By Jason Meisner and Joseph
Ryan, Tribune reporters
8:14 a.m. CST, January 15, 2014
The former cop and death row
inmate was callous and calculated, quoting military tactics as he considered
which of two targets it made the most sense to kill in order to take over their
chunk of a lucrative strip club, federal authorities allege.
"You chop the snake's head
off. Pow," Steven Mandell allegedly told an undercover informant in
September 2012 as a hidden video recorder rolled. "I still don't think you
have a clear path on how it plays out, but at least we'd be on our way,
wouldn't we?"
In the end, Mandell decided to
kill the more vulnerable of the two — and his wife if necessary — then place a
threatening phone call to the second target's wife to convince him to walk
away, according to transcripts of the secret recordings filed recently in
federal court.
And in case anyone thought the
Chicago Outfit's infamous Elmwood Park crew didn't have muscle anymore, Mandell
had a special message.
"Tell that (expletive)
husband to leave this situation alone, or else," Mandell said he would
tell the wife, according to the government filing. "'Cause I'll show you
what Elmwood Park really looks like. I can get really nasty."
On the FBI video, Mandell then
drew a hand across this throat and made a "slitting sound," the
filing said.
The chilling new details have
emerged a month before Mandell, 63, is set to go on trial in U.S. District
Court in connection with a series of alleged plots, including a gruesome scheme
to kidnap and extort a local businessman, then kill him and dismember the body.
Now, through details provided
in the court record, the Tribune has confirmed that the strip club associate
Mandell had allegedly planned to kill, identified in the government filing only
as "Victim 2," was Anthony Quaranta, a former Franklin Park cop known
as "Tony Q." He also allegedly targeted Quaranta's associate, Demitri
Stavropoulos, a highly paid "consultant" at the Polekatz strip club
in suburban Bridgeview who was identified in the court record only as
"Associate 1."
Cloak and dagger
The court document also paints
a more detailed picture of just how reckless and daring Mandell — formerly
known as Steven Manning — had allegedly become before his sensational arrest in
October 2012.
According to the government filing,
for several weeks that fall, Mandell and his alleged associate, Gary Engel,
were conducting cloak-and-dagger surveillance of Victim 2's pregnant wife while
at the same time outfitting a vacant Northwest Side storefront with the
industrial equipment needed to chop up a body as part of the separate plot to
kill the businessman.
At one point, the FBI was
conducting aerial surveillance as Mandell crouched down next to a car in a
suburban mall parking lot, allegedly to install a tracking device on the car of
one of his girlfriends, according to court records.
In recent months, Mandell's
case has also been linked to the suspicious death of Giacomo Ruggirello, a Lake
County restaurateur who perished in a fire in September 2012. The Tribune has
previously reported that someone had broken into Ruggirello's Highwood
restaurant on the same day as the fire and taken the office safe. Mandell's
attorneys have subpoenaed the records from the suspected arson investigation.
Authorities have alleged that
Mandell's schemes didn't stop with his arrest. Days later, he called his wife —
an 82-year-old Buffalo Grove woman — from a federal Loop jail and asked her to
get rid of evidence in the case, his indictment alleged.
Prosecutors have also alleged
that Mandell tried from jail to arrange the murder of the FBI's key informant
in the case — a man previously identified by the Tribune as Northwest Side real
estate mogul George Michael.
'Psychological warfare'
Originally from the Italian
section of Chicago's Near West Side known as "The Patch," Mandell's
criminal history goes back to his days as a Chicago cop in the 1970s and '80s.
After he was booted from the force for insurance fraud, Mandell was accused of
taking part in a mob-connected jewelry theft ring and other alleged schemes,
including the kidnapping and extortion of several drug dealers in Kansas City,
records show.
Mandell was eventually sent to
death row for the drug-related 1990 slaying of a trucking firm owner, and at
his sentencing prosecutors linked Mandell to two additional unsolved murders,
including the 1986 killing of his own father, Boris, according to court
records.
Both his murder and Missouri
kidnapping convictions were overturned on appeal after Mandell alleged
authorities fabricated evidence and used a notorious jailhouse snitch to frame
him. He sued the FBI and won a landmark $6.5 million in damages from a federal
jury in 2005. However, a judge later threw out the award, and Mandell did not
receive any money.
Records show that after the
jury verdict, Mandell moved to Florida, married and started a lock and safe
company out of his wife's home. When he returned to Chicago, he had changed his
last name from Manning to Mandell, records show.
Mandell's trial in February
will focus on a series of undercover recordings made in fall 2012 at Michael's
Northwest Side realty office and the storefront on West Devon Avenue jokingly
referred to in recordings as "Club Med," where Mandell and Engel
allegedly planned to dismember the businessman's body.
While much of the transcripts
have been blacked out for undisclosed reasons, the portions that have been made
public in court filings highlight the allegedly disturbing nature of the
conversations that jurors in Mandell's trial are likely to hear.
Prosecutors allege Mandell and
Engel planned to wage "psychological warfare" on the kidnapping
victim to coerce him to turn over his assets. In an undercover FBI recording
made at Club Med in the days before the planned kidnapping, the two discussed
everything from how to instill the most fear in their victim to how best to
drain his body of blood.
According to one prosecution
filing, Mandell was referring to the victim's genitals when he asked his
alleged accomplice, "You going to put a little blade there?"
"It's like slicing a
banana split," the filing quoted Engel as responding.
Following his arrest in
October, Engel was found hanged in his jail cell in McHenry County, a death
that has been ruled a suicide.
'Who?'
According to court records,
Mandell was also captured talking extensively about Quaranta and Stavropoulos
and their stake in Polekatz, a multimillion-dollar strip club in the south
suburbs that has been engulfed in controversy over its murky finances and
alleged ties to felons and organized crime associates.
Stavropoulos, identified by the
Chicago Crime Commission as an organized crime associate, was brought on as a
$5,000-a-week consultant at the club about a year after his release from prison
for running a multistate bookmaking ring, according to court records.
A 2010 Tribune investigation
also documented how Stavropoulos partnered with another alleged underworld
figure, Michael "Jaws" Giorango, and borrowed millions from the
family bank of former Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who at the time was
running for the U.S. Senate. Giorango and Stavropoulos used the money to launch
their own lending business that made high-interest, short-term loans to
questionable borrowers, the Tribune found.
Quaranta, meanwhile, quit the
Franklin Park police in late 2002 at about the time prosecutors dropped charges
that he had illegal steroids delivered to his house, records show. He later
lent about $500,000 to Polekatz and became a highly paid consultant to the
club. Records show that in addition to his interest in Polekatz, Quaranta either
owns or has a financial interest in four other strip clubs and taverns from
suburban Bedford Park to Indiana and Texas.
Quaranta did not respond to
phone calls seeking comment. His attorney, Ed Wanderling, returned a message
left on Quaranta's cellphone and said he could not comment on a pending
investigation or "what Steve Mandell's ideas or plans were."
Wanderling said he was not
aware of any plans by prosecutors to use Quaranta as a witness in Mandell's
trial.
Reached by telephone recently,
Stavropoulos declined to speak about the case. When asked about Mandell,
Stavropoulos responded, "Who?"
'Smells like organized crime'
According to the filing by
federal prosecutors, to move in on the Polekatz action, Mandell decided that it
made more sense to kill Quaranta, who has no criminal record and would
therefore have an easier time fighting the takeover in court if he was left
alive.
On the recordings quoted in the
government filing, Mandell ruminated how Stavropoulos understood muscle and
would step aside once he saw that Mandell meant business.
"Although he's got a big
ego, when he sees what happens to (Quaranta) and his old lady … he might
(expletive) all over himself, too," Mandell allegedly said of
Stavropoulos.
Mandell developed a plot to
kill Quaranta and his wife at home while their children were in school,
according to the government filing. He lamented it might be a "rush
job" but was ready to ad lib if necessary, according to the undercover
recordings.
"I know from military
strategy what George Patton said, battle plans are as good as the first shot
fired," the government filing quoted Mandell as saying. "Once that
first shot's fired, you're almost into improvisation, right?"
Mandell's attorneys had sought
to have the wiretaps barred from trial, arguing the FBI could have used normal
investigative techniques to stop the alleged schemes. In denying the request
last month, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve quoted snippets of a wiretapped
conversation from almost a month before Mandell's arrest that showed he had
planned to act dumb and lawyer up if authorities came around asking about
Quaranta's murder.
"How can I help you with
this (expletive)?" Mandell said he would tell investigators, according to
the government filing. 'Wow — he was — this is a murder investigation? … I have
a lawyer to attend to this. They'll gladly handle all your questions."
Mandell then planned to point
investigators in another direction by remarking on Quaranta's background as a
strip club operator.
"Italian guy, Franklin
Park cop who runs five joints? That smells like organized crime," Mandell
said he would say. "I think you're in the wrong neighborhood. Go beat on
someone else's door."
