Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family

by Frank Calabrese

  Volpe, a stately Italian immigrant in his late seventies with white hair and a slim build who spoke in broken English, knew enough not to call the cops. Instead, he dialed his employer in Palm Springs. The next morning, a livid Accardo boarded a flight back to Chicago to deal with this shocking intrusion.

  No one burglarized the Boss and lived to tell the tale. At the time, the Outfit had many sources within the Chicago Police Department to help track down the perpetrators. William Hanhardt, for one, was the mobbed-up former Chief of Detectives for the CPD and after retirement a convicted jewel thief himself. He alone could provide the Outfit with enough information to round up the usual suspects.

  The first suspect to “go missing” was Bernard Ryan, thirty-four, found with four bullets lodged in the back of his head. With a police scanner at his side, used to monitor street action, Ryan was a well-established jewel thief and convicted burglar. Next was Steven Garcia, stabbed with an ice pick numerous times, his throat slit ear to ear.

  My father, Uncle Nick, Gumba, and Jarrett were assigned to grab Mendell. Jarrett, an experienced burglar himself, located Mendell and brought him in. It was a classic lure-your-friend-to-his-murder scenario. Jarrett had previously worked with Mendell and wanted to show him the fruits of a recent heist stored in his mother-in-law’s garage—the same place where Haggerty was killed. It was a trap. There was no score, only my father, Uncle Nick, and Gumba lying in wait. On January 16, 1978, Mendell was severely beaten by Saladino and strangled by my dad, and his throat was slit by Nick. Afterward, his body was unceremoniously dumped into the trunk of his car.

  The Outfit wanted to send a message from Accardo that no one was exempt; all the participants were to be killed. The Outfit’s revenge campaign continued. Vincent Moretti and the innocent Donald Renno were rounded up. Moretti was suspected of being part of Mendell’s crew and was known for stealing and fencing items without giving the mob its cut. Moretti, like Hanhardt, was a CPD cop gone bad.

  Moretti and Renno were ambushed by two Chinatown crews after John Fecarotta lured them to Cicero on January 31, 1978, on the pretext of arranging a meeting for a deal to manufacture pizza boxes. Fecarotta was joined by Outfit hit man Tony Borsellino, Johnny “Apes” Monteleone, and Butch Petrocelli, who shared a hand in executing Renno, while Jarrett, Gumba, my father, and Uncle Nick allegedly took care of Moretti. This time it was my uncle who applied the rope around Moretti’s neck while the four-hundred-pound Gumba joined in by mercilessly bouncing up and down on him. My father called the murder the “Strangers in the Night” killing because Sinatra’s song was playing in the background.

  Both Moretti’s and Renno’s bodies were found in the backseat of a parked car in Cicero with multiple stab wounds to the head and neck, a clear message that they had been tortured. Renno had nothing to do with the burglary but had the misfortune of being Moretti’s friend. They were together when Moretti was grabbed. A coroner’s autopsy indicated that Moretti had been stomped on and worked over. His face was unrecognizable. His ribs were broken and his kidneys were ruptured.

  In February of 1978, John Mendell’s body turned up on the South Side on a subzero day in an Oldsmobile sporting numerous parking tickets flapping in the Chicago breeze. Police opened the trunk and found him frozen stiff, icicles caking his eyes and mouth. His throat had been slit and a rope was wrapped around his neck. Mendell wore only a brown sweater and his underwear. His hands and feet were tied behind his back.

  The entire Levinson’s Jewelers affair was proof positive not only that the Outfit enjoyed free rein over Chicago to conduct its business, but that its style of vengeance had gone over the top. The hits ordered by the Boss had every burglar in town on the run. Bobby “the Beak” Siegel, a six-foot-two, 220-pound convicted murderer and jewel thief who claimed to be related to Bugsy Siegel, became concerned that he was next on the hit list. He went to his lawyer and asked for a polygraph test to show the bosses he wasn’t involved in the Accardo break-in. The test saved his life. He was later also able to testify against the mobsters because of the test.

  Just as the body count was subsiding, Michael Volpe, Accardo’s caretaker, was called before a grand jury. Speculation was rife that before Carl Walsh, Accardo’s attorney, could arrive, Volpe told more than he should have. Five days later, the seventy-five-year-old inexplicably vanished, never to be seen again.

  The Calabrese crew had become an Outfit secret weapon. While my father carried out his orders, he felt that Accardo had taken the Levinson heist a little too personal. Leaving a trail of corpses in parked cars around town created a firestorm, and the press had a field day with screaming headlines about tortured bodies. Such was my father’s concern, and it was warranted. Guys like him didn’t need the heat.

  But the Calabrese crew didn’t refrain from imposing their own treachery on any customer who crossed them. Before the Levinson murders, on March 15, 1977, the smelly, decomposed body of Henry Cosentino, a two-bit hood, was found in a police auto impound, his head resting on a box of hamburger patties in an abandoned car on West Division Street. According to testimony, Cosentino was killed as a result of a juice loan gone horribly wrong. After Cosentino’s brother took out a loan from Gumba and my father, an argument ensued, during which Henry shot Gumba in the leg. My father and Jarrett grabbed Cosentino and, in trademark fashion, strangled him and slashed his throat.

  Uncle Nick was not present for the Cosentino slaying. He was out on a date, which didn’t stop his older brother from berating him later for failing to show up for the assignment.

  Throughout the 1970s, criminals operating in Chicago, be they burglars, bookmakers, or thieves, paid a “street tax” to the most ominous quartet of Outfit strongmen: Tony Borsellino, Harry Aleman, Jerry Scarpelli, and Butch Petrocelli. In return for his tribute, a bookmaker would get a phoned warning to clear out his office to avoid an upcoming police raid. The information came directly from corrupt cops throughout most of the police districts that the Outfit had on its payroll. Guys like Petrocelli, Borsellino, Scarpelli, and Aleman survived off their ability to intimidate.

  My father had particular disdain for Petrocelli, whom he dismissed as a blowhard and bully. On the other hand, Dad showed enormous respect for Tony “Bors,” whom he saw as a stand-up guy. “Tough Tony” reportedly whacked thirteen guys for the mob. Butch and Tony were continually at odds. Butch had more clout with the upper ranks, and he bent the ear of Rocky Infelise, boss of the West Side crew, that Borsellino was not to be trusted and that he was cooperating with law enforcement. There was no indication that Borsellino was a snitch. After discrepancies arose over the amount of money the Wild Bunch was supposed to turn in to the Outfit, with Butch stealing the cash, the blame was placed on Tough Tony.

  Borsellino approached my dad, wanting to jump crews and come work for him in Chinatown. They spoke about Tony’s problems with Butch, and how Petrocelli was holding back money and spreading rumors. Dad was sympathetic to Borsellino’s situation. He welcomed having Tony as a member of his crew. At the same time, he couldn’t risk rocking the boat by bringing him on without an okay. It was decided that he would speak to Angelo on Tony’s behalf.

  My father sat with Angelo to explain that Tony was being railroaded by Butch and that the hit should be stopped. But the Hook was in no mood for mercy and wouldn’t intervene. According to Angelo, the only way my father could save his friend would be to step in and take his place. Not long after their sit-down, Borsellino was found in a Frankfort, Illinois, farm field with five bullet holes in the back of his head.

  By the end of 1980, Butchie Petrocelli’s act was getting tiresome to the Outfit hierarchy. He was suspected of skimming his collection money while shaking down street thieves and robbers without Outfit clearance. Worse, Petrocelli crossed the line by coming on to the wives of Outfit members who were away in prison. As his flamboyant behavior on the street drew more heat, the shoe dropped when Angelo discovered that a hundred thousand dollars of the cash Butch had raised one Christmas at
a Gold Coast hotel to benefit his imprisoned friend Harry Aleman’s family had ended up in Butch’s pocket. LaPietra and Joe Ferriola, the boss of the Cicero crew (and Aleman’s uncle), bristled at the thought of Petrocelli charging each guest a thousand bucks and dipping into the proceeds.

  On December 30, Petrocelli was whistled in to meet with LaPietra at a Cicero social club. A block from their social club meeting spot, he was grabbed and dragged into a storefront office as Frankie Furio and Johnny Apes waited outside in their cars. Evidence at trial concluded that Uncle Nick, along with Frank Santucci and Jimmy LaPietra, held Petrocelli down while my father gave him the Calabrese necktie.

  According to my uncle, Petrocelli’s body was thrown into the backseat of Butch’s red four-door 1977 Ford LTD and abandoned by my dad and Furio in an alleyway. When the pair returned, Jerry Scarpelli, who had accompanied Butch, now needed to search the car to retrieve his keys.

  After my father, my uncle, and Scarpelli returned, LaPietra ordered Nick and my dad to go back a third time, this time to burn the body and the LTD. After emptying two large cans of Zippo lighter fluid, my uncle tossed a lit book of matches into the car. Butch’s car windows were blackened, but the automobile didn’t properly incinerate. Nick forgot to crack a window open to oxygenate the fire. His failure to understand a basic tenet of physics led to some concern that Butch had survived. (He hadn’t.)

  Petrocelli’s car was ditched just before a heavy snowfall. Three months later, in March of 1981, Petrocelli’s vehicle was found, his body thawed after the winter snows had melted.

  Some families eat to live. The Calabrese family lived to eat. Eating was an event and a daily celebration. My father loved food, restaurants, and cooking so much that eating could supersede business and his fervent love of money. There were rules attached: Do not talk business at the dinner table or in the car or in the house unless it was in his office with the television on. Information was doled out on a need-to-know basis. As a clever precaution, if Dad told a story, he’d tell a slightly different version to each person. If something got back to him, he would know who in his family or crew was the leak.

  Dad loved to eat in the neighborhood restaurants and ma-and-pa joints (sitting facing the front door). His taste for food spanned the globe. When his family visited San Francisco, he scoured Chinatown, asking not where the tourists ate, but where the Chinese locals dined. Our family wound up eating a great Chinese meal in a small place, the only non-Asians in the dining room. In Chicago, he loved the lamb dishes in one of his favorite haunts in Greektown.

  One day I came home from school to find five dead lambs, heads and all, hanging from hooks in the garage. “Your father is having Uncle Ang over to barbecue the lambs in the yard this weekend,” my mother said.

  Uncle Ang had a reputation for cooking the best lamb dishes. When asked if he ate the heads, he replied, “That’s the best part, especially the eyes.”

  Once I graduated from high school, my father landed me a job with the city. After working the summer of my senior year on the curb and gutter crew, I graduated to the sewers as a full-time city employee. While I attended junior college for a few classes, I worked for the Department of Sewers.

  When I was working curbs and gutters, there were two crews. One was the finishing crew, whose work included putting in new sidewalks and curbs. The guys from Chinatown and Taylor Street were assigned to that crew, where Dad had the most pull. We’d ride in big dump trucks into the worst neighborhoods, the projects. For the Department of Sewers, I started out as a laborer and worked my way up to crew foreman. Our responsibilities included cleaning, maintaining, and “rodding” the city sewers. Our city crew would hand-clean sewers and turn on hydrants to flush them out. Nobody works too hard for the city, but I got into it. The work ethic I was taught was when you did something, you took pride, whether it was laying sidewalk, cleaning sewers, or collecting money.

  I spent much of 1978 and 1979 working on a “hand crew.” Workdays weren’t too hard until I was transferred to the airport, where I worked on a vector, a large truck that sucked the dirt and leaves out of the sewers, starting at six o’clock in the morning. An old-timer Italian took a liking to me and brought me onto his crew, where I learned about operating heavy equipment. This old-timer was formerly a bookie for the Outfit who went legit.

  Dating back to his days as a no-show, my dad was a legend with the city crews, as were the bookies and gangsters who pulled strings to “work” a city job. But I rarely used my status as Frank senior’s son to become a no-show or skip work.

  A lot of the bookies and gangsters who worked for the city were ghost payrollers. But I figured I didn’t want to sit in a chair all day and watch other people work. I was on a crew with a black guy and an old Italian and became the subforeman who handled the paperwork.

  Once I joined the city crew, I learned how to operate the Orange Peel Grapple, a special crane with a bucket that went into the catch basins, fetched the dirt and leaves, and deposited the stuff into a truck. You pulled the lever, the arm moved. You let the lever go, the arm stopped. I was intrigued by it. I got good at it. Plus, I could make twice the money running equipment emptying out the catch basins on the curbs. We’d work all over town.

  Running the Orange Peel was a skill that would later come in handy while working with the crew.

  I rode the political waves working for the city. Depending on who won the Chicago mayoral seat, I’d watch workers come and go as the city jobs changed hands based on who was allied with whom politically. One time a new guy who didn’t know how to run the Orange Peel was breaking car and store windows while the rest of the crew workers ducked for cover, getting nothing done. I was the one who sat in the cab for him and worked the machine while he collected his paycheck.

  Throughout my time working for the city, my father controlled all of my finances. Twice a month, I would dutifully hand over my paycheck to him and he would dole out a small portion back to me for pocket money.

  When I worked at Armand’s making pizza as a kid, I didn’t have my own bank account. I’d bring my check to him and he would urge me to save my money. Out of the forty or fifty dollars, I’d get ten or fifteen. Here I was in my early twenties, handing over my checks while he deposited them into accounts under my name. That’s how he controlled my brother and me. When I made twenty-six thousand dollars a year, twice a month he’d ask me how much out of an eight-hundred-dollar check I needed. Then he’d bust my balls: “What do you need two hundred dollars for?” He’d put the rest in the bank and enter the amount on a balance sheet. He never stole the money. It was about control. At the same time, he was laundering his own money while paying me in cash.

  Like a lot of city workers, I did weekend jobs on the side, mostly sidewalks and driveways, to supplement my income, which was how I made pocket money without my dad knowing it. While working for the city, I had a lot of friends who were doing well fighting on the boxing circuit. There was a park in a nearby black neighborhood filled with Italian boxers. I began sparring with my friends, and in 1979 I entered in the Golden Gloves.

  When I first started boxing, I couldn’t tell my dad. Finally I had to let him know because my friends and I began making names for ourselves as fighters. A few of my friends ended up being ranked. When I came home one night from a fight, I showed him the trophy I had won, and he went nuts. I told him I just wanted to try it. It was odd that he would get upset, since he boxed amateur for a while and went undefeated. He was critical even though he had done the same things.

  “No son of mine is gonna be no fuckin’ boxer.”

  In 1980, I fought my Golden Gloves championship fight at the International Amphitheater in the old Chicago stockyards, in front of eight thousand spectators. Televised on WGN, it was the one fight he attended. He asked that I dedicate the fight to his dying father, who would be watching the bout from his hospital bed. Rated as the underdog, I won the fight by unanimous decision.

  He was proud of me because I walked throug
h the tournament and beat all my opponents. Like him, I was undefeated. At the time things were good. I was making money working for the city. I had a job and a girlfriend. But my heart wasn’t into boxing. I didn’t want to fight for a career. I did it mainly because I liked the jackets you received when you won. Yet, when I won the jacket I never wore it, because I thought it would look like I was bragging and calling attention to myself.

  While working with the city, I was at my father’s beck and call. I’d take off early some days from my city job to make time for my father’s assignments—like a trip to Melrose Park as Uncle Nick’s backup, when, under Joey Aiuppa’s orders, Nick had to slap a guy around for selling fireworks without permission and not paying a street tax.

  On Saturdays I’d go to Philly Tolomeo’s apartment, while my father would go over the bookkeeping and have me sit next to him and watch. He’d have me check the figures or recount the money. It was very subtle. At no point did he ask me, or say that he wanted me to start working with him full-time. He would tell me that Philly was a moneymaker but a fuckup, and that we needed to get the money from him every week.

  After I spent more time on the streets with the crew, my responsibilities expanded. There was this guy we knew, a friend, who operated a parking garage. My father found out he was selling drugs. He was working with us as a bookie, but he made the mistake of asking my uncle if he was interested in getting into the cocaine business. It was the 1980s. Everybody was doing it. He was a nice guy who was just being honest with my uncle. A lot of guys were selling, including Tony and Michael Spilotro.

  My father wanted to send him a message. So we put a box together. He showed me how to mix kerosene with just the right amount of gasoline, putting it in gallon milk jugs. Then we drove out to the guy’s garage, stuffed the jugs in a box with a lot of paper, lit a flare, and put the box up against the garage. That was the warning we sent out. At the time, the Chicago Outfit was adamantly opposed to drugs. When a guy’s garage gets burned down, he knows something isn’t right, that somebody knows he’s doing something wrong. He got the message to stop.