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Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, I describe details about the horrific demise of mobsters Tony and Michael Spilotro, as told in open court by the recently deceased Chicago Outfit member Nick Calabrese. Michael Spilotro thought he was gping to a meeting of the Chicago Outfit bosses so they could āmakeā him a member or get āwhistled in.ā Michael Spilotro was wrong; I think he and his brother, Tony, knew that. Nick Calabrese was the Chicago Outfit killer who told the story of who and how the Spilotro brothers were murdered.
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I also introduce my latest book (click the title to buy), āWindy City Mafia: The Chicago Outfit,ā which features gripping tales from my podcast about the rise of organized crime in Chicago. Overall, the episode offers a chilling glimpse into the realities of mob life while encouraging listeners to engage further with organized crime narratives through my book.
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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police intelligence sergeant, detective sergeant later on back here in the studio of gangland wire with this episode. Iām you got to bear with me, guys. Iām going to do a little selling at the very start. I usually sell anything I got to sell at the end or asking for promote or for support or whatever.
[0:22]But at the start, weāre going to do a little promotion. I have a book that I just did and Iām going to give you, Iām going to reward you. Iām going to give you a story, an interesting story, but to start, I have a book here that Iāve done. Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. You can see it back over my shoulder there. Like any good day ever seen any author being interviewed on a podcast on a, on YouTube, youāll see they had the book propped up over their shoulder. So anyhow, Iāve done this book and what I did. So, stories from Gangland Wire. So I took a bunch of my different Chicago stories and I just take my show notes and the transcript and then distill that down into a short story. So itās a variety of different chapters. Each one is different. Letās see, I did an overview, The Rise of the Chicago Outfit, kind of an overview of that. Then Iāve got seven chapters, which Iāve got Scarface on the golf course, which I thought was a really funny story and a good one. The Trial of Al Capone, thatās a first-person account that I found, and I put some other things together and did a show on that. The rise of Tony Accardo, Joe Batters, the murder of Estelle Carey, which was a particularly horrific murder.
[1:40]I found a story about the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit serving a search warrant on an outfit gambling house, and they found a bunch of bookmaking records. Kind of near and dear to my own heart, I was part of the intelligence unit. We never served any search warrants. We set up some other people for vice to go serve the search warrants. Had an interview with Frank Calabrese Jr. And so I went back through that and pulled out a lot of the salient details about the Calabrese family. And finally, I did the executioner, Fear in the Chicago Outfit. What a catchy title for that chapter. And thatās really the story of Harry Aleman, which is, I mean, that guy was, he was a piece of work, wasnāt he?
[2:24]Anyhow, but the story Iām going to tell you today, oh, and that book will be on Amazon, both the Kindle and the hardcover version. And if you guys will go out right away and, you know, for, I think, $1.99, you can get that Kindle version. Even if you donāt have Kindle, hit that $1.99. If I can get a whole bunch of people to buy this thing the first 10 days or two weeks or so, Amazon will see that and theyāll say, oh, man. And so theyāll push it up in their algorithms and itāll show it to a lot of other people who have bought books, true crime books about the outfit or any mob books. Because thereās a huge fan base out there that buy all kinds of mob books. And a lot of you guys are a lot of you guys that listen are those guys that buy those mob books. And I bought many, many myself. Now I get a lot of them sent to me, which is kind of nice. And I interview these authors while they send me their books. So I get all the latest books and I pass them along to one of my big supporters, Eric, Eric Tyler. I really appreciate what youāve done for me in the past. I help him make my movie and and other things that youāve done financially and emotionally and physically support the podcast and my work. Well, I get him those books.
[3:48]
Eyewitness Account of a Mob Murder
[3:43]And so, you know, thatās what it is. Thatās my and and help me out if you can. I would really appreciate it. So today Iām going to tell you the story out of the words of an eyewitness of the murder of the two Spilotro brothers, Anthony or Tony Spilotro and his brother, Michael. You know, they were big out in Las Vegas and they got in trouble out there. And, you know, itās really I think itās interesting. Itās an insiderās account of a mob murder. You know they had had brought a lot of attention especially tony had brought a lot of attention onto the outfit out in las vegas and during the same time you know weād started this here in kansas city uh listening to this guy named joe agosto talk about Spilotro talk about frank rosenthal talk about the skim coming back to kansas city from the stardust or from the Tropicana, and also talking about the Stardust and the fact Skim was coming out of that and going to Chicago.
[4:48]And so first two full days on a witness stand, thereās a guy named Nick Calabrese. Nick Calabreseās brother was Frank Calabrese Sr. And he ran the 26th Street crew, which was a crew of killers. And of course, I interviewed Frank Calabrese Jr. About that life with his uncle Nick nick and his dad frank sometimes itās like i talk to these guys like frank jr and he talks about his that was just his uncle nick when he was a little kid his dad was just you know dad.
[5:21]Uh, like some of these, uh, kids here in Kansas city, I talked to them once in a while and, you know, their grandpa or their great uncle was just Cork Civella. I mean, it was just grandpa, you know, to us, it was Cork Civella, a real killer to them. It was just grandpa. So I always find that really kind of fascinating. You know, Nick Calabrese kind of starts out right on the, off the bat. He said, uh, prosecutor asked him about what happened. And he said, well, he said, I tackled Spilotroās brother, Michael, around the legs. And I heard Tony in the back ask if he could say a prayer.
[5:58]What happened next? The prosecutor said, you know, he said, I couldnāt, I didnāt hear anything anymore. You know, I, you know, you go into the action, everything else closes down. Iāve been there on that. You go into some kind of action, your hearing closes down. You donāt need your hearing more than likely. And you start taking the action. Youāre looking for any kind of a danger to you. The article I read said that he just spoke in a monotone, calmly, and just like, matter of fact, well, you know, we did this and we did that. Nick Calabrese had been a longtime hitman along with his brother Frank and his 26th Street crew. In the months before the Spilotros were killed, he had been part of a team of mob killers, some of these other guys who weāll name later on, that went out to Las Vegas trying to catch and kill Tony and Mike Spilotro out there. They were going to use explosives, and they even had a silencer-equipped Uzi, they said, followed him around, followed him to Goodmanās office and downtown, and back there where his home is, itās on a cul-de-sac. I tell you what, Iāve been there, itās in my, uh, Las Vegas mob tour on YouTube.
[7:08]It would be a hard one. It would be impossible to sit on. You can follow him in, but you couldnāt stay down in there. Thereād be no way. Somebody would be calling the police on you. I mean, thereās just nobody moving in and out of that neighborhood. And everybody parks their cars in the garage. Nobody parks on the street. So itās impossible to sit on that house. So the outfit acting on Joey Iupaās orders said, letās get them to come back to Chicago. So they came up with a ruse and said, Michael is going to be promoted. Heās going to be whistled in. Heās going to be a made guy and theyāre going to promote Tony to be a capo. Now, Calabrese testified that one of his fellow hitman, John Farracotta, said that Tony Spilotro supposedly was targeted because he had an affair with the wife of what they called a Chicago bookmaker, which has to be Frank Rosenthal. Which is kind of a no-no, but I donāt buy that you would do all this because he had an affair with Jerry. Supposedly, they put out the story that he was moving drugs with a motorcycle gang out there. You know, big no-no, donāt move drugs. I donāt really believe that.
[8:21]Iām not sure why. If we want to speculate, I would say that Tony Spilotro had just gotten too big for his britches out there and brought a lot of heat. I mean, a lot of heat, and it really wasnāt particularly him, although part of it was because of him, but that heat all started in Kansas City, and it started on FBI wiretaps, and it spun off to Chicago because Lefty Rosenthal was doing all this crazy stuff out there and bringing all kinds of attention to himself, which brings law enforcement attention to him. Tony Splatro was also bringing a lot of law enforcement attention when he started this hole in the wall gang, which brought the Chicago, the Metro intelligence unit to actually combine with the FBI for the first time ever and a little task force and work on the hole in the wall gang, which then turned Frank Cullotta. So itās, it was just a variety of things. It probably wasnāt either one of these two things.
[9:20]Calabrese talked about when he first was told that he was going to be part of this hit on Mike and Tony Spilotro, he told his brother, his older brother, Frank Singer, and Frank Singer said, well, why didnāt they ask me? I want to be there like a little kid. You know, why come? Iām not chosen for this team. Crazy. He ends up, heās not there. Iām not sure exactly why. But 83 or so, I think the the skim trials that started and Iupa and Jackie Cerrone and Angela LaPietra are going to prison as well as, you know, Tuffy DeLuna and Nickās Nick Civella had died. Cork Civella, Frank Balistrieri, John Scalise, Mashie Rockman, and Cleveland are all mob bosses. The whole skim thing was done and all that money that theyād been getting every month. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars between the trop and then all the four casinos that Alan Glick owned out there. The Stardust, the Hacienda, the Fremont, and God, I never remember the name of the other day. I had four casinos. They were skimming them out of that. That was going to Chicago. Chicago was divided up with Cleveland.
[10:38]Milwaukee and Kansas city Kansas city had the Trop covered 40 grand a month we recovered 80 grand when we took them off uh with the uh guy that was bringing the skim back and a regular guy named Caruso and had a junket that was going in and out of Kansas city to uh las Vegas so he you know had cover uh and he took 80 grand off of him that was two months skim so 40 grand a month out of the trop and and over a hundred thousand dollars maybe even a couple hundred depending on the month out of those other four casinos so it was a lot of money and and i think he felt like and we needed somebody to blame i would say and Spilotro you know he had drawn all this heat with the hole in the wall gang and Frank Cullotta was testifying by then but anyhow it was reported did later on that Aiuppa when he ordered the brotherās murder he said you know Iāve had enough of this and thereās.
[11:39]Been several people that have are bringing us down here and I donāt care how you do it just get him I want him done I want this done I want him out thatās when they they sent Nick Calabrese and some other some of these other guys out to Las Vegas kill him with explosives and the automatic weapons that didnāt work came back thatās when they scheme they hatched up this scheme to lure him to a meeting in a house in bensonville itās a suburb up in Chicago with this promise of mob promotion for tony and and you make Michael get āwhistled inā and break a lot of call he said you know he was asking about that and and he said you know they i donāt know if they call it made he said we just always called it being whistled in and that makes sense how letās click over. Tony and his brother get together. Theyāre back in Chicago. Tonyās always maintained a house in Chicago, and Michael lived there mostly and had a wife and family there. So June the 14th, 1983 or 86, June the 14th, 1986, they get together.
[12:46]Michael left. He told his wife that, you know, Iām going to this meeting. Iām not sure this doesnāt look good, but I donāt know. His wife will later testify that he said if he wasnāt back by nine oāclock, it was no good. it. Michael Spilotroās daughter also will testify that Michael told her he loved her at least 10 times before leaving on that fatal day, or should it be fateful day, fateful, fatal day. Both Tony Spilotro and Michael removed all their valuables and all their personal identification before they left. Now, I donāt know if thatās normal when youāre going to go to a meeting where youāre going to be made. I donāt particularly think it is. I donāt know. I I wouldnāt have showed up at that meeting. They said Tony Spilotro had a gun hidden on him, but he didnāt get a chance to get to it, apparently. Nick Calabrese will tell the court when heās testifying that he was told to wait at a shopping center on 22nd Street, just west of Illinois Highway 83 in DuPage County, and somebody will pick him up.
[13:51]Waiting with him were John Ferricotta and another capo, Jimmy LaPietra, Angelo LaPietraās son. Son i think and now the leader of the 26th street crew jimmy marcello who will be the really the next boss or as it probably was the boss at the time with Aiuppa in jail or on his way he picked him up in what calabrese called a fancy blue van one of these big uh navigator kind of vans early in the afternoon is a saturday afternoon they drove up to this bensonville subdivision uh went to irving park road and where all the homes looked alike all had uh you know these partial brick walls and then uh wood the rest of it bay windows in the front garage doing on two garages most of them have two car garages drove in the garage door was already up when they got there they just drove right in shut the garage door so nobody really might not even notice that blue van then what they do is they put the bodies in that blue van and back out and take off when He said when it got there, there was John Bananas DiFronzo, who will become the boss later on, Sam Wings Carlisi, who will have a short period of time at the boss, and Joe Ferriola is a longtime capo over in Chinatown and the 26th Street crew and has moved on up.
[15:09]He was the one who brought Harry Aleman in and schooled him and used him, and he was really the guy. If you wanted somebody killed, then you went to Joe Ferriola and he could get Harry Elman and some of the members of the Wild Buds to do that. There were this this Chicago outfit of the 70s and 80s that weāre talking about. This is the end of that really peak peak of the outfit. The final last straw, except I guess thereās still something going. And Calabrese will remark that Calabrese, that Wings Carlisi said he really got a good tan and.
[15:49]And then made some passing remark about when Nick Calabrese and John Farrakata were down in Phoenix recently.
[15:59]
The Execution of the Spilotro Brothers
[15:56]And heās Ferracotta had spent a lot of money when he was down there. Well, Calabrese will say that Ferracotta runs in the bathroom. And when he comes out, heās pale. He said, Calabrese testified. He said, I figure he thinks this is slow parties for him. And it wasnāt, he wasnāt marked for murder yet. Heād be killed about three months later because heās the one that bots the, uh, Uh, Spoletroās burial didnāt bury him deep enough and left before they really got buried really good. I think they got scared off. They thought somebody was coming. They all ran off at one dude, uh, taco. He had, uh, his wife, she ends up testifying against him. He has to call her to come and get him. About 30 minutes later, the Spoletroās get walking upstairs and Nick Calabrese says, you know, I remember hearing somebody talking, saying, hello, thereās a few guys upstairs. Some of them were downstairs. Most of them were upstairs because they wanted to then push these guys downstairs when he went down the basement. Itās one time he really showed a little bit of tension and a little bit of emotion on the stand. They report that he exhaled audibly like, Iām wound up because Iām tense. Iām focusing, totally focusing on what Iām going to do. Look around at the rest of the courtroom.
[17:11]Marcello had no reaction and just, you know, deadpan. He was sitting there and this is in the family secrets trial. Actually, I think I forgot to mention that. Most of you guys probably know that. First one down the stairs, Nick says, was Michael Spilotro. Then he stepped forward at Green and said, how you doing, Mike? Because I knew him, you know, and you say, oh, yeah, how you doing? And would step towards him. About that time, this dude named Marino and several others jumped on him. So Calabrese said, I dove and grabbed his legs.
[17:44]He said, I noticed there was Louie the Mooch Eboli who was there and he threw a rope around his neck was strangling. And he said he remembered only one thing before he kind of, you know, as far as his hearing went blank, he said, I heard Tony Spilotro say, can I say a prayer? And, and all the rest of the waiting men, men just bum rust. These brothers just swarmed them.
[18:04]Thereās nothing you could do when you got the weight of seven or eight men, even though youāre a tough guy yourself, you canāt do it. These guys are just as tough and many of them were bigger, swarmed them and kicked them and beat them and hit them with only with their fists.
[18:20]A lot of people said it was with some blunt instruments like, you know, axe handles or whatever, baseball bats or whatever kind of, you know, Hollywood thing you want to think of. But the coroner will say this blunt force trauma was from fists and feet and not from any instrument. And also thereās a rumor that they were found with dirt in their lungs that they were buried alive but the autopsy will show that their lungs are filled with blood from the beating so if they died from not being able to get air it was from all the blood that filled up their lungs from the internal damage that they were did as they beat them lotto brothers are dead you know and and they hope that their bodies will never be found as i said they didnāt bury them deep enough some farmer found them and kind of a uh you know itās sad commentary on their end but the these long-time catholic tony splatter even wanted to pray at the end the Chicago archdiocese ruled that they cannot be given a catholic funeral at saint Bernardine in forest park because of their organized crime connections so they had a private service and a cemetery chapel it was located at the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillsdale, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Itās on June the 27th.
[19:36]Really not that long after they were killed and they were buried in the family plot up there. They had a wake at Salernoās Galewood Chapel on North Harlem Avenue. And three of the killers, Joe Ferriola, Marino. God, I canāt remember his last first name. Let me know what his first name is. Marino. I should have looked it up. And Rocky InFelice all showed up at the wake.
[20:04]
Reflection on the Spilotro Murders
[20:01]So I once attended a mob associates funeral. And this guy one guy showed up and i thought uh-oh uh-oh one made guy showed up at this funeral who would have been the kind of guy that would would probably maybe orchestrated this thing he didnāt do it himself but i bet he he orchestrated it uh i have to tell that story someday i did so much on jimmy Duardi, i donāt remember iāve got an old podcast on jimmy Duardi one of our a made guy who was a real old-time mobster but anyhow so thatās the story of the murder of the splatter brothers tony and Michael and who did it and what went down right from the mouth of a man who did it nick calabrese uncle to frank calabrese jr.
[20:50]Who i have a story about in my book so donāt forget my book windy city mafia the chicago outfit stories from gangland wire podcast. Iām gonna do more of these iāll look up some more chicago stories that i think interesting and havenāt been told and retold a jillion times and iām gonna do one on new york and iām gonna do one on kansas city and so iām just gonna kind of keep doing these all along as i have time to uh to do them itās just kind of kind of fun for me too, and gives me another, uh, another stream of income. So if you guys will go whole bunch of you go buy this book, why, uh, it will help immensely. So thanks a lot, guys. Uh, donāt forget. I like to ride motorcycles and you know, all the rest of it. You got problems with drugs or alcohol or PTSD.
[21:33]Thereās, thereās help available. If youāre a veteran, go to the VA and Anthony Ruggiano, former Gambino, uh, proposed member. Iāve been told not really a made guy. Um, they got, they got help for you out there. Iāve got other books, some other book, the Amazon site, and thatās the one about the skimming from Las Vegas from the Kansas City viewpoint and all the wiretaps that they used. You get the Kindle version. You can click on the transcripts that are used inside the book and hear the actual wiretaps. And Iāve got the two movies that are out there for I think is a dollar ninety nine rental gangland wire, which tells about the starting of the skim investigation and the whole big to do that really got the FBI into it. And then brothers against brothers, the Savella Sparrow war, which was about right on the heels of the start of the skimming investigation and all the wiretaps. Then this little war between some upstart young Turks, last name of Sparrow, broke out. And we all pulled out of that, let the FBI, all they did then was sit on the wiretaps. And we all went into in the middle of this war, really. So we about got caught up a couple of times right in the middle of it. So anyhow, thanks a lot, guys.