Final Confession

by Brian P. Wallace

  While Phil was lying low in Chicago, Tony and Angelo were serving their sentences in Walpole. “It really bothered me that they were in the can, but they understood why I was in no hurry to join them,” Phil said. Every Christmas both Angelo and Tony would receive huge goody packages from different states. An accompanying card was signed, “a friend.”

  Phil had been in Chicago for a year before the intense heat started to subside a little. He made a lot of friends while there: some legitimate, some not. One person whom Phil (aka Joey Zito) became very friendly with was none other than the mayor, Richard Daley. There had been rumors circulating around Chicago that Mayor Daley was “in bed” with the mob ever since some well-known wise guys gave Daley some serious campaign money in 1955. It was rumored that Daley had more direct ties to the Chicago mob, and it was a well-known fact that the Chicago Police Department was owned lock, stock, and barrel by gangsters.

  Phil had been introduced to Mayor Daley through friends of Augie. “The mayor and I hit it off,” Phil said. “He never for a minute knew who I was or that I was wanted by the FBI. He knew me as Joey Zito, the guy who owned Toy World downtown. He knew I had some connections, but that was a plus and not a minus in Chicago. Mayor Daley personally gave me what was called a legislative aide’s badge, which, he told me, would come in handy at times. And it did,” Phil said, laughing. “I was stopped for speeding on three different occasions. Each time, when I produced my license and registration, I also produced my badge, which got me a warning instead of a ticket. Police or anyone else in Chicago didn’t fool around with Mayor Daley.”

  Phil became even closer to his sister Mari while he was on the run. Mari and Augie knew almost everyone on the hustle in Chicago. It was not uncommon for Joey Zito to have dinner with Mayor Daley on a Wednesday and then dine with Tony Accardo or Joey Aiuppa on Thursday.

  In 1972, after Phil had been on the run for three years, the feds began to focus on Chicago and to tail Mari. She had a beautiful apartment in one of Chicago’s most fashionable highrise buildings and Phil often stopped by unannounced, after work or on the weekends, to visit his sister. On one of those occasions, he was just about to walk into the lobby when he spotted a man conspicuously trying to be inconspicuous. Phil headed out the door to his car.

  He waited and watched for thirty minutes. The guy who was sitting in the lobby left Mari’s building along with three other guys; they got into two cars and left. Phil waited another ten minutes and then went to see Mari, who was shaken up. “They know you’re in Chicago,” she cried. “They might think I’m in Chicago, but they don’t know anything,” Phil replied, wondering how the feds had figured out where he was. He headed home to his new wife, Molly.

  Phil called some of his new friends in Chicago and asked them to do a little snooping to see if there were any new memos about his fugitive status. “After a week or so, I got a call from a well-known Chicago wise guy who asked me to meet him at Augie’s theater. As I stepped from my car, I could see feds everywhere. It was too late to do anything, so I just got out of my car and walked right past the place. I figured they had compromised the wise guy and knew I was coming there to meet him.

  “I was wrong. They never looked at me because they were there to bust a guy named Jackie Cerone, who I saw being led out of the Follies in handcuffs a few minutes later. It could’ve been a pretty good twofer if they’d done their homework. Here I was on the Top Ten list and not one of those feds—and there had to be at least twenty of them—even looked my way. I walked around the block and came back just in time to see them leading Jackie away. That was too close. I went into the Follies and met my guy.”

  The Chicago wise guy was sitting alone at the end of the bar, pretty shook up. His eyes went wide when he saw Phil approach. “Phil, I’m glad you’re okay.” “I thought you’d set me up,” Phil told him in a menacing tone. “Believe me, Phil, I had nothing to do with this. But I knew if they grabbed you on your way in here, I was a dead man.” “You thought right,” Phil said seriously. Then he sat down, paused, and extended his hand to the gangster, who was instantly relieved.

  The wise guy told Phil that his sources in the Chicago Police Department knew absolutely nothing. It was almost as if they had been purposely left in the dark. Then he’d talked to some of the guys on the mob’s payroll who worked with the feds. The FBI had gotten a tip from a police informer about Phil’s whereabouts.

  “I knew it,” Phil said. “Where did the tip come from?”

  “Boston,” the wise guy answered.

  Almost to himself, Phil murmured, “Tilley.”

  “What?” the Chicago gangster asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just a score I have to settle,” Phil said.

  FOR THE NEXT SIX MONTHS the feds were everywhere, and Phil, using his Joey Zito passport and some of the money he still had left from the half million he’d had when he ran, took off until things quieted down. He asked Augie to make an emergency phone call to Bobby Cresta and tell him Phil would be incommunicado for several months. Then Joey Zito took his new wife on a cruise around the world, where the only thing he had to worry about was whether to eat five or six times a day.

  He returned to Chicago in March of 1973 and went back to his toy store as if nothing had happened. The people who’d missed Phil the most while he was away, beside Mari, were members of the Chicago Police Department. They were used to getting special half-price deals on Christmas toys at Toy World. He continued his life in Chicago through Christmas 1973 as the most popular businessman in the eyes of the Chicago Police.

  The feds continued to harass Mari. “One day in December Phil contacted her and asked her to meet him in a downtown lounge. She checked for tails and was sure nobody was tailing her when she went into the place. She sat down in a booth and waited for Phil. As soon as she ordered a drink she saw two men enter the lounge. Both were wearing suits that might as well have said FEDS on the sleeves. She panicked, knowing Phil was due momentarily.

  Not knowing what else to do, she continued drinking her drink and smoking her cigarette. A minute later a hippie with long hair and a scraggly beard, who looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week, came over and asked Mari, “Hey, lady, got a light?” She looked him straight in the eyes, tapped her cigarette on the ashtray, and in a hard voice told him that she didn’t smoke. The hippie got the message and left. Phil never showed up.

  After a while Mari went back home. The phone was ringing when she let herself into her luxury apartment. Mari, frightened for her brother, said, “Phil?” He just laughed in reply. “What’s so funny?” she said. “So you don’t smoke, huh?” It took Mari a few seconds and then she screamed, “You have got to be shittin’ me. Tell me you weren’t that hippie.” “I confess. … And by the way, you weren’t too friendly.”

  “I don’t believe you, I just don’t believe you!” Mari was laughing now. After a while she asked, “Why did you do that?” “I just wanted to see for myself if they were still tailing you,” Phil said.

  “Couldn’t you have watched from across the street?” Mari asked. “What fun is that?” Phil asked, still laughing. But Mari could sense that Phil was getting restless, even careless. It was almost as if he were challenging the feds to catch him. Maybe being an ordinary citizen no longer satisfied him. “I think part of him wanted to get caught,” Mari recalled later.

  “A few weeks after the hippie incident, in January 1974, Phil called and asked me to accompany him to get some snow chains for his tires. There was a huge snowstorm predicted for the Chicago area. So we drove to Sears Roebuck, where we both went our separate ways, promising to meet in half an hour at a designated spot. Later I saw Phil at the spot but was surprised to see he didn’t have anything in his hands. I asked him where the chains were and he said he didn’t like what they had in the store. When we got into the parking lot, I heard some kind of noise and I asked him what it was. Phil opened his coat; he had the snow chains under his coat. I went crazy,” Mari recalled. “He had a couple of tho
usand on him and he stole snow chains worth only twenty bucks!” Mari was upset that he’d taken such a risk. But Phil just laughed his head off. Mari couldn’t help herself. He was having such a good time, she had to laugh with him. But not without fear that Phil wasn’t adjusting well to such a tame lifestyle.

  19

  Surrounded

  IN 1972 OR SO, Phil had married a woman named Molly, though he still had no formal divorce from Dorothy, back in Lynn, Massachusetts. The new couple bought a house in a Chicago suburb. A house with a white picket fence. Phil commuted to the toy store every day. To their neighbors, the Zitos seemed like the perfect suburban couple: successful, in love, and with a great future. They had no children. Molly didn’t know anything about Joey Paul Zito’s past. At least not until March 1, 1974.

  On that day two dozen federal agents surrounded Toy World. Joey Zito was inside the store, totally oblivious to what was going on outside. A Chicago television station had gotten wind of something transpiring downtown and had sent a TV crew to cover the event.

  If Phil was oblivious to what was happening, so too were the members of the Chicago Police Department—who were purposely kept in the dark. The FBI had rightly figured that the Chicago Police were much too fond of the owner of Toy World. As the feds got into position to take Phil down, though, the Chicago cops arrived on the scene too, and a near shootout ensued between members of the two law enforcement agencies.

  Phil’s wife Molly had turned on the television set expecting to see the nightly news. What she saw drove her to a nervous breakdown. All three Chicago television stations were on the scene reporting the apprehension of one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives, a man from Boston named Phil Cresta—her husband.

  Phil figured out that the game was up before the first federal officer stepped through the door and handcuffed him without a struggle. “I saw the television cameras before I saw the feds, but I knew they had to mean the feds were out there somewhere. I called Augie from the store and told him I was going down. I asked him to make sure a good attorney was at the police station when I arrived.

  Augie didn’t disappoint him. With TV camera lights blazing, Phil was led into Chicago’s U.S. District Court to be arraigned. Waiting for his new client was the famous mob attorney Julius Echeles.

  BAIL WAS SET at $625,000. Phil waived extradition and the paperwork began. On the evening of March 1, 1974, the Boston FBI SAC received the following memo from his Chicago office.

  NR 002 CG PLAIN

  445PM NITEL MARCH 2[1], 1974

  TO: DIRECTOR

  BOSTON

  FROM: CHICAGO

  PHILIP JOSEPH CRESTA JR. AKA JOE ZITO IO NUMBER 4347

  SUBJECT APPEARED THIS DATE BEFORE UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JAMES T. BALOG AND WAS REPRESENTED BY ATTORNEY JULIUS ECHELES.

  MAGISTRATE BALOG SET BOND IN THE AMOUNT OF $625,000 CORPORATE SURETY AND REMANDED CRESTA TO CUSTODY USM, CHICAGO. CRESTA TO REAPPEAR BEFORE MAGISTRATE BALOG, 1:45 P.M., MARCH 7, 1974.

  ARMED AND DANGEROUS

  Later that day another memo was dispatched across the country from then-FBI Director Clarence Kelley:

  PLAINTEXT TELETYPE NITEL

  TO ALL SACS

  FROM DIRECTOR, FBI

  CHANGED [SIC]: PHILIP JOSEPH CRESTA, JR., AKA JOE ZITO—IO NO. 4347,

  SUBJECT ARRESTED MARCH 1, 1974, BY BUREAU AGENTS, CHICAGO, WITHOUT INCIDENT USING ALIAS JOE ZITO.

  ARMED & DANGEROUS.

  BEFORE THE TRIAL could start, Phil had to be returned to Boston from Chicago. To say that the wheels of justice move slowly is a major understatement, at least in regard to this case. Cresta was held in a federal lockup in Chicago from March 1 until March 30, when the papers involving Case No. 74 M 177 were sent to the office of the United States Marshal. These directed the marshal to transport Cresta to Boston, where he was to stand trial on armed robbery charges. There was only one problem. The Suffolk County Superior Court could not find the bench warrant that had been issued on June 12, 1969, for Cresta’s arrest.

  Attorney Julius Echeles went before Judge Balog and asked for the immediate release of Phil Cresta. Echeles presented a petition that stated, “The United States Marshals Service has been unable to produce any kind of warrant which would detain or hold Mr. Cresta. Therefore I request the immediate release of Mr.Cresta pending the $625,000 cash/surety, which will be presented to the Clerk at 9:00 A.M. tomorrow.” Suddenly the wheels of justice went into overdrive. By the time Attorney Echeles returned to federal court at nine the next morning, the warrant had been found and Cresta was already on his way to Boston. They were not taking any chances.

  ON APRIL 11, 1974, forty-six-year-old Phil Cresta stood before Judge James C. Roy and asked for bail reduction. Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney James Sullivan told Judge Roy that if Cresta was allowed to get out on bail, he would never be seen again. Sullivan stated, “Your Honor, this man has just been returned from Chicago where, under the alias Joseph Paul Zito, he knowingly and willingly fled prosecution for the crime he now appears before you on. He is the worst kind of bail risk. Your Honor, this man who appears before you today is no ordinary run-of-the-mill defendant. Just the fact that he disappeared for over five years while the FBI and every other major law enforcement agency in the country was looking for him should tell you something about the man and about the resources he has at his disposal. We fear that if Mr. Cresta is allowed to meet bail, he will again use his resources to flee. We strongly urge you not to decrease his bail but to hold Mr. Cresta without bail.”

  Phil Cresta’s attorney, Alfred Paul Farese, railed against the DA’s plea for no bail. Farese said, “Your Honor, Phil Cresta is an innocent man who fled this state to avoid being persecuted, not prosecuted, by the likes of a career criminal named Red Kelley, who will be the only witness to testify against my client. Mr. Kelley has a personal vendetta against my client, who is totally innocent of the indictment, as set forth. He has no intentions of fleeing. In fact, Mr. Cresta is glad to be back home with his family and friends and is anxious to clear the record and his name. To hold an innocent man without bail is unconscionable and we know that you are a fair and decent man, Your Honor.”

  Attorney Farese may have laid it on a little too thick but it worked, at least they thought it worked. Judge Roy reduced Phil’s bail from $625,000 cash/surety to $100,000 cash/surety. He set the trial date for June 19, 1974, in Suffolk County Superior Court.

  Getting the $100,000 was no problem for Phil. He had what was left of his money in a few safe-deposit boxes in Chicago. He called Augie from the Charles Street Jail, where he was held pending trial. Augie promised to get the cash and bring it to Boston personally.

  Phil just wanted to get out of that hellhole. But Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne had other ideas. Byrne put the word out that Cresta was not to be bailed under any circumstance. He made it clear to any bail bondsman who might think of putting money up for Cresta to think again. Byrne let it be known that any bondsman who helped Cresta would find a call on bond; that is, bonds that any of their clients had forfeited in the past would become immediately due for payment.

  Augie carried the money from Chicago as he had told Phil he would. Phil couldn’t understand why he was still in jail until he got a visit from his brother Bobby. Bobby explained how no bail bondsman in the state would touch the money. “Have you asked Cosmo Gilberti?” “Phil,” Bobby explained, “I’m telling you: I’ve tried just about every bondsman in this city, and the word is out. Nobody’s going to jeopardize their livelihood for you or anybody else.”

  Phil listened to what Bobby had to say and then told him to go call Cosmo Gilberti. An hour later bail bondsman Gilberti appeared in Suffolk Superior with $50,000 in cash and the deed for Phil’s younger sister’s house. Byrne went ballistic, but he had no choice but to order Phil to be released immediately from jail.

  “Gilberti had some balls,” Phil said later. “He and I had done a lot of business and I knew he’d stand up to B
yrne if I asked him to.” So, knowing that the feds and the IRS would be snooping around, trying to find where he came up with a hundred large, Phil told Bobby to instruct Gilberti to put up fifty large in cash and the other fifty in surety. Phil’s sister Rose was more than willing to put up her house as surety after being guaranteed that her brother would stand for trial.

  Phil hit the bricks on the twelfth of April and immediately went to McGrail’s. Nothing had changed except that Tony and Angelo were no longer sitting in the last booth, and that was hard for Phil. It was great, however, seeing all the other old faces and reliving some of the old times. They treated Phil like some kind of star that day, even the guys who’d sat in that bar for ten years and never spoken to him. One guy, after a few beers, came over to Phil and said, “Shit, I always thought you were a car salesman or something. I never knew you were a big-time thief.” Phil didn’t know whether to say thanks or what.

  The next day Phil boarded a flight to Chicago—after he cleared it with the authorities. He didn’t need Byrne to hear he was gone and revoke his bail. So he walked into Byrne’s office and told them that he had some business to clear up in Chicago and that he’d be gone for two days. Byrne’s assistants didn’t like it, but they had no choice: he wasn’t leaving the country or anything. Phil gave them Mari’s address, got a cab to Logan, and flew out. The toughest part for Phil was his current wife’s situation: she had thought she’d married a single man, a toy store owner, not a man who was still married to his first wife and on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. She was not doing well.

  Phil later said of her, “Molly was a good woman and she didn’t deserve that.” She was still hospitalized at the time of Phil’s visit to Chicago, because of the nervous breakdown she’d had after seeing her husband arrested on television. He knew enough not to visit her. Phil’s first wife divorced him that same year, 1974. Molly followed through with divorce, without ever seeing Phil again, in 1976.