Judge quashes Lombardo's clown act

Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo took to the stand in his own defense Tuesday and quickly tried to live up to his wisecracking reputation before being authoritatively shut down by U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel.

Just a few minutes into his testimony, Lombardo was regaling the court with tales of how he, as a boy, used to shine shoes of cops at the local police station in Chicago's Grand Avenue neighborhood. Prosecutors objected, but Zagel allowed it.

"So far it's OK," said the judge.

But then the clown went too far.

"Very cheap people," Lombardo said of the police, noting they only paid five cents per shine.

"Let's not press our luck," Lombardo's lawyer, Rick Halprin, cautioned his client as the gallery burst into laughter.

Zagel put a stop to it, reminding everybody the trial is about 17 murders.

"There's one thing about this case: there's absolutely nothing humorous about it, and I expect not to hear audible laughter," Zagel said.

From there on out, the raspy-voiced Lombardo cut the jokes but still sometimes rambled, prompting Halprin, his own lawyer, to agree with prosecutors when they asked the judge to direct Lombardo to only answer questions posed.

Eventually, Lombardo got around to trying to explain away the damning evidence against him: his fingerprint on the title application for a car used in the murder of Daniel Seifert at a plastics plant in Bensenville in 1974.

Halprin began to lead Lombardo to an explanation that he hung out at American Bonding, 1019 S. State St. in Chicago, next to the old police headquarters building. Lombardo testified an employee there often notarized documents for police officers who came in.

Halprin backed off slightly when prosecutors objected but promised to return to the subject today. Previously, he had told Judge Zagel outside the presence of the jury that Lombardo will say he often sat near the door and handed documents from customers to the notary.

Lombardo also tried to explain why employees of an electronics store identified him as the person who bought a police scanner used in Seifert's murder.

Lombardo claimed he often bought equipment for Irv Weiner, running errands for him. Lombardo was asked to explain why he signed receipts for that equipment "J. Savard" instead of using his real name.

"Mr. Weiner told me to sign it Savard. He was thinking of the great hockey players," Lombardo said.

Prosecutors, who may begin their cross-examination of Lombardo today, are expected to attack that explanation as fiction and also that Lombardo, who they say was a mob leader, would ever run errands for Weiner.

Also Tuesday, former FBI agent Peter Wacks caused somewhat of a stir when he testified as a defense witness, noting Seifert's widow, Emma, never told him she thought Joseph Lombardo was among the masked assailants who gunned her husband down. Wacks admitted he had a "personal" relationship with Emma but was not asked to further define it.

Relationships between FBI agents investigating cases and the victims of those cases are frowned upon by the agency.

Robert Grant, current head of the FBI, declined to say if any regulations had been broken by that relationship. But he did say the FBI constantly tells agents to be careful in their associations so as not to bring question upon the agency.

"Things that detract from the FBI hurt the FBI," Grant said.

He did not know if Wacks' relationship with Emma Seifert ever had been investigated.

"We'll see," Grant said when asked if an investigation now would be opened.

This is not the first time Wacks has ruffled law-enforcement feathers. He took heat in September 2004 when he wrote a report, paid for by the village of Rosemont, contending the town and then-Mayor Donald Stephens had no ties to the mob.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has contended both did. Stephens, now deceased, always denied it.

Also testifying Tuesday were three former co-workers of Lombardo: John Lira, 56, a former lightweight boxing champion; Ralph DiCapua, 54, a retired city of Chicago worker; and Bonnie Venturini, 65, Lombardo's former mistress. All attested to the fact that Lombardo at times held straight jobs.