FBI offers reward in alleged mob murder

It was a year ago Thursday that a construction crew unearthed reputed mobster Robert Charles Cruz's remains near Willowbrook.

Yet the passage of time has netted few clues about the fate that befell the alleged hoodlum.

Cruz vanished Dec. 4, 1997. On Thursday, the FBI announced it is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information to help solve the 50-year-old Kildeer man's slaying.

Workers digging sewers for new townhouses made the grisly discovery March 20, 2007, in a makeshift grave off Route 83 in southeast DuPage County.

Though Cruz disappeared a decade earlier, DuPage Coroner Pete Siekmann said they still were able to identify him through fingerprints. Cruz also had identifiable tattoos on both his arms.

He was shot twice in the head, rolled up in carpeting and buried about 8 feet deep several blocks from DuPage County's infamous "gangster graveyard."

In 1988, federal agents acting on a tip dug up the bodies of two low-level organized crime figures near Bluff Road within 50 yards of the home of Joseph Jerome Scalise, a former reputed syndicate enforcer, believed to be living in Hinsdale.

The FBI also suspects the slaying is connected to organized crime given Cruz's criminal and family history. He was the cousin of imprisoned hit man Harry Aleman.

"We're at an impasse," said Ross Rice, an FBI spokesman. "We're hoping the reward will motivate someone to come forward with information to help us solve this case."

Authorities characterized Cruz as a low-level figure involved in the illegal drug trade. His family reported him missing shortly after Aleman was convicted of killing a Teamsters union steward. Aleman is the nephew of deceased rackets boss Joseph Ferriola.

Aleman had been acquitted of the murder in 1977, but he made history as the first time in the United States an exonerated defendant was retried when it was learned the judge accepted a bribe. Aleman, 69, is serving a 100- to 300-year sentence. Some have speculated Cruz's murder was tied to his cousin's conviction.

Cruz vanished in 1997 about two years after being exonerated from Arizona's death row. He had been convicted of orchestrating the New Year's Eve 1980 execution-style murders of a Phoenix print-shop owner and his mother-in-law. Cruz spent 14 years in prison until his release June 1, 1995, after his conviction was overturned.

A message left at his son's home in Chicago was not returned Thursday. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Chicago FBI at (312) 421-6700.