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Calculated abuses (cont.) Helping him ‘jump’ In the fifth part of this series, the Post-Gazette reported on a scam by prisoners called "jumping on the bus," in which inmates buy inside information about a crime they had no part in, often purchasing it from government informants. They memorize it and offer to testify against people charged with the crime. In return, prosecutors promise to cut their sentences. John Pree’s ticket to freedom went beyond that. He said federal agents approached him and asked him to lie to help win indictments against more than a dozen reputed Detroit-area gangsters. The agents promised to provide the information he’d need. Federal agents had long sought to put Vito Giacalone, boss of the Detroit organized crime family, and several of his accomplices behind bars. Pree was a long-time criminal facing a life sentence after being arrested following his armed robbery of a home in 1992. Federal agents told him they could make that sentence disappear. In court filings, here’s how Pree described the deal: Federal agents provided him information about a number of crimes, including the torture and murder of Detroit gangster Peter Cavataio. Pree would plead guilty to these crimes, testifying that he’d been acting on the orders of Giacalone and his associates, who would face life sentences. In exchange, the life sentence Pree was facing for the armed robbery and being a career offender would be dropped, he’d be sentenced to 20 years for the murder he didn’t commit, then federal agents would quietly arrange for that 20-year sentence to be reduced to less than a decade behind bars. Pree said they also promised him a new identity and cash to begin his life anew. Pree said he agreed to the deal, even though he’d never met Giacalone. "[Federal agents] would bring me police reports to read, photographs, then their rendition of things that happened," he said in a recent telephone interview. Pree told the fabricated testimony of the Cavataio murder to a grand jury, and more. Yes, he’d burned down Giacalone’s girlfriend’s house in suburban Detroit so Giacalone could collect the insurance, he told the grand jurors. There were mob-ordered fire bombings, hidden business interests in brothels, intimidation of witnesses, political corruption and more, Pree testified. There were a few hitches. He testified that he’d murdered the gangster in 1986, when the killing actually occurred in 1985. And he failed when asked to pick his victim out of a photo lineup. "That’s because I didn’t know him," Pree said from prison. Pree said he repeatedly failed a polygraph test before testifying. Nonetheless, Pree’s grand jury testimony in March 1997 helped indict 17 suspected mobsters in the federal government’s largest crackdown of organized crime figures in Michigan. Agents placed Pree in the federal witness protection program and sent him to a prison in Minnesota to await his call to testify at the trials of Giacalone and others. Pree said he soon began to get nervous about the deal. There was no word on the promise to cut his prison time. Several of the men he’d testified against had agreed to plea bargains, so his testimony wouldn’t be needed at trial. And if the federal prosecutors didn’t fulfill their part of the deal, he feared he might be sentenced to life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. And aside from that, he had found some things in his armed robbery conviction that he believed might help him get the verdict reversed on appeal. His misgivings intensified after federal agents stopped responding to his calls and letters. So in 1997, he withdrew his guilty plea in the murder. He told the court he’d lied in linking crimes to Giacalone and underlings. He said his FBI contacts had cautioned him to keep that information to himself. Even though he still faced life in prison on the home invasion charge, Pree said in an interview that the charade had worn on him. "I’m not going to lie for these guys [federal agents] anymore." Without Pree’s testimony, two suspects he’d implicated were acquitted, while others were convicted after prosecutors were able to convince another gangster to become a government witness. Giacalone, who was facing life in prison based on Pree’s statements, agreed to a 61/2-year sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to one charge of conspiracy. As for Pree, he has appealed his conviction on the armed robbery charge. And after withdrawing his guilty plea in Cavataio’s slaying, federal prosecutors quietly dropped murder charges against him. Keith Corbett, chief of the organized crime and racketeering section for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Michigan, characterized Pree as an admitted perjurer and said the government has contested each issue Pree has broached. As for his planned testimony, Corbett said, "We would not have attempted to use Mr. Pree as a witness unless we believed what he was telling us." Corbett said all of the matters regarding Pree are still under review. Pree has been removed from the witness program and is now imprisoned in Michigan.
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