Mobster-turned-witness Cullotta getting the chance to have the last word

Arnoldy’s office had a problem on its hands. Mobster brothers Anthony and Michael Spilotro had vanished from the substantial surveillance network of the Bureau and Metro police. Tony had just beaten a federal case but was scheduled to be retried on charges that could have put him away for life. Michael had his own legal troubles.

Cullotta had grown up with Tony and followed him to Las Vegas to guard his back and carry out his orders. In addition to helping operate the Hole in the Wall Gang burglary crew, Cullotta tried his hand at running the Upper Crust Italian restaurant. When asked, he shook down illegal bookmakers for tribute payments to Spilotro and performed hits on request.

When Cullotta turned on his close friend and former crew, he was deeply conflicted. Bad guys have feelings, too, mostly for other bad guys and the wiseguy’s life of leisure, lust and violence. When Cullotta agreed to cooperate, he began a long transition. That meant cooperating with law enforcement, testifying at trials, and staying in anonymous motel rooms guarded by marshals.

When Cullotta reached Arnoldy, the FBI man had a simple question: Did Frank know where the Spilotros might have run off to?

Cullotta laughed a little to himself.

Run? Tough Tony Spilotro, run?

“They ain’t ran nowhere,” the 68-year-old Cullotta recalled in a recent interview with his trademark Chicago street sneer. “I said, ‘Tony’d never run. I guarantee you they’re dead. Whether they show up or not, I don’t know.’ “

A few days later, after an ex-FBI agent-turned author had made national news when he announced the missing men probably were in hiding to avoid prosecution, the Spilotros showed up in an Indiana cornfield. Cullotta had been right.

The only place they had run was into the hereafter.

Two decades later, the bloody tale of the Spilotros’ final hours is being retold in U.S. District Court in Chicago as part of the Operation Family Secrets trial. Joseph Lombardo is the highest profile hoodlum to face a range of felony charges that includes participation in 18 murders, including the beating deaths of the Spilotros. Tony, portrayed by Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino,” was known as the Outfit’s overseer in Las Vegas.

Interviewed this week from an undisclosed location, Cullotta confirmed he’s been called as a witness in the trial in mid-August. His appearance won’t hurt the sales of his memoir, “Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness.”

Cullotta learned from published accounts that Tony stayed tough to the very end. As Spilotro was being beaten to death in an Illinois basement, he admonished his attackers.

“Tony put up a fight,” star government witness Frank Calabrese Jr. testified. “He kept saying, ‘You guys are going to get in trouble, you guys are going to get in trouble.’ “

According to the younger Calabrese, Spilotro was killed for making scores in Las Vegas without sharing the wealth with his Outfit superiors, and for his tryst with Gerri Rosenthal, Chicago mob associate Frank Rosenthal’s wife.

But what makes no sense to Cullotta is the recent testimony that the Spilotros were lured back to Chicago under the false pretense that Michael was going to get “made” into the Outfit.

“Wouldn’t Tony have had enough (expletive) brains to know that can’t be possible?” Cullotta asked. “I just don’t understand it. How Michael, with his bad attitude and how mean he was to other people, would become a made member, makes no sense to me.

“Tony was a lot sharper than that. As far as I’m concerned, Tony was always suspicious. I always thought Michael was in trouble and Tony was going in to straighten it out.”

Spilotro was clever and supremely paranoid, but he knew he was headed for more legal trouble in Las Vegas thanks in part to Cullotta’s cooperation. Spilotro couldn’t run or hide.

So he went back to Chicago one last time.

More than two decades later, Frank Cullotta has survived to tell the tale.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.