Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness (28 page)

Although Valachi’s disclosures did serious harm to the mob by bringing it out of the shadows and into the spotlight, no organizedcrime figures were prosecuted as a result of his turning.

In 1968, journalist Peter Maas published Valachi’s biography,
The Valachi Papers
. The former mobster died of a heart attack in 1971 while incarcerated in a federal prison.

Jimmy “Weasel” Fratiano was originally from Cleveland. He reportedly made his bones in the early 1940s when he carried out a contract hit for then-Los Angeles crime boss, Jack Dragna. He became a made man in the Dragna crime family in 1947. The Weasel’s star continued to rise and he eventually served as acting boss of the Los Angeles crime family for a time. Along the way it’s believed he put at least 11 notches on his gun.

However, in the 1970s, Fratiano began having disagreements with his superiors and the bosses of other families. After receiving word that a contract had been issued on his life, the Weasel became a government informant. Over the next several years, he testified in a number of mob trials in various venues. His testimony was instrumental in obtaining numerous convictions against organizedcrime figures.

Fratiano entered the federal Witness Protection Program and, as far as is known, didn’t go back to his criminal ways. His biography,
The Last Mafioso
by Ovid Demaris, was published in 1980. The Weasel passed away from natural causes in 1993.

Having once been an acting boss, Fratiano had the distinction of being the highest-ranking mob defector ever, until 1991. That year Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, John Gotti’s underboss, turned on his master.

The head of the powerful New York City Gambino family, Gotti had earned the nickname “Teflon Don” because he beat the feds every time they hauled him into court. Gotti was facing another racketeering trial and the law wanted him bad. They were willing to make a deal with the devil, if they had to, in order to get him. In this case, the devil was Sammy the Bull, a 19-time killer.

It worked out well for the prosecutors. With Sammy’s testimony, they were able to convict Gotti and get him a sentence of life without parole. As one of the government lawyers said later, “The Teflon turned to Velcro. Every charge stuck.”

In the case of Valachi, his decision to talk served to make the authorities and public aware of organized crime and how it operated. The roles of Fratiano and Gravano were geared more toward sending people to jail. And in Gravano’s case, the law had a very specific target.

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While Frank’s new lawyer, a government-paid public defender, was still negotiating the details of his deal with the law, the debriefing process got into full swing. Frank was taken out of general population, put in an isolation cell, and talked with the feds. When he was alone, he did a lot of thinking. He’d grown up with only one set of values. Now he’d rolled and become a Judas. It was a hard thing for him to deal with; he hated himself for a while and even contemplated suicide. That would have saved Tony a bullet and he could have gone out with his reputation intact. But then he realized that after three decades of stealing what people had worked for, and following a code that sometimes required the use of violence, he was finally doing the right thing. After surviving the first few days, he began to get a grip on things. It got gradually easier for him. Not easy, but easier.

Metro got in on the act right away, too. The detectives initially brought Don Campbell with them, but Frank didn’t like the prosecutor and refused to talk with him. Campbell left and things were okay after that.

Frank understood up front that he had to tell the complete truth. Any deal he ended up making with local and federal prosecutors depended on his being honest. Neither the FBI nor Metro wanted to hear any lies or embellishments, only things that he knew for sure. And there was a lot of paperwork. Frank had to take evaluation and psychological tests and a polygraph was administered. He was impressed with how thorough his captors were. He had to prove to them he was a valuable witness before they’d let him into their program.

Within a few days, Eileen and her 12-year-old son Kent entered Witness Protection; Kimberly elected to stay in Las Vegas. The two were flown to Minnesota where they stayed a couple of weeks. From there they were taken to Virginia Beach.

Frank’s brother-in-law, Jerry, learned about Frank’s decision from Eileen even before Tony Spilotro heard the news. Fearing for his own safety, he went to My Place and talked with Tony. “I don’t know if you’ve heard about this yet, but Frank’s rolled and my sister will be going into Witness Protection.”

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Frank was soon released from jail, but he remained in the custody of Clark County, staying in Las Vegas for two or three weeks. He was put up in hotels, and for security reasons was relocated every couple of days. To him, it felt like he stayed in about every hotel room in town. His debriefing was constant, running from about 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. Then he went out to dinner surrounded by his security detail of detectives and FBI agents. He was even taken to Lake Mead to do some fishing. Eating in restaurants and fishing didn’t completely ease his anguish, but it helped to make his life a little more bearable.

As Frank adjusted to the changes, a rather ironic twist took place. Gene Smith, the same cop Frank had considered killing after the Frank Bluestein shooting, was put in charge of providing his security.

Smith took the task of keeping Frank alive seriously. He once told his men, only somewhat tongue in cheek, “If Cullotta gets killed, there better be a number of dead cops around his body to keep it company.”

During the Metro phase of his debriefing, Frank provided information that allowed the police to clear about 50 of their previously unsolved burglaries.

In less than a month, Frank was officially turned over to the feds. The FBI’s Dennis Arnoldy took over from Charlie Parsons as the chief debriefer. The tenacious investigator, who had been pursuing Frank only days earlier, now worked with him on an almost daily basis. According to Arnoldy, there was never any animosity in their relationship.

After taking control of Frank, the feds got him out of Las Vegas. From then on, he was brought back only for legal proceedings. For his protection, he was moved around regularly. Arnoldy met with Frank hundreds of times during the following months in various locations across the country.

During the countless hours the two men spent together, they developed a bond that far outlasted the five or so years they were officially connected. From the earliest days of debriefing, Arnoldy developed a respect for Frank’s honesty in regard to the information he provided.

The agent and his colleagues knew that any information prosecutors used that came from Frank would be vigorously attacked by defense attorneys. Thus, anything he told them had to be double- or triple-checked for accuracy before it was acted on. If it didn’t pass that test, it wouldn’t be used.

One of the ways Frank’s veracity was verified was by matching police reports with his descriptions of crimes committed. For example, when he supplied the date and location of a burglary and the items taken, his statement was compared with police incident reports on file. Additionally, he’d be driven past the site of the burglary and asked to identify the specific house. Arnoldy found that when Frank was asked about something he had no knowledge of, he’d say he didn’t know. He didn’t try to tell his interviewers what he thought they wanted to hear.

Strike Force attorney Stan Hunterton also felt Cullotta was a good catch for the government, so he made sure that Frank was treated accordingly. In his opinion, Frank was one of the best-protected witnesses he ever dealt with.

Frank’s positive impression on those who were interrogating and evaluating him didn’t land him in a bed of roses, though. Soon after being taken out of Las Vegas, he was locked up in San Diego in a place where the government put all the other turncoats. The protected witnesses were housed in a special unit on one floor of the prison. For their own safety, they were kept segregated from the inmates in general population. Frank doesn’t know if it was true, but he heard that their food was prepared in a special area to guard against poisoning.

Frank had turned because he had no other choice. He never wore a wire or tried to entrap anyone and he found it deplorable to live in a unit with 60 stool pigeons. These inmates were just as dangerous as the hardcore cons in Stateville, but in a different way. They got you with their ears and mouth rather than a shiv. Everyone wanted to rat on everyone else. They were always eavesdropping on conversations, trying to pick up any information that could be dealt to the authorities in return for a reduced sentence. It was a cesspool in which he spent two years.

The government tried to keep Frank’s cooperation as quiet as possible for as long as possible. Certainly the Las Vegas underworld knew what was going on, but the media and the general public remained in the dark for some time.

The law knew that as long as Larry Neumann remained free, he posed a threat to the public in general and to potential witnesses in particular. Frank Cullotta was providing information that prosecutors felt would put Neumann away for a long long time. What they needed to do was to get him off the streets until Frank’s information could be pursued in the courts.

The 1981 charge of an ex-felon in possession of a concealed weapon against Neumann was all they had on him at the moment. Stan Hunterton prosecuted the case vigorously and won a conviction against Neumann on that charge, resulting in a sentence of two years, the maximum term that could be imposed at the time. Neumann’s lawyer filed a motion to get his client out on bond while the conviction was appealed. Obviously, that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

At the subsequent bail hearing, prosecutors had to demonstrate that Neumann presented a danger if released, thus his request for bond should be denied. As part of their presentation, Charlie Parsons testified about Neumann’s plan to kill Ernie Davino. During his testimony, he had to reveal that the source of his information was Frank Cullotta. A gasp went up from the spectators in the courtroom. The word was out.

The
Review-Journal
and
Las Vegas Sun
treated the news of Frank’s defection as a major event. Both papers speculated about how much damage his cooperation with prosecutors would do to the mob in general and Tony Spilotro in particular. Using named and anonymous law-enforcement sources, the reports said Cullotta was providing information that would blow the lid off Spilotro’s street-crime rackets. He was also allegedly saying things about casino employees who had functioned as tipsters to the gang, including some in executive positions.

After hearing from the lawmen, one of the first people on the journalists’ interview lists was Oscar Goodman. The lawyer’s reaction was low key, conveying the impression that the revelation didn’t amount to much. He essentially dismissed the matter as a non-event, telling a reporter that he wasn’t concerned about Frank saying anything detrimental about his client, Tony Spilotro, because there wasn’t anything detrimental to say. He added that Tony wished his old pal the best.

Later, Goodman became more critical of his client’s one-time confidant. He told author John L. Smith that in his opinion, Frank was never effective as a government witness. Goodman is quoted as saying: “Although you’ll never get them to admit it, the government never got squat in the way of convictions for turning Frank Cullotta.” However, as time went on, Frank’s testimony began to lead to indictments and convictions against Tony and others.

Frank knew that from the law’s point of view, he’d been a bad guy most of his life. He’d admittedly committed myriad crimes, including murder. He knew there was no way he was going to get a free pass. On the other hand, he didn’t want to be locked in a cell and have the key thrown away, either. There had to be a mechanism by which he could testify about his most serious transgressions without being exposed to the full criminal penalties. By July 1982, Frank and his lawyer finalized an agreement with prosecutors. Sentencing was scheduled for July 7.

The agreement included both incentives and punishment. Frank was given immunity for any previously uncharged crimes he testified to. To settle his pending cases, he had to enter guilty pleas, but all sentences would run concurrent with whatever term he received for his conviction on possession of stolen property for the furniture he’d used in his house. Since that was a local charge, the best the federal prosecutors could do was to make a sentencing recommendation to the court, asking that Frank’s cooperation be taken into account. With that kind of backing, the defendant was expecting a somewhat lenient disposition.

On the sentencing date, Frank was flown to Las Vegas and transported by helicopter to the courthouse roof. The presiding judge had no sympathy for Cullotta and was about to hand down a sentence of 10 years in prison.

Frank stood up. “Ten years? I don’t think so. I’m a valuable witness and I’m helping you guys a lot more than you’re trying to help me. I’m not going to go for ten years. You can stick everything in your ass. Put me back on the street and let them kill me. I’d rather be dead anyway.”

His rant, essentially a bargaining ploy, did some good. After a lot of back and forth between the federal and local prosecutors, the sentence was reduced to eight years, with all other sentences running concurrently. In addition, he’d serve his time in a federal facility with an opportunity for parole. Overall, he was satisfied.

Frank ended up serving two years at the federal lockup in San Diego. He was paroled to the Witness Protection Program in 1984 and placed on two years of probation. He was totally free in 1986. He was 48 years old.