MOB TALK: June 14, 1986, Chicago Outfit Anthony "Tony The Ant" Spilotro & his brother, an associate of the Chicago Outfit, Michael "Micky" Spilotro were beaten to death & buried in a cornfield
- mobtalk247
- Jun 14
- 13 min read
On June 14, 1986, American mobster & high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit Anthony "Tony The Ant" Spilotro & his brother, an associate of the Chicago Outfit, Michael "Micky" Spilotro were beaten to death & buried in a cornfield in Morocco, Indiana, a town in Beaver Township, in Newton County, where their bodies were found on June 23. The population in Morocco was 1,129 at the 2010 census. Tony Spilotro had been sent to Las Vegas by the Outfit as its "Representative," or, "Outside Man," to protect its casino skimming operations &, "Inside Man." But, after gaining too much media attention & being blacklisted by the casinos, as well as allegedly having an affair with the wife of Outfit associate & the actual "Inside Man" Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, it was decided that Anthony was a liability, & he was murdered on the orders of the new Chicago Outfit boss, Joseph "Joe Negal" Ferriola.
Spilotro was born in Chicago, Illinois, the 4th of 6 children to Pasquale "Patsy" Spilotro Sr. & Antoinette Spilotro. He attended Burbank Elementary School, & entered Steinmetz High School in 1953. His father had emigrated from Triggiano, Province of Bari, Italy, & had arrived at Ellis Island in 1914. He & his mother ran Patsy's Restaurant, which was frequented by mobsters such as Sam “MoMo” Giancana, Jackie "The Lackey" Cerone, Gus Alex, & Francesco "Frank The Enforcer" Nitti. Tony & 4 of his brothers, (John, Vincent, Victor, & Michael) became involved in criminal activity, starting at an early age. The remaining brother, "Patrick" Pasquale Jr., became a dentist.
Tony Spilotro was a boyhood friend of Frank Cullotta, & the 2 started a criminal career together as teenagers, engaging in theft, burglary, & murder. Anthony was nicknamed "Tony The Ant" by the media after FBI Special Agent William Roemer referred to Spilotro as "that little pissant." Since the media couldn't use "pissant", they shortened it to the "Ant". In 1971, Spilotro moved to Las Vegas to manage the affairs of the Chicago Outfit there. He formed the "Hole in the Wall" Gang, a group of experienced thieves, safecrackers, & killers. The crew became known in the media as the "Hole in the Wall Gang", because of its penchant for gaining entry to homes & buildings by drilling through the exterior walls & ceilings of the locations they burglarized.
In early 1979, Frank Cullotta moved to Las Vegas to join Spilotro. On July 4, 1981, the Hole in the Wall Gang robbed Bertha's Gifts & Home Furnishings on East Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. The robbery was a bust, as much of the gang was arrested, including Cullotta, Joe Blasko, Leo Guardino, Ernest Davino, Lawrence Neumann, & Wayne Matecki, each charged with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary, attempted grand larceny, & possession of burglary tools. Around this time, Spilotro had an affair with Frank Rosenthal's wife, Geri McGee. In 1982, Cullotta was imprisoned & was approached by the FBI with a wiretap of Spilotro talking with someone about "having to clean our dirty laundry", which Cullotta took as an insinuated contract on his life.
Due to this, in July 1982, Cullotta finalized an agreement with the prosecutors. Martin Scorsese's film Casino (1995) is based on the Las Vegas careers of Spilotro & Rosenthal, on whom the characters Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro (played by Joe Pesci) & Ace Rothstein (played by Robert DeNiro) were based. Pesci had a natural resemblance to Tony Spilotro & in makeup, he looked even more like him. When Pesci entered the casino where the movie was being shot, some pit bosses, who'd had personal dealings with Spilotro, nearly shit themselves.
In September 1983, Spilotro was indicted for conspiracy & obstruction of justice in the Sherwin "Jerry" Lisner murder & was released on $100k bail. At a trial in October 1983, Cullotta admitted that he was involved in over 300 crimes, including 4 murders, perjury, robberies, & burglaries. He also testified that Spilotro, his boss in Las Vegas, ordered him to make a telephone call, which lured 1 of the 1962 murder victims, William McCarthy, to a fast food restaurant. Billy McCarthy was a stick-up man & a members of Frank Cullotta’s burglary crew in Chicago, Illinois. McCarthy wouldn't be a household name, but a series of events would lead him to be remembered in a scene in Martin Scorsese’s classic Casino.
One night McCarthy was drinking in the Black Door bar by himself, the Black Door was a bar in Rosemont, which was a Mob-connected bar. 2 brothers managed the bar, Ronnie & Phil Scalvo, their father was closely tied to the Chicago Outfit. McCarthy, who was drunk got into an argument with the brothers, who beat him up & threw him out of the bar. A couple of nights later McCarthy & an associate, Jimmy Miraglia, went back to the Black Door to sort out the Scalvo brothers. Instead, they got another beating. By now an enraged, McCarthy & Miraglia wanted to kill the Scalvo brothers. For about a week they went back & forth to the Black Door watching the brothers. But every time the brothers left the bar, a cocktail waitress left with them. Killing innocent civilians was not looked upon too kindly by the Outfit, so McCarthy & Miraglia decided to wait for the right opportunity.
That opportunity came soon enough, 1 night as the Scalvo brothers were leaving the Black Door, again with the cocktail waitress when all three were shot dead by McCarthy & Miraglia. This enraged the Outfit, not only did they kill connected men in mob territory, they also killed an innocent civilian. This was only going to be solved by death. The Outfit bosses wanted the murderers identified & dealt with. Tony Spilotro, who had been working for Mad Sam DeStefano, took this opportunity to show the Outfit bosses he was up for the job & ready to become a “Made Guy.”
Spilotro soon found out that McCarthy had taken a couple of beatings from the Scalvo brothers & that in 1 of those beatings Miraglia was present. Spilotro knew that both McCarthy & Miraglia were associates of an old friend of his, Frank Cullotta. Spilotro paid Cullotta a visit & asked him about McCarthy & Miraglia, Spilotro explained, that while he didn’t think Frank had taken part in the murders, some people did. Frank could either prove himself, by setting up McCarthy, or die along with them. Cullotta knew he was in a tough place, so he set McCarthy up. Frank got McCarthy on the phone & scheduled to meet. That night he met Tony & someone going by the name of Saint, at Howard Johnsons. Tony took Franks car & left him with Saint. About 40 minutes later Tony came back. He said to Frank, here’s your car, see you later. Miraglia went missing a few days later. Tony Spilotro told Frank Cullotta all about it shortly afterward.
Spilotro said, that McCarthy was 1 tough fu$@?&! Irishman. We beat that motherfu$@?! with everything, they beat him for 3 days, even stabbing him with ice-picks, but he just wouldn’t tell us who did the Scalvos with him. We finally got so pissed off, we put his head in a vise & turned it. The kids eyeball popped right out of his fu$&?! head. Billy begged for me to kill him. He gave up Miraglia’s name, just before he died. In turn, Miraglia had been found drinking in a bar by Spilotro & his crew, they brought him into a back room & beat him but didnt kill him, they then took him & put him in the trunk of his own car, then brought him to where McCarthys body was being kept. Jimmy knew he was going to be killed. He asked to be strangled, so his wife could collect some insurance money. We did what he wanted & dumped him in the trunk of a car along with Billy. Then we drove the car to another neighborhood & ditched it. A couple of days later somebody smelled the stench & called the cops.
Cullotta had help kill McCarthy & Miraglia, who were found dead in the trunk of the car on May 14, 1962. McCarthy's head was placed in a vise, as Tony The Ant had said, & his throat was slashed, while Miraglia was strangled just as Cullotta was told. Spilotro was acquitted later that year. Spilotro's defense attorney was future Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman. The vice scene in the movie Casino was drawn from Spilotro's interrogation of McCarthy. Tony beat McCarthy, stabbed him in the balls with an icepick, & put his head into the vice, crushing it until his head was 5 inches wide, & McCarthy just wouldn’t rat. He didn't give up the name of Jimmy Miraglia, until Spilotro tightened the vice enough to make 1 of his eyes pop out. Spilotro then poured lighter fluid on him & lit him on fire, killing him.
Michael Spilotro was friends with actor Robert Conrad &, through Conrad, also became close friends with Robert's fellow Hollywood actor Larry Manetti (1 of the supporting stars of Magnum P.I.) & his wife Nancy DeCarl. In a 2008 interview, Conrad described Michael Spilotro as his "best friend". Michael 1st met Robert Conrad in May 1954, when Robert was only 19 years old. At the time, Conrad had eloped with a lawyer's daughter & had lied about his age, to gain employment as a longshoreman on the Chicago waterfront. He was later fired in December of that year, for handing out a petition to have his union steward fired. The 2 remained close & Michael later appeared as a stick-up man in Conrad's TV series The Duke in 1979. On the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website, Michael is labeled as a dramatic actor. Through Conrad, he became close with actors Patrick Wayne, Dennis Hopper, & Nick Adams. He later was featured in Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy, released in 1982, & with Tom Selleck in the 1st season of the TV series Magnum, P.I., in the episode 12 entitled "Thicker Than Blood", as an armed federal marshal.
After temporarily moving to Las Vegas shortly before his death, in order to tend to his indictment in the months-long Hole in the Wall Gang trial, Michael allegedly helped run a local jewelry store called The Goldrush Ltd, with Anthony and his other brother John, who worked as a bookmaker. Michael soon became involved in bookmaking, drug dealing, prostitution, robbery, & extortion. Through his relationship with Larry Manetti he had connections in the Plaza Hotel & Casino, when it was under the ownership of the Barrick Gaming Corporation. Lifelong friend & fellow actor Larry Manetti told reporters from the Chicago Tribune during the Family Trial, "I didn't know Michael was a gangster. I knew him as a guy I grew up with in the neighborhood. Michael wanted to be on TV, that's all. Who wouldn't?... He wasn't trying to be a movie star or an actor, he was having fun." Manetti also commented to reporters about Michael's acting ability stating, "He was OK as an actor, he wasn't so stiff." Robert Conrad attended funerals of the Spilotro family, & made no effort to hide his appearances from the press there. There was no attempt on the part of either Robert Conrad or Larry Manetti to attend the funerals of Anthony or Michael. He didn't appear publicly with either brother, even when they were alive. Conrad attempted to keep his association sub rosa also. When he encountered a bus load of tourists when Anthony Spilotro's Monte Carlo automobile collided with it, he quickly left, before any attention could be drawn.
Tony Spilotro & his brother Michael disappeared on June 14, 1986, after they drove away together from Michael's Oak Park home. Michael's wife, Anne, reported both brothers missing on June 16. Michael's car, a 1986 Lincoln, was recovered several days later in a motel parking lot near O'Hare International Airport. On June 22, the Spilotro brothers’ bodies were found, 1 on top of the other, stripped down to their undershorts, & buried in a cornfield in the Willow Slough preserve near Enos, Indiana. The freshly turned earth had been noticed by a farmer, who thought that the remains of a deer killed out of season had been buried there by a poacher, & notified authorities.
An autopsy completed on June 24, identified their cause of death as blunt force trauma, & ascertained that they had been dead since June 14. They were identified by dental charts supplied by their dentist brother, Patrick Spilotro. The 2 were buried in a family plot at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, on June 27. Nearing the end of the film Casino, Nicky & his brother Dominick (Philip Suriano), based on Tony's brother Michael Spilotro, are shown being beaten with metal baseball bats & buried alive in an Indiana cornfield by their associate Frank Marino (Frank Vincent), based on Frank Cullotta, & the rest of Nicky's crew. Pesci suffered a broken rib while filming his final bat beating, the same rib he broke 15 years earlier, while filming Raging Bull, when DeNiro really hit Pesci with a body shot.
By the time of his death, the FBI suspected Spilotro was involved in 22 or 25 murders including: The murder of Sam DeStefano on April 14, 1973, when it was presumed that DeStefano was to have met with his brother, Mario Anthony DeStefano, & associate Tony Spilotro, in the garage of his Galewood neighborhood home, in the 1600 block of North Sayre Avenue. Before the meeting began, Spilotro supposedly entered the lot & shot DeStefano twice with a shotgun, hitting him in the chest & tearing his left arm off at the elbow, instantly killing him. DeStefano was buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. The murderer was never brought to trial.
Spitoro has also been rumored to have murdered former Chicago Outfit boss Sam “MoMo” Giancana. After Giancana's return to the United States, police detailed officers to guard his house in Oak Park, Illinois, but on the night of June 19, 1975, shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the Church Committee, which was investigating CIA & Cosa Nostra collusion, a gunman entered the home through the basement & shot Giancana in the head & neck 7 times, with a .22 caliber pistol. At around 11 p.m., Joseph DiPersio, Giancana's caretaker, found his body on the floor of the basement kitchen, where he was said to be frying sausage & peppers. A week before his death, Giancana had gall bladder surgery in Houston. Giancana was interred next to his wife, Angeline, in a family mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery, in Hillside, Illinois.
Within days of Giancana's murder, Michael J. Corbitt, the police chief of Willow Springs, Illinois, and a mobster associate, was told by Chicago Outfit's capo Salvatore Bastone that "Sam sure loved that little guy in Oak Park... Tony Spilotro. Yeah, he was fuckin' crazy about him. Sam put Tony on the fuckin' map, thought he was gonna be a big fuckin' man someday. Did you know that after Marshall Caifano got out of Vegas, it was Sam who wanted Tony Spilotro out there? Even lately, with all the problems with the skim & all, Sam always stood behind the guy. Tony was over to Sam's house all the time. He lived right by there. Did you know Tony even figured out a way where he could get in through the back of Sam's place without anybody seeing him? He'd go through other people's yards, go over fences, all sorts of shit". When Corbitt asked for the reason for the murder, Bastone quipped, "There's never just 1 reason for shit like what happened to Sam. There's a million of 'em. Let's just say that Sam should've remembered what happened to Bugsy Siegel".
Spilotro’s death contract had been signed in January 1986, in the wake of the imprisonment of Joseph "Joey Doves" or “Joey O’Brien” Aiuppa & John “Jackie The Lackey” Cerone for skimming Las Vegas casino profits, a meeting was held at the Czech Lodge in North Riverside, Illinois. Most of the 'upper echelon' were there, including Outfit boss Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo. Accardo decided to appoint Samuel “Sammy Wings” Carlisi as the "Street Boss" in charge of Outfit operations, to replace Aiuppa. Carlisi told the group that Accardo would stay on as consigliere & would have final say, as well as Gus Alex staying head of the connection guys. He then went on to the 1st problem: Tony Spilotro, & how things had gone down since he took over Vegas. Mobster & mob enforcer Rocco Infelice said, "Hit him." Everyone else at the meeting agreed.
Spilotro was replaced in Las Vegas by Donald "The Wizard of Odds" Angelini. Although the original reports stated the Spilotros were beaten & buried in the Enos, Indiana, cornfield, mobster Nicholas Calabrese testified at the "Operation Family Secrets" in 2007, that the brothers were killed in a Bensenville, Illinois, basement 1st, where the Spilotros believed Michael would be inducted into The Outfit, then their bodies were transported to the cornfield. According to court testimony, when Tony entered the basement & realized what was about to occur, he asked if he could "say a prayer". No arrests were made until April 25, 2005, when 14 members of the Chicago Outfit (including reputed boss James Marcello) were indicted for 18 murders, including the Spilotros'.
The suspected murderers included capo Albert "Caesar" Tocco from Chicago Heights, Illinois, who was sentenced to 200 years in prison in 1990, after his wife testified against him. She testified that, in 1986, she drove her husband from an Indiana cornfield where he told her he had just buried Spilotro. On May 18, 2007, the star witness in the government's case against 14 Chicago mob figures, Nicholas Calabrese, pled guilty to taking part in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including the hits on Anthony & Michael Spilotro. Under heavy security, Calabrese admitted that he took part in planning or carrying out 14 of the murders, including the Spilotro killings. He became the key witness against his brother, Frank Calabrese, Sr., & other major mob figures charged in the government's Family Secrets Trial.
Mickie Spilotro's wife & daughter would later testify in 2007 for the prosecution regarding the Spilotro Brothers' involvement with James Marcello.
In 2007, Anne Spilotro testified at the Family Secrets trial about how she reached out to mob boss James Marcello for help & was allegedly swindled, after selling her husband's Chicago restaurant to state Democratic Senator James DeLeo & attorney James Banks, the nephew of Chicago's 36th Ward Alderman William Banks. Upon hearing the allegations, DeLeo expressed amazement at her complaint to reporters. DeLeo said he & James Banks converted the restaurant into a pizza parlor that later failed.
Nick Calabrese agreed to testify, after the FBI showed him DNA evidence linking him to the murder of fellow hit-man John Fecarotta, who was also allegedly involved in the Spilotro slayings. In September 2007, Frank Calabrese, Sr. & 4 other men, Marcello, Joseph Lombardo, Paul "The Indian" Schiro, & former Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle, were convicted of mob-related crimes. On September 27, 2007, Marcello was found guilty by a federal jury, in the murders of both Spilotro brothers. On February 5, 2009, Marcello was sentenced to life imprisonment for the Spilotro murders, & United States District Judge James Zagel, agreeing with the presentation made by federal prosecutor Markus Funk, also found Marcello responsible for the D'Andrea murder as well, even though the jury had deadlocked on that count. On March 26, 2009, Nicholas Calabrese was sentenced to 12 years & 4 months imprisonment.
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