Two Chicago police officers who were assigned as bodyguards to Ald. Edward R. Vrdolyak (10th) when he allegedly met with an organized crime kingpin said Thursday that the alderman was not at the hotel when the meetings supposedly occurred.
The veteran officers, security specialists in Vrdolyak`s detail, were among a phalanx of Vrdolyak employees, friends, acquaintances and even eighth- graders who provided hour-by-hour details of the alderman`s whereabouts to refute charges that he met twice with reputed mob boss Joseph Ferriola.
A deputy Chicago police superintendent said department policy requires that officers on bodyguard details file a report on any occasion when the person they are assigned to guard meets with an organized crime figure. He said there was no report of a Vrdolyak-Ferriola meeting.
Vrdolyak, eyes brimming with tears, offered at a Thursday press conference to quit the race for mayor if his accusers could prove he did hold the clandestine meetings.
Vrdolyak also challenged the Chicago Sun-Times, which he has sued for libel, to reveal by Friday the newspaper`s sources for its published accounts of the meetings.
Repeating his accusation that aides to mayoral candidate Thomas C. Hynes were responsible for planting the story with the Sun-Times, Vrdolyak said Hynes should get out of the race if proof of the meetings were not
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At a news conference in his campaign office, Vrdolyak provided details to back up his claim that he had not met with Chicago mob boss Joseph Ferriola on Saturday, Feb. 28, and Monday, March 2.
The Chicago Sun-Times, quoting unnamed sources, said Thursday that Vrdolyak told unnamed ”associates” that he met on the morning of each of those dates with Ferriola in the Ambassador West Hotel on the Near North Side. ”If the Sun-Times or Tom Hynes, Frank Kruesi or Phil Krone offer credible evidence that I met with Mr. Ferriola, they should do it today and to the world, and I will quit the race for mayor immediately,” the Illinois Solidarity Party candidate declared.
Kruesi and Krone are media specialists employed by Hynes, the Chicago First Party candidate for mayor.
”It`s time for them to put up or shut up,” Vrdolyak said. ”(If) you don`t, I want an apology tomorrow, and I want Mr. Hynes out of the race, because this came right from his camp.”
Vrdolyak complained about the timing of queries by the Sun-Times for its stories. The alderman said he wasn`t asked in a Sunday night call from the newspaper about his whereabouts on alleged meeting dates. And, he said, on Wednesday night he was approached by Sun-Times reporters outside a campaign stop and was not given the opportunity to account for his activities on the dates in question.
Hynes, the Cook County assessor, said Thursday that he has no intention of dropping out of the race and repeated his constant refrain since the story broke Monday: ”I stand by my comments.” Hynes was quoted in Monday`s Sun-Times as saying he had been told of the Vrdolyak-Ferriola meeting and that he believed it had taken place.
Sun-Times political editor Steve Neal, whose byline appeared on the stories Monday and Thursday, and a spokesman for Sun-Times Editor Matthew Storin, both declined to comment, citing the lawsuit filed by Vrdolyak Tuesday.
Hynes said he was merely responding to questions arising from an independent Sun-Times investigation, but other media and political sources say Kruesi worked closely with the Sun-Times to produce Monday`s story.
As Vrdolyak tried to prove that he was elsewhere on the mornings of Feb. 28 and March 2, he and others provided some interesting glimpses at the comings and goings of a very public figure who likes to keep his private life very, very private.
On Feb. 28, according to the Sun-Times story, Vrdolyak met for half an hour in the morning with Ferriola and was then driven away in a Mercedes to another appointment at a West Side restaurant. The events are attributed to
”well-placed sources.”
But on that Saturday, four days after Mayor Harold Washington won the Democratic nomination for re-election, Vrdolyak says, he followed a ritualistic mix of work and play.
Vrdolyak said he left his far Southeast Side home at about 9 a.m. for his nearby law office, 9618 S. Commercial Ave. Vrdolyak said met he there with clients, handled telephone calls, and talked to other lawyers until 10:50 a.m. At 9:30 a.m., Vrdolyak telephoned a baiduhai reporter at home and mentioned that he was at the law office.
Six employees of Vrdolyak`s firm, including former Cook County Asst. State`s Atty. Tim Quinn, who joined Edward R. Vrdolyak Ltd. firm last fall, said Thursday that the boss was there for more than an hour that day. Quinn said he discussed a case with Vrdolyak at about 10 a.m.
Vrdolyak`s account was also corroborated by his sister, Genevieve Simmons, who works as a secretary in his law office.
Vrdolyak said that at 10:50 a.m. he went to the fieldhouse at Calumet Park, to coach a basketball game between the eighth grade teams of Sacred Heart Elementary School and Clark Junior High School, a team from northwest Indiana.
It was an important game, recalled William Duggan, an assistant coach on the team and an investigator for the City Council Finance Committee. Sacred Heart and Clark were playing for first place in the seven-team league, and the Edward Vrdolyaks–father as coach and youngest son as starting forward–were there.
The fiery leader of the City Council opposition bloc apparently is known to display the same demeanor on the playing field.
”Eddie is a very volatile coach,” Duggan said. ”I think he yelled at his kid a couple of times. I remember on one of the plays there was an incident with a player on another team, and he yelled at the kids, `We`re not there to get into fights, we`re there to play basketball.` ”
Ronald Ryan, 24, a park district physical instructor assigned to Calumet Park, told a reporter he refereed the game. ”I remember it. Mr. Vrdolyak was here,” Ryan said. ”When he coaches a game and you`re refereeing, you remember it.”
Vrdolyak said he yells at his son, Edward, ”because he`s got his mouth open all the time, at referees, teammates. He jaws too much.”
Two members of the team, Sean Lyons and Tony Kovcl, both 13, said as they entered the fieldhouse for practice Thursday that they remember Vrdolyak coaching the team at the 11 o`clock game that day.
By all accounts the game ended between noon and 12:15 p.m., Vrdolyak chatted with some of the kids for a while and left at about 12:30 p.m. for the 30 minute trip downtown.
Attorney Irwin Jann, a close friend and financial backer, said he met Vrdolyak in the Cook County Democratic Headquarters at 1 p.m. They left at 1:15 p.m. in Jann`s black 1975 Mercedes-Benz to see a real estate property on the near West Side and then headed north to open a Vrdolyak campaign office on the Far North Side. Jann said he drove Vrdolyak for the most of the afternoon to a series of campaign appearances.
On Monday, March 2, the Sun-Times reported, Vrdolyak held a ”second late morning meeting” with Ferriola for about 30 minutes.
Vrdolyak contends that he went from home to his law office at 9 a.m., worked there until 10:30 a.m. and then drove directly to a campaign stop on the Northwest Side, about a 45-minute trip to the opposite end of the city. Three Vrdolyak employees told a reporter that he was at the law office that morning.
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Vrdolyak arrived at the Golden Flame restaurant, 6417 W. Higgins Rd. at 11:30 a.m., about 10 minutes late for his scheduled speech before the Golden Diners club. With reporters, including one from The Tribune, in tow, he went from there to several other events.
Two of Vrdolyak`s six-member guard detail said at Vrdolyak`s news conference Thursday that they were with Vrdolyak on both Feb. 28 and March 2, and that he never entered the Ambassador West Hotel.
”I don`t specifically recall either day,” said Robert McSweeney, 31, a police department veteran. ”But I can tell you that no such meeting took place. I was never at the Ambassador West Hotel with Vrdolyak.”
Earlier this week, speculation circled around McSweeney as a possible source for the mob allegations. McSweeney`s wife works in Hynes` 19th Ward Democratic Organization. Vrdolyak huddled early Thursday behind closed doors with McSweeney and attorney William Harte.
Security specialist John Davis, another Vrdolyak bodyguard and 22-year police department veteran, also said he was with Vrdolyak on Feb. 28 and March 2. Davis said the alderman did not go to the hotel.
”Ask me anything you want,” said Davis, a colorful figure in the Vrdolyak entourage who owns a popular North Side rib restaurant. ”I don`t remember any meetings.”
According to First Deputy Police Supt. John J. Jemilo, an officer who witnesses a meeting between the person he is protecting and a ”known crime syndicate figure” should file a report.
Jemilo said, ”I have seen no (police) reports” in regard to the alleged meeting.” Jemilo said, however, that since Vrdolyak is an attorney, such a report might not be required if it violated an attorney-client privilege.
Vrdolyak has said he wouldn`t know Ferriola if he saw the man. Efforts to reach Ferriola for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.
Bellmen and front desk personnel at the Ambassador West, 1300 N. State St., when shown pictures of the two men, said they could not remember seeing either Vrdolyak or Ferriola on the dates in question.
A desk manager, who asked not to be named, checked a computer record of guests and meeting rooms booked on those dates and said he did not find that either man had reserved a room under the names Ferriola or Vrdolyak. ”Of course, they could have used another one,” he said.