Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness (5 page)

After a while, Pape left the room. On his way out he said to Durso, “Throw this bastard out the window. Say he tried to escape.” Hanging out the window by his ankles, Frank prayed he wouldn’t be dropped. Durso fired more questions at him as he hung upside down, but Frank kept his mouth shut. Eventually, he was
pulled back inside where Frank Pape was waiting. He said, “Was your father Joe Cullotta?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to be the man he was? You aren’t going to make it. You’ll never be the man he was.”

Finally, Frank was turned loose. He’d made it through the session, but had definitely taken the worst of it. He’d meet up with Durso and Gargano again, though under very different circumstances.

On his way home, Frank stopped to see Tony Spilotro, who was then a partner with one of the Outfit guys in a restaurant called King Burger. Noting Frank’s black eye, Tony asked, “What the fuck happened to you?”

“The cops picked me up for that Oak Park thing. There was Frank Pape, Durso, and his buddy Gargano.” He raised his shirt to display the bruises.

“What’d you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them shit. If I had, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be locked the fuck up.”

Tony was impressed. “That’s good, Frankie. Fuck those assholes.”

“You wanna know the worst part? They used cattle prods on me.”

Tony couldn’t believe it. “
What?
Those cocksuckers used cattle prods? Rotten bastards.”

“Yeah, and now anytime a messenger gets robbed, they’ll be looking for me. I’ve gotta give up the bank route, Tony. I’ve gotta find something they won’t connect me with.”

It didn’t take long for Frank to find what he was looking for: a market for automobile spark plugs. He located a warehouse full of them and a guy called an “out,” who’d buy the hot merchandise. Frank and an associate broke into the warehouse, but were spotted while loading up their work car. The police arrived just as Frank was making his getaway. A chase ensued.

Reaching speeds of a hundred miles an hour, Frank lost the cops without incident. After ditching the car, he and his partner split up on foot. But a police patrol picked up the other guy and he gave up Frank.

During court proceedings, Frank’s lawyer worked a deal with the prosecutor. The charges were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors in return for a guilty plea. In 1956, shortly before he turned 18, Frank began his first adult incarceration, a one-year sentence in the House of Corrections, a City of Chicago facility. His sister and mother were disappointed in him. But his mother remained supportive and came to see him regularly. She was his only visitor.

Being locked up wasn’t that much of a hardship for Frank. He’d been conditioned for it by his encounters with the juvenile system. In fact, the guards at the adult facilities treated the inmates better than in the juvenile lockups. And he knew several of the other inmates from his reform-school days. Throughout Frank’s criminal career, he never did time in a place where he didn’t know some of his fellow convicts from the streets.

By the time he got out, Tony and the rest of Frank’s gang were working with the Outfit in Cicero. Continuing his desire to remain independent of the mob, Frank quickly hooked up with a couple of other guys and started a new crew. He also hooked up with a new girlfriend, Ann.

Ann was underage, so when they decided on a whim to get married, they had to elope. A few months later, Ann announced she was pregnant. Their daughter Angela was born about six months after that. Frank and Ann were not only too young to get married. They were also way too wild to settle into family life. Soon thereafter, Ann filed for a divorce.

Frank managed to stay out of jail for the next few years, but in 1960 he got busted again in conjunction with the burglary of a large appliance store. It was plain bad luck. Frank and another burglar made entry through the front door, unaware that an off-duty rookie cop walking to a store to get milk for his baby was about to pass by. The cop noticed the burglary and dropped a dime on the thieves.

After entering the building, Frank looked out the front window and saw cops all around the place. “Find a place to hide,” his accomplice said. “You’ve got a record and I don’t. Let them arrest me.”

Frank climbed into the drop ceiling and concealed himself while the cops were arresting his friend. More bad luck: The ceiling gave way and Frank came crashing down right in front of the officers. He looked up and saw a bunch of guns in his face.

While being held in the Cook County Jail on the burglary charge, Frank found himself housed on a tier with Sam Giancana, head of the Chicago mob from 1957 to 1966. One of the other inmates introduced Frank to the Boss. Giancana told Frank, “I’ve heard a lot about you, kid. You remind me of myself; I was a wild kid, too. But you’ve got to learn to control that temper of yours. Maybe when you get out, I’ll be able to help you some time.”

Frank had no desire to join the Outfit, but he was flattered by the offer from the top mobster. He was also impressed with Giancana’s clout behind bars: He lived like a king. He had his own stove and refrigerator; people cooked for him and washed and ironed his clothes; guards brought him filet mignon. During the four days they spent together, Frank got to share those delicious meals.

Another inmate of some note who shared those meals was Richard Cain, a Giancana associate and former cop. In the 1992 book
Double Cross
, co-authored by Giancana’s half-brother Chuck and nephew Sam, the authors allege that Giancana was part of a CIA conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. They assert that Giancana said it was Cain, not Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired the shots from the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas that day. Cain was murdered more than a decade later, in a Chicago sandwich shop on December 20, 1973, in an apparent mob hit.

Frank was able to get the burglary charge for the appliancestore heist reduced to a misdemeanor, but he was sentenced to the House of Corrections for another year. The rookie cop who saw the break-in and sounded the alarm was subsequently transferred, then promoted, and ended up as warden of the county jail.

Frank estimates that, including his confinement in the reform school, by the time he reached his 22nd birthday he’d been locked up a total of about three and a half years. In spite of all those days of lost freedom, when Frank got out of the slammer, he had no intention of giving up the criminal life. He was still in his early 20s and he enjoyed the excitement of it. He believed he was already a good thief and would only get better. Living on the right side of the law didn’t appeal to him at all.

It didn’t take Frank long to get back in harness. Shortly after he hit the streets, Tony Spilotro introduced him to a guy who provided tips on potential burglary or robbery victims. The tipster said he had inside information from an insurance company that the home of the heirs to Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer contained a large amount of valuables.

Frank knew the robbery would require a home invasion. When he got information that the husband and wife were out of the house for the evening, the gang made its move. They hid in the shrubbery along the driveway, waiting for the couple to come home. When the husband got out of the car and opened the garage door, the robbers charged them, took their keys, and escorted them into the house. A live-in maid was in her quarters and the two kids were sleeping in their rooms. Everyone was tied up and the thieves spent about three hours going through the place.

This time the score was a bust. Instead of an anticipated take of about $100,000, the thieves ended up with around $600 each. In spite of the paltry sum, the newspapers played the robbery up big. A few months later Frank heard that a couple of guys had been charged with the heist. Although innocent, they were convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Even though this adventure turned out to be a disappointment, Frank and Tony never gave up on using tipsters. On the contrary, they were a major resource for the duo throughout the years, particularly during their time in Las Vegas.

Frank, Tony, and their crews always went on jobs anticipating worthwhile scores. They gathered intelligence on potential victims and developed detailed plans to minimize the chances of being caught. In order to keep tabs on the cops, for example, the thieves carried police radios in the work cars to monitor their calls. There were no portable radios in those days, so the radio had to be plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter, using an adapter. The driver had the police radio and a walkie-talkie; the guys doing the burglary had walkie-talkies.

The plans included a pick-up spot in case something went wrong. If it did and there was time, the burglars brought the stolen property with them to that location. But if the situation demanded an immediate escape, the loot was left behind. When there were no problems, the work car backed up to the building and the booty was loaded right there.

The crooks were after cash mostly, but on a bad night they took anything they thought they might be able to sell. They knew a fence who’d buy most of the junk. He didn’t pay much, but anything was better than nothing.

They tried to be as professional as possible, but they were all in the midst of a volatile time of life in a dangerous business. And on occasion, there were personal scores to settle. Frank’s first armed robbery partner Crazy Bob Sprodak, for one, always seemed to wind up in the middle of a beef.

Sprodak came to Frank and complained that members of a gang known as the K Knights had roughed him up. He said that these were some big goons and he needed help in getting his revenge.

Tony and Frank told Bob they’d help him. The trio put together some Molotov cocktails and a couple of rifles, then stole a car. With Tony driving they pulled up in front of the K Knights’ hangout, got out of the car, fired a few shots through the window, and tossed in the Molotovs. As the cops closed in, the three got away. But one of the K Knights was able to identify Frank and he was arrested two days later. He was charged with arson and attempted murder. His lawyer was able to get the arson rap dropped completely and the attempted murder reduced to a misdemeanor. For the third straight time Frank had avoided a felony conviction. However, he drew another year of incarceration, this time in the custody of Cook County.

During Frank’s second stint in the county jail, he had a little easier time of it. By then, the warden was none other than the rookie cop who’d seen Frank and his crew breaking into the appliance store. He felt that Frank was responsible for getting him the prestigious position and visited the inmate every day. Any reasonable request Frank made of the warden was granted. He served his year and returned to the streets.

Before Frank went away, though, he and Crazy Bob pulled another caper. They were taking a load of merchandise to Frank’s fence when a police car pulled alongside and the cop motioned them to pull over. Frank pretended he was about to comply, then slammed into a U-turn. The cop turned on his siren and the pursuit began. Frank was running red lights and doing eighty.

“The fucking cops are shooting at us!” Crazy Bob yelled. Just then a bullet passed through the car and struck the windshield. “Let me out of this goddamn car!”

Frank made a few more turns and wound up on a street that the cops had sealed off a couple of blocks ahead. He drove up onto the sidewalk and pulled into an alley. He and Bob bailed out while the car was still rolling; it hit a lamppost and stopped. They split up and eluded capture.

The escapade made the newspapers. Another high-speed chase, shots fired, and the bad guys got away. But this marked the end of Frank’s affiliation with Sprodak. Just being around Crazy Bob provided a little more excitement than he wanted and from then on, Frank kept his distance. It was a good thing he did. Several years later Bob and a guy called Sausage Fingers were doing burglaries when one night they hit the house of a close associate of Tony Accardo, the Outfit boss. The mobsters went nuts. They rounded up all the known thieves, including Frank and his crew, and wanted to know who’d done Accardo’s friend’s place. Frank told them he didn’t know anything about it.

Someone must have talked, though. Sausage Fingers was killed in his car right in front of his house and Crazy Bob disappeared.

One day as Tony and Frank were riding down the Eisenhower Expressway, Tony pointed at the pillars under an overpass. He said, “Did you know that Crazy Bob is the foundation for one of them?”

Frank didn’t want to believe it. “You gotta be kidding.”

Tony laughed. “No, I’m not. Crazy Bob is holding up the fucking overpass.”

Frank had been earning his living on the wrong side of the law for nearly 10 years. His scores were growing and his methods becoming more sophisticated, but his targets were riskier. Frank wasn’t shy about hitting a jewelry store now and then, but they weren’t easy to burglarize and the jobs required special planning. Frank came up with two ideas and used them both.

For the first plan Frank had his partner, a guy named Duke, dress up in a painter’s uniform, complete with splotches of color on it. He even used a van that looked like a painter’s work vehicle. The scheme called for Duke to enter the store and ask to see a piece of jewelry, then to mace both clerks. At that point Frank would come in and they’d tie up the clerks, put a closed-for-remodeling sign in the window, grab the merchandise, and run.

On the day of the caper there were only a couple of minor snags. When Frank walked into the store, the mace was still in the air and he and Duke both got it in their faces. It was annoying, but not debilitating. And as Frank was locking the door, a guy wanted to come in to get a bracelet. Frank told him the store was closed and sent him on his way. He and Duke cleaned out the vault and got away with a pretty good haul.

The second plot required Frank to do something he never thought he’d do: dress as a Chicago cop. He’d have the whole uniform on—belt, badge, gun, everything issued to real cops. Frank took two other men on the job with him. One of them would assist Frank inside the store after he gained control of the employees; the other would man the work car.