The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness.
Frank Cullotta, Tony Spilotro's childhood friend and trusted lieutenant, reveals the details of his decades-long criminal career, and the real story of life inside Spilotro's Sin City gang.
Professional Reviews
Publishers Weekly - 5/21/07
Mystery and nonfiction writer Griffin covered the Vegas reign of kingpin Tony the Ant Spilotro in The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs. the Mob. Digging deeper into mob history, he now focuses on Spilotro's lifelong pal, career criminal Cullotta, who appeared in Martin Scorsese's 1995 film, Casino, recreating an actual murder he committed in 1979. Spilotro and Cullotta met in Chicago as teenage troublemakers, and early chapters detail the violent escapades of Cullotta's youth before he escalated to major crimes. Spilotro rose in the ranks of the mob and became the Chicago Outfit's man in Las Vegas, and Cullotta eventually joined him, running a robbery and murder crew. Together, Spilotro and Cullotta extorted illegal bookmakers and drug dealers throughout Vegas. But in the early 1980s, Cullotta became a government witness, bringing down the house. In addition to poring through newspaper archives, Griffin interviewed various sheriffs, attorneys, agents and detectives, while primarily relying on information from retired FBI agent Arnoldy and what Pileggi calls the phenomenal memory of Cullotta himself. Griffin's flat, unemotional yet potent writing makes the bloodletting, murders and mayhem chilling and unnerving throughout. 30 b&w photos. (July 1)
Serial killer Ted Bundy's murders recounted from the perspective of thirty years after his execution in a Florida prison.
Brutal, compelling, with new updated facts about the case, his victims and the compulsions that drove Ted Bundy to mass murder.
