FAMILY SECRETS TRIAL
U.S. tries to fill in 'Secrets' trial gaps
Prosecutors focus outside Chicago
By Jeff Coen | Tribune staff reporter
July 31, 2007
Visiting his friend Paul Schiro in prison in 2003, longtime burglar Richard Cleary mentioned he had heard that the federal government was talking to an invaluable informant in Chicago.
A man named Nicholas Calabrese was telling them "where all the bodies are buried," Cleary said he told Schiro, asking if that was a problem.
"[Schiro] said, 'Yes, he could put me away forever,'" Cleary testified Monday at the Family Secrets trial at Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
The testimony came as federal prosecutors shifted the focus of the sweeping conspiracy case from Outfit business in Chicago to its influence in Las Vegas and Phoenix in an attempt to fill in gaps for the jury, which has been hearing evidence for more than a month.
Some of Monday's testimony covered the background behind the slaying of Emil Vaci in Arizona. In his testimony two weeks ago, Calabrese said he shot Vaci for the mob with the help of Schiro, known as "the Indian," who is among the five defendants on trial.
Testimony also touched on a skimming case at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas at the time Anthony "the Ant" Spilotro was running Outfit interests there. Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, another Family Secrets defendant, would later be convicted in that case.
The gray-haired Cleary testified in a quiet voice, donning eyeglasses during his time on the stand. He was indicted in the 1980s along with Spilotro and his brother, Michael, as part of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, an infamous Las Vegas burglary ring, he said.
He saw Anthony Spilotro and sometimes met with Schiro at the Arizona Manor, Cleary said, a hotel and restaurant where Vaci was the general manager. Vaci also ran a tour company that shuttled gamblers from Phoenix to the Stardust, where he worked for a time as a pit boss.
On cross-examination, defense attorney Rick Halprin asked Cleary about his testimony that Schiro once told him his Outfit boss was Joey Lombardo. Cleary acknowledged he had no firsthand information.
The day's testimony began with witness Dennis Gomes, a former investigator for the Nevada Gaming Control Board whose work unveiled the Stardust skimming case.
In 1975, Gomes told the jury, he began to focus on properties run by Argent Corp. and its casinos, which were known to have been funded by loans from the mob-dominated Central States Pension Fund of the Teamsters.
A man named Jay Vandermark had been hired to manage slot machines.
"It was sort of like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop," Gomes said.
Casinos convert coins to cash based on their weight, not by counting them, Gomes said. If the scales could be rigged to undercount the coins, he said there would be leftover cash that could be taken undetected.
Gomes and his agents found that $7 million had been taken in just that way, he said, and Vandermark would never be seen again.
L.J. O'Neale, a deputy district attorney in Nevada, testified that he investigated the Vandermark disappearance in 1986. O'Neale said he had reason to believe that the people who thought they were controlling the skimming operation understood the take was $4 million. He said the $3 million discrepancy may have contributed to Vandermark's disappearance.
Vandermark was last known to have been at Vaci's Arizona Manor, witnesses testified, and O'Neale said he called Vaci into the grand jury in early 1986. Calabrese would shoot him in the head months later, according to testimony.
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jcoen@tribune.com
