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“Did Frank Make the Vatican an Offer It Couldn’t Refuse?” asked the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

“Sinatra Stars in Storm over Catholic Divorces,” said the London Observer.

The letters-to-the-editor columns reverberated for weeks with outrage from readers who were unaware of the dramatic new changes within the Catholic church and resented what they thought was Frank’s new standing. Reverend Edgar Holden, O.F.M., wrote to the Daily News: “If Frank Sinatra received Holy Communion … I’m happy for him. I’d also presume he felt he had a right in conscience to do so. As for his first marriage being annulled, that’s none of my business, or, for that matter, anyone else’s.”

Most readers disagreed. “The fact that Sinatra obtained this annulment three marriages after a valid marriage many years ago in the church to a Catholic lady who bore him three children raises many questions in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike,” wrote one Joseph M. Kelly. “Did his power and influence play a role in this unusual annulment? To that extent, it is our business.”

“The annulment was very embarrassing for Nancy, Sr.,” said her close friend, Kitty Kallen. “She wishes she knew more about it. She doesn’t understand how [Frank got it] and people are saying terrible things, that she got paid off, which isn’t true at all. I know that for a fact!”

“I think he did it for his mother,” said Edie Goetz. “He got that annulment to honor her memory.”

32

Palm Springs, the lush desert oasis nestled at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, is a citadel of organized crime. Nowhere in America is the Mafia’s presence more blatant than in this resort, which is home to more than one hundred gangsters, including Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo, Chicago’s Mafia boss, who oversees his family’s business interests in Las Vegas from his condominium a few miles from the Sinatra compound.

For years the sheriffs department kept track of organized crime figures and their friends and associates in the area. Heading the sheriffs list was the honorary mayor of Cathedral City, Francis Albert Sinatra, of 70588 Frank Sinatra Drive, Rancho Mirage. Also on the list were Chicago syndicate member John Lardino, identified in law enforcement intelligence files as a “former syndicate gunman who posed as a respectable union official”; Frank Calabrese, another Chicago hoodlum; Rene “The Painter” Piccarreto, a former lieutenant in the Rochester, New York mob, a man California investigators believe is an important conduit for laundering profits from New York rackets; Vincent Dominic Caci of the Buffalo Mafia family, who moved to Palm Springs after his release from prison.

The most prevalent criminal activity in the area is conspiracy, but according to prosecutors it is one of the most difficult crimes to prove.

“Some big hoodlums may put their heads together in the Coachella Valley and plan a crime,” said Riverside County Sheriff Ben Clark, “but the actual crime they’re planning won’t occur here; it may happen in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, New York, or New Jersey.”

In 1976, such a crime occurred in Tarrytown, New York. The mob built the Westchester Premier Theater, a seven-million-dollar, thirty-five-hundred-seat facility for live entertainment that went bankrupt within a year after the Mafia reaped millions by illicitly skimming profits. With shows featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, the promoters packed the house. First-year revenues alone amounted to $5.3 million. Yet by December 1976 the Westchester Premier Theater was near bankruptcy. Only Frank’s concerts in May 1977, for which he was paid $800,000, delayed the theater’s closing.

Federal agents, who were investigating another matter, tapped the phone of Sinatra’s friend Tommy Marson in Palm Springs and heard him talking to Gregory DePalma, who was linked to the Carlo Gambino crime family in New York and was running the Westchester theater. The two men discussed a plan “to siphon off money from an upcoming Frank Sinatra