The first of a two-part authorized excerpt from Tribune reporter Jeff Coen’s Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.
*
By Jeff Coen
The story of Anthony “the Ant” Spilotro is hardly unknown. Like Joey Lombardo, Spilotro rose to become a crime boss from humble beginnings in the old West Side neighborhood, one of six children born to his immigrant parents. He dropped out of Chicago’s Steinmetz High School and turned to crime early on, taking up with local theft rings and getting noticed by the neighborhood’s Outfit leaders. He would be placed in charge of a significant bookmaking operation and work in Irwin Weiner’s bail bonding business. His reputation for brutality dated to the early 1960s, when he would be connected to what became known as the “M&M murders,” so named for victims Billy McCarthy and Jimmy Miraglia, two members of a burglary crew believed to have taken part in an unauthorized murder. When McCarthy was too slow in providing information about the killing and who was involved, Spilotro resorted to putting his head in a vise until one of his eyes popped out.
Spilotro would go on to become a trusted associate of Joey Aiuppa and Lombardo, sent to Las Vegas in the early 1970s to be the guy on the ground who ensured that the Chicago mob’s will was done there. Once he was installed, local authorities famoulsy noticed a spike in gangland killings, and Spilotro started his own burglary ring, know as the “Hole in the Wall Gang” for its favorite tactic to avoid alarm systems while stealing jewelry. He was accused but never convicted of employing a team of thieves that included the likes of Sal Romano, Frank Cullotta, and feared hit man “Crazy Larry” Neumann.
Some members of Spilotro’s family still say that his reputation is overblown and that he wasn’t the criminal he has been made out to be, but his Las Vegas exploits were immortalized in the 1995 film Casino, where Joe Pesci played a character named Nicky Santoro, who was based on Spilotro.
By the middle of the 1980s, Spilotro had done a good job of avoiding prison. After being indicted along with Lombardo in the Teamsters pension fund case involving Daniel Seifert, the case had come apart in 1974 with Seifert’s murder. He was indicted in the M&M murders in 1983 but had dodged responsibility in a bench trial conducted by Cook County Judge Thomas J. Maloney, who was later convicted himself of taking bribes to fix murder cases. And three years later the racketeering case against Spilotro that was the result of his burglary ring being busted had ended in the mistrial with a possible jury bribe. Prosecutors in Las Vegas were preparing to take him to trial again in the summer of 1986 when Chicago called and summoned Spilotro home. The Las Vegas operation was coming apart, with Aiuppa, Lombardo, Jackie Cerone, and Angelo LaPietra already having been convicted in the Stardust skim as a result of the “Pendorf” and “Strawman” investigations. Spilotro, whose own trial in the Stardust case had been delayed for health reasons, was being blamed for getting too big for his britches, bringing too much federal heat at almost every turn.
The bill was coming due for all of the problems he was causing.
Michael Spilotro also was charged in the Hole in the Wall case, but a judge had dismissed the allegations against him for lack of evidence. He was a Chicago restaurant owner and also a part-time actor who landed some minor television roles, including playing an FBI agent on the show Magnum P.I. But like his brother, his legal troubles weren’t over in the summer of 1986. He was facing trial in Chicago on extortion charges out of the federal “Operation Safebet,” which targeted organized crime and suburban prostitution.
Both brothers were at Michael Spilotro’s Oak Park home in early June, having told a judge in Nevada that he was traveling to have dental work performed by his brother.
Nick [Calabrese] said it was John Fecarotta who first talked about a ruse to get the Spilotro brothers back to Chicago and comfortable. The crew had given up on finding an acceptable way to do the job in Las Vegas. The brothers would be told that Michael had been recommended to become a made man, Outfit leaders decided, and Anthony would be promised an elevation to capo.
Nick had returned from Phoenix on a Sunday, and by the following Friday, he said, the plan against the Spilotros already was in motion. Fecarotta paged him, and the men spoke on the street. Nick was to meet Fecarotta and others the next day at a shopping center on Twenty-Second Street west of Illinois Route 83 near Oak Brook in the western suburbs.
“Did he tell you what the purpose of that meeting was going to be?” prosecutor Mitch Mars asked [at Calabrese’s trial].
“It was about the Spilotros.”
Nick said he immediately went to meet with his brother to tell him what was happening. He was supposed to head to the rendezvous point early that Saturday afternoon, he told Frank [Calabrese] Sr., and it was for the Spilotro brothers. His brother had become irritated at learning that wheels were in motion without him, Nick said.
“He got upset because, he says, ‘Why didn’t they ask me? I want to be there,’ Nick told the jury. His brother wouldn’t be part of it but asked Nick to let him know when it was finished.
The FBI wasn’t completely unaware that something was afoot. Agents had been listening to Outfit telephone calls going between James Marcello, Rocky Infelice, and Joe Ferriola, and were aware of a meeting on June 13, 1986, at a suburban McDonald’s. No fewer than five agents were dispatched to cover it and were at various points watching Marcello, Ferriola, and another man meet Sam Carlisi at 12:18 p.m. Whatever the men had to discuss was quickly taken care of. Not even twenty minutes later, all of them had left.
The next day was Saturday, June 14, 1986. As a result of the Victor Cacciatore extortion, Angelo La Pietra had picked up some new equipment for the crew, so Nick drove a new blue van west to the shopping center where Fecarotta had told him to be. He said he parked it at the far end of the lot and walked up to the store to find Fecarotta and Jimmy LaPietra waiting for him. The plan was for the three to wait for a fourth person to arrive to drive them to where they would be going.
That driver was James Marcello, Nick said, adding that when he had first begun his debriefings with the FBI, he had lied to them.
“And what was the lie?” Mars asked.
“That I said that Johnny Fecarotta was the one that drove us to the house,” Nick replied. He had intentionally left Marcello out of his initial admissions to agents.
“I was trying to protect him.”
The house, Nick said, was due north up Route 83 in a suburb called Bensenville adjacent to O’Hare International Airport, a town known for warehouses and having its neighborhoods of modest homes in the way of airport expansion. Marcello drove the men in his “fancy” conversion van to within about a mile or so of O’Hare’s runways, turning near Iriving Park Road into a subdivision that, like so many developments in the area, had a set of small brick walls marking the entrance. He and Fecarotta were in the backseat, Nick remembered, and LaPietra was in front.
–
Coming Thursday: Can I say a prayer?
–
See also:
* Meet The Spilotros
Posted on April 29, 2009