Lawrence Siegal didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary when he received a telephone call from Bruce Sears, a former business partner, about five days ago. After all, Sears called periodically to keep in touch even though their business venture fell apart years ago.
Sears wanted to know “what I was doing, where I was going,” said Siegal, who told Sears that he was preparing to leave on a business trip to Indianapolis.
“I didn’t think anything of it,” Siegal, who is married and the father of three children, said Friday. “I thought we were friends.”
Sears apparently didn’t share the same feelings, according to authorities. FBI agents arrested Sears on Friday on charges that he tried to hire a hit man for $50,000 to kill Siegal in order to collect on a $1.9 million insurance policy.
In a common business practice, the two had taken out identical policies on each other when they merged their businesses eight years ago, Siegal said. The venture ended only a year later.
But according to a criminal complaint lodged in federal court, Sears kept paying $2,000 a month in premiums to keep active the policy he bought on Siegal–suggesting that Sears may have been plotting the alleged hit for years.
Indeed, Sears allegedly bragged to the hit man that he had twice tried to poison Siegal–once using a hypodermic needle to inject botulism into a can of Coca-Cola, authorities said. Siegal never drank from the can, Sears allegedly said.
He also claimed to have once poisoned a meal he had prepared for Siegal. But, again, Sears allegedly said that Siegal hadn’t eaten the food.
The charges alleged that Sears turned to Richard Lantini, a former Stone Park police officer and ex-convict whom he had met through business dealings, to be the hit man. Oddly, though, Sears allegedly knew before he approached Lantini that Lantini had been a snitch for the government in criminal investigations of crime syndicate figures.
Lantini immediately tipped off the FBI after he was allegedly approached by Sears. Officials tape-recorded Lantini’s next meeting with Sears and then had Lantini introduce undercover FBI Agent Francis Marrocco as another murder-for-hire specialist.
During the meeting on April 7 in a Northbrook hotel, Sears was suspicious enough to pat down the back of the agent’s coat as he walked by at one point, authorities said. Yet he had already suggested that Siegal’s killing be made to look like the result of a random carjacking or robbery, according to the charges.
In his discussions with Lantini, Sears alleged he had been defrauded by Siegal in their business dealings and then left him holding a bank debt of $1.9 million.
Lantini quoted Sears as telling him in their initial, unrecorded meeting, “I want (Siegal) whacked.” He maintained that Siegal was a childhood friend, according to the charges.
But Siegal, interviewed at his Vernon Hills residence, said he met Sears through business acquaintances eight years ago and that they decided to merge their related businesses. Siegal owned a 50-year-old fabric company named Saul Siegal Co., which was located on Chicago’s North Side. Sears owned a Chicago company called I.S. Crane that specialized in wallpaper and blinds.
The new venture lasted only a year, Siegal said.
“I’m sure he did this because he was desperate for money,” said Siegal, 54, who talked to Sears every month even though their business ties had long ago ended. “I’m still in a state of disbelief, but in a way I’m not shocked. Now that I look back and think about it, desperate people do desperate things.”
Siegal said he had canceled his insurance policy on Sears after they went their separate ways.
Sears, dressed in jeans and with his balding gray hair combed straight back, made his initial appearance in federal court Friday.
Assistant U.S. Atty. John Burley said the government wants Sears, 56, of Glencoe, held without bond pending trial, calling him both a flight risk and a danger to society.
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Sears will be held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center at least until a detention hearing Tuesday.
Lantini told authorities that he met Sears in September through business dealings and told him of his criminal background. On March 30, Sears proposed the hit to Lantini as they drank in a hotel bar, authorities charged.
A week later, after Lantini had contacted the FBI, Sears took him to Siegal’s residence, showing where he spied on his former partner’s comings and goings from a nearby side street, authorities said.
Sears also showed the purported hit man Siegal’s favorite breakfast stop, described Siegal’s car and provided him with Siegal’s itinerary for the next week and a photo of the would-be target, according to the charges.
The next day, in the meeting with the undercover FBI agent, Sears described how he experimented with a number of biological toxins–one made from blowfish–in an attempt to come up with deadly substances that wouldn’t arouse suspicion because they can be found in tainted food, authorities said.