CHICAGO (AP) - A reputed mob boss’s brother testified Thursday he got information about a protected witness, but he never identified the source as a U.S. deputy marshal on trial for allegedly leaking secrets to organized crime.
Michael Marcello testified that information about witness Nicholas Calabrese came through a friend who got it from a source whose identity he didn’t know.
“You can’t say for sure about any of this stuff because you have no personal knowledge of the source,” the deputy marshal’s defense attorney, Francis Lipuma, said to Marcello, who confirmed that.
Deputy marshal John Ambrose, 42, is accused of leaking confidential information about Calabrese, whom he had been assigned to guard a couple times while Calabrese was in Chicago talking to federal prosecutors before the “Family Secrets” mob trial. That investigation ultimately sent Marcello’s brother, James, to prison for life.
Ambrose has denied the charges, and his attorneys say plenty of other people had access to the information and no harm ever came to Calabrese.
Michael Marcello testified he had never seen Ambrose, been in the same room with him or talked to him on the phone. For most of his time on the witness stand, he explained hand signals, nicknames and other references in conversations authorities recorded between him and his brother.
The judge reminded jurors that the purpose of the videotaped conversations was to show the Marcellos had received information about Calabrese and discussed it. Grainy video images showed the brothers talking in a prison visitor room in hushed, and sometimes inaudible, tones.
Michael Marcello often said he didn’t know about people in the mob, and he sometimes struggled to recall details in transcripts of conversations intercepted six years ago.
“I don’t know who I’m talking about,” he testified at one point.
Judge John F. Grady threw out one video as evidence Thursday after jurors heard it earlier in the week. Grady said the video did not show the Marcellos discussing leaked information, while videos that were accepted as evidence did include such conversations.
The video was secretly recorded in 2003, when Michael visited James in prison. The Marcellos talked about the “Marquette Ten” and suggested the “baby sitter” watching Calabrese was the son of someone connected to the case. Ambrose’s father was convicted and went to prison in that case.
Michael Marcello is serving prison time after pleading guilty last year to racketeering and other charges.
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