Son of Mob Hit Man Takes Witness Stand

Ronald Jarrett looked at the video screen on the witness stand in the Family Secrets trial on Tuesday and saw the image of a mustachioed face staring back.

Ronald Jarrett

"That was my father," he said of Ronnie Jarrett, a noted Outfit hit man and bookie who was gunned down in 1999.

The younger Jarrett, 35, was one of a series of prosecution witnesses called Tuesday to corroborate some of prosecution witness Nicholas Calabrese's key testimony over the last week about mob murders, how the Chicago Outfit made its money and what role Frank Calabrese Sr. and other defendants played.

Jarrett, in a white dress shirt and buzz-cut hair, testified that his father was a member of Frank Calabrese's Outfit crew and ran a gambling operation. When his dad was sentenced to prison in 1980, both Calabrese brothers dropped by to visit him, he said.

On his father's release from prison, Jarrett said, the two of them began working together in a gambling ring that took bets on football, basketball and horse racing, among other sports. Some of the money went to Frank Calabrese's family. Ronnie Jarrett bankrolled the operation, his son said, keeping cash in a bedroom drawer or a coat pocket in his closet.

The operation expanded to two offices, one in Burbank and another in Chicago, Jarrett said. Gambling slips were hidden in the ceiling of the front porch of the Chicago office, he said. Times were good, he said, until his father's fatal shooting just before Christmas in 1999.

Jarrett said he once asked reputed mob figure Nicholas Ferriola who was responsible for his father's death. Ferriola, who has pleaded guilty as part of the Family Secrets prosecution, brought players to the gambling operation, he said.

According to Jarrett, Ferriola told him that Johnny "Apes" Monteleone ordered his father's hit. Nicholas Calabrese had testified that Monteleone took over as boss of the Outfit's 26th Street crew after the deaths of brothers Angelo LaPietra and Jimmy LaPietra in the 1990s. "He told me that my dad had a problem with Johnny 'Apes,'" Jarrett testified.

On cross-examination by Joseph Lopez, the attorney for Frank Calabrese Sr., Jarrett acknowledged that Calabrese had tried to push him away from bookmaking. Through his questioning, Lopez also suggested that Jarrett's father could have been killed for refusing to let his gambling operation be controlled by Monteleone. To his knowledge, the younger Jarrett said, his father didn't pay "street taxes" to Outfit bosses.

In the afternoon, prosecutors called witnesses in an attempt to bolster Nicholas Calabrese's account of the murder of Nicholas D'Andrea, who had been suspected in an attempt on the life of reputed mob capo Al Pilotto on a golf course in Crete.

The heart of the government case involves 18 long-unsolved gangland slayings. Calabrese's brother and four other defendants are on trial in the landmark case.

Calabrese had described the killing in detail last week, saying D'Andrea had been lured to a garage in Chicago Heights. Calabrese testified he had been told that a tall man and a short man would walk into the garage and that he was to club the short man with a bat.

On entering the garage, the tall man took off running, possibly tipping off the shorter D'Andrea, Calabrese had said. It then took several members of the hit squad, including Family Secrets defendant James Marcello, to overpower and subdue D'Andrea, Calabrese testified. D'Andrea's body was later found in the trunk of his car, according to testimony.

The surprise of the day came when Terri Nevis, D'Andrea's former wife, said a photo that prosecutors have shown to jurors was, in fact, not her husband. "Absolutely not," she said in a whispery voice when Thomas Breen, Marcello's lawyer, showed her the photo. It remains to be seen how much the apparent error will aid the defense because Calabrese, in his testimony, said he didn't recognize the photo as that of D'Andrea.

Calabrese had said that within days of the hit on D'Andrea, Outfit bosses showed him a newspaper story about another murder. He said he had been told that the victim was the taller man who had spooked D'Andrea in the garage. Prosecutors have told the judge they will show jurors that a mobster named Sam Guzzino was killed soon after the D'Andrea hit. The government contends he was the taller man in question.

Nevis, who had begun living with D'Andrea when she was 15 and he was in his late 40s, testified that on the day he died, it was Guzzino who called D'Andrea to set up a meeting. "He said to get Nick on the phone," said Nevis, now a 45-year-old mortgage banker living on the West Coast. Another witness, Karen Brill, testified that Sam Guzzino would come by his brother's cab company in Chicago Heights where she worked. The company had a garage that shared space with a bar and brothel called "The Vagabond Lounge," Nevis said.

Brill was shown a photo of an old brown garage she said was the one she was talking about -- the same photo Calabrese told jurors appeared to look like the garage where D'Andrea was killed.


Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Bribes to A Top Chicago Cop Detailed

Friends of ours: Angelo Volpe, Frank "The Calico Kid" Teutonico, Turk Torello
Friends of mine: William Hanhardt, Robert "Bobby the Beak" Siegel, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal

A master thief and killer for the Outfit testified today that his mob boss gave a top Chicago cop, William Hanhardt, $1,000 to $1,200 a month in bribes and a new car every two years.

Robert "Bobby the Beak" Siegel took the witness stand Wednesday morning in the Family Secrets case and recounted to jurors in a gravelly baritone how he came up through organized crime in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s.

Siegel told jurors how his one-time boss, Angelo Volpe, who oversaw the numbers racket on the South Side, paid off Chicago Police, including Hanhardt in the 1960s. Volpe also allegedly paid off Hanhardt's long-time partner, the late Jack Hinchy. Siegel said Volpe told Hanhardt and Hinchy to leave Siegel alone because Siegel was working for him.

Hanhardt, 78, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison in 2002 for running a nationwide jewelry theft ring that stole millions of dollars in diamonds and other fine gems.

Siegel, who is 71 and in witness protection, told jurors he grew up on the West Side and began stealing when he was 13 or 14, "anything we could make a buck with."

He graduated to armed robberies and worked for Frank "The Calico Kid" Teutonico as a juice loan collector. Under Teutonico, Siegel learned who was who in the Outfit. After Teutonico went to prison, Siegel went to work for Volpe, Siegel testified.

Siegel also said he was sent by mobster Turk Torello in the late 1960s to Las Vegas to help collect $87,000 from an associate of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, a subject of the book and movie "Casino."

Siegel said he got the job done. "You know, we threatened him and told him he would get hurt if he didn't pay it, and we straightened it out," Siegel said.

Siegel also said he killed three people for the mob, including one person believed to be an informant, but offered no details early on during his testimony Wednesday.

Siegel began working with investigators in the mid-1990s after he was arrested for a series of jewelry store robberies and five of his codefendants in the case cooperated against him.

"I felt I didn't owe loyalty to anybody after that," Siegel said.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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Mobster's Widow Testifies at Trial

Friends of ours: Nicholas D'Andrea, James Marcello

Chicago mobster Nicholas D’Andrea drove off in his silver Mercedes with his gun tucked into his belt and within hours was murdered and stuffed into the car’s trunk, his widow testified Tuesday.

Terri L. Nevis, 45, told a federal court jury that as he pulled away from their house on Sept. 13, 1981, D’Andrea was immediately sandwiched between a car in front of him and a car that seemed to be trailing him.

“Was that the last time you saw your husband alive?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Markus Funk asked. “That was the last time I saw him period,” she testified.

Prosecutors blame mob boss James Marcello for the D’Andrea killing in one of the seemingly endless feuds that marked the Chicago Outfit, as the city’s organized crime family calls itself, in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Cybercrime Is Funding Organized Crime

For months now, the feds have said organized crime was moving into the realm of cybercrime, using hackers to run scams and break into systems.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Liebermann, chief of the computer hacking and intellectual property section in New Jersey's U.S. Attorney's Office, says cybercrime has been so profitable for organized crime that they're now using it to fund the rest of their underground operations.

"In terms of the risks and rewards, there's a higher chance of getting more, financially, using the world of computer crime. Organized crime is realizing this," he said. "We have suspicions of organized crime being behind some cybercrime that we're investigating here. The attorney general has issued reports about organized crime and terrorist links using computer crime, hacking and intellectual property crimes as a way of raising revenue. It's being used to fund organized crime."

Analysts at Websense, a Web security company, reported late last year that the mob was expected to band together more closely with hackers in 2007 to form a more organized cybercrime community.

The beefed-up online crime cooperative has begun buying, selling, and trading ready-made cyberattack toolkits and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. Dan Hubbard, VP of security research at Websense, noted that organized criminals have realized that the Internet has been an untapped resource for earning them profit. Tools and exploits to steal personal, business, and financial information are the hottest commodities for cybercriminals.

Liebermann said federal law enforcement is in a good position to tackle this burgeoning crime.

"The laws that we have ... target a lot of this activity," said Liebermann. "I do not feel handcuffed, no. There is the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act out there, and if it passes, it would enhance penalties and add computer crime to the list of predicate crimes that would give rise to a RICO [Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] charge."

The prosecutor added that when they charge someone under RICO, the sentencing guidelines provide enhanced penalties because "organized crime is an enhanced problem to be dealt with." If the law passes and computer crimes are added to the list of RICO crimes, it would enhance the penalties for organized crime with computer acts.

And Liebermann says the United States is becoming more and more able to chase down and prosecute cybercriminals, organized or not, even if they're out of the country. Until recently, launching hacking or denial-of-service attacks from outside U.S. borders was enough to keep criminals beyond the long arm of the U.S. law.

Liebermann says their reach, though, is lengthening.

"It presents a special problem, not just for the U.S. but ... other countries have recognized that this is a problem," he added. "Previously, getting information was a problem. It was a more laborious process to get that information without skipping any steps or taking any roundabouts. Other governments are able to work faster, using the same tools we previously had to get the information back on a more efficient basis. We can pick up a phone with a list of countries, like the United Kingdom or Israel, and have a live body. It's a good list of countries."

And even the countries that aren't participating in a particular process are more willing to help in some way now. That's a huge help, according to Liebermann, because of the fleeting nature of digital evidence.

"Botnet herders shift to new servers again and again and again," he said. "If you identify a server but it takes months to get information from another country, the chance of getting any information on this is very slim. If the cooperation is immediate, the chance of getting information is much better. It's a recognition that computer crime has no boundaries."

Thanks to Sharon Gaudin

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Mobster Presidential Campaign Contributions

Rudy Giuliani's campaign revealed that the actor in The Sopranos who played Paulie Walnuts donated to them, even though Rudy is a Mafia-buster. It's pure self-interest. The more real mobsters who are off the street, the more jobs there are for the actors who play them. Thanks to Argus.

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Chicago Crime Commission Briefs U.S. Paratroopers on Mob Tactics

Some U.S. paratroopers headed for Iraq will have a working knowledge of organized crime provided by Chicago mob fighters.

The head of the Chicago Crime Commission this month provided intelligence personnel from the 101st Airborne Division with a primer on the investigation of organized-crime rings that will assist them in their upcoming deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gangsters and other career criminals are an extra wrinkle in the security situation in the theater. Kidnappings and smuggling are pinned on organized rings in Iraq while Afghanistan is a hot bed of heroin.

Although the Crime Commission is primarily geared to monitoring the activities of the Windy City's "Outfit," its expertise can also be applied to other rings that are organized in similar fashion and engaged in venerable rackets such as extortion, murder and drug trafficking.

Commission President James Wagner said in a statement Monday that the troops received extensive background on gangs operating in the region as well as training in ways to investigate and break up such organizations.

Wagner will be revisiting Fort Campbell later this summer for briefings on the subject with top Army commanders.

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Nick Calabrese Blasted by Attorney on Cross Examination

Friends of ours: Nick Calabrese, James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, Sam Carlisi, Frank Calabrese Sr., Anthony Spilotro
Friends of mine: Michael Spilotro

An attorney for James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, the reputed head of the Chicago Outfit, today blasted a star witness' account that Marcello was made into the mob in a 1983 ceremony.

Marcello is half Irish, and according to the testimony of Outfit killer Nicholas Calabrese, only men who are fully Italian can be made members of the Chicago Outfit.

Marcello's attorney, Thomas Breen, asked Calabrese on the witness stand if he had met Marcello's "lovely mother Mrs. Flynn," referring to her maiden name.

"And Mrs. Flynn is as Irish as Paddy's pig, isn't she?" Breen said.

"Then Jimmy Marcello lied," Calabrese shot back, apparently a little rattled. "[Marcello's sponsor] Sam Carlisi lied, they lied to the boss."

Nicholas Calabrese gave a detailed account of how he, Marcello and Calabrese's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., were made with several other men in a ceremony in a closed Chicago area restaurant in 1983.

Breen suggested through his questioning that Calabrese was lying about many details he gave to FBI agents and told jurors from the stand.

Breen asked Calabrese about the making ceremony.

"They serve food?" Breen asked.

"No," Calabrese said.

"No corn beef for Mr. Marcello?" Breen jabbed.

Calabrese has admitted to taking part in at least 14 murders for the mob. As part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, he is avoiding the death penalty and hoping to get something less than life in prison. He's testifying against his brother Frank Calabrese Sr., Marcello and three other men on trial.

Earlier in the trial, Breen scored a point when he was able to get Nicholas Calabrese to say he did not recognize the photo of one of the men that he took part in killing, Nicholas D'Andrea, in Chicago Heights in 1981.

Calabrese said he had only seen the man briefly. The mob was interested in grilling D'Andrea about the attempted murder of a south suburban mob boss but beat D'Andrea so badly that he died before questioning.

The attorney for Calabrese's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., revealed during his questioning earlier in the day that a family member of one of Nicholas Calabrese's murder victims secretly recorded Nicholas Calabrese during a prison visit.

Nicholas Calabrese took part in the murders of the mob's man in Las Vegas, Anthony Spilotro, and his brother, Michael Spilotro. Their brother, Dr. Pat Spilotro, a dentist, was a friend of Nick Calabrese and also did his dental work, Nicholas Calabrese testified. The dentist visited Nicholas Calabrese in prison once and recorded him, but Calabrese told him nothing about the murders.

In 2001, Nicholas Calabrese sent Pat Spilotro a Christmas card from prison, telling him that he had made a decision he never believed he would have made. Nicholas Calabrese was referring to cooperating with the FBI, according to court testimony.

"God willing, I'll be home next Christmas," Calabrese wrote.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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