Cullotta was in the Witness Protection Program at one point, but he resurfaced, acting as a consultant for Scorsese's 1995 film, along with running a mob tour company in Vegas and a YouTube channel. Cullotta told Upproxx, 'I became friends with Tony, and we started hanging together, and robbing together, and doing everything together.' But after a failed robbery attempt led to an arrest, Cullotta turned state's evidence when he suspected Spilotro had put a hit out on his name. And anytime you got any monies to give me, you give me directly.'Ĭullotta and Spilotro grew up together and began their life of crime together as young men in Chicago.

I'll never give them any orders directly, they'll be coming through you. In a 2015 with Uproxx, Cullotta said after moving to Las Vegas, Spilotro gave Cullotta the OK to set up a crew, telling Cullotta, 'Just make sure I get a percentage. Meanwhile, Nick Calabrese testified that the Spilotro brothers were killed by a group of mobsters in the basement, and they transported their corpses to the Indiana cornfield where the brothers were buried. The Spilotro brothers' family testified both men suspected it was a trap. The brothers were lured to a basement in the Bensenville neighborhood, near the Chicago airport, under the false pretense Michael would become a 'made man,' as reported by the Wednesday Journal. What really happened to the Spilotro brothers only became publicly known in 2007 during the 'Family Secrets' mob trial. In 1986, their bodies were found and identified in an Indiana cornfield, and, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, 'Investigators suspect that the two men 'died at or near' the grave.' This led Scorsese and Pileggi to envision the violent end for the brothers that is seen in the film.

Scorsese and Pileggi had no way of knowing what really became of the character's real-life counterparts, Anthony and Michael Spilotro, because the full details of their murders were not revealed until long after the film came out.

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