When we were producing Cullotta in 2006, the book’s namesake and subject, Frank Cullotta, was still deep in the cloak-and-dagger stage of his life. He’d fulfilled his obligations to the government by testifying for the prosecution at trials in the early 1980s. He’d served his time in prison and came off probation in 1986; shortly thereafter, he left the Witness Protection Program. In 1994, he came out of hiding briefly to be a technical advisor for (and bit-part actor in) the movie Casino, after connecting with Nick Pileggi to provide inside information for the book of the same name. (Pileggi contributed the Foreword to our book about Frank).
Yet as late as 2009, two years after the release of Cullotta by Denny Griffin, its principal subject was still undercover, living somewhere in southern California. During that time, Anthony Curtis made a personal book delivery to Frank, who was supplying them for a mob event (as in, a convention or book signing-type affair, not a secret meeting of capos). Anthony was on his way to San Diego anyway, so he drove in with a trunkful of books. He had Frank’s number and called him on the phone. Frank gave AC directions to the place he wanted to meet.
"Take the freeway to exit 35. There's a long road that ends in a box canyon after about six miles, where you'll reach a dead end."
As Cullotta went on, Anthony was becoming amused by the ominous-sounding directions, coming as they were from a known former hit man.
Frank continued, "At the end of the road, there's a gas station and a little diner. Which one do you want meet at?"
Anthony thought about it for a minute and said, "Whichever one has more people."
Frank got the joke and laughed (to Anthony's relief), but there was still a vestige of reality in terms of the whole "mob mentality" and how Cullotta still had to live his life vigilantly, even more than 25 years after he’d rolled, turned state’s evidence, and began informing on Tony Spilotro and his Las Vegas Hole in the Wall Gang. Complacency is probably instinctually impossible for him after all these years, although the need for paranoia is likely past.
As proof of the latter, since then Cullotta has come out of hiding. Today, he says that anyone who might have had a grudge against him is dead and he’s fairly public in Las Vegas, making occasional appearances at the Mob Museum and even serving as host for the Vegas Mob Tour (by appointment). He's on the speaker list at Mob-Con 2014, taking place at Palace Station September 27-28. He and that other infamous old-timer, Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas), used to host private dinners and even briefly tried to launch a food truck using Hill's recipes before his death.
For years we had Pileggi’s Foreword and the book’s Introduction posted at ShopLVA.com, where we still have some autographed copies of the memoir in stock. Now, we’ve added Chapter 5, "Crime Wave," about Cullotta’s formative years on the Chicago criminal scene (at the end of which he’s starting a 15-year stint in state prison); Chapter 8, "Together Again," about joining his old friend Tony Spilotro on the Las Vegas crime scene; Chapter 12, "Bertha’s," about the jewelry-store robbery that was the downfall of the Hole in the Wall gang, plus the Mob’s contract on Cullotta; and the big Chapter 13, "Switching Sides," which is not only self-explanatory, but the must-read of the bunch.
As a sentiment that has often been paraphrased has it, "The lust for true crime is fired by the notion that bad people are good fun, so long as one doesn’t have to share a dark alley with them."
That’s exactly the feeling you’ll get from Cullotta—The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness.
