Pete Calabrese
==============

Pete Calabrese, known as Peter the Rabbit, was a prisoner at FCI Loretto whom John Kiriakou identifies as a senior member of the Bonanno crime family.

He belongs to the group Kiriakou calls the Italians, the faction he describes as honest, honourable and generous, the one he was closest to inside, and the one whose association eventually gave him a measure of protection from both prisoners and staff.

The objection

Calabrese appears in Kiriakou's account at the point where prison loyalties collided. Frank Russo, the former Cuyahoga County auditor who shared Kiriakou's bunk, had testified against Jimmy Dimora as part of his own plea, and was therefore marked inside as a cooperator, barred from the television room and required to eat at the rat and pedophile table.

Kiriakou recounts Calabrese asking him directly why he hung out with that rat. Kiriakou answered that Russo was his bunkmate first of all, and second that he was a really great guy, adding that he knew what Russo had done and was making no excuses for it, and that he knew Russo had informed on Dimora.

Calabrese's reply was that Russo brought dishonour to the Italians. Kiriakou did not dispute it. He agreed that Russo did, and said it did not make him any less of a sweetheart.

Standing

Kiriakou's account of the exchange is notable for what did not follow it. Russo, he says, had such a hilarious sense of humour and was such a nice man that he won everybody over, everybody except the Italians. Calabrese's objection stood, and so did Kiriakou's friendship with Russo, and Kiriakou describes his own relationship with the Italians as unaffected: he continued to eat with them, and his closest friend inside, Mark Lanzalotti, delivered hot meals to the made men at Loretto every night.

Kiriakou notes that a half-dozen of the men at Loretto were made men, and that unlike every other faction the Italians did not have and did not need a shot caller, being tight enough as a group to deal directly and honestly with everybody else.

See also

- The Italians at Loretto
- Frank Russo
- FCI Loretto
- Rat And Pedophile Table
- Shot Callers
