August 2–9, 2001

news

End of the Line

Angelo Lutz has until the end of this week to report to jail.

by Jim Barry

At 2 p.m. this Friday, Angelo Lutz will walk into the U.S. Marshals office and into the custody of the United States government. "I’ll be there at 1:59 and a half," Lutz told City Paper in a telephone interview from his home Tuesday morning.

"I’m not in a hurry, so there’s no reason to get there early."

Lutz’s bail was revoked last week. U.S. District Judge Herbert Hutton gave Lutz until Friday to get his affairs in order. "I wear this electronic ankle bracelet," Lutz said. "And I have to call the federal court’s pretrial services office to get permission any time I need to leave the house."

This week, Lutz asked pretrial services if he could visit his uncle in a Center City nursing home, but they said no. His uncle was recently moved to the nursing home because of senility. Angelo and his mother were supposed to clean out his uncle’s house this week, but the government said Angelo had to stay at home.

As treasurer of the Overbrook String Band, Lutz was scheduled to attend their regular Tuesday night meeting at Second and Moore to turn over the club records to a new treasurer. And the Mummers wanted to give him a farewell party. The government nixed that.

Helen Lutz, Angelo’s mother, told City Paper in a telephone interview that the "Pretrial services office is being very mean. All of a sudden they’re saying no to everything. How am I going to move all those things out of my brother’s house without Angelo’s help? I’m a 70-year-old woman."

Pretrial services supervisor Tom Wolf said he couldn’t comment because his work was confidential.

"The government is a sore loser," Angelo Lutz said. "I have a week left to help my mom, but they won’t let me now."

"This is my last media interview," Lutz said. "A lot of people said I shouldn’t have spoken out during the trial like I did. That I got too personal. But it was the government who made it personal. I never should have been in this case, but the FBI wanted to pressure me ’cause they wanted me to flip against the other defendants. I couldn’t flip a pancake on these guys even if I wanted to."

Lutz pointed out that many of the men who testified against him for the prosecution broke their cooperating agreements with the government by continuing to gamble and accept bets. "One guy testified against me, and a day and a half later he was in Las Vegas. How fair is that? That guy was charged with the same crimes as me but because he was working for the government, he got a free pass."

Lutz is furious with the Daily News, which began running a "Fat Ange" hotline on Monday. The Daily News asked readers to call in their Angelo Lutz sightings. "The Daily New s is making fun of me because I’m fat, I’m sick and I’m going to jail. They’re mean. And they’re wrong. They reported all these places I was supposed to be at, and except for Pizzicato restaurant at Third and Market, I wasn’t anywhere they reported."

Kitty Caparella, Daily News mob reporter, "is a government reporter," Lutz said. "She’s a press agent for the prosecutor. And this Fat Ange sighting stuff is over the line. I’ve had it with the Daily News. I’m seeking legal representation, and I’m going to sue them."

Caparella denied she played favorites.

"Is it because I am a skeptical reporter who questions what he and other mobsters say?" she asked. "How can you trust anything he says? His own friends call him ‘Liar Liar.’"

Caparella had some choice comments for Lutz.

"Lutz," she said, "has been used by the mob, abused by [mob consigliere] Georgie Borgesi and thoroughly overexposed by the media. He is the one who calls himself a degenerate gambler. Degenerate, in the dictionary, means morally corrupt."

As for the Fat Ange hotline, Caparella said she has nothing to do with that.

"You have to talk to a city editor about that," she said.

Angelo Lutz is an only child. His family, the Luzzis, originally lived in Belmont Hills, Lower Merion Township, when it was known as West Manayunk. The family name was changed to Lutz when his father went to work as a construction engineer at the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. He worked there 40 years and died not long after Angelo was freed on bail. "I’m leaving my 70-year-old mother alone," Angelo said. "She’s got health problems. I’ve got health problems. I’ve got heart problems. I got diabetes. They’ll probably send me to a prison hospital in Massachusetts. She won’t be able to come and see me. But I’m gonna make the best of a bad situation. What else can I do?"

A friend who has known Angelo Lutz all his life told City Paper, "It’s a real shame. Angelo wanted so much to be a part of things and to be a stand-up guy. He could have pleaded guilty and gotten parole. He never wanted to be a mob guy, but he didn’t want to turn his back on guys he thinks are his friends. So now he’s going to jail. If Angelo had beaten this case, he would have moved somewhere out West, like Nevada, and started a whole new life. He would have gone to college and run a legit business and just been Angelo to a whole new set of people. That’s what he was really hoping for — a new start."