Cosa Nostra News

Charles (Chuckie) Russell, who boasted of pulling off thousands of burglaries in a four-year period,   died before he could be sentenced for gun possession in connection with a 2016 robbery plot, the Chicago Sun-Times reported , attributing this to court filings. Chuckie Russell  Russell, 70, a reputed member of the Chicago Outfit's Grand Avenue Crew (Joey the Clown Lombardo’s old bailiwick), was suffering from prostate cancer. On Dec. 21, 2016, he was arrested after purchasing eight guns from an undercover federal agent in Chicago. He pleaded guilty last year to possession of a revolver that agents found during a search of his home in Schaumburg. He reportedly faced at least 15 years in prison. However, because of his illness, Russell was released from jail and allowed to live at home via electronic monitoring, and was never healthy  enough to be sentenced. Russell had arranged to stay in a condo owned by girlfriend Patricia Spilotro, a relative of ...

"I’m like an old-time general. They’d better give me some stars.” -- Giuseppe (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, caught on wiretap The Clown He was The Clown, but he was an intelligent clown who read the Wall Street Journal. (FBI agents who knew Joey the Clown Lombardo were amazed by his business and financial acumen.) He also embodied such an extreme paradoxical nature, he almost shouldn't have existed. “[H]e was no clown; he was a deadly killer,” Bill Roemer, the late FBI Outfit investigator, once wrote. “I believe he filled up a cemetery or two," Michael Corbitt, the former corrupt police chief, now deceased, who spilled secrets in a best-selling book once said of Lombardo. Some in law enforcement even found positive feedback to offer. "It’s kind of refreshing to have people like Joey Lombardo out there,” Peter Wacks, a former FBI agent who once helped put Lombardo away said when the mobster lammed it for the family Secrets case. "There are...