Windy City Wiseguy, Outfit Boss Confidant, ‘The Gabeet’, Back For The Holidays, Enjoying Partial Freedom
Chicago mobster Robert (Bobby the Gabeet) Bellavia celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday with his family this week for the first time in two and a half decades. In the process, reputed acting Chicago mafia don Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis got another member of his inner circle back from prison, the second running buddy of his to get his walking papers in the past year.
Bellavia was released to an Illinois halfway house last week. He had been in a federal correctional facility since 1990 when he was indicted and eventually convicted in the Good Ship Lollipop case, a large-scale RICO and murder indictment which brought down a large chunk of the Outfit’s Cicero crew. Deceased Cicero capo Ernest (Rocky) Infelise, the lead defendant in the case, jokingly called his crew the Good Ship Lollipop, a reference to an old Shirley Temple song.
A part of the indictment dealt with Outfit activity in north-suburban Lake County, a region that falls under the Cicero crew banner and has been DeLaurentis’ primary stomping grounds since the 1970s. The 76-year old Bellavia will be out of his downtown Chicago halfway house this spring (May to be exact). Per Chicago Police Department records, he holds multiple legitimate investments in real estate and the restaurant business in the so-called Second City, investments dating back decades.
“Bobby’s rock solid, the guy just did two dimes and a nickel (25 years in prison) and didn’t flinch for a second,” said one Gangster Report source who grew up with Bellavia. “They don’t make ’em like him anymore. He was dead to rights, wouldn’t even consider turning on his friends. That’s the kind of man he is, a man’s man, a soldier, a man of honor. How many people left can say that? A lot people want to pretend, want to talk the talk. Bobby walks the walk, day in-day out, his whole life.”
DeLaurentis, also 76 and the front boss for the Chicago mob for the last few years, was convicted in the Good Ship Lollipop case, too and has been free since 2006. Solly D’s best friend and fellow co-defendant, Louis (Louie Tomatoes) Marino was sprung from the clink last fall. Bellavia and Infelise were found guilty of conspiracy in the case’s headlining murder, the heinous 1985 gangland-style homicide of brash Lake County bookie Hal Smith, one of the most successful sports-handicappers in the country at the time he was clipped.
Outfit enforcer and retied pugilist and prize-fighter trainer Robert (Bobby the Boxer) Salerno was convicted of Smith’s actual murder at a second trial in 1995, represented in the courtroom by his son, defense attorney Alexander Salerno. Marino and DeLaurentis were convicted of racketeering, but acquitted of any wrongdoing in the Smith slaying. The 1982 Chicago mob murder of Bobby Plummer, an Outfit associate who helped oversee operations at a backdoor casino ran out of his suburban mansion, was charged in the case as well, yet yielded no convictions when the dust cleared.
Smith, 47, was killed on February 7, 1985 at the Long Grove, Illinois home of Outfit associate William (B.J.) Jahoda, DeLaurentis’ former driver. Jahoda turned informant in 1989 and implicated Infelise and his brigade of underworld protégés in the hit, where Smith was beaten, tortured, stabbed and strangled to death, his body left in the trunk of his Cadillac in an Arlington Heights bar’s parking lot.
According to Jahoda’s testimony, Smith continually resisted shakedown attempts by the Outfit’s Cicero crew and got into a public shouting match with DeLaurentis and Marino resulting in racial epithets being flung back and forth in the months preceding his murder. Although Smith initially agreed to fork over a $3,000 per month extortion fee – after more than three years of dodging paying any tribute – , it wasn’t long before negotiations completely broke down and tensions reached a boiling point when DeLaurentis demanded $6,000, instead, per court filings. Witnesses at an Arlington Heights restaurant in the spring of 1984 recounted Smith and DeLaurentis throwing money at each other, Smith calling Solly D and Louie Tomatoes, “no-good guineas that should take their olive-oil smelling asses back to Italy”, and DeLaurentis threatening to kill Smith and stuff him in the trunk of his car, making him “trunk music.”
Marino’s glasses and a cigar of his were discovered by police inside the vehicle Smith actually did become trunk music in. Louie Tomatoes was named as a participant, but never charged in the infamous Spilotro brothers double murder in June 1986, depicted in the movie Casino (w/ Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesce portraying rogue Outfit lieutenant Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro).
Jahoda told the jury at the Good Ship Lollipop trial – lasting from late 1991 into 1992 – that after a half-year of Infelise and company stalking Smith and planning his demise, in the winter of 1985, he was instructed by Infleise to deliver Smith to his slaughter, scheduled to take place in his own kitchen. The government’s star witness testified watching Smith’s murder carried out by Infelise, Bellavia, Marino and Salerno through a window from his front lawn.
In a conv
“Nope. That was it, right there (in his kitchen). Bang. Out,” he replied.
Infelise, a former paratrooper in the U.S. Army, died while incarcerated in 2005 at a medical hospital at age 82. Salerno, 81, isn’t eligible for parole until the 2020s.
Exclusive Gangster Report sources say DeLaurentis was tapped as the Outfit’s street boss and acting boss in around late 2010 upon his predecessor Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno being convicted and jailed for mob-related extortion. Marino (83 years old), per these sources, assumed command of Cicero’s Lake County wing immediately following his release from behind bars in 2014 – Solly D originally staked claim to the lucrative racket territory in the early 1980s. The Chicago mob’s overall boss, long-tenured John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo, remains the city’s Godfather, although according to most reports, the octogenarian is semi-retired and relatively inactive.
