On The Home front

Excerpted from The Battle for Las Vegas – the Law vs. the Mob

On The Home Front

As busy as he was, Tony wasn’t on the job 24/7. As a former Las Vegas TV reporter told me, “Tony didn’t spend all his time whacking and hacking.” He did have a wife and son. In an effort to find out if there was another side to the Ant, I spoke with Nancy and Vincent Spilotro. Per agreement, Tony’s business activities were not discussed.

According to Nancy Spilotro, her husband was a regular guy. He liked home cooking and they seldom ate out. Tony’s own culinary skills were limited to fixing their son breakfast, usually consisting of pancakes. As a couple, they seldom visited the Strip unless there was a special show they wanted to see, or if they were acting as tour guides for out-of-town company. The family visited Disneyland from time-to-time, where Tony’s favorite ride was “It’s A Small World.” The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews, was his favorite movie. He was no “Mr. Fix It” and wasn’t particularly handy around the house. The Spilotros lived comfortably, but not flamboyantly.

Prior to speaking with Vincent, I reviewed an article called “Growing Up Spilotro,” that appeared in the November 2003, issue of Las Vegas Life. During our several telephone conversations in the first few months of 2004, we discussed the content of that piece. “He was the most loving man I ever knew,” Vincent Spilotro told me, repeating a quote from the magazine.

Vincent remembers life as being good as he grew up in Las Vegas. He recalls his father taking him on Colorado River trips, sometimes in the company of casino owners. Other times the two of them just went cruising around town. In his son’s eyes, the alleged mob enforcer was honest and generous, willing to give advice to neighborhood kids. There were also the times his father couldn’t get to sleep unless Vincent put his arm around him. “He only slept a couple of hours a night. Having my arm around him helped.”

But he also has memories of raids by federal agents, and a shooting incident at his house when he was 14. On that occasion, someone attacked his home, and his uncle John’s house, which was located just down the street, with shotguns. Although some shotgun pellets came uncomfortably close to the teenager’s head, no one was injured during the assault. The building and his mother’s car were damaged, however. No one was ever charged in the incident, but both Vincent and his mother believe the police were the culprits.

His father’s reputation gave a unique character to his experiences in school. The other kids knew about Tony and gave Vincent appropriate respect. “I couldn’t get in a fight if I tried,” he says. And his girlfriends didn’t dare cheat on him. Sometimes Tony brought celebrities, such as actor Robert Conrad, to his son’s baseball games, making the boy a celebrity in his own right. A few teachers even asked Vincent if he would get Tony’s autograph for them.

According to Sister Lorraine Forster, who knew Vincent as a student at Bishop Gorman High School, the boy was no problem. “He was a handsome young man,” the retired nun remembers. “He didn’t cause any trouble, didn’t bring any attention to himself. If anything, I’d say he was quiet, maybe a little shy. He was a nice kid.”

But young Vincent also lived by a code of silence. “If I knew somebody had done something wrong, I couldn’t tell on them. That’s the way it was.” And sometimes Tony would advise him that the father of one of his classmates was an informant and to be careful. It was not the life of a typical student, to be sure.

Vincent doesn’t try to portray his father as a saint, but neither does he believe the way Tony is portrayed in books and movies is accurate, either. He doesn’t think his father was capable of that kind of violence, or that he ever killed anybody. “I just can’t see it,” he said.

Was Tony Spilotro a vicious mobster or a loving husband and doting father? Depending on one’s perspective, he might have been both.