not trying to beat a dead horse:
By Matt O'Connor, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporters Liam Ford, Ray Gibson and Todd Lighty contributed to this report
Published April 30 2005
The mob told Anthony Spilotro he was going to be promoted to a "capo," a street boss running a huge territory. His brother Michael was to become a "made" member, a trusted insider.
For the honors, the two were driven to a house near Bensenville--where mobsters jumped them, then beat and strangled them.
Authorities also revealed their source for the information--Nicholas W. Calabrese, a mob hit man-turned-informant who even implicated himself, confessing that he took part in 15 gangland murders, according to testimony Friday.
Calabrese's claim of involvement in 15 murders would make him one of the mob's most prolific known hit men. Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the mob turncoat crucial to the conviction of New York crime boss John Gotti, claimed responsibility for 19 gangland murders.
According to Calabrese's account to the FBI, the mob originally plotted to kill the Spilotro brothers in Las Vegas with explosives. Anthony Spilotro ran the Outfit's operations there and ran afoul of mob bosses.
The Las Vegas plot went awry for unexplained reasons. But Calabrese told authorities that years later, while he and James Marcello were incarcerated in a federal prison in Downstate Pekin, Marcello said he had supplied the explosives for the planned hit.
Instead, the Spilotros were lured by mob bosses to the Bensenville area home near Illinois Highway 83 and Irving Park Road on the promise of being promoted another rung up in the Outfit, Maseth testified.
Calabrese told the FBI that Marcello drove the Spilotros to the home, Maseth said.
"Were they killed at that location?" asked Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars, chief of the organized crime section.
"Yes, they were," Maseth said.
Calabrese said he and Marcello didn't take part in removing the bodies, according to Maseth. The Spilotros were later discovered buried in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield. Fecarotta was killed three months after the Spilotros' murders, possibly for botching the burial.
At the time, the coroner of Newton County, where the Spilotros were buried, suggested the brothers may have been buried alive. But this week, the doctor who performed the autopsies said in an interview that this was untrue and that the brothers had died of beatings.
"We found nothing that would indicate that they were buried alive," said Dr. John E. Pless, a professor emeritus at Indiana University.
