The making of the Hole in the Wall Series I am adding a new method of supporting the podcast. If you have the venmo app, how about donating an average of fifty cents an episode or just hit me up for a buck every time you think of it. Now on with the show. This is the first of a 3 part series telling the story of the Chicago Outfit member Tony Spilotro Hole in the Wall Gang. In this first episode, your hosts tell about the early beginnings and the Las Vegas background that allowed such a gang to start. We use a few dramatic depictions of interviews with the participants who are not available. Plus we use interviews of a few of the actual people involved like Frank Cullotta and FBI agent Emmet Michaels, former Las Vegas Metro Commander Kent Clifford, and Mob historian Michael Green. If we can’t get an original participant in these events because they are dead of impossible to find, we are using actors, lets give credit to our actors, Ben Ellickson of Chicago, the comedian Cojac of Kansas City and the man of a thousand voices, Alex Virgo of Kansas City. Every good thief wants that one big score. How many movies have there been made about the big score or the last score before a master thief retires? My first one I remember was probably the Thomas Crown Affair, but there have been plenty like Heat, Heist, Oceans 11, 12, and Oceans 8 with an all-female cast. What is your favorite caper film?  Personally, mine is Heat with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. The background on the Hole in the Wall Gang In this first episode, we look at the Hole in the Wall gang that starts stealing fro Sears stores and from drug dealers and ends with the last big score, the 1981 burglary at Bertha’s Gifts and Home Furnishings at 896 East Sahara Street in Las Vegas. The Bertha’s store was started by Bertha Ragland who came to Vegas right after WW II and opened a fine china and home furnishings store. She would eventually add a high-end jewelry store inside the home furnishing store.  Bertha Ragland was a colorful and well-known successful Las Vegas businesswoman. Remember this was over 30 years ago and while credit cards were being used, in Las Vegas most still dealt in a lot of cash. The cash transaction report, or CTR, was in use but widely ignored by many financial institutions until the later 1980s when the DEA got very tough on money laundering. It was a well-known fact to her employees that she did not trust banks and kept large amounts of cash and jewelry inside a safe in the store. To take you back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, remember Jane Byrne, she was mayor of Chicago and in 1981 she moved her family into the Cabrini Green high-rise housing project for 3 weeks. In 1981 The ground-breaking cop show, Hill Street Blues based on the Chicago PD was released. I was watching the Kansas City mob boys as they tried to regain some organization after the skimming search warrants were served in 1979 and Joe Agosto turned government witness. The FBI attacks the Outfit In 1981, Anthony Accardo was the real power behind the throne of the Chicago outfit while Joey Doves Aiuppa was the boss to all outside observers. The FBI was conducting a multi-prong attack on the Outfit and their connections to the Teamster’s union and Las Vegas casinos in Operation Strawman 1 and 2. In Operation Penfdorf the FBI taped Teamster’s official Allen Dorfman plotting to skim Teamster money with Outfit Capo Joey the Clown Lombardo and others. Operation Greylord and Operation Gambet were uncovering and identifying the Outift’s penetration of the Cook County Circuit court and other Chicago government entities. 1981 will be the last good year for the Chicago Outfit. A burglary in the Las Vegas store named Bertha’s Gifts and Furnishings will provide one of the most important witnesses to come forward in the Outfit’s history. Frank Cullotta meets Tony Spilotro First,