Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. It's good to be back here
in the studio of Gangland Wire.
I have a story today and an interview, as you can see.
My interviewee is Kurt Calabrese. Now, Kurt Calabrese is from Chicago and he
grew up in a Chicago outfit family.
Now, a lot of you guys know, if you're real mob aficionados,
you know about the Family Secrets Trial.
And his father, Kurt's father, was Frank Calabrese Sr., his brother,
Frank Calabrese Jr., who we had on the show several years ago.
One of my earliest interviews, actually.
And then his uncle, Nick Calabrese, ended up going to Witness Protection Program.
And so that's why they called it the Family Secrets Trial, because it was all
centered around the Calabrese family.
So I really look forward to talking to Kurt. And Kurt, welcome.
Thank you, Gary. Thank you for having me. So, Kurt, we talked a little bit before the show.
And, you know, what I found kind of fascinating in a way was partly not the
mafia stuff particularly, but your childhood.
You all grew up in this three-story or three, what'd you call it?
A three-flat? Flat, yeah.
Three-flat house where your father, mother, grandparents, your brother,
you, your uncle, Nick, all lived in this same house.
Now, tell us a little bit about what that was like. And you might talk about
the neighborhood, too. So, you know, tell us a little bit about what that was like.
Well, the house that we lived in, actually, my father had built.
It's a three flat. It's three apartments.
And he had a family room, a very
big family room built onto the house also with a garage and a room in it.
Very unique building that he had built. But he had it built for family.
So we grew up there. We lived there almost our whole lives.
And I was in a community called Elmwood Park.
Which is a suburb right outside Chicago, in fact, right on the border of Chicago.
A very quiet neighborhood, very, I'm not going to say ethnic,
but a lot of Italian grew up there. A lot of different nationalities,
but probably predominantly Italian.
It was a very nice neighborhood to grow up in.
Everybody knew each other, very closely knit neighborhood.
One of those neighborhoods where you didn't have to lock your doors.
A lot of things went on in that neighborhood.
It was a very closely knit neighborhood, and I enjoyed it.
I loved growing up where I grew up because I had a lot of friends that I grew
up with, and there was a lot to do.
Outside of the house, we had a pretty normal childhood as far as playing baseball
and hanging out with our friends and going to school and played football and basketball.
A lot of sports inside our home was a little bit different than it was in other people's homes,
which I didn't realize until I wasn't a kid anymore when I realized that what
went on in our house didn't go on in other homes. Interesting.
Now, I've noticed that in Kansas City, our little Italy section and other cities,
I see people talking about their neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods.
Back at one time, they were really safe. Nobody was going around breaking in
houses, let alone robbing people on the streets. They were really safe because
people took care of each other. They were out on the streets.
They weren't hiding back in their homes all the time. They were out on the streets.
Said, there's a stranger that came through there.
You know, everybody had their eye on it. Believe me, I know it was a policeman
working an Italian neighborhood, a Peckerwood policeman.
You know, we call non-Italians or Peckerwoods down here. I don't know if you
call non-Italians Peckerwoods up there, but they call us Peckerwoods.
You see a Peckerwood driving through there, you give him the eye,
like, who is that guy? Was it like that in your neighborhood?
Yes, it was. It was, you knew, like I said, everybody kind of knew each other.
And if somebody came into that neighborhood and didn't belong there or was doing
something they shouldn't be doing, it was, you knew right away.
You were, there were people out on the street all the time. And I mean,
it was one of a few Italian neighborhoods.
I mean, there were probably five or six very strong Italian neighborhoods in
the Chicago and Chicagoland area that were, you know, predominantly Italian
and Elwood Park being one of them.
And not to mention that, uh, you know, there was a lot of mob guys that lived
in our neighborhood So that, you know,
that was something that made people feel safe back then in those neighborhoods,
you know, and people still talk about that because, uh, you know,
you don't really have neighborhoods like that anymore, unfortunately.
Yeah. I have to ask in Kansas city, there was this deal started in Italian neighborhood.
If you tied a red ribbon around your, uh, steering column, nobody would break
into that car. Did you have anything like that?
That warned people off? There was a mob car, Bob connected car. No, not really.
I mean, you know, growing up a lot of, a lot of.
Guys I grew up with and people in the neighborhood had, uh, horns hanging from
their mirrors, uh, you know, the Italian horn, uh, which warded off evil and, you know, the evil eye.
So, I mean, that, that was something that maybe could be considered similar,
but a lot of, a lot of people that were Italian just had those hanging from their mirrors.
So nothing like, like that, that I can remember.
That was probably before my time. I saw one when I was a young police,
but I saw when this guy got killed in his car, You know, I was overlooking at
the car just out of curiosity. I was a street policeman still.
There was a red ribbon around the steering column. So I thought,
well, you know, that rumor is true.
So growing up, your father and your Uncle Nicky are involved in this outfit business, shall we say.
When did you first start to realize that there was something a little bit different?
I know on The Sopranos, they did a whole show about the kids starting to realize
that their dad was a little bit different than the other dads.
When did you first notice that?
It was grammar school, probably mid-grammar school.
I started to, there were, you know, there was people talking and,
you know, there was a story that was put in a newspaper.
I think it was about sixth grade maybe.
And it was on the front page of the newspaper was a picture of a house.
And it was a story about, you know, organized crime, about the outfit.
It was funny because that day.
We didn't get the newspaper a lot in our house, but that day,
particular day, there was no newspapers around the area.
So it was, you know, we weren't supposed to see that, but, um,
and we didn't, I didn't see it personally. It was pointed out to me by some friends.
So I guess it would be easier to say that my friends kind of caught on quicker
than I did. You know, what was going on?
Again, that was going on, but what, that our lives were different,
that my father was different, that what he did was different,
you know, because as kids, we were told.
You know, he was a engineer that he was, uh, he was in the carpet business that,
you know, things to, to say to people if we were ever asked.
So, you know, the way we were raised with an iron fist, you know,
we followed whatever we were told to say.
And so that's, you know, that's how we explained it when I get school,
when your teacher would ask, what does your father do? Or your friends would
ask, what does your father do?
You know, those were the answers that we were given to give people.
It seems like I remember your brother, Frank, saying that he was an engineer
and, and like, you know, he would tell that at school and they would say like
a, like a train engineer and say, no, like just an engineer.
Like he didn't really even know what that meant other than he was an engineer.
Right. That's where it ended. It was, he was an engineer. We couldn't explain
it because we didn't know.
So, you know, it was, you know, just an engineer.
And when people ask, just an engineer, that's what he was. And for most people
in your community, that would probably be enough.
They would say, okay, let's move on.
It was for people. The teachers wanted more, but friends and parents,
that was enough for them. That was enough.
You know, another thing I have noticed with mob families, and I find this fascinating
that you have, on one hand, now I worked a lot of criminals as a policeman,
but with mob guys, you have this family.
You have children at home, you have Christmases, you have Easter,
you have the normal holidays, you give presents.
But I've talked to some mob kids and they talked about all the,
what they didn't realize at the time was all the swag that they would get in
there and all the new stuff and boxes and some of the presents that would show
up at Christmas time. Do you remember that?
Was he bringing a lot of swag in for you guys as presents and to do things with?
Yeah, not as much for the holidays, for Christmas and stuff,
but there was always something in our house.
There was always, like one time he came home with a box of hockey sticks.
There was like 25 professional hockey sticks.
They were, you know, and we didn't think anything of it. I mean, we used them. Yeah.
It was stuff like that. There was stuff that he would bring home in quantity.
And, you know, again, we just, it was kind of,
It wasn't odd. It was kind of normal, but it was, if you go back to think of
it now on, you tell people now, I mean, that's, you know, evidently this stuff
was falling off the back of a truck somewhere. Yeah.
Yeah. It fell off a truck. The great euphemism for having some stolen property.
Oh, it just fell off a truck. Oh, okay. I'll take some.
And what's different about us, Gary, is we weren't, we never asked.
We were so, the discipline in our house was you really couldn't ask somebody,
hey, dad, where'd you get these? Or, hey, dad, how did you get these?
It was just, you just, you know, you just lived.
You didn't ask questions about anything, especially if it was something that he was giving you.
It wasn't like, you know, hey, where'd you get this? Or, you know,
where did this come from?
It was just happy to have it, you know, which I think is different,
was different in our home than it was in a lot of other guys' homes that were
part of that life. because, you know, my father wasn't, you really couldn't ask him anything.
You really couldn't, couldn't really have a conversation with him about anything.
Cause he just, you know, you couldn't ask questions.
You couldn't, you just had to accept whatever was given you or whatever was
told to you as an answer and you live with it.
You deal with it. So that gets around to the, you know, next logical question
is I believe he had a pretty violent temper.
How did he express that in the home? Was it, I mean, out in the streets, he might kill somebody.
He did kill several people in the home. He's not going to kill anybody,
but did you see a lot of evidence of that violent temper or did he keep it under control at home?
No, he, he was very violent in our house.
He, he was, especially with me, he was very, very hands-on. He was very abusive.
He was very, you know, he, he bullied me.
He, he wanted you to fear him and he, he enjoyed that fear. when he knew that you feared him.
And I literally shook around my dad.
I literally shook. I mean, that's how he was with me.
He was, you know, I mean, the beatings and the, you know, the abuse and the,
you know, both physical and verbal, you know, that, that's how he was with me, especially.
And, and I don't, you know, I can't really answer why, you know,
people have asked me, Hey, why was your dad like that with you?
You know, I mean, he brought it home with them. It was in our house.
And, you know, again, at an early age, he, you know, he involved us in his life,
you know, gradually at the beginning.
But I mean, you know, and I, me personally, didn't want anything to do with that life.
And reason being is I didn't want anything to do with my dad.
I mean, he was my dad and I loved him and I respected him.
And I, and I, you know, I was there with, for him, for anything he ever needed all the way till the end.
But I did not want to be part of anything he was part of because he just was
the hardest person in the world to get along with. And he was he was abusive.
And, you know, and again, you know, the why would you want to be around a world
with someone who, you know, who's that way?
You know, I mean, he could have been a postman or, you know, or whatever.
And I and if he was that way, I make me not want to be around them.
And that's, you know, he used the term sad sack when he referred to me in code.
And the reason being is because if you looked at me, I had that look on my face
my whole life. I just did not want to be around him.
I feared him and I shook around him and he made me shake.
And again, for nothing, just for, that's just the way he was.
And people, and once I saw people on the street act that way around him,
you know, and a lot of things started to make sense to me.
Yeah. You probably knew you had to walk on eggshells is what I hear you're saying around him.
And that continually abuse, that continual fear, even though he wasn't going
off at the present time, you never knew what was going to set him off.
Right. And I guess one of your defenses was to just look down and be kind of
downtrodden because you knew that was a way maybe to keep him from going off on you.
Yeah, I would hope that it would, whatever, but it didn't.
I mean, when I, whenever I put my head down or I had that look on my face,
he would, he would point it out and he would, he almost made fun of it.
You know, that's how, that's how the sad sack came up. I mean,
it was like a joke, you know, look, look at him.
He's, you know, it was always looks like a mope or always looks like,
you know, the look on his face is like, he's not happy. Well, I wasn't happy.
I mean, it was, I didn't have a good poker face. So, and, and,
and Gary, what you got to understand is this didn't happen occasionally. This was every day.
This was part of my life every day. This wasn't an occasional him getting mad
or him an occasional, you know, going, you know, going off on me.
This, this way he was in walking on eggshells was every day.
And it was, and that's what I, what, what I want people to try to understand.
And that's what I talk about in, you know, in, in my, uh, in the podcast is,
is, you know, this was every day. This wasn't a portion of my life.
This wasn't, uh, this was every day.
And, and, you know, it's had, it's, it has its effect on me.
It's had its effect. I mean, it's still, still till this day.
I mean, it's never going to go away.
I believe it. Matter of fact, we've been a little bit remiss.
We should have brought this up earlier.
Kurt is now part of a ongoing, I don't know, eight, eight, eight,
eight series of podcasts called underbelly killing Kurt, which is part of a
larger podcast, a professional ran by a company, if you will, a podcast.
And so they're in the middle of that right now. You've got a couple more episodes,
I think, come out, and then you're going to do some wrap up.
He even mentioned it, guys, to give you a little teaser on this podcast,
you got to start listening to it.
It's good. I've listened to some of them myself.
And at the end, Kurt said he gave me a little teaser.
They might release some audio of his Uncle Nicky Calabrese at the end.
Now, we don't know for sure, and he's not committing to me, but that's a little teaser.
You might get a little of the actual voice of Nicky, his Uncle Nicky Calabrese.
Because if you remember, a lot of you guys are real aficionados,
but after the skimming from Las Vegas trials took out, Angelo LaPietra, Iupa.
Jackie Cerrone took out these high echelon guys.
The next one was a family secrets trial in which his Uncle Mickey testified
and his brother Frank testified and took down his dad's crew for all these murders and also took down,
I believe, Jimmy Marcello for the Spalatro brothers,
which was kind of the next boss.
I mean, it really, between those two prosecutions, just about decimated the Chicago outfit.
Wouldn't you agree, Kirk? Oh, yes. Yes, definitely.
Had to be a really tense time. I guess your dad was in jail during the trial.
But you're talking about your dad. Now,
when he realized that maybe there was something going on, you know,
he saw surveillance on himself or he knew people were asking,
FBI agents were asking questions in places that they shouldn't be,
that, you know, people that really might know something to hurt him.
Did he get even more tense then?
Was there a lot more anger? What was his life?
I always wondered, does it ever bother him that we, as law enforcement, are after him?
Does it ever bother him at all? They never acted like it.
You know what he was he taught us at a
young age to always be respectful to to
everyone including law enforcement um never
never give anybody a reason to you know to have a problem with you uh so he
you know he was he was always the same way he was with people especially strangers
especially people he didn't know and he was very even keel he was you know he
didn't get excited I did when,
when stuff was going on and, and a lot of stuff was going on at that time.
Um, yeah, he, he was very, uh, you know, he, he, he was very edgy.
He was very easy to, to get mad. I mean, but, but again, to me, that was everyday life.
So it wasn't, it wasn't different to me, but people, you know,
outside of his family, you know, noticed it, recognized it.
And, um, you know, I, I, I don't know. I think you're probably aware of,
I mean, during the family secrets trial, you know, my family was threatened.
You know, I, I, my life was threatened. There was a, there was a fake bomb put
on my porch at my home, uh, on the day of the jury selection for that case.
There was, uh, rats put on my doorstep previously to that, um,
two white rats with nooses around their necks.
Um, so I, my life was a lot different than the stories you're going to read
in the family secrets books.
And, you know, that's one of the reasons why I did this podcast,
because I wanted to be able to explain to people what I went through,
what my family went through because of my father, because of the life that he
chose for himself and for us.
You know, and that's where I think that's a little bit more unique for people,
because I actually dealt with that stuff.
I mean, it didn't happen to anyone else. It happened to me and I didn't cooperate. Yeah.
I refused to cooperate. I refused to talk. That's one of the reasons why,
you know, I'm speaking my piece now and doing the podcast.
And when and the name of it, Killing Kurt, I mean, this story is killing me.
It's it's it's taken its toll on me, you know, especially since I came home from prison.
You know, I did two years in prison. I made a deal, cut a deal and pled out
so that my family could get their deals.
The government hinged my deal, their deals on my deal.
My father, my uncle, and my brother had negotiated pleas, but they wouldn't
accept them unless I agreed to plead out too.
And unfortunately, had I had my day in court and I was able to get severed from
the case, I think I would have won my case because I wasn't charged with the
same things that they were charged with.
Even though I was part of that life and I wasn't charged with any of this stuff
because there was no evidence to charge me.
To me, it's unique and it's different than a lot of stuff people have done.
And my story is different and it just needed to be told.
It is killing me and it's had its effect on me.
And I suffer from complex PTSD because of the life I've lived,
according to the doctors, and it's getting worse.
And there is something for me being able to tell my story.
It, it, it may not give me closure that I hoped it would give me,
but it does give me some peace for people to understand what I've lived and
why I am the way I am because of how I lived.
Interesting. Yeah. And, and I think a lot of people don't understand in,
in these tight communities like,
the outfit community family, the extended family bears.
If somebody that's, that's why we've never had anybody go into witness protection
and really testify here in Kansas city, because it's so hard on the extended family.
And, and it's such a small community that you can't go anywhere without running into somebody else.
Now, Chicago is a little bit bigger, but you still lived in a really small community.
So you go to some, some friend's wedding or some friends, you know,
go to church or, or just your restaurant that you would normally go to.
There's some of these mob guys, and now they're painting you with the brush
of being a rat. Is that what you experienced?
That's exactly what I've experienced. And it's, you know, I,
when, when all this happened, uh, you know, people automatically think that
you're part of what's going on.
And if you don't come out and say, Hey, I had nothing to do with this,
or I have nothing to do with this person.
Um, then, then they start to understand it. And when proof, when,
when everything comes out, they can see it. But I never did that, Gary.
I never went out and said, Hey, I got nothing to do with my brother.
I have nothing to do with my uncle.
You know, I don't agree with what they did and I wouldn't do it,
but I never, I never, you know, I never threw him under the bus or said,
Hey, I, you know, I don't, I've got nothing to do with them.
Unfortunately, I had to start being more honest about what Frank Jr.
Has done because unfortunately he has a tendency of, of lying and telling stories
that aren't true or accurate just to supplement his, his, his story or what he's created.
And it's, it's, you know, unfortunately my brother's dead to me.
It has to be that way because, yeah. And I'm not proud to say that or happy
to say that because I was as close to my brother as I was to anybody in my life.
When I asked him to stop lying and just tell the truth of how what really went on...
He wouldn't do it. You know, there were things that he put me in the middle
of, you know, when he decided to cooperate, you know, I didn't judge him and
I didn't, I didn't, I didn't agree with what he did, but I didn't judge him.
But he, you know, he, he packed up and he ran away and left me and our whole
family there to deal with the mess that he created.
And, and he didn't seem to care about the people that he hurt by doing what he did.
And I don't mean the outfit. I'm talking about family members on both sides
of my family, on my mother's side.
You know, he, he hurt a lot of people with things that he talked about that
really had nothing to do with the mob, had nothing to do with the outfit.
It was more family stuff. And, and, you know, it's, it's offensive because.
You know, people come up to me and say, well, why did Junior talk about,
why did he bring me into the book? Why did he talk about me?
I can't answer that question. But at some point I had to say,
listen, this had nothing to do with me.
I had nothing to do with this. I wanted nothing to do with this.
I remained loyal to myself because I never believed in doing that.
I never believed in cooperating or telling on people or, you know, I just, I don't know.
And all the way till the end. I mean, I claimed my father's body when nobody
would go out there to claim it just because, you know, for my own selfish reasons.
But I needed to see this man dead.
I needed to know that he was actually dead because he haunted me.
I mean, he, you know, in some ways he still does, but I can't,
you know, I can't fix that.
And it's never going to get fixed overnight, but it is what I live every day. And it's different.
What I live every day is different than what these other people live every day.
It's different from what Junior lives every day. And everybody's got their,
their issues and, and, and things that have happened.
But I, you know, I needed to, to tell the truth. I needed to tell the story.
I needed to tell it accurately because a lot of lies have been told and it's
offensive. and it's killing me.
I can only imagine the pressure that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office
brought to bear on you as...
They started taking down this whole family secrets thing.
It got, it got the son, they got the brother and now they got,
then you're out there and you were close enough that you might know some,
I bet that, I bet they grilled you. I bet they threatened you with everything.
They did. Talk about that a little bit, what that was like.
Well, they, they first threatened for first, according to my uncle,
um, the deal that he made with them was for them to leave me alone.
And he even went as far as telling them when they went to see him,
um, that they were going to see his nephew next.
And he said to them, which it's how it's my uncle.
It's my relationship with my uncle. I'm proud of how, what my uncle thought
of me, but he kind of, he kind of, it kind of hurt me because it, it made a problem for me.
He told the FBI, don't go see Kurt.
Cause Kurt won't talk to you. So they didn't want to hear that. They didn't like that.
I'm sure it made them even have a bigger problem with me.
But they told my lawyer, we want to talk to Kurt.
And my lawyer told him straight out, Kurt won't talk to you.
And they said, well, we've got immunity already for him.
If we subpoena him, we already have the immunity.
And if he doesn't testify, we're going to lock him up. And my lawyer told him, go right ahead.
He's not going to talk to you. And he told him straight out,
if you lock this kid up, this kid wants nothing to do with this life anymore.
He wants nothing to do with his father.
He wants nothing to do with what's going on here. He just wants to be left alone.
If you go ahead and subpoena him, we will go to the newspaper and we will let
them know that, you know, this kid went and did his time. I did my time. I came home.
I wanted to be left alone. I wanted nothing to do with either side.
And they kind of backed off But then my father subpoenaed me.
My father had the nerve to actually subpoena me and put me on a stand.
I mean, he pointed me out during the family secrets trial. And I was sitting
in a watching like everyone else.
He pointed me out. He subpoenaed me right outside the courtroom.
And it was a mind game that my father played with me. He did that to me my whole life.
Same with the threat, the threatening letters I got, the threats. They all came from him.
They were all his way. I don't know why, but they were all his way of,
of playing a mind game with me, either trying to scare me or scare me more than I was already scared.
But he, you know, he played those games with me and the government,
you know, I ended up when the, when my father was going to sentencing, I was, uh,
government got ahold of my lawyer and said, listen, uh, they had already locked
him down and it was called the Sam's measure.
Uh, they locked him down like a terrorist. And at that point,
they can decide who you can see and who you can't see, who can visit you, who you can talk to.
And so the government got ahold of my lawyer and said, listen,
if Kurt ever wants to talk to his father again or say anything to his dad,
he's going to have to do it at the sentencing.
Well, I didn't, you know, Gary, I didn't really get why they wanted me at the sentencing.
I thought about it. I didn't tell anybody what I was doing. I wrote something out.
I thought about it. I didn't decide till the morning of the sentencing that
I was going to actually speak.
And that's because I didn't want anybody to know I was going to do it.
I didn't want it to be a circus and courtroom.
So I decided the last minute to go in there. Well, they put me in the,
in the road with the victims families and the FBI saw me sitting in the room.
They, they had known now that I was going to speak and I didn't understand exactly
why they wanted me there until I started speaking. And the only person who can
get my father to lose it was me.
For some reason, whatever the reason is with me, he just lost it.
And so when I got up to speak, which I had second thoughts about doing,
and I, again, I didn't realize why they wanted me in the courtroom.
But once I started to speak, my father lost it. And I, I, I figured out that
at that point, the government wanted, wanted my father to lose it in court and
wanted the judge to see it. And he wanted the, the, uh.
The jury to see it. And sure enough, they got to see it.
And that's when I realized why they invited me into the court that day was for
them, for the judge to see my father actually lose his temper.
Like they kept claiming he did his whole life and he claimed he didn't.
Well, he lost it when I started to speak.
So they got what they wanted out of it.
I didn't even get a chance to finish my statement because he cut me off.
So, you know, it was my way of saying, yeah, normally I would never have done something that way.
I didn't want to do that, but I, I, I wanted to be able to say what I needed to say.
I didn't want to do it in front of anyone. I wanted to do with him alone,
but I wasn't, I was told I was never going to get that opportunity.
So I chose to do that. Um, it's something that I, I probably shouldn't have done.
I wouldn't have done it. You know, if I had thought about it,
I probably wouldn't have done it, but I got to say some of the things that I
wanted to say and get them off my chest.
And I just, I, you know, he wasn't very happy and And he, you know,
he basically tried to come after me, come at me in the courtroom.
Now, you said you did a couple of years. Now, what did he suck you into something
that wasn't for not refusing to testify?
Did he pull you into something that make dirty you up a little bit where they can make a case on you?
Well, there were two. Our original case that we went away to prison for.
That's what I went away for. I, I, my charges originally were conspiracy,
conspiracy to defraud the IRS and some mail fraud counts. But they,
when I pled out, I pled out to conspiracy to defraud the IRS.
And, um, that, that was a charge I should have never gotten because there was
nothing there on a case that, that had me guilty of anything there.
Uh, but it was, you know, it was there when they come to you with a plea,
you plead out to what they tell you. Cause I offered to plead out the perjury.
Cause I, I lied during, uh, depositions, uh, in our first case about money that
belonged to my dad and, and properties.
And, you know, I, I claimed that was all my stuff and, you know,
I perjured myself, but I, but you know, when I got charged, if he had,
had that case went to trial, uh, I would have never gotten charged.
Uh, I, I most likely would have beat him in court because that's how weak their
evidence was against me.
But they wanted me, you know, there was a time, Gary, in our first case where,
uh, when we got arrested, you know, they, they pulled my father in a room and
my brother and I were sitting in a room across the hallway with the door open. It was all staged.
And my dad was in a room across the hall and they told my dad point blank,
if you agree to take responsibility for what's happened here,
not plea, not, not rat on anybody or not telling anybody, just take responsibility.
Billy, we'll let your kids walk out the door right now.
And my father said to them, I'm not worried. Both of my kids are men.
So at that point, I thought I was,
I thought I finally earned my father's respect when he said that to me.
I was, you know, I was so messed up mentally at that point that I thought that
was a huge compliment my father gave me, but he had the opportunity to get us out of the case.
And I think the government expected him to accept that and the case would have
ended right there, but he didn't, he would not, he would not do it.
He didn't even think about it.
He didn't even take a second to think about it. He just basically said that
I'm, I'm not worried. Both my, my boys are men.
And so, you know, that's the kind of person my father was. My father was about himself.
My father was, listen, my father was very good at what he did.
Okay. Very good at what he did.
He was just a horrible father. He was, he was on the street.
He was respected. He was feared.
You know, he was very good at what he did. And even the government didn't know
what he was doing until my uncle cooperated.
They had no idea that my father and uncle were both part of all those murders.
They had no idea, which, you know, is their job to find that out.
You know, they had no idea. In fact, in fact, so much, Gary,
that they didn't believe my uncle. When he first started cooperating,
they didn't believe him.
Really? The point where he got frustrated and he said, okay,
fine. He said, I'm done. Let me out. Let me get, get me out of the room.
Cause they were like, no, no, we got information that that's somebody else. He said.
You know, the stuff he gave them and he was so, my uncle was so particular and
his mind was so sharp that he remembered things that nobody would have remembered.
So he was so accurate when he described things, that's when they started realizing
these guys were part of, you know, very serious part of what was going on. Really?
Those little details from a crime scene that were never made public.
Like, see, when a guy comes to you and he can give you those little details,
you look back at the crime scene photos or the, you know, the description of
the crime scene and you say, oh, man, this guy knows.
And he was able to do that, it sounds like. Yes. Oh, yeah.
And to point to, like I said, it confused them because who has a mind like that
could remember all that stuff to detail like that. But that's how my uncle's mind was.
I mean, he was, you know, and again, my uncle was a stand-up guy.
Uh, you know, I, I had my, had junior not did what he did, my uncle would have never cooperated.
I mean, he would have died in prison. He had no, you know, no,
no ideas or thoughts to do that.
And it broke his heart. Man, you know, people don't realize what it did to my uncle.
I mean, he, you know, he, he couldn't live with himself with, with how, what he did.
Now he was a loyal, loyal soldier, my uncle. And, you know, unfortunately,
my father didn't do the right thing with him either.
He didn't do the right thing with anybody. My father, he didn't,
he treated everybody that way.
It seemed to me like everybody was disposable in his world.
Everybody's disposable in order to protect him. No matter what you're disposable.
And we all did protect him. I mean, we, we were willing, we were all willing.
There was a time when my father was going to leave.
In fact, it's in the, it's in the podcast. There was a time when my father was
going to run, run away and go in hiding.
Um, because of, uh, uh, Joe Bonanno did that years ago. Yeah.
I remember he, yeah. Where he claimed that they were going to kill him.
So he was afraid of his life.
Well, my father was going to do that. And I was working with him to, to try to do that.
And uh you know he got mad because when
he said he was going to do it and he was going to disappear he wanted
us to be upset that he was going to leave and
we were all saying go you're like all right go
let me help you right we did we were
helping him and he said you know what's going
to happen is when i disappear they're going to arrest you guys immediately and
we said fine fine just to let
him go just to get rid of him just to let him you know
because we we had no life the three of us
had no lives our lives were his life and
that's you know that's what people need to understand about
this story is you know that's how he was and i mean the controlling you know
he he controlled you he controlled me to the point like i said i was i was a
you know the fear of god from him you know for for reasons and i'm not talking
about you know listen i as a kid i got in trouble.
I did things, you know, I came home late and I, you know, and I got grounded and I got hit.
And, and, and, you know, when I did stuff like that, I expected that,
you know, but when, when, when I'm, what I'm talking about, the abuse and the
bullying was every day was about nothing, was about nothing.
You didn't have to do anything to be treated that way. You know,
that's, that's just the way he, you know, he was with me and,
you know, it's taken its toll.
Now I have to ask a little bit, uh,
later in your life, you married into a outfit family. You married Angela LaPietra's
daughter, correct? Granddaughter.
Granddaughter. Yeah. So how was that? I mean, how, you know,
that had to be kind of interesting.
Well, it, it put it this way. It was, nobody wanted that.
Nobody wanted her and I to be married. Nobody wanted her and I to be together.
Um, it started off as a, as us dating.
Uh, I used to, how we, how we started dating and, and I mean,
we were raised as cousins.
That's how close our families were. So we were raised, you know,
as Italian cousins, you're not really blood related, but that's your cousin.
Cause, cause. Right. And, and what's weird is a lot of people find very unique
is, is my father. how that started
was my father wanted me, and I was probably about 16, 17 years old.
And my father decided every Sunday morning, I was going to go to the bakery
and pick up bread and drop it off at Angelo's house and other people's houses
too, but Angelo's house was one of them.
And so I started to do that every Sunday morning and they would invite me in
and I would go in and I would have cup, you know, coffee with them and bread.
And so that's how that all started we became friendlier that
way and then we started dating and but um
they they didn't really want us together uh her her mother didn't particularly
like me and I think part of the reason she didn't like me was because I was
part of that world my father had me being part of that world so um I think that
was part of the reason why she didn't love me um.
So it was, it put a lot of pressure on, on, on, and then we decided to get married
and we went to city hall and got married because my father told me to stay away from her.
Uh, she was told to stay away from me, but not in the same way I was told.
Uh, but we decided to go to city hall and get married and, uh, nobody wanted that.
And Angela was in prison at the time for the skimming case.
And so he wasn't even on the street. so it
was he didn't even know what was going on because he was being lied
to but he was trying to control me from
prison through my father telling me uh
stay have your son stay away from my granddaughter um
and you know my dad kept telling me well you know once angelo
comes home it'll all get straightened out and then if you guys want
to be together well you know that was a long time he
was going to be away still for a long
time he's gonna be we decided to do
that and um you know my father beat the
shit out of me the night he found out that i went and did that and
i had to go in hiding for for like three days and the only person i was in contact
with was my uncle and uh you know it was just one of many stories that i talk
about like i said in the in the podcast um and and you know it was just it's
stuff that you can't even imagine.
Gary, you can't dream this stuff up.
And it's, it's sad because now, you know, my kids, you know,
are aware of everything that went on and, and, um, you know,
and it's just, it put a lot of, it, it, it had a lot to do with us getting divorced.
I mean, we ended up getting divorced after 20 years and, you know,
and again, it was, it was rough on, on everybody was rough on my ex-wife.
It was rough on my kids. It was rough on my mother.
You know, it was rough on, on, you know, everybody's lives because everybody was involved.
Yeah, really. I have to ask if, did you have big, when you were a kid and younger,
did you have big family dinners on Sunday, every Sunday, everybody had to be there?
Yes. Yes. We, we had bread. And again, I used to go pick up the bread, bring the bread home.
We'd have, you know, we'd eat. My ma was a phenomenal cook, um,
which, you know, my mother wasn't Italian.
My mother was Irish and, um, we We have, you know, uh, relations on that side
who were considered associates of organized crime.
We, you know, I had it between my family, my mother's family,
and then the family I married into, you know, I was kind of surrounded with this.
Totally surrounded by it. Yeah. And it's, you know, it is what it is.
Yeah. Yeah. We used to, on Sundays, my, my mother was a phenomenal cook and,
and, um, and I, uh, my mother was, was the best. I mean, I, I just lost her
two years ago, but she was, I was lucky enough to have the best mother in the world.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the best father, but I did have the best mother.
Did she sometimes try to run interference for you a little as best she could?
I know it'd be hard in that, you know, male dominated patriarchal society that you live in anyhow.
Did she sometimes try to run a little interference for you? She did all the time, Gary.
But what I have some regrets in my life and that I'm not probably ever going to be able to fix.
But, you know, I watched my mother. I watched my father treat my mother horribly.
And um and i i have regrets that
i didn't do anything about it as a kid and then as
growing up because uh she didn't
deserve she she was a wonderful person my mother and she
was there for everyone and you know he treated he treated her the same way he
treated everybody else and it was just horrible and i just wish that i would
have done something about it when i could have because i i she didn't deserve
to live like that nobody did nobody deserved to live like that it was not a,
not a good life for anybody.
Um, but I, you know, I, I have regrets that I don't know if I'll ever be able
to let go of cause it was, it's personal.
Yeah. She didn't deserve it. Yeah. Yeah.
And my mother was loyal to my father all the way to the end.
Yeah. I mean, even they were divorced and the FBI
came to the house and wanted to show my mom
pictures of my father with his girlfriend and
the house that they built and my mother slammed the door in
her face you know and and that's to me that
takes that's quite a person to be able to do that you
know when you're you know when you're upset and you're going through you know
you're grieving and you know and you know and again I'm not you know my father
and it goes to show you you know there's there's so much more to this story
Gary that hasn't even been told yet but you know my my father was able to get a,
annulment from my mother through the church while he was in prison on trial for murder.
And they, and the church didn't even notify my mother until it already went
through, you know, and that's, that's the kind of guy my dad was.
I mean, you know, for whatever reasons he had, and it was, I mean,
he thought he was going to be able to put my mother on the stand and testify against junior.
But I mean, how do you get, you know, how do you get an annulment while you're in prison for murder?
Yeah exactly that you were married to all these
years you've got kids with and that that kind of
hurt my mother that that was kind of the last straw with
my mother but i mean he wanted
to do this in order to try to discredit junior to get her on the stand i know
they do that a lot when you get a really frank culotta when he started testifying
they they had a parade of people that would discredit him as being a liar so
they could discredit the witnesses.
Wow, that's typical. But he was told that they're not, you know,
you can get your marriage annulled, but that's through the government.
The church. They're not going to recognize her and allow her to get up on the stand and testify.
They're not going to do it. But he had his own mind, his own way of thinking.
He thought he was his own lawyer at that time, and he knew what was right and what he was going to do.
And he didn't care about the last thing he cared about was hurting anybody's
feelings. That was the last thing he cared about.
So I have to ask kind of the last things here about his Cody finish.
Did you know them very well? Did they come around?
Was it like Joe Lombardo, you know, lumpy? Was he like uncle Joey to you or,
or anything like that? Did he come around? What kind of a guy was he?
You know what? I, he didn't come around. Uh, we didn't know him really much
other than bumping into him.
Um, I remember meeting him when I was a kid at, uh, at Dr.
Pat's Palatro, who was a dentist at his office.
And I met him there and I used to bump into him.
And, you know, in fact, he was Joe's in a club that I used to,
a friend of mine had a club on grand Avenue and I used to stop at the club occasionally.
And the night before the indictments, he was at the club.
He slept at the club because they couldn't find him. Yeah. He disappeared.
They weren't able to find him. But I was with him in the club that afternoon.
I was playing cards with him that afternoon.
But, um, yeah, we didn't, um, Jimmy Marcello, we would see occasionally.
Um, we knew his family pretty well. Um, and, and we would see him.
And again, Gary, I, I, I never had any problem with any of these guys.
I liked them. They were all very, very nice to me, you know,
just, you know, and again, I'm, I'm just saying as how they were with me,
you know, and, and all the people in that world, they were all,
you know, they were all nice.
They were all very, you know, when I would see them, you know, hug me and kiss me.
And, you know, if it was in a restaurant, they'd want to buy me a drink or buy me dinner.
And, you know, and, you know, and then when all this happened,
you know, a lot of people kind of looked at me differently because of,
you know, what my family did.
And, you know, and I know there's hard feelings there because of, you know.
Because a lot of people went away. A lot of people got hurt because of it. Yeah, they did.
That, uh, that cop or former cop, Twan Doyle, was he a policeman during that time earlier?
Did you know him as a policeman or was he always an ex-policeman?
No, he, well, when we were younger, he, we knew him because he was around my
dad a lot years and years ago.
And then, uh, in fact, I was with my father.
We were at a wedding and we bumped into him and that started up the friendship
again. So he started coming around again, but, uh, he was, yeah,
he way back, he was a policeman. Then he, I don't remember when he wasn't a
policeman anymore, but we didn't see him that much until the wedding.
And then after the wedding, he started coming around again by my dad,
hanging out with my dad a little bit. Yeah.
It seemed like he was more involved with gambling and running a sports book or something.
If I, what I read about him was right. Yeah. He, yeah.
And I mean, they started visiting my dad when he was away and they kind of tied
these guys into the case and, you know, with the bloody glove and, you know, right.
So they, you know, again, you know, I got to look at my dad's AG,
you know, why would you involve these guys?
Why would you, you know, but it was all about my dad, you know,
he didn't care who he hurt or who got hurt because of him.
One last quick thing, explain to the guys out there about the bloody glove.
I can, I can, if you don't remember all of it, I can fill in a little bit maybe,
but the bloody glove that is like oj's bloody glove man this bloody glove was
the nail in the coffin it seemed to be like can you explain about that and then
we'll we'll let you go kurt,
Yeah, there was a glove left at the murder of John Feccherata that my uncle dropped.
My uncle was the one who killed him and how it was all done and set up. He chased him down.
He had to chase him down. He got shot in the car trying to kill Feccherata.
He got shot. He shot himself in his arm, and he chased him down at a bingo hall,
in front of a bingo hall, and shot him, and one of the gloves fell from out of his pocket.
And, uh, and the government had the glove. They just never had the DNA.
They just never knew, you know, that it was my uncle that did it.
Uh, and then when junior decided to cooperate, he opened up that can of worms
with, with the, with the glove.
And, and that was the, the, the nail in the coffin for my uncle because they had his DNA.
They had the, you know, the bloody glove and they had the, they,
they took x-rays of his arm.
They saw the, you know, where he got shot with the bullet. it.
So that was, you know, at that point it was, uh, and again, it wasn't just that,
that got my uncle to cooperate.
It was, there were other things, but it was, yeah, they, at that point,
they, they knew everything and, you know, and again, it, it all came through Frank Jr.
Didn't come through my uncle. It came through Frank Jr. And,
you know, I, I kind of wish Frank Jr.
Would be a little bit more honest about everything that he did with that and
how he started that whole case instead of basically there's times when he's
blamed my uncle and said, you know, He didn't put these people away.
My uncle put all these guys away. Well, that's not what happened.
The name of the podcast, guys, is Underbelly Killing Kurt.
Be sure and check it out. I'll have links in the show notes and on the YouTube down below.
And Kurt Calabrese, do you have any final words here for my guys out there?
Just I hope people can understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I hope they get a chance to listen to the podcast. it's
through entropy media it's on apple it's
on uh spotify anywhere you can listen to
podcasts it's on and i just hope people can
understand that i'm not looking for any sympathy or any any pity because of
what my life was i just want people to know this is what i live this is what
i live every day and we'll watch interviews i do i hope okay thanks kurt calabrese
thanks a lot for coming on, Kirk. Thank you very much for having me, Gary.
Hey guys, that was really interesting. I thought I really liked that guy.
He's, uh, you know, he had a tough way to go growing up. You know,
we all have fathers who can be a bit strict.
I was a little bit strict and, and brought an edge of violence home from my work.
I didn't really, uh, flail on the kids and, and didn't really yell at them,
but I just had that edge of violence.
And when you work with a violent,
area in your life you're going to bring that
edge of violence home wherever you go with you another thing
kurt told me we didn't mention during that he has a website that
has a bunch of different articles and different things he's written so
if you want to learn more about kurt calabrese it's kurtcalabrese.com and and
so check that out and i'll have a link to that in the show notes down below
so uh once again you know that i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles
when you're out there on the streets, driving your big F-150s.
If you have a problem with PTSD, like Kurt does, Kurt's not been in the service,
but he's getting help somewhere else.
I've been in the service. The VA website has a hotline and hand in hand with
PTSD many times is a problem with drugs or alcohol.
And Anthony Ruggiano has a hotline
on his website and he's a drug and
alcohol counselor down in florida you have a problem with gambling addiction
always goes hand in hand with ptsd also
but you can have a problem with these new apps a
lot of people are having problems with uh with addiction uh to to gambling so
there's uh help out there for you somewhere i know in missouri it's 1-800 bets
off i don't know what it is in your different states i think each different
state that has gambling has a different website or a different hotline number
I have my books and movies out there.
Don't forget about them. I have a Chicago book, which has a lot of the stories
from the podcast going all the way back to the early days.
And I just selected different stories from the podcast. It's called Windy Cities, the Chicago Outfit.
I have one about New York families.
It's called Big Apple Mafia, the five families. That has a lot of stories from
the oldest to the newest.
I took from my podcast. my book, Leaving Vegas, which you can see back over
my shoulder here, right over there, right over there, uh, Leaving Vegas.
That's tells kind of the inside story of the skimming investigation from the Kansas city side.
I don't know if I have anything else to sell, you know, just Google me.
You can find me. I'm all over the internet and keep coming back guys.
I really appreciate y'all turning in.
If you have any suggestions or, you know, get on my YouTube,
my YouTube has a huge following anymore.
It's getting bigger than the audio podcast. Well, not quite,
but it's, it's getting pretty big.
Uh, tell your friends about it, like, and subscribe the YouTube channel so you
can get notified that there's a new show up, which I put up pretty much one
every week and sometimes one during the middle of the week.
Although I've been a little bit, uh, lax on that here in the last few months
while I was writing that last book, I'll get back into it again pretty soon
as soon as I can. Uh, so thanks a lot guys.