The Rise an Fall of Tommy Karate

Gangland Wire

Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Retired intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins tells about the mob career of Tommy Karate Pitera. He got his name because, as a young man Tommy Pitera was often bullied because of his squeaky voice. He studied karate and became so proficient that he was given a scholarship and studied for several years in Japan. When he returned to New York City, Bonanno family members noticed his abilities and recruited Pitera to work as an enforcer and loan collector and gave him his moniker. Soon, he was taken into a crew, and once he committed his first murder, he became a very important member. Support the Podcast Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwireClick 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.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio, Gangland Wire.
0:04.1	I'm going to knock one out before I go play golf.
0:06.7	Check it out.
0:07.5	It's a nice and warm out there today, finally.
0:10.7	I wanted to do something about Thomas Tommy Karate Petera.
0:15.5	He's a bad dude.
0:17.0	I started researching on him, and I actually sent him a letter.
0:20.0	I found out his inmate number in the prison.
0:22.7	And I sent him a letter asking if he would do an interview.
0:26.5	And I never heard back, of course, didn't surprise me.
0:30.4	And then I also found out as I'm poking around trying to find out information about Tommy Karate.
0:37.6	He got such a cool nickname there that I found on Instagram.
0:43.0	There's a Tommy Karate page and he sells paintings and get them for $350 each ones that he does.
0:52.1	And they have them, they have, you know, what you can see them on
0:57.6	Instagram, but they also have the Tommy Karate Petera artwork on a website.
1:06.0	And it has, you know, all the rest of them or a lot of them.
1:08.6	And you can, you can buy one. So I thought, you know, I'll get a hold of them and you can you can buy one so I thought you know I'll get
1:12.4	a hold of this guy he's not run the website for the penitentiary they can do a lot they can make
1:17.5	phone calls but I'm pretty sure they can't get on the internet too many scammers in the penitentiary
1:23.7	to let him get on the internet so I I got a whole this guy that runs the through
1:28.9	Instagram, did the messaging. And I offered to buy one in exchange if he would do a phone
1:34.8	interview with me. I said, just a 15 minute phone interview. And then I was going to raffle it off
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.