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Chicago
Sun-Times
Confessions of `Bobby the
Beak'
May 3, 1998
BY CAM SIMPSON AND MARK BROWN STAFF REPORTERS
Copyright 1998, Chicago
Sun-Times
During a lifetime as a professional crook, Robert G.
Siegel has done it all.
Robbing jewelry stores, banks and armored cars was his
specialty. Selling drugs, collecting juice loans and committing the occasional
murder were part of the job. Hijacking and counterfeiting filled out the resume.
His street name, ``Bobby the Beak,'' befitted a guy who ran with the Chicago mob, even if it was a bit
unflattering, like the nickname applied to the famed mobster once reputed to be
his uncle, Benjamin ``Bugsy'' Siegel.
Until federal agents arrested him six years ago at a west
suburban Geneva restaurant, Siegel earned a good living, never paid income taxes
and rarely went to jail.
These days, Siegel, 62, is hidden away in the federal
witness protection program after revealing information that helped
spark the latest corruption investigation of the Chicago Police Department.
Justice Department documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show that Siegel
has provided a wealth of details gleaned from his career of crime:
unsolved mob murders, police officers on organized crime's payroll, former
police officers who fenced jewels and ``mob-connected'' lawyers who allegedly
paid bribes to judges to fix cases.
``I can do a lot of damage,'' Siegel told a Chicago FBI
agent who traveled to Florida in late 1994 to assess his request for a deal that
would reduce the 19-year federal prison sentence he is serving. ``I can give you
what you want.''
The seeds of information planted by Siegel have sprouted
into public view in recent weeks with revelations that federal
officials are investigating the alleged involvement of current and former
Chicago cops in a nationwide jewel theft and burglary ring.
Among those under investigation is William Hanhardt, a
storied Chicago police detective with a reputation for both solving crimes and
socializing with criminals. As part of the investigation, sources said, federal
agents wiretapped the Deerfield telephone of Hanhardt, who at one time was a
deputy superintendent in the Police Department. They also
wiretapped the telephone at a close relative's home where Hanhardt spent time.
Indictments
expected
Chicago Police Supt. Terry Hillard said Thursday he
expects indictments in that investigation to be handed down within one month.
Sources have said they expect a sergeant and
a detective to be implicated. The officers could be accused of supplying vehicle
identification numbers to former colleagues and other outsiders. The ID numbers,
in turn, were used to make duplicate keys to rob the cars of jewelry salesmen.
In addition, Carl Drammis, a deputy assistant
superintendent, was questioned by federal investigators in the jewel theft
probe. Drammis, 62, retired last week, but his attorney said retiring had
nothing to do with the investigation and that his client ``hasn't done anything
wrong.''
Siegel's exact role in the probe is still unclear. The
heavily censored documents obtained by the Sun-Times make no mention of Hanhardt
or any ongoing jewel theft activity known to Siegel.
Before federal authorities caught him, however, Siegel was
the leader of one of the most successful and prolific jewelry theft rings ever
organized, stealing $16 million in gems over six years.
And in late 1995, just before wiretaps
started landing on the phones of those now caught up in the local probe, Siegel
told members of a special FBI task force about at least five ``fences'' who
purchased some of the gems stolen by his ring.
The fences named by Siegel included a former Elmwood Park
policeman and a former Chicago policeman, the documents show.
Between 1984 and 1990, Siegel's gang committed 13
robberies from stores in California, Florida, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, according
to court records. Siegel was one of the last of the group to get
caught.
The brazen robberies were well-planned and executed,
police said. The automatic weapon-toting robbers routinely wore Halloween masks,
trench coats, bulletproof vests and cream-colored golf gloves as they hit stores
during regular business hours, often getting in and out in under two minutes.
Ten men, including Siegel, pleaded guilty to being part of
the theft ring. Three others were convicted at trial. Many were from Chicago.
Two others were acquitted.
Siegel's arrest posed a particular problem for him. He was
accused of firing 31 rounds from a MAC-11 machinegun into a police car driven by
a Palm Beach, Fla., deputy in hot pursuit after the gang netted more than $6.5
million in jewels from a Boca Raton jewelry store in 1988.
That mistake originally earned Siegel a 45-year prison sentence, which was reduced to 19 years on appeal. Federal
prosecutors in Chicago have promised to ask a Florida judge to reduce his
sentence further if he ``cooperates truthfully and completely'' in probes here.
As part of his deal, Siegel told an FBI task force that a
former Elmwood Park police officer fenced some of the $350,000 worth of jewelry
taken in a 1990 California job. He said other jewelry taken in that robbery was
fenced through a former Chicago cop who also is a reputed mob associate.
Siegel told authorities that a west suburban father-son
team connected to the mob bought $60,000 worth of stolen jewelry from a heist in
Tampa that netted $500,000 worth of merchandise. Siegel also gave
up the name of a prominent national fence in New York.
Tales of murder
In addition to the crimes for which he was convicted,
beginning with an armed robbery as a teenager, Siegel has promised to testify to
his involvement in crimes for which he was never charged--including three
murders, records show.
None of the murder victims was identified
by name in documents obtained by the Sun-Times, but details of one crime fit the 1978 kidnapping and murder of Mel Young, a
41-year-old Elk Grove Village man who was found dead in the trunk of a car
parked at O'Hare Airport on Sept. 8, 1978.
Young, a motorcycle enthusiast, was shot and stuffed in
the trunk of his Lincoln Continental Mark V.
Authorities originally suspected the murder was related to
chop-shop operations, but Siegel told federal agents that Young was kidnapped as
retribution for failing to include another individual in some of Young's drug
deals.
While Young was being held against his will, Siegel and
his accomplices went to burglarize his home. When they returned, they decided to
kill him. Siegel told authorities he followed the car containing the body to
O'Hare, drove the person who disposed of the body back from the airport, then
fenced the stolen goods.
Siegel also said he was the trigger man in the 1964 murder
of a law-enforcement informant. The snitch was providing information about
narcotics trafficking, Siegel said.
Siegel admitted he did the shooting after the victim was
lured to an arranged location. He said the hit was ordered by superiors. During
that period, Siegel has said he was on the payroll of the late Frank ``Calico
Kid'' Teutonico, whose mob loan-sharking operation served as a front for his
real pursuit--selling heroin.
In a third murder in 1977, Siegel said the murder weapon
was a gun he had provided years earlier to the killer. After the murder, Siegel
helped dispose of the getaway car, according to his confession.
Siegel was granted
immunity from prosecution in all three murders.
Among the other never-solved crimes Siegel has admitted
are: a 1983 armed robbery of an armored car delivery company in Chicago; an
attempted armed robbery of a Wells Fargo armored car in Omaha, Neb., in 1987 in
which a guard was shot in the hand; the armed robbery of a Naperville jewelry
store in 1982; an attempted armed robbery of an Archer Avenue bank in 1988; the
burglary of a jewelry store near Joliet in 1984, and an arson fire at a Polk
Bros. furniture store set around 1975 in an attempt to muscle the store's owners
into allowing its employees to join a labor union.
In addition, Siegel has fingered certain criminal defense
attorneys he contends are ``employed by the Outfit,'' a reference to the Chicago
organized crime syndicate. Siegel said he was told those attorneys used a
portion of their fees to bribe judges, according to government documents.
Bribes also were paid to certain police officers by
members of organized crime for protection, he said. When Siegel joined up with a
particular organized crime street crew, his supervisor told the cops he was now
entitled to protection, too, he said.
After one arrest, cooperative police allowed Siegel to be
processed without disclosing the contents of his pockets. On another occasion,
Siegel asked the arresting officer to get rid of the weapon with which he had
been caught. The officer refused, Siegel said, but promised to keep Siegel's
name out of the newspaper. Siegel said he was contacted subsequently by an
attorney who advised him that the favor would cost him $1,000.
Siegel also identified another Chicago cop who did favors for the Outfit, such as ``locating an individual''
whom mobsters wanted to track.
Helped solve bank heists
Siegel's cooperation already has led to the conviction of
two west suburban men for bank heists in Saugatuck, Mich., and North Riverside.
The robberies, which netted the unusually large sum of $421,000, had gone
unsolved for five years. Siegel was part of the crew that pulled both jobs, the
highlight of which was distracting the only Saugatuck patrol car with a false report of an auto accident on the other side of the
Kalamazoo River just minutes before they hit the bank.
Although he has yet to be put to the test
in a courtroom, Chicago prosecutors told their Florida counterparts last year
that they believed Siegel had been ``complete and truthful'' with them.
He did tell a little lie to a probation officer filling
out a pre-sentencing report, falsely claiming legitimate past employment as a
car salesman and cabinetmaker, authorities admit. He's never filed an income tax
return or paid any taxes, they say.
In making his pitch for a deal, Siegel told the FBI that
other top Chicago area burglars and robbers are ``very worried''
about him cooperating. Authorities apparently believe him on that score, too,
arranging for him to be held in a special federal facility for protected
witnesses as a security measure while he awaits his sentence reduction.
They say Siegel is allowed to make telephone calls and
occasionally receive supervised visits from his wife.
For a confessed lifelong criminal with a lengthy arrest
record, Siegel has spent remarkably little time in prison.
An armed robbery at age 17 earned him a five-year
probation sentence in 1952. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to burglary and
got his first taste of prison, serving a little more than three years in
Stateville.
Federal agents pinched Siegel in 1963 for allegedly operating a counterfeiting gang here. At the time, Chicago
newspapers reported he had described himself as the nephew of the legendary
Bugsy Siegel, who ran mob gambling operations in California and Nevada before
being knocked off in 1947. Law enforcement sources said they don't believe the
Beak is really related to Bugsy, but that he told people he was to appear more
important.
Oak Park police arrested Siegel in 1971 on suspicion of
murder, but a grand jury refused to indict him. At the time, Siegel, a father of
five, was a resident of Oak Park.
Shortly thereafter, he served two years in a federal
prison in Sandstone, Minn., for taking part in a hijacking.
Siegel grew up on Chicago's West Side, the son of a
Checker Cab driver. He told authorities he dropped out of school
in fifth grade.
Although never a member of the mob's inner circle, Siegel
said his close association with organized crime grew out of a long relationship
with Teutonico. From the late 1950s until Teutonico's conviction
in 1971, Siegel said he was on Teutonico's payroll. For a while, he claims to
have held the unusual distinction of being on a second mob payroll as well after
being hired in 1967 at $600 a month to work in the street crew of
mobster Angelo Fosco.
While in Fosco's employ, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Siegel
said he was sent to Las Vegas to meet with Frank ``Lefty'' Rosenthal, then the
Outfit's sin city representative, who needed help collecting on a
bad gambling debt of $87,000. Siegel said he told the debtor he had 10 days to
pay or he would be killed. The money was paid, and Siegel received a $7,000
bonus when he got back to Chicago.
At Teutonico's suggestion, Siegel said he got out of the
``juice'' business when his mentor went to prison.
For the next two decades, Siegel turned his talents to
burglary and robbery, teaming up with other professional criminals ``strong''
enough to pursue their illicit activities without paying a percentage of their
receipts in street tax to the mob.
In 1980, a Senate subcommittee identified Siegel as a member of the notorious armed robbery gang headed by
Paul ``Peanuts'' Panczko. The gang was perhaps more dangerous than the mob, the
subcommittee wrote, because its members frequently killed and tortured during
robberies and home invasions.
Siegel never mentioned Panczko in documents obtained by
the Sun-Times.
At least two other men in Siegel's
jewel-heist crew cooperated with authorities, according to records obtained by
the Sun-Times. They are Walter Frank Zischke, 53, formerly of
Cicero, and Theodore Ristich, 52, formerly of Chicago, government records say.
Breaking the code
The accounts of Siegel's cooperation don't make clear what
persuaded him to join the ever-growing list of criminals to forsake the mob's
code of silence.
But a turning point appears to have taken
place in early 1995 when Siegel received a visit at the Florida jail where he was being held from Francis ``Pat'' Mazza, an old mob
friend who had helped him rob the Saugatuck bank.
Mazza, an alleged member of the street crew of current mob
boss John ``No Nose'' DiFronzo, had caught wind of Siegel's initial overtures to
federal agents, which had taken place just a few months earlier. He sought
Siegel's assurance that word of his government cooperation was untrue.
Siegel, who was still wavering at the time,
gave his assurance and Mazza subsequently tried to bribe a jail
guard to ``take care of the old man,'' federal prosecutors alleged in court
documents.
Spooked by the mob's strong interest in his situation,
however, Siegel soon afterward was transferred to an Oklahoma prison and began
turning over detailed information.
He also had Mazza stricken from his approved visitor list.
Now Mazza has his own visitor list. He pleaded guilty last year to the Saugatuck
bank robbery and is serving a 13-year prison term.
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