A priest has been charged with plotting to recover a violin for jailed Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. Calabrese, currently serving a life sentence in a high-security federal prison, allegedly passed messages about the violin to Eugene Klein, who worked as a chaplain at the facility. Calabrese was apparently worried that federal agents would seize the violin, which he believed was a Stradivari, and which was supposedly hidden in his former holiday home in Wisconsin.

The violin was not found in a search of the Wisconsin property, and when federal agents searched Calabrese's home in a suburb of Chicago, they found documents relating to a violin made in 1764 by Milanese maker Giuseppe Antonio Artalli. Calabrese's former lawyer said that the violin used to be owned by Liberace.

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