In the old days there were standards in the Chicago underworld and honour among mobsters. While there might even have been outright war between capos and their crew, the city’s crime families could still count on one thing: the Code of Silence.
But on Tuesday investigators were celebrating what was being called the most devastating strike against Chicago’s criminal underworld since the days of Al Capone, following a series of betrayals which, they believe, will help scupper the underworld’s business.
Twelve reputed crime figures and two city policemen were indicted on Monday, accused of illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder in a racketeering conspiracy that implicates virtually all of Chicago’s underworld.
Thomas Kirkpatrick, president of the Chicago crime commission, said: ”The truth is, for personal revenge or to save their own skin in today’s world, they are willing to rat out anybody — the code of silence is on its last legs.”
He added: ”Maybe it’s just part of the ‘me generation’.”
However, two reputed mob members, Joseph ”the Clown” Lombardo and Frank ”the German” Schweihs, were still being sought on Tuesday night.
Since 1919, when the crime commission was established, there have been 1 111 gangland slayings in Chicago, but only 14 of those crimes have ever been solved.
Monday’s indictments promise resolution for as many as 18 killings, and the jailing of reputed crime bosses who believed themselves above the law, Kirkpatrick said. ”It includes people who were considered almost legendary crime figures in Chicago and untouchable over the years.”
From 1970 to 1986 there was a string of murders as criminal empires grew rapidly. The 41-page indictment reads like a primer on crime, with details on loan sharking and ruses used to avoid police detection.
The first breakthrough came five years ago when Frank Calabrese Jr cooperated with the law against his father, Frank Calabrese Sr, head of one of Chicago’s crime families, and his hitman uncle Nicholas Calabrese. Confronted by DNA evidence, Nicholas also gave up family secrets.
Investigators believe these leads let them assemble their most devastating blow against the ”Chicago Outfit” to date, and could put a third of the crime families out of action.
The investigation also promises a solution to such legendary murders as that of Anthony ”the Ant” Spilotro, the chief executioner for the mob’s west coast branch, based in Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1980s. He disappeared in 1986 and his mutilated body turned up in a grave in an Indiana cornfield. Joe Pesci played a hitman modelled on Spilotro in the 1995 movie Casino.
The real life endings of some of the crime figures arrested on Tuesday were less colourful. Several suspects are in their seventies; when they appeared in court several told US district judge James Zagel they were on medication. James Marcello (63) reputedly the capo di tutti capi of the Chicago mafia, told the court he had sinus troubles. Michael Ricci, a policeman accused of collecting protection cash for the mob, was in a wheelchair.
Another feared figure, hitman Frank ”Gumba” Saladino (59) had been dead for several hours by the time police arrived to arrest him. He spent his last months shut in at a $40-a-night motel, surviving on takeaway pizzas. Police found $100 000 by his body. – Guardian Unlimited Â