Mob gambling trial
Jury hears tapes, telephone conversations used code words, revealed little
Post-Tribune (IN)
August 6, 1991
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Taped conversations played in the federal trial of six men here on mob gambling charges revealed both the hard and the human side of some of the accused.
The trial entered its third week Monday.
Jurors wearing black wireless headphones heard tape-recorded conversations made in 1987 from secret wire taps on the telephones of two of the alleged schemers - Anthony Leone and current defendant Bernard "Snooky" Morgano.
The other defendants, all charged with racketeering, are Dominick ''Tootsie" Palermo, 73, of Orland Park, Ill.; Nicholas "Jumbo" Guzzino, 49, of Chicago Heights, Ill.; Sam Nuzzo Jr., 45, of Merrillville; Sam "Frog" Glorioso, 48, of Gary; and Peter "Cadillac Pete" Petros, 56, formerly of Gary now of Cicero, Ill.
The charges stem from the alleged extortion and collection of a "street tax" to protect local gamblers.
Leone, convicted in 1988 on a federal gambling charge for running an illegal Gary lottery, is cooperating with the government and is expected to be a prosecution witness later in the trial.
The portly Morgano, the alleged street boss of protection rackets in Northwest Indiana, sat hunched at the defendants' table in U.S. District Court while dozens of his conversations with his associates and co-defendants were played.
Monday's tapes provided no real smoking guns.
The tapes were supported by testimony from FBI agents who followed Morgano and Leone.
Special Agent Robert W. Hadrick said he saw Morgano meet numerous times with James A. "Sonny" Peterson, the reputed East Chicago gambling boss, and at least once with Peterson and Vincent Kirrin in the same car in a parking lot in unincorporated Calumet Township.
Kirrin, a Winfield Township businessman and political power broker, was recently convicted of federal corruption charges for paying kickbacks to Lake County officials to obtain lucrative county contracts.
Many of the taped conversations were pointedly vague and sprinkled with code words or callers' promises to talk later face-to-face.
One curious conversation was recorded as Morgano was on hold, waiting for his reputed boss, Guzzino, to come on.
Morgano's wife, Stephanie, heard talking to him in the background, was upset that Morgano might be going out again.
Stephanie Morgano told her husband she wanted to go to an open house and complained that she didn't want to go alone.
"Send them a gift and don't go," Morgano suggested meekly.
"I wouldn't do that," she snapped back.
But it is a menacing, foul-mouthed Morgano who barks through the phone at Leone in another call when Leone tells him an unidentified man missed his ''appointment."
"Then make another appointment for me in the afternoon," Morgano said. " ... 'Cause I'm gonna talk to him. He's gonna have to f------ do what he's to be told, and that's all," he said.
One code phrase used repeatedly between Leone and Morgano was about each others' dogs being "out of the pen," meaning Morgano and Leone were being followed by federal agents.
Leone, for example, told Morgano, "Those dogs tucked me in today."
Authorities closing in apparently were on Leone's mind when, on one of the day's last tapes, he spoke with a woman, identified by the government only as an unknown female.
Female: "Are you all right?"
Leone: "Huh. Yeah."
Female: "Are you sure? Anything?"
Leone: "Huh? Well, I don't want to discuss it over the phone."
Female: "No, but I, I'm ... I prayed all day for you."
Leone: "Well (laughs)."
Female: "You gonna need more?"
Leone: "I don't know."
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