Judge sentences thief as killer
'THE INDIAN' | Elderly mobster gets 20 years for 1986 murder
In the summer of 1986, Emil Vaci was 73, but he wasn't too old to buy a suit to renew his wedding vows.
But Vaci and his new suit never made it to the ceremony.
(AP file)
Instead, he would be buried in it.
Vaci was gunned down in June 1986 as he was leaving work, his body dumped in a canal, by a team of killers dispatched by the Chicago Outfit. Top mobsters were worried Vaci was cooperating with authorities in an Outfit investigation.
Vaci was betrayed by an old friend, Paul "The Indian" Schiro, the Outfit's man in Phoenix, and on Monday, more than two decades after Vaci's death, Schiro was finally held accountable.
A federal judge on Monday sentenced Schiro, 71, to 20 years in prison as part of the historic Family Secrets mob case.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel said the 20-year sentence would have been too lenient if not for Schiro's age.
The judge learned in a letter from Vaci's daughter, Drena Garrison, how her father's murder devastated her family, how he never got to wear that new suit to renew his marriage vows.
"Till this day, I still cannot shake the image I have of my mother hunched over, clinching my father's new suit, now wrinkled and stained with tears from the news of my father's death," Garrison wrote.
The judge held Schiro accountable for Vaci's murder even though the jury in the Family Secrets case could not reach a verdict on whether Schiro was liable for the death. The judge found that prosecutors had still proven the murder by a preponderance of the evidence and sentenced Schiro accordingly, as the judge can under federal law. The judge's decision bodes well for the families of other victims who were disappointed when the Family Secrets jury could not reach decisions on seven other Outfit murders.
Schiro was defiant to the end, saying in a strong, angry voice to the judge that federal prosecutor Markus Funk was misquoting testimony.
"There's no evidence of racketeering I can see at all," Schiro said. "I don't know how the jury found me guilty of racketeering. I went to trial with co-defendants I never met in my whole life."
Authorities have long considered Schiro a killer for the mob. He grew up with and was a longtime friend of the late infamous mobster Tony Spilotro. And Schiro would go to prison for taking part in the jewelry theft ring of disgraced Chicago Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt.