'Crooked' cops come clean
Former officers posed to gather bribe information
Post-Tribune (IN)
August 9, 1991
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Two honest Gary policemen who posed as crooked cops struck telling blows at one of six defendants in the racketeering and gambling trial in U.S. District Court here.
Secretly recorded tapes of conversations between former Gary police officers Lt. Fred Bemish and investigator Willie Ray Turley and the men who offered them bribes scored hits Thursday on reputed mobster Bernard "Snooky" Morgano.
The government alleges Morgano, 54, of Valparaiso, is the Northwest Indiana street boss of the Chicago-based crime syndicate.
Morgano allegedly ran his own gambling operations here and wanted to impose a mob "street tax" on the area's other gamblers.
Bemish's testimony helped tie Morgano to the gambling, and Turley's helped link Morgano to the protection scheme.
On trial with Morgano are his reputed mob boss, Dominick "Tootsie" Palermo, 73, of Orland Park, Ill., and underboss Nicholas "Jumbo" Guzzino, 49, of Chicago Heights, Ill., as well as Morgano's local associates, 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.
Anthony Leone, 49, of Porter Township, reputedly Morgano's chief lieutenant, is scheduled to testify when the trial resumes Monday.
Leone is the link between Morgano and the bribing of Bemish and Turley.
Bemish is now an investigator for Northern Indi-
But in July 1985, Bemish was Gary's top vice cop, heading the department's Public Morals Bureau.
As such, Gary numbers runner Al Watkins calculated the first $50 bribe he paid to Bemish would be a down payment on future police protection.
He figured Bemish wrong.
Bemish, who had arrested Watkins earlier for lottery activities, then posed as a cop on the take, taped Watkins' conversation instead.
Watkins told Bemish - and the tape recorder in Bemish's car - that he was Leone's partner in the Gary lottery.
"Leone is Mafia," Watkins added, saying he once saw Leone take target practice with a silencer-equipped pistol at a line of bottles in the storeroom of Morgano's Hobart restaurant on Ridge Road at Interstate 65.
"I know what I'm talking about," Watkins said. "I've seen things, which I'm not gonna tell you, but I've seen payoffs."
Watkins said he saw Leone make payoffs to the Lake County Sheriff, then Rudy Bartolomei. Bartolomei now is in the federal witness protection program after being convicted on unrelated federal corruption charges.
Watkins was later charged with bribery for the payoff to Bemish, who was working with the FBI. Watkins then agreed to aid the government's gambling probe.
Watkins told jurors that Leone and Morgano would split the lottery money at their "counting house," Morgano's restaurant.
Morgano grabbed 15 percent of the lottery take "off the top" for protection and another 15 percent for using the restaurant, Watkins said.
An additional 10 percent was paid to then-retired Gary police officer Mike Mione, allegedly for police protection, Watkins said.
Mione also pleaded guilty in 1988 to gambling and racketeering charges.
It was Mione who approached Turley, then a member of Gary's vice squad, about taking payoffs in return for Turley directing raids on Gary gambling joints not paying street taxes.
On Wednesday, Gary bookmaker Franklin Burton testified he was approached by Glorioso, and later conferred with Nuzzo, about paying protection money. FBI wiretaps and surveillance, presented earlier in the trial, support Burton's testimony.
Turley's tape indicates Burton was, indeed, being targeted.
Leone, whose identity was at first unknown to Turley, offered to pay the Gary vice cop $500 to raid Burton's bookie joint at 39th Avenue and Broadway and two other, unrelated gambling locations.
Turley told the jury he learned later the caller was Leone.
"That guy (Burton) we want to be shut down, period," Leone said on tape.
"If you hit them before Thursday, you'll have the whole five ... Thursday morning," Leone said. "And this way, when you hit these joints, then we go in there and say, hey, you know you gotta come up with some bread."
Turley made the raids, but turned the tapes over to Capt. Cobie Howard, then head of Gary police investigators, who gave them to the FBI.
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