Coen covered the Family Secrets trial for the Chicago Tribune. In his 2009 book Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob, journalist Jeff Coen details what really happened. Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Review-Journal. The way the movie portrays it, the brothers - or at least the fictional characters representing Anthony and Michael Spilotro - are beaten with baseball bats in a cornfield and shoved into a shallow grave while still alive.

Case in point: the death of the Spilotro brothers, two mobsters originally from Chicago. What you see in Casino isn’t exactly the way things were.

Though the movie Casino was released more than 22 years ago, it still serves as a reference point for those hoping to understand what real Las Vegas mobsters were like when they were a sinister fixture in the news.īut most movies based on true stories, including Casino, twist the facts for dramatic effect and to compress long histories into a watchable timeframe. Rothstein’s lawyer, Oscar Goodman (played by Goodman himself), stands by his side.

Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is surrounded by the press at a Nevada Gaming Commission meeting portrayed in Casino.

Real casino movie characters