by Jeff Coen
Both Mary Mestrovic and Nick Costello were then taken to Area Three the same day, the report stated. That accounted for Mary recalling that she was moved once after starting to talk to police. The key state’s attorney supervisor had responded there, read Costello his rights, and collected another refusal to talk. The supervisor had said he didn’t believe there was enough evidence to proceed, the report said, so Costello was photographed, fingerprinted, and released from the Ninth District.
The summary next said both Larry Raddatz and his friend John Russell were interviewed the same day. They had described the car as a green Chevrolet two-door. “They further related that they could not identify the passenger in the auto. Raddatz stated that he did not have a clear view of the passenger, but stated that the subject had light brown hair, parted in the middle approximately collar length,” the report read. It was no identification, though Sherlock noted it was in the ballpark for Costello.
The next paragraph recounted how Costello had come to be at the Ninth District the night of the shooting. A teen had told detectives he had been at both the party on Throop and the fight in traffic on Halsted. There was no time frame mentioned in the paragraph, but he had told investigators that he had picked up Costello and another teen after seeing them standing at the corner of Thirtieth and Emerald, near McGuane Park. They had proceeded south toward Boyce Field, where they saw a crowd and police on the scene. (There was nothing in the paragraph on whether the group was asked why they chose to go by that park in the early morning hours.) They had been stopped and taken to the Ninth District for questioning.
The next paragraph indicated that four of Hughes’s friends who were in the park had been interviewed, a group that included David Gilmartin. None of them could provide a suspect identification, but they agreed on the description of the car.
It was a car much like the one driven by Paul Ferraro, whose name made another appearance in the report next, restating some of what Sherlock had found suspicious. “Paul Ferraro was again interviewed at Area Three headquarters. Ferraro related that he was at his [girlfriend’s] cousin’s home babysitting during most of the evening and that he only left for approximately 15 minutes at about 2330 hours to get a sandwich. Ferraro stated that he remained at the location until after 0130 hours on the 15th of May and he had no knowledge of this incident,” the report read.
“It should be noted that Ferraro had a vehicle similar to that described by the witnesses. [The girlfriend] was also interviewed in the presence of her mother and related the same account as did Ferraro. Both Ferraro and [his girlfriend] agreed to submit to a polygraph examination if necessary.”
Someone, apparently Gorman, had paid special attention to the paragraph, perhaps noticing what Sherlock did years later. He had circled the part of it that read “at the location until after 0130 hours.” This time was not long after Hughes was shot.
To Sherlock, the implications were clear. The babysitting alibi covered the key parts of the timeline in the murder, to be sure, and it could very well be true. But there was a little more in play. Where had the car been during that time? That would take more digging.
The report closed with several more paragraphs from a number of witnesses, most of whom couldn’t add much to the narrative for police. One said he believed the driver had done the shooting with a chrome gun and that he had “curly type hair.” Others questioned included some teens who simply had been in cars stopped near Boyce Field that night. But those interviews did include the youth who was picked up along with Costello at Thirtieth and Emerald after the shooting.
That young man “related that he had been at the party and later at the fight at 31st and Halsted streets,” the report read. He “further related that he had been at the park [McGuane] and heard Costello state that he [Costello] would shoot somebody at Boyce park.”
Whoa, Sherlock thought. That statement was given May 19, 1976, two days after Costello and Mary Mestrovic had been at Area Three and Costello had been let go. So police had one witness, apparently a friend, telling them he had overheard Costello saying he would shoot someone at Boyce and another witness putting Costello in the car. Costello hadn’t provided any alibi.
So why had the case gone cold?
Jimmy Gorman and Chuck Gilmartin also knew the importance of the car. That was obvious from the Gorman file. Their papers were filled with notes about it, including at least two attempts to find and catalog every Chevrolet registered to anyone in the area. It was every car that could even come close to matching the description. Some sheets had dozens of handwritten lines, organized by VIN.
“Location between 200 West to 1800 West, 2200 South to 5100 South,” one note read. “71–74 Chev.”
One or both men had drawn borders around a good piece of the city grid, including Bridgeport and Canaryville, and had run the vehicles. The list included the name and address of the person each Chevrolet was registered to. But there was no line for the car’s color, meaning finding the green ones probably required quick runs within the search perimeter to try to lay eyes on any that might be registered to someone connected to the case. Gorman and Gilmartin had run their search in reverse as well, looking for cars registered to people with last names they knew were tied to the case, including LaMantia, Costello, the teen who had been picked up with Costello, and the young man who had been struck with the bat during the fight.
Next in the file came more reports on whom police had brought in for polygraph exams. One was both a friend of Rocky LaMantia’s and a relative of his girlfriend. This young man “was given four polygraph tests. There were significant emotional disturbances indicative of deception in this subject’s polygraph records when he was questioned regarding his knowledge of this particular crime. There were however, no significant emotional disturbances indicative of deception on the questions pertaining to his actual participation in this crime.”
Another was the teen whose beating with a toy bat had escalated things that night. He had been given six tests, one report stated. “This subject’s polygraph records are erratic to the extent that the examiners are precluded from eliminating him as a suspect in regard to the crime under investigation. However, due to the fact that the subject was suffering from a cold and appeared somewhat fatigued at the time of testing, it is suggested that he be re-examined at a later date if the investigators deem it advisable.”
And apparently investigators had kept John Russell on their radar, despite him being the victim’s friend. “This subject’s polygraph records were unemotional to the extent that a definite decision regarding his status in this investigation cannot be made at this time.” Russell’s continued inclusion in the investigation would anger his friends even many years later.
Then came information on LaMantia’s supposed polygraph. It was in the form of a police report noting the registered letter that had been received from his lawyer, Anthony Onesto, informing the police department that LaMantia had passed one and to leave him alone.
The report noted Onesto had told police he knew LaMantia had been questioned, which raised Sherlock’s curiosity as he looked for paperwork. “Also noted in the letter was the fact that this unit has been advised that Rocco LaMantia will not cooperate with the police without first advising his attorney Mr. Onesto,” the report read. “It should be noted that as of this writing no person [here] has in fact spoken to Mr. LaMantia.”
So at least that was one explanation for why there wasn’t a pile of interview notes with a teen who had become a prime suspect in the case, but it still left open major questions about how thorough the police had been. What was emerging to Sherlock was that detectives on the ground like Strong and Boyle appeared to be doing their due diligence, while higher-ups were putting a brick on their efforts. Much more pressure should have been applied to each youth in the circle around this shooting. Those who said anything should have been locked into grand jury statements. Someone would have cracked, he thought; these were teenagers. At times, the police in the Hughes case
seemed to be acting like the case was more mysterious than it was, as if they were looking for the Zodiac Killer.
One thread Sherlock knew he had to pick at was the case’s links to organized crime. With the possible shooter being the son of an Outfit figure, it was a natural move for him to begin looking into the LaMantia family, including who they knew that could have helped to shield Rocky LaMantia from any prosecution.
His predecessor had done the same. As Sherlock was leafing through Gorman’s file, he found newspaper clippings on Michael “Big Mike” Sarno, also known as “the Large Guy,” a mobster who, according to the federal government, led a Cicero street crew that allegedly made thousands of dollars a week collecting money from illegal video gambling machines at local bars. The FBI knew he was the main reason an explosion ripped through the front of a competing business called C&S Coin Operated Amusements in neighboring Berwyn in 2003. Turns out nothing gets the feds’ attention like setting off a crude pipe bomb in the middle of a busy suburb, and Sarno and his crew were taken down and linked to Outfit-connected operations including heists at jewelry stores. Sarno already had a racketeering conviction in his past, having been convicted along with noted Outfit member Ernest “Rocco” Infelise years earlier.
The case against Sarno included evidence gathered from the bugging of a Cicero pawn shop linked to a member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club that served as a base for the crew, which was blamed for robberies at jewelry stores across the western suburbs that netted them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ring went as far as using corrupt police officers to tap into databases and give them information on law enforcement efforts to stop them. One Berwyn officer notably spray-painted a burglary target’s garage himself so he could stop by while on duty to case the house. Sarno eventually was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
Swept up in this federal grab bag of mob-related foolishness was one Casey Szaflarski. Szaflarski was in his fifties in 2009 as the case was coming down. The feds accused him of being the guy who went around to the bars, taverns, and clubs where the ring had machines, collecting the cash and making out fake receipts so the proceeds could be skimmed. A jury ultimately found him guilty of aiding and abetting a gambling operation, and he was sentenced to more than three years in prison.
But before his conviction, Szaflarski was trying to be released on bond in 2010, and he put up his Bridgeport home to make it happen. One clip Sherlock found detailed how prosecutors were asking questions about Szaflarski’s shady finances, and how he had links to a Chicago police officer. That was why the story had made it into the Gorman file.
Szaflarski was the son-in-law of the late Chicago mobster Joseph “Shorty” LaMantia, according to one report Sherlock found, and the officer was LaMantia’s niece.
Gorman was noting the link, albeit by marriage, between the LaMantia family and the officer’s family name. Paul Ferraro’s girlfriend in 1976 shared that last name, and she had provided Ferraro’s alibi. Maybe she could account for the green Chevrolet that some suspected had been used in the John Hughes murder, Sherlock thought. Finding a member of the family to talk about that night was moving up on Sherlock’s to-do list.
Mentions of the car continued in the Gorman file. One police progress report included notes on other interviews done with other teens who had been brought in for questioning after being stopped in cars around Boyce Field after the shooting.
“After advising them of their constitutional rights, we interviewed the youths from McGuane Park. Their accounts of the evening’s incidents agreed with the accounts given by witnesses,” the report read. “They stated, however, that they knew of no one who had a gun or who intended to shoot anyone.”
The teens had named some who were in the fight at Thirty-First and Halsted and some who were at McGuane Park before someone apparently drove from there to Boyce and killed Hughes. “When asked about the wanted auto, they stated that the only person in the McGuane Park area they knew had a car that fit the description of the wanted auto is one Paul Ferraro …” the notes continued. “They stated, however, that they believe he left for Indiana late in the evening of 14 May. They said he drives a 1973 Chevrolet 4-door Impala, green with a dark green vinyl top. They could add nothing further.”
One of the earliest references to the car in the Gorman file came in the form of a typed memo to Lietenant Curtin from May 21, 1976, less than a week after the shooting. It was a summary of sorts from two officers who were working the case, though not Strong or Boyle. They had been to Boyce Field, apparently to work the rumor mill. They even interviewed two “playground supervisors” who “had nothing new.”
But the third paragraph stopped Sherlock. “We received information from a person who would not identify himself that the shooter was driving Ferraro’s car and that Ferraro was the passenger,” the memo said, apparently referencing an anonymous phone call. “The shooter is supposed to be someone by the name of LaMantia.”
The caller thought LaMantia was a graduate of De La Salle, Hughes’s high school. The officers had shown up at the school to look through recent yearbooks, and found that Rocky LaMantia was still enrolled, and in Hughes’s class. They also learned that LaMantia lived nearby, had a juvenile arrest for battery, and had been stopped for a traffic violation the day after the shooting. He would be investigated further, the report said. “We went to gun registration and ran the name of LaMantia and it lists 6 LaMantias with Smith and Wesson revolvers,” it continued. “These people will be checked to see if any of the guns are missing.”
Witnesses in the immediate days after Hughes was killed had been unable to identify LaMantia or anyone else as the shooter. And those who had been pointed to as being part of the dispute that night had either refused to cooperate or denied any knowledge about the killing in the park. That included Costello, who had refused to answer any questions after Mary Mestrovic identified him as being in the shooting car. And while later witnesses had placed LaMantia at the Throop party and as part of the fight on Halsted, this memo may have been the first indication of anyone signaling that LaMantia could be the shooter. Clearly, even police officers who had been canvassing the neighborhood and working the case had acted as if LaMantia was a new name to their ears.
The report continued with more tipsters suggesting Paul Ferraro had a car like the green one that kids in Boyce had seen. The officers noted the Ferraro family owned three cars, including a Buick, but suggested none of them was a match. On the next line, however, they wrote, “Information obtained also is that Ferraro just before the shooting bought a Chevrolet like the one wanted and the same colors and would … have no license,” apparently meaning it wouldn’t have been registered yet. Some witnesses in the park had told police it was possible the car they saw did not have a license plate.
The report ended with a note that information out of McGuane Park was that before the shooting and the trouble earlier in the night, boys from Boyce had driven by and taunted their rivals, including by shouting out a car window that Martha DiCaro was a whore.
“Martha’s boyfriend, main squeeze is a Rocky,” the officers wrote that they had learned. “Maybe Rocco LaMantia.”
As Sherlock worked his way through the last of the Gorman file, he came to realize it probably was not going to provide him with “the golden egg” he had hoped would be in there, a piece of paper with someone confessing to the killing or specifically pointing a finger at LaMantia or someone else.
What it was providing, however, was a road map of sorts. He could now see approximately what the officers who worked the case at the time had seen, and he could plan his next moves. He could tell that the detectives who had been closest to the investigation were taking it seriously. They had fairly quickly drawn a tight circle around those who were probably involved in some way, only to have their grip on the case loosened by their bosses, who appeared to have had their own motives for easing certain targets out of the police dragnet.
The efforts of the detectives included
steps common in that kind of investigation, such as having a composite sketch made of a possible shooter. To have it made though, they chose to bring in John Russell, one of the Hughes friends who had acknowledged not getting a great look at the passenger in the shooting car. But Russell had also told police that if he ever saw the shooter again, he might be able to identify him. That was good enough. But there was no record of the sketch being released to the media. Instead it appeared in a police newsletter in July 1976, showing a somewhat thin-faced White male with darker hair and defined eyebrows.
Unknown M/W, 20–25, olive complexion, short dark curly hair, clean shaven, armed with long barrel silver revolver, driving a 1970–73 light green 2 door Chevrolet with damage on right rear fender and roof. Wanted for the fatal shooting which occurred at Root St. & Lowe on 15 May 76. Reference R.D. X178274. Auth: Area 3 Homicide/Sex Section, CID.
Oddly, the description given was of a man years older than any teen police had been looking at in connection with the case, and clearly older than any of their leading suspects at the time. It also authoritatively stated the car in question would have dents, ostensibly from being hit by hurled bats, although witness accounts were not consistent on whether the car actually had been struck as it sped away from the shooting.
The detectives appeared to have done a good job chronicling their interviews with anyone who hadn’t blocked them by hiring a lawyer, such as LaMantia. Remaining interviews in the Gorman file included write-ups of their talks with the teen struck by the toy bat earlier in the night, and with Paul Ferraro, whose car was emerging as an investigative route Sherlock hoped to follow to find the truth about what had happened. Sherlock was interested in hearing how Ferraro had described his night at the time and how his car had been accounted for—or not. How had he explained his sudden exit to Indiana with the green Chevy, inside of an hour after Hughes had been shot?