Near the end of his life last summer, former mobster Frank Cullotta said Las Vegas as depicted in the movie Casino will never come back. Dennis N. Griffin, who has written several books about the Mafia in Las Vegas, said the retired mobster told him before a final trip to the hospital that “the Vegas of his day was gone.”
Cullotta died Aug. 20 in a Las Vegas hospital of complications from COVID-19. He was 81.
“I believe that Frank’s passing marked the end of that era of Vegas history,” Griffin told Casino.org.
Cullotta moved to Las Vegas in the late 1970s to help his Chicago boyhood friend, Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, operate a criminal enterprise in Southern Nevada. Spilotro was the Chicago Outfit’s overseer in Las Vegas.