Family Affair_Greed, Treachery, and Betrayal in the Chicago Mafia

by Sam Giancana

  Like in the case of Van Corbin, it didn’t take long for mob justice to be meted out to the perpetrators of the Accardo home invasion. Two weeks to be exact. The first body of the break-in team to be discovered was that of Bernard Ryan, a three-time convicted felon and close associate of Mendell’s. On January 20, two weeks to the day after the burglary, he was found in the driver’s seat of a Lincoln Continental on a side street in the western suburb of Stone Park, his throat slit and four bullet holes lodged in the back of his skull.

  Thirteen days later, Ryan’s well-known right-hand man, Steve Garcia, also a close associate of John Mendell’s, was found in the trunk of his car, which had been left in a Sheraton Hotel parking garage. Enjoying the first few weeks of 1978 in Miami, Garcia had been lured back to the Windy City by the prospect of another score. Authorities in law enforcement believe it was Ronnie Jarrett, a sometime associate of Mendell’s, who had made the call to set him up. It’s believed Outfit hit man Anthony “Little Tony” Borselino helped carried out the execution. Garcia, like Ryan, had his throat slit from ear to ear. However, unlike Ryan, who had been shot in the head, he had been stabbed numerous times in the chest and stomach with an ice pick.

  The proverbial hit parade continued when, on February 4, just two days after authorities found Garcia as trunk music, the police found an abandoned Cadillac in the south suburban parking lot of Esther’s Place restaurant, which contained two more bodies: Vincent Moretti and Donald Renno. Moretti was a former cop who was kicked off the force after a felony burglary conviction and had become a feared Chicago-area hoodlum, not to mention one of The Outfit’s top fences. Renno, who some speculate may not have been involved in the break-in at all, was a small-time thief who often did jobs with both Mendell and Moretti.

  Both Renno and Moretti had their throats cut, but it was obvious the mob assassins had paid special attention to the ex-police officer who was seen wearing a pair of the Big Tuna’s prized gold cuff links around town in the days after the burglary. Moretti had been beaten so severely that the blunt trauma to his chest had caused several of his ribs to break and one of his kidney’s to rupture. He also had been castrated and his penis had been placed in his mouth, the ultimate sign of disrespect in gangland slayings.

  The murders of Moretti and Renno took place several days before at a Cicero bar, located at Twenty-second and Laramie, which was owned by an associate of South Side mob chief John “Johnny Apes” Monteleone. Moretti and Renno were called in after the establishment had closed for the night under the pretense that they would help Accardo’s lieutenants retrieve some of their boss’ stolen property. According to Nick Calabrese, the pair were beaten and strangled to death by Calabrese himself, his brother Frank, Johnny Monteleone, Tony Borselino, and Frank “Goomba” Saladino, while Joe Ferriola and Jimmy La Pietra acted as lookouts. Among Chicago mob circles, the brutal double homicide became known as the “Strangers in the Night” murder, since the famed Frank Sinatra hit song was playing on the jukebox in the background as Moretti and Renno were slugged and stomped into oblivion.

  The next body to be found was that of the heist crew’s mastermind and leader, John Mendell. Mendell was probably the first victim to be killed because he disappeared on January 15, just over a week after the Accardo house break-in. But he wasn’t found until five weeks after the fact, on February 20, when police officers came across an abandoned vehicle sitting parked on the street of a South Side neighborhood, covered in ice and snow, its windshield plastered with parking ticket violations. When the police opened up the car’s trunk, they discovered Mendell, frozen stiff, half-naked, and hog-tied. He had been stabbed numerous times in the chest with an ice pick and, according to the autopsy report, most likely died by strangulation as a result of being tied up in such a way that if he moved his legs or arms he would tighten the noose wrapped around his neck.

  After another two months passed, Accardo’s henchmen succeeded in eliminating the rest of Mendell’s crew. On April 14, Johnny McDonald, a suspected member of the group of thieves and someone the police believed aided in the setup of the Bernard Ryan hit, was found murdered in a West Side alley, his throat cut and a gunshot wound in the back of his head. On April 26, twenty-two-year-old Robert Toggs, the final and youngest member of Mendell’s crew, was discovered in the trunk of his car in a grocery store parking lot off Grand Avenue. His throat had been slashed and he had been shot several times in the back of the head and neck.

  WITH Mendell and his men eradicated in the first third of the year, things slowed down for a while. The killing rampage temporarily halted. However, there were still loose ends to be tied up, roadways that could lead back to the Big Tuna that had to be closed down. In October 1978, Michael Volpe, the seventy-five-year-old Sicilian immigrant that Accardo had looking after his home while he vacationed on the West Coast, disappeared. To this day, he’s never been found. Five days before he was reported missing by his wife, Volpe, a slight man who spoke broken English, had testified in front of a grand jury that was investigating the January break-in and its bloodstained aftermath. The FBI is of the belief that Accardo ordered his caretaker to be killed for either divulging too much information to the government in his testimony or for possibly aiding Mendell’s crew in the robbery.

  Trying to do whatever he could to disassociate himself from the series of retribution killings, Accardo is alleged to have ended his epic purge by ordering the murders of two of his hand-picked executioners; First, often-used Outfit hit man Tony Borselino was found dead on May 22, 1979, in a desolate cornfield in Will County, Illinois, shot four times in the back of his head. Then finally, in mid-September, Gerald “Jerry the Dinger” Carusiello, a top lieutenant to Accardo’s second in command, Joey Aiuppa, was slain in suburban Addison, seemingly in the midst of carrying out what he believed to be a burglary, but what was in fact a setup to kill him.

  The FBI had traced phone records from Carusiello to some of the victims in the hours leading up to their murders, and they were pressuring him to cooperate in their investigation. To prevent any information he had from getting into the wrong hands, Accardo and his inner circle decided he had to be done away with. The Outfit’s reign of death was at last over. Ten bodies in twenty-one months. Mob justice had been rendered.

  “It was just a gruesome bloodbath that took place for about a year after the Accardo burglary,” said Jack O’Rourke. “I would bet some of the guys that got killed had nothing to do with the break-in at all. A couple of them were just made examples of because they were known burglars and friends with John Mendell. I wish I could tell you what the guys who did [the break-in] were thinking. These guys had worked with The Outfit for years, so they had to know what the end game was. Sometimes I guess you just outsmart yourself. You think you’re so good at something; you’ll never have to answer for your actions. But with the mafia in Chicago, you’re always going to answer. They’re brutal killers, looking for excuses to kill. Mendell gave them that excuse. And for Accardo, I think this string of homicides says all you need to know about him. He was quiet and unassuming, yet this showed how vicious he could be if and when you crossed him.”

  If there was anything positive that came from the string of treacherous gangland homicides that encompassed the final two years of the 1970s, it was the search warrant the FBI was able to obtain that gave it access to Tony Accardo’s River Forest residence. The disappearance of Michael Volpe provided the government with the probable cause they needed, arguing to a judge that Volpe’s employment at the house was sufficient reason to believe a search of the premises could potentially bear fruit for the investigation. On November 11, 1978, the FBI agents assigned to the case got their wish and were granted access to the mafia don’s prized abode at 1407 Ashland Avenue.

  Once inside, they were quick to uncover a hidden panel in the foyer that led to a secret basement encampment, the size of a moderately sized home. It encased a full-size, modern kitchen, a bedroom, an office, and a cavernous conference room, nearly fifty feet
in length. Surrounded by thirty-four chairs, with a full-length movie screen on the back wall, the entire room was constructed in top-grade marble and finely polished oak. They also discovered the monstrosity of a safe that the Mendell gang failed to find and a rather large, almost oversize furnace room, revealing a half dozen incinerators. Agents wondered how such a room could be used.

  Although some curiosities were fulfilled, nothing of significance was found that could be used in solving the murders or making a case against The Big Tuna. It wasn’t until more than twenty-five years after the final body dropped in Accardo’s spree of revenge killings that three of the homicides—Mendell, Moretti, and Renno—were put at the doorstep of Outfit hit man Frank Calabrese, who was charged in the 2005 Family Secrets case.

  7.

  All in the Family

  The Breeze Brothers

  Frank and Nick Calabrese came from humble beginnings. They grew up on the city’s predominantly ethnic West Side, the area around Grand Avenue and Ogden, at that time known as “The Patch.” With immigrant parents who barely spoke English, Frank, the eldest child—born March 17, 1938, had to quit school at a young age and work to help the family survive. Selling newspapers and shining shoes on the corner of State and Grand Avenue went a long way toward putting food on the family’s table. As a teenager he was a petty thief, sometimes doing odd jobs and running errands for Frank “Feech” Furio, a street lieutenant under West Side mob boss Fiori “Fifi” Bucceri and his protégé and future South Side mob czar, Angelo “The Hook” La Pietra.

  “Growing up, Frank was always a bully,” said one former neighbor who chose not to be identified by name. “He was big and strong and, in my mind, got his rocks off by picking on those around him who were weaker basically because he could. Nick was quieter in his demeanor and followed Frank around a lot. You could talk to Nick, and he would try to look out for you, sometimes even try to protect you from his brother. Frank was closed off. Nick wasn’t like that, he wanted to be your friend. But Nick still idolized his brother, and it was obvious he wanted to chase his path. . . . It didn’t surprise me to see what they eventually became.”

  Spending some time in the U.S. Army and stationed in North Carolina, Frankie Breeze went AWOL when he didn’t get let off from duty after the conclusion of the Korean War like he had been promised by his recruiter. Incarcerated in a Missouri military stockade, he escaped twice, the final time taking his first arrest as a civilian when he was busted stealing a car from the St. Louis airport in 1954. Stuck back in jail until he was twenty-one, Calabrese eventually returned home to Chicago and within a few years developed into a well-respected presence in the local underworld.

  Frank started out as a truck driver, ferrying dairy products all across the city and into the suburbs, while moonlighting as a top-notch burglar, cargo hijacker, and all-around strong arm. He was married in 1961 and through his father-in-laws’ connections gained employment with a local Teamsters Union. Still moonlighting, he became a commodity on the street and was called up for duty by The Outfit. At first, he worked for Steve Annerino, a go-to guy for rising mob capo Angelo La Pietra, and then graduated to working for La Pietra directly.

  When La Pietra moved his base of operations to the South Side’s Chinatown district, an area of the city in which he had been authorized by The Outfit brass to create his own sub-crew, Calabrese followed him. With the help of Cheech Furio and a street mentor of his named Larry Stubich, Calabrese opened up a loan-sharking operation, a racket that would eventually turn into his bread and butter, and a sports gambling business. Furio ran a series of back-door card games on his behalf, and a street tax was eventually imposed on legitimate businesses he deemed ripe for the picking. Patrons of Calabrese’s gambling operations who got in over their heads were steered to his juice loan racket to take out a street loan. It was a vicious circle that would end up making him a multimillionaire.

  Influence in local labor politics arrived via his new brother-in-law, Ed Hanley, the president of the local Culinary Workers and Bartenders unions. He then began dabbling in construction and real estate purchases. By the late-1960s, Frankie Breeze was known throughout the city as a top racketeer, and by early in the following decade, he was given permission to head his own subcrew under the new La Pietra regime on the South Side. Earning the dual reputation as a money-maker and genuine tough guy, he was labeled a rising star.

  Benefiting from The Outfit’s unique power structure, a highly respected solider such as Frank Calabrese, could head a crew without being a captain. The Outfit hierarchy allowed for capos to break their individual crew down into subcrews and appoint a street boss for each. This method of command distribution was put in place under Tony Accardo in the 1940s and resulted in maximum insulation for the crime family’s administration. The theory was that by having faith in the lower ranks of the syndicate and adding more leadership positions, you boost troop morale and decrease the chances of jealously and in-fighting among the chain of command.

  Soon, Frank developed himself a second niche in the local underworld: murder. The Calabrese street crew emerged in the late 1970s as a primary enforcement unit for La Pietra, at that time probably The Outfit’s most powerful capo. Unlike some other often-used mob assassins in the area, Calabrese didn’t flaunt his reputation as a hit man. He preferred to keep that profession on a need-to-know basis; most thought he was just a loan shark.

  Around Halloween 1969, Nick Calabrese approached his big brother Frank about the prospect of employment. He was sick of working at the series of Teamsters jobs Frank had gotten him—one of them was as an ironworker on the construction of the John Hancock Tower—and he wanted to go to work for the family business. He wanted a spot in his brother’s crew. Called to a meeting in May 1970 at Slicker Sam’s, an area restaurant owned by reputed Outfit soldier Salvatore “Slicker Sam” Rosa, Nick was told by Frank that La Pietra said it was okay for him to join up with his operation.

  Frank started Nick off doing collections, and within three months had him involved in the plot to murder Michael “Hambone” Albergo. Nick, who married the niece of reputed Outfit member, William Louie “The Printer” Tenuta, established himself as a sturdy and reliable man of honor in his own right, impressing La Pietra with his workmanlike effort on the street. Throughout most of the 1980s, he held a no-show job at a forklift company in the heavily mob-influenced McCormack Place industrial park, getting a paycheck without having to report for work. He began a collection of antique cars and often took fishing trips with his nephews in Wisconsin at a cottage he owned.

  Pleased with their work, La Pietra sponsored both Frank and Nick for membership within the crime family, and in October 1983, in the basement of a closed restaurant near the corner of Roosevelt and Manheim, the brothers were formally initiated into the Chicago mafia by don Joey Aiuppa.

  All wasn’t peachy keen though and over time, a growing animosity started to fester between the pair of siblings. Frank was jealous of his brother’s close relationship with his own sons, and Nick suspected Frank of holding back on his kick-up cash to La Pietra and holding out on properly compensating him and the rest of his underlings.

  IN the 1980s, Frank Calabrese set up shop at M&R Auto and Truck Repair Service, a River Grove-based repair garage that would act as his headquarters through the next decade and a half. His crew was tight knit, if only for the fact that its members shared an equal fear and hatred of their boss.

  “With Frank, you saw two distinct sides to him,” said Tom Bourgeois. “One minute he could be laughing and joking with you and seem to not have a mean bone in his body. The next minute, with the snap of a finger, he could turn on you and have a demonic look in his eyes like he wanted to strangle every inch of life out of you with his bare hands. He was menacing. A lot of his subordinates walked on eggshells around him because they couldn’t predict his moods.”

  The core of Frank’s crew was made up of Cheech Furio, Frank “Goomba” Saladino, Louis “Louie the Baker” Bombacino, Phill
ip “Philly Boy” Fiore, Terry Scalise, Philip “Philly Beans” Tolomeo, Nick Calabrese, and Frank’s two sons, Kurt and Frank Jr. The crew became masters of the old-fashioned bust out. Whenever one of Calabrese’s customers got substantially indebted, the crew would take over the business—skimming cash and running up charges on company accounts with no intention of repaying any of it—and seize the customer’s personal assets as a way of making up the debt.

  Cheech Furio acted as Frankie Breeze’s top lieutenant, handling daily affairs for the crew’s operations until his death in 1985, at which time Philly Boy Fiore took over those duties. Divorced from his first wife in 1984, Frank next married Diane Cimino. Accumulating a mountain of moola from his cluster of rackets, he invested in real estate and silently backed several restaurants, where he enjoyed holding court, retelling war stories, and playing the role of mob boss. He even expanded his crew’s operations outside of the Chicagoland area, starting a satellite gambling business in Rockford headed by Goomba Saladino, who had relocated there, along with his cousin Joseph “Big Joe” Saladino and Frank “Frankie the Fireman” Geraci, a boyhood pal of the Calabreses.

  Alleged to have orchestrated close to two dozen gangland homicides, the downfall of Frank Calabrese ultimately resulted from the way he treated those he surrounded himself with. When his degrading antics caused loyalty to wane among his inner circle, he was through.

  His overall demise would eventually come in the form of betrayal by his own flesh and blood, his son, Frank Jr. and his brother, Nick. But before that, a large part of his downfall came in the form of two scorned former friends, Philly Beans Tolomeo, a one-time Chicago cop turned crook, and Matt Russo, a business partner who thought his friendship with The Outfit king could protect him from his wrath.