RIP Frank Cullotta: Wake Up With The Final Scene In "Casino" That The Former Chicago Mobster Helped Make

(Source)--Frank Cullotta loved the life of the mob. He loved the scores. But in 1982 he flipped, turned on his associates and became an informant for the federal government.

Over the course of the 1970s and into the early '80s, Cullotta gained fear and fame as an enforcer. A master burglar, he estimated he had broken into at a minimum 300 homes. Robberies, he put at 200. But Cullotta wasn’t just a thief. He was involved in two mob hits.

“One was a car explosion and the other was a guy getting shot in the head,” he said while sitting in a Las Vegas hotel room.

“I come from a good family, loving mother, loving father. But my father was a shady guy,” Cullotta told us.

Cullotta was the right-hand man to Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro, portrayed by Joe Pesci in the film Casino. Another of their childhood friends, Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, was the inspiration for Robert De Niro’s Ace Rothstein in the film.

Cullotta arrived in Las Vegas from his Chicago hometown in the 1970s and formed a burglary group known as the Hole in the Wall gang. The name derived for their propensity to bust through buildings to avoid door and window alarms. Cullotta ran the operation and paid cuts to Spilotro, and also performed other tasks, including murders, at his childhood friend’s request.

Casino is a crazy movie because we know so many of the people involved at this point. They shouldn't have even changed the names. Names that everyone Chicago knows like "Spilotro". We know these stories in large part because of Frank Cullotta who served as an advisor on the movie and is a published author after starting his life off as a big time mafia guy. He flipped, went to jail, turned into a writer, worked on movies, and died warm in his bed at the age of 81. That's about as good as a mafia can expect. He even got a cameo in the movie Casino. He killed "Stoney". 

Casino is in the canon of all time great mafia movies. If it's on tv, which it is ALL the time, you almost always stop on it and watch through at least one commercial break. And even for all of his faults like ya know….MURDER, maybe the good Lord will see fit to let him into heaven. That's what Spilotro and Cullotta believe as good catholics

Spilotro, after a life of violence, Frank Cullotta said, counted on one last ace, betting on a final act of contrition.

“If you say a prayer before you die…praying to God for forgiveness, he says you won’t go to hell.”

Frank Cullotta was 81, his cause of death was congestive heart failure.