In Mob Sweep, Feds Hope to Send Up the Clown

The names read like a who's who from some faded blotter left behind at the Chicago Police Department's old State Street headquarters: Joseph (the Clown) Lombardo, Frank (the German) Schweihs, Frank (Gumba) Saladino, and on and on.

But on Monday, 14 men, including several who have for years been reputed to be in the city's top level of organized crime leaders, were being rounded up in connection with 18 murders that stretch back over four decades and had gone unsolved and, in some cases, been nearly forgotten.

Several of the accused are in their mid-70's now, and one, though only 59, was found dead, apparently of natural causes, when the authorities arrived on Monday to arrest him in the hotel room where he lived. A few of the others accused, meanwhile, had moved away to places like Florida and Arizona, better known for retirement.

Describing the 9-count, 41-page racketeering conspiracy indictment as putting a "hit on the mob," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney here, said in a written statement, "After so many years, it lifts the veil of secrecy and exposes the violent underworld of organized crime."

While arrests of organized crime figures are hardly unique in a city where Al Capone once worked, rarely have so many of its reputed high-level leaders been charged all at once. Nor, federal authorities said, has the entire "Chicago Outfit" before been deemed a criminal enterprise under federal racketeering laws.

"This really lays out the whole continuing criminal enterprise that is still going on," said Thomas Kirkpatrick, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, an anticrime group created in 1919 by Chicago business leaders who were increasingly worried that it could become too dangerous to conduct legitimate commerce in this town.

"People tend to forget what these guys are about," Mr. Kirkpatrick said. "They watch 'The Sopranos' or some of these movies about the mob, and they think it's just some colorful characters. The thing is, they're still doing this. These characters are still doing this."

Among the most notorious murders the authorities say they have solved with Monday's announcement: the 1986 death of Tony (the Ant) Spilotro, the organization's chief enforcer in Las Vegas, and his brother, Michael, who were buried in an Indiana cornfield. (Joe Pesci portrayed a character based on Tony Spilotro in the 1995 movie "Casino.")

The authorities here say the indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury on Thursday and unsealed on Monday, was years in the making. The Federal Bureau of Investigation dubbed their probe "Operation Family Secrets," and agents from the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service began arresting the accused in Illinois, Florida and Arizona on Monday morning.