Small bodyguard faces big challenge protecting mob trial witness

When retired mobster-murderer Frank Cullotta spoke at a book signing in Las Vegas in June, there were concerns about his security. Some thought it was dangerous for a man expected to be a witness in a mob trial in Chicago to do a public event in Las Vegas.

However, Cullotta had a bodyguard. But at 5-foot-1, 112 pounds, and 57 years old, Rebecca Venegas didn't exactly look the part. That night, she was wearing a demure gray suit, but her choice of accessories included a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.

When she first met Cullotta, Rebecca was working as a security guard on the movie set of Martin Scorsese's 1995 movie "Casino."

Cullotta was on the set as a consultant and ended up being typecast as a murderer, re-creating for the movie an actual murder he did in Las Vegas in 1979.

"I'd heard through the grapevine Frank was looking for a bodyguard, so I hired on with the security company for the movie," said Rebecca, who looks more like she could be Cullotta's date than his bodyguard.

But then, looks can deceive.

She caught his eye on the set, and it didn't take long before they agreed she would be his personal bodyguard. The street-savvy mobster must have felt comfortable having her as his protection.

"I've been protecting him for 14 years," Rebecca said recently at lunch.

While I scribbled notes, she watched the dining room by habit. Are the waiters coming and going out the kitchen doors or has traffic flow stopped? Is our waiter behaving the same way throughout lunch or does he seem nervous? Who is sitting around us?

Not that anybody would want to hide in the kitchen and whack me, but that's what Rebecca trained herself to do, and now it's just instinct. (Come to think of it, there's a decent-sized list of people who wouldn't mind if I were taken out.)

Rebecca has been a security guard for nearly 30 years now, currently working special events. She said she's been hired to work the upcoming Emmy Awards show.

One of her areas of expertise is to test other people's security. She said she breached security at Universal Studios and sat near President and Barbara Bush at the ABC television special "Welcome Home America: A USO Salute to America's Sons and Daughters," which aired Feb. 4, 1991.

"In the video of the show, I'm the one in the brown desert camouflage less than 10 feet from President Bush," she said.

She won't say how she did it or who hired her, but said the Secret Service later interviewed her about it. The Secret Service declined comment.

Rebecca said she also breached security at Barbra Streisand's first concert at the MGM Grand.

Part of her success is her nonthreatening appearance.

"I blend in so many ways, I can be Italian or Indian or Mexican," said the fit Hispanic woman.

Cullotta takes up about 25 percent of her time, she said. "He's the most demanding; when he calls, I drop what I'm doing."

Cullotta left the federal Witness Protection Program after the restrictions became too annoying to him. But he comes often to Las Vegas, where Rebecca has been based since 1992.

She's never fired her weapon for Cullotta or any other client. And she's only drawn a weapon once, in a case where a husband believed to be abusive was trying to kidnap his daughter from her school. Rebecca pulled a weapon and, even though the wealthy husband had his own bodyguard, he released the child.

"What he didn't know is that I carried a tranquilizer gun for that assignment, since a child was involved," she said.

Early on, Cullotta, 68, asked her if she was afraid of him.

"Should I be?" she answered.

Cullotta told her he would never hurt her.

She answered that he should be afraid of her. "I'm the one carrying the firearm."

I chuckled in disbelief when I first met Rebecca Venegas and heard she was Cullotta's bodyguard.

It's that eternal conflict between how people look and what they are capable of handling, one of life's fascinating dichotomies.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.