Albert ‘Caesar’ Tocco, 77; Mobster Was Sentenced to 200 Years

Albert “Caesar” Tocco, 77, a reputed mob boss who was sentenced to 200 years after his wife took the unusual step of testifying against him, died Wednesday in an Indiana prison after suffering a stroke, said a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was 15 years into his prison sentence for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion and tax fraud.

He allegedly oversaw organized crime operations in many of Chicago’s southern suburbs. Tocco was arrested in Greece in 1989 and brought back to Chicago, where he was convicted in federal court.

His wife, Betty, testified that in 1986 she drove him from an Indiana cornfield where he told her he had just buried Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, the mob’s man in Las Vegas for two decades, and his brother Michael. The Spilotro case was the basis for much of the 1995 Martin Scorsese movie “Casino.”

In an interview published in the Chicago Sun-Times just after he was sentenced in 1990, Betty Tocco called her husband a ruthless thug who abused his family, broke the mob’s code of ethics and even cheated his daughter at games of tic-tac-toe.