Frank Calabrese Sr. ran a street crew of the Chicago Outfit that made its money from loan-sharking, extortion and illegal gambling and that also acted as the organization's enforcement arm. On September 10, 2007, a federal jury in Chicago convicted him of racketeering conspiracy. On September 27 the same jury found him responsible for seven murders committed between 1970 and 1986. He was one of five men tried together before U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel. On January 28, 2009, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, and in May 2012 the Seventh Circuit upheld the convictions and sentences. Calabrese died on December 25, 2012, in North Carolina, at the age of 75.
The case against him was assembled largely from inside his own family. A son, then serving a sentence alongside him, wrote to the FBI and recorded his father's conversations. His brother, a co-defendant who became a government witness, later gave the jury an account of the crew's killings. Calabrese was never charged with murder as a separate count. The murders reached the jury through the racketeering conspiracy charge, which is why the verdicts came in two stages, two and a half weeks apart.
Calabrese was born on March 17, 1937. His organization was formally the Calabrese street crew, also known as the South Side or 26th Street crew, and it was commonly called the Chinatown crew. The 1995 indictment dated its racketeering from 1978. By 2007 the Chicago Outfit had operated in the city for more than four decades and was organized into crews, each assigned to a territory. Calabrese's crew lived on loan-sharking, collecting what it called a "street tax" from businesses, and running illegal gambling, and it also served as the Outfit's enforcement arm.
A federal prosecutor later described him at the 2007 trial as a man who decided who would die and who never cooperated or atoned.
Federal prosecutors first moved against the crew as a loan-sharking operation. In 1995 a grand jury in Chicago indicted Calabrese and six others on a racketeering conspiracy running through the Calabrese street crew from 1978 to 1992. He pleaded guilty in 1997, was sentenced to 118 months and did not appeal. The sentencing judge was James Holderman.
That conviction mattered again a decade later. When Calabrese was indicted for the murders, his lawyers argued that the new case was a second prosecution for the same conspiracy and so violated the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. The Seventh Circuit rejected that argument twice, once before the trial and once after it.
In 1998 a son of Calabrese, who was then in prison with his father, wrote to the FBI's Chicago office and offered to help gather evidence against him. The son agreed to wear a recording device. Over more than two years the conversations he taped captured Calabrese discussing killings. The recordings included Calabrese talking about three murders, and agents later obtained court permission to record his other conversations with visitors.
The evidence tied Calabrese to the September 1986 murder of John Fecarotta. In 2002 his brother, a co-defendant who became a government witness, agreed to cooperate. He gave investigators details of 18 murders that had never been solved, and agents checked what he said against thousands of old documents: police reports, financial statements, property records and gambling receipts. The FBI's own account puts the length of the investigation at seven years and the number of agents on it at seven.
In April 2005 a federal grand jury in Chicago returned a 43-page indictment naming 14 defendants. It charged a racketeering conspiracy in which the Outfit itself was the enterprise, with 18 murders among the racketeering acts, together with extortion, loan-sharking, illegal gambling and obstruction of justice. The killings it covered ran from August 1970 to September 1986. The conspiracy charge was brought under section 1962(d) of Title 18 of the United States Code, and the indictment was later superseded.
Before trial, two of the defendants died, one was found too ill to stand trial and six pleaded guilty. Five went to trial: Calabrese, James Marcello, Joseph Lombardo, Paul Schiro and Anthony Doyle, a retired Chicago police officer who was not accused of taking part in any killing.
The jury's findings on Calabrese cover seven murders involving eight victims, in the order of their dates.
Michael Albergo died in August 1970. It is the oldest killing in the indictment, and prosecutors told the jury that Calabrese and others were responsible.
William Dauber and his wife, Charlotte, died on July 2, 1980, in Will County. In rebuttal at the trial, a prosecutor told the jury that a recording had captured Calabrese discussing the Daubers' killings.
Michael Cagnoni died on June 24, 1981. His former wife said after the verdicts that it had taken 26 years to solve the case and that the FBI and prosecutors had never let it die. Prosecutors told the jury that Calabrese was responsible, and a widow of Cagnoni spoke at the 2009 sentencing.
Richard Ortiz died in Cicero on July 23, 1983, and Arthur Morawski died there the same day. The jury found Calabrese responsible for both deaths. A brother of Richard Ortiz was among the relatives who attended the 2009 sentencing.
John Fecarotta died in Chicago on September 14, 1986. It was the last of the killings charged in the indictment, and the murder that the recorded conversations had first linked to Calabrese.
Six more murders had been attributed to Calabrese by prosecutors. On those the jury did not return verdicts.
Jury selection began in mid-June 2007 before Judge Zagel, and the jurors were granted anonymity because of fears of reprisals. The trial lasted about ten weeks and ended with the close of the evidence on August 30. The government called more than 125 witnesses and offered more than 200 exhibits. Mitchell Mars was among the prosecutors who addressed the jury, and Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk was a leading member of the team.
In their opening statements, defense lawyers attacked the credibility of the government's family witnesses. Calabrese's son helped the FBI record the conversations and explained the recordings to the jurors. His brother linked every defendant except Doyle to a murder scene. Calabrese himself testified. He denied that he had taken the oath of a "made" member of the Outfit.
Near the end of the trial, during the prosecution's rebuttal argument, Calabrese shouted "Dem are lies!" Marshals moved toward him; the prosecutor went on, and the judge did not interrupt. A juror, the foreman, later told the judge that he had heard Calabrese threaten Funk. Calabrese's lawyer, Joseph Lopez, said his client denied making the threat. Funk said he took it seriously and was placed under armed guard by deputy U.S. marshals for several weeks.
The jury began deliberating at the end of August. On Monday, September 10, 2007, it found all five defendants guilty on all counts. Calabrese was convicted of racketeering conspiracy, of the extortion of a pizza restaurant by demanding a street tax, and of running an illegal bookmaking business. The jurors then moved on to a second question: which murders, if any, each convicted man had committed as part of the conspiracy. A finding of murder would raise the maximum sentence to life.
On September 27 the jury announced its findings after deliberating for eight days. Calabrese was found responsible for seven murders; on six others the jurors did not return verdicts. Marcello was found responsible for two murders, those of Anthony Spilotro and Michael Spilotro on June 14, 1986, and Lombardo for one, that of Daniel Seifert in 1974. The jury did not return a finding on the murder of Emil Vaci in Phoenix for Schiro. Doyle faced no murder question. The jury had thus tied Calabrese, Marcello and Lombardo to ten murders between them, and the three men became eligible for life terms.
Judge Zagel sentenced Schiro on January 26, 2009, to 20 years in prison. Two days later, on January 28, he sentenced Calabrese, then 71, to life in prison. The judge also imposed terms of 240 months and 60 months on other counts. Calabrese asked for leniency and told the court he was "not a big shot." "All I want is justice," he said.
Zagel called the crimes "unspeakable" and said that Calabrese's laughter during testimony showed "callousness." Relatives of the dead addressed the court. A widow of Cagnoni spoke, and another son of Calabrese made a statement disowning his father; Calabrese interrupted and argued with him.
Marcello and Lombardo were also sentenced to life in prison and Doyle to 12 years. On April 6, 2009, Zagel ordered Calabrese, Lombardo, Marcello and Schiro to pay more than $24 million, made up of $20.2 million in forfeiture and $4.4 million in restitution to the families of the dead. Doyle was assigned one percent of the restitution.
Calabrese's appeal was heard together with those of the other four defendants. His lawyers raised the double jeopardy argument based on the 1997 plea. All five defendants complained about the way Judge Zagel had dealt with the jury, including entering the jury room and dismissing a juror without first telling defense counsel, and about the effect of trying the five men together. Calabrese's own conduct in court, including his outbursts, was cited as a reason the joint trial had been unfair.
The Seventh Circuit, in a panel of Judges Posner, Wood and Sykes, heard argument in February 2012. On May 1, 2012, it affirmed the convictions and the sentences. Writing for the majority, Posner held that the Outfit was a different enterprise from the street crews of the earlier cases, remarking that "The outfit is more than the sum of the street crews." The court found one error: Doyle had joined the conspiracy in 1999, after all the murders, and should not have been assessed a share of the restitution. Wood dissented in part. She would have reversed the convictions of Calabrese and Marcello on double jeopardy grounds.
Calabrese died on Tuesday, December 25, 2012, in North Carolina, at the age of 75. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the death. In his last years he was held under special restrictions on his communications.
The structure of the trial explains why the verdicts came in two stages. The charge was a racketeering conspiracy under section 1962(d) of Title 18 of the United States Code, with murder, extortion, loan-sharking, illegal gambling and obstruction of justice among the alleged racketeering acts, and none of the defendants was charged with murder as a separate count. The jury first decided whether each man was guilty of the conspiracy. It then decided which murders each convicted man had committed within it, and a murder finding raised the maximum sentence to life.
The earlier prosecutions of the Outfit's street crews shaped the legal fight. The Seventh Circuit's 2007 opinion treated a conspiracy that ran the whole Outfit as different from conspiracies that ran single crews, so Calabrese's 1997 plea did not bar the new case, although it left open that overlapping acts could raise a double jeopardy problem if the 2007 trial had simply repeated the earlier evidence. Judge Wood's partial dissent took the opposite view, finding the Outfit and the crews effectively the same enterprise.
Calabrese denied that he had taken the oath of a "made" member of the Outfit. He testified at the trial, and his lawyers attacked the credibility of the family members who gave evidence against him.
On the threat to the prosecutor, a juror said he heard it, authorities treated it as serious, and Calabrese's lawyer said his client denied making it.
The jury did not return verdicts on six murders that prosecutors attributed to Calabrese, so no finding on them exists.
Judge Wood's partial dissent argued that the 2007 trial violated Calabrese's and Marcello's rights because it covered the same conspiracy as their earlier prosecutions. The majority rejected the argument.
March 17, 1937: Frank Calabrese Sr. is born.
August 1970: Michael Albergo dies, the earliest killing in the indictment.
July 2, 1980: William and Charlotte Dauber die in Will County.
June 24, 1981: Michael Cagnoni dies.
July 23, 1983: Richard Ortiz and Arthur Morawski die in Cicero.
September 14, 1986: John Fecarotta dies in Chicago.
1995: Calabrese and six others are indicted on a loan-sharking racketeering conspiracy.
1997: He pleads guilty and receives 118 months.
1998: A son writes to the FBI's Chicago office.
2002: His brother agrees to cooperate.
April 2005: A federal grand jury returns a 43-page indictment against 14 defendants.
June 12, 2007: The Seventh Circuit rejects a pre-trial double jeopardy motion.
June to August 2007: The trial of five defendants is held in Chicago.
September 10, 2007: Guilty verdicts on racketeering conspiracy, extortion and illegal bookmaking.
September 27, 2007: The jury finds him responsible for seven murders.
January 28, 2009: Sentenced to life in prison.
April 6, 2009: Forfeiture and restitution ordered.
May 1, 2012: The Seventh Circuit affirms the convictions and sentences.
December 25, 2012: Calabrese dies in North Carolina.