CHICAGO: As both a gun dealer and an undertaker, Ernie Severino was positioned to serve the Chicago mob in various ways.

The soft-spoken 60-year-old testified Thursday in the trial of five reputed mobsters that he supplied his friend, William "Butchie" Petrocelli, the leader of a gang called "The Wild Bunch," with up to 100 guns for free. He was hazier about what happened when Petrocelli asked about using his funeral parlor's crematorium.

Then, just after Christmas in 1980, Petrocelli vanished. Some of the toughest men in the Chicago underworld came to Severino, telling him to turn over bank documents and other items he kept for Petrocelli. He was reluctant, afraid Petrocelli would come back for revenge.

"No, he's not coming back," Severino said Gerry Scarpelli told him.

Scarpelli went on to say that mob bosses told him he was taking over Petrocelli's gang, Severino said, and the bosses told Scarpelli: "You can go in the next room and take care of the garbage if you want to."

Calabrese's brother, Nicholas Calabrese, the government's star witness, testified earlier that mob bosses turned against Petrocelli because he was too flamboyant. Nicholas Calabrese became a government witness in 2002 after his DNA was found on a bloody glove left at the scene of another mob murder.

The underworld bosses resented the glittering Christmas party Petrocelli threw at a Gold Coast hotel and his boasting that some day he would be the boss of the Chicago Outfit, as the city's mob family calls itself, Nicholas Calabrese said.

Severino said that when the mobsters asked him where Petrocelli's money and other possessions were stored, he told them everything.

"They don't ask unless they already know the answer," he said.

In testimony about another killing, retired security consultant Fred Pavlich said Thursday that the head of a cooperative association specializing in shipping fruits and vegetables was delivering cash to mob figures before he was killed by a car bomb.

Pavlich said he accompanied Michael Cagnoni when he delivered cash to Cicero-based Flash Trucking, which made most of his local deliveries.

Pavlich said he resigned as head of security for the shipping cooperative the day after he received a threatening phone call that persuaded him it was time for him to step aside. The caller did not mention Cagnoni, but weeks later, Cagnoni died when the bomb erupted under the seat of his Mercedes on June 24, 1981.

Prosecutors say Frank Calabrese was responsible for the Cagnoni murder. On the stand, Nicholas Calabrese described how the bomb was planted in Cagnoni's car and detonated by an automatic radio-controlled device.

Calabrese attorney Joseph Lopez asked Pavlich if Cagnoni had been paying the money in hopes that it would head off labor union problems. Pavlich said he understood that was part of the reason.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/27/america/NA-GEN-US-Mafia-Trial.php