Men convicted in 1980 Marlboro diamond heist charged in alleged plot to rob Chicago-area bank

Aging diamond thieves held in alleged bank plot

CHICAGO — Two men convicted of London’s $3.6 million Marlborough diamond robbery three decades ago have been arrested on charges of conspiring to rob a suburban Chicago bank, federal officials announced Friday.

Joseph “Jerry” Scalise, 73 and Arthur Rachel, 71, were arrested Thursday night along with Robert Pullia, 69, after months of FBI surveillance showed they were planning to rob the First National Bank of LaGrange, according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

In addition to a long arrest record, the FBI said Scalise’s resume included serving as a technical adviser on the movie “Public Enemies” about Depression Era badman John Dillinger, which was filmed in Chicago in 2008.

The three men appeared Friday before Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan, who set a bond hearing for Wednesday. Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk told Nolan that all three represent both a flight risk and a danger to the community and thus should be kept in jail.

Defense attorney Terence P. Gillespie told reporters one of the men told him the charges were “nonsense” and that all three would plead not guilty.

Scalise and Rachel were convicted in a British court of being the two men who in 1980, using a hand grenade as a threat, robbed posh Graff Jewelers in central London of $3.6 million worth of goods including the big diamond.

Carried out in daylight, the Marlborough diamond robbery made headlines throughout Britain. Scalise and Rachel began serving 15-year prison terms in 1984 and were released in 1993.

Authorities say they had more recently been under surveillance in connection with a robbery of the Harris Bank in LaGrange in 2007 when three men took more than $100,000 and fled. They have not been charged in that case.

A criminal complaint filed Friday charges them with conspiring to obstruct, delay and affect commerce through robbery of the First National Bank of LaGrange.

In a bizarre twist, the men’s arrest came outside the one-time home of the late Chicago mob boss Angelo “The Hook” LaPietra, where the FBI said they were planning a home invasion Thursday night.

The men, two clad in black clothing, were drilling holes in the wall and removing windows, according to the affidavit. It said Scalise was overheard saying he wanted toothpaste to disguise the holes, a technique he said was used by two Irish Republican Army men he and Rachel befriended during their prison time in England.

Other conversations monitored by the FBI contained an array of mob references. LaPietra was described by Scalise as “a miserable person” who after his release from prison would sit “in a chair in a corner and stare at people.”

“Every little thing made him nuts,” Scalise is quoted as saying.

The FBI said it picked up several references to individuals involved in the 2007 Operation Family Secrets trial, the biggest Chicago mob case in decades. At one point, Scalise said Nicholas Calabrese, an admitted hit man who became the government’s star witness, “ran everything at McCormick Place,” Chicago’s big lakefront exposition center.

The men also discussed a recent FBI seizure of $730,000 in cash as well as jewelry and handguns from a cache in a wall in the home of Calabrese’s brother, Frank, a reputed mob loan shark and hit man. He was sent to prison for life following the Family Secrets trial.