Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness (29 page)

On July 8, 1982, the
Review Journal
ran a story about Frank’s sentencing hearing under the headline, “Cullotta gets eight-year prison term.” The reporter’s description of the scene at the courthouse captured the importance government prosecutors placed on Frank and the tense atmosphere surrounding his appearance.

“District Judge Paul Goldman sentenced the 43-year-old Cullotta while Metro officers and federal agents blanketed the courtroom with heavy security. Three agents sat in the jury box, two guarded the rear courtroom entrance, two more guarded the front entrance and four formed a line between the defendant and the spectator section. In addition to the guards in the courtroom, two more were positioned on the courthouse roof.

“All who entered the courtroom, even reporters and courthouse observers known to the officers, were searched.

“Although the formal sentence was to the state prison, Cullotta will serve his time in a federal institution.”

The torment Frank endured during his two years in San Diego wasn’t due solely to what it was like behind the walls. During that time, he had to testify in public against some of his former friends. His appearances as a witness forced him into the unpleasant position of having to come face to face with those he was helping to put in prison. He not only had to look into their eyes, but he also had to endure withering attacks from their lawyers.

Those were the toughest two years of his life: Back and forth to witness stands, facing all the people he’d grown up with and dealing with their lawyers. Knowing he had a violent temper, the attorneys tried to provoke him into losing his composure. They called him a serpent, a rat, and a devil. They said he was stupid and a jerk. They even accused him of raping other inmates. But through it all, he kept his cool. And he honored his promise to the prosecutors: He never lied to them during interviews and he never perjured himself under oath.

Initially, the mobsters and crooks to whom Frank posed a threat tried to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse: He always had a death threat hanging over his head. Then they sicced their lawyers on him, who used any and all means available to discredit or intimidate him.

Michael Spilotro reached out to Frank through his brother Joey. He said, “Tell your brother not to testify against Tony and we’ll give you enough money to fill a good-size house.” Frank told Joey to tell Michael that he wasn’t interested.

When intimidation and bribery failed, the Spilotro forces tried a different approach. Tony’s lawyers threatened to subpoena Frank’s mother as a defense witness. Their plan to have Josephine testify against her own son was never carried out. Although the reason she wasn’t called to the stand is unknown, Frank suspects the lawyers thought it over and decided it could backfire and turn into a public-relations disaster.

In spite of the pressures, Frank testified in a number of venues around the country, including Illinois and Florida. In all cases he took the stand under the protection of state and federal immunity. His testimony resulted in several indictments and convictions. Two particular cases that Frank was instrumental in and warrant specific mention are Larry Neumann’s murder trial and the M&M murders. One was a clear win. The other went into the books as a loss, but it may have been a case that couldn’t have been won under any circumstances.

Based on Frank’s grand-jury testimony, Larry Neumann was charged in the murder of Chicago jeweler Bob Brown. Neumann was tried twice and Frank testified at both. The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second resulted in a conviction and a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lurch Neumann had breathed his last free air.

When Frank was escorted into court for one of his appearances against Neumann, he had to walk past the holding cell that held the defendant.

As Frank passed by the cell, Neumann didn’t say anything to him directly, but their eyes met for a moment. Frank’s impression was that his former friend couldn’t believe what he was doing to him. It was a very uncomfortable few seconds.

On January 27, 1983, Richard Daley, state’s attorney for Cook County, Illinois, and Chicago mayoral candidate, held a press conference. He announced publicly that Tony Spilotro had been indicted for the 1962 torture killings of James Miraglia and William McCarthy, the so-called M&M murders. The indictment was based in large part on the grand-jury testimony of Frank Cullotta. According to Daley, Cullotta had testified that he helped Tony set up the slayings, but hadn’t actually been present when the murders were committed. Following the press conference, Spilotro was arrested in Las Vegas and jailed without bail to await extradition to Illinois.

Oscar Goodman learned of Tony’s troubles when he returned to Vegas after winning a major but unrelated case in Florida. He rushed from the airport to his office, then over to the jail to see his client. A few hours later, the accused murderer was released on bail. Goodman’s ability to spring a client facing extradition on such serious charges raised some eyebrows in law-enforcement and legal circles.

Preparing for the trial, Goodman conferred regularly with Herb Barsy, an attorney who had long represented Spilotro in Chicago. Barsy had the reputation of knowing how to work the system and being able to get things done.

When Judge Thomas J. Maloney was assigned to hear the case, Barsy and Spilotro were so impressed that they convinced Goodman to forego a jury trial in favor of letting Maloney decide Tony’s guilt or innocence. It was an idea that didn’t initially sit well with the Las Vegas attorney.

Goodman explained his feelings about trying a murder case without a jury to author John L. Smith: “Tony liked the idea, but in my career I’d tried it only once, and that was in Las Vegas at the insistence of a client who was up on income–tax charges and had drawn Harry Claiborne as a judge in federal court. I knew Harry. The client knew Harry. He insisted they were close friends and that the judge would never rule against him because of that friendship. I refused at first, but he insisted. And I’m convinced that Claiborne was harder on him than he would have been had my client taken a damn jury trial. Claiborne convicted him and threw the book at him.”

In spite of his doubts, Goodman went along with the wishes of Spilotro and Barsy. However, his preparation was virtually the same as it would have been if Tony were being judged by a jury of his peers: His strategy was to discredit the testimony of the government’s chief witness, Frank Cullotta.

In the end, Judge Maloney ruled that the prosecution hadn’t proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Goodman claimed that the decision surprised him, but Frank wasn’t the least bit shocked by the acquittal. He knew from the start that getting a guilty verdict in a 21-year-old case would be difficult. And when he heard Tony had opted for a bench trial and who the judge was, he was pretty sure the case was lost. He expressed his concerns to the FBI and said there was virtually no chance of getting a conviction. They sensed problems, too, but it was too late to do anything about it.

After the verdict, it may have looked as though Oscar Goodman’s strategy had worked due to good lawyering and a weak prosecution case. It appeared on the surface that the judge hadn’t found Frank’s testimony credible, which was why Tony Spilotro was a free man once again. But there were questions. Did Frank really fail to convince Judge Maloney of Tony’s guilt? Or had the outcome of the trial been pre-determined?

• • •

In 1993, ten years after the M&M trial, Thomas Maloney, the presiding judge, had the dubious distinction of being the only Illinois judge ever convicted of fixing a murder case. Although Maloney wasn’t charged in conjunction with the Spilotro trial, a closer look at his history and the Chicago court system of the time may help explain why Spilotro and Barsy insisted on foregoing a jury trial.

Thomas Maloney was a practicing defense attorney in Chicago in 1977 when he was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to fill a vacancy in the Circuit Court. One year later, he ran for that office and was elected by the voters. Maloney retained the position until his retirement in 1990.

In the early 1980s, the feds launched Operation Greylord, designed to investigate suspicions of corruption in the Chicago courts. One of the key players in a subsequent probe, Operation Gambat, which began in 1986, was Robert Cooley, a Chicago criminal-defense lawyer in the 1970s and ’80s. Cooley represented, and fixed cases for, organized-crime figures. He was highly successful in purchasing influence in the courts and didn’t lose a case for approximately four years.

“I had no problem paying people money to make sure I got a decision in a case. In fact, I wanted to win all my cases and I did,” Cooley explained. But all that changed in the late 1980s when a client asked the attorney to arrange to have a witness murdered. That’s when Robert Cooley became an FBI informant.

As a result of Operations Greylord and Gambat, 92 people, including defense attorneys, bailiffs, clerks, and 13 judges, were indicted. One of those 13 was Thomas Maloney. Maloney was convicted in 1993 on charges of racketeering conspiracy, racketeering, extortion under color of official right, and obstruction of justice. These violations of the law all arose from three cases in which Judge Maloney took bribes. In 1994 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $200,000.

The first of the three cases took place in 1981. Three hit men were accused of attempted murder. During the course of the trial, the victim died and the charges were elevated to murder. Defense attorney Robert Cooley was retained by political friends of the defendants. He assured his clients that Judge Maloney could be bought, but that the price would be high. The politicians contributed $100,000 to grease the various wheels involved in the fix, including Maloney. At trial, the judge admitted as evidence a declaration from the dying victim identifying the defendants as his killers. But he then ruled that the declaration was unreliable, resulting in acquittals for all three defendants. After turning informant, Cooley covertly taped a conversation with one of the politicians who acknowledged the case had been fixed.

The next charged bribe occurred in 1982 and was also a murder case. This time a single defendant and a different defense attorney were involved. Maloney wasn’t able to let the defendant off completely, because the case was receiving a lot of media attention and was considered too hot for an out-and-out acquittal. But that didn’t mean the judge couldn’t be of service. As a compromise, he acquitted on felony murder, convicted on voluntary manslaughter, and imposed a nine-year sentence, greatly reduced from the 20 years at least that would have resulted from a murder conviction

The third case consisted of two defendants accused of murdering two men in 1985. This time the fix was arranged, but it didn’t come to fruition. A middleman negotiated a fee of $10,000 for the defendants to receive acquittals after a bench trial. Things fell apart when the prosecution put on such a strong case—including three credible eyewitnesses to the murders—that Judge Maloney saw no way he could let the defendants off. Through the middleman, he sent word that he was going to return the bribe money. Maloney was talked into hanging onto the cash until the defense put on its case. If they could discredit the government’s evidence, perhaps Maloney could still deliver. The defense flopped. Maloney found both men guilty and sentenced them to death.

Does Maloney’s conviction mean conclusively that the Spilotro trial was fixed? No, it doesn’t. It simply raises a possibility that can logically be considered. But at least two people believe that Tony was in no danger when he faced Judge Maloney.

On November 11, 2003, Las Vegas TV station KVBC aired a segment on its nightly news show called “Another Side of Oscar Goodman.” The focus of the piece was the M&M murder trial, whether Tony Spilotro had beaten the rap due to a crooked judge, and if so, had Goodman been aware of it. One of the guests interviewed was former mob lawyer-turned-informant Robert Cooley.

The question of the validity of the verdict was posed to Cooley, who said, “Absolutely it was fixed. I saw Tony on many occasions before and after. Tony made it clear the case was fixed and he had no problems with the case.”

As for whether or not Oscar Goodman could have been unaware the fix was in, Cooley said, “Well, it’s possible I’ll be seven feet tall when I wake up in the morning. But the odds are pretty good against it.”

Joe Yablonsky, the former Las Vegas FBI chief, had earlier expressed his reservations about the legitimacy of the M&M trial. In a letter to the editor of the
Las Vegas Review
-
Journal
in April 1999, Yablonsky, talking about Oscar Goodman, said, “Why did he and his co-counsel in Chicago waive a jury in the M&M boys’ homicide case (the victim’s head was placed in a vise, popping his eyeballs) perpetrated by his beloved client, gentle Tony the Ant Spilotro? Waiving a jury trial in a homicide case is virtually unheard of. It places the fate of the defendant in the judgment of one person, the judge, as opposed to 12 jurors. The judge in that case was subsequently convicted of corruption in an FBI sting operation known as Greylord.”

Though Oscar Goodman claims that Frank was a total flop as a government witness, Dennis Arnoldy has an entirely different opinion. He’s convinced Frank delivered for prosecutors in a big way.

To support his argument, Arnoldy cites statistics of Frank’s productivity between 1982 and 1988. During that time, his testimony in front of various federal and state grand juries and trials was instrumental in indicting 19 people on federal racketeeringrelated charges, in four Illinois murder indictments, and in five Nevada burglary and armed-robbery indictments. These charges resulted in 15 federal convictions, including the Florida home invasion, one Illinois murder conviction, and five Nevada burglary and armed-robbery convictions.