When a bad thing is a sure thing, even a mobster can cop a plea
It would be a mistake to look at white-haired Joseph Scalise on Wednesday, portly and bearded in black sweater and slacks, and think of him as some community college professor of the practical arts, some harmless old geezer.
And such a mistake might be dangerous. Scalise wasn't a reputed Chicago Outfit enforcer and member of the mob's feared "Wild Bunch" crew because he knew about old Western movies and cowboys.
Yet those Wild Bunch days of the 1970s with the late Butch Petrocelli and his buddy, the late Gerry Scarpelli, were long ago. And on Wednesday, standing before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, Scalise looked all of his 73 years.
He pleaded guilty to four criminal counts involving planning armored car robberies and the attempted takedown of the fortress-like Bridgeport neighborhood home of late Outfit boss Angelo "The Hook" La Pietra. If the scary Angelo were alive, Scalise wouldn't have made it to court.
"Has your attorney explained to your satisfaction the possible consequences?" asked Leinenweber.
"Yes," said Scalise.
He's not young and fit, and clearly no Hollywood stereotype of Outfit muscle, but all that tells you is that stereotypes are stupid. The Outfit doesn't need big muscles. The only muscle the Outfit cares about, really, is the one found in the index finger of the human hand.
It is the muscle used to write judicial orders in civil cases, the muscle used to phone a politician. And, obviously, it is the muscle used to pull a trigger.
Scalise's calculation was this: On one side were the facts of his age and that if he lost at trial, he would likely die behind bars.
On the other side were all the FBI recordings with Scalise's voice on them, planning the robberies and other crimes, gabbing about how he and his confederates were too old to be recognized, that the police would be "looking for some young guy. But there's no coppers that know us today."
Former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt, would have recognized Scalise. But when Scalise was arrested in 2010, Hanhardt was in prison, nearing the end of his sentence for running the Outfit's sanctioned national jewelry theft ring. And who says Chicago doesn't know about hope and change?
The FBI's Edward "Ted" McNamara, of the organized crime section, was in the courtroom watching Wednesday, and his agents know where Scalise drilled the holes in the wall of the La Pietra home and the garage where the guns were stored. Judge Leinenweber had already decided the recordings would be heard by the jury. And so Scalise pleaded guilty.
He'll serve a solid federal sentence of six years or so and maybe breathe a few puffs of free air at the end.
That's almost cinematic, a Hollywood ending, for those who persist in thinking of life as a movie.
Naturally, Hollywood would go for Jack Nicholson, but I'd much rather cast Dennis Franz, a true Chicago actor, as Scalise. Franz has played corrupt cops as if he really knows what he's talking about. Maybe it's the weight of violence behind the eyes. And younger actors could play the younger Scalise, when he left Chicago for London years ago, to steal the legendary Marlborough Diamond, all 45 whopping carats of it, and a handful of other rocks.
Though Scalise did 13 years in a British prison for the 1980 heist, the Marlborough Diamond and others have never been found. And while he was in prison overseas, his buddy Gerry Scarpelli — Gary Sinise would be perfect for the role — began talking to the FBI about Scalise and others.
Soon the FBI was digging for bodies near Scalise's suburban home, and this prompted his then-attorney Anne Burke — the wife of the Chicago ward boss and the future (and current) Illinois Supreme Court Justice — to insist that Scalise had nothing to say to the feds.
"The FBI has been trying to get him (Scalise) to talk consistently over the years," Burke told the Tribune in 1988, saying her client was subject of FBI "harassment." She added, "On all occasions he has refused to talk to them."
Naturally, I'd cast the gracious Blythe Danner as Justice Burke, or maybe Helen Mirren.
In some lines of work it appears critical for your colleagues to know you're not a rat. But what about the betrayer? Talking to the feds must have unnerved Scarpelli so much that, while in federal custody in the lockup at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center, he accomplished an amazing feat.
He strangled himself with plastic laundry bags on the floor of the shower room, about the time that feared Outfit hit man Frank "The German" Schweihs was also there. It was officially ruled a suicide.
And all this was on my mind as Scalise walked out of court, a free man for a few weeks until he has to surrender himself.
"John, you need a new picture on your column," he told me in the corridor.
Where's the Marlborough Diamond?
"If Lloyd's (of London) wanted to pay enough money, maybe they could (find out where it is)," he said.
He was easy about it all, relaxed, resigned. He said he was writing a book about his exploits, and he explained that he pleaded guilty, even though he thought he might win, "because sometimes you've just got to be realistic."
Like pleading guilty, when there is no other way.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0119-20120119,0,5135869.column
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