The Infamous Vinnie Teresa

Gangland Wire

Gary Jenkins

Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime, History

4.6 • 647 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

In this last interview with our good friend and contributor, Camillus "Cam" Robinson, Gary and Cam discuss the infamous government informant Vincent "Vinnie" Teresa. Cam died recently and I will feel this loss for a long time. His gentle nature and prodigious work effort was always a great benfit to the podcast and to everybody around him. Rest in Peace to my friend and collaborator in this crazy world of mafia history. Camillus was a great historian and an excellent writer. Check out his book by clicking on the title, Chicago Swan Song: A Mob Wife's Story. Lisa Swan became the wife of Frank Calabrese, Jr., a collector for his father, the notorious and brutal Frank “Frankie the Breeze” Calabrese, a high-ranking member of the infamous Chinatown Crew. It’s all here. The money, the violence, the drugs, the greed, and the murders that surrounded her, as well as her deep passion to break free from a lifestyle that could change with the flash of a single bullet. Swan’s firsthand, intimate look inside the insular and secretive Chicago Outfit details her life inside the Calabrese Clan, one of the First Families of the Chicago Mob. She describes, with clarity and occasional humor, her discovery of the dark side of the Mafia and her battle to save herself, her children, and eventually her husband from the gritty realities of the Mob. In this episode, we learn that Vinnie Teresa was an early mobster in the FBI's vaunted Top Echelon Informant program. In the end, Vinne Teresa was caught in an act of perjury when he tried to implicate Meyer Lansky in a criminal conspiracy. Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee" 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. Donate to the podcast. Click here! Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective and now podcaster, documentary filmmaker. And I am here with my good friend and periodic co-host, if you will, Amulus, Camillus Robinson. Cam, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Gary, I always have a blast. I mean, you and I, you got me started in this and anytime I can come on, we just love to. We have a good time getting together, don't we? Yeah, we do. So oh you know a little aside i was just researching some old stuff on chicago or newspaper clip and i saw there was a grand jury about gambling in gary indiana see cam used to live up by gary indiana and we did a show about the gary indiana family that's right. [0:49] Ran by chicago of course hell chicago ran everything some people even say they ran kansas city they didn't really but they had a lot of influence down here kansas city next savella did not do much if he thought iupa wouldn't approve he wouldn't do it he he got iupa's approval on any major things outside of kansas city for sure they had a swung a big stick didn't they absolutely savella wasn't the kind of guy who answered to people but i think he was smart enough to know who were the big fish in the pond yeah he was smart anyhow we're going to talk about Vinnie Teresa. Vinnie Teresa is one of the earliest mob books I ever read. I'll never forget, Kim. I was in a library in the junior college. I must have been taking a class and I was just poking around. I found this book about the mafia. I wasn't into organized crime at the time. I started reading this book about this Vinnie Teresa and all the stuff that he talked about,

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Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer use @ganglandwire
Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

To go to the store or make a donation click here.
To rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here
To rent Brothers against Brothers, click here.
To rent Gangland Wire, click here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, this is a very hard message to bring to you.
0:03.7	I just got word that my co-host, once in a while co-host and contributor, Camillis Robinson,
0:13.2	died in natural death and he slept the other night.
0:17.8	So this will be the last show I do with Cam Robinson. Cam, you were a great guy.
0:24.5	It's really hard to get through this, guys, but I got to do a tribute to Cam. He was just a real
0:33.0	mob-officionado. He was a great researcher. He was a great co-host. We fell together just by a happenstance.
0:42.3	He emailed me once. He had been a podcast fan a few years ago, and he said, you know, he liked
0:47.8	that I, like, went right to the meat of the matter and dug out facts and then engage in a lot
0:53.7	of chit-chat. So I emailed back and said,
0:56.6	you know, hey, what are you about actually? And we got on the phone. We really, we connected,
1:03.3	if you will. And so he started coming up with research. And I was doing some other things at the time.
1:09.7	So Cam did the research and they'd get a hold of me and send me a copy of the research
1:13.6	and then we'd do the show.
1:15.8	And so it's, you know, since then he got involved up in Chicago.
1:20.3	He lived in Chicago for a while and got involved with some people,
1:23.9	Paul Whitcomb and John Toey and Nicholas Seifert,
1:29.7	some other people had kind of a mob show,
1:40.0	a mob roundtable, and, well, I don't know what else to say. It's just so sad. Cam, I'll miss you, buddy. So thanks, guys. Well, hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio gangland
1:45.8	wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas Police Intelligence Detective, and now podcaster,
1:51.9	documentary filmmaker, and I am here with my good friend and periodic co-host, if you will,
1:59.5	Amulus Camillus Robinson.
2:01.5	Cam, thanks a lot for coming on the show.
	...

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