1989 Year of the Stool Pigeon Ken Eto

Gangland Wire

Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ken Eto and Vince Solano An American-born man of Japanese extraction left the internment camps after World War II and landed in Chicago. Ken Eto was a professional gambler who received notice from the Outfit. By the 1970s, Vince Solano, boss of the Rush Street crew took over all Bolita action and he placed Ken Eto in charge. The FBI made a gambling case on Eto and before he appeared for sentencing, he assured Solano that he could do the time and he would not turn into a witness. Vince Solano did not want to take a chance and he dispatched two of his men named Jasper Campise and John Gattuso to murder Eto. they bungled the hit and Eto survived. A few months later Solano had his two errant hitmen murdered. Ken Eto and Elaine Smith FBI agent Elaine Smith had made the original case on Eto. She was part of the team who turned Eto and she became his minder turning the time when he started testifying about every Outfit secret he knew. They even flew him to Kansas City for the Las Vegas casino skim trials where he identified the Outfit hierarchy and told the jury that this was a criminal organization and was able to identify the hierarchy and tell how they worked. Show notes by Gary Jenkins To go to the store or make a donation click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. To subscribe on iTunes click here, please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Gangland Wire, hosted by former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins.
0:19.0	Hey guys, all you wiretappers out there.
0:21.8	This is one of the series of short episodes about the Chicago outfit in 1989.
0:31.5	I'm recording this with my friend Cam Robinson, Camulus Robinson, and Paul Whitcomb,
0:40.5	my other friend, both these guys are experts on the Chicago outfit.
0:48.8	Now, looking back at 1989, the Covey's won first place in the National League East, but the Giants beat them in the National League playoffs.
0:54.3	If you remember that, the Royals, since I'm from Kansas City, we finished second near American League West,
0:59.8	kind of on our way back downhill from our Great Wind and the World Series in 1985.
1:06.1	Richard J. Daly had been the mayor for a long time in Chicago, and Richard M. Daly,
1:09.1	little Ritchie, became the mayor in 1989.
1:12.7	Now you're going to notice that the sound is just a little off.
1:18.1	I had to take the sound from a Zoom call because my recorder developed a problem during the taping and I didn't notice until we were about, God, I've been about an hour or so into it
1:23.7	and none of us wanted to go back over this again.
1:26.1	It's like catching lightning in a
1:28.7	bottle doing a show. I felt like we'd done something really good and just, we just can't,
1:34.4	sometimes you just can't do it again. So, but I think it's a cool show, a cool series of episodes
1:39.6	about stool pigeons in 1989. Now, 1989, the Chicago outfit had a bad year, as you'll see.
1:47.7	Everybody came in and started talking.
1:49.9	So settle back and listen to this particular episode.
1:53.6	I don't remember which is which.
1:55.2	Now, don't forget to hit me up on my Venmo, bite me a shot in a beer,
1:58.5	or help me buy a new recorder, which I'm going to do,
	...

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