Facing sentencing back in 2008, reputed mob hit man Anthony Calabrese knew if he ever left prison alive, it would be as an old man unable to threaten anyone ever again.
A decade later, his attorney acknowledged that 57-year-old Calabrese will likely be coming home “in a box” — the way prosecutors warned he would if he didn’t cooperate.
In recent court filings, Calabrese says he’s been given only a few months to live following a cancer diagnosis. And Monday, President Donald Trump also quietly denied a commutation petition from Calabrese, the main suspect in the last known mob hit in Chicago.
He was among 180 denied clemency by Trump this week, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Calabrese’s attorney, Joseph “The Shark” Lopez, had not yet heard about the president’s decision when reached Wednesday by phone. But he said he knew of the accused killer’s clemency petition and said he’s been helping Calabrese try to secure a compassionate release from prison.
It hasn’t gone well, Lopez said, thanks to “the stamp of organized crime.” Meanwhile, he said his client is deteriorating daily.
“So he has to wait and sit in there, and count the days until he dies,” Lopez said. “And then he comes home in a box.”
Federal authorities believe Calabrese was the gunman in the 2001 mob slaying of Anthony “The Hatch” Chiaramonti in west suburban Lyons. He was also a suspect in the 1997 attempted murder of a Naperville woman.
U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve shot down in February a bid for Calabrese’s early release. Calabrese’s quest for freedom has also taken him to federal court in Indianapolis. In a filing there last week, he said he has “an anticipated life expectancy of 3 months.”
He has been living in a federal prison in Terre Haute. In December, he asked the warden there to let him live his final days in Chicago.
“My release does not pose a risk to any person, or member of the community,” Calabrese wrote. “Given the effects of the cancer I do have, I will be debilitated and confined to a bed in the very near future.”
St. Eve sentenced Calabrese in 2008 to 62 years in prison for his role in three armed robberies in the suburbs. The crimes all involved guns and required strict sentencing under the law. He is not due out until 2061.
Federal prosecutors depicted him as a cold, violent and ruthless man. They played a secret tape recording at his trial in which he and a colleague could be heard savagely beating a man they suspected might be wearing a wire.
Calabrese admitted in court he had made mistakes and once battled a drug problem. But he suggested he knew nothing of the murder and attempted murder the government once wanted to interview him about.
He said he refused to lie and was punished for it.
“You’re gonna die in jail, is what they told me,” Calabrese said at the time.
