The Spilotro brothers' burial site

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

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

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

During the early 1970s, the outfit sent him to Las Vegas so that he could oversee some of their operations there.

In Vegas, Spilotro formed the "Hole in the Wall" gang, which carried out a number of burglaries.

Following the murder of John Roselli in 1976, he was given the task of overseeing the Outfit's casino profits. At the time, a number of casinos in the city were allowing the family to "skim" cash off the top of their undeclared revenues.

However, Spilotro was a violent and troublesome individual. Instead of focusing on running the skimming operation, he often became involved in street crime.

In 1986, one of the leaders of the outfit, Joey Aiuppa, was convicted of skimming and sentenced to 28 years in prison. When Aiuppa was found guilty, 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 performed poorly at his job and that he needed to go. From their perspective, he had run amok in Vegas and attracted far too much attention.

On June 14th, 1986, Anthony and his younger brother, Michael, were brought to a basement in Bensenville, Illinois. The pair believed that they were attending an initiation ritual and that Michael was finally going to become a "made man".

However, when the two brothers walked into the basement, Anthony quickly realized that they had been lured to their deaths. According to one witness, he asked his killers if he could say a prayer.

Moments later, the Spilotro brothers were beaten to death.

Afterwards, they were stripped to their underwear and transported to this rural location near Enos, Indiana.

The two men were buried together at the side of a cornfield, about 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 might be 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 one another.

Fortunately, the mobsters' 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 two men would still be missing to this day.

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

Photos

Photos of the site and other related images.

Casino (1995)

Image source: Casino (1995)

The character Nicky Santoro in Martin Scorsese's mob film Casino (1995) is based on Anthony Spilotro. Santoro was portrayed by actor Joe Pesci.

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

Although this is similar to how "Tony the Ant" met his maker, there are a number of differences between this scene and what happened in real life.

The most obvious one is that the Spilotro brothers were killed in the basement of a house, not in the field.

They also weren't buried alive, as they were long dead by the time their bodies were dumped into a makeshift grave.

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

Anthony and Michael Spilotro

Although Anthony and Michael Spilotro were both part of The Outfit, Michael was not a made man. In other words, he wasn't an official member.

When the brothers were invited to a house on Bryn Mawr Avenue in Bensenville, they believed that he was finally going to be inducted into the family.

However, after stepping down into the basement, a group of men tackled Michael to the ground, placed a rope around his neck, and then removed a revolver that he had in his jacket.

Upon realizing that they had been lured to their deaths, Anthony Spilotro reportedly asked, "Can I say a prayer?"

17W101 Bryn Mawr Avenue

It is believed that the brothers were murdered at 17W101 Bryn Mawr Avenue in Bensenville, Illinois. These days, the property no longer exists, as it was demolished in 2022.

At the time, the house was reportedly owned by the brother-in-law of Lee Magnafichi, who was a mobster in the Chicago Outfit.

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Howard Johnson's

On the day of the murders, the Spilotro brothers drove from their house to this parking lot on West Irving Park Road in Bensenville.

At the time, it was a hotel called Howard Johnson's. These days, it is called Four Points.

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 procedure to be picked up at a nondescript halfway point, as the location of the ceremony was usually kept secret until the last moment.

When Marcello collected the Spilotro brothers, he drove them to the house on Bryn Mawr Avenue, where they were both beaten to death in the basement.

Coordinates: 41.956650, -87.882964

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