A Deerfield man on parole for selling silencers and dealing drugs was charged Tuesday with solicitation to commit murder for his part in a foiled contract plot to kill an organized crime figure in Florida.
Lake County and federal authorities say the man, Jackie Gail, 47, is an organized crime operative who also is under investigation in connection with the unsolved murder of pizza company executive Salvatore Canzoneri. Canzoneri was gunned down in his Highland Park home in 1989.
State and federal officials said that Gail is engaged to Canzoneri`s widow, Karen.
Local and federal authorities seized Gail at the Lake Forest Oasis of the Tri-State Tollway Tuesday afternoon shortly after he allegedly completed plans with a government operative to murder a mobster in Pompano Beach, Fla., according to police.
The arrest came after Gail finished discussing the plot with the operative, who was wearing a concealed microphone, authorities said.
Gail had just bought a .357 magnum revolver from the government informant, according to Lake County State`s Atty. Michael Waller. Gail bought the gun after soliciting the informant`s help in the Florida contract killing, Waller said.
Gail wanted the Florida mobster murdered for ”personal and financial reasons,” authorities said. The identity of the intended victim was not disclosed by officials.
In addition to the gun, Gail allegedly bought an ”eight-ball,” or one-eighth of an ounce of cocaine from the informant, Waller said.
The arrest climaxed a joint investigation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Highland Park Police, the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group and the Lake County state`s attorney`s office. At the time of the arrest, Gail was still on parole from his conviction for selling silencers and drug trafficking, for which he was sentenced to 16 years in prison, authorities said.
When Gail was arrested on the previous charges, federal authorities said the silencers he was peddling were similar to the ones used in the 1975 slaying of Chicago mob chieftain Sam Giancana.
Although the murder solicitation charges did not mention a connection to the slaying of Salvatore Canzoneri, Gail has been a target of a Lake County grand jury investigating the Canzoneri murder, state and federal sources said. Last December, Karen Canzoneri, 46, made a brief appearance before that grand jury, but she has not been charged. Before her grand jury appearance, her attorney, Michael Saken, said his client would claim her 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination and decline to answer any questions about the murder of her 61-year-old husband.
Saken later declined to comment on what transpired during the secret grand jury proceedings and proclaimed his client`s innocence.
On Tuesday, Saken declined comment when asked if his client was engaged to Gail. Saken has said, however, that Lake County prosecutors have informed him that Karen Canzoneri is the focus of the grand jury investigation.
Waller declined Tuesday to comment on whether Gail was a suspect in the Canzoneri slaying.
Canzoneri was found shot to death Nov. 22, 1989, when his wife returned home with their two children about midnight after attending a bar mitzvah in the North Shore community. He had been shot three times, and there were signs of a scuffle in the house, with tables and chairs overturned. Canzoneri, a former Chicago police officer, was the president of Pizza Crust International and Panhandle Pizza Inc., both of Highland Park.
No one has ever been charged in connection with the crime.
