 Welcome to the original gangsters podcast. I am your host Scott Bernstein, along with my partner in crime and co-conspirator, the doctor Jimi Guccellato, you know, that's my signature Howard Stern shout out. So today I'm super jack for this episode. I don't know if I've been as jack for an episode since maybe we first got started. This is a guy, a guest that we've wanted to have on since day one. And for whatever reason, it just, the stars want to line, but we're going to bring on Frank Calabrese Jr., the prodigal son of the Chinatown mob crew in Chicago. He grew up in the mob. His dad and his uncle were both very high ranking members of the Chicago outfit, both killers, guys that played a very active role in everything that you saw in the movie Casino from the sixties all the way into the nineties. And then Frank, who we're about to bring on in a second and I'm going to just shut up and just turn the floor over to Frank. Frank is a true American hero, in my opinion. And I don't think you can say that a lot about people from that life. But what Frank did was so consequential, both for the ripple effects in the sense that Frank deciding to work with the FBI against his father and his against his father, brought the biggest mafia prosecution in the history of the Chicago FBI, put to bed 18 unsolved murders, including the murders of the spolato brothers that you saw depicted in the movie Casino. But he and he'll tell you this, he had no incentive to cooperate. He wasn't jammed up. He wasn't looking at life in prison. And he made a decision and he'll talk about it to you guys about where that decision came from that his father needed to be stopped. His father could not be a free man anymore and let let to roam Chicago as for all intents and purposes. He was a John Wayne Gacy. He was a serial killer. He just was veiled in a mob skipper outfit. So, Frank, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sorry. I had such a long preamble, but I'm so excited for you here. And Frank, we'll tell you what we can we can get more Frank story. He's about to start a residency in the Las Vegas Mob Museum. He's got a great book that will one day be on the big screen as a movie or on a streaming platform as a television show. It's been in the work since the book came out. And just to give a small insight into my, I made my bones as a reporter on his case, his dad's case. I was a young cub mob reporter in my late 20s in Chicago in that courtroom every day writing a book, writing for a magazine. And then I've gotten to know Frank more recently and we were in Las Vegas together last week for a couple of days. And I got nothing but the most amazing things to say about this man. So thank you, Frank, for joining us. Thank you, Scott. Yeah, you know, it's funny that you mentioned Hollywood with that. You know, I've been working on this for almost 10 years now. And I got to tell you, Hollywood's a lot rougher. Yes. It's up Hollywood. They patch you on the back and they tell you don't worry about nothing. And next thing you know, everything's gone. So a little bit about myself to people that don't know me. And then I'll talk a little bit about my story that know my story. It's really a family story. Okay. I was, I say I was born into this. Because I'm half Irish, half Italian. I grew up in Chicago. My father's side was my Italian side. Last name, Calabres, it was Sicilian embattés. And on my Irish side, my mother was Hanley. On my Irish side, my grandfather had sticks Hanley used to fight against El Capone. He ran with a crew called the O'Donnell crew. He was involved in a historical shootout where Capone killed McSwiggan, the state attorney, state's attorney. My grandfather survived because when he seen the cars coming, he dived behind the wheel. Well, the two guys behind him weren't quick enough. Got shot, killed, fell on top of them. That's how my grandfather survived. Now my uncle, Ed Hanley on my Irish side, my mother's brother, started out in a local in Cicero with the hotel and restaurant employees union. Tony Ricardo, seeing my uncle, the boss of the Chicago Mott, seeing my uncle's, what he had in him. And, and my uncle on the horizon to be the international president for over 30 years of over 350,000 members strong. That's just my Irish side. Now my Italian side, my dad and uncle, like Scott said, were both high ranking members of the Chicago Mott. A trait my dad had, which you don't see is a lot of times guys are either racketeers or street guys. Street guys do heavy work. Racketeers make a lot of money. They coincide well together. Okay, my dad had a little bit of both. And, and he was good at both. This life changed my dad though. I wound up following my dad and my uncle into this life for over 30 years. Now as a young kid growing up in Chicago, what was different from New York was you weren't supposed to bring your kids into this life. You're supposed to make a better life for your kids. So the neighborhood I grew up at, there was a lot of guys in the outfit, all their kids. I knew we, we didn't stand on the corner and want to be gangsters. I want to go to college. I wanted to be a lawyer. I played sports. That's what we did. God forbid we got in any trouble. We'd get our asses kicked by our old men. As a young kid, my father started to teach me about the street. He said, so I'm going to teach you about the street. You're going to learn street smarts from me. You go to school or in book smarts. If you have them both, they're going to be very successful in life. So he started teaching me stuff. He gave me a little chores to do. He testing. And the more that I did for my dad, the better I was at it and the more he seen of him and me. And you got to understand, as a young kid, I can handle myself, but I didn't like fighting. I look like Opie Taylor, Ron Howard. Okay. If I got in a fight in school, I was crying while I was beating the guy up because I wanted to be friends with him. I was so shy. I didn't want to go to birthday parties. I didn't want anybody to look at me. So it wasn't like, oh my God, this guy is, it's like I'm going to be a gangster. I'm a tough guy. I don't care. I can handle myself, but it didn't like violence. And it's still to this day. So going through grammar school, going through high school, my dad slowly brought me into this more and more. And I was like, hey, be a good son. Do this for your dad. I was always idolized my dad. I idolized my uncle Nick. And eventually when I got, when I graduated from high school, my dad will not allow us to go away from college. He says, you can go to local college and it gets me a job with the city of Chicago Water and Sewer Department. I start working there and then my dad starts bringing me into the mob more and more, but he never tells me, oh, what do you feel like doing when you get out of school? Do you want to join me? You know, here's a handbook. Here's a list of what we do. It was just like, hey, do this for your dad, be a good son. And it went further and further. It got to the point where I started buying into this, but I didn't buy into my dad. I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't buy into the mob. I bought into my dad and I bought into my uncle. I bought into the family. I bought into loyalty. Can I ask you a question real quick? Just for the audience. So your, your dad and your uncle both were Southside outfit guys, right? Well, it's a little more complicated. We were from the West side, Grandin Harlem, Elmwood Park. Okay. But because my dad was brought into the mob by Angelo Lapetro, who was in Cicero, and then he ran Chinatown, we were with the Chinatown crew. So, but the people that were directly over your dad and uncle were the La Pietro brothers, right? Hooks and Jimmy, Jimmy the Lapper. Yeah. Correct. Okay. So those and then Johnny Apes and the Carusos, those, those were the guys that, that you and your dad were around in the, you know, 70s and 80s, right? Correct. Okay. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Well, no, no, that's all part of the Chinatown crew. Yeah. Another thing with that too, this was a very, very violent crew also, because there were two crews that the mob would use when they wanted people dead, done right in a timely manner. The Wild Bunch, which was all brought out at the trial. Okay. And the Chinatown crew. Okay. And so a lot of the names that you mentioned, my dad learned a lot from the government, learned a lot from the military, you know, just by watching how they did things. So everything was strategically planned out with my dad and practice. There's no room for air. He says, you don't worry about, about what you're doing. You don't worry about getting caught. You worry about getting this done and getting this done right. And you'll be ready for it. So yeah, he was very regimented like that. Now, you know, my dad's constantly testing me, you know, and I got this job and in my early 20s, and my dad comes home from his night at work and I could see his adrenaline going. He goes, we got to talk, wherever we talked, we went in the bathroom, we turned the vents on, we turned the water on, he steps in, he looks at me, he's never told you, there's rules in the neighborhood. Everybody tells you no drugs. I go, yeah, dad, because we had to kill two guys tonight because of that. And then he just proceeds to describe in detail how they killed him. Okay. He used a shotgun that blew him apart and he's watching my reaction as if I'm ready for this. My reaction to it was, hey, this is my dad. If he says, this is the way it's got to be. This is the way it's got to be. You know, there's rules and you follow them. But the whole time I'm thinking, wow, I wonder what my friends, fathers were telling their sons about their day at work, but it was not like this. So from that point on, I graduated. I graduated this, I was living two lives. My dad said, you are my secret weapon. Therefore, going forward, you know, I started getting deeper and deeper with my dad. Now, when you're out on the street and you get into this life, you're always looking to make money. You're always looking to see what's the grind in the street? What can I do? What was your early 80s? One of the big mistakes I made in the early 80s, a lot of guys were starting to get into powder cocaine, selling it, partying once in a while, big no-no to the mom. That's not in Chicago, if you've gotten caught. I partied once in a while with my friends on the weekend. It was only supposed to be habit forming. It was a celebratory drug. But when I seen the money that could be made in it, behind my father's back and then be else known, I set up my own little crew and started selling powder cocaine. Problem was, like on Scarface, don't get high on your own supply. I did. It turned into a problem. When I went to prison in 97, I've been clean since. Most embarrassing thing I've ever did in my life. Actually, there were a lot of guys that were doing the same thing I was doing. Made guys, guys like, they don't bring much out about Tony Splattrow and Michael Splattrow. I mean, they were huge in it. I was just talking to a guy the other day that was at Hogy's all the time. It was just, it was around. And a lot of guys were asking a lot of questions because there was a lot of money. I have a question about that. Would you say that they said there's a no drug policy? Would you say that that was disingenuous and maybe the policy was don't get caught dealing drugs more than don't do it? That was what it was like in Detroit. I mean, Tokyo and Josie were guys that would espouse the no narcotics rule. But just like Carlo Gambino or Angelo Bruno, they're taking envelopes knowing that these envelopes are coming from drugs. Well, from my experience, my dad and certain guys on up no drugs. A lot of guys my age, other guys I talked about, exactly what you guys said. But they weren't on the week. They weren't on like, Frankie, thanks for the envelope. We know you did a good job loan sharking this week. But knowing that it's actually drug money. He didn't want any drug money. No, no. In fact, one of the guys on our crew, we found out he was all of a sudden he's giving out a lot of juice loan money, 200, 300, $500 like a whole list of guys. We find out these guys are all heavily involved in drugs. He just told them all, don't even pay me the money back. Just stay away from me. That's it. So he figured it wasn't even worth it. And he reported to my dad and told my dad. But there were changing times. Like I said, some guys were seeing the money in it. And again, it wasn't supposed to be like heroin or crack or all this other stuff. But still we see what he said. I think when you say this is accurate, I think Chicago is a was a bit of an outlier in that not to say there wasn't drug activity with an LCN, there clearly was. But opposed to these other families that were referencing, it seems like there was, it was more than just lip service in Chicago. And that drives with my research too. There was not at the level that you saw in other families, the acceptance and the proliferation of the drug economy in LCN. Yeah. No, that's exactly, I feel the same way. Scott, from all everything that I experienced and I knew. Again, looking back on it, you like there's some things you like to change in life and that was one of them. So I started getting deeper and deeper involved. And the I seen this life changing my dad, you know, a lot of stuff that he was saying the way it was the way he was, was changing. And it got to the point where I wanted things why I survived from today was I was always in businesses. I worked when I was a young kid, I had on my own businesses. I 14 years old, I worked in a pizza place, you know, so I always worked one, two jobs. I had a nightclub at 22. And when I sit in a nightclub at a nightclub with Jimmy Marcelo's nephew, who was a friend of mine, and we both worked it. It wasn't just the front we were working this we loved it. I went to the city job. I wasn't I wasn't a payroll ghost. I'd worked there for eight hours. I go work in the nightclub in the mean in the middle of that I'd leave to go meet the guys I had to meet to collect what I needed to collect. So we're working. So I think that's what saved me. And I started seeing the government getting stronger. I started seeing the mob get more paranoid towards one another. And I started thinking, you know, I don't know if this is what I want to do. And I wound up getting married in 1988. And my father looked at that as like my wife was a wedge between us. And you know, I started backing off. And I didn't do a lot. I didn't want to do it. And he wasn't fair with me either. A lot of times he wasn't fair with me. He wasn't fair with my uncle. He wasn't fair with my brother. And we see a lot of this. And he was very, very controlling. He, you know, fair and money make you control people. My dad was good at that. But the problem was he didn't draw the line from the street and the home. He brought it in the hall, very controlling out what I want to do wanted to control my whole life. So it was hard. It was hard. And I started to break away from my dad. They're trying to break away from my dad. And during that time, things started getting a little, a little rough between me and him. And oh, geez. So I, you know, sometimes in life when you know, I would, I actually got a job at a car dealership so that I can work so many hours there that I wouldn't be free for my dad. That's how crazy it was. And my dad got me married and he was fighting with my uncle. He's fighting with my brother. He's fighting with me. We see this man changing. He's becoming quicker with his hands, more manipulative and more physical and more paranoid. More, I mean, very, very paranoid. One minute, my dad had these, he was a sociopath. One minute, he was the nicest guy in the world. You talk to a lot of people out there that know my dad and they might only know the nice side. But the people that don't know the nice side, it was, it was not a nice side. Okay. He loved the kill. His signature trait to kill you was with a rope and a knife. He was very, very street smart, talked about, never talked about moving up, never flashed money. We had all these rules that he filed. Drive Fords and Chevy's. Don't drive fancy cars. Don't pull out a lot of money. Go onto the table. So it was all this stuff. Another thing that we learned was the FBI. They were our biggest enemy. Okay. So when I got up every day, you know, first thing I had to do before I left my house was make sure I wasn't being followed. Okay. And I had a routine. My dad used to say they're very sophisticated. They have unlimited resources, unlimited manpower. And guess what's the biggest thing? Frankie, I go, what? He goes, they can make all the mistakes they want and they learn from mistakes. We can't make one. Well, then dad, if they're an enemy, why would I respect them? Don't ever make it personal. You do not want an agent that hates you so bad. Kind of like a lot of the agents hated Gotti so bad that they took it home with them. They slept at night. All they thought about doing, you want them to say, hey, the Calibri's, he's not a bad guy, but too bad he chose the wrong way of life. So, you know, all this stuff was instilled in me. This was one of the breaking points, one of the few breaking points where things really started getting serious. I'm working this full time job. Now the government's getting stronger. And we know it. So we didn't have anything in the house, no book work, no nothing in the house. And we were known on the street for that so that they wouldn't come to the house. So we would get up in the middle of the night, three o'clock in the morning, and I go meet my dad and my uncle at a different location to do the book work once a week. Then I go right to work the next day. One night I'm late. I get there about 20 minutes late. I come down the stairs. There's my dad and my uncle at the bottom of the stairs. I step to the bottom, step, bam, he hits me in the side of the head. I go down. He's on top of me, beat me. I see my uncle coming for me and I'm like, holy shit, maybe they found out about the drugs. Oh no. I'm trying to cover up. All of a sudden my uncle starts screaming at my dad, what are you doing? Why are you hitting Frankie for being late? You're not the brother I know no more. I don't want no more. It runs out the door and leaves me with my dad. Now there's only one man in life that I fear, and that was that man. I respect what other men are capable of. I just don't fear. Okay. My dad jumps off me, grabs a towel, and he's good dad again. So here, go wash your face in the hands, please. I don't want to be at home like you on this. Come on, let's get done. And I'm just sitting here and I'm looking and I can't believe what's going on. I have legitimate friends that I'm close with that are making legitimate money. I have opportunities to make legitimate money. I'm doing this more so for my dad and I'm starting to say, why do I really need to do this? We can make legitimate money. I don't mind having to do something when it involves somebody threatening your family or going to harm your family. That's fine. But I got a problem with somebody ordering me to do something to somebody because of money, because of some reason that really there's other options. So that that's who I was. About a week later, my dad comes up to me. He goes, don't do it. What the heck? Don't do what? Those don't want on me. Because the world ain't big enough. I'll find you. I know what you're thinking. You know, that's exactly what I was thinking. Now, what do I got to do? I got two kids now. My son was born premature. When I'm at the hospital, my son, he's his lungs weren't developed. So I look up, he's in an emergency, fighting for his life. I look up and go, you know what, take me on the scumbag. I've done so many things wrong. Give this, give my son a chance. You know what? What's my legacy going to be for these kids? Am I going to put them through all this? Is this going to keep continuing? So you know what? My son makes it. The first thing I'm going to do is get the hell out of here. My son made it. The first thing I did was move to an apartment on the far west side under a paticious name. And I'm going to hide from my dad while I'm getting my stuff in order trying to think what I'm going to do. Okay. I got this family. It's not just me. And I'm against, man, I fear my father's not bothering me for a while. So I'm like, oh, maybe he's not going to bother me anymore. So some time goes by. One night I'm putting the kids to bed. I happen to look out the back window. It's dark in the room and who's standing in the parking lot by a pole looking right at my apartment. My dad scared the shit out of me. He didn't see me. I ran, I got my gun and I sat on the couch in the front room all night long looking in front door. Which man is going to come to that door? Is it going to be good? That son? What are you doing? We're family? Or is it going to be that sociopath killer? I told you not to run, man, you're dead. He did, he did worse than that. He didn't come to the door that night. Every day I'm walking by and thinking, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Start getting a little paranoid. You need money when you start new life. My dad over the years, one of the things he used to do with me and my brothers is he used to hold our money and keep lists of what we have to cash our checks, give us what we needed. We reported to him. I told him, money and fear is what we control people. He's holding over $200,000 of my money. Now I can't go ask him, hey dad, can I get that money? Because anytime I talked about my money and what he said, it's all going to be yours one day. Don't worry about it, save it in a bank. So what did I do? I did something that was good at the time or was probably the dumbest thing I ever did. I knew where he had to get hiding places. I went and stole almost $800,000 of his money. My intention was take that money. I bought some restaurants, fuel my drug trade, did some stuff with some people with commodities, make as much money as I can, put his money back and then take off with the money I got. A couple of years go by, everything's going great. He doesn't bother me. I get, I call it more dumb. Okay. Oh, he knows that's my money. He knows I entered. That's why he's not coming around. One day he shows up at my house. I want my money. That's Angelo's money. It wasn't my money. I said, well, you had to follow out with Angelo. I will kill him. What? I said, I will kill him. Then we won't know. Then we'll call it even on the money. No, no, no. I need to get that money. So he took out, he goes, I own him now. Because you reported me three times a day. I gave him the money I had. So some stuff he took over my restaurants, put lean against my house and everything ain't good. And I started paying my idea was, let me get all this money back as quick as I could. The restaurants are doing good. Maybe he'll leave me alone. I can get on with life. Father's son will work it out and I'll give him, then I'll pay him, like protection money every month. So he leaves me alone. Frank, did you like Angelo Lapetra? When I was younger, he really liked me a lot. He was, I respected him. I respected him. Okay. Wasn't he kind of like your dad too? Like someone who enjoyed killing? It wasn't someone who looked at it as business. He actually kind of got off on it. Angelo was a very evil man. Yes, yes, he did. Very evil. And I remember one time I'd go down to the club and my dad's like, you go around and you help that man. And I respected him. So I was like, call the mom. What do you need me to do? What do you need me to do? And he told me one day, he's yelling at everybody. He yelled at everybody. You see these guys. I mean, when he yelled, people got scared. And he starts yelling at me. I said, what the fuck am I thinking of myself? So I says, um, can I talk to you for a second? He goes, yeah, what's up? So I went to the side. I says, look, I says, I'm down here to help you. I said, whatever you need me to do, I will do. I says, if I don't do it, I don't do it right. And you've asked me a couple of times, go ahead and yell at me, slap me in head, do whatever the fuck you got to do. But please don't yell at me like these other guys. Okay, I'll do what you, he started laughing, gave me a hug. You got it. You know, and I don't think too many people told him, you know, but I told him respectfully, you know, so he, he really, he really had a liking for me. Okay. And I don't know if it's because he's seen a lot of my dad and me too. I don't know, you know, but, um, yeah, I respected him. And yeah, he was a very, very treacherous man. Was his brother Jimmy different or similar? Jimmy was a little more laid back, but Jimmy was a stone cold killer, stone cold killer, wouldn't even break a sweat. So these guys were, these guys were true street guys. I'm not, I'm not trying to give your uncle Nikki a pass because he was a killer. I mean, he murdered multiple people, but I would say being my, you know, putting my armchair psychiatrist hat on, I didn't get the feeling that your uncle enjoyed it. He saw it as, and tell me if I'm wrong. He saw it as business that needed to be done. He was assigned. He was going to do it, but he wasn't going to revel in it the way we're talking about your dad or the La Petre brothers or so my uncle was in the Navy. My uncle was in the Navy. My uncle was very military. And that's where he looked at it as, you know, he idolized my dad like I did. So, you know, you don't question when you idolize somebody and you believe in something, you're not questioning it. Okay, but no, he would not go out and hurt somebody. If a guy didn't have the money, he put it in for him instead of hurting him. So when my uncle was ordered to kill, he killed just like a soldier, right or wrong. Everybody makes their opinion about that years later, after he went through all this, he had a very hard time when he looked back on everything he did. And he had a hard time living with it. And I think that's why he's dead now. It just ate away at him that what he did, you know, you know, and again, he saved my life in the John Ficker Roder murder because I was the one that partially came up with the plan. And I was the one that insisted to my dad, hey, let me do this. And my uncle was the one that stepped in when we were almost ready to do it and said, no, I'll handle this alone. Everybody knowing that it was a two man job at least. Okay, my uncle, my uncle didn't want me to cross this line. He goes, once you cross this line, the mob's changing, your dad's changing. It's not like it was years ago. And no, Frank, yeah, I don't do businesses, you're a good guy, don't do this. I'm telling you. So, you know, my uncle killed his first guy right when he got in with my dad. And he wasn't even, he thought they were just testing them. Like I said, they're always test. It was the hand bone Al Bergo hit, right? Yeah, he actually soiled his pants, because you know, it was real. Didn't what he had to do, but soiled his pants. So like I said, my uncle, you're right. He wasn't. That doesn't make it right. What he did. No, I'm not excusing it. I was just making a delineation between some of the characters in this story. Yeah. And you know, one thing going off the topic, you know, what I want to say is that I'm not sitting here bashing the mob. I'm not sitting here bashing organized crime. A lot of guys lived a life the way it was supposed to be. Okay, make a better life for your family. The neighborhood a better place. Okay, be fair with people, be businessmen until you don't until you until there comes a time where you can't be a businessman. Then there were certain guys that start justifying that criminal justification of he looked at me wrong. He's dead, you know, and that's that was my father. Okay, that was my father, you know, when you start killing people and people get scared and you see how easy it is, it becomes an addiction and they change like this. So would you say at this point, it was more about your father bringing you under his thumb as opposed to bringing you into Cozanostra, something larger, you know, like this brotherhood, this secret society, was it seems like it was more about just keeping you. He wanted to control you. More than like socializing you in this larger culture. Right. A lot of people didn't know what level I was. He said, you're my secret weapon. He didn't trust anybody. He needed somebody to trust. You got your son just like I trust my dad. But he looked at it as disrespect when I didn't want to get in it. And when I war with him, and when I questions things that were going on to him, yeah, that's not right. You tell me one thing, you know, and you see these guys, you know, guys will kill somebody's husband just to be able to dig that person, you know, and that's something you don't want to talk. I mean, I want to mention names out there. I was friends with people's kids and stuff. And I don't want to, you know, but there were a lot of things that I've seen that I did not agree with. I've seen a lot of infighting between each other, even though Chicago was one, they still fought against different crews, you know, not outright like New York in a war. But I mean, there was constantly this competition and who could backdoor? And I'm like, I don't know. I just don't know. And this was so, you know, I'm trying to lay my groundwork to I love the restaurant business was in it all my life. I love working love hustling. And I'm trying to set this groundwork that, you know, maybe I get my dad the rest of this money back, keep my restaurants. I don't have my take my family and move. Okay, some time goes by and I'm paying him and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And all of a sudden one day calls me. Hey, son, you know, you're doing a good job. Let's go meet for coffee. Okay, so me I'm thinking unconditional love. Okay, my dad's gonna, I'm gonna pay him off. You know, he's gonna we're gonna get along we're gonna work on our relationship. This is great. And he's gonna leave me alone and not pull me back in. So I go and I meet him by the park. Hey, let's come on. Let's take one car. Why take two? Okay, we do it a lot for parking and stuff. I get in this truck on the way there. I'm sorry, my allergies about me. I'm on my way there. He goes, I gotta stop with the one garage garages work, work garages, or we had work cars, weapons, all that stuff. He goes, I gotta run in and get some. I said, Okay, so I'm telling a funny story while we're driving. This is good dad 100%. I'm just so happy. We get there. He goes, Hey, you got your keys with you. I forgot mine. Take a walk with me. We'll go in there and then let's go for coffee. He goes, but finish that story. I love that story. It's so funny. I'm walking, telling the story, I get to the door. When I go to walk in the door, I put the key in off center door. So then I turn around, it's got me by the night. And I see that look in his eyes that killer look. Okay, I call it that glassy 1000 yard square. And our first thing I thought was, Oh, shit, he set me up. Now I thought I was too smart to be set up. I have anybody could be set up and I learned that that night. He goes, I tried controlling your uncontrollable. Oh, shit, he's going to kill me. I got my kids. He's going to bury me somewhere. And they're never going to find me. I got to get out of this garage. He goes, I'd rather have you dead than you disobeying me. So I got real close to him. I'm crying, I'm trying to hug him and I'm looking right in his eyes to make it as hard as I possibly couldn't. I'm like a daddy trigger words. I love you. I'm your son. I thought everything was going good. What's going on here? Please, my kids, I just kept going, trying to hit some kind of trigger word. You know, I didn't think I was going to make it out of that garage that night because my dad instilled in me, you never pull a gun on somebody unless you're going to use it because it'll come back and it'll haunt you. He took that gun away, put it back on the shelf. While he's driving in the car, he's so pissed. I could see that he didn't kill me now that while we're driving every once in a while, he backhand me to the face. I didn't even put my hands up. I just sat there and took that beating. It didn't hurt here. It hurt here. I can't trust my dad no more. What am I going to do? I went back and got that gun. I had the keys to the garage. It was a five-shot Stumbums revolver, Saturday Night Special, carrying it in my pocket every day. He says he ever tries again. I'll kill him with the gun. He didn't get me with it. This was a bad time in my life, bad time. I didn't care. All I thought about was killing my dad, my family. What am I going to do? Maybe I'm better off with them without me. I'm going to fuck up whatever it was I was thinking. I'm a bad person. Then we get indicted in 1995. Me, my dad, my uncle, my brother, about five or six other crew members. For an old racketeering thing, from 78 to 92, I believe it was, the whole time I worked with my dad, for extortion, racketeering and trying to carry out our juice-loan business to threats and violence. You know my first thought when I got arrested? This is a blessing in disguise. I need prison. Prison will help me, and it gets me away from my dad. So when I get a lawyer, I find out I'm looking at 10 to 12 years if I fight it and lose, but she tells me if you plead guilty without cooperating, you're looking at three to five years and $125,000 fine. I'm thinking of my kids five and six. This is the decision I want to make. When I go to see my dad to tell him I want this decision, I don't trust him. So you know, actually I didn't go see him. He found me as smart as he was. I was in a neighborhood cafe, always carried the gun. All of a sudden his truck pulls up real fast. I'm like, ah, you know what? Today's not the day to tell him. I was just scared. I go to go out the back kitchen door. Who steps in front of the screen door? My dad. I slowly start reaching from my pocket. He sees it. He slowly starts reaching versus his son, please. Let's just talk about this. You take your hand away and I'll take mine. Okay, today's the day to tell him. I told him what I want to do. You're not cooperating. Instead, it's not cooperating. You know what? I got a great idea. You stole all me some money. Why don't you plead guilty for me? So I don't have to go to prison, and I'll take care of your wife and kids and call even the whole time you're gone. So now I'm looking again from three to five to back to 10, and I'm like, you know what? I'll be away from my dad. I said, okay, well, the lawyer's talking out of it. So long story short, I'm out on bond and trying to figure out what I'm going to do next. I find out that there is the drug program in the federal system 18 months off. So what do I do? I purposely party, go see my presensing officer and tell her I have a drug problem. Now I'm going to violate, and I'm going to get in prison and get the program. Prior to that, what I did was she told me that the FBI said, you know what? He's lying. We've been filing the calibrations. They have nothing to do with drugs. He's just trying to get the time off. And I'm thinking, I said, but I plead dirty. Yeah, they're offering you a 30-day outpatient program. I'm like, oh, shit. So I ignore her for a while. I figure the federal marshals are going to come out. They're going to arrest me, and they'll violate me, and I'll get my program, right? I'll say, this is what I wanted to do. She calls my dad and tells my dad she can't find me. I'm not talking to my dad. I'm avoiding my dad. He does not know about the drugs. I'm at a feast in the neighborhood doing fried calamans. And I got my hand on the fryer, and all of a sudden, who comes up and grabs me? I'm thinking it's the marshals. I look up. It's my dad. He's got me by the hand. He goes, I got two guys trained on you. You come over here and talk to me right now. I walk over there. What's going on? Ms. Lawley called me, says she can't find you. That was my presensing officer. This is where I came clean with my dad. He had tears in his eyes. That night, we worked a lot of shit out. And I said, look, dad, it's embarrassing, but this is what I'm trying to do. What my dad thought was that I had second thoughts about going to prison that I might cooperate against him because you know, I've got our relationship. He says, dad, I'm going to do my time. I just want less time. I want to get home to my kids. So we made promises to one another in the lawyer's office after that. He asked me to promise him never to do drugs again. And I kept that promise till this day, and I'll keep the promise till the day I die. And I asked him, please, don't bring me back into this when we get out, no matter how much you think you need me. I just want to be a family man. I want to work my business if I can help you. I'll help you if times are hard with money, but I don't want to do any, I don't want any part of your life. And he said, okay. And I went into, I went and I violated. Now, what I talked about a little bit at the museum was, you know, when I violated the day I got up to go to prison, I knew I was going. I knew I was going to violate. I was ready for this. I needed this. Those two years on bond felt like purgatory. I go down the stairs and who's at the bottom of my stairs, my two little kids. Diddy, diddy, give us the kids you're going to work. Yeah, kids, I don't want them to know what's going on. I give them a kiss. I walk, my daughter tells me, daddy, don't forget tonight, we're going to make popcorn and watch Little Mermaid. I walked out that door and I lost it. What am I doing to my kids? You know, I never suffered a day in jail. Who suffers is your loved ones, your family. Okay. All right. And I, to this day, never forgot that day on the stairs. My kids are who I answer to. They're 33 and 30. They're gonna be, my son's gonna be 32. Okay. And, you know, that was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. Now, when I got in prison, the next day I woke up, I felt like a million dollars that I'm CC and this is the start of my new life. A week later, my mom comes, she's looking at me weird with my younger brother. What's going on? I go, something wrong? Please tell me. I can handle it. My mind's like, there's nothing wrong. You look great. You look better here than the street. I thought this was a bad place. It's a mile to be fine. I don't want you to come back no more. I says, and I'll see you in a few years. Stay close, stay close with your grandkids. My wife put her through a lot and she was scared and she asked for a divorce. She didn't want to fight. Today she's my ex-wife. We raised the kids together. We have a nice relationship. I had to tell my kids, I brought them. Yeah, what is this? I says, this is prison, but there's two kinds of people in prison. People who make mistakes and bad people. They had to make mistakes. When you come in home, I couldn't say three to five years to a six-year-old. I says, I got to pass all the classes, so I'm going to stay here and study as hard as I could. I use my prison experience and everything I did wrong to teach my kids that there's a fine line between these clothes and an orange jumpsuit that you've got to take accountability for what you do. Can I ask something? Was your father, like with your children, his grandkids, was he different around them? Because sometimes you hear these stories about your parent is tough on you, but then they have a soft spot for the grandkids. What was that dynamic like? Yeah, he did have a soft spot for the kids, but sometimes he could control himself. One time, when we were kind of on the outs, back then we had the pagers. The only cell phone you had was the brick, and you needed a drug dealer or a doctor. You didn't see monsters walking around with a brick phone. He's paging me, and I'm supposed to go out to a phone, and I know what phone to call. I'm not because I'm my daughter sick, so I can't leave the house. Finally, he comes to the house. He walks in the door like he caught me. Come on in. My daughter, my son are right there, and he slaps me in the face. Then he looks down and he sees the kids. He goes, laugh, laugh, it's all like it was a joke. And my daughter was like, like that. He was mad because he thought I was avoiding him. I wasn't. I couldn't go out. But see, that's when his temper, he couldn't control it anymore. One thing my dad was bad with was controlling his temper, and he fought that for many years. That's why he stopped drinking two years earlier, because liquor made him a mean person. So he got rid of liquor. He really fought with that. Back to the, so I'm at MCC. I'm waiting to see where I'm going. I feel like a million dollars. I'm working out, and all of a sudden this goes up and says, Mylon, Michigan, Frank Calibre. He's going to my counselor. That's my dad. He's there. Where am I going? He's already there. Why is his name up here? He wasn't here. He looks and goes, ah, I got great news for you. Sometimes they put family members together. You're one of the lucky ones. You know what I wanted to run? I couldn't run nowhere. I'm locked down. It's next to security. Where am I going to go? I freaked out. So I got on a bus, wound up in Tierra Hut. The planes broke down. So I was in the hole for 16 days, and that's when I dug down deep inside. What am I made of? What am I going to do when I get out? How am I going to make it up to my family? But the biggest thing was, I lost a fear of my dad. I'm going to Mylon, Michigan with an open mind. I'm going to try to work this out. I'm going down in security level. So it's great, all the freedoms you get now. But I don't trust my dad, and he's a master manipulator. So my guard is going to be up. I get to Mylon, Michigan. I was down five and a half months before I got there. I get to Mylon, Michigan for eight months. I worked on my relationship with my dad. He didn't know I was divorced. When he found out I was divorced, he thought it was an opportunity to get me closer to him. He's seen me doing real good time. I could see how proud he was in my eyes. It was funny because we get here and I'm like, hey, dad, I see the guard tower over there. I says, do they shoot you? Do they shoot with the tracer first if you step off the concrete like a tear or a hut? He goes, huh? Oh yeah, you get a shot. I go, so they shoot here too? No, no, no. It's a written shot. And I was like, okay. Oh, I said, this is not, I mean, when I got to Mylon at the guard, he says, hey, so let me get this straight. I could leave this unit and go anywhere in the prison I want from five o'clock to nine o'clock. He's like, yeah. And he's looking at me like, what's wrong? Well, guess where I came from was controlled movement everywhere you went was controlled. So, and I was in a nice unit. They were like dormitories, you know, a couple of the units, the newer section. So anyways, for the whole, I get a job in commissary. I'm busting my ass like I did my businesses. Guys are getting released. I'm one of the top guys in commissary. I'm making suggestions, ordering stuff, doing stuff like I would do in a business on the street. The guards won that year. The number one commissary for profits and the way it was run for the whole prison system. They each got a $500 bonus of pizza and beer party. Okay. I had something to do with that. The warden, the girl that ran the warden staff asked me to be on the wards board with eight other inmates running stuff. I had a lot of perks. What did I do? I took care of guys from South Philly, from New York, from Detroit, from Chicago. I took care of my dad, always the best fruit and vegetables. And I'm doing my time. My dad is cornered on the yard one day with a couple of guys from the life. And they're like, hey, Frank, we got to tell you something. Your son, he's really a good guy, a stand-up guy. He's always taken care of us, got our back. He's doing a good time. What guy should do better time? I had a guy, Shorty Lamentia, come right up to me and say, you do the best time I've ever seen. I wish I could do time like you. You know what my dad says to him? My son, that's me. I tell him what to do. They're all looking at my dad like, is this guy jealous of his son? What's going on? Why would you say that? That was a compliment. When I found out I was pissed. You know, I wasn't confronted with my dad on the yard. It got so bad between us. We were bumping shoulders and everything. I says, dad, you know what? I says, you're a piece of crap and I don't fear you no more. What? I go, that's right. He goes, yeah, I figured that. I go, you know, you, I says, I got some problems with you. He goes, what? I go, you don't draw the line anywhere. You tried to extort my brother Kirk at Tony and Tina's wedding. My brother owned half of Tony and Tina's wedding or a third in Chicago. My dad sent the guy in there to extort him. Because what are you talking about? I go, you sent somebody in there. I mentioned the guy's name. I go to extort Kirk. He goes, you know what? He goes, no, I didn't. Who told you that? I go, nobody. See, you don't know what you're talking about. I said, I seen it on a camera. Camera, who had cameras? I said, dad, you idiot you sent in went right on a security camera. I watched the whole thing and left. I'll be right back. I got to go to the bathroom. We're going to finish this conversation. See, I knew my dad. He's going to figure out this story. He goes, he comes back with all these lives. And at that point, I said, I'm done with this guy. He's never going to change. I gave him eight months. He wants to screw me. He's trying to pull me back in because he's talking about when I get out, we're going to be back together again. So this is where I made this huge decision that was the biggest decision I ever made in my life. First of all, I was taught from my dad, don't make a decision out of anger. Think it through. Look at everything before. Make sure that you can live with this decision for the rest of your life. So I'm trying to think of different options I have. And sometimes in life, you have to make decision over the choices you have. And sometimes the choices you have all suck. It came down to two choices that I could think of, wait till I get on the street, go against my dad. Well, guess what? He's good at killing. I'll probably wind up that. Okay. Or if I do get lucky enough to get him, I may wind up in jail for the rest of my life. Well, the other one was the FBI. Contact the FBI. I'm not going to wait. Hold it. I'm not doing bad time. And I don't know if I can trouble the FBI. I trust them. I don't know. So I came up with an idea, a business proposition to the FBI. So I went to the prison library. I wore winter gloves for no fingerprints. I typed it for no handwriting. I didn't put anything personal in there in case I didn't accept it. I could say that's the government trying to set us up, dad. Okay. And I sent this thing out. And it was months before they came. Now I found out from them later on that when they got that letter, first of all, they couldn't believe what they got. They weren't even sure if it was real. Then the legalities of my lawyers couldn't know. And if you do it at that time, we need to get them out there and get them in front of a grand jury. That's protocol. Get them in front of a grand jury. He changes his mind. He can't. So what I put in the letter basically was that nobody can know for my safety. Don't bring any recording devices. Not even my lawyer can know. And I want to help you keep this sick man locked up forever. It was basically what I put in the letter. I tried to type it carefully. I made it look like a real WAP job letter if I could. So when they finally came out, they're like, what do you want? What do you want? I says, well, this is what I want. No disrespect to you guys. I says, no immunity. I'll do all my time. I'll pay all my fines, but I want to help you against my dad, not the mob, not anybody else. Just my dad. Well, will you wear a wire? I says, hell no, he caught guys twice on the street. He's too smart with that. You know, we're not even supposed to talk about anything after it's done. I says, I'm going to feed you, drive you. I'm going to feed you information, point you in the right direction so you can get my dad. So they left. They came back a couple weeks later with the information I gave them, not the hardest part that wound up happening, that I tried as much as I could that didn't want to happen was in order to get my dad in trouble, I had to talk about what my uncle did with the Fikarata murder, which put him in there.