Getting cops out of the mob's pockets
They aren't talking about solving it.
"You know he knows we killed Tommy Mock," Thomas Tucker is telling his wife. "I mean, what do I got to do, write f------ s--- on wallpaper for you?"
Mock, a bar owner, was shot to death in his driveway in 1981. He and Thomas Tucker were bitter enemies when Tucker was on the force. Who else Thomas Tucker is referring to on the secret recording isn't clear, and the Mock slaying has never been solved.
What is clear, prosecutors say in court documents, is that Linda Tucker, still a high-ranking police officer in the once corruption-tainted west suburb of Stone Park, was involved in a conspiracy with her husband to protect mob-linked video gambling in town.
For almost a century, the Outfit has had influence with the local police, both in Chicago and the suburbs, passing out bribes to protect its speakeasies of the 1920s, its bordellos, its gambling dens and, more recently, its video poker machines.
The most obvious recent example is former Chicago chief of detectives William Hanhardt. Prosecutors say he was involved in running a multimillion-dollar jewelry theft ring that operated nationally. And they suggest he was the middleman in a mob hit--an allegation a federal judge rejected.
In another instance, in 1997, the Chicago Crime Commission put an active Chicago police officer on its chart as an active player in organized crime.
In the suburbs, a recent prosecution involving video poker machines brought down five former police officers, including two police chiefs and a deputy chief.
In Stone Park, federal prosecutors never charged Linda Tucker. It appears from court filings, briefly made public last year, that prosecutors did not have as strong a case against Linda Tucker as they did against her husband.
Thomas Tucker pleaded guilty to passing out bribes for West Side and west suburban mob boss Anthony Centracchio to protect video gambling. Tucker was sentenced in May to nearly five years in prison as part of a case against mob-controlled gambling overseen by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Levine and Stephen Andersson.
A federal judge declined to find that Linda Tucker was part of the conspiracy when prosecutors tried to get the secretly taped conversations between the husband and wife allowed in as evidence. But the allegations against Linda Tucker have raised enough questions to prompt Stone Park Mayor Ben Mazzulla to launch an inquiry.
Mazzulla, who ran on a reform platform, said Linda Tucker has been an "outstanding" officer while he has been in office, but he said he was troubled by the allegations.
"I've definitely got to look into it," Mazzulla said. "We definitely want a clean slate."
Mazzulla was elected to office a year ago and has drawn praise for his reform efforts. His predecessor, Robert Natale, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for taking Outfit payoffs.
When he was elected mayor, Mazzulla said, he talked to Linda Tucker and tried to broach the topic of her husband's legal problems. But he said Tucker--who has sported the vanity license plate FELONY1 on her car--didn't want to talk about it.
"She's really sensitive about that stuff," Mazzulla said.
While Tommy Tucker was being investigated, the feds allege, Linda Tucker ran the license plate of an FBI task force investigator tailing her husband. When she couldn't get the information she needed from a police computer database, she called the State Police, demanding the information.
Linda Tucker appeared to get angry when she got the runaround from a state trooper, who was secretly recording the conversation for the feds.
"I'm a sergeant on this police department for 15 years, and you're gonna tell me I'm not [authorized]--I'm authorized to," she said.
Linda and Thomas Tucker were tape-recorded talking about the succession of mob leaders overseeing the Stone Park area.
And Linda Tucker is heard lamenting how a low-level collector of video poker machines, nicknamed Diesel, had been treated by the late mob boss Louie "the Mooch" Eboli, who was known for being stingy.
Eboli "never did anything for Diesel," Linda Tucker complains. "Diesel was so dedicated."