'I would send my blessing' to kill own brother: tape
IF OUTFIT FINDS RAT | Jurors hear Calabrese Sr. on recordings secretly made by son

July 11, 2007
BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter/swarmbir@suntimes.com
Reputed Outfit killer Frank Calabrese Sr. was stewing in federal prison, obsessed with figuring out who the rat was in his mob crew and how to stomp him out.

Even if it was his brother, Nick Calabrese.

"I don't wanna see nothing happen to him," Frank Calabrese Sr. said in a secretly recorded conversation he had with his son, Frank Jr., while they were in prison in March 1999. "But let me tell you something, if somebody feels it's, it's either them or him, he's gone."

Brother cooperating with feds
Frank Calabrese Jr. is testifying against his father, who sits only yards away in the large, ceremonial courtroom from his son. Calabrese Sr. often wore a smirk or a scowl during his son's early testimony, but now his eyes are riveted to the transcripts of the secret recordings, occasionally looking up to comment to his attorney. The son isn't facing charges in the Family Secrets case but is testifying against his father in hopes of sending him to prison for good. He recorded his father by wearing a special set of earphones rigged with a microphone by the FBI.
And in the coming weeks, Nick Calabrese will make his brother's nightmare a reality by taking the stand against him and another reputed top mobster, James "Little Jimmy" Marcello. Nick Calabrese started cooperating with the feds after DNA tied him to a 1986 mob hit. He has admitted killing at least 14 people in his guilty plea.

In one taped conversation played Tuesday, Calabrese Sr. told his son he didn't even want fellow mobsters to ask his permission to kill his brother. If something was required from Calabrese Sr., "I would send my blessing," he said.


Says Aiuppa ordered Spilotro hit
In the taped conversations played for the jurors Tuesday, Frank Calabrese Sr. talks about murders he allegedly committed and other Outfit murders he knew about and offers advice.
Calabrese Jr. got his paranoid father to talk about the murders by pitting his father against his uncle.

Calabrese Jr. told his father that his Uncle Nick once told him that his father killed an innocent woman who was slain with her husband, a mob enforcer, in 1980.

Calabrese Sr. shot back to his son that his uncle was involved in killing "an innocent Polish guy" when he and another Outfit killer gunned down two men -- one on the Outfit hit list, the other a bystander -- outside a Cicero bar.

Calabrese Sr. also told his son that then-top Chicago mob boss Joseph Aiuppa ordered the murder of the mob's top man in Las Vegas, Anthony Spilotro.

One of Spilotro's sins: sleeping with the wife of a mob associate.

When Aiuppa "found out that he was f - - - - - - that guy's wife. That is a no-no. That is a no-no," Calabrese Sr. said.

A "nail went in the coffin," Calabrese Sr. said.