It was a rumor that was proven false in the family secrets trial that they didn't have a formal ceremony. They did.

Frank Calabrese was on tape talking about it...and I think his brother that turned rat talked about it on the stand also.

In one of the first undercover tapes played at the Family Secrets trial, a speaker identified as reputed mob boss Frank Calabrese Sr. recounted for his son the ceremony at which Outfit members become "made."

The underboss, the Outfit's second-in-command, and capos, who led the street crews, initiated new members one by one, cutting their fingers and then burning a holy picture in their hands, the elder Calabrese said in the 1999 conversation. The bosses checked out if anyone flinched in pain, according to the tape played Monday in court. Candidates had to have a murder under their belt. "You know what I regret more than anything?" said Calabrese, accused by prosecutors in 13 gangland slayings. "Burning the holy pictures in my hand. That bothers me."

In his first full day on the witness stand, Calabrese's son, Frank Jr., who identified his father on the tape, testified about murder and intimidation as his father glowered at him from under furrowed brows, his chin jutting forward in defiance at times and amusement at other times.

In an undercover tape played in court Monday, the elder Calabrese expressed some regrets at being made a full-fledged member of the Outfit in the secret ceremony years earlier. On the tape, the elder Calabrese said he told his sponsor, Angelo LaPietra, boss of the 26th Street crew in the early to mid-1980s, that "I didn't want it."

"I would be strapped down and if I wanted to do something else, I couldn't," Calabrese was heard on the tape telling his son.



The elder Calabrese told his son that to qualify, a made member had to have committed at least one murder, though the initiation could take place years later, the son said.

But the elder Calabrese gave plaudits to Mario Puzo, author of the "Godfather," saying the book's depiction of the making ceremony was "very close" to the real thing, his son said.