by Sam Giancana
Fallout from the unsavory incident was inevitable and started right after Labor Day. Nick D’Andrea was found beaten to death in the trunk of a burning Mercedes in a Chicago Heights trash depository on September 13. Twenty-six years later, former mob hit man, Nick Calabrese, testified at the 2007 Family Secrets trial that he and fellow Outfit members, Sam Carlisi, Angelo La Pietra, and James Marcello were dispersed by The Outfit brass to interrogate D’Andrea as to the identities of the participants in the Pilotto assasination conspiracy. According to Calabrese, they bound his hands and feet, repeatedly pistol-whipped him, and bludgeoned him with the butt of a shotgun before realizing they had accidentally killed him without getting the desired intelligence. Knowing that at the very least Sam Guzzino was in charge of the operation, The Outfit set its sights on him to exact retribution for the bungled murder attempt. Nearly six weeks later in late October, Guzzino was found in ditch on the side of the road by a farmer in Beecher, Illinois, his throat cut and three bullets lodged in the back of his skull.
Hearing what happened to D’Andrea and Guzzino and the ongoing rumors that The Outfit was looking to kill him too, Bounds resurfaced in Chicago in the days following the Thanksgiving holiday and turned himself into the FBI. With no cajoling at all, he offered to cooperate.
The FBI was happy to oblige and immediately put him to work—he was sent back onto the streets wearing a wire. Recording several conversations between himself and his co-conspirators, Bounds aided the government in building an ironclad case against Richie Guzzino and Robert Ciarrocchi. On April 11, 1984, both were indicted for attempted murder and conspiracy to deprive a citizen his right to testify as a witness in a judicial proceeding. Both eventually were convicted and issued prison terms. Guzzino was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison and Ciarrocchi ten years. Each appealed their sentences, but both sentences were affirmed by the higher court.
Fully recovered, Pilotto was able to stand trial on his charges in Miami alongside his boss, Tony Accardo. Steadfastly refusing to turn against the don and the crime family that sought to have him brutally killed, he was convicted and on Septermber 14, 1982, sentenced to serve a twenty-year federal prison sentence.
Acquitted of the charges himself, Accardo was wrong about his longtime lieutenant; Pilotto had defied expectations and even facing death from his friends in the mob, stood true to the code of allegiance he had pledged on his Outfit initiation over thirty-five years earlier. According to those who knew him, the immense irony of the situation was never lost on the Big Tuna, an always wise-don who wasn’t afraid to critique his own leadership.
Although in prison, Pilotto’s name would pop up again in local newspapers two years later, accused of offering to pay an FBI informant to assassinate then sitting Chicago mayor Jane Byrne for her refusal to legalize a casino he had a financial interest in. Nothing further came of the mayoral assassination plot and after serving a decade behind bars, Pilotto was released in 1992. A bid to get back into labor politics was thwarted in 1995, as he was ousted from both Local 5 and his position on the area’s district council for his connections to organized crime. Pilotto died of natural causes in July 1999 at the age of eighty-eight after spending his final years living full time in Florida. In 2005, Jimmy Marcello was indicted for the murder of Nick D’Andrea in the massive Family Secrets case, but in October 2007, the jury deadlocked of that specific charge.
11.
Loose Cannon
End of the Spilotro Era
As all of the pieces that would later make up the Family Secrets case started to come together in Chicago, The Outfit’s monetary foothold in Las Vegas held strong. By the mid-1970s, Tony Spilotro was the king of the desert, having risen higher in the Las Vegas underworld than anyone had before in the city’s storied history. He was an overwhelming presence on the Strip and in the area’s social strata, forging a presence throughout the decade as everyone’s favorite celebrity gangster. The best seats at shows and the most exclusive tables at the finest eateries in town were all his for the asking. Attracted to his status and swagger, woman threw themselves at him and famous Hollywood actors, when in town for vacation, sought his company. Infrequently did a day pass when Spilotro’s name and picture didn’t appear in the local newspaper or on the TV’s nightly newscast. Everybody knew that the city was in the palm of his hand, and he ate it up.
Accumulating a criminal portfolio that was second to none in gangland circles across the nation, he was richer and more powerful than he could have ever imagined. And his empire was getting only bigger. This was not necessarily a good thing.
With his behavior and activities going virtually unchecked by his bosses in the Midwest, Vegas’s little wiseguy—Tony stood barely five feet four inches tall—had developed a huge ego. Not to mention, career ambitions that significantly out-sized what The Outfit had in store for him.
Having departed his original base of operations in Circus Circus, Tony set up shop first in the Dunes hotel and casino poker room, and then in the clubhouse of the Las Vegas Country Club, using both locations as temporary headquarters while he sought another business to purchase in order to set up his permanent office. In November 1976, he opened the Gold Rush, a multi-level jewelry store built in an Old West motif that stood on a side street off the Strip. It immediately became the nerve center of Spilotro’s ever-expanding criminal regime. Around this time, he also formed the soon-to-be notorious “Hole in the Wall Gang,” a high-end burglary crew made up of a dozen or so of the group of henchmen he had imported from Chicago, and began a large-scale drug distribution business.
The Hole in the Wall Gang became famous for bypassing alarm systems by simply busting large holes in the homes and stores they intended to rob. Tony appointed Frank Cullotta, his boyhood pal who had just emerged from a six-year prison stint and relocated to Las Vegas, to be his top lieutenant on the street, in charge of the highly trained group of professional thieves. The crew would go on to pull jobs all across the West Coast.
He stationed Fat Herbie Blitzstein at the Gold Rush, where all of the stolen merchandise his crew apprehended was fenced or resold to unknowing customers, and he allegedly made his younger brother, Michael, in charge of his narcotics operation. Michael was traveling between Nevada and Chicago, where he ran Hoagies, a popular restaurant and Windy City mobster haunt. Other members of Tony’s inner circle included Ernie Davino, Leo Guardino, Wayne Matecki, Lawrence “Crazy Larry” Neuman, Salvatore Romano, Peter Basile, Jimmy Patrazzo, Bobby Stella, Joey Cussamano, Sammy Siegle, Jasper Speciale, Fred “Sarge” Ferris, Tommy Amato, Gene Cimorelli, Robert Doldot, Frank Masterana, Dickie Stevens, and Gussie Gallo.
If The Ant wasn’t at the Gold Rush conducting business, he could usually be found at either the Upper Crust Pizza Parlor, a restaurant owned by Cullotta; Jubilation, a nightclub run out of the Stardust; or the My Place Lounge, a bar where he did most of his drinking and socializing. Cash was flowing in at epic rates. However, in a move that would end up costing him severely in the not so distant future, too much of it was going into his pocket and not enough of it into the pockets of the powers that be in Chicago.
JUST as Tony’s empire was reaching its zenith, things began to take a turn for the worse. And from there, they got downright ugly. The leadership of the Chicago mob was convicted of stealing millions by skimming the casinos that Spilotro was overseeing and Tony became the centerpiece in over a half dozen federal and state racketeering investigations. As Spilotro’s problems with the law mounted, his behavior became increasingly insolent. He developed a bothersome cocaine habit and embarked on a dangerous and forbidden love affair with a highly placed mob associate’s wife. Stories of frequent rants about his desire to violently ascend to the top spot in the Chicago mob went a long way in placing The Ant outside the good graces of The Outfit’s leadership. At a time when he should have been enjoying the pleasure of having paradise in the palm of his hand, Tony Spilotro was instead digging himself a hole that even the most Herculean of mobsters cou
ldn’t find their way out of.
“After a while, Spilotro let all the power he had amassed go to his head,” said a former law enforcement agent. “He was completely incorrigible, totally out of control in every way possible. At one time he was arrogant and power hungry but still able to look at things from the perspective of a smart criminal. Through the years, his behavior began to defy logic and eventually undermine his entire empire. The lifestyle he led in Vegas, the lack of checks and balances from his superiors, really took its toll.”
Beginning in May 1979, the floodgates opened up on Tony’s legal woes and didn’t close for nearly five years. On May 16, he was indicted in Las Vegas, alongside his two top emissaries, Herbie Blitzstein and Frank Cullotta, for heading a large-scale and statewide sports betting and loan-sharking operation. A large part of the investigation that led to the indictment was the FBI’s ability to have one of its agents successfully penetrate Spilotro’s inner circle. Posing as a top of the line jewel thief, agent Rick Baken, using the alias Rick Calise, gained the trust of Tony’s brother John and then Tony, allowing him access to a large number of invaluable conversations and firsthand transfers of stolen property. After Baken’s heroics, it was only a matter of time until the government could make its case. To add insult to injury, right before the end of the year, Tony was placed in the Las Vegas Gaming Commission’s Black Book, officially banning him from entering any of the city’s casinos for his connection to organized crime.
Tony’s affair with Geri Rosenthal, the ex-showgirl wife of his childhood best friend, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, was also starting to make waves around this time. The relationship between Spilotro and Geri became the worst-kept secret in town and an obvious ploy by Tony to put Lefty, who he had developed a growing feud with and whose ego was the only one in the city to rival his own, in his place. The affair, as well as Tony’s expanding drug business, were extreme violations of the mafia’s code of conduct. Traditional mob logic says dealing in narcotics brought harsher legal penalties and, as a result, more opportunity for its soldiers to become traitors. Sleeping with co-workers’ wives was an even further dalliance into the gangland forbidden zone because it bred resentment and unrest.
Rumors of The Ant flouting the rules in both situations were slowly making their way back to Chicago and had his bosses asking questions regarding his judgment. An unauthorized and unsuccessful attempt on Lefty Rosenthal’s life—a car bombing that he was lucky to survive— rumored to have been engineered by Spilotro in the years to come didn’t win him any popularity contests back home either.
The start of the new decade didn’t bring much of a change to Tony’s bad fortune. In June 1980, he was arrested by Las Vegas police for being seen inside Sam’s Town Hotel, a modest gambling hall located a good twenty miles off the Strip. Tension between the Spilotro organization and local law enforcement, who by this time had a team of close to two dozen officers assigned specifically to tracking the Ant’s every move, were about to reach its peak.
In Tony’s mind it started in the 1970s with petty harassment from the cops sent to follow him, but by the end of 1980, Spilotro felt like he was under siege. Just a week following his arrest for being inside Sam’s Town Hotel, one of his associates from Chicago, Frank “Frankie Blue” Bluestein, was shot and killed by two Las Vegas Metro Intelligence Division detectives in the driveway of his home. Bluestein was a maitre d’ at a restaurant inside the Hacienda hotel and casino and the son of Steven “Stevie Blue” Bluestein, a Las Vegas labor union official and suspected member of his crew. Trailed home from a meeting with Tony and Frank Cullotta, Frankie Blue was shot after exiting his vehicle and allegedly waving a pistol in the cops’ direction, complaining of being unnecessarily hounded. Responding to Bluestein’s death, a number of Tony’s crew drove by the home of a member of Metro Intelligence Division and peppered it with shotgun fire.
The drive-by coupled with word on the street that Spilotro had issued murder contracts on the two detectives who killed Bluestein, prompted Kent Clifford, the head of Metro Intelligence, to board a plane and go straight to Chicago and to the doorsteps of Joey Aiuppa and Joey Lombardo. Unable to meet face to face, he left messages with both of their wives that any retribution delivered on his men would be returned tenfold. If The Outfit hierarchy didn’t know before, they were now fully aware of Spilotro’s continued spiral downward.
Tony’s luck wasn’t getting much better and the days of his Hole in the Wall Gang—a venerable cash cow for him for the last several years—were coming to an unceremonious conclusion. At the start of 1981, Salvatore Romano, one of the gang’s primary lieutenants and a longtime Spilotro crony, switched sides and began working for the government. When Frank Cullotta began planning a major score on behalf of the gang scheduled for the July 4th holiday weekend at Bertha’s, a handsomely sized jewelry story on West Sahara Avenue, Romano made sure the FBI was briefed on all the details. Wanting to hold off on the bust until they caught the infamous gang in the act, the FBI staked out Bertha’s on the day of the intended robbery and made their arrests as Cullotta and company were in the process of burglarizing the store.
Stocked with a mountain of evidence provided by Romano’s cooperation and the undercover work undertaken by agent Rick Baken, a mere two weeks after the highly publicized Bertha’s bust, Spilotro was indicted once again. This time, he was indicted alongside Fat Herbie, his brother John, and Joe Blasko, a former cop who had joined Tony’s crew on a full-time basis after his dismissal from the force for providing the Spilotro organization with illegal information. The government nailed Tony on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to deal in and possession of stolen property.
By May 1982, Frank Cullotta decided to begin cooperating with the FBI against his former boss, The Ant. Facing mounting legal problems himself, learning of Spilotro’s refusal to chip in for his defense fund, and knowing about recorded confirmation of a contract on his life, Cullotta was convinced to turn on Spilotro and enter the witness protection program.
Based on the information and evidence culled from Cullotta’s cooperation, in January 1983, Tony was indicted for the seemingly long-forgotten M&M murders from twenty years earlier and was jailed without bond pending trial. While behind bars in Chicago, he was hit with yet two more racketeering indictments: one was regarding his command over the Hole in the Wall Gang and the murder of Jerry Lisner, a homicide committed by Cullotta at his behest when it was discovered that Lisner was working for the FBI. The other found Tony indicted alongside several other mob figures in the Midwest, including Outfit leaders Joey Lombardo, Joey Aiuppa, Angelo La Pietra, and Jackie Cerone in the legendary Strawman II case, charged with pension fund fraud and the skimming of three separate casinos.
The unbearable heat that Spilotro’s brash and careless behavior had been bringing down on himself had finally hit his bosses. And they held him responsible. The thin ice he had been skating on for quite some time was about to crack.
“All the legal problems he had compiled were beginning to reflect on the authority above him and ultimately provided Chicago with an excuse to do him in,” said a former agent. “He had faced bumps in the road from the law before, but by the end of his first decade in Nevada, he was immersed in arrests, indictments, and trials. People like Cullotta and Romano started to turn against him, and the totality of the circumstances made it appear that he had lost control of his crew. It was only a matter of time before either the law or the mob were going to put an end to his run.”
ACQUITTED on the M&M murders, Tony was once again a free man. But it wasn’t long before he found himself in more trouble. However, this time it wasn’t with the law. It was with his health. Spilotro’s drug use, heavy drinking, stress level, and increasing weight gain had given him a heart attack and the need for bypass surgery. This development let Tony’s attorneys successfully sever him from the pension fund fraud trial while he recovered. During his stay in the hospital, The Ant also jumped into a May-December romance, and fell in love and
eventually carried on a lengthy affair with one of his nurses. As Spilotro watched on the sidelines while his superiors in The Outfit all got convicted in the Strawman II case, he readied himself for his own upcoming battles in the courtroom and the possibility that his ongoing antics had now made him a target for mob reprisal.
As Tony had begun to suspect, The Outfit had tired of his routine. When he began his first racketeering trial in Las Vegas in January 1986—which would end in a mistrial—the mafia family he had been a member of for over twenty years started making preparations for his murder. Spilotro’s primary backer in the Chicago mob hierarchy, Joey Aiuppa, was so upset with his own conviction that he abandoned his support of Spilotro and sanctioned his execution. Spilotro’s second most powerful advocate, Joey Lombardo, might have been able to help, but he was out of the picture at the time, sitting hundreds of miles away in a federal prison cell.
When Joe Ferriola, an avid anti-Spilotro advocate, took Aiuppa’s place as boss at the start of 1986, the table was all set for The Ant’s downfall. Ferriola, also known as “Joe Nagal,” “Joey the Chinaman,” or “Joey Spoons,” is alleged to have tasked his protégé, John Di Fronzo, with the job of making arrangements for and setting up the heavily anticipated hit.
On two separate occasions in the coming months, hit teams from Chicago consisting of the Calabrese brothers, Jimmy Di Forti, Frank Santucci, Frankie Schweihs, and Giovanni “Big John” Fecoratta made trips out West to try to take Spilotro out, but each time had their plans thwarted by The Ant’s unpredictable movements. Finally, in June, The Outfit was able to lure Tony back home, with the promise of a promotion for him and an initiation ceremony for his brother Michael. Although he found it strange that his recent behavior could warrant such an accolade, he boarded a plane on Friday, June 13 and landed at O’Hare Airport at around 7:30 in the evening.