Is Sin City Mayoral Candidate Goodman More Than a 'Mouthpiece?'

By Cathy Scott

Word on the street is that the campaign headquarters of Carolyn Goodman at last Tuesday's election night in Sin City was peppered with mobsters. Old-time mobsters.

"At least 10 were there," the source said.

It's not surprising, considering Carolyn's husband is Oscar Goodman, the self-proclaimed "Mouthpiece for the Mob" who, as a criminal defense attorney, represented the likes of Chicago mobster Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, once suspected of more than 20 killings, and Philadelphia mob underboss Philip Leonetti. Oscar, currently the mayor of Las Vegas whose three-term sting is expiring, has been vocal about his hopes for his wife succeeding him as mayor.

Back in June of 1999, Oscar Goodman was elected mayor of this gambling mecca. At the time, he said he was proud of his past: "I'm not ashamed of anything." During Goodman's tenure as mayor, he changed his popular "mouthpiece" moniker to "America's Happiest Mayor."

On Tuesday, his wife won 37 percent of the vote, with Chris Giunchigliani coming in second, inching closer to her husband's aspirations for her.

Whisperings, however, at the Goodmans' election-night party, according to the source, were that Carolyn might have been able to pull off an early first in the primary based on name recognition, but when it comes to winning in the run off, it might not be as simple.

That's because Giunchigliani, currently a Clark County commissioner, is known as a politician for the people who runs grassroots campaigns. The personable Carolyn Goodman, on the other hand, is new to politics other than as first lady of Las Vegas for the last 12 years. Mrs. Goodman is more recognized as the founder of a private school, known as a top college prep academy where people with money send their kids

"I am running against a name, let’s put it that way," Giunchigliani recently told The Washington Post. "But I think the public recognizes that the time for that type of leadership style has passed."

Now it's up to the voters. Chris, 57, and Carolyn, 72, will face each other again on June 7 in a run-off election. 

Photos courtesy of the candidates' campaign websites and philly.com.

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Smoke and Mirrors: The Truth About Las Vegas

by Cathy Scott

Watching Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman’s indignation over recent advice by President Barack Obama to a New Hampshire audience to not waste cash in Las Vegas was reminiscent of a similarly indignant Goodman a decade earlier. 


Goodman, a former criminal defense attorney and self-described “mouthpiece for the mob,” spent 35 years defending the nation’s most notorious underworld figures. His clients included mobsters Meyer Lansky, Anthony "Tony The Ant" Spilotro and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the latter two portrayed in the film Casino by actors Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro. Goodman, also in the film, played himself–a lawyer for the mob. 


So it came as a surprise in 1999 when Goodman tried to deny the mob’s existence in Las Vegas. It was during Goodman’s mayoral run, when he issued a statement in the midst of a colorful Las Vegas trial of two reputed Mafiosi charged in connection with the 1997 execution-style murder of another gangster, Herbert “Fat Herbie” Blitzstein. The trial spotlighted the very kind of mob activity that officials, other than Goodman, had insisted, year after year, no longer existed in Las Vegas.

It started in the early 1990s, when the Nevada Gaming Commission released the first of several statements assuring the public that the FBI had forced the last of the mob out of Las Vegas in the 1980s. That was not true, of course. Goodman himself had represented Spilotro in a mob trial in the mid-1980s, shortly before Spilotro was buried alive and left for dead in an Indiana cornfield. Blitzstein was a co-defendant with Spilotro in that trial. After Spilotro’s murder, Blitzstein pleaded guilty and went to prison. He was released in the early 1990s and returned to Las Vegas, picking up where he had left off.


The 62-year-old Blitzstein ran a downtown auto-repair shop that fronted for his rackets. Authorities said he ran loan-shark and insurance-fraud racketeering operations out of the shop. 


In January 1997, Blitzstein was gunned down in his town house. Federal prosecutors later contended that mob families in Los Angeles and Buffalo, N.Y., had ordered Blitzstein’s hit so they could take control of his business. 


Then, in May 1999, Goodman, as a mayoral candidate, issued a press release declaring the streets of the city free of traditional organized crime.


"For the last 15 years," Goodman said, "there hasn't been a mob presence here." 


Coincidentally or not, Goodman issued that statement from his law office, which was around the corner from the U.S. District courthouse where the Blitzstein murder-related trial was well underway. Testimony in that case, which was heavily covered by the media, related to the life-and-death saga of Herbert Blitzstein–who had been Spilotro's right-hand man–provided new details about Las Vegas street rackets. For example, the 12-count racketeering indictment handed down in the case named 10 defendants charged with offenses ranging from Mafia-related murder-for-hire to racketeering. 


The trial surrounding Blitzstein’s murder, which ended with most of the defendants pleading out to lesser crimes, was the last Mafia-related trial in Las Vegas. 


Blitzstein’s murder also marked the last mob hit in Sin City. But don't tell Oscar Goodman. We'll just keep it between us.

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Babysitter Turns Crime Sleuth

by Susan Murphy Milano

What do a babysitter and a former mob boss Frank Cullotta, co-author with Denny Griffin on the book "Cullotta" have to do with answers to a 28-year-old McHenry County, Illinois unsolved homicide of a bar owner and his employee?

On June 2, 1981, in McHenry, Illinois the bodies of Ronald Scharff and his barmaid Patricia Freeman were discovered. The local authorities had the man, the motive, and the evidence shortly after the crime. For some reason police sat on the evidence and the case went cold.

Last year a former babysitter to Scharff’s son Paul, now grown with a family of his own who at the time of his father’s murder was only ten years old began asking questions about the 1981 unsolved murder. The babysitter's father also happened to be best friends with the deceased Ronald Scharff. The former babysitter googled the names of Anthony Spilotro head of a violent street crew with whom the movie casino was based played by actor Joe Pecsi, and others from the notorious “hole in the wall gang.” On her Internet search the book “Cullotta,” co-authored by retired veteran cop, tuned author and radio show host Dennis Griffin appeared.

The book is based on the life of Frank Cullotta, who happened to be a childhood friend of Chicago Outfit enforcer Anthony Spilotro. Frank Cullotta in the early 1980s joined Spilotro's violent Las Vegas street crew. The former mobster committed crimes ranging from robbery to murder, and later turning government witness in its investigation of the mob's influence in Las Vegas.

When the former babysitter turned crime sleuth read the book "Cullotta," there is was in black and white on page 130, providing enough details to the June 2, 1981 murders of bar owner Ronald Scharff and waitress Patricia Freeman at the P.M. Pub in McHenry, IL.

Frank Cullotta named "hole in the wall" crew member Larry Neumann as the killer of Scharff and Freeman. After serving time in prison with Neumann, Cullotta introduced him to Spilotro's gang. As Cullotta recalled during his law enforcement debriefing, Neumann admitted committing the murders. Larry Neumann was angry when he learned earlier that evening bar owner Ronalld Scharff had thrown his ex-wife out of the tavern.

The feds provided McHenry authorities with information on the man and the motive. Ronald Scharff had been killed for the perceived slight. Patricia Freeman was murdered because she was a witness in the wrong place at the time. Instead of arresting Larry Neumann and closing the case McHenry County detectives went out of their way to discredit Cullotta's details of the crime. Those detectives have since retired.

Larry Neumann died in prison in 2007 after a lengthy criminal career that included at least six murders, including a 1956 triple homicide from which he managed to gain release.

Since discovering and reading the book, Paul Scharff has been working with McHenry Detectives to get his father’s case closed. And with the unlikely pair of co-authors Denny Griffin and Frank Collutta who set out to tell a tale of one man’s life in the mob, could have never predicted the book would take on a unique and important journey, Justice!

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