22-caliber handgun but could not get to it. When the Spilotros got to the basement, about 15 mobsters pounced on them. (At the trial, one of the killers, Mob turncoat Nick Calabrese, said he could not recall which house it was.)Īnthony and his brother, Michael, a part-time actor and owner of the Chicago restaurant and Mob hangout Hoagie’s, went to the home in June 1986 believing they were to be promoted within the Outfit.Īlthough the brothers were suspicious, refusing to go was unthinkable. But according to trial testimony, the Spilotros were lured to a residence near O’Hare International Airport in Bensenville, a subdivision of “modest homes,” and were beaten to death in the basement. In the 1995 movie, it was baseball bats in a cornfield. That 2007 trial resulted in convictions and revealed details that weren’t publicly known when the movie came out more than a decade earlier. Coen covered the Family Secrets trial for the Chicago Tribune. In his 2009 book Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob, journalist Jeff Coen details what really happened. Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Review-Journal. The way the movie portrays it, the brothers - or at least the fictional characters representing Anthony and Michael Spilotro - are beaten with baseball bats in a cornfield and shoved into a shallow grave while still alive.

Case in point: the death of the Spilotro brothers, two mobsters originally from Chicago.

What you see in Casino isn’t exactly the way things were. Though the movie Casino was released more than 22 years ago, it still serves as a reference point for those hoping to understand what real Las Vegas mobsters were like when they were a sinister fixture in the news.īut most movies based on true stories, including Casino, twist the facts for dramatic effect and to compress long histories into a watchable timeframe. Rothstein’s lawyer, Oscar Goodman (played by Goodman himself), stands by his side. Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is surrounded by the press at a Nevada Gaming Commission meeting portrayed in Casino.

Film casino 1995