Nearly US$730,000 in cash, about 1,000 pieces of jewelry and loaded handguns found hidden alongside recording devices in a mobster’s suburban home show there are still plenty of mysteries to unravel about the notorious Chicago Outfit.
The discovery in a secret compartment behind a family portrait in Frank Calabrese Sr’s home — a year after the massive Operation Family Secrets trial sent Calabrese and several others to prison — may trigger a fresh look at everything from unsolved shootings to a jewel theft ring once run by the former Chicago Police chief of detectives.
“I would say it’s a treasure trove, really,” said James Wagner, one-time head of the FBI’s organized crime unit in Chicago and the Chicago Crime Commission.
FBI spokesman Ross Ross would not comment extensively on the investigation or search of Calabrese’s home in Oak Brook, which was revealed in documents filed on Wednesday in US District Court. But he said investigators would run ballistics tests on the weapons and attempt to trace the jewelry and track down owners.
Calabrese, 71, was one of several reputed mobsters convicted last year in a racketeering conspiracy that included 18 decades-old murders. He was blamed for 13, sentenced to life in prison and was one of four defendants ordered to pay more than US$24 million, including millions in restitution to the families of murder victims.
Tuesday’s search was tied to that order.
But the discovery could mean learning even more about the inner workings of the Chicago Outfit.
Wagner said investigators would try to determine ownership of the seven loaded guns by tracking serial numbers and testing for ballistics matches on homicides and shootings nationwide.
As for the jewelry, some pieces still in display boxes or bearing store tags, Wagner suggested several likely investigative avenues.
The first could be the Outfit-connected jewelry-heist ring run by William Hanhardt, the former Chicago Police chief of detectives.
Hanhardt is in prison after pleading guilty to leading a band of thieves that stole US$5 million in jewelry and fine watches in the 1980s and 1990s. One of Calabrese’s co-defendants, Paul Schiro, was sentenced to prison in 2002 for being part of Hanhardt’s ring. And a witness at the Family Secrets trial testified that Hanhardt collected US$1,000 a week and a new car every two years in return for making sure mobsters were not caught.
Wagner also said that before the murdered body of Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro was found buried in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield, he was not only the Chicago mob’s man in Las Vegas but also operated a jewelry store there. At the time of his death, he was under investigation for a number of jewelry thefts, Wagner said.
Investigators may try to determine if any jewelry from those thefts found their way to Calabrese’s home, Wagner said. But he added that tracing the diamonds, particularly the loose ones, was a long shot.
“I’m not aware of any ability to trace those,” he said.
Still, the newly found recording devices — suction cups used to “tap” into telephone conversations and several microcassettes — could prove particularly intriguing. One had the name of a convicted Outfit member written on it.
“This could be important evidence for them, evidence against other people involved in some of the same activities” as Calabrese and the others who were convicted last year, former assistant US attorney Joel Levin said.
The tapes could contain the kind of code words that came out during the Family Secret trial, Wagner said.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
RSS