Trial reveals 'Mad Sam' as patron saint of new Outfit

The Chicago Mob was just way ahead of its time.

Long before “Mad Men” started racking up TV's Emmy Awards, the Outfit had its own leading mad man.

Samuel “Mad Sam” DeStefano was mayhem incarnate. For decades from the 1930s through the '70s he was a loan shark and debt collector by trade, exceedingly efficient at extracting every penny due to the Mob.

DeStefano was a practicing sadist. His passion was torture.

He built a soundproof torture chamber in the basement of his Little Italy apartment where he used a cattle prod, meat grinder, hammer and more traditional weaponry. But he really favored an ice pick to make his point.

In his Chicago Police Department mug shot, DeStefano resembles a cross between Shemp from the Three Stooges and Charles Manson, but based on records of mad Sam's actual behavior over the years, that photo must have been snapped on a good day.

This is not intended to be simply a history lesson.

Although Mad Sam was taken down with two pumps from a shotgun by his own protégé, Anthony “Ant” Spilotro, in 1973, DeStefano's legacy is about to be resurrected during the latest Outfit trial in federal court.

Undercover FBI recordings that will be used in a Mob racketeering prosecution entering its first week of testimony will showcase DeStefano's inhumanity.

One of five defendants accused of bombing a Berwyn video poker machine company is heard touting Mad Sam's sadistic skills according to 80-pages of government transcripts.

Samuel Volpendesto, 87, speaks of his friendship with DeStefano and recalls with fondness how he visited Mad Sam in that basement torture chamber. When Volpendesto walked into the basement, he found the mobster grinding up a human body. “Oh, he was totally insane,” Volpendesto is heard telling the informant. “Like they used to say in the old days, ‘Make sure you get the right guy.'”

Volpendesto's son Anthony is also a defendant in the bombing/racketeering case and seems to be more than just a fan of the Outfit's late savage-master.

Anthony Volpendesto is a Mad Sam impersonator.

Just as Mad Sam DeStefano used to show up for court wearing pajamas, rant, rave, ramble incoherently, act crazy and act as his own attorney in the courtroom, Anthony Volpendesto has been putting on similar performances since being arrested more than two years ago.

He is representing himself, filing dozens of barely legible, handwritten motions that make little sense. The common theme is that he should not be prosecuted because the government has no jurisdiction over him.

This month, Judge Ronald Guzman ordered the younger Volpendesto removed from the courtroom when he went on an uncontrollable verbal rampage, threatening to have all the attorneys in the room disbarred and yelling that he did “not consent to any of these proceedings.”

“I have no further business with this court,” he declared before Guzman told deputy U.S. marshals to drag him out the back door and into a holding cell.

Such behavior is particularly upsetting to the other defendants in the case, particularly convicted Outfit boss Mike “The Large Guy” Sarno, who prosecutors say was the leader of the conspiracy. The rotund Sarno, who eschews largesse except around his waistline, prefers to live a quiet suburban life with his family in Westchester.

Mr. Sarno, a Mob-lifer who was known as “Fat Boy” during his early years, lets his power do the talking. Sarno is accused of giving the order to blow up C & S Amusements in Berwyn back in 2003 because the company was trying to cut in on the Outfit's illegal video poker business. Authorities say Sarno hooked up with the Outlaws motorcycle gang in an unusual alliance to carry out the bomb attack.

Sarno doesn't go in for any of the courtroom theatrics. He simply flashes a V for victory sign to news crews as he walks into the Dirksen Federal Building.

The antics and loony tricks, reminiscent of Mad Sam DeStefano's days, are left up to Anthony Volpendesto.

The only stunt of DeStefano's that the younger Volpendesto hasn't used yet is speaking to the judge through a bullhorn.

But the trial is just starting.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie