Even in Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, the Family Secrets case was a true spectacle when it made it to court in 2007.
A top mob boss, a reputed consigliere, and other high-profile members of the Chicago Outfit were accused in a total of eighteen gangland killings, revealing organized crime s ruthless grip on the city throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Painting a vivid picture of murder, courtroom drama, family loyalties and disloyalties, journalist Jeff Coen accurately portrays the Chicago Outfit s cold-blooded--and sometimes incompetent--killers and their crimes in the case that brought them down.
In 1998 Frank Calabrese Jr.
volunteered to wear a wire to gather evidence against his father, a vicious loan shark who strangled most of his victims with a rope before slitting their throats to ensure they were dead.
Frank Jr.
went after his uncle Nick as well, a calculating but sometimes bumbling hit man who would become one of the highest-ranking turncoats in mob history, admitting he helped strangle, stab, shoot, and bomb victims who got in the mob s way, and turning evidence against his brother Frank.
The Chicago courtroom took on the look and feel of a movie set as Chicago s most colorful mobsters and their equally flamboyant attorneys paraded through and performed: James Jimmy Light Marcello, the acting head of the Chicago mob; Joey the Clown Lombardo, one of Chicago s most eccentric mobsters; Paul the Indian Schiro; and a former Chicago police officer, Anthony Twan Doyle, among others.
Re-creating events from court transcripts, police records, interviews, and notes taken day after day as the story unfolded in court, Coen provides a riveting wide-angle view and one of the best accounts on record of the inner workings of the Chicago syndicate and its control over the city s streets.
About the Author: Jeff Coen is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covering federal trials and investigations from the Dirksen U.
Courthouse in downtown Chica.
| Performed | James |
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| Author | Jeff |
Chicago Review Press Family secrets: the case that crippled the chicago mob, paperback/jeff coen
