Chicago MOb on trial "this is not the Sopranos" Assistant U.S. Attorney said

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If you're feeling a little ganster/mob withdrawl this might interest you....a real life Chicago mob on trial for several murders that happened many years ago....all fairly old men now too.

Reputed mob boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78, James Marcello, 65, Frank Calabrese Sr., 70, and Paul Schiro, 69, are accused in a racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders.... the fifth defendant, retired Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, 62, might not have killed anyone, but he protected the others, Scully said.

Chicago's biggest mob trial in years started Thursday with a prosecutor urging the jury to forget what they know about movie mobsters and see the aging defendants for who they are: men who "committed brutal crimes on behalf of the Chicago Outfit."

All five have pleaded not guilty.

Scully described Calabrese as a violent loan shark who strangled witnesses with a rope and cut their throats to make sure they were dead.
Defense attorney Joseph Lopez painted a different picture for the jury, though, describing Calabrese as a much-maligned, deeply religious man "who believes in peace" and loved his family.

He ripped into Calabrese's son, Frank Jr., who is expected to be a key witness for the government against his father.
"He's going to say, 'My father is a rotten S.O.B., my father never loved me' — none of this is true," Lopez said. He said the jurors would see letters between the father and son "expressing love for one another."
"You're going to hear that Frank did slap his son around on numerous occasions," Lopez said. But he said that was only because the youngster was robbing the neighbors of their jewelry and taking cocaine.

He said Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, also expected to be a key witness, once stole a rifle with a silencer from Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs, where it had been used to shoot birds that congregated on the scoreboard.

Scully described Marcello as one of the top leaders of the Chicago Outfit. He said Lombardo was the boss of the mob's Grand Avenue crew. Schiro was jailed five years ago for taking part in a jewel theft ring led by the Chicago police department's one-time chief of detectives, William Hanhardt.

Doyle, the retired Chicago police officer, also worked as a loan shark under Calabrese, according to federal prosecutors. He is the one defendant in the case not directly accused of murdering anyone. But Scully said that he aided and abetted the others in their work.
Scully was graphic in describing the killings, but it was Lopez who offered the juiciest details.


He recounted how FBI agents, acting on an informant's tip, tore up concrete in a parking lot near U.S. Cellular Field, home of the White Sox, looking for the last remains of murdered loan shark Michael Albergo. He said they found "thousands of bones" under the parking lot.
But DNA testing couldn't tie any of the bones to Albergo, Lopez said, repeatedly referring to the victim by his mob nickname of "Hambone."
 

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Great old pic of Joey "The Clown" Lombardo:

Jlombardo.jpg


GUILTY
 

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Is that really him? he's 78 now...he looks like a clown not a gangster....then again what does a gangster really look like?
 

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From the Chicago Sun-Times

Years of the Clown
JOEY LOMBARDO'S RUTHLESS RISE | Beloved family man, loyal friend -- or mobster?
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June 10, 2007
<!-- Article By Line --> BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter
<!-- Article's First Paragraph --> To neighbors, Joseph Lombardo was a beloved family man and respected boys baseball coach in his West Side neighborhood -- "more liked than the priest" in the community, according to one friend.
To the feds, Lombardo is the man who had a factory owner slain in front of the man's wife and 4-year-old son.
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At 78, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo is the oldest of a mostly geriatric bunch of mobsters in the Family Secrets case.
(AP/Chicago Police)
PHOTO GALLERY

Lombardo's rise
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<!-- Fact box starts here --> COMING MONDAY
In 1974, three killers gunned down businessman Daniel Seifert outside his Bensenville factory in front of his wife and 4-year-old son. Joey "the Clown" Lombardo is charged in connection with the murder. For the first time in more than 30 years, the Seifert family speaks at length on how the slaying shattered their lives.

To his friends, Lombardo would never turn his back on anyone in need. To investigators, he's the man who knows no loyalty, signing off on the murders of three close friends.
When he appears in federal court these days, for updates on the trial starting June 19 that could put him in prison until his dying days, he's the wisecracking senior citizen. At 78, he's the oldest of a mostly geriatric bunch of mobsters in what likely will be the last great Outfit trial in Chicago history -- the Family Secrets case.

The ruthless rise
He's "the Clown," known for his quick wit. When the cops stopped him once in the 1980s, after he fled a gambling raid, he had $12,000 in cash on him and a book filled with jokes. But the wisecracks, investigators say, only mask the brutality of one of the last of the old-time Chicago mobsters.
Interviews with people who have known and investigated Lombardo, as well as a review of thousands of pages of court records and law enforcement documents, reveal the story of the ruthless rise of Lombardo in the Chicago Outfit.
"He was vicious and a killer," said retired FBI Agent Jack O'Rourke. "He was their prime enforcer."
Lombardo has denied hurting anyone. Now behind bars at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, he declined an interview request.
In court in 1983, Lombardo said: "I never ordered a killing, I never OKd a killing, and I never killed a man in my life."
His attorney, Rick Halprin, says his client has never been a mob leader.
But investigators say Lombardo was a top mobster for years, thanks to his criminal versatility.
He allegedly went from busting heads and two-bit burglaries to orchestrating a bribe attempt of U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon. He was convicted in that case in the 1980s, as well as another one for skimming millions from Las Vegas casinos for the mob.
He allegedly controlled millions of dollars in Teamster pension funds through his friend, insurance magnate Allen Dorfman, and was responsible for getting the skim from Las Vegas casinos to Chicago mob bosses.
As a child, Lombardo never knew such wealth, growing up poor in Depression-era Chicago, one of 11 children, the son of a printer. A graduate of Wells High School, he worked as a paperboy, plucked chickens, shined shoes, loaded boxcars at Union Station for 69 cents an hour and handled room service at the Blackstone Hotel.
He was also quite the athlete, playing on wrestling, basketball, fencing and swimming teams and even taking square-dancing lessons. He found a passion for golf and caddied for top Chicago gangster Jackie Cerone. He was also quite the gin rummy cardshark.
But he didn't have to rely on cards for cash. His criminal work was apparently quite profitable, authorities said. In recent years, while Lombardo pleads poverty, his family trust benefitting his ex-wife, son and daughter has sold real estate for millions. Authorities believe the trust was set up to keep the feds from seizing assets.
Lombardo's success was punctuated by violence. He has been a suspect in numerous murders but never convicted. What's more, authorities say, he had control over the most allegedly vicious hit man around, Frank "The German" Schweihs. Schweihs is charged in the Family Secrets case with Lombardo. Schweihs would talk about doing an Outfit killing like he was taking out the garbage, court records show.

The Clown
Even before Lombardo was a somebody in the Chicago Outfit, he was "the Clown." It was 1964, and Lombardo was on trial in Chicago with other alleged loan sharks for beating a man who owed the mob money.
The case was making headlines, and so was Lombardo. When police took his mug shot, he opened his mouth into a cavernous yawn to stop the cops from getting a good photo of him.
Even then, Lombardo -- then going by a variation of his birth name, Joseph Lombardi -- was referred to in the press as the Clown.
The other notable twist: Lombardo was innocent of the charge.
But he was part of a clever plot to scotch the case, authorities said.
When police rounded up the loan sharks, they arrested the wrong Joseph Lombardi. At the time, two Chicago gangsters had that name and looked similar. Defense attorneys for the men realized the error but kept silent to spring a trap on prosecutors, authorities said.
It worked. When the victim took the stand, he could identify all the defendants as his attackers, all except the Clown.

Let the clowning begin
"Talk about having your jaw drop and your case collapse," said attorney Louis B. Garippo, who prosecuted the case. Lombardo walked out a free man. His fellow mobsters walked too, after a jury acquitted them.
Lombardo's antics would be only his first of many public displays.
After he was arrested in 1980 for leading police on a chase, he left the courthouse one day, past the press corps, hidden behind a newspaper with a peephole cut out for his eyes. He was tripped up, though, as he went through the revolving door.
When Lombardo got out of prison in 1992, the FBI in Chicago began getting strange phone calls from a man identifying himself as Long John Silver. The caller would let agents know when he was going to call through newspaper ads.
The caller provided good info about the Outfit's hierarchy but was anxious to steer agents away from one person -- Lombardo's son, Joseph Jr., whom agents were investigating but never charged.
Agents traced the calls as coming from pay phones near Lombardo's home, sources said.
The phone calls never amounted to much, and the agents never proved they were coming from Lombardo. But there was a tantalizing clue.
Flip the initials for Long John: you get J and L. Short for Joseph Lombardo? Lombardo could pull that stunt, agents figured.

On the move
To get into the Chicago Outfit as a made member -- to have the full rights of membership -- a candidate must murder for the mob. Lombardo's qualifying kill was allegedly the 1965 hit of mob associate and hotel owner Manny Skar, according to court records. Lombardo allegedly shadowed Skar for two days before Skar was killed as he exited his car to enter his apartment on Lake Shore Drive.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Lombardo was on the move, wearing multiple hats for the Outfit and allegedly signing off on the murders of three close friends.
The first was in 1974 -- the slaying of businessman Daniel Seifert. Seifert ran a fiberglass business in the suburbs and was an unwitting front for Lombardo. Lombardo and Seifert were so close that Lombardo baby-sat Seifert's kids.
But when the feds came calling and Seifert decided to cooperate, Lombardo decided his friend had to go, authorities charge. On Sept. 27, 1974, Seifert was gunned down outside his Bensenville factory as his wife and 4-year-old son watched. With Seifert dead, the charges against Lombardo evaporated. Lombardo is charged in connection with Seifert's murder in the Family Secrets case along with racketeering.
The next to go was insurance magnate Allen Dorfman, who went on Hawaii golf vacations with Lombardo. Lombardo was close to Dorfman, a clout-heavy insurance broker. Lombardo and Dorfman allegedly schemed to control the Teamsters' pension funds, which loaned millions to build Vegas casinos.
Lombardo would allegedly muscle people for Dorfman.
In one conversation, secretly tape-recorded by the feds, Lombardo spoke to mob lawyer and casino investor Morris Schenker, who wasn't coming up with the money Dorfman believed Schenker owed the Outfit.
"Now, it's getting to the point now where you either s - - - or get off the pot," Lombardo said to Schenker, who was 72 at the time of the 1979 conversation.
"If they come back and tell me to give you a message and if you want to defy it, I assure you that you will never reach 73," Lombardo said.
Schenker died of natural causes. Dorfman did not, getting gunned down in 1983 in Lincolnwood after Outfit leaders worried he'd turn stool pigeon.
Three years later, another Lombardo friend, mob killer Anthony Spilotro, was beaten to death along with his brother, Michael. Lombardo allegedly oversaw Spilotro, who was the Outfit's man in Las Vegas. The Spilotros and Lombardo were close. Their families came over on the same boat from Italy.
In the end, though, Anthony Spilotro had to die, Outfit leaders decided. He was causing too much heat in Vegas, including taking out a contract on an FBI agent.
The Spilotro brothers were lured to a Bensenville area home on the ruse they were getting promotions. Instead, when they went down to the basement, several mobsters surrounded them and beat them to death. They were buried in an Indiana cornfield.
In recent years, Lombardo has kept a low profile. He has been seen hanging out more at the Italian restaurant La Scarola than with other mobsters.
His defense -- unique but possibly workable -- is that he has moved away from the mob life.
In short, he's retired.
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Im very close to this case and it started this morning and should last up to 12 weeks, its one of the biggest court cases in the city of Chicago, ever! It will be very interesting to see how it turns out...

The jury was finally settled on last night and on Tuesday a hoax bomb was found at the house of the brother of one of the defendents whose son, ironically has to testify against his father.

Something else that i thought was funny and im sorry if it was posted above(i didnt read the above post) but Joey the clown took out a full page ad in the Tribune a long time ago informing the city of Chicago he is retireing from the mob.
 

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I really wish Court TV was covering this one live.

That is an interesting twist, the son testifying against the father.

I was reading that in NYC there's an unwritten rule among the mobs that there will be no more murders....things have been pretty quiet since the early 90's.
 

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