Reputed Chicago mobster rips into son and brother who testified against him

A suspected mob hit man being questioned in his racketeering conspiracy trial ripped into relatives who have testified against him, likening his brother to Judas and saying his son “could make Jesus look like the devil.”
“My brother was like Alfredo in the Godfather; if he wasn't running things and screwing them up he wasn't happy,” convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese Sr. testified.



AdvertisementCalabrese, 70, was in his second day on the stand at the nine-week trial in which he and four other men are charged with a conspiracy that includes gambling, extortion, loan sharking and 18 long-unsolved killings.
Calabrese has freely admitted he associated and did business with members of the Chicago Outfit, as the city's organized crime family calls itself, but insists that he never took the oath of a so-called made guy.

Confronted by his attorney, Joseph Lopez, with taped evidence that he knew about the cut finger and burning of holy pictures that are part of the mob initiation ceremony, Calabrese said he learned of such things from “The Valachi Papers,” a book and movie about New York mobster Joe Valachi.

The taped evidence was gathered by Calabrese's son, Frank Jr., who testified earlier that after a hellish childhood under a domineering mobster father he has turned his life around and is going straight.

But Calabrese Sr. claimed that his son had set him up.

“He could make Jesus look like the devil on the cross,” he said.

He said he still loves his son, as well as his brother, Nicholas, an admitted mob hit man who took the stand as the government's star witness.

But he sounded bitter when he told how at Christmas 1996 Nicholas had shared brandy with him and kissed him on the lips.

“Now I know that that the kiss he gave me at Christmas was a Judas kiss,” he said.

Monday's session got under way with Calabrese grumbling that he was not being given a fair chance to tell his side of the story.

“Your honor, how am I going to defend myself?” he said. He complained that he had been stifled by prosecution objections when he tried to present evidence that $2 million had been stolen from his Wisconsin home.

Judge James B. Zagel immediately sent the jurors out of the room.

“I will not allow you to introduce evidence that is inadmissible,” Zagel said, warning that Calabrese would be held in contempt if he continued complaining.

Calabrese has been cut short repeatedly throughout his testimony by objections from the government for giving long-winded answers to questions, some of them far from the subject he was asked about.

“Can I just say something, Joe?” he has often asked Lopez.

When he repeated that Monday afternoon, Zagel cut in and said: “Usually the answer to that question should be no.”

Calabrese's show of emotion came when he was being questioned by his own lawyer. He is likely to face considerably more pressure on the witness stand when federal prosecutors cross-examine him, but it's unclear when that will be.

Calabrese is due back Tuesday for more direct examination by his lawyer.