Family Affair_Greed, Treachery, and Betrayal in the Chicago Mafia Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1. - The Fugitive

  Chapter 2. - The Outfit

  Chapter 3. - Clown Prince of the Mob

  Chapter 4. - A Darker Shade of Pail

  Chapter 5. - Desert Don

  Chapter 6. - Boosting the Boss

  Chapter 7. - All in the Family

  Chapter 8. - Chinatown

  Chapter 9. - The Rundown

  Chapter 10. - Terror at the Tee

  Chapter 11. - Loose Cannon

  Chapter 12. - Burial Blunders and Farm-Side Follies

  Chapter 13. - Changing of the Guard

  Chapter 14. - The Weight Meets His Fate

  Chapter 15. - Dirty Blue

  Chapter 16. - Sins of the Father

  Chapter 17. - A Little House Cleaning

  Chapter 18. - The Trial

  Chapter 19. - Now and Forever

  No Prayer for the Dying

  When Michael reached the bottom of the stairwell, he was met by Outfit soldier Nicholas “Nicky Breeze” Calabrese, who shook his hand as part of the ruse that a making ceremony was about to commence. Within seconds of the docile greeting, carnage-strewn chaos erupted. Michael was tackled by Louie Eboli. Several Outfit hit men converged on the younger Spilotro and began viciously beating and stomping him in an aggressive flurry of fists and feet. Before he could do anything to defend himself, Tony was grabbed from behind and pushed to the cold and dirty basement floor. With Tony forced to watch, Michael was finally put out of his misery, strangled to death with a strip of electrical cord by Eboli. The murderous thugs then turned their attention to Tony. Knowing his fate, he asked his killers for permission to say one last novena before he met his maker.

  They refused.

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  FAMILY AFFAIR

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley mass-market edition / March 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Sam Giancana and Scott M. Burnstein.

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-18557-5

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  To

  Alex Frank, Adam Miller, and John Pink,

  all great, kind, and talented men gone too soon

  And to the memory of Margo Hirschfeld,

  the “Godmother” of the North Shore

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Mom, Dad, Butterscotch, Mello, Grampa, Uncles Bob, David, and Jack; Aunts Sue, Arlene, Eileen, and Miriam; Jeremy, Jamie, Ian, Amy, Tyler, Ryan, Casey, Elaine; my agent, Frank Weimann; my editor at Berkley Books, the incomparable Denise Silvestro; Meredith Giordan, Jaimee Garbacik, and Elyse Tanzillo; J.R. Davis and the Chicago Crime Commission, agent Ross Rice at the Chicago FBI, Randall Sanborn at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, John Scully, Chuck Goudie, Jim Wagner, Tom Bourgeois, Jack O’Rourke, Wayne Zydron, Mickey Lombardo, John Binder, Richard Stilling, Antonio Napoli, Jeremy H., Mac, Eric, Keith and Jeff at the Oak-land Press, Kristy, Rob, Judd, Andy, Julie, Lauren, Jeff, Al Profit, Herm Groman, Dennis Arnoldy, Frank Cullotta, Mike Floyd and Tami, Adam Rafalski, Angelo, Alex, Anne, Jen, Ara, Morgan, Stephanie, Sara, Laddie, Robert, Tricia, Mikey, Jason, Ross, Kyle, Mike, Paul, Dave, and Matt.

  Family Affair is the consummate epic mob saga—a lurid and compelling true story of death, deceit, and debauchery in the modern-day underworld. This complex and long-winding tale involves a group of intriguing and richly textured mob characters; spans close to forty years in the history of the mafia’s Chicago crime family, known locally on the street and in the press as “The Outfit”; and covers two separate eras in the syndicate’s legendary history: one being the mob’s glory days of the 1970s through the 1990s, and the other being The Outfit’s current landscape in the new millennium. The story has everything: an opus of sex, drugs, money, murder, lust, power, sibling betrayal, underworld politics, and government corruption.

  The ever-shifting plot line of this mafia-infused soap opera culminates in a massive federal racketeering indictment, an enormous government legal effort aptly named “Operation Family Secrets,” that charged fourteen defendants, several of whom were members of the current Chicago crime family administration, with eighteen previously unsolved gangland homicides. The indictment, which was announced in April 2005, went to trial in the summer of 2007. It was the FBI’s biggest strike against the American mafia since the early 1980s.

  June 14, 1986 Chicago

  Something was amiss. Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro, a forty-eight-year-old wiseguy of the most lethal variety, had a well-honed gut instinct and things just didn’t feel right to him. It was a beautiful early summer afternoon in Chicago, and most residents of the sprawling Midwest metropolis were out in droves enjoying the gorgeous, sun-drenched day. Nicknamed The Ant due to his diminutive size, Tony Spilotro should have been doing the same. However, despite spending the first half of his day surrounded by family and friends at his younger brother Michael’s suburban Oak Park residence, Spilotro was visibly unhappy, acting outwardly nervous, fidgety, and ill at ease. It was understandable. He had a great deal on his mind. In a few hours, he and his brother had an important meeting to attend—a top-secret mob gathering to be exact. He had attended and participated in this type of event many times, but something about this one seemed different. Something about this situation felt off. Tony began to suspect he was in grave danger and that if he went to the meeting there was a good chance that he would not be coming back alive.

  On the surface, things appeared to be going great. Spilotro was one of the Windy City’s most powerf
ul mob lieutenants, tapped by the Chicago mafia—known locally as “The Outfit”—to oversee their vast and lucrative interests in the Las Vegas hotel and gaming industry. He was tremendously wealthy, lived a life of excess and self-indulgence, and was both feared and respected in underworld circles nationwide. Just a few months earlier, an article in a major Windy City newspaper named him a possible successor to then-Chicago godfather Joe Ferriola. The Ant’s exploits became so notorious that in the years to come he would be immortalized on the big screen by Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci in director Martin Scorsese’s Casino.

  Called back to Chicago from his headquarters in Nevada for what he was told was going be a formal mob initiation ceremony for his brother and protégé, Michael, as well as an official promotion for himself to the status of caporegime (capo), a much valued leadership position within any mafia crime family, Spilotro should have been sitting on top of the world. But he wasn’t. In actuality, he was as far away from the top of the world as possible. And everything wasn’t what it seemed.

  As a result of a series of high-profile arrests in the early 1980s, Tony had been skating on thin ice with his superiors in the mob for quite a while. His increasingly insubordinate behavior and headline-garnering antics while running things in Las Vegas had earned him a great deal of enemies in Chicago, specifically several members of the recently elected crime family administration.

  It was 4:00 in the afternoon, and before leaving for their meeting, Tony and Michael gave all of their jewelry and cash to their loved ones. The mood was grim. Farewells were exchanged amid a palpable aura of tension. Tony gave his wedding ring, diamond-plated Rolex wristwatch, and personal phone and contact book to his wife, Nancy. Michael told his wife that if the two of them didn’t make it back to Oak Park by 9:00, she should assume the worst. A man who had personally taken part in well over three dozen gangland homicides, Tony “The Ant” Spilotro had the distinct suspicion that he and his brother were being set up for one themselves.

  He was right.

  ALTHOUGH it was already the middle of June, the wheels of the murder contract placed on the Spilotro brothers had been in motion since midwinter. In January 1986, Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa, the Chicago Outfit’s boss since 1972 and once an integral supporter of The Ant, was imprisoned on a racketeering conviction, and the road to Tony’s violent downfall began being paved. Replacing Aiuppa atop the crime family hierarchy was Joe Ferriola, a longtime capo from the city’s West Side and a man who fervently despised Tony Spilotro for the headaches and frustration he had been causing the Outfit brass. Wasting little time in planning his rival’s demise, Ferriola announced during a speech made at his official inauguration dinner—held in the basement of a north suburban restaurant just days after Aiuppa’s incarceration—that his first order of business as new don would be to sanction Tony Spilotro’s execution. The following afternoon, FBI documents allege, he began making arrangements for the assassination, taking several underlings to start planning the specifics of the heavily anticipated mob hit.

  In the minds of a lot of people in the mob, the move was a long time coming. The city of Las Vegas, once a gangster’s paradise virtually free from the law-enforcement hassles encountered by wiseguys on the East Coast and Midwest, had become a magnet for police busts. A series of indictments and convictions of several mob administrations across the country, stemming from activity in Las Vegas, had put a number of powerful mafia dons behind bars. Many in the nation’s underworld blamed Spilotro. At that point, even Aiuppa, once an ardent supporter of Spilotro, was fed up and signed off on the murder contract

  Over the past decade, The Ant had gotten completely out of control. Sent to the mob-built desert oasis in 1971, he was given specific instructions to stay in the shadows and keep a low profile. That didn’t happen. Instead, Spilotro, a cunning, brutal, and media-starved wiseguy cut from the same cloth as former Windy City crime lords Al “Scarface” Capone and Sam “Momo” Giancana, decided to plant his own flag on the glittery, cash-soaked Vegas Strip, and declared himself the desert’s first mafia don. Shortly after arriving in Nevada, Spilotro recruited a band of thugs from back home in Chicago to make up a loyal power base and quickly began conducting his own street rackets—intentionally off The Outfit’s radar—and hoarding the tremendous profits for himself. The Ant opened up shop on an emporium of vice, making certain his presence was felt in all bookmaking, loan sharking, and extortion operations being run in the city, headquartering his crew’s activities out of his Old West-style jewelry store, The Gold Rush. He also began selling drugs—a major mafia no-no—and running a large-scale stolen jewelry ring known in the press as “The Hole in the Wall Gang.” Add to all this the facts that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair with the wife of a top mob associate, had an increasingly bothersome cocaine habit, and had often spoke freely among his inner circle about killing his way to the top of The Outfit, and it was clear to his bosses in Chicago that they had no choice—The Ant had to be eliminated.

  Michael Spilotro got himself included in the top-priority gangland assassination for two reasons: First, acting as Tony’s emissary in Chicago, Michael’s own behavior had gotten out of control. He was continually shaking down and roughing up already-connected street merchants using his brother’s name as leverage and refusing to pay gambling debts based on his perceived status within the local underworld. By 1986, he had angered one too many powerful people in The Outfit and became expendable. Second, there was a fear that Michael, a well-known hothead, would eventually seek retaliation for his brother against those ordering the hit. Several years younger than his more notorious sibling, Michael was groomed by Tony The Ant; the older he got, the more he tried to emulate him in every way possible. From the way he dressed to the way he talked, Michael wanted to be exactly like his big brother. Consequently, Michael grew up to be lethal, greedy, and arrogant and sealed his own fate by appearing as a threat to many higher-ups in the Chicago mob.

  BORN and raised on the city’s notoriously rough West Side and schooled in the ways of the streets by legendary Windy City underworld figures like Salvatore “Mad Sam” DeStefano, James “Jimmy the Turk” Torrello, and Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderesio, Tony Spilotro was, if nothing else, old school. In terms of philosophy and attitude, he continued to live his life by a code of honor that many of his associates in the mob had abandoned long ago. So, despite his reservations and concerns for his own personal safety, when he was called and told to appear at an Outfit initiation ceremony, he went and he didn’t ask questions. After being instructed to meet James “Jimmy the Man” Marcello, at that time a fellow Chicago mob soldier, in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson Inn near Schiller Park, Illinois, the Spilotro brothers kissed their wives and children good-bye on the afternoon of June 14, 1986, and were never seen by them again. Arriving at the parking lot early, they went into the hotel bar and had a drink to ease their nerves. At about 3:30 P.M., they went back into the parking lot and were met by Marcello, who was waiting for them in his silver Cadillac. Jimmy Marcello—known on the streets as “Little Jimmy,” “Jimmy Lights,” or “Jimmy the Driver”—knew both of the Spilotro brothers very well. He was especially close to Michael, the two of them being around the same age and known to work out together at a local health club. Leaving their car at the hotel, Tony and Michael got in the backseat, and the group of wiseguys left the parking lot. Within minutes they were on the expressway.

  Driving south on Interstate 83 away from Schiller Park and toward the city, the Cadillac exited on Irving Park Road and headed for a small side street located in the town of Bensenville. A tiny suburb that sits directly on the border of Chicago proper. Stopping in the driveway of high-powered Outfit member Louis “Louie the Mooch” Eboli’s house, Marcello turned off the ignition. The three men exited the vehicle, and the Spilotros were ushered into the house through a side door that had been left open for them. Still acting on the pretense that they were coming to attend a benign mob get-together, Marcello mad
e casual conversation with Tony and Michael as they entered the residence. Met at the door by Eboli, Outfit boss Joe Ferriola, and Outfit underboss Sam “Wings” Carlisi, the men then made their way to the back of the house. Marcello opened a door leading to the basement and Carlisi escorted the Spilotro brothers, Michael and then Tony, down the stairs to their pending slaughter. A cadre of bloodthirsty hit men awaited them, murder their only agenda. Instead of an initiation ceremony, it was a death trap. They were descending into hell, and Tony Spilotro, a man who had made a reputation of being able to elude volatile situations unscathed, could do nothing but pray for a quick passing. Unfortunately for him, his prayers would not be answered.

  When Michael reached the bottom of the stairwell, he was met by Outfit soldier Nicholas “Nicky Breeze” Calabrese, who shook his hand as part of the ruse that a making ceremony was about to commence. Within seconds of the docile greeting, carnage-strewn chaos erupted. Michael was tackled by Louie Eboli. Several Outfit hit men converged on the younger Spilotro and began viciously beating and stomping him in a flurry of fists and feet. Before he could do anything to defend himself, Tony was grabbed from behind and pushed to the cold and dirty basement floor. With Tony forced to watch, Michael was finally put out of his misery, strangled to death with a strip of electrical cord by Eboli. The murderous thugs then turned their attention to Tony. Knowing his fate, he asked his killers for permission to say one last novena before he met his maker. They refused.