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February 21, 2008

An indirect tribute

The late federal mob prosecutor Mitch Mars wasn't a man who sought the limelight.

After his court victories against the Outfit, and there were many, he had to be pushed to attend news conferences.

But the bad guys sure knew who he was.

Take for instance, a fascinating conversation from February 1999 between mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr. and two crooked cops who were trying to help him figure out if the government was building a case against him.

The chat involves Calabrese Sr., Anthony "Twan" Doyle and Michael Ricci.

Calabrese Sr. and Doyle were convicted in the recent Family Secrets trial, in which Mars was the lead prosecutor. Ricci died before the trial started and was never convicted.

Much of the conversation between the men is in code.

Calabrese Sr. was worried that someone would overhear him and the two cops chatting in the prison visiting room at Milan, Mich., where Calabrese Sr. was serving a stretch on a loan-sharking case.

Calabrese Sr. was right to be paranoid. The feds were secretly listening in and recording the conversation. They used it against Calabrese Sr. and Doyle at the Family Secrets trial.

In the conversation, Doyle is speculating on who's behind a certain federal investigation, according to a government transcript.

"I'll bet you once it comes to light," Doyle says, "I'll bet you it's that f------ Mitch Mars that's what I think I said."


Funeral details for federal prosecutor Mars

Mitch Mars
Mitchell Mars

Visitation will be held 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at the Damar-Kaminski Funeral Home & Crematorium, 7861 S. 88th Ave., in Justice, IL.

A funeral is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday at Damar and 10 a.m. Mass at St. Cletus Church in LaGrange. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to St. Jude Children’s Hospital or Make-A-Wish Foundation.

February 20, 2008

"A hero" passes

Mitch Mars, the top organized crime prosecutor in U.S. Attorney's office, has died after a battle with lung cancer, the office announced Wednesday.

Mars, 55, prosecuted some of the most high profile organized crime cases in Chicago history, including Family Secrets and former Cicero President Betty Loren-Maltese.

"Mitch's impact on organized crime in this city cannot be overstated," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Here is the full statement from the U.S. Attorney's office:

CHICAGO -- Mitchell Mars, longtime Chief of the Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, died last night after a struggle with lung cancer, said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

“We lost a very dear friend and a treasured colleague today,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mr. Mars, 55, a Chicago native known to all as “Mitch,” had a remarkable career in government service during which his many accomplishments were often hidden by his modest demeanor and sharp sense of humor. Following graduation from Georgetown University Law Center, Mitch started working for the government in 1977, when he joined the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was later appointed to work for the House select committee that investigated the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinations. Mitch joined the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in 1978 and then headed to the Organized Crime Strike Force in Chicago in 1980.

“Little could anyone have known then what an impact his arrival would make upon this city,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mitch formally joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1990 when the Justice Department Strike Force merged with the office. Mitch became the Organized Crime Chief in 1992 and led the section for the next 15 years, during which he tried some of the most significant organized crime cases in the country, including U.S. v. Tocco, U.S. v. Sarsinelli, U.S. v. Infelice, and more recently U.S. v. Spano, the Cicero case involving former town President Betty Loren-Maltese. Most recently, he led the investigation and prosecution of U.S. v. Calabrese, the Family Secrets case, an historic prosecution that resulted in convictions involving 18 previously unsolved organized crime murders since 1970, and which Mitch completed shortly before learning that he had cancer.

“Mitch’s impact on organized crime in this city cannot be overstated,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

“The Chicago legal community will note that it lost a great and accomplished trial lawyer. The world of law enforcement will note that it lost a committed and savvy investigator of organized crime, who every few years accomplished time and again what others would hope to accomplish in a lifetime – with Mitch, of course, giving 100 percent of the credit to the agents and trial partners he worked with and none to himself,” Mr. Fitzgerald added.

“But we would do a disservice to remember Mitch only by what he accomplished as a prosecutor in the courtroom. Mitch personified the word ‘public servant.’ He came to work every day and served the citizens. He worked extremely hard and was quite talented and sought nothing in return except the feeling that he was part of doing something good. We will best remember Mitch as the most decent of persons: honest, to a fault; committed, beyond a doubt, to his wife, his friends and his country; and a team player who assumed all responsibility but took no credit. Anyone who knew Mitch as a person knew that he was also quite funny, laughing as often about himself as about others, and all too happy to enlist others to join in as well,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mr. Mars had been on leave for the past few months after learning that he had cancer, following the Family Secrets trial.

“Mitch was determined to deal with his struggle privately with his wife and his family with his quiet resolve and strong sense of humor,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a personal message to the 300 employees of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Funeral arrangements are pending.

February 08, 2008

Tony Calabrese guilty on all counts

A federal jury in Chicago on Friday found reputed mob hitman Anthony Calabrese guilty on six charges related to three armed robberies in the suburbs.

Calabrese faces much of the rest of his life in prison, and authorities hope to use that leverage to get him to reveal who hired him to kill top mobster Anthony Chiaramonti in 2001 and a Naperville woman in 1997. The mobster died, but the woman survived.

More details to come.

February 07, 2008

The Tony Calabrese trial so far

Anthony Calabrese
Anthony Calabrese
Prosecutors introduced perhaps their most powerful evidence Wednesday in the trial of reputed mob killer Anthony Calabrese.

Jurors were transfixed as prosecutors played a recording of Calabrese and his righthand man allegedly beating up a man they believed was a snitch.

Jurors heard the man yelp, squeal and beg for mercy.

Interestingly enough, Calabrese isn't charged with beating up the informant, Edmund Frank, who was secretly recording his meeting for the feds.

Calabrese is charged with three armed robberies that under federal sentencing rules could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

That's the kind of leverage the feds want to use to convince Calabrese to rat out the people who hired him allegedly to kill a high-ranking Chicago mobster in 2001 and a Naperville woman in 1997. The mobster died, but the woman survived.

Calabrese has long been the main suspect in both crimes but has not been charged.

In the trial, which could wrap up this week, prosecutors Joel Hammerman and Markus Funk have essentially put on everyone besides Calabrese who took part in the armed robberies.

Those include Robert Cooper, who has pleaded guilty in the 2001 mob murder, and Frank.

In addition to the criminals who were allegedly part of Calabrese's crew, the victims of the armed robberies are testifying too, telling jurors about the horrors of getting robbed at gunpoint.

In one 2001 robbery, one witness, Gabriel Perez, a railroad engineer, told jurors that he was having the DaVinci's Last Supper tattooed on his lower back at a Lockport tattoo parlor, as his girlfriend watched, when three men burst in.

They tied up Perez and hogtied his girlfriend with zip ties. Their main focus was one of the parlor's owners, who allegedly had tattooed the daughter of a mobster, according to a court filing. They took the owner in the back and began hitting his hands with a hammer.

Anthony Calabrese, a friend of the mobster, planned the raid, according to testimony and court records.

Calabrese's defense attorney, Steven Hunter, has attacked the credibility of the prosecution's witnesess, noting that many of them are criminals who gained time off lengthy prison sentences by making up stories about Calabrese pleasing to the prosecution.

Jurors, though, aren't hearing anything regarding Calabrese's alleged connection to organized crime or his other crimes. The judge has barred any mention of the mob.

Calabrese is currently in jail, but when jurors see him at trial, he's dressed in a dark suit, not an orange jumpsuit.