John DiFronzo, Leader of The Chicago Outfit, is Dead

The leader of the Outfit for more than a decade, notorious for his nickname and his cagey demeanor, died on Sunday-the ABC7 I-Team has learned.

John "No Nose" DiFronzo was 89 years old. He had Alzheimer's disease, according to noted Chicago attorney Joe "the Shark" Lopez who counts mob leaders as clients. "I knew that he was extremely ill and I thought that the ending was going to come and it finally did" Lopez told the I-Team during an interview on Tuesday.

DiFronzo was awarded the mob moniker "No Nose" early in his career when part of his schnoz was sliced off as he jumped through the plate glass window of a Michigan Ave. clothing store window to escape after a burglary. That incident in 1949 happened in the middle of a gun battle with police and left DiFronzo with a mangled snout.

Eventually plastic surgery restored the mobster's nose, but the nickname stuck. Sometimes he was also called "Johnny Bananas" by associates.

"John DiFronzo was at the top during a much different era than other times in history" said Chicago mob expert John Binder. "I mean they were still killing quite a few guys pre-years during the 1960's. Starting in the 1990's that really slows down and by the late 1990's there's very few certifiable or agreed-on outfit hits" said Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit."

DiFronzo had been a longtime resident of River Grove. He would meet weekly with Outfit underlings at a local restaurant near the apartment he shared with his wife.

The I-Team put his regular midday meetings under surveillance in 2009 and conducted a rare interview with the mob boss as he was leaving one of the luncheons. "Lunch with No Nose" as it was coined, was a rare glimpse into Outfit operations and perhaps the last time DiFronzo was seen on television.

The crime syndicate boss, who began as an enforcer, did serve prison sentences for burglary in 1950 and in 1993 for racketeering-and was a suspect in about three dozen Outfit crimes and some murder cases. But he was convicted only a few times and managed to escape the legal fate of many of his mob colleagues.

As the upper echelon of the Chicago Outfit went to prison for life in the 2007 Operation: Family Secrets case, DiFronzo was always thought to have been atop the list of those who would fall in the second round of federal indictments.

"I think about (mob hitman) Nick Calabrese saying that DiFronzo was there when they killed the Spilotro brothers" recalled Lopez. Anthony "Ant" Spilotro and his brother Michael Spilotro were murdered by Outfit hitmen according to federal investigators and buried in an Indiana cornfield. The 1986 double murder was the subject of a Hollywood movie and has never been officially solved.

There never was a Family Secrets II and DiFronzo managed to hold the reins of power into his 80's.

After Lunch with No Nose, the octogenarian Outfit boss told the I-Team that he was "not concerned at all" about being prosecuted. As it turned out, he was correct. He met the fate of old age and a debilitating disease on Sunday morning, passing away less violently then some of those who crossed paths with the Outfit over the years.

"I would say John DiFronzo was no Tony Accardo" said Binder, referring to Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo the long-time Chicago consiglieri who died in 1992. "Now of course they (Outfit bosses) are working during different time periods. It's one thing to be leading an organization when its growing and it's at its peak. It's another thing to be leading an organization when it is clearly declining" Binder said.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff.

Tweet

Reports that John "No Nose" DiFronzo, AKA Johnny Bananas, Chicago's Top Mobster has Died

Days earlier a “message” had been sent by Chicago mobsters, federal agents believed, when a small bomb exploded outside the home of the daughter of Outfit turncoat Lenny Patrick.

John DiFronzo was just one of a group of alleged mobsters for whom the Feds wanted to send a message back, immediately.

There was no hurry in DiFronzo that day as he breezed north on Dearborn as if it was a noon-time walk, declining to answer any questions.

DiFronzo climbed the ladder of the Outfit ranks from burglar to boss. Reporters nicknamed him “No-Nose” after he was cut jumping through a window in a Michigan Avenue burglary in the 1940s. But to his fellow organized crime brothers he was known as “Bananas” due to his complexion.

In January 1992, DiFronzo was indicted in California in a scheme to run a casino at the Rincon Indian Preservation near San Diego. He and fellow Chicagoan Donald Angelini, were convicted of fraud and conspiracy, though the conviction was over turned and he was released from prison.

By day DiFronzo worked as a car salesman at an Irving Park dealership and often by 4:00 he could be seen entering an Elmwood Park restaurant for his afternoon vodka.

DiFronzo’s name surfaced in the Operation Family Secrets trial in which mob heavy weights Joey “the Clown” Lombardo, Frank Calabrese, Sr. and James Marcello were convicted of taking part in a series of mob hits, including the murders of Tony Spilotro and Michael Spilotro.

During the trial, federal prosecutors named DiFronzo as part of the crew that killed “Tony the Ant” and his brother and buried them in an Indiana farm field. When asked during the course of the trial how prosecutors could name—and not charge—DiFronzo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell Mars’ only response was “good question.”

The Elmwood Park mobster had reportedly been ill for some time. Within hours of the announcement of his death at the age of 89 his Wikipedia page was updated to list his birth as December 13, 1928 and his death as May 27, 2018.

Thanks to Carol Marin and Don Moseley.

Tweet

Colombia’s Ex-President @AlvaroUribeVel Calls Ties to #Medellin Cartel #FakeNews

Colombia’s ex-president Alvaro Uribe has rebuffed declassified United States cables containing claims he had ties to the Medellin Cartel in the 1990s.

Uribe dismissed the accusations, and ongoing speculation, that his early Senate election campaigns were financed by the Ochoa crime family that helped Pablo Escobar found the infamous cartel. “I have never received money for my campaigns,” Uribe said in a video posted on his Twitter account, rejecting the accusations as “fake news.”

Uribe questioned that the central figure giving testimony in the US files, the late Luis Guillermo Velez, a long-time friend of the former president, would conspire against him.

“When I aspired to be the Governor of Antioquia, how strange that Luis Guillermo Velez, a close friend of Juan Manuel Santos, who now appears as an informant against me, supported me to be governor,” he says.

The former president contends that his 1990 campaign was managed by Jose Roberto Arango, the current CEO of television network RCN. He has acknowledged growing up with the Ochoa family.

The polarizing figure questioned the timing of the cable release, just days out from presidential elections in Colombia where his protege Ivan Duque would be a favorite to become the nation’s next president.

Uribe is also under investigation by the Supreme Court for funding paramilitary groups responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Yet investigations have been stalled with the murders of several witnesses along with, according to the court, multiple others being intimidated at the hands of Uribe.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency and several investigative journalists have supported claims of Uribe’s ties to the now defunct Medellin Cartel.

According to the US embassy, receiving money from drug cartels was “a near universal practice in Colombian politics” at the time.

Thanks to Jarrod Demir.

Tweet

Bill Fawell is @GOP House candidate in Illinois, His Qualifications: Claims @Beyonce and her #BeyHive are tied to the #Illuminati, He is a 9/11 #Truther & @BarackObama #Birther, Wrote Book on Overthrowing the US Government

The Republican nominee for a US House seat in Illinois has said the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job and that singer Beyonce Knowles has ties to the Illuminati.

Bill Fawell is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos in Illinois' 17th District, where she won by 20 points in 2016 even though the district also voted narrowly for Donald Trump.

Fawell won his uncontested primary in March. He has not reported any fundraising to the Federal Election Commission, per publicly available records.

A KFile review reveals Fawell, a real estate broker, pushed conspiracy theories in blogs and his 2012 book, "New American Revolution: The Constitutional Overthrow of the United States Government."

In his book, Fawell pushed a conspiracy theory that 7 World Trade Center collapsed as part of a controlled demolition and the attacks were a plot to destroy documents.

"Go to YouTube and punch in 'Building #7' It's the third building that went down with the twin towers on 9/11," Fawell wrote. "Nothing hit this building, not a thing, and it fell entirely upon its own. If it looks like a standard commercial implosion demolition, it's because that is exactly what it is."

"It's interesting to note that the clandestine branch of the CIA was housed on the top floor," he added. "No personnel were lost, but any and all documents were destroyed, just like a giant shredder. The Pentagon was hit in a wing being remodeled (but few people), that held a mountain of paperwork regarding 1 trillion dollars which the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was having trouble accounting for. That mountain of paperwork became a pile of ash."

In a February 2013 post on the blog of a political action committee he established in 2012 called Elect a New Congress, Fawell said that Beyonce's husband, rapper Jay-Z, "has a long history of serving up the godless Illuminati" and shared a YouTube video that speculated that Beyonce's upcoming halftime performance at the Super Bowl would have Illuminati symbolism.

The Illuminati is a secret society that serves as the basis for a popular conspiracy theory that alleges that many of the world's leaders and celebrities are masterminding world events.

In the same blog post, Fawell said that the previous Super Bowl's halftime show, performed by Madonna, was satanic and influenced by the Illuminati. He also called Madonna a "narcissist skank with the crooked teeth."

In an interview with CNN, Fawell stood by his blog posts and the theories he espoused on them. He said that Jay-Z and Beyonce expressed their support for the Illuminati in their videos, and that singer Taylor Swift had as well.

In explaining his rationale that 7 World Trade Center didn't collapse on its own, he said, "There's no way that 1,500-degree jet fuel can melt steel that requires 2,500-degree temperatures to melt." He also acknowledged that he didn't expect any support from the national Republican Party apparatus.
The Illinois Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Another Illinois Republican nominee for a House seat, neo-Nazi Arthur Jones, has been rejected by national Republicans and the state party for denying the Holocaust.

In a 2014 post, Fawell speculated that New York City was going to be destroyed in a false flag attack by the deep state in either the year 2016 or 2017.

"New York City is going to be destroyed in the biggest, baddest false flag attack ever made by any organization upon the American People in a Pearl Harbor redux," Fawell wrote. (False flag attacks are acts designed by perpetrators to look like they were carried out by other individuals or groups.)

He said that the attack would be made in an attempt to drag America into war, and that financial institutions were already withdrawing money from New York in preparation for the supposed attack.

In another post in 2014, he wrote that then-President Barack Obama created false flag attacks to shore up support for his foreign policy intervention against ISIS.

In addition to alleging conspiracies, Fawell used sexist and racist slurs against politicians.

In one 2013 post he called former Secretary of State Colin Powell an "Uncle Tom" and called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a "bitch" as well as a witch.

He also regularly called Obama "Barry Soetoro" and sometimes called him "Barry Goddamn Soetoro Barack Hussain (sic) Obama."

When Obama lived in Indonesia as a child he sometimes was known as Barry Soetoro, as Soetoro was his stepfather's last name. Many conspiracy theorists allege that Soetoro is his real last name and use it to argue that he was not born in the United States.

Thanks to Nathan McDermott and Andrew Kaczynski.

Tweet

Great Read - #NotoriousRBG : The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg @NotoriousRBG

Featured in the critically acclaimed documentary RBG

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she has only tried to make the world a little better and a little freer. But nearly a half-century into her career, something funny happened to the octogenarian: she won the internet. Across America, people who weren’t even born when Ginsburg first made her name as a feminist pioneer are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute.

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, inspired by the Tumblr that amused the Justice herself and brought to you by its founder and an award-winning feminist journalist, is more than just a love letter. It draws on intimate access to Ginsburg's family members, close friends, colleagues, and clerks, as well an interview with the Justice herself. An original hybrid of reported narrative, annotated dissents, rare archival photos and documents, and illustrations, the book tells a never-before-told story of an unusual and transformative woman who transcends generational divides. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

“The authors make this unassuming, most studious woman come pulsing to life. . . . Notorious RBG may be a playful project, but it asks to be read seriously. . . . That I responded so personally to it is a testimony to [its] storytelling and panache.”— Jennifer Senior, New York Times

Tweet