The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs. The Mob (5 page)

This was the Las Vegas that Tony Spilotro came to in 1971. It was a booming action-packed town, with tourists pouring in by the plane and carload. Honest visitors and locals enjoyed the ample sunshine, ate well, did a little gambling, and watched some of the best entertainers on the planet perform, all at reasonable prices.

Those who weren’t so honest, however, found other ways to occupy their time and made plenty of money doing it.

5

The Spilotro Era Begins

S
oon after settling into town with his wife Nancy and son Vincent, Tony Spilotro made his debut as a businessman. His first venture was opening a jewelry and gift shop at the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino. Using his wife’s maiden name in order to prevent drawing attention to himself, Tony did business as Anthony Stuart, Ltd. Concessions in major casinos were generally hard to come by, especially for people with known ties to organized crime. According to Nevada gaming regulations, any casino doing business with such people could lose its license. Nevertheless, Circus Circus owner Jay Sarno chose to ignore the rules and let the mob-connected Spilotro open his shop. The fact that Sarno had obtained around $20 million in Teamster loans may very well have influenced his decision.

However, using the Stuart name didn’t shield Tony’s presence from local FBI agents. Their Chicago counterparts had alerted them to the move the moment the Spilotros set out for Vegas. Still, even though Tony was a suspect in multiple murders in Chicago, agents anticipated that his role in Las Vegas would be merely that of a gofer for Rosenthal and his cronies. This was based on the belief that the various crime families with interests in Las Vegas casinos wanted to make money. For them to do so, their operations would have to maintain a low profile. Therefore, agents assumed, Tony wouldn’t do anything to make waves. They were wrong.

Loansharking

Right from the start, Tony had things on his mind other than cashiering in his own store. Las Vegas was a 24-hour town, growing larger by the day. Many of the residents and new arrivals took jobs in the hotels and casinos as maids, valets, cleaners, food servers, and dealers. Most were paid low wages and relied heavily on tips to supplement their income. Sometimes their money didn’t quite stretch to the next paycheck. These circumstances created a golden opportunity for someone who had money to lend and the ability to make sure he got it back. It was an ideal situation for an experienced loanshark like Spilotro.

Unfortunately, someone was already running loansharking operations in Las Vegas. His name was Gaspare Anedetto Speciale, known as Jasper to his customers, the police, and the FBI. He came to Vegas by way of New York and was with New York City crime boss Joe Columbo when Columbo was murdered in 1971. Mobsters visiting Sin City routinely sought an audience with Jasper and reportedly went through the ritual of kissing him on both cheeks when they met.

In deference to Jasper’s connections, Tony didn’t immediately try to displace him. On the contrary, “Tony kissed Jasper’s ass when he first came to town, just like everybody else,” as stated by retired FBI agent Michael Simon in a 1983
Los Angeles Times
article. All the while, though, Spilotro bided his time, taking a share of the loansharking business without stepping on Jasper’s toes. His restraint was rewarded a few years later; when Jasper went to prison in 1976 on a federal racketeering conviction, Tony emerged as the undisputed king of Las Vegas loansharks. In this case, he accomplished his rise the way Chicago preferred, without bloodshed or publicity.

A Murder Indictment Goes Away

In August 1972, Tony’s efforts to establish himself in Vegas were interrupted by an incident from his past in Chicago: He was indicted for the 1963 murder of Leo Foreman. News of the indictment reached the Clark County Sheriff’s Department when Sgt. Charles Lee, a former Chicago cop now working in Las Vegas, received a call from a Chicago homicide detective he knew. The detective told Lee about the indictment and that two Chicago detectives were flying to Vegas that night to arrest Spilotro. They wanted a couple of local officers to go along as backup. No problem there. It was what came next that Lee found chilling.

The Chicago cop warned Lee to be careful about whom he shared the information with. According to snitches in the Windy City, someone in Lee’s department was on the Outfit’s payroll.

Sergeant Lee broke the news to his boss and they put a plan in place to uncover the alleged rogue cop after Spilotro’s arrest. Tony was taken into custody without incident and booked into the jail. After he was processed and taken to his cell, a covert surveillance of the jail began.

It wasn’t long before John DeMoss, a 32-year-old officer with the Organized Crime and Homicide Unit, signed into the jail with his niece. He explained that he wanted to give the girl a tour of the facility. Once inside, he stopped at Tony’s cell and spoke with the inmate. Afterward, he contacted an attorney for Tony, delivered a message from Rosenthal to Spilotro, and began making arrangements for bail. When confronted with his suspicious activity by his superiors, DeMoss opted to resign rather than undergo disciplinary proceedings. He wasn’t unemployed for long, though. Almost immediately he was hired as a supervisor at the Rosenthal-managed Stardust. The ex-cop was later named as a suspect in gangland killings in Nevada and California, but was never arrested.

Even without DeMoss’ help, Tony did okay. He was released from jail on $10,000 bail and, starting in September, shuttled back and forth between Chicago and Las Vegas. The arrangement allowed him to participate in trial preparation while continuing to take care of his Vegas interests.

“Scared to Death”

But there was a major concern for Tony regarding the Foreman trial: Sam DeStefano, his co-defendant along with Sam’s brother Mario, was planning to act as his own attorney. Even worse, Mad Sam had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Rumor had it that he was contemplating making a deal with prosecutors to avoid dying in prison. There was no doubt that any such arrangement would require Sam to give up the Ant and Mario. Tony’s lawyer tried to get the cases severed, but failed.

With the legal system uncooperative, Tony went a different route. He took his pleadings to Tony Accardo. Five weeks before the trial, a person or persons unknown fired two shotgun blasts into Mad Sam’s chest. In June 1973, Tony was acquitted of the Foreman charges. He was off the hook in Chicago for the time being, but the trial and the circumstances surrounding it had served the undesirable purpose of bringing Tony into the law-enforcement spotlight.

A 1974 study by the
Los Angeles Times
found that in the three years Tony had been in Vegas, more gangland-style murders had been committed there than in the previous 25 years combined. A casino executive and his wife were gunned down in front of their home. Another casino executive was murdered in a parking lot. A prominent lawyer was blown up in his Cadillac. A loanshark victim went missing and another casino boss was beaten and crippled for life. It didn’t matter whether or not Spilotro was responsible for the violence. People, including the cops, believed he was, and as his reputation for viciousness grew, so did his boldness.

“Everybody on the Strip is scared to death of the little bastard. He struts in and out of the joints like Little Caesar,” the
Los Angeles Times
quotes one casino owner as saying at the time. The same piece also quotes a store owner who first met Spilotro when Tony stopped in to buy clothes for his son. “When he came in the store the first time, you almost wanted to pat him on the head, until you looked into his eyes.” Tony’s eyes, described as pale blue and reptilian, looked through people, not at them. Many who dealt with Tony, including law-enforcement personnel, agreed you could find death in those eyes.

Another Witness Dies

Spilotro’s fast rise as a force to be reckoned with in Vegas was interrupted again in 1974, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago. This time he was one of six defendants charged with defrauding the Central States Teamsters Pension Fund of $1.4 million. Among his co-defendants were Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo, one of Tony’s superiors in the Chicago Outfit, and Allen Dorfman, believed to be a catalyst in arranging financial transactions between the Teamsters and organized crime. Dorfman had been convicted in a Teamster kickback case a few years earlier.

The government’s scenario was complex, involving several companies and thousands of bookkeeping records. It could be a difficult case to get across to a jury. But the feds had an ace up their sleeve. The operator of one of the companies used to siphon money from the pension fund was cooperating. Prosecutors believed that their key witness, 29-year-old Dan Seifert, a Chicago businessman, would be able to walk the jurors through the maze of transactions in a manner they would be able to understand. If the prosecution proved successful, Tony and his pals would be off the streets for a long time.

In September 1974, three months before the trial was scheduled to begin, Seifert, his wife, and their four-year-old son stopped by Seifert’s plastics factory early on a Friday morning. Four armed men wearing ski masks materialized and chased Seifert through the plant. They caught and killed the young husband and father with a shotgun blast to the head.

Seifert’s murder had a chilling effect on the other witnesses. When the trial began, they crumbled on the stand as Tony’s eyes bored into them. Spilotro was soon dropped from the case. All five of the other defendants were subsequently acquitted. Being an important witness in any case against Tony Spilotro was turning out to be extremely hazardous.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas and California, three more people met suspicious and untimely demises. Many suspected the murders were either carried out at Tony’s behest or by the mobster himself. Spilotro was even charged in one of the homicides.

William Klim

On June 23, 1973, William “Red” Klim, a Caesars Palace employee, was shot and killed gangland style in the parking lot of the Churchill Downs Race Book. There were multiple theories regarding scenarios as to the motive for Klim’s murder. One held that the deceased was cooperating with authorities in an investigation of illegal bookmaking that targeted Lefty Rosenthal. Another suggested that the dead man had information pertaining to Spilotro’s implication in a fraud against the Teamsters Pension Fund. Yet another designated Klim as a loanshark who refused to pay the Ant a tribute. All three theories involved Tony either directly or as Rosenthal’s protector.

Although Spilotro was charged with Klim’s murder the following year, the case against him fell apart when witnesses were unable or unwilling to positively identify the killer.

Marty Buccieri

Marty Buccieri was a pit boss at Caesars Palace and a distant relative of Chicago underboss Fiori “Fifi” Buccieri. He reportedly had connections to most of the Vegas crime figures worth knowing and had used those connections to facilitate the granting of a number of Teamster Pension Fund loans to Allen Glick, CEO of Argent (Allen R. Glick Enterprises), the Outfit-installed owner of the Stardust, Hacienda, Fremont, and Marina casinos. In the summer of 1975, law-enforcement sources learned that Buccieri had approached Glick and demanded a $30,000 finder’s fee for his help in obtaining the loans. At one point he’s said to have physically threatened Glick. The Argent boss then informed Lefty Rosenthal—the behind-the-scenes power of the operation—of the incident.

A few days later, Buccieri was found shot to death. The law immediately suspected that Tony Spilotro was involved. Others in the know disagreed, citing the use of a 25-caliber weapon, rather than the .22 that was supposedly a Spilotro trademark. Regardless of the identity of the perpetrator, though, it’s logical to conclude that Glick was a dangerous man to argue with or threaten.

Tamara Rand

Tamara Rand was an erstwhile friend and business partner of Allen Glick. She invested heavily in his Vegas casinos and, in spite of having no gaming experience, had signed a contract as a consultant at the Hacienda for $100,000 per year. Rand believed that through investments she had purchased five percent of Glick’s casinos, so when Glick denied such a deal, she filed suit against him for breach of contract and fraud. A court trial could have blown the lid off the mob’s hidden interests in the Las Vegas casinos. Consequently, on November 9, 1975, just days after a bitter argument between her and Glick, Tamara Rand was murdered at her home in San Diego.

Unlike the gun that killed Buccieri, the murder weapon in Rand’s case was a .22, the reputed weapon of choice of Spilotro and his associates. Although Tony was a prime suspect in the Rand killing, there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the murder. One report even circulated that Tony had a solid alibi for the day in question. According to that story, while Rand was being rubbed out in San Diego, Tony was in Las Vegas chatting with an FBI agent who, for unknown reasons, had flown in from Chicago for a visit.

But former law-enforcement officers familiar with the Rand case and the Spilotro investigations don’t recall Tony being cleared because of any such visit. They consider the report to be “dubious,” and maintain that Spilotro was never taken off the table as a suspect.

At any rate, Tony gradually faded from the headlines in the Rand murder. That wasn’t the case for Allen Glick, however. The relationship that had existed between Glick and the victim created a firestorm of speculation and media interest. By Thanksgiving, Glick was forced to issue a statement. He not only denied any involvement in the Rand murder, but also proclaimed that Argent had no connection to organized crime. Many in Las Vegas and law-enforcement circles found the latter contention to be absurd. Spilotro even got back in on the act by stating through his lawyer that he had absolutely no connection to Argent. Those in a position to know also greeted this declaration with great skepticism.

Around the time of the Buccieri and Rand murders, additional information about Allen Glick’s activities began to surface from an unexpected source.

Newport Beach

In the 1970s, Bob Gatewood was a sergeant working with the police department in Newport Beach, California. He was assigned to the Organized Crime Unit. One day in 1973, he received a phone call from a friend, a Marine he’d met while undergoing SWAT training at Camp Pendleton. They’d become close and socialized together with their families.