Joseph Lombardo - Indictment, Disappearance, and Family Secrets Trial

Indictment, Disappearance, and Family Secrets Trial

In 2003, Chicago newspapers began reporting that federal investigators were looking into solving old mob murders. In 2003, the FBI swabbed Lombardo for DNA. Federal authorities also notified Lombardo during the probe that his life might be in danger.

On April 25, 2005, Lombardo, along with 13 other defendants was indicted as part of the federal government's Operation Family Secrets investigation, which lifted the veil on 18 killings since the 1970s that federal investigators had attributed to the Outfit. Lombardo was indicted for his role in at least one murder, as well as for running a racket based on illegal gambling, loan sharking and murder. Although Lombardo had known for weeks that an indictment was coming—agents had visited his machine shop on Chicago's Near West Side several months earlier and taken DNA swabs—he was not under surveillance by federal agents in the weeks leading up to the indictment. And as federal agents rounded up the 14 defendants on April 25, 2005, they realized that Lombardo had disappeared and become a fugitive.

While Lombardo's whereabouts were unknown, he wrote letters to his lawyer, Rick Halprin -- but directed toward the judge in the trial—in which he claimed to be innocent, requested a very minimal bond, offered to take a lie detector test, and asked to be tried separately from the other defendants in the Family Secrets case—all requests that Judge James Zagel denied.

The first letter from Lombardo surfaced on May 4, 2005 and was four pages long and riddled with spelling errors. "I am no part of a enterprise or racketeering . . . have no part in the poker machines, extorcinate loans, gambling and what ever else the indictment says," the letter read. "About the 18 murders in the indictment, I want you to know that I was not privy before the murders, during the murders, and after the murders, and to this present writing to you." Lombardo also told Zagel in the letter, "I am not a violent man in anyway shape or form. I do not own or have any weapons of any kind. if the F.B.I. should find me I will come peacefully and no resistance at all." Lombardo also asked Zagel for "any ideas or suggestion of what I should do," and said the judge can "notify my lawyer" who can "reach me by the media." In August and September 2005, Lombardo sent more letters to his attorney, indicating that he had been following local news coverage of a state hearing involving allegations that the mayor of Rosemont, Illinois had met with several members of the Chicago Outfit. In response, Halprin quipped of his still-at-large client's newspaper-reading habit: "I doubt that he has a home subscription."

The FBI then offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Lombardo's capture. After nine months at large, a bearded, unkempt Lombardo, with long hair and having gained some weight, finally was captured by FBI agents on January 13, 2006 outside the Elmwood Park, Illinois home of his longtime friend Dominic Calarco. Federal agents had been tipped off to Lombardo's whereabouts after Lombardo had visited dead Outfit mobster Tony Spilotro's dentist brother, Patrick Spilotro, for a decaying tooth. At his arraignment, Lombardo pleaded, "Not guilty." He also revealed that he had atherosclerosis and had not seen a doctor while he was at large because "I was--what do they call it? I was unavailable," prompting laughter in the courtroom.

During the trial, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mitchell Mars, T. Markus Funk, and John Scully, Lombardo took the unusual step for a mobster of taking the stand in his own defense, denying any involvement in the Seifert murder and claiming to have been at a police station at the time of the slaying, reporting the disappearance of his wallet. However, federal prosecutors noted Lombardo's fingerprint on the title application for a car used in the murder of Seifert. In addition, prosecutors pointed out that employees of an electronics store identified Lombardo as the purchaser of a police scanner used in Seifert's murder.

In April 2009 Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob by Jeff Coen, the Chicago Tribune reporter for the trial, was published by Chicago Review Press.