The film presents its own fictional version of how this might have happened. According to investigators, he died after suffering multiple blunt-force blows to the head and neck and was hidden in the field shortly after. Nicky Santoro of director Martin Scorsese's Casino was apparently based on real-life gangster Anthony Spilotro, whose body (along with his brother's) was found covered up in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.
