I'm John Bachelor.

I'm John Bachelor. This is the new John Bachelor show CBS Audio Network. I'm speaking with the

author Russell Shorto, his new book is Small Time, a story of my family and the mob. We come now

to an event that's important to mention because I want to get

back to the family but I want to frame this. There's a murder and the murder

takes place off camera. We don't see it. But Russell's done the best he can to put together

why it happened and what it did to the operation. His name was Pippi DeFalco.

This is the year I believe it's 1960, is that correct Russell?

February 60.

Why do we believe he was murdered and they found his body later that spring coming up out of the river and that rocked everybody and seems

to have been the beginning of the end of happy times. Why was he killed? Who

killed him? Well the murder was never solved. When I first started meeting with people in town and saying,

you know, I want to look into my grandfather, I want to understand who he was and what that world was,

invariably. Each one of these old people who I sat down with would say,

you know the story about Pippi, right? So I mean it was still it's still to this day that

story echoes in town that this he was a bookie he booked sports he worked at times

for Russ and Joe but it also at times he would go out on his own and apparently, and this may have been his undoing,

he would also at times work for one of the neighboring operations in Greensburg or McKeesport or New Kensington.

And he, and one of the reasons that this becomes such a big local mystery is that he just goes

missing.

The body doesn't turn up for about six weeks.

And in that interval, you see it in the paper they're saying where's

...