and coerce associates of criminals and to treat gangs as single criminal enterprises.
"Because of the bikie gang stranglehold on organised crime, we need legislation similar to RICO, but updated to suit the times," Senator Macdonald said. He said legal advisers had also suggested a toughening of old laws to outlaw consorting over the internet or on mobile phones.
Senator Macdonald's joint parliamentary committee recently took evidence into organised crime and the Australian Crime Commission at hearings around Australia. He said some of the evidence, much of it given in secret, was "stunning".
Police told the inquiry that bikie gangs were now conducting joint ventures with ethnic gangs and had links to international crime syndicates. They had also established companies to launder drug money and they were recruiting children to fence stolen property.
Queensland police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission backed the introduction of RICO laws and again appealed to the State Government to pass phone-tapping laws.
Veteran investigative crime journalist Bob Bottom - who also gave evidence at the Brisbane hearings - also backed the introduction of RICO laws and telephone taps.
He said the Gold Coast was a crime centre in Australia in much the same way that US gangsters flocked to Florida from where they ran vast criminal networks.
Thanks to Des Houghton
This follows a warning from the Australian Crime Commission of increasing motorcycle gang involvement in the manufacture and trafficking of drugs, extortion, theft, identity fraud, illegal gambling, money laundering, prostitution, car rebirthing, arson and murder.
"Most Australians would be absolutely horrified if they knew what a deep hold the bikies have on all kinds of criminal activity in Australia," said Queensland senator Ian Macdonald. Senator Macdonald is chairman of a federal parliamentary committee investigating organised crime.
The committee has recommended the introduction of so-called RICO laws, based on the American Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. The powerful Act gives US crime investigators wider powers to investigate and coerce associates of criminals and to treat gangs as single criminal enterprises.
"Because of the bikie gang stranglehold on organised crime, we need legislation similar to RICO, but updated to suit the times," Senator Macdonald said. He said legal advisers had also suggested a toughening of old laws to outlaw consorting over the internet or on mobile phones.
Senator Macdonald's joint parliamentary committee recently took evidence into organised crime and the Australian Crime Commission at hearings around Australia. He said some of the evidence, much of it given in secret, was "stunning".
Police told the inquiry that bikie gangs were now conducting joint ventures with ethnic gangs and had links to international crime syndicates. They had also established companies to launder drug money and they were recruiting children to fence stolen property.
Queensland police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission backed the introduction of RICO laws and again appealed to the State Government to pass phone-tapping laws.
Veteran investigative crime journalist Bob Bottom - who also gave evidence at the Brisbane hearings - also backed the introduction of RICO laws and telephone taps.
He said the Gold Coast was a crime centre in Australia in much the same way that US gangsters flocked to Florida from where they ran vast criminal networks.
Thanks to Des Houghton
Curse of Al Capone's Gold
In North Dakota rogue cop Andy Larson supplements his income by stealing from criminals especially bootleggers. He and four of his friends plan to hijack a truckload filled with illegal booze, but to his dismay everything turns ugly as bullets fly. The four bootleggers and one of Larson’s allies are dead. When the dust settles, the four survivors look inside the truck to find a cache of gold coins.
Andy knows he needs to cover up the disaster from his work peers and elude the owner of the coins, mobster Al Capone. As he struggles with both, Andy tries to figure out how to dispose of bodies, alcohol, and coins without the cops or the Chicago mob knowing it was him.
Except for the illegal booze and names like Capone, this prohibition crime caper could take place in any twentieth century era as the action-packed story line lacks a distinct 1920s flavor to it. The story line is fast-paced and filled with gunfights that make the Valentine’s Day massacre look like a cozy. With the blood flowing and the audience wanting Andy to get his comeuppance as a bad cop, readers will be reminded of marihuana busts in the south and southwest in the 1960s as Mike Thompson provides a graphic shoot out.
Thanks to Harriet Klausner
Andy knows he needs to cover up the disaster from his work peers and elude the owner of the coins, mobster Al Capone. As he struggles with both, Andy tries to figure out how to dispose of bodies, alcohol, and coins without the cops or the Chicago mob knowing it was him.
Except for the illegal booze and names like Capone, this prohibition crime caper could take place in any twentieth century era as the action-packed story line lacks a distinct 1920s flavor to it. The story line is fast-paced and filled with gunfights that make the Valentine’s Day massacre look like a cozy. With the blood flowing and the audience wanting Andy to get his comeuppance as a bad cop, readers will be reminded of marihuana busts in the south and southwest in the 1960s as Mike Thompson provides a graphic shoot out.
Thanks to Harriet Klausner
Mob Killer Crys on Witness Stand
A stone killer for the Mob, who testified casually about his homicidal jaunts through Brooklyn looking for people to shoot, started crying in court yesterday over his youthful wrong turn into a life of crime.
Tough guy Lawrence Mazza, 46, who was to testify about his gangster boss' ties to rogue FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio collapsed in tears in Brooklyn Supreme Court when he recounted that he spent a year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice studying police science.
"I was planning to follow my father" in civil service, Mazza said, choking up at the thought of his dad, a lieutenant in the Fire Department. "I'm sorry," Mazza told the judge, growing increasingly emotional.
A court officer handed him a tissue. The prosecutor got him a glass of water. But the handsome mobster continued to weep. Finally the judge called a break.
Seasoned court watchers said they'd never seen anything like it.
After recovering his composure, Mazza laid out his remarkable story: how he unwittingly romanced a Mafioso's girlfriend, was befriended by the gangster, shared the woman with him and gradually transformed into a feared killer.
Mazza called his mobster patron, Colombo capo Gregory (The Grim Reaper) Scarpa Sr., "vicious, violent" and a man who "told me he stopped counting at 50" when listing his murders. "He was unscrupulous and treacherous. He was a horrible human being," Mazza testified. "I was his right hand man, very, very close."
He described how, during the bloody Colombo family civil war of the early 1990s, they would cruise the streets of Brooklyn in a station wagon tricked out as a death car, loaded with shotguns, rifles and pistols, with special hidden compartments for the guns.
They wore bulletproof vests, carried rudimentary portable phones and looked for members of the rival Orena faction to blow away.
They rarely missed, he said. "Pretty much, we killed who we shot," Mazza testified.
Mazza, who pled guilty years ago to loansharking, racketeering, four murders and conspiracy to kill four other people, now lives in Florida after spending a decade in jail. He began cooperating soon after his 1993 arrest and has helped the feds with three trials so far.
Thanks to Scott Shifrel and Helen Kennedy
Tough guy Lawrence Mazza, 46, who was to testify about his gangster boss' ties to rogue FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio collapsed in tears in Brooklyn Supreme Court when he recounted that he spent a year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice studying police science.
"I was planning to follow my father" in civil service, Mazza said, choking up at the thought of his dad, a lieutenant in the Fire Department. "I'm sorry," Mazza told the judge, growing increasingly emotional.
A court officer handed him a tissue. The prosecutor got him a glass of water. But the handsome mobster continued to weep. Finally the judge called a break.
Seasoned court watchers said they'd never seen anything like it.
After recovering his composure, Mazza laid out his remarkable story: how he unwittingly romanced a Mafioso's girlfriend, was befriended by the gangster, shared the woman with him and gradually transformed into a feared killer.
Mazza called his mobster patron, Colombo capo Gregory (The Grim Reaper) Scarpa Sr., "vicious, violent" and a man who "told me he stopped counting at 50" when listing his murders. "He was unscrupulous and treacherous. He was a horrible human being," Mazza testified. "I was his right hand man, very, very close."
He described how, during the bloody Colombo family civil war of the early 1990s, they would cruise the streets of Brooklyn in a station wagon tricked out as a death car, loaded with shotguns, rifles and pistols, with special hidden compartments for the guns.
They wore bulletproof vests, carried rudimentary portable phones and looked for members of the rival Orena faction to blow away.
They rarely missed, he said. "Pretty much, we killed who we shot," Mazza testified.
Mazza, who pled guilty years ago to loansharking, racketeering, four murders and conspiracy to kill four other people, now lives in Florida after spending a decade in jail. He began cooperating soon after his 1993 arrest and has helped the feds with three trials so far.
Thanks to Scott Shifrel and Helen Kennedy
The Mafia Chef: Anthony Bourdain
Dubbed "the bad boy of cuisine" for his rock-star look and blunt observations about the world of restaurants, chefs and cooking and the "Mafia Chef" because of his crime and cookery novels, Anthony Bourdain is not your typical celebrity chef. A 28-year veteran of professional kitchens, Bourdain is currently the executive chef at New York’s famed bistro, Les Halles.Bourdain entertains and educates with his exotic tales of travel and lessons learned from the kitchen trenches. He shares his passion on topics ranging from "Great Cuisines: The Common Thread" to the celebrity chef phenomenon and the culture of cooking. He also imparts his drill-sergeant approach to running a kitchen, which he shared with the Harvard Business Review Magazine, in "Management by Fire: A Conversation With Chef Anthony Bourdain." "The fantastic mix of order and chaos," he says, "demands a rigid hierarchy and a sacrosanct code of conduct, where punctuality, loyalty, teamwork and discipline are key to producing consistently good food."
His exposé of New York restaurants, Don’t Eat Before Reading This, published in The New Yorker Magazine
in 1999, attracted huge attention in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It formed the basis of his critically acclaimed 2001 book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which described in lurid detail his experiences in kitchens and became a surprise international best-seller.In late 2000, Bourdain set out to eat his way across the globe, looking for, as he puts it, kicks, thrills, epiphanies and the "perfect meal." The book, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines
, and its companion 22-part television series chronicle his adventures and misadventures on that voyage, during which he sampled the still-beating heart of a live cobra, dined with gangsters in Russia, and returned to his roots in the tiny fishing village of La Teste, France, where he first ate an oyster as a child.Bourdain is a contributing authority for Food Arts Magazine. His novels include The Bobby Gold Stories: A Novel, Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo. His work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Gourmet Magazine
and The New York Times. He describes his recent book Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking, as "Julia Child meets Full Metal Jacket."His latest book, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, is a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures.
Anthony Bourdain was born in New York City in 1956. After two misspent years at Vassar College, he attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, followed by nearly three decades of working in professional kitchens. He lives — and will always live — in New York City.
The Second Burial of John Gotti
Four girls in black ponytails and Sunday dresses are laughing and chatting in Spanish as they walk toward Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the orange brick church that towers over Ozone Park, Queens. They cross a famous intersection. Do they know it was here, 15 years ago, that mob henchmen gunned down Thomas and Rosemarie Uva, the daredevil couple who made a career of robbing Italian mafia social clubs? It seemed unlikely. Nowadays, Indian pop music blares from cars more often than gunshots, and West Indian grocery stores line the streets near the ex-headquarters of this neighborhood’s most famous denizen: late mafia boss John Gotti.
The notorious Gambino crime family honcho ran his affairs here, from behind two bright red metal doors of the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. He died in prison in 2002. Now, new immigrants are moving in, the Italians are leaving and the neighborhood seems to be forgetting him.
“This whole place was Italian-American. But they just started moving,” said Angelique Kayani, 69, who was born in Panama and moved to Ozone Park from nearby Richmond Hill in 2006. “As a matter of fact, the house over, they moved away on Sunday. And a lot of Indians moved in.” Kayani says she doesn’t know much more about Gotti than what she’s read in the papers. This is a quiet place where neighbors look out for one another, and children play on their scooters in the street, she said.
Down the block, a woman in a bright pink sari tended to her garden.
“I don’t speak English,” she smiled, apologetically. “I speak Bengali.”
“John Gotti? No, I don’t know him,” said Luis Rivera, who emigrated from Mexico. Rivera said his Liberty Avenue block is mostly Indian.
An aura of omertá seems to prevail, even among the old-timers, and even now only seems to hasten the forgetting. Hardly anyone talks about the 20-plus years of extravagant Fourth of July block parties Gotti used to throw for the neighborhood, complete with Boar’s Head burgers, ice cream cones, and illegal firework displays. (In 1995, then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who made his prosecutorial reputation by cracking down on wiseguys, banned these bashes.)
“Oh, no, I don’t speak English. I only speak Italian,” said a gray-haired woman who was rocking in a chair in the front yard of her 97th Street home, beside a tomato plant and a statue of the Virgin Mary. “But talk to them,” she said, gesturing toward her Hispanic neighbors across the street. “They’ll talk to you.”
Larry Varano, 74, an Italian-American who has lived in Ozone Park for 50 years, admits to remembering the Gotti days. Gotti’s brother Frank once lived up the block (though the Dapper Don himself only worked here — he lived in nearby Howard Beach). “They were nice people,” he said. “What they did in their private life, I don’t know. I don’t care.”
He said the neighborhood had changed a lot in recent years. “When I first came out here — let’s put it this way — the block I lived on was 99 percent Italian. Now it’s 4 percent Italian,” Varano said. He explained that most of his current neighbors are Puerto Rican. “They’re nice,” he added. “In fact, the neighbor I have now is Puerto Rican, and he’s the best neighbor I’ve had.”
Developers carved Ozone Park out of farmland in the 1880s, when the Long Island Railroad began service through the area. Italian-Americans were early settlers. The neighborhood mostly consists of one- and two-family homes, with some condos and small apartment buildings, said Betty Braton, chairwoman of Queens Community Board 10. The 2000 U.S. Census lists 43 percent of residents as white, 40 percent as Hispanic or Latino and 14 percent as Asian.
Buried in an overgrown junk-strewn lot, behind the house where Christopher Tirado, 22, lives with his brother and nephews, are the bones of the mafia’s past. Police excavations here in 2004 uncovered two pelvic bones, a set of teeth, skull fragments, and shoes full of skeletal remains, later confirmed as belonging to Bonnano family capos Philip “Phil Lucky” Giaccone and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera. Also believed to be buried here are hit man Tommy DeSimone, portrayed by Joe Pesci in the movie “Goodfellas,” and John Favara, a Queens man who accidentally struck and killed Gotti’s son with his car, then disappeared months later while the Gottis were vacationing in Florida.
“I don’t know pretty much, other than they were digging our backyard,” Tirado said.
“I haven’t heard about it,” said Leon Kennedy, 67, who recently moved into a house close by.
This is the seedier part of town: some nearby homes are vacant, the windows boarded shut. Broken-down cars and piles of junk lay scattered in the weeds. “No dumping” and rodent bait warning signs hang on the fence.
Even Gotti’s old block has changed. Down the street from his former headquarters, the Sunrise Chinese Restaurant, El Viejo Yayo Restaurant, and Tiffany’s West Indian Deli have moved in. The Bergin Hunt and Fish Club is gone, the storefront has been taken over by a pet-grooming salon.
Varano plans to rent a car and travel Europe, starting in Rome. Will he be leaving Ozone Park, too? “Yeah,” he said, “When I die.”
Thanks to Gaetana Pipia
The notorious Gambino crime family honcho ran his affairs here, from behind two bright red metal doors of the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. He died in prison in 2002. Now, new immigrants are moving in, the Italians are leaving and the neighborhood seems to be forgetting him.
“This whole place was Italian-American. But they just started moving,” said Angelique Kayani, 69, who was born in Panama and moved to Ozone Park from nearby Richmond Hill in 2006. “As a matter of fact, the house over, they moved away on Sunday. And a lot of Indians moved in.” Kayani says she doesn’t know much more about Gotti than what she’s read in the papers. This is a quiet place where neighbors look out for one another, and children play on their scooters in the street, she said.
Down the block, a woman in a bright pink sari tended to her garden.
“I don’t speak English,” she smiled, apologetically. “I speak Bengali.”
“John Gotti? No, I don’t know him,” said Luis Rivera, who emigrated from Mexico. Rivera said his Liberty Avenue block is mostly Indian.
An aura of omertá seems to prevail, even among the old-timers, and even now only seems to hasten the forgetting. Hardly anyone talks about the 20-plus years of extravagant Fourth of July block parties Gotti used to throw for the neighborhood, complete with Boar’s Head burgers, ice cream cones, and illegal firework displays. (In 1995, then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who made his prosecutorial reputation by cracking down on wiseguys, banned these bashes.)
“Oh, no, I don’t speak English. I only speak Italian,” said a gray-haired woman who was rocking in a chair in the front yard of her 97th Street home, beside a tomato plant and a statue of the Virgin Mary. “But talk to them,” she said, gesturing toward her Hispanic neighbors across the street. “They’ll talk to you.”
Larry Varano, 74, an Italian-American who has lived in Ozone Park for 50 years, admits to remembering the Gotti days. Gotti’s brother Frank once lived up the block (though the Dapper Don himself only worked here — he lived in nearby Howard Beach). “They were nice people,” he said. “What they did in their private life, I don’t know. I don’t care.”
He said the neighborhood had changed a lot in recent years. “When I first came out here — let’s put it this way — the block I lived on was 99 percent Italian. Now it’s 4 percent Italian,” Varano said. He explained that most of his current neighbors are Puerto Rican. “They’re nice,” he added. “In fact, the neighbor I have now is Puerto Rican, and he’s the best neighbor I’ve had.”
Developers carved Ozone Park out of farmland in the 1880s, when the Long Island Railroad began service through the area. Italian-Americans were early settlers. The neighborhood mostly consists of one- and two-family homes, with some condos and small apartment buildings, said Betty Braton, chairwoman of Queens Community Board 10. The 2000 U.S. Census lists 43 percent of residents as white, 40 percent as Hispanic or Latino and 14 percent as Asian.
Buried in an overgrown junk-strewn lot, behind the house where Christopher Tirado, 22, lives with his brother and nephews, are the bones of the mafia’s past. Police excavations here in 2004 uncovered two pelvic bones, a set of teeth, skull fragments, and shoes full of skeletal remains, later confirmed as belonging to Bonnano family capos Philip “Phil Lucky” Giaccone and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera. Also believed to be buried here are hit man Tommy DeSimone, portrayed by Joe Pesci in the movie “Goodfellas,” and John Favara, a Queens man who accidentally struck and killed Gotti’s son with his car, then disappeared months later while the Gottis were vacationing in Florida.
“I don’t know pretty much, other than they were digging our backyard,” Tirado said.
“I haven’t heard about it,” said Leon Kennedy, 67, who recently moved into a house close by.
This is the seedier part of town: some nearby homes are vacant, the windows boarded shut. Broken-down cars and piles of junk lay scattered in the weeds. “No dumping” and rodent bait warning signs hang on the fence.
Even Gotti’s old block has changed. Down the street from his former headquarters, the Sunrise Chinese Restaurant, El Viejo Yayo Restaurant, and Tiffany’s West Indian Deli have moved in. The Bergin Hunt and Fish Club is gone, the storefront has been taken over by a pet-grooming salon.
Varano plans to rent a car and travel Europe, starting in Rome. Will he be leaving Ozone Park, too? “Yeah,” he said, “When I die.”
Thanks to Gaetana Pipia
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Are New York Gangsters Basically Teenage Girls with Guns?
Someone once said that New York gangsters are basically teenage girls with guns. Looked at from the proper angle, it does seem there is something particularly adolescent about a group of grown men for whom gossip, betrayal and a hair-trigger sense of loyalty runs deep in the blood.
Take, for instance, Vincent Basciano, the former hair salon owner and former acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, whose jailers — not coincidentally — once accused him of having an “unusual sophistication” at passing notes. In a legal dust-up that, beyond its violent elements, could have taken place in the girls’ locker room after field hockey practice, Mr. Basciano has accused a man, who once accused him of murder, of trying to implicate him in a phony plot to take the man’s life.
That probably bears repeating with a bit more explanation.
The trouble started in July when Mr. Basciano (known as “Vinnie Gorgeous” because of the hair salon he used to own) and his former best friend, Dominick Cicale, were both inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the huge federal jail in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Basciano was being held there during his racketeering trial in Brooklyn on charges of, among other things, having killed a gangland wannabe named Frank Santoro. Mr. Cicale, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in the same case, had double-crossed him and was, at that point, a main government witness at the trial.
According to court papers filed Tuesday evening, Mr. Cicale — in what some described as an attempt to get his former friend into further trouble with the law — reached out to a handful of fellow inmates in the super-secure witness section of the jail and asked them to tell the authorities that Mr. Basciano had recruited them through a jail guard to murder Mr. Cicale. Even the government acknowledges that there was no real plot beyond the vengeful, imaginary one that Mr. Cicale sought to pin on his onetime friend.
Ephraim Savitt, Mr. Basciano’s lawyer, said Mr. Cicale may also have been trying to get out of jail by hatching the phony plot. “What he was trying to convey was that there’s no place within the prison system that’s safe for him,” Mr. Savitt said. “I think he wants to convince the government and the court to let him out of jail to some undisclosed location.”
It was Mr. Savitt, in his legal papers, who first brought the plot to the court’s attention. He is hoping the allegations against Mr. Cicale will taint him to the point the judge in the case, Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, will grant Mr. Basciano a new trial. Mr. Basciano was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering at the trial, which ended in July, largely on the basis of Mr. Cicale’s testimony.
To further discredit Mr. Cicale, Mr. Savitt says an inmate from the jail has claimed that Mr. Cicale liked to order other inmates to “create mischief” and was known for “acting out.” He once told an inmate to throw water on the cable box, for instance, Mr. Savitt’s papers say. He also — on purpose — spilled his coffee on the kitchen floor.
The notes Mr. Basciano was accused of having passed in jail were mentioned in the defense’s recent filing to suggest that the government has a track record of watching its inmates closely and therefore must have known of Mr. Cicale’s plot. One of them was more momentous than your average teenage note, including as it did the names of five men the government says Mr. Basciano wished to kill. But, according to Mr. Basciano’s wife, Angela, who was interviewed by the government, the note was not a murder list but a “Santeria list.” She says that Mr. Basciano wanted to place the men — among them, a prosecutor and a federal judge — under a voodoo spell. Mrs. Basciano told the government that she went so far as to take the list to a “Santeria priestess” in the Bronx, court papers say.
Judge Garaufis has yet to rule on Mr. Savitt’s request for a new trial, which is contained in the court papers that are full of the he-said, he-said back-and-forth that makes up a large part of Mafia talk. One paragraph, in particular, catches the flavor. The names involved are less important than the air of gossipy disagreement.
“Cicale testified that Anthony ‘Bruno’ Indelicato initially was the person who called him about a ‘piece of work’ in which Cicale could ‘make his bones’ by killing Frank Santoro. Yet, P. J. Pisciotti testified that Indelicato told him that he was surprised to hear, just prior to the murder, that Santoro would be killed and that, in his view, it was a mistake to kill Santoro. Cicale testified that he had enlisted P. J. Pisciotti to kill Michael Mancuso and throw him off a boat. Pisciotti testified that, to the contrary, there was never a plan to kill Mancuso and throw him off a boat.”
Thanks to Alan Feuer
Take, for instance, Vincent Basciano, the former hair salon owner and former acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, whose jailers — not coincidentally — once accused him of having an “unusual sophistication” at passing notes. In a legal dust-up that, beyond its violent elements, could have taken place in the girls’ locker room after field hockey practice, Mr. Basciano has accused a man, who once accused him of murder, of trying to implicate him in a phony plot to take the man’s life.That probably bears repeating with a bit more explanation.
The trouble started in July when Mr. Basciano (known as “Vinnie Gorgeous” because of the hair salon he used to own) and his former best friend, Dominick Cicale, were both inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the huge federal jail in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Basciano was being held there during his racketeering trial in Brooklyn on charges of, among other things, having killed a gangland wannabe named Frank Santoro. Mr. Cicale, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in the same case, had double-crossed him and was, at that point, a main government witness at the trial.
According to court papers filed Tuesday evening, Mr. Cicale — in what some described as an attempt to get his former friend into further trouble with the law — reached out to a handful of fellow inmates in the super-secure witness section of the jail and asked them to tell the authorities that Mr. Basciano had recruited them through a jail guard to murder Mr. Cicale. Even the government acknowledges that there was no real plot beyond the vengeful, imaginary one that Mr. Cicale sought to pin on his onetime friend.
Ephraim Savitt, Mr. Basciano’s lawyer, said Mr. Cicale may also have been trying to get out of jail by hatching the phony plot. “What he was trying to convey was that there’s no place within the prison system that’s safe for him,” Mr. Savitt said. “I think he wants to convince the government and the court to let him out of jail to some undisclosed location.”
It was Mr. Savitt, in his legal papers, who first brought the plot to the court’s attention. He is hoping the allegations against Mr. Cicale will taint him to the point the judge in the case, Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, will grant Mr. Basciano a new trial. Mr. Basciano was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering at the trial, which ended in July, largely on the basis of Mr. Cicale’s testimony.
To further discredit Mr. Cicale, Mr. Savitt says an inmate from the jail has claimed that Mr. Cicale liked to order other inmates to “create mischief” and was known for “acting out.” He once told an inmate to throw water on the cable box, for instance, Mr. Savitt’s papers say. He also — on purpose — spilled his coffee on the kitchen floor.
The notes Mr. Basciano was accused of having passed in jail were mentioned in the defense’s recent filing to suggest that the government has a track record of watching its inmates closely and therefore must have known of Mr. Cicale’s plot. One of them was more momentous than your average teenage note, including as it did the names of five men the government says Mr. Basciano wished to kill. But, according to Mr. Basciano’s wife, Angela, who was interviewed by the government, the note was not a murder list but a “Santeria list.” She says that Mr. Basciano wanted to place the men — among them, a prosecutor and a federal judge — under a voodoo spell. Mrs. Basciano told the government that she went so far as to take the list to a “Santeria priestess” in the Bronx, court papers say.
Judge Garaufis has yet to rule on Mr. Savitt’s request for a new trial, which is contained in the court papers that are full of the he-said, he-said back-and-forth that makes up a large part of Mafia talk. One paragraph, in particular, catches the flavor. The names involved are less important than the air of gossipy disagreement.
“Cicale testified that Anthony ‘Bruno’ Indelicato initially was the person who called him about a ‘piece of work’ in which Cicale could ‘make his bones’ by killing Frank Santoro. Yet, P. J. Pisciotti testified that Indelicato told him that he was surprised to hear, just prior to the murder, that Santoro would be killed and that, in his view, it was a mistake to kill Santoro. Cicale testified that he had enlisted P. J. Pisciotti to kill Michael Mancuso and throw him off a boat. Pisciotti testified that, to the contrary, there was never a plan to kill Mancuso and throw him off a boat.”
Thanks to Alan Feuer
Reinstatement of Mafia Cops Convictions Sought by US
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — known as RICO — was signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in October 1970. Wielded mainly, though not exclusively, as a sword against the Mafia, it holds in its most basic terms that a person or group of people who commit certain crimes as part of a conspiracy or criminal enterprise can be charged with racketeering.
The law has been used against defendants like Funzi Tieri, who once ran the Genovese crime family, and Michael R. Milken, the junk bond financier, and, over the years, has spawned a voluminous literature about what constitutes an “enterprise” or a “conspiracy.”
Yesterday, another debate on just those themes took place as the opposing sides in the so-called Mafia cops corruption case gathered in a federal appeals court in Manhattan to argue whether the convictions of two former New York City police detectives found guilty of killing for the mob last year should stand.
During that debate, at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, federal prosecutors argued that the convictions, which were overturned last year, should be reinstated because the killings — some as far back as 20 years — were part of the same ongoing enterprise as a small-time drug transaction in Las Vegas two years ago.
The defense argued that there was no continuing conspiracy and that the government had patched together two separate sets of crimes to bolster its case. The three-judge panel will now consider the arguments and rule on whether the convictions should be reinstated.
After a made-for-celluloid trial (with locations as diverse as a senior citizens center in Las Vegas and the parking lot of a Brooklyn Toys “R” Us), the two detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were convicted in April 2006 of killing at least eight men for the mob in one of the most spectacular cases of police corruption in the city since Lt. Charles Becker went to the electric chair for murdering the bookmaker Herman Rosenthal in 1915.
Almost as spectacular as the trial itself was its aftermath, when the district judge who heard the case in Brooklyn, Jack B. Weinstein, overturned the convictions. He ruled that the government’s case had stretched racketeering law “to the breaking point” and that the five-year statute of limitations on conspiracies had run out.
From the start, it was unclear if Judge Weinstein was going to accept the government’s central premise in the case: that the eight brutal murders the two detectives were accused of committing in Brooklyn in the 1980s and early 1990s were related to the single ounce of methamphetamine they were later caught selling in Las Vegas, years after they had retired from the force and had left New York. Though the government said the crimes were part of the same “ongoing criminal enterprise,” the defense contended that the prosecutors had “bootstrapped” the drug charges to the murder charges to “freshen up” the case.
Yesterday, one of those prosecutors, Mitra Hormozi, found herself peppered with questions from three judges who were trying to determine the exact nature of what the government has called the Eppolito-Caracappa enterprise.
The government concedes that the two men did not commit a crime together from their last murder in 1991 until 2005, when they were caught on videotape arranging the drug deal in Las Vegas, but Ms. Hormozi suggested that the conspiracy survived because the men maintained a desire to make a quick, illicit dollar and because they kept their enterprise a secret.
She also suggested that, in terms of personality, Mr. Eppolito (a gregarious salesman) and Mr. Caracappa (a sullen brooder) continued to play the same roles in each other’s lives in Las Vegas as they had in Brooklyn when they worked for the police.
Daniel Nobel, Mr. Caracappa’s lawyer, found this ridiculous, saying that certain “personality traits” in “a mere friendship” were not enough to constitute a criminal enterprise.
Joseph Bondy, Mr. Eppolito’s lawyer, said that the drug deal in Las Vegas and money-laundering that his client was accused of there were “completely sporadic disparate acts utterly unconnected to the New York acts.”
Thanks to Alan Feuer
The law has been used against defendants like Funzi Tieri, who once ran the Genovese crime family, and Michael R. Milken, the junk bond financier, and, over the years, has spawned a voluminous literature about what constitutes an “enterprise” or a “conspiracy.”
Yesterday, another debate on just those themes took place as the opposing sides in the so-called Mafia cops corruption case gathered in a federal appeals court in Manhattan to argue whether the convictions of two former New York City police detectives found guilty of killing for the mob last year should stand.
During that debate, at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, federal prosecutors argued that the convictions, which were overturned last year, should be reinstated because the killings — some as far back as 20 years — were part of the same ongoing enterprise as a small-time drug transaction in Las Vegas two years ago.
The defense argued that there was no continuing conspiracy and that the government had patched together two separate sets of crimes to bolster its case. The three-judge panel will now consider the arguments and rule on whether the convictions should be reinstated.
After a made-for-celluloid trial (with locations as diverse as a senior citizens center in Las Vegas and the parking lot of a Brooklyn Toys “R” Us), the two detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were convicted in April 2006 of killing at least eight men for the mob in one of the most spectacular cases of police corruption in the city since Lt. Charles Becker went to the electric chair for murdering the bookmaker Herman Rosenthal in 1915.
Almost as spectacular as the trial itself was its aftermath, when the district judge who heard the case in Brooklyn, Jack B. Weinstein, overturned the convictions. He ruled that the government’s case had stretched racketeering law “to the breaking point” and that the five-year statute of limitations on conspiracies had run out.
From the start, it was unclear if Judge Weinstein was going to accept the government’s central premise in the case: that the eight brutal murders the two detectives were accused of committing in Brooklyn in the 1980s and early 1990s were related to the single ounce of methamphetamine they were later caught selling in Las Vegas, years after they had retired from the force and had left New York. Though the government said the crimes were part of the same “ongoing criminal enterprise,” the defense contended that the prosecutors had “bootstrapped” the drug charges to the murder charges to “freshen up” the case.
Yesterday, one of those prosecutors, Mitra Hormozi, found herself peppered with questions from three judges who were trying to determine the exact nature of what the government has called the Eppolito-Caracappa enterprise.
The government concedes that the two men did not commit a crime together from their last murder in 1991 until 2005, when they were caught on videotape arranging the drug deal in Las Vegas, but Ms. Hormozi suggested that the conspiracy survived because the men maintained a desire to make a quick, illicit dollar and because they kept their enterprise a secret.
She also suggested that, in terms of personality, Mr. Eppolito (a gregarious salesman) and Mr. Caracappa (a sullen brooder) continued to play the same roles in each other’s lives in Las Vegas as they had in Brooklyn when they worked for the police.
Daniel Nobel, Mr. Caracappa’s lawyer, found this ridiculous, saying that certain “personality traits” in “a mere friendship” were not enough to constitute a criminal enterprise.
Joseph Bondy, Mr. Eppolito’s lawyer, said that the drug deal in Las Vegas and money-laundering that his client was accused of there were “completely sporadic disparate acts utterly unconnected to the New York acts.”
Thanks to Alan Feuer
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Jurors Claim Mob Defendant Threatened Prosecutor, New Trial Coming?
At least four jurors in the city's biggest mob trial in years allegedly heard one of the defendants threaten a federal prosecutor as he delivered closing arguments, according to a published report.
Convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. allegedly told Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Funk, “You are a (expletive) dead man,” according to a letter obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and WMAQ-TV.
A juror met with prosecutors after the trial and told them about the alleged threat, according to the letter, sent to Calabrese attorney Joseph Lopez by lead prosecutor Mitchell A. Mars. Three other jurors “confirmed the juror's observations and heard Mr. Calabrese say the same thing,” Mars' letter said.
Lopez told the Sun-Times for a story posted Friday on its Web site that he sat next to his client and never heard any threat. “My client has more brains than that,” Lopez said. “We were surrounded by FBI agents and U.S. attorneys and spectators and nobody heard anything, and now a month later ... Why wasn't something said immediately right afterwards? That's what I want to know. It's an overactive imagination, that's all I can think of.”
U.S. attorney's office spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.
If jurors heard Calabrese threaten a prosecutor it could have unfairly affected deliberations, raising the possibility of new trials, attorneys for Calabrese's co-defendants said. “This is quite a development,” said Rick Halprin, attorney for Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo. “I have grave concerns about this. ... You would assume it impacted their thought process. We know from the letter that one-third of them talked about it. I expect to be in court on it next week.”
Marc Martin, attorney for James Marcello, who was held responsible for two murders, said he had argued the defendants should have had separate trials. “Marcello has been complaining about this since day one, and this just adds more fuel to the fire,” said Martin, who also questioned whether Mars and Funk broke rules by having contact with a juror without court permission.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who also got a copy of the letter, could let the verdict stand if he reconvenes the jurors and hears from each one that the alleged threat did not affect the deliberations, Alschuler said.
Calabrese was among five defendants convicted last month for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder.
The defendants were accused of squeezing “street tax,” similar to protection money, out of businesses, running sports bookmaking and video poker operations, and engaging in loan sharking. And they were accused of killing many of those who they feared might spill mob secrets to the government - or already doing so.
Convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. allegedly told Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Funk, “You are a (expletive) dead man,” according to a letter obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and WMAQ-TV.
A juror met with prosecutors after the trial and told them about the alleged threat, according to the letter, sent to Calabrese attorney Joseph Lopez by lead prosecutor Mitchell A. Mars. Three other jurors “confirmed the juror's observations and heard Mr. Calabrese say the same thing,” Mars' letter said.
Lopez told the Sun-Times for a story posted Friday on its Web site that he sat next to his client and never heard any threat. “My client has more brains than that,” Lopez said. “We were surrounded by FBI agents and U.S. attorneys and spectators and nobody heard anything, and now a month later ... Why wasn't something said immediately right afterwards? That's what I want to know. It's an overactive imagination, that's all I can think of.”U.S. attorney's office spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.
If jurors heard Calabrese threaten a prosecutor it could have unfairly affected deliberations, raising the possibility of new trials, attorneys for Calabrese's co-defendants said. “This is quite a development,” said Rick Halprin, attorney for Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo. “I have grave concerns about this. ... You would assume it impacted their thought process. We know from the letter that one-third of them talked about it. I expect to be in court on it next week.”
Marc Martin, attorney for James Marcello, who was held responsible for two murders, said he had argued the defendants should have had separate trials. “Marcello has been complaining about this since day one, and this just adds more fuel to the fire,” said Martin, who also questioned whether Mars and Funk broke rules by having contact with a juror without court permission.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who also got a copy of the letter, could let the verdict stand if he reconvenes the jurors and hears from each one that the alleged threat did not affect the deliberations, Alschuler said.
Calabrese was among five defendants convicted last month for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder.
The defendants were accused of squeezing “street tax,” similar to protection money, out of businesses, running sports bookmaking and video poker operations, and engaging in loan sharking. And they were accused of killing many of those who they feared might spill mob secrets to the government - or already doing so.
Son of Mob Boss Arrested
The politically connected son of a late Chicago mob boss is under arrest on armed robbery charges.
He has one of the most feared last names in the Chicago Outfit - Lamantia. His name is Rocky and his late father's name was Joe, but they called him "Shorty" for his squat stature. On Thursday, the I-Team learned that Rocky LaMantia is in big trouble.
Witnesses say four men walked into a pawn shop at 647 W. Roosevelt Rd. At lunchtime Wednesday and began smashing display cases with hatchets. They allegedly used the tools to hold off employees and customers and escaped with $175,000 in new diamond rings and gold chains. Among them, according to police: Rocco "Rocky" LaMantia, who has had a history of robbery and drug convictions and beat a murder rap 25 years ago.
LaMantia's lawyer, Joe Lopez, known as The Shark for his vigorous defense of mobsters, said in the pawn shop heist, Rocky is being railroaded. "My client was there to redeem some of the goods that were previously given to the shop owner and had the money to redeem the goods. While he was there, these other individuals came in and violently attacked the patrons that were there. They violently smashed the cabinets, from my understanding, and took jewelry out of there, ordered my client onto the ground," said Lopez.
Witnesses say LaMantia drove the hatchet-wielding thugs to and from the pawn shop and that the blades were actually left behind. Lopez maintains his client is an innocent victim and a witness.
LaMantia is the son of the late South Side rackets boss Joseph "Shorty" LaMantia and were linked to the city hall hired truck scandal. Rocky LaMantia once had city truck contracts, and his wife used to work in Mayor Daley's budget office, which ran the hired truck program. The LaMantias have not been charged in that case, but Rocky's lawyer said authorities will no doubt try to use his Italian heritage against him. "Of course they're going to use his family background to dirty him up," said Lopez.
The owner of the pawn shop said Rocky Lamantia had been a customer for six or seven years. LaMantia was arrested when he returned to the shop-after the armed robbery, supposedly to check on the victims.
Forty-eight-year-old LaMantia was a fixture in the gallery at this summer's Family Secrets mob trial. He said he was gathering material for a book on his mob family and even asked if the I-Team's Chuck Goudie wanted to write it for him. It was an offer Goudie refused.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
He has one of the most feared last names in the Chicago Outfit - Lamantia. His name is Rocky and his late father's name was Joe, but they called him "Shorty" for his squat stature. On Thursday, the I-Team learned that Rocky LaMantia is in big trouble.
Witnesses say four men walked into a pawn shop at 647 W. Roosevelt Rd. At lunchtime Wednesday and began smashing display cases with hatchets. They allegedly used the tools to hold off employees and customers and escaped with $175,000 in new diamond rings and gold chains. Among them, according to police: Rocco "Rocky" LaMantia, who has had a history of robbery and drug convictions and beat a murder rap 25 years ago.
LaMantia's lawyer, Joe Lopez, known as The Shark for his vigorous defense of mobsters, said in the pawn shop heist, Rocky is being railroaded. "My client was there to redeem some of the goods that were previously given to the shop owner and had the money to redeem the goods. While he was there, these other individuals came in and violently attacked the patrons that were there. They violently smashed the cabinets, from my understanding, and took jewelry out of there, ordered my client onto the ground," said Lopez.
Witnesses say LaMantia drove the hatchet-wielding thugs to and from the pawn shop and that the blades were actually left behind. Lopez maintains his client is an innocent victim and a witness.
LaMantia is the son of the late South Side rackets boss Joseph "Shorty" LaMantia and were linked to the city hall hired truck scandal. Rocky LaMantia once had city truck contracts, and his wife used to work in Mayor Daley's budget office, which ran the hired truck program. The LaMantias have not been charged in that case, but Rocky's lawyer said authorities will no doubt try to use his Italian heritage against him. "Of course they're going to use his family background to dirty him up," said Lopez.
The owner of the pawn shop said Rocky Lamantia had been a customer for six or seven years. LaMantia was arrested when he returned to the shop-after the armed robbery, supposedly to check on the victims.
Forty-eight-year-old LaMantia was a fixture in the gallery at this summer's Family Secrets mob trial. He said he was gathering material for a book on his mob family and even asked if the I-Team's Chuck Goudie wanted to write it for him. It was an offer Goudie refused.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
FBI Boss Rooted for Mafia According to Fellow Agent Testimony
The anecdote is so ingrained in Mafia lore that it was mimicked in a scene from the television show "The Sopranos": A corrupt FBI agent slapping his desk and celebrating news of another killing in a bloody mob civil war.
A current FBI agent testified Wednesday that it happened in a real-life slip-up by ex-agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, now on trial for murder. "We're going to win this thing," DeVecchio blurted out at headquarters, according to the witness.
Prosecutors said the 1992 outburst was further proof that DeVecchio secretly aligned himself with an informant within one of the warring factions of the Colombo crime family.
The capo-turned-informant, the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., showered DeVecchio with cash, stolen jewelry, liquor -- and even prostitutes -- in exchange for confidential information, according to an indictment. The ruthless mobster used the inside tips about the identities and whereabouts of suspected rats and rivals to rub out at least four victims in the late 1980s and early 1990s, authorities said.
DeVecchio, 66, has pleaded not guilty in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn to four counts of murder in what prosecutors have billed as one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history. At his request, the trial is being heard by a judge and not a jury.
DeVecchio has denied forming an illicit alliance with Scarpa. His supporters include former agents who put up money to pay his legal bills. But agent Christopher M. Favo, whom DeVecchio once supervised on the FBI's Colombo squad, took the witness stand Wednesday to recount his mounting suspicions about his former boss.
Favo, who shared an office with DeVecchio, testified that he overheard DeVecchio use a special phone line to stay in constant touch with "34" -- Scarpa's informant code name. He also described his astonishment at the defendant's obvious joy over the 1992 slaying of a Colombo soldier from the faction opposing Scarpa, and recalled the pointed exchange that followed.
"We're the FBI," Favo snapped. "We're not on either side."
"That's what I meant," DeVecchio responded, according to Favo.
Favo said he eventually stopped sharing information with DeVecchio and alerted FBI higher-ups about possible leaks. But the Department of Justice declined to prosecute DeVecchio following an internal investigation; he retired to Florida in 1996, two years after Scarpa died in prison.
State prosecutors revived the case last year after they said they persuaded Scarpa's longtime girlfriend to come forward and reveal his secrets. The girlfriend, Linda Schiro, was expected to testify as early as next week. Also slated as a government witness is Scarpa's imprisoned son.
A current FBI agent testified Wednesday that it happened in a real-life slip-up by ex-agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, now on trial for murder. "We're going to win this thing," DeVecchio blurted out at headquarters, according to the witness.
Prosecutors said the 1992 outburst was further proof that DeVecchio secretly aligned himself with an informant within one of the warring factions of the Colombo crime family.
The capo-turned-informant, the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., showered DeVecchio with cash, stolen jewelry, liquor -- and even prostitutes -- in exchange for confidential information, according to an indictment. The ruthless mobster used the inside tips about the identities and whereabouts of suspected rats and rivals to rub out at least four victims in the late 1980s and early 1990s, authorities said.
DeVecchio, 66, has pleaded not guilty in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn to four counts of murder in what prosecutors have billed as one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history. At his request, the trial is being heard by a judge and not a jury.
DeVecchio has denied forming an illicit alliance with Scarpa. His supporters include former agents who put up money to pay his legal bills. But agent Christopher M. Favo, whom DeVecchio once supervised on the FBI's Colombo squad, took the witness stand Wednesday to recount his mounting suspicions about his former boss.
Favo, who shared an office with DeVecchio, testified that he overheard DeVecchio use a special phone line to stay in constant touch with "34" -- Scarpa's informant code name. He also described his astonishment at the defendant's obvious joy over the 1992 slaying of a Colombo soldier from the faction opposing Scarpa, and recalled the pointed exchange that followed.
"We're the FBI," Favo snapped. "We're not on either side."
"That's what I meant," DeVecchio responded, according to Favo.
Favo said he eventually stopped sharing information with DeVecchio and alerted FBI higher-ups about possible leaks. But the Department of Justice declined to prosecute DeVecchio following an internal investigation; he retired to Florida in 1996, two years after Scarpa died in prison.
State prosecutors revived the case last year after they said they persuaded Scarpa's longtime girlfriend to come forward and reveal his secrets. The girlfriend, Linda Schiro, was expected to testify as early as next week. Also slated as a government witness is Scarpa's imprisoned son.
Ex-Cop Doyle, Denied Bail
federal judge turned down a request for bail Wednesday from a retired police officer convicted along with four alleged mobsters at Chicago's Family Secrets racketeering conspiracy trial.
"I believe the evidence at trial has shown that he is a danger to the community," said U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who presided over Chicago's biggest mob trial in years, aimed at leaders of organized crime.
Anthony Doyle, 62, a former Chicago police officer, is being held in federal custody pending sentencing for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder.
Doyle himself was not accused of murdering anyone, although the jury found that three other defendants were directly responsible for mob hits.
In his five-page order, Zagel said that Doyle had shown a strong loyalty to convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, who could be sentenced to life in prison for his part in assorted mob murders.
"The evidence showed that Mr. Calabrese Sr. is an advocate and practitioner of lethal violence and that he does not hesitate to enlist others to do his violence," Zagel said. "In addition, Mr. Calabrese displayed a profound lack of control of his own emotions at trial."
Zagel said that he had "no doubt that Frank Calabrese Sr. would be willing to take steps against those who testified against him (most of whom are not under federal protection), even if it was against his interest to do so." He said that even though Doyle and Calabrese are barred from direct communication, they might communicate indirectly. "The risk that defendant Doyle would attempt to assist Frank Calabrese Sr. is too high to be disregarded," Zagel said.
He also said Doyle is desperate because he may soon lose his police pension and will leave a sick wife behind when he goes to prison. He said that could prompt him to "do desperate things."
"He is a man skilled in the ways of crime and criminals," Zagel said.
Convicted in the case along with Doyle and Calabrese were James Marcello, 65, Paul Schiro, 70, and Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78.
Thanks to CBS2
"I believe the evidence at trial has shown that he is a danger to the community," said U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who presided over Chicago's biggest mob trial in years, aimed at leaders of organized crime.
Anthony Doyle, 62, a former Chicago police officer, is being held in federal custody pending sentencing for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder.Doyle himself was not accused of murdering anyone, although the jury found that three other defendants were directly responsible for mob hits.
In his five-page order, Zagel said that Doyle had shown a strong loyalty to convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, who could be sentenced to life in prison for his part in assorted mob murders.
"The evidence showed that Mr. Calabrese Sr. is an advocate and practitioner of lethal violence and that he does not hesitate to enlist others to do his violence," Zagel said. "In addition, Mr. Calabrese displayed a profound lack of control of his own emotions at trial."
Zagel said that he had "no doubt that Frank Calabrese Sr. would be willing to take steps against those who testified against him (most of whom are not under federal protection), even if it was against his interest to do so." He said that even though Doyle and Calabrese are barred from direct communication, they might communicate indirectly. "The risk that defendant Doyle would attempt to assist Frank Calabrese Sr. is too high to be disregarded," Zagel said.
He also said Doyle is desperate because he may soon lose his police pension and will leave a sick wife behind when he goes to prison. He said that could prompt him to "do desperate things."
"He is a man skilled in the ways of crime and criminals," Zagel said.
Convicted in the case along with Doyle and Calabrese were James Marcello, 65, Paul Schiro, 70, and Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78.
Thanks to CBS2
Friday, October 19, 2007
David Chase Takes on Angry Sopranos Fans
Were you at all surprised by the reaction to the final episode?
DAVID CHASE: No. We knew there would be people who would be perplexed by it and shut their minds to it. This just felt like the right ending.
Did you expect people to be so pissed off?
We didn't expect them to be that pissed for that long. It's one thing to be deeply involved with a television show. It's another to be so involved that all you do is sit on a couch and watch it. It seemed that those people were just looking for an excuse to be pissed off. There was a war going on that week and attempted terror attacks in London. But these people were talking about onion rings.
If you were expecting plot twists like Furio coming back from Italy to whack Tony and marry Carmela, you were obviously barking up the wrong tree.
There was so much more to say than could have been conveyed by an image of Tony facedown in a bowl of onion rings with a bullet in his head. Or, on the other side, taking over the New York mob. The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted ''justice.'' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.
You know there were many people who thought the end was brilliant.
Sure. But I must say that even people who liked it misinterpreted it, to a certain extent. This wasn't really about ''leaving the door open.'' There was nothing definite about what happened, but there was a clean trend on view — a definite sense of what Tony and Carmela's future looks like. Whether it happened that night or some other night doesn't really matter.
Have you heard the elaborate theories about what really happened? Like the one that says you were re-creating The Last Supper?
The interesting thing is that, if you're creative, there may be things at work that you're not even aware of: things you learned in school, patterns you've internalized. I had no intention of using The Last Supper, but who knows if, subconsciously, it just came out. If people want to sit there figuring this stuff out, I think that's just great. Most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn't.
Are they wasting their time? Is there a puzzle to be solved?
There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code. Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Toricano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Jerry was on his way down to the floor. That's the way things happen: It's already going on by the time you even notice it.
Are you saying...?
I'm not saying anything. And I'm not trying to be coy. It's just that I think that to explain it would diminish it.
Why do you think people are so intent on getting an answer?
I remember I would tell my kid and her cousins bedtime stories. Sometimes I would want to get back to the grown-ups and have a drink, so I would say something like, ''And they were driving down the road and that's it. Story over.'' They would always scream, ''Wait a minute! That's no ending!'' Apparently that need for finality exists in human beings. But we're not children anymore. Especially watching a show like The Sopranos that's got sex and violence.
You've said that you knew what the final scene would be for several years before it happened. What was the seed of the idea?
As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw.
So you just had to get them to the diner?
Yeah. But it's not that difficult. Whatever else happens, people are going to have to stop and eat.
Was Journey there from the beginning?
I had thought about using ''Don't Stop Believin''' a couple times over the course of the series in a background way, but I had forgotten about it until my nephew sent me a mix tape with the song on it. I knew it would be controversial, because Journey has a reputation that most people wouldn't associate with our show.
Did you consider other songs?
When we were scouting locations, I actually took several songs in the van and played them for the crew. I'd never done that before. When the Journey song came on, everybody went, ''Oh no! Jesus, David, what are you thinking?'' But then they started to say, ''You know what? This is kind of good. This is a great f---ing song!''
What about the black screen?
Originally, I didn't want any credits at all. I just wanted the black screen to go the length of the credits — all the way to the HBO whoosh sound. But the Director's Guild wouldn't give us a waiver.
Did you think of it as a prank — people thinking their TVs had gone out?
I saw some items in the press that said, ''This was a huge 'f--- you' to the audience.'' That we were s---ting in the audience's face. Why would we want to do that? Why would we entertain people for eight years only to give them the finger? We don't have contempt for the audience. In fact, I think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span. We always operated as though people don't need to be spoon-fed every single thing — that their instincts and feelings and humanity will tell them what's going on.
It seems part of what upsets people is your ruthlessness. The idea that nothing ever changes or gets better.
I disagree. People have said that the Soprano family's whole life goes in the toilet in the last episode. That the parents' whole twisted lifestyle is visited on the children. And that's true — to a certain extent. But look at it: A.J.'s not going to become a citizen-soldier or join the Peace Corps to try to help the world; he'll probably be a low-level movie producer. But he's not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer, but she's not going to be a housewife-whore like her mother. She'll learn to operate in the world in a way that Carmela never did. It's not ideal. It's not what the parents dreamed of. But it's better than it was. Tiny, little bits of progress — that's how it works.
Do you believe life has an arc? Or is it just a bunch of stuff that happens?
Is there a pupose, you mean? Everything I have to say about that is in the show. Go look at Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphu
. It's all there: Life seems to have no purpose but we have to go on behaving as thought it does. We have to go on behaving toward each other like people who would love.
So, it's still worth trying?
Of course. What else are you going to do? Watch TV?
(Interview by Brett Martin. Excerpted from The Sopranos: The Complete Book)
DAVID CHASE: No. We knew there would be people who would be perplexed by it and shut their minds to it. This just felt like the right ending.
Did you expect people to be so pissed off?
We didn't expect them to be that pissed for that long. It's one thing to be deeply involved with a television show. It's another to be so involved that all you do is sit on a couch and watch it. It seemed that those people were just looking for an excuse to be pissed off. There was a war going on that week and attempted terror attacks in London. But these people were talking about onion rings.
If you were expecting plot twists like Furio coming back from Italy to whack Tony and marry Carmela, you were obviously barking up the wrong tree.
There was so much more to say than could have been conveyed by an image of Tony facedown in a bowl of onion rings with a bullet in his head. Or, on the other side, taking over the New York mob. The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted ''justice.'' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.
You know there were many people who thought the end was brilliant.
Sure. But I must say that even people who liked it misinterpreted it, to a certain extent. This wasn't really about ''leaving the door open.'' There was nothing definite about what happened, but there was a clean trend on view — a definite sense of what Tony and Carmela's future looks like. Whether it happened that night or some other night doesn't really matter.
Have you heard the elaborate theories about what really happened? Like the one that says you were re-creating The Last Supper?
The interesting thing is that, if you're creative, there may be things at work that you're not even aware of: things you learned in school, patterns you've internalized. I had no intention of using The Last Supper, but who knows if, subconsciously, it just came out. If people want to sit there figuring this stuff out, I think that's just great. Most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn't.
Are they wasting their time? Is there a puzzle to be solved?
There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code. Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Toricano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Jerry was on his way down to the floor. That's the way things happen: It's already going on by the time you even notice it.
Are you saying...?
I'm not saying anything. And I'm not trying to be coy. It's just that I think that to explain it would diminish it.
Why do you think people are so intent on getting an answer?
I remember I would tell my kid and her cousins bedtime stories. Sometimes I would want to get back to the grown-ups and have a drink, so I would say something like, ''And they were driving down the road and that's it. Story over.'' They would always scream, ''Wait a minute! That's no ending!'' Apparently that need for finality exists in human beings. But we're not children anymore. Especially watching a show like The Sopranos that's got sex and violence.
You've said that you knew what the final scene would be for several years before it happened. What was the seed of the idea?
As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw.
So you just had to get them to the diner?
Yeah. But it's not that difficult. Whatever else happens, people are going to have to stop and eat.
Was Journey there from the beginning?
I had thought about using ''Don't Stop Believin''' a couple times over the course of the series in a background way, but I had forgotten about it until my nephew sent me a mix tape with the song on it. I knew it would be controversial, because Journey has a reputation that most people wouldn't associate with our show.
Did you consider other songs?
When we were scouting locations, I actually took several songs in the van and played them for the crew. I'd never done that before. When the Journey song came on, everybody went, ''Oh no! Jesus, David, what are you thinking?'' But then they started to say, ''You know what? This is kind of good. This is a great f---ing song!''
What about the black screen?
Originally, I didn't want any credits at all. I just wanted the black screen to go the length of the credits — all the way to the HBO whoosh sound. But the Director's Guild wouldn't give us a waiver.
Did you think of it as a prank — people thinking their TVs had gone out?
I saw some items in the press that said, ''This was a huge 'f--- you' to the audience.'' That we were s---ting in the audience's face. Why would we want to do that? Why would we entertain people for eight years only to give them the finger? We don't have contempt for the audience. In fact, I think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span. We always operated as though people don't need to be spoon-fed every single thing — that their instincts and feelings and humanity will tell them what's going on.
It seems part of what upsets people is your ruthlessness. The idea that nothing ever changes or gets better.
I disagree. People have said that the Soprano family's whole life goes in the toilet in the last episode. That the parents' whole twisted lifestyle is visited on the children. And that's true — to a certain extent. But look at it: A.J.'s not going to become a citizen-soldier or join the Peace Corps to try to help the world; he'll probably be a low-level movie producer. But he's not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer, but she's not going to be a housewife-whore like her mother. She'll learn to operate in the world in a way that Carmela never did. It's not ideal. It's not what the parents dreamed of. But it's better than it was. Tiny, little bits of progress — that's how it works.
Do you believe life has an arc? Or is it just a bunch of stuff that happens?
Is there a pupose, you mean? Everything I have to say about that is in the show. Go look at Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphu
. It's all there: Life seems to have no purpose but we have to go on behaving as thought it does. We have to go on behaving toward each other like people who would love.So, it's still worth trying?
Of course. What else are you going to do? Watch TV?
(Interview by Brett Martin. Excerpted from The Sopranos: The Complete Book)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Accused of Helping the Mob, FBI Agent Gets His Day in Court
The rumor was explosive, hard to believe: Gregory Scarpa Sr., a ruthless Colombo crime family capo known as the Grim Reaper, was receiving tips from a mysterious source inside law enforcement, a man he called “the girlfriend.”
The confirmation was devastating: Prosecutors working to cripple the family in the mid-1990s said that the source was their own Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor, the man assigned to lead the Colombo investigation.
In May 1995, an assistant United States attorney, Ellen M. Corcella, was prosecuting a murder conspiracy case on the brutal war for control of the family. She practically begged jurors not to be distracted by the role prosecutors said Mr. DeVecchio played.
“He’ll get his day in court,” Ms. Corcella told the jury.
Though Ms. Corcella lost that case, her prediction eventually came true. More than a decade later, Mr. DeVecchio arrived in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday for a trial on murder charges. By the account of state prosecutors, he traded information with Mr. Scarpa from 1980 through 1993, directly causing four Mafia killings and failing to stop several others.
Mr. DeVecchio tried several legal maneuvers — including claiming immunity from prosecution as a federal agent — but each failed, and he appeared in court yesterday in a drab gray suit, ragged crew cut and crinkled features, watched from the gallery by rows of agents dressed nearly identically.
Prosecutors say Mr. DeVecchio accepted cash, wine, the services of a prostitute and jewelry stolen from bank safe deposit boxes. They say he billed the federal government for more than $66,000 in payments to Mr. Scarpa, then kept the money himself. But his greatest rewards were the least tangible, prosecutors say: Through years of handling his prized mole, Mr. DeVecchio grew his legend in the annals of law enforcement.
After helping supervise the famed Commission Case in the 1980s, when top leaders of the city’s five crime families were jailed, Mr. DeVecchio was honored by the Police Department and called to lecture at training academies.
So to Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyers and supporters, among them five agents who signed for his $1 million bail, the charges unfairly smear an exemplary career. Motivated by political gain, they say, state prosecutors have built a flawed case on the word of Mr. Scarpa’s common-law wife, Linda Schiro, a woman intent on selling her story to publishers.
Yesterday, there was a lot of history in the room, all the way up. The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, was investigated by the F.B.I. in the 1960s when he was a student at Columbia University.
Despite a warning and a reminder that he could have a jury hear the case, Mr. DeVecchio waived his right to a jury trial and left his fate to a man that his F.B.I. colleagues had once described as a dangerous student protest organizer.
Absent an audience of jurors, an assistant district attorney, Joseph P. Alexis, opened his case with a stark, unemotional recounting of the charges. In a trial expected to last more than a month, he said Ms. Schiro would testify that Mr. DeVecchio had visited her home, taken cash payments and told Mr. Scarpa whom to kill.
The witness list includes several Mafia associates, including Mr. Scarpa’s namesake son, who is in prison for racketeering.
By the prosecutor’s account, Mr. DeVecchio identified informers. “Scarpa used this information,” Mr. Alexis said, “to devastating effect.”
Mr. Scarpa shot Mary Bari, the girlfriend of a Mafia figure who was suspected of crossing Mr. Scarpa, while his son held her down, Mr. Alexis said. Mr. DeVecchio eventually investigated possible informers on request.
“Shockingly, DeVecchio used his F.B.I. resources, looked into the matter and faithfully reported back,” he said.
A lawyer for Mr. DeVecchio, Douglas Grover, said Ms. Schiro’s testimony had been concocted to sell books. Several of the victims, he said, were killed before they ever had a chance to cooperate with the F.B.I.
Mr. Grover said Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with Mr. Scarpa was proper, required to make big cases against secretive Mafia families. “Gregory Scarpa, as ugly and miserable a human being as he was, a made member of the Colombo crime family, was a top echelon F.B.I. source,” Mr. Grover said.
For Mr. DeVecchio, 67 and retired, the trial will render final judgment on a career marked as maverick from the start.
After joining the F.B.I. in 1965, Mr. DeVecchio worked in New York, a city traditionally unpopular among agents for its weather, cost of living, field office bureaucracy and large, ambitious Police Department. His Italian family background led to assignments investigating the Mafia, supporters say.
Mr. DeVecchio first came to prominence in the early 1980s. Posing undercover as a hit man, he helped convict a former intelligence agent of plotting to kill prosecutors and witnesses.
By then, in the parlance of the F.B.I., he had opened Mr. Scarpa, contracting him as a confidential informer to gather insight on Mafia doings and hierarchy.
Mr. Scarpa was something of a legend himself, a compact, muscular man of 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds. In the 1960s, the F.B.I. engaged him to travel south, meet Ku Klux Klan members and use his powers of persuasion to find the bodies of slain civil rights workers. Back home in Brooklyn he reputedly oversaw Colombo loan-sharking operations, hijackings, weapons sales and killings.
Much of Mr. Scarpa’s reputation derived from an uncanny ability to avoid prison through a series of indictments. In 1993, he finally pleaded guilty to murder and racketeering charges. The next year, at age 66, he died in a prison hospital of complications from AIDS, which he had contracted in a blood transfusion from a member of his crew.
The relationship between Mr. DeVecchio and Mr. Scarpa first drew scrutiny in 1994, when F.B.I. agents voiced their suspicions to supervisors, but an inquiry failed to find enough evidence. Taking the witness stand at a hearing in 1997, he strongly denied giving Mr. Scarpa investigative information.
Still, the accusations persisted, taking the form of defense motions, rumors, Mafia lore and, not least, book proposals. In 2005, state prosecutors got their break from Ms. Schiro, who had lived with Mr. Scarpa for years, bearing sons who followed their father into the Mafia.
By Ms. Schiro’s account, Mr. DeVecchio warned Mr. Scarpa of surveillance, impending arrests and other government informers. Prosecutors accused him of helping Mr. Scarpa kill a teenage murder witness, rivals for power and suspected informers, including a woman who had dated a family consigliere.
In his opening, Mr. Grover said the new charges reprised accusations long laid to rest, tacitly acknowledging the long, strange arc of Mr. DeVecchio’s career at the F.B.I. “Watch this one play out,” Mr. Grover told the judge. “It’s going to be quite interesting.”
Thanks to Michael Brick
The confirmation was devastating: Prosecutors working to cripple the family in the mid-1990s said that the source was their own Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor, the man assigned to lead the Colombo investigation.
In May 1995, an assistant United States attorney, Ellen M. Corcella, was prosecuting a murder conspiracy case on the brutal war for control of the family. She practically begged jurors not to be distracted by the role prosecutors said Mr. DeVecchio played.
“He’ll get his day in court,” Ms. Corcella told the jury.
Though Ms. Corcella lost that case, her prediction eventually came true. More than a decade later, Mr. DeVecchio arrived in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday for a trial on murder charges. By the account of state prosecutors, he traded information with Mr. Scarpa from 1980 through 1993, directly causing four Mafia killings and failing to stop several others.
Mr. DeVecchio tried several legal maneuvers — including claiming immunity from prosecution as a federal agent — but each failed, and he appeared in court yesterday in a drab gray suit, ragged crew cut and crinkled features, watched from the gallery by rows of agents dressed nearly identically.
Prosecutors say Mr. DeVecchio accepted cash, wine, the services of a prostitute and jewelry stolen from bank safe deposit boxes. They say he billed the federal government for more than $66,000 in payments to Mr. Scarpa, then kept the money himself. But his greatest rewards were the least tangible, prosecutors say: Through years of handling his prized mole, Mr. DeVecchio grew his legend in the annals of law enforcement.
After helping supervise the famed Commission Case in the 1980s, when top leaders of the city’s five crime families were jailed, Mr. DeVecchio was honored by the Police Department and called to lecture at training academies.
So to Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyers and supporters, among them five agents who signed for his $1 million bail, the charges unfairly smear an exemplary career. Motivated by political gain, they say, state prosecutors have built a flawed case on the word of Mr. Scarpa’s common-law wife, Linda Schiro, a woman intent on selling her story to publishers.
Yesterday, there was a lot of history in the room, all the way up. The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, was investigated by the F.B.I. in the 1960s when he was a student at Columbia University.
Despite a warning and a reminder that he could have a jury hear the case, Mr. DeVecchio waived his right to a jury trial and left his fate to a man that his F.B.I. colleagues had once described as a dangerous student protest organizer.
Absent an audience of jurors, an assistant district attorney, Joseph P. Alexis, opened his case with a stark, unemotional recounting of the charges. In a trial expected to last more than a month, he said Ms. Schiro would testify that Mr. DeVecchio had visited her home, taken cash payments and told Mr. Scarpa whom to kill.
The witness list includes several Mafia associates, including Mr. Scarpa’s namesake son, who is in prison for racketeering.
By the prosecutor’s account, Mr. DeVecchio identified informers. “Scarpa used this information,” Mr. Alexis said, “to devastating effect.”
Mr. Scarpa shot Mary Bari, the girlfriend of a Mafia figure who was suspected of crossing Mr. Scarpa, while his son held her down, Mr. Alexis said. Mr. DeVecchio eventually investigated possible informers on request.
“Shockingly, DeVecchio used his F.B.I. resources, looked into the matter and faithfully reported back,” he said.
A lawyer for Mr. DeVecchio, Douglas Grover, said Ms. Schiro’s testimony had been concocted to sell books. Several of the victims, he said, were killed before they ever had a chance to cooperate with the F.B.I.
Mr. Grover said Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with Mr. Scarpa was proper, required to make big cases against secretive Mafia families. “Gregory Scarpa, as ugly and miserable a human being as he was, a made member of the Colombo crime family, was a top echelon F.B.I. source,” Mr. Grover said.
For Mr. DeVecchio, 67 and retired, the trial will render final judgment on a career marked as maverick from the start.
After joining the F.B.I. in 1965, Mr. DeVecchio worked in New York, a city traditionally unpopular among agents for its weather, cost of living, field office bureaucracy and large, ambitious Police Department. His Italian family background led to assignments investigating the Mafia, supporters say.
Mr. DeVecchio first came to prominence in the early 1980s. Posing undercover as a hit man, he helped convict a former intelligence agent of plotting to kill prosecutors and witnesses.
By then, in the parlance of the F.B.I., he had opened Mr. Scarpa, contracting him as a confidential informer to gather insight on Mafia doings and hierarchy.
Mr. Scarpa was something of a legend himself, a compact, muscular man of 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds. In the 1960s, the F.B.I. engaged him to travel south, meet Ku Klux Klan members and use his powers of persuasion to find the bodies of slain civil rights workers. Back home in Brooklyn he reputedly oversaw Colombo loan-sharking operations, hijackings, weapons sales and killings.
Much of Mr. Scarpa’s reputation derived from an uncanny ability to avoid prison through a series of indictments. In 1993, he finally pleaded guilty to murder and racketeering charges. The next year, at age 66, he died in a prison hospital of complications from AIDS, which he had contracted in a blood transfusion from a member of his crew.
The relationship between Mr. DeVecchio and Mr. Scarpa first drew scrutiny in 1994, when F.B.I. agents voiced their suspicions to supervisors, but an inquiry failed to find enough evidence. Taking the witness stand at a hearing in 1997, he strongly denied giving Mr. Scarpa investigative information.
Still, the accusations persisted, taking the form of defense motions, rumors, Mafia lore and, not least, book proposals. In 2005, state prosecutors got their break from Ms. Schiro, who had lived with Mr. Scarpa for years, bearing sons who followed their father into the Mafia.
By Ms. Schiro’s account, Mr. DeVecchio warned Mr. Scarpa of surveillance, impending arrests and other government informers. Prosecutors accused him of helping Mr. Scarpa kill a teenage murder witness, rivals for power and suspected informers, including a woman who had dated a family consigliere.
In his opening, Mr. Grover said the new charges reprised accusations long laid to rest, tacitly acknowledging the long, strange arc of Mr. DeVecchio’s career at the F.B.I. “Watch this one play out,” Mr. Grover told the judge. “It’s going to be quite interesting.”
Thanks to Michael Brick
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
A Dentist Gets Drilled by "The Shark"
Joseph "The Shark" Lopez returns with more Shark Tales from the Family Secrets trial and some questions for Pat Spilotro, the dentist brother of Tony and Michael Spilotro. Pat testified during the trial regarding his relationship with some of the defendants. Nick Calabrese, testifying for the prosecution, revealed how both Tony and Michael met their demise.
"The trial was quite a show of characters. The best was Dr. Spilotro, the rat. If his brothers could have seen him on the stand testifying as a government witness they would have puked. He was disgusting. He sat there like a big church victim crying about his brothers.
What about the families of the guys his brother killed, did he weep for them? What about the guy whose head went into the vise or the burglars that were killed? What about those guys doc?
There were times I thought the trial would never end. Day after day was a grind. Judge Zagel kept it going at a good pace. The big issue on appeal will be the double jeporady arguments of Calabrese and Marcello. This case will go on for years to come and it aint over yet!" - Joe Shark
"The trial was quite a show of characters. The best was Dr. Spilotro, the rat. If his brothers could have seen him on the stand testifying as a government witness they would have puked. He was disgusting. He sat there like a big church victim crying about his brothers.
What about the families of the guys his brother killed, did he weep for them? What about the guy whose head went into the vise or the burglars that were killed? What about those guys doc?
There were times I thought the trial would never end. Day after day was a grind. Judge Zagel kept it going at a good pace. The big issue on appeal will be the double jeporady arguments of Calabrese and Marcello. This case will go on for years to come and it aint over yet!" - Joe Shark
Monday, October 15, 2007
The Sopranos Bobby Bacala is Heading to Las Vegas
Steve Schirripa, Bobby ‘Bacala’ Baccalieri from The Sopranos’, will be hosting Vegas Va-Voom Variety Spectacular at The Comedy Festival on November 14th at 9:00 PM. It’s a variety show full of music, comedy, and surprise guests. Musical performances include Las Vegas headliners the glitzy-glam duo Zowie Bowie, Vegas perennial favorite “The Lon Bronson Band,” and Schirripa’s own sexy Vegas Va-Voom showgirls.
The Comedy Festival will run from November 14-17 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and is produced by HBO and AEG Live. For ticket information please log onto: www.thecomedyfestival.com.
He'll also be on The Tonight Show onTuesday, October 16 promoting his appearance at The Comedy Festival.
The Comedy Festival will run from November 14-17 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and is produced by HBO and AEG Live. For ticket information please log onto: www.thecomedyfestival.com.
He'll also be on The Tonight Show onTuesday, October 16 promoting his appearance at The Comedy Festival.
"Rocky" Busted in Mob Roundup
The FBI said it arrested seven associates of the Genovese Crime family Wednesday on charges the men took part in a series of armed robberies and other crimes in New York and New Jersey.
Among those charged were John "Rocky" Melicharek, Dominick "Shakes" Memoli and Enad "Neddy" Gjelaj.
The suspects are accused of robbing numerous Morris County homes at gunpoint, as well as an Orange County business. The FBI said the men also threatened a Manhattan businessman if he did not make payments to reputed Genovese crime family associates Michael Iuni and Angelo Nicosia.
The suspects were taken to the FBI office in Newark Wednesday morning. They are expected to be arraigned on the extortion and robbery charges late Wednesday.
Melicharek and Memoli face up to life in prison. Others face a maximum of 40 years if convicted. Prosecutors said Memoli and Gjelaj are already behind bars on other criminal counts.
U.S. attorney Michael Garcia said in addition to prison time, his office plans to seek $1 million in restitution from the suspects.
Among those charged were John "Rocky" Melicharek, Dominick "Shakes" Memoli and Enad "Neddy" Gjelaj.
The suspects are accused of robbing numerous Morris County homes at gunpoint, as well as an Orange County business. The FBI said the men also threatened a Manhattan businessman if he did not make payments to reputed Genovese crime family associates Michael Iuni and Angelo Nicosia.
The suspects were taken to the FBI office in Newark Wednesday morning. They are expected to be arraigned on the extortion and robbery charges late Wednesday.
Melicharek and Memoli face up to life in prison. Others face a maximum of 40 years if convicted. Prosecutors said Memoli and Gjelaj are already behind bars on other criminal counts.
U.S. attorney Michael Garcia said in addition to prison time, his office plans to seek $1 million in restitution from the suspects.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Genovese Family Associates and Others Arrested on Extortion and Robbery Charges
MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, MARK MERSHON, Assistant Directorin- Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation(“FBI”), and WEYSAN DUN, the Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Newark Office of the FBI announced today the arrests of seven individuals charged with participating in a series of extortions and violent home invasions.
According to an Indictment unsealed today in Manhattan federal court: The defendants, JOHN MELICHAREK, a/k/a “Rocky,” MICHAEL IUNI, and ANGELO NICOSIA -- associates of the Genovese Organized Crime Family -- and DOMINICK MEMOLI, a/k/a “Shakes,” LOUIS PIPOLO, DARDIAN CELAJ, a/k/a “Danny,” and ENED GJELAJ, a/k/a “Neddy,” took part in a string of extortions and robberies targeted at business owners based in New York and New Jersey. MELICHAREK, IUNI, and NICOSIA used their status as Genovese Organized Crime Family associates to extort a Manhattan-based business owner. MELICHAREK, MEMOLI, PIPOLO, CELAJ, and GJELAJ also planned and executed home invasions, including a September 2003 robbery of a Morris County, New Jersey business owner, and an October 2003 robbery attempt of an Orange County, New York business owner, using firearms in connection with the crimes. MELICHAREK also faces a stolen property charge.
If convicted, MELICHAREK, MEMOLI, PIPOLO, CELAJ, and GJELAJ face maximum sentences of life imprisonment. IUNI and NICOSIA face maximum sentences of 40 years’ imprisonment.
MELICHAREK, IUNI, NICOSIA, PIPOLO, and CELAJ were arrested this week by FBI agents. MEMOLI and GJELAJ are each currently serving a sentence from a prior criminal conviction and accordingly, will be brought by the United States Marshals Service to the Southern District of New York to face the charges.
Mr. GARCIA praised the efforts of the FBI, the Orange County, New York District Attorney’s Office, the Morris County, New Jersey Prosecutor’s Office, the Rockaway Township, New Jersey Police Department, and the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
Assistant United States Attorneys ELIE HONIG and BENJAMIN GRUENSTEIN are in charge of the prosecution.
According to an Indictment unsealed today in Manhattan federal court: The defendants, JOHN MELICHAREK, a/k/a “Rocky,” MICHAEL IUNI, and ANGELO NICOSIA -- associates of the Genovese Organized Crime Family -- and DOMINICK MEMOLI, a/k/a “Shakes,” LOUIS PIPOLO, DARDIAN CELAJ, a/k/a “Danny,” and ENED GJELAJ, a/k/a “Neddy,” took part in a string of extortions and robberies targeted at business owners based in New York and New Jersey. MELICHAREK, IUNI, and NICOSIA used their status as Genovese Organized Crime Family associates to extort a Manhattan-based business owner. MELICHAREK, MEMOLI, PIPOLO, CELAJ, and GJELAJ also planned and executed home invasions, including a September 2003 robbery of a Morris County, New Jersey business owner, and an October 2003 robbery attempt of an Orange County, New York business owner, using firearms in connection with the crimes. MELICHAREK also faces a stolen property charge.
If convicted, MELICHAREK, MEMOLI, PIPOLO, CELAJ, and GJELAJ face maximum sentences of life imprisonment. IUNI and NICOSIA face maximum sentences of 40 years’ imprisonment.
MELICHAREK, IUNI, NICOSIA, PIPOLO, and CELAJ were arrested this week by FBI agents. MEMOLI and GJELAJ are each currently serving a sentence from a prior criminal conviction and accordingly, will be brought by the United States Marshals Service to the Southern District of New York to face the charges.
Mr. GARCIA praised the efforts of the FBI, the Orange County, New York District Attorney’s Office, the Morris County, New Jersey Prosecutor’s Office, the Rockaway Township, New Jersey Police Department, and the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
Assistant United States Attorneys ELIE HONIG and BENJAMIN GRUENSTEIN are in charge of the prosecution.
A Look Back at the Philly Mob
Pop culture is riddled with more mob movies and TV shows than an unlucky gangster's body is with bullets. Americans are fascinated with the dark side and have made “The Sopranos” the poster children for the Mafia and Victoria Gotti, daughter of John “The Dapper Don” Gotti, and her spoiled-rotten offspring its royal family with the reality show “Growing Up Gotti.”
But contrary to what pop culture loves to portray, the mob is far from glamorous and exciting. Just take a look at where Cosa Nostra — Sicilian for “our thing” — landed South Philly's own tough guys, all of whom made headlines at one point or another: Angelo “The Gentle Don” Bruno, Phil “Chicken Man” Testa and his son Salvatore Testa got whacked, while Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, John Stanfa, Ralph Natale, “Skinny” Joey Merlino and Ron Previte are all in prison for racketeering and murder among other offenses,
George Anastasia, who has written extensively about the mob for The Philadelphia Inquirer since the late 1970s and authored four books
on the subject, noted, “If you look at the list, you see where these guys have ended up,” Anastasia, a native of the 1700 block of Watkins Street who now lives in South Jersey, told the Review.
Bruno was the longest running crime boss and perhaps one of the most respected for the low-key approach that earned him his nickname.
Bruno ruled from '59 to March 21, 1980, when he was shot to death in his car with driver John Stanfa in front of Bruno's home at 934 Snyder Ave. Under the Sicilian immigrant's tenure, “he did everything low-key — he didn't do any public shootings in restaurants or in the street” unlike how later-day mobsters such as the ruthless Scarfo conducted business, Capt. Charles Bloom of the police department's Central Intelligence Bureau said. “If you had to describe Bruno, you could say, ‘make money, don't make headlines,'” Bloom said.
His attitude in life did not mark his death. His violent end received press from outlets such as The New York Times, which covered the fallout from Stanfa's trial for perjury in connection to the killing to FBI testimony in '81 that Scarfo was the new head of the family.
Stanfa suffered a graze wound in the Bruno ambush, Anastasia said, adding, “To this day there's conflicting reports. Some people believe Stanfa was part of the plot and he knew what was going to happen and others say he didn't. I tend to believe the former.”
Under Bruno's reign, the Philadelphia crime family was among the most powerful in the United States, trailing closely being New York and Chicago. The Gentle Don carved out a close relationship with Carlo Gambino, leader of New York's family — a friendship that saved Bruno when short-lived Philly boss Antonio Pollina wanted him killed in '59.
As the story goes, Bruno pledged his loyalty to Pollina despite being passed over for the job, but the new boss still felt threatened. When Pollina ordered a hit, Gambino intervened by not only halting the slaying, but putting his new friend in charge of the Philadelphia crime family. The first notch in Bruno's belt of civility was sparing Pollina.
According to Bloom, the Philly mob, which controlled this city and South Jersey including Atlantic City, has always been in New York's shadow and the former often cannot operate without the latter's blessing.
Bruno's death at 69 paved the way for a slew of flamboyant, young wiseguys to take the helm. “That totally destabilized the organization and it's been destabilized since then. It's been disorganized organized crime,” Anastasia said.
The new guns included Bruno underling Testa, who was blown up March 15, 1981, on his front porch on the 2100 block of Porter Street in Girard Estate by a nail bomb and later immortalized in Bruce Springsteen's song “Atlantic City,” whose lyrics say, “Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night/Now they blew up his house too.” The song, featured on the Boss' “Nebraska” album, which made it to No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Album charts, brought the scene to the attention of countless music fans worldwide.
More than 20 years later, Testa's fatal bombing is still making news. An Oct. 7 Time article cited the killing in its piece “The Sicilian Connection,” which explores the U.S. Cosa Nostra's alleged link to the Sicilian Mafia.
Months after the Chicken Man's demise, Scarfo had Frank Narducci and Rocco Marinucci whacked for the unauthorized hit of his mentor, according to Anastasia.
Long before he ascended to power, Scarfo was banished to AC by Bruno in the '60s after the young hothead knifed a man inside Oregon Diner, 302 W. Oregon Ave, the writer said. Scarfo stayed in AC — a wasteland at the time — but hung around long enough to benefit from gambling when the casinos hit town.
With Testa gone, Scarfo took over in '81 and made Testa's son Salvatore a capo. That same year, Testa and two others survived an ambush outside the Italian Market, but three years later, the capo wasn't as lucky when Scarfo had the young man killed Sept. 14, 1984. So much for loyalty to his mentor — he had his son killed, Anastasia said, adding, “That's the way he was.”
Testa was lured to a now-gone candy store on Passyunk for a meeting, where a Scarfo hit man shot him, wrapped his body in a rug and dumped it by a dirt road in Gloucester County, N.J., the writer said. Scarfo told his organization he had Testa killed because he broke off an engagement with Salvatore Merlino's daughter, Maria, but according to Anastasia, Scarfo saw Testa as a possible threat. “He used the broken engagement as an excuse,” the author said. In years to come, Merlino's son Joey would become a reputed mob boss.
Scarfo held control for six years until his arrest and conviction for a racketeering case that included counts of murder, Anastasia said. Little Nicky got 55 years and remains in the Big House. But his impression was indelible. In a '91 Time interview with former soldier-turned-informer Nicholas “The Crow” Caramandi, interviewer Richard Behar refers to Scarfo as the “most vicious Mob boss of his generation” and proceeds to ask Caramandi about working under him, as well as the killing of Salvatore Testa.
In '89, Bruno's former driver Stanfa, who grew up on Passyunk Avenue near the Melrose Diner and later moved to Jersey, became boss. In '95, he got five life terms for racketeering and murder.
That opened the way for Natale. After serving 15 years for drug dealing and arson, Natale was released in '95 and became boss in an alliance with Merlino, who was his underling, Anastasia said. Merlino associate Previte helped build a case against Natale by wearing a wire for the feds. The tapes resulted in the then-69-year-old Natale and then-37-year-old Merlino arrested on drug charges in '99 with Natale tied to a major South Jersey meth ring and Merlino to a Boston cocaine ring. Natale became the first mobster to cooperate with the feds and, as a result, got a 13-year sentence, which he's serving in a protected witness wing, Anastasia said.
That leaves Merlino, who by all appearances may be one of Philadelphia Cosa Nostra's last bad boys.
Despite the feds pursuing him aggressively for years, the style-conscious young turk with the striking wife did not shy away from the media, becoming a magnet for his organized softball league and Christmas parties for the poor. In typical Merlino fashion, his 2001 trial on murder and racketeering charges was a press event. And, he may have beaten the rap for Joseph Sodano's '96 murder in Philadelphia court, but a federal judge in New Jersey upheld charges in the same case against the reputed mob boss in October 2001. The New York Times, among other national and international papers, covered the trial.
Merlino and seven codefendants — including Previte — were convicted of bookmaking, racketeering and extortion. These days, “Skinny Joey” is serving a 14-year sentence, set to be released in '11, Anastasia said.
The reigning alleged crime boss has been identified as 68-year-old Joe Ligambi, who was with the Stanfa organization. In '89, Ligambi was sent away for 10 years after being convicted of murder, which was overturned on appeal. Ligambi came back to South Philly in '99 and, when Merlino went to jail, became acting boss, Anastasia said. According to the author, “he's kind of gone back to the Bruno model of low-key, not flashy.”
Bloom contends Cosa Nostra is still very much alive and well. “It's not as powerful as it was 20 years ago but it's still there. They haven't gone away. They took a lot of hits from law enforcement pressure and each other, but they didn't throw in the towel,” the captain said.
Thanks to Lorraine Gennaro
But contrary to what pop culture loves to portray, the mob is far from glamorous and exciting. Just take a look at where Cosa Nostra — Sicilian for “our thing” — landed South Philly's own tough guys, all of whom made headlines at one point or another: Angelo “The Gentle Don” Bruno, Phil “Chicken Man” Testa and his son Salvatore Testa got whacked, while Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, John Stanfa, Ralph Natale, “Skinny” Joey Merlino and Ron Previte are all in prison for racketeering and murder among other offenses,
George Anastasia, who has written extensively about the mob for The Philadelphia Inquirer since the late 1970s and authored four books
on the subject, noted, “If you look at the list, you see where these guys have ended up,” Anastasia, a native of the 1700 block of Watkins Street who now lives in South Jersey, told the Review.Bruno was the longest running crime boss and perhaps one of the most respected for the low-key approach that earned him his nickname.
Bruno ruled from '59 to March 21, 1980, when he was shot to death in his car with driver John Stanfa in front of Bruno's home at 934 Snyder Ave. Under the Sicilian immigrant's tenure, “he did everything low-key — he didn't do any public shootings in restaurants or in the street” unlike how later-day mobsters such as the ruthless Scarfo conducted business, Capt. Charles Bloom of the police department's Central Intelligence Bureau said. “If you had to describe Bruno, you could say, ‘make money, don't make headlines,'” Bloom said.
His attitude in life did not mark his death. His violent end received press from outlets such as The New York Times, which covered the fallout from Stanfa's trial for perjury in connection to the killing to FBI testimony in '81 that Scarfo was the new head of the family.
Stanfa suffered a graze wound in the Bruno ambush, Anastasia said, adding, “To this day there's conflicting reports. Some people believe Stanfa was part of the plot and he knew what was going to happen and others say he didn't. I tend to believe the former.”
Under Bruno's reign, the Philadelphia crime family was among the most powerful in the United States, trailing closely being New York and Chicago. The Gentle Don carved out a close relationship with Carlo Gambino, leader of New York's family — a friendship that saved Bruno when short-lived Philly boss Antonio Pollina wanted him killed in '59.
As the story goes, Bruno pledged his loyalty to Pollina despite being passed over for the job, but the new boss still felt threatened. When Pollina ordered a hit, Gambino intervened by not only halting the slaying, but putting his new friend in charge of the Philadelphia crime family. The first notch in Bruno's belt of civility was sparing Pollina.
According to Bloom, the Philly mob, which controlled this city and South Jersey including Atlantic City, has always been in New York's shadow and the former often cannot operate without the latter's blessing.
Bruno's death at 69 paved the way for a slew of flamboyant, young wiseguys to take the helm. “That totally destabilized the organization and it's been destabilized since then. It's been disorganized organized crime,” Anastasia said.
The new guns included Bruno underling Testa, who was blown up March 15, 1981, on his front porch on the 2100 block of Porter Street in Girard Estate by a nail bomb and later immortalized in Bruce Springsteen's song “Atlantic City,” whose lyrics say, “Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night/Now they blew up his house too.” The song, featured on the Boss' “Nebraska” album, which made it to No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Album charts, brought the scene to the attention of countless music fans worldwide.
More than 20 years later, Testa's fatal bombing is still making news. An Oct. 7 Time article cited the killing in its piece “The Sicilian Connection,” which explores the U.S. Cosa Nostra's alleged link to the Sicilian Mafia.
Months after the Chicken Man's demise, Scarfo had Frank Narducci and Rocco Marinucci whacked for the unauthorized hit of his mentor, according to Anastasia.
Long before he ascended to power, Scarfo was banished to AC by Bruno in the '60s after the young hothead knifed a man inside Oregon Diner, 302 W. Oregon Ave, the writer said. Scarfo stayed in AC — a wasteland at the time — but hung around long enough to benefit from gambling when the casinos hit town.
With Testa gone, Scarfo took over in '81 and made Testa's son Salvatore a capo. That same year, Testa and two others survived an ambush outside the Italian Market, but three years later, the capo wasn't as lucky when Scarfo had the young man killed Sept. 14, 1984. So much for loyalty to his mentor — he had his son killed, Anastasia said, adding, “That's the way he was.”
Testa was lured to a now-gone candy store on Passyunk for a meeting, where a Scarfo hit man shot him, wrapped his body in a rug and dumped it by a dirt road in Gloucester County, N.J., the writer said. Scarfo told his organization he had Testa killed because he broke off an engagement with Salvatore Merlino's daughter, Maria, but according to Anastasia, Scarfo saw Testa as a possible threat. “He used the broken engagement as an excuse,” the author said. In years to come, Merlino's son Joey would become a reputed mob boss.
Scarfo held control for six years until his arrest and conviction for a racketeering case that included counts of murder, Anastasia said. Little Nicky got 55 years and remains in the Big House. But his impression was indelible. In a '91 Time interview with former soldier-turned-informer Nicholas “The Crow” Caramandi, interviewer Richard Behar refers to Scarfo as the “most vicious Mob boss of his generation” and proceeds to ask Caramandi about working under him, as well as the killing of Salvatore Testa.
In '89, Bruno's former driver Stanfa, who grew up on Passyunk Avenue near the Melrose Diner and later moved to Jersey, became boss. In '95, he got five life terms for racketeering and murder.
That opened the way for Natale. After serving 15 years for drug dealing and arson, Natale was released in '95 and became boss in an alliance with Merlino, who was his underling, Anastasia said. Merlino associate Previte helped build a case against Natale by wearing a wire for the feds. The tapes resulted in the then-69-year-old Natale and then-37-year-old Merlino arrested on drug charges in '99 with Natale tied to a major South Jersey meth ring and Merlino to a Boston cocaine ring. Natale became the first mobster to cooperate with the feds and, as a result, got a 13-year sentence, which he's serving in a protected witness wing, Anastasia said.
That leaves Merlino, who by all appearances may be one of Philadelphia Cosa Nostra's last bad boys.
Despite the feds pursuing him aggressively for years, the style-conscious young turk with the striking wife did not shy away from the media, becoming a magnet for his organized softball league and Christmas parties for the poor. In typical Merlino fashion, his 2001 trial on murder and racketeering charges was a press event. And, he may have beaten the rap for Joseph Sodano's '96 murder in Philadelphia court, but a federal judge in New Jersey upheld charges in the same case against the reputed mob boss in October 2001. The New York Times, among other national and international papers, covered the trial.
Merlino and seven codefendants — including Previte — were convicted of bookmaking, racketeering and extortion. These days, “Skinny Joey” is serving a 14-year sentence, set to be released in '11, Anastasia said.
The reigning alleged crime boss has been identified as 68-year-old Joe Ligambi, who was with the Stanfa organization. In '89, Ligambi was sent away for 10 years after being convicted of murder, which was overturned on appeal. Ligambi came back to South Philly in '99 and, when Merlino went to jail, became acting boss, Anastasia said. According to the author, “he's kind of gone back to the Bruno model of low-key, not flashy.”
Bloom contends Cosa Nostra is still very much alive and well. “It's not as powerful as it was 20 years ago but it's still there. They haven't gone away. They took a lot of hits from law enforcement pressure and each other, but they didn't throw in the towel,” the captain said.
Thanks to Lorraine Gennaro
American Gangster on BET
AMERICAN GANGSTER chronicles the life and times of some of Black America’s most notorious crime figures. The show will explore without glorifying, and investigate without celebrating these criminal-minded men and women.
During each episode, the crimes of infamous Black figures, such as Chaz Williams, Larry Hoover and the D.C. Snipers, will be put in the context of Black history as we see how their actions both reflected and corrupted the values of their community. While exploring the lives of drug dealers, murderers and thieves, each AMERICAN GANGSTER episode will have a strong moral dimension. The Black victims of these criminals will be heard. Judgment will be passed, and amoral behavior censured. Each episode will blend news footage, photographs and interviews in a compelling, magazine-style format.
Otta Da Joint
Nick Boscarino -- an alleged mob associate and former business partner of Rosemont's late Mayor Donald Stephens -- got out of federal prison Friday. Boscarino, 55, did most of the three-year sentence he got for stealing $288,670 in insurance premiums paid by Rosemont in the 1990s. He split it with Ralph Aulenta, an insurance broker who got out of prison last year. Boscarino and Stephens once co-owned a forklift company. A trust fund in the name of Boscarino's wife, Shari, had a $1.5 million stake in the failed Rosemont casino. Illinois casino regulators once asked Boscarino if he ran his wife's trust fund; Boscarino refused to answer. Those authorities thought Boscarino was "at the very least a close associate'' of mobsters.
Thanks to Tim Novak
Thanks to Tim Novak
Thursday, October 11, 2007
More Family Secret Murders
The milestone mob case has solved many more Chicago Outfit killings than first thought. When the curtain went up on Operation Family Secrets, authorities said the plot involved 18 old gangland murders. But 18 is just the number of killings that were part of the court case.
The I-Team has learned that federal authorities consider as many as 40 mob murders now solved because of their investigation.
The mob's hit parade has been rolling since 1919 with corpses in cars and alleys; on street corners, sidewalks and alleyways; even in back yards and barber chairs. And in almost 90 years of keeping the stats, just a few Outfit murders have ever been solved.
"Whenever we had an organized crime homicide in Area 4, they were some of the hardest cases to work because even their own family members wouldn't talk to you," said Steve Peterson, Chicago police.
When you're a contract killer for La Cosa Nostra, or the LCN, part of the deal is, you don't get caught.
"This is the first investigation that I can recall where so many murders are charged...it goes to the heart of the LCN and that is a bunch of murderous thugs," said Robert Grant, FBI.
One man was *the* most murderous of the thugs: Nick Calabrese, mob hitman-turned-government informant.
During the summer-long trial, Calabrese admitted that he personally took part in more than a dozen gangland killings. But the I-Team has learned that during months of interviews with Chicago FBI agents, Nick Calabrese identified the Outfit triggermen in many additional murders that were never revealed in court.
"About 20 or so that Nick Calabrese provided information on," said John Scully, Family Secrets prosecutor. "I haven't looked at it in a while, but there are a number of murders beyond the ones that he testified about. Again, that he was not involved in, but through conversations with other mobsters."
Retired federal prosecutor Scully revealed the information during a recent interview about the Family Secrets case. While Scully declined to provide details, the I-Team has learned that the case of one mob murder victim is atop those cleared by Calabrese.
Manny Skar, a mob gambling functionary was mysteriously shot dead in 1965 as he emerged from his car near the garage of this Lake Shore Drive apartment house where he and his wife lived. Skar was about to snitch on the Outfit.
According to FBI interview reports, known as 302's, Nick Calabrese told agents that the hit man who rubbed out Skar was none other than Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo.
Mob investigators believe it was Lombardo's first hit, carried out as a requirement of The Clown's induction into the outfit.
Skar's murder and the numerous other "bonus killings" cleared by Nick Calabrese, will be used by prosecutors at the upcoming sentencing of Lombardo, Nick's brother Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese and "Little Jimmy" Marcello.
"At some point, if they haven't done it already, the FBI will be advising the police departments that have an interest in those murders now that this case is done," said Scully.
FBI spokesman Ross Rice confirms that the bureau is providing local authorities with details of the old mob murders, but he says in some cases, informant Nick Calabrese didn't even know the name of the victim.
However, from court records and law enforcement sources, these are among the secret murders also believed cleared by Calabrese:
-Sam Annerino, 1971. A top south suburban enforcer, taken out by masked gunmen in the middle of an Oak Lawn street.
-Anthony Reitinger, 1975. Mob bookie, gunned down in Mama Luna's restaurant on the Northwest Side.
-Tony Borsellino, 1979. A mob assassin shot five times in the back of the head and dumped in a Frankfort farm field.
-Sam Guzzino, 1981. Outfit bodyguard found mangled in a southwest suburban ditch.
-Ronnie Jarrett, 1999. South Side mob lieutenant ambushed on his Bridgeport doorstep.
Besides Nick Calabrese lifting the veil of secrecy on as many as 20 additional Outfit murders, he has also disclosed details of a number of botched gangland shootings, where the target survived.
Defense lawyers declined to comment on Calabrese' additional statements, saying that his FBI records are still under a court-protective order.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
The I-Team has learned that federal authorities consider as many as 40 mob murders now solved because of their investigation.
The mob's hit parade has been rolling since 1919 with corpses in cars and alleys; on street corners, sidewalks and alleyways; even in back yards and barber chairs. And in almost 90 years of keeping the stats, just a few Outfit murders have ever been solved.
"Whenever we had an organized crime homicide in Area 4, they were some of the hardest cases to work because even their own family members wouldn't talk to you," said Steve Peterson, Chicago police.
When you're a contract killer for La Cosa Nostra, or the LCN, part of the deal is, you don't get caught.
"This is the first investigation that I can recall where so many murders are charged...it goes to the heart of the LCN and that is a bunch of murderous thugs," said Robert Grant, FBI.
One man was *the* most murderous of the thugs: Nick Calabrese, mob hitman-turned-government informant.
During the summer-long trial, Calabrese admitted that he personally took part in more than a dozen gangland killings. But the I-Team has learned that during months of interviews with Chicago FBI agents, Nick Calabrese identified the Outfit triggermen in many additional murders that were never revealed in court.
"About 20 or so that Nick Calabrese provided information on," said John Scully, Family Secrets prosecutor. "I haven't looked at it in a while, but there are a number of murders beyond the ones that he testified about. Again, that he was not involved in, but through conversations with other mobsters."
Retired federal prosecutor Scully revealed the information during a recent interview about the Family Secrets case. While Scully declined to provide details, the I-Team has learned that the case of one mob murder victim is atop those cleared by Calabrese.
Manny Skar, a mob gambling functionary was mysteriously shot dead in 1965 as he emerged from his car near the garage of this Lake Shore Drive apartment house where he and his wife lived. Skar was about to snitch on the Outfit.
According to FBI interview reports, known as 302's, Nick Calabrese told agents that the hit man who rubbed out Skar was none other than Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo.
Mob investigators believe it was Lombardo's first hit, carried out as a requirement of The Clown's induction into the outfit.
Skar's murder and the numerous other "bonus killings" cleared by Nick Calabrese, will be used by prosecutors at the upcoming sentencing of Lombardo, Nick's brother Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese and "Little Jimmy" Marcello.
"At some point, if they haven't done it already, the FBI will be advising the police departments that have an interest in those murders now that this case is done," said Scully.
FBI spokesman Ross Rice confirms that the bureau is providing local authorities with details of the old mob murders, but he says in some cases, informant Nick Calabrese didn't even know the name of the victim.
However, from court records and law enforcement sources, these are among the secret murders also believed cleared by Calabrese:
-Sam Annerino, 1971. A top south suburban enforcer, taken out by masked gunmen in the middle of an Oak Lawn street.
-Anthony Reitinger, 1975. Mob bookie, gunned down in Mama Luna's restaurant on the Northwest Side.
-Tony Borsellino, 1979. A mob assassin shot five times in the back of the head and dumped in a Frankfort farm field.
-Sam Guzzino, 1981. Outfit bodyguard found mangled in a southwest suburban ditch.
-Ronnie Jarrett, 1999. South Side mob lieutenant ambushed on his Bridgeport doorstep.
Besides Nick Calabrese lifting the veil of secrecy on as many as 20 additional Outfit murders, he has also disclosed details of a number of botched gangland shootings, where the target survived.
Defense lawyers declined to comment on Calabrese' additional statements, saying that his FBI records are still under a court-protective order.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Mafia Maiden Coming
Mafia Maiden is the story of a young chicago girl, who goes on to become the first female Made member of the notorious Chicago Outfit. Mafia Maiden was created by Jeffrey Barnes the founder of Dark Matter Comics, the story is told in upcoming comic book series and the first issue is expected to hit shelves in March of 2008.
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