The Spilotro brothers' burial site

This is the location where the mob buried the bodies of Anthony and Michael Spilotro.

The gravesite is situated beside West 100 North, in a cornfield that is roughly 1.5 miles west of Enos, Indiana.

Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro was a senior member of the Chicago Outfit, an Italian-American mafia family that operated primarily in the Midwest.

During the early 1970s, the organization sent him to Nevada to oversee some of their operations in Las Vegas.

However, Spilotro found the position boring and soon became involved in petty street crime. While in Vegas, he formed the "Hole in the Wall" gang, which carried out numerous burglaries.

After John Roselli's murder in 1976, the Outfit tasked him with supervising its casino profits. During that period, casinos in Vegas were allowing the mob to "skim" cash off the top of their undeclared revenues.

However, Spilotro could not keep himself out of trouble. Instead of keeping a low profile and focusing on the skimming operation, he often became involved in other crimes.

In 1986, one of the leaders of the Outfit, Joey Aiuppa, was found guilty of skimming and sentenced to 28 years in prison. In the aftermath of Aiuppa's conviction, high-ranking members of the organization held a meeting to "review" the situation in Las Vegas.

During this meeting, they arrived at the conclusion that "Tony the Ant" had attracted too much attention to their operations and that he "needed to go."

Murders

On June 14th, 1986, Anthony and his younger brother, Michael, were told to drive to a hotel parking lot on West Irving Park Road in Bensenville.

The pair had been led to believe that they were attending an initiation ritual and that Michael was finally going to become a "made man."

When they arrived at the parking lot, they were picked up by a senior Outfit member named "Little Jimmy" Marcello.

In the lead-up to an initiation ritual, it was common practice to be picked up at a nondescript halfway point, as the location of the ceremony was always kept secret until the last moment.

After collecting the Spilotro brothers, Marcello drove them to a house on Bryn Mawr Avenue.

When the two brothers walked down into the basement, it immediately became apparent that they had been lured to their deaths. Some of the men tackled Michael to the ground, placed a rope around his neck, and removed a revolver from his jacket.

Upon realizing what was happening, Anthony reportedly asked the men if he could say a prayer.

Moments later, the Spilotro brothers were beaten to death.

Burial

Following the killings, the brothers were stripped down to their underwear and transported to this rural location near Enos, Indiana.

They were then buried at the side of the cornfield, approximately 250 feet away from the road.

Eight days later, on June 22nd, the farmer who owned the field noticed that the soil near the tree line had been disturbed. Believing that poachers were using his land to bury deer during the off-season, he decided to call the police.

When the authorities dug up the site, it became apparent that they were dealing with a double homicide. Five feet down, they found the remains of the Spilotro brothers, who had been dumped on top of each other.

Their killers had made the mistake of burying their remains beside a newly planted cornfield. This meant that the disturbed soil was in plain sight.

Had they chosen a cornfield that was in a later stage of its development, it is likely that the brothers would still be missing to this day.

Following the find, the authorities covered the grave and leveled it out. As a result, there are no signs that it ever existed.

Casino (1995)

The character Nicky Santoro in Martin Scorsese's mob film Casino (1995) is based on Anthony Spilotro.

At the end of the movie, Santoro and his brother are lured to a cornfield, beaten with baseball bats, and then buried alive.

Although this is similar to how the Spilotro brothers died, there are several differences between the scene and what happened in real life.

The most obvious difference is that the brothers weren't killed at the field. They also weren't buried alive, as they were long dead by the time their bodies were thrown into the grave.

The third, less obvious difference is that the corn in the movie is much higher. In real life, the corn was only four inches tall.