Lawyer: Claim of leak about ‘Family Secrets’ witness ‘inaccurate’

Lawyers for a Catholic priest facing sentencing Thursday have shot back at claims by federal prosecutors that their client passed sensitive information about the star witness in the landmark Family Secrets trial to prolific mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr.

Thomas Anthony Durkin called the allegation “inaccurate” and “highly inflammatory.” Calabrese’s brother, Nicholas Calabrese, helped put Frank Calabrese Sr. in prison for the rest of his life. Durkin asked a judge Wednesday to possibly go as far as delaying former prison chaplain Eugene Klein’s sentencing hearing over the matter.

The revelation was slipped 15 pages into a document filed Monday that called for U.S. District Judge John Darrah to sentence Klein to five years in prison. Klein acted as a secret messenger for the feared hit man, delivering the contents of notes the mob boss had written in solitary confinement and hidden in religious books, to associates on the outside.

Klein pleaded guilty in February 2015 to violating the strict security surrounding Frank Calabrese. He is accused of plotting to snatch the mob boss’ rare violin from Frank Calabrese’s Wisconsin vacation home.

In a filing Wednesday, Durkin quoted a summary of an April 2011 interview Klein gave with an FBI agent, which states another inmate told Klein that he knew where Nicholas Calabrese was being incarcerated.

“Subsequent to this meeting Klein shared the information with (Frank) Calabrese,” it states. “Afterwards, (Frank) Calabrese asked Klein to find out all he could about the matter. Although Klein did not intend to do anything more, he told Calabrese that he would see what he could do.”

The summary of a follow-up interview is partially redacted but indicates the inmate “did not say what prison in [REDACTED] he met Nick Calabrese.”

Durkin also said Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu responded to an information request Tuesday by saying, “I think our pleading is pretty clear and there is no confusion on this point: We did not say at any point in our filings, and we will not be arguing at sentencing, that the defendant gave Frank [Calabrese] the actual physical address of Nick [Calabrese].”

Bhachu’s sentencing memo indicates Klein, “revealed information to Frank Calabrese, Sr., about the location of his brother, Nicholas Calabrese — knowing that Nicholas Calabrese had cooperated against his brother and that Nicholas Calabrese was in grave danger as a result of his cooperation.”

Frank Calabrese died on Christmas Day 2012 — his favorite holiday — in a federal prison in North Carolina.