14 mob hits gets killer 12-year sentence
FAMILY SECRETS | Calabrese made history as first made man to testify against top mobsters, including his own brother
What does a deal with "the devil" to cripple the Chicago Outfit cost?
Fourteen people dead -- but less than a year in prison for each slaying.
Mob killer Nicholas Calabrese shot, strangled or blew up 14 men for the Outfit in the 1970s and 1980s. But he got just 12 years and 4 months in prison Thursday for being the first made man in Chicago history to break the Outfit wall of silence and testify against top mobsters in federal court, dealing a critical blow to organized crime in the historic Family Secrets case.
In addition to the murders he admitted, Calabrese provided the feds unparalleled access to the inner workings of the mob, detailed 22 other mob murders and helped put away the head of the Chicago mob, James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, as well as Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo and Calabrese's own brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., with his testimony.
The decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel outraged many relatives of Nicholas Calabrese's victims. Charlene Moravecek, widow of murder victim Paul Haggerty, stared at him in a federal courtroom and said, "He is the devil."
After the judge announced his sentence, she left sobbing and collapsed outside the courtroom. She quickly regained consciousness but was wheeled out on a stretcher by paramedics.
Anthony Ortiz, the son of another Calabrese victim, blasted the judge's decision, saying, "I've never heard of something so ridiculous."
Zagel, known as a law-and-order judge, noted that if criminals who provided extraordinary cooperation in the past hadn't received significant breaks in sentencing, Nicholas Calabrese likely would have never come forward.
The judge said that while the families in the courtroom have some closure, an end to the mystery of how their loved ones died, there are hundreds of other families who know no details and need someone willing to cooperate.
Calabrese, 66, will have to serve a a little more than four more years in prison.
He was supposed to be released in November 2002 from a separate loan-sharking case but was held behind bars after he decided to cooperate with the feds. He gets credit for the time he served.
The judge and prosecutors said Calabrese felt remorse for his murders.
He began cooperating after authorities tied him to the 1986 murder of his friend, mobster John Fecarotta, through a bloody glove Calabrese dropped at the scene.
In court, Calabrese apologized for his crimes.
"I let fear control my life, and beneath that fear was a coward who didn't walk away from that life," Calabrese told the judge. "I can't go back and undo what I done. It's there every day, it doesn't go away, and rightly so."
Calabrese's cooperation began in January 2002, but years earlier top mobsters began worrying that Calabrese would start snitching.
His brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., was caught on a secret federal recording saying he would give his "blessings" if mobsters learned he was cooperating and decided to kill him.
Nicholas Calabrese griped to Marcello in 1997 when they were both in a Downstate prison that the Outfit wasn't providing for his family, so Marcello began having $4,000 a month sent to his family for the next five years.
Calabrese was admitted into the Witness Protection Program on Aug. 27, 2002, and likely will remain there for the rest of his life, always looking over his shoulder.