Anthony Calabrese Wire/Chiaramonte Hit/Outfit

Since (supposedly) new info/theories on the Chiaramonte hit is being discussed on ANP in the comments section I thought I'd post the link to the wire an anonymous guy wore on Anthony Calabrese and Robert Cooper. Cooper was ultimately convicted of the murder. Calabrese is doing what amounts to life on something else and the feds never charged him. The CW is that Cooper was the driver and Calabrese the shooter.

Of course Fosco is now saying something different.

Unfortunately the link the Sun Times had to the actual transcript is gone, so this is the best I can find.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&id=5956633

Here is where anyone would be very skeptical of Fosco. He markets Magnafichi to his readers as a reformed or retired made member of the Outfit to build his audience, only to reframe him as an "alleged" suspect in a very high profile, unsolved "gangland" murder the moment they have a beef. It undermines the credibility of any legit information he releases through his blog.

We all know the story of the Chiaramonti and who was apparently involved in his murder, but I think it would be very interesting to know what Jimmy Marcello thought of his guy, the Hatch, at the time of the murder. Jim was in prison (pre-Family Secrets) at the time of the shooting, and he would be out in a couple years. Mick was representing his brother on the outside at the time. Supposedly there is surveillance footage of Jim complaining to his brother about the way in which Hatch's murder was carried out, but he was not really upset by the fact that it had happened. I find that very interesting.

Fosco's site kinda stirs things up and keeps a conversation going, but like with virtually anywhere on the Internet, you have to really just look at all of the information like it is, possibly, providing some kind of context, or one particular person's ideas about something. (Who may or may not have an agenda.) In terms of actually concretely believing everything you read on it, or most other places, it's probably not much more valuable than the guy at the end of the bar talking about his ideas about life on other planets.

Hey Johnny. I was listening to one of the sessions with Magnafichi and he said something to the effect that, "no one would criticize John in my presence." I had to refresh my memory and look at the relationship bet. Magnafichi and Cerone. It looks like he was a driver for Cerone? Don't know much more about their working together, etc. But I did find it interesting that Mr.Fosco didn't take the opportunity to express his dislike for Cerone. As a matter of fact, he (Fosco) was kinda, sorta, bragging on Cerone. Two different situations, two different positions or attitudes at different times. Odd.

Was I right in assuming that Mr. Fosco did not / does not like Cerone sr.? I believe he has also expressed a dislike for Cerone's son, who is an attorney. Maybe it depends on the day you ask him ? Who knows.

Could be "the man at the end of the bar " is a good analogy.

You are right. It seems pretty easy to instigate a debate over at American News Post. From what I read, there is a range of credibility among those who post comments. The best posters are the ones who simply ask direct questions rather than make their own claims or assert street knowledge. For example, Fosco knows little about the Chinatown crew (or at least is not forthcoming about what he does know), and for a few years, there was at least one idiot (Black Angelo) who dragged ANP way down by making all these fantastic obviously false claims like Toots Caruso bringing in his sleepers from the Five Families of New York to carry out hits throughout Bridgeport. Pure stupidity, obviously. Fosco ignored it but comments like that would attract credulous people, and these weird tangents developed in the comments. 80% of those threads are garbage. The most unsolicited information comes from Fosco when he has been provoked or attacked in some way, off the blog. He can be good to talk to in-person and (to a lesser extent) through email.

Joe also knows certain things, or has overheard certain things, that he keeps private until someone who is connected to said "things" pisses him off. I recall that mongoloid Greg Tosto setting Joe off, and Fosco subsequently going off on Tosto's uncle Rocky Infelice in the comments section, trashing Rocky, calling him unarguably the undisputed worst boss in the history of the Outfit. Although he's not very far off the mark there (Infelice was not the brightest crayon), it was clearly meant to trash the the former boss's name within the southwestern suburban communities in which the Infelice family resides. Fosco knows that community members/family members follow his site closely, and pride is very sacred with these people.

Sure, he embellishes once in a while to stir things up, but a good deal of it is stuff that he keeps pent up until you wrong him. That's what makes him such a nuisance.

Regarding Mike Mags & the Hatch hit, who knows. Mike obviously wouldn't have been upset about it, as it got him out of a pretty terrifying bind. Of course he was probably briefed, but that's likely as far as it went.

And finally regarding the Marcellos' relationship with the Hatch, the hatch was a complete psychopath/loose cannon to begin with, and had been really crossing some lines/pissing people off within the organization around that particular time period. I recall Little Jimmy ordering Michael Marcello & Frank Schweihs to pay the Hatch a visit not long before his murder, trying to talk some sense into him, and it not going well at all.

I find it interesting, as one of you said awhile back, that he's very careful about what he answers regarding Cicero. That's if he answers at all.

He consistently plays dumb. A lot of it has to do with the fact that he doesn't know much at all. He was never directly connected with any of those people. No one from down there would ever give someone like Cerone esq or Joe fosco the time of day. He also wants absolutely nothing to do with crews like the Carusos, Inendinos, Cataudellas, etc. Those are the real Outfit guys, not people you want to be revealing thing about on the internet. Bobby Dominic/magnafichi aren't going to have heavies knocking down Joe's door anytime soon lol. And guys like cerone esq/daddono III aren't real gangsters. Johnny Bananas doesn't care, although Peter might, but those guys are more likely to sic lawyers & suits on Fosco before siccing Albie/Porky types on him. Elmwood park has been finished lol, can't even really call it the Chicago Outfit anymore.

Although Fosco does give this answer in response to the question, "How is Cicero making money?"

"Dirty book stores, bootleg gaming, juice loans, fencing, protection matters."

He then goes on to explain that the bookstores are actually brothels.

Yeah, as Huron said Fosco only trashes the guys like DiFronzo who are basically rich and retired now anyway and could care less about what he has to say. He hardly ever mentions any of the heavy crews in his columns.

Then Heavy D's answer to that was "wow really? Weak sauce". What kind of street rackets was he expecting? lol

I guess people still have the idea of the Outfit controlling casinos, unions, construction, big-time betting, etc.

Joe was obviously being conservative & vague. He knows what people are really after & he doesn't want to give it to them. And he shouldn't, he's in no position to. The southside people are big into drugs as well. I don't think people realize just how trashy the south/southwest suburbs, and white people that reside on the southside of Chicago, actually are. The Outfit will always have consistent business in those areas. You can bet they have large pieces of the Calumet boardwalk strip & the Indiana casinos as well. And of course prostitution has always been a Hallmark of the Cicero crew.

Almost all the Cicero made guys have legit businesses, whether it be trucking, construction companies, etc.

Horseshoe's owned by Caesars, which is a $3 billion international conglomerate.

Doubt they get a f**kin' dime.

Off topic. The original subject was more interesting.

When was the last big chicago bust ?

That will tell you what they are still into

Wasn't referring to the lake Michigan based river boat style casinos, those are all corporate owned. I was referring to a few of the smaller casinos scattered throughout central & southern Indy.

Yes, yes, and yes lol....Drive through Lyons and see how many trashy white people there are lol. They have moved into drugs as well there as no question about that. Fosco amuses me as well in that now that he is beefing with Magnafichi only NOW does he even MENTION Joey A AT ALL...I doubt he knows much about Cicero either but he is indeed careful with what he says about them....

@huronsocial

i'm sure after difronzo dies somebody in Elmwood park is gonna try to step up

and the strip in calumet city on stateline is all black nowadays

Wasn't referring to anything in Cal city.

I dunno man, the Italian population is just perishing up there. Quickly. Somebody probably will, but the recruitment pool will just continue to grow smaller, while the southwest suburban Italian American population will continue to expand. The breeding grounds are now Lombard, Westchester, Darien, Addison, even areas like oak lawn. It's very sad that the Patch & Elmwood are dead/dying, but that's the way it goes. They've been dying for over twenty years.

Since we are on the subject of recruiting pools, I did some number crunching out of sheer curiosity. This is entirely hypothetical on my part. Basically, I went to city-data.com, took the Italian population of a mob family's operating area, multiplied it by the male population's percentage, and then multiplied the resulting number by percentage of whites living below the poverty line. Not that poor = criminal, but just because it was the most readily available statistic. Here are the numbers I got:

1. Five Families (NYC): 36,195, or 7,239 per family
2. Philadelphia: 9,987
3. Patriarca (Boston and Providence): 5,744
4. The Outfit (Chicago): 4,942
5. DeCavalcante (NJ, I just used the cities which are included in the NYC metro-area: Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Edison, and Trenton): 3,360
6. Detroit Partnership: 1,165

I wish I could have found some consistent numbers as to the percentage of the white population found guilty of violent crimes, but as I said, I just went with the poverty numbers for convenience.

If you wanted too, you could use these numbers as justification for the next family to go "extinct". I may do some research on cities whose families are already defunct and see if the numbers are significantly lower than those listed above (they most certainly will be).

Just some nerdy food for thought.

The South Side people are big into drugs? The Calumet boardwalk strip? Indiana casinos? Do you have evidence for any of this?

Elmwood is not losing it's Italian feel at all, Huron. It's of course not how it was 30 years ago but it's the same for most other areas too. Still mainly Italian as well as the most Italian populated area in Illinois

I'm noticing that Chicago Outfit threads deteriorate into off-topic, splinter discussions much more rapidly than other discussions on this forum.

I'm not sure there is much to talk about re: Chiaramonte, though.

On one hand you have who the feds suspect, a confession and a wire.

On the other you have Joe Fosco who is now saying the guy he was best friends with a month ago was probably involved.

After a while some of this stuff is like talking about the JFK assassination--there are dozens of different accounts with dozens of reliable SOUNDING witnesses. You reach a point of "who the f##k knows?" pretty quickly.

One thing I do find interesting about the Calabrese case--why didn't the feds prosecute him?

There have been rumblings for years now about the feds building another large-scale RICO case against the Outfit. The popular cliche is that it will be the "sequel" to Family Secrets, encompassing current activity. Who knows? What I do know is that Outfit attorney Joe Lopez recently said, "the feds don't do anything before it's time," with regard to a question about organized crime in Chicago. My guess is that if the feds really do have something truly substantial on Anthony Calabrese, then they are going to try to parlay it into something bigger.

I would assume so as well. Though when that happens is anyone's guess. The Feds don't have unlimited resources and tend to spend the resources they do have on what the public is focused on--i.e. corrupt governors, gangs, etc. No one cares about the Outfit...I don't see them doing anything against them anytime soon.

Resources being sent from OC investigations to terror related investigations may also affect this.

John Kass right after Secrets wrote of a coming "tsunami" of indictments against the remaining guys but it never happened.

Some guy on ANP (for what it's worth, which is obviously very little ) was also saying "someone he knows" is predicting a big case against Cicero in 3-5 years.

I agree completely about Calabrese.

It's also interesting to note that they now have a fair amount of very high-up Chicago guys doing life or what amounts to life.

I'm sure they're working on something...

Evidence? Come on ivy, he's a tough guy from Chicago, what more do you need?

The feds may have greater priorities than organized crime in Chicago (or any major city these days), but I think they care a great deal about Hatch’s murder, along with Ronnie Jarrett’s shooting and Zizzo’s disappearance. Jarrett was under surveillance at the time of his shooting, and an FBI agent was on the scene before any first responders. The feds also care enough to keep tabs on Rudy and the likes of Paul Carparelli. The feds are clearly interested. There is going to be another big case, certainly. It will be interesting to see if it involves DiFronzo and Toots—two people whose names came up in open court during the Family Secrets trial but who avoided indictment. Also of interest to me (for personal reasons) will be the fate of Solly DeLaurentis and Jimmy Inendino.

You probably remember during Secrets it came out that the FBI has what they described as "two high-level informants."

Of course speculation has run wild.

Ivy has posted the exact number of agents working on the Outfit/OC in Chicago before... or if not the exact number, it was a very logical/probable conclusion based on statements the FBI has made.

Just thinking out loud, it would seem the Hatch's murder would be the easiest to get to the bottom to. Jarrett was dealing on the side and ostensibly could have been killed by drug dealers as well. (Although I think people usually point the finger at Montelone.) Zizzo... like Hoffa, but will never get half the resources. Sounds like a probable cold case!

StonePark , if there was another big case like family secrets , would the outfit be able to recover and regroup from that ( business keeps going on with the new crop), or would that type of a case result in the beginning of the end for the outfit , ( not enough new leaders to keep the illegal activity money flowing ) ? Thanks

SP....or anyone with any real knowledge of the situation....what kind of importance do people in Cicero (Inendino or Solly D) place on the organization as an institution? Do these guys place a hight value on that? As opposed to JD who appears to be content with staying out of prison.

@Nicky, those numbers are very skewed. Elmwood park is half the size of suburbs like Lombard, and considerably smaller than suburbs like Addison. And Elmwood is rapidly losing it's IA population to Hispanics & Poles, this cannot be denied. Those places I mentioned are not. If anything, many of the young folks that grew up in Elmwood are headed that way.

Cicero & Chinatown take the Chicago Outfit very seriously. The difronzos know Elmwood park/grand Ave are all but done.

I could definitely see a big indictment coming down on the southside over the next few years. Don't think it will involve the Carusos or the inendino crew. But delaurentis & his people are certainly on the chopping block. The Cicero crew is pretty large, made guys down there have big teams. Carparelli alone has a big crew.

I don’t know. All I have is my opinion. If there is another big RICO case focusing on recent activity that took out both Sollys, Jimmy I, and Toots, it would be hard to imagine the active street crews staying afloat. A case targeting the upper echelon would leave Cicero/Berwyn and Chinatown with a few younger capable guys without any competent leaders. (At this time, we can set our watches to a few people who will rush to defend the Caruso Family Honor by foolishly arguing that Bruno or Leo Caruso would steer the ship.)

People do not realize how much power and influence Johnny DiFronzo has locked up. Even though he loafs around like an old hump, he still is what he was twenty years ago, but he is resting on his laurels. As long as he is around (and to a lesser extent, his brother Pete, and to an even lesser but still significant extent a few of their immediate “confederates”) the Outfit exists, though it won’t resemble organized crime or the mafia to most of the people reading this. Maybe that is significant, and maybe it isn’t. In my opinion, it is. We will see what happens.

Also, it won’t take actual convictions of current leaders to dramatically damage the organization. Indictments and the trial process can accomplish the same thing, especially considering the age of some of these guys.

Thanks and your opinion makes sense in that it matches what the FBI says regarding Outfit size and active crews post Family Secrets.

Regardless there will always be guys bringing in cash from the stables of gambling , sharking and video poker .

To me the lack of indictments and violence has been surprising but it's possibly due to a reduction in activity and crew size today from years ago

The only people who can give you an honest answer to this question are the Cicero people themselves, like Inendino and DeLaurentis. You're asking how particular people "identify." In this sense, I don't have any real knowledge of the situation, and no one on here does. My observation, though, is that they both have a mafia "aesthetic" and they both did time for the organization without informing...that we know of. That speaks to something.

Agree with SP that all we can do is guess, but my guess would be that they indeed do place importance on the institution itself. That is what allows them to extort, etc. They still want people fearful of them.

Without naming names, as I don't want to get anyone whacked, what do you guys think is the number one reason some guy looking at a life sentence doesn't flip when they have the opportunity?

1. The organization still financially supports their family

2. Fear of violent reprisal for them or their family

3. Sense of loyalty

I would guess one and two. I would also guess that people don't have the opportunity to flip as much as one might think. You would in many instances literally have to be able to show where the bodies are buried, or something else that would eventually lead to concrete convictions.

When it comes to the Outfit, this reason may be the most important: given how much the current leadership is intermarried, they not only flip on their criminal associates, they flip on the fathers of their daughter/sons spouse, or cousins or nephews or uncles.

I also agree that the Outfit supports their families and they do it probably better than most borgatas. Hence why they have had only one made member ever flip in their history.

I would say loyalty. Snitches don't really get killed anymore(to many examples to list of snitches living out in the open) and for the most part the whole your family gets taken care off while your away, is pretty much a falacy.

Jimmy Marcello was giving Nick Calabrese's family $4K a month while he was away, thus why Nick protected him at first.

Great point ChiTown.

I can understand being a good soldier if you're looking at 10 years. When you're looking down the barrel of a life sentence with no chance of seeing the outside until you croak... I have to think there are other reasons besides "being a stand-up guy" for not flipping.

I can't think of any Chicago guys who flipped really living out in the open. Like ChiTown says, Calabrese is the only made guy who flipped. And he sure as hell ain't living out in the open.

Sure people like Frank Cullotta who was involved 100 years ago, they are not going to waste their time clipping him. And Calabrese Jr. was never formally involved.

There is probably a certain amount of sophistication at play as well, knowing that these men have already done all their damage and flattening them wouldn't do a damn thing.

didint know you asking exclusively about chicago

Though I do find it interesting....in the ANP comments Fosco talks about LaValley who flipped in the 90s I believe. Interesting that he heard he was found murdered a few years back. Dunno if it's related, but it's suspicious for sure.

I'd love to know whether or not that is true...I do know that while Jimmy the Panda was active, he was close with Bill Daddono III and originally worked for Bill's father. I'm not sure why Fosco would make that story up. I would assume Jimmy changed his name, so perhaps no way of ever knowing the real story.

Fosco knows, or at least knew, some feds. Word about LaValley began circulating about four years ago. I once asked him about it, and he said "a fed" told him, and he did admit it was not definitively Outfit related.