Hi, this is Brooke. Welcome to our midweek podcast. True crime represents an unbelievably popular genre in,

well, any medium. Books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, they all pull in the audiences by playing to

our deepest fears, our most sensational imaginings. The genre also exploits our misconceptions and biases about crime,

and some argue can even make them worse. But at its best, true crime can make us an offer we

can't refuse, the chance to try and understand a master criminal mind. Rachel Corbett stumbled upon that phenomenon

while working on an upcoming book about criminal profiling.

The former FBI agents, she called up,

kept talking about these podcasts they were listening to

where the mobsters of a bygone era speak for themselves.

Corbett is the author of a recent article in The New Yorker called Why the FBI Loves Mob Podcasts.

And as it turns out, they are having quite a moment.

So they've all started in the last few years.

Sammy the Bull is one of the fan favorites.

That's Salvatore Gravano, the Gambino family underboss in the late 80s, who you wrote was involved in at least 19 murders during his tenure as John Gotti's enforcer.

Exactly. He was the underboss, which means he was second in line, if anything should have

happened to Gotti. And he was a hitman, Rose's way through the ranks. And he was involved in

19 murders, meaning he either executed them personally or he directed them. And now he tells

the tales of these crimes and many others from the Phoenix suburbs where he

lives to be near his grandkids. You wrote, he spent 17 and a half years at a supermax prison,

but he's not still there. So he turned on Gotti, right? Exactly. He flipped on Gotti. Godi got caught implicating Gravano in a series of murders. And Sammy was angry that he wasn't the one who got pinched. Gotti did, but Gotti wanted him to do the time. So he flipped and went to the FBI and got Gotti put in prison for the rest of his life.

I wonder why he wasn't afraid to be murdered. Is it because he was with Gotti so long he knew

exactly how and when it could come? There was a hit out for him. I mean, there have been several hits

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