Where the victims were killed or found dead

April 26, 2005

1. Michael Frank Albergo
Albergo, 42, vanished in September 1970. The FBI excavated an embankment at 33rd and Shields near Sox Park in 2003, acting on a tip he was buried there, but did not find a body. Albergo, nicknamed "Hambone," was an alleged loan shark who disappeared before he was to stand trial on charges of usury and conspiracy. Monday's indictment said he was killed in Chicago, but it did not give an address. Authorities speculated he might have been whacked because he did not realize he was making illegal loans to an undercover Chicago cop, resulting in charges against not only Albergo but two other men.

2. Daniel R. Seifert
Seifert was supposed to testify against reputed mob kingpin Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and other Outfit members in a Teamsters Pension Fund fraud case. But before he got a chance, he was killed by shotgun blasts as his wife and young son watched in horror outside Seifert's plastics factory in Bensenville on Sept. 27, 1974.

3. Paul E. Haggerty
Haggerty, 27, was found June 24, 1976, in the trunk of a car that was towed to the police auto pound. He had been missing for about a week since finishing a sentence at a South Side work-release center for burglary and grand theft. His body was bound, gagged and blindfolded and stuffed into a plastic bag.

4. Henry J. Cosentino
The decomposing body of Cosentino, 52, was found bound and gagged in an abandoned car in a police auto pound in the 4600 block of West Division on March 15, 1977. His head was resting on a box of hamburger patties. He had been missing since Jan. 24, 1977. Cosentino served prison time for shipping stolen goods across state lines, but was considered a small-time hood. He may have been in debt to loan sharks because some of his planned heists went awry, investigators said at the time. His relatives owned a sandwich shop where a cop-turned-mobster was assassinated.

5. John Mendell
The 31-year-old Lincolnwood man was found dead on the South Side, his body frozen and stuffed in the trunk of an Oldsmobile in February 1978. His throat was cut and there were signs of torture. He disappeared and apparently was killed more than a month earlier in Chicago. At the time of his death, he was wanted for questioning in a $1 million jewelry store heist, and in the burglary of then-mob chieftain Anthony Accardo's home. An informant once accused now-dead mobster Ronald Jarrett of killing Mendell.

6 & 7. Donald Renno and Vincent Moretti
The bodies of Moretti, a former cop in his early 50s, and Renno, 31, were found badly beaten and with their throats cut in the back of a Cadillac in February 1978. They might have been killed several days before in the Cicero area. Like Mendell, the men were reputed burglars. One theory has Moretti and/or Renno being involved in the Accardo break-in. Another has Moretti angering the Outfit by stealing, and perhaps fencing stolen items, without the mob's sanction -- and without kicking back a cut. Moretti's twin brother was murdered in a 1957 gangland hit. Another brother had been a cop and was convicted of killing two youths.

8 & 9. William and Charlotte Dauber
The couple was driving on a road outside Joliet when they were killed by a shotgun blast on July 2, 1980. Dauber, a hit man, was facing federal drug charges, and Outfit bosses thought he would testify against them, investigators said. The Daubers had just left the courthouse in Joliet and were driving to their home in Crete when they were killed. In 1990, Albert Tocco, reputed south suburban mob boss, was sentenced to 200 years in prison for running his crime family through murder and extortion. Witnesses, including Tocco's wife, implicated him in ordering the killings of the Daubers.

10. William "Butch" Petrocelli
Petrocelli, suspected of being a mob hit man, disappeared Dec. 30, 1980, and his body showed up in the back seat of his car, parked in the 4300 block of West 25th in Cicero, on March 15, 1981. His body was in a sleeping bag and his face was charred, possibly from an acetylene torch. One federal informant said he was questioned, tortured and killed at a mob meeting in December 1980. Petrocelli may have been killed because he extorted "street tax" from robbers in the name of a higher-ranking mobster, but never gave him a cut of the proceeds.

11. Michael Cagnoni
Cagnoni, 37, was a well-to-do trucking executive who ran afoul of the mob and knew it. He had hired a bodyguard, carried a gun and wore a bulletproof vest for a while. Still, someone planted a sophisticated bomb under the seat of his Mercedes. It detonated June 24, 1981, shredding his car and killing Cagnoni as he pulled onto the Tri-State Tollway in Hinsdale.

12. Nicholas D'Andrea
The Chicago Heights man, an associate of reputed hoodlum Albert Tocco, was found dead in the trunk of a burning car in the Crete area in September 1981. Tocco was suspected of orchestrating a botched golf course hit of Al Pilotto that summer. It was theorized that D'Andrea, who was around 50 at the time of his death, was murdered as retaliation, or to get information about the attempted Pilotto hit. D'Andrea's areas of expertise were allegedly drugs and gambling, according to the Chicago Crime Commission.

13 & 14. Richard Ortiz and Arthur Morawski
Ortiz, 45, and Morawski, 56, were killed July 23, 1983, when a gunman walked up to their car parked on a street in Cicero and blasted them with a shotgun. The gunman reportedly fired eight 12-gauge shotgun rounds into the driver's side of Ortiz's 1983 Mercury sitting in front of His & Mine Lounge in the 5100 block of West Cermak. The gunman stepped out of a car parked behind the Mercury and opened fire.

15. Emil Vaci
Vaci, 73, was shot in the back of the head with six .22-caliber bullets in Phoenix, and his body was found wrapped in black plastic in a dry canal bed on June 7, 1986. Next to the body, police found a .38-caliber pistol stolen in Chicago. Vaci testified before a federal grand jury investigating Las Vegas casino skimming by the Spilotro brothers. The Spilotros were found dead in an Indiana field about a week after Vaci's body was discovered. Investigators theorized Vaci was whacked to keep him quiet, then the Spilotros were killed because they were bringing too much federal heat on the Chicago Outfit.

16 & 17. Anthony and Michael Spilotro
The popularized view of the mobster-brothers, advanced in the movie "Casino" and elsewhere, is they were beaten to death with bats in an Indiana cornfield. Actually, it appears, they were pounded by the fists and feet of top mobsters in a Bensenville basement June 14, 1986, then driven to Indiana and buried. Anthony Spilotro, 48 at the time of his death, was the mob's man in Las Vegas, but he had enraged mob higher-ups in numerous ways. Mob turncoat Nick Calabrese has told the feds he was involved in the Bensenville beating, sources have said. Michael Spilotro, 41, had been under indictment on federal charges.