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★★ A-2 CALTrialContinued from Page A-1 Watkins said to Fred Bemish, the Gary police officer. “I’ve seen a whole bunch of s--t, that I know Leone is with the Mafia, and no doubt in my mind about that.Watkins testified Thursday to seeing Leone shoot at bottles with a silencer in a Hobart, Ind., restaurant owned by Leone’s uncle, Bernard “Snookie Morgano, 54, of Valparaiso, one of the six defendants.Leone, 51, pleaded guilty to two counts of extortion and agreed to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He is expected to testify Monday.Watkins said he and Leone started the lottery shortly before they were laid off from a steel mill in 1983. The illegallottery was based nois Lottery numbers but sometimes paid out more than the Illinois Lottery, Watkins said.Morgano’s restaurant building in Hobart was used as the “counting house, he said.Watkins described how proceeds were divided: 15 percent would go to a fellow mill worker who had put up the initial money for the lottery; 30 percent would go to Morgano — 15 percent for use of his building and 15 percent for street tax;” and 10 percent would go to Gary police officer Mike Mione.Leone and Watkins split whatever was left after paying the winners, Watkins said.Watkins said Leone and Morgano told him around late 1984 that the lottery was not making any money and they were through with it.“I found later I had been taken,” Watkins said.Leone had said he would sell the business for $5,000, of which Watkins was to receive nothing. Watkins testified Instead Leone sold the lottery for $10,000, he said.Watkins said when he confronted Leone, Leone got him a job with another illegal lottery business.Watkins was arrested May 16,1985 by Gary police Lt. Fred Bemish. To get the charges dropped Watkins said he paid Bemish $250 over three different occasions.During this time, Bemish, acting like a crooked cop, was working with the FBI. On July 18, 1985, his conversation with Watkins was recordedWatkins told Bemish that day, “Leone works for the big man that, ah, has control of the county.”“With the Mafia, ya mean? Bemish askedThat’s right, Watkins said. “That’s what I’m sayin’, that’s why I don’t want you askin’ me too goddam much. I am just a small f—ing fish. That is absolutely right.”Later in the conversation, Watkins identifies the “big man” as the one with the Hobart restaurant — Morgano.The FBI later tapped Morgano’s and Leone’s home telephone lines. In frequent conversations between the two, played for the jury earlier in the trial, Morgano gives orders to Leone, telling him who to get holdof and who to pressure.The FBI also watched them at their frequent meetings in restaurants and taverns.They followed Morgano to his meetings with Guzzino and Palermo at the Taste of Italy restaurant in Calumet City.And the FBI bugged the Taste of Italy.Recordings of those conversations also were played earlier in the trial.During their lunchtime meetings when the restaurant was closed to the public, Morgano, Guzzino and Palermo discussed sums of money they had collected or were “owed.”Morgano tells of payoffs to police and “the sheriff.”In a recorded conversation among now-convicted south suburban mob boss Albert Tocco, Palermo and Guzzino, Tocco warns about two cars surveilling Guzzino’s house and gives the FBI agents’ names as “Scott” and Robert Walker.Tocco said, “one car was by the car wash and one was on Lowe Avenue.”Guzzino lived at 104 Southgate Ave., but he and Palermo are now being held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.On Thursday, FBI Special Agent Scott Wall testified how just after midnight one day in April, 1986, he was on surveillance on Sangamon Street, just west of Halsted Street in Chicago Heights, when he noticed a police car checking with a light into cars parked along the street.Wall said he turned on his lights and motor and proceeded slowly down the street. The police car followed him and pulled him over on Joe Orr Road.The officer asked for his identification and drivers license. When Wall showed him his FBI credentials, the officer pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote down Wall’s name, Wall said.The policeman also asked Wall “if there were any other units in the area,” Wall said. Wall told him there was “one behind the car wash.”FBI Special Agent Terrence Hill said that while he was on surveillance one night in April 1986 on Sangamon Street south of Joe Orr Road, “I was approached by a Chicago Heights marked police vehicle.”The officer “had a hand on his gun and a flashlight” and asked Hill what he was doing in the area“I said I was with the FBI,” Hill said. “He then told me this was a dangerous area to be in because there had been a robbery at the Domino’s Pizza.”A second police car approached and both city police officers left.Both of the two FBI agents said they could not recall the name of the person they were following at the time.The trial is expected to end next week.The other defendants are Sam “Frog” Glorioso, 49, of Gary, Sam Nuzzo, Jr., 45, of Merrillville, Ind., and Peter Petros, 57, of Chicago.
Newspaper Details
Calumet City Star
Calumet City, Illinois, US
Sun, Aug 11, 1991
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anthony M.
NA, 12 Feb 2025
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