Mistress humiliates Marcello
DOUBLE-CROSS | She made him think she'd kept mum, but she talked to grand jury

August 3, 2007
BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter/swarmbir@suntimes.com
For more than 20 years, reputed Chicago mob boss James Marcello gave his mistress thousands of dollars a month, making sure she got the cash even when he was in prison.

He put her and her two children up in a lovely suburban home.

He took care of the $15,000 gambling debt she ran up in one month.

The mistress, Connie Marcello, a former bartender at a Cicero strip club, publicly humiliated Marcello by revealing she conned him into believing she had told a grand jury nothing in March 2005. For more than two years after that, she got up to $5,000 a month from Marcello, even though she had secretly spilled the beans.

The reputed mob boss told her to say she got the monthly cash from her mother, if she was ever asked.

But the mistress told the truth to the grand jury when she faced jail if she didn't talk.

Connie Marcello was tending bar at the Cicero club when she met Marcello in the mid-1980s. They never married, but she legally changed her last name to his. She said that she, her son and daughter would act like "a normal family" when James Marcello visited them.

Connie Marcello originally refused to testify when she was called before a grand jury in February 2005.

"It was always understood not to say anything," Connie Marcello said.

But a month later, prosecutors granted her immunity and she faced testifying or going to jail.

James Marcello paid for her attorney but did not balk at her going to jail, the mistress said.

"He just always believed that I could go to jail for the length of the trial, and it would be over," Connie Marcello said.

In earlier testimony Thursday, James Marcello was linked to the brutal beating murders of the Spilotro brothers in 1986.

Jurors already have heard from Outfit killer Nicholas Calabrese, who told them James Marcello drove him and two other mob killers to a home in the Bensenville area to wait for Anthony and Michael Spilotro to arrive.

The brothers believed they were attending a ceremony to mark their promotions in the mob.

In fact, they were attending their executions. A dozen or so mob killers jumped the brothers as they came down into the basement and beat them to death, according to previous trial testimony.

Michael Spilotro's daughter, Michelle, identified Marcello's voice as the man who called her home asking to speak to her father the day he went to that fateful meeting from which he never returned, according to testimony from her and a former FBI agent.

Michael Spilotro's widow, Ann, testified how she reached out to James Marcello for help after she believed she got ripped off after selling her restaurant to state Sen. James DeLeo (D-Chicago) and attorney James Banks, the nephew of 36th Ward Ald. William Banks.

Ann Spilotro never said if she got the help. DeLeo on Thursday expressed amazement at her complaint. DeLeo said he and James Banks converted the place into a pizza parlor that failed.

"This is the first time I've ever heard of it," DeLeo said. "All of a sudden, 23 years later, I'm hearing she was treated unfairly? It's amazing."


Contributing: Chris Fusco