I'm John Bachelor.

This is the new John Bachelor Show, CBS Audio Network.

I welcome the historian and narrator, Russell Shorto,

distinguished for having written books about Manhattan about the Revolutionary War, but now he takes us to a small town in western Pennsylvania, famous for a catastrophe, Johnstown.

The catastrophe happened some years before our story.

Nonetheless, it makes Johnstown a famous version of Americana between the Industrial Revolution, and here we are in the 21st century. Russell, congratulations,

and good evening. The book is entitled Small Time. It is subtitled, a story of my family, your family, Russell, and the mob.

We go to an event that was critical to the players in your book.

October 30, 1971.

The Tribune Democrat, the Johnstown local newspaper, published 185 pages of a report issued by the federal government about organized crime.

It read in part, during the course of that survey, commission investigators received allegations that a serious condition existed in the Johnstown area with regard to large-scale legal gambling operations

and the relationship to local government and law enforcement.

One particular man named in this report, Joe Regino, and we will introduce, called

affectionately Little Joe, made a remark that he would have every tribune democrat

destroyed you report that you went looking for it in the town library and in the tribune

democrat records did you find it russell good evening to you good evening john thanks for

having me on your show no i didn't um jo regino, who was the boss of the operation of the local

franchise of the mob in my hometown, Johnstown, indeed vowed that every copy of the Tribune

Democrat he would destroy because it printed this about him.

And he seems to have done it.

I searched many other places as well.

And finally, I went to the Tribune Democrat itself, and they had helped me a good deal in my research.

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