Thug, thief, killer, but now the man who may put key mob figures away
LAS VEGAS | Cullotta to testify about his inside knowledge of the mob
Once, Frank Cullotta was a thug, a thief and a killer. Now, the 68-year grandfather says: "I've changed."
"I probably couldn't kill a fly now, really," the mob hit man-turned government witness said in an interview in Las Vegas.
Cullotta is expected to make a rare trip home to Chicago to testify in the Operation Family Secrets trial that got under way Tuesday.
(Courtesy/Dennis Griffin)
Cullotta was a criminal and mob associate from the mid 1950s until 1982. He admits committing more than 300 burglaries, 200 thefts, 25 arsons -- and two murders.
One killing, he said, was carried out with a car bomb, the other with a .22-caliber pistol. In 1979, he said, he shot Las Vegas hood-turned-government witness Jerry Lisner in the head. Ten times.
Cullotta said he also led two friends to their deaths. "I mean, friends kill friends," he said.
Born in 1938 in "The Patch" on Chicago's Near West Side, Cullotta still carries the thick accent of his old neighborhood and the dress code, which today includes a black, collarless suit jacket over black-and-gray Hawaiian shirt, with highly polished, black dress shoes.
His father, Joe Cullotta, was a thief and mob wheelman who was killed in a police chase in the 1940s.
"I just felt like he was the model I wanted to follow," Cullotta said.
He met future Las Vegas mob boss Tony "The Ant" Spilotro on Grand Avenue when they were teens. "He was shining shoes on one side of the street, and I was shining on the other.
"He said: 'If you are here tomorrow, I'm going to break your neck.' I said: 'I'll be back.' "
The young toughs became fast friends. By 16, Cullotta was sticking up bars and bank messengers.
In 1962, Cullotta's allegiance to Spilotro and the mob was tested. When two members of his burglary crew did an unauthorized hit, Cullotta was ordered by Spilotro to deliver his friends to their deaths. Billy McCarthy was the first to die.
The other friend, Jimmy Miraglia, was killed a few days later.
"It bothered me for a long time," Cullotta said. "But you know you live in that world, and you say, you know, if I don't give 'em up, I'm going, too."
By the early 1970s, Spilotro was the Outfit's guy in Las Vegas. In 1979, Cullotta moved west to be The Ant's muscle and, for years, "a good friend," Cullotta said.
But in 1982, after a botched robbery, the FBI told Cullotta Spilotro had ordered a hit on him. Cullotta entered witness protection.
In 1983, then-State's Attorney Richard Daley announced Spilotro's indictment for the murders of McCarthy and Miraglia and said Cullotta helped break the case.
But in a bench trial, Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas J. Maloney ruled the evidence was weak and freed Spilotro. Years later, Maloney was revealed to be one of the mob's judges and was convicted in 1993 of taking bribes to fix three other murder cases. Now 82, he remains in federal prison.
In June 1986, Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael were savagely beaten, then buried alive in an Indiana cornfield. Their murders are central to the Family Secrets trial.
Two weeks ago, Cullotta was signing autographs at a reception at the Nevada State Museum, hugging people who'd bought his new book -- Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness, written by Dennis Griffin.
Lombardo's attorney, Rick Halprin, calls the book "just a cheap, trashy book full of stories which he knows are not true."
Today, Cullotta lives in an undisclosed location with a new identity. Among other things, he is a technical adviser to a Las Vegas business that offers bus tours of old mob hangouts. In 1995, he was technical adviser to the mob film "Casino" and had a bit part -- as a hit man.
But he said his best role is survivor.
"They tried to kill me. I wasn't going to become part of the list of guys that were all murdered by their friends. I was a little smarter than them."