Mob witnesses testify to planted bombs, murders

CHICAGO -- As both a gun dealer and an undertaker, Ernie Severino was positioned to serve the Chicago mob in various ways.

The soft-spoken 60-year-old testified Thursday that he supplied his friend William "Butchie" Petrocelli with up to 100 guns -- everything from sawed-off shotguns to MAC-10 assault rifles -- free of charge.

"Do you know what they were used for?" asked prosecutor Markus Funk.

"Not really," said Severino. "I can guess."

Severino was hazier about just what happened when Petrocelli inquired if it would be possible for him to use the funeral parlor's crematorium.

But Severino was clear about how he felt just after Christmas in 1980 when his old friend vanished and some of the toughest men in the mob told him to turn over bank documents and other items he kept for Petrocelli.

Severino was frightened -- afraid that Petrocelli would come back and wreak revenge on Severino for giving up his money and other possessions. But he got assurances that he would be safe.

"No, he's not coming back," Severino quoted mobster Gerry Scarpelli as saying. He said Scarpelli told him that mob higher-ups called him to a meeting, told him he was taking over Petrocelli's gang and added: "You can go in the next room and take care of the garbage if you want to."

In the next room were the remains of Butchie Petrocelli.

Prosecutors say convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese, one of five men on trial, was to blame for the Petrocelli killing.

The 69-year-old Calabrese and his co-defendants are charged with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included illegal gambling, extortion, loan sharking and 18 murders, including Petrocelli's.

Calabrese's brother, Nicholas Calabrese, the government's star witness, testified earlier that mob bosses turned against Petrocelli, leader of a gang called "The Wild Bunch," because he was too flamboyant.

They resented the glittering Christmas party he threw at a Gold Coast hotel and his boasting that some day he would be the boss of the Chicago Outfit, as the city's mob family calls itself, Nicholas Calabrese said.

Severino said that when the mobsters asked him where Petrocelli's money and other possessions were stored he told them everything.

"They don't ask unless they already know the answer," he said.

In other testimony, retired security consultant Fred Pavlich testified that the head of a cooperative association specializing in shipping fruits and vegetables was delivering cash to mob figures before he was murdered.

He said he accompanied Michael Cagnoni when he delivered cash to Cicero-based Flash Trucking, which made most of his local deliveries.

He said he was also on hand when Cagnoni delivered thousands of dollars in cash to a group of men meeting at a suburban Rosemont hotel.

"I, of course, kept my distance and went downstairs as I was told to do," Pavlich said. But after studying an FBI surveillance photo of the late Chicago Outfit boss Tony Accardo, he said: "Yes, I believe that was one of the gentlemen."

One of the owners of Flash Trucking, Michael Spano, is serving a 12ˆ¨-year prison sentence for his 2002 conviction on charges of helping Cicero town president Betty Loren-Maltese swindle the suburb out of millions of dollars in insurance money.

Prosecutors say that when Cicero mob boss Rocky Infelice went to federal prison in the early 1990s he dubbed Spano as his successor.

Pavlich said he resigned as head of security for the shipping cooperative that Michael Cagnoni headed only weeks before a powerful bomb erupted under the driver's seat of Cagnoni's Mercedes on June 24, 1981.

Pavlich said the night before he resigned, he got a threatening phone call that didn't mention Cagnoni but did persuade him it was time to go.

Prosecutors say Frank Calabrese was responsible for the Cagnoni murder. On the stand, Nicholas Calabrese described how a bomb was planted in Cagnoni's car and detonated by an automatic radio-controlled device.

An eyewitness, who was at one time a U.S. Marines explosives expert, testified Wednesday that the blast sent huge hunks of metal flying through the air, produced a giant cloud of smoke and tore Cagnoni's body in half.

Calabrese attorney Joseph Lopez asked Pavlich if Cagnoni had been paying the money in hopes that it would head off labor union problems.

Pavlich said he understood that was part of the reason

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