Brother of reputed mob boss testifies

The brother of a reputed mob boss took center stage Thursday at the trial of a U.S. deputy marshal on trial for leaking secrets to organized crime on the same day that a federal judge threw out a key secretly recorded conversation.

Michael Marcello never identified deputy marshal John Ambrose as his source of information about Nicholas Calabrese, a protected witness in the Operation Family Secrets investigation that sent his brother James Marcello to prison for life.

Michael Marcello testified that information came through a friend who got it from a source he did not identify.

"You can't say for sure about any of this stuff because you have no personal knowledge of the source," Ambrose defense attorney Francis Lipuma said to Michael Marcello.

Ambrose, 42, is accused of leaking confidential information about Calabrese, who he had been assigned to guard a couple times while Calabrese was in Chicago talking to federal prosecutors before the "Family Secrets" mob trial.

Ambrose has denied the charges. Michael Marcello answered "No" when he was asked whether he had ever seen Ambrose, been in the same room with him or talked to him on the phone.

Michael Marcello is serving prison time after pleading guilty last year to racketeering and other charges.

The government lost a piece of evidence in their case Thursday when Judge John F. Grady threw out a secretly recorded conversation in 2003 between the Marcello brothers when Michael was visiting James, who was doing a stint in prison.

The videotaped conversation was already played to the jury earlier in the week. It included the Marcellos talking about the "Marquette Ten" and suggesting 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.

Grady told the jury the 2003 video was inadmissible because it did not show the Marcellos discussing leaked information. He told them other secretly taped conversations were admissible because they showed the brothers got leaked details.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, a balding Michael Marcello spent the day explaining recorded conversations federal authorities picked up between him and his brother. He told them what hand signals meant and what people's nicknames were.

The judge reminded jurors that the purpose of the videotaped conversations was to show the Marcellos had received information about Calabrese and were talking about it.

Grainy video images showed the Marcellos sitting in the corner of a prison visitor room talking in hushed, and sometimes inaudible, tones.

Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk peppered Michael Marcello with questions so jurors would know who he was talking about. Lipuma pushed him to search his memory for details too.

When he was asked about people who were in the mob, Marcello often said he didn't know and he sometimes struggled to recall what he was talking about when quizzed about details in transcripts of conversations intercepted six years ago.

"I don't know who I'm talking about," Michael Marcello testified at one point.