Operation Family Secrets

January 10, 2011
While in prison with his father, Frank Calabrese Sr., on racketeering charges, Frank Jr, a former member of the Chicago crime syndicate known as the Outfit, offered to help the FBI keep his father in prison for life ("so that he could get the psychological help he needed" is his questionable explanation) by testifying against him. Now in the federal witness protection program and living in an undisclosed location, Frank Jr. gives an insider's view of the Outfit and how he helped expose its crimes. Wearing a wire in the prison yard in 1999, he recorded his father implicating himself in several murders, detailing shotguns and shells ("Big big bearings. So them will fuckin' tear half your body apart"). The sessions were not without danger; one day his father asked to see a new tattoo on his back and reached for the sweatshirt concealing the recorder. Those tapes enabled the FBI to solve dozens of murders and send top mobsters to prison, while giving Frank Sr. multiple life sentences. This suspenseful account, punctuated with riveting excerpts from the tapes, reads like a thriller.

January 1, 2011

The inside story of a notable organized-crime prosecution, in which a son turned on his ferocious father.

For decades, organized crime in Chicago—the so-called "Outfit"—remained a feared and mysterious cabal. In 2007, prosecutors scored a huge coup in the "Family Secrets" trial, sentencing several key mobsters to long sentences for racketeering and numerous old murders. Improbably, the process began when imprisoned Outfit member Frank Calabrese Jr. contacted the FBI, wishing to cooperate in order to prevent his also-jailed father's return to his crooked ways: "I feel I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever." Both Calabreses had pled guilty to federal racketeering charges in 1997, having run a successful "juice loan" business for years. Amazingly, the younger Calabrese recorded conversations with his father in prison, and the surveillance provided the core of the prosecution's case. The book offers a startling narrative of Outfit mayhem—the Calabrese crew was involved in a long string of killings, some notorious, like that of Tony Spilotro (fictionalized in Martin Scorsese's Casino). Calabrese Jr. particularly regrets the involvement of his uncle, Nick, a quiet Vietnam veteran who became ensnared in his brother's business, ultimately transforming into a hit man (Nick also turned state's witness and testified). The author still seems bewildered by his father's ability to be simultaneously a loving patriarch, a ruthless Outfit boss and a cold-blooded killer. As with most mob memoirs, Calabrese Jr. performs exculpatory gymnastics in order to blur the extent of the narrator's criminal involvement, and the writing is workmanlike, if wry at times. Still, this is an undeniably engaging tale, capturing the nitty-gritty of daily life in the "crews" of the Outfit.

A useful and readable addition to Mob Lit.

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