Columnist Jeff German: Spilotro’s bloody end revealed

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 | 11 a.m.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have given us a clearer picture of the wicked, cutthroat nature of the Chicago mob, which once dominated street rackets in Las Vegas.

It's the story of how Tony Spilotro, the tough-talking hoodlum who oversaw the Chicago mob's interests here, was allegedly betrayed by his own crime family members.

Top Chicago mob figures were indicted last week in a series of 18 old slayings, including those of Spilotro and his younger brother, Michael, in 1986.

Fresh details of the Spilotro murders, long shrouded in mystery, are just now starting to trickle out of the federal courthouse in Chicago -- thanks to the cooperation of Nick Calabrese, a former mob member who has acknowledged participating in the slayings.

The Spilotro brothers, it turns out, were lured to their brutal deaths at a home in Bensenville, a Chicago suburb, under the guise that they were being promoted within the crime family. Tony, regarded as a "soldier" with the family, was told he would be rising to the rank of "capo," and Michael was to be inducted as a "made member."

But it was all a ruse, prosecutors suggested in federal court on Friday.

Instead, prosecutors said, the Spilotros were beaten to death in the basement of the home, and their bodies were buried in an Indiana cornfield -- proving once again that the mob offers no job security.

"This doesn't surprise me," says Dennis Arnoldy, a former Las Vegas FBI agent who investigated Tony Spilotro. "There had to be some purpose to the sit-down that wasn't threatening to them."

Whether the brothers actually believed they were about to meet with good fortune is hard to fathom.

At the time, Tony Spilotro's crime empire in Las Vegas was falling apart. One of his most trusted lieutenants, Frank Cullotta, had turned against him. And Spilotro was facing three federal racketeering indictments, one of which also implicated his Chicago bosses in a lucrative casino skimming conspiracy here.

It didn't matter in the end, however. The Spilotro brothers learned the hard way that there's a fine line between career advancement and termination within the mob.

As predicted here, Vinny Faraci, a former Crazy Horse Too shift manager, did indeed take the Fifth on Friday.

Faraci, the son of a ranking New York crime figure, asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination several times and refused to answer questions at a sworn deposition in a civil suit against the topless club.

The suit was filed by Kirk Henry, a Kansas City man who suffered a broken neck during an altercation in the Crazy Horse's parking lot.

Just how Henry sustained his injuries also is the subject of a federal racketeering probe of the Crazy Horse.

Not testifying in the civil case probably won't hurt Faraci very much. He's not a defendant.

But it can't improve his shaky standing with the feds, who reportedly have him in their sights.