The Chicago Mob Still Influential

Jurors have heard testimony about a Judas kiss like the one Michael Corleone gave his brother Fredo in "The Godfather."

They're heard about mobsters initiated as "made guys" by getting their fingers cut and having holy pictures burned in their bare hands in secret ceremonies. And they've heard about how those who crossed the "Chicago Outfit" sometimes ended up in the trunk of a car.

The city's biggest mob trial in years, involving five men in their 60s and 70s accused of crimes ranging from loan sharking to 18 long-unsolved murders, has lifted the curtain on the secrets of the mob - as it was decades ago. Most of the allegations date to the 1970s and '80s. But what about today? Experts say the mob is alive and well in the town that was once Al Capone's.

"People say, 'Look at how old these guys are on trial, it's a geriatric organization,' " said John Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit (IL) (Images of America)."

"What you're seeing is just part of the organization," he said. "They're still doing gambling, they've still got some labour racketeering, they've got their hooks into some unions (and) they're still doing juice lending."

A few years ago, plans for a casino in the suburb of Rosemont were derailed amid concerns about mob ties in the village. And in the late 1990s, one of the largest unions in the United States, the Laborers International, publicly launched an effort to drive organized crime out of its Chicago District Council.

Jurors in the latest trial heard a secretly recorded tape of one of the defendants, Frank Calabrese Sr., talking about collecting "recipes," code for payoffs, in the late 1990s - while he was behind bars.

"What the trial has made clear is even when they are in prison they continue to exert influence and control," said James Wagner, the head of the Chicago Crime Commission, who investigated the mob for years when he was an FBI agent. And although the current trial's defendants are aging, others point out that the Outfit still has people ready to step in and take over for the old mobsters, known as "Mustache Petes."

"They're still there, there's still young guys coming up," said Jack O'Rourke, a retired FBI agent who also spent years investigating the Chicago mob. "And they're still powerful enough to kill guys."

Binder compared the mob to a corporation. "It's important in management to groom people," he said. "The Outfit is good at it; they've shown the ability to bring people up."

Still, the Chicago Outfit is showing its age, say some who have studied it.

"The Chicago mob used to be big time, and now it's just local thugs like Tony Soprano," said Gus Russo, author of a best-selling book about the Chicago mob titled simply "The Outfit."

"There's no doubt they still have some cops on the take, some lawyers, a judge here and there and labour unions. But now they are just a local mob," he said.

Chicago's mob probably lost some of its power because many of the illegal activities it once made money from are now legal, like casinos and state-run lotteries.

In addition, Russo said: "They had pornography, and now that's big business."

The Outfit has other opportunities, however.

"They've still got the sports betting," O'Rourke said. "They've controlled that forever and it is illegal."

But even that business has changed, O'Rourke said, because they way they collect the money has got a bit more genteel than in the old days.

"Now with the gamblers, they don't get tough any more and extort them," he said. "Instead, they're saying, 'You can't play any more.' To the gamblers, that's worse than getting beat up."

Even though some of its influence may be waning, the trial suggests the mob can still pull off the kind of tricks that made it infamous.

After rumours that he would testify at the trial, reputed mobster Anthony Zizzo vanished last year.

Then in January, a deputy U.S. marshal was charged with leaking information to reputed mob boss John (No Nose) DiFronzo about the co-operation and travel plans of Nicholas Calabrese, a key government witness and the brother of defendant Frank Calabrese Sr.

"Now they are more surreptitious than ever before, more cunning and intelligent in the way they operate," Wagner said. "They're not less dangerous or influential."

Thanks to Don Babwin

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Playing Dumb is Wrong Prescription on Witness Stand

Anthony (Passafiume) Doyle, the hulking former Chicago cop tied to the Chicago Outfit, doesn't look like a guy who takes many beatings.

Known as "Twan" on the street, Doyle looks more like a guy who gives them for free. But he needed a doctor after the beating he took on the witness stand Thursday in the Family Secrets Outfit trial.

After a severe cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Atty. Markus Funk, Doyle looked flat and gray, like the pork chops in the sandwiches at the Maxwell Street Polish stand on 31st Street byda viaduct.

Twan looked like he needed a doctor.

So I drove over after testimony was done, for a pork-chop sandwich, to the doctors office there, to see if Dr. Frank "Toots" Caruso would make a house call and tend to his lifelong friend.

Federal authorities consider Caruso, a former labor leader ousted from his union for crime connections, to be a major street boss in the Outfit. Funk kept referring to him in open court as "The Doctor," which he said was Outfit code, in the tape recordings from the federal prison in Milan, Mich., where Doyle visited Chinatown loan shark Frank Calabrese.

Prosecutors say Calabrese wanted the doctor to make a visit, to tend to sickly friends who might talk to the feds.

Since I was hungry, and Doyle appeared in need of doctorly advice, there was only one place to go. This doctor's office smelled of onions and grilled meat, which is nicer than antiseptics.

Is Dr. Toots here? Where's Dr. Toots?

"Toots no here," said the grill man through the window.

So I left my office number and ordered two pork-chop sandwiches, or sangwiches as they are called, one for me and one for my trusty colleague, the Polish Spartacus.

Light on the onions, I said. "I'll take mine regular," Spartacus said.

We stood outside, eating our tasty sangwiches at the counter on the sidewalk, reflecting on the testimony and anticipating walking across the street for a fine cigar.

Doyle's testimony had been rather predictable. He didn't know nothing. He didn't know why he used code words so easily that he appeared quite fluent in the obscure Chinatown dialect of the Outfit language.

It's not Chinese. It's not classic Italian. It's Chitalian.

On tape, Doyle and Frank Calabrese spoke of "doctors" (Caruso) and "purses" (bloody gloves sought by the FBI) and "sisters" (gangsters) and "sickly sisters" (guys who might testify against the Outfit) and the "family" (you know) and so on.

It sure sounded incriminating, but Doyle had a reason. He testified that he played along with the Calabrese code he called "gibberish" and "mumbo jumbo" because he didn't want to look stupid. So he kept talking, incriminating himself into a federal charge that as a cop in the police evidence section, he warned Outfit bosses that the FBI was looking for a bloody glove that would frighten "sickly sisters." At least, that's his theory.

"I gave him lip service," Doyle said. "I didn't know what he was talking about. I don't wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid," Doyle said from the witness stand.

There is a tasty Sicilian Easter cake called ciambellone, but Twan doesn't look like a tasty Easter cake. He looks more like the guy you never want to meet in a parking lot at night.

He was especially upset that prosecutors dropped the portion of the tape on him where he keeps referring to "the doctor." He didn't want to be a chumbolone about "the doctor" either, but that put him in a bind with prosecutor Funk.

"I never heard of a name called 'doctor,'" Doyle said of Caruso. "And I've known him my entire life!"

He denied this, he denied that, and if I hadn't been reading the transcripts and watching the tapes along with the jury, I'd have believed him. Perhaps they do believe him.

Outside the federal building, Hollywood producers were filming another exciting Batman movie -- this one about Batman fighting the Chicago Outfit.

The streets were crowded with extras and trucks, and production crew members told me that the big trucks with the equipment belonged to "Movies in Motion," the company founded by William Galioto, another former Chicago cop and brother-in-law of Jimmy Marcello, one of the other Outfit bosses on trial in Family Secrets.

They must think we're chumbolones. We reflected on this, walking across the street to the cigar shop, hoping to find Dr. Toots enjoying a stogie. We had two fine cigars ourselves, but the Doctor wasn't in.

Three Chicago Police detectives were inside, smoking cigars, resting their paws on their guns on their belts.

How's crime? "It always goes down when it rains," said one detective, and everybody laughed.

The TV was on, with a rerun of a M*A*S*H episode, and Col. Sherman T. Potter was speaking kindly, giving fatherly advice. I wonder if Dr. Toots would give his friend Twan that same medicine.

Thanks to John Kass

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Former Chicago Cop Admits to Disgracing Badge while Moonlighting for the Mob

In the Operation Family Secrets mob trial today, a Chicago Police officer admitted that he had a year's-long relationship with top ranking members of the Chicago outfit.

Former Chicago cop Anthony Doyle is one of the five men charged with outfit crimes in Operation Family Secrets. While many Chicago Police officers moonlight to supplement their city salaries, federal prosecutors say Doyle's side job was with the outfit as a loan shark and an informant, that he gave mob bosses inside police department information about evidence in a gangland murder.

Former Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle arrived for court knowing that today's cross-examination by federal prosecutors would be out to make him look like a "chumbalone." That is an Italian slang word for idiot, or dummy, and on the witness stand this afternoon was the word that Doyle himself used to describe his motivation for the tough-guy conversations he was recorded having with Chicago outfit bosses.

The jury has seen and heard the FBI surveillance tapes of Officer Doyle meeting with mob rackets boss Frank Calabrese Senior while Calabrese was serving time for extortion at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Prosecutors say that Officer Doyle provided Calabrese information about police evidence in the 1986 mob hit on John Fecarota, a killing carried out by Calabrese's brother Nick. At the time, Officer Doyle was working in the police evidence section.

Doyle today said his conversations with Calabrese during prison visits were: "mind-boggling gibberish. I don't know what's being talked about."

Then he claimed that he was just giving Calabrese "lip service...I don't want to look like a chumbalone," said Doyle, who is of Italian heritage but changed his last name to the Irish Doyle when he took the police exam.

Doyle tried to explain why he visited a mob boss in prison when police rules prohibit such contacts with felons.

"You knew Frank Calabrese Senior was an outfit boss. Didn't you?" asked prosecutor T. Marcus Funk.

"No sir," replied Doyle. "I knew him as a loan shark and bookmaker for the Chicago outfit."

Then later in the day, Funk asked him: "You knew that Mr. Calabrese was an outfit man when you visited him in prison, didn't you?"

Doyle, backed into a corner, admitted "Yes, sir" he knew the obvious.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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America's Most Wanted on The Chicago Syndicate for 8/25

Paul Eischeid: The ATF and police in Tempe , Ariz. have charged outlaw biker Paul Eischeid with an act of savagery in the desert. They say he killed a woman who visited a Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club in 2003. Now, they need your help to get their hands on him.

East Coast Bandits: First, it was a bank in Chicopee , Mass. Then, Cranston , R.I. Now, the FBI says the same group of thugs has robbed a bank on New York ’s Long Island . Investigators say these guys are dangerous – and they’re wielding some big weapons. Check out AMW.com to learn more about where they could be hiding out now. Then, tune in this week to help us bring these bandits down.

Operation Falcon 2007: AMW has teamed up with the U.S. Marshals Service for the third year in a row running a dragnet operation designed to round up as many wanted fugitives as possible. The nationwide sting -- known as Operation Falcon -- has seen great success in years past, and this year cops expect much of the same. Two of the Marshal’s Top 15 are known to have close ties with the biker community, and this Saturday night, AMW correspondent John Turchin will take you to Sturgis , S.D. for one of the biggest biker rallies in the world. Tune in, and help us put away a few bad news bikers.

Michael Alexander: It took two tries to find Michael Alexander but NYPD has finally got him. An AMW tipster first told police that Michael Alexander was hiding out in a Brooklyn apartment. When police went to get him on May 29, 2007, they could smell the marijuana coming from his room, but Alexander had already jumped out the window. It took authorities another day to catch up to him. Alexander put up his hands and told police,"I'm tired of running."

Carl Dinatale: Police say Carl Dinatale isn't the most creative felon in the world, and that he allegedly robbed dozens of jewelry stores all along the East Coast. But thanks to great police work and some help from AMW, the crooked thief is behind bars.

Vincent Ledoux: For ten years, Vincent Ledoux was able to hide out and make a new life for himself. But thanks to an AMW viewer, the accused sexual predator is in custody, and AMW was there for the takedown. Tune in this Saturday night for the full story on our 945th direct-result capture.

Raymond Gates: With the help of an AMW tipster, Raymond Gates is finally in police custody. New Mexico cops collaborated with the U.S. Marshals in Texas to take down the wanted sex offender on June 26, 2007, making him direct capture #950.

Jose Perez: In December 2004, after a night of partying and drinking - a regular occurrence in the Perez household - Ingrid went to her room to go to bed, cops say. But, a few hours later, Ingrid woke up and her father was in her room. Cops say what happened next is one of the most tragic crimes in America .

Jenna Nielsen Killer: The search continues for Jenna Nielsen's killer. When we first aired her story, tips streamed into our hotline. One in particular stood out. Police in Mississippi had arrested a perp known as the "Baby-Face Rapist". His resemblance to the Raleigh composite sketch is uncanny - close enough to warrant a trip to follow this compelling lead. This week, we need your help to get justice for the Nielsen family.

Chi Du: When a jealous ex spotted his former girlfriend with another man, he decided that if he couldn't have her, then no one would. Police say a brutal attack soon followed, and Chi Du left two stunned victims behind.

Stanley Obas: Pennsylvania detectives haven't given up tracking down a man accused of torturing and murdering a 13-year-old girl, then burying her body in a cemetery 11 years ago. This Saturday, we need your help to put him away for good.

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The Clown goes verbal to deny he’s Keyser Soze

Reputed top mobster Lombardo makes high risk gambit
By Josh Casey

In a move that radically departed from mob courtroom strategies of thirty years or more, Joseph ‘The Clown’ Lombardo, reputed mobster and, moreover, widely alleged to be the hidden boss of the Chicago Outfit, took the stand in his own defense.


Mob boss 1982? or Keyser Soze 2006?


What makes Lombardo’s appearance on the stand highly unusual is that for decades, alleged mobsters have relied upon the maxim that silence is golden. In other words, you can’t get caught out if you don’t speak out. That, along with leaving the prosecution to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt without the assistance of self-incrimination has become standard practice for all mobsters, and especially those with most to lose, the bosses. Another factor in that strategy has been that most often the cases were slam-dunks anyway, so little was to be gained but much more could be lost by being tripped-up by cross examination.

What makes a difference in the Family Secrets trial (the name originating from the FBI code name for the investigation) as far as Lombardo is concerned is twofold. First, most of the evidence against him is historical; he had previously been found guilty in two federal trials in the 1980s and duly served his time.

Secondly, much of the accusations against him in the Family Secrets case have been circumstantial and/or based on anecdotal accounts and rumor bordering at times on folklore. Witnesses, mostly criminals or associates, and most with an axe to grind, expressed mostly hearsay reports of his alleged culpability in this or that, or of him being the fiendish mastermind behind the Outfit.

There has barely been any of the ‘hard evidence’ normally required for murder trials, indeed, one of the most emotive accusations - that by the former wife of Daniel Seifert, who was shot to death in 1974 - was starkly undermined by the very star witness widely expected to confirm Lombardo’s guilt: ‘made’ Outfit member, Nicholas Calabrese.

It had long been speculated that Lombardo was one of the masked killers of Daniel Seifert, and the former Mrs. Seifert gave evidence earlier in the trial that she believed the man who delivered the coup de grace was Lombardo, based on her personal familiarity with him as a family friend at the time – citing his height and build, and in particular that he was ‘light on his feet’, remarking that Joseph Lombardo had once been a boxer and was very nimble on his feet also.

Calabrese, however, revealed his knowledge to be that Joseph (Joey) Hansen, a now deceased member of Tony Spilotro’s street crew of that time, fired the fatal shot. Allegedly, Seifert was killed because he was due to give evidence implicating Lombardo and Spilotro (also alleged to have been among the masked killers) in an impending fraud trial; hence a Spilotro henchman being the culprit would have as much logic as any other scenario. The defense also called a former FBI agent who told how Mrs. Seifert offered no such information at any time during the original investigation.

It can only be a matter of speculation whether Rick Halprin, Lombardo’s wily and respected attorney, announced that he was putting his client on the stand as a sign of confidence or of desperation, but it was a considerably risky gambit.

The current trial, it can be argued, has produced little beyond material already used in the 1980s trials, for which Mr. Lombardo has already paid his debt. Since then he has taken the eccentrically bizarre step (he’s not called the clown for nothing) upon his release in 1992 of publicly renouncing any involvement in organized crime via an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune. Since then, he has been accused of no further crimes, regardless of the widespread belief in some quarters that he is the clandestine Eminence Grise of the Outfit.

Suspicion, anecdote and accusation, and especially hearsay, are not usually regarded as evidence, and few of these charges would seem likely to hold water anywhere beyond the U.S. Title 18, chapter 96, so-called RICO statutes where the establishment of a criminal enterprise is the primary requirement. Under this amorphous definition, the alleged collective crimes required to be proven to qualify the enterprise often seem to suffer from a lower, hazier level of scrutiny, a kind of sub-prime justice.

In other words, if you throw enough shocking photographs of disfigured remains, and the tawdry usual suspects point fingers alleging that this man is the Outfit’s Keyser Soze, and that guy cut people’s throats (true though any of it might be), combined with endless tales of beaten up bookies, extortion, killings, bombings and mayhem in general, and all the names can be joined up from time to time, then bundle it all up together, the mud sticks in the minds of juries, without each component being tried to the normally necessary standards of proof as when a single charge.

While the prosecution scored no direct hits on Lombardo (in fact the prosecution have signally failed to live up to the pre-trial ballyhoo and nail anything of substance to its primary target) with its opening evidence, significant circumstantial mud was spattered and Lombardo’s team have decided he is best placed to rid himself of it. A likely tactic always was for him to deny any association with any criminal enterprise since his release in 1992, something the cold record might seem to support, and that to penalize him for past misdeeds would be tantamount to double jeopardy. And any conclusion implied that he is still involved simply because he discussed the Spilotro killings while in the dentist’s chair of their brother, whom he had known for decades, seemed tenuous, to say the least, and even a finger print on a document might not necessarily construe that he pulled a trigger, at least not this time.

The greatest danger for defendants with a long past of criminal association taking the stand is that whatever they say opens the door for the prosecution to dissect all that they utter, and any topic introduced means that topic is then fair game. And if a defendant’s history is long enough, and Lombardo is now 78 years old, that is a lot of topics to avoid and protect from slip-up and errors brought about by the intense probing, and preparation, of the prosecutors. And Lombardo could be certain that those U.S. Attorneys did not get the last couple of weekends off.

His gambit was highly risky, but time and the jury will tell if it paid off. On the other hand, the U.S. attorney’s case has looked sadly anemic in places, and perhaps Lombardo and Halprin did not think there was too much to worry about, so could afford to try to swing the jury to thinking he is a kindly, humorous retired senior citizen, who has left a regrettable past far behind. He’s not called the clown for nothing. But Lombardo better than most should appreciate what the word gambit really means, as its roots, like his own, are Italian. It derives from Gambetto, and means ‘tripping up’ and that can hobble you for life.

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