Battle of Thieves?

Friends of ours: Frank Cullotta, Tony Spilotro
Friends of mine: William "Slick" Hanner, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal

Since 1995, George Knapp has been the chief reporter on the Las Vegas Channel 8's I-Team investigative unit. In that capacity, he has earned two regional Edward R. Murrow awards and a national Edward R. Murrow award for his investigative stories on the voter registration fraud in the Clark County election of 2004. Knapp has won eleven Emmy Awards. Seven were for his "Street Talk" commentaries and one was for an investigative story. Seven times, he has won the Mark Twain Award for best news writing from the Associated Press. Recently Knapp ran a series (Part 1 and Part 2) that covered his interview with Frank Cullotta, a former thief/mob hitman who turned government informant.

Slick Hanner has shared with me an email that he has sent to Knapp in which he challenges the credibility of Cullotta. In addition to providing examples, Hanner proposes a sitdown in which Knapp moderates a discussion between the Cullotta and Hanner as a "Battle of Thieves". It is a compelling idea and one that I hope that Knapp embraces. Below you will find Hanner's email to Knapp. Feel free to pass along your thoughts on this to both myself and directly to Knapp.

Dear Mr. Knapp,

The last couple of nights I watched your show on Frank Cullotta with my mouth open in disbelief. This guy is trying to whitewash every lousy thing he did. I admit to being a thief all my life. But I was an honorable thief, meaning I never snitched on my friends or turned states evidence against anyone. You will see that I'm telling the truth when you read my life story in my newly released non-fiction book, Thief! The Gutsy, True Story of an Ex-Con Artist (Barricade Books.) In the book, I reveal my life of crime with the mob, prostitution and gambling when I lived in Chicago (Outfit headquarters,) Miami and Las Vegas. And I hold nothing back about what kind of a guy I was. I wrote THIEF to straighten out the public on Cullotta and Rosenthal's lies (Pileggi's main informants) in the book Casino.

Cullotta was the worst kind of thief. He thought nothing of betraying his friends and even turned on his brother in order to save his own neck. Now he's on your program telling so many lies, which I will be happy to refute.

For instance, Cullotta said Tony Spilotro brought him to Las Vegas to be in his Hole in the Wall Gang. But the truth is that Cullotta came to town as a pimp for his girlfriend, Debbie, who worked at the Dunes. Then Cullotta hooked up with his boyhood friend, Tony Spilotro, and asked Tony if he could bring his own burglary crew to Las Vegas. Tony said yes as long as he got a piece of Cullotta's action.

Mr. Knapp, this is only one example but there's much more. I can recite chapter and verse on the truth about Frank Cullotta. I also have a friend who is willing to step forward with more evidence of Cullotta's lies, and he was in a position to know. Together, we have an arsenal of information that has never come out previously. Should you want more information from me or care to have me on your show, I will be happy to give names, places, dates, etc., as would my friend.

Why would I even bother to do this? Cullotta makes the Hole in the Wall Gang seem like Robin and his merry men, just a bunch of innocent pranksters. What a joke! Let's get some facts on the table. Maybe you could have me and Cullotta on your show together in a "battle of the thieves?"

William "Slick" Hanner

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Is a Mob Hitman Revealing Family Secrets?

Friends of ours: Frank Cullotta, Tony Spilotro, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo
Friends of mine: Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal

The Mafia bosses who once controlled Las Vegas are long gone, but their ghosts are about to be resurrected. Federal prosecutors in Chicago are working on one of the largest, and perhaps last, trials of organized crime kingpins in America, targeting some of the men who pulled the strings in Las Vegas during the darkest days of mob influence in the city.

At least 18 unsolved gangland murders could finally be solved. One former Las Vegas mobster says he's ready to tell the court what he knows about those crimes. Frank Cullotta has been in hiding for 25 years but he surfaced long enough to give an exclusive interview to the I-Team's George Knapp. (Part 1)

George Knapp: "Do you think of yourself as a hitman?"

Frank Cullotta: "Not really. I guess if you kill one person you're a hitman. I don't think of myself as a hitman."

But hitman or not, Frank Cullotta did kill people on orders from the mob. He murdered a man named Jerry Lisner in this house on Rawhide and left the body in the swimming pool. Cullotta won't say how many others he may have killed, but it's more than just Lisner.

When things began to unravel for the mob in Las Vegas, everyone was expendable, even the other members of the Hole in the Wall Gang, like Ernie Devino and Joe Blasko, both of who were slated for death. And the boss himself, tough Tony Spilotro, who was beaten to death in front of his brother Michael and then both were dumped in a cornfield. Even though Spilotro okayed a hit on his pal Cullotta, Cullotta still winces when he thinks of the brutal way Spilotro died.

Frank Cullotta said, "I know that Tony was a violent person himself and that he killed a lot of people and hurt a lot of people, but I grew up with this guy. I just don't think if I had to kill him, I could kill him that way. I'da just shot him."

The murder of the Spilotro brothers is one of the charges now facing 14 Mafia figures in Chicago, including longtime mob kingpin Joey The Clown Lombardo, the boss to whom Spilotro reported. Cullotta thinks Lombardo had to okay the Spilotro murders, as well as the murder of the mobster who botched the burial of the bodies. He's pretty sure a Mafia soldier named Al Tocco was also in on the hit and that the upcoming trial just might be the end of the line for the Chicago mob.

Frank Cullotta said, "I would think it's the end. I don't think it will ever be as strong or as organized as it was."

What about certain Las Vegas mysteries? Who tried to kill Frank Lefty Rosenthal by planting a bomb under his car on Sahara Avenue?

Contrary to law enforcement suspicions, Cullotta says it wasn't Spilotro for the simple reason that if Tough Tony had done it, Lefty wouldn't have escaped. What about their former lawyer, now Mayor Oscar Goodman? Might he have anything to fear from a tell-all book by Cullotta? Did he ever cross the line?

Cullotta said, "Nah, he's just got a big mouth. I got nothing to say about him. He's got the right job. He likes everyone to see him and hear him."

For the record, the mayor is no fan of Cullotta's either and says the former gangster is a notorious liar. Former strike force prosecutor Don Campbell who helped turn Cullotta from killer to witness says Cullotta's testimony was critical in the conviction of numerous mob figures, but he scoffs at Cullotta's suggestion that the Hole in the Wall members were modern Robin Hoods who only stole from other crooks.

Don Campbell, former federal prosecutor, said, "Like hell. They were absolute scum of the earth. They would turn on anyone. Themselves. They would rob their own mother. They were despicable human beings."

Cullotta says he's a much different person since going straight. He owns a business in an undisclosed town and says some of his new neighbors have figured out who he is from seeing old TV footage.

Cullotta said, "They know I'm a changed guy. I live a legitimate life. I don't harm nobody. They don't feel uncomfortable around me. As a matter of fact, they feel protected. Don't ask me why."

Cullotta's tell-all book is slated for release in late April. The Chicago mob trial is expected to begin in May.

Thanks to George Knapp

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Sequel for The Departed?

Screenwriter William Monahan is working on a treatment for a sequel to The Departed, reports Variety, and he's even passed the notion by the director of the first film, Martin Scorsese.

Without getting too spoilery, anyone who has seen Warner Bros.' The Departed might wonder how a sequel to the Oscar-nominated crime drama could even be possible judging by how things end up in the picture. But then again, the film is based on the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs, which of course went on to spawn two follow-ups.

Mark Wahlberg, who co-stars in the film, recently said that he may be back for a sequel, and that Robert De Niro was in talks to appear in the picture as well -- if it were to happen. Of course, as Variety points out, there's no sign that Scorsese would return for a Departed 2 or that Warner Bros. would even want to produce the sequel.

The Hollywood Reporter, however, claims that "Scorsese would need to approve any take before development was to move forward. A prequel is not being ruled out, either." THR also adds that Warners' deal had option rights to the two Infernal Affairs sequels, but that it is uncertain how the next Departed film might figure into that since Monahan could be fashioning an original tale.

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Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia

Joseph P. Macheca served as a street warrior for the intensely corrupt New Orleans Democratic machine, as a pioneer of the Crescent City’s fruit trade, as a Confederate privateer in the Gulf and, according to legend, as the “godfather” of the first Mafia organization to germinate in American soil.

Macheca lives on in New Orleans legend as the criminal overlord whose 1891 lynching death atoned for the assassination of city Police Chief David C. Hennessy. However, Macheca’s death was less a spontaneous lynching than a cold-blooded murder. The gang leader's old political and underworld allies sacrificed him so their own roles in local intrigues might not be discovered and so they could assume control of his assets.

Deep Water is the historical biography of Joseph P. Macheca. It establishes the factual details of Macheca’s epic life story and sets them against the vivid backdrop of Gilded Age New Orleans.

This biography of Joseph Macheca—merchant, smuggler, Mafia “godfather”—documents the early New Orleans underworld, explains Police Chief Hennessy’s assassination and the largest American lynching.

Set in the Gilded Age of New Orleans, the historical biography Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia establishes the factual details of Macheca’s epic life story, the assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy and the Crescent City lynchings.

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Hitman Could be Key Operation Family Secrets Witness

Friends of ours: Frank Cullotta, Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo

One of the largest Mafia trials in American history is slated to begin in Chicago in May, and a key witness could be a former killer and thief who roamed Las Vegas during the heyday of the local mob.

His name is Frank Cullotta. He's been in hiding since the early '80s but agreed to meet with the I-Team's George Knapp to talk about the bad old days and about the secrets he's ready to spill.

The I-Team first interviewed Frank Cullotta on camera five years ago. At the time, he said he was working on a book about his life of crime. The book is just about complete, and with the trial of the Chicago Mafia just around the corner, the I-Team located Cullotta again, even though he still lives under an assumed name, still lives in a place that can't be revealed, and still has people who want him dead.

George Knapp: "If it had happened in the old days?"

Frank Cullotta: "I'da went there and killed everybody in the hospital and that is a fact."

There's still a bit of the old Frank Cullotta tucked way down inside the new version. He's been on the run from his former mob associates for more than 20 years, but he still slips in and out of Las Vegas from time to time, most recently to visit the grave of his teenage granddaughter, who's death last year Cullotta blames on St. Rose hospital. Lucky for them Cullotta is out of the life.

Frank Cullotta: "I do miss them days but I'm glad I'm in this situation and not in that situation."

George Knapp: "If you'd stayed in that life?"

Frank Cullotta: "I'da been dead or in prison. One of the two. Take your choice."

Death and prison are the dual fates that most of his former Las Vegas associates met. The I-Team arranged to meet Cullotta in a West Coast city to talk about the book he's written and about the upcoming Mafia trial in Chicago.

He won't say where he lives or what name he uses, even though he left the witness protection program years ago after giving testimony that helped put more than a dozen higher ranking mobsters behind bars. He's had three phony names and more addresses than he can count.

Frank Cullotta: "I lived in the south for quite a while. I went as far as Biloxi, Mississippi, Gulfport, Texas, Virginia. All over the place."

George Knapp: "You must have stuck out like a sore thumb?"

Frank Cullotta: "Terrible. Terrible, especially Texas. This is the way I sound. They knew right away I didn't belong there. As soon as I was off parole, I was outta there."

But he stays in touch with the FBI and has been interviewed twice about the Chicago trial, where 14 alleged Mafia figures will be tried for 18 gangland murders, including the slaying of Cullotta's boyhood friend and former tough boss Tony Spilotro, the reputed rackets boss of Las Vegas.

Cullotta followed Spilotro to Las Vegas along with other members of what came to be known as the Hole in the Wall Gang. These men helped Spilotro protect the flow of money skimmed from mob-tainted casinos, but then branched out into other enterprises -- arson for hire, strong arming bookies and drug dealers, and burglaries accomplished by cutting holes in walls to bypass alarms, which inspired a nickname Cullotta hates to this day.

Cullotta said, "Everybody was knocking holes in the wall. You get a rap for every one with a hole in the wall. They had us doing a million places. Half of them scores we didn't do."

But they did their share. When federal and local lawmen turned up the heat, catching the gang in the act of a million dollar burglary, things fell apart. In his book, Cullotta reveals for the first time there was a plan to murder fellow gang member Ernie Davino to keep him from talking. Also on the hit list was former cop turned gangster Joe Blasko, for the same reason.

Cullotta personally carried out a hit on a mobster wannabe named Jerry Lisner and testified it was under orders from Tony Spilotro. And then, facing life behind bars himself, Cullotta learned that his name was on the list. The FBI played him tapes of Spilotro speaking to mob boss Joey Lombardo in Chicago.

Cullotta said, "And Joey told him in so many words, you gotta clean your laundry, because Joey asked him, what the hell is going on out there?"

George Knapp: "You were the laundry?"

Frank Cullotta: "Absolutely."

Cullotta says that if he testifies in the Chicago trial it won't be about specific murders, but rather about the mob hierarchy. He feels certain that Lombardo, who was Spilotro's boss, would have had to sign off on the 1986 murder of Spilotro and his brother Michael, whose bodies were buried in an Indiana cornfield. Cullotta is cagey about how many people he's killed himself but says his book, due out in late April, will solve a lot of mysteries.

Cullotta continued, "Anywhere from 36 to 50 guys I know who were murdered by our friends. And they were our friends who got murdered, and they were all killed for different reasons by different guys. The guys who killed the guys got killed by other guys."

Cullotta says there are a lot of people in Las Vegas who will likely be put on the spot when his book is released, people in the casino industry for example.

Thanks to George Knapp

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