Family Secrets Trial

[guids]

I dont know if any of you guys follow this stuff, but the jury in the chicago family secrets trial just found a verdict: guilty
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070910/...H3KstpvLus0NUE



the real life accounts of Tony Spilotro's murder (Pesci in Casino) was heard, among a bunch of other historic mafia stuff.

[iron81]

This has been all over the Chicago papers for months. Basically, the feds were able to make the case when the son of a Chicago mob boss flipped. He was the star witness in a case that also included wiretap evidence. There were 4 defendants including the aforementioned boss Frank Calabrese and a mob hitman with maybe a dozen kills. Every 2nd article about this case had a reference to the movie "Casino".

[kevin017]

couldn't have been that great of mobsters if they couldn't even off the snitch before the trial.

[iron81]

Meh, he was in witness protection before anyone knew he had flipped. They were in their 60's and 70's so they managed to stay out of prison for a while.

There was also a 5th defendant, a Chicago Police officer who was accused of destroying evidence for the Mob.

[wet work]

Casino was on the other night. I ended up checking some more stuff on the web. Lefty Rosenthal has a pretty cool little website, he also gives free sports picks. (Then I ended up reading some stuff about the Computer group sports bettors.) I seriously think I've read just about every good mob book in print and the Chicago guys always seemed the baddest. They really had things wrapped up tight for a long time.

[youtalkfunny]

I can't help myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip2WYXbPuuw

(audio is NSFW)

[Big Steve]

A much better version....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93Kvl3YMWQ

Still NSFW for audio.

Big Steve [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[daryn]

(nsfw language)better link

[illini43]

I actually sat in on this trial for 2 days this summer when I was interning at a law firm downtown.

The first day I went had some witnesses from the FBI, etc. talking about fingerprint detection methods, which was interesting and basically told me never touch anything you don't want to be connected with. Pretty crazy stuff.

The second day I went was when Nick Calabrese (brother of one of the defendents, aka the SNITCH who flipped) was on the stand. He was talking about all the different murders he helped with, how he was "made", stuff about the Spilatros in Vegas, then in Bensenville/cornfield in Indiana. It was like listening to a movie. In the early 80's they used a remote control to blow up a guys car when he was driving to work on I-294 in Hinsdale, IL. He also explained how he shot guys in the head, strangle people, etc. Picutres were also shown of the customized cards they had with polic sirens built-in to help run away from the cops. They even had a license plate 'flipper' that would change the plates of a car while you were driving.

Pretty sweet stuff. All of the guys are like 65+, so I don't think it's really that big of a deal that they are all guilty - the mob has found new leadership by now.

It was weird just sitting 50 feet away from these guys though, especially when they looked around the courtroom at the crowd and made eye contact with me. I'm sure I sat next to a few guys who are currently in the mob; there was quite an interesting crowd at the trial.

[Mike Gallo]

Welcome to my world [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Its not as glamorous as Hollywood makes it out to seem.