Fear, Disgust Led Wife to Testify Against Mobster
May 16, 1990
CHICAGO (AP) _ Fear, disgust and an overriding desire to protect her children from their father - an organized crime boss - drove Betty Tocco to testify against her husband, she said.

In an interview published in Wednesday’s Chicago Sun-Times, she called Albert Tocco a ruthless thug who broke the mob’s code of ethics and even cheated his daughter at tic-tac-toe.

Mrs. Tocco is believed to be the first wife of an organized crime leader to testify against her spouse.

Tocco, 61, convicted of running a racketeering and extortion ring on the South Side of Chicago, was sentenced Monday to 200 years in prison and fined $2 million. It was the stiffest penalty ever handed to a Chicago mob leader.

Describing what led her to testify, Mrs. Tocco said until 1986 she believed Tocco’s story that he was not a mob boss.

She learned otherwise when she drove to an Indiana cornfield to pick up her husband and he told her he had just buried Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael.

?I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,? she said. ?I was shocked, nauseated, disgusted. It was Father’s Day. His sister and mother were coming over for a barbecue. What was I supposed to say? ’Albert just buried the Spilotros last night so we can’t barbecue today.?

She said Tocco was abusive at home and threatened her and her children. When an unexpected knock came from the front door, she said her husband made her answer it, especially after a killing Tocco would later be linked to by federal prosecutors.

He often told her to pack his bags on a moment’s notice, she said, and he would disappear without telling her where he was going.

It was during one of those disappearances that FBI agents came looking for him. Tocco was arrested on Jan. 5, 1989, after his wife told FBI agents that Albert was trying to get her son, Michael, out of the country.

Tocco’s conviction and incarceration have done little to ease her fears, she said.

A jailhouse informant told authorities Tocco said he’d like to get his hands ?around her throat.?

But she believes she did the right thing.

?It’s not because of me he’s where he’s at,? she said. ?I didn’t tell him to go out there and bury people, to go out there and murder people.