Interference (61 page)

On January 20, 1988, Attorney General Meese sent a memorandum—entitled “New and Expanded Initiatives in the Federal Organized Crime Effort”—to the OCRS, all U.S. attorneys, and Strike Force chiefs. In this letter, Meese wrote: “In order to maximize the benefits to be derived from a close working relationship and coordination between the United States Attorney as the chief federal prosecutor in each District and the Organized Crime Strike Force Chief, and in order to capitalize on our recent successes against organized crime, the Department will implement the following initiatives …”

Despite Meese's attempt to sugarcoat the bad news, the action was nothing more than a sleight-of-hand move. Essentially, Meese reinstituted the policy, previously advocated by Thornburgh, to compromise the independence of the Strike Forces. By again attempting to make the career prosecutors of the Strike Force accountable to the politically appointed U.S. attorneys, dissension was renewed within the Justice Department.

Immediately after Meese released his memo, Margolis threatened to resign.

Comparing the Meese action with that of Thornburgh over a decade earlier, the chief of the criminal division under Meese, William Weld, who later resigned in protest of Meese's overall pattern of unethical behavior, told me, “It was almost much worse. I threw my body in the middle [of Meese and Margolis] to prevent the total merger of the Strike Forces into the U.S. attorney's offices.”

Weld said that a compromise was finally reached when it was decided that the U.S. attorneys would be the rating officials in personnel terms for the Strike Force chiefs—but that the chief of the criminal division would become the reviewing official with the power to overrule decisions by the U.S. attorneys.
⁹

In August 1988, Meese resigned as attorney general. For his successor, Reagan appointed Richard Thornburgh, who was later retained by President George Bush.

Predictably, in mid-March 1989, Thornburgh announced that all of the Strike Force offices would be disbanded.

Later that same week, on March 22 at the NFL owners' meeting in Palm Desert, sixty-three-year-old Pete Rozelle, with two years left on his contract, resigned as NFL commissioner. While leaving the room after telling the owners of his decision, Rozelle was embraced by Al Davis. Later, at a press conference, Rozelle told reporters, “You go through life once … I wanted more free time … time to travel and do other things.”

In a moving tribute to Rozelle, Joe Gergen, a columnist for
The Sporting News
, wrote, “Perhaps Rozelle should have taken his leave when he was still trim and full of what Kennedy called vigah. But say this about Rozelle: He was a man for his age. The NFL was no Camelot. Don't let it be forgotten, however, that once it was a mighty little kingdom governed by a wise man.”

Earlier, on August 13, 1988, Edward Bennett Williams, the former president of the Washington Redskins and the owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, died after an eleven-year bout with cancer. He was sixty-eight years old and took numerous secrets about the sweetheart relationship between the federal government and the NFL to the grave with him.
¹⁰

Twelve days after Williams's death, eighty-seven-year-old Art Rooney, the patriarch of the Pittsburgh Steelers, died at Mercy Hospital in his hometown after suffering a stroke in his office at Three Rivers Stadium. The funeral mass was held at his 150-year-old parish church, St. Peter's on Arch Street, near Allegheny Center and the stadium on the city's north side. The church was also a short walk from his Victorian house, which he and his wife had purchased in 1933 for $5,000. He had spent half that much for the Steelers that same year. At the time of his death, Rooney was the only owner to have won four Super Bowl championships.
¹¹

Eleven hundred mourners attended the services to honor Rooney. Those who could not get into the church watched on closed-circuit televisions set up in the nearby church hall. Overshadowed by the solemnness of the funeral mass were rare handshakes
between Pete Rozelle and Al Davis, as well as between members of the NFL Management Council and the NFL Players Association. Nearly every NFL owner was in attendance at the church, as well as numerous players and Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder,
¹²
who said that he had known Rooney for fifty-three years. Also in attendance was former Pennsylvania governor Richard Thornburgh, who had replaced Meese as attorney general earlier in the month.

“He [Rooney] was a man who belonged to the entire world of sports,” Rozelle told reporters. “It is questionable whether any sports figure was more universally loved and respected.”

Bishop Vincent Leonard, a longtime friend of Rooney, delivered the eulogy, telling the crowd that there was no public clamor to have the Steelers' owner canonized. If they tried, the bishop said, “the devil's advocates would have a field day for the likes of a man who, on his honeymoon, took his wife to the racetrack.”

Rooney was buried in a Catholic cemetery next to his wife, who had died six years earlier. As his body was being lowered into his grave, his beloved Steelers players were preparing for a preseason game with the New Orleans Saints in Louisiana.

The bet was even-money that Art Rooney was there in spirit, cheering them on.

52 The Las Vegas and Outlaw Lines Today

ON JUNE 23, 1986—the same day as he was scheduled to stand trial for conspiracy and racketeering—forty-eight-year-old Tony Spilotro, the enforcer of the outlaw line, was found buried in a shallow grave in a Newton County cornfield in northwestern Indiana. Planted along with Spilotro was his younger brother, Michael, who was also under indictment in Chicago for extortion. Both men, who were reported missing on June 14, were found dressed only in their underwear. They had been beaten to death and placed in the ground several days earlier. Their bodies were so badly decomposed that an immediate identification could not be made. Fingerprints and dental records obtained by the FBI were used for positive makes. The murder remains officially unsolved—although law-enforcement officials say that it was probably ordered by Joe Ferriola, also known as Joe Nagall, who had become the new boss of the Chicago Mafia in 1986. Nagall had made his reputation as an enforcer under Sam Giancana and later Joey Aiuppa, who was convicted in the Stardust skimming trial and sentenced to prison.

According to federal investigators, Spilotro was upset when Nagall was named as Aiuppa's successor. Spilotro was planning to mount a challenge against him. “Aiuppa, along with Tony Accardo,
¹
remained as Nagall's advisers and probably approved of Nagall's decision to take out Tony Spilotro,” a top FBI official told me. “Michael Spilotro was killed along with him to prevent any act of vengeance, which could have caused a serious problem within the Chicago mob.”

Among those suspected for being involved in the Spilotro murder was Frank Schweihs, who was also a top suspect in the murder of Allen Dorfman. In September 1988, the FBI revealed that it had taped Schweihs bragging about some of his jobs, but no specifics have been released. The investigation of Schweihs's roles in a variety of crimes, including the murders of Dorfman and the Spilotro brothers, is continuing. Soon after the existence of the tapes was revealed, Schweihs was arrested for extortion.

Also during the fall of 1988, with Accardo in retirement and Aiuppa in prison, another dramatic change within the top leadership of the Chicago Mafia occurred. Sam Carlisi of Elmhurst, Illinois, a longtime associate of Aiuppa and Nagall, became the acting boss of the Chicago Mafia. After just two years in power, Nagall had stepped aside because of his failing health and finally died in March 1989. Born in December 1921, Carlisi is the brother of Buffalo Mafia figure Roy Carlisi, who was arrested at the 1957 Apalachin Conference. Another Carlisi brother, Alphonso, owned a bar, which was a front for layoff sports-bookmaking activity in Chicago.

Meantime, even after the murders of the Spilotro brothers, Lefty Rosenthal, the brains of the outlaw line, continued his self-imposed exile—but moved from Laguna Niguel in Southern California to Boca Raton, Florida. During the fall of 1988, soon after his move to Florida, Rosenthal attempted but failed to have his name removed from the Nevada Black Book and to obtain a gaming license.

The new brain behind the outlaw line, according to law-enforcement authorities, is Chicago mobster Don Angelini, who, like Carlisi, is also from Elmhurst and has become known as the newest “Wizard of Odds.” Angelini has been involved in the underworld's oddsmaking operations since 1957 when he and Bill Kaplan operated Angel-Kaplan Sports News, which had employed Lefty Rosenthal during his game-fixing days. At that time, Angelini was Rosenthal's immediate supervisor.

The five-feet-ten, medium-built Angelini, who has brilliant white hair, brown eyes, and wears glasses, is directed by Dominic Cortina, Nagall's and Carlisi's chief gambling lieutenant and a close associate of Angelini since the mid-1950s. Angelini and Cortina were convicted of federal gambling violations in 1970 and sentenced to five years in prison. In February 1979, Angelini and Cortina, along with five others, pleaded guilty and were
sentenced to three years in prison for running a $1.5-million-a-month sports-betting business. Among those convicted was Joseph Spadavecchio, another close associate of Rosenthal.

Upon being sentenced, Angelini told the judge, “I've never used threats to collect a debt. I am not now and have never been a member of the Chicago crime syndicate.”

Joe Yablonsky, the former head of the FBI's Las Vegas office, told me, “Angelini used to be a messenger, which is a trusted job. He delivered messages for the Chicago mob to Rosenthal in Vegas. They were paranoid about the telephone, so Angelini would actually fly to Nevada. They would meet at the airport and talk. And then Angelini would just get another flight and return to Chicago.”

When I asked Angelini in late 1988 whether he had indeed become the new executive of the outlaw line, based upon his success as an oddsmaker during his days with the Angel-Kaplan line, he replied, “That's ancient history. That was twenty years ago. We went out of business in 1968, and I couldn't tell you anything about the gambling business since then. I'm out of it, and I have nothing to do with it anymore. I don't even have any interest in football anymore. I don't even watch the games. I'm far from a wizard. I'm an old man. Bill [Kaplan] died an old man. It's all over. I'm out of the business.”

Ernest “Rocco” Infelise, Nagall's former driver, is Carlisi's and Cortina's chief enforcer—although he has yet to earn the awesome and brutal reputation achieved by Spilotro. A horse-racing enthusiast, the six-feet, 240-pound Infelise has a criminal record back to 1952 with arrests for murder, burglary, and robbery. He was also convicted for firearms violations and the theft of $1 million in silver bullion.

One of Infelise's top henchmen was Wayne Bock, a former player with the Chicago Cardinals of the NFL and a driver for Carlisi, who, along with Schweihs, is another top suspect in the 1983 Dorfman murder. Bock also spent a great deal of time at a second house in Hollywood, Florida.

Through these men, the Chicago Mafia continues to finance, distribute, and enforce the nation's principal outlaw line on all NFL games.

Today, the sports book at the Stardust, the onetime home of the outlaw line, is under new management but still resembles the bar scene in the movie
Star Wars
on Sunday afternoons during
the football season. Some patrons wear suits and ties, while others are more relaxed, donning jerseys, T-shirts, hats, and headgear from their favorite NFL team. Other sports gamblers look as though they live in the street but appear to be regulars at the payout window.

Although the Stardust lacks the glamour and sophistication of the newer, state-of-the-art sports books at Caesars Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton, the Stardust is still the place to be before and during NFL games. On the large, glitzy marquee rotating outside the hotel, the Stardust boasts that its sports book is “the Home of the Official Las Vegas Line.”

One of oddsmaker Michael Roxborough's top clients is the Stardust. Explaining the process, Roxy told me, “The whole thing begins on Saturday. We can't make a line until we see some college results. With the NFL, it starts right after the Sunday games. We're looking for injuries to skilled players, and anything else we can discover from the results of the games. Basically, it's a real crunch period between noon on Sunday and five
P.M
., when I phone my numbers into the Stardust. They take my line. On that basis the Stardust supervisors decide which way they want to go.”
²

The director of the Stardust sports book who takes and adjusts Roxy's numbers is Scott Schettler, who was born in Pennsylvania and has been in Las Vegas since 1968. By 1971, he was working at Bobby Martin's old haunt, the Churchill Downs Sports Book, writing betting tickets, handling the board, and giving out scores over the telephone. He remained at Churchill until 1977. Then he opened the sports book at the Royal Casino, leaving that job in 1978 to open another in Reno at the Club Cal-Neva. Schettler returned home to western Pennsylvania for a year before going back to Vegas in 1981 and becoming a clerk at the Stardust. He stayed at the Stardust for eighteen months before leaving to open another sports book at Jerry's Nugget, a casino in North Las Vegas.

In December 1983, with the Stardust in receivership by the state after the federal skimming indictments, Schettler was selected by gaming officials to operate the casino's sports book as part of the state-appointed management team. He has run the Stardust Sports Book ever since under the Stardust's owner, Sam Boyd, who purchased the hotel/casino from Al Sachs.

“At the Stardust,” Schettler told me, “we open the line up first. Our line is based on Roxy's numbers and those of my guys
who work here.
³
There are about four or five opinions that go into this. Then we take bets and move the line. When the line has flattened out, the other books will follow our lead. By putting my line up first, I have a chance to get two-way business. The other books are basically gambling. They are giving one-way business because they wait to put up the line. We strictly book here. We don't gamble. Right now, at the major hotels, we're doing forty-four percent of the business. Caesars and Hilton are the glamour places, but we're actually a book joint.”