‘Psychopath’ ex-Chicago cop gets life in prison plus five years for torture plot

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Steve Mandell ranted and raved for half an hour.

He called the case against him “phantasmagorically ridiculous.”

And he said “even Helen Keller could see” that he’d been framed and that he’d never have followed through with his “hoax” plot.

Nobody in the packed courtroom had expected less from the Outfit-connected 64-year-old former Chicago cop, an incorrigible ham who loudly maintained his innocence even after he was convicted in February of concocting a gruesome plot to kidnap, torture, extort, kill and dismember a suburban businessman.

But his desperation was palpable. Everyone in the courtroom had seen the damning, secretly filmed FBI video of him chuckling inside the meat-cleaver and buzz saw-equipped torture chamber he built on the Northwest Side.

And on Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve sentenced him to life in prison, plus five years, calling him an “evil” man.

Yet, many liberals say only the police should own handguns.