Man Gets Life Sentence In 2009 Double-Murder Plot
UPDATED: 12/4/2017
CHICAGO (STMW) - A man from Downers Grove was sentenced Friday to life in prison for conspiring with a Naperville man to murder a federal prosecutor and a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Frank Caira, 41, was sentenced to life imprisonment on a felony charge of conspiracy to commit murder, and to 20 years in prison on a companion count of solicitation of a crime of violence. Caira was also fined $250,000, according to a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney David Capp, of the Northern District of Indiana.
Caira's associate, former Naperville insurance agent Jack Mann, testified against him during his trial.
Mann, 43, last lived on Prairie Sage Lane, in the High Meadow area of Naperville's far southwest side, and ran an unsuccessful 2006 campaign for election to the Indian Prairie School District 204 Board of Education. He was sentenced July 27 to eight years and nine months in prison for his role in the plot.
Prosecutors said Caira approached Mann in August or September 2009 to talk about a drug case pending against him. Authorities earlier had caught Caira - a former Northwestern University research technologist - making narcotics in his home.
During a meeting in Oak Brook, Caira "suggested that he was looking for someone to get rid of" Assistant U.S. Attorney Shoshana Gillers and DEA Special Agent Patrick Bagley, according to a plea agreement filed in Mann's case.
Mann, at Caira's suggestion, got in touch with Ricardo Ruiz, a onetime member of the Latin Kings street gang. Ruiz agreed to kill Gillers and Bagley in exchange for six kilograms of cocaine.
Ruiz and Mann met in late 2009. Caira had given Mann the names of the targets and attorney Jed Stone, saying he was unhappy with Stone's representation of him in the narcotics case. Caira wanted Stone's dog dead.
Mann told Caira that Ruiz in December 2009 was ready to kill Gillers, Bagley and Stone's dog. Unbeknownst to either Caira or Mann, Ruiz in the interim had told his lawyer about the plot.
Ruiz wore a wire to a Dec. 27, 2009 meeting with Mann, during which they again discussed the murder plan. Agents of the U.S. Marshal's Service and FBI arrested Caira and Mann several weeks later.
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