For anyone who doesn't know, (if there is such a person out there, who might also be reading this column!), Anthony "The Ant"* Spilotro was an infamous mob "enforcer" in Las Vegas, who moved out west from his home town in the early '70s to take over as the on-the-ground representative for the so-called Chicago Outfit, a position he inherited from the equally notorious Marshall Caifano. Spilotro is the real-life mobster upon whom the Joe Pesci character in Casino is based and from most accounts, the movie does a pretty accurate job in its portrayal of this short-of-stature and increasingly psychotic sociopath.
In addition to his job of controlling casino employees and other personnel involved in "the rake," the casino-revenue embezzling operation at the Stardust that was the mob's key business out here, when Spiltro wasn't generally putting the fear of God into people or actually torturing someone, he and his brother were busy establishing their own empire, based on a loan-sharking business and burglary outfit known as the "Hole in the Wall" gang. They fenced the stolen goods through a business located just off the Strip called The Gold Rush, which was owned in conjunction with Chicago bookmaker Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein who, like Spilotro, would later meet an untimely and bloody fate.
Spilotro's reign of terror came to an end as a result of various factors. He had an affair with the wife of his former and extremely connected friend "Lefty" Rosenthal, which didn't do him any favors, while his parallel private business interests were also not appreciated by his bosses. As the federal net began to tighten around his associates, key figures like Spilotro sidekick and confidant Frank Cullotta began turning state's evidence on him. As Spilotro's behavior became increasingly erratic and violent, as depicted in the movie, he became too much of a liability to fade and at a meeting of the bosses early in 1986, his fate was sealed with a unanimous decision that this loose canon had to go.
Until not so long ago, it was pretty much the accepted wisdom that Anthony Spilotro and brother Michael were lured to a rendez-vous under the pretense of being promoted, but instead were driven to an Indiana cornfield where they were beaten to a pulp with baseball bats then buried -- still alive. That's how it's depicted in the movie, but on May 18, 2007, Nicholas Calabrese pleaded guilty in Chicago to taking part in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including the 1986 hits on the Spilotro brothers and became the first "made" man ever to testify against the Chicago Outfit.
Under heavy security, Calabrese described at the so-called "Operation Family Secrets" trial how Anthony and Michael had in fact been killed not in a field in Indiana, but rather in the basement a hunting lodge in DuPage County, Illinois, owned by Spilotro's former mob boss Joseph Aiuppa, who was himself in prison at the time. The rest of the story remains pretty much the same, with Calabrese relating how the Spilotros were beaten and strangled before being buried in a cornfield alongside Highway 41 in northwest Indiana.
One other detail that did emerge for the first time was that allegedly, when Tony realized what fate was really in store for him in that basement, he asked for a moment to say a prayer. The request was granted, so it's said, and Tony "the Ant" apparently used his last breaths to pray for his wife and son.
Like most mafia wives (prior to the reality TV era, anyhow), Nancy Spilotro, who was married Tony when the couple were in their early 20s, kept a pretty low profile. In 1966, the couple adopted their only son, Vincent, but we couldn't find out much more about Spilotro family life, aside from the odd quote from his widow, who claims her husband was a regular guy. There's some evidence that Nancy was a good match for Anthony, however, in an anecdote she relates that's quoted in Dennis Griffin's The Battle for Las Vegas. The incident in question involves Lefty Rosenthal's wife Geri, with whom Spilotro was having his not-so-secret affair:
The word was out. It had to be embarrassing for Lefty, but he chose to ignore rather than confront the situation. It was a strategy that worked for several months, until everything came to a head.
It was September 8, 1980. Geri Rosenthal had been out all night. When she got home at around 9 a.m., she was high on drugs, booze, or both. Finding herself locked out of the house, she became enraged. Getting back into her Mercedes, she repeatedly rammed her car into the rear of Lefty’s parked Cadillac. There was damage to each vehicle, but they both remained drivable. The commotion brought Lefty out to his front porch and a number of neighbors onto their lawns. A security guard called the police.
At the sight of her husband, Geri exited her car and took up a position on the lawn, shouting at him. She said the FBI wanted to talk with her and she just might go see them. She also announced that Tony Spilotro was her "sponsor" (protector) and wanted to know what Lefty planned to do about it.
During her tirade a police car pulled up and the officers tried using their verbal skills to calm down the out-of-control woman. Soon after the police got there, another car arrived. Nancy Spilotro was the driver.
"As I remember that morning, Lefty called me and said that Geri was outside the house raising hell. He asked if I’d come over and see if I could help," Nancy Spilotro said in a 2004 interview. "I went right over. I was still in my pajamas, covered by a robe."
While the police continued trying to reason with Geri, she pulled a pearl-handled revolver from under her clothing and waved it in the general direction of her husband. The police officers dove for cover behind their car. Neighbors scurried for safety. Lefty remained where he was, seemingly unable to move. That was when the five-foot 97-pound Nancy Spilotro sprang into action. She launched herself at the other woman.
"I must have been quite a sight, flying through the air in my pajamas and robe," she laughed. Funny or not, the diminutive Spilotro was effective. She wrestled the larger woman to the ground and disarmed her. With the danger over and additional police cars on the scene, the spectators returned to their positions to watch the rest of the action.
Following her husband's murder, Nancy remained a resident of Las Vegas, where she still lives to this day. She's known to be reclusive -- perhaps not surprisingly -- but did make some public appearances, along with the couple's son, around the opening of what's now called the Mob Attraction, to which she donated Vince's baby shoes, among many other personal items. We checked with Denny Griffin who confirmed that Nancy, who's now aged 74, has experienced some health issues but currently seems to be doing fine.
Vincent, on the other hand, struggled more with his legacy -- both with having a father who was heavily involved in organized crime and who had been arrested no less than 13 times before his son reached the age of 20, and with the subsequent murder, which the family claims the FBI failed to investigate. While his dad/son memories may not be conventional, Spilotro Jr. speaks of his notorious father with fondness and pride:
"I knew what he did, [but] he was just, you know, just a loving father."
"I helped when I was a kid, at 18 years old, helped design this room, at our house, it was a place called the 'Security Room.' There was a steel door, which was covered with wallpaper, you never knew it was steel. A solid door with the frame. The walls were all insulated with concrete and stuff. I mean, you couldn't get in that room."
There was definitely some important closure, for both Nancy and Vincent, when Nick Calabrese finally spilled the beans. Prior to that, Vince had plans to conduct his own investigation and avenge his father's death, going as far as to stockpile guns and explosives. He was talked out of doing anything reckless by fellow family members, but the evidently troubled young man still struggled with alcohol and drug problems, which in turn gave rise to health issues.
Today, Vincent is a colon-cancer survivor but continues to suffer from pancreatitis and chronic kidney stones, so Dennis Griffin assured us, although he told us that the health problems currently seem to be under control. Vincent Spilotro also continues to reside in the Las Vegas area.
*While this is the familiar epithet associated with Spilotro, the nickname was actually coined and popularized by the media as a sanitized version of the derogatory comment made by an FBI agent, who referred in disgust to the diminutive mobster as "that pissant." On the streets, he was better known as "Tough Tony," a moniker we figure Spilotro probably preferred.
