Columnist Jeff German: Spilotro case: A culture of brutality

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.

There may be no better insight into the vicious world of the mob than Monday's federal indictment against top Chicago crime family members.

It was the world of Tony Spilotro, a feared cold-blooded killer who spent a decade running street rackets for the Chicago mob in Las Vegas until his own brutal slaying in 1986.

The indictment offers few details of how Spilotro and his younger brother, Michael, were killed 19 years ago. Their badly beaten bodies, clothed only in their underwear, were found buried in an Indiana cornfield about 70 miles from Chicago.

But it does confirm what those within law enforcement, the underworld and even Hollywood have suspected all these years -- that the Spilotros were done in by members of their own crime family.

That was the theory advanced in Martin Scorsese's 1995 movie, "Casino," which chronicled the mob's demise on the Strip. The Chicago mob, for the most part, gave up on Las Vegas after the deaths of the Spilotro brothers.

Among those charged Monday in a string of mob hits, including the Spilotro murders, is Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, a reported ranking Chicago mob member who oversaw Tony Spilotro's activities in Las Vegas. Two men who allegedly worked under Spilotro, Frank Schweihs and Paul Schiro, also are charged in the sweeping murder conspiracy.

And so are two other reputed Chicago mob members well-known to Spilotro -- Frank Calabrese Sr., and his brother, Nick Calabrese. The latter Calabrese is said to be cooperating with FBI agents.

According to the indictment, members who had fallen out of favor with the Chicago crime family's bosses often would be lured to their unsuspecting deaths by fellow members.

"It's a dangerous world, all right," says former Chicago mob associate Frank Cullotta. "You have to have eyes planted in the back of your head. You can't trust anybody."

Cullotta, an admitted former hitman and enforcer for the mob, should know.

He was a trusted Spilotro lieutenant until he landed in a pinch with lawmen in 1982 and became a government witness against Spilotro, who had been waging a ferocious legal battle with the government with the help of his lawyer, now-Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Cullotta spent several years in the Witness Protection Program helping federal authorities build criminal cases against Spilotro until the crime kingpin's untimely death.

"Tony lost his usefulness because he drew a lot of heat," says Cullotta, who's now on his own with a new identity. "He caused too many problems. If he wasn't a burden to them, he never would have gotten whacked."

Dennis Arnoldy, the supervisor of the FBI's Organized Crime Squad in Las Vegas at the time, agreed, saying Spilotro had become "too visible" for the Chicago mob.

"He was doing things here without their knowledge and consent," says Arnoldy, now a private investigator. "They don't do these killings for fun. They have a purpose. They're going to protect themselves and the organization."

It's a reminder of how things once were in Las Vegas.