October 20, 2021 — Reputed Windy City mafia associate Nick Sarillo died of natural causes at the age of 80 last Friday. Sarillo was connected to the Chicago mob’s Cicero crew, specifically former crew leaders James (Little Jimmy) Marcello and Joseph (Black Joe) Amato, per Chicago Crime Commission files. He resided in Spring Grove.
In the spring of 1982, Sarillo survived a car-bomb attack as tensions rose inside the Cicero regime related to control of the north-suburban Lake County wing of the crew. Sarillo’s blue-colored van exploded while he drove on a road in Wauconda, Illinois, a tiny village nestled in Lake County, on April 24, 1982.
Little Jimmy Marcello and Chinatown crew mob enforcer Frank (Frankie Breeze) Calabrese were charged with the bombing in the historic 2005 Operation Family Secrets case. At the time the case landed, Marcello was the Outfit’s acting boss. Back at the time of the bombing, Sarillo owned a restaurant Marcello frequently dined and held court at in the years before earning his button. Frankie Breeze oversaw loan sharking activity for the Outfit’s Chinatown-26th Street group, located on the city’s Southside.
According to FBI informant debriefings that took in the early 1980s, Sarillo would sometimes act as a driver for then-Lake County rackets boss Black Joe Amato, an old-school Chicagoland Mafia figure that traced his roots in the Midwest underworld to the Prohibition era and the Capone mob. The attempt on Sarillo’s life was tied to a power struggle that broke out in Lake County pitting Amato versus a then-upstart Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, per Chicago Crime Commission intelligence files.
DeLaurentis, 82, is alleged to be the Outfit’s current don, according to sources in law enforcement. He did a decade and a half in prison for a racketeering conviction in the 1990 Operation Good Ship Lollipop Case targeting the Cicero crew. Amato died of natural causes in the 1990s, having relinquished his territory to DeLaurentis and becoming a valued adviser to top Outfit brass in his final years.
Marcello and Calabrese were each found guilty of murder in 2007 in the Family Secrets trial. The 78-year old Marcello is being housed in the feds’ SuperMax facility in Florence, Colorado. Calabrese, 75, died of a heart attack behind bars in 2012.
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