Relief for some families, anguish for others

VICTIMS | 'Deadlock' on 8 killings a 'travesty; it's unbelievable'

"I've waited 31½ years for this," she cried.

But she was too late; she had missed the reading of the verdicts in the murder phase of the Family Secrets trial of Chicago organized-crime figures.

Jurors deadlocked on whether mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. strangled her husband, Paul Haggerty.

"Why? Why? Why did they find everyone else guilty except the man who killed my husband?" she said, her face red from crying as she finally made it upstairs to the hall outside the courtroom, where another relative hugged her. Remembering the day she was told her husband had been murdered as though it were yesterday, she said, "I was 8½ months pregnant when they told me. The baby only lived six months."

There was a clear division outside the courtroom Thursday night. Relatives such as Moravecek felt anguish that the jurors deadlocked on eight of the murders. Relatives in the 10 murder cases in which jurors found mobsters liable felt relief.

"It was nice to finally put the puzzle together after 33 years. It's a good day," said Joseph Seifert, who thought of his father Thursday morning on the anniversary of his death. "It's nice to have it end today."

What would he say to Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, who jurors found murdered his father with a shotgun?

"I don't have anything to say to him," Seifert said.

Lead prosecutor Mitchell Mars said it was hard to face grieving relatives of victims whose murders jurors deadlocked on -- even though the mobsters will still do jail time on other convictions.

"It's a tough thing to talk to the victims of the homicides," Mars said. "It's very difficult to face the family members and try to explain to them what might have been going through the jurors' minds.''

"I'm feeling pretty s-----," Bob D'Andrea said, his fist clenched as he stared out the 25th-floor window of the federal courthouse. Jurors deadlocked on whether Jimmy Marcello beat D'Andrea's father to death.

"'Deadlock' might as well be 'innocent.' He knows he did it. I know he did it. Everybody knows he did it. [The jury] spent just enough time ... to hang each and every one of them once. I didn't wait 26 years to hear this. It's a travesty. It's unbelievable."

Patrick Spilotro grimly nodded his head when jurors found James Marcello had beaten Spilotro's brothers Michael and Anthony to death. Spilotro's wife clasped her hands together and shook them.

"We are very satisfied that it came down like it did," Patrick Spilotro said. "It will let the families rest in peace. These people are going away. They're going to spend the rest of their lives where they belong."

Anthony Ortiz said he was glad Frank Calabrese Sr. was found responsible for the shotgun murder of his father, Richard Ortiz.

"Finally, it's over. It's closure," he said. "We've been waiting for this for a very long time. Now, he [Calabrese Sr.] wasn't sitting there smirking."

Ortiz had attended virtually every day of testimony involving his father's murder and drove in frantically from Addison when he heard the news that the jury was coming back with its verdict.

"There's a lot of stop signs and stop lights I blew through," he said.

Drena Garrison could not believe jurors deadlocked on whether Paul Schiro ordered the murder of her stepfather, Emil Vaci.

"I'm really rather shocked," she said. "Paulie [Schiro] will probably never see the light of day. If he thought he got away with something ... well, he can't be living a very good life."

Contributing: Dave Newbart, Art Golab