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Crooked City: Dixon, IL

1. Welcome to Youngstown

Crooked City: Dixon, IL

Sony Music

Society & Culture, Documentary, History, True Crime

4.51.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2014, congressman Jim Traficant dies, and the city that loved him mourns. Why so much love for such a flawed man? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of Crooked City: Youngstown, OH ad-free right now. Click ‘try free’ at the top of the Crooked City: Youngstown, OH show page on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. A truth.media & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's a cool evening on September 23rd, 2014, on a farm just outside of Youngstown, Ohio.

0:15.0

73-year-old former congressman Jim Traffkin walks out to his old Ford tractor to put it

0:20.2

away for the night.

0:22.8

In the years since he got out of prison after being convicted of racketeering and corruption,

0:27.1

Traffkin's done a lot of his thinking out here.

0:30.0

Surrounded by corn fields in every direction, he tends to his horses and the endless list

0:34.8

of things that need fixing on an old farm.

0:38.6

Tonight there's one chore left.

0:45.9

He pulls the tractor into the barn the way he has a hundred times before, but this time

0:51.6

his foot slips, or maybe steps on the gas, mistaking it for the clutch.

0:57.2

The tractor lurches, the front wheels slam into a large farming blade, laying across the

1:01.7

barn floor.

1:04.5

The front of the tractor tips up, and Traffkin goes with it.

1:09.1

Then the whole thing lands on top of him.

1:19.8

Over the years, people died in all kinds of ways in Mafia Run Youngstown.

1:24.6

Gangsters shot by sniper rifles, pistols and shotguns, blown up by dynamite, suffocated

1:30.8

by duct tape.

1:32.8

At one time, Traffkin worried that the same would happen to him.

1:37.6

He never thought it would end like this.

1:42.1

For eight minutes, he was pinned beneath the one-ton tractor, struggling to breathe.

1:46.8

Then, just as he was about to lose consciousness, a man appeared in the barn doorway, and ran

1:52.4

to get help.

...

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