Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 170

following year. Wife trouble continued to plague him in the following years. His first wife filed a complaint against him in McHenry County in 1977 saying he was $1,475 behind in child-support payments. Then, on the day of Mrs. Lambert's funeral in 1980, he was arrested for non-support on a petition filed in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago by bis second wife.

Task force members now concentrated their investigation on Charles Albanese. As president of the family-owned trophy company, he drew an annual salary of $60,000 and shared a three-way split of the profits with his mother, Clara, and brother, Michael Jr. He enjoyed demonstrating his affluence and was the envy of some neighbors. Other associates of Al investigators he was present at a meeting on Sept. 4, 1980, during which the elder Albanese told his son: "Chuck, I want you out! I don't want you to be in the plant anymore.

I don't want you under the same roof. I dont even want you to be a director of the company." A few days later the old man softened his stand and simply demoted Charles from president to treasurer, thus allowing him to retain his $60,000 salary as an executive officer. And the son, in what appeared to be gestures of friendship, began bringing cookies to his dad at work. He also brought snacks for his brother, Michael who was comptroller of the firm. On Sept.

8, four days after the family blowup, Michael Jr. came down with severe vomiting and nau Charles Albanese was their man, yet they had no hard evidence to link him to the lethal arsenic. Murder Continued court order from Circuit Judge Jack Hoogasian in Waukegan to disinter the remains of the two women and of Michael Albanese Sr. The three bodies were dug up on Aug. 31 and brought to the Lake County Morgue in Waukegan.

There, autopsies revealed that all three bodies were heavily laced with arsenic. Lambert appeared to have succumbed to a single massive dose of poison, while Albanese possibly ingested small amounts over a period of as long as four months. Babcox relayed the information to Querham-mer, and after the two coroners presented it to the task force, Pasenelli agreed to quietly step up his investigation. UESES AT THE TWO HOSPI- I tals where the two women had died could shed little light on the case, but at- I tendants at both institu-J VJ tions remembered the visits paid the dying women by Charles Albanese and his wife, during which they often brought the women little snacks, such as cookies, which were not available at the hospital. Pasenelli ordered a background check on every person known to have had contact with the Albenese, Lambert and Mueller families.

Among them was Charles Albanese, who, investigators learned, moved with his family into their sprawling Tudor-style home in August 1978. They added a swimming pool in the summer of 1981 a year after the deaths of Lambert and Mueller and were planning to enclose it with a dome for year-round use. Chuck Albanese had several cars, including two Cadillacs, one of which had belonged to his late father. He also took his family on annual vacation trips to Jamaica or Marco Island, with a babysitter usually going along for his daughters, aged 5 and 7. As they dug deeper, investigators also learned that Albanese was an ex-convict and had been a bigamist In 1965, while working as a car salesman in the Chicago Buburb of Morton Grove, Albanese, then 27, was arrested for home invasion and robbery.

He and another man, posing as detectives, had invaded the home of a Chicago bus driver and made off with $160. They were quickly nabbed, however, after a suspicious neighbor gave police the license number of their getaway car. Albanese was convicted of armed robbery and placed on five years probation. At about the same time, his first wife divorced him after six years of marriage and took their three daughters to live in Wisconsin. Little is known about Albanese's second wife.

However, court records show he married Virginia Mueller, his third wife, in Las Vegas over the 1972 Labor Day weekend even though his divorce from his second wife did not become final until the it," the operator said. "He asked me if I had anything he could use to get rid of some pests around his house. I suggested arsenic. Then he asked me how to use it." With the murder weapon now placed in the suspect's hands, it was now just a matter of ironing out legal technicalities before the task force moved in on Albanese. Then the case took another surprise turn.

Investigators learned through a travel agent that Albanese was planning a hurry-up Thanksgiving holiday trip to Jamaica with his wife and mother, with whom he was not known to be on friendly terms. With Clara Albanese's profitrsharing from the trophy firm, her $60,000 salary and her husband's estate and life-insurance benefit amounting to more than half a million dollars, the task force feared she could be her son's next victim. On a Wednesday night, just 30 hours before he was scheduled to take off for Jamaica and as his wife and mother were packing their bags to go to Chicago where he was to join them, Albanese was arrested in bis McHenry office. He was charged with two counts of murder in Lake. County those of Mary Lambert and Marion Mueller.

McHenry County authorities also charged him with two counts of murder of his father and of Lambert, who died in McHenry Hospital; one charge of attempted murder of his younger brother; and one charge of theft of more than $30,000 worth of scrap zinc from the trophy company. "The motive was greed," Babcox announced at a press conference. "In my 20 years as coroner I have never encountered nor been involved in such a cold-blooded, calculated, sordid destruction of two families." May 5, 1982, Charles 0 Albanese went on trial, which was held in Bloom-ington, 150 miles southwest of Chicago, because of extensive local publicity about the case. He was convicted on all charges, and on June 23 was sentenced to death in the electric chair. In October 1982, after being divorced by his third wife, Virginia, Albanese was again tried, in Waukegan, for the murder of Marion Mueller.

Found guilty again, he received another sentence of death by electrocution. Albanese was transferred to death row at the Menard Correctional Center in Downstate Chester to await his execution. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed both convictions in 1984 and again in 1988. In May 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his latest appeal letting stand previous rulings that he was properly convicted and that the death sentences were valid.

Meanwhile, the electric chair went the way of the gallows as the ultimate punishment in Illinois, and Albanese today faces death by lethal injection. banese referred to him as "a spoiled brat who always wanted to be a big shot" One family friend told investigators: "Charles was very ambitious. He wanted money right away. He didnt want to have to work for it." There was no question that Albanese had a lot to gain from the deaths of the two women and even more bo from the demise of his father and possible death of his brother. Investigators learned that he began making regular visits to Mrs.

Lambert and Mrs. Mueller in mid-1980, bringing them little gifts of jewelry and trinkets and dining with them whenever he had an opportunity. It was during this period of congeniality that Albanese prevailed on Mrs. Lambert to change her will and leave all her property to her daughter Marion, bypassing her son and other daughter. Not much later, both Mrs.

Lambert and Marion were dead, and their combined assets passed on to Marion's daughter, Virginia, Chuck's wife. Police estimated the combined Lambert and Mueller estates to be worth around $150,000. The women also left their home, one of 365 such dwelling units in the retirement community, which were valued at between $45,000 and $95,000. Albanese sold that home at less than market value in a quick cash sale. Not long after the deaths of the two women, Charles and his father had a serious falling-out at the plant Allied attorney Donald Fifihbein told sea and had to be hospitalized.

He became violently ill again after eating lunch in his office one January day in 1981 and again the following month. In late February and early March he was hospitalized twice more, with severe nausea and deteriorating nerve problems. Meanwhile, his father, too, was hospitalized with similar problems during March and April and finally died on May 16 at age 69. The elder Albanese left an estate valued at $267,373, including $150,000 in stock holdings in the family business, which, along with a $200,000 life-insurance benefit went to his widow, Clara. Had Michael also died, Charles would have gained full control of the firm, and would have had to share profits only with his elderly mother.

Members of the task force agreed that Charles Albanese was their man, yet they had no hard evidence to link him to the lethal arsenic. Digging into the suspect's business life, investigators learned that he had sold scrap zinc from Allied Die Casting to a metalplating firm in Elkhorn, charging only 35 cents instead of the going rate of 50 cents a pound for it and pocketing the $25,000 to $35,000 from the sale for himself. Then came the bombshell: The op-. era tor of the Elkhorn firm had provided Albanese with arsenic, which is occasionally used in metalplating. "I gave him about two pounds of 24 Chicago Tribune Maoazinb.