The second of a two-part authorized excerpt from Tribune reporter Jeff Coen’s Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob. (Part one.)
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By Jeff Coen
In Oak Park, Michael Spilotro had been getting ready for what supposedly was his making day, but there were signs that the brothers weren’t simply blindly heading for their doom. With the recent troubles they were certainly suspicious, but not answering such a request for their appearances was not an option. Michael was worried enough to give his daughter his jewelry in a plastic sandwich bad and ask for her to bring it to a graduation party they were to attend that night. He told his wife he would meet her after his business was finished, but if he wasn’t there by 9:00, she should assume that something was very wrong.

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Posted on April 30, 2009

The first of a two-part authorized excerpt from Tribune reporter Jeff Coen’s Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.
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By Jeff Coen
The story of Anthony “the Ant” Spilotro is hardly unknown. Like Joey Lombardo, Spilotro rose to become a crime boss from humble beginnings in the old West Side neighborhood, one of six children born to his immigrant parents. He dropped out of Chicago’s Steinmetz High School and turned to crime early on, taking up with local theft rings and getting noticed by the neighborhood’s Outfit leaders. He would be placed in charge of a significant bookmaking operation and work in Irwin Weiner’s bail bonding business. His reputation for brutality dated to the early 1960s, when he would be connected to what became known as the “M&M murders,” so named for victims Billy McCarthy and Jimmy Miraglia, two members of a burglary crew believed to have taken part in an unauthorized murder. When McCarthy was too slow in providing information about the killing and who was involved, Spilotro resorted to putting his head in a vise until one of his eyes popped out.
Spilotro would go on to become a trusted associate of Joey Aiuppa and Lombardo, sent to Las Vegas in the early 1970s to be the guy on the ground who ensured that the Chicago mob’s will was done there. Once he was installed, local authorities famoulsy noticed a spike in gangland killings, and Spilotro started his own burglary ring, know as the “Hole in the Wall Gang” for its favorite tactic to avoid alarm systems while stealing jewelry. He was accused but never convicted of employing a team of thieves that included the likes of Sal Romano, Frank Cullotta, and feared hit man “Crazy Larry” Neumann.
Some members of Spilotro’s family still say that his reputation is overblown and that he wasn’t the criminal he has been made out to be, but his Las Vegas exploits were immortalized in the 1995 film Casino, where Joe Pesci played a character named Nicky Santoro, who was based on Spilotro.

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Posted on April 29, 2009

By Beachwood Books
In advance of a two-part authorized excerpt – starting Wednesday – about the mob murders of fellow Outfit men Tony and Michael Spilotro from Tribune reporter Jeff Coen’s Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled The Chicago Mob, we’ve taken a look through a host of other books in the mob pantheon to see what others had to say about how the Spilotros got to where they did – before they got to be too much for Outfit elders to take.
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Casino/Nicholas Pileggi:
Tony “the Ant” Spilotro grew up in a two-story wooden gray bungalow in an Italian neighborhood just a few blocks from Lefty [Rosenthal’s] home. Tony and his five brothers – Vincent, Victor, Patrick, Johnny, and Michael – slept in one room in three sets of bunk beds.
Tony’s father, Patsy, owned Patsy’s Restaurant at the corner of Grand and Ogden Avenues. It was a small place famous for homemade meatballs that attracted customers from all over town, including Outfit guys like Tony Accardo, Paul “the Waiter” Ricca, Sam Giancana, Gussie Alex, and Jackie Cerone. Patsy’s parking lot was often used for mob meetings.
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Tony said he never saw anybody as tough as Billy McCarthy.
“Finally, Tony said he dragged Billy over to a workbench and put his head in a vise and he started screwing it tighter and tighter,” [said Frank Cullotta.]
“He said while Phil [Alderisio] and Chuckie [Nicoletti] watched, he kept tightening the vise until Billy’s head began to squish together and one of his eyes popped out. Tony said that’s when Billy gave up Jimmy Miraglia’s name.
“Tony really sounded like he was very proud of what he accomplished that night. It seems as thought it was the first time he had ever killed anyone. It was like he made his bones. That’s the way it appeared to me at the time. Like he was recognized now that he participated in a mob hit. I remember he was really impressed with Chuckie Nicoletti.
“‘Boy this is a heartless guy,’ Tony said about Chuckie. ‘This guy was eating pasta when Billy’s eye popped out.'”

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Posted on April 28, 2009

By The Beachwood Relevant Books Affairs Desk
A few excerpts from Christopher Shaw’s Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, and then an Olympic bookshelf.
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Gleaned from Shaw: It’s always about real estate. There is always overspending. The pitch is always about your city being considered “world-class.” The promised jobs, tourism and legacy rarely materialize.
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“The IOC and the local Games organizers were selling dreams, not facts. Games critics – academics and investigative journalists – labored mightily to provide a solid base of countervailing facts and figures but were simply incapable of disconnecting the Olympic dreams in the minds of most of the citizenry from Olympic realities on the ground. Much of the public simply didn’t seem to care that facts didn’t match the glowing expectations and promises. It was simply surreal, as if there were two parallel Olympic worlds that never coincided. Indeed, there were very different worlds, not in the sense of geography, but rather as rhetorical domains: The dominant one belonged to the IOC and its coterie of camp followers, the bid cities’ Games organizers, a compliant media, politicians of all stripes and, not least, the special business interests with the most to gain. In due course, the latter would literally own terrain, but to get there they needed to piggyback on the IOC’s ownership of something more fundamental: the ‘frame’.”

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Posted on April 23, 2009

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Posted on April 7, 2009

By Open Books
When was the last time you were able to sit down for more than a couple of minutes to enjoy a good book?
Open Books, Chicago’s non-profit literacy organization, wants to remind you of the joy of reading and will open its doors on Monday, April 13th to observe . . .
National Drop Everything and Read Day

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Posted on April 3, 2009