It was fast approaching noon. Mike Maseth and Kevin Blair sat in the warden’s office waiting for the signed papers to arrive via the warden’s personal fax machine. The operation would have to be aborted soon. Then Hartnett phoned Maseth at 11:45. The federal judge in Detroit had just signed off. The paperwork had been faxed. By 11:50 a.m., Agent Blair was waving the official paperwork—but he couldn’t find the warden. He sat at the warden’s desk and phoned Supervisor Bourgeois at the Chicago Bureau office.
My father was cautious during his meeting with Doyle and Ricci. The trio grabbed three white plastic chairs and huddled in the back corner of the lounge next to a hanging fire extinguisher. My dad spoke in such cryptic code that he sometimes got lost in his obscure jargon.
Here’s the important stuff they discussed:
The bloody gloves weighed heavily on everybody’s mind. Twan confirmed that somebody named Lewis let it leave “the warehouse” on January 13.
Referring to Jimmy DiForti as “Rota,” my dad wondered whether or not Rota was cooperating. He had viewed DiForti suspiciously ever since Jimmy LaPietra carelessly broke an Outfit code by telling DiForti about our role in the Fecarotta hit.
“What did he tell Scarpe Grande [code for the FBI]?” he asked Twan and Ricci.
It bothered him that DiForti had underboss Johnny Apes’s ear. Could this be DiForti’s opportunity to bury my father and uncle and skate on his own murder beef?
Caught on video, my dad referred to the bloody gloves as “the stuff being taken from the sister’s purse,” something that could hurt “the entire family,” meaning the Outfit.
“Was anything mentioned to Pancho [Ronnie Jarrett] about the stuff being taken from the purse?” my father quizzed Doyle and Ricci. Pancho needed to be informed about the gloves situation so he could cover himself and Uncle Nick, considering the hits they’d both been involved in.
According to my father, Pancho needed to see “the doctor” (Chinatown Outfit associate Frank “Toots” Caruso) about “those things stolen from the purse” and that the “other doctor in the hospital” (Jimmy Marcello) needed to be alerted by Mickey Marcello. (“What they should do is tell the doctor they want to see her.”) Jimmy could then approach my uncle and assure him that everything was under control and to stay cool. Sensing the worst, my father remarked that “something stinks over there.”
“It’s a shame,” he said. “… what they should do is maybe bring her [Nick] to see a psychiatrist [Jimmy Marcello] or something.… Not only that, but a psychiatrist would be able to determine if she needed shock treatment or, a, a, ah, prodder up her ass.… Yeah, maybe a good physical.”
Ironically, as my father commiserated in his ridiculous thick code with Doyle and Ricci about the dire consequences of the bloody gloves, he had no clue that the mysterious mole was right under his nose out on the Milan prison yard. Me.
Communication between my father and Doyle and Ricci continued for five more visits, until July 16, 2000, and all their conversations were caught on wiretap.
——
With the departure of Kevin Blair from the OC1 squad, the Two Mikes would lead the case as it gained momentum. While Hartnett remained the senior member of the two, Maseth was gaining more and more experience—and my personal trust—by the day.
As I contributed more information to the case, the Two Mikes would soon need to enlist extra agents to track down the numerous leads on the unsolved murders and illegal activities that my corroborating information provided. Speculation grew that Operation Family Secrets could be an even bigger organized crime case than the Bill Jahoda–Rocky Infelise OC2 case of 1992.
The FBI met with me and discussed the danger of wearing a wire on a prison yard against my father. They advised me to think hard about how best to make the approach and get him talking. The closer it came to crunch time, the more I doubted whether I could get anything out of my dad out on the Milan yard.
By then we were down together (locked up) for a year. My dad knew I was doing my time well. If he had seen me having a hard time, he would have caught on right away. So we proceeded. First off, I had to get back on speaking terms with him. Next, I had to convince him that I wanted him and me to patch up our differences. But would he talk? Was he too smart? He didn’t talk about the past, and if he did, it was often in an impenetrable code.
There was one sticking point the warden and the Bureau of Prisons had with the FBI about my wearing the wire. Because the prison was constructed out of concrete, I could not be monitored, which made it impossible for the FBI to listen in. If I ran into trouble, I was on my own and vulnerable, which made the BOP legally liable. Nobody except the FBI, the Milan warden, and the head of the SIS knew that I was wired. What if I was discovered? What if I was suddenly targeted for murder by my father or an inmate (or a corrupt correctional officer) who might want a shot at a wired inmate? Six months had already passed since my first letter was sent to Tom Bourgeois. Everybody was anxious to start taping. When the warden gave his approval, it was time to get to work.
Originally I had agreed that I would record one tape for the FBI out on the yard. If I could get my dad to admit to having taken part in the July 2, 1980, murders of Billy and Charlotte Dauber, that would be enough to open the door of self-incrimination. I knew he was involved in the hit, but wasn’t aware of the extent.
Billy Dauber was drafted into the Chicago Outfit in the 1970s by James “Jimmy the Bomber” Catuara, who ran illegal gambling and vice on Chicago’s South Side. Dauber had a fearsome reputation as an established killer and earner for the Outfit. As Catuara’s protégé, he was a suspect in more than twenty homicides and was active in illegal automobile chop shops, gambling, and prostitution.
In November 1976, Dauber, Catuara’s former protégé, defected and joined Albert “Caesar” Tocco as his top enforcer. Almost two years later, on July 28, 1978, Jimmy the Bomber was found shot to death in his red Cadillac.
In 1979 Dauber was busted for intent to distribute cocaine along with a list of firearm violations. With the FBI, the DEA, and the ATF all over him, Dauber had to make a move. He and his outspoken wife, Charlotte, began cooperating with the ATF.
On July 2, 1980, Dauber and his wife left the Will County Court House trailed by three men in a work car. Those men included Butch Petrocelli and Jerry Scarpelli, members of the Joe Ferriola street crew and the Wild Bunch. The work car was a Ford Econoline van, a vehicle with a sliding side door that provided easy access for a shooter to kill his victims. To assist them and set up the victims properly, a second work car was driven by my father, who was forty-three at the time. Everything for the hit had to be covered. The Daubers had been followed for the previous two months by James “Dukey” Basile, a crew member who, because he didn’t do “heavy work” (like killing people), was assigned to detail their movements and habits.
Dauber, a giant of a man at six foot six and 290 pounds, had to have his junk-food fix. After stopping at a Winchell’s Donut shop with their lawyer, Ed Genson (who later defended rapper R. Kelly), and leaving a short time later, the Daubers drove off, followed by the two work cars. Moments later on an isolated stretch of road in Will County, my father swerved in front of the Daubers’ Lincoln Continental, slowing it down. The van, meanwhile, quickly pulled alongside the Daubers’ car, and as the Econoline’s side door slid open, Petrocelli showered the car with .30-caliber shells from his carbine. As the Daubers crashed into a large apple tree, Petrocelli ordered Scarpelli to make certain the job was done. Exiting the van with his ski mask on, Scarpelli approached the motionless car, where he pumped two shots into Dauber’s head. He left Charlotte alone because she was already dead. The van was driven down the road to a remote spot, where it was saturated with Ronsonol lighter fluid (the solvent of choice for Outfit arsonists and murderers) and torched to destroy any physical evidence. Later that evening the murder weapons were dismantled, hacksawed into pieces, and thrown into the Cal Sag Canal off of the Route 83 Bridge. Dauber’s ATF handler, Dennis
Laughrey, later recounted how he had told Billy it would be a good idea if they had protection. He offered to escort them home. Dauber had refused.
The prison yard at Milan was surrounded by a double fence with rolled barbed wire strewn across the top. Below were large jagged rocks and boulders—leg breakers—at the foot of the fencing. Inside the Milan yard was a softball field, basketball courts, and an outdoor weight pile, which were used mainly during the summer months. There were also boccie ball courts, picnic tables, and a half-mile asphalt track. Inmates could look over at neighboring farms and fields and into the prison parking lot.
Walking the outdoor half-mile asphalt track on the yard gave inmates a chance to escape the endless chatter that echoed inside the cell units. It was a secure area where my father and I could talk under the pretense of ironing out our troubled relationship. More important, my dad felt safe outdoors. While operating in Chicago, he insisted on talking “business” outside. When the other inmates saw him and me walking the yard together, they knew to keep their distance.
I got the first wired conversation rolling by bringing up what bothered me about my father’s organized crime affiliations. I asked him point-blank, if the Outfit didn’t kill innocent people, then how come Uncle Nick told me my dad had killed Dauber’s wife? Of course, my uncle had told me no such story. It was actually my dad who had told me about the Daubers. I mentioned Uncle Nick’s name just to get my father riled.
Dad’s eyes opened wide. He went into a tirade, angry that Uncle Nick would run his mouth to me. I shifted the conversation to his relationship with his Outfit partners, taking an antagonistic view.
“I’m not scared of them,” I said defiantly. “They’re backstabbers, and if they try to come around to any businesses me, my friends, or the family have, they’ll know they fucked with the wrong person.”
My dad stared back at me in amazement. “Does that include me, too?”
“It depends on whose side you want to be on,” I answered.
My comments about the Outfit opened the door to a wider discussion. Respecting my newfound toughness and bitterness toward the Outfit, he seemed determined to win me back to his side by talking things out with me.
When I returned to the SIS office to remove the wire, I remarked to Hartnett how difficult it was to get my dad to talk. But I felt we’d scored some hard-hitting information. We had talked more about the Outfit. I had also brought up Angelo LaPietra. We had spoken about his having to take orders and report to the various underbosses and bosses—something he resented, although he had no ambition to become a boss.
A few days later, I received the bad news. A technical glitch in the prototype digital recorder had rendered our first conversation unintelligible. The malfunction sowed doubt and disappointment. Had I done the right thing risking my life in the first place? Were these guys competent? How was I going to get my father to talk about the same stuff over again?
The FBI agents were distressed that their equipment had malfunctioned. In the future the agents made sure I had two devices rolling, using one as backup. For one session, the backup was an old-fashioned analog recorder that required me to be “wired up like a Christmas tree” and plastered with white tape on my chest. The recording device was fastened between my legs old-school-style and burned my testicles as I stood out on the yard.
The hardest part of the mission was getting back to my cell before correctional officers conducted the final count. Immediately after taping, I would leave the SIS office and scurry through a long hallway to reenter the main prison yard. If anybody spotted me coming from the SIS office out onto the yard, a rumor would spread that I was an informant.
I ventured onto the yard on Valentine’s Day, 1999, for my second try. A portion of that day’s conversations took place in the prison library, which explains why my father spoke in thick code that day. “Joy,” “Slim,” and “Gus” were code names for Nick. “The Tall Guy” and “the Small Guy” were both Ronnie Jarrett. Jimmy DiForti was “Poker,” “Rota” (Italian for “road”), “Tires” (because DiForti once had a tire shop in Cicero), or sometimes just plain Jimmy.
It had snowed earlier that day and the air was brisk as we strolled around the asphalt track. To get the conversation moving, I suggested to him that based on a Chicago Tribune news article a friend had sent me in the mail, DiForti might be cooperating with the FBI. Otherwise, I asked, how else could DiForti be out on bail on a murder rap, violate his bond, and be back out on the street? This was a way to get him going. Then I brought up the Billy and Charlotte Dauber murders again.
“What happened with the Daubers?” I asked.
“Don’t say that name,” my dad shot back.
“What? Dauber?” I repeated on purpose. “What about the Daubers?”
“Dauber was very dangerous, six feet six inches, a big fucking hillbilly, biker type,” he said. In my second taped conversation, the first successfully recorded, my father confirmed that, yes, it was he who drove the Mustang “casey” (as in casing) car at the Dauber hit, while Ronnie Jarrett rode shotgun. I couldn’t believe he was talking about it so freely, so I pressed on, bringing up Charlotte Dauber as an unwitting victim caught in the trap with her husband, code-named “the Farmer” by my dad.
“They didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. “They couldn’t say, ‘Hey, move over.’ ”
To keep the dialogue moving, I used a trick my dad had taught me on the street: pit one person against the other. At the mention of Uncle Nick again, he maintained that the acrimony between him and his sons stemmed from my uncle “poisoning” our minds against him.
Uncle Nick wasn’t completely innocent, according to my father. He then singled out my uncle for shooting and killing Arthur Morawski, an unfortunate bystander, while the pair was trying to kill the drug dealer Richard Ortiz. It was Nick who gunned down “an innocent Polish guy that worked every day from nine to five.”
Ortiz wasn’t paying his street tax, and he skimmed money from Dad’s capo, Johnny Apes. Morawski, “the innocent Polish guy” with Ortiz, was not an intended target. Then my dad admitted he was the driver in the Half and Half Murder, while my uncle and Jimmy DiForti were the shooters.
On April 10, he recalled the Ortiz and Morawski hits, which took place in July 1983. He remembered having to prod Uncle Nick and DiForti out of the car to make the kill outside the His ‘N’ Mine Lounge in Cicero.
Calabrese Sr.: [Ortiz] was a dope dealer and he was, uh, he was, he was lendin’ money out of his own. And he belonged to Johnny [Apes] at one time.
Frank Jr.: He was Mexican.
Calabrese Sr.: Mexican … We used … to call him half and half, because he was half Mexican and half somethin’ else.
Frank Jr.: Oh, okay.
Calabrese Sr.: And, uh, where he got it, his friends were sittin’ right across the street.
Frank Jr.: Oh really?
Calabrese Sr.: His friends were sittin’ on a bench across the street. They couldn’t even describe the car. Because you see how confusing things are when people …
Frank Jr.: Oh yeah.
Calabrese Sr.: And he, the guy [Ortiz], they were pullin’ over to park to go across the street.… As they pulled, I pulled [up] with ’em.
Frank Jr.: Diagonal?
Calabrese Sr.: Yeah. Diagonal like this. But I left room.… Right off Laramie there you could park like this on, on Twenty-second.… I made sure when they got out, I made sure that I didn’t have to back out, that you turn right out.…
Frank Jr.: Okay, I understand what you’re saying.
Calabrese Sr.: This was done in a matter of seconds. I’m shielding them from the street so nobody could see what they’re doin’.… They [Nick and DiForti] both got out on the same side then.
My father went into detail about the shotguns and the shells used to blast Ortiz and Morawski to pieces.
Calabrese Sr.: Yeah, they emptied out. They, I made sure.
Frank Jr.: They were …
Calabrese Sr.: Empty.
No, they were automatics.
Frank Jr.: Oh, they were shotguns?
Calabrese Sr.: Yeah. But they were …
Frank Jr.: Oh. Automatics …
Calabrese Sr.: Automatics … Yeah ’cause after they inject, we threw ’em away.
Frank Jr.: Oh, okay.
Calabrese Sr.: Yeah. In fact, that’s the first thing that’s done.… And they worked, because we went and tried ’em. Anytime you use somethin’, you make sure you try it. We took on, on, we took ’em both on, uh two different nights. On, uh, County Line Road up in DuPage County … The forest preserve up there. On the other side of uh, of, uh, Hinsdale … We went over there and we tried the shotguns. They both worked.… They worked perfect. They didn’t jam up or anything. So that’s what they used. They had, uh I think four apiece, or five apiece. They had one [shell] in there and four in the chamber.
Frank Jr.: Mmm-hmm.
Calabrese Sr.: They were double-aughts, Frank.
Frank Jr.: That means what? Extra …
Calabrese Sr.: Bigger ones … Big big bearings. So them, them will fuckin’ tear half your body apart.
Frank Jr.: So they must have tore them up pretty good then.
Calabrese Sr.: Oh yeah. Tore ’em up bad. Them’ll tear your body up. They’re called double-aughts. And you want me to tell you somethin’? The Polish guy that was with ’em was a nice guy. Okay? But he happened to be at the wrong place. You know the—eh—uh, they were, it was said no matter who’s with ’em, [the Outfit] want it done. Now if you back away and you have that opportunity and you don’t, then you’d look like a fuckin’ asshole.
Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family Page 18
