Jailed mob hit man talks to wife in secret code: feds
Outfit hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. apparently doesn't know when to shut up.
He's on the hook for seven murders in a racketeering case -- convicted in part by his own secretly recorded words.
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He was overhead threatening to kill a prosecutor, Markus Funk.
And he's now under the kind of security lockdown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago usually reserved for terrorists -- or as his defense attorney, Joseph Lopez, has suggested, Hannibal Lecter.
None of this has stopped Calabrese from trying to talk in code and mouth words to one of the few people still allowed to visit him -- his wife -- federal prosecutors said Thursday.
A federal judge Thursday found the extreme jail security measures for Calabrese justified and denied his request for face-to-face contact with a private investigator to prepare for Calabrese's sentencing next Wednesday.
Calabrese, 71, likely will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Authorities did not reveal the contents of the messages between Calabrese and his wife, but if he was trying to talk to her in code, it wouldn't be the first time, the feds have alleged.
In one secretly recorded conversation from 1999, Calabrese, then in prison, was heard asking his wife about recipes, including one for German chocolate cake. In fact, he was using code to ask her about juice loan collections, the feds say.