Free Witsec by Pete Earley

soon as Randaccio and Natarelli were arrested, the Magaddino family began hunting Calabrese and Rochelle. Rumors surfaced that Magaddino was offering $100,000 to anyone who could find them. Mobsters questioned Rochelle’s neighbors, harassed the couple’s friends and relatives, even interrogated Calabrese’s former barber. No one knew where they were hiding. As the trial date drew closer, the LCN became bolder. “Several of us on the strike force began getting threatening telephone calls,” recalled Donald Campbell. “We were shocked because there had always been an understanding that the mob didn’t go after federal agents or their families. You just didn’t cross that line.” Strike force members began traveling in pairs, taking special precautions. Campbell sent his wife out of town. Finally, Giambrone and a Bureau of Narcotics agent took matters into their own hands. They drove to the Magaddino family estate in Niagara Falls. “Giambrone goes up to the door and knocks, and when Magaddino is summoned and comes to the door, Giambrone whips out his revolver, sticks it in Magaddino’s mouth, and says, ‘If one more phone call comes in or anyone attempts to do harm to my family or anyone else’s on the strike force, we are going to come back and blow your fucking head off,’ ” Campbell recalled. “I knew Giambrone and this other agent and so did Magaddino, and he knew they meant it. From that moment on, the harassment stopped.”
    Kennelly personally argued the case against the two mobsters when it finally came to trial in late 1967.“I was worried about two things,” he recalled. “Would jurors believe Calabrese—an admitted criminal, scoundrel, and mob member—and if they did, would they buy the conspiracy theory?” Calabrese, who was brought to the courthouse encircled by agents, was grilled for hours by the defense attorneys. They tried to portray him as a hot-tempered thug and pathological liar by dredging up everything they could from his criminal past. But Calabrese proved unflappable, and Kennelly called several witnesses to buttress his testimony. “Everything Paddy Calabrese said—down to details about which hotel he stayed in while he was in California—was corroborated,” said Kennelly. “It was clear that Paddy was telling the straight story about the robberies, but I didn’t know if that was going to be enough. It all hinged on whether or not jurors accepted our conspiracy theory.” They did. Randaccio and Natarelli were found guilty, and each was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
    The strike force was so grateful to Calabrese that Kennelly personally appeared on his behalf before the state parole board. It voted him an immediate parole. “Suddenly we had to figure out what to do with him,” Kennelly recalled, “and none of us had a clue.” Kennelly suggested that Calabrese change his last name to Angelo. “One of our strike force members got a priest in Buffalo to give Paddy and his family new baptismal certificates with their fake names on them.” At the time, those were sufficient for the couple to obtain new driver’s licenses. Another strike force attorney persuaded a Buffalo school superintendent to change the last names on the children’s school records to Angelo so Rochelle could take the records with her. “The hardest job was finding someplace to hide them. One of our guys on the strike force had a brother whoran a manufacturing plant in Jackson, Michigan,” Kennelly said, “so we arranged for him to hire Paddy. Everything we did was through strike force members. There was no one else we could ask for help.”
    Kennelly conjured up $600 to pay three months’ rent for Calabrese. Members of the strike force passed around a hat and collected another $500 so the family could buy a used car. That was it. After the “Angelos” were delivered to Michigan, they were on their own. From the start, Kennelly wondered whether they could adjust. “Paddy had been a mob