James “Little Jimmy” Marcello, in 1992, is in federal prison. He’s the reputed one-time mob boss of Chicago. (Chicago Tribune file / May 20, 1992)
By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune
A perturbed federal judge on Thursday ordered that James Marcello, the reputed onetime head of the Chicago mob who is serving a life sentence in California, be returned immediately to Chicago so that he can help his attorney in his pending appeal.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who two years ago ordered that Marcello be housed in a Chicago federal jail pending his appeal, told federal authorities to get him here as soon as possible.
Arguments in Marcello’s appeal are slated for Monday.
“I don’t even know how they’re going to get him back,” said Zagel, acknowledging the tight turnaround. “But they are going to get him back here because that’s my order. … He will remain until I order him released.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Chicago said arrangements would be made to bring Marcello back. Marcello was recently moved to the federal prison in Atwater, Calif., after a routine audit at the federal jail in downtown Chicago showed he was still incarcerated there and it appeared all his pending court matters had been resolved, authorities said.
Marcello was sentenced to life in prison three years ago after he and four others were convicted of racketeering conspiracy in the legendary Family Secrets trial in 2007 that riveted Chicago with its grisly details of 18 gangland murders from decades earlier. The jury found Marcello responsible for one of the most infamous Outfit slayings in Chicago history — the 1986 beatings of Anthony Spilotro, the mob’s Las Vegas chieftain, and his brother Michael read more Here
