Law & Order: Rat Fink Unit

By Shannon in News on Jan 14, 2007 7:22PM

Tonight, Detectives Green and Cassady (oh, how we wish it was still Briscoe or Fontana) investigate the twisted case of fallen U.S. Marshal John Thomas Ambrose. Ambrose was tracked down by FBI agents in connection with a deadly case involving brotherhood, the Chicago mob, the witness protection program, the Marquette 10, and that most dire of elements: murder.

Sorry, we had to get that out of our system. Ambrose was indeed arrested on Thursday by the FBI in an organized crime-related case. Since before 2003 (the article doesn't give an exact time frame), the U.S. government has had their eyes on fourteen people with ties to the mob, as well as their associates, for carrying out at least 18 murders. In order to get a much-needed boost for their case, a federally protected mobster named Nicholas Calabrese was tapped to help out the FBI. Unfortunately, the government operation turned out to have a bit of a mole problem. When top Chicago mob boss Michael Marcello visited his brother in the pen in 2003, he admitted to having an inside source with the U.S. Marshals, who protect those precious federal witnesses.

Apparently Marcello didn't realize the FBI can listen in on his conversations with his mobbed-up brother in federal prison, for he dropped broad hints about "the babysitter," most notably that he was the son of one of those in the Marquette 10, an outfit with an illustrious history all their own. Piecing the info together, the FBI came up with Ambrose as their culprit: Not only is he the son of Thomas Ambrose, who died in prison serving his Marquette 10 sentence, but he had been assigned to Nicholas Calabrese detail. Why it took the feds almost four years to figure it out is a mystery we're not even sure Jack McCoy could solve.

Image via solarleo.