Las Vegas Mafia - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 5/22/26
The Best of Coast to Coast AM
iHeartPodcasts and Coast to Coast AM
4.1 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guest host Rich Berra and author Jack Sheehan explore the Mafia's connection to building up Las Vegas, his effort to interview notorious drug smuggler Jimmy Chagra, who had been convicted in the murder of a judge, and why people romanticize the lives of criminals.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.4 | Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on IHeart Radio. |
| 0:09.4 | Welcome back to coast to coast a.m. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm your host, Rich Barra, and our guest, Jack Sheehan. |
| 0:13.8 | Well, he's been a teacher and a writer his entire career. |
| 0:16.5 | He has published 35 books on a large variety of subjects. |
| 0:24.5 | Biographies, histories, travels, sports, crime, entertainment. |
| 0:28.6 | He determined years ago that he didn't want to be pigeonholed. |
| 0:31.0 | Well, he did a good job there as a certain type of writer. |
| 0:33.9 | So he's written any good story that comes his way. |
| 0:37.7 | I've heard him on with George Knapp, who is another one of my heroes here, |
| 0:41.4 | and it's just an honor to have Jack Sheen on the show. Hey, Jack, nice to meet you. |
| 0:43.7 | Nice to meet you, Rich. Thanks so much. |
| 0:51.2 | So 35 books, and what we're going to get into a little bit tonight is it was kind of inspired. |
| 0:57.2 | I asked them to find you. I was watching the crime family's documentary on Netflix. |
| 0:59.7 | I don't know if you've seen that. But it was very, very thorough. |
| 1:03.3 | And the Vegas ties, the Vegas lore, it seems to be, to me anyway, they kind of gloss over that stuff, but there is some real deep ties to the Las Vegas strip and really the building of Las Vegas in general, correct? |
| 1:19.7 | No doubt about it. |
| 1:21.5 | As my friend and subject of a book, Perry Thomas, a banker who financed a lot of those transactions from the |
| 1:30.5 | underworld uh as famously said we would never have grown as a city without the mob and we would have been |
| 1:38.7 | dead on arrival if we hadn't driven them out of town and And Perry was a wonderful subject for a book. |
... |
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