Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family

Frank Calabrese, Jr., Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman, Paul Pompian

Crown, Mar 6, 2012 - True Crime - 336 pages

The chilling true story of how the son of the most violent mobster in Chicago helped bring down the last great American crime syndicate: the one-hundred-year-old Chicago Outfit.

In Operation Family Secrets, Frank Calabrese, Jr. reveals for the first time the outfit’s “made” ceremony and describes being put to work alongside his father and uncle in loan sharking, gambling, labor racketeering, and extortion. As members of the outfit, they plotted the slaying of a fellow gangster, committed the bombing murder of a trucking executive, the gangland execution of two mobsters—whose burial in an Indiana cornfield was reenacted in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster film Casino—and numerous other hits.

The Calabrese Crew’s colossal earnings and extreme ruthlessness made them both a dreaded criminal gang and the object of an intense FBi inquiry. When Frank Jr., his father, and Uncle Nick are convicted on racketeering violations, “Junior” and “Senior” are sent to the same federal penitentiary in Michigan. It's there that Frank Jr. makes the life-changing decision to go straight. But he needs to keep his father behind bars in order to regain control of his life and save his family. So Frank Jr. makes a secret deal with prosecutors, and for six months—unmonitored and unprotected—he wears a wire as his father recounts decades of hideous crimes. Frank Jr.’s cooperation with the FBI for virtually no monetary gain or special privileges helped create the government’s “Operation Family Secrets” campaign against the Chicago outfit, which reopened eighteen unsolved murders, implicated twelve La Cosa Nostra soldiers and two outfit bosses, and became one of the largest organized crime cases in U.S. history.

Operation Family Secrets intimately portrays how organized crime rots a family from the inside out while detailing Frank Jr.’s deadly prison-yard mission, the FBI’s landmark investigation, and the U.S. attorney’s office’s daring prosecution of America’s most dangerous criminal organization.

Contents

• Family Secrets: 1
• The Art of Blending: 37
• Outfit Reign of Terror: 46
• Frankie Johnnys: 56
• A White Flash and a Burst of Heat: 64
• Keep Things in the Family: 70
• The Boys Out West: 80
• Killing of the Zhivagos: 87
• Oh No Not You: 97
• How Bad Could It: 103
• Scared: 109
• Florida: 122
• The ThousandYard Stare: 132
• Busted: 141
• College with Guns: 152
• The MCC: 159
• A Chance to Step Up: 164
• Two Choices Neither One Good: 169
• The Moment I Sent It: 176
• Scarpe Grande: 182
• The Wire: 187
• My Fathers Executioner: 199
• Three Secret Lives: 208
• The Changing Streets: 216
• A Royal Pain in the Back: 224
• Pandoras Box: 231
• Life on the Squad: 237
• The Terrible Towel: 243
• What Happened to My Father?: 252
• The Trial Stage: 260
• Broken Code: 267
• The Road to Justice: 284
• Keep Thinking This Is a Dream: 290
• The Umbrella Effect: 304
• Behind the Picture Frame: 313
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: 321

About the author

Frank Calabrese, Jr., lived in his native Chicago for thirty-nine years. Mentored by his father and brought into the Chicago outfit at age eighteen, he now resides in Arizona with his ex-wife and two children.

Keith and Kent Zimmerman have coauthored many New York Times and London Times bestselling books.

Paul Pompian, who has produced more than fifty motion pictures and television productions, was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and came by his interest in the outfit naturally.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family
• Authors: Frank Calabrese, Jr., Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman, Paul Pompian
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Crown, 2012
• ISBN: 0307717739, 9780307717733
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Criminals & Outlaws; History / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI); True Crime / Organized Crime