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 The prosecution's star witness was an admitted hit man who would "shoot you in the head over a cold ravioli," as one defense attorney put it. Another witness was the son who pretended to reconcile with his father while secretly recording their prison conversations, including one about how men burned holy pictures in their cupped hands at the ceremony to become "made" guys.
How much was fact and how much fiction?
On Tuesday, after 10 weeks of testimony and audio tapes, that question was left to the jury.
Prosecutors say the five defendants, all in their 60s or 70s, engaged in a racketeering conspiracy to benefit Chicago's organized crime family, known as the Outfit. The conspiracy allegedly included 18 long-unsolved murders, illegal gambling, loan sharking and extortion.
The prosecutors and witnesses detailed grisly killings, with so-called friends allegedly luring men to their deaths, and bodies buried at construction sites. In one notorious case, Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, known as the mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character in the 1995 movie "Casino," was beaten to death and buried in an Indiana cornfield.
This is about "the history of organized crime in Chicago," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell Mars told the jurors in his closing arguments last week.
The men on trial are reputed mobster Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78; convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese, 70; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70; reputed mob boss James Marcello, 65; and retired Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle, 62. If convicted, all but Doyle could face life in prison.
Defense attorneys attacked the case as one built largely on the testimony of a hit man, Calabrese's brother Nicholas, who the defense said admitted lying to authorities in the past and was only cooperating with the government now to escape the death penalty.
Lombardo lived up to his "clown" moniker by wisecracking on the stand. He told jurors he's not a member of the Outfit and learned everything he knows about the mob from James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson movies.
Doyle testified that during a secretly recorded conversation with Frank Calabrese in prison, he agreed with much of what the prisoner wanted without knowing what it was, and that the code words Calabrese used were "mind-boggling gibberish."
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 Frank Calabrese told jurors he did business with Outfit members but never took the oath of a made guy.
He had to endure the testimony of his brother Nicholas, who linked all the defendants except Doyle to a murder scene and who admitted participating in more than a dozen murders and placed his brother at seven killings.
Defense attorney Joseph Lopez labeled Nicholas Calabrese a "grim reaper," a "walking piece of deception," and a man who would kill you for serving him cold pasta.
Frank Calabrese also listened as prosecutors asked his son Frank Calabrese Jr. to translate conversations with his father at a federal prison in Michigan where both were serving time for loan-sharking.
In one example, Calabrese Jr. told jurors that when his father described a mob associate as "not a nice girl," that meant the man was cooperating with authorities.
Prosecutors mocked many of the explanations offered by defense attorneys as unbelievable or ridiculous, and they asked jurors to disregard the claim by Lombardo's defense that any criminal activity he might have been engaged in, he withdrew from long ago.
"Once you belong to the Outfit, you belong for life," Mars said. "These are people that cheat, steal and kill each other. They can make who they want, they can break who they want."
Lopez urged jurors to think of Frank Calabrese Sr.'s presumed innocence like the white cloak surrounding the cartoon character "Casper the Friendly Ghost."
"As you shut the (jury room) door," Lopez said, "he's still presumed innocent."
[Associated Press; by Tara
Burghart]
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