Guilty plea entered in '86 Spilotro hits

[FONT=verdana,arial]This is the end of the true story portrayed in Scorcese's Casino. Spilatro was the guy played by Joe Pesci. zg

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CHICAGO'S ORGANIZED CRIME FAMILY: Guilty plea entered in Spilotro hits in '86[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,arial]Government witness admits involvement in 14 killings[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial] By MIKE ROBINSON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [/FONT]

CHICAGO -- The star witness in the government's case against a dozen Chicago mob figures pleaded guilty Friday to taking part in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including hits on Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro, long known as the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas, and Spilotro's brother, Michael Spilotro, in 1986.

Under heavy security, Nicholas Calabrese admitted that he took part in planning or carrying out 14 of the murders, including the Spilotro killings.

...more - http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/guilty-plea-entered-spilotro-hits-86

July 2007

The Chicago Mafia on Trial!
Questions and Answers about the "Family Secrets" case

By Rick Porrello
Mafia Author, Commentator
and Host of AmericanMafia.com

The Chicago Mafia case is just in time to fill the void in available mob drama caused by David Chase’s rude drop of the curtain on Tony Soprano. But this is not entertainment.

As Sammy Davis Jr.’s teenage drummer during the early 1980s, I had no idea what was going on behind the entertainment and gambling scenes of glittery Las Vegas, where "Mr. D" performed several months out of the year. I would learn a few years later when I began researching the unsolved murder of my grandfather, Raymond Porrello, a Cleveland mob leader killed, along with three of my uncles, during the years of Prohibition. It was our own "family secret," a part of history that none of the adults wanted to share with their curious children. My curiosity sparked research that culminated in a writing career led by my first book , The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia a partial family history.

During the time that seven Porrello brothers reigned supreme in Cleveland, Meyer Lansky was a powerful Jewish mobster who, along with Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, would sit at the top of American organized crime by the early 1930s. A future gambling magnate, Lansky started investing in the Nevada desert with his underling Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. They purchased the Flaming hotel and Casino. Only days after his baby opened for business, Siegel caught three high-powered slugs in his head. It was organizational justice for mismanagement and theft of syndicate seed money.

By the 1940s Las Vegas was well on its way to becoming the entertainment and gambling capital of the world. And by the early 1980s, the Mafia, a secret criminal organization (and part of a national organized crime syndicate) whose corrupt nature was brought to American from Sicily during the late 1800s, still controlled most of the city.

There was no Las Vegas Mafia, per se. The criminal influence came primarily from the Mafia "families" of New York, Cleveland, and especially Chicago. In the 1980s as I looked past Sammy Davis Jr. and into the faces of enthralled Caesars Palace audiences, Tony Spilotro was on the streets of Las Vegas enforcing the edicts of his bosses back home in Chicago to make sure they got their cash. Most of it came from the "skim," money stolen from millions flowing into the casino counting rooms. Casinos secretly owned by the Mafia.

When Spilotro turned renegade and his ways reckless, it attracted more and more heat from the law, until, like with Bugsy, the bosses ordered his elimination.

Who is charged with what?

It’s dubbed the Family Secrets trial after the FBI code-name for the investigation. The indictment was returned in April, 2005 and announced by the FBI, IRS and US Attorney’s Office. Numerous law enforcement agencies aided in the investigation. (See Appendix A) Fourteen defendants were originally named, but after guilty pleas, a natural death, a 77-year-old ruled too sick to stand trial, and at least one defection, only four key Chicago Mafia members and an associate remain to fight the charges against them.

...more - http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_392.html

I just got back from Vegas. The wife and I did the Mob Tour at the Greek Isles. A little overpriced, but very interesting.

3 Chicago Mobsters Convicted Of 10 Murders

CHICAGO, Sept. 27, 2007

(AP) A federal jury convicted three aging mobsters of 10 murders Thursday in a trial that included a parade of colorful witnesses who exposed the seedy inner workings of organized crime in Chicago.

Jurors deadlocked on blame for eight other murders after eight days of deliberations in one of the biggest mob trials in the city's storied crime history.

But prosecutors won murder convictions against Frank Calabrese Sr., 70; Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78; and James Marcello, 65, increasing the maximum sentence each of them faces to life. Jurors deadlocked on the fourth defendant, Paul Schiro, 70.

The same jury convicted them Sept. 10 of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that involved illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and a wave of mob murders going back almost four decades.

The jury then considered whether the men were individually responsible for specific murders, the prerequisite for toughening their sentences to life.

U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel polled individual jurors, and all said further deliberations would not help them come to a unanimous decision on the deadlocked counts.

Retired police Officer Anthony Doyle, 62, was also convicted of racketeering conspiracy, but he was not accused of direct involvement in a murder.

The so-called Operation Family Secrets trial is the biggest organized crime case in Chicago in many years. The defendants were convicted of operating the Chicago Outfit, as the city's organized crime family is called, as a racketeering enterprise.

They were accused of squeezing "street tax," similar to protection money, out of businesses, ran sports bookmaking and video poker businesses, and engaged in loan sharking. And they were accused of killing many of those who might have spilled their secrets to the government.

The oldest murder listed in the indictment, that of Michael "Hambone" Albergo, himself a loan shark, goes back to 1970.

Also among the victims was Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, long the mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character in the movie "Casino." He and brother Michael Spilotro were beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield in June 1986.



Federal Judge James B. Zagel, left, looks on as the verdict in the Family Secrets mob trial is read to defendants Frank Calabrese Sr., Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and James Marcello, front row, and Anthony Doyle and Paul Schiro, background right, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, in Chicago. (AP)


Joseph Lombardo covered his face with a newspaper during a court appearance in the 1980s.