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Gangland Wire

Prison story with Steve St. John

Gangland Wire

Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6623 Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Gary interviews Steve St. John about an interesting character Steve met in prison. Stephen Blumberg once lived off a $72,000 annual family trust fund. But, he helped a dark secret compulsion that will send him to prison more than once. Blumberg started as a child removing doorknobs and stained glass windows from the old houses that were slated for destruction in his childhood home of St. Paul. MN. His interest in Victorian architecture started his fascination with rare books. he found in college that the University of Minnesota library held thousands of like. Blumberg initially took items as a way to create a reference collection for his own use. Steve tells some great prison stories about this strange man. Venmo me @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” In 1990, federal authorities arrested Stephen Blumberg for the theft of thousands of rare books from 268 or more universities and museums throughout the United States and Canada. The government valued this haul at about US $5.3 million. In 1991, a federal judge sentenced Blumberg to 71 months in prison gave him a $200,000 fine. It was this conviction that sent him into a federal joint with my friend Steven St. John. On December 29, 1995, he completed his sentence and the BOP released him. Show notes by Gary Jenkins To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder Coverup  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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You are listening to Gangland Wire, hosted by former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective, Gary Jenkins.

0:19.2

Hello, all you wiretappers out there.

0:21.2

This is another segment of what I call Waring the Wire on Steve St. John.

0:25.6

And I want to give a big shout out to Bo Bergren, who is a regular contributor, and I hope

0:31.2

I got that pronounced right again this time, Bo.

0:33.8

Thanks a lot.

0:34.8

Hey, wiretappers.

0:35.5

I'm here on the phone with my friend Steve St. John. I think you know a little

0:39.2

bit about his past. I worked a case. At least my guys did. I just supervised. Follow him around

0:45.1

back in the early 90s and he ended up doing about 10 years in the penitentiary. He came back out

0:51.4

and we've become friends over the last year or so or six months.

0:55.1

You know, I put out another one that he's wearing the wires, and he's got a lot of great

0:58.2

stories out of the penitentiary when he was in.

1:01.0

And he was telling me one about, I said, let's just do this thing.

1:04.3

It's about the guy that went around stealing rare books.

1:07.5

You know, he told the one about the guy that got federal time for finding

1:11.7

the Taronosaurus Rex, the one called the boy one named Sue, which is, you meet the

1:18.6

craziest people in the penitentiary, don't you, Steve?

1:21.1

Well, you do. That's sure. They probably say the same thing about me.

1:26.4

You think anybody's out there tell stories about you?

1:30.3

I worked out of.

1:31.3

About this guy that had this whole big drug kingpin and owned this cabin down on the river.

...

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