Topic: Nicholas Calabrese

Nicholas W. Calabrese (born November 30, 1942) is an imprisoned member of the Chicago Outfit crime organization who is the highest-ranking mobster ever to turn against the Chicago Outfit. His testimony and cooperation with federal prosecutors helped result in the 2007 murder convictions of Chicago Outfit mobsters Joseph Lombardo, James Marcello and Frank Calabrese, Sr.

Calabrese was born the son of James and Sophie Calabrese, growing up near the intersection of Grand and Ogden Avenues on Chicago's Near West Side. As a boy, Calabrese worked at a newsstand at the corner of Grand Avenue and State Street, in downtown Chicago, where some of his brothers had worked as well. Calabrese graduated from Steinmetz High School in Chicago.

Calabrese served in Vietnam in the United States Navy from 1965 until 1967, working as a radioman and having top-secret clearance on the USS Bainbridge. Calabrese also had worked as an ironworker on the John Hancock Center construction project in Chicago, as a Teamster working for trade show contractor United Exposition at Chicago's McCormick Place and as a Cook County security officer at the courthouse in Maywood, Illinois from 1977 until 1989.