Hoping to learn about late-1970s warring Mob factions in this Missouri city on the Kansas border, authorities instead uncovered a bombshell: Kansas City’s Civella crime family illegally controlled a money pipeline originating from inside the Las Vegas Strip’s Tropicana hotel-casino. In reality, the bug was planted at a dinner table with bench seats in a now-demolished Kansas City pizzeria, the Villa Capri. In the 1995 movie Casino, the Mob’s control of skimming at Las Vegas casinos is exposed when authorities learn about it from a surveillance microphone in a Kansas City grocery store.
O’Malley, William Ouseley and Gary Jenkins at the Kansas City Mafia Film Festival on November 24, 2018.
