The Mammoth Book of the Mafia by Cawthorne Nigel

Author:Cawthorne, Nigel [Cawthorne, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Constable Robinson
Published: 2009-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

Casino

Tony Spilotro

In 1971, Tony Spilotro took over in Las Vegas. He had been associated with the Mob since childhood. His parents were from Bari in southeast Italy and ran a restaurant in Chicago that such celebrated gangsters as Frank Nitti and Sam Giancana used for meetings. From an early age, he got involved in petty crime. In 1962, he pleaded guilty to attempting to fix a basketball game. He became a debt collector for the Chicago Outfit, the local branch of the Cosa Nostra. With the Outfit’s enforcer “Mad” Sam DeStefano’s heavy mob, Spilotro was sent to kill two gangsters. He quickly gained notoriety when he crushed one of the victims’ heads in a vice. In 1963, he was “made” and assigned to bookmaking with his childhood friend Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal. After running the mob’s betting operations in Miami, he was sent to Las Vegas. As he took control a series of murders took place. Victims were tortured and dumped out in the desert. In 1973, Spilotro was indicted for murder alongside DeStefano, but was acquitted after DeStefano was slain. The following year he was indicted a second time, this time alongside reputed Mob boss Joseph Lombardo. Again they were acquitted when a key witness was murdered. Things began to turn bad in Las Vegas for Spilotro when he was barred from entering casinos by the Nevada Gaming Commission. So he diversified into burglary and protection. The situation deteriorated further when his burglary gang were arrested and rumours circulated that Spilotro was sleeping with Rosenthal’s wife. The Outfit decided to have him killed. They lured him back to Illinois when Spilotro and his brother Michael were beaten with baseball bats, then burned alive in a cornfield. In his book Casino, Nicholas Pileggi – author of Wiseguy which was adapted for the screen as Goodfellas – used interviews with Spilotro’s enforcer Frank Cullotta and Bill Hall, the FBI agent who bugged him, to tell the tale of Spilotro’s time in Las Vegas.

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