As prosecutors played a series of secretly recorded conversations between alleged Outfit killer Frank Calabrese Sr. and his son, Frank Jr., while they were in prison, Calabrese Sr. walked out of the courtroom as one conversation began rolling.
The son recorded his father to keep him in prison for good. Calabrese Sr. is accused of 13 Outfit hits in the case.
His father had promised to semi-retire from the Outfit, but his son was convinced his father would never change.
In a conversation from June 1, 1999, Calabrese Jr. is about to leave prison, while his father has several more years on his sentence.
They talk about how they will stay in touch, how the son will visit.
Out of all the conversations the prosecutors have played in court, it is easily the most emotional.
Calabrese Sr. had feared that his brother and reputed fellow Outfit hitman, Nick Calabrese, was saying bad things about him and trying to turn his son and the rest of his family against him.
But Calabrese Jr. has convinced him that they bonded.
All as the son is burying his father with the recordings.
"I feel sometimes ya think I'm not gonna come and visit ya?" the son asks his father.
"Yeah, I gotta tell ya something. I have no doubts you're coming back, son. Ah, I think, what happened in here, is you and I got to understand each other a little bit," Calabrese Sr. said.
There is a long pause in the conversation.
"It'll go by fast," Calabrese Jr. tells his father of his prison sentence. "It's gonna go by fast."
Of course, as the son was assuring him of that, he was doing everything in his power his father never saw the light of day again.
After the conversation was played, Calabrese Sr. came back into the courtroom.
His eyes had a shine to them. And he glared daggers at his son.
SW: just listened to/watched all the stuff from The German. Was there actually someone trying to muscle in on the porn store, or was that a bunch of BS to try to get Schweiss to say something incriminating (through all the threats and talk about protocal and ownership, he eventually said "...Mike talked with Lumbo..." which seems fairly incriminating). So was there another guy, maybe a cowboy, or another wiseguy, someone trying to put the arm on the joint? and if so, who was it?
WARMBIR: For those folks who haven't listened and watched the Schweihs tapes, there's an extended bit where Schweihs is telling the man he's shaking down, Red Wemette, not to worry about another man that Wemette has mentioned came by the store, asking questions.
The man's visit prompts some of the most vitriolic utterances from Schweihs.
In fact, the supposed visitor was a ruse created by the FBI.
You right on the money, Lansky.
The FBI and Wemette were working together to secretly record Schweihs, and an agent suggested to Wemette that he mention a visitor possibly looking to shake down Wemette's porn shop to see Schweihs' reaction.
Schweihs, of course, was furious because the porn store was already spoken for - by Schweihs.