Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family

by Frank Calabrese

  In March 1986, Uncle Nick got the call from “Big Stoop” Fecarotta to come west to Arizona. Because he was toting explosives (supplied by Little Jimmy Marcello) inside his carry-on bag, my uncle opted to take a train rather than a plane. Once he arrived at the Phoenix train station, he was met by Big Stoop and Frank “the German” Schweihs. The three men drove to Las Vegas together to spend a couple of weeks “laying on” Tony and Michael. The initial plan was to take out the Spilotros first, then go to Arizona and complete the Vaci assignment.

  The trio floated a few ideas on how to kill the Spilotros. Frank the German suggested gunning them down with an Uzi in the basement offices of a local lawyer. Or how about killing them on the courthouse steps after an upcoming court appearance? Death by explosives was discussed. My uncle, not a risk taker, wasn’t convinced. No use “cowboying” it Wild Bunch–style, like Butch Petrocelli might have done.

  “If we kill these guys with an Uzi in broad daylight,” my uncle reasoned, “they’ll lock the whole city down. There’s only a couple of ways in and out of Vegas. We’ll never make it out alive.”

  As the crew found out, it proved extremely difficult to get both Spilotro brothers together and vulnerable. Arriving back in Arizona from Vegas, Uncle Nick met Paul “the Indian” Schiro for the first time. The Indian, a career burglar, served as the Outfit’s point man in the Southwest. He was an old friend of Emil Vaci’s, a fact that didn’t seem to deter him from helping to plot his death.

  As the days and weeks passed, back home in Chicago, imprisoned boss Aiuppa was getting impatient with the boys out West. They had already spent close to a hundred G’s, sent via Federal Express by Sam “Wings” Carlisi, hidden inside a shipment of cigars. After weeks of stalking the Spilotros with zero results, my uncle was getting concerned about having squandered so much Outfit dough with nothing to show for it. Fearing an impatient Outfit might push the button on them, they decided that Emil Vaci had to be killed next, and pronto. But how?

  One proposal: my uncle would dress up as a FedEx man, walk into the back of Vaci’s wife’s dress shop, and shoot him, a plan that was foiled when a telephone man was in the back, up on a pole installing wire for new phone lines. Was he a fed?

  Another option: murder Vaci outside Ernesto’s, the restaurant where he worked as maître d’.

  After suddenly being called back to Chicago and redispatched, the hit team, now consisting of Nick, Paul Schiro, Jimmy DiForti, John Fecarotta, and Joey Hansen (leaving Frank the German behind in Chicago), returned to Arizona with a new plan. The four mobsters quickly went back to work. They dug three holes forty-five minutes outside of town. They parked a stolen 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix (grifted earlier by Frank the German) to hold a place next to Vaci’s regular parking space. According to a report and citation written on March 26, 1986, all four of the Pontiac’s tires were slashed by vandals, which raised concerns among the hit squad that someone was possibly wise to the hit.

  Prior to the murder, my uncle and Big Stoop drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas, possibly to pick up weapons. On their way back to Phoenix, they stopped at an Arizona casino in Bullhead City, where Fecarotta hit a $2,100 jackpot. Curiously, it was my uncle who signed the tax form using his own name, which again, decades later, placed him in the vicinity of the Vaci murder.

  Fecarotta would leave Phoenix again for Vegas prior to Vaci’s murder. After being forced to testify in a Washington, D.C., hearing investigating Outfit links with labor unions, Big Stoop felt that he was drawing law enforcement heat. Capo Jimmy LaPietra would later equate Fecarotta’s departure to Vegas with abandoning his Outfit obligations in Phoenix.

  The final plan was simplified. Uncle Nick and Hansen would grab Vaci one night after work, throw him into an Econoline “pleasure” van parked directly next to his car, shoot and strangle him, and then deposit his corpse into one of the three holes outside of town.

  Each team member’s role was assigned the night of the Vaci hit: Nick was the shooter, Joey Hansen was the van driver, and Paul Schiro and Jimmy DiForti were lookouts. After closing time on Saturday night, June 7, 1986, Vaci, who had just bought a new suit to wear to a ceremony to renew his wedding vows, walked out to his car. Suddenly Uncle Nick slid open the Econoline door and grabbed him. A struggle ensued. Together, Hansen and my uncle dragged Vaci into the van. At first, Vaci thought he was being robbed. But as Hansen drove off, and my uncle pulled the .22-caliber pistol with a silencer, Vaci knew exactly what was going down, especially when he noticed the blue plastic tarp on the van floor.

  Vaci pleaded, “I didn’t say anything, guys. You don’t need to do this. I didn’t say anything.”

  My uncle held the .22 to Vaci’s head and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun jammed. But not for long. He shot Vaci multiple times in the head with the .22. The body was wrapped inside the blue plastic tarp. On the drive to one of the graves, Hansen wondered aloud, Was Vaci dead? To make certain, Uncle Nick shot him in the head once more. Nervous about a forty-five-minute drive with a dead body in the van, Nick and Joey decided to forgo the holes and pull off to the side of the road and dump the tarp-wrapped body into a dry canal embankment. As they sped off, my uncle noticed his spare gun, a .38, missing. It later turned up—wrapped inside the blue tarp with Emil Vaci’s body.

  The fate of Tony and Michael Spilotro on Saturday, June 14, 1986, a week after Emil Vaci’s death, is well known through the motion picture Casino and the national interest the story garnered. Tony and my father (Dad being one year older) grew up in the same neighborhood, the Patch. The Calabrese family’s first connection with the Spilotros was when my father’s family rented an apartment on the third floor next to the building that housed Patsy’s, the Spilotro family eatery.

  Named after father Pasquale Spilotro, Sr., an immigrant from the Italian province of Bari, Patsy’s was a cozy Italian joint located right at Grand Avenue and Ogden. Patsy’s old-country cuisine (and its adjacent parking lot used for mob meetings) was a magnet for major Outfit figures Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana, Jackie Cerone, and Gussie Alex. At one point, six Spilotro brothers worked at their father’s restaurant before striking out on their own.

  I remember standing on the corner of Grand Avenue and Ogden with my dad as he told me about Patsy’s and that Pasquale junior, whom we knew as Dr. Pat Spilotro, was the toughest and most levelheaded of the Spilotro brothers. He said it was ironic because Dr. Pat was the one brother who steered away from trouble and became a great dentist and family man. He was our family dentist for years.

  Like my father, Tony took to the streets after dropping out of school. His first arrest was in 1955 for shoplifting and purse snatching. By 1962 he began his association with Lefty Rosenthal by trying to fix college basketball and football games. As Tony’s notoriety burgeoned, he ascended quickly up the Outfit ladder, rubbing shoulders with Joey Aiuppa, Turk Torello, Angelo and Jimmy LaPietra, and later Joey Lombardo.

  My father often told me that he and Tony butted heads when they were younger at Grand and Ogden. Tony didn’t scare my father. One night they were at a nightclub and Tony was giving my father the evil eye from the other end of the bar. Here’s how tough my father was. When he saw Tony go into the bathroom alone, he followed him in, locked the door, and turned and asked him if he had something on his mind. Tony said no, so they went back out into the lounge, sat for a couple of hours, talked things over, and worked everything out. They understood each other. Tony respected my father because he wouldn’t back down, unlike most people on the street.

  While Tony may have respected my father, there was a time when my dad seriously considered inviting Michael Spilotro to join his Chinatown crew. Of the two brothers, Michael was the most personable, and later his rugged good looks earned him television acting roles (once portraying an FBI agent) with Robert Conrad and with Larry Manetti on Magnum, P.I. Both Conrad and Manetti are Chicago-born actors.

  The one thing that Tony and my father had in common was that they were born leaders, but what the b
osses didn’t like was that both were fast with their hands and too violent.

  By the early 1970s, Tony was shipped off to Las Vegas to succeed Marshall Caifano as the Outfit’s eyes and ears in Fun City, a job for which my father was in the running. It came down to the two of them because what the bosses wanted in Vegas was somebody who was feared and who could keep everybody in line. I think my dad would have done better because he was more low-key and listened to the bosses.

  With Michael in Chicago in 1971, Tony moved to Las Vegas and quickly reunited with his pal Lefty Rosenthal. He soon exceeded his responsibilities of overseeing the Outfit’s casino skim by organizing the burglars, pimps, call girls, and stickup artists, demanding that they pay a street tax—and they paid.

  He set up the Gold Rush Jewelry Store on West Sahara Avenue with the help of another childhood friend, Frank Cullotta. The Gold Rush served as a gathering place for criminals who came west. In a short time they became known as the Hole in the Wall Gang. They got the name by gaining entry with holes cut through walls, doors, or rooftops. Included in this all-star cast were Tony’s brother Michael Spilotro, Sal Romano, and their leader, Frank Cullotta. As Nicky Santoro’s sidekick, actor Frank Vincent portrayed Cullotta in the 1995 motion picture Casino. Cullotta served as a “technical consultant” for the film.

  By 1978, the Hole in the Wall Gang had graduated from burglaries, strong-arm robberies, and extortion to ordering hits on key FBI agents. By 1979, the Spilotro name was entered into the Black Book, barring him from entering any casino in Nevada. This served to accelerate Hole in the Wall Gang’s capers.

  On the first floor of the Gold Rush was the jewelry section, where rings, bracelets, and necklaces were sold at unusually high discounts. Upstairs was off limits to the public; there, Tony sold police radio scanners and surveillance equipment to burglars.

  The more reckless Tony got with his victims, his crew, and his visibility, the stickier his situation got back home in Chicago. While Tony was the dominant criminal mind of the two, Michael was ambitious and wanted to rise through the ranks and taste his brother’s status. It was evident to everyone that Michael was riding on his brother’s fearsome reputation. Both were involved in extortion schemes, robbery, call girls on the Strip, and bookmaking. Things started changing quickly for Tony when Angelo LaPietra and Joey Aiuppa were sentenced for their convictions in the Operation Strawman Las Vegas skim case.

  Tony and Michael’s demise a week after Emil Vaci’s is the stuff from which crime legends are made. Once the hit squad of Uncle Nick, John Fecarotta, Jimmy DiForti, and Frank the German came up empty, the imprisoned Joey Aiuppa and Angelo LaPietra gave word to Sam Carlisi, the boss. Tony had to go, and Michael was to be included. The Spilotro act in Las Vegas had worn thin.

  When Tony got a severance from their racketeering trial because of his “heart condition,” it was one more nail in his coffin. Aiuppa was enraged that he was spending his golden years in federal prison, and felt that it was because of Spilotro’s high-profile and out-of-control behavior that he was behind bars. The coup de grâce was Spilotro’s affair with Geri Rosenthal, Lefty’s wife.

  As the clock was ticking on Tony and Michael Spilotro, the two brothers were whistled back to Chicago, ostensibly for an important meeting under the assumption that Michael would be “made” and Tony would be promoted to capo.

  It was Big Stoop Fecarotta who, a week prior, gave Uncle Nick the heads-up that the Spilotros were slated to be killed. When he reported back to my father, with me in the room, my uncle told us of the plan to kill both Tony and Michael. My father wasn’t happy. He was disappointed that the bosses hadn’t involved him in planning the hit.

  I saw concern on my father’s face about Michael’s having to go. He thought things were getting out of hand with the bosses and wondered what would stop him and Uncle Nick from being on the hit list someday. We talked for a while about how things were changing.

  Saturday afternoon, June 14, 1986, Nick drove alone to the Oak Brook Shopping Center on Route 83, just south of Bensenville. There, in the parking lot of Venture, a department store chain in the area, he met Big Stoop and Jimmy LaPietra. They were picked up later by Jimmy Marcello, who drove them to a Bensenville address.

  According to my uncle, when they entered the house, they were met by John DiFronzo, Sam Carlisi, and Joe Ferriola. After exchanging greetings, Uncle Nick and the group made their way into the basement, where he saw Louis “the Mooch” Eboli, Louis Marino, and three other “gentlemen” whom he didn’t recognize or know. Since it was a “formal murder party,” everyone was wearing gloves.

  With everything in place, Marcello left the house to pick up the Spilotro brothers. He returned with them about thirty minutes later. They were heard exchanging greetings with people upstairs. Nick was in the basement. He didn’t know exactly who was upstairs, other than Marcello, Michael, and Tony.

  According to Nick’s testimony, Michael entered the basement first and was grabbed by Eboli, Marino, and my uncle. Nick testified that Marino and Nick held him down while Eboli quickly threw a rope around his neck and strangled him. While my uncle was distracted with the killing of Michael, he did hear Tony say, “You guys are going to get in trouble.” Then, realizing it was the end, he asked to say a prayer. Request denied. (DiFronzo and Marino have never been charged.)

  After the murders, Marcello drove my uncle, Fecarotta, and Jimmy LaPietra back to the shopping center. Uncle Nick accompanied Fecarotta and LaPietra to dump Tony’s car at a hotel, where it was later found. Nick doesn’t know how the Spilotros got to their “funeral home” in Indiana, but he concluded that each crew had a specific responsibility and had no knowledge of what the other crews were doing.

  Ann Spilotro, Michael’s wife, later testified that Michael told her he was meeting with Marcello on Saturday afternoon with Tony, and they were moving up in the organization. The night before, Friday, June 13, Michael told Ann that if he wasn’t at the graduation party they were planning to attend the next evening by nine o’clock, something had gone wrong. They left their rings and jewelry behind in a plastic bag. Michael’s daughter Michelle testified that she answered a call at their home on that Saturday morning from a man she knew as Jim, who asked to speak with her father. (It was Michelle who identified Jimmy Marcello, voice number 6, as “Jim” in a voice “lineup” conducted by the FBI. According to FBI tapes, Jimmy Marcello’s code name for the Spilotros was “the Zhivagos.”)

  My dad told me numerous times it was Aiuppa who ordered Tony killed and that he wanted it done before he and Angelo reported to prison. Aiuppa didn’t care how; he just wanted it done. While it was Tony who had incurred the wrath of the Outfit bosses, killing Michael was deemed a necessary precaution. Had he remained alive, there was concern that he might exact revenge, or worse, flip with enough information to bring down the entire Outfit.

  Frank Cullotta has his theory that both Spilotro brothers knew it was the end of the line. “I knew he was going to get killed,” said Cullotta, “and when he disappeared, I was asked, ‘Do you think he ran?’ ‘No, he’s dead.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Oh c’mon, Tony ain’t gonna run. He knows he can’t go anywhere.’ ”

  There was a rumor that Tony had his own skim going, and that shortly after his death, when authorities went to his Las Vegas home, they found millions stashed in a hollowed-out section of floor under a waterbed. Had Spilotro been skimming the skim for years and not giving the bosses a straight count?

  It was first thought by the FBI that Tony and Michael were buried in an Illinois junkyard. This was based on a tip and a search that turned out to be fruitless. Gangster and chop shop king Al “Caesar” Tocco and Nicholas “Nicky” Guzzino were among those who botched the burial, leading to the discovery of the Spilotros’ bodies by a local Indiana farmer alongside Highway 41.

  Betty Tocco, Al’s wife, subsequently testified that on Sunday morning, June 15—Father’s Day—Tocco called at six o’clock screaming that she was to leave the house immedi
ately to pick him up at a gas station on Route 41 near Enos, Indiana. Betty made the twenty-minute drive and found Tocco disheveled and filthy in blue work clothes. The gas station was approximately one mile from the burial site.

  According to Betty’s testimony, Al was angry that he got split up from Nicky, Tootsie, and Chickie; Nicky Guzzino, a member of the executive board for Local 5 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America and pension board trustee; Dominick “Tootsie” Palermo; and Albert “Chickie” Roviero. Tocco and his three “undertakers” were given burial detail.

  In reconstructing the murders of the Spilotros, Ross Rice of the FBI concluded that it was a highly compartmentalized operation. There were guys at the Bensenville house murder scene that didn’t know each other, and this was purposeful. It was apparent that members of various crews were given their respective assignments from the top. Tocco, as the Chicago Heights boss, was in charge of burying the brothers.

  Betty Tocco continued her testimony by recalling that Al was irate that Chickie, Nicky, and Tootsie had gone off with one of the walkie-talkies. While they were digging they became spooked when a car came down the road too close to the burial site. After they became separated and Tocco had no way to communicate, he walked all night, and finally at around 6:00 a.m. found his way to the gas station on Route 41, where Betty picked him up. After driving her husband to Chickie’s house and finding he wasn’t there, they went to Al’s sanitation company, the Chicago Heights Disposal Company, with him still wearing the same dirty clothes.