Ex-Chicago cop accused of mob ties gets 12 years

A former Chicago police officer accused by federal prosecutors of being a "sleeper agent" for organized crime was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in federal prison for his racketeering conviction at the landmark Family Secrets trial.

"You picked the wrong people to try to help," U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel told Anthony Doyle, who was accused of whispering inside information about a major murder investigation to imprisoned hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. and taking messages from Calabrese to mobsters in other prisons and on the outside.

Doyle, 64, was among five men including Calabrese convicted in September 2007 at the Family Secrets trial -- Chicago's biggest organized crime trial in decades.

Unlike three of his co-defendants, though, the husky, broad-shouldered former officer was not held responsible for any of 18 murders outlined in the indictment.

The case focused on an alleged conspiracy stretching over decades that included gambling, loan sharking, extortion of "street tax" similar to protection money and a series of murders as the mob brought down vengeance on real or suspected witnesses.

Prosecutors claimed that even before he joined the force Doyle collected debts for Calabrese, a convicted loan shark as well as someone his own brother described as a killer relied on by mob higher ups to eliminate possible informants.

The 1986 murder of mobster John Fecarotta launched a series of events that led to the Family Secrets trial. Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, killed Fecarotta but dropped a bloody pair of gloves near the scene -- DNA evidence that identified him.

To avoid the execution chamber, Nicholas Calabrese, an admitted hit man and "made member" of the Chicago Outfit, became the government's star witness.

Prosecutors also showed the jury tapes of Doyle in the visiting room at the Milan, Mich., federal prison, briefing the imprisoned Frank Calabrese on the progress of the Fecarotta homicide investigation. Calabrese was serving time for a loan sharking conspiracy and worried that his brother might talk.

On a recording made within the prison, Calabrese is also heard saying Doyle would "glom the gloves" from the evidence room if possible. But FBI agents removed the gloves from the room before they could be tampered with.

On one of the tapes, Doyle suggests that they should use an electric cattle prod to bring Nicholas Calabrese into line.

Doyle testified in his own defense at the trial that the things Frank Calabrese said in their prison conversation struck him as "gibberish" but he had pretended to understand and go along because "I don't want to be a chumbalone, an idiot."

Defense attorney Ralph E. Meczyk, in pleading with Zagel for leniency, said of his client: "He wasn't a chumbalone but he was a chum." He said he had foolishly befriended Calabrese and now realizes he blundered in helping a man who was "the epitome of evil."

Meczyk pointed to times as a policeman that Doyle had disarmed dangerous criminals, arrested a cop killer and led six people out of a burning building.

"He was a truly heroic and stellar and exemplary police officer -- he took guns off the street," Meczyk told the judge.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk told Zagel that such claims were "actually quite difficult to take seriously."

"This man is a disgrace, and to come here and say he was a stellar police officer, a man of good deeds, is an outrage," Funk said.

Zagel said it was possible for a police officer to be a mixture of good and bad.

Only one more Family Secrets defendant, Nicholas Calabrese, remains to be sentenced. Zagel has set his sentencing for March 26.