Frank Calabrese Sr.
A federal jury laid seven mob murders on Frank Calabrese Sr.
But that doesn't mean he can't have Christ in his life — at least according to Calabrese Sr.
Calabrese Sr. talks about Jesus Christ a lot in newly released transcripts of secretly recorded conversations between him and his protege, Nicholas Ferriola, the son of late mob boss Joseph Ferriola.
Unlike Calabrese Sr., Ferriola did not go to trial. Instead, Ferriola pleaded guilty in June last year in the Family Secrets case to collecting street tax for Calabrese Sr. while Calabrese Sr. was in prison, as well as running a bookmaking operation with one of Calabrese Sr.'s closest friends, the late mob killer Ronald Jarrett.
Like many people in prison, Calabrese Sr. had a lot of time on his hands, and he spoke of his newfound love of the Bible with Nicholas Ferriola — all of this before Calabrese Sr. was indicted in the Family Secrets case.
"You tryin' to convert me,"? Ferriola asks Calabrese Sr. at one point during the jailhouse conversation, which the FBI secretly recorded.
"No, I don't convert nobody, buddy," Calabrese Sr. replies. "They have to convert themselves. Let me, let me explain to you something. I am what I am. I've always been, I always believed in God. That I gotta tell you. I never denounced God once."
"Sure," Ferriola says.
While Calabrese Sr. said he was read the Bible, he later testified at the Family Secrets trial that he could not read.
He also appears confused on theological matters.
At one point Calabrese Sr. says: "Now the Bible is documented as true evidence. I always had doubts about that till I see that’s a lot of this, when the, it’s in the scriptures from Christ writing them himself, the born again Christ, who was God.
"The first Christ left after he was disappointed, then he gave his son, to, to uh the Virgin Mary, without her having sex. She was pregnant. There was no sex, she was conceiving a baby without sex. It sounds stupid, I know, but it ... the power was with the Christ and told one of the angels."
"Now when you say angels, did they actually see these angels, uh yeah they actually ... they didn’t have wings, but they seen them. And uh they talked to them and they told them they were an angel from heaven. Now when Ch ... when Christ spoke to a lot of people, he spoke to them see him visibly, he spoke to them through a cloud, a dark cloud over Mount Sinai, and he would, he would speak through the cloud, he would make it, he would open up the ground to show them the power he had. Uh when you go back and hear how the world was created, and you start reading, you get a little thoughts in your mind and say this was very possible, very possible ..."
The conversation continues, according to the FBI transcript:
FERRIOLA: Now what I’m tryin ...
CALABRESE, SR. Go ahead.
FERRIOLA: You read the Bible, that’s good, but I’m tellin’ you, who wrote
the...
CALABRESE, SR.: Huh?
FERRIOLA: Who wrote the book?
CALABRESE, SR. Christ, Christ wrote the scriptures.
Ferriola's attorney, Edmund Wanderling, filed the transcripts recently to try to show a judge that the two men were really often talking about religion, and not talking in code about bumping a guy off, as the feds contend.
"Now when you say angels, did they actually see these angels, uh yeah they actually ... they didn’t have wings, but they seen them."
Aquinas, right? Summa Theologica. He must've taken a prison class in scholasticism.
A couple of geniuses...
I can't believe my Grandparents spent all that money for me to go to Parochial schools.
I could have just went to Federal prison!
I'll tell ya...always a day late and a dollar short.
These two are a real pair of *Brite Lites*
dont laugh, this man is intelligent, to make money,all his life without a college degree , or highschool diploma,to be called illiterate,,the man is smart, the feds know ,the cops know it ,how many of us could be able to survive this life style,not many ,you may judge this man ,call him a killer ,but give the man respect
Steve, Does Frank Calabrese really think he has a Chance of ever
getting out of Prison alive?
STEVE WARMBIR RESPONDS: I haven't spoken to Calabrese Sr., so I don't know what he's thinking.
While he seems to be a man blessed with the power of positive thinking, he is not stupid. So I would assume he realizes that his chances at ever seeing the light of day again are slim.