Ex-cop calls mob suspect's code 'mumbo jumbo'
By Jeff Coen | Tribune staff reporter
1:48 PM CDT, August 23, 2007

In a second day on the witness stand at the Family Secrets trial, former Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle continued to deny that he had any clue what reputed mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. was talking about when the two were secretly recorded conferring at a federal prison in 1999.

Doyle said he and Michael Ricci, another former police officer charged in the case, visited Calabrese just to be nice to an old friend. When Calabrese talked in code, Doyle said he became "totally lost."

He said he didn't want to be rude and interrupt Calabrese.

"Basically, out of respect, I didn't want to come out and say, 'Speak to me. What are you talking about — English,' " Doyle testified, calling what Calabrese said "mumbo jumbo."

Prosecutors contend Doyle was passing information about evidence that turned out to be a bloody glove left at the scene of the 1986 murder of mobster John Fecarotta. Chicago Outfit leaders were allegedly worried that the evidence, along with the testimony of an informant, could be harmful.

Prosecutors contend Doyle, who worked in a police evidence area in 1999, looked up the information on the item and passed it to Calabrese. DNA on the glove eventually was found to match Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, who testified against his brother in the trial's highlight last month. The government contends that Doyle and Frank Calabrese Sr. talked in code about whether Nicholas Calabrese might be helping the FBI. Instead of referring to his "brother," prosecutors argue, Calabrese used "sister."

"Ah, but somebody, somebody has to watch, because if not that one sister can hurt the whole family," Frank Calabrese Sr. can be heard to say in the February 1999 tape. "The sister should be watched real strong."

Doyle denied agreeing to help Calabrese, telling jurors he was a police officer and not a "messenger boy."

In his questioning of his client, attorney Ralph Meczyk led Doyle to a section of the transcript when Calabrese had left Ricci and Doyle in a visiting room.

"I have to ask you a few things when we get out of this place as to who is who that he's talking about," Doyle told Ricci.

Ricci died before the trial began.

As the morning session drew to a close, Meczyk told Doyle that he would be cross-examined Thursday afternoon by Assistant U.S. Atty. Markus Funk, calling Funk a fine interrogator.

"Good luck," Meczyk said.

jcoen@tribune.com