Gangland Wire

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Frank Hayde to explore his latest book, Hoffa’s Connection. Hayde, a Kansas City native and noted mob historian, brings forward a largely overlooked figure in organized crime history—Sylvia Pagano. The conversation centers on Pagano’s rise from Kansas City to Detroit, where she operated at the intersection of organized crime and labor unions under Jimmy Hoffa. Known for her effectiveness as a union organizer, Pagano infiltrated workplaces, signed up members, and quietly maintained ties to powerful mob figures. Her ability to navigate both worlds made her a key behind-the-scenes operator during a volatile era in American labor history. Hayde details Pagano’s role in helping broker alliances between the Mafia and the Teamsters during a turbulent strike, marking a turning point in the relationship between organized crime and labor. Drawing from FBI wiretaps, he reveals candid conversations that shed light on her relationships with influential mob leaders like Tony Giacalone and Moe Dalitz, emphasizing her strategic importance across multiple crime families. The episode also explores the life of Chucky O’Brien, who grew up surrounded by Hoffa and organized crime figures. Through Hayde’s research and interviews, listeners gain insight into the generational impact of mob ties, as well as the strict code of silence that governed both mother and son. Beyond individual stories, the discussion expands to the broader national network connecting crime families and labor unions. Pagano’s reach extended well beyond regional boundaries, illustrating how organized crime leveraged union influence across the country. This episode offers a fresh perspective on the enduring mystery surrounding Hoffa’s disappearance by examining the deeper historical context—and the overlooked players like Sylvia Pagano who helped shape it. It’s a detailed look at power, loyalty, and survival within the American Mafia. The book is Hoffa’s Connections:The Story of Sylvia Pagano: the Kansas City Girl at the Center of the Mafia’s Alliance with the Teamsters Union  xxx [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:03] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, later sergeant. I have this podcast, Gangland Wire. I’ve got a website. If you want to go check my website out, I’ve got a few things for sale on there. And you can go rent the documentaries I’ve done about the Kansas City mob on Amazon. Just search my name. I’m all over the internet. Just search my name and mafia and you’ll find more you ever wanted to know about me and the mob and what I’ve done. And today I have a really a former Kansas City boy, a Kansas City native who has done several books on the mob, particularly the Kansas City mob. And he’s got a most recent one that I find just really fascinating. It’s a little known story that will help shed the light on Jimmy Hoffa, a little bit more light than most of you ever knew. There’s some questions that I had myself that’s not really in the in the popular culture about Jimmy Hoffa. It’s Frank Hayde. Welcome, Frank. Thanks, Gary. Great to be with you again. All right, Frank. We’ve done Mafia Dreams and Mafia and the Machine. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your books. [1:13] I grew up in Kansas City. My family stretches way back in Kansas City, and they were involved in the political machine under Pendergast, and so I heard a lot of stories about those days growing up. Later in my career with the National Park Service, I worked a short stint at the Harry Truman National Historic Site, where I learned more about local history, more about the political machine and the mob in Kansas City. So that’s where my interest started. [1:39] And then many years later, I wrote The Mafia and the Machine, and then followed that up with some of these other books, including this most recent one, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Kansas City girl at the center of the Mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters. You know, that’s the mouthful, I know. You know how it is with the subtitle. You can try to get the, summarize the entire book in your subtitle. So, that’s what that is. Yeah. When you look up a book or you see it online or whatever, you want to know quickly what it’s about. So I see that title, Hoffa. Oh, that’s interesting. I thought everything was done about Hoffa. Then you got this subtitle in here and you say, oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know about this. And I didn’t myself, this Sylvia Pagano. And the story starts in Kansas City. It’s a fascinating story, guys. I want to tell you, it is a fascinating story. [2:31] But before we get started, Frank was a park ranger, a law enforcement park ranger for the National Park Service for 20 years. And he has a really interesting mob interaction when he was in, I believe you run a temporary assignment out in California. Tell the guys about your mafia interaction as a law enforcement officer. [2:53] Yeah. So I was actually at the park service 32 years. 20 of those were law enforcement and just retired. But in the summer of 2024, I got to go out to Redwood National Park on what we call a detail, which is a temporary assignment. They were shorthanded and needed a little extra help. And I knew the place pretty well because I had worked there earlier in my career. So I went out there and it’s a beautiful place. And I was on patrol and I came upon a campsite and there was some violations going on. Nothing major, just the typical stuff that we see as park rangers. And I contacted the occupants of this campsite and I got their licenses and I was back in my vehicle running the licenses. There was a male and a female and the female, I noticed it was a New York license and Brooklyn address and last name is Scarpa. I said, no, that can’t be. That’d be too much of a coincidence. And ran the information, recontacted the subject. And I asked the female, I said, by any chance, are you related to Greg Scarpa? She said, oh, yeah, that was my grandfather. And Greg Jr. was my father. [4:02] And I guess I had to laugh. And by then, I had already written a ticket or two, I think, for just petty offenses. And so I handed her ticket and then asked her if she’d take a picture with me. But she was real nice. She understood that people don’t mind, and she was great. She took a picture with me, and she was more than happy to talk about her father and her grandfather. And it was all very interesting and just quite the coincidence. Yeah, really. That was quite a coincidence. Not only the main coincidence was that you knew her. And then a lot of people might know the name. You really knew the name. Yeah, no. And you had this whole interest in it to talk about. Yeah, I can tell you that 99% of park rangers, you have no idea. Now, if you’re a Brooklyn cop, that’s different. But I was probably the only park ranger alive that would have made that connection because of my interest in the topic. I’ve been trying to get Greg Scarlett Jr. to come on. He’s made some intimations to somebody else. He followed my Facebook group, and I followed his. And so I don’t know. I reached out indirectly. I don’t know exactly how to get a hold of him. Maybe I’ll package this little story up and I’ll send that to him. Maybe that’ll get him to come on the show. Except you wrote the tickets, damn it. That’s the problem. I hope he won’t come after me to write in his daughter’s tickets. Yeah. [5:25] All right, Frank. So let’s go in this most recent book, Hoffa’s Connection. How did you, Sylvia Pagano, how did you even get onto that name other than, did you start, she’s Chucky O’Brien’s mother, who most guys know if you’re really into Hoffa at all, or even on the little bit, Chucky O’Brien was, everybody thought he was like his illegitimate son a lot of times or his surrogate son. And he was really close to Hoffa and drove him around. I was going through your book. He was a guy that Hoffa could send around to other mob people because he was half Italian himself and both sides trusted him to carry messages and do meetings and things like that. So how did you get onto this originally? So I got a call from Jack Goldsmith, who’s a very interesting man because he is the learned hand professor of law at Harvard University, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former assistant attorney general under President Bush. But for me, the most interesting thing about him was that he is Chucky O’Brien’s stepson. [6:29] And he was working on his book, Inhofe’s Shadow, when he contacted me. It’s a great book. I would recommend it to all the wiretappers. But it’s about Chucky. And he wanted to know if I had come across any information on Chucky O’Brien in my research for the Mafia and the Machine, because Chucky was from Kansas City. I said, what? Chucky O’Brien was from Kansas City? Because I knew all about Chucky O’Brien, but I had no idea he was from Kansas City. So that shocked me. And I don’t think very few people knew that. His Kansas City roots were scarcely known. Everybody just thought of Chucky as a Detroit guy. But when I finally read Goldsmith’s book, it’s about Chucky, but he touches on Sylvia. And I found what he wrote about Sylvia to be completely fascinating, especially because she was Kansas City. And so I thought, shoot, she’s in my wheelhouse. I thought, wow, she would make a great subject for a book. But I balked at it because she was so secretive that she left hardly anything information, hardly any documents exist about Sylvia. It’s just she wasn’t like the men that she associated with who were so extensively documented. There was just very little known about her, not even very many photographs in existence. [7:44] But fortunately, I got together with Pat Faisal in Kansas City. He’s a terrific researcher. You’ve worked with him a lot, Gary. You’ve had him on your show, I think. I think he’s written a couple of really important books on local history, and he had come across her independently of me, and through his own research, he had stumbled on just a brief mention or two of Sylvia Pagano in various FBI documents. [8:09] And so we decided to put our heads together, and Pat helped me with the research, did the lion’s share of the research, fed it to me, and then I would write the story. And that’s how it came together. [8:21] Interesting. And Frank, one of the coolest things, the research that Pat found was those wiretaps or bugs that the illegal bugs the FBI had in her house. And so they got a lot of really great conversations and they’re all transcribed and out there for somebody to find. So to me, that was fascinating. [8:45] Yes, that was probably our best source are these transcripts from the illegal microphones that the FBI placed in homes and businesses of organized crime associates all over the country back in the 60s. Got some great information from those. Sylvia talking freely in her apartment. Candidly, because she doesn’t know anybody’s list. And they had him in Tony Giacalone’s home juice company in Detroit also. And Sylvia was often a topic of conversation over there as well. By the way, Tony Giacalone was Sylvia’s paramour for many years. They had a long affair. People who think that Sylvia had an affair with Hoffa that produced Chucky O’Brien, [9:28] And that is not accurate. Chucky, we know who Chucky’s father was. He was a criminal out of St. Louis from the time he was a boy and went to prison when he was a young guy, was recruited from prison to come to Kansas City and work as a driver, for none other than Charlie Banagio. And so that put him right at the center of the action. [9:53] And Sylvia, having married the young man that put her right, she was already at the center of the action because she knew all the movers and shakers in the North End at that time already from the time she was a girl. But they became very much a part of Banagio’s network. And this was one fact that really blew me away that I didn’t know. And I don’t think you know it or Owsley or O’Malley or really anybody in Kansas City that Charlie Banagio was Chuckie O’Brien’s godfather. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Yeah. That is interesting. So Sylvia Pagano, she lives down there in the North End, what we call the North End folks, which is our little Italy. There’s a big church that anchors that neighborhood. And that’s where all the people came from Southern Italy and Sicily, moved into Kansas City and were associated with the church down there. After them, the Vietnamese came in and the church sponsored a lot of the Vietnamese and settled in that same neighborhood as it became a shifting neighborhood. So she’s down over there in Little Italy or the North End. And she meets a guy named Michael. Was it Three Fingers? [11:03] Oh, yeah. Frankie. Frankie Three Fingers. Coppola. Coppola, yeah. So tell us about that relationship. Yeah, that’s really interesting because Frankie Three Fingers… Hasn’t really been chronicled much as part of the Kansas City family. Because he was a roving guy, he had a lot of clout in both Italy and the U.S., and he had memberships in multiple families, and he was a high-ranking status too. So wherever he went, whether it was Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, New Orleans, he was all over the place, and he was well-respected wherever he went. But he was in Kansas City for quite a long time. He was strongly associated with Padagio. And it appears from all the evidence, as well as testimony from organized crime experts in Detroit, that Frankie Three Fingers escorted Sylvia to Detroit after her marriage with Charles O’Brien ended in about 1941 in Kansas City. [12:13] So Sylvia arrives in Detroit on the arm of Frank Coppola, and that put her on the fast track to getting to know the upper echelon of the Detroit family and mobsters, top mobsters beyond Detroit. Coppola was associated with Costello in his slot machine racket down in New Orleans. [12:36] And later, after he got deported back to Italy, He worked with Lucky Luciano to put together the whole narcotics syndicate network that included the French Connection. So tremendously influential as a mobster. Sylvia could really not have picked a more influential and well-connected guy as a boyfriend. That really put her on the fast track to getting to know a lot of the most powerful guys in the country. Really interesting guy. Frank Copeland. I’ll just say it and maybe someone else can run with it. I don’t know if it’ll be me or not, but he would make a great subject for a book. Yeah, he’s not very well known. And the mob used to have this guy, Nikolai Gentile. He traveled around to different families and brokered different deals. I think back before communication was so fast and you didn’t fly from one city to the other, you had to take a train. That’s a whole day on the train to get one city to the other. Telephone communication wasn’t that good. You didn’t hardly make long distance phone calls back there in the 20s and 30s. I don’t think they were hard. So you have guys like this that then travel around and take messages that are trusted by the different cities. And so he had to be one of those guys. [13:52] You’re exactly right. In fact, he knew Nicola Gentile. [13:58] Gentile is also, I speak about him in this book also. He plays a role, a pretty important one, and he describes some events that are really fascinating. This story actually doesn’t begin in Kansas City. It begins in Pueblo, Colorado. There’s three geographic areas that are really emphasized in this story. Pueblo, Colorado, Kansas City, and Detroit. But Nicola Gentili and Frank Coppola knew each other in the United States, and they knew each other in Italy. And you’re exactly right, they had a similar role as traveling diplomats within the mafia. Very interesting. Not too many other guys, especially later on. They had Johnny Roselli, who was really well-traveled, and some others. But in those early days, a couple of these guys, Coppola, Gentile, I don’t know if there was any others or not, but that was what they did. They were all over the place, and they were so well-connected, and they really had memberships in multiple families. And that seems to have faded away later. You didn’t hear too much about guys that had more than one member. So occasionally somebody would switch families, but yeah, they were really interesting, [15:11] real, what you would call international mystery men, I think. Interesting. So she had an affair with him, and he brought her up to Detroit and started making connections in Detroit, if I remember the story right, with the Jackalones. And so what. [15:27] Take us on from there. How does she then move in with Hoffa? And she’s like in the middle between the Peckerwood truck drivers and the Italian mob, which they both needed each other and they worked well together for a long time. So how does she end up in the center of that? Yeah, she’s still quite young when she gets to Detroit. She’s just early 20s, maybe mid 20s at that point. But and here she is she’s immediately meeting all of the wise guys but she was still she needed a job she needed work i’m sure coppola helped her out to some extent but he had his own wife he had his own he probably had another mistress or two as well i mean she needed to make a she needed to make a living and raise her son chucky and um she got a job with the teamsters at that time in In Detroit, unions were strong. There was a lot of unions, and it was the capital of industrial unionism at that time. And so that just became a natural choice. She ended up meeting Burke Brennan initially, actually, even before Hoffa. Brennan was Hoffa’s right-hand guy. [16:36] And he gave her a job with the Teamsters as a salter. She was an organizer, and a good one, and a legit organizer. But her specialty was salting. Now, what’s that? So she was a union representative, and she would get a job in a factory or a warehouse, just an ordinary job. And she would go to work, just like everybody else, punch the clock. But while she was there, her real objective was signing other people up to join the union. So she’s like a secret agent in a way, buried into the normal workforce, but with a real different agenda. And she was real good at it. And the union guys noticed that she worked really hard and she was loyal and that she would keep her mouth shut. And so those were the same qualities that the mob guys admired. So this was at the time, though, and this is very important, when most of the unions and the mob were still at odds with each other. Back then, the gangsters were getting hired by companies to break strikes and to oppose unions. [17:47] And there was a particularly bad strike going on. It lasted a long time. The Teamsters were striking the Detroit Lumber Company. This was at about 42. And it was violent. And Hoffa could see the writing on the wall that the Teamsters were losing the battle. It went on and on. It was violent. And that’s where Sylvia Pagano stepped in. Burt Brennan told Jimmy Hoffa he should talk to Facci. Facci was Italian for face. And that was Sylvia’s nickname that she got when she was young back in Kansas City. Had a very pretty face. And so they called her the face. So Hoffa talked to Fauci and she set up a basically like a summit meeting peace conference, more or less. And they brokered a deal where the mob switched sides and became allies with the Teamsters against the Detroit Lumber Company. So that was really the moment that changed history, brought the mafia into the Teamsters orbit and vice versa. And that’s all traceable right back to Sylvia Pagano. [18:55] Wow. That’s interesting. I always wondered what the genesis of that was with Hoffa and the mob. And of course, we can see how it developed, but what that actual birth of that was. I think you’ve stumbled across the birth of it. You also… [19:11] We’re able to stumble across the birth of the Eastern families and New York families connection to Hoffa, which that that gets even bigger. Tell us a little bit about that. She was involved in that, believe it or not, guys. And just like in Detroit, back in New York, there’s Johnny Dio. He was busting up labor union strikes for the companies. Yeah, I think that to some degree in New York, New Jersey, that some Teamsters locals had already been infiltrated by the mafia independently and maybe unbeknownst to Hoffa in Detroit. But it really became a big thing with Hoffa and with Sylvia’s brokering that alliance. Little isolated examples of mob infiltration, I think, were already happening in Detroit. But once again, as Hoffa’s progressing in his career, moving up the ranks, he always had his eye on the top job. He wanted to be the president of the IBT. And of course, he knew he needed help in the Northeast for that, to realize that goal. And so with Sylvia helped set up meetings with Tony Ducks Corral Johnny Diagordi Tony Provenzano and Sylvia had gotten to know Provenzano in Detroit because he had strong connections to Detroit let’s see his cousin was married to. [20:39] Tony Giacalone’s cousin was married to Tony Pro, I believe, or vice versa. That’s your book. Yeah. I’d have to go back and read my own book. Yeah, it’s hard to keep up. Hard to remember all the details. All these players. Giacalone’s cousin was married to Provenzano. And so Sylvia had already met Provenzano in Detroit. And Chucky, her son, had already started calling him Uncle Tony. And so she had this great connection to Provenzano. And so she helped facilitate the Teamsters Mob Alliance in New York and New Jersey, just as she had in Detroit. And then it goes on from there. Then she later, we’re moving forward now, but she would later become the link between Hoffa and his closest contact in Cleveland, which was Moe Daylitz. She became the link between Hoffa and Alan Dorfman in Chicago. And she became the link between Hoffa and the Sevilla brothers in Kansas City. So she really was, and this is all, they taught, there’s a, from those FBI tapes, those illegal FBI tapes, we have Tony Zarelli and Nick Sevilla in Florida speaking about Sylvia Pagano and her relationship as a liaison between the Detroit family and between the Kansas City family. Like, there’s your proof right there. Not that you need it. She was really… [22:09] The guys, a lot of them really liked, adored her in the sense of she did have an affair with a couple of them, and she was a good-looking woman. A lot of them had, Moe Dalitz was known to have a crush on Sylvia, possibly an affair with Sylvia. But she was more than your mob mole, right? She was a dealmaker. She was an advisor. She was a liaison. She brought money to the table. She did deals with the guys. She helped broker some pension fund loans, all these things. So what I like to say about Sylvia is that we all know that the mob never inducted women into their ranks. But if they had, Sylvia Pagana would have been their first choice because she worked hard. She was loyal. [22:56] She kept her mouth shut. And she really lived truer to the code than some of the men did. She was 100% omerta. She really was. and she learned that in the north end of Kansas City, where Umerta was extremely strong even up into this century after it wasn’t so strong in other places and so she passed that on to Chucky O’Brien. He was also a real strong adherent to the code of silence. Yeah, I think we have to remember Chucky O’Brien was half Italian. His father was Italian. No. [23:33] So his mother, Sylvia, was the Italian. Mother, Sylvia, yeah. Yeah, his dad was Irish. Yeah, I got that mixed up. Exactly, asked backwards. But yeah, he was half Italian. And so he really talked the talk, and he moved right in. All these guys were like his uncle, Uncle Nick, Uncle Quirk, and that kind of thing. So he came back to Kansas City. Tell a little bit about Chuckie O’Brien and Kansas City. Yeah, so in 1950, he’d been in Detroit for about nine years by that point. 1950, he’s getting into high school age, and Sylvia sent him back to Kansas City to live on Independence Avenue with his grandparents, and he went to Cardinal Glennon High School. [24:13] And became a good athlete, started dating a gal from the old neighborhood who was a lot like Sylvia. I think that’s really interesting because Chucky really idolized his mother, but he never really, when he was young at least, got to spend as much time with her as he wanted. He spent a lot of time back in Kansas City. He spent a lot of time at his uncle’s house in Detroit because Sylvia was so busy with Hoffa and with the mob. So here’s Chucky in Kansas City. He meets a gal from Sylvia’s old neighborhood who has other things in common with Sylvia and who even looks, in my opinion, quite a lot like Sylvia. And he would eventually take her back to Detroit and marry her and have a family together. But his main objective, it really in Kansas City wasn’t so much going to school. It was becoming a truck driver. He wanted to become a truck driver so that he could put himself on the path to becoming a union organizer like his hero and surrogate father, Jimmy Hoffa. And according to Chucky, Uncle Nick and Uncle Cork got him his first job as a driver and got him his first union card with local 541. [25:23] And this was right at the time when Local 541 was becoming ground zero for labor strife and union corruption in the United States. And Gary, you said a key word earlier, which was Peckerwood. And that’s who was running the Kansas City Teamsters at the time. It was dominated by Peckerwood guys, country boys, basically, and like Hoffa. And these guys were just as bad as the Italian gangsters who were more famous. They ran those locals with intimidation and terror, and they were violent, and they were very ambitious. They had political power. [26:08] Make a long story short, in 1953 in Kansas City, we had an inter-union labor war. And it was the Teamsters versus almost every other union in town. And Teamsters were trying to dominate a lot of these other unions is what it was. And so you had a complete paralysis of the entire construction industry for three months. Imagine just all construction stopping for three months in any metro area and how devastating that is to the economy. 23,000 Kansas Citians were out of work. The Teamsters were refusing to pick up or deliver supplies. And that eventually morphed into violence and sabotage. You had guys going into battle at construction sites. People were getting badly injured. People were getting kidnapped. It was, and then furthermore, we had four military defense projects centered in the Kansas City area, and this is right at the height of the Korean War. So these military installations were suffering work stoppages also. So this was unacceptable in Washington. And Congress swooped in with hearings and an investigation. [27:17] And they called this, basically, it was, I think the exact language was something like the most forbidding chapter in the history of American unions, something like that. It was a big deal. This history has been mostly forgotten. But Kansas City was [27:32] completely paralyzed for about three months. And that was the union that was the local mainly primarily local 541 which chucky was a young member of he was too young at that time to get drawn into the politics of the union i don’t believe that he was on the front lines of these these battles and violence that was happening he was just a brand new truck driver at the time but he was part of that in the sense that he was a local a member of the local at the time this stuff was happening so yeah that’s that’s what happened when Chucky came back to Kansas City. [28:07] Interesting. And that must have been the time when Roy Williams started moving up the ladder and the mob was moving in and they moved this auto ring and some of his people out. And Roy Lee Williams must have, with the support of Nick Civella and the local mob, must have moved right on in. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. The main guy behind all the strife and violence I was just talking about was Orville Ring, classic quintessential Peckerwood guy and then after all this happened Hoffa swooped in and helped negotiate an end to these conflicts in 1953 and, And Nick Civella and his crime family, they were all watching all this from the wings, planning and scheming. Wow, there’s a lot going on here. How can we capitalize on this? [28:50] So in the aftermath of it all, the Savellas basically intimidated Orville Ring out of the Union. He went back to his farm. Later, he was killed in an accident on his farm, which a lot of people thought was the mob, that the mob did it. But it looked probably just an accident. And I think a tractor rolled over on him or something like that. But yeah, Roy Williams. So at this time, just basically the Italians were taken over from the Peckerwoods. There were still some useful Peckerwoods, and they worked together. And Roy Williams was the key guy there. This is when Nick Civella and he started working together to take over the Teamsters in Kansas City. You’re exactly right. And the rest is history. Really? really. Roy Williams is an interesting guy. He was a war hero from World War II. He had several bronze stars and he was a huge war hero, but he knew which side of the bread got the butter. And so he went with that and he went with Nick Civella. And he did, he bucked up to him a few times, but Nick Civella, actually in a famous scene, Nick Civella had him picked up and driven somewhere and shined a bright light in his eyes and said, you will go along with this scheme. [30:05] So it’s, but he kept going along to almost, he almost, he did become the president of the union for a short period of time, almost right there at the end of his life and when everybody was going to jail. But he was Nick Civella’s protege and Nick Civella’s puppet for his whole life and the whole Teamsters union was. [30:24] Yeah and that story you mentioned with the white spotlight shining in his eyes they kidnapped him and took him into this empty warehouse and i always point to that as just one of those. [30:34] Terrifying stories about how the mob used to work and yeah man and that wasn’t the only time that they intimidated roy williams in that manner so he like you said he was this tough guy war hero He was a big guy, and yet even a guy like that can get intimidated into doing whatever these guys tell him to do because his tactics that they used were just terrifying. Yeah. I read one thing where he later on, he claimed when he turned and gave evidence and talked to the Bureau that he claimed that they also threatened his wife and children during one of these sit downs with him. I mean, they did the same thing to Alan Glick out in Las Vegas. Tuffy DeLuna was out there, and he read off Alan Glick’s name of his wife and his children. He said, you may find yourself expendable, but I don’t think you’re going to find your family expendable and read off their names. So there’s two good examples of them. Say that Bob never messes with your family. There’s two good examples of them using the family and family as threats. Yeah. [31:40] It’s very tough. Yeah, it is. I heard knowing Mo Dalitz, to me, that was key because he was such a mover and an operator. Talk a little more about that. He had been in Cleveland. He had to set her up with Bill Presser. And that was primarily Jewish mobsters in Cleveland, seemed to me like. And then he also had all those connections to Chicago to get to Red Dorfman, his son, Alan Dorfman. Talk a little more about that relationship with Mo Dalitz. In Mo Dalitz’s biography, I can’t think of the name of the author at the moment, but that author states that Sylvia was one of Mo Dalitz’s lovers. I’m not sure if that’s true or not. I do think that Mo Dalitz, at the very least, had a crush on Sylvia, but also respected her very much. And she, just as she had with the Detroit family before, she brokered an alliance with Daylitz. What happened was Daylitz had a laundry empire, was a rum runner and a racketeer and a leader in the Jewish mob. But he also had a lot of legitimate businesses, including a laundry empire in Detroit and Cleveland. [32:53] And while he was still in Detroit, before he really made his move to Cleveland, his permanent move to Cleveland, his laundries, along with other laundry owners, they bonded together in an association. And they were very anti-union. And they were basically at odds with the Teamsters. And until Sylvia swooped in. And Sylvia had her own connections by now to the Laundry Workers Union also. So she’s working for the Teamsters, and she’s very close to Hoffa, but she then married a guy named John Paris, who was the head of the Laundry Workers Union. [33:32] So Sylvia knows Hoffa, and she knows the head of the Laundry Workers Union very closely, and she knows Dalitz. So she’s the one who’s positioned to bring these people together, sit them down at the same table, and start working together, start negotiating. And that’s what she did with Daylitz. And so that led to Daylitz paying off Hoffa, basically, to settle this contract on terms that were favorable to Daylitz and the other laundry owners. [34:07] But you could say that Hoffa, in that case, sold out his members, at least at that time. Now, I do want to make it clear that most rank-and-file teamsters for many decades loved Hoffa because he definitely did negotiate some great contracts that brought truck drivers into the middle class, got them very good pay and benefits. And it’s only fair, it’s only right to give him credit because as somebody once said about Hoffa. [34:33] He was always a criminal, but also always a teamster. And he worked very hard for his membership. He never stopped working. And it was sincere, I do believe. But there were times when he, the ends justified the means and he did whatever he had to do to keep the union alive, but also to serve himself and enrich himself. And that was one of those cases where the membership lost out a little bit when Hoffa and Daylitz formed their alliance with the initiation and the help of Sylvia Pagano. Interesting. So let’s go back to Chucky O’Brien for a minute. He goes back up from Kansas City. He ends up back up in Detroit and working very closely with Jimmy Hoffa. And you talked to his son. Yeah. And to make that, and he was probably a huge help and some insight into what his father was like. So talk about Chucky O’Brien when he got back with Hoffa. Yeah, so he goes back to Detroit. [35:31] And he steps right back into the Hoffa family circle because Sylvia became part of the Hoffa family. She was Josephine Hoffa’s best friend. Jimmy Hoffa relied on her not only for important work in the union and for important connections to the mob, but he also relied on her heavily as Josephine’s personal assistant and caretaker. Sylvia worked extremely hard serving other people. And she was an excellent caretaker to Josephine who needed a lot of care, had very poor health, made worse by severe alcoholism. And Sylvia was a wonderful caretaker. But Chucky stepped right back into that family orbit. Later, when his own kids were small, Chucky and his wife and his kids moved into the Hoffa house. They’d all lived under the same roof for quite a few years. But Sylvia was really the glue that kept it all together and Chucky’s son who’s also named Chuck O’Brien he was a young boy at this time so his memories of his grandmother. [36:42] And Jimmy Hoffa started when he was a young boy and continued up until Sylvia died when he was in his late teens, but he was a great source for the book helped out a lot I really appreciate him And it was interesting to have direct access to someone who actually lived under the same roof with Jimmy Hoffa. So he was not privy, young Chuck was not privy to any inside information or any mob dealings or anything like that. But he later moved to Kansas City and went to work in the River Key for his uncle at the Godfather Lounge, which just a couple of years later was torched in the River Key War. And then young Chuck had worked in professional hockey for a while. And then he became a truck driver and joined Local 41. And so all this history just comes full circle and repeats itself. And I was a little fascinated by these Sylvia’s grandkids who were born and raised in Detroit. They both ended up back in Kansas City in the land of their parents and their grandparents. And they ended up in the same neighborhoods that Sylvia had been born in many years before. [37:57] Interesting. And Chucky O’Brien, then he’s kind of Hoffa’s driver sometimes. And Aaron Renner on up to the end of Hoffa’s life was even implicated at the very end. Some people claim that he helped set Hoffa up because he was the one person that Hoffa trusted. And that one movie, The Irishman or whatever, really threw a lot of shade on Chucky O’Brien. So how did you deal with that. [38:21] Yeah, I think Chucky got a real bad rap, and as I used to study Hoffa and read all the Hoffa books, I always thought, I always had a very low opinion of Chucky O’Brien, and he became the butt of a joke, and he was portrayed as this blundering, not-too-bright guy who either helped kill his surrogate father or was duped into giving him a ride to where he was killed without knowing what was going on and without being able to, realize it to the point where he could have maybe helped Hoffa. I think Jack Goldsmith put all that to rest. He really changed my opinion of Chucky in his book, but I realized that Chucky had been misunderstood in many ways. Was he involved in Hoffa’s disappearance or not? I think Goldsmith basically vindicates Chucky. [39:15] However, I do believe that there’s still some evidence that could strongly suggest that even in light of what Goldsmith wrote, that Chucky could still have known more than he let on. But he was so committed to Emerita that he took a lot of secrets to his grave, I believe. What’s interesting is some of the other co-conspirators in the Hoffa thing ended up dead, like Sally Buggs, and got killed in Little Italy a few years later, and the prevailing wisdom, at least, was to, keep him quiet about the Hoffa case. And they would have probably done the same thing to Chucky if Chucky could have pointed the finger at anybody or implicated anybody. And I’m sure he could have. I’m sure he knew some things about that. He was so close to Giacalone. Chucky was very close to Tony Giacalone and to Tony Provenzano. [40:07] And I think that Chucky survived because Giacalone trusted him 100% just as Sylvia Pagano’s son. Giacalone’s trust in Chucky to not give anybody up was just so rock solid. And he loved Chucky. And I think that he was also honoring Sylvia by allowing Chucky to stay alive. So I know I’m straying from your initial question, Gary. There’s so much going on with the whole Chuck O’Brien thing and his involvement. It gets very interesting. You have to get really down in the weeds with it to understand all of it. But I think that Goldsmith’s book is a great read for anybody who’s interested in Hoffa and the whole case. I definitely would recommend it. So it may come down to Chuck O’Brien. And was he more loyal to the mob, to the mafia and their code? Or more loyal to Hoffa and the Teamsters? as Hoffa as an individual, not to the teams or his union, but Hoffa as an individual. Was he more loyal to Hoffa or more loyal to the union or more loyal to the mob? And giving up those guys, he has to turn his back on everything. [41:21] The union and the mob. And so I can see where he, whatever he knew, [41:25] he was not going to say a word. It would be to his advantage. He has no, they didn’t have a hammer on him. Wasn’t a criminal. They didn’t have a life sentence hanging over his head for anything. They did have, they did prosecute Chucky on a federal case. It was a small time thing. He took some, maybe took some gifts from a, from an employer in his role as a union guy, some small gifts. And then he had also got caught up in a cargo theft case, which is all documented in the book, Office of Connection. But the law enforcement did have a couple of cases that they could apply pressure onto Chucky. But he didn’t say a word, and he just went to prison and served his time. He didn’t have to serve too much time. He was only in for about a year, I think. It was a low-level felony. But he just, he’d never thought once about turning state’s witness. He just went and served his time and got back out and went on with his life. [42:25] Yeah. It’s those 50 and 75-year sentences that’ll make the right attorneys. You get even, I used to say, when they came up, those sentencing guidelines for cocaine dealers, you could make a guy talk about his mother when he’s looking. He’s 40 years old and he’s looking at a 50, 75-year sentence. Yeah. I do have to say, though, if there’s one guy that might, and there was a few of them who went and served a hard time. Yeah, a long time until they’re old. Rather than give anybody else up. And I think Chucky would have been one of those guys. I do. Yeah. [42:57] Having been raised by sylvia pagano he was just so committed to that culture and those traditions and that way of life and and omerta yeah sylvia even had almost a kind of a halfway making ceremony for chucky she arranged for the top guys in detroit when he came back to detroit from kansas city in the early 50s tony giacalone put together a little event where chucky walked into the back room of grecian gardens restaurant in detroit and all the top guys were sitting around a table and he made a pledge of loyalty to them at that time and then he sat down and broke bread with them and he didn’t prick his finger and burn a card and he wasn’t made into the family but it was all halfway a little bit and they did that for sylvia and because they just valued her so much they respected her and they needed her they she was the connection to their most valuable asset, which was Jimmy Hoffa. So that tells you a little bit about how much respect they had for Sylvia and also for Chucky’s unique role. Here he is. [44:05] He’s he’s the son of charlie banagio’s low-level chauffeur yeah and yet he’s sitting down with guys like meyer lansky in florida he’s sitting down with all the top guys in detroit chicago inu acardo rica rosanova all these top guys in chicago then he would sit down with them on behalf of jimmy hoff he was he probably i say in the book that he probably had more chucky o’brien the son of, Banagio’s chauffeur probably had more sit-downs with high-level mobsters than Nick Civella did. As Hoffa’s representative, that was the life. And he knew how to handle that kind of thing because he was raised by Sylvia. So he knew how to say, what not to say, how to behave himself in those types of meetings. So that came naturally to him. And he was Hoffa’s gopher. He drove in places. He took Hoffa’s wife to her medical appointments. He did low-level stuff like that, but he also did more important work, more sensitive stuff, like sitting down with mob bosses and relaying information back and forth, just like as Sylvia had taught him to do. [45:16] That’s fascinating. I tell you what, guys, Frank Hayde, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Ken City girl at the center of the mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters Union. I might have links in here. You better get this book. This is untrod territory. Unplowed ground, as we used to say on the farm. This is fresh stuff that you’ve read. There’s so many books out there about Hoffa and his disappearance that they just want to, come on, we can’t do this. I can’t do this again, Hoffa’s disappearance. You’re never going to find his body. You’re never going to figure out exactly who killed him. Nobody’s going to talk, and anybody that could is dead. But this unearthed some really fresh, interesting information about Hoffa and his connection with the Italian La Cosa Nostra in the United States, the entire United States, really. Yes. Thank you, Gary. That was a very nice little summary of it. And I really appreciate you. You’ve had me on your show before, my other books, and I listened to your podcast. Can’t get enough of it. You do terrific work. All us wire trappers love you, man. And we all appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Are you still doing the, are we still buying you cups of coffee and that kind of stuff? Yeah, you can always buy me a cup of coffee and hit the donate button. [46:29] I forget about doing that. I’ve been doing this so long and I got a few guys that hit it regularly and some never do. I do this for the pure joy of it anyhow, but it helps to have a little extra money coming in now and then. When you were selling books yesterday, you love writing this book. You love all that research and putting it together and educating people, but it’s nice to get paid for it too. [46:50] It’s a small-time racket, but hey. It’s a small-time racket. Another interesting thing, Frank, we were talking about people doing time, getting so much time, and trying to force them to talk. Yesterday, Frank had a program at the library, and we had a local guy who was a subject of his last book, Mafia Dreams, who was a mob hanger-on guy when he was a young guy. And he got caught up in a murder, an accidental murder in a way. That it’s a long story and you have to get mafia dreams to learn about it. The next generation of the wannabe. [47:25] Italian mafia guys in kansas city and so that guy was there he did 25 years 25 years for what we call felony murder another guy he transported a friend of his to a drug by only the guy killed the man was selling the or tried to kill the man that was selling the drugs and the fbi had it set up and ran in and shot and killed the kid who almanese had carried up to the drug ripoff and And so they charged this driver with felony murder, and he did 25 years, just got out about four or five years ago. He could have talked. He had enough to buy him a lot of grace on that 25-year sentence, and he did every minute of it. He never said a word, and it was hard time. It was state time here in Missouri. Yeah, I think that’s true. I think he is representative of Kansas City in a way, because I do believe that in Kansas City, the Code of Emerita persisted longer than most places. And yeah, when you’re 24 years old, I think he was 24 at the time that he was sentenced. Maybe he was 25 and you get sentenced to 25 and a half years. [48:38] And you have the chance to whittle that down by giving up information on your friends. And you don’t take it, and you choose to do the 25 and a half years, that’s hardcore. And he did, and those are the best years of his life that he’ll never get back. But he is out now, and he’s making a legitimate living and keeping his nose clean and just trying to make up for a lot of lost time. Yeah, he is. 25 years will straighten your mind out, won’t it? Yeah. Man. All right, Frank. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Hey, thanks again, Gary. Don’t forget to donate Bob the Bob Gary cup of coffee, y’all. Thank you. Okay, Gary. Okay, Frank. That was great. Talk to you later.

Transcribed - Published: 1 June 2026

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with former NYPD officer Jimmy Dennedy and NYC Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Vecchione for a gripping discussion on violent crime, justice, and redemption. Jimmy recounts the shocking murder of NYPD officers Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster by the Black Liberation Army, while Michael reveals the challenges of prosecuting those responsible. The conversation then shifts to something unexpected—redemption. After retiring, Jimmy began working in prison ministry, where he witnessed firsthand how even hardened criminals, including mobsters, can change their lives. This episode dives deep into: The reality of cop killings in New York City The struggle to prosecute violent offenders Inside stories from mob cases Redemption and transformation inside prisons Get the book Hard Guys Cry. If you’re interested in true crime, mafia history, and real law enforcement stories, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Subscribe for more mafia history and true crime 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now turned podcaster. And I have another retired cop here on the show, Jimmy Dennedy. Jimmy, I tell you what, I had it down, Dennedy, like Kennedy. And our friend who’s been on here several times, Michael Vecchione. Welcome, Michael. Welcome, Jimmy. Thank you very much for having us, Gary. Thank you. All right. Michael has several books out there. He’s, he’s prosecuted the mob. That’s how I got onto him. He prosecuted the, he had something to do with the mob cops, Louis Eppolito. And I can’t remember exactly now. I should have made a note on that, Michael. What was the name of that book? [0:48] The name of the book? Friends of the Family. Friends of the Family. Is that those two New York PD coppers that were in the pay of? Louis Eppolito and Louis Eppolito was one of the cops. And you know what, Gary? during the, when Jimmy, when you talk to Jimmy, Jimmy has a kind of a, an odd situation regarding Louie Eppolito. And, and it’s a good story. I think he should tell you, tell your listeners. All right. Great. We look forward to that, Jimmy and Jimmy Denity, who was a New York city policeman. And he has a book, tough dies to cry. Hard guys cry. Let me do that over again. Yeah. I said, I left, I had it written down here and he had Jimmy Denity is here with us. He is a retired New York City copper, and he has a book, Hard Guy’s Cry. So welcome, Jimmy. [1:34] Good morning. Thank you very much for having me. All right, Michael, you and Jimmy, did you guys work together a little bit on the job? Did you know each other back then? Yeah, we certainly did. We’ve probably known each other now for maybe 45 or more years. I got to know Jimmy because I got assigned a case involving, unfortunately, the death, the murder of two New York City police officers who were assigned to Jimmy’s precinct at the time in Bed-Stuy. And it was a case that had been tried twice before I got it. And there were hung juries in both of the cases. And the DA at that point was going to just simply decide to not prosecute it anymore. And the head of the policeman’s union went to the DA, the district attorney, and said, listen, just give it one more shot. So I was at the time the head of a group called the Major Offense Bureau in the Brooklyn DA’s office. And I got, I’ll never forget this. I was sitting at my desk and the boss of the unit, the bureau that I was part of, came into my office and said, come with me. We’ll go to see the DA. [2:41] I didn’t know. I thought maybe I was in trouble for some reason, but I sat down and he said, listen, I want to give you one more shot. I want to take this case to trial one more time and you are the guy that we want to do it. So I was happy to do it. I tried a lot of cases by that point. And, and the best part of the whole situation, Gary is I met Jimmy Danity. That was, he, we became fast friends and I got to tell you a little funny story. He had been involved in the two other trials. [3:11] But when he sat down with me, the first thing he said to me was, or one of the first things was, do you eat lunch? I said, yeah, of course I eat lunch. Why? He said, the guy that tried the case before you and the one before him, they didn’t eat lunch. And by the time the afternoon came, their energy was all waned, had waned. And he said, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to have lunch on your desk every time you come back for the lunch break from the trial. And he did. There was a sandwich waiting for me every day when I came back, and he is the guy that brought it to me. But before the trial, we went out. Me, Jimmy, and detective from the Homicide Bureau, who was assigned to the case. [3:57] Tony Martin, went out to the scene. And again, another one of these scenes, which I’ll never forget. The scene was in the middle of Bed-Stuy on Troop Avenue. Jimmy, that was the, yeah. [4:10] Willoughby and Troop. Willoughby and Troop. So we’re on the street and the three of us are standing there right on the sidewalk. And we look around and I said to Tony, did you hit every one of these buildings looking for witnesses? Because there was a problem with the case with the witnesses. One had died in a very strange way. And so he looked around I don’t know if you remember this, Jimmy And he pointed to a building Diagonally across from the spot Where the two cops were shot And he said, Mike We never went into that building, And Jimmy and Tony went into the building, canvassed it and came up with two new witnesses. And so it was a wonderful experience working with Jimmy. He was a hard worker. He really was tied to this case in the sense that these guys were his friends. They were two guys who were gunned down for really no reason by a member of the Black Liberation Army at the time who was part of the Attica riots here in New York. He was actually one of the guys who started the Attica riots in New York. And he was out and he was with another guy. And we believe that they were going to meet another one of their fellow. [5:27] I don’t want to call them gang members, to set up a robbery. And that’s why they were in Brooklyn. And the case had so many ups and downs and twists and turns. And it was something which I obviously will never forget. But the best part about it, I’ll repeat myself, is that I met Jimmy Denity. And he and I have been friends from that point on until today. And so let me just get to the book because Hard Guy’s Cry to me was a labor of love. It really was. I got a call one afternoon and I’m sitting out on my deck and Jimmy calls me and we just got to talking and he asked me about doing a book about his life and his story. And I said, it’s great. There are lots of books out there about cops and street cops and what they’ve done on the street. He said, so he said, oh, but he started to now expand on it. And then he told me the second part of his career, which was the prison ministry in the federal prison and a state prison here in New York. And I said, Jimmy, you buried the lead. That’s the part of this book that I can sell to a publisher. Because Gary, you probably know this. You probably interviewed these guys who do books when they retire. This was just going to be one of those. Jimmy’s career on the street was terrific. [6:47] The only problem was there are lots of guys who have books out there like that. So when he told me the story about his prison ministry, I was working at the time with a partner of mine, Jerry Schmetterer, who has now passed away. And we both talked about it and we said, this is definitely a story. This is definitely a book. And it’s been a long journey, Jim, until we got to this point. We’ve had COVID. We’ve had the Minneapolis, the guy in Minneapolis who was killed and agents saying to us, nobody wants to publish a book about a good cop. Nobody wants to do that. You can’t sell this until I didn’t give up. I really didn’t give up. And I took the proposal and I rewrote it after Jerry died. And then I sent it out to a couple of publishers and one of them grabbed it and said, yes, I want to do this. And then believe it or not, Gary, his publishing company hit the skids in terms of being able to spend money. He went out of business. So I had one more shot and I gave it to the publisher of my novels. [7:55] And she finally is the one who said, yes, let’s do this. And then here we are today. [8:01] It’s really, again, I said this before, but it was a journey of love. It really was to tell this guy’s story. and we, I know I’m repeating myself, but we became such good friends that our families got to know each other. I went to Jimmy’s house for holidays. We really just became very good friends. And here we are. And I’m so happy that I was able to write this book because I really believe that the people who read it will say, wow, this is a great guy. This is a great guy. And he is. Interesting. Hey, Jimmy, I got a couple of questions for you. Now, you worked, that was the Rocco and Lori case, if I remember right. And everybody who worked big city policing at the time, that scared the dog shit out of us. It was like these guys just laid in wait for a couple patrolmen to walk by, stepped out and shot them. That was my impression. And I worked that kind of a neighborhood. And we were jumping. We were pretty jumpy for quite a while. And it wasn’t solved for a while. We knew it was some kind of a political act, or at least that’s what we’re led to believe. Did you guys feel the same way in New York? Let me just stop you for a second. The case that I did with Jimmy was Norman Cerullo and Christina Soames years later. The one that you’re talking about, Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster, was much earlier. [9:21] Jimmy was involved in it because he was a good friend of Rocco Laurie. They went to the academy together. But I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about the right thing. [9:33] So that kind of a case, you actually went through two of them. So tell us about your feelings about that. Did that, how did that affect your dealings on the street? I was in the academy with Rocco Laurie, right? And we had both come out of the Marine Corps at the same time. And we worked out together. We boxed together. And some of the guys were slacking off. The guy’s name was Mr. Clean. He was the instructor. He would say, okay, now you’re going to box with Denny or you’re going to box with Laurie. Of course, they were slacking. We weren’t slacking. Oh, God. That was me. They said, Jenkins, go over there and box with one of those guys. No brother in Lime. [10:12] So we became close we we knew his wife he knew that time it was my girlfriend but that was my wife we had gone out to dinner and he was a really good man in the academy i won the gun for physical fitness he won the gun for overall excellence and we got pictures with our guns together and stuff. So I was working at midnight with this guy, Victor Grillo, nice guy. And a job came over. Cops shot in Manhattan. We were in Brooklyn. It’s on the other side of the bridge. So we’re saying, wait. And that became the ninth precinct. That’s where Rocco worked. So we used to call him the Rock. I hope it’s not the Rock. And it turns out it was him. These guys executed him. They were basically a domestic terrorist group. They were robbing banks. They were killing cops for no reason. They just walked past them, turned around, opened up on them. And they shot them all over the face to the groin. And then they took their guns and shot them. And some of the guns actually wound up out in St. Louis or in West Area. [11:16] So did it affect me? Absolutely. I became, I don’t want to say callous, but I was very leery of everybody. [11:26] And I started, my niche was guns. I locked up a lot of guys for a lot of guns. But anything to do with it, Black Liberation Army or anything, I used to accumulate information, intelligence information, and my locker was full of it. I’d lock up a guy, and they used to have years ago the little address books. I used to take their address books, and they would ask me information, the FBI, the Major K-Squad, Jimmy, have any information on this guy? And which I did many times, right? Fast forward several years later, I’m out, and I’m having a few cocktails, and then i drove back to the precinct the 79th precinct to meet a friend of mine bobby perry, and while i was at the front of the desk there’s a place they could check your messages if anybody calls you messages so i’m checking my messages and it came over shots fired then it came over cop shot then it came over two cop shot then i drove down to my civilian car right it was dark, and it was like help you know radio card door is open you know I mean blood all over the place he also shot his friend right and he’s laying it dead with a gun in his hand his blood all over the place it was a nightmare so let me figure this out but now everybody name others coming down because he’s cop-killing students a doubleheader so to speak and then I see the blood going across the street and the blood stops. [12:53] So obviously somebody was shot. It’s not our guys. And then I assume he got into a car. [13:00] So I’m trying to figure, is he going to go to the Spanish neighborhood or deeper into the black neighborhood? And I said, let me go to the hospital. So I drive to the hospital to see if they need blood or anything. And out of the corner of my eye, when I passed Lexington Avenue, I see there had been a car accident. A guy hit parked cars. I kept going. And then I told Mike, you know, my father gave us a game when we were kids. It was called Game in the States. at a map of the united states and you had two little electric wires and you plug one into the state and there’s a list of capitals on the other side and when you hit that the light would go on you got the right answer and as god is the lord a light went off in my head just like it was the right state capital yeah went to the hospital and they did you know and then this guy paulie has ever seen him he’s crying he was in plain clothes anti-crime i said paulie listen to me Two things. Once, I want to come in the car. I’m going to go back to the scene. Because when I got there, there was a Spanish guy on the pool across the street. And he was a little biggazy type guy himself. But he used to give me information. He used to give me information on his competitors. Yeah. [14:10] Yes. So when he saw me, you know, he ran. Right? I wanted to come back and talk to him. But on the way back, I said, Paul, I’m going to stop at this accident scene. This is, it’s just there. Yeah. Go back there. Ambulance is starting to pull away fire truck was there pulling away so i went over there they said it’s an accident scene the guy’s injured i said what kind of injury is it the guy said well he dressed his wound because he won he refused medical aid this guy so i said i just dressed his wound i saw undress the wound let me look at it i’m not undressing the wound i went over and i just ripped it off and it’s a gunshot wound yeah right yeah so all he had a radio calls the sergeant down and they bring a witness from willoughby avenue she comes down she says that’s the guy who killed the two cops so we get him put him in the ambulance right in the ambulance he’s a big boy this guy right and he goes reach and grabs my gun from my holster so now it’s like an arm wrestle for the gun between me him and paulie saracena and during this arm wrestle necessary force was used and the necessary force was used until he dropped the gun or he got the gun from him. Goes to the hospital. He has a Derringer behind his belt buckle and he has police handcuff key. [15:38] These guys are the real deal. Yeah, that’s a real deal. They train for this stuff. They associate but others that train they shoot you know what i mean so it’s just uncanny that rocko was my friend and he was murdered in a double police homicide and then a few years later i lock up a guy from the same team that killed two of my friends you know it was a nightmare and then we went to trial and that’s how i met mike and it’s a very. [16:09] It’s pressing on your brain. Yeah. Something like this happens. And then, and I don’t have to tell you, Gary, but then you get other cases. So you’re making more gun arrests, but you still have this. You know what I mean? It’s, it’s tough. It’s tough. But it was. I just want to interrupt for one second. One of the, Jimmy mentioned her. They brought a witness back to the scene to identify the, the bad guy. And, uh, and she was a great witness. She was there when the shooting occurred. She was actually moving into the building that the shooting happened in front of. And so the case was, we had a couple of, she was the best eyewitness to the case. And as Jimmy and Tony Martin, the detective who were assigned together after the actual arrest, because we had, they had to get the case together and look for more witnesses, et cetera. [16:58] They went one day to see this particular young woman to talk to her and see what was, if everything was still good, if she was okay. Turns out she was in the hospital nobody knew this she had gone into the hospital we were told because she had a cold she died in the hospital gary from a cold which is what we thought turns out she had encephalitis but the thing was at the time we said who goes into a hospital number one with a cold and who dies from a cold so we at that point not me but i wasn’t on the case yet, but others. And then when Jimmy told me this later on, I said to myself. [17:42] It’s got to be some connection to the bad guys. Maybe they poisoned her. Maybe they did something and we looked into it. It turned out, Jimmy, what was the disease that she had? I think she had herpes viral encephalitis in the brain. It’s a possibility that it can be induced. Yeah. So that’s what we looked at. And the medical examiner at the time of the death never really looked. The DA who had the case at the time thought, ah, this is a slam dunk. We had this witness, that witness. Jimmy arrests the guy and he’s got the bullet, which another thing happened. He wouldn’t allow the medical people to take the bullet out of his leg. It was the cop’s bullet. Yeah. So we wouldn’t, he wouldn’t let him do it. So we had to go with a, an x-ray of the bullet at the trial instead of the bullet itself. But it was, it’s a case with, as I said before, excuse me, many twists and turns. And it’s the whole story is in the book. And I don’t want to take away from Jimmy’s story here, but I have a legal question. You couldn’t get a search warrant to take the bullet out of a person. Is that? [18:51] We tried, and you know what the judge said? No. Uh-huh, okay. I just, I never ran into that. I’ve heard that before where the bullet stays inside and you can’t get it. I just. [19:03] I tried. The judge wouldn’t give us the search, the ability to search, quote unquote, which meant taking the bullet out of his leg. Anyway, so that’s where we, that’s where we met. And it was, it was quite a case. And Jimmy, I understand you, you go through your career and you see all these horrible things and you’re harding yourself. And you know, the title of your book, hard girls, hard boys, hard men cry. I don’t know why I got hard guys cry. I don’t know why I can’t remember. I should remember from Norman Mailer’s tough guys don’t dance, but hard guys cry. And so you harden yourself all those years, but then something happened in your life. Apparently that changed, changed that. I know after I retired, partly what happened to me is I became a lawyer and I started dealing with people from not particularly criminals, but many times relatives of people who had gone to jail. And I worked for public defenders and really got to know people on the other side and realize that we’re just two sides of the same coin many times trying to get along and trying to get by. So what happened in your life that changed that, your attitude? [20:11] When I retired, there was an old man who was a farmer, and it was like a late-year-type situation. This farmhouse was falling apart. The second floor was owned by raccoons. He had electricity in one room and no running water, but he was the calmest, nicest, most spiritual guy you ever wanted to meet. Almost no teeth. He had one tooth. And there was Louis Adamski. We used to call him Louis the farmer. So I used to take care of Louis. was taking over my house for Thanksgiving, Christmas, driving down this long driveway, see how he’s doing. And I didn’t see him for a while. So I drove down the driveway one particular day and I said, Louie, I haven’t seen you. You haven’t called. He said, he had bladder cancer. I said, really? I said, wow. He said, you had two surgeries. I said, you’re going for follow-up treatment? And he said, I’m supposed to go every 90 days, but he had no insurance, zero, no Social services, nothing. And the doctors were suing him. And they wanted his farm. He owned one-tenth of his farm. It had about 80 acres. But it was heirs. Everybody in his family had passed away. I said, Louie, you got to get follow-up treatment. So there was a city that’s not about a half hour away called Newburgh, New York. And there was a urologist I was familiar with. So I told him the story. This guy has nothing. He said to me, if you will drive him, I will treat him like the president of the United States. [21:40] So for two and a half years, just about every month, sometimes twice a week, it all depends when his visits were, I would drive Louie. So it was like an all day affair almost because I have my own business, so I don’t show up for work. What do I care? So I take care of Louie all this time and my friends are patting me on the back saying, oh, you’re Louie’s angel. So one particular day we go in and… [22:03] He, if Louis checker, he calls me into the, uh, his consultation room and he says, so your friend’s cancer is back. She got to be kidding me. He said, yeah, I feel it on his prostate. He said, he has someone for biopsy Friday. This was on a Wednesday. I said, I don’t know how he’s going to get there. It’s an old day. I said, doc, listen, I’m married to this guy for two and a half years. I said, I’ll take him. He said, you sure? It was an old day. I said, doc, I don’t care. He said, all right. He said, I’ll tell you what, as long as you’re going to take them, your PSA is just borderline high. He said, I feel there’s nothing on your prostate, but if you’re going to take it, let me give you a biopsy too. I said, fine, I don’t care. So I take, we both get the biopsy. The next Wednesday, he calls them both of us in. I have cancer as well, worse than his, right? So he got radiation. I went out to New York City. There was a top flight surgeon in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. And I told him the story like I’m telling you now. So he said, you got to cut that out of there. You don’t want it in there. So they cut me a half. They took it out. And in the recovery room, he comes in and he says to me, you weren’t Louis’ angel. Louis was your angel. He said, you had a C-grade cancer. It was starting to spread, but I got everything. [23:15] So he said, you would have been dead about a year and a half. He said, because you had no signs, no symptoms. By the time you had the symptoms, it would be all over. Yeah. So it changes the way you think that I was invited to go on to this, a religious retreat weekend, a Cresillo weekend. I didn’t want to go. I’m not a holy roller. It’s not my cup of tea, but I socially boxed in like friends. So then your wife has to go too. So my wife, Noraline said, oh, I’ll go. And I said, oh, yeah, now I got to go. So I go on this week. it’s it’s thursday friday saturday sunday you can’t bring a watch you didn’t have cell phones then right so you’re stuck there so i went and i hooked up for a couple of other ex-marines and this actor mike was poorly he was on the sopranos so i sit in the back like we’re just going to ride this one out oh we can write it out it turns out that it was very moving, it’s very moving and people spoke that thought they were like punks i knew them indirectly they had quite a story to tell and then, weekend was over and on the way back it was November and I was telling Mike I rolled the windows down it was like spring, spring in my mind you see things differently like these computer generated pictures you see what it is but if you stare at it long enough another picture comes out within the picture and kind of life came out of life for me I saw things differently, Then these guys asked me to go into the prison. [24:42] Listen, I say, listen, you’re a carpenter. You’re a plumber. You don’t know what these guys are. I’ve thrown these guys down stamps and shot a guy at my house. Crazy. Again, I’m socially boxed in. So we go up to the prison. It was 41 of us, 41 of us. It’s called the Kairos. It’s an interdenominational… [25:01] Prison ministry. So I sit in a big circle, piece of paper, it passes around. When you get it, you have to say who you are, where you’re from. So I get it. I said, my name’s Jimmy Danity. I live in Orange County, New York. I’m married. I have two children, and I retired from the Oak City Police Department. They booed me. I told Mike, it was like an old dog growling. Yeah. Yeah. I said, what am I doing here? So the next day, because you had to sleep up in the prison too, The next day, you’re at a table. So you have an inmate on either side. So there’s like maybe nine people at the table. And there’s three of us, six of them. And don’t ask them what they did. Never referred them as a prisoner, as a resident. They were like, guys, I grew up with their neighbor. I said, what did you do? You stupid. So it becomes, it was a religious weekend. But also, it’s practical life. And you guys were good. You know what I mean? I got along well with them. So we did every day and it was friday saturday sunday they finished and that’s it i’m done i’m done with this i said i’d do it and i’m saying i wonder if any of my guys would show up to a wednesday night they have a wednesday night follow-up at this organization i wonder if any of my guys would be there so you know what let me show let me go to one wednesday right all my guys. [26:22] Oh, my gosh. And that was the only, Gary, that was the only table where all of them showed up again. So that’s why he knew that this was the right thing for him. I’m sorry, Jim. I just want to know. And so this was still in the prison. Yeah. Back up the prison. Yeah. And they invited these guys. If you want, you can come to this follow up. At that time, every Wednesday at six o’clock, they could go into the chapel to this particular group meeting. So I just want to see if any of my guys are going to show up. They all showed up and then the volunteers drop off and then i said let me do another wednesday, and another wednesday and it comes like everybody wants to talk to you it’s like when you go into the pet store where puppies say they want you to pick them like pick me and it you get you wind up with a group i tell mike they’re my guys and then you wind up it’s a spiritual thing no question about it right it’s brand involved and everything but you go through life with these guys and a lot them have a lot of crazy situations yeah and one guy is a mafia guy and i think frankie and he wants to say jimmy this new guy he wants to talk to your jug it’s all right so he takes me behind this little interdenomination altar they got there right so i said hey don’t you he says remember me i said no he said you should you broke my nose so i said when did i break your nose He said. [27:46] Yeah, in the park on 53rd Street where we used to play hockey. He said, your brother, I remember you. I mentioned his name, his last name. I said, you were messing with the park attendant. I slammed a basketball in his face. You know what I mean? He never forgot it. They told Frankie, yeah, he was crazy before he went to the Marine Corps. I’d make guys in there. [28:04] I worked. Yeah. The drug cases that they had. [28:09] You know, I knew who their bosses were. I testified in Philadelphia against one of these guys’ big bosses. And it’s just, it was like almost an inside straight. It was like meant to be. It was meant to be. And then my parish priest, so then I started, I was in the denominational night. The Catholic guys had nothing. I started a Catholic night with a few other good guys, my friend Brian and a few other guys, right, on Thursday. So now I’m going there Wednesday and Thursday. So my parish priest said, the state maximum security doesn’t have anything like this. Let’s start one there. So I’m going Wednesday, the federal prison, Thursday to the state max. You know, and it, I did it for 25 years, two days a week. Wow. And if the guys in Brooklyn, where I was a cop, knew I was doing this, they say, wrong guy, definitely. Somebody else, you got the wrong guy. Yeah. It’s the way the good Lord leads you. Now, something changed in your life and it’s not like you had any control of it. It just, it changed. You opened yourself up. It seems to me like it. And you just didn’t have any choice but to go down this path. And you know what it is also, Gary, it’s also like you’re preventing crime. You’re doing the same thing only from the inside. From the inside, you want to change the way they think, the way they act. And there’s a million things I could tell you how I was able to change things in a prison. They’re going to stab somebody. The guy who was a rat. [29:32] And they didn’t like him. I didn’t like him. And I told him, listen, I like the guy. He said, you like the guy? Don’t get involved in this. I said, do what you want to do. I like the guy. They never touch the guy. Because if they do something like that, then they’re going to hurt you. [29:46] Gary, I think Jimmy should tell you, he’s talking about the effect he had on these guys. What really was the point of the prison ministry was to essentially make these guys, I think, better people and to change their lives. I think you should tell him, ask Jimmy, tell him the story of the Boston mobster because this one, this story has, it really hits home as to exactly what effect he had on someone who was one of guys that you might have on your show. someday. This guy was a really bad guy. And he was up there with Whitey Bulger, et cetera, in Boston. So I think it’s worthwhile to tell the story. And it really hits home in terms of how effective Jimmy was after being effective on the street, locking up these guys, what he did with the prison. So if you have a bit of time, I think it’s worthwhile to hear the story. Yeah, let’s hear it. I always want to hear stories about mobsters, anyhow. Yep. Go ahead, Jim. We were up at the federal prison, and it was during the holiday season, right? And the volunteer chaplain was Father Paul Papara, and he was giving a talk on forgiveness. So we had all these wise guys. It was a mess. They had all different guys. This particular time, a couple of wise guys, they had their arms folded, and they said, Father, you want me to forgive the guy that ratted me out? [31:05] He’s home with his family, and I’m here doing X amount of years left on my bid. So I raised my hand. so I said listen if this guy is lying and put you in prison for no reason shame on him he should rot in hell but if he just exposed what you did anyway you know you did it if you did it the good lord see you live in a fishbowl the guy just exposed you for what you did that’s, You have no bitch here, pal. Jimmy, this guy Jimmy, he’s a different name than him. Jimmy stands up and he says, listen, I’ve been in jail. I’ve killed people. I don’t want to, I forgive anybody. I want forgiveness. I’ll forgive anybody. So that was it. Eventually, Jimmy, a couple years later, goes home. So he called me at my office a couple years later and he wanted me to write a letter of reference to work at the docks with Homeland Security. I said, I don’t know how to write it. Put down that I was a prisoner and just what you thought of me. No problem. So I met him in the prison, stuff like that, right? [32:03] About a year after that or so, I get a call from him again. He says, hey, Jimmy, you got time? Hey, Jimmy. I said, good. I got all the time in the world for you. He said, what’s up, pal? He said, I was on a train platform. He says, and I see this guy. Him and his associate tried to kill me. They had stabbed me 13 times. He said, I already took care of his friend. And I walked up to him like a face-to-face with him. Then he recognized me the guy turned white and urinated all over himself because he knows he’s there jimmy says to me i put my finger on his face and i told him you know that thing you’re worried about right get out of here i forgive you i get the fuck out of here now and he says to me jimmy it would have been easier for me to clip this guy and to forgive the guy but i forgave him, And I’m saying, Jimmy, I’m so proud of you, I can’t, just, and he, for him to call me to tell me how he responded to that situation, you know, which was completely out of character to the old guy, the old Jim. He was very proud of himself, and I was very proud of him. [33:09] So that’s the story Mike has told. It was the story, quite frankly, Gary. Didn’t he have one of the Westies in there with him? They were some particularly brutal crew in New York City. Yeah, yeah, he did. [33:25] We had a few of them up there. We had Jimmy Coonan, who started the Westies. Oh, okay. Jimmy was there, and I was friendly with Jimmy because I knew guys that he knew. The guys at Otisville Prison is a high medium. [33:38] Lewisburg is a max so when guys behave even a max they could come down to the media so when he came down he never came to the services and stuff we were talking all the way on the side but another fellow was a Westie a tough guy you know what I mean they would, drive through jewelry stores, 50 miles an hour go inside and rob everything but they would go in there before with their girlfriends looking good dressed nice they knew where this stuff was and they would take everything and he wound up getting locked up for almost like a Lufthansa type thing at the airport only they got caught so he was at my first weekend in the prison and we became very close friends and I tried to help him and he responded very positively, and he’s sitting in a circle there’s a cross, whoever has the cross has the microphone, nobody interrupts when you’re done, the next guy talks, he was talking and we finished, the Spanish kid so the Spanish kid is talking and he’s talking, so I told him what are you talking for Rich he can’t be talking like that the kid’s talking so he didn’t come for a few months then he comes back right and we’re sitting there talking and then he has a cross and he puts his head down. [34:54] And he starts talking and he says, you know, something happened to me. You can’t explain it. You had a Spanish kid in the next cell, right? It was a new guy. They robbed the sneakers and the kid had no sneakers. I know he’s got his head down. Now I’m thinking maybe he robbed the kid’s sneakers, right? He says, I gave him my sneakers because I had an extra pair. And as he’s telling the story, his head is down. The floor is gray, but getting darker, the teardrops. He’s telling the story he’s crying and then he says maybe I’m not all bad after all yeah I said how can you think of yourself like that he eventually goes home so, we my wife Norley and I get invited to his wedding which is a no-no but the guy was home so and the wedding is on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. [35:46] Yeah so we go down at the wedding and we’re like the oddball there but He could introduce us to enough people, you know, and if you see change in people, it’s wonderful. If on the street, if you go to these religious retreats, people go jumping out like a gazelle. But in prison, if an elephant jumps in it, it’s a miracle. Yeah. I mean, if you see somebody that thinks that they’re ugly, they’re not ugly inside. So I found it very rewarding. And. They, I didn’t think they’d respond to retired law enforcement, but they responded well. Yeah. Because I spoke their language. Yeah. So it lasted 25 years, Gary. Yeah. I’ve got a couple of guys here in Kansas city that it’s not a spiritual kind of a thing, but I’ve become friends with them. And one guy told me, he’s fine. He said, he said, I can talk to you and you understand what I’m talking about. He said, all the rest of the people in my life anymore, cause he’s out of the life. He said, they don’t understand what I’m talking about. He said, I don’t have to get back into life, but I can talk to you and you know, you know, the people I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about. I said, yeah, I do. [36:56] So obviously in case it was pretty obvious that we were, when we started to hear all these stories, when he told, told Jerry and I the story of the, the mobster who was crying because given the sneaker, that’s where the books, the title of the book comes from, art guys cry. But there’s one other guy in there that you should ask him about. And that is we had this, I don’t even know what to call him. He was really an oddball guy, a criminal in New York. He was a rich guy who owned a lot of, he ran art galleries and collected art galleries and collected paintings and got into the art world and was advising rich people as to what art they were buying. And it turns out he was basically a sadist. And he had another guy with him who he and the other guy wound up, he didn’t get charged with this, his partner did, wound up killing somebody. And when they found the body buried laying in the woods in upstate New York, he had one of those. [38:02] Sadomasochistic masks on him, his black mask. And this individual was one of Jimmy’s guys and he was a hardcore, am I right, Jimmy, in terms of not wanting help at all. He was just the kind of guy who, you know, if you help them, it was going to be a miracle. And he did. He helped them and it’s a miracle. And it’s worthwhile to tell the story about this guy. His name was Andrew Crispo. He’s no longer alive. And he was all over the newspapers here in New York City because of the whole masochistic, the sadomasochist activity that he was involved in. And that the picture of the dead body with that black mask on was all over the newspapers. And this guy, we have his picture in the book. If you see him, it’s butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He looked like the nicest guy in the world. Businessman. Turns out he was really one of the worst guys in terms of how he treated people. And Jimmy finally got to him. It was, to me, one of the more miraculous transformations when I heard all of the stories was this one because of what he was on the outside and what he became after Jimmy had him and he got out. He did not repeat his life the way that he was before here. Chris Bowe was a tough guy, right, Jimmy, in terms of getting to him? [39:28] Andrew, Sky Andre brought him down to one of our groups. And he asked me if he could bring his friend down the shirt. Everybody’s welcome, of course. And you’ve been around tough guys your whole life. Everybody’s a tough guy. You’re a tough guy. Everybody’s a tough guy. This guy had no muscle tone. He was like ashing in color. He looked like a raccoon. He had like rings around his eyes. And he was like creepy, creepy. So he came. And then he came for about seven years all the time. You get to know him, right? And he got grabbed for that sero-masochistic murder, but they couldn’t prove it. He got locked up, attempted kidnapping, the three-year-old daughter of the federal trustee. That’s why he was in jail now federal jail but he if you make a long story short he, doesn’t know who his parents are right and i’m not bleeding on i’m just telling you the way it is, he was dropped off at an orphanage as an infant and i was there for sentencing and this is what the judge said mr crispo he said before i sentence you i’d like you to know that i researched your history as a newborn you were dropped off in an orphanage right you remain there for 18 years where you were repeatedly beaten up and raped and. [40:47] But after leaving there, you managed to raise yourself up to get on the top of the art world, even owning a world-renowned art gallery in New York City. He said, for that, he said, I give you credit. However, then he banged him for seven years on the other thing. But he came down, and he had nothing spiritually. And if you sit with him and you talk with him, he kind of listened. He came around. [41:13] Like I told Mike, there was another guy. colombian guy his wife used to bring his daughter to work all the time so he came into the group a little late and he’s crying and then i said what’s the matter he said he said i’m not gonna see my daughter for two weeks i said well the comment told me once there’s a price for loving the price for loving is the absence of love you have to experience the love to miss it mr andrew who was sitting on our group andrew could you tell him a little bit about yourself oh yeah he said see the visiting room that you were in with your wife and the child, I’ve never been in there, and I’ll never be in there. And they said, there’s nothing worse than being alone, than being alone and no one cares. [41:56] And he came, and the rings went from his eyes, and then he became involved in all this other stuff. And he actually became a kind guy. He got involved with the church and things like that. And then he eventually went home. I’ll tell you the money he had. You need the money for an appeal? He sold one painting for $2.46 million. Oh wow the attorney’s fee that’s just one thing he had money but he had nothing yeah he had nothing and then when he went home he used to correspond you know and he’d write beautiful things thanks for the prayers thanks for your wife how’s your dog it’s not the same guy but he wasn’t like like what he’s tattooed tough guys he was like creepy tough and at the end when he left my opinion He was not. So if you can help somebody, it’s nice to help somebody if you can. Yeah. That’s interesting. That’s a true shift in the personality and to give somebody some spiritual hope in their life that they can, from what you’re describing to what he was to what he left when he left. That’s amazing. Exactly. That’s an amazing story. [43:01] There it is. Cry, The Journey of a Tough Cop from the Mean Streets to a Prison Ministry, Jimmy Dennedy and Michael Vecchione. Jimmy and Michael, I appreciate you guys so much for coming on and telling these stories. And guys, there’s a lot more stories just like this and better in the book. I’ll have links to get it down in the show notes. [43:22] And guys, you got anything last words you want to say? Anything you left out? [43:28] Gary, listen, keep getting those pension checks. [43:33] Yes, I will. I told my wife, Nora, put my feet in potting soil. If my toenail grows, that’s a sign of life. Keep getting that check. Really? [43:44] Thanks so much, Jimmy. All right. I just want to thank you. You’ve been terrific. And I hope that, I really mean this when I say this, people who get this book and read it or listen to it or however they want to get it into their, their mind, they’re going to love it because this guy’s story is just fantastic. And we touched on a few things, but we didn’t really touch, we didn’t get into the real meat that that’s there. And it’s, it was a, again, a pleasure to do this. So I’ve got one guy, I got one guy I talked to that has prison stories. I tell you what guys, there are so many great stories that come out of the penitentiary. It’s just, it’s amazing. I think part of these people don’t have much else current to talk about, so they tell stories from their past, and you get some great stories coming out of the prisons. Thanks a lot, guys. Gary. Thank you. God bless my friend.

Transcribed - Published: 25 May 2026

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins examines the rise and influence of Louis “Streaky” Gatto and the Genovese crime family’s powerful New Jersey faction. Drawing from a 2004 New Jersey Crime Commission report, this episode explores how Genovese crews operated across multiple counties while controlling illegal gambling, loan sharking, and waterfront rackets through intimidation and organized violence. Gary breaks down the structure of Gatto’s Bergen County crew, including the involvement of his son Joseph Gatto and son-in-law Alan “Little Al” Greco. The discussion details how the crew maintained control over bookmaking and gambling operations and how prosecutors later tied key members to murders connected to their criminal enterprises. The episode also dives into the federal RICO prosecution and the dramatic courtroom testimony of witness Robert Belli. Gary explains allegations that associates of the Gatto crew attempted to pressure and intimidate witnesses before testimony, including claims involving the infamous “evil eye” or malocchio. Prosecutors argued that subtle intimidation tactics, courtroom stares, and indirect threats were all part of an effort to influence testimony. Another major focus is Moe Brown, a reputed associate connected to the Gatto organization. The episode explores how prosecutors used recordings and testimony to connect Brown to the defendants and how his conduct in court became part of the government’s intimidation narrative. Finally, Gary examines the later criminal cases involving Joseph Gatto, including offshore sports betting operations, convictions, prison sentences, and the eventual decline of the family’s gambling empire. The episode concludes with the deaths of both Joseph Gatto and Louis “Streaky” Gatto, marking the end of an era for one of New Jersey’s most feared Genovese crews. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wires. A little extra I’m going to throw in here. I did this interview with Scott Deitch about Jerry Katina, and I got a lot of. [0:12] Comments, a lot of reactions to that show, a lot of New Jersey mob fans, Genovese mob fans out there. A guy named Carmine, Carmine something, he had some other numbers after his name. Carmine commented that I should do a show on Louis Streaky Gatto. That was a New Jersey capo who was one of the Chin’s best earners in the Genovese family. He had a crew down in New Jersey. And if you notice, one more thing, I was going to mention this before. I got a new hat. Now, check this out. [0:46] Hope you can see that. Got the gangland wire insignia on it. Now, this is my official gangland wire hat. [0:56] Louis Streaky Gatto, the New Jersey Crime Commission report in May 2004, reported that the Genovese family maintained five crews headquartered in New Jersey. Each was overseen by a capo, of course, and each of the four New York-based crews, this is right out of The Sopranos, about 40 soldiers and more than 400 criminal associates who were active in New Jersey. [1:21] They reported that the family operated in the northern New Jersey counties of Hudson, Essex, Union, Bergen, and Passaic County. They also had gained strength in Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean counties. Ocean, is that down in Atlantic City? I don’t have a map in front of me, so I’m not sure. The crime report stated that the Genovese family controlled the largest bookmaking and loan sharking rings in the New York, New Jersey metropolitan area. And the family maintained a strong influence on the Port Newark, Elizabeth, and Hudson County waterfronts. This report also identified the family consigliere Lawrence Little Larry Dentico as a person with the most extensive familiarity of the family’s New Jersey operations because he had been the top aide to the former consigliere and New York, New Jersey operations chief, Louis A. Bobby Mann. I did a show on Bobby Mann and Irwin Schiff and some of those plots, I don’t know, sometime in the last year, I believe. This 2004 report identified the five capos at that time in New Jersey, and they were Tino Fouimara, who died in 2010, Angelo Prisco, who died in 2017, Joseph Gatto died in 2010, Silvio DeVita, and Ludwig Bruchy, who died in 2020. [2:44] Now, Streaky Gatto, Louis Streaky Gatto, he was always the favorite money earner of Vincent de Chin Gigante. Before he was promoted to captain, his New Jersey crew was led by a capo named Peter LaPlaca until the mid-1970s, and that’s when Streaky Gatto took over the crew. Gatto was the boss of Bergen County with the help of his son, Joseph the Eagle Gatto. And his son-in-law, and a guy who keeps coming back in this thing, and who was his top enforcer, Alan Little Al Greco. I noticed a comment. Somebody said that he was really half Polish. I think his mother was Polish and his father was Italian. Somebody correct me on that in the comments, if you will. Controlled large illegal gambling, loan sharking, bookmaking operations in Bergen and Passaic counties. [3:33] These three guys used murder, violence, and fear to click on these rackets and control everybody who was a bookmaker. You couldn’t be, like Chicago, you couldn’t be a lone wolf bookmaker making money without these guys getting a piece of your action and working with you on it. They made sure that other rivals didn’t take advantage of somebody that was [3:55] under their protection. Gatto and Alan Greco, Little Al, were indicted on two counts of murder for the murders of Arthur Belli and Vincent Mastretti. They also were alleged to be behind the murders of a guy named Jack Handsome Jack, Ciaranella, Johnny Lombardi, and Peter Adamo. 1991-1990. [4:20] Streaky Gatto and Alan Greco were sentenced to 65 years. Streaky Gatto’s son, Joseph Gatto, was indicted on racketeering charges in the same RICO prosecution, but he only received 30 months. There was an appeal to that trial, and we learned a little bit about their brazen intimidation tactics, how it works. There’s a guy named Robert Belli, whose brother had had a gambling operation. His brother, Arthur Belli, was one of the persons in that RICO case that was murdered by Streaky Gatto. They called on Robert Belli to testify about the extortionate takeover of their gambling business. And he said that little Al Greco once told him, he said, things are going to be different now. And then shortly after that, Robert Belli’s hot dog truck was blown up and he was beaten by two men with baseball bats, typical mob extortionist takeovers of a small-time gambler, a bookie, a guy that had his own book of business, his own customers. As a result, he just gave it up. But he also testified that Belli disappeared and now we’re in trial for Belli being murdered by Streaky Gatto and planned on returning to the business just before he disappeared. [5:37] Now, in cross-examination, it turns out that he had been spoken to by somebody in the Gatto families because he all of a sudden starts agreeing with all the defense counsel’s suggestions, first of all, that the prosecutor paid him and pressured him, and all the local police and prosecutors involved in the case were corrupt. I’ll redirect. The prosecutor tries to show that Belli had become hostile to government and accommodating to the defense because he’d been intimidated. They asked Belli about a guy named Frank Sesta, who was known as Mo Brown. We’ll refer to him as Mo Brown. He was always known as Mo Brown. Belli stated that after defense investigators, Gatto’s lawyers and their investigators handed him into a meeting with the defense counsel, Mo Brown showed up and wanted to take him to the meeting. And then when he wouldn’t go with Mo Brown, Brown tried to pressure him into letting one of his associates drive him to this meeting and again to a pretrial hearing. He wouldn’t do it. He knew better than that. He took a ride with a government investigator. He did have to go meet with the defense counsel, of course. Anybody that’s going to be a witness against you, they have to make them available to the defense investigators and counsels, defense counsel, in order to do a deposition or just listen to what, see what they got to say. [6:59] He said Brown approached him and told him about a job interview. He said he’d take him to his job interview just before he testified at trial. He said Brown had discussed the case with him more than once and once said, isn’t it a shame that Little Al got 60 years in this case and he did get 65 years? And this all was coming out after they got their 65-year sentences, Little Al and Streaky Gatto. They just kept coming back. And then during the trial, the prosecutors got testimony from Belli that Moe Brown had been in the courtroom and standing directly in front of him several times and that he looked at him with an unhappy look. [7:36] Of course, they objected, the defense counsel objected to all that. They also introduced evidence that this Moe Brown was really closely connected to Streaky Gatto and Little Al Greco. They’d sent him into surveillance during the social club, the Lodi Social Club, and sent him with other people in the defendant’s gambling business. They also had a tape of a conversation between Louis Gatto Jr., Stryker Gatto’s son, and little Al Greco, talking about Mo Brown, that they were real familiar with him. So they connected Mo Brown to the Gattos and to Little Al Greco and then showed how he was then in court and was given the witness, the evil eye, the malokia, I think they call it, something like that was in The Godfather. And that he had tried to befriend the guy before he testified and told him about a job and tried to give him rides different places. They even mentioned that how… [8:39] They asked the witness Belli about three occasions during the trial when Al Greco had given him a look. One was before he testified, and Greco passed by him in the hallway, and he gave him a look. Defense has strenuously objected to this. It’s irrelevant, and you can’t really say that look was a bad look. The defense counsel strenuously objected to these points, but it was overruled. The second look came when Belli was in the back of the courtroom him waiting to testify, and Greco, Little Al Greco, just turned his chair around just to give him a look, and the third time was when Greco stood up and then turned over around and looked at Belli during the sidebar while Belli was on the stand. Prosecutor then asked Belli if Greco had ever looked at him that way before, and Belli said, well, he had. He said when he told him, Little Al Greco told him things are going to be different just before he beat him up, or had he beaten, And, of course, they strenuously object to all this. In the end, it did not do any good. In the end, little Al Greco still got his 65 years, and he didn’t get a new trial or anything. [9:45] A little story in regards to little Al Greco, the guy that was son-in-law to Strique Gatto and was right under him. It seemed like he was his main kind of enforcement guy, guy out dealing, maybe underboss, under people trying to, guy that deals with people on the street. He made a connection with a notorious New Jersey con artist and mob associates, Tom Giacomaro. They wanted him to come in and be a made man, supposedly, in the 80s. And, you know, he didn’t want it. He was independent. He knew better because once you come in, you know, they’re going to take everything from you. And he was quoted as saying, you know, I don’t want to kiss the ring. Everybody’s kissing Streaky Gatto’s ring, he said, except me. Jack Amaro was in the trucking business with two of Streaky’s crew, and they were making a lot of money. Streaky wanted to sit down. He wanted to bring this guy in because he was earning a lot of money. Giacomaro remembers that they met at Vesuvius in Newark. I mean, it sounds just like the Sopranos, doesn’t it? He described the table and how it went down. He said, Streaky sat at the head of the table with his sons right next to him, Joseph and Louis Jr. And his son-in-law, little Al Greco. [11:02] And Giacomaro remembered that Streaky was a skinny little guy who hardly said anything, but he said he had an ego big enough to suffocate the entire restaurant. Over again, little Al took care of the business during this lunch. He pitched Giacomaro on Friday. Him joining the family plan. And Streaky, during this time, he made a big production of putting some $100 bills between his knuckles. He held up his fist when the waiters came and they kissed his ring and took the bill and said, oh, thank you, Don Luigi. Thank you. During this lunch, he remembered that little Al once said, you know, we want to open the books for use. We got big plans for use. He knew what that meant. He knew he was then going to have to give him a percentage of his earnings and let them use his businesses to launder their money. Finally, he says, you know, Giacomaro says, I told Streaky and I told Lil Al, I said, you know, what can you really offer me with that? I don’t already have. He said, it was like everybody just quit breathing. [12:02] Just a dead silence fell over the table. He said he thought Streaky Yaddo was going to leap across his pastas and stab him in the eye with a fork. He didn’t, you know, he’s in a public place. And, you know, he would later say, you know, I was going to use them for everything they had, but never be one of them. You know, I’ll infiltrate their world all the way at the top if I can, [12:22] but I ain’t never being made because the only crime boss I want to answer to is myself. Joseph Gatto, Stricky Gatto’s son, was released in 1993, and he took over control of his father’s crew. He expanded the crew’s gambling operations and introduced, you know, brings it in the 21st century, so to speak, of the use of pagers and cell phones. And by 1999, he gets convicted again on some illegal gambling charges and took a plea deal. And at that time, he did admit that he was a capo of the Genovese family. You know, gambling is getting lesser, lighter sentences by then. He had a pretty light sentence. He gets released again in 2003. But a year later, he’s indicted in 2004 for running something called Catalina Sports, which is an offshore wire room in Costa rica bosley this thing was taking in 300 to 500 hundred thousand dollars profit per week and these gatos they were they were money earners that’s for sure that conviction gets overturned and you know by now 2005. [13:22] They did try him again in 2008. I don’t even know what happened. He’ll die in 2010. He’ll never go back to jail again. And nobody cares about gambling by then because it’s getting opened up all over the place. Streaky Gatto, who originally started talking about his father, died in prison in 2002. He never got out after he got that 65-year sentence from his RICO and murder convictions. So that’s a little bit about Louis Streaky Gatto. [13:48] And Carmine, thanks for suggesting that. So I hope y’all like this story. I hope y’all like my hat with my Gangland Wire logo on it. Talk to you later. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 22 May 2026

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins sits down with returning guest Scott Deitch for a detailed exploration of one of the more understated yet influential figures in organized crime—Jerry Catena. Scott Deitch, known for his deep research and engaging storytelling, brings insight from his books Cigar City Mafia, Garden State Gangland, and his upcoming release Jersey Boss. The conversation moves from Tampa’s mob history to the inner workings of the Genovese crime family, with a focus on Catena’s calculated rise through the ranks. 🔍 Episode Highlights Scott Deitch’s Mafia Journey Deitch outlines how he became one of the more respected voices in mafia history, driven by a fascination with overlooked mob figures and untold regional stories. Who Was Jerry Catena? A key but often underreported power broker, Catena rose during Prohibition-era influences and mentorship, eventually becoming a major figure within the Genovese hierarchy. Mob Influence in New Jersey & Tampa. The discussion connects Catena’s operations to broader organized crime networks stretching from Florida to the Northeast. Hollywood vs Reality. A look at how The Sopranos drew inspiration from real mob figures, including possible parallels to Catena and New Jersey crime families. Las Vegas & Gambling Operations. Catena’s involvement in early Las Vegas casino ventures reveals the mob’s hybrid model of legitimate business and illicit skimming operations. The Businessman Mobster. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Catena relied more on relationships and financial acumen than violence, aligning himself with figures like Frank Costello and Longy Zwillman. A Different Ending Catena’s relatively peaceful retirement contrasts sharply with the violent ends typical of organized crime figures. Personal Side of a Mob Figure Stories of Catena’s love for golf and generous personality add nuance to an otherwise complex criminal life. Tampa Mafia Tours Deitch shares details about his immersive mafia history tours in Tampa, offering listeners a chance to experience this world firsthand. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, welcome all you guys out there. It’s good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I have one of my old friends here, one of my oldest friends in the podcast, Mafia podcast business. I interviewed Scott a long time ago. I went down to Tampa and went on his mob tour in Tampa. And we had a cigar before we went on the tour, and he’s got several really great mob books. So it’s Scott Deitch. It’s really great to have you back on the show, Scott. Yeah, it’s great to be back, Gary. And you missed the most important part of the Tampa trip was we made the bet on the Super Bowl. Oh, yeah. I had to send you something, didn’t I? You had to send me some Kansas City barbecue. Yeah, I had to send you some barbecue. I forgot all about that. Yeah. I’m like a Las Vegas gambler. I’m always talking about how much I won. I never come back and tell you how much I lost. Never notice that. Gamblers never talk about how much they lost. [0:59] So anyhow, Scott, you’ve got several mob books. You’ve been on the show before. Tell us a little bit about your background and the mob books that you have. I know you’ve got another one on the New Jersey mob. You’ve got one on the Purple Gang and a couple other things. You’ve got a Tampa book. So tell us about that and the titles of them. And guys, I’ll have the links to these books in the show notes. Yeah, so my first book came out in 2004, over 20 years ago. That was Cigar City Mafia, History of the Mafia in Tampa. I’ve written a book on Santo Traficante called The Silent Don. He was the last longtime boss of Tampa involved in CIA mafia plots and figures into some of the Kennedy assassination theories. [1:44] Garden State Gangland, like you mentioned, which is a first overall overarching [1:48] history of the mafia in New Jersey. I did Hitman, which is a look at the East Harlem Purple Gang. And then my upcoming one, among others, which is Jersey Boss, and that’ll be out in May of 2026. [2:04] Jersey Boss, the rise of Mafia power, Jerry Catena. Now, I’m going to get this question. Let’s talk about The Sopranos first. Let’s get that out of the way. Does this have anything to do with Sopranos? Was Tony Soprano based on this guy or somebody else that was connected to this guy, the Cavalcante family? So funny, because I was asked that a few years ago for the Star Ledger, the Jersey paper I grew up with. And there’s one of the guys that a lot of people point to as part of the inspiration for Tony Soprano was Tony Boy Boyardo, who was the son of Richie the Boot Boyardo. And Tony Boy was close with Jerry Catina. And in fact, Jerry Cattino was Tony’s, the best man at Tony Boy’s wedding. So Jerry Cattino himself is not really necessarily represented in the fictional universe of The Sopranos, but certainly people around there and this Tony Boy connection with some of the aspects of Tony Soprano are part of that. And he came up under Richie the Boot, Beardo. And Richie the Boot, he was immensely successful, financially successful. And Jerry Cattino was too. He must have learned well at reaching the boots, the foot at his knee. [3:17] Yeah. And even more so than Richie the Buddha was Longy’s Willman, Abner Longy’s Willman, who was really another major mentor to Jerry Catena. And really see as Jerry falls under the tutelage of Longy’s Willman during the prohibition era, he starts becoming more of a racketeer than a gangster. And that’s under Longy sees the value of legitimate businesses and investing. And in fact, I talk about it in the book, a lot of people don’t really know much about the New Jersey mob’s investments in Las Vegas. And Catena and Longy Zwellman started investing in Vegas in the late 40s. So, yeah, I think Catena was fortunate to have, or I say fortunate for him in his underworld career, to have mentors like Boyardo and especially Zwillman who steered him out of the purely criminal and showed him the value of the legitimate side of business. [4:14] The legitimate side of business with mafia rules. Absolutely. Yeah. I had somebody ask me, well, why don’t you go into business and do a podcast with one of these mobsters? I said, I’m not going to do business with a mobster. They got their own set of rules, and I don’t understand those rules. [4:31] I know the regular business rules, but I don’t understand those mafia rules. Jerry was, I see in some of my old notes here from way back, that he was close to Frank Costello, and that’s one of the ways that he got into gambling, and he was part of the Genovese family. So talk a little bit about those early days of Jerry Catena. [4:53] Yeah, so he’s born in Newark in Down Neck or the Ironbound neighborhood. Starts, I’d say, starts coming under law enforcement, screwing. He gets in trouble with the law around the prohibition era. He starts off as a truck driver, works his way up. He’s involved in illegal gambling at that time, then starts to get involved in the vending machine business. But he ends up becoming associated with members of the Genovese crime family. And along the way becomes very close friends with Frank Costello. After he’s made, oh my God, I’m drawing a blank, 46, he gets put under Willie Moretti’s crew. So he’s really becomes a core part of the New Jersey faction of the Genovese crime family. Interesting. [5:41] With that, I have to assume that he looked after their gambling interests down there as much as anything. Was that his initial focus, or was he more into extortion? No, gambling was definitely one of the—yeah, it was actually funny you mentioned hijacking. One of his earliest arrests was for hijacking trucks of cigarettes in the 1920s. Then he moves into illegal gambling. [6:07] He’s involved in bootlegging during Prohibition, but afterwards into illegal gambling. The other thing, he becomes very involved in the unions around the Port Elizabeth and the Newark Port area. And the interesting thing about Catena is even though he becomes associated with guys like Frank Costello and obviously Vito Genovese in the New York faction, he’s very much a New Jersey-based crime figure. So most of his operations are in New Jersey. Fort Lee, New Jersey at the time becomes a real hotbed of gambling. They have these nightclubs, places like Dukes. Jerry Coutinho becomes involved with that. Yeah, I would say it’s pretty accurate to say that illegal gambling was certainly one of kind of the primary revenue sources for him. [6:51] Yeah, and that’s more white collar crime. Now, he’s going to move on to going into legitimate business with the great A&P story, which is a great story. Whenever you’re ready, we’ve got to talk about that. Now, you mentioned about having the points in the casinos out there. We know that when Costello was shot, they pulled a piece of paper out of his, he had a piece of paper in his pocket that indicated what the take was on a particular day at the start. So was that, how did these guys from New York get into Las Vegas so early? [7:25] Longy’s woman starts going over to Vegas and probably, I think the connection there is Longy’s woman was close with Meyer Lansky. So Meyer Lansky, obviously out there with Bugsy Siegel, when they take over the Flamingo, the Billy Wilkerson deal, all that, then obviously Bugsy Siegel was killed. Meyer Lansky really gets his kind of foothold in at that time. Longy’s woman comes soon thereafter. after. And by the late 40s, early 50s, Jerry Catena’s there, involved in skim operations. And predominantly in the late 50s, after it opens, is the Fremont Hotel in downtown, which is still there on Fremont Street. It becomes really one of their major cash cows for Jerry Catena and his operations. And I’ll take a little segue here, because I think one of the really, interesting and important things about jerry Catena which differentiates him from a lot of the other mafia guys was he was very ingrained and embedded with jewish organized crime figures like long east women like abe green guys like that that are out of newark so his operations in vegas parallel a lot of the involvement of jewish gangsters in vegas as well so Catena really, takes a little bit of a different path than a lot of the traditional Mafio out of New York and New Jersey at that time. [8:50] What I find interesting, because like the Midwest mobs, they got into Vegas by guaranteeing getting these teamsters loans for non-Italians, front men, if you will, to build the casinos or make the existing casino bigger. But these early New York guys, I talked to an expert on that early development of Las Vegas. They said those farmers and ranchers in Las Vegas, they didn’t know how to run casinos. but the mob guys who’d had carpet joints, Frank Costello and Mayor Lansky and people like that, they knew how to run a casino. So those Jewish gamblers out of Cleveland, all those guys then moved out to help the farmers and ranchers that, that pull, had the strings of political power at the time and wanted to make money off the gambling and showed them how to run the casinos. Is that kind of how, would that be how they got in out there? Cause they weren’t guaranteeing teamsters loan at that point. [9:45] No. So yeah, you’re right about that too. And they’re bringing out that expertise of running these gambling operations in New York, New Jersey at that time. And it’s really the fortuitous timing as post-World War II, the tourism boom, Vegas starts booming, you get the entertainment, it all becomes this ecosystem that’s growing, keeps growing. And like you mentioned, later on when the Midwest guys come in, that’s when the Teamster Central Pension Fund, and they’re utilizing that. But so it’s interesting to see all the different ways that the mafia guys were moving in. There’s some other guys moving with the entertainment that comes over into Vegas as well. Yeah. Interesting. [10:22] So how did he, he didn’t just sit back and bring the money in. How active was he on the streets? Was he a street guy? If something needed to be done, would he go out and do it? Or did he hire somebody to do it? I guess would be my question. After Willie Moretti is killed, Jerry Catena takes over his crew. [10:44] That’s when he starts to become noticed not only in terms of respect and stature within the mafia, but law enforcement. He’s called in front of the Kefauver Commission in 1950. He’s called in front of the McClellan Commission in 59 again. And so as his star starts to rise in the 1950s, his friendship with Frank Costello, his relationship with Vito Genovese starts to grow. And in 1957, after Frank Costello is shot at, the famous shooting, The Majestic on the Upper West Side, that Vito Genovese becomes boss. He appoints Jerry Catena as underboss. And there’s a quote somewhere. I forget who was on a wiretap. And Genovese is there. I kind of wonder why Jerry was made underboss. And Genovese says something to the effect of this guy controls Las Vegas, meaning he’s a big earner. So he’s bringing in a lot of money to the family at that time. That’s when Coutinho’s stature really cements itself. Really? And I believe he was at Appalachian with Vito Genovese, too. Yeah, they’re in the same club. Which tells you right now his position in power. [11:54] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he stopped in the car. And I believe Bufalino was in the car as well with the same car. Oh, really? So he was a nationally known guy. By 1957, he was known all over the East Coast, for sure. And then in Las Vegas, too. So he was a mover and a shaker that kind of kept his head down, too. He’s not like Costello Genovese. He’s not exactly a household name. No. A lot of people don’t really know that name exactly. Yeah, and that’s why I wanted to do a book on him, because he’s a fascinating character, very influential, but not at the top 10 or 20 list of most mobsters. Generally, people know pop culture, and even in the mob world, he’s not as well-documented or as well-known. He must not have gone into New York and partied a lot. [12:43] He’s no John Gotti, was he? No, he did like nice restaurants in New York, but he stayed a little bit more under the radar, that’s for sure. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So tell us a little more about him. We’re up to 1957 and he’s got interest in the casinos. He’s been to Appalachian. He has solidified his position. [13:07] And we got that great A&P store extortion. What does he get into after that? There’s something else about the North American Chemical Company and detergent company that he’s muscled in on. So he becomes acting boss of the Genovese family after Vito goes to prison. That’s the argument I put forth in the book. And there’s a lot of evidence supporting that from wiretaps and stuff. He’s also getting much more involved in a lot of bigger legitimate businesses, gaming being one. But he starts investing in companies. One of these is this North American chemical company that you refer to. And they make this liquid detergent that is pretty caustic and not a lot of stores won’t carry it. So he’s trying to work with unions to pressure some of the major stores like A&P to carry this product. [13:59] Even though he’s the acting boss and he has a lot of close confidants and probably the closest Tommy Ebbely in terms of stature, although they don’t always get along. Jerry Catena really relies on his younger brother, Gene Catena. And he puts Gene in charge of this A&P thing. And rather than doing it the quiet way that Jerry likes it, Gene actually starts recruiting people to bomb A&P stores and actually results in the murder of a couple A&P managers of the stores that were refusing to stock this. And from a couple sources I spoke to, Jerry was pretty incensed about this and shooed his brother out pretty hard because this is out of character for kind of the way he was running things. [14:42] And then Gene dies in 1967 and the AP thing fizzles out after there. But I think it’s, yeah, because if you look at like the history of how Jerry does business, it’s very much an outlier in terms of just not only the outright [14:56] violence, but violence against people that aren’t involved in organized crime or the mob. What other business interests did he have over these years? I think probably one of the biggest that he gets into is Bally Gaming. And the name Bally, everyone knows the name Bally. It’s synonymous with gaming. They had their hands in fitness centers. They own Six Fleck and Bally’s still a big name, even though the Bally company now is basically Bally in name only, but let’s rewind back to the early sixties. Lee gaming becomes this really big manufacturer out of Chicago. It’s a subsidiary of Lion Manufacturing. And the owner of Lion Manufacturing dies suddenly from a heart attack. [15:36] And the company goes into a trust, a bank trust. But there’s a salesman in their Chicago office named Bill O’Donnell. And he sees the value in the Bally name. So he puts together an investment consortium to buy Bally. And he goes to his biggest distributor, which is a company called Runyon. And Runyon’s based out of Newark. And the three primary owners of Runyon are Barney Sugarman, Abe Green, who grew up one of Longy’s Women’s top men, and Jerry Catena. And Jerry was very involved in the day-to-day business of Runyon. So Jerry puts together an even bigger pool of investors, and they basically buy Bally. And this coincides with the introduction of an electronic version of a slot machine that Bally was manufacturing. Oh, really? So Bally really starts to take off. And the interesting thing about this, again, there’s not one other mafia guy in this investment group. Nobody from the Genovese family, no Italians. It’s a bunch of old Jewish gangsters and other affiliates that Jerry puts together for this investment. And one of the interesting things is as Bally becomes bigger in the 1960s, Jerry just starts making more and more money. You can see on wiretaps that he doesn’t really want to be boss anymore. [17:01] He’s really into golf. He just wants to not be boss anymore. But anyway, he’s involved in Bally. He sells his shares in the mid-60s because Bally goes public. But there’s an enormous amount of information showing that he basically sold his shares. But Abe Green and some others bought additional shares that were really Jerry. So he stole it as his hands in Bally. [17:27] Valley. Interesting. He’s one of those guys. I met this wet guy once. He had an auto theft ring. And I said, dude, if you would take your skills, your organizational building, your brains and put it into a regular business, you’d do all right. So Jerry’s one of those guys, isn’t he? Yeah, for sure. If he put all his enthusiasm and expertise and organizational [17:48] abilities into regular business, then he’d do okay anyhow. And one other thing during this time too, he still stills his illegal operations going he still has the skim and he was getting forty two thousand dollars a month in the early 60s out of the skin for himself person that’s a lot of money and that’s not counting all the other stuff and one of the other interesting things that i found out through researching this is he did not take kick nobody had to kick money up to him he was self-sufficient he let everyone keep their own stuff so he unless he was involved in it he never took an envelope from his other ones, because he didn’t really need to. He had so much of his own stuff going on. So it’s another kind of interesting little detail. Yeah, he was a much-beloved boss. He probably saved himself a lot of trouble by not getting greedy. Yeah, and it’s funny, because he was very aloof, like I said. He didn’t necessarily want to be boss. And you hear on wiretaps, like. [18:46] Shift to carload and people timey ebbly just complaining about him they’re like this guy’s really aloof he’s not in touch you can’t get to see him this but yet nobody tries to make a move against him because i think even though he probably wasn’t the most ideal boss in their eyes in terms of being hands-on they realize they he’s doing okay he was very well respected and well liked and i think that went a long way huh interesting that which which makes me wonder what uh how did And where was Vincent Gigante during these years as he’s slowly but surely moving up? He must be eventually getting come up in right behind, under Catena. Yeah, so Gigante’s in New York at that time. Tommy Eboli’s, like the head, oversees a lot of the New York operations. You have Benny Squint Lombardo, who’s powerhouse behind the scenes. And then Genovese dies in 69. [19:44] Catena takes over for a very brief period but he actually goes to prison in 1970 and not from being convicted of any crime he gets sentenced to prison for contempt because he gets brought before the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation and he refuses to testify, and they jail him for contempt for almost five years Five years? Wow Yeah, in fact it’s one of the longest sentences ever imposed on someone for contempt and he’s ultimately freed by the Supreme Court You can look up, there’s a Supreme Court decision. It’s Catena versus something. I have it in the book. But yeah, so when Catena goes to prison, then the Genovese leadership continues moving forward. Emily’s killed in 72, and then Gigantes starts showing up in the picture by then. [20:29] Yeah, and he’ll move on up. So how did Jerry then, he’s done five years in the pen. Man, now what happens after he comes back out? Is he assuming he’s placed or does he start easing himself out? Use that as an excuse to get on out. Exactly. You nailed it on the head. Yeah, within less than a year, he sells his home in New Jersey. He already owns a place in Boca Raton. So he goes to Boca and really starts fading back playing golf, but he still keeps his, I don’t want to say consigliere because he’s not considered the official consigliere at that point, but he’s still very involved and people have want, want to come for advice or guidance. They’re meeting with Jerry. He’s seen meeting with like Sam The Plumber, the Calvo Conte, and these other guys. And one kind of weird thing, in 1983, there’s a series of both federal and New Jersey State police, the org charts that you see. And Catena’s considered a consigliere at that point, but he’s probably at that point semi-retired. And by the mid 80s, he’s completely retired and steps back from business. [21:43] Interesting. And he lives basically one of the few bosses that just retires on his own accord. Yeah. He didn’t retire into the penitentiary. He had never really come out until he couldn’t really do anything when he came back out. A lot of them ended up like that. Either that or dead some way, one way or the other. And boy, he came up through the growth, the huge growth of the mob up 50s into the 70s in the New York families especially. They really exerted a lot of power and grew during those years. So he saw it all, didn’t he? Yeah, he was born in 1902. So, you know, by the time he’s a teenager in his 20s, Prohibition starts. So he’s right there. [22:28] You know, when he turns 18, Prohibition starts. He’s right there through his adult life. And he lives a long life. He dies in 2000 at 98 years old in Punta Gorda, Florida. [22:39] And pretty much his reign in his life is the 20th century. He pretty much bookends the 20th century. So you’re right. When he hits his prime, his 40s, 50s, that’s when the mafia is hitting their prime. They hit their prime with the political contacts and the concrete club and all the construction in Manhattan. They’re all making so much money. You mentioned political context. That’s another thing, especially in the 50s and 60s, is Catena is very politically astute. And the Genevieve’s family themselves, they’re tied in with the mayor of Newark, the police chief. They have a state assembly or state representatives on their payroll. He’s on wiretap or his associates talking about these politicians they have in their pockets. So he certainly played the political game as well. In your research, did you run across anything that kind of got his take on the purported meeting in, I believe, in Philadelphia between Chicago and New York or East Coast guys where they agreed to divide up Las Vegas for Chicago and Atlantic City for the East Coast? [23:47] No, because by the time that he got out, Atlantic City just started. He was fading away. But here’s an interesting thing, though. His name really starts popping back up in the papers around 1977 when Atlantic City legalizes gambling. The reason for that is because Bally makes a bid to be one of the early casinos. And there’s a whole bunch of hearings that Catena’s name has brought up in relation to his previous ownership of Bally. And what’s interesting is that up until the mid nineties. And again, Catena is long retired. He’s in his mid nineties. Every time Bali reapplies for their casino license, Atlantic city, there is a line in there. And I pulled it from the gaming control board that says Bali is not allowed to give any payments to any companies owned by Jerry Catena or blah, blah, blah. So even though he’s long retired, he’s towards the end of his life. They’re still wanting to keep Jerry Catena out of Bali gaming. [24:46] I have a long memory there in New Jersey. Yeah. When they were getting ready to do the casino thing, we happened to have a, what we called a LEIU, Law Enforcement Intelligence Units, Bi-Zone Conference. And what that meant was the Eastern Zone and Central Zone met. They met in Kansas City and a whole lot of New Jersey state troopers and a couple of guys from the, whatever the county is there, Atlantic City, from the prosecutor’s office. And a couple other intelligence people, they were like telling us all those precautions that they were taking trying to keep the mob out. They were really working like hell to keep the mob out. And they really never exactly got it done. And I remember talking about that even the mob will get an interest in… Transportation companies that bring people from New York. Yeah. [25:38] The gambling junkets were a big business. And to that point down here in Tampa, the Tampa guys had junkets out to Vegas. Same thing as they weren’t involved in Vegas, but they control these businesses and were bringing gamblers out there and taking a little off the top. Yeah, we had a junket out of Kansas City, and that was the guy that ran the junket. That was the guy that was bringing the skim back from the Tropicana. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that was the cover they used. he, they called him the singer. He had a reason to go back and forth to Las Vegas. And they talked about that, how nobody paid any attention to him because he already had a reason to go back and forth. Oh yeah, that makes sense. That’s smart. As you guys, they think about it, but I have to think about everything because they got a big brother breathing down their neck. [26:24] Absolutely. Scott, you got any other stories that you want to tell guys about it that are in the book and Tyson to go get that book? Yeah. So just a couple other random things that I found really interesting. [26:36] Jerry Catena’s name was in the newspaper a lot in the 1950s, but not for any kind of mob stuff. He was an avid amateur golfer, and he actually golfed in a lot of prestigious tournaments around New Jersey and then later in Florida. And then a couple of people I spoke to, one guy remembers being a caddy for him and saying how Jerry was a very good tipper or tip him with 20, 50 bucks back then. That was huge. A lot. Yeah. But he spent about as much time in the golf course as he did doing mod business. He was all the way up in, you know, up until his eighties, he was a avid golfer, which I thought that was interesting thing. [27:13] Yeah. The other thing, too, is really just how he shows up in these little different pockets of mob history a little bit behind the scenes. And I think the other really interesting thing about Jerry Catena is he was a very soft-spoken, everyone I talked to, people that knew him, family, his old attorney, never raised his voice, never lost his temper, very low-key, very… And it was funny, he’s a Neapolitan heritage, which a lot of the Genovese guys were. But if you look at pictures of him, he looks Irish because he had really light hair and blue eyes. So he looked like a stereotypical Irish priest in some photos of him. But yeah, he definitely was cut from a different cloth, I would say, [27:57] of most of those mob guys, for sure. Certainly, I think if you were to pick a family for him to be in would be the Genovese family, because they always seem to have more of those racketeers rather than gangsters, whether it was Frank Costello or Luciano or whatever. Yeah, interesting. No Joey Gallows in there. No, yeah, no. [28:19] Like the Columbos. All right, Scott DeGay, it’s really been great having you on. It’s an interesting book, and I’ll have links to all your books down in the show notes, guys. You might want to get that Garden State Gangland. Garden State Gangland, yep. Garden State Gangland to give you the bigger picture about New Jersey boffy stuff, as well as more of a narrow view of it with the Jerry Catina book. So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention, and Scott and I talked about this when we first got on, is he does a mob tour of Tampa all winter long. So you guys from up north that go down to Tampa or go to Florida over the winter, you need to go down there and take that tour. I actually have an example of the tour on my YouTube page. You have to go up there and maybe search on my YouTube channel for Tampa tour. And I think you can find it so you can see what you’re getting into. Yeah. Yeah. Tampa Mafia tours. We do them generally September to end of April. In fact, we’re recording this towards the end of April when we have our final tours. Nobody wants to be walking around outside in August. I can testify. It’s a great tour. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. Appreciate it. It’s a good thing to do in the winter too. Yeah. For when you’re up north. All right, Scott, thanks so much. Thanks again, Gary. Always a pleasure being on.

Transcribed - Published: 18 May 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins interviews Eddie Inserra about the Boston Mafia. He is the author of Confidence of the Mob: The IRS Agent Who Took down the Mob – Then Advised Them, a deeply researched account of his grandfather, Fred G. Pastore, a key figure in early IRS efforts to dismantle organized crime. Fred Pastore was part of the IRS’s early “racket squad,” targeting Boston Mafia enterprises. His work paralleled the groundbreaking financial investigations that helped bring down figures like Al Capone, demonstrating how financial crimes could succeed where traditional policing struggled. Then, he leaves the IRS and advises the Boston Mafia. Eddie recounts how he uncovered his grandfather’s story through a remarkable archive of family documents, photos, and recordings. These materials revealed a complicated dual life: Fred was both a relentless investigator and, later, a trusted confidant to certain Boston Mafia figures. This paradox sits at the center of the book and this conversation. A major focus of the discussion is the “pinball racket”—a widespread illegal gambling operation hidden in plain sight within bars and storefronts. Fred’s investigations exposed how these machines generated significant underground revenue streams for organized crime, particularly in Boston. Eddie details the innovative and often risky techniques the IRS used to infiltrate these operations, including undercover work within corporations like Raytheon, where illegal gambling rings had taken root among employees. The episode also explores the institutional challenges Fred faced. His aggressive tactics and unconventional relationships eventually brought him into conflict with IRS leadership and political figures, forcing his resignation. In a striking turn, Fred leveraged his deep knowledge of organized crime to advise former mob associates—highlighting the blurred moral boundaries that often exist in this world.   Eddie adds a personal dimension, sharing memories of growing up around his grandfather and describing the cultural landscape of Boston’s North End, where family, community, and organized crime often intersected. These stories provide insight into how relationships between law enforcement and mob figures could be shaped by proximity, respect, and shared environments.  The conversation concludes with a look ahead at Eddie’s upcoming podcast, which will expand on these themes through interviews with former IRS agents, mob associates, and others connected to Fred Pastore’s extraordinary life.   This episode offers a rare look at the gray areas of justice—where the line between hunter and ally becomes increasingly difficult to define. Check out the book: Confidence of the Mob: The IRS Agent Who Took down the Mob – Then Advised Them, 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, are you wire tapers? Good to be back here in the studio. Gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective. Glad to be back in the studio. I have a man on the line who’s written a really interesting book called Confidence of the Mob, the RIRS agent who took down the mafia and then advised him. So that’s what’s interesting about this. Here’s a man. The, it was part of the early racket squad with the IRS intelligence who were the guys that went after the mafia and in all the different cities, most famously in Chicago, and took down Al Capone, and he ends up in a conflict with his bosses over informant and then. He goes into business as an accountant and ends up advising Jerry Angelo and some and childhood friends, really. ’cause he grew up in the north end of Boston. So this is his grandson Eddie and Sarah. Welcome Eddie. Eddy Inserra: Hey, thanks Gary. Glad to be here. Gary Jenkins: All right guys. Now there’s the book and I’ll have [00:01:00] links to it in the, the show notes as well as you can see the book over Eddie’s right hand shoulder there. You’ll get it. Now. First thing I wanna bring up about this book, Eddie, is I’m gonna ask you a little bit about how you got into this, but about this QR code you have in there, guys, there’s a QR code in there. I don’t know, about a quarter of the way in. Tell us about that and what was your idea to do there? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, so the QR code takes you to our website, which is it links to confidence of the mob.com. And this project started off as me interviewing a bunch of people about. My grandfather’s story. So I have all these audio clips, I have all these documents that I found in the box that my mother gave me that really had my grandfather’s complete career in there. So it’s more of a evidence-based website where if you scan that QR code, you can access some of the documents. Listen to some of the clips by the book, just learn more about the story overall. So it’s, the QR code is meant to be interactive, so you can take from what’s on the book into your phone and just explore more, [00:02:00] right? Gary Jenkins: Really interesting that with the new internet and you can do so much more and make your, what used to be just a hardcover. Paperback or hardcover piece of, a bunch of papers together and you can go onto the internet and you can find so much more with really not that much effort and a little bit of effort on your part. I know that I did something like that with a book I did. And it is a little bit of effort, but it’s not as much effort as is really, I think for that to further instruct people, teach people what that life was like for your subject. ’cause that’s what you’re trying to do, is you wanna tell people what. Your grandfather’s life was like, and so that’s I think it was just ingenious of you to doing that. I haven’t really seen that. I don’t think there’s probably other books that I didn’t notice, but I had not seen that before. Anyhow Eddie, let’s let’s go back. You’re the grandson. Fred g Pastor, tell us how you got into this, your earliest memories of this. Did you know your grandfather when you were a little kid and probably didn’t get the stories you wish you’d gotten? More than likely [00:03:00] I’d have him. But tell us a little bit about that. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, so he actually passed away when I was eight years old, so I got to know him for eight years. He passed away in 1988, and then, I knew my grandfather was always, when you see your grandfather, he is always happy when you’re, a little kid. One side of him, always happy, generous smile on his face, always laughing. Typical grandfather give you candy when no one’s looking. Things like that. So typical grandfather, I found out later on that his life was much more complex than I had thought. And when I was younger, he had an office. So I’d go into the office and I’d, everybody would be doing accounting work. He’d have probably about, he had about six or seven employees, maybe more at some, sometimes I’d go into the office and I’m just a kid running around the hallways and sitting at the desks. My father worked there as well. And yeah, I’m just watching them push papers and write down numbers and stuff like that. So I didn’t think it was too, I thought it was pretty boring. It was cool, but it was boring. But later I found out much more about him. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So later on in life, how did you stumble [00:04:00] across this whole dualistic life He had in a way I would maybe dualistic not at the same time but these two careers that he had how did you stumble across that? Eddy Inserra: There was a box that my mother had in her attic, and it was a, an old Florida citrus oranges box carton and overflowing with papers. And she, about 10 to 12 years ago, she gave it to me and said, Eddie, I want to give you these documents that your grandfather’s documents. I don’t know what’s in them, but there yours now. So I said, okay, great. And I pulled out a couple of documents and I looked at them. One was like an accounting ledger. E exactly what I expected. Some, some numbers and things like that. And I put ’em back in the box and I said, lemme put this on the shelf and I’ll take a look at the other documents some other time. So a couple weeks later, I go back into it and I pull out some papers and I start seeing profiles for big names and organized crime that I had heard of in the past. Jerry Angiulo, Raymond Patriarchal profiles on Racketeers Bernie [00:05:00] McGarry, doc Gansky, all these huge. Folklore names from Boston gambling and numbers and mafia times from the 1950s to the 1960s. I started piecing it together and I said and then I find a telegram in there to, to the White House Bobby Kennedy and JFK from my grandfather saying, I need to meet you at the White House right away regarding this Bernard Goldfine case that I’m working on. And I just started piecing this together and I said whoa. I never knew anything about the IRS side, but. He was really the tip of the spear. You mentioned like Elliot Ness, Al Capone earlier. It was the same sort of division, the intelligence division that he was working in, but he was in the Northeast District and it was, this was obviously after Capone that era, but next generation of, racket squad leaders, and he was the tip of the spear in Boston and the FBI didn’t have jurisdiction at that time to go after these racketeers. It was the IRS at that time. Later on, after he switched sides, so to say the FBI took over, but at that time, the IRS was the [00:06:00] potent weapon against these racketeers. So I’ve got all his documentation on investigations, case notes commendations it’s just really a treasure trove of, his whole career. And I pieced this together over years. There’s hundreds of documents, had to put a timeline together. Gary Jenkins: Really. Eddy Inserra: You’ve done investigative work, you know how that stuff works and I didn’t know anything about it, so it was just complete disorganized mess and had to pull it all together. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: The first thing you have to do is get a timeline. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: That is paramount. When you’re doing something like that, you have to get a time. In order to keep things straight. Otherwise, it just becomes a, it’s just, you can never get it straight in your mind. Interesting. You know that the IRS back in the day was the premier organization that, that and the the the Federal Narcotics people were the ones that went after the mafia, whereas the FBI wasn’t, and you know what people don’t understand about the IRS many people, the IRS is just this big, huge. Organization that’ll come down on you when you [00:07:00] cheat on your taxes. But it’s really two divisions. There’s a civil division, but then there’s this criminal division, which was called the Intelligence Unit for a long time. And then I think your grandfather what I read in your book was he went into some special squad within the intelligence division called the Racket Squad. Is that right? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, that’s correct. The Racket squad was a specialized division inside of the Intelligence Division. Okay. Which only went after high profile Racketeers. And there was even an old TV show if you go on YouTube and look up Racket Squad. Yeah. There was a TV show about that. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: I remembered. I think no, it was gangbusters on the radio, but Racket Squad was on tv. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So he grew up with a lot of the mobsters in the Boston area. Correct. Eddy Inserra: Correct. He was born in 1919, the same year as Jerry Angiulo. They were the same age which you’ll hear that name a lot and a lot of your listeners know. Jerry Angiulo was the under boss of Raymond Patriarch in Boston. And so they grew up right across through the bridge. [00:08:00] So Fred grew up actually in East Boston and Jerry grew up in the North end, and I confirmed that they did know each other when they were kids. I don’t know how deep that relationship went, but they did know each other when they were kids. And there was another man who ended up becoming partners with Fred later on in his post IRS career who he grew up with named Guy Spano. And he was also in East Boston at that time, and they were all this they knew each other, Gary Jenkins: interesting. Fred, knowing all these people, he knows about the bars and stuff and I noticed one of the things that was interesting, one of the things looked like early cases. He went after the pinball racket. Guys back in the day, every corner store bars, they all had pinball machines and they were a great way. To launder money and get all this cash money in and not pay their taxes on kinda like a cover charge that strip clubs get today. Whether there’s a way to, to get line cash money in that didn’t really go through the cash register. Tell us about that pinball racket. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, the pinball racket was a big deal back then. There was a lot of paperwork in [00:09:00] his box about that. There was a map that he had inside that box that showed all the different places he was raiding in Massachusetts just for the pinball machine. Pinball machines and the pinball machines back then were a game, not a game of skill because they didn’t have flippers on them. So the flippers that, that came on later, then it became a game of skill and it wasn’t actually just throwing your money away and gambling, so to say. So they weren’t able to go after them after they added flippers to the machines. But before the flippers interesting. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, I did, I didn’t really realize that I saw one of those when I was. You my late teens over in Kansas City, Kansas, and now I didn’t really realize what the deal was. What it was if you play it so much and get lucky and your ball goes to a certain place, then you win. But if it doesn’t and there’s no way to have it, is all pure luck. That’s the difference. I’ll be darned. I never thought about that. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Of course from then, that’s gambling and that’s where the money is. So he [00:10:00] continues on going after mobsters, Italian mobsters in that area of the country in organized, more organized gambling. So tell us a few of his other organized gambling investigations. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, he went after the Italians. He also did go after a lot of the Irish too that in his paperwork too. Wimpy Bennett, Walter Wimpy Bennett. There was a lot of, in Jewish DKI, like I mentioned. Yeah, a couple other too but yeah, one, one big investigation that really put him on the map was. The Raytheon investigation. Raytheon we know as a big defense company and they’re headquartered in Massachusetts. They always have been, I don’t know if they still are, but they have been up until a few years ago. But huge corporation and during that time was the Cold War. So they’re supposed to be building missiles, but they called the IRS saying, Hey, listen, we’ve got a problem. Our production, our manufacturing floor, everybody’s supposed to be working, but. They’re all not on the floor and they’re gambling somewhere. We don’t know where, we don’t know the root cause of this syndicate, but it’s in all of our buildings and people are consuming their time, playing the [00:11:00] daily numbers, betting on sports, all kinds of stuff. And they couldn’t really get to the root of it to root it out of the system. So they called the IRS, they assigned Fred, my grandfather to the case, and he took the lead. He ended up sending a bunch of his agents in undercover as janitors, and they had to go through the whole process, the whole hiring process as a normal, employee would try to get hired. So they’d have to submit an application, go through the test, all that stuff. Because the, it was just so embedded in Ray Raytheon that someone would. Tipped them off. So he got a bunch of these janitors in and they ended up finding out that the, there was long lines going to the bathroom all day long. And that’s, they were making the bets, taking the bets in the bathroom stalls in multiple locations. They rated them all at the simultaneously and they got a bunch of leads after that for more mafia stuff, but it was a big mafia gambling syndicate embedded in the US government sort of defense contractor. So that got him, that was on the cover of the newspapers. It was in. Magazines. It was a big deal. [00:12:00] So Gary Jenkins: Interesting. After that is that he gets crossways with. His bosses and with the US attorney’s office eventually. Was there any other cases I see on the headline here, Pastore names Paul’s, me and politicians behind the bookies. So how did he get into to finding who the bookies were paying off? Eddy Inserra: So he, he had an undercover confidential informant, I should say, who was giving him a lot of information. And we were real in the book. Who that was, we didn’t know at the time. Nobody in my family knew until a few years ago, and that’s, we’re talking 60, 50, 60 years ago. And even the president and RFK at the time wanted to know his confidential informant. So Fred was getting some really good information. They didn’t know where it was coming from. And Fred had made a deal at the time with Eisenhower and the chief of the IRS that. He’d keep this confidential informant on his, on the payroll, but the only people that would know about it was Eisenhower, the chief of the [00:13:00] IRS under Eisenhower and Fred. And then JFK came in, RFK came in as the Attorney General and they wanted to know whose confidential informant was and he would never give him up. So that, that caused some tension between Fred and RFK. Before that there was another case. With a man called Frank Aya. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he’s out, he was out of Worcester part of the, actually, gen Outta Worcester. Yeah, outta Gary Jenkins: Worcester. Okay. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Part of the Genovese faction so New York, but I, their territory went all the way up to Worcester. And the FBI was actually investigating him for the Brinks robbery in Boston. Gary Jenkins: Oh, Eddy Inserra: really? At the time. So they were looking for leads because they had understood that one of the guys was from Worcester. They’re, they assumed so they went interrogating him, and he said no, I’m not a criminal. I’m just a bookmaker. And as soon as he said that I guess Hoover didn’t want anything to do with Bookmaking at the FBI. So they just threw their hands up and they threw it at the IRS and [00:14:00] that fell in my grandfather’s lap. And so he started digging into IAC and he, he actually built a case against him. He ended up going to jail. But during that process, when he was investigating Ioni, Ioni gave up another man. His name was Bernard Goldfine. Wasn’t in the mafia. He’s a big businessman. He owned all these textile manufacturing companies. And he kept getting the contracts for all the US government, military uniforms every year. So no one else would ever win. And my grandfather exposed that there was some bribery and corruption going on. Between him and Eisenhower’s chief of staff named Sherman Adams. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, Eddy Inserra: I Gary Jenkins: remember, I remember that. Sherman Adams he went down. I remember that. Eddy Inserra: Do you remember the Una coat? That’s what that was the big Gary Jenkins: thing. Yeah. I forgotten about that. Somebody gave me this Una coat. I never was sure what a Una coat was, but yeah, I forgotten about that. The Vicuna code and he and everything, they found all these papers that be. For Eisenhower to four eight C, it’d have to say [00:15:00] KSA Sherman Adams. That was a big deal. While he was spooning feeding Eisenhower all the, anything that he wanted to have. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. That’s funny you remember that because that’s, yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That was huge at the time in the fifties. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. For some reason, he bribed him with a lot of things, hotel rooms, cash, all these things. But the Vicuna code, for some reason, stuck in the media, and that was my grandfather’s work, was exposing that and yeah. That was a big deal at the time and after he exposed that and with him not giving up that confidential informant. RFK wanted Fred out of Massachusetts. Pretty much out of the cross heads. We can get into that if you want, but yeah that’s the next Gary Jenkins: thing. What would he want? We, because Kennedy’s of course, were Boston area, new England based, and a lot of their people probably could then get in trouble with because of Fred Pastore and his bulldog attitude towards enforcing the law. Was that the deal? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, Fred would follow the money. I know that’s a common thing, but he really would follow the money. And from what I [00:16:00] understand, I wasn’t there, I didn’t live at that time, but from what I understand, he followed the money and wherever it led him and that led him right up to the White House. You know how politics are there, it’s a dirty game. So I’m sure that might’ve been someone who gave money to the candidate, maybe even the same guy, Bernard Goldfine or somebody. And if Fred dug that up, they could get. The same treatment Sherman Adams did. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. Eddy Inserra: They wanted Fred out of there. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So what happened then? They it seemed like they, they repressed him to reveal his informant or something like and he ended up, either I quit or, I have to give up my informant. Is that, was that what it came down to? Hobson’s choice like that? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, it came down to that. They tried to actually reassign him to Syracuse. New York was really, it was a demotion in pay and in actually title as well. So he would’ve been brought down. He wouldn’t have been in the rack racket squad. He would’ve been down to a special agent again, and would’ve been a step backwards and they would’ve had him out of the mix in Boston. And that’s really what they wanted to accomplish is silence Fred. Yeah. [00:17:00] So he was faced with a decision, do I take that demotion and that’s the end of it, or. Do what he actually did, which was, took him back to his up upbringing in East Boston. Tough poor kid when you actually have to face the bully, I think. And that street grit that he actually said no. You know what? He held his own press conference in downtown Boston and he said, I’m resigning from the IRS today. And I’m opening up my own tax fraud defense firm right across the street. He wanted to view them out the window every day. He had a chip on his shoulder. And so he ended up advising the same kind of people and some of the same people that he was previously going after at the IRS. And he was like a super weapon for those guys because he knew all the legalities and the loopholes and how to structure your businesses and things like that. So Gary Jenkins: yeah, I noticed there was like a Fred Angiulo was that Jerry’s brother then. Eddy Inserra: I don’t know if there was a Fred, if there was Gary Jenkins: a wonder. I thought it, it was Fred. I may have got [00:18:00] that name wrong, Nick in the Nick in my head, because your dad, your grandpa’s name was Fred Pastor. But anyhow, there he defended Angiulo and some of their people, he, he knew everybody went to North End at eight and, they were socially compatible, if you will. So tell us a little bit about that, what you learned about those, that part of his life. Eddy Inserra: Obviously post IRS career, I learned that from my mother and other people, that on the weekends Fred would go on Friday night. Him and his his daughter whose youngest daughter is Charmin, which is my mother. Oldest daughter’s, Pam and my grandmother is Nina. And they would go into Boston to the north end and they’d go down there for, to go to the bakery sit out front. The women would sit out front eating pastry, and Fred would go out back for about 15 minutes and. To me it was him giving advice maybe face to face. To, to Jerry and he’d come out 15 minutes with a paper bag from what I’ve heard. And and that would be it. Then they’d go to the fruit market and then they’d go home and they’d go out to Stella’s. [00:19:00] Restaurant in the North End on Fleet Street at the time, which is a famous spot. Even, JFK, they used to go there. But it was a real famous spot. Fred would be there a lot with the family. And on the weekends my mother remembers. So the Injus, by the way, Jerry and Jula, there was five brothers who really ran their empire together. But Jerry was the head of it and the genius with numbers. And he shared that with Fred. They both had a genius with numbers. So that was some that was interesting. And Nick would, his brother Nick would go to Fred’s house on Sundays, and my mother would call him Uncle Nick. He’d always bring something. One time he brought a pet dog for them. They had a dog, and he’d bring all kinds of gifts and they always saw the nice side to these people. Even in the office, when I went to the office and I met a couple of these people when I was young, I didn’t know who they were, but I, you’d always see the nice side because. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, Eddy Inserra: Fred was the golden goose helping them keep their money, but most importantly keeping them outta jail. So Gary Jenkins: interesting. Huh? That’s a, that’s quite a career switch. [00:20:00] The were you in 98 Prince Street? The famous 98 Prince Street. I went to the north end, went around, took some pictures and stuff. It’s nothing like it, it’s described, but back in the day, other than, it’s really cool, those little narrow brick streets and restaurants and everything. Talk about the north end over there. Eddy Inserra: The north end is that’s the Italian enclave of the city. Boston has different enclaves, different cultural enclaves I should say. And the North end is the the Italian, it actually was the was the Irish before the Italian. So a lot of people don’t know that. But I didn’t know that. The Italian section, and that’s where there’s, world class Italian food restaurants, every 10 feet. And. It’s a tight knit community. Everybody knows everybody especially back then. So you walk down the street, you’ll see people hanging on the corner and if when you’re, when you were a kid you’d go get your fireworks there at the park and, illegal fireworks and get whatever you want. But yeah, 98 Prince Street was where Jerry ran his sort of headquarters out of there and they called it the doghouse. That was, [00:21:00] they knew they had eyes looking out for them as well being there. So the whole neighborhood was really looking out for them. And eventually the FBI caught them by wiretapping a vehicle up front. Yeah. So inside. But yeah, it’s really tight knit Italian. If you come to Boston, I really recommend you go, especially if you want to eat some nice food and see how this still some remnants of how it used to be, like you said, those brick roads and things like that. It’s pretty nostalgic and interesting. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really cool. I’d highly recommend any of you guys. You go out to, you, go to Boston, go to the north end and eat and just walk around. It’s really nice, although it’s pretty busy on the weekends, so a lot of people down there, man and some of the restaurants, there were long lines to get into ’em around dinnertime. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, try if you can make a reservation, try to, if not. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. Good bakeries too that the nicer places. I can’t even remember the names of ’em now. I had ’em that day. But anyhow, so I have to, I’m gonna flip back just a little bit. I made a jotted down a note [00:22:00] about Frank, the cheese man c Chiara, who was at Apple Lake. He did he who was the consigliere, I think for Patri arca. I believe your grandfather went after him or had some dealings with him. Do you remember that? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, he, there was some documents in the box about him and they were telling him he was definitely the concierge for arraignment at the time. And there were documents that Fred’s team was actually tracking him. They were watching him, he was going to Cuba back and forth to Cuba at that time. And so they thought he was moving money or just setting things up with a casino and things like that down there. They couldn’t, I don’t know if they actually got him to go to jail. I don’t remember if they were able to prosecute him, but they were checking him at the airport. I remember they checked his passport. But he was the, he was a money man as well, so he was known to be like the bank at that time. Gary Jenkins: Did did your grandfather have any trouble? His own troubles with the IRS af? Did they come after him or try to go after him at any point in time? Later in his career? Usually they [00:23:00] do. Yeah. They could be pretty vindictive. I’ve seen it here where an FBI agent then becomes a white collar crime lawyer. And boy, I tell you what, his old buddies, he was, they, he, a friend of mine went like that and he was surprised. He was shocked how p how his old friends from the bureau treated him. So did he have any problems like that? Eddy Inserra: In fact, he had a big problem like that as soon as he wouldn’t give up, his informant’s name. That became a problem actually. The the FBI called him in one of the documents that I have. It’s a memo that he wrote right after he came back from the FBI interrogating him. So he was told to report to the FBI in Boston by himself. And this was from his IRS superiors that say that, they want you over there, you gotta go talk to them. And so he went over there. And there was two agents in the room with Fred and they interrogated him asking if he had taken bribes at all. Yeah. And Fred used he, he outwitted them saying, I can’t say anything. This is an on ongoing investigation. If he, if you want me to say anything about this, you’re gonna have to get my [00:24:00] superiors to sign off on this. And, whatever the process was. And he felt like it was unbelievable because he said, who’s accusing me of this? They wouldn’t tell him. But eventually he figured out that it was this textile manufacturer that I mentioned earlier, Bernard Goldfine, his sort of right hand woman, her name was Mildred Paperman. She had she’d already been convicted and so was Bernard Goldfine, but they had said that Fred was taking bribes from them. So they’re taking this information from convicted, felons. And she said she had proof of it. So she had a check made up to the initials, FGP and who else, that’s Fred’s initials. Yeah. Fred G passed story. So Fred started laughing when they pulled that out. He said, do you guys have any idea who this is? It’s not me. And it was for Maine Senator Frederick g Payne, with the same initials. And that was easily documented in his paperwork that he was accepting bribes from gold mines. It’s really interesting how he outsmarted them [00:25:00] and I guess they didn’t do their homework good enough, but, they went after him hard and even after he left the IR Rs they tried to, I think one of, one of the documents says you didn’t report $2 of your tax income or something like that. Just busted his dogs. Oh my Gary Jenkins: God. I’m in a heap of trouble then. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. But the thing that he did have. And I, I can’t say it for sure, but he did have, in his back pocket, was a list of police and politicians that did take bribes. And that’s what up in, in that newspaper behind me, he was supposed to release this list. There was the media believed that he was gonna release these names during his press conference. He didn’t, and I believe that was an insurance policy that he kept in his pocket to keep them away. That’s my belief. I can’t confirm that, but that’s my sort of theory on that. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I tell you what in Boston, greater Boston, that area, having a list of policemen and politicians that have been taking bribes, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Just take out about 10 out and name the rest. Eddy Inserra: I tell you what, [00:26:00] I do have that list. It was in the bar. Gary Jenkins: Oh, do you? Oh really? Yeah. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Is Gary Jenkins: that gonna be on your website? Is that gonna be on your website or are you just keeping that to yourself? Eddy Inserra: I thought long and hard about that, and I don’t think it’s fair to ruin or tarnish any family or anything like that. So I, that’s not gonna come out. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: That has nothing to do with me. That’s not my, Gary Jenkins: I, I’d have to agree with that, that those were different times, different days. Yeah. And there’s no use hurting in what would be innocent people today with that kind of information, especially Boston seemed like it’s a. A small community in, in, in a way, it’s not like New York where you’re spread out over all these boroughs and Los Angeles, where you’re spread out over, 25% of the state. It’s more like Kansas City, more like a small area that is Boston. And so a lot of people, everybody knows each other in some manner. Eddy Inserra: Yeah exactly. Couple of degrees of separation if that. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: All right, Eddie and [00:27:00] Sarah, confidence of the mob, the IRS agent who took down the mafia and then advised them. So a really interesting book. Guys. I’ll have links to the website or to the Amazon page where you can buy this book. I’d highly recommend you buy it and when you do, go in there see, I don’t know, it’s about a quarter of the way in and find that find that QR code and. Go to that website and listen to some, I listened to a couple of three of those interviews. Really interesting stuff. That off the stuff that you can’t get everything in, but it’s interesting. I understand about that. Eddy Inserra: Thanks Gary. Yeah. That’s a upcoming podcast. We’re gonna have all full interviews and all that stuff with all. Oh, Gary Jenkins: Are you gonna do one yourself or with somebody there in Boston? Eddy Inserra: We’ve, it’s not gonna be a live podcast. It’s actually a bunch of clips thrown together. So it’s, oh, Gary Jenkins: I see. Eddy Inserra: Okay. Yeah we put it all together. It’s taken a couple years, so far, 12 episodes. We’ve got IRS agents in there, mafia members. We’ve got Fred’s ex clients and family. It’s really interesting. So you can check [00:28:00] that out on the website. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. When is that coming? Eddy Inserra: So we’re shooting to start releasing the end of May. So last week in May. Okay. Gary Jenkins: I love board. I always need another podcast to listen to myself. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Yeah. Only gonna be one season. It’s not gonna be a multiple season thing. Gary Jenkins: That, that was my next question. It was gonna be a limit limited edition, if you will. Limited season. You’re not gonna keep going year in and year out like I do. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, no, there’s not enough content, but we’ll do behind the scenes and we’ll do some live stuff in Boston and things like that. Yeah. Okay. If anybody knew Fred or of him, please contact me too on the website. Okay. Love to hear about. Gary Jenkins: All right. Great. Alright Eddie and Sarah, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Eddy Inserra: Thanks, Gary. Great to meet you.

Transcribed - Published: 11 May 2026

In this episode, host Gary Jenkins, a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, sits down with author and mob expert Springs Toledo and discusses the Boston Winter Hill Gang and its notorious members. Springs’ book, “Don’t Talk About Joe Mac: The Life, Wars, and Secret History of the Man Behind the Winter Hill Gang” Springs Toledo provides an exhaustive look at Joe McDonald aka Mac, a pivotal yet often overlooked figure in the Boston criminal landscape, especially during the 1960s-1990s. Springs, a Boston native, brings a unique perspective and personal anecdotes that enrich our understanding of the intersections of crime, family, and community within the city. They explore Joe Mac’s early life and how his background shaped his role in organized crime. Springs shares how Mac was an elder statesman in the underworld, feared and respected for his ability to organize the rackets in Somerville and maintain a significant network of relationships across various neighborhoods. Joe Mac’s methods of operation were emblematic of a time when the Irish underworld was gaining ground in a city dominated by Italian crime families. Springs discusses the stark differences in these organizations, from their cultural practices to their hierarchies. Springs also highlights the complexities of Joe Mac’s personal life, discussing his relationships with his family, especially his daughter Jacqueline. Their conversations reveal a side of Mac rarely seen in crime stories — a devoted father struggling with his dual identity as a loving parent and a cold-blooded criminal. Throughout the episode, Springs captures the essence of Mac’s character, noting that while he was involved in heinous acts, he also exhibited genuine love for his family, a contradiction that adds depth to his narrative. As the conversation unfolds, we examine the dynamics within the Winter Hill Gang, particularly the relationships among Joe Mac, prominent figures like Whitey Bulger, and Howie Carr. Springs shares fascinating insights into Mac’s cautious nature and strategic approach to power. He articulates how Mac operated in the shadows, steering clear of public scrutiny while effectively managing the group’s criminal enterprises. The episode paints a vivid portrait of a gang operating amid violence, betrayal, and survival. In addition to discussing the various criminal exploits, Springs shares some gripping anecdotes that illustrate the real-life implications of this lifestyle. His stories about Joe’s attempts to balance family life while dodging law enforcement showcase the constant threat that loomed over their lives, encapsulating the dangerous allure and traumatizing consequences of organized crime. We also touch upon the significant events that defined the gang wars in Boston, including Joe Mac’s suspected involvement in notorious hits and how the landscape of crime shifted in response to law enforcement’s increased focus on organized crime. Springs dives into the enigmatic character of Joe Mac, unraveling his military background, his unyielding commitment to the underworld, and how he managed to stay a step ahead of rivals and authorities alike. In closing, Springs reflects on the motivations behind his book—his desire to portray the human side of a man branded a monster while exploring the broader themes of morality, family, and the haunting legacy of crime. As we wrap up, it becomes clear that “Don’t Talk About Joe Mac” is not just a biography of an infamous crime figure, but a complex narrative that invites readers to ponder the true cost of a life steeped in organized crime. This episode is a riveting exploration of character, culture, and crime, offering audiences an engaging glimpse into the storied history of Boston organized crime, the Winter Hill gang through the lens of one of its most pivotal figures, Joe Mac. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Springs Toledo JOe mac Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, all your wire tappers out there. Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective, doing a podcast mainly about organized crime. We might stray into drugs every once in a while, but primarily about Italian based organized crime or, and then sometimes we get into Irish based organized crime. I’ve done a story on the Westie in the past and a few other stories like that. So today we’re gonna talk about the. Crossing of the Irish and and the Italians in Boston area, which is a really well known, famous story. A lot of great characters. And I have with me a man who wrote a book about this. Springs Toledo, welcome Springs. Springs Toledo: Thank you very much, Gary. Happy to be here. Gary Jenkins: Great. Now guys, the books is, don’t Talk about Joe Mack the Life Wars and Secret History of the Man Behind The Winter Hill Gang. And I’ve always wondered about this Winter Hill gang. I’ve always heard of it and Whitey Bulger came out of that and was so famous, but I’ve never really. [00:01:00] Seen anything or know anything about the background of it. And Springs, Toledo has somebody, a guy called Joe Mack that was involved in that and he’s really gone into it in depth. Springs, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this. Springs Toledo: I’m a native of Boston, which did help, the accent helped open doors. Gary Jenkins: We can tell. Springs Toledo: But I don’t even try to hide it anymore. And I have a background in, in boxing, which also helps, that’s a breeding ground for, leg breakers and enforcers. Historically, in Boston, a lot of ex fighters became gangsters or, involved in that life. I went to Northeastern got a graduate degree in criminology. And I I didn’t, I never became a police officer. I worked with, actually with juvenile delinquents and troubled youth for many years. I’ve written several books some about boxing, some about an historical figure named John Brown, who’s an abolitionist, so I’m running the gamut. But Joe McDonald was a name that I heard whispered for many years, growing up. He had a very long criminal career over five decades.[00:02:00] And, so he was considered something very serious. But what I began to notice as the book started coming out after John Madano became a cooperating witness, as he’d say. Is that not much was known about this individual. What I knew is that he was about 20 years older than everybody else. So he’s an elder statesman in that world. So I started poking around. I know some guys who were involved in that life. I know some other guys who were very connected to very serious individuals who were active in the Boston Underworld during these years, the sixties, seventies, eighties, into the nineties. Yeah. So I started, asking around and the things I started to hear were very downright alarming about who this man was and that he was the guy not Whitey Bulger. There was what they’ll all tell you the deeper you get into the operators in that world is that Whitey Bulger is. Largely a mythology. And that in Somerville especially, he wasn’t really that respected. Joe Mack, however, was Joe Mack was, he [00:03:00] was the go-to guy. And upon doing all kinds of research, field research, but also I’m trying to corroborate everything. People are saying you can’t just take what people have to say at face value, especially if they’re, underworld figures. Yeah. A lot of ’em have a self-interest as so what I would do, I had a little strategy. What I would do is I would talk to one guy in Southie if I heard a story that sounded intriguing or something about Joe Mack, what have you, and then I’d try to find another guy in Somerville or East Boston or Hy Park who didn’t necessarily know that individual. And if the stories match, I’d look into it further. For instance, I wanna make sure the guy wasn’t in prison at that time, that he’s allegedly known to have done something. So that’s how I began to put together a picture. And what the u unanimously what I found out is that Joe McDonald was really the, he’s the one that put together organized crime in Somerville, centered in Winter Hill. He organized the launch sh the rackets loan, sharking booking, sports betting, all of that. And he was a very feared individual.[00:04:00] He looked like a building superintendent. He was balding. He, no, he was nothing flashy about him. He was family man. But so I started digging deeper and I got his military records, and then the picture really started to come together because of what he went through during World War II in the South Pacific and the trauma that he suffered. I didn’t wanna write a straight True crime book. So I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want it to be ordinary. I wanted it to be get underneath the behavior. It’s the, the criminology major is, was showing it’s yeah. Was coming to the fore. So I wanna get underneath it. So I consider this book more of a nonfiction noir. ‘Cause if you watch those old movies, a lot of ’em have a theme where you have, the main character, the anti-hero. These are movies from the forties, all black and white. All shadowy. Yeah. They come back from World War ii and they’re troubled. They’re shell-shocked. JoEM, Joe Mack came back and he’s marred. Something about his personality had changed and he’s one of the few individuals that I’ve encountered who [00:05:00] actually age into crime. He didn’t age out of it like everybody else. He aged into it. But he was very good at what he did. He was a brilliant individual. Very strong-willed. Someone said that I talked to, they said that, all the fear, whatever fear he had was knocked out of him, in SVO sound. When his ship went down, which was a USS Quincy with his brother on it. So he became a, began to emerge as a fascinating figure. But what. Made me decide to write the book was when I was hooked up with his daughter by TJ English. I reached out to him and he, he told me about Jackie McDonald. I reached out to her and I said, I’m thinking about writing a book about your father, Joe McDonald. I don’t think that the the literature on him now really got him right. And she said, give me a night to drink about it. Yeah, so the next morning she told me she was she’ll tell me everything she knows and she was the right person because first of all, she was named for the brother that he lost in SVO sound that he never got over his little brother. Her name’s [00:06:00] Jacqueline. And like her father, she’s absolutely brilliant. She’s charismatic. She is incredibly honest. If she’s not sure about something she’d say. So nothing in it was, what she told me was about herself. It was nothing was ego driven. She wanted to tell the truth of her father. And what I began to realize early on is that you know this, you have victims of guys like Joe McDonald who killed dozens of people professionally, but he was a murderer. There’s no doubt about it. And you have a lot of victims, including in his own family. Not that he intended to hurt his daughters and his son, but his, who he was and what he was, did a lot of damage to his own family and she was the perfect person to talk to because she was so honest. She’s also very funny if, you read about her in the book, she comes across as a real character, very charismatic. So her story runs parallel with his, she comes out about the middle of the book. I trace her life alongside with his, and she had a memoir that she did many years ago and she shared that with me. [00:07:00] She’s she really is a force of good, if you will, in the book. She’s the one to cheer for, she’s the one to root for. Joe McDonald is a formidable figure, but he’s a dark and shadow. We figure. I do bring him out as much as I can and he is fascinating, but. I felt like I needed someone to root for the reader, yeah. And also, it’s women who love true crime the most. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: That’s so Springs Toledo: had to give nod to them, they’re gonna buy it. Gary Jenkins: That is true. And a story like this will will attract men and women both, sometimes those just straight, kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. Of true crime books are not really attractive to women. That’s really interesting that. You’re showing the human side of this guy instead of just the crime side, which there every one of these guys that are professional criminals in this life have a human side. They, that’s what one thing that fascinated me about ’em, even way back when I started, went into the intelligence unit is these guys all had families and they had kids going to St. Pius up here and they played football and the families all showed up [00:08:00] when their kids played football and they were in little league and all that kind of normal stuff. On one hand, but yet they came over into the CI city in here. They came from the suburbs over in the city and were these gangsters all night long, and then went back home to their suburban homes. So that family side. That’s really interesting. I’m glad you did that. Springs Toledo: That’s compartmentalization. And Joe was the best at it. But there was something unusual about this case and that is that. Joe told nothing to anybody. His Winter Hill partners barely knew about his personal life. They didn’t know much about him. Yeah, nobody knew much about him. ’cause he didn’t confide in anybody. He did it the way you’re supposed to do it. As an organized, if you’re gonna get into organized crime, you want to follow his lead. And he lived a tough life. It’s nothing to get into in terms of choosing that as an occupation. However, he did confide in his daughters. He trusted them and he told them an awful lot, which he didn’t realize was traumatizing them. But. Jackie McDonald is blessed with a very good memory, so she was able to fill in [00:09:00] a lot of blanks about some of which were cold case murders and other just, real eyebrow raising incidents that happened. I think this book would’ve been invaluable to the FBI. Right up to the early nineties interest because of the stuff that came out, several cold case murders. I think I solved them. And, they were attributable, well attributed. I attribute them to Joe, a few. I know he did. But, people didn’t know, and he was a, excuse my saying, but he had. He was a real talent for that. He knew how to get you. He knew how to find you. He knew how to get you. And he also, like I said, he didn’t have any fear, so there was nothing holding him back. And that’s a difference from Whitey Bulger. What people don’t realize is that Whitey Bulger was a very careful man. And that’s why a lot of murders attributed to Whitey Bulger. He didn’t do, it doesn’t even, it, it offends his personality. He was the kind of guy, if he’s gonna kill you, you’re gonna be in the basement tied to a chair, or you’re gonna be a woman. He’s not on Northern Avenue in Boston in broad daylight, killing Brian Halleran. It’s not true. That’s not Whitey [00:10:00] bulge, that’s not how he operated. Joe Mack was a different beast altogether, and yet he was never indicted for murder. He was questioned maybe for one of them. And the title is really a reason for that because you didn’t talk about Joe Mack. That’s actually, that’s that’s. I like the title a lot. It took me a long time to get to that title. First title was Hey Joe, ’cause of the song. And I was like, ah. Nobody said, Hey, Joe to him. Where you going with that gun in your hand, huh? That’s right. You’re good. Yeah. Jimmy Hendrix. And then another title was the Wars of Joe Mack. That was a little too masculine that works, but it was too masculine. Yeah, don’t talk about Joe Mack really captures, what he was and how he operated. Gary Jenkins: Springs set the geographic scene. I’ve always been a little bit confused about this in Boston. IU Boston is unlike Kansas City, for example, what I’m familiar with. It has these really distinct areas in neighborhoods. Set the scene, the Italians African Americans, the Irish what set that up for us? [00:11:00] Springs Toledo: Okay, this is the, fifties, sixties, seventies that, that’s where most of the book is occurring. Especially 60, 70, actually into the eighties. Boston first of all it’s basically back then was an Irish Catholic city. Yeah. There were other ethnicities, but it was overrun with the Irish and there were neighborhoods. So you had. You had neighborhood crews, you had crews that were operated out of East Boston. That’s Barboza, south Boston was several of them. Jamaica Plain, the North End obviously was where the mafia was. Sented La Ostra. Somerville, Charlestown. And a lot of, most of these guys who were got into criminality. Not only did they have families, they also had occupations. They were long showmen, they were roofers. They had jobs. I’m a policeman. And back then policemen, you didn’t make a lot of money. So you were encouraged to supplement your income. Oh yeah. Some of these guys were, they were detectives by day and they’re doing heists at night and that was not uncommon. And. Over time, certain organizations [00:12:00] became more organized and the Irish, remember, were barely organized. They were more like, it was more like the old West when things got hot. It was also a whiskey driven, a lot of the heinous acts and the murders that started to happen with that, the Irish gang war in the sixties, everybody was drunk. Some of these guys were really nice guys and then they got to the whiskey and forget it. They become monsters. Not everybody, but but. Boston was also very segregated. Not like the south. It was, there was natural neighborhoods, I was in Hy Park, that’s where I came up. If I went to Southy, there was a problem ’cause I didn’t know a lot of people there. If somebody from Southie went to the North End, it’s a problem. You are Irish, you shouldn’t be here. You didn’t cross boundaries. Mattapan was Jewish and then it became black. Same thing. So everybody congregating together is very tribal in that sense. Less so now, but there are still pockets, what’s upsetting to me is that you barely hear the accent, and you’re walking through Boston, you don’t hear the accent too much anymore. You have to get to Dorchester. That’s their accent’s. 10 times worse than mine, [00:13:00] and mine’s pretty bad but Joe Mack was Joe Mack was born in Medford, Massachusetts. He then, he was in Somerville by about 1950. His mother had moved there as as clan, if you will. Had moved there, his sisters and brothers. And so he was in Somerville in Winter Hill, and that’s where he started to operate and that’s where he started to put things together. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You say Winter Hill. So let’s talk about the beginnings or this Winter Hill gang. I’ve heard of this. Many times. And Whitey Bulger of course popularized it. So tell me about the Winter Hill gang and Howie Carr. And there’s a famous picture that see on internet or on Facebook with our Underboss Tuffy Luna and this guy that was the head of the Winter Hill gang and a couple other gangsters from New York. So tell us about the beginning of this Winter Hill gang. Springs Toledo: We deserves a lot of credit. He’s the one that really brought the stuff out beginning in the eighties. He had the guts to mention Joe Mack in print. That’s high risk. I’m not sure how much he did it, but he was really [00:14:00] attuned to it early. And he had some great books, but winter Hill’s a neighborhood in Somerville. It’s not South Boston. You talk to guys who were associated with the Winter Hill Gang, what they called the Hill. Really? It was called The Hill by those who were a part of that organization. They get very resentful about Whitey Belgium and some of them will say that Whitey Belger wasn’t Winter Hill. Whitey Belgium was a partner, but he was South Boston. Okay. Once, and it’s a big story, but once he, it’s all in the book. But once he betrayed his partners in 79. With Fleming and all the partners just about were either they were all indicted except for about this big horse racing scheme that was going on, across several states. But Whitey and Fleming were unindicted co-conspirators, and that was hint number one that prompted Joe to go to Howie Winter, who was the face of the organization and say, I’m gonna kill them both. He was talked out of it because it’d be too much heat because Whitey had some very serious connections. You can’t take that away from him. And so he was a high [00:15:00] risk hit. Joe would’ve done it anyway and would’ve probably made him disappear or threw it at another organization to get the heat off the hill. But he was restrained, which was, I thought was a big mistake, but who can tell then? But after he cleared the field of his rivals, who. Where his partners in the Winter Hill gang he ostensibly should have taken over the rackets in Somerville, but that wasn’t really the case. He had salty that was his turf. He was a local guy. Salty was really where he was. He was no longer really welcome is my understanding from guys who I talked to were there, he was basically chased out of the Marshall Motor’s garage in Somerville in Winter Hill, and that’s when he went to the Lancaster garage in, on North End, which is closer to home, closer to his. Space of operations. Yeah. But Whitey was very treacherous and he was Machiavellian in his methods. Joe at the time was already on the lamb because I don’t think Whitey would’ve survived that if Joe was close and saw what he was doing. So it’s a lot of what could have been, if Joe wasn’t in the wind because of several other crimes and murders he was [00:16:00] doing at the time, he was actually on the FBI’s 10 most wanted on 76, long before Whitey was on it. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So then the relationship between Howie Carr and Joe Mack how was that, how did that shake down? Springs Toledo: Howie Winter, you mean, Gary Jenkins: or Howie Winter, I’m sorry. Springs Toledo: Yeah. Howie Winter was mentored by Joe Mack. See, Joe Mack was really, he was like the general, he was like the general on the field. The Irish don’t operate in a hierarchy. That’s an Italian thing. There’s no ring kissing in an Irish pub. It’s just a different culture. What they were partners. You had one guy up front. He was the face of it. That’s Howie. Howie was the face of it before Howie’s buddy McClain. In the early, in the early sixties. Joe though, the guy in the shadows, he used to say, I’m at the back of the bus. He’s at the back of the bus, but he’s the one with the map. He’s the go-to guy. The guy up front is the guy that gets hit. That’s the guy that gets indicted. So Joe was astute enough to, just stay in the [00:17:00] background, let the kids have it. But they were. Very close, very close. During the war they were, very tight-knit organization. These were friends. They were very affectionate with each other. They took care of one another. This is before Whitey came in. He was, he poisoned the well. But Joe and Howie and Buddy McClean and they, anos when they come in, they were very close. It was a kind of a band of brothers in a way. But Joe still made. Maintain that, everybody was at arms length with him. He was careful about everybody. There was a rift between Howie and Joe later in their respective lives in the in the eighties, into the nineties. I’m told that it was healed. I don’t think it was, and that’s unfortunate. But they were close to most of their lives, they literally went to war together on, on the street, you’re gonna form strong bonds when you know you’re looking at this guy and you gotta rely on him to watch your back. And Gary Jenkins: yeah, Springs Toledo: that’s what was happening. Gary Jenkins: So Irish, they didn’t kick up, if you will, to somebody above them. Everybody was a kind of a independent operator. If you got a piece of action and you had something going that you didn’t have to kick up to [00:18:00] somebody to be part of the Winter Hill gang, if you will. Springs Toledo: That was where the, there were a lot of crews around. They were called independents. And there’s a lot of them around in Boston in the sixties. But if you got too big and you started making real money, Patri was a power in Boston. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Springs Toledo: Raymond Patri, he was a power in Boston. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s two schools of thought. Some believe that Winter Hill had to always kick up to them, kick to Providence. Others say? No, not really. Because first of all, he loved Buddy McClean. Buddy McClain was he was a very charismatic guy, very tough guy, and he was a man of his word, so they really liked him. So there’s the other school of thought is that, they liked Buddy, they gave him a pass on that. But every now and then they’d have to do him favors, maybe do some hits, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But again, but in, in Boston it’s, like I said, it’s mostly Irish, it’s not set up like New York where the Italians are a real power that’s right there. He, one guy, matter of fact a name of one of the chapters in the book where I get into the Gangland war. Is Boston was [00:19:00] overrun with sick bastards, quote unquote, because there was just so many dangerous guys. There wasn’t a few here and there, like the gallows or it, there was hundreds of guys and there was damn near psychopathic they were called and underworld polls. There was savages, they go right to your house. And it was too many. This, one guy actually several believed that if there was a problem between Rhode Island. The Boston Underworld, meaning Boston Writ Lodge, including Somerville, Medford, Malden, all that. That. The Italians would’ve come to the table. ’cause the Irish underworld, the Boston Underworld here would’ve made it very much not worth it. Not worth the blood and the treasure. So it’s, yes, with very interesting culture here. What you couldn’t control the Boston underworld. They would just, Boston itself has a reputation. You don’t wanna invade this place. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, just ask the English, huh? Springs Toledo: Exactly. Yeah. We go way back with that stuff. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah it’s, I was at I went into the north end and looked around at Prince Street and all the place where [00:20:00] Jerry Angelo and all that was going on, and that is such a small. Discreet little area in that then, so you, they just operated and he was not any kind of a real power. It didn’t seem to be like, compared to patriarchal. He was under patriarchal of course. And he didn’t really, it’s like the Irish all had their own thing all around him. All, and he didn’t really have didn’t, I didn’t find any, anything I’ve ever seen where there was much to do between those two. Was there, did he have anything about that? Springs Toledo: He had he had two guys joe Russo, he was a killer. He was a very serious individual and a guy who has two names. Some call him Byi, some call him Zino. Larry was his name. Very serious guy. But that’s two guys. The other dangerous guys in the north end. They were getting up there in age. Meanwhile, like you just alluded to, this sur this surrounded, by these, these crazy guys. Yeah, but they, they did. There was some interplay, there was some contracts would be given to the Hill, for instance. That happened several times. The Hill would borrow [00:21:00] money from Angelou and Jou had a lot of money. They’d borrow money from him. Whitey Belger borrowed money from him with Fleming and actually didn’t pay it back. And then Joe Mack got out of the can. This is 80 late 86, 87, and him and Howie went to Fleming and Whitey and said, listen, you’re paying them back. Matter of fact, you’re paying them back a million because you made us look bad. We pay our debts, you pay him, you pay in back 1 million. And they did. They Whitey Bulger. Yeah. Whitey Bulger did not step two, Joe McDonald. In other words he wasn’t the power that Johnny Depp would have us believe. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So let’s go back to the family just a little bit. His daughter Jack Le, so when he went to prison, did she talk about that? I have a friend who went to prison for several years and he talks, tells me a lot about his kids coming to visit him in prison. Did he talk about that? Did she talk about that? How that affected her? Springs Toledo: She she talks about her whole life and how he was a shadow in her life. She loved him, [00:22:00] but he brought a lot of chains behind him and a lot of ghosts and a lot of fear of FBI raids and things like that. Even when he was on the run from the FBI was on the, top 10 most wanted, it’s only six o’clock news all over the place in every post office. He would just show up and see her. He thought he was being a dutiful father. He’s showing up. He’s got these black sideburns, glued onto his face and she could see the ink dripping. He got his rug on his head he startled her a lot. So she. He was a cause of great anxiety. And then she became a mother, and then things started to change. She had to protect her boys. And while, he looked like he could be a good grandfather, he was an extremely dangerous man. And when he went away to prison, she tried to be a good daughter. She would send him clippings. Matter of fact, she sent him a clipping of I think it was a national examiner because her father was in it. It was about the top 10. FBI fugitives. And she pointed out she was into astronomy and she astrology and she pointed [00:23:00] out that Joe Mack and another guy named Leo Corey had the same birthday, July 14th. So she thought he’d get a kick outta that. He gets outta prison a few years later, and he shows up at her house with Leo Corey. Who’s still on the top 10 most wanted. And she, he opens the door. He said, do you remember this guy? And she turned, that, that was a scary, that was a very scary moment for her. Yeah. He’s bringing very, this is a convicted murderer. It’s a multiple murderer. She’s got bringing, he’s bringing it to her house like he’s an old friend. So that kind of stuff happened a lot. It almost show off like that. Look what I can do. Yeah. So she had, I, she did love him and she has since forgiven him. And I think this book is part of her process to forgive, what he put her through and what he put his other children through. Not intentionally, he tried to be a good father, but how can you. In that position. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. When you bring that violence into the home, and you can’t help but bring that aura of [00:24:00] violence with you. When you live that life and when you come back into the home, there’s still that edge of violence that, that unspoken communication, you jump every time, somebody pulls up out in front and you’re running to the window to see who it is and there’s just always, always on edge. I, that would be it. Springs Toledo: Here’s a good story. So he’s on the run. This is in the I think it’s the late sixties. Joe’s on the run. She’s at home and Joe set his wife and kids up in Malden and a house on the hill. And originally he was gonna live there too. And it’s a, it is a great place. He’s up, he’s on a corner. He’s on a hill. You can see Boston from it. So it’s got a great vantage point for kind of a, a paranoid damaged war veteran. Yeah. So a call comes into the house. Voice says, you know who this is. She’s about 11, 12 years old. Voice says, you know who this is? Yes. Meet me at the bottom of the hill. So she gets her sister Patty and they meet their dad at the bottom of the hill. He takes them bowling and saga. He’s got the disguise on. Yeah. He’s got so many IDs, fake IDs, and he’s they [00:25:00] go to they, they go bowl and. You gotta wait for Lane. So he’s sitting there like this, he got his arms out. He’s feeling good about himself. He’s a good dad. He got his two teenage girls here and one of ’em, one of ’em, almost a teenager. And suddenly over the intercom, Thomas Campbell, your lane is ready. And he’s just sitting there. Thomas Campbell, he’s just sitting there. Finally his daughter says, pat says, dad, that’s you. Oh. And off he goes. So he wasn’t even sure who he was half the time. Yeah. So he’s my heart went out to him in that sense because here’s a man who made some very dark life choices and he’s trying to be a conventional father. Meanwhile, he’s gotta keep his eye on the clock, on the door, on the phone and everything else, all day long. Not to mention the fact that, there’s, it was dangerous lifestyle. But, his daughters, I, his daughters, they idolize him and they loved him. They didn’t fear him, he never raised his hand to them, never raised his hand to them, but they feared what he brought with ’em. Yeah. And that’s a theme book. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a, that’s that is so interesting. Think about this [00:26:00] era or of violent violence. I think somewhere in the book I noticed I was going through it where he may have been possibly one of the suspects on the Joe Barbosa head out in San Francisco when they finally got him and in. Springs Toledo: That’s fascinating because actually I had to take out ’cause of the publisher, I take about 15,000 words, but I really get into that. But that had to go. But what happened was. He had to go out there and kill a federal witness. And this guy was a civilian. This guy looked like a grandfather. And but he was gonna be a fence for some rear stamps that Joe had taken a million dollars worth of rear stamps. And this guy was gonna be the fence. He was a rear stamp collector out in Sierra Madre. Long story short, in January of 1976, Joe Mack drives out there, shoots him in the head five times in front of his wife, and then in February, that’s when Bob Bozer is killed February, 1976. This is January, 1976. Now, what I heard from two sources, and they’re pretty good, is that Joe did not go from Sierra Madre, [00:27:00] California back to Somerville. What he did was he went to Laurel Canyon and that’s where Alex Rocco was staying. Alex Rocco du played Mo Green in The Godfather. Oh, Gary Jenkins: yeah. Yeah. Springs Toledo: Yeah, he was a Winter Hill guy and Joe stayed with him on the lamb for so many weeks. I don’t know if it’s true. I couldn’t chase that down. No way you’re gonna find that out. But it was an intriguing little tidbit. So then in in February Bob Bozer is killed. Now when that news hit a bar in Boston called Clocks was a mob hangout. The bartender who knew all these guys. He got off the phone and he yelled out to the bar that Bleepity bleep stool pigeon. Animal Barbosa is dead and gone. God bless Joe Mack. That’s what he said. He just assumed Joe Mack did it. So what I’m trying to chase that down and what happens is so I’m talking to guys, who’re talking to guys. What I [00:28:00] found out is that one guy said no, this that, that wasn’t Joe that was kept in-house among the Italians because Bob Bza really took apart the Italians influences Yeah. In Boston. Yeah. He took them apart with lies. And however, there were three people in that van. I got these I got freedom of information documents and. What I was told by a made guy actually, is that it was Russo and Byi Zino. They’re the ones that took out Bob Bozo with a shotgun from a van. The van two seats were taken out of the van. The windows were painted black. This. Side windows were painted black and peeps were drilled into the side door and the back, so they worked hard to get ’em, but there was a third man in the van, so that’s a little intriguing. Could it have been Joe? I don’t know. Probably not. I’d have to say probably not, but nice story. And then from there, and then literally just a few weeks after that, Joe was in disguise. Remember now he’s already on the news as a as a top 10 fugitive. The FBI’s looking [00:29:00] for, and where is he? He’s in Walpole. How did I find out? I got everybody’s prison records. I could, and Brian Halleran, who turns up later in the book and then turns up dead later in the book. He’s in prison. Joe visits him. How do I know? It’s Joe’s Alias? John A. Kelly, that was his alias at the time. So he’s wanted by the FBI, he’s on the news and literally a week or two later. He’s visiting somebody in Walpole State Prison. From there, I trace him to Montreal. What’s he doing in Montreal? He’s sticking, he’s holding up a an ahed car robbery. With the Montreal Express, they had a great program, the Montreal Express. And Somerville, what they would do is they would just swap guys to do these big highs, get these ika, get these banks, and then just return. So it was awfully hard to catch ’em ’cause they’re just doing like a swap off. Yeah. Joe Mack. Was up there. And what he was doing was, and he, it was a white van, which raises an eyebrow, another white van. And the Amed car, the guy wouldn’t open the door. So they open up the [00:30:00] door of the back doors of the white van. And there is a World War II Browning anti-aircraft gun. And guess who’s behind it? Joe Mack. So this is a very busy man, and he should be, he’s retirement age but did he kill Boba? Probably not, but there was a third guy there. I would not be surprised. I know the Italians used him. Gary Jenkins: You brought something to Montreal Express Now what’s that? I, that I’m not from, I’ve not heard that term before. Springs Toledo: I wasn’t either, but that a lot of guys told me they Gary Jenkins: back heard your story there. Springs Toledo: Yeah, there is. Yeah. They were they were up, they were they were bank robbers. They went for the armor trucks. That was their forte. Very well organized. Very skilled. They were specialized and they would swap off with, winter Hills, sometimes with Southie and South Boston, I should say. South Boston and Somerville would, they were very close, they were very much aligned. They would swap off. I think one of ’em was the brother of a Bruins hockey player. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. These guys, they got their connections. I found out more and more after I since I started doing this podcast, how many connections people [00:31:00] had between cities and even within a city connections to regular look like Square John, businessmen and just connections all over the place. It’s Springs Toledo: all over the place. Matter of fact, Joe was Joe was in contact with the guys who escaped from Alcatraz. I couldn’t prove it, but I heard that, he was sending them money and, and supporting them. I pro I didn’t find nearly 50% of what Joe was up to, but that’s more than anybody else. I think before this book, we knew about 2% of what he was up to. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: It was Springs Toledo: pretty guy. Sure. Yeah. He was a footnote in the most of the books. Just a footnote, if that. So Gary Jenkins: that’s the smart one, the one that keeps his head down and keeps out of the papers and everything. Did that, did you talk to John Ano? Springs Toledo: Yes. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Springs Toledo: I did. He was he loved, first thing he said was how much he loved him. All these guys, very serious guys. They’re very powerful guys in the underworld. And when I brought his name up the ones who were close to him, they would say I love that. I love that man. Loved him. They loved and [00:32:00] revered him. Other guys who were not as close to him, but who were very, operatives in the bus world. I bring his name up now, he’s been gone since 1997. And they’d look around like this. And they say, oh gee. So you know, his name is still enough to and matter of fact, I was told early on when I was poking around that I’m poking around in dangerous places and Joe still has friends and you don’t wanna cross these guys, so even now his his shadow still looms, if you will, but I think it approve of what I did because, what I heard is that he’s very honest. He would not want any biographer to pull a pull punches about who and what he was. I didn’t, yeah. But some of his friends warned me. They were, you gotta be careful with this, but I call it bachelor’s privilege. I’m not married, I have no kids. If I end up in a ditch, who cares? So I can take risks. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That’s some truth. It’s just that last few minutes before you’d done the dish, you go, oh shit, I wish I was anywhere but here. I, Springs Toledo: I would ask to talk to a priest. Let me get a confession. That what you gotta do, Gary Jenkins: you Springs Toledo: know, Gary Jenkins: you’d be like I think it was Tony Citro. Supposedly the story was he [00:33:00] wanted to know if he could say a quick prayer before they did him in, but Springs Toledo: I hope they let him, Gary Jenkins: I don’t know. Steve Fleming, we met, you’d mentioned about Steve Fleming, the Rifleman, who was whitey’s buddy and you, I think you mentioned you had a story about Steve Fleming. Springs Toledo: Steve Fleming was it’s interesting he doesn’t appear too much in the book. One of the things I had to do with this, I had to do my best to keep the names down. One of the a fatal flaw in a whole lot of Boston and Underworld books than any underworld books is there was just 8,000 names. Too many names. There’s too many names. So I, so I mentioned him a few times ’cause you have to, but I’m not focused on Fleming, but I can tell you that Joe was very suspicious of Fleming as early as he was very suspicious of Whitey. He respected him. Fleming was a killer. More of an ambush killer than than a Savage or a guy who took a lot of risks. He was a lot like Whitey, like that. But no, Joe didn’t trust him because. He had a long bid and he got out early, and that’s always a cause for concern among those guys. Why are [00:34:00] you out early? They got a story and the stories backed up by the government. They were already in cahoots. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Springs Toledo: But with the names, there was one guy, this is an example. He was actually an MDC cop who was part of the Winter Hill gang in the early sixties, and his name was Russ Nicholson. I don’t wanna keep saying Russ Nicholson, the cop. So I shortened it to Russ the cop. Yeah. And then as things went on and the, police department realized that this guy’s involved in the rackets, they forced him to resign. So then I started calling them Rust, the ex cop. Then Rusty ex-cop gets clipped probably by Georgie McLaughlin. He’s dead, so now he’s Rust the dead ex-cop. So I’m trying to be polite to the reader and keep the names down. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. That’s a good idea that I know about that, that people say I love what you did, but there’s too many names. I got confused who was who. So it’s Springs Toledo: yeah, Gary Jenkins: it’s always a problem with these deals. All right, Springs, Toledo. [00:35:00] Let’s see. All of a sudden I like there it is. There you go guys. And guys, I will have your his link to for all his books and the show notes and of course links to my books too, but links to all of these guy, these books. You had some even about John Brown. You wanna go back into little Civil War history? Why check those out too. Guys, thanks so much for coming on the show. Springs Toledo: My pleasure.

Transcribed - Published: 4 May 2026

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins reports his previous contributor, Matt, who he interviewed on a new theory on the Carmine Galante hit, answers questions we have seen on various social media outlets. Matt claims the U.S. attorney and the FBI got it wrong when they alleged and convicted Bruno Indelicato for this murder. Challenging the official story, Matt reveals new theories, missing evidence, and the role of younger mobsters in one of the Mafia’s most infamous assassinations. In this bonus episode, I had Matt record his answers to the doubters of his theory. click here to see the book Made on Long Island.   [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, this is Gary Jenkins, as a lot of you know, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective [0:06] and now podcast host and producer and all that. And I was contacted by my guest I had on recently, who was only known as Matt. He’s a guy who supplied all the information to the author of Brantley Scarbrough, who wrote Made in Long Island. That was just out a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve never met Scarborough, and I don’t know any more about him. and I’ve never met Matt in person. I’ve had some emails and some Zoom calls with Matt, but I’ve never actually seen him either. But I recognize his accent, and he does come from the Long Island, New York area. And he does have some interesting stories about growing up with younger mobsters and the Bonanno and Gambino families and doing the fireworks business with Gotti and some of the other horse racing fixing business and that kind of thing, but he made quite a claim that the accepted suspects and the hit on the banana wannabe boss, Carmine the Cigar Galante. [1:11] Was not who the government claims it is. [1:14] And the government only claims one guy, and that’s Bruno or Anthony Bruno Indelicato. He claims it was some young guys who had a grudge against Galante, and they heard that this hit was approved by the commission, and they jumped in there and did it before Joe Massino got his crew set and were all ready to go and carry out this approved hit. Now, there’s no dispute that the commission approved this hit, I don’t think. There may be some disagreement about who actually carried it out. I think there’s no doubt that the two Zips, who were bodyguards, Cesare Bonaventure and Baldassario Amato, did not resist the hit. They took no action and just walked out and left, and then were interviewed by the government later on. Of course, they wouldn’t say anything. They probably knew he was scheduled to be hit, and they knew this was coming. And both were promoted in the Bonanno family right after, so that tells you something. Now, in the commission trial, that’s where Anthony Delicato got convicted for the hit on Carmine Galante. And in the commission trial, the government did convict Tony Salerno, boss of the Genovese family. [2:26] Anthony Tony Dux Corralo, boss of the Lucchese family, Gennaro Jerry Lang Langella, the Colombo family acting boss and regular underboss, Salvatore Tom Mix Santoro, who was a Lucchese family underboss. Christopher Christie Tick Funari, Lucchese family consigliere. [2:45] Ralph, little Ralphie Scopo, the Colombo family soldier. Carmine Junior Persico, who was the boss of the Colombo crime family at that time. [2:55] Stefano Canone, Bonanno family consigliere. [3:00] Anthony Bruno Indelicato, Bonanno family capo. Paul Castellano and Mr. Neal, Neal Delacroche, were not in the trial because they died. They were charged, but they died just before the trial. Now, on the YouTube show we did, we got a lot of comments and Matt’s got a lot of questions. And he wants to address and clarify why he doesn’t believe that the government’s claim that Anthony Delacato and two unknown men killed Galante. So I said, you know, I don’t know what to tell you. I said, you know, record and clarify your claim and see if you can address any of these questions that people have had in the comments section. Now, this may end up like all the competing theories on Jimmy Hoffa’s death and where his body by body might be. I don’t know. But at least Frank Sheeran, the Irishman, did not claim the Galante hit as best I can remember. So anyhow, here’s Matt’s story. I just want to say thank you so much for the interest we’ve generated from Gary’s Gangland podcast. [4:03] A lot of learning goes on here, and that’s where I’m going to start off. One item keeps coming up, and believe me, I’m not being the slightest bit condescending. If you don’t study this stuff and look at it, you have no way of knowing this. If you were to punch in right now, because we’ve done it, like Google searches, what evidence was used against Bruno and Delicato? Well, one thing that comes up, and a couple people referenced in the emails and on the posts, was ballistics. [4:27] They had ballistic evidence against Bruno Indelicato. Boy, that’s pretty strong. I mean, ballistic evidence is very, very strong. So let’s go through the ballistic evidence. Let me start off by saying there’s none. What you’re reading on that, and if you read the fine print closely and go back to the source, that is AI-generated garbage. That’s why we don’t like AI. The definition of ballistic evidence would be something like this. We pulled a slug out of a wall. We pulled a slug out of a victim. We locked a guy up. The guy had that gun on him. We matched that slug to that gun. That is ballistic evidence. There was absolutely none of that presented against Bruno Indelicato, despite what AI says. Again, if you take away one thing, please take away the fact that don’t ever use AI as a source. Now, I know one other thing people asked about was the progression on all this. And again, the book details it with so many stories, so many different John Gotti stories in there that people never heard about. But here’s a brief summary of the progression. [5:28] Our friends were young. We were crazy. We dealt fireworks. We dealt so much, they had to bring in the boss. The boss at that time for that area was John Gotti. To us, it was the same as John Smith. We never heard of the guy. He was great to us. We sold a ton of fireworks. He gave us more and more locations, more and more responsibility. Our friends made a fortune. One of our friends, we thought, had a car accident. Two of the bodyguards who helped our friends kill Galante, Baldo and Chesaree, they approached us at a wake and said, look, your friend was not the victim of an accident. Your friend was the victim of a homicide authorized by Galante. We verified there was bulletholes in his car from the impound yard, from the police sources we had. Kept it under wraps for two years. One of the card games, Angelo got word to our friend Tommy that the commission, in fact, did authorize a hit on Galante. The hit was to be done conjunctively with the Gambinos and the Bananos. Our friend Tommy jumped the gate. He said, we’re going to avenge our friend’s death, put together the team that did it. The details are shocking about what our team did to get the hit done. I mean, details you’re shocked about an alibi jumping off of a boat to create an alibi. I want people to read about this. Having police sources helping the hit, Including holding the spaces on July 12th When the hit went down Holding two different parking spaces at that location I hope this helps people Now I want to get back to another one that keeps coming up People keep saying Oh well they’re on tape celebrating. [6:57] People, please, we’ve made some videos on this at YouTube. Go look at them. You can pull them up. They’re online. You can find them. [7:05] There’s a bunch of sources that have them. Watch the raw video. That is not a celebration. That is a beef being put in. Sonny Red Indelicato is furious. He’s going at it with his consigliere, Stefano Canaan, Stevie Beefs. And you can see in his face, you can see his body language and mannerisms. He walks away from him and then he rushes back quickly and goes to his face. That is not a celebration. That’s anger. Stefano Canone actually points in back of him, pointing at the Ravenite. And he’s basically telling him, look, we’ve registered the beef. Neil is inside. Neil is trying to decipher all of this also, because, again, the whole conflict was this. The commission ordered this hit. People say, oh, they approved that. I’m telling you, the commission, the ones who ordered the hit, they gave the work to Joe Massino, who was going to oversee the job. However, the commission specified that it had to be done jointly between the Gambino family and the Bonanno family. Sonny Red and Indelicato was furious that he was left out of the hit. Simultaneously, John Gotti over in Ozone Park, Queens, was furious that he was let out of the hit. [8:19] You just have to understand, in Cosa Nostra, you do not go out and celebrate a hit after it’s done. You don’t even show your face. Everything in a hit like this is meticulously planned and organized. You know exactly where the getaway cars are going to go and who’s going to chop them up. There is no shot in the world that an expert like Sonny Redd is going to leave a getaway car from a triple homicide out in the middle of the street. That does not happen. Let me tell you something. That’s called botching a hit, both of those acts. If you botch a hit in Cosa Nostra, you’re the next one on the other end of the next hit. You’re going to get hit. There’s plenty of cases where people screwed up hits and didn’t dispose of vehicles properly, and they’re the next ones to get hit. So anyone who thinks it’s a celebration and thinks that that’s Cosa Nostra protocol to go out and celebrate is sadly mistaken. That’s why right away the FBI and Cosa Nostra members knew, obviously, Sonny Red Indelicato, his brother JB, Phil Lucky, Bruno and Delicato, all those guys had nothing to do with the hit. If they did, they would have been buried in a safe house. They would not be out in front of what we call the FBI screen test at Mr. Neal’s Club, the Ravenite in Manhattan. Now, people also say another phrase or two that I really love, the smell test. Okay, the smell test. Let’s talk about that. You had two trials going on simultaneously in 1985. [9:48] Same building, Brooklyn, Pizza Connection case and the commission case. The FBI had been broken down into five different squads, one for each family. You know them all, Colombo, Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, and of course, the Bonanno. Now, the Bonanno section of the FBI, the Bonanno squad, had the most to do in these cases. Most, if not all, the pizza connection focused on the Bonannos, and a good chunk, especially 100% of the Gallant they hit, focused on the Bonannos, and that was in the commission case. These guys talk to each other. They live, eat, and breathe with each other. So if you want to talk about a smell test, can somebody tell me why in Richard Martin, he was the prosecutor, by the way, in the Pizza Connection case, they absolutely refused to say who killed Delonte in that case? [10:39] They came out and said in the indictment and in testimony, three unknown males killed Delonte. [10:46] Now, people talk about it’s easy to see. Bruno and Delicato did it. So you want to tell me that five and six years after the hit, FBI agents that were on the Banano squad, they couldn’t come out and say Bruno and Delicato did it. Why? Because they knew he didn’t. They didn’t want to get a perjury rap. Richard Martin didn’t want to blow his case by telling nonsense that Bruno and Delicato did it. If it was common knowledge that Bruno Indelicato did it, and if there was a legitimate shred of evidence that Bruno Delicato did the work, the Pizza Connection case would have also said Bruno Indelicato is one of the shooters. It did not. That’s what doesn’t pass the smell test. But they even went to an appellate court to throw out any testimony about Galante’s murder in the Pizza Connection case. And sure enough, the judge agreed and said, yeah, we’re not putting one stitch of Galante’s murder in the Pizza Connection case. Now, had those FBI agents in the Bonanno Squad had presented legitimate evidence against Bruno and Delicato in the Pizza Connection case, be it ballistic, be it anything, the judge wouldn’t have done that, but he did. Read the transcripts of the case we have. There was nothing like that presented against Bruno in that case. And again, that’s why the FBI in the Pizza Connection case kept saying, we have no idea who killed Carmine Galante. That is critical for people to understand. [12:10] And last note, I want to get on to people wondering about the Joe Messino angle. Yes, Joe Messino, when he flipped right out after his conviction, he gave up murders all the way back from 1969. Now, Joe Mezzino had a motivation. If he left out any crime or any detail and failed to disclose anything, they throw him out of the program. They did the same to gas pipe case, so they threw him out of the program. So Joe Messino, of course, is going to tell the feds every single thing he knew about the Bonanno family’s involvement with the Galante hit. [12:46] Joe Messino, you know, did come out and say, yes, he got the order and he informed Rusty about the hit. But notice that’s when the trail stops. Joe Messina, who was a hands on guy, never came back and said, hey, Sonny Red did the hit with his kid Bruno and his brother JB. He gave them no details why because he didn’t have details thank you so much again for all of your questions and comments so guys that’s matt’s reasoning and that’s his story the government did not charge or convict any of the others for this murder any other people for this murder in that commission trial now those guys who were convicted were convicted for racketeering under rico and the murder of Galante was not a racketeering. That was a criminal predicate offense that proved that there was an organization known as a commission. It existed, and they ordered criminal acts. And this was a criminal act that they ordered. They need a predicate act where they’ve ordered criminal acts. And the Galante hit was one of them, and murder’s the best one to throw out there. And I think they convicted him based on his palm print on the getaway car that they found. [13:55] They never claimed during the trial to know the other two hit men. So I’ll leave it up to you guys to argue this out in the comments section on my YouTube shows with Matt or on this one here. And he’ll be monitoring those and, you know, come back with any questions that you have. So thanks, Matt, for this interesting look at Young Associates of Gotti and the fireworks business and the horse race fixing business and your theory based on information from your friends in the younger element of the New York mob. And you were kind of on the periphery of that yourself and the people that you [14:29] talked to that were really basically were involved in this hit and the setup. I thought it was really slick using cops to block out parking spots and then to pull out if it was all good to go. And leave the area so that’s uh didn’t have ring cameras and all the cameras back then so we’re gonna never know how much all that’s true you know but it’s uh history is is kind of an agreed upon set of facts or lies or whatever because eventually we agree upon it and that’s becomes the history and this is some of the history of the new york mob in the 70s to the 80s and the murder of Lilo or Carmine the Cigar Galante. Thanks, guys, so much for tuning in. And don’t forget to hit on YouTube, like and subscribe. Post this on your own social media pages and let other people know about the show. We like to get a lot of people watching or listening and watching to the show.  

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins takes a deep dive with his guest Matt into the assassination of Carmine Galante—one of the most infamous mob hits in American history. Matt co-authored a book titled Made In Long Island Matt begins by analyzing the controversial footage captured at the Ravenite Social Club shortly after the murder. While federal investigators interpreted the scene as a celebration by those responsible, Matt challenges that narrative. He breaks down the body language and behavior of key figures, including Bruno Indelicato, suggesting the footage actually reflects anger and exclusion—not guilt. The episode introduces guest Matt, co-author of Made on Long Island, who provides an insider’s perspective on the inner workings of organized crime. Matt prefers to not give his last name. Together, they explore how the Galante hit fit into a broader power struggle within the Bonanno crime family and beyond. Matt cowrote this book with Bartley Scarbrough. Matt tells a little-known story about Mob dealings with Fireworks around the 4th of July. One story is about a closed store and how they made up for the closed store and gave a fireworks show on the 5th and most of the kids never knew. The conversation expands to include major mob figures such as John Gotti and Sonny Red Indelicato, examining the shifting alliances and rivalries that shaped the events leading up to the assassination. Matt shares firsthand stories of mob life, detailing how communication relied on coded language and payphones—tools that kept operations hidden in plain sight. Gary and Matt dissect the planning behind the hit, revealing a calculated operation involving surveillance, weapon disposal, and carefully constructed alibis. They also address the aftermath, focusing on law enforcement’s inability to definitively link the crime to certain suspects—raising questions about whether individuals like Indelicato were wrongly accused.   A central theme emerges: the gap between official narratives and the complex realities of organized crime. Matt argues that investigative misinterpretations—particularly by federal authorities—led to flawed conclusions and, potentially, unjust prosecutions. This episode challenges long-held assumptions about the Galante murder, offering listeners a more nuanced view of Mafia politics, loyalty, and betrayal. It’s a detailed reexamination of a landmark mob hit—and a reminder that the truth is often far more complicated than the headlines. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Yeah, if you could just hold the frame right there, I think it’s very important [0:03] to set the stage of what we have here. This is a meeting of Bonanno crime family members, very high up ones, in front of Neil Delacroche’s Gambino headquarters on Mulberry Street, known as the Ravenite. Now, the feds used this tape to say that Bruno Indelicato was part of a conspiracy to murder Galante and that this tape shows the celebration. It does not. This tape is an absolute beef being put in primarily by Sonny Red and Delicato because he was supposed to do the hit jointly with the Gambino family led by John Gotti. He’s furious because at this point in time, he thinks he’s left out of the head. And just before you roll it, this video basically proves to every law enforcement person and every Cosa Nostra member that the people in this video did not do the murder. You don’t go out in Cosa Nostra, commit one of the biggest hits ever, a triple homicide, and then show your face an hour later. It does not work that way. So if you roll the tape, we can see some of the body language on these guys as well. [1:08] The guy in the white is Stefano Canone. He is the family’s consigliere, [1:13] which is technically third in charge, an advisory role. He is already at the Ravenite when everyone else arrives. A key figure in this is Sonny Red in Delicato Wearing a black jacket you’ll see His son is in the white shirt there The younger fellow that’s Bruno in Delicato The only guy that was convicted of this crime Now look at what’s going on here This is not a celebration They’re in the face of him And they’re furious And stop right there if you could, The gentleman in the black jacket right there. [1:44] Sonny, Red, and Delicato, he takes a couple steps back from his consigliere, which is technically his boss, and he turns around in fury, and he’s angry because, again, his team, led by him, was left off the head. Notice also, if you want to keep rolling the tape, he goes to his glasses. This is an absolute sign of anger, as per our body language experts, who, by the way, don’t even know who these people are. The only thing they know is this is a dispute, not a celebration. You notice that when he puts his hand up by his glasses? Now he thinks a little bit better of it because that’s his boss he’s talking to. And that’s a very good sign here. Again, another angle of this is in the Pizza Connection case in 1985. [2:27] Not only in the indictment, but also in FBI testimony, when asked who killed Carmen Galante, they did not say it was Bruno and Delicato and two other masked assailants. They said it was three unknown masked assailants that killed him. That’s what their testimony was. Everybody on the Cosa Nostra side and on the law enforcement side knows what this is. No mob guy commits a triple murder and then goes out to run to a place that we used to refer to as the FBI screen test, which was the Ravenite in Lower Manhattan and Mulberry Street. Everybody knows it, and it’s about time the story gets told, [3:05] and you’re going to see a lot more of this. Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Sergeant, and I have a guy here who has a different story and what he would say the real story behind the murder of Carmine Galante. Now, guys, there’s three monumental hits in organized crime history, I would say. The Galante hit… [3:33] Big because of the cigar in his mouth and that picture that was captured, but he was also an important hit in Mob. Now we also had the Anastasia. Anastasia was important and it was also got important, more important because of the photographs. Paul Castellano was important, I think more because of John Gotti than anything, but Carmine Galante and Matt here knows a lot about that hit and a lot about an alternative story to what really happened as it was reported it in the media. So welcome, Matt. Thank you so much for having me on, Gary. I really love your program. I’m happy to be here. All right, Matt, you got a book made on Long Island. Let’s just show everybody the copy of that. There you go, guys. There’s a copy of the book. It’s available on Amazon right now, right, Matt? [4:25] It certainly is. Thank you for putting it up. And one little sentence I’ll draw attention to at the bottom is, no AI was used in this. I know a lot of books are coming out now and people using AI, which I personally think is garbage. This is all handwritten and 440 pages of story after story. Yeah, there’s a lot to it. I guess you were writing under the name of Bartley Scarborough. Yeah, Bart is a good guy. He’s a friend of mine who actually started organizing this with me literally about 15, 20 years ago. Just to give everybody the timetable, we could not release this stuff till now because everybody with criminal culpability is now deceased or one guy is doing life in jail without the possibility of parole for another crime. That’s why we waited so long. Bart organized this stuff. He had me go over the thoughts. And he actually, I don’t know how much he’s going to want to talk about it, but he actually was there when we spoke to some of our friends who gave us extreme detail about this. But in terms of the actual writing, I actually penned it all myself with Bart’s assistant. All right, great. And as you know by now, it’s no easy task to write, especially 400-some pages. That’s a lot of words. That’s a lot of work, guys. Trust me, that is a lot of work. [5:41] You’ve got to keep going over it. Good writing is hard because it takes about three rewritings to actually get it out. Did you find that? [5:51] I did. It’s definitely extremely hard to do with volumes like this going over the past so many years. And plus getting the information from our friends, it was extremely hard to do. It was very time consuming. And I need to stress for the audience, I was not present when any of these major crimes like the homicides went down. I was present for the other things in the book, horse racing, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about later, major fireworks sales. But I need the audience to know that I was not present when the homicides went down, even though I was a juvenile at the time, and that from the proceeds of the fireworks sale and the horse racing, I did not pocket the proceeds like other people did. I know there’s lawyers out there, and I’m paying some $1,000 an hour. I apologize to people, but the lawyers told me 100 times I need to make those facts clear. Okay. All right. You did not do any of this, but you were right next to people who did do this. So we’re talking about firsthand information, correct? That is correct. Now, again, I was there for some of the stuff. I was there for some of the entity in the book. I was definitely there for the major league fireworks deals and participated in those. The horse racing that we’ll get to later, I was there for that. But in terms of the hard stuff, the stuff with no statute of limitations, homicides, I was not there. [7:12] So tell me about these group of guys that you grew up with, that you started doing some of these things. We have some kind of interesting personalities in there. Tell us about those guys. Oh my gosh. We had a real collection of characters is the only way to put it. Now, growing up when we were very young, let’s call it 11, 12, 13, we all really had two goals in mind. We wanted to make money and we wanted to play sports at that age. And that’s what we did. We made money on anything, paper routes, shoveling snow, raking leaves. And what happened was being so competitive, we got into a feud with another group in the same town. Now, there’s no way around it. We were idiots at this age. Some of our guys were carrying guns. Two of the guys in particular, their parents, what we call, were on the job, which means they were cops. So they had access to guns. Another guy was able to get us guns. So the bottom line is you’ve got 13-year-old kids who… That have no fuse carrying guns. Here is where it all started. [8:11] My uncle, like my cousin’s dad, came to one of the baseball games, and we had no idea that he knew the other coaches. And all of a sudden, they realized these kids are carrying guns. They’re going to kill each other. So they sat us down, disarmed us. It’s a pretty funny thing that’s in the book. I remember my uncle saying, whoever has a weapon, you put it on the table right now. I take a sock out of my pocket. He’s, what’s wrong with you? He goes, I asked for weapons, not your dirty laundry. I go, there’s a 25 inside the sock. He was shocked. But what they did was this. They disarmed us. They said, you want to kill each other with fists? Go at it. But we have a better idea. Why don’t you sell fireworks? Why don’t you work for us? You’ll make money doing this. First year, we only had about a week before the 4th of July. We sold out a couple pallets that they had. Now, the second year, I said, can we get these same prices? They said absolutely We went nuts to sell this stuff We ended up with an order for $85,000, And that’s how the order was so big That John Gotti got brought into this He was their boss at the time That’s how we met him And again, people say John Gotti, John Gotti Well to us at the time John Gotti was the same as John Smith The name meant nothing to us. [9:26] So some of these guys, older guys that you started dealing with that sat you down were relatives. There were members of the Gambino family then of Gotti’s crew. That is correct. Yep. Yep. They actually had two guys out of the three guys that sat us down. And by the way, none of us, myself included, ever had even the slightest inkling that these guys were involved in organized crime. You actually had two guys that were Gambino guys and one guy who was also a coach who was with the Genovese. [9:54] That was the actual makeup of the three guys that sat us down. And this was that. What towns are you talking about out there in Long Island? Kind of guys that listen from New York. Sure. This is actually Syosset, believe it or not, which was a upper middle class area. Nice and calm, crime free. And again, most of everybody that was with us was from Syosset. [10:19] Interesting. So the fireworks thing, I’ve always wondered about that. I’ve noticed in Kansas City, the mob guys, several of them every year have these huge, big firework tents. And I started asking around. I found out that they might make $100,000 in about two or three weeks time off those fireworks. There must be immense profit in it. And it’s so that kind of profit and kind of a gray area crime, if you will, in some cities, they don’t allow fireworks to be sold or even to be shot off. Mob likes to get into that and make that money. So tell us a little bit more about how that worked. Who were your customers? You guys went out into the community and sold more. You were more like you weren’t retailers. You were more like found other people to retail. It sounds to me like tell me the nuts and bolts of how that worked. [11:05] That is exactly correct. Now, the first year when they gave us the two pallets with about five or six days, maybe a week before the 4th of July, we sold those strictly to local people we know. And by the way, as kids, we loved fireworks ourselves. We still do. I do. I can speak for myself. We love this stuff. Now, when I saw the prices, for example, that these guys can get us, and I’ll use a barometer, very common in New York, a mat of firecrackers, which is a pack of 80 packs inside, 16 firecrackers to a pack. You could buy that for $8 And it would just fly like hotcakes These guys were selling us the stuff At $3 a mat So all these prices Were anywhere from. [11:49] 70, sometimes even 80% cheaper than what we could sell them for. So the profit, like you said, was utterly enormous. Now we had a full year to work our second year because they said, yes, sell as much as you want, go ahead and get the pre-orders. We contacted everybody we knew. All of our guys had people in other places, Huntington, the town of Huntington, we did big business, other places out in Suffolk and even somewhere in the city. [12:13] And again, for young kids at that age to put together an order for $85,000. She knocked everybody. And that’s what really got their attention. And for that kind of money being fronted to us, that’s why they had to bring their boss in, which was John. The other thing that really shocked us too, I was worried about getting caught. Now the legal penalties for getting caught was nothing. Five or $10 fine, nothing on your record. It was nothing. However, the police could take all your firearms. If they took money like that from young kids, we’re finished. Our lives are over. and to be honest, the organization solved that for us. They sat us down with cops. The cops told us to our face, you will never have a problem. Don’t worry about it. And once I heard, that’s when I told our guys, go ahead and sell as much as you can, and that’s when we got the order for the two tractor trailers. I knew at that point in time, the risk is pretty much gone. Yes, there’s a risk of getting robbed, but we had two of our guys’ older brothers who were a really severe, a tough guy, one that’s referenced in the book a lot, Bubbles. And again, he’s a deceased, and we’ll talk about him more in terms of the Galante hit. So people that are going to rob us really would be like, why would I rob these guys? Look at who they’re with. So in my opinion, we had no risk, and that’s why we went nuts with this. [13:30] That’s the beauty of working with the mob. They usually had connections with law enforcement that could get you protected. Now, you brought Gotti into it. Tell us about meeting Gotti for the first time. [13:39] Was he all that, like they say? Was he just this real charismatic personality that you just wanted him to like you and wanted to do what he wanted you to do? What was that like? I’m glad you brought it up because I’m going to tell you that’s the funniest thing that ever happened to any of us in our lives. And I suspect it might have been one of the funniest things that ever happened to him. When we got this order for the two-tracked trailers, he wanted to meet us with some of his other people. One that turned out to be Angelo, quack, quack, Angelo Ruggiero. And we decided to meet at our friend’s house over in Syosset. It was during a school day, but we had no risk because his dad was a New York City cop. His dad wasn’t there. His mom would be out the whole day playing a card game she played called Mahjong. So we said, yeah, let’s do it at his house. Now, these guys show up. Again, we’re teens. We’re 13, 14, 15 in that range. One, a couple guys maybe a couple years older. And these guys were like in their low 30s. That’s all John Gotti was age-wise when we met him, I would say. [14:39] No older, I wouldn’t think, than 35. I could do the math, but right in that range. All nice cars, nice suits. They come in with all the samples. So we lay them all around my friend Jeff’s house I’m talking about in his stoves, his mother’s piano, the couches and everything And they’re going over stuff and they’re saying, look This stuff here comes $48 to a case Your price, I’m just making up numbers for argument’s sake Your price is $175 a case on this one You can easily sell this stuff for $600 or whatever the numbers were So we’re shocked Now to set the stage My friend’s mom was really A kind of a crazy lady she was very Loud and she was extremely Opinionated if not wild She would always kid my not kid She was serious to my friend Jeff saying You’re a no good bum this Boy’s gonna end up in jail she would berate Our friend into the ground I mean this kid was crazy believe me this kid was Driving us to school at 14 and 15 years Old didn’t have a worry in the world So Yeah. [15:40] This is where the humor came in. She came home unexpectedly. Apparently, one of the card players didn’t show up. They couldn’t do it. She walks into her house, and she sees fireworks all over. She sees us with guys who look like gangsters that are 35 years old, and she blows her stack. She screams, who are these hoodlums in my house? What are these devices these criminals have? What is this fool meaning her son done this time with nuts? And I’ll never forget John says to my uncle who was in there He says did you set this up as a gag? Very low so nothing we could hear except a few people And my uncle had a really weird look on his face He goes I wish I could get off that easy So we figure the deal is all over She’s going nuts I run up to her with the price lists And I say Mrs. Goldberg please I know we like to shoot a fire It’s not about that It’s about making money I show her the list And I reference before the matter firecrackers I point to it. I call these guys firework salesmen. That’s what I call John and Angelo. I go, these firework salesmen here can sell us this amount of firecrackers for $3. [16:49] We can sell it all day long for $8. There’s a fortune in this. So then instead of her blowing up, she goes, tell me more. So that was funny enough. So I go through more prices. And just to set the stage for your listeners, a lot of people in New York might know this term. People outside might not. I’m a Christian, but if you have a non-Christian, Jewish people call him Goy or Goyim. She’s looking at the lists, and she explodes in the loudest voice you’ve ever heard. If the Goyim will buy these devices, then sell them to the Goyim we were. We lost it. [17:24] She said that Angelo, my uncle, a bunch of the guys had to go outside. And I stepped outside with them, too, because they didn’t want to insult her and laugh in her face. I don’t know how John stayed in the house with her, but he did for a while. These guys were laughing so hard, tears were coming out of us. So the neighborhood girls that we knew saw these guys all dressed in suits. They thought we were crying, and they sincerely asked, are you guys okay what happened? It was because we were laughing so hard we started crying. So I said, let me get in here. The fireworks deal is more important. So she went over this stuff with us, telling us how we’re going to make money. Just insanity. The book really expands on this. And then afterwards, when John left the house, he also broke down in laughter. He didn’t want to do it in front of her. He couldn’t take it. Out of respect, he didn’t want to laugh in someone’s face like that. But he walked two doors down, and he freaking lost it. So I think it’s got to be one of the funniest things he’s ever had happen to him in his life. He said it was. And it just got crazier from there. [18:19] Now, was Angelo Ruggiero with him? He was his right-hand man. Was he there on this deal? Yeah, Angelo was there with him. Yep, he sure was. What was he like to deal with as a person? I’ve interviewed his son who has a show. What was he like? Was he funny? He seemed like he talked a lot and was a funny guy. I’m just curious. He did. And again, in the account that you guys are going to read about in the book, Tommy, who’s the main character in this book, who again, deceased and gave me all the interactions he had with him, explains what a nice guy he was. I know he had a violent side. I know he has a lot of hits under his belt, but he was apparently a ton of fun. [18:59] When I interacted with him, I thought he was freaking hilarious. And as you’ll see in the book, Angelo is really the one who fed all the inside information nonstop to our buddy Tommy, Tommy, who at that time was playing cards over at John’s Club in Ozone Park, the Bergen, very regularly at that point in time. And the book really traces Tommy about what happened, his interactions with Angelo, his interactions with everybody else. And when you get to the whole crux of the matter, Angelo is the one who told our good friend Tommy that, hey, the commission has authorized a hit on Galante. And the hit is to be done jointly with our family, meaning the Gambinos, and with the Bananos. And that John was going to be the leader of the Gambino faction. [19:48] Sonny Red and Delicato was going to be the leader of the Banano faction, and Joey Messino was not only the one taking the messages to and from Rusty, which is the Philip Mestelli in jail, but Joe Messino was going to supervise the entire operation. So that was the structure of it. Yeah, that’s what I’ve read about it. And also what you’re saying about Angelo Ruggiero is that’s one reason the Bureau was able to learn so much about Castellano because he would go to meetings at Castellano’s house, if I remember right, come back home and get on the phone or have some people come over. And he talked to him about, he said this and he said this and he said that and he said this. That gave him probable cause then to go into Castellano’s house. So he was known to be loose lips, and that’s why he got the moniker quack quack, I’ve heard. But I also heard it was because of the way he walked, so I’m not sure. No, that’s true. Both of what you’re saying is true. And just to touch on him one more time, very important. He loved my friend Tommy because Tommy got him out of more than a couple of jams. I’ll give an example. There was a guy in the Gambino family up in Connecticut. John always referred to him as the genius Tony Mungali And he put a firework sorter in with Angelo. [21:06] Now, this guy blew his stack because no fireworks came, and he had promised the entire neighborhood a gigantic fireworks show. He had his friends, his people of his family over there, neighbors and no fireworks. This guy blew his stack, and this story is detailed in the book. Tommy got a call from another Gambino guy the morning of July 5th, very early. He was still hungover from partying the night before. He said, oh, my God, what’s this about? It’s got to be something bad. Did somebody blow their hand off with fireworks? What’s going on? And the bad news was that this Tony had put a beef in saying, what’s wrong with you people? You didn’t do what you said. And he was blaming Angelo. Tony was all over Angelo. And the bottom line is Tony was right. It was Angelo’s fault. However, my friend Tommy never threw Angelo under the bus. My friend Tommy ate it. And he basically, it’s a real good recounting in the book. And there’s so many stories like this. There’s hundreds of them. But I’ll give you this one real quick. [22:03] Like, so Tommy basically told Tony Mengele, listen, how old are the kids that you promised this big fireworks show to? And Tony blew up. He’s like, what the F does it matter how old the kids are? But my friend Tommy was smart and he was going somewhere. He’s like, listen, these kids don’t know the difference between July 5th and July 4th. We’re going to come to your house tonight. We’re going to give it the most insane fireworks show anybody in your area has ever seen. We don’t want a dime. We’re so sorry this mistake happened They go up there I was with them at that point. [22:38] Nothing but fun. So welcoming. And again, my buddies, none of us would ever throw Angelo under the bus. And believe me, Tony and his uncle, Sandalo, he tried to pin it on Angelo. We said, no, it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault. Bottom line is those guys loved us. One of Tony’s workers ended up being a gigantic fireworks customer of ours. And to the best of my knowledge to this day, and I’m not involved in it in the slightest, To this day, all one of his guys does is sell fireworks in the Connecticut region. Makes a fortune. Interesting. And so that’s a wild story. But again, Angelo loved Tommy because so many times Tommy would say, look, Angelo didn’t do this. I did. What did Angelo do in return? He gave Tommy so many different pieces of information. And again, I won’t bog you down, but each one of these stories is so interesting. Angelo had some fireworks clubs that he made money on. [23:32] There’s no other way to put it. Angelo was not working much at all. And then one of these meetings, John brought everyone in and said, listen, from now on, these clubs that sell fireworks, particularly Oceanside, New York, Long Beach, Bayville, Massapequa, he goes, I’m giving them to you guys to run. And now, obviously, none of us want anything to do like that. We’re going to cut out his friends. We’re going to end up in a freaking meat grinder or end up in a cement truck. So we all told John we didn’t want it. John said, that’s it. It’s over. It’s yours. so then our next step was to make sure we figured out how much roughly those guys were making. [24:05] I give my friend tommy all the credit in the world he ended up giving angelo more money by a lot, for using the place than angelo ever made doing work and this time angelo doesn’t have to do any work angelo loved us all these guys loved us because we paid them more than they made and now they didn’t have to do a damn thing so our guys were very smart and calculating particularly Tommy, but some of the other ones. And that was a good Angelo story. Yeah, it is. And I’ve read that not only Gotti and in his neighborhood, but other mob guys around in New York and their neighborhoods, they would put on a huge fireworks shows for everybody in the neighborhood every year. Gotti particularly was noted for that. That is interesting, their love for fireworks and fireworks shows. Did they ever front you these things? Did they front you money or did Did they buy the fireworks? [24:56] You guys made this money each year, but I’m sure you’d spend it all. Then the following year, you’d have to come up with money. How did that work? The money worked. You wanted to be able to pay them back if they fronted anything. [25:08] Yes. You have a bunch of good questions here. I’m going to backtrack one second on what you said about guys in the life loving fireworks. That is a hundred percent fact. Love the fireworks and the stuff that people see at some of the celebrations over at the Bergen. Yeah, that was rooted from our guys providing it. Now, here is one of the reasons why John turned over these four locations to us. He had complaints from multiple people. Castellano, I believe Michael Franzese people. These guys went to the fireworks locations on the best days, like July 2nd and July 3rd, and they were closed. And John blew up at that. He’s making me look like a freaking idiot. I’m telling Castellano’s people, it could have been his nephews or little cousins or whatever, go to this place to load up with fireworks for free. These guys go to the place and it’s closed that’s one of the motivating factors why john, turned that business over to us we had it open all the time now in terms of fronting stuff absolutely the money was enormous those guys fronted it to us all the time big loads that’s just how it was young kids like that we can come up with anything near that kind of money. [26:14] And just another tidbit too the lady i told you about who would go wild when we were doing the deal. She offered to fund some money up too. And that’s detailed in the book as well. But yeah, as we got it to like year number three, I don’t remember us ever putting a penny up after year three. It was all fronted to us. Was it all cash too? When you went out to these clubs and these people with the neighborhoods and stuff, would they always just give you cash each year? [26:40] That is a great question, and the answer is yes for the people we retailed to, yes for the people that walked into the stores. However, we had wholesale customers that we would give credit to. Now, I’ll give you this story, which is also detailed in the book real quick. There was a street gang in Huntington. They were known as the Huntington Hitters, primarily Hispanics. They gave us an order, and one of our good friends got back from a younger kid that he helped out before that his older brother was intending to rob us when we dropped off the fireworks. [27:14] So we had what I thought was a brilliant plan made. Tommy was very instrumental in this, and I gave some feedback too. We told these guys, come meet us at this bar out on Jericho Turnpike in Huntington. We have some additional fireworks we want to show you guys and see if you want it, which was a lie. But we knew that they wouldn’t rob us then because we didn’t have anything honest. Let me tell you what we brought to that meeting. We brought Bubbles and two of his guys that were freaking deadly people. And they had freaking gym bags with them. And they said, don’t worry anything about security when we do this deal. And they showed him stuff inside the bags, heavy duty weaponry. So right away, these Huntington hitter group said, these are the wrong people to rob. So sure enough, right on cue, a day or two later, they called my buddy and said, you know what? We don’t want to do the fireworks business. We can’t. That I petitioned, and I got a few of my friends to agree, and Tommy definitely went with it too. You know what? These guys can make a fortune doing this. Let’s front them five or ten grand worth of this stuff and see what happens. And I’m like, it’s not going to cost us anything. Number one, I don’t think they’re going to rob us. If they do, what did we lose? $1,500 at the most? My friends said we were nuts, but we went with it. And I want to tell you, smartest move we ever made. [28:29] As every year we went by, we fronted them more and more. They were our first customer that we ever fronted a full tractor trailer to. Never had a problem getting one cent from them. It’s funny how that evolved. It’s just absolute madness. But again, I give Tommy a lot of the credit here and some of the other guys very sharp to come up with a business plan like this. [28:52] I tell you, this little crew you got in with early on, they were a bunch of hustlers. But you also had this deal with Gotti and horse racing and getting inside information on horse racing. There’s some pretty good stories there that are in the book. Tell the guys a little bit about that point. Then we’ll move on to the Galante hit. [29:11] Absolutely. Now, horse racing was interesting. We would go to a place called Roosevelt Raceway, which is over in Westbury, Long Island. Really not that far from where we lived over in Syosset. Now, again, I know the law was probably you had to be 18 to make a bet. They didn’t care. I was making bets there at 12 and 13 years old. I’ll tell you this one time that they did care, and I’ll get to that at the end of the question you asked, and you’ll see why. So we were clowns, but even as clowns, we could see it. If a horse, these were harness racing, by the way. If a harness race is coming down the stretch, you didn’t have to be a genius to see that one or two of these horses would hold back, but the other two jockeys would whip the crap out of their horses. So naturally, we felt cheated, even at young ages. Our guys were definitely certified. There’s no question about that. Our guys would throw things at the freaking jockeys. I’m talking about golf balls, rocks. Our guys were insane. And a lot of that stuff is detailed in the book, how crazy we were. But to get to your point, after I think it was the third or fourth year, John walked with Tommy. [30:17] And he said, you guys are bringing in so much money and doing so well. I want to give you a gift. And I remember Tommy, because myself and a little bit of Bart, but myself, I had to pull all this out of my friend Tommy. He knew he was going to pass away. And he wanted this story out in the public. Now, this guy, Tommy, never wanted his real name used, but he gave me detail after detail. Some of the stuff, like I’m explaining with the fireworks and the horse racing, I was there myself to see. But on the heavy stuff, he gave me detail after detail. same with a little bit to Bart. So this is how Tommy explained it to us. John gave him a sheet of paper and Tommy being a smartest said, oh, what is this, John? You want me to go play the freaking lottery with these numbers? What do these numbers mean? John, you smartest. Here’s what the numbers mean. The first number was the number of the race at Roosevelt Raceway. The next four numbers were the only four horses that could win. Usually these races had eight horses in them. Once in a while, seven, once in a while, nine, but eight was the norm. Those are the only four horses that can win. And for the audience, I want to explain to them how that’s possible. [31:24] Let’s say you have an eight horse harness race and you tell four of the jockeys, no matter what happens, you are not to come in the top. They’ll hold the horses back. And by the way, this is not just conjectural rumor. These guys got locked up for it later on down the line, jockeys and everybody what they were doing is it hold the four horses back the organization would have no idea what horse was going to win they just knew which four wouldn’t so what did they didn’t bet winner plays to show they would bet exactus triples and sometimes super factors which means all four and box those four around some yeah so in your example. [32:03] Basically, John gave our buddy Tom three races, and Tommy knew that this has got to be damn better than a tip. It has to be rock solid. So what happened was we all went there, and we knew nothing about it. We didn’t know that we should just bet a small amount of money. We had no knowledge about damaging a pool, so I’ll make it easy for the listeners. Tommy overbet these races like crazy. For example, if a three combination triple should pay $1,500, the first thing the FBI and the New York Racing Authority would ask is, why did this $1,500 triple pay only $400? And the reason is, and they knew it because the race was fixed. So everybody was betting those combinations. Now, the organization was smart enough to only bet small amounts of money, and they used the term not to damage the pool. That was a term they used all the time. We don’t want to damage the pool. [33:04] Again, throw us in the mix. We had absolutely no idea. We didn’t know any of this. So Tommy bet the crap out of these races, and he did damage the pool. And that brought the attention of the authorities. But worse than that, another long story in the book goes back to the Connecticut people, because I think the genius Tony Mengele was the one helping to fix the races. So they figured there was a leak on their side. And John Gotti actually thought he was going to get killed over this. And he told people, including Angelo, I might not be coming back from this meeting. I got sent for here. The horse pulls bad because John was really running the horses with Tony and some other guys. Tony grabbed him by chance outside of the Ravenite, Mr. Neal’s club, and they walked. [33:52] And Tony apparently was furious, like, yeah, let’s kill whoever damaged the pool, whoever did this. And then John apparently told him it was us. And then Tony says, oh, man, those fireworks guys, I love those guys. He goes, okay, nothing’s going to happen here. So apparently Tony went into the meeting, and he basically lied to the people there, Castellano and Neil Delacroach, and he says, listen, I found out the leak. The leak is on our side, and I’ll take care of it. And that’s how it worked But again, that ties back to the fireworks If that never happened, I don’t know what would have happened John had every intention of going in there and saying he’s screwed up He didn’t explain to us And he had no business giving us the numbers And he knows that, He did not have permission to give us anything at the racetrack He took it on himself to do it, And he got saved by that stroke of luck Of meeting Tony in front of the club before the meeting Had someone been outside, whoever Tommy Bellotti or anybody said Hey, get inside, the meeting’s going on Those two would not have had a chance to talk. I don’t know what would have happened, but I think it would have been very bad for Sean. Yeah, would have been. Yeah, that’s interesting. Now, explain to the guys about the pool. Everybody doesn’t know about the pool. [35:04] These exactors and trifectas, how that pool works. That is a great question because we had to have it explained to us. Let’s take any racetrack, and the first number you’re going to have is how many people bet on what’s focused on triples. Now, the definition of a triple is horses come in the order of one, two, three. So if you bet a 7-4-3 triple, the race must end 7-4-3 for you to hit that triple. Now, the next variation of that is if you like the 7-4-3, what most people will do is they will do what’s called boxing that triple, which means they have 7-4-3 and that’s a winner. [35:43] But so is 4-3-7. So is any combination. So is 2-7-4. [35:49] 3-7-4. Any of the combination of your three horses win. Now, they can tell what a triple should pay based on the amount that’s spent and what the odds are. Let’s say you have a horse that’s a mid shot, like an 8 or 10 to 1. You have a favorite in there and maybe a halfway of a little bit of a long shot. They know what that should pay in a certain range. Now, if you know that race was fixed, and by the way, it’s all pari-mutual, so the weighting is average. If you’ve got $10,000 in a triple pool and you have 10 winning tickets, each ticket’s going to get paid $1,000. And they would know that’s legitimate and that’s honest. And there should be about 10 people with those combinations. Now, if you have that same $10,000 worth of triple pool, and again, these are round numbers. It’s way higher, just for an example. and all of a sudden you’ve got 105 winning tickets when mathematically there should be 10 or 15 at the most the money drops that thousand dollar prize now might be 210 dollars and that’s what the feds and everyone new york racing authority looks for if you have a horse that’s eight to one first place let’s say ten to one second place and let’s say five to two third place that triple should pay something like, I’m guessing, $400, $500, $600 around that range. If that triple pays only $150, right away they know that somebody knew something. [37:16] Too many people bet on that combination. They know how many people probably will bet on any certain combination. And when that gets skewed, too many people bet on one combination, then they know something’s up. Interesting. That’s like these new sports prop bets in the apps on gambling, on the apps on sports. If all of a sudden there’s a whole lot of money goes out on some team on the spread and too much money goes down in one place, then they know there’s something going on. Somebody knows something and they start looking. [37:48] Exactly. They start looking and you make a great point about today’s sports betting. If you have a basketball player, and again, this is not conjecture. There’s already been indictments on this. Let’s say the guy is supposed to have 11 rebounds in a game. All of a sudden, when he has nine, he tells the coach, man, I hurt my ankle. I can’t play anymore. Now, if the balance was normal on his under and his over, no problem. What do we all know happens? The under money bet on this guy is radical. It’s a 95 to 5 ratio. They know right away it’s fixed. And that’s what I believe the guy in Toronto, the Toronto Raptors was doing. And so many other ones were too, but that’s everywhere. We were involved in that way, way back in the day as well, to some degree. We heard so much about it. Yeah, interesting. [38:34] Let’s get into Carmine Galante. The probably most famous, certainly the most famous image, even more famous than Albert Anastasia of Carmine Galante laying there. He was the Bonanno, longtime Bonanno capo and had risen up in the ranks. And he comes out of the penitentiary and Rusty Rustelli is supposed to be the next Bonanno boss. And Carmine decides that he’s going to act like he’s the boss. So let’s talk about how this whole thing started a little bit. That is a great observation. And that’s pretty much how the ball got rolling with those guys. Here’s how we got involved in this. [39:12] We had one of our good friends who was helping us with the fireworks and going to the clubs and having nothing but fun. And then the one night when Tommy was at the club, the cops came in. And I know a lot of people think, oh, Cosa Nostra doesn’t mix with the cops. People will think that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Look at the convictions with gas pipe cases and everybody else. John had guys on his payroll that ended up getting convicted and stuff. [39:39] The cops and Cosa Nostra do work together. despite what everyone else says. Look at us with the fireworks, for example. So anyway, at the card game, what I was told from Tommy is they kept getting messages after messages. And again, these messages at that time would come in over pay phones. There were no cell phones. So you’d have a guy sitting at the pay phone. And as I’m told, most of the messages would be coded numbers. Let’s say Angelo’s number was 167. The guy would just pick up the phone, tell number 167, which is Angelo. [40:11] Another set of code numbers and that might mean hey the cops are coming over now the cops came into the club they came into the bergen and apparently they told everybody listen nobody here is getting locked up we don’t want information we just need to give you some news and from what tommy says because he was there playing cards at the time they told him that our good friend michael had died in a car accident and they wanted to know should they go and wake his dad up and And his dad obviously was in the life made guy and do it that way. Or did John and Angelo perhaps want to go out to the house? They gave him the option to do it. And John and Angelo, of course, jumped at that. And they, whatever they did, they went at the house. I don’t know if they waited till they woke up in the morning, whatever it was and knocked on the door or whatever. But so that’s what happens now at the wake, by the way, just to make the story a little bit more clear, there. [41:09] This was probably our fourth year or so selling fireworks. And every year we sold fireworks, we met more and more people. So many of it is detailed in the book. I can’t even tell you the list of people we met. And you name it, Tony Ducks, Corralo, all these guys. So we’re meeting more and more people. Two in particular that we started hanging out with because they liked us because we were just crazy, drinking, women chasing maniacs, were Baldo and Chesery. And that’s Baldo Amato and Cheshire Bonventry. They were with the Bananos. And we were hanging out with them. They grabbed my friend Tommy at the wake and pulled him away. And everyone’s thinking, oh, they’re really Sicilian. We call them the Zips. They’re tough guys. They probably just don’t want to show their emotions because they love Michael in front of everybody. We didn’t know what was going on. They informed my friend Tommy that our friend, Michael, did not die in a car accident. It was a basic, supposed to be a warning that turned into a hit. [42:12] And Tommy’s, that’s nonsense. The cops told us the car was off the road. The car was a crumpled mess. That’s nonsense. But Baldo insisted and said, no, these guys shot him off the road. So nobody believed any of this. But we came up with the conclusion of, hey, we’re friends with the cops. The cops will take us to the impound yard. Let’s see for ourselves. House so those guys went over there and what tommy says they found bullet holes in like less than a minute they found a couple bullet holes so they knew right away that baldo was telling the truth now all this was going on other people would tell us don’t trust baldo don’t trust chesery the sicilians are the most ruthless cunning backstabbers you’re ever going to meet and i didn’t feel that way and neither did tommy or the other guys that were involved with us our other friends aunt and The whole gang, Gonzo, we didn’t feel that way at all. We thought they really had our best interest. So. [43:08] That stayed quiet, but two of our friends swore on that day, no matter who did this to our friend, Michael, no matter who they are, we don’t care what their rank or anything. [43:19] We’re going to make them pay for what they did. They’re going to have to answer for what they did to our friend. And we know the rules. You can’t touch a maid guy or an associate without getting permission. But we kept everything quiet for another reason. Michael’s dad I referred to as a maid guy. Now, you talk about crazy. This guy was nuts. This guy had no fuse. He’s detailed all over the book. For example, when John O’Neill would tell him to go out and just talk to a guy, don’t hurt him. This guy owes us a couple thousand. Just talk to him. The guy would end up with two broken arms. This guy had no fuse whatsoever. If he ever thought for a minute that somebody had killed his son, the worry was, and I think the worry is correct, he would have gone out and just killed better than adult targets all over the place. Whether they knew anything about it Which 99% of them knew nothing about this He would have just started killing people He would have started a war So that was the reason why the bosses, Did not want him And to his death he never knew that this happened They kept it from him for that reason There was no stopping this guy would have gone on a rampage So that was a big factor in that, So Then you talked before about the card games And Angelo. [44:30] More of these messages came in And my buddy Tommy noticed it And he said, Angelo, what’s going on? And so don’t worry after the card game, I’ll walk you down and we’ll talk to you. Apparently after the card games, Tommy and Angelo would walk down 101st Avenue and have these long talks. And Angelo said to Tommy, the commission has authorized a hit on Carmine Galante. We got the hit. John is our lead. [44:54] We have to do it jointly with the Bananas. Sonny Red is there, and Joe Massino is going to look at the whole thing and supervise the whole thing. So bells went off on my friend Tommy’s head. All of a sudden, he got everybody together. Not me, of course. I was not there when this transpired. I was not there when they organized the hit. But he got the other guys together, and he said, look, this is the guy who killed our friend. We have no risk now because the commissioner wants this guy dead. So these guys came out with what Tommy detailed to me. And by the way, it wasn’t just Tommy who detailed this to us. Bubbles detailed it to us. And there’s one big distinction I need to mention here. Tommy wanted all of this out. He did not want his real name used. [45:40] However, Bubbles wanted his real name used. He used to hang out with general views people. And he told me, he goes, use my name. I want people to know that I did this. And after he passed and that’s why inside the book we do reveal his real name and where he lived and the interesting thing for me was Bubbles and Tommy had no idea that each one of them was talking to me and to a small degree Bart about this so the details that they both gave were exactly the same the most ingenious hit I’ve ever heard of in my life they had police help from the 8-3 precinct over in Bushwick. Apparently, there was some cop over there that hated, I think it was a family dispute of some kind. The guy who was being, I think his grandmother or aunt or somebody was being shaken down by the bananas. So we had that asset. We now had Baldo and Chesery, who were Galante’s top bodyguards. So our guys went out on surveillance for months. And the funny thing about the surveillance was, who else was doing surveillance at the same time? [46:47] John Gotti was, and so was his people. So there was times like when Tommy and the guys would be close to a certain place. And by the way, he was killed at Joe and Mary’s. But that is not the only place that these guys did heavy surveillance on. And it’s not the only place that Galanti hung out at. So the book names a bunch of other places that the surveillance was done. So these guys would be there, and they’d look down the block, and possibly John and Angela were there doing the same surveillance. So they had to leave. Otherwise, John and Angela, what the hell are you guys doing over here? So that was funny to me on that regard But our guys in my opinion Put together the most ingenious hit Down to every single detail. [47:26] Basically took out the police help to help with the zips. The alibi is another crazy part of this. At that time, we would like to do a lot of fishing. We went off to a place called Sentinel Riches in Long Island. And one time we were night fishing over there and we saw guys jump off the boat, get onto smaller boats and come back an hour or two later with bundles. Now you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to realize what they were doing. They were running junk and they were Colombians. Yeah. So I discussed it a little bit with the boat’s captain and he said, just don’t say a word. Don’t go near him. Keep you guys away. We almost had a problem because again, our guys were drunk and our guys were carrying and our guys will, we came close to having a problem. But Tommy put this together. He had the boat captain go out one day and again, he didn’t tell all the people that were with, he didn’t tell his cousin’s crew for Shaw, who was with us that day, our guys jumped off the boat onto a smaller boat, took that boat to the Oak Beach Inn, took stolen cars in on that day, the July 12th, 1979, and they did the hit. [48:35] So Tommy’s uncle was furious with him. He thought he was lying to him. He goes, you’re lying. You were not there. I put you on that boat, which he did. Our friends were drunk and they drove him there on the road. Morning and i picked you up when that boat doc said don’t lie to me you’re on the boat all day and that’s when tommy and again this is detailed in the book like crazy told everybody can you say alibi and what do you mean he goes yeah you just said we were on the boat all day that’s not true, jumped the boat went to the oak beach and took the stolen cars did the work and came back so that was that shocked everybody in the room apparently when tommy was forced to detail, everything that happened on the hit. He even detailed for them all the cars that were involved. He detailed how the marked police cars actually held parking spaces for our guys in front of the place. One was, my understanding, about a half a block north. The other one was about a half a block south of the location over there, which was 205 Knickerbocker. They held the parking spaces. Our guys rolled up. [49:37] And if there was something going on, like, for example, FBI surveillance or unmarked cops in the place, those cop cars were not giving up the space. Our guys would honk and flash at them. But if they did not give up the spaces, the signal to our guys was the place is dirty, leave. So we had a lot of built-in signals like that. And then when they gave up the parking spots, both of the cops moved from one north heading south, one south heading north. What did that do? That let them both take one more scan of the block. Is the block dirty? And if the block was dirty, they were going to blow the sirens and everything was off. But the details, again, that are in the book about this hit are freaking shocking how meticulous it was. [50:22] Interesting. I have one question that Galante’s guy, Cousin Moy, they called him, Angelo Prezzanzano, I probably butchered that, but he was off sick that day. Was he part of it or was he just off sick that day? I’m going to tell you, to be honest, I have no knowledge of that. I know that Boldo and Chessery were the primary bodyguards that day. Yeah, they were there that day. I actually have no knowledge, but the other couple of details that are just beyond fascinating, how our guys operated on this. For example, when the car pulled up with one driver and three shooters, one of the shooters, again, he wanted to be named, so we’re naming him. It was Bubbles. [51:01] And the other two guys, Bubbles was a very big-built guy. He would easily be spotted. Plus, he knew a lot of people in the city. He stayed in the car. The two guys that were normal-built, they went inside. And I want the listeners to understand how skilled these guys were at this hit. [51:19] They had provided Baldo and Chesery with dark jackets that day. Now, I’ve read some stuff that people said, oh, they had big, heavy leather jackets on. That’s a lie. They were lightweight summer jackets. And people said, why do that? The answer is because at that time, people were wearing white and pastels and light clothing. It was burning hot that day in the summer. And if you want to spot somebody in a restaurant, you want them to stick out like a sore thumb. So that was the motivation for those black jackets. Now, check this one out. And again, the book goes through this in so many more details. Our guys walked in prearranged with Baltimore Orioles baseball hats. Because again, keep in mind, Chesaree and Boulder did not have a great command of the English language. They didn’t really 100% know American customs. And we showed them Mets and Yankee hats that everybody has. So now we show them a distinctive bright orange baseball hat with a bird on it that nobody could mistake. Here was the signal. Our guys walked up to them face to face with these hats on. [52:22] Now, that was slick. That was slicker shit, man. It was smart because if the place was hot, if Boldo and Chesery realized there was too many maid guys in there or surveillance guys or FBI in there, they were to immediately tell our guys it’s too crowded today. Only get takeout. Only get takeout. The place is too crowded. That was a signal to our guys to walk out and to tell the people the place is hot. leave. These guys had multiple hot signals here that if something was wrong, they would do it. Now, if they didn’t give those signals, our guys were to turn their hats around. So they walked in with the hats like a normal baseball player. They walked out with the hats like a catch you would wear with his hat on backwards. That was to give Boulder and Chesery the signal, Boulder and Chesery the signal this thing was going down. Now, here’s the most fascinating thing about the story is Tommy recanted for us. That day, July 12th, 79, was supposed to be a dry run. [53:28] And they told everybody, just do it like it’s real. Now, we were all hoping that Bould on Chesaree would do it like it was real, and they did it. They walked out of the place, and they walked north. I believe in their minds, they said, this is a dry run. Nothing’s going to happen. Then they heard the shots, and that’s what happened. And I want to elaborate on this because, again, there’s so much built in here. One of the witnesses said that, and I’ll tell you who the witness was. It was one of the guys who killed his daughter, Torano. His daughter had said that, oh, I saw Baldo crouched over with a gun. Gary, you’re a former detective. You’ve got a scene with four people shot, three dead. And you have a witness saying that a guy was in there with a gun out. You tell me how the guy is not arrested at the very least and tried. And I’m going to give everyone the answer here of why that didn’t happen. And I think it’s pretty clear. [54:25] I’m convinced that the FBI had static surveillance on the place, just like they did to Mr. Neal’s club that we always call the, basically the FBI screen test. Yeah. That’s number one. And, or they had a guy up the street. So I believe what happened here was they looked at what this witness said, and then either their own cameras or a human agent that they had on the streets said, wait a second, we cannot charge these guys. I saw a bold on Chesaree, whatever the number would be, 200 feet up the street before the shots rang out. They’re innocent. They didn’t do the shooting. Otherwise, of course, you got a witness saying, I saw a guy behind a table in a gun in a quadruple shooting, triple homicide, and that guy’s not going to get arrested. So obviously there was something there. [55:16] I was wondering why. And I’m going to take another step for people, too. And again, terrible. Cosa knows the story ever told. But to take this one step further, the cop cars were there. There were two marked cars close in proximity when this went down. I think the FBI might have said, wait a second here. What just happened? One guy that we hate, Galante, is dead. Some other guy, a cap on a maid guy are gone. Look at our cameras. How could we do anything here? There’s marked cops here. I think the feds had to realize the cops played a role in this. [55:50] Let’s just kill it and move on. I think that’s possible. Now, the cop cars were also referenced by Tommy. He told us the meeting that they had. It was a life or death meeting, by the way. When John Gotti and other people went to that meeting, Tommy’s uncle and people like that, there was a good chance none of them were going to come out alive. The book details that Castellano, who everyone knows, wanted to kill John Gotti, had a cast of killers in that building. Roy DeMail’s people were in there. There were people in there that you couldn’t even believe. Nino Gadge’s people in there. Hardcore butchers. They knew how to dispose of and chop up bodies. So in that meeting, apparently what Tommy made clear, and again, we took notes, we went over this for hours, days, literally years. [56:36] Sonny Red and Delicato made the statement in that meeting because, again, Sonny Red and Delicato put in the beef, hey, you guys did this hit without us. John Gotti’s saying, fuck you. Excuse my language. Effu. You guys did the hit without us. Nobody knew who did this hit, and I’ll get to that later. What happened here was that Sonny Red and Delicato and his people made an immediate beef, and we’ll talk about that later, saying, hey, The commission said this is to be a joint hit Between the Bananos and the Gambinos And I can definitely confirm From what they told me, Banano people and Gambino people Were on this hit together and doing surveillance So when Galante got killed Sonny Red and his Banano people Were furious Because they thought John Gotti went off And did a hit against the commission’s wishes At the same time, John Gotti was furious At Sonny Red and his people Thinking they did the work Without them being notified But the thing that Tommy always stressed is, again, that meeting was a death trap. Castellano always hated Gotti. Castellano wanted Gotti out. And this was the chance to do it for breaking the commission rule. So Castellano had hardcore murderers there that day. Roy DeMeo and his crew. [57:49] Incredible. You know, Gadgi, a cast of murderers. And John Gotti being street smart. And again, this is fully detailed in the book. It’s just too much to talk about here. John Gotti had made some very heavy precautions himself. Going into that meeting. But what the catch for me was, Sonny Red and Delicato said something like, whoever did this hit was either the most incompetent hitman ever, or possibly they were zips from Montreal that couldn’t give a crap if they were shot at or in a police shootout or whatever. They just didn’t care. And then Tommy said, what if I tell you that those cops were in on the hit? And that silenced the room. And that’s when Tommy had to come clean and talk about everything about it. And it shocked the people that were in that run that this hit was done like that. But that’s, that’s really how this thing was done. Interesting. Guys, you got to get this book. I’m telling you, Made on Long Island. And there’s a whole lot more details, these behind the scenes details about the Galante hit with some real people involved. It’s a lot different story than what we’ve ever heard. I know that. And even people went to jail behind this. But it was mainly on the say-so of informants who, as we know, will pretty much say anything to get out of there, whatever it is they’re trying to buy their way out of. [59:07] Matt, I’ve got one last question here. We don’t want to give away too much of this book, but what about, didn’t the FBI kind of make bank on the celebration afterwards? [59:19] What would you say about that? Gary, you’re bringing me the most important thing in this book, and this is what I want the listener to understand. Bruno and Delicato did heavy time for this, and he did not do this crime. He’s innocent. And I’m going to throw a few things. You referenced one in the video, and I’m shocked that none of these experts and bloggers ever looked at any of this. But I’m going to tell you exactly what told every member of Cosa Nostra and every cop and every fed worth his salt. Bruno didn’t do this. The FBI claims that the video you referenced was made at that club roughly 50 minutes after the hit. Now, this is the way that a mob hit goes down. The planning is meticulous. The car is prearranged. Who’s going to chop it up and destroy it? The weapons are prearranged. Who’s going to take those and destroy them? The clothing is prearranged. Who’s going to get the clothing and destroy that? A shower is critical These guys were using, as Tommy explained to us This orange cleaning gel That was like a pumice structure And everybody who did a hit would wash themselves For a very long time Especially on places where gunpowder residue Could be like a face, hands And scrape off their skin with this pumice orange gel Type of paste soap. [1:00:42] I want to tell you what the feds want people to believe happens, and you tell me how preposterous this is. They want you to believe that Sonny Red and Delicato, who’s a top hitman, did this hit along with his son and his brother JB and Lucky Phil, and then took the getaway car, didn’t drive it anywhere except to Queens, the opposite direction of Manhattan, by the way, heading east. And you wanted people to believe that Sonny Red and Delicato was going to take a car that was used in a quadruple shooting, triple homicide, and just dump it in broad daylight in Queens. People, this is not what happens. It is a prearranged chop shop where that car is going to go. That’s number one. Number two, look at the timetable. Nobody would have any time To get these things done Dispose of weapons Dispose of clothing Get over to Neal’s Club in Manhattan In that time frame Again that’s why the FBI knew. [1:01:47] Sonny and Bruno And all the Indelicados Had nothing to do with this hit It’s not possible Mob hits don’t work like this No mob hit in the world Ever takes place With the guys who did a hit like this To go somewhere out in the open and get congratulated, it’s not reality, people. It’s not how it works. It’s the opposite. These people are buried in safe houses until their boss tells them, look, everything’s fine right now. You can quiet it down. You guys can come out. Nobody’s going to go out in the open, especially not to Neil Della Croce’s club that we called the FBI screen test. So right away, honest FBI people, honest cops, and everybody in Cosa Nostra knew right away that Bruno, JB, Sonny, Phil Lucky had absolutely nothing to do with the galant they hit. It doesn’t work that way. Now, you specifically brought up that video. This, to me, is a shock. [1:02:42] People say, oh, they’re celebrating. And again, that doesn’t happen. But let’s play along and say that, yeah, they were celebrating. Tell me a celebration that anybody listening to your program ever went to, where you’re going to drive through hellish traffic from now Queens into Manhattan. I know the distance is not that far mileage-wise, but the time sure as hell is. I’ve made the drive many times. You’re going to go to the celebration. You’re going to stay outside, not even go inside the building, and you’re going to leave a minute and a half later. That’s a celebration? No. That’s an infuriating beef. And I want people to watch this video. We have it up on our YouTube channel. I’m going to make sure Gary has it up on his. And you can watch this video as we break it down. [1:03:24] Sonny Red is in the face of his consigliere, Stefano Canone. And at one point in the video, you’ll see Canone. [1:03:32] Take his hand and point in back of him, point it to Mr. Neal’s place, basically saying, look, I’ll register the beef. I’m with you. God, he must have done this. We’re going to register the beef. And another critical thing about this video is what Sonny Red does. Now, we actually had a body language expert look at this stuff. He focuses mostly on card games, shoplifters, stuff like that. But he’s a body language expert. He knew nothing about the mob, knew nothing about who these guys were. And we said, what do you make of this video? He goes, it’s obviously heated. There’s definitely some major points of contention. People are angry. That’s obvious. And the most important point you could see about the anger is Sonny Red is face to face with Stefano Canone. He turns around and then something else hits him in his head because he’s so angry. He can’t control himself. He goes right back to his own consigliere and he reaches for his glasses. And that’s also a sign of anger, reaching for something on your face, be it a pencil, be it in glasses. [1:04:27] So Sonny Redd is furious that this hit was done without his team doing it. And anyone looking at the video should know that. And again, that’s critical. Now, Joe Messina was critical in this too. He was a hands-on guy. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. You could give him whatever title you want, acting boss, street boss, acting street boss. But he was the one, by his own admission, giving Rusty in jail the information about the hit on Galante. What did Joe Messina do years later In the Three Capitals hit He was there He shouldn’t have been there He’s an acting boss at the time And he actually took part in that hit And he admits to this Now when he was convicted of crimes. [1:05:07] Seven murders to be particular. He made a deal right away and he ran to them. What else did he have to give to the FBI? He gave him a lot of stuff and people need to follow this. He gave up John Gotti for a murder that no one was ever charged with, a guy named Vito Borelli. And Massino said him and Gotti were the ones who pulled off this murder. I believe it was 1975. And that John Gotti was the trigger man. So Joe Massino knew that if you make a deal with the government. You must tell them everything. You cannot leave out one crime. He even went back to a murder he did in 1969 that the government apparently had no idea about. Some guy that he killed back then. I don’t remember the guy’s name. Zumo or somebody. [1:05:48] So the gas pipe case example comes in here. If you leave one thing out of the government or you change one detail, they’ll void your deal. Now, Joe Messino knew that. So in his mind, I must tell the government every single thing and not leave anything out. So he details these hits that they didn’t know about. Vito Borelli with John Gotti being the trigger man. I’ll ask your listeners one question. What details did Joe Massino give defense about the Galante hit? The answer is none because he had none. He went to his grave not having any idea who freaking did this work. Now we talked about the hit. Not only was Galante killed, which was approved, but you had a Bonanno Capo and a banana soldier killed in that hit, which are major violations of the rules. You can’t touch a guy without getting it approved first. So on a hit like this, the conversations were furious. So if Joe Massino did his job, which he did, he grabbed these guys and said, hey, why did you guys kill these guys? What happened? What’s going on? What do I have to report up to Rusty? And Sonny Redd came back as detailed in the book. [1:06:55] Basically telling Joe Massino, we don’t have any freaking idea. We thought Gotti did it. So that’s a really good point for people to know. Had Joe Massino, the guy in charge of this, known one detail about it, he would have done it. Would he have figured Sonny Red? Of course he would have. Any of these guys. He would have fingered Bruno like he set up his own acting street boss, Bassiano. He put him away wearing a wire. But he didn’t because he didn’t know. And the last thing I’ll leave your listeners with, which is what lawyers that we know call exculpatory proof that Bruno and Delicato was innocent, is this. In 1985, you had two cases going on simultaneously in the same courthouse in Brooklyn. Pizza Connection case, which I think a lot of people know about, and the commission case. Bruno was charged with this crime in the commission case. However, in the Pizza Connection case, I believe that the FBI and the prosecutor, I think the guy’s name was Richard Martin, were not about to lie or purge themselves. [1:07:55] On their indictment, they wrote the murder of Galante was conducted by three still unknown males. They did not say the murder was done by Bruno and Delicato and two unknown males. They said it was done by three unknown males, not just in the indictment, but also in their testimony. Now, any good lawyer would have taken that testimony because, again, these FBI guys were on the Banano Squad, the same family that Bruno was in. So they knew everything about anybody in the Bananos. They don’t keep secrets from each other. Brought them into that courtroom and said, what was your testimony down the hallway? And they would have had to say, it’s three unknown males. That’s exculpatory evidence and it works. Now, my question was, what the hell kind of lawyer did Bruno have? Yeah. [1:08:42] Yeah, that’s crazy. And the answer is the lawyer he had was a mob lawyer who basically told them what he can do and what he couldn’t do. And I know so many cases where guys wanted to put on a defense and they couldn’t. And one good reason is because if they were ever to take the stand, they would ask him questions they couldn’t answer. So go away for a year on contempt. But this is all clear proof that Bruno did not do this. Nobody does a hit and goes and celebrates. You don’t even have the time to do it. What about all the time needed to do all the stuff we discussed? Disposing of the clothing Disposing of the gun And I can promise you one last point on this If anybody in any family Ever committed a quadruple shooting With three homicides And they left a getaway car Quote unquote out in the open Quote unquote with a palm print inside of it They’d be dead There’s not even a question I can give you a list of guys Who were killed for what they call botching hits That are not even close to this Leaving a getaway car out in the middle of a street In broad daylight It’s all a lie. And the honest FBI agent said, we’re not going to go on alone with this lie. We’re going to tell what we know. And it’s three unknown males did the shooting. [1:09:48] Interesting. All right. Matt, I really appreciate you coming on. And guys, here it is. It’s 400 and some pages of details that you know about and a lot that you don’t know about, but a real inside nuts and bolts look at being a mob associate and being around mobsters and around mob associates and doing some of those minor things that they all do and make a lot of money at. [1:10:11] And you get a real detailed insight on that from a guy that did it. And you’re also getting the story indirectly from a guy who was involved with the Galante hit. So I really appreciate you coming on the show, Matt. [1:10:24] It was my pleasure. And again, if anybody ever wants to contact us and ask us questions, no problem at all. The best way to get us is by email. I’ll put your email in the show notes. It is made in Long Island at, go ahead. I’m sorry, go ahead. That’s okay. It would be made on Long Island 32 at yahoo.com. And we have a YouTube channel up and Gary, you’re a great guy. And I know from what Hollywood people have told me, this is going to be the biggest Cosa Knows story mystery ever revealed. And I truly hope that this brings an avalanche of people to your site. And it should with all the other great work, because then they need to look at your other great work that you have up there. And I just hope that’s exactly what happens. Thank you, Matt. And I’ll have a link to your YouTube channel also in the show notes and the audio and the video version. I have both out there. So thanks a lot, Matt. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Transcribed - Published: 27 April 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Charles Bufalino, a relative of notorious Mafia boss Russell Bufalino. What begins as a family history discussion quickly expands into one of the most enduring mysteries in organized crime—the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Charles recounts how, in 2011, he uncovered information that unexpectedly tied his own family to the Hoffa case. That discovery set him on a path of research that ultimately led to his upcoming book, Revelations of a Mafia Family, the Teamsters, and the Final Resting Place of Jimmy Hoffa, scheduled for release April 28. While he stops short of revealing his conclusions, he makes clear that his findings point toward new insights into Hoffa’s fate. The conversation provides a detailed look at the Bufalino family’s Sicilian roots and their migration to Pennsylvania’s coal regions. Charles explains how these immigrant communities, bound by kinship and necessity, became intertwined with labor struggles, violence, and early organized crime. The discussion highlights the 1902 anthracite coal strike and the broader environment that allowed criminal networks to gain influence within unions and local industries. Gary and Charles examine Russell Bufalino’s rise from these beginnings into a respected and highly effective Mafia figure. Known more for his discretion and organizational skill than overt violence, Bufalino developed a reputation as a trusted “utility man” across multiple crime families, including connections in Detroit and Buffalo. His ability to navigate alliances and maintain loyalty made him a quiet but powerful force within the national Mafia structure. The episode also explores the transition from coal and labor rackets into the trucking industry and the Teamsters Union, a shift that significantly expanded organized crime’s reach and profitability. Charles offers personal reflections on his family, including his relationship with Bill Bufalino, and describes the dual nature of their lives—family men on one side, deeply connected to organized crime on the other. As the discussion turns back to Jimmy Hoffa, Gary and Charles analyze longstanding theories and newer leads regarding his disappearance. Charles suggests that his forthcoming book will provide a more definitive perspective on Hoffa’s final resting place, adding another layer to a mystery that has persisted for decades. This episode delivers both historical depth and personal insight, offering listeners a closer look at how family loyalty, organized crime, and American labor history intersect—along with a compelling preview of potential new answers in the Hoffa case. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Charles Bufalino [00:00:00] hey, are you wire tappers out there? Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know I’m a retired Kansas City, Missouri Police Intelligence unit. Officer and I I worked a mob for a long time and now I’m still studying the mob. And today we have a a descendant of one of the more famous mob names in the United States Russell Buffalino This is Charles Buffalino Welcome Charles. Thank you. And I’m actually not a descendant of Russell, but I’m a an extended family member of his right. Basically I never wanted to write a book about our family until and I still didn’t after, after it occurred in 2011 that I stumbled across three pieces of information that all aligned on the theme of the Hoffa disappearance and its relationship to. Several extended members of my family and there are three things about, there were three little revelations that I experienced, and I don’t really want to go into detail about them now because they’re [00:01:00] all in the book, and frankly, that’s proprietary information for right now until April 28th when the book comes out. But when I got to the third one it really hit me like a shot that. I knew something about the Hoffa disappearance and my family’s relationship to it that nobody was ever really meant to know. And it bothered me just a little bit and I tried to dismiss it and I went away from it for a couple of days and I thought, this is still bothering me. So I’m gonna find out a little bit more about the Hoffa disappearance so I can dismiss this suspicion, right? So I’m searching on the web and I’m pretty sure the source that I found, it doesn’t matter. This is pretty common knowledge. The source that I found though was from the UCLA magazine, 1984 or sometime in that timeframe. And it detailed what the FBI was doing in the [00:02:00] aftermath of Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975. And what they did, the presumption that they made was that Hoffa had been cremated, and that’s a story that you may hear. That’s a story you have heard from. I have Ken Lama. Yeah, he got that from Russ himself. So they took that theory to Bagnas Go’s funeral home in Detroit, which whose clientele had been some of the members on the FBI’s watch list over the years. And Bagnas said, look, we don’t have a crematory. They then went to a place called Central Sanitation. Is that, does that ring any bells for you? Central sanitation was Zy Vitale’s place Peter Vitali. Yeah. Who was a member of the Detroit Partnership, right? He had two such enterprises. This was the second one of them. And when the FBI went there, they interviewed the lawyer for the facility and asked him to show them around. He showed them [00:03:00] around to the trash compactors, the, the cardboard compactors and said, yeah, occasionally, a homeless person or a bum crimes in there to, catch a nap and ends up being more or less as asphyxiated than crushed per se. But, that’s a rare occurrence. And and then they wanted to see the incinerator. And they showed him the incinerator and the FBI said, okay, we want another look at that. We wanna make a date and come back. They set a date to come back and central sanitation burned down. Now the, there’s nothing. Unusual about that, except when I was reading the account I’m running across the name Nick Elli, who was the lawyer for the facility who’s giving the FBI the tour and his name was Ringing Bells. Ringing Bells. And I’m thinking Nick, miss Nikki, is that my cousin? That’s my first cousin Nick from Burbank, [00:04:00] California. Oh really? And how did he get involved in this and. That led me to want to know, okay, who all in the family was in Detroit in 1975, apart from Bill Bino and his three of his close relatives, his siblings who went out there with him that nobody knows their names and Russell and what all was going on out there. And moreover, I needed to understand better again for myself. How these people really related to one another. What was the nature of Bill Binos relationship with Russell? The real nature. It’s commonly understood that they’re cousins. What does that mean? I have cousins that I’ve never met and I think it’s easy for people to presume that was the case. That was not the case, bill. And Russell were. In Bill’s mind and owing to a special relationship they had, they were closer than [00:05:00] brothers due to the fact that Bill’s daughter Bill’s rather Russell’s wife was Bill’s daughter’s godmother. That essentially that made Russell Bills. They had a godfather relationship between him and I. Describe what that means in the book. So Yeah. Which is pretty strong in, in this kind of a family that Godfather relationship’s pretty strong. I may talk about the movie, we’re talking about in Italian family, the Godfather’s pretty strong relationship. Correct. It’s a kind of a, yeah, it’s I get to talk about it in the book because in Montero Sicily, where Bill’s father is from. If I suggest to you that, I want you to be my child’s godfather, it really doesn’t imply anything, any responsibility you have with respect to the child. That means I want us to be as, I want us to be in cahoots business together, brothers. But I’m sure it meant more to Bill than it did to Russell. But, it was a token relationship [00:06:00] probably from Russell’s direction, but they certainly were close and they certainly were involved in teamster business together from very early on. So should I spend a minute and tell you what the family structure was like? Yeah. Explain that Family structure from Sicily on, forward in, in kind of a shortened version, but yeah. Explain that. I’ll do it now. I went ahead and I. Put together some visual aids if you would like to. Yeah. Is this that kind of a show? Can we do multi? Yeah, we can do, yeah, we can do that. Oh, not too many because about half the people that listen to it are audio. I’ll be frustrated. Let’s not do that. Alright. What we’ll do instead is we’ll talk about so I’m sitting in Pitton, Pennsylvania right now in a house that my grandfather and his brother built. My grandfather was Nikola, my. Grand uncle was Salvato and Salvatore’s role in the greater family was he assembled everybody. He came here in 1901 in just [00:07:00] before the great big 1902 anthracite coal strike that sent about 30,000 people out of the coal fields. They just, they gave up after a five month strike and went back to the old country or then went west to the Batum fields. So there was a labor shortage. And at the same time, in Sicily, in Montero, especially where sulfur mining was the key industry they were running into a problem where the United States was breaking into the sulfur market in a big way. It was the fracking process. And eventually the United States and Sicily settled the whole sulfur market thing by treaty. All of that is to say sulfur mines were becoming in trouble, and the last of them would close in the 1970s, the Sicilian mines. So they had this problem where they’re gonna have surface of population, they started to [00:08:00] immigrate and they started to immigrate to the Coalfields, Pennsylvania, where, you know there was this lack of late people to work in the anthracite mines. And Salvatore’s role was to bring them over for probably banks of labor brokers. And once they were here to outfit them with. Food and lodging and all of their material requirements. So he was working for, if he was not himself the Petron system. So that’s my grandfather and his brother. And eventually they took three other Buffalo men into the country. One of them was Russell’s father and the other that was Angelo and the other. Brother of Angelo was kalo. They say Charles, but I call him Kalo in the book to distinguish him from other Charles’s. Kajaro was a black hander. [00:09:00] He was a mafioso. Angelo’s father didn’t live for two years. He was killed in a mine explosion that injured my grand uncle. And Russell grew up under Klo, which is right. Russell was an infant when he arrived. And for several years he bounced in and out of the country back to Sicily and eventually Reland in the country in 1914, living for a time in Buffalo and then back in the Pitton area. So in the Pitton area on my block. So I’m in the kitchen now at the house. On my block was this property, which was a soda factory in a general store. Next door also in the family was a grocer. Up the street was a hotel, and next to that was a bar. And they all belonged to Kalo and they were all run by my members of my family. My grandfather in [00:10:00] particular ran the bar and the hotel while Salvato and his family, they all had very large families. Were servicing the general store and the. So that was their role. And all of the children, there were 20 some children between Nicolo, Kalo, JRO, and a third brother. And they all considered Russell their first cousin, despite the fact that there might not have been a familial relationship between Kalo and the other brothers. They all represented themselves as brothers, four men for about 25 years until the family split apart as Sicilian families only can in very grudging way. But Russell never forgot his relationship to everybody in the family. And at one time or another, every one of those 20 children could reach out to him, rub a lamp, and Russell [00:11:00] would appear and. Do something for them and it was mutual. My father was a professional photographer, probably never charged Russell for a thing. And it was that way with other members of the family that had their crafts of their own. Yeah. So does that help to. Yeah that when the Binos came over, they were like in, in this patron system. And so Russell just kind. Fell right into that. And your one uncle was already in a black hander from the old school Mafioso. So they brought that with him. And then you had this one guy, Russell who probably had the oomph, the wherewithal to then rise on, go into that system, rise onto the top. He was really, was born and bred into that system. Yeah, you could say that. He by, people get confused. They assume based on some facts that he was [00:12:00] raised in Buffalo and came up under Macino. Yeah. And I don’t think that’s the case. There’s plenty of evidence within the family and traditions within the family that say, Russell was a very well known quantity in the city of Pitton at the store next door where everybody sat outside drinking soda on a hot summer day, and all the children would fight to entertain the old men. Russell was there along with Kalo Jro, who was a very day-to-day presence in the family, but. There was a strong relationship between Pitton, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York, based on, at the time the Lehigh Valley Railroad. That was the northern terminus of that railroad. So it was an easy trip and there were a lot of labor jobs up there as well with the hydroelectric plant. So people from Buffalo and people from Pitton, a lot of famili familial relationships between them. And at the same time, in 1920, they could see prohibition coming. And Russell was a [00:13:00] mechanic. Where NASCAR comes from? NASCAR is mechanics souping up cars, so they get away from Yeah. The police from the the revenues. Yeah. So I’m almost certain that’s Russell’s first reason for being in Buffalo, working for a guy named John Montana. And John Montana would later testify before the rackets committee. In 1997. So Russell worked for him. It was probably, and again, Mandino’s specialty was importing Canadian whiskey. Yeah, and then there was typical bootlegging they were doing, down here as well as up there. So Russell was probably taking the good stuff down from New York to Pitton area on a regular basis. Pitton is like between Scranton and Wilkes Bar. It’s like a six hour car drive. To Buffalo, and that was his first job. And then he’s back, and so for all of his [00:14:00] life, he was bi-coastal, right? We think of him as in his later years being in New York City, and then two or three days out of the week being in his Kingston home, which is again just down the street here. But he was that way all of his life. He did that between Buffalo and Pittston, and there was a lot of interchange between them by 1922 he’s on the record. He had a car accident on the, on a bridge locally that sent him up for a while. So by 1922, you could more or less consider him again a Pitton property. And he ends up marrying in 1928 into the family through the Chandras. But he was always, a skinny guy. He was, he didn’t really, fit the mold of a classic mobster. He didn’t. He grew up in it. He didn’t show signs of being a real gun toter himself. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. He [00:15:00] probably had a lot of organizational abilities in a certain amount of charisma that would get people to do what he wanted. His specialty was diamonds and jewelry, and so that, that was a specialty. And his other specialty was cars. And again, that continued to be important right through the end of prohibition 1933 December. And. At that key juncture. So kalo, his grant, his uncle was in a tree partite relationship with two other men that formed the real coal country power. They were all coal contractors and gangsters in their own right? Okay. And bootleggers. So they were all in this cahoots relationship, and Russell was in their sphere. Through klo a lot of real heavy mob style violence locally in the 1920s [00:16:00] that was related both to union problems in the coal mines, but also the bootlegging, right? So people were stealing each other’s shipments that needed to be dealt with. Coal miners were going out on Wildcat Strike. There were assassinations related to that big doings in the twenties that probably ended by the middle thirties. The heart of the depression things were so bad for the coal miners, they just assumed worked for substandard wages as go out on strike ’cause they really couldn’t afford to do it. Yeah. But things calmed down pretty much by then, and by that time things were heating up for the three men that they went on background and gave control over to John Chandra. Now, John Chandra is a co contractor in his own right and he’s running the show for Karo and Vbi and Latour, and it’s [00:17:00] under Chandra that Russell really is in a mentorship relationship with Chandra and Chandra, it seems to really have gentled him somewhat. Because the first three men were, they were just killers. They would just, they would take you out rather than deal with you. And Chandra inherited a new generation in the thirties. And his career lasted until 1949. And Russell by then was just the natural to take over. Now from Infancy Forward, he had been in the company of the most dangerous man in the coal fields. People who knew New York gangsters for certain, and was in their company as well. So he knew how to get along and he knew how to be quiet, and he became trusted. That’s probably the thing he was most relied on for. Yeah. Interesting. He was quiet and trusted. That’s, [00:18:00] that is really interesting. People say, and I don’t know how true this is, but they say that, when people have a vacancy and they’re organizational structure, they plug Russell in. And he was not the kind of guy who was gonna try and muscle in your territory. He was just going to keep the balls in the air for you. Yeah. Until the next guy came back and then just hand ’em right back over. He wasn’t a threat. He did seem to be like the utility man of the northeast mobs. He sure was. And when app leaking happened. So I was born in 1957. I was born on the anniversary of his father’s death in the coal mine. Huh? Right away. That’s an Oman. Bad things are coming. Russell and two months later, apple Aiken. Yeah. He was real busy in the late 1950s, early 1960s. He was facing deportation for a very long time, and that’s where. [00:19:00] Bill got a little bit more involved with him because Bill was, an attorney in the family and he was writing letters and doing motions and whatever to keep Russell, you knows, court proceedings to, going on for a long time. Bill eventually wrote a letter to the authorities in Italy that basically said, Hey, don’t take it personally that Russell volunteered to be in the army in 1940. He wasn’t really, trying to get back at you. He was just trying to support his new native country. And and of course there were other people who will tell you there was a suitcase with a million dollars in it that accompanied that letter. Yeah. But Hitler refused to receive Russell. But Russell was apparently ready to get on the plane. Before that refusal came down. Yeah. There’s a whole slew of those cases. I just did a research on that. All the different guys that they tried to deport during those years and the, and their lawyers and [00:20:00] the how they just kept staving it off and staving it off until many times the government just gave up. ’cause it was just like, okay, you have to wonder if they were really serious about it. I think they were just messing with them, but, yeah. But, bills, bill’s teamster career. Where to begin? So Bill and my father both were born in 1918 and a third relative, Jimmy, they were all born in 1918 and they all graduated high school together. Bill was at the University of Scranton for a while before it was called that he was majoring in Divinity and his brother Charles, who was already married into. The greater family suggested you need to be, you need to be a lawyer. We’re going to, we’re gonna get you into law school. And so Bill claimed he had, through his undergraduate, just monitored law classes and approached the dean to say, I’d like to be, I’d like to graduate with a pre-law degree. And [00:21:00] the dean said, sure, why? Sure, why not? And so then Bill went off to, farley Dickinson Law School. Left there just in time to join World War ii, and now he’s assigned in the Detroit area, so it was World War II that brought him to Ellis Air Force Base. Ah, I think it’s just south of Detroit. I’m not sure exactly where it is, but it’s not far. And in that time, I know you know the name Angela Melley. He is a member of the Detroit Partnership. He’s considered the conser of that organization. He has a brother, and the brother has a son who wants to get into business. The brother, I forget his name, comes to Pitton, meets with the Buffalo family. He is from, I think, San Cataldo. Which is a neighboring community in Sicily and they say, look we wanna be in business together. So Bill [00:22:00] now is given the name of Mel’s brother and suggested to contact him, which he does. He says just it was randomly, looking for a deserter in Detroit and it occurred to me to call the brother. So he calls the brother, ends up getting invited to the house. Invited to dinner the next day, proposes to the daughter within three days, and now they’re in the family way. And Bill and Vincent Melly become corners of Belvin Distributing Corporation, I think was the name of it. They were world of to jukebox people. This is where he meets hfa. They’re in the world to jukebox business. Jimmy James, the head of the local 8 95 of the Teamsters, which was called the Jukebox Local ’cause it was a coin and operated local. Starts picketing them. And now Bill and Hoffa are in a lawyerly [00:23:00] way because Jimmy James asked Toya Hoffa into the picture. And Bill presses Hoffa makes him the business agent for the local. Very shortly thereafter, deposes Jimmy James makes Bill the president, and later he is formally elected to the role and now he’s a union president a local president for the next 20 years. And a close associate of Hoffa during the 1960s. So seeing as how I came around so late, I was there to see this. Teamster action because Bill was frequently in Pittston, especially after Hoffa went to Lewisburg Prison, which is 90 minutes down the road. Bill’s sister Mary is my next door neighbor. She’s retired and he comes to visit whenever he goes to C Hoffa, which is every week according to him. To get instructions to bring back to [00:24:00] Fitz. He’s in Pittston. Moreover, he launches a law office in the city of Pittston downstairs on the other side of the house. His father’s old general store because he needs to, he’s not a trial lawyer in Detroit and he wants to join the Detroit bar. And he has to fulfill a. The requirements of a by motion thing to be admitted. Other than that, he’s gotta take the test. He doesn’t want to do that. So he just comes, does a couple probates, this and that for three years and now you’re in. So he does that. So he’s by the time I’m 10, I’m pretty well acquainted with Bill. And Bill is, my father. They’re the close friends. They’re always talking in Mary’s kitchen. I’m sitting there listening, Bill’s running a rator, and they’re laughing about how they sent Bobby Kennedy a parachute because he he said, if I can’t put Hoffa in prison, I’ll jump off the Capitol dome [00:25:00] that I’m a parachute. And he writes about that. RFK writes about that. So it, it was very interesting having him around. Yeah. And he had a brother that would often come with him. To bodyguard him to bodyguard Hoffa, he wore Hoffa’s money belt. His brother Angelo, they called him Yabo, very big guy. And and sometimes he would bring his son Billy boy. William Bino ii, who later had some fame of his own in the nineties. Defending white boy Rick in Detroit. Oh yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that. Yeah. So I knew them all and I knew them all in a family way and I was not quite aware that Bill and Hoffa had a falling out. ’cause then I guess that wasn’t fitting information for a 10-year-old. Yeah. But yeah that’s how I know all of them. And so my real connect to the family is through Bill, his sister Mary. His brother [00:26:00] Yabo. When when Bill retired in 1982 for health reasons, his brother Angelo Yabo returned to Pitton and was my neighbor for the next 10, 12 years. And he was my last connection to the 1920s. And he would tell me things that I had no real frame of reference to understand, about. Running whiskey and whatnot. He didn’t share a lot of stories about that, but every now and then something would escape. And he was just the kind of guy you could tell he’d done a lot of things and I didn’t find out until his funeral. At his funeral an individual came up to me who had traveled to the area from Detroit, probably with William ii. He just for some reason he squared up with me, put his hand out and said Yabo was like a father to me, and then just told me everything. I never wanted to know about what Yabo had done in Detroit. Working for Angelo Melly, [00:27:00] running a bar for him. Being a bartender, occasionally helping people find their checkbook, that kind of thing. So he was obviously a very colorful guy. He was obviously very well respected by the Detroit people. At the same time he wasn’t gonna kill anybody. That was not what he did. But the FBI followed him to Angelo Millie’s farm one day. They had an informant in his car, basically. And it became clear, I finally learned why he and his sister Mary, and other members of his family would go to Florida every year and spend about a month in Florida. They were at Angela Mel’s. Timeshare. Basically he availed Yabo, and this is, somebody at the very top level of the organization down there. So he was not respected. I have to ask about this as Hoffa and Russell Bino and Bill. As the Teamsters Hoffa starts having problems [00:28:00] with Kennedy and there’s this back and forth there. Then was, there, was there, there’s a lot of talk about that that Kennedy and, he, that he got so personal with Hoffa, which he did, there’s some talk about, maybe they had something to do with the murder of JFK Mo. Mainly it falls to, marcelo down in Detroit, I mean down in new Orleans, but yeah. But still, Bino was right in there among that crew. Was there ever much talk about that even after it happened? Yes. There’s a lot of talk about it. When Bill Buf, so I’m trying to Dan Mul Day. Dan Mul Day is a researcher who had worked for many years on the Hoffa disappearance. And he spent a lot of time talking to Bill Bino about that. And when he quizzed Bill about, who, who did this right? Bill answered have the CIA investigate the FBI and then have the [00:29:00] FBI investigate the CIA and then you’ll have the answer. That’s exactly what he said. Interesting. And what he was saying was, yeah, the Bay of Pigs thing, the whole. Pal Kill Castro was something that was known by a lot of people that went missing in 1975, or no. Ended up murdered Johnny Roseli. Yeah. Gian and Gian Kana, I think was 1975 too. Hoffa was really the third person to go missing in 1975 that had information to contribute about that Uhhuh. Interesting. Or at least was believed to. And when you read Bill Alia’s book, he says Russell also knew something about that. So Russell was becoming edgy. That Bill would say something, or rather, no, Hoffa would say something too much about that because Hoffa was, pretty much a loose cannon by that time In terms of speaking.[00:30:00] I interviewed that guy with that Billy Leya book. Did you know him? He was Billy, yeah. Do you know him very well? I did not know Billy, my brother knew Billy when they were both young. Okay. My brother Nick, see Nick’s 12 years older than me and I think so is Billy. Yeah. Alright. I did not, I’ve been in his company once or twice, but he wouldn’t know me. Okay. I was just in curious about that. He seemed like he was a guy that was like, he was always around the binos and during those ta those years, he was like always somewhere around in and around that. It’s a real interesting, contrast between Pittsburgh and Detroit, the Coalfields a more rural area, and then the big city and the auto factories and the teamsters and how these immigrant Sicilians moved into that and moved in on up that, the immigrant way, you get here man, and you start getting better jobs. You get better jobs, you take care of your relatives and you bring them in. And so it’s just, it’s really an interesting complex there. I [00:31:00] forget who I was talking to. I said some of the history’s not good, right? It’s not, it doesn’t, yeah. It’s not real neat. And I said, feel bad sometimes for some of the people. And and the party I was talking to said they would swam here if they could have. When I was right, I was expressing concern about the Padron system and how it was sometimes exploitive. I think Salvatore was pretty fair as Padron went. He wasn’t a gouger, but there was a lot of gouging in that system, and it was effectively dead by 1930. Curiously, by 1930, that’s when the family split apart. That’s when Kelo said, okay. This is not a revenue stream for me anymore. Time to break with the other binos and move on. But the thing about the the Sicilians and the coal mines, they started as really, they started as what’s the word, scabs, right? Yeah. So there was a lot of union trouble in 1902. You got Welsh minors from. [00:32:00] Ireland everywhere. It was all here. It was like Brooklyn and now we’re coming in to fill this void of 30,000 workers. There’s trouble, a lot of trouble. And the people who are the replacement miners, these Sicilians, they already owe a tithe to their pad. Drones. Yeah. They’ve gotta go down they’re in this heated place. Now once you get in and eventually it’s 10 or 12 or 15 more years before unions really started to sign contracts with these particular mines in the northern coal field that were run by 1913, by at least three and probably four black handers ran the contracts, right? So the mafia is to all intents and purpose the mine owner. And they’ve got all of these dependent [00:33:00] people who are, their their agents through the Padron system who are members of the union, and eventually they run for elective positions within the union. And now what you end up with is the company is the union. And it happened at least once, that an insurgent branch of the United Mine workers went in opposition against its own district leadership. The district leadership’s bodyguard was one of those individuals who was at the same time a union organizer. A partner with one of the black candidates. So it didn’t work out well. There was a murder involved. Things went badly. It happened ultimately. It’s interesting that, and now you it started out, as union busters, as scabs, right? And [00:34:00] they move in and take over the unions, and then the teamsters come along as the coal kinda goes down and the truck driving is going up, up and up. And then they just. Move smoothly right into the teamsters Union. Yeah. Where there’s political power and money. That was the seat of political power and a lot of money and the political power the power of the purse, the power of the pension fund and the los, and of course clear out to Las Vegas. And Russell Vino was right in the middle of all that with the guys from Detroit and Chicago. It was just, it just is a natural progress of of activity. Exactly. And where was it? Just a couple of years ago. Was it in Florida? The Longshoreman’s Union threatened to go out. Yeah, I remember something like that. What did DeSantis do? He DeSantis mo mobilized the National Guard. Yeah. So that never happened here, but if you think about it so Bill Buffalino at one time the FBI was advised that. Bill was being groomed [00:35:00] to take over the Teamsters. Not by force. Something, God forbid if Hoffa should end up in prison. Yeah. So that was happening. But I think it was thwarted because Hoffa had a little there was a a situation in his ranks where he, somebody was trying to. Openly deposed him. And it didn’t work out. And he probably did a reorg of his own and that’s when he decided to run fifth for 1965 for the, as his vice president. So that, so he was trying to head off all, he probably could see it coming. Yeah. And it was in those years that he began to lose a little bit of trust in Bill. And that was the source of their breakup eventually because he got hot with Bill in prison. But think about it. So Bill then, as the president of the Teamsters, imagine the power they had at that time to effectively shut down the country. Oh [00:36:00] man. Yeah, it was huge power. It was huge. And what’s interesting is Hoffa, then he starts bringing what we affectionately refer to here in Kansas City as Pecker Woods. He brings in Roy Williams down in Kansas City. He brings in Jackie Presser up in cleveland and Fitz Fitz Simmons. These are all peckerwoods, these are not Italians. Now Italian, some of ’em are behind the string, behind the scenes, pulling some strings. Of course. Yeah, but they’ve got all those guys out front. It’s just it is fascinating to me how these guys have worked. Yeah. Very insidious. And the thing about unionism somebody will tell you that, union membership is down, or union participation is way down from the 1960s. Yeah. There was a union for everything. Yeah. In the fifties and sixties, bill to, and probably it was to boost his resume. I don’t know. The car washers in the Detroit area. There were 200 car washes and they employed up to [00:37:00] 40 to 50 people each. Just doing this job. It was, to organize them. The the tactic was I’m not gonna go after the WR and file and get them to vote on anything. I’m going straight to the owner. He is gonna pay me to their membership fees and he’s gonna pay their dues. That’s how it’s gonna be. And that’s what they did. There were certain, car washers that were not assaulted in this way, and others who were, and they were pretty upset about it. And they took it to the law and there was a grand jury hearing that Bill was invited to attend. But according to Dan Mul day, the judge in the hearing was in their pocket. And yeah, nothing ever came of it. That was mentioned also before Keith f so a bill was on the hot seat for that and the Zer, the er the Zer company to sell their machines entered into an agreement whereby their service people [00:38:00] would be unionized. And therefore, if you went to a bar, now you’re a union agent for local 9 8 9 85. Of the teamsters. You go into a bar and you look at the jukebox and it’s not a er. Yeah. Now we’ve got a big problem. Now there’s a picket outside. I guarantee you the picket was Yaba, Bino Bell’s brother. Gotta be big guy with a mortar board walking back and forth. Unfair, this is a scab shop and now what’s gonna happen? No union truck driver is gonna deliver beer to that bar. Crazy. Yeah. And so that’s right. So that’s how they worked that one out. So that was the extent of Bill’s organizing skills. Interesting. So let’s skip forward here a little bit and we don’t want to give it all away, but we’re talking about the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa. So how do you go into that? Just, and we want guys to, you gotta get this book guys. It’s the revelations of a mafia family, the temperatures, [00:39:00] and the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa. The key words here is the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa. As you might know, Charles, that’s the hook here and Dan Maldia and you probably have a problem, I gotta say. ’cause he’s pretty sure he knows the final resting place. I know he, he, that’s what he, but there’s another guy who also thinks he knows the final resting place as well as me, but he doesn’t know as far as I go. So his theory expands on the central sanitation. Whereby HAA is brought to central sanitation and cremated incinerated, to me that means ashes. And what do you do with ashes post cremation? You can throw ’em to the wind or you can do something extremely appropriate and almost poetic with them. And then move them to a town that is your native [00:40:00] home. That’s what I’m saying. Now, that’s where you come in. Okay. But now, in order to, in order for that to be true I’m willing for that not to be true. In order for that to be true, central sanitation has to be in the mix. And a fellow by the name of, oh my gosh, I’ll never forget his name. Bernstein. Scott Bernstein is a Detroit reporter. I know Scott. Alright, so last year they had this symposium in which he and Novi Toko and a former prosecutor Yeah. All submitted. Did you see that? I didnt see it, but I remember when it happened. I didn’t even know that was happening and I was wrapping up the book at that time, submitting the second to last draft when I became aware of their theory. And their theory solves a problem that I had, which is, skeletal remains. Yeah. And I’m not gonna, I’m not going to break [00:41:00] their I’m not gonna give away their findings, but. The problem with an incinerator is it’s not a crematory and it falls 800 degrees short of being able to render, and even, bones have to be crushed afterwards. Anyway. Yeah, there’s still bones left some their theory pretty much takes care of that, that the bone thing. On top of that, someone else wrote a book Mr. Tubman wrote a book in 2024 that said his parents were, driving in a Detroit suburb on the day Jimmy Hoffa went missing and saw someone being wrestled into a central sanitation truck. And the father noted that truck was not supposed to be there on, on that day. And of course, the property was one of the properties that were suspected of being the place where Hoffman went missing. Again, and that’s not definitive. If there were ashes involved, I think that I have a [00:42:00] first person memoir of the person that did something with the ashes. All right guys. And that’s gonna be in Revelations of a Mafia Family, the Teamsters in the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa, correct Charles? That’s what it is. And it’s gonna be released on what is it? April? 28th. 28th. 28th. All right. Charles Buffalino I really appreciate you coming on and talking about your book. And guys, you gotta get this book. I’m telling you, it’s I’ve got a advanced copy of it and it’s pretty interesting. It’s readable and it is. Got a lot of great history into it, as you can tell. If you ever wanted to know the immigrant story of Sicilians, this is it, that the, there were huge miners and because they were minors in Sicily, so we had mining activities. I didn’t know about the whole strike breaking thing. That’s interesting. I knew they came down, like here in Missouri, southwest part of Missouri, we have coal mines and a huge group of Sicilians came down here. [00:43:00] And because I was wondering why. Joy IPA outta Chicago was going dove hunting down in Pittsburgh, Kansas. I went down there just to, to look around in this little town, front, neck. All the stores are, have Italian names and so I, there’s a little museum down there. So I stopped in. I said, what’s the deal? And she said, oh. She said, tons of people came over from Southern Italy and Sicily. To work in the coal mines around here, and it’s a big coal mining area. I said, oh, that’s it. That’s it. That is it. That was a safe territory for these Chicago mobsters and Kansas City mobsters to go hunting down there. Okay, so the coal mining is the mining much to know is a big part of the history of the mafia in a way. For sure. And there’s a place in so I thought Pitton had a lot of at, and it does, has a lot of Sicilian, maybe 24% as of the last census. Yeah. Was recently invited. Last year I went to [00:44:00] Clarksburg, Virginia. 40% Italian to this day. Ah, yeah. And they were all minors. And you go there and there’s no there’s no southern speech pattern. It’s all. Ah they’re Pittsburgh. And I said, why? What’s that all about? Oh, he said, no. We are a, we’re a suburb of Pittsburgh. We’re two hours away. Yeah. But the stuff we were producing went right to the mills. Yeah. And so that was the language that we spoke. Oh, we darned. And there were so many of them that they spoke their own language. They didn’t try to blend in with the right Scott, people that had been there from the country and from the hills down in there for a while. I’ll be darned huh. That’s interesting. That is that. And Clarksburg, I’ll tell you that place in the 1950s and sixties, or I’m sorry, in the seventies when the dress factories fell apart, they were burning pittston down. So Piston’s, a lot of old missing buildings. Yeah. But Clarksburg is just like visiting old Pittston. Huh, interesting. [00:45:00] Pitton, Pennsylvania the the seat of power for Russell Bino back in the day, Northwest. I always, you always hear about Northwest Pennsylvania and up into New York was his territory. And again, he was such an interesting guy because like you said, he was like utility man. He was going around to different families or, they, you don’t, they don’t ever talk about this big seat of power that he had in his underboss and his. His capos and that right there in that one geographic area. So it’s really interesting. Different anthracite coal was such a product. So there’s batum is coals everywhere else, but there’s only five counties in the United States that has 80% of anthracite coal. And anthracite coal was the fuel of choice for the industrial revolution. So there was a lot of money here. And so people really can’t understand, just how much wealth there was here. And how a place this small could be somebody’s seat of power, as you say. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. All [00:46:00] right, charles Buffalino I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay. All right, we’re done here. I’ll redo that When I stumbled over your name again and got a couple other things to redo, but otherwise it’s it gotta be an easy edit. That’s the guy I like when the guy really knows his stuff and he goes right on through it makes my job easier and I will wait and put this out just about the time. I gotta make a note right now. Anytime from the 15th forward is fine. I’m sure, we didn’t, I didn’t reveal anything so sensitive that. Anybody can steal. I’ll be maybe mu Monday the 20th. I got a feeling here either. That’s perfect. 13th? 13th or the 20th? Probably the 20th. I got it written down on the 20th. Okay. That’s awesome. All right, Gary, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. All right. You made it very easy. Oh good. Oh, and have you have you been in touch with Scott? You gotta go on Scott Show. I did mention to him, Scott, I’m gonna send you a book when it’s time. I, I didn’t wanna reveal everything again. Yeah. I’m just being real careful [00:47:00] for all these months. But yeah, I have, oh yeah, I’m in. But yeah, get on his show. He has, I think he has bigger fo I know he has a bigger follow than me. He kinda really gets into the, what’s going on today, which I never do. And he does, I don’t know, I, here in Kansas City, they get bad. I, and I get word back from ’em that they’re bad at me if I mention their names or there’s any mafia today, so I just seem to not mess with that anymore. Yeah, i’m the same way, I’m not even a fan of this stuff. This is not my thing. Yeah. If it’s the whole, like if Hoffa is here in Pitton I really feel, and my family’s involved in it. It’s like a moral obligation. I’ve got a interesting, yeah, I can see why. That’s the only reason I, that’s the only reason I even bother to research. Yeah. I just started doing some research on a true crime that’s not mafia and it’s kinda it’s like a breath of fresh air. I think I’m getting a little bit burned out in the mafia thing. I like the [00:48:00] stories. I like the capers and stuff that people do. I really love that. And so that’s there are some. Interesting people in this. Yeah. And I’ve known a bunch of them myself. My story’s not interesting, but I, yeah. When I was in college, I worked at a pizza shop. The guy was a bookie. Yeah. And every Friday night we’d be with Butchy, scotchy, Ragy Fingers, and the Greenie, and we’d go to the Skyliner Diner after the track, and it would just be, I’ve been at more dice games. Yeah. They used to rope my head for luck. I was 17. They’re so colorful too. And another thing I’ve learned is, hey. These mob guys, they have so many connections throughout the community Yeah. That most people, they don’t have. When I was a policeman, I didn’t have any idea how many connections I, in hindsight, I realized that how naive we all were, how many connections they really had out in the community, and how those worked and how they I don’t know. So many people found it colorful or they liked buying something that fell off a truck and then. And they like to [00:49:00] gamble and they’re just throughout the entire community and we didn’t know it ’cause I lived in this narrow little police world. It’s the adulation that people just adore this lifestyle. And I don’t know, I think maybe if people had less of a sense they were getting bent over by the government all the time. Yeah. Yeah. There’d be less of that. But everybody’s a secret agent in a way, yes. And I’m, everybody wants to be James Bond. And I’m naive enough to write a book about the Mafia and, but everybody I know, they all know better than me. And I tell some of my classmates, yeah, I wrote a book and they’re like, because they know there’s a whole network up. Yep. All Charles, it was great to meet you. Thank you so much. Great meeting with you. Take care. Bye bye. Bye-bye.

Transcribed - Published: 20 April 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with Salt Lake City author Flats to discuss his book, Ice Pick Willie: The Life and Times of Israel Alderman. We take a deep dive into the shadowy world of Israel “Icepick Willie” Alderman—a largely forgotten but deeply embedded figure in early 20th-century organized crime. Willie’s criminal career traces back to Prohibition-era New York, where he began as a jewelry thief before evolving into something far more lethal. His nickname came from his preferred weapon: an ordinary household ice pick. In the 1920s, it was common, inconspicuous, and devastatingly effective. Flats explains how Willie’s method allowed him to carry out murders quietly and efficiently, often avoiding the attention that accompanied more public gangland shootings. We follow Willie’s movements from New York to Minneapolis and eventually into the orbit of Chicago’s violent underworld. Along the way, he intersected with major figures of organized crime, including Meyer Lansky, Charles Luciano, and Bugs Moran. Flats outlines the shifting alliances and rivalries that defined the era, placing Willie within the broader context of gang wars that culminated in events like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The conversation also examines Willie’s transition from violent enforcer to gambling operative as organized crime evolved and shifted westward. As Las Vegas rose with legalized gambling, figures like Willie adapted—moving from street-level brutality to more structured rackets under established mob leadership. Despite brushing against major historical events and powerful crime bosses, Icepick Willie faded into relative obscurity. Flats and I explore why certain gangsters become legends while others—equally dangerous and influential—slip into the margins of history. We also touch on Willie’s odd cultural afterlife, including regional pop-culture references that keep his name alive in unexpected ways. This episode provides both a character study of a cold and calculated killer and a broader examination of how organized crime adapted from Prohibition chaos to structured syndicates. It’s a detailed look at a man who operated in the shadows—lethal, efficient, and nearly forgotten. Flats’ book, Ice Pick Willie: The Life and Times of Israel Alderman, is available now on Amazon. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:03] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. As most of you, I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective turned podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I got a couple of documentary films you can rent on Amazon if you choose. I’ll have links in the show notes. Or just go to Amazon and search my name and you’ll find my stuff. But anyhow, today I have a friend of mine from Salt Lake City called Flats. And he’s just Flats, all right? And he’s written a book about a man named Icepick Willie. Now, Icepick Willie has got a great, cool nickname. I’m surprised that he didn’t last through history a little better because people had an easy-to-remembering cool nickname. His real name is Israel Alderman. Now, Flats has been researching him. He got a hold of me because I did a show on David Berman, who ended up in Las Vegas. He was a Jewish gambler from Minneapolis. And ice pick ends up out there connected to him somehow. And I didn’t really stumble. I stumbled a little bit across that, but I couldn’t remember what it was. But anyhow, welcome flats. [1:09] Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. All right. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I’m always open for any chance to talk about Ice Pick Willie, one of my favorite people. And if you guys out there know anything about Ice Pick Willie, get a hold of me and I’ll connect you up with Flats. And I’ll have his Gmail in the show notes. But either that or get a hold of me pretty easy. Any rumors or stories, lies, anything about him. [1:38] But in the meantime, in a couple of weeks, actually, by the time this podcast is out, that book’s going to be up on Amazon. But you can always go back. You can always pull those down and add more information in and then put them back up if you want. So that’s a good way to go. Nicknames are interesting. I once talked about doing a show on nicknames and how people got them, and I just never got around to it. And many times you can see how people get their nicknames. Al Capone, Scarface Al. He’s got the big scar on his face, right? Here’s one. One of Icepick’s Willie’s contemporaries, a guy named Albert, was it Tannenbaum? Yeah, Tannenbaum. And he was called Tick Tock. And I looked that up because, like I said, he was a contemporary of Icepick Willie’s. And he got the name Tick Tock because somebody said you move all the time. You’re always like a watch. You’re Tick Tocking all the time. And, of course, there’s Anthony Accardo, who they called Joe Batters. And his guys gave him that. They used to call him Joe. And that was because he beat up somebody with a baseball bat so bad that Al Capone said, you’re a real Joe batters. But he also, many times the press will give people these nicknames. And they gave Anthony Accardo the nickname of the big tuna because he was big. And they had a picture of him with a huge big tuna he had caught. There’s Joe Bananas Bonnano. That speaks for itself, Joe Bananas. And I think the press gave him that. First question, Flats, you know how Icepick Willie got his nickname? The nickname came… [3:06] From when he was in Minneapolis, he apparently picked it up. And this is something which he admitted to later on in his life. He claimed to have taken about 11, 12 victims out by using an ice pick in the ear. [3:27] And ice picks were actually really common back in the 20s everywhere. People had them. Everyone had them in their homes. and they were a real popular tool among Murder Incorporated members. It’s a handy thing, small, quiet kind of a tool. [3:49] Normally, a knife-pick killing was something that took maybe three or four people, not counting the victim. They’d crowd around him and grab his arms, whatever, and then somebody’d do him, they’d haul him off. Uh, Willie had managed to turn this into a one man operation. He’d take his victim. [4:11] He’d be up at the bar with a drinking buddy, get this guy really liquored up, and he’d slip his ice pick out of his jacket. Boom, real quick in the air, ice pick’s gone, the guy’s down on the bar. Not much blood because it’s an ice pick. Forensics wasn’t real hot back in the 20s, so a lot of times they would diagnose this as a brain aneurysm. But the guy would slump over the bar, drunk, dead drunk, and then they’d just haul him off. The story is they’d take him in the back room, he’d go down the coal chute, which everybody had back then, out into a truck, they’d haul off the body. The people that went down the coal chute, they were all pretty much forgotten. But Willie, he seemed to have stuck around. Now, in Minneapolis, apparently he’s still a real popular figure. Memorable, which is funny because Minneapolis, for all my research, is the place there is the least documented evidence about. [5:19] But that seems to be that and Las Vegas are where he’s best known. There’s even a company in Minneapolis that does a nail polish they named Ice Rick Willie. It’s a popular culture thing there. Yeah. Now, did he start out in New York with Erlansky? He started out in New York. He grew up on the Lower East Side. Like so many people, Benny Siegel and Meyer, everybody came from there. Early on, and back by the 20s, Meyer had hooked up with Charlie Luciano, and most of the serious Jewish gangsters came under Meyer’s umbrella, so to speak. And this Willie supposedly, according to another author, this is when Willie hooked up with Meyer, was early on during Prohibition. But Willie didn’t start out as a bootlegger. He started out with a bunch of jewelry store robbers, but they were pretty notorious at him. God, his first record of him was, oh, when was it? About 1925. [6:34] He got a charge for robbery. Not a lot of details on it. The charge was dismissed, and it seems to be a pretty common thing throughout his entire life as far as resolution of his legal issue. But anyway, then right after Christmas, that’s in year 25, he was going by Izzy Alderman back then. Israel, Izzy was his nickname. He didn’t get into Willie till later, but he went into with a couple other guys and they hit a jewelry store for about $75,000 worth of jewelry. Oh, wow. That’s a pretty good chunk of change back then. That’s a score, man. That is a real score back then. Oh, yeah. And then a few months later, along with a couple other people, he hit another jewelry store in the Bronx, William Sims Robbery. This one was pretty well publicized. And they go in, they take the, everybody there, the owner, employees, customers, tie them up, they’re in the back room, they grab trays full of gems, usually diamonds, they’re out the door, never even touched the cash register. So they got about a hundred grand on that. Got away. Next morning. [7:59] Another jeweler, Sam Candle, as he was opening up his shop to let a friend in, some guys come pushing into the door. Izzy’s with them again. Once more, the same M.O., everybody’s in the back room tied up. Another hundred grand or so worth the gems. So they’re doing pretty good by now. Wow, yeah. I assume that whenever they fenced them, did you find out much about how they fenced them? Did the Italians get a piece of the action? Did they make him pay up, or did Meyer Lansky get a piece of that? I’m sure that Meyer was somehow connected to this. He got a piece of everything that was going on in the Jewish world. And originally, at that point in time, there was not a lot of interaction between the Italian mobsters and the Jewish mobsters. They had their own little thing that they kept to themselves. They felt safer that way. They could trust everybody. It was actually pretty much Meyer and Charlie Luciano that moved things past that point. I see. But up till then, everything was coming under Meyer’s thing. So they were doing pretty good until they did a robbery. [9:19] There was a jeweler, Aaron Roddark. Now, about 18 months earlier, he’d had an attempted robbery where he had shot and killed one of the robbers as they were running out of the store. So he got a bunch of publicity called the Fighting Jewelers in the press, a popular guy. About a year and a half later, another crew walks in. This is Izzy’s crew. [9:50] When they come in, same thing, the fighting jeweler, he goes for his gun. Doesn’t work out so well this time. This time, he’s shot and killed. But they didn’t get any jewels. They take off again. [10:05] But now they’re hot. This is big news. Fighting jewelers murdered. Big publicity, big public outcry. And cops are looking for them hot and heavy by now. [10:17] And by now, so a few weeks, couple weeks after the fighting jewelers murdered, one of Izzy’s crew was picked up, coming out of a doctor’s office, for a gunshot wound, where he’d been treated. Cots get word of this, they pick him up, and he immediately starts confessing to all the jewelry store robbers, giving up partners. They pick up a couple more people pretty soon everybody is just singing like canary it’s like the mormon tavern fire or something so the cops are looking for everybody they haven’t got they pick up almost everybody the two people are missing from the last robbery where the guy was murdered is Izzy Alderman and one of the other guys Robert Byrd. [11:09] So Izzy and Robert they know they’re hot They’ve got warrants out. They know the police are looking. They’ve got this information because they’re connected to whoever. So they leave town. They’re on their way to Chicago. They’re going to go there to hide out, take care of business for a couple reasons. One is Robert Berg has brother, Ollie, who is tied in with the Northside Bugs Moran gang in Chicago. Ago, Holly is also a jewelry driver and right about the time, right before. [11:47] His brother, Robert, gets to Chicago. Ollie and a couple guys are on an Illinois Central commuter train. They robbed three jewelry salesmen while they’re on the train of their jewels, managed to get off the train and get away. They got picked up about 12 hours later, though. So now his brother, Ollie, is in prison again, of course. But Robert is connected. They have connections to the Northside gang. Through the brother, through Ollie. And this is a safe place for them to go, relatively safe. At that point in time, Chicago’s got the beer wars going on, and so it wasn’t a real safe place to be. But they had out there, they’re there maybe a week or so. The cops raid a hotel room, they pick up Robert Burke. They also find a bunch of jewelry, which they trace back to the New York robbery. So they know this is all tied together now. They don’t get Willie. Izzy is still at that point. So Robert Berg, now he’s back to New York going to prison too. Izzy needs a new partner. Berg had a guy he was running around with, Red McLaughlin. [13:06] Red’s partner’s in jail, and Izzy’s partner’s in jail, so they came up a little bit. But now Red already at this point the cops are looking for him hot and heavy in Chicago a little while before they found him. [13:24] The cops saw him on the side of the road, Red was on the running board of the car, reaching through the window, choking the driver. The driver turned out to be, of course, a jewelry salesman with the jewelry in the car. Red explained to the cop that his friend was just having some kind of a fit, and he was trying to help him. The cop wasn’t going for it, and so Red was off to jail. He managed to get bailed out. And as soon as he’s out, he just goes off on all kinds of things. By now, the cops are looking for him for being involved in some kidnappings and bootlegging and murders. One newspaper article called him the man of a hundred brides. He’s like Lon Chaney of the criminal world or something. So now the cops are really hot after Red. He’s junk bail. He’s doing all this other stuff. There they raid a hotel, the Webster Hotel in Chicago. They’ve got a tip. That’s where they’re going to find him. Yeah. They don’t find Red, but they find his buddy in there. They find him, and he’s got a suitcase full of guns. [14:38] But no, he knows this is turned out to be actually Izzy Alderman, but he knows the cops are looking for Izzy Alderman. So he tells the cops his name’s Robert Lewis. They don’t know any better. Things are different back then. Yeah. He also told them that he was a bootlegger from Detroit. And that, I guess, would explain having a suitcase full of guns. And when they get ready to arrest him, he tells the cops they’re going to be wasting their time because he says he has some high connections in the illegal liquor business in town here. And apparently he was right because all of his charges were dismissed as soon as they haul him in once again. Back then, it seemed in Chicago, because of Al Capone, Bugs Moran. [15:30] New York with Meyer and Charlie, Prohibition contributed to it a lot. Corruption was just fantastic. So you could buy your people’s way out of everything, which was nice if that’s what you were doing. Yeah so anyway Robert Bird disappears and now Willie all of his partners all of his connections everybody’s locked up missing dead something he’s out of work again but he’s in Chicago since 1927 they’re in the middle of the beer wars he’s a starker a tough muscle man starker’s Jewish term so he hooks up right away They were Bugs Moran on the North side. Bugs is more, the Bugs Moran gang, they were people like Frank Foster, Ed Newberry. He had other Jewish gangsters working with him at the time. So Lizzie fit in pretty good. And it isn’t long at all, maybe a month later, he gets cops pull over a car. They find Frank Foster and Izzy Alderman in there. And they’ve got guns, of course. And once again, the charges just disappear. Everybody goes on their way. [16:51] So things are rolling along. The beer wars are going good. And now we get into the taxi cab wars. because in Chicago back then, that’s how you settled everything. You had a war. There were two cab companies mostly going on in Chicago at the time, and they were shooting up each other’s cab offices and throwing bombs and shooting up cabs. So the Yellow Cab Company puts out a hefty reward for the people involved, which leads to another made by the cops on this time. It was a Broadway apartment where there were supposed to be people involved in all of this. [17:30] Among the people they find, first off, Frank Foster, who at the time was a high-ranking member of Bugs Moran’s group on the north side. They also find another bunch of people, one of them named Harry Davidson. This was, again, Izzy Alderman, but he knew that the cops were looking for Izzy Alderman, and they were looking for Robert Lewis by then. So that was Harry Davidson, and that worked out. And, of course, everybody gets charged with concealed weapons, and then the charges are dropped, and catch and release. Yeah, catch and release Chicago. It was really interesting. So shortly after this, of course, this is 1929 in Chicago, and it’s Valentine’s Day. We all know what happened there. Now this brought major heat, major attention from everyone nationwide, the student. [18:30] And surprisingly, later in life, like I said, he used to almost brag about his activity as he got older. One of the things he would tell people is that he missed the St. Valentine’s Day massacre because he was in the bathroom. Yeah, I was going to say, he missed that. The bathroom wasn’t in SMT partage, if that was the case. They had an outhouse, Flats. They had an outhouse out back. That’s true. Yeah, he was close enough to do that activity. Yeah. He was just caught up in the middle of all the major things happening throughout Gangland at that point in time. Really? How does he end up in Minneapolis? It’s reasonably close to Chicago, and there are some connections. It is. [19:19] Before he ends up back in Minneapolis, first he ends up back in New York. What happens now in New York, they’ve got their own problems going on between the two gangs back then. Yeah, they had the Castle Marie’s War during that time, I believe, or sometime around then. It broke out. Actually, it happens right after he gets shot. But as he gets picked up, there’d been a shooting that they had. First, they had the Easter Massacre, where a few people get shot up. And then the Fox Lake Massacre. Like I said, everything in Chicago was wars or massacres. And by the time the Fox Lake massacre happened, it was after the Valentine’s Day thing. Izzy Alderman, Frank Foster, Ted Newberry, and probably at least 6, 8, 10 other people affected. They left the Northside gang, and they moved south and joined up with El Capote. [20:21] Obviously, they could see where everything’s going. I mean, everyone at the outside is winning. But the authorities were aware of it. So after the Easter massacre and the Fox Lake massacre, now the cops know there’s going to be all kinds of retaliation. Fox Lake thing, Al Capone’s people got shot up. So cops are out on the street looking for people. They pull over a car racing down the street. They find Frank Foster, Izzy Alderman again, out with their guns. Once again, they get hauled in, arrested, catching release. Shortly after this, now we get a reporter, Jake Lingle. Jake Lingle, he was crooked. He was on the take. He was one of these $65 a week reporters who vacations in Hawaii and has an apartment on Lake George Drive, that kind of thing. He even said he had a fancy piece of gold jewelry that was a gift from Al Capone. Anyway, he gets into trouble with people there. He gets killed. [21:32] Now, everybody knows you can’t. The people you don’t kill are cops and newsmen. Jake Lengel gets killed, and now, once again, it’s like St. Valentine’s Day all over again. Big public outcry. Cops are hot and heavy. They know somehow Izzy Alderman is somehow tied into this. Frank Foster’s tied into it. So they’re hunting them. And a few months later, a cop spots Izzy. He’s in a restaurant with another guy, Joe Condi. They’re eating dinner. Cop recognized Izzy because he was really, which is surprising, he was really well known then to the cops, to the press, to other gangsters. [22:19] And yet today, who was Izzy Aldenman? Who was Ice-Pick Willie? So time goes by. But the cop spots him, recognizes him, grabs, snatters him up, and arrests him. As soon as they come out of the restaurant, runs him in for questioning for the Lingle murder. They get him in. There’s nothing they can tie him to the Lingle case with. So they charge him with vagrants. This is a new deal, a new tool that prosecutors are using in Chicago. Yeah. We know you’re a gangster. We can’t prove anything, so we’re going to arrest you for vagrancy because you have no physical means of support. You don’t have a job. [23:07] When Izzy was arrested at this time, he had about $650 in his pocket. This is worth like over 12 grand today so yeah the economy’s good when vagrants are carrying that kind of money obviously but they get arrested charged with first they’re brought in before a judge one judge mccordy he says there’s nothing to hold them on the lingual thing so they’re free to go the minute they walk out of the court building they get arrested charged with vacancy taken in front of another judge, Judge Lyle. Now, Judge Lyle, he’s known, he’s a holy terror when it comes to gangsters. He’s just after them. And even he admits the vagrancy thing, I’m not sure it’s really valid, but we’re going to charge you anyway. First thing is, he says, is I want a lawyer. So the judge tells the court reporter, the defendant has no comment at this time. And then in what’s probably the shortest trial in history, Izzy and his buddy are found guilty. [24:21] And shipped away to jail in a matter of like 10 minutes or something. How long was the sentence for? How long was the sentence for? They were sentenced to six months in jail. Okay. Surveillance. Okay. So now their lawyer comes back, goes back to the first judge, McGordy, who had released them on the Lingle chart. [24:49] And he convinced her, I don’t know, for whatever reason, Judge McGurdy says, no, I have jurisdiction in this case because they were brought before me first. And so he issues a bond and sets them free again. As soon as they walk out of the courthouse, they’re re-arrested again for vagrancy. At this point, their lawyer, the lawyer’s upset. And he’s telling, he tells the cops, that’s it. If you’re going to take them in on this bullshit again, you got to take me too. So they all went down to the station, the lawyer with them, charged with vagrancy again, locked up. Judge Lyle, like I say, Judge Lyle was not a friend of these people. He missed their fail at $10,000 on the vagrancy charge. And then he immediately changed it to $20,000 a piece because he was afraid they might make the $10,000 bail. These vagrants, mind you. So they’re backed off in jail. [25:56] Late that night, the lawyer, who’s also out of jail at this point, finds another judge who is either totally unaware of this case or he’s very aware of it. Either way, this judge says, oh, no, that’s way too much bail for vagrancy. The bail should be $100 for that. And as he says, they’re bailing at $100. They’re out again. Boom. So the next day, they go to court facing the, vagrancy charge in front of Judge Lyle. Judge Lyle immediately says, no, your bond was issued falsely, charges him with another $20,000 bail, has him re-arrested. Oh, my God. So they get their bond reduced to $10,000. They bail out of jail. They go to court. [26:51] Finally, on the vagrancy charges, maybe a month later. They’ve been dealing with this now for almost two months. Vagrancy charge. First day of the actual vagrancy trial, Izzy goes in, they arrest him for the burglaries back in New York, charging with hoax. So now they’re ignoring the vagrancy charge. They’ve got him locked up. They’re holding him for extradition to New York. He fights this still. He holds out finally in December, just a couple days before Christmas. He ends up back in New York to face the vagrants. He’s charged with the robberies and the murder of the fighting jeweler. Finally, everything gets dropped back in New York. You know, this is Meyer and Charlie’s area. All the charges are dropped. He’s free and clear again. He’s back home, so he sticks around. and it’s just in time because, as you mentioned, the Castle Marie’s war breaks out like a month later. [27:57] There’s no actual evidence, a lot of evidence of his involvement, but coincidentally, he is charged with murder about a month after the war breaks out. And, of course, his charges drop again, too, like they are. And then as the war goes on, first, Charlie Luciano, he swapped, changed his sides, they whacked Joe the boss, and then they set up Maranzano. [28:27] And Salvador Marenzano gets shot and killed in a restaurant, supposedly by a hit squad of Jewish gangsters that Meyer organized, because Meyer and Charlie were pretty close at this point in time. It isn’t sure who all was involved in that. Benny Siegel was supposed to be one of the shooters. And there’s no mention of Izzy being involved in it, but once again, just coincidentally, he left for France a couple of weeks after the shooting, where he stays until the end of the year when they first held at a couple of conferences. The one where Charlie Luciano organized pretty much the Italian crime family And then a couple months later, Meyer had one where he organized Jewish people, except Meyer had more of a national thing, whereas Charlie’s was more of the New York Five family kind of thing. [29:37] So anyway, at this time, I guess moving along here, Dave Berman, as you’re familiar with, being a Jewish mobster out of the Midwest, he’d come under Meyer’s umbrella. And then in 1927, he gets called to New York. He ends up in New York. At the time, Meyer, the Bugs and Meyer gang, especially being Budgie Siegel and Meyer Lansky, had this thing going where they were kidnapping rival bootleggers. Bootlegging was big business. Meyer was taking control of all of that. It was coming, especially coming in from Canada, which is where the Midwest came in, coming in by boatloads from Canada. We were drinking Canada Dry. Yeah, good one. So Dave Berman, he ends up in New York. Another bootlegger named Abe Sharlin gets kidnapped. [30:45] And the family agrees to pay like a $50,000 ransom to get him back. So when the two guys show up to collect the ransom, instead of a pile of money, there’s a pile of cops waiting for him. Immediately, a shootout breaks out. The one guy jumps out of the car, pulls out his gun, big shootout, people running everywhere. One guy shot and killed. The other guy, he surrenders. That’s Dave Berman. So Dave Berman, it’s, doing this for Meyer, but the cops don’t know that for sure. But they arrest him. He’s off to Sing for seven years for kidnapping. [31:27] Actually, back then, Sing, the prison in Ossining, New York, sat on the river, and so most people sent there, prisoners were shipped up there by boat. That’s where the term sent up the river. I didn’t realize that. Cool. So he does his time while he’s locked up there there’s not a lot of Willie doesn’t show up a lot but there is one specific mention of him, B Kittle he was a nightclub singer back in the early 30s young girl goes to New York chasing her dream ends up working at the nightclub that just happens to be to hang out for the mobsters. She doesn’t know this, but… And actually, she ends up marrying Mo Sedway later on. And Mo Sedway was one of Meyer Lansky’s close people, Benny’s people. She does remark, though, that she remembers there were two guys she’d always see sitting over at a table in the corner drinking together. One of them, she said, was Izzy Alderman, who she said was a lieutenant for Moe Sedway, and the other was Fat Irish Green. [32:51] Fat Irish Green was Benny’s bodyguard, hang-around-everywhere kind of guy. We always see the same people popping up all through this thing. Izzy’s plugged into this bunch. So anyway, we jump ahead a couple years. Dave Berman gets out of prison. Gets out of prison immediately. Meets up with Mo Sedway and Meyer and Charlie, everybody there. Dave’s been a stand-up guy. He kept his mouth shut about everything. He took his beef. He was good about it. But the story goes, they offer him a million dollars in cash for his loyalty. Fire took the judge. More employers should be like him. [33:42] Dave said he didn’t want the money. He wanted to be, he wanted control of gambling in Minneapolis. His mother lived there. His brother, Chickie, was there running small-time gambling thing. That’s where he wanted to go. And they say, okie-dokie, which I think is a good example of the influence, shall we say, that the East Coast group had over the rest of the country. They can just, I’ll give you this city in the Midwest. But before A.V. heads there, interestingly enough, there’s a couple of treasury bond robberies, big treasury bond robberies that happened in New York. They need total like over $2 million. [34:31] Big bucks and the FBI tracks down some of the bonds to a Minneapolis gangster, so when they arrest him along with him the Minneapolis gangster his name was Royce Boris Royce not that it’s a big deal but with him they pick up Davey Berman Davey the Jew is what he was called at that time they weren’t quite as politically correct, They got Dave Berman, they got Moe Subway, and there was a guy that the newspapers called, one account called him Jacob Irish Greenberg, and another one called him Jack Green Greenberg. So this would have been Fat Irish Green, it was Jacob Greenberg. [35:21] Once again, by the time it was done, acquittals all the way around. Wonderful things for him. Now Davey Berman pays off to Minneapolis to join his brother in the gambling thing. He gets there. Brother Chickie was running gambling initially. Isidore, or Kid Khan, was in charge. Isidore Bloomfield was in charge of the Minneapolis thing. And his brother, Yiddy Bloom. Yeah. But, of course, Davey’s here now. Since Kid Khan and his bunch were also Jewish popsters, that means they are linked to Meyer. And when Meyer says, okay, here’s Davey, now that’s how it goes. Davey immediately starts expanding the gambling joints into horse booking and race wire and craft games and everything. And he’s a good businessman. He’s sharp. And he’s learned a lot, apparently, from Meyer because he knows how to keep his name and people out of the name. Back then in Minneapolis, they had a deal. It was called the O’Connor Existence. [36:41] For the it was a deal that the local police had with gangster you could come to our town, and we won’t bother you we’ll leave you alone three conditions you check in with us when you get here so we know you’re here you of course make various payments to the necessary police and city officials and it was an orphan’s fund to the widows and orphans fund the police, and you promised that you will not commit any crimes major crimes while you’re in twin cities minneapolis st paul and if they’d agree to that they could stay there safely no matter who was looking for them so this also made it kind of more attractive i think for dave burman and people like him because obviously all you got to do is pay people off you’re good to go yeah kind of like the hot springs of the north, huh? Oh, yeah. So, once again, with this kind of ability, you don’t find a lot of mention of. [37:52] Dave Berman or his crew, especially in Minneapolis, and some of the police records have been lost there over the years. So that made it a little harder, too, to track things down. There are a couple of interesting things. For example, now, part of the Berman crew, one of them especially was Slippy Sherr, a guy named Phillip Sherr. They went by Slippy. He was really an interesting sort of guy. He was definitely a violent person he was constantly charged with assaults and murders and of course the charges were always dropped there was one occasion he was out with some friends in a bar they end up in an argument with the bar owner turns into a fight the bar owner goes outside flags down a motorcycle cop who’s going by the motorcycle cop goes back in with the bar owner and they proceed to get in a fist fight with Flippy and his friends, they get lumped up pretty good. Later, when they go to court. [39:01] The officer made a remark in court about, he said, all in all, it was pretty fair fight all the way around. And he said, for the most part, they’re pretty nice guys when they’re not drinking. Yeah. So aren’t we all? He was that kind of the guy Flippi was bollocked, Oh, another example of that. Willie ends up, by the time he hits Minneapolis, he’s become Willie Alden. He’s given up the Izzy thing, trying to put that behind him. Now, his focus is gambling. He’s like Dave Berman. It’s a muscle, maybe, behind Dave Berman. But he’s mellowed out a lot, and you don’t hear a lot about him. In one incident, though, they were golfers of all things. They loved golfing. And this is the 30s. So, of course, they can only golf at the Jewish golf course. Jewish people weren’t allowed at the regular country club. They’re out golfing. Flippy, sure, he would always join them. We wanted to force them. They didn’t deal with golf well. They’d get upset easily. I know the feeling. I know. [40:19] So on one occasion, Flippi slices a ball over into a neighboring farmer’s field. There’s an 18-year-old kid over there farming his potato crop. And Flippi, being argumentative, is a problem breaks out over the ball, him and this kid. Pretty soon, Flippi’s over there in the field. First, he starts wailing on the kid with his fist. And then he starts beating on him with his golf club until he knocks him out. Oh, man. This is like a $30,000 golf club. Game for flippy by the time it’s over and probably got extra strokes on that hole while he was there. [41:03] That the berman crew ran in minneapolis was 613 hennepin this was they were regularly it seemed like it was an annual thing it’s probably a deal they hadn’t once a year the cops would hit 613 Hennepin, they’d raid it, they’d charge him with gambling, whatever, and they’d pay their fine, let it go. But like clockwork, if you check the newspapers, once a year, it’s 13 Hennepin. So finally, last time, 1940, they go in, and now their cops are hyped. Big, great, they ain’t got all these cops, they’re ready to get the door down, charge in. To get there, Doors are wide open. Cop belt all run in. There’s still hot coffee on the stove. There’s a chalkboard full of all the race results. Everything but people. The places. There’s nobody in the place. This upset him made more of an embarrassment, I think, than anything for the police. He finally got beat out on that one. [42:09] That was 613 Hennepin. Was that the address and the name of the spot, 613 Hennepin? Or was that Hennepin’s like a common name up in Minneapolis? It was called the TMA Club. Okay, and the address was 613 Hennepin. Yeah, it actually had a couple of different names, But the address, no matter what club was at that address, whatever they called, it was the same thing. Yeah, I got you. They just sold. Now, about this time, this is late 1930s, of course, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Silver Church thing, the support group, so to speak, in the States, right? Yeah, yeah. And Judge Perlman from New York got a hold of Meyer Lansky. Yeah. See if he could offer assistance. And among the people that Meyer called was Dave Berman, of course, in Minneapolis. And Dave said, sure, I’d be glad to help. And Willie would be glad to help, too. Dave was a little nervous about Willie’s assistance because they really didn’t want anybody killed. And he wasn’t sure about that with Willie. But as it turns out, they said that Silver Shirts held their meeting at the Elks Club in town. and J.B. Berman showed up with some friends and baseball bats. [43:32] It took him about 10 minutes to clear the place out. A couple more go-rounds like this and the silver shirts, all the… [43:42] Nazi groups, neo-Nazis, whatever, they changed their mind about having these kind of meetings there. Like in New York, when they had Nuremeyer brought his people in, they were not extremely friendly to the Nazis, which is understandable. So the Silver Shirts complained to the mayor, Mayor LaGuardia, demanding protection for their rallies and their marches. And the mayor is obligated by law to protect them, to provide them with the support. And he did. He rounded up all of the black and Jewish officers he could find and assigned them to that duty. His mother was Jewish. Yeah, crazy times. It’s hard to believe. If you don’t read it in history yourself, you wouldn’t know it. It’s really something that’s been a gift under the rug. We had those Nazi sympathizers right up to World War II. It was crazy. Oh, it was amazing. People like Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, who wrote The International Jew. At one time, if you bought a new Ford, you’d get a free copy of that book. [44:57] I read that somewhere, The International Jew, that Jewish conspiracy that’s supposed to take over the world and have all the money and everything. Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s ridiculous. They just want to take over gambling. It’s obvious. Yeah, really. Then they wanted to move all these guys you mentioned, Mo Sedway and Mayor Lansky, of course, and Buggy Siegel. They all end up out in Las Vegas. They take it all to Las Vegas, don’t they? Yeah, and like I said, right from the very beginning, you’ll see the same name over and over. Benny Siegel, Gus Greenbaum, Joe Stacker. They had an amazing bunch. And if you look at it, most of them died in bed. Yeah. [45:43] It was a whole different, probably, mindset than you’d see with the Italian gangsters at that time. These are people who managed to stay out of jail, stay out of the press, and stay out of the ground and make money. Yeah. A FBI agent here in Kansas City gave me a quote one time on a documentary I was doing. He was talking about this national crime syndicate. And he said, yeah, he said, the Italians provided the brawn, and the Jews provided the brains. Pretty much how well you got to Vegas, obviously the Jewish groups around the country had been running gambling. They were smart. Meyer especially was a visionary. This guy was a genius in Meyer’s mind. And he could see that, obviously, Prohibition, as wonderful as it was for them, wasn’t going to last forever. But he could see the future in gambling. And I’m sure he didn’t foresee Las Vegas back when Prohibition was repealed, but he did see the direction things were going. [46:55] He developed gambling all over the country. And then when Vegas came along, this was just a wonderful thing for legalized gambling. They had the expertise, the experience, the knowledge, all they needed. Because opening casino is an expensive venture, so they needed more money. The Italians provided extra cash, and the Jewish groups had all the experience and the knowledge to run there. That’s where, back in the one conference, the Fraconia conference that Meyer organized, where he organized the Jewish groups around the nation, at that time he convinced, both groups were convinced that it was time that they start working together and not be at odds with them. with each other. Yeah, no, it was actually, it turned out to be a real profitable agreement as time went on. Yeah, especially in Las Vegas, so. [47:55] I’ll tell you what, Flatsy, it’s a hell of a book. That’s a hell of a story you’ve got there, guys. [48:00] We’re not going to disclose everything because we’ve got to go on out to Las Vegas, but we’re not going to disclose everything. We want you to buy that book. It really sounds interesting. It’s really a walk through the history and the expansion of organized crime from the early days from the Castle of Racey War and Chicago and the Beer Wars to Minneapolis and on out to Las Vegas. It’s a hell of a story. and Ice-Pick Willie was there for all of it, it sounds to me like. That’s what I found so amazing is pretty much every major event in gangland history at that point in time, he would somehow evolve there. And yet, here like 50 years or so after he’s dead, nobody even remembers him. They will now. The people he knew, the people he associated with, the things he’s seen, what a life really guys the book is Ice Pick Willie the life and times of Israel Alderman and the author is Flats F-L-A-T-S and I will have a link to that book on Amazon when this comes out so thanks a lot Flats I really appreciate you coming on and telling those stories, you betcha thanks for having me.

Transcribed - Published: 13 April 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with former drug trafficker Carlos Perez for a direct, unfiltered discussion about the evolution of the drug trade in America. Carlos has a new book out titled Pedro Pan: The Product of a Revolution Gone Bad The conversation opens with recent controversy surrounding the reported death of  the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader El Mencho, and what that development signals for the balance of power among modern Mexican cartels. From there, Gary and Carlos trace the arc of the drug trade from the Caribbean smuggling routes of the 1970s and 1980s to the dominance of today’s cartel-controlled corridors. Carlos reflects on the era of Ronald Reagan and the early “War on Drugs,” describing a time when enforcement was uneven and smugglers routinely exploited weak regulatory environments in places like the Bahamas. He explains how traffickers adapted faster than policymakers, using maritime routes, small aircraft, and coordinated pickup operations to move multi-ton quantities of narcotics. Gary and Carlos contrast those earlier days with modern interdiction efforts—advanced Coast Guard surveillance, satellite tracking, military-grade radar, and cross-border intelligence sharing. What was once opportunistic smuggling has evolved into highly structured cartel logistics supported by corrupt officials and narco-state dynamics. Carlos provides a candid account of his own rise in the trade. Starting as a construction laborer, he moved into pickup crews retrieving floating bales of drugs in open water. Over time, he became involved in larger-scale operations involving aircraft and organized distribution networks. He details the operational mechanics, the risks, and the constant calculation between profit and prison—or worse. The discussion also explores the blurred lines between political authority and cartel influence. Carlos explains how governments in certain regions became intertwined with trafficking operations, illustrating how power, money, and violence intersect across borders. In the second half of the episode, Carlos shifts to a personal reckoning. He discusses the moral compromises required in the drug trade and the toll it takes on family and identity. Ultimately, he chose to step away, prioritizing stability and long-term survival over fast money. Now living a legitimate life, Carlos has documented his journey in his book Pedro Pan: The Product of a Revolution Gone Bad, offering readers a firsthand account of smuggling culture, Cuban heritage, revolution-era influences, and the psychological weight of that world. His story reflects both personal accountability and a broader commentary on the human side of organized crime. This episode blends law enforcement perspective with insider testimony, giving listeners a rare dual lens: the cop who chased traffickers and the man who once outran them. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence [0:03] Unit detective. It’s great to be back here in the studio. It’s a cold day in Kansas City, Missouri, but we’re going to talk to a warm state and with a man that lives in that warm state, Carlos Perez. Welcome, Carlos. How are you doing, Gary? Doing good? Yeah, I’m doing good. A little cold, and I know it’s much warmer down there. We talked about that. Carlos was involved in the drug business, which is quite topical right now, especially today. Now, this won’t come out today, but as of over the weekend, the Mexican government arrested the El Mencho, the head of that, I can’t remember the name of that cartel. It was a Western Mexico, the state of Jalisco cartel. And somehow he got killed on the way to Mexico City as they’re transporting him. And his guys, the cartel members, are going crazy. Carlos, let’s talk about that a little bit, about this new war on drugs. When I was in Ronnie Reagan’s war on drugs, it was different than it is now. Now we have this new war on drugs with blowing drug boats out of the water. And this guy dies on the way to the bigger jail. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. Carlos, how would you, as a former drug trafficker, how do you react to that? [1:18] The laws change. And the more that the smugglers change, the more that the system to catch them changes also. In fact, when you’re talking about Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs, there was quite a few things that allowed the smugglers to succeed. One was, most of it, and I’m talking Caribbean now, most of it was going through the Bahamas. The Bahamas had laws at that time where anything governmental was not allowed to land nor dock a boat anywhere in the Bahamas without the permission of the Bahamian government. Which, by the time they got to wherever, if they reacted, if they were advised of some drugs coming in, it would take them a long time to react. I think they had two boats for all the islands that had to travel back and forth. You never, you couldn’t, they couldn’t, the DEA, the Coast Guard, they couldn’t catch you. [2:12] And when you fly a plane in, you just land anywhere and say hello to the DEA as they’re flying by because they can’t land. And therefore, you score the load that you have. Nowadays, Jesus God Almighty, now you’ve got the Coast Guard out there. You’ve got the Coast Guard citation constantly flying, plus Navy. But you couldn’t get it done. And back in those days, that’s the way it was done. It was the Bahamas played a huge part. The prime minister of the Bahamas was so heavily, even though he never. [2:42] Did any time or anything he was heavily involved he took payoffs to left left and right the whole the situation is completely different now you got AWACS flying overhead that can hear you when you’re in the bathroom anybody here’s my opinion on that I want to know who in the hell was in charge of sending those boats out of Venezuela that after the first one got blown up who was telling them to keep sending boats over now if maduro this is my theory if maduro was smart he would have stopped that if he was really the one in charge he would have gone god you got to make me look better you can’t keep doing it that tells me he was not in charge of the shit okay so there’s someone behind that kept going send them we got to see if we can score keep the score, i don’t know how he kept doing that that was to me that was such a stupid move especially when you You see that you’ve got half of America’s Navy sitting on your doorstep, and you keep trying to send drugs. What are you, nuts? The Pacific, they should have gone over to the Pacific, where there’s less surveillance, and maybe run it up the Pacific coast by land. [3:53] Okay. Try to get it into Mexico by land. Because back in the day, Mexico was not really involved at all in that. It was the Caribbean. And then when the Colombian cartel, which was Medellin cartel, when they stopped losing so many loads, they started to go to Mexico. And through Mexico, they just flew small planes, landed in the woods somewhere in Mexico, and then they moved it up. That was not – you weren’t doing that in the Caribbean by that time. And talking about Reagan’s war on drugs, I had two – this is the sideline. I had two little boats coming in from the Bahamas that had marijuana on them. [4:35] I still got to laugh at this freaking idiot. One of them, they were coming in from – Bimney’s only 47 miles away. You can almost do it on the fumes of a gas tank. This guy forgot to gas up. Coming over, he gets stopped by the Marine Patrol, right? As they’re searching him, the other boat had gone through but was wondering where his partner was, and he goes back to see where the guy is. [5:01] How’s that for – anyway, they get them both. It was a total of about 1,200 pounds. That had come from Jamaica, that’s about –, And the vice president, who was Bush, was at the Coast Guard dock when they were unloading the boats. And I was sitting there watching, going, damn, they look like my boats. And when I investigated, it was a—but that was one little incident that had happened. But the difference between yesterday, yesteryear, and now is chronologically things change. They trump the other everybody that was a president or that that had something to do with stopping the trade with drugs never really stuck their foot in deep to stop it it makes me feel like yeah you’re not really you’re talking a lot but you’re not really doing much because if i was a cop my god i usually i’d have had all kinds of medals from stopping these people because it’s an easy thing but no one really had the interest who was involved economically up the top god and only In the Bahamas, I knew who it was. It was the prime minister. Knew his people real well. In the States, everything changes every couple of years. And you don’t know what they’re thinking, what their process of thought is to try to stop this. You know what it was? None. They didn’t try. Okay, they did not try. [6:22] There used to be, oh God, probably about two or three DC-3s a night landing in Bimini, 47 miles away. Okay? Each one of them had 10,000 pounds on it. The boats were running up the river, the Miami River. Once you get inside on a river, inside land, you pretty much already scored. That changed. Then it went to freighters, fast boats going out, picking up, coming in. Then when the United States stopped that, when they declared, we’re going to be able to stop any boat anywhere in international waters. You couldn’t do it back then. [7:02] When that ended then you began with the airplanes the airplanes would take it this is still back when you when the US or any governmental agency could not, set foot in the Bahamian territory, Bahamian waters, without the prime minister’s knowledge. The prime minister’s involved. You’re not going to get it. It’s not going to happen. So that change, and it went to small airplanes. Fly it in anywhere you want in the Bahamas, and then get your boats, and from there on in, try to see what you’re thinking, your process of thought is going to be to get it from the Bahamas, some of the shorter points to the States and to Miami at that point. One of them for me was easy. And that was because I had information on the Miami tower and where in the hell everything was at any point in time. So I would sit and wait for my messenger to get back to me, to tell me where the smoker was, which was the big Coast Guard boat and where the citation was. Once I knew that, I knew I could come across. And the only thing I was going to run into was fishermen. [8:10] So things changed. And then they allowed things change after that. And obviously they were allowed to go into the Bahamas and do whatever they wanted. But that was when Pinland was finally out. I don’t know who the prime minister became after that, but it changed. And now it became, this is why I think that the cartels were stupid. They, instead of doing as much as you could without getting noticed, they started bringing in loads of 10,000 and 20,000 kilos. I was like, God, what the hell do they get all that? I know where they get it, but since I know how the situation goes, I want to know how they amass it and get it onto one boat or one container or whatever and not have it noticed. That’s just way too much to not notice at one point or another. People get edgy around shit like that. In other words, I could take two people and put them in front of a container and separate them and tell one of them, that’s full of drugs, and then tell the other one, no, that’s full of furniture. And then stand both of them there and see who gets nervous. [9:16] It’s human nature. It’s human nature. If you know something bad is going on, to feel it and to react. Why they did that, I don’t know. I was one of the ones, if not the only one, that was sent to Mexico to teach them how to put airstrips in the middle of the jungle, how to protect them, what to do with them, where to put potholes with certain rocks, get them out when they play in the stomach, put them back in when he’s done so if anyone else tries to land, they’re gone. But how it got so deep, I’ll never understand that. And I was pretty much in the beginning of smuggling as to notice chronologically how everything’s seen because I stayed for quite a while. Yeah. Now, Carlos, you’ve written a book about this. What’s the name of that book? The book is called Heisting the Beard. I just need the beard. The beard with a D, meaning Fidel Castro. Ah, interesting. Yeah, he’s just in Cubans when they go like this to their chin or they mention him and they mention him as the beard. He was heavily involved in the decision-making of Cuba running drones. [10:27] That book is about, oh, I ran into a guy. This is how this happens, which is really fun. I ran into a guy who I used to call him by the name of Banco. And he came and told me that he knew where there was a big load of drugs, jewels that they had pilfered from the ocean where they knew that shipwrecks have gone down. Because no one can dive around Cuba. And Cuba is a country that held all the gold before it went to Spain. Everything stopped there and went on. So he told me he knew where there was a warehouse that was holding that plus a lot of coke. And I had ways to get in. I have a friend who’s Bahamian, who was actually one of my partners, who’s from Ragged Island in the Bahamas. Ragged Island is maybe… [11:17] 20 miles off the Cuban coast, down on the eastern end of Cuba. So it was easy for me to sneak in. Everyone thinks of Cuba as this military power, Russia’s buddy. They didn’t have shit. They couldn’t put a plane in the air. They didn’t have patrol boats. They had patrol boats, but I swear I could out-swim them. It was ridiculous to see at what point they were developed as far as a country. And it was like, everything is going downhill as today, and it keeps going downhill. So I would sneak in on a Zodiac. [11:53] And I’d hit the coast, middle of the night. No one would see me. I speak perfect Spanish. I speak a Cuban dialect. So I wasn’t going to get caught by it because I looked like a black bean in a pot of white rice. It wasn’t going to be like that. So we figured out where everything was, and we went in and took a little look. And got awake after a lot of headaches, but we were able to do that. There’s other instances where there’s an airport right next to Havana called the Varadero Airport, and it’s a military airport. And I know that they were holding a lot of cocaine that was going in there. The reason I know that is because hearsay in the streets in Miami, you go drink a little Cuban coffee somewhere, you hear assholes talking garbage, and they would say that they were getting boats ready to go to Cuba to bring in whatever they had. So it’s not really why they make it a mystery as to why they were involved. If you think logically, let’s say you leave Colombia and you’re doing business with Cuba. Wouldn’t it be safe to just, oh, you’re chasing me, let me land in Cuba and I got no problem, not because they don’t want you here, but they want me here. That’s logically speaking. So why that… [13:11] That mystery among people that they weren’t involved. What are you, crazy? Not only that, recently, you might have seen it, they’ve had a Carlos Leder Riva. Okay. [13:27] Carlos, can you say that over again? It just zeroed out to say that over again. After you said Carlos Leder. Leder Rivas. Yeah. Now, whatever you said after that, say that over again. [13:45] Carlos Lerder Rivas recently has done some interviews on the drug trade. He did a lot of time in the States over the Norman’s Key transporting point where all the coke would go there. And then, like I told you before, they fly it into the Bahamas and then over into the States. He recently has been on saying how he was personally involved with Raul Castro. I have no doubt about that. I knew him personally. i flew a couple times into that island where it was transported out so i know what he was told the reason i also know that is everybody has this pablo escobar myth in their head he was neither the boss and he was neither the money man the money people were the ochoas the military his might and his force did not come from him and his mouth that he could do this and that it comes from rodriguez gacha who had a 2 000 man private army and he was one of the members of the cartel and they never tell you who started it all and it was carlos letter rivas he was the one that started the cartel he’s the one that wanted to be on in the colombian parliament and was looking for votes escobar is he was a he was a late comer into all that stuff the only reason they put him out there that I can understand is because they just wanted to figure out that they could knock the hell out of later on. [15:09] Okay? Because when he started fighting against Los Pepes, which was that organization that got together to try to kill Pablo, Pablo reversed it on those guys. He got rid of almost all of them, but it wasn’t him. It was Rodriguez. [15:24] Rodriguez gotcha. He’s the one. And he was involved in the Emerald business before he got into the coke business. He was the guy, let me tell you what, when Pablo was around, and I only saw that once, when Pablo was around Gacha, okay, this was down in La Guajira, in the high desert in Colombia. When he was around Gacha, you could tell that he was subordinate. He was scared. He was like, damn, if I mess up with this guy, he’ll take my head off. [15:53] So people really have the whole story, Pablo, Pablo, my, you know what, Pablo, my ass. There’s a lot of people who you had to have money to do those things yeah and in those days they were strong enough because of the ochoas well they could gather big loads a thousand two thousand keys and put it all together but as time went on chronologically that shit changed okay i can remember once getting a load where it had it damn you they labeled it they labeled everyone One had one name, one had the other So what they were doing at that time Was it got so tough on them Because of Pablo’s big mouth And because of his, I’m going to take over Blowing up a plane Doing a few other attacking parliament All those things You couldn’t put those loads together To me there’s no cartels anymore To me they’re government Narco systems You. [16:55] The Mexican government is definitely involved with the cartels. And as you saw, we went after a cartel in Venezuela, but the head of the cartel was the Venezuelan government. So what they are is narco states now. And you know how hard it is to attack or to deal with a narco state? Now you’re dealing with a government entity that has a lot of power. It’s a completely different ballgame. And Venezuela themselves, including Cuba, had a diplomatic immunity flying into different countries with the drugs. And they could put a load of cocaine on and fly into Spain, and they had no problem with it. And they were doing those kind of things, I would say, recently, like within the last 10 or 15 years. Maybe even since Maduro has been there, which is about 20 years, that they’ve been doing that. Really, the United States can get information on anything they want. They had this information but couldn’t do anything about it. [17:57] So chronologically, everything changes. Back in the beginning, let me tell you, the first time I made a little money was hauling some marijuana with old Touch Brown from the Everglades. And I worked like a Hebrew slave for four days in the swamp hauling bails from marijuana and into the into the everglades and then over into miami and it was completely different game and you know what they didn’t cheat me for one penny they didn’t cheat me for one penny and how much came in 40 tons on one of the boats yeah it was 80 000 pounds on a freighter and we worked like little like slaves and they paid me like two weeks later, they paid me $2. I’ll tell you that story in a minute. You asked me a while ago how I got started. Should I answer that, or you got another question you want for me? No, go ahead. How’d you get started in that? You started out as a grunt, as we say in the military. You started out as a low-end worker, a guy that transports bales. What did you do? You started saving your money up, and you knew where the connections were, and finally you You bought your own load and just kept getting bigger and bigger. [19:11] In a sense, yeah, it wasn’t drastic. When I came in, here’s the story. I’m in Texas. My mom calls me up and tells me I have an uncle who’s in Texas. He wants to see me. I get together with him, and he’s driving a brand-new Cadillac. This is a guy who, two and two to him is 22. I know he’s my uncle, but he’s a dumb son of a bitch. [19:35] He’s telling me that he’s got a, you know what a roach coach is? Yeah. with those construction things with food. He tells me he has a red smoke in Miami and that he bought a house, got a house, he’s doing really good. And I looked at him and I said, bro, you’re the one that’s crushed. You’re the wetback. I came on a plane a long time ago. He’s telling me stories. What’s going on here? So anyway, he tells me and I say to him, get me a job. I was working as a carpenter in Houston. Straight out of college, I’m banging nails. I said, God damn, I’m banging nails. but I got an education here. What’s going on? So anyway, I loaded up in Houston. I head and I end up in Coconut Grove working for one of the bosses. My job was $500 a week and I had to go and sleep on his yacht about 7 p.m. And by 6 in the morning when the workers started coming in, just go. That went on for about four or five months and I finally said, let me make some real money because I saw he was still moving and doing things economically economically moving forward, and I was sleeping on a boat. So he finally gets me an interview with two of the bosses. And this is a building in Miami that was called the DuPont Plaza building. [20:52] And so we go to the meeting, and I’m talking to the two guys. One of them, they called him El Coronel, and the other one, El Colorado. The Colonel and Red. They were the ones that were handling it. And this was, by the way, this was marijuana, coming from Colombia at that time. So we go in there, and he tells me, no problem. I’ll pay you $2 a pound. Now, understand that at that time, at that point in time, my mind is in Jersey and New York. And if you’re moving 20 pounds from one place to the other, it’s a lot. You’re not dealing with loads at that time. We’re talking, what, 1977 in New York? And I looked at him, I said, you’re fucking crazy. You think I’m going to risk my ass for $2 a pound? Even if it’s 300 pounds, that’s $600. Are you fucking nuts? [21:45] My uncle grabbed me by the shirt, stood me up and said, excuse me. Walked me outside and said, listen, there’s 40 tons coming in. You want the job or not? I went back in. I apologized to you guys. I said, no problem. I will go to work. From that point on, there wasn’t, that’s just, was right about at the end of the big freighters. And so now my uncle invites me to go to Bimini because he had a friend there and they were going to do some job. I don’t know. When we go, I end up running into a younger guy, Bahamian, and I became partners with him. We call him Dreamer. And I said, look, if you can set things up over here and gather up whatever materials you can gather up, I’ll come and get it and we’ll be partners. At that time, a lot of freighters and a lot of boats were being chased by the Coast Guard and what they would do is they would drop, they would dump it overboard. Oh yeah. Ergo the, what they call it, the square grouper. [22:44] Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Bales were floating everywhere. You could go out. So what he would do is he would go on a boat, find bales that were floating. He would call me up, and he would tell me, hey, I salvaged a 300-horsepower engine. Come and get it. I knew what the weight was, so I knew what kind of boat I had to take. So I bought an 18-foot formula. I dug out the hole in the bottom. I made a secret hole. What the what cubans call a clavo a clavo which is you’re hiding it underboard he called me up one day tells me there’s three he can get 300 pounds i left at eight in the morning was back in miami by 11 30 left at about 12 30 went back and picked up another load so in that first job we ended up making a couple hundred thousand dollars from there we bought a bigger boat, Now he started patrolling, All the area where the boats were coming in Because everything flows from the Gulf Down in this area, flows north The Gulf Stream goes north So everything’s going to float this way somehow. [23:54] We did that for probably a year Until one time, I was over there. We were going fishing, and we ran into a duffel bag. The duffel bag had 65 kilos in it that was just floating. At that time, it cost probably around $40,000 a kilo in Miami, let alone New York. We didn’t bother to take it up north. Sold it all in Miami. I used to say to myself, where in the hell does all this cash come from? Because they would pay. We made a lot of money that time. And then we had seen… Carlos, let me interject here. No, no. [24:38] You were making hundreds of thousands of dollars just by picking up cocaine and marijuana that had been thrown off other boats. So you didn’t even have to go buy it, really. You guys were just picking it up, the square groupers, and then putting it together and then bringing it to money. That’s crazy. You are an entrepreneur. You’re a guy that sees an opportunity and seizes it. Tell you what. And that’s exactly how it went, Gary. When we made that big chunk of money, we had seen how things were going because we knew that planes were coming in and landing. And they had whatever it is that they were hauling, either coke or marijuana. So with that amount of money, we bought a plane and I decided to become a pilot. I said, hell, we’re going to cut this down. I’ll fly. We’ll save money that way. And now we can talk to the people down in Jamaica or Columbia and say, hey, we’re coming together. We’re taking a responsibility. We’re not going to middle it. We’re not going to find it. We’re going to do the job. And it took off from there. [25:43] Took off real good from there. Eventually, I see that you are going to build in to have a legitimate life, become a horse breeder and a ranch owner and rub elbows with all the kind of the muckety mucks, if you will, down there in Florida. So tell us about that transition and how did your life change during that time? [26:04] I had a family. I had four kids by then. And I knew that I was in a business where the chances were threefold. I either score or I die or I go to jail. And I didn’t like any of those odds at that time. I was like, you know what? I’ve made enough money. I got a small little ranch out here. I don’t need to do anything. And I decided that was it. I don’t need to be doing this anymore. I’m set. And I’m the kind of person, I’m set with what I mathematically calculate. I’m not like I need almost $20 million. I calculated it to where I knew I could be comfortable. And talking about the mucks and the big famous guys, I had lunch with Sam Walton one time. How did you do that? [26:59] I was at his, his daughter, Nancy Walton, Laurie was heavily into the horse. And by that time I was into horses also. So we used to, I used to show them all over the country and we were in, in Illinois at a horse show. And the setup that his daughter used to put out there was unbelievable. It was like, whew, she really put out a spread. And he happened to be there one time. And it wasn’t like I went and had lunch with him, but a few people sat around, ate a couple of grilled burgers. And that’s my story of Sam Wolfe, the richest man in the world at that time. And look who he’s having lunch with. how really i’ve noticed going to horse races that a lot of the support staff are all hispanic i think because hispanic people know how to deal with horses have an affinity affinity for horses, you’re absolutely right the barn work even me and who as far as the horses went i was a nobody i just had my own little stretch even my workers were mexican they just are good at it they’re very good at that. Interesting. They understand country life, too. Yeah. [28:10] So, what happened? You’re like, you’re going straight. You haven’t really done any time. Surely DEA, I know enough about them that they keep files, and they may not do anything about you now, but they know a lot about you, and they don’t forget. So, what happened here? You can’t feed the government. It’s an entity, not an individual. You know, one guy prosecutes you and he retires. That doesn’t mean your case is over. He hands it over to somebody else and it goes on and on. They didn’t get, I didn’t get caught doing anything. I had too many ways to outmaneuver them and not because I was smarter than anybody else. It’s because I had contact. I had a contact, like I told you, at the Miami Tower where I would call him and say, hey, I need to know where this was. He would call me back and let me know exactly when I could cross. [29:06] So it was a matter of, in my case, I didn’t play Russian roulette. I tried to put things on more of the positive end of it on my side but i’m so they arrested me for money because they thought i had too much first the irs came in and they started checking out the next thing i know is i’m being visited by by the fbi but it was alphabet soup when they showed up at their hotel yeah not the farm i was like what the hell are these guys doing here anyway they grabbed me took me in and i’ll give you a funny story and you used to be a policeman yes all They pick me up, and I say to the guy, the old James Cagney state, I’ll be home before you tonight. Yeah, I’ll be home. You’ll be still writing your report when I’m back home. You’ll still be filling out the paperwork, but I’ll be sitting at home. [29:58] So I played that act. And actually, I did get home pretty quick. I was able to call my lawyer. He actually called up the mayor of Fort Myers. His name was Wilbur Smith. And he was a lawyer also. And Wilbur is the one that got me. It happened to have been on a Friday, which meant if they didn’t work something out, I was going to sit my ass in the jail until Monday. When the judge comes up. But Wilbur got me out of it. Wait a minute. Wait till the dogs get, okay. Can you start that with Wilbur? Wilbur got me out of that when the dogs quit. Let’s see. [30:38] Anyway, Wilbur gets me out of it. I’m walking down the hall with Wilbur to go see the judge real quick. And he says to me, he goes, do you do drugs? Do you have any drugs on you? And I’m like, oh, Jesus. I don’t know. I smoke weed, but I don’t touch anything else. I never have. And he goes, so, okay, we’re okay with that. And in my pocket. I had a joint in my pocket. I pull it out and I go, here. Oh, Jesus Christ, put that back. Oh, Wilbur. Oh, Wilbur’s shit when he saw that. But anyway, I was home. I was home that night. Now, here’s another funny story. I had a, along with this story, I had a maid at the house at the farm. And she was Brazilian. And she was not a resident or anything. That girl took, when they came, went to pick me up. And they took me into, it was a U.S. Marshall. She took off running into the woods. and I’m talking deep Florida woods and when I got back home about an hour later she ends up showing up and I said what are you doing why did you take off like that I was scared they were going to deport me, if you were scared what do you think I was. [31:46] And when they showed up that one time when they showed up you could have sworn that they were picking up Pablo Escobar it was alphabet soup long guns long freaking guns not just People holding their little long guns. Yeah. And I’m like, all this for me? Really? And you know what it is? It’s not long before that happened. They had called me in to do a polygraph. [32:14] The FBI did. I had no problem because they were trying to associate me with the head of the Indian cartel in America, the guy that handled everything, including the money. You might have, did you see Cocaine Cowboys Kings of Miami? Yeah, I did. Okay. The one guy, George Valdez, that was pretty much testifying against the other guys that he said he helped. Like how can you you’re snitching right in front of everybody bro anyway he i had a farm next to his, and the next thing i know because i guess they tried to associate me with him i had nothing to do with him next thing i know the fbi is calling me out they do a polygraph even my lawyer said don’t do the polygraph it’s not mandatory said i got nothing to hide now they told me they were going to ask me about horses they ended up asking me everything except horses until i finally yeah took those things off my fingers i pulled them off and i said this is done and i left not long after that is when they swatted in i was like jesus god who do they think they’re picking up here i’m just a in in uh in sense i’m still even if they know everything i’m still a grunt, I’m working for you. It’s not like I’m Mr. Put-it-together shit. You call me up, hey, we got a job. You want it? Yes or no? But it was unbelievable. [33:41] I went to jail. I did some time in jail. When I got out, I never once again really, even though I got 100 phone calls about you want to go to work, you want to listen to that, I never really thought about it again. My kids were growing up. The youngest one was six or seven by then. And they had suffered because I was gone. Yeah. And I didn’t like that. That made me feel like shit. [34:10] It just, it got to the point where when I was working, I looked at everything economically. Hey, this is what I’ll be able to have. Once you have what you want, economics is bullshit if that’s what you’re working for, because you already have it. Yeah. And when I got out, my thoughts were completely different. My thoughts were that the money is not going to solve any issues I may have. Physically, maybe. Mentally, no. mentally, I’ve got to learn how to deal with a little bit of reality here and figure out who is affected by my actions. And the people that were affected by my actions were people that were close to me. And I didn’t enjoy that. I didn’t enjoy that at all. It made me double take. It made me go inside and do a lot of things. [35:04] So from that point on, I really didn’t know what to do. And so I have a friend who is a big-time producer in Hollywood. We grew up together in Jersey, who told me, wow, you’ve got a lot of stories. You should start writing. I never thought about writing. So I started putting down ideas. I wrote a book. I wrote a bunch of political essays on what was going on in Cuba. See, I grew up in a revolutionary family. My father was in intelligence, and my uncle trained the troops that were going to go to the Bay of Pigs, among other incursions into Cuba. So I came over, I’m six years old. I’m a Peter Pan kid. I don’t know if you know what that is. Now, what is that? You’ve mentioned that before. What is that? Tell the guys. Peter Pan is, it’s not a good translation because it has nothing to do with Peter Pan. In Spanish, it’s Pedro Pan and had to do with a little kid eating some bread or whatever. But in 1960, the Catholic Church got together and decided to send the children out of Cuba so they wouldn’t suffer the wraths of the revolution. In essence, 14,000 kids were put on planes and sent into the States. I was one of them. Wow. I ended up in Miami. [36:27] I was one of them, and I was actually one of the lucky ones because I had family in Miami at that time, so I was able to stay with them. My parents were still back in Cuba applying to leave. Back then, they called the freedom flights. So a lot of those kids though they were sent some of them were sent to alaska montana wyoming really they were dispersed all over through families that were willing to help and and keep them until their parents came so i was one of them that grew up because of my father and my uncle the conversation most of the time if not all the time was around cuba and his freedom so the revolution at that time is going really strong in New Jersey. There’s a family in New Jersey by the name, the last name is Cook. [37:17] And they owned a big factory called Cook, Color, and Chemical. They were very wealthy people, but evidently they lost a lot of land or investments in Cuba. So they were willing to help the revolution and the revolutionaries. They had a big farm in this small little town called Hope. And that little town, you had all the Cuban revolutionaries up there getting ready. I’m talking about going into the woods with every kind of equipment you could think of. And they were training to go to Cuba. Now, here I am, six, seven years old. And I’m running around the woods with these maniacs. They would dress me in camouflage and tell me I was the next generation of Cuban revolutionaries. And I’m like, what the fuck is this guy talking? I didn’t. I was having a good time with all these guys. [38:06] And it ended up being that the new york times caught wind that there were these crazy cubans. [38:12] In the woods in jersey and they had to move their operations down to florida but about what happened in jersey in jersey the mafia at that time they were all involved with the kennedy and the prior to the assassination and everything that was going on they thought that the cubans did it they thought to the mafia. They didn’t know who did it. But there was a get-together one time. I was probably about seven or eight years old, and it was a dove shoot where they had a thousand doves, and they would all line them up and let some of them go, and then they would do a big dove fricassee. But that meeting, I just remember the names because I was being introduced, the son of, and this is Mr. Spud. The names never left me. One of them was Santos Traficante, who was the head of the mafia in in in tampa the other one was fat tony salerno who was the head of the mafia in new york there was my mom’s cousin who was an fbi uh agent and a bunch of other guys that looked exactly like him they dressed exactly like him well i could pick you out of a barrel boy and a lot of these other i grew up in the jersey new york area so i know what tough guys act especially of the Italian guys. So there was a bunch of them walking around like they could take on the world. And this is part of my life. I’m a young person doing it. I really don’t know what’s going on, but I’m picking up on all this stuff. [39:40] They moved to Florida. I’m away from all that stuff for a while. But my parents regularly go to Florida for a visit, for vacation. So every year, I’m running into my uncle and the things that he’s doing, what’s going on. [39:57] And so the life never mentally never leaves me. I’m always, I’m always hearing next year in Havana, we’re going to get them, all this nonsense. So the years go on and on and the situation, you wonder how the smuggling game got started. The smuggling games basically, and I saw a report on this not long ago, some lady reporting on it. You had a lot of educated men that were involved in the revolution that wanted to get their country done. The U.S. government, Secret Service at the ICIA, whoever they may be, cut off the funds when all the bullshit with Cuba was done. You’re not allowed to leave from U.S. soil if we cut you with any arms headed down. And they caught a lot of these Cubans trying to go to Cuba on little boats with all kinds of armament. They didn’t do shit to them. Okay, they just slapped them on the head and don’t do that. But it got to the point where the government was not funding that part of the Cuban Revolution anymore. What do a bunch of college-educated, university-educated men do? [41:06] They’re going to go work at the Fountain Blue? My father worked at the Fountain Blue when he first got to Miami. And there was water fountains that said whites, blacks, and Cubans. He was still trying to drink. It’s like my mother used to tell me. I didn’t know I was white until I got to this country. And now all of a sudden we have white Spanish, white this, white this. It’s ridiculous. So these men were not going to go to work with a little bacon with a little Cuban coffee. They have all these contacts all through Central and South America because of the revolution. So who becomes the primary smugglers? [41:44] Yes, the Cuban revolutionaries. And that’s how smuggling was started in the Caribbean. I’m involved with all these people because of my father and my uncle. My legacy is I can get right in. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. And that’s how I got to my uncle and him giving me the job with the guy. No, that nonsense. So it’s like the grateful dad said, what a long, strange trip it’s been. It’s been. [42:13] So where are you at now with your life? [42:17] Right now, we’re putting together hopefully a TV show on basically my life, but my life in a novel way, not in a very direct memoir way. And I continue to write. I am married to a wonderful woman who actually led me down this path. I was sitting on my farm doing quite well. My wife at that time had passed away from pancreatic cancer. That’s a death sentence. Yeah, I’ve heard that. [42:52] I didn’t have a will, and everything was in her name because I wanted to protect the family. Yeah. So when she dies, everything’s gone. I’m not knowing which way to turn here. I was 50, 70 years old. I thought I was going to be relaxing and fishing every day, and it didn’t work out that way. I was going downhill like a sled in a snowstorm, boy. I was going to hit eventually. I don’t know what bottom would have been, but I knew there wouldn’t be good. And I ran into a wonderful woman who led me down the road of, we’ve got to write, we’ve got to do this. And she is my manager, and we eventually got married. And sometimes things are tough, but they’re a whole lot better than getting that bottom. Yeah, really. Better than you’re out of jail. You’re not in jail. Not there anymore. What a long, strange trip it’s been for Carlos J.C. Perez. [43:57] I want to know how strange it gets to the point where the DEA comes to me to get information. And I’m like, you guys got to be kidding me. I always knew that when you’re in law enforcement, you depend on information. You go wherever you think the source is, that’s for sure. You think you can get something out of them. Exactly. They ended up being great, by the way. Great guys. Super nice guys. Okay? And if I said any different, I’d be lying. [44:28] But it doesn’t sound like you ever particularly worked for them. You didn’t go back in undercover for them either. No, no, I didn’t do that. Luckily, when I was doing the stuff that I was doing, it wasn’t out. It wasn’t a guns and roses type deal. I don’t ever remember collecting any money or doing anything where I had to have a gun on it. I’ll give you a little tidbit of something that just happened recently. I had to go into a government and reinstate my license or something like that. The lady’s going through it. She comes up with a ticket that I got in 19—now, I’m talking in the year 2000 and probably 14. She comes up with a ticket that I got in 82. It was a ticket. Yeah. The ticket was for $52. Two different tickets, 26 each. Okay. Yeah. You know what that ticket was for? I had come in from the Bahamas in the hull of the boat. I had 800 pounds. The Marine Patrol pulls me over and says, let me see what you got. They go through the whole thing. He finds two lobsters that I had in the live $26 per lobster. I got the ticket. The guy never checked the boat, never did anything. And I got in with 800 pounds, which at that time was like a quarter million bucks. [45:50] Oh my God. Life is funny, man. Life is funny. Life is funny. That’s for sure. All right. Carlos Perez. Now the name of the book and guys, I will, I will have a link in the show notes to it. Remind me of the name of the book, Carlos. Pedro Pan. Pedro Pan, as in Peter Pan. And Ron is bred in Spanish. So there’s something to think about the little magical character, Peter Pan. Not a thing. Not a thing. And it’s a product of a revolution gone bad, which basically is me. I’m an unfortunate product of that. Revolution. You’re back around now. You’re contributing to society. That’s the only thing that’s important in the end. Hey, I have a quick question. Did you ever hear of a book called The Corporation written by a guy named T.J. English? Oh, hell yeah. Read it from cover to cover. As a matter of fact, I know the guy. [46:46] What’s his name? Batista? Was it Jorge Batista? No, Battle. Battle, yeah. As a matter of fact, I know the guys that own the manuscript. Okay tj what’s his name what’s his last name tj english english the only thing he did was write the book off of the notes that they had gotten from a guy that i know his name is tony gonzalez tony gonzalez has another partner by the last name of freitas and what they did was they investigated battle over the years and years and and then somehow ran into english because he had written a couple of books on Cuba. And then T.J. English ended up writing that. And by the way, Battle took the New York mafia and put it on its knees. Yeah, I did a story on the book. And that’s true. He had to get permission. Actually, he had to get permission from back in the 60s from Fat Tony Salerno, and they couldn’t get an approval until Traficante stepped in and said, work with him. And what the hell were they doing then? They were killing each other. They were blowing up their little bolita houses and all that. Oh, that was crazy. But you know what? He was never any kind of a Cuban mafia boss. [48:05] He liked to fight chickens and play the numbers. The Cubans don’t really have a mafia per se. They’re too splintered. And in the mafia, you’ve got to go ask permission to do this and that. These crazy guys, they don’t ask anybody permission for anything. [48:19] Interesting that’s a that’s an interesting world that’s a whole different world that cuban, You’ve got the revolution on one side, the Castro revolution, and then you’ve got the anti-revolution against Castro that’s been going on all these years. And in the middle of it, you’ve got some of these people that were kicked out of Cuba that can’t get jobs and they only want you to work as a waiter or something. And so you go into business and the best business going with your connections is the drug business. And so it’s just a really interesting millage, if you will, or mix of people and situations down in the southwest part or southeast part of the United States. Oh, yeah, you’re right. It is a millage of like, how does this work? [49:04] There’s no sense to it sometimes. No, that’s for sure. I guess I’m glad they weren’t blowing boats out of the water. They might have got you back then. I can’t tell you what. They wouldn’t have dared because I would have said, I said, why don’t you do that? Oh, you get somebody else to do it. Yeah, probably what would have saved my ass anyway is that I have never, ever been money hungry. My family in Cuba, my great-grandfather was a sugar baron. And I’ve heard all the stories about all the money, but I’ve yet to see a penny. [49:36] I don’t work that way. I grew up with a bunch of humble people. And it wasn’t, damn sure, it wasn’t about money. And when I’m young, I’m not thinking like that. But now at my age, I go, wow, man, if I knew then, what do I know now? Yeah, really. All right, Carlos. Thanks a lot for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. No, no problem, Gary. Thanks for having me on. Okay.

Transcribed - Published: 6 April 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with author and historian Gary Clemente for a deep dive into the remarkable life of Nicola Gentile, one of the most influential yet little-known figures in early American organized crime. Click here to find books by mob expert Gary Celemente Gentile was no street thug. Born in Sicily in 1884, he immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and became a roving Mafia diplomat—trusted to mediate disputes among crime families in cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pueblo, Chicago, and beyond. Known as Zio Nicola (“Uncle Nick”), Gentile operated as a stabilizing force during the most violent period of Mafia history, including Prohibition and the Castellammarese War. Clemente reveals that Gentile’s story survives largely because Gentile broke the ultimate Mafia rule: he wrote memoirs. Those writings—published in Italy in the 1960s—were seized by the FBI and later translated by Clemente’s father, Peter Clemente, one of the first Sicilian-born agents assigned to the FBI’s elite Top Hoodlum Squad. The episode offers rare insight into those translations and the intelligence value they held for federal investigators. The discussion traces Gentile’s interactions with legendary figures such as Carlo Gambino, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Vito Genovese, as well as his behind-the-scenes role in shaping the Mafia’s modern organizational structure—including the creation of the national Commission. The episode also explores Gentile’s personal contradictions: a lifelong criminal who saw himself as an honorable man, a mediator capable of violence, and a romantic who later believed a lover betrayed him to federal authorities. After fleeing the U.S. under indictment, Gentile returned to Sicily, where he later provided intelligence to Allied forces during World War II—another unlikely chapter in an already extraordinary life. Despite being sentenced to death by Mafia leaders for publishing his memoirs, Gentile was spared due to the respect he commanded on both sides of the Atlantic. He died peacefully in Sicily in 1970, leaving behind a story so expansive it feels tailor-made for film. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am a former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now turned podcaster and documented filmmaker. We record the mafia, everything we can about the mob. And today I’ve been wanting to do this story, guys, as a man named Nicola Gentile. Did I get that right, Gary? Beautiful. All right. This is Gary Clemente, and Gary’s been on before, or GP Clemente. He’s been on before. His father was Peter Clemente, who was one of the original Sicilian-born FBI agents in the United States and did a lot of translation work with Bellacci. And he’s written, he’s writing books. So we talked about the first book, but tell just a little bit more about it. And guys, I’ll have links to that book. And then tell me a little bit about the two more you have coming out. The first book that I wrote in a series of books about my father’s lengthy FBI career is called Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. [1:04] And it’s about my father’s career in the mafia from 1950 to 1976. And in 1957, he became a part of the Top Hoodlum squad, which is an elite group that J.H. Goober started as part of the Top Hoodlum program. And what happened was in 1957, they had a big mafia conclave meeting in Appalachian, New York. [1:30] And they had about 60 members of the mafia throughout the country, all the bosses that attended this meeting. And it became publicized. The cops were there. They confiscated their identification, their wallets, the money, everything. And it got released into the news. This was a big story. [1:50] So what happened was J. Edgar Hoover at that time had been denying the existence of the mafia for a number of reasons. Probably because he didn’t want to get involved with all of the muck of trying to prosecute these gangland people because he knew that they had a lot of buffers between the bosses and the guys committing the murders. So he knew it was going to be difficult, and it would blemish their conviction record and rate. So he kind of stayed away from it, denied the existence of the mafia, And along comes this Appalachian Conclave meeting. It got released into the news, and everybody was up in arms about this. That’s when Hoover decided to start the Top Hoodland program, because there was absolutely no denial of what was going on here, that there was some sort of vast criminal organization that was highly organized, and he had to do something about it. So in 1957, my father became part of the Top Hoodlum program. [2:54] And in particular, the Top Hoodlum squad in New York City, which is really a hotbed of mafia criminal activity. You couldn’t get any more hotter than what they had. They had five mafia families alone in New York. And the first book was really about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino, how Carlo Gambino became one of his original subjects for him to study and to profile. [3:24] He was ordered to do that, and he was happy to do that. The book is really about him confronting face-to-face with Carlo Gambino, and then afterwards wiretapping him at the Golden Gate Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He was on the other side of a wall. From Gambino for six weeks. Gambino did not know he was on the other side of the wall wiretapping him with another agent. So that’s what the first book was about. And the second book is about really the backstory of my father’s life before he got into the FBI a little bit. Then his first years in the Bureau, when he was a part of the investigation of the Communist Party and the Workers’, Party and the few offices that he was in, like the Springfield, Illinois office, and also Cleveland. And then he became a part of the New York office. He was still investigating communist activities at the time. And then he became a part of the Top Woodland squad. And his milieu, his wheelhouse, became organized crime and the mafia. So that’s generally what has happened so far. The second book is being released this coming month, and it will We’ll have book two and book three talking about these sorts of things. [4:44] Interesting. Interesting. All right, guys, I’ll have a link to the old book down there in the show notes and look for that new book coming up and we’ll get back together. I’ll get back with Gary after the book comes out sometime and we’ll do another show. And we’re not going to talk about the mafia so much. We’re going to talk about these activities, which I think is interesting, of the FBI against the Social Workers Party and the Communist Party USA because they did a lot of work. When I was growing up, Gary, do you remember I Led Three Lives, the TV show about, his last name was Phil Brick. It was a weekly TV show about an undercover FBI agent who supposedly was working as a member of the Communist Party. He would go to these meetings and things like that. Do you remember that? I Led Three Lives. I do remember that. That show goes way, way back. What year was that show? Oh, that had to be 1953, 54. I had to be like 9, 10 years old, 55. I was 10 years old, so it probably may be 1955. I do remember the show. I think I’ve seen reruns of it. Yeah, I bet it’s on YouTube. I have to look that up for fun one of these days. [5:52] Issue Machine’s show back then, we will talk about this later on at another time as regards to the second book. Back in the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s main enemy was the Communist Party. It wasn’t organized crime. That was his top focus. He wrote a book called Masters of Deceit. And people, I think everybody, they should have this book in public school system, but they don’t want to do that today. Today’s public school system, they try to inculcate youngsters in more social activities and social warriors and not learning about the perils of Marxism and communism. [6:33] Okay, today we’re going to talk about Nicola Gentile. Now, 1903, he was a Sicilian immigrant that came to the United States, and he found a lot of opportunity among the other Sicilian immigrants because he was a blackhander, if you will, when he first got here. He was a criminal who came over from Sicily, but he was able to move among all the different families, all the different cities, and settle disputes and help people get organized and do things like that. Gary, start telling us a little bit about what you remember about Nicola Gentile. First of all, I want to tell people that Nicola Gentile was an uber jovelace. He was jovelace on steroids. Somebody later on in his life, toward the end of his life, he wrote his memoirs down. This was in 1963. So what happened was he published his memoirs in Italy. He had a co-author, he had another journalist write these memoirs down in Sicilia. [7:36] These memoirs were then grabbed by the FBI and they were given to my father. My father had the papers written in Sicilian. And I remember as a boy in 1963, when this happened, my father was sitting at a table translating these memoirs with my grandmother. Now, my grandmother grew up not too far away. My grandmother and my grandfather grew up not too far away from Nicola Gentile. Nicola was born in the town of Siculiana. Try to say that, Gary. [8:14] I give. I said that one real fast. So he’s writing these, translating the memoirs with my Sicilian-speaking grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather spoke, my grandparents, my father spoke Sicilian as well, too. He grew up with that as a little boy. But my grandmother and my grandfather were helping him translate these papers. These are the FBI papers. This is a copy. This is a copy of the FBI photocopy after it got translated. And my father did write some notes here and there. You can see it’s fairly light. The print is fairly light on it. I do have some post-it notes or notations, comments on it. But this is about 185 pages that were translated. And the language is quite formal, I’ll read to you a little bit of the first page What Nicola Gentile wrote as he started off Before you get started there, was that book ever translated? Is that available here in English form like on Amazon as a book you can buy today? I know a lot of people are wondering, can I find that? [9:34] That’s a good question. I haven’t gone that far yet. Okay, all right. I don’t know. I’ll take a look. That is a good question. But this is the translation that my father and my grandparents did. And whether it came out that way in these books that are out now, I don’t know. There are some books that do talk about Nicola Jantili, but I don’t know if there are any English translation books. So this is how the first page of Nicola’s book opens. Siculiana, a small town of Sicily, did not, prior to 1900, offer any opportunity for work or secondary school education for the betterment of life of its youth. [10:22] The greater portion of whom in which there existed the disposition encouraged by the family while still young frequented the shop of an artisan where they struggled to learn a trade, but at the same time often neglecting school so that illiteracy reigned supreme. So that’s the sort of language that Nicola used in it. And it’s quite interesting. It’s a bit formal. He does jump around a bit from his activities from one place to another. He talks a lot about how he knew practically everybody in the mob at that time. He knew people like Luciano. He knew he interacted with Al Capone. He interacted with Vito Genovese. He interacted with Albert the Mad Hatter, Anastasia. These were all the big shots. I’m talking about in the 1920s through the 1930s and all the way after. If you remember that in the 1920s, the 1919 prohibition happened, okay? That’s what really blew up out of everything, the prestige, the money, and the power of the mafia. That’s how it grew because of prohibition. and they were able to bootleg liquor, and Nikola was indeed a part of this. [11:51] He traveled around a lot. Now, what was the deal with that? He was in New York. I think that was his base, and that’s where he got started, but he traveled to, I think, New Orleans, or did he come up from New Orleans? I can’t remember. He was in Kansas City. He was in Cleveland. He was in Pueblo, Colorado. He made some connections. There’s a really old, early family in Pueblo, Colorado. I’ve talked to a descendant of that family, and I’ve talked to another author that knew quite a little bit about it so he traveled around to these different families what was the story with that, For whatever reason, he was a robing ambassador and a mediator. Look, you’re talking about organized crime. You’re talking about the mafia. You’re talking about vicious people who had one thing and one thing only in mind. What was it? Duh, money. Money and power. Because of that, you’re going to have disputes. You’re going to have arguments. You’re going to have people being killed as a result of it. And Gentile was the sort of individual that, think of Nicola Gentile as a Vida Colleone. [12:59] Think of him as a godfather figure. Very wise, understanding how to mediate the disputes, realizing that, as everybody else did, that if we do not mediate these disputes, what will happen? We will be at each other’s throats like animals. Yeah. And our organization cannot exist. Our universe, our world cannot exist if this happens. So we must mediate these disputes. We must have an organizational structure. We must have a boss. We must have an underboss. We must have a consigliere, an advisor, who tells, who gives words of wisdom about how to proceed with business. Whether to take somebody out, how to proceed in such a fashion. So all of that was a part of the world. And it existed for many years, for many decades because of that. [14:01] Now, let me start off a little bit to tell you the beginnings of Nicola so we can lead up to how he got to this position. So he was born in 1884. He came to America at the age of 19 and went to New York. He travels to Kansas City to meet with his brother Vincent, who lived in Topeka, Kansas, not too far away from Kansas City. He started working out in the Santa Fe Railroad, and he became a linen peddler, and he did make some money doing that. He returned to Italy in 1909. He married in 1910 and had a daughter named Maria. Now, in his papers, you really don’t hear anything more about that happening. You don’t hear anything about his wife, children, nothing. And it isn’t until later on, at the very end of his memoirs, he talks about the women in his life. We’ll get to that later. But so what happened was he returns back from Italy, gets back to America, and he goes to Canada. Then he moves to San Francisco with his brother, and he continues to sell linen until 1914. And it isn’t until he was a year or two later, maybe about the age of 19, 20 or so, he starts getting involved with the Honor Society. [15:27] Now, he knows about the Honor Society from back in Sicily. He’s been well aware of it. He’s been involved with it. At the age of 15, he had been convicted of a crime, and he had been sentenced to jail at the age of 15. So he wasn’t new to the world of organized crime. He knew it from back in Sicily. It’s a very deep fabric of the world of Sicily at that time. Why is that? Because in Sicily, in those years, in the late 1800s, you had either what? You had a sort of a feudal system where people were working for these large landowners, and the landowners were absentee landowners, okay? They delegated authority to people underneath them, and the people working for their land and working on their land were really, for example, a lot of poverty happened because of it. So to bridge that sort of gap with poverty, the Mafia started, in other words, and they called it the Honor Society. These were men of honor. And Nicola Gentile describes it as the, let me see here. [16:39] He describes the honor society, originating many years ago in antiquity, and it gives the right to defend the honor of the weak and to respect human law. With these principles as its guide, it’s still operated within the mafia. So you understand that within the honor society, here’s the code that we must be civilized, even though we’re acting like animals. [17:08] We don’t want to act too much like animals but otherwise we will destroy, the golden goose so this is what they put in the back of their minds we must act in a civilized manner, so that was the understanding of how the outer society worked so he went to New York he went to Brooklyn, and at that time the mafia probably had 2,000 2,000 members of the mafia in New York at that time, between the five families. They call them Bocate families. So he joined the Outer Society in Pittsburgh. [17:49] And soon after, he was asked by Gregorio Conte, the head of the mob boss in Pittsburgh, to do a killing for him. Okay? Now, he doesn’t say whether this was an initiation right, because that’s what they usually did in the mafia. You had to kill somebody in order to be initiated into the mafia, become a member of it. So he was ordered to do a killing, and what happened was he confronted this individual in front of a restaurant. His brother shoots the victim in front of the restaurant. He runs away before Nikola, empties his gun into the guy. Paul runs away. Nicola’s standing there with his gun. People are yelling and screaming, oh my gosh, he did it. He killed this person. Paul is running down the street. He takes his firearm. He shoots it up in the air. [18:45] Scares the crowd away. Nicola runs away. He escapes from that scene. Now, Nicola really has never, throughout his mafia career, he’s never been arrested. It isn’t until later on in his life that he actually does get under the eye of the police and he becomes indicted and will get arrested. So that’s what happens to him later on. But later, during his life in the mob, he does not get arrested in any way, shape, or form. Although he got to Italy, when he goes back to Italy, he was under the scrutiny of the police there and he had been arrested. He gets out on bail, and he was accused of crimes there. So he was pretty slippery. But in terms of what we’re talking about, his mediation skills, little by little, he becomes this sort of individual that people look at as somebody that can mediate their problems and to tamper down the situation that can become very hot. And he became somebody that the other mobsters called, they called him Uncle Nick or Zio Nicola, Zio Cola, Uncle Cola. They saw him as a sort of a vunticular figure. [20:07] That could ameliorate these disputes and these situations that they were involved with. In Kansas City, our mob boss was Nick Savella for a long time, and I was looking over some wiretaps, and people were talking about him, and one of his underlings was talking to another underling about something he was going to take to him, and he called him Zeo the whole time. They always referred to him as Zeo, so that’s a term of honor and respect throughout the mafia world. [20:37] That’s right. As I keep saying, the mafia was able to exist for as long as it did because they had an organizational structure. They had a code of honor that kept them from not acting like wild animals too much. Too much. A lot of these people, you’ve met more than your share of criminals. Gary, you know how many of these people can be. Some of them can be very business-like. Some of them can be very vicious, vicious, sick people too. And the great scarpets of the world that would kill dozens of people. These were psychopaths. You had your whole range. You had your whole range of people. And the fascinating thing about Gentile was that he knew a lot of these individuals. You talked about the Kansas City, the Kansas City entity. Yes, Pueblo, Colorado did have its problems at that time. And somebody had been killed, the Pueblo, Colorado family, and that sort of spilled over into Kansas City. Kansas City was asking to mediate the situation, and it was Chile mediated the situation because of it. [21:57] Chantina became the boss of the Kansas City family. Now, he does not get into this in great depth about what he did in Kansas City at Boston, but it was a temporary thing. He was bopping around from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Kansas City. He went to New York. He was in Boston. He was far away, San Francisco, Los Angeles. He was all over the place. And he was very well respected. He had a lot to do with what was going on in Chicago with Al Capone. Interestingly enough, Al Capone, at that time, when Gentile encountered him, his family, if you want to call it his crime family, had a lot of international entities in it. It wasn’t an Italian thing. He had a lot of different people from different ethnic backgrounds as a part of his organization. It wasn’t until Nicola comes around and the mafia bosses came around and told him, look, this is what the mafia is like. We’re not an international group here. [23:08] It’s strictly Italian. You want to be a part of it, you need to buy into this. Okay. And that’s indeed what he did, bought into the mafia, marginalize the people that were not Italians. Booted them out and or killed them sometimes and started his own mafia italian thing in chicago which became very very well known as as a bloody place to believe bloody bloody place to be because of the the killings that they had prior to him being a part of the mafia officially there were a tremendous amount of gangland killings as you know in chicago so he had a large part to and he He did keep a lot of those other ethnicities around as players, as people he could use, though. And on into Frank Nitti’s time and on up into current modern times, up into the 50s and 60s, they had several people that were on the periphery would be associates. But I guess he had more organization of Sicilians, it looks to me like, over the years. Yes, yes, he did. What happened eventually was, as Gary, the Castellamareci War erupted in the 1930s. That’s another hard one to say, Castellamareci. Castellamareci. I can say that, Castellamareci. [24:35] Try to say that real fast. So what happened, the Castellamareci War erupted. In June, the boss mazzeria was the boss of bosses. They called him the king. Was the boss of the Capetituticape, the boss of bosses, okay? [24:53] And Mazzaria was wielding a very heavy hand that a lot of the other bosses in the country did not like at that time. And in particular, Maranzano became his chief foe. And he was originally from the Castellammare area of Sicily, okay? and his henchmen, his crew, the men around him were from that area. So they had a big war with the children past Mazaria. They wanted to assume power. A lot of people were dying. They were dropping like flies, especially over in New York. And Nicola Gentile was one of the people that were trying to mediate this situation between Mazaria and Marazano. Originally, Nicola sided with Mazaria, but then the ties changed. In turn, everybody wanted Mazaria dead. All the other bosses wanted him dead, including Capone. Mazaria was eventually executed in, I believe it was 1931. [26:05] And so Salvatore Marzano assumes power, okay? The people that Mazaria had underneath him, And Marisano said, we need to get rid of these guys. So he wound up killing all of the mazzarela boys. So everybody was saying, look, I don’t see any end of this bloodshed. We don’t need this publicity, okay? We need to operate in the shadows, okay? And Carlo Gambino was an expert at doing that. So what happened was the war ended. Marisano took over. He kills the boys. But then after that Marzano, what happens power gets to his head and easily lies the crown of the king, Marzano eventually gets killed by the other bosses and it was Vito Genovese. [27:00] It was Vito Genovese that was ordered to do the hit on Marazano with his crew. And as a result of that, Gary, the other bosses said, look, we need more structure here. There’s too much bloodshed. We can’t have this going on forever and ever. So they created a commission. Now, they did have other commissions before. They did have general assemblies like that. And so they created a commission that included Lucky Luciano, included Al Capone. [27:35] Included Joe Profaggi, included Joe Bananas as part of the commission to settle down, settle things down. Now, I said that originally, when we started that, that they had an Appalachian conclave, right? They had about 60 bosses, 60, 80 bosses there at that conclave. That’s big. Believe it or not, while the big war was going on, Al Capone had a meeting on his dime in Boston, I believe. Guess who was there? I’m sorry, about 500. They had 500 mafia guys there. And there was no publicity about it. Not what happened later on in Appalachian, New York. So here you have, you imagine, 500 mob guys meeting at a hotel in Boston, and it wasn’t covered by the media at that time. But that’s part and parcel of what Nicola was involved with, some of the people he was involved with at that time. So what happens to him later on? What stirs him to write this book? [28:44] What happened was, toward the latter part of his life, he starts to talk about a couple of women that he was involved with. He talks about, I will put all the paperwork so you can actually hear the words that he talks about. He talks about how he met this woman named Maria. [29:08] He meets this woman named Maria, and he really captures his imagination. He doesn’t talk about that he had been married, that he also had a child, too. He had a child named Maria. So he meets this woman named Maria, and she’s really stricken with him. And to the point where she tells him that she’s so smitten with him that I’m going to read what, He tried to pose as a jewelry salesman so that he could meet her. He says, I suspected that you weren’t a jewelry salesman. She says to him, she said, you did. She whispered in my ear, lightly touching my earlobe with her lips. She used to finish by kissing me on the mouth wild with love. There were moments of passion that our bodies would entwine, palpitating with love, and which would later be abandoned with languid reproves. So that’s the sort of language he used. And at one point, he talks about how he liked going to her apartment to visit her when he was feeling edgy. [30:28] You’re a mobster. You feel a little bit edgy. You’re always looking over your shoulder, right? So he was happy to go to her apartment to calm down, and she would talk to him. And she says, Mary was happy to see me. She used to tell me, Nick, that’s how she called me, you are an extraordinary man. You don’t know with what fear and respect those Boers, the Shacatani, speaker view. The Shacatani were the people of Sciacca, Sicily, that were mobsters that he associated with. It says, your name impresses everyone. Any woman alive brought to live among this rabble would be happy to be your co-worker, to wear men’s clothes, and at the necessary time of the occasion should present itself, to embrace a Tommy gun and die in your arm. [31:26] So that’s the sort of romantic verbiage that they used at the time. So what happened, too, was he sees her, then eventually he meets another woman named Dorothy. [31:41] She professes herself to be Irish to begin with, but then he finds out later as she tells him, I’m actually not Irish. I come from a Sicilian family. But she just wanted to impress him somehow to get his eyes. She was very attracted to him, to this woman, Dorothy. What happened was they have a love affair with each other, and Nikola, this is to the very end of his story here, Nikola had been involved with a gambling house in New York, and the gambling house was starting to go underwater. He needed money, so it was proposed to him by another mobster by the name of Jacono to do some narcotic trafficking down in Texas and Louisiana. [32:31] He gets the permission to do so from his bosses. Look, Nicola was still a roving asset, and he had to get permission to do things so that he could acquire enough money for investments, so he can give them money back, so he gets permission to do this. He starts getting involved with the drug trafficking trade in Texas and Louisiana, and he sees that he’s being tailed a lot. He doesn’t understand why. He says, out of nowhere, the police would show up. How did they find out? At the same time, he was trying to contact Dorothy. Before he left, Dorothy asked him. [33:11] Will I be seeing you much? She said, I don’t know. I could be gone six months or a year. She says that she’s so heartbroken about this. And he leaves and he gets involved with the drug trade. And he’s asking these questions about how is it that the cops are showing up at these different places where we are trying to transact business? What happens was he tried to contact Dorothy at different places where she said that she could be contacted. She didn’t get back to him. So he puts two and two together. He thinks that he believes that Dorothy was actually a treasury agent. She had been spying on him, that she was the Mata Hari, so to speak, and was feeding the information to the feds. to where he was. So what happened was they indicted him, got out on bail on $18,000 bail, and he was urged to be a stowaway to get to Italy. So he stows away on a ship, gets back to Italy. And interestingly enough, Gary. [34:23] He starts at World War II erupts, and he becomes an asset to the Allies in Sicily. He’s given them intelligence about what’s happening in Sicily with the mafia in Sicily. And the mafia in Sicily did not want to have anything to do with Mussolini. Mussolini was trying to bag on them big time. He’s trying to shut them down. And Nicola helped the Allies with intelligence reports on what was going on in Sicily. And that was a big part of what he was doing. And then later on, it wasn’t until 1963 or so, and he was still getting involved. He was still getting involved with the mafia at that time, doing criminal activities. But he wasn’t welcomed as much as he had been before. But he was still involved with them. What happened was the 60s came around, and he started writing his memoirs. He was an older man, and he started writing these things down on paper. [35:28] Which is what a mafia member does not do. You do not speak a word, let alone try to write it on paper. Otherwise, it’s a penalty of death. So he wrote all of these memoirs down in 1963. It got published that he was sentenced to death. But one of the mafia families in Sicily refused to do it. They refused to do it because he had a lot of respect. Members of the mafia in the U.S. And also in Sicily respected Gintilian very much because he had this godfather air about him. He had the Vita Corleone air about him. I will talk to you, and I will come up with a solution for you. Everybody’s calmed down by that. They’re not so excited and bloodthirsty when they hear that. They sense him to death. The mafia family in Sicily refused to carry out the hit. The book was published, and he lived the rest of his life in peace. He died peacefully as an old man in Sicily in 1970. Wow, 1970. That’s a hell of a story. That is a hell of a story, man. [36:44] I’m telling you you can make a movie out of this man’s life oh yeah literally the way he was jumping around from one place to the other he was really a maverick rogue sort of individual who is who did not have a higher education about him but was extremely intelligent and was able to use this and that’s what that’s why they respected him a lot of these individuals that he dealt with were boars and uneducated individuals to begin with. Many of them were highly intelligent. And as my dad always told me, his son, these individuals, especially the mob bosses, they could have been tycoons of finance. They could have been industrial tycoons, wizards of finance and economics and Wall Street if they had wanted to, but they did not want to. So they choose a life of crime. [37:40] Interesting. I’ll tell you what, that’s a hell of a story, Gary. That is a really cool story. I’d always wanted to do this guy’s story, mainly because I knew of his Kansas City connection. I talked to our local FBI agent here that has chronicled a lot of these things, got a book out there about those early days, and he’s excited. He’s looking forward to listening to this. So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Gary Clemente, GP Clemente. His father was Peter Clemente, the first Sicilian-born member of the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. And Gary has been translating his works, is what he did. He wrote down a lot of stuff, and Gary’s been translating. He’s putting it down to a series of books. It’s called, let’s see, it is Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad, I believe. I think I can read that on your event there. He does speaking events, too. If you’re back east, you’re from New York City area. Where are you from? Where do you speak at? I originally grew up in New Jersey, not too far from one of the Sopranos guys. [38:47] In New Jersey, my father was working at the New York office at that time and decided to buy a home in the suburbs of New York, not too far away from New York City. So that’s where I grew up. On the right side of the track. If somebody wants to get a hold of you to do a speaking engagement, though, how do they find you? They can get a hold of me at my email, gpclementibooks, gpclementibooks, at gmail.com. And I’m also on X, gpclementi16, I’m also on X. And the book is available on Amazon. You can pick it up there, and it’s doing quite well. I’m looking forward to the next one coming out next month. Yeah, I bet you’re looking forward to that. Yeah, and if you get his book, be sure and give him a review. Give him a good review on whatever review you want to give, but give him a good review. Please. [39:48] Because it helps these guys a lot to get a good review. More people will buy their book. And we, guys, we all want to encourage these mob historians. And Gary has done a real great job at chronicling the history, not just the blood and guts. We all like the blood and guts stories and the murder stories, but the entire history. You were talking about them being out in Pueblo, Colorado, and I just couldn’t figure that out. I just talked to a woman whose ancestors were in Pueblo, Colorado, connected to the mob out there. And she said that what it is, there was lead mines out there, and a lot of Sicilians were miners, and they went to that southern Colorado area to work in the mines. And I know we have a large group of Sicilian populations in southwest Missouri where there were strip mines down there for coal. And it’s a huge family of them down there. And so it’s, you know, where the work was is where people went to, and that’s how they ended up spread around the country. [40:45] That’s right. There were many Sicilians in San Francisco, Louisiana. Believe it or not, when Sicilians were in Louisiana when they first immigrated to Louisiana, there were several of them that had been home because they were looked upon as less than human. And the locals did not want them infiltrating their population. So it didn’t just happen to African-Americans, it also happened to Sicilians. Yeah, I’ve read about that story. So it’s an immigrant experience. Any group of immigrants that comes to the United States at first. [41:25] You know, the greater population, the English and the Irish and the Germans already have the good jobs and they keep them pushed out. And they have a different language, totally different language. And everybody else is speaking English. And so it’s really hard for an immigrant population to move in. That’s why they have to start businesses. And along with them, they brought the mafia. They had brought this tradition of the mafia that is shadow government, if you will, for them. Well, that’s true. And I must add that even though I talk a lot about the mafia and the world of the mafia, the Cosa Nostra, that my father was involved with, My father would be the first to tell you he was not proud of the criminal association and organization that these people started. He was not proud of it in any way. In fact, if you read my first book, you will read the part about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino and told him to his face that he was not proud of what Gambino and his associates were doing. And the bad name that they were bringing upon other Italian and Sicilians that had come to this country, like my grandparents, that work hard and made something of themselves. It’s not something to be proud of. Fascinating, interesting, but it’s not something that I’m certainly not proud of either. But pretty amazing, considering these people could have done something more honest. [42:51] But they chose not to. That’s a whole other story and movie to talk about. Yeah, it is. Gary Clemente, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks so much. You’re welcome. Thank you, Gary. Great being here. Gary to Gary. Gary to Gary, yeah. You know, they don’t name Gary anymore. Gary, little kids, Gary anymore. That was back right after the war in the early 50s. Everybody was named Gary. I had three Garys, I think, in my class. I tell you, I went to this movie with my grandkids. It’s called Zootopia. And they had a character in there called Gary the Snake. [43:27] So that’s what we’ve devolved down to, We’re nothing but snakes, Gary Guys, I really appreciate y’all tuning in And don’t forget to like and subscribe And down in the show notes, I’m going to have links to this stuff And I’ve got links to some of the stuff that I sell My books and DVDs If you want to rent them, I’ve got a link to that You can rent my DVDs for $1.99 So thanks a lot, guys. Okay, Gary, thank you. Hey, thank you, Gary. Thank you very much. Really appreciate that you’re having me on. Really enjoy it. Anything I can do for you, please let me know. Anything I can do. You know that I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book, right? I didn’t remember. I do so much sometimes, Gary, that I forget all what I do good. Yeah, I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book. I gave you a good endorsement. All right. The second book, the one that’s coming out, the one that’s coming out, we’ll have the same thing on there. You got some author blurbs? You got enough author blurbs on there? Yeah, yeah. Your endorsement will be on the back of the next book, too. Okay, all right, all right. All right, Gary. Thanks a lot, my friend. Hey, thank you, buddy. Anything in Kansas City. When the other book comes out, I’ll let you know. Yeah, let me know. We’ll do that show here in a couple of months. Okay? Hey, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, all right. Stay safe. Okay, buddy. Take care. Bye-bye.

Transcribed - Published: 30 March 2026

In this episode, Gary Jenkins, retired intelligence detective, sits down with veteran true crime authors Frank Gerardot and Burl Barer to examine their book Where Murder Lies, a case that intersects Russian organized crime, Italian mob connections, and a troubling claim of wrongful conviction. At the center of the story is Jimmy Kitlas, a young man who struggled with learning disabilities and instability after aging out of a rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles. Facing homelessness and limited options, he gravitated toward individuals connected to the Russian mob, seeking protection and belonging. Instead, he was drawn into criminal schemes—including check fraud and drug trafficking—engineered by experienced mob figures who exploited his vulnerabilities. Frank and Burl provide historical context on the rise of Russian organized crime in the United States, particularly in neighborhoods like Brighton Beach. Unlike the rigid hierarchy of traditional Mafia families, these groups often operated through looser networks, engaging in lucrative scams such as gas tax fraud alongside Italian crime figures. The authors explain how these alliances blurred lines between ethnic crime groups and created new power structures within the American underworld. The discussion then shifts to the murder that reshaped Jimmy’s life. What began as manipulation and grooming evolved into betrayal, jealousy, and ultimately violence. The authors detail how Jimmy’s arrest followed a carefully orchestrated narrative that shifted blame onto him while shielding more powerful figures. Through examination of court records and transcripts, Gerardot and Barer argue that investigative failures and prosecutorial decisions compounded the injustice. 0:02 Introduction and Guests 0:47 Wrongful Conviction Discussion 4:26 Kelly Lee’s Influence 6:33 Russian Mob Background 12:28 Jimmy Kitlas’ Journey 18:47 Investigative Challenges 22:58 The Murder Plot 26:45 Russian Mob Operations 28:29 Geographic Control in LA 31:29 Trust and Collaboration 35:03 Daniel Patterson’s Role 37:10 Conclusion and Book Promotions 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, and I have two guests today. Frank Girdo. Is that correct, Frank? Girdo? That’s pretty good. Gerardot. I’ll take it. Gerardot. Gerardot. Just don’t pronounce a T at the end, right? Yes, sir. [0:24] And Burl Barer. Is it Barer, Burl? Yep, that’s close enough for government work. Joe’s enough for government work. That’s the story of my life, as everybody knows. I like to get it close. And we never let the real facts get in the way of a good story either. So let’s just get going here. We like to tell stories on this channel. That’s what my guys like is stories. [0:44] Stories about the Russian mob and maybe a little bit about the Italian mob. And we also got a story about a wrongful conviction, which is a kind of a hot topic right now. We’re seeing a lot of different things in these true crime shows about wrongful convictions. And there’s been, I think a lot of them have been uncovered. In the last few years because people started paying attention to that a little more than they used to. When I was a policeman, they didn’t pay any attention. Never heard of a wrongful conviction. I really congratulate you investigators and authors and true crime diggers out there that see these things and then go take a look at them because they need to be taken and given a look at. So Burl Baer is an Edgar winning author and two-time Anthony Ward nominee. He’s got a lot of experience in reporting. I see you’ve been in the Hollywood Reporter, even the London Sunday Telegraph, New York Times, USA Today. [1:38] You’ve got, I believe you’ve got some other, what else do you do, Burrell? I watch a lot of TV, watch a lot of movies. What kind of shows have you been on? You’ve done other investigations here. Yeah. I did almost, Frank and I have done most of those shows. Deadly Women, Deadly Sins, Behind Mansion Walls, you know, all. [1:57] Do you name them and claim them? We’ve probably been on them. All right. And Frank Gerardot, you’re a journalist, radio host. You’ve authored several true crime nonfiction books, co-author with Burl on A Taste for Murder, Betrayal in Blue. And you did one with somebody else named Byrne. Oh, that was about John Orr. And I read that book. Actually, I read that book, that John Orr. That was a hell of a story, man. That was a hell of a story. Several years ago. So that’s a, it’s a crazy thing. And that, that, that book really tells the story of John Orr through his daughter’s perspective. Ah, okay. And, and I don’t remember which one I read. I read one. I listened to a podcast about the whole thing all the way through guys. That was the LA County was an LA County fireman, fire investigator who was sat in his own fire all up and down in California. Oh yeah. He would go up North. He was in Southern California. He would go up north to a fire conference and he’d set fires on the way back. It was crazy, craziest story I ever read. And after he got arrested, the number of arson fires in California declined by 70%. I’ll be darned. I’ll be darned. He set brush fires, just all kinds of fires. It was crazy. Name of that book is Burn, Guys, if you’re interested in that by Frank Cardo. That’s the French pronunciation. Yes, sir. Yes. [3:18] So these two guys, they have their publicist, God Hold Me, and they introduced me to this book, Where Murder Lies. It is a fascinating look, and they did a real great examination of the Russian mob, a little connection to the Italian mob in New York City as part of this investigation into really a wrongful conviction case, a wrongful conviction of a kid who was, I guess we don’t use the word retarded anymore. He was mentally disabled and retarded in some manner. I’m not sure exactly how to describe that anymore. How would you guys describe him? So, yeah, I think he’s differently abled. We’ll say that. He’s actually a pretty smart guy. He speaks a lot of languages. He read this book in a night. [4:01] He just, I think more of his problem is that he’s maybe learning. He had learning difficulties. And as you’ll see when we get into the book here, he had a lot of physical and emotional trauma growing up. Okay. Jimmy Kittlis was his name. Yes. And a woman named… Kelly Lee. [4:22] A woman named Kelly Lee got you guys interested in this story. It’s a wrongful conviction story that strays into this mob ties. Who was she? Now, who was Kelly Lee? [4:32] I could tell you about Kelly Lee. She was one of the first people I met when I came to Los Angeles in November of 2003. Three, she was doing intake at Teshuvah, which is a Jewish community kind of rehab for people with all-matter recovery issues. I’d just been through a bad patch, et cetera. He needed some help. She did my intake. Wound up becoming friends with her and her husband. And a few years later, we’re having dinner together. She says, oh, Pearl, you’re a true crime writer. I go, duh, yeah. And she pulls out a handful of court transcripts that are difficult to get nowadays. Thank you. Says, take a look at this. She was, at the time this murder took place, what I would term an unlicensed pharmaceutical supplier on the streets of West Hollywood. Correctly. Gotcha. Marijuana, primarily. Yeah. And she had six arrests for selling pot, which now would probably get her a community service award here. Yeah. Times were different. And when Jimmy Kittlis ages out of the facilities or whatever down in Lake Elsinore. When he turns 18, they just put him on a bus with a ticket to West Hollywood. Goodbye. [5:49] And he gets off. He meets her. She’s a very compassionate person. She can see that this kid is really childlike. Babe in the woods or babe on the street, he’s really going to get taken advantage of. She takes him under her wing like a surrogate mom and tries to tell him and teach him how to survive on the street. And then she said, he’s like a child. Could be really eager to please, super polite, has the intentions man of a goldfish. Oh, look, there’s a castle. Oh, look, there’s a castle. It’d be very easily used. [6:28] It had a lot of sexual energy. He needed a girlfriend. He got one and got her pregnant. And she really tried to help these kids, But she couldn’t be with him 24-7 And she certainly raised her eyebrows When she saw who was spending a lot of time With this couple And that was a well-known fellow In the Russian mob, Yeah, I read that So let’s talk a little bit about the Russian mob So you guys really went in the background When they first came to Brighton Beach Tell the guys a little bit about that background. [7:02] Yeah, sure. As the Soviet Union began to crumble, a lot of Russian Jews found their way to New York, and they found their way to Brighton Beach. And they set up a sort of black market trading system among themselves and within the community with all the sort of standard features of mafia, right? Protection, extortion, sometimes murder, certainly dealing in black market stuff like drugs. [7:32] Clubs, prostitution, just about every kind of crime you can think of happening in a neighborhood that’s protected by a mafia. These guys were controlling in this neighborhood of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach. What I thought was interesting, and readers will probably find interesting too, is that there’s not a real setup like a commission or families. The Russian mob really operates more like Ronin. There’s guys that just independent operators and build up their business based on their relationships and how many people they can pull into a scheme. What we also found is that these guys were pretty adaptable and they picked up on a scam that the Lucchesis and the Gambinos were operating. And that was to get gas, steal it, take it from places where it wasn’t really tracked and put it into gas stations, sell it for maybe a penny less than the guy across the street, but capture the tax, the federal excise tax money and pocket it. And this was a multi-million dollar scheme And to the fine-tuning of it The Russian mob, Worked with guys like Michael Francesi To really extract as much as they could from it One of the guys in our book. [9:00] Meyer Ida, who was in Brighton Beach and operating there, came to Los Angeles in the mid-90s and started up the gas tax scheme. But the feds were pretty wise to it at that point, and he got caught up in the sting. Interesting. If I remember right, some of them were, they couldn’t steal it, but they would set up companies, shell companies, and then buy gas and then sell it a little bit cheaper. And it was up to them to collect the tax and then pay the state. And they do this for a certain period of time. And then they just declare file bankruptcy or just walk away from that shell company and create another little LLC and do the same thing. So just like run after you just couldn’t catch up. You bust out of one and move on to the next one. And that’s what they and you could they change the laws for gasoline purchase changed as a result because you could just go buy it. You can make up a company today, buy it tomorrow, sell it on Thursday, collect the tax on Friday, and bail out on Saturday and start all over again next week. Wow. Wow. There’s a scam. There’s a mob that’s willing to take advantage of a loophole like that. It’s crazy. So they moved out to LA. What other kind of scams? Go ahead. Go ahead, Brett. I was going to say that the Russians were so good at this type of scam, far ahead mentally of the American Mafia. [10:29] They were the best people they ever worked with. They were geniuses. They knew how to do this unlike any other. And in fact, the gas tax scam, the biggest moneymaker for the Russian mob and eventually the American mafia than any other form of income, billions of dollars. Interesting also is that if the former Soviet Union, should probably know, they factor in the Russian mob in their economy. I believe the last figure was 63% of the GNP of Russia was crime. They actually give a figure for it. Here we go. In America, this percentage of our federal income is from crime, but in Russia, they do. 63%. I don’t know what it is in America, But we talked to this Stan, who’s never going to pronounce his last name. And he had been in the Russian mob ever since he was a kid, raised in it. [11:32] And so that’s just what we were brought up with. We didn’t think there was anything unusual. If you were a girl, you were going to be a sex worker. They were respectable. If you were a guy, you were going to do this. And it was never as bad or as evil as the Americans said it was. It was always, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. coming. It’s so scary. I noticed you had a chapter titled Glassnose Gangsters. [12:00] I thought that was a pretty tricky title. I also read once that in Russia, they were so used to dealing with corrupt officials and running different scams that were in and around governmental agencies, like the tax collecting thing. They were so used to that, that they really refined this to a fine point than Americans could, because we’re not so used to dealing with corrupt officials. We have some, but not like Russia. Russia was an art in Russia. [12:28] Yeah, and they just took the template and brought it right over here and started earning pretty quickly. So now, how does Jimmy Kittlis, he’s a street kid. He’s one of these, what I call throwaway kids. We have this group of kids on the streets that are 18, 19, 20, use drugs. And lots of times these older men who are gay want to pay him for sex or bring him in and take care of him. Was he one of those kids? Did he get into that kind of a lifestyle? [13:02] He’s a homeless kid. He’s a runaway. And the place that he goes to, Hollywood and West Hollywood, is full of people that want to exploit young boys. Yeah. The lifestyle that he got into, though, was I think he recognized that there would be, people there who were stronger than him and smarter than him and want to take advantage of him. And so he sought out ways to hook up with mobsters because he figured that if he was connected, that would protect him from some of the bad stuff that might happen, especially like sexual exploitation. [13:41] When he goes into a homeless shelter, he peripherally knows about Mark. He asks around about Mark, who’s a Russian mobster. And the homeless shelter introduces them and says, oh, hey, yeah, Jimmy here would like to do some work with you. And so he falls into doing work with Mark and let the scamming begin, as they say. Interesting. Yeah. I read the book how he was, he had such a facility to learn language that he learned Russian pretty quick. And he had other languages. Just one of those people that just could start picking that up. Me work like hell, and I can’t have one conversation, but somebody like that, they just pick it up. I understand he picked up Russian pretty quick, too. Very quickly, and to this day, speaks it pretty well. And that got him some cachet. [14:30] But that only goes so far because, Gary, these guys that come in at a low level and aren’t Russian are really just mules. And that’s really what Jimmy was. He was a mule. Mark’s specialty was Czech forgery. and check washing. And he taught Jimmy how to take envelopes and get checks out of them, change who the check was written to or the amount that the check was drawn for, and go to various banks and cash those checks. And Mark was a pro at it. He had equipment to do it. He knew how the scam worked. He knew that you don’t go to the same bank three days in a row. You go to a couple of different banks and that’s how they got by day to day. [15:18] Interesting. Yeah, I worked one of those little scams once, a little group of people that were doing that. They could have a process that can wash some of the ink off of a check and then put and change the amount and those kinds of things. They’d work, they’d go to grocery stores on paydays. People used to take their grocery, their checks to put grocery stores on paydays plus banks. So it’s a pretty good moneymaker that needs little guys like this to go out and cash the checks while the bad guy sits back and provides the checks and takes most of the money. So it’s interesting. Yeah. And that’s exactly what Jimmy was, the little guy that cashed the check. [15:57] I want to interject something here. Now, Mark was, as Jimmy said, he looked like a Russian mobster. He was a Russian mobster. However, what Jimmy didn’t realize is that the whole family, or most of the family, was involved. Mark’s uncle, Meyer ITF, also known as Mike, was a very prominent figure in the Russian mob in Los Angeles. The fans were very aware of him. He was, shall we say, a big shot. He was the godfather of Plumber Park here. He was the guy. Jimmy didn’t know that. He just knew about Mark. As you know in the book, sooner or later it becomes a situation involving a fortune in gold and smuggled MDMA that puts Meyer in federal custody. Meyer wants out of federal custody. Mark not only is a Russian mobster doing bank fraud, he’s also an FBI informant and a DEA informant and an informant of the Pasadena Police Department. [17:07] Frank says, according to the menu at a Chinese restaurant, going from column A to column B, how do I get my uncle out of prison? Solve a murder. Oh, what’s the easiest way to solve a murder? Plan it. Set it up. Blame it on someone, like maybe Jimmy. Final result, I’ll tell you, Meyer got out of prison. Jimmy went to prison. [17:36] Wow, that’s a hell of a story. Frank can give me more insight on that process, but that’s the short form on how this all winds up fitting together. Yeah, and you guys, when you went back, you had to go back. Could you be able to pull she had transcripts from the court so you could find out who testified were able to get any more information police department’s notorious for not allowing reports to go out i can’t even get them out of my own but and i bet it was really bad on that how did how’d you go about that how’d you start digging into this and get your first clues that you can tell you about trying to talk to the items about this yeah yeah so it’s like an onion i i look at it like that and we had early on kelly shared with us some of the trial transcripts so that’s pretty good yeah there’s a lot of information in there and it and within the trial transcripts there’s names and and dates and so we started picking at it and early on you know we couldn’t get cooperation from any of [18:40] the mobsters yeah we didn’t get cooperation from the fbi or the dea We were able to do some digging. [18:48] And I think the digging led to a congressional hearing on the Russian mob back in the early 90s. And Meyer Itev’s name pops up in that hearing. So from there, I started digging through federal court files using PACER and came across all kinds of court documents involving Mike and then his nephew for various scams they were involved in. [19:21] And then taking those court documents and continuing to research and talk to people and figure it out, we were able to lay it all out. It took us six years to do this, but lay out a narrative of who’s Mike, who’s Mark, who are they involved with, and what kind of things were they operating when Jimmy got involved. And where was everybody when this murder took place? And what we found out was that Mike was in federal custody and had been charged with involvement in a scheme to steal gold from a place in Massachusetts. And how the scheme worked is Mike and his buddy posed as government scientists who were building a nuclear reactor facility in a run-down apartment in Pasadena, California. And they were able to put in purchase orders for the gold and have it delivered to this apartment. And only when one of them misspelled sergeant on the P.O. And sent a fake check did the government catch on and arrest him. [20:37] When they brought him in and charged him with this, the first thing that these guys wanted to do was figure out how they could get out of it. They hooked up with a guy in Hollywood who was involved in a scheme. Yeah. To dissuade a reporter from writing about the actor Steven Seagal. And this guy, his name is Alex Proctor, went to Meijer and another man in our book, Daniel Patterson, and said, listen, can you help me? I need to knock off this reporter. [21:12] Daniel, as you’ll see from reading our book, is a pretty well-connected guy. He’s done some pretty interesting stuff, but murder was the limit of what he would do for anybody. He began to peel back some of the layers of that onion for authorities in that case. And that led to Meyer being in custody. And that was the catalyst for Mark and his other uncle, Gary, to try to figure out how can we get him out? And they believed that the government would let Meyer out of custody if they could inform on a big enough crime. Big enough crime probably wouldn’t be a burglary or a low-level assault or a battery. It had to be something significant. And then this murder happens. Wow. How did they choose this victim? I don’t know necessarily that they chose him, but this guy lived in the neighborhood where Mark and Jimmy hung out, and they essentially manipulated him into believing he was going to have sex with Jimmy’s girlfriend. And then manipulated Jimmy into thinking that, hey, this guy’s going to have sex with your girlfriend. Aren’t you upset by that? Doesn’t that piss you off? Don’t you think you should be a man and do something about it? Yeah. [22:39] Hormones, jealousy, rage, greed. It’s like there’s everything like comes together in this one moment. And we end up with this guy, Alex, who’s a school teacher, just ends up dying. [22:55] So they got motive and means and opportunity. They can manipulate Jimmy into providing all those for the investigated officers. Yep. Yeah. Wow. And, you know, and what, and what really the thing that really, I think, so there’s this event that happens and there’s a, there’s like part of this, there’s a locked door mystery that investigators encounter. But the other part of it is how after the crime, Jimmy was arrested. [23:27] Manipulated into going to a hotel as a hideout that was arranged for him by Mark and Gary Iteve. And as soon as Jimmy’s in the hotel, they park themselves outside and guide the police to the hideout where they arrest Jimmy and his girlfriend. I think I read that initially, after the school teacher was dead, they got in, was it Pasadena? One of the police departments got an anonymous call giving up the body, where it was, the murder, and the suspect. Only one anonymous call. And then they, and then, oh, my God, this was heinous. Let’s mention that locked door. Let’s mention this locked door. This was heinous, heinous. When the police get to the scene of the crime, and they noticed that the apartment does not show any forced entry. Living room, everything, it’s fine. Get to the bedroom, however. The door had been locked from the inside. Jimmy said when he left, he locked the bedroom door from the inside. This is now after the fact. Someone shows up and tries to get in. They can’t because the door’s locked. They want to get in real fast. And they finally get in, practically ripped the doorknob off to get in. [24:50] At the same time, let’s assume it might be the same person, Mark ITM uses the dead man’s telephone to call his lawyer to say, I want to report a murder that we could use to get my uncle out of prison. [25:07] Using the dead guy’s phone. Then after they arrange that, he cuts the wires and leaves. Also wiping the door, the doorknob clean. His fingerprints are in there because he acknowledges he was in the bedroom earlier when Jimmy put the unconscious, still-breathing fellow on the bed. [25:29] He leaves. Mark left, went out and told the girl. Jimmy killed the guy. But when he left, the guy was alive, breathing on the bed. He says, come down after in a minute. So then he tells the girl, we got to go because we’re going to get in trouble with the cops. What are we going to do? So it was a real mess. So to say, who killed this guy? Jimmy had to take full responsibility because he confessed to protect his girlfriend. Also, he felt bad about putting the guy to headlock and throw the old drunk guy to the ground anyway. But then again, how did Mark make a phone call to his lawyer and the dead man’s phone after all that happened? And after the doors ripped open in the apartment to the bedroom. Did he find the guy already dead? Or did he have to help finish the process? Legally, he was found not guilty. Mark was. Just like OJ was. Because did OJ do it? Did OJ not do it? Did he cover for his son? Whatever. But legally, he was not guilty. Same thing with Mark. Not guilty. Jimmy, guilty. Whether we killed him or not. [26:45] We can’t say. We weren’t there. Crazy. Crazy, isn’t it? [26:52] What other kinds of things was this crime family, this Russian mob family? It’s like a family. I’ve read about these. They’ll have that one strong man, and then you’ll have a group that kind of emanates out from that, but yet they’re not part of some larger group. They stand on their own. And so what else, what other kind of crimes were they involved in? Was this talking about MMDA being smuggled into those that’s a party? Rave kind of clubs yeah they one of the things that they did was make a counterfeit viagra one of the guys had a uh an idea to he bought some viagra and he had a plan to set up pharmacies where he could like order viagra through the pharmacy and like with the gas tax right don’t pay anybody have the viagra and sell it and then one of the other guys said that’s a waste of time I got a pill press. Just all we got to do is get the chemicals or some chemicals and put them together and press a bunch of Viagra pills and then we can sell thousands instead of tens. [27:54] And then the gold scheme, which we mentioned, and the MA, the list goes on and on. And within the community of the Russian diaspora, extortion, loan sharking, gambling, prostitution, all those means of making money were on the table and being used. They were familiar with the casinos here in LA, familiar with the how to operate prostitution rings and advertise the services. Very sophisticated group of guys. [28:29] Did they have a geographic area in which they were kind of like the ruling group? [28:35] So that’s the funny thing about LA. And we talk about this a little bit in the book, that LA’s never really had like a mob family. There’s no five families here. If you go back to the 1940s and 50s, there was a guy named Mickey Cohen, who was a mobster here in LA and with help started the casinos in Vegas. But there’s no turf here In LA, if you’re going to set up an operation You’ve got to find a way to work with some of the other mobs In Los Angeles, the Mexican mafia is very prominent And their operation is run out of the jails That’s where their leadership is in the jail and prison system And the soldiers are on the street And that’s where the drugs and prostitution are distributed at street level, operated from the jails. Guys like Meyer or people operating within those turfs, they got to work with the Mexican mob to make sure that they’re not crossing lines. And we chronicle some of that, especially with the MDMA smuggling in the book. [29:44] Interesting. Wow. Yeah. LA’s not really had that, like you said, that five families each has a geographic territory or even had one family, a guy named Jack Dragna, but it was really, it was open. LA was open city. We had a guy from Kansas City went out there in the 50s and fell in with some people out there. And, of course, from Tony Splatro and that Jimmy Fradiano, Jimmy Fradiano, these people from Chicago had some action going down in L.A., but no one mob family controlled L.A. And it’s spread out that you’ve got these neighborhoods over the place that I just wonder if they’re like a Brighton Beach kind of a place that where a lot of Russians had settled in. That was their neighborhood, at least where they did. They all live in one neighborhood. So, yeah, West Hollywood has a Russian enclave. And then there’s a park there called Plummer Park. That’s a gathering place for Russians in the neighborhood to get together and play chess and talk about what’s going on. I live in a neighborhood that has its own little enclave of Armenian mobsters. And their hangout is a donut shop. Yes, I’ve seen that here I have I was at a Starbucks up by the airport And I see these guys all ganged up together And they look like. [31:03] They’re Italians. They look like down at the social club down in the North End. I was retired by then. So I look at these guys. I call a friend of mine back down the intelligence unit. I say, I see these guys and here’s one of their license plates and it’s some kind of a limo service. And so, yeah, that’s our Albanian gangsters. They all hang out there at that Starbucks and then they go to the airport. They have these different things. They haul drug dealers back and forth. We are on to them. [31:29] That’s great interesting people ask Frank and I how is it that you get guys from the Russian mall or the fact with Betrayal in Blue who was a drug cartel guy or guys from the American mafia how do you get them to cooperate with you when you write these books I would like to stand whose name I can never pronounce with a whole section about the Russian mob, where he talks openly about it. And he says, because they trust us and anybody else, they want their story told truthfully. This is their legacy. They don’t want a bunch of BS about them in a book. If it’s been over seven years, they could talk about it. Unless it’s bank robbery, then it’s 10 years. We always tell them, don’t talk about anything you can be arrested for. Although, we’ll appreciate this because you’re doing this podcast. I was doing one, had this guest on, and all of a sudden he’s just talking about killing somebody. [32:35] I said, you can tell I’m kind of getting upset. Turns to his lawyers, he goes, what’s the statute of limitations on murder? Murder. Oh, my God. There isn’t one. Shut up. I have told guys that. I said, I’ll tell you something, dude. Do not tell me something I can’t live with. You can talk to me, but do not tell me something I can’t live with. You cannot trust me if you tell me something I can’t live with. And that’s the main one right there. Fortunately, they trust, People learned that they could trust Frank and I to be honest with them, direct with them, protect them if they need protection. I don’t know about the protection part. I’m not going to protect any. I’m with Jerry. Don’t tell me anything. Well, that’s what I mean. You tell them, don’t cross this line. That’s protection. Please tell them where the guardrails are. Yeah. It’s an interesting thing that we do. I’ve got some guys here and some guys around the country I’ve dealt with. And they reach out to you and they want to tell their story. I wish I could get more of them to want to tell their story. And they want to tell one thing I get criticized for. And it’ll be somebody that’s on YouTube, obviously in the know, and they’ll tell me how I got something wrong. [33:47] You deal with what you got. You deal with the newspaper articles and old court cases and things like that and try to get it right. But you can’t totally get it right. Of course, you don’t get it right as the way somebody else sees it, too. Everybody has a different take on the right story. I found out long ago, if you only rely on law enforcement, you’re not going to get the whole story. No, you got to go. Well, then you’re doing stenography. That’s what I always said. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s hard to get those people to open up, too. Man, it’s. Yeah. I was a reporter for a long time, so I’ve had some practice at it. And I’ve interviewed guys in prison. I’ve interviewed people who pre-arrest, during arrest, post-arrest. [34:26] And I’ve developed a way to talk to people that makes them comfortable. With Adam Diaz that Burrell mentioned in our book, Betrayal in Blue, this guy is a South American cartel member dealing cocaine in the United States. He went on the record and talked about his life doing that. [34:47] And the same thing in this book with Daniel Patterson. Daniel is quite a colorful character. And I interviewed him over five or six weekends about everything that he was involved in, up to and including the stuff that he did with the ITEVs. [35:04] Now, Daniel Patterson, explain who he was to the Russians. Sure. He’s basically a conduit for the Russians. He’s a guy who knew how to make money more legitimately than they did. He had the pill press. he explained the gold scam how to operate the gold scam how to write po’s how to like add a veneer of legitimacy to their business and and make more money by doing that yeah it’s like the scam emails you get you see the misspelled words they greet you in some archaic way this is a scam this guy could take all that out of it and right i always love it without warning people i want to worm. If the woman on the dating site says, I am so-and-so by name, they’re Nigerian. But if you tell them that, then all the Nigerians will stop telling them, I’ll stop using that. But if it says, I am Sally by name, they’re Nigerian. Even if they say they live in your hometown, they’re Nigerian. Good clue. Good clue. You guys hear that out there? [36:12] Yeah listen closely when you trip to one of these emails or one of these online things and you start talking to them they say my name is sally my name is nigerian hang up, how’s everything in nigerian click yeah. [36:31] Guys, I didn’t expect to get that kind of a great clue for my guys out there, but that’s a good one. I didn’t really realize that one myself. Yeah, I am Sally by name. Here’s your clue. Watch out. I was talking to a guy once, a friend of mine. He was talking about some girl that he met online, of course, through Facebook. And he said, she told me she just thought I looked interesting and sounded interesting from my Facebook. And I said, what’d she do? He said, I think she’s legitimate. I said, what’d she do? She’s an entrepreneur. I said, dude, dude. On. Dude. Model and entrepreneur. Yeah. [37:10] Okay. This has been great. Frank Girardeau and Burl Baer. B-A-R-E-R. Yes. And guys, I’ll have links to these books, all of their books. This book is A Taste for Murder, and they have Actually, this book is Where Murder Lies. Oh, I’m sorry. Okay. Oh, yeah. All right. Let me start. I’ll edit this. Their book is Where Murder Lies. And they also have one called A Taste for Murder, Betrayal in Blue, and Burned. So those are all three great true crime books. And I will have links to them in the show notes, guys. Thanks so much. Merle and Frank, I really appreciate you coming on. It’s really interesting. And Owen, if you buy the book, review the book. Say something nice about it. If you don’t like it, keep your mouth shut. Don’t give me one of those one-star reviews or I’m coming for you. You can’t trust those. [38:08] Thank you, Gary. All right. Thank you. All right. I’ll send, I don’t know, do I have your emails or do I have the publicist’s email? I got somebody’s email. Sometimes I never get your guys’ email. You got Vine, you got Frank, you got them both. All right. I’ll send you a link whenever I get this. It’ll probably be a month or more before I actually get this up. I would stay way ahead. Okay, good. Okay. All right. Talk to you soon. Same thing I can ever do for you here in Kansas City while you get on these stories or something. Hey, I’m in Missouri. I haven’t used to Missouri. I’m in Houston, Missouri. You what? I’m in Houston, Missouri. Oh, are you? Yeah, Texas County, Missouri. Oh, Texas County. Yeah, that’s way down south. That’s down south. I’m in the Ozarks. Yeah. Okay. That’s why I grew the goatee. Okay. All right. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye. Bye.

Published: 23 March 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Aaron Mead to discuss his gripping novel Body in the Barrel, a story inspired by a real-life discovery in Lake Mead that shocked the nation. In 2022, as water levels at Lake Mead dropped to historic lows, authorities discovered a body in a barrel with a gunshot wound to the head—a killing style that many investigators immediately linked to organized crime. The discovery triggered speculation that the remains could date back to the 1970s or 1980s, the heyday of mob activity in Las Vegas. Aaron Mead explains how this discovery sparked the idea for his novel. Although Mead is a longtime water engineer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the mystery of the barrel victim and the history of mob activity in Las Vegas inspired him to craft a fictional story grounded in real events. Gary and Aaron dive deep into the Chicago Outfit’s influence in Las Vegas, discussing figures like Tony Spilotro and hitman Frank Cullotta, whose violent methods and stories helped shape the mythology of organized crime in the desert. They also explore the long-standing mob practice of disposing of bodies in barrels, including the infamous case of mobster Johnny Roselli, whose body was also discovered stuffed in a drum. The conversation examines several possible identities of the Lake Mead victim, including casino insiders and Outfit associates who disappeared during the era of casino skimming. Mead’s novel follows a fictional mob associate named Lenny Battaglia, who becomes terrified when news breaks about the barrel discovery. The reason? He knows there’s another barrel—with his victim—still resting somewhere in Lake Mead. The discussion moves beyond mob history into the psychological consequences of violence, comparing Mead’s story to classic works like Crime and Punishment. Rather than focusing on a traditional “whodunit,” the novel explores what happens after the crime, examining guilt, fear, and the moral weight carried by those who commit violence. Gary and Aaron also discuss the broader context of violence in American culture, including parallels between organized crime murders and modern tragedies such as the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Finally, the conversation shifts to Mead’s professional expertise in Western water law and the Colorado River, explaining how drought and declining water levels at Lake Mead are literally revealing pieces of hidden history—sometimes including crimes buried for decades. This episode blends mob history, real crime mysteries, and fiction inspired by true events, offering listeners a fascinating look at how the past can resurface in unexpected ways. Click here to find Body in a Barrel 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:02]Introduction to Gangland Wire [0:00]Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Now I have a podcast and I interview real crime mobsters, policemen, FBI agents, do authors that are doing true crime books. And I do authors that are doing novels that are based on true crime. Because we stick with true crime as close as we can here, guys. You know that. And today I have one of those authors that has written a book that is a novel, but it’s based on a lot of real events in Las Vegas. And we all know a little bit about Las Vegas and the Mafia. So Aaron Mead, welcome, Aaron. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s great to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your history. [0:47]Sure. Yeah, I’m actually I’ve been working as an engineer, a water engineer for 30 some odd years. And so I come by my writing habit as a sort of a side interest. I, I, yeah, I just, I got a very, I’ve got a varied educational background too. So I started out as a, as an engineer in my training and then just had a creative itch and went back to school, ended up doing a PhD in philosophy of all things. And while I was doing that, I, I thought I might be an academic. I thought I might be a professor at one time and through the job search, things didn’t really work out. I did find a job, but it just wasn’t going to pay well enough, consider moving my family across the country for it. So I ended up not going into academia, but I stuck with writing, which was my favorite part of the PhD, the dissertation. [1:31]And I just started writing different things, some nonfiction stuff related to my dissertation research, but then just got an idea for a story, wrote a novel. It’s still sitting in the drawer. I’m interested in publishing that someday. But this idea for the book related to kind of Las Vegas mob stuff actually came connected with my work as a water engineer. So I work for Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. We import water to Southern California from the Colorado River. And so I track the Colorado River news pretty closely. And in 2022, the lake was dropping because of drought and overuse. And this body in a barrel showed up on the shore of Lake Mead. And there was a gunshot wound to the head. And this looked an awful lot like a mob hit to the authorities. And so this just piqued my interest and got me thinking about how did this barrel get there and this body and what’s the story behind it. And I started doing a little research and it turns out that the clothing on the body was pretty well preserved. [2:29]So the police dated it to the late 70s, early 80s potentially. And that’s of course the heyday of the mob activities in Las Vegas. It got me onto the Chicago outfit and, Some of the characters involved in the outfits activity in Vegas there. And so my story just went from there. But, yeah, I guess that’s a little about me and the story. So, yeah. Yeah. Those are the days when Tony Spolatro was really active out there. Chicago outfit man on the scene, if you will. And Body in a Barrel, another interesting Chicago link is they found a guy named Johnny Roselli, who was a highly placed mob guy who was connected to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He had been their guy before Spalatro. He had been their representative out in the West, and they found his body in a barrel down in Florida. Wow, okay. There’s some reference there. [3:21]I’d read a little that this is a pretty popular method of body disposal in various times. And Tony Spalatro was, I understand that they haven’t actually identified the victim yet, but the kind of style of killing they think is pretty connected with something Tony Spalatro might do. I guess the sort of low caliber gunshot wound was a popular way to dispose of it, to whack people just because it was a little less messy than a high caliber weapon. Yeah, this is one they call it a lupara blanca, which means white shotgun in Italian. And that means that you never find the body. In this case, they found the body. Every once in a while, they’ll find the body. Not very often, though. Usually they hide them pretty good. Now, who’d ever thought that Lake Mead would drop that much? Yeah, they dropped it at 100 feet of water, and I don’t think anybody expected it to drop that low. And it could go even lower in the next couple of years here, honestly. Really? Oh, really? It’s still dropping. I thought there’d been some more rain and some snow up in the mountains that were going to add to that. It’s going to be still dropping, huh? Yeah, there has been a fair bit of precipitation this year, but in the areas that count most, where you get most of the runoff, which is up in the mountains of Colorado and Utah, it’s really quite dry, actually. They’ve had some rain, but not much snow, and so they’re talking about a snow drought. Yeah, things could. It just depends. We’ll see how things develop, but it could get bad. Yeah, talk about that gun now. Chicago was noted. [4:40]For using these 22 caliber high standard i think they’re browning semi-automatic pistols with a silencer on it and they had them out there i believe and they also another interesting thing about the outfit in order to keep the sound down they would load their own shells and so they were had less powder in them and sometimes the shells didn’t do the job that they wanted to do now frank Kulata, who was in Las Vegas working for Tony Splattro during these years, he tells a story about trying to kill a guy with one of those guns and how he had such a hard time getting him killed. So I don’t know how many holes were in this guy’s head, but you got to get somebody just right in the head with that .22 caliber pistol. Yeah, they say it had to be pretty close range. You’re talking about the Jerry Listener murder, I think. Is that right? Yeah. I read about that one. That’s actually the kind of the murder in question in my book is based on that loosely. And so yeah, Kolata advises my main character, Lenny, to load his gun with half loads because they’ve lost their silencer or something. So that’ll keep the sound down. But yeah, I guess Lister ended up with multiple bullets to the head. And when they found them, more than you’d imagine would be necessary. [5:55]Really? There’s a guy that worked for the Stardust named Jay VanderWalk that disappeared at the time. It disappeared for a long time. Did you look at that one, too, as some of your source material? Yeah. So there’s this great article that’s been turned into a podcast on the Mob Museum website. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that in Las Vegas there. And they suggest there might be three potential victims. [6:21]VanderMark is one of the—is that the guy you mentioned, George VanderMark? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they call him by Jay. That’s right. Yeah. So, yeah, he is one of the, he’s a missing person, right? From that era, had connections with the Argent company. So they think he, that’s one of the possibilities. He was running the skimming operation, at least in some of the casinos there for Argent. And I guess the, as the gaming control board in Nevada found out about the skimming operation, gradually, they were starting to talk to people. And I think that they were worried that he was going to talk or actually this is, I think the, the outfit suspected he was stealing money from him. I think it was a combination. Stealing money is worse than talking. Right, yeah. So I guess he took off to Mexico, maybe, I read, or Costa Rica even. But I think… He came back. I can’t remember the exact story, but yeah. Yeah. So from what I read, Nick Calabrese, who I guess was a hitman for the outfit, and then turned eventually and started talking to the feds. He suggested that, I guess, Vandermark ended up in a hotel in Phoenix or something, and the outfit sent a couple of hitmen after him and whacked him there. And then Calabrese said they buried his body in the desert. So that means, you know, if that’s true, then obviously it’s not the guy in the barrel, but he’s one of the ones they talk about because they never found his body. Yeah. And I guess the other one I read about was William Crespo. [7:40]I don’t know that story. Yeah. So the little I know of it is he was a drug runner [7:48]Stories of the Las Vegas Mob [7:45]involved with the outfit in Las Vegas. And he got caught kind of landing in the Las Vegas airport coming from Miami with $400,000 worth of cocaine on him. And the feds arrested him. He accepted an offer of immunity to become an informant. And he was set to testify about this drug ring that the outfit was part of. And he actually ended up testifying before a grand jury, got a bunch of folks indicted. I guess one of the names of folks who was indicted was Victor Greger, according to this article. He was a former Argent executive. But then when Crespo himself went to testify, he was set to testify in June 83. And they got to him before then and he never testified. So, he’s another kind of missing person they suspect could be in the barrel. But the article thought the most likely candidate was a guy named Johnny Pappas. I don’t know if you know him at all. Yeah, I don’t know the story of that. Okay. So, this is a Chicago native guy who was involved in some of the Argent Corporation casino work. And he was, I guess by the 70s, late 70s, he was managing this resort on the northern part of Lake Mead called Echo Bay Resort, which was an Argent Corporation Resort. [9:00]And it’s closed now. It’s not there anymore. It used to be like a hotel and a boat launch. And so he was at the lake at different times. He also owned a boat on Lake Mead. And so in 1976, the day he disappeared, his wife told authorities basically that he went to meet this guy at a restaurant who was interested in buying his boat at Lake Mead. And so they think it could have been a ruse set up by outfit folks luring him basically down to the lake to show him his boat. And then they knock him off and take him out on his own dang boat and drop him in the lake. The motive is a little less clear in this case, but it was around that time when stuff was coming out about the Argent Corporation and the skimming. And they could have just thought he was a liability, might be set to talk or something. Yeah, those are the three that I read about anyway. He just disappeared after this meeting to go sell his boat. Yeah, they found that theory makes sense. They found his car parked in the circus casino parking lot on the strip the next day. And yeah, he’s just gone, disappeared. [10:01]I’ll be darned. I hadn’t heard that story. That is a pretty likely scenario. Say, hey, I’ll drive and let’s run down there and let’s see that boat. I got the money right here. You show the guy a bunch of money and he’ll drop all caution. It’ll go to the wind. That’s how they do it. and got him isolated then. [10:18]Yeah. And maybe it’s a last minute deal. So nobody really knows who he’s meeting and where he’s going and that he’s even going. So that’s, that’s a classic in the mob. Yeah. Apparently he told his wife he was going to go sell his boat, but that’s about it. Yeah. I’ll be darned. Yeah. The, as Lake Mead’s gone down, has there been any other bodies or any other things that have been found out there recently? Yeah, there’s been some strange things turned up. One is a sort of a World War II era airplane, honestly, started coming out of the water. But that was known about for some time. You could see it, I guess, from aerial photos. But other bodies, yeah, there’s a few other bodies, just skeletons, nothing in barrels and no gunshot wounds. And so, people just, I think authorities have identified most of those and suspect they were just drowning victims, unfortunate boating accidents and whatnot. But nothing like this body in a barrel. I think they’ve been trying to identify that body. There’s lots of DNA evidence, right? You got still a pretty intact body. But the problem is back in that era, I guess they didn’t have the DNA database to be matching with. Yeah. So, it’s not borne a lot of fruit. I think it’s still an open case, honestly. Really? The chance they have is if one of that guy’s descendants goes to something like 23andMe and then does that. And I know they’ve come up with a deal where they can start running an unknown DNA through those… [11:44]Files and see if you can come up with a connection and then go back and say, okay, where would this guy have ever come across or be in this other person’s family tree, if you will, and then they can eventually get it. That’s fascinating. Amazing. Yeah, it is what they could do. I had a guy that used to be a professional criminal talking about it. He said, I don’t know why anybody does crime today. He said with the DNA and the cameras and the cell phones and all that, he said, there’s just way, way too many ways to get caught. That’s wild. Yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. I watch a lot of crime shows and I see a lot of that stuff. And everybody watches those crime shows. So they know about those tools out there. So first thing, you got to go get a burner phone. If you’re going to go do something, you better go get a burner phone. And then you better dress up in one of those suits in those English police movies, those white hazmat suits and your whole face covered. Crazy, crazy. Yeah. And then go do it. Don’t use your own car. You better go steal a car somewhere. Man, complicated. It’s too hard. Yes. And even then, if they look at you and say, your phone never moved for 24 hours, but yet you were seen over here or over there. How come you didn’t have your phone with you or your car? You parked your car here for 12 hours and then you came back and got it. What were you doing? [13:08]It is just crazy, isn’t it? Yeah. But tell us, what’s the storyline of your book? Don’t give too much away. You want people to buy it. I understand that. But tell the guys the storyline of your book. Sure, yeah. So the storyline is, it starts out with the true events of 2022, right? This headline that there’s a body in a barrel shows up on the shore of Lake Mead. And my main protagonist, who’s sort of made up from my imagination, his name’s Lenny Battaglia. [13:37]The Body in the Barrel [13:33]And he reads this headline. He’s an old time mob associate. He, at one time when he was young, was connected with the outfit, but ended up getting out of it barely. But he reads this headline and starts to get worried because he’s got a barrel with a body in it that’s his victim farther out in the lake. So this one that he reads about is not his. It’s actually his partners who, in my story, the partners loosely based on Frank Collada, actually. [14:01]And so he reads this headline, gets worried, goes out in his little boat to try to move his victim farther out into the lake because he’s concerned that his lake, the lake’s continuing to drop and the kind of the falling lakes acts like a ticking clock in my story in some ways. I think the Sopranos did something like this. They thought somebody was going to come up and buy some farm, and they had said, these guys have to dig this body up and move it. So that is not out of the realm of possibility, is it? No, no. But what is out of the realm of possibility is this old guy in his tiny little boat actually moving the barrel. So he goes out with just a gaff with a hook on it and tries to yank it out with his little outboard motor, and it just won’t budge. The thing’s really heavy. If you know anything about water, stuff under water is really heavy. Really heavy. Yeah. He’s wrestling with it and ends up falling in while he’s trying to pull this barrel farther out. And so it’s a big failure. And while he’s falling in, he has this flashback to the killing, basically. And so the story kind of goes from there, but it’s really focused on how he deals with what he’s done, basically. [15:10]Crime is no mystery from the beginning. it’s not a it’s not a traditional it’s not a traditional police procedural of where who done it yeah it’s not like that it’s more like kind of what is what’s the aftermath what’s the effect of, a terrible crime like this on even the perpetrator yeah yeah and as I said one of my characters is based on Frank Collada who so he was the story takes place in kind of two time frames right we’ve got the, contemporary time frame, but then we got flashbacks to his time at the mob and Frank was his partner in this hit. We’ve also got a character showing up who’s based on Tony Spolatro. I call him Tony Bonucci, named after one of my favorite Italian soccer players. [15:50]But yeah, so we’ve got this connection to the early 80s, late 70s, and then also this kind of contemporary period. And I understand Frank Collado was actually, he recently just died, right he was he did during covid times i think he he already had copd he was already everything he did he you’d see me to have his oxygen on and so he was already weakened then he got covid during uh during covid that’s a shame you know yeah i did some listening to a podcast he was on in researching my book and it was really fascinating to listen to yeah yeah he is he’s and he’s got his there’s a whole book out there that he mainly just told stories about his life during the whole book. It’s amazing. I did one with him and then added some more clips in from that a long time. One of my earlier ones, I got to know him real early because we had the mob con out there. I knew the guy that was getting it going and I went out to the guy that actually Denny Griffin who wrote the books with Frank Collider, wrote several books with Frank Collider and I’d gotten to know Denny and so Denny invited me to come out and do a program at the first mob conference and I met Frank then. I met him and a couple others after that. He was gruff, but he was a good guy. I mean, he was gruff, I’ll tell you. He wasn’t a guy that just, it was hard to joke around with him. Interesting. Okay, interesting. [17:12]Yeah, I got a bit of that vibe from the podcast of him that I was listening to. Yeah, it’s funny. Just genuine Italian Chicago, like to the core. Yeah, he was that. He was born and bred, born and bred from early his childhood. He was a Chicago mobster. There’s no doubt about that. That’s wild. [17:32]Yeah, Denny Griffin’s book was really helpful to me, actually, in my research. Yeah, the battle for Las Vegas in particular was. Yeah, that’s the one I used. Denny was that. Denny’s dead now. I don’t know if you knew that. I did know that, unfortunately. Yeah, I was pretty good friends with Denny. He helped me out a lot when I got started and got me out there. And he gave me for my first documentary, which was about the skimming, a lot about the skimming. He got me several people to interview, lined me up with them and verified, hey, this guy’s okay and work with him. And I flew out to Las Vegas and interviewed a bunch of people and interviewed him too. But he got me an employee of the Best Casino that knew Lefty Rosenthal really well. She gave us some really great sound bites. I get calls today or emails wanting to know if she’s still around. She’s died since. People are still trying to find her to get to interview her. That’s wild. That’s wild. That’s because old Denny Griffin, he was a good guy. He really was. That’s neat. His book was certainly good. Yeah. Interesting. So what else do you want to say about your book before we get out of here? Besides, go out and buy it. Go out and buy it. It’s on Amazon, I’m sure, and I’ll have a link to the Amazon site. I appreciate that. Yeah, it is on Amazon. What do I want to say about it? I guess the other thing to say is it’s got some, I don’t want to give too much away, but gun violence is really a big part of the book. Not only this single mob hit, but also it wraps in. [18:56]This mass shooting in 2017, the one where the guy was a shooter was in the hotel suites up high and he was shooting across the street into that country music festival. So it’s really funny. I compare it to two things, right? I compare it to Casino, which is this famous Scorsese film from that mobster era, which everybody knows about. And actually, Frank Collado was in. He had a cameo in that. Yeah, that’s funny. But then the other thing I compare the book to is Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which is obviously this sort of towering literary novel. But the parallel is just dealing with this aftermath of violence, right? What happens when you kill somebody and what’s the sort of dealing with guilt and fear and the consequences. [19:44]Exploring Themes of Violence [19:40]So I’d say those are the sort of things I point to as parallels for the book. I don’t know. There’s a lot more to say. Like you’ve said, it’s grounded in true life crime, but it’s also definitely fiction. I’ve made up the better part of it. Yeah. [19:54]All right. Aaron Mead. The book is Body in the Barrel. Aaron, I really appreciate you coming on the show. And guys, I’ll have links to this book down below. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure meeting you and hearing some of your stories. And I’m enjoying your podcast. And it’s been a privilege to be on here. So thank you. Okay. We like to hear that. Thanks a lot, Aaron. [20:17]Yeah, thank you. Okay. Okay. I’ll do a little extra here in a minute. I just want to tell you something. When I went to law school at the police department and my favorite class was water law and I did my, you have to do a 50 page publishable paper to get out of law school. I did mine on Western water law and it was just, I was fascinated by that Western water law and all the things that go into that, the Rio Grande Pact and all the different political entities that are trying to use that water and how they use it. And then how the EPA rules and figured in on using water out West. And the fact that out West, they treated water like they treated gold or some other mineral. If you found the source, you owned it. Whereas they had riparian interest in [21:06]The Complexities of Water Law [21:03]laws back East here, where you have plenty of water. You can use all the water you want as long as you don’t reduce it. But nobody owns that source of water. [21:12]If it’s a big source, it’s just a fascinating topic. Yeah, it is a bit of the Wild West, like applies to water out West. It’s that first in time, first in right thing. It’s pretty crazy. The Colorado River especially is so complicated. You got seven, seven states take water from it. You got the federal government running the dams there. You’ve got Mexico that takes a portion of it. You’ve got this whole hundred year history of law layered on top of each other. And even today, the rules on how the water gets distributed are about to expire in this year. And so we’re trying to come up with new rules. And it’s just so tough because… [21:49]There’s less water in the river than there used to be, and so the old agreements don’t quite work out, and we’re having to take reductions, and, you know, who takes what? It’s just sort of a big mess, honestly. We’re fighting over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up in court, honestly. But that would be not a good outcome, but it seems potentially likely. Yeah. There’s a judge I heard say once that, you better make a deal outside of my courtroom. If you come into my courtroom, my decision is not going to hurt everybody’s feelings with my decision. Yeah. And inevitably, like the folks, the special masters or whatever the justices are that are making the decisions, they don’t know as much about water as we do. If we can’t work it out, it’s going to happen. I know. And there are just so many pressures that are on it. And it’s tough. And plus, one thing we haven’t mentioned is a huge growth in population over the last 20, 30 years out there. It’s true. Yeah, it’s true. Yes, unbelievable how many people have moved to Phoenix and Albuquerque and Las Vegas, especially Las Vegas, but just being such a huge growth in population out. And before it was desert that nobody really, they didn’t live, they didn’t want to live out there. [22:55]It’s true. Yeah. And surprisingly, like in a lot of these cities, actually, the demand for water has not increased. Like in Las Vegas, it’s actually gone down. Oh, really? They have done an incredible job of conserving water. Same in Los Angeles. The demands for water have gone down despite the population growth. The thing that makes it challenging is that the whole pie is shrinking and it’s the agricultural use that’s the highest. I think it’s something like 85% or 80% of the water in the Colorado Basin is agriculture. And so, those are the things you’re going to need to find conservation there, which is harder. [23:30]Like those Israelis did, it was something called drip irrigation where they used, they were more skillful in the way they used their water in their fields down in the desert. Yeah, and some of the folks that’s been, some of the agricultural folks have been converting to that kind of irrigation for quite some time now. So, it’s like we’re wringing out every sponge we got and running out of options. But, yeah, we’ll figure it out one way or the other here. Yeah, I’m sure we will. This is America, after all. [23:59]Or is it still America? It’s hard to know. Yeah, it’s hard to know. We’re going down that path. Looking a little different these days. Yes, it is. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay, Aaron, I really appreciate it. I’ll get in touch with you whenever I send an email with the links after I put them up. It’ll be, I don’t know. It’ll probably be a month or more before I get it up. Sure. I stay way ahead. I’ve got quite a few kind of scheduled up for the next two weeks now or three. Smart. Two weeks now, one just went up today. So I put it up, video, I put them up on Sunday evening, and then the audio comes out like 4 o’clock in the morning on Monday morning. Okay. Don’t ask me why. I just started doing that. Yeah. No worries. It gets ahead of everybody. Then they can see it. Hey, I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t, if you don’t mind. No. Do you know about any contemporary organized crime activity in Las Vegas? Is there still stuff going on or is it? I don’t. I really don’t. Yeah. Okay. [24:59]Trying to think of a source for you. I’ll check with a source for you. Okay. I know it’s not Midwest folks from your era, but yeah. Yeah, no, probably something up there out at Los Angeles and people that moved out there a generation ago and stayed under the radar. And then, of course, international. Yeah. Those like Russians and people like that out of Phoenix or in Los Angeles, both. Anyhow, I’ll check on that. Okay. Yeah. If you think of something, that’d be great. I’d be interested. Okay. Okay. I will. All right. Thank you. Thank you again. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. Can you go ahead and do, can you exit the meeting? I’m going to do a little ending thing here. I will. Yeah. [25:40]That was interesting, folks. I did Waterlaw in, well, that was interesting, folks. I really liked Aaron and I think his Body in the Barrel book is going to be pretty darn good. [25:53]Concluding Thoughts on Crime and History [25:50]So I’d recommend you try it. I haven’t actually read it myself. I’ve read excerpts from it. I’ve got it here. I need to sit down and take some time and read it. I like when they base it on the real life people and some people that I know something about. It’s kind of like hearing stories about your hometown. Oh, yeah, I know that guy. Oh, yeah, I remember when that happened. And it’s an interesting thing, the lowering of Lake Mead. He and I, he’s a water engineer, and he and I talked a little bit more about it. I find it a fascinating topic, that Western water law and Western water rights and how that all works. It’s different than back east where we have plenty of water. So don’t forget, I’ve got videos on Amazon Prime for rent. Just use my name and mafia, Gary Jenkins Mafia on Amazon Prime, and you’ll find them. And I’ve got books there. Do the same thing. Gary Jenkins Mafia books. I’ve got three books on Amazon and I’ve got them on my website. And I always appreciate when people make comments on my YouTube channel or on my Gangland Wire podcast page. We’re just here to report mob history. That’s all we want to do is report mob history. And in this case, we got a fictional book that’s reporting mob history based on real mob history. I’ll do that every once in a while, too. [27:07]So thanks a lot, guys. I always appreciate doing this show. It’s a way to end my life out, if you will. I’m down to that last quarter, maybe down to the last two minutes one of these days, but we’ll get there. Thanks a lot, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 16 March 2026

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history through his unique perspective on the mafia. In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins welcomes an unusual guest from the world of organized crime storytelling—cartoonist Brett Juliano, creator of the Dust Bunny Mafia comic series. Instead of traditional books or documentaries, Brett tells real Mafia stories through short, three-panel comics featuring his unique cartoon characters while staying grounded in historical research and documented sources. Brett explains how his lifelong interest in animation and storytelling evolved into a project that blends true crime history with visual humor and commentary. After moving to Chicago, he became fascinated with the city’s underworld history and began transforming real mob stories into illustrated comic strips that challenge Hollywood myths and highlight lesser-known facts about organized crime. His work draws on true crime books, FBI files, court transcripts, and podcasts, including Gangland Wire itself. Each comic strip distills a real historical moment into a visual gag or ironic twist that reveals the strange reality behind mob legends. Gary and Brett discuss several Dust Bunny Mafia comics and the real events behind them: The “Sicilian Flu” Courtroom Act A humorous look at a tactic sometimes used by mob figures: appearing frail in court to gain sympathy or delay proceedings. Wiseguys who were partying the night before might suddenly appear in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets or hooked to oxygen tanks when they walked into court. Lucky Luciano and the Myth of “Lucky” Brett examines the legendary story that Charles “Lucky” Luciano got his nickname after surviving a brutal kidnapping and beating. His comic plays with the idea that mobsters often exaggerated their own legends—especially when trying to impress people. The Kansas City Mob Search – Carl “Tuffy” DeLuna One comic comes directly from Gary Jenkins’ own experience investigating the Kansas City mob. When police searched DeLuna’s home in 1979, the mobster calmly offered coffee and eventually led investigators straight to the basement, where incriminating notes were stored. The scene shows how, sometimes, the truth of organized crime investigations is stranger than fiction. Bugsy Siegel in Rainy Portland Another comic explores the obscure story of Bugsy Siegel visiting Portland to meet local crime boss Al Winters, only to endure two straight weeks of rain—highlighting the contrast between Hollywood-style mob glamour and the less glamorous reality of underworld negotiations. A New Graphic Anthology on Kickstarter Brett is now launching a major new collection of his comics titled: “Family Business: An Offer You Can’t Refuse.” The book will include: 130+ pages of full-color comics More than 230 true crime strips Historical commentary explaining the real story behind each comic Additional artwork parodying mob businesses and underworld culture The project will be funded through a Kickstarter campaign beginning March 24, with the finished book expected to ship later in the year once printing is completed. Click here for 👉 Kickstarter Campaign:  Where to Find Brett Juliano You can explore Brett’s comics, books, and merchandise here: Dust Bunny Mafia Website:  Online Store: Brett also shares his comics across social media platforms including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook groups focused on organized crime history. For fans of Mafia history, Dust Bunny Mafia offers a refreshing twist—true crime storytelling through comics that balance humor with serious historical research. As Gary notes during the interview, separating myth from reality is essential in mob history, and Brett’s work uses a creative medium to do exactly that. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [00:00:00] hey, are you Wire tappers? Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective and, I investigated the Mafia and I’m still working on the Mafia only. We work on mafia history now, and I have a kind of unusual, different sort of a story today. I have a man who has been doing. Cartoons based on real mob stories, but he has his own little cartoon characters. It’s called Dust Bunny Mafia. If you’re on my gangland Wire podcast group, you might’ve seen that, and he’s on other places in social media. So welcome Brett Juliano. Welcome Brett. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me on. All right, cool. Guys, let me, I’m just gonna give you a little taste of what this looks like. It’s when I first saw it. That, that’s interesting. I appreciate a, a different way of doing these kinds of things. All right. That should be, there you go. All right. There you go. There’s which one was that? That was the Sicilian flu. Brett tell the guys a little bit about, what got you [00:01:00] into this and then we’ll talk about each one of these images that you sent me. Yeah, so I’ve been doing comics and the Dust Bunny mafia for over a dozen years. Long story short, I wanted to be a animator when I was, young. And then as I grew up, I always loved the idea of telling stories through visual form. And then after moving out to Chicago about 10 years ago, I really wanted to connect with the principle of the local history of the Chicago Underworld and retell it through my Dust Bunny Mafia Comex. I try and. Do it in a way in which the I try to break the myths of Hollywood and a lot of things. I try and get my, research through primary sources. So I’ll, listen to True Crime podcasts like yours. I have a huge collection at home of True Crime books, looking through FBI files, court transcripts, things like that. And [00:02:00] I just want to. Find ways to compose those things into three panel comics that kind of address myths and other, aspects of the mafia. So I know you, you came to the Mob Con out in Las Vegas and had a whole display of different things. So you even have a whole little a book too, don’t you? Or you’ve got one or more books that are a little bit longer than just a one three panel? Yes. Yeah, I’ve got, with the Dust Bunny Mafia comic. Overall I am, I’ve done about 10 books total. Okay. I’ve got three big graphic novel trade collections, and then, as you’re aware, the little based on true story booklets like these ones, like where these scripts come in, I now am collecting that into a larger anthology collection that’s gonna be 132 page full color that has over 200. About 230 individual strips with the commentary. Do you have a website or how do people [00:03:00] get hold of you if they’d want to get some of this? Yeah, you can find me comics dot dust bunny mafia.com or Dust Bunny mafia dot Big Cartel is the online store and I ship everything out myself. I’ve done a bunch of crowdfunding campaigns, over 20 of them, and I’ve shipped all over the world with my comics and basically searched Dust Bunny Mafia. I’m on. Like you mentioned earlier, a lot of the Facebook groups, I’m on Instagram, threads X, all the all the social platforms and I’ll guys, I’ll have a link to his website in the in the show notes. Brett, tell us a little bit about this one. This is the or I’ve got the Sicilian flu. Tell us about this story here. What’s the real story here? So that story comes that strip is based on an interview with Joaquin Phoenix, Joaquin Garcia, excuse me who was known as Jack. And [00:04:00] he was interviewed, I believe on the Before the Lights podcast with Tommy Canal. And he was telling a story about Greg De Palma going to court one day and while he was being, while he was being, deposed and brought in for questioning. Basically it’s addressing the myth of the actions and the over exaggerations that mob officers will do to tie things up or misdirect. So he was talking about how. The wise guys will be out eating and drinking, partying, at night or on the weekends. And then they’ll come to court in a wheelchair, maybe have a blanket. Some of ’em will even throw, have a little oxygen tank and, just the absurdity of things that they will, the lengths they will go to to try and misdirect or hope things up. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a common kind of a deal that more not just mobsters do that. There’s other criminals have done that too. I’ve seen that myself. So let’s talk about [00:05:00] two is let be a lady. Get that one up there. All right. What’s the story of luck? Be a lady. So luck Be a lady is talking about the myth of Charles Luck, Luciano’s nickname of Lucky. Yes. And about, how it was one night, one kidnapping that, where he got the scar and the people dragged him into, Staten Island. They. Speed him overnight, tortured him, set him free, and then that’s how it was, that one event is what made him or gave him the nickname. Lucky. When in actuality what I’m paring here is that, he’s trying to impress girls in my comic and, with each drink and stuff, he adds more myth and more legend to the nickname. And. I believe, the event happened. I’m not trying to discredit that. I just [00:06:00] think he, and I’ve seen sources say that he had the nickname long before the beating and like the one night, event. And it wasn’t that instance that gave him the nickname Lucky. Interesting. I never thought about that, what I always thought. I think that was I think he reported that himself in that book that he wrote with another author. I think that’s where that story came from. I’m not sure but I always figured he probably had some coppers tuned him up and, but he had to make it into a much better story and make himself much tougher. Yeah, of course. And they would do that back in those days. They’d tune your ass up bad. All right. Let’s see. Now we got, oh, I know this one. Show me the way I. So this one is based on your account? Yeah, that’s so it’s talking about Carl Tuffy de Luna’s home being searched after Valentine’s Day or around Valentine’s Day [00:07:00] in 1979, where the Kansas City Police department and the FBI. Executed a, search warrant on his house. And so I set it up very cordial in which, my detectives are, being served coffee and then. The line that I loved most from the book was basically where he is like, all right, you might as well come into the basement. That’s where you’ll find the good stuff. And he’s, leading them around the property and everything saying, if you wanna find this, here’s where you’re gonna get this. Almost like it was a art collector or, someone’s showing off a house. And so it’s one of those instances where, the truth is stranger that fiction. And so I was like. Once I saw that, I’m like, okay, I can translate this into a comic and, reach a broader audience. Yeah. Really? Yeah. It’s I’ll never forget, I, he tells his wife, says, Sandy said, fix these officers a pot of coffee. So she was visibly making coffee and he was kind, he would [00:08:00] follow ’em around a little bit. Point stuff out. They went and they come up from downstairs. They brought two or three guns up from upstairs, downstairs hey, tough. Where’d you get this? And then, it was getting like midnight or something and it was like, we are gonna be there. And we were there in the end, almost till four in the morning. And I, and it’s one agent, Shay Airy. He is dead now, but he was a long time mob. Investigator goes back to, to when they first formed the top hoodlum squad in Kansas City. And so he knew Tuffy pretty well. They were familiar with each other. And finally Tuffy says, Shay, you might as well come on downstairs. That’s where the good stuff is. I remember thinking, oh my God. And that’s where they found all the notes that he’d been keeping. See, he knew that was good stuff. He knew the importance of those notes and a little additional story on those notes. The next day or two, he’s meeting with some of these other guys with Joe Ragusa and Charlie Moretina in a restaurant, and they’ve got a bug on this table where they’re at. And he said, here’s what he says. He says, I got caught with a [00:09:00] bunch of shit. He said, I had it on the bag and I was gonna throw it away but man, they, I just didn’t get to the trashing time and I didn’t get it thrown away. He wasn’t got thrown away. He was just one of these guys that kept everything. And and that bunch of shit that he was talking about with those, those notes the infamous notes. All right, let’s see here. I’ll try. This is on a counter rain. Okay, there we go. So this is on a counter rain. So tell me the story on this one. I’m not sure. So this comes from a local myth about Portland, Oregon. And so I’ve got my Bugsy Siegel Ben Siegel character, and then he’s meeting with Al Winters, who was the local boss of kind of crime boss in the area. And apparently the story set goes that Ben Siegel visited him. And he spent two weeks in Portland trying to find a way for them to [00:10:00] work together to open up a gambling casino or something. And the, over the two weeks, it didn’t rain. It didn’t stop raining every single day that Bugsy was there. It, didn’t, it didn’t let up. And so he the idea is that, we don’t have any real good accounts on whether this did or didn’t happen. There’s very little known about, the Portland crime family and those things. There’s only a couple books been written as far as my knowledge. And but it’s just playing with the fact that, the Pacific Northwest and Portland is rainy for a long time, and a mobster who’s more, affiliated with Hollywood and Las Vegas and sunny Southern California, Portland would be a nightmare. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And you must have talked to Casey McBride on that one. Our friend Casey McBride from Portland. And ’cause he talked a lot, he’s talked a lot [00:11:00] about Al Winter and he was like the, I think started during prohibition and the crime boss of Portland. If you think of Portland having a crime bus. And it wouldn’t make sense if if he was gonna do anything outside of Portland and even in, even if he had, was making any money. Why, buggy Siegel, he felt like he was a West Coast boss. I got a feeling and anything that happened on the West coast and he heard about it, he probably would be coming around wanting to get a little piece of that action. That’s how they are. They hear you’re getting some kind of criminal action that’s organized and steady and regular. They’re gonna come around, try to get a piece of it. So I would imagine that’s what he was up there doing. And there’s no doubt Al Winter was the. Erstwhile crime boss and we had a guy from ended up in Kansas City, came through Kansas City. He had a relative here named Joe Augusto, who ended up in Las Vegas. But he went to Portland for a while. He was, and he was a Sicilian and he had different scams going. We’d never heard of him when he appeared in Las Vegas, but he ended up [00:12:00] catching a case up there in neither Washington State or Oregon, I can’t remember which one now for some kind of a scam. He was running. He came back down and he got in with the people at the Tropicana and Joe Agosto Somehow I know how he did it. He, and he was connected to Nick Ella here in Kansas City, and he used, he parlayed that connection. With the people that owned the Tropicana, there was several partners in that. And they wanted a big loan to, to amp up the Tropicana, to keep up with the other expansion of the other casinos, and they needed to get this big loan. It’s hard to get loans for casinos, regular banks back then, regular banks would not make loans, but the Teamsters Union would. And so he parlayed his connection with Nick Novella. Claiming, promising that they would get a big Teamsters loan. And then N Novella made sure they didn’t get it for a while as he kept working his way in and getting more employees that he, that owed him into places and then they started to skim. And that’s that’s a little [00:13:00] Kansas City connection to the northwest part of the United States. Yeah. Interesting. Tell us a little more about it. What do you got planned now? You’re putting those little three, three panel true crime ones into will you organize it by family or how will you do that? Yeah, so I’ve got so the collection’s called family Business. An offer you can’t refuse. And it’s going to be crowdfunded via Kickstarter starting on March 24th and run through mid-April. I expect the book to be then available for public demand in June or July of this year. ‘Cause it takes a little time to print everything. But yeah, I’ve got it organized roughly into like geographic area. So I start with Chicago and then I, for the most part will go chronologically. So I’ll find, oh, I see. The strips about Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, and then move up, through the years until you’re talking about Ian Kana, Antonio Caro, and things like that. And that’ll hit each of the [00:14:00] kind of big regions. So I’ve got everything from, chicago in the Midwest, and then I’ll go into down to Cincinnati and hit things on and Newport, Kentucky during prohibition where George Remus and some of the Cleveland Syndicate started gambling dens and things like that. And then I move into New York and do the same thing. But I’ve got. I’ve been working on these comics for this is the seventh year that I’ve been doing these True Story comics, so I’m gonna have over two hundred and thirty, two thirty five in this collection. And then Eve’s Comic has a little blurb, a small paragraph, explaining the true life story that inspired the comics. And so throughout the book it’s gonna be two to four comics on a page or in a spread. And then there’s gonna be different different kind of segues in between in which I’ll have some of the graphic design work [00:15:00] that I’ve done to parody mafia businesses, like ante cigars based on Carmine ante if he had a cigar shop. And I’ll do things like that. And so I’ll have like little interludes or kind of chapter breaks. Between different stories and which I’ll also explain some, give some context for, the casual true crime fans, and you had t-shirts with ante cigar shops and different things like that too, don’t you? Yep. You had those made up for as gifts or what as rewards for your crowd crowdsourcing thing. ’cause I think I’ve got one of those ante cigar shop t-shirts or I used to, I, it’s around here somewhere. I don’t know, sometimes I run through t-shirts and I get some many and I just start getting rid of ’em and starting over again. Oh yeah. I’ve got, I try and get one for each of the campaigns that I run. And and when I do that, I’ve now got a huge stack and I’m like, yeah. Yeah. And it’s just ’cause I want to test the quality, make sure I have good. Product for my backers, and then I’m like, I don’t really [00:16:00] need another T-shirt, but I’m gonna offer ’em. I first started in this first movie I made up a whole bunch of t-shirts. I bought 300 t-shirts that gang land wire, and I think I’m, this is eight or nine years later and I’m down to one or two left of the original t-shirts. Then I discovered print on demand that Printful that you told me about. And so now I just print ’em, I get one done at a time. Yep. For my gang led Wired, I don’t really try to do any other t-shirts. I don’t know. It’s sometimes it’s like you just, it gets so spread, so thin, doing different things that I run outta time myself. Yeah. Now, are these books or are they just the graphic novels, or are they just available off your website, or do you have some of ’em up on Amazon or places like that? Yeah, so Meet the Family. My first dust Bunny Mafia graphic novel is on Amazon. And then the rest of ’em are on my website or on Kickstarter. [00:17:00] When I have the campaigns going, I’ll usually have different add-ons that people can, pledge for to get all the books or the different, like mobster playing cards that I’ve done, things like that. Interesting. Interesting. All right, Brett Juliano, I really appreciate you coming on here and we will get this up and guys if you’re interested in this, get hold of old Brett. I’ll have the contact information. He he’ll be glad to, to ship you out some stuff and he needs, I, I appreciate anybody that does he does, Brett does everything. Characters are not real, but the stories are real. So I appreciate anybody that bases anything on the real stories ’cause there’s so much myth out there and so much bullshit that that, so I appreciate that you do that, Brett. Thank you Gary. That means a lot. Okay. All right, Brett. Good talking to you. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Okay. All right, Brett. I’ll I don’t know next week or two, maybe I’ll go ahead and slide this up there. [00:18:00] No, I appreciate it. I’ll send you a link. I’ll send you a link whenever we, I get it up there. Sounds great. Thanks Gary. Okay. Alright. Bye. Bye.

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with retired FBI agent Geoff Kelly, a specialist in art theft investigations who inherited one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American history—the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He recently wrote a book about this theft titled 13 Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Kelly’s law enforcement career began as a New York City transit police officer before transitioning to the FBI. Like many agents, he initially sought violent crime work. Instead, he was assigned to economic crimes before eventually transferring to a violent crime squad. It was there that he encountered the Gardner case—a cold case largely untouched by senior agents at the time. The robbery itself remains extraordinary: two men posing as police officers gained entry to the museum and stole 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt. More than three decades later, none of the works have been recovered. Inside the Gardner Heist Geoff explains how art theft is often misunderstood. Popular culture portrays refined, sophisticated criminals orchestrating elaborate capers. The reality, he says, is usually more opportunistic and frequently violent. Art theft often intersects with organized crime, drug trafficking, and even homicide. Massachusetts has a documented history of art-related crimes, and several individuals connected to the Gardner investigation met violent ends. The criminal underworld surrounding stolen art is less about wealthy collectors hiding paintings in private vaults and more about leverage—using artwork as collateral in criminal negotiations. The FBI’s Art Crime Evolution Following the 2003 looting of Iraq’s National Museum during the Baghdad invasion, the FBI formalized its Art Crime Team. Kelly discusses how intelligence gathering, informants, and international cooperation became central tools in recovering stolen artifacts. He emphasizes that solving art crimes often depends less on forensic breakthroughs and more on human intelligence. Informants remain essential, especially in cases where organized crime overlaps with high-value theft. Kelly also discusses his upcoming book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, which explores the intersections of mobsters, murder, and the illicit art market. Organized Crime and the Reality of Stolen Art Drawing on my own experience working organized crime in Kansas City, I found clear parallels between traditional mob rackets and art theft networks. The same structures—intimidation, secrecy, and violence—apply. Once a painting disappears into criminal circulation, it becomes a liability as much as an asset. Kelly challenges the myth that thieves profit easily from masterpieces. High-profile works are difficult to sell. The black-market art world is volatile and dangerous. In many cases, the artwork becomes bargaining collateral rather than a cash windfall. A Case Still Waiting for Closure More than 30 years later, the Gardner Museum still displays empty frames where the paintings once hung. Kelly remains committed to the idea that public awareness may eventually generate new leads.  The Gardner heist stands as both a cultural tragedy and a criminal mystery—one that continues to intersect with organized crime, violence, and international intrigue. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, you guys, Gary Jenkins back here in studio Gangland Wire. Y’all know me. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I have in the studio today… Jeff Kelly, he’s a now-retired FBI agent. He was an expert in recovering stolen artifacts and art pieces. He was involved. He wasn’t involved in the original theft of the Boston art theft, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but he ended up inheriting that case. So welcome, Jeff. Hi. Thanks, Gary. Nice to be here. And guys, I need to mention this right off the bat. Jeff has a book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Be out on Amazon. I’ll have links down below in the show notes if you want to get that book. I think it would be pretty interesting. I was telling Jeff, I just interviewed Joe Ford, the million-dollar detective, the guy that goes after classic cars, and I read that book. I love these kind of caper kind of books and caper crimes. Those are the ones I like the best is the caper crimes. And Jeff is an expert at working caper crimes. And that’s what these are, capers. So Jeff, how did you get into this? Now you came on the FBI. You were a policeman before, I believe. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your FBI career. Yeah, I started out with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police in New York City. It was a transit cop. I did that for three years. And then I got into the FBI in October of 95. [1:30] And my goal was always, I wanted to work violent crime. That’s what drew me to law enforcement in the first place, working bank robberies and kidnappings and fugitives. I had to do my five years on working economic crime, telemarketing fraud. It was interesting, but not all that exciting. And finally in 2000, I got my transfer to the violent crime squad. And I loved working it. And I did it for my entire career from then on, right up until my retirement in 2024. But back then, art theft was considered a major theft violation, [2:01] and it was worked by the Violent Crime Squad. And so in 2002… My supervisor dumped this old moribund cold case in my lap. It was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. [2:15] Nobody wanted it on the squad, so they figured, let’s give it to the new guy. I was ecstatic to get it because I’d heard about it. I went to school in Boston. I went to Boston University and graduated the year before it happened, but I knew about it. [2:28] That’s how I started working this case, this particular case, and then the following year during the U.S., there was a, the U.S. And coalition forces invaded Baghdad in Iraq. And during a 36-hour period, more than 15,000 objects of very, very important cultural history were looted from the National Museum of Iraq. And it’s really one of the most important museums in the world in terms of our shared history. Kind of the cradle of civilization over there in the Tigers and Euphrates River. Yeah, and that was the time when the FBI kind of belatedly realized that there was no art crime team to investigate this. And of course, FBI agents have been working art theft like any other property crime since the beginning of the FBI’s existence, but there was no codified team. So they did a canvas for the team in 2004 and I applied for it because at this point I’d been working the Gardner case for a couple of years and really was fascinated by it and made the team. And so then over the next 20 years, we continued to expand the team both in size and in scope and in our intelligence base and knowledge base. And when I left the Bureau in 2024, it was and still is a tremendous team with a lot of very dedicated and professional agents and professional support. [3:51] Now, guys, if you don’t know about the Isabella Stewart Gardner case, there was a Netflix documentary on it a few years ago. It was an art museum in Boston. [4:01] Two guys showed up. They had Boston police uniforms on, and they got in. They basically, it was an armed robbery, and they took control of the museum. The guards were in there late at night and took these really valuable paintings out. I believe you told me earlier they were Remington paintings. We’ll get into that. And it was a violent crime. It was an armed robbery of paintings, and you told me about other armed robberies of paintings. I think you got into some other armed robberies of paintings. You always think of, as you mentioned before, the Thomas Crown Affair character that goes out and does these sophisticated art thefts. That’s not always true, is it? It’s never that way, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Everybody wants to believe that art thefts are pulled off by the Thomas Crown Affairs and these gentlemen thieves repel in through skylights and do all that fancy stuff, put it in their underground lair. That’s just not the way it works. But if you look to art theft. [4:55] Massachusetts really is a cradle of art theft in this country, and it’s very unique. The first armed robbery of a museum occurred in Boston in 1972. It was committed by a guy named Al Monday, who was a prolific art thief. And they stole four pieces from the Worcester Art Museum in central Massachusetts with a gun. They ended up shooting the guard. And one of the pieces that they stole was a Rembrandt called St. Bartholomew. [5:26] And in keeping with the milieu of true art thieves, the paintings were stored on a pig farm just over the state line in Rhode Island. And when this Connecticut safecracker by the name of Chucky Carlo, who was looking at some serious time in prison for some of the crimes that he committed, when he found out that Al Monday had these paintings, he just simply kidnapped Al Monday and stuck a gun in his ribs and said he would kill him if he didn’t give him the paintings. which is no honor among thieves. And Al turned over the paintings, Chucky returned them, and he got a very significant break on his pending jail sentence. Right here in 1972, Boston thieves see Rembrandt as a valuable get-out-of-jail-free card. [6:09] And then if we jump forward three years to 1975, there was a very skilled art thief, really a master thief by the name of Miles Conner. I interviewed Miles for my book. It was very gracious of him to sit down with me for it. And he had robbed or committed a burglary of the Woolworth estate up in Maine, the family, the five and dime family magnets. And he got caught for it because he tried to sell those paintings to an undercover FBI agent. And so he was looking at 12 years in prison for it. And he was out on bail. And he reached out to a family friend who was a state trooper. And he asked him, how can I get away with this one? How can I get out of this? Because he was in serious trouble. The trooper’s response was meant to be hyperbolic. The trooper said, Miles, it’s going to take you a Rembrandt to get out of this one. [6:57] And so Miles said, okay, I’ll go get a Rembrandt. And he got a crew together and they did a daylight smash and grab at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, just across the street from the Gardner. And they stole Rembrandt, the girl in a gold-trimmed cloak. [7:12] And he was able to return that painting. Instead of doing 12 years, he did 28 months. And he even managed to, he told me he even managed to get the $10,000 reward in the process. So you have this atmosphere in Massachusetts that Rembrandts are a valuable commodity, right? They can help you out in a jam. And so I think it’s no coincidence that in 1990, when the Gardner Museum heist came down, the Gardner Museum had this array of motion sensors all throughout the museum. It would alert to wherever you went, every gallery, hallway, whatever. [7:49] And we know from these motion sensors that after, as you said, the two guys went in disguised as cops and bluffed their way into the museum, they made a beeline for the Dutch room, which is the room of all things Rembrandt. They stole three Rembrandts. They stole a fourth piece called Landscape with an Obelisk, which was actually by Govard Flink, but it had been misattributed to Rembrandt until the mid 80s. And then they took a large Rembrandt oil-on-panel off the wall and it was recovered the next morning leaning against a piece of furniture. We believe they just overlooked it in the dark. So out of the 13 pieces taken, three were Rembrandt, a fourth was misattributed to Rembrandt, and there was going to be a 14th piece taken, which was also Rembrandt. It definitely falls into that theory that this was going to be a hold-on to these pieces for a while and see if you can use them for a break. [8:48] Interesting. Now, back in the 70s, for example, when somebody would work in an art robbery like that or an art theft, you got your tried and true ways of working a crime. You got to have sources, you got to have witnesses, and hopefully you can get a crime like this. You can get a source that says, hey, this guy, we had a guy in Kansas City that he was a fence for these kinds of guys. He had an antique auction and he took all this stuff and got it somewhere else. So at the time, just use your regular police methods. And what changed over the years as you’ve done this? Yeah, certainly we’ve become much more sophisticated with the techniques that we use. But at the end of the day, it’s always still going to be intelligence. But I found from working my entire career in violent crime, virtually my whole career in violent crime, the sources are crucial. Having a good informant can make and break a case. And working art theft investigations, you’re certainly going to have the same types of fences of informants, fences for stolen property and what they’re hearing about what organized crime guys are doing and what drug guys are doing. But it also opened up a whole new avenue of sources for me as working in art investigations, because now you’ve got pawn shops and gallery owners and auction houses, and they’re in a position to know when not only when stolen artwork is coming in, but also fakes and forgeries. We spoke about this, that. [10:16] Somebody comes in with one valuable piece that would be very difficult for somebody in his or her position to come across one piece like this, let alone a dozen of them. That really points to probably a fake. And so that’s really the key to solving these things is just having a good intelligence base who’s going to let us know about when something comes up that’s either stolen or it’s been forged. [10:43] Brings up a question. In my mind, did you ever work a gallery owner or a gallery [10:48] that then would filter in, knowingly filter in some fakes every once in a while? They couldn’t do it 100% of the time, but you could certainly make some extra money by filtering fakes out of it because many people would get it and they’d never know. Nobody would ever know. Listen, it is a really difficult thing when you’re working these types of crimes because unlike bank robber, you go into a bank and you stick them up with a gun and take them on. It’s not up to the government to be able to prove at trial that you knew that the bank was insured by the FDIC. You went in and you robbed it, you committed the offense. When you’re talking about interstate transportation of stolen property or possession of stolen property, there are what’s called specific intent crimes, meaning you have to prove the element of knowledge. You have to be able to prove that the person knew that that item was stolen. Not that it said it was stolen. and you had to show that they knew it. And that’s a really high hurdle to overcome. And typically what we do to try and prove that specific intent is we’re going to go through. [11:53] Recorded statements made to a source or to an undercover or emails or texts or something that we can show that this person knew that item was stolen. And so we would see that a lot in auction houses and galleries. There’s a lot of willful blindness where a lot of gallery owners and auction houses, they’re going to look the other way because it’s too lucrative to pass up. And in fact, in 2015, the art crime team, once we received information that ISIL or ISIS was using looted cultural property from Syria and Iraq as a form, a viable form of terrorism financing. And we put auction houses and gallery owners on notice in 2015, and we basically told them that if you’re selling objects of cultural patrimony or cultural heritage with a dubious provenance, like a wink and a nod, you may be unwittingly or wittingly funding terrorism. While we never charged anybody with it, hopefully it was an eye-opener that when you’re getting into this world, it’s not a victimless crime. There are very real victims involved. [13:07] And that’s one of the things that really is interesting about working our crime investigations. And I used to get ribbed by my friends who were not on the art crime team about [13:18] where like the wine and cheese squad were raised and everything. But our subjects are far from it. We’re dealing with organized crime, gangs, terrorists. This is no joke. These are serious individuals and the stakes are high. And in the Gardner case, three or four people that we believe were involved in the heist were murdered a year after the Gardner case crime occurred. Yeah, I was just going to go back to that a little bit, as we said before, a little bit like the Lufthansa case. All of a sudden, everybody that was involved in the theft. Started dropping like flies. So tell the guys about that. That is really interesting. [14:00] Yeah. So the two individuals that we believe went into the museum dressed as cops, just a week shy of the one-year anniversary, one of the guys was found dead in his apartment of an acute overdose of cocaine, intravenous. And his family admitted that he used Coke, but they said he was terrified of needles. He was scared of needles. So it really looked to be like a hotshot, an intentional overdose of cocaine. Two weeks later, the other guy who we believe went into the museum with him, his wife reported him missing. And a couple of weeks later, his bullet riddled body was recovered in the trunk of his car out by Logan Airport in East Boston. There was another member of that crew. These were all part of the same crew. This Carmelo Merlino, who was a Boston mobster, had an auto shop down in the Dorchester section of Boston. Another member of his crew, a guy named Bobby, six weeks after the heist, he brought in, he visited a jeweler in the downtown crossing jewelry district in Boston. He came in with this object and he unwrapped it. It was an eagle. [15:03] It was the finial from the Napoleonic flag that was stolen in the Gardner heist. And he asked the jeweler, how much is this thing worth? And the jeweler looked at it and he said, it’s worth nothing. Because he immediately recognized it as one of the people that had been stolen six weeks earlier from the Gardner heist. And then a few months later, Bobby was stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on the front porch of his house. And the responding police saw that his house had been broken into and ransacked like his killers had been looking for something. There was a fourth guy, Jimmy, who bragged to his girlfriend a few months after the heist that he had a couple of pieces from the Gardner Museum hidden in his attic. [15:47] And in February of 1990, 11 months after the heist, he was executed on his front porch in what the local police called a mob hit. So, yeah, these are the types of crimes that have a tendency to have a chilling effect on anybody who harbors any aspirations to come forward with information. Yeah, and we talked earlier a little bit about, like, the crime itself, and the statute of limitations is up on that, what you said, and the crime itself, but how we talked a little bit and explained to them about how this could be part of a RICO case. And you’ve got the murders and you’ve got the actual theft and whatever they did with the paintings, then maybe you could get over after a Bob boss as a Rico case. Tell the guys a little bit about doing that. Yeah. [16:32] I’ve heard it so many times in more than two decades that I worked the case and people would say, geez, why don’t people come forward? They’re just paintings. There are so many times they’re just paintings. They’re like, yeah, they are, but there’s two things about that. Number one, there’s some dead bodies on these paintings, three or four, and that there’s no statute of limitations for murder. And so if you implicate yourself in the theft or you implicate yourself in possessing or transporting these paintings at any time, the fear is that you’re then implicating yourself in a homicide. And the other aspect of this, which I think has a chilling effect, is the fact that transportation of stolen property is one of the predicate acts for RICO, racketeering influence corrupt organization case. And RICO is basically, Gary, is basically an entire organization is corrupt. Yeah. There’s no legitimate purpose. It’s what we think about the mob and the [17:27] FBI has taken down the mob in the past. So if you implicate yourself in stolen property and you’re part of organized crime, that’s one of the predicate acts for a RICO. And that’s basically life sentences. And so one of my goals in the years and years that I worked in this case was to try and convince people that you could come forward with information and the U S attorney’s offices, whether it’s up in Boston or new Haven or Philadelphia. [17:58] Would be willing to figure out a way to get the paintings back with immunity from prosecution for a RICO case. Look, that’s a high hurdle. That’s a high hurdle to convince somebody that if you come forward, you’re not going to get charged and you’re eligible for millions of dollars in reward. That’s a tough bill to swallow, but it’s the truth. I’m retired from the FBI now. I can tell you that it was, it’s a, it was, and still is a bona fide offer. And that’s one of the goals that I’ve always tried to impress on anyone is the opportunity to become a millionaire without going to jail. There you go, Jeff. Can you, now you’re not with the Bureau anymore. Can you go out, if you could go out and find them and bring them in, could you collect that reward? I would certainly hope so. [18:48] I can’t tell you how many of my friends thought that I had some of these paintings stashed in my basement. Waiting for retirement to go turn them in the next day. I think half the guys I worked with were expecting to see me pull into the parking lot of the FBI. [19:01] Big package, but no. But yeah, I suppose I could. By this point, I can tell you the amount of my very being that I put into this case over two days. Yeah. I just would love to see these paintings go back just because they need to be back at the museum. That’s where they belong. Now, these crimes, they seem, You said there’s a lot of murders attached to this. They seem a little boring. Did you have any exciting moments trying to pop anybody or do any surveillances? I know we did a big surveillance of a bunch of junkies that were going around stealing from small museums around the Midwest. And we follow them here in Kansas City. And they would have been pretty exciting had we had a confrontation with them. Did you have any exciting moments in this? It actually was a fascinating case. And for the first, there’s the really boring aspects of this job and tedious aspects. And I would say that in my, two decades working this case, I probably did, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 consent searches, searching in attics and basements and crawling through crawl spaces and just getting sweaty and covered in cobwebs. But the break in the case for me came in 2009 when one of the guys who was part of Merlino’s crew who was deceased, his niece came forward to me and told me that the paintings. Some of them had been hidden up in this guy’s hide at his house up in Maine. I went up to Maine with Anthony Amore, who’s the director of security for the Gardner Museum. We worked on this case together for years. [20:29] And then we found that hide. And then we interviewed, right from there, we went and interviewed Guarenti. That’s the guy, Bobby Guarenti. We interviewed his widow and she broke down and admitted that he once showed her the paintings and she gave them to a guy down in Connecticut. And we identified that guy and we interviewed him. My name is Bobby Gentile. He’s a made member of the Philly Mob. He got straightened out with his crew back in the late 90s. [20:54] And he refused to cooperate. And then that’s where we really just started getting, using a lot of ingenuity to try and break it. And an agent down in the New Haven office, a guy by the name of Jamie Lawton, he joined our team and we started working this case. And he had a source who knew Gentile, Bobby Gentile, and the source started buying drugs from Gentile. Ah, there we go. We ended up arresting Gentile and we did a search warrant at his house. And it was crazy. Like we recovered, I want to say seven handguns, loaded handguns lying all over the place. He had a pump action shotgun hanging by the front door. He had high explosives. We had to evacuate the house and call him the bomb squad. But the interesting thing was he had the March 19th, 1990 edition of the Boston Herald with headlines about the Gardner heist and tucked inside that newspaper was a handwritten list of all the stolen items. With what looked like their black market values. This is in the house of a guy who swore up and down that he’d never heard of the Gardner Museum. And we were able to figure out who wrote the list. It was written by none other than Al Monday, who’s the guy that did the first armed robbery of a museum, of a Rembrandt. And we interviewed him and he told us that he wrote that list for Bobby Gentile and his buddy up in Maine, Bobby Garanti, because they had a buyer for the paintings and they wanted to know what they were worth. [22:24] So yeah, and then Gentile took 30 months. [22:28] He wouldn’t cooperate. And while he was incarcerated, we turned two of his closest friends to becoming sources. And so when he got out of prison in February or April of 2014, they started talking to him and talked about the gardener and they said they might know somebody who’d want to buy him. That’s how we then introduced an undercover agent. Gentile was introduced to Tony, this undercover FBI agent. Over six months, they had long talks about selling the paintings. Unfortunately, before Gentile would sell the paintings, he wanted to do a drug deal first, which we couldn’t allow to happen. We can’t let drugs walk on the street. So we had to take it down. And although we’d seized all these guns from Gentile back in 2012, he told the sources the FBI didn’t get all of his guns. Because of that disturbing comment, one of the sources asked Gentile if he could buy a gun for him. And Gentile sold him a loaded 38. So we arrested him again. And he still refused to cooperate. I don’t respect what he did for a living or a lot of the things that he did, but you do have to respect his adherence to his values. However, misguided they may have been, he took the code of omerta, the code of silence to heart, and he took it to his grave. He died, I think, in 2021 after going to prison a second time. [23:50] While we never got any paintings back, it was a tremendous ride, and I’m confident they will come back. It’s just going to be a question of when. Yeah, that kind of brings up the question that you hear people speculate. Did you ever run across this? Is there actually any rich old guys or an Arab sheik or somebody that buys stuff like this and then really keeps it and never shows it to anybody? Does that unicorn really exist? everybody wants that to be true i know virtually it’s not yeah there’s there’s never been a case of some wealthy what we call the doctor no theory some some reclusive billionaire with his underground lair filled with all the illicit stolen treasures of the world yeah that’s it’s never happened yeah i guess you never say never but but no look the majority statistically about three-quarters of everyone that collects art in this country does it for, and I assume it’s probably worldwide, does it for the investment potential. There’s a lot of money to be made in collecting art. It rarely, if ever, drops in value. So that’s why people collect art. If there’s somebody who has a particular piece that they want so badly that they’re going to commission its theft, it’s more the stuff of Hollywood. It could happen, but we’ve never seen that happen yet. Interesting. [25:14] We did have one case here where we had a medical doctor and he had it on the wall of his house. And it was, I believe it was a Western artist named Remington that these junkies stole out of Omaha. But it was such a minor piece that he could show it to anybody and they wouldn’t. They would say, oh, that’s cool. You got a Remington. [25:30] There’s plenty of those around. And he could afford a real deal Remington anyhow. So it wasn’t that big a deal. And that’s really what it comes down to is that art, high-end art does get stolen. It gets stolen quite often. The art market is about $60 billion, and the FBI, we estimated about $6 to $8 billion of that is illicit, whether it’s theft or fakes and forgeries. It’s a tremendous market, but it’s mostly second and third tier items. [26:02] Really valuable, well-known pieces. They do get stolen, but that’s the easy part. The easy part is stealing it. The hard part is monetizing it. That’s why you very rarely see recidivism among art thieves, high-end art thieves, because you do it once, and now you’re stuck with the thing. It’s easier to steal something else. You got to go out and boost fur coats and stuff to make a living. Exactly. Do a jewelry store robbery down there and make a living. And that’s exactly the point. That’s why you’re seeing a sea change in terms of art thefts, museum thefts. The Louvre was a great example of that. Dresden green vault robbery where 100 million euros in gems were stolen back in 2019 yeah. [26:45] Gems and jewelry, it can be broken down. It’s going to greatly diminish their value, but you can recut a gem. You can melt down the setting. You can monetize it for a greatly diminished value, but at least you can monetize it. You can’t cut up a Rembrandt into smaller pieces. [27:02] It’s only valuable as a whole complete piece. Yeah. I’m just thinking about that. We got a couple of guys, Jerry Scalise and Art Rachel in Chicago, flew to London, robbed a really valuable piece, the Lady Churchill’s diamond or something, I don’t remember, but really valuable piece and mailed it to somebody on their way to the airport and then got caught when they got back to Chicago and brought back to London and did 14 years in England and they never gave up that piece and nobody could, it never appeared anywhere, but it was just cut up and they didn’t make hardly any money off of it. Yeah. Look, there’s a, there’s much more profitable ways to. Yeah. To make an illicit living than stealing high-end artwork, but it does still get stolen. And that’s one of the cruel ironies when you’re talking about art theft is if somebody has a $20,000 piece of jewelry or a very expensive watch, they’re most likely going to lock it up in a safe in their bedroom or something. But you have a $10 million piece of artwork, you probably got it on the mantle. You’ve got it over the fireplace or in the front foyer of your house and probably doesn’t have a passive alarm system protecting it or security screws to keep it from being taken off the wall because people want to show it off. Yeah. It’s way too enticing. [28:24] Really? So, yes, you need to keep the word out there and keep this in people’s minds. And I’m sure the museum tries to do this in some ways in order, hopefully, that maybe somebody will say, oh. Yeah. [28:38] I think I saw that somewhere in this news program or on this podcast. [28:42] I’ll put some pictures on the podcast when I end up editing this. No, please do, Kerry. And that’s the thing. That’s the basis for the title of my book is it really is a fugitive investigation. And that’s how I work this case is fugitives and perfect fugitives because they’re not like their human counterparts. They’re not going to get tripped up on the silly things that we need to do as human beings, getting a driver’s license or whatnot. Yeah. [29:09] And so that’s how I worked the case. The FBI was really, I was always impressed with the FBI’s support that they gave me on this investigation. We did billboard campaigns and social media and a lot of things to get these images out there to the public, hoping it might resonate with somebody. And that’s really my goal for this book. I felt it should be written. I felt it’s an important case. Certainly, it’s something that I wanted to write about. It’s something that’s very important to me. [29:42] But it’s yet another attempt to apprehend these fugitives. And I’m hopeful that somebody, it might resonate with somebody. Somebody’s going to see something. And there’s so much disinformation and misinformation that’s out there in the media about this case. People are endlessly, all these armchair detectives, and I don’t say it in a deprecating way. Good for them. Work as hard as you can. But if you want to work this case from your armchair, great. but you should be going off accurate information because there’s a lot of bad information that’s out there on the internet. And if you want to help out, if you want to collect that $10 million reward, great, but you should be going off the most accurate factual information that’s available. Yeah. And you probably ought to go down to the deep seamy underbelly of Philadelphia or Boston or somewhere and get involved with a mob and then work your way up and make different cocaine deals and everything. And eventually you might be trusted enough that some might say, oh yeah, I’ve got those in this basement. I would suggest there’s better hobbies. [30:47] That could be hazardous to your health. I wouldn’t recommend it. Yes, it could. All right. Jeffrey Kelly, the book is 13 Perfect Tuesdays. Those are the paintings that were stolen that you’ll see on the podcast on the YouTube channel. The true story of the mob, murder, and the world’s largest art heist. Jeffrey, thanks so much for coming on to tell us about this. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me.

Transcribed - Published: 9 March 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Host retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins dives into the shadowy intersection of organized gambling and college athletics through the story of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal.  During the early 1960s, Rosenthal built his reputation by identifying weaknesses in sports systems, particularly among vulnerable college athletes. He met one who could not be bought, Mickey Bruce of Oregon. At the center of this story is a little-known but pivotal attempt at a fix involving the Oregon Ducks. Rosenthal and his associate, David Budin, believed they had found an opening, but they ran headlong into the integrity of Oregon halfback Mickey Bruce. Bruce flatly refused the bribe, setting off a chain reaction that would help expose a much wider pattern of corruption in college sports.   I break down how this wasn’t an isolated incident but part of a nationwide effort by gamblers to influence outcomes and exploit young athletes. The episode explores the mechanics of organized gambling, attempts to fix games, and why college sports became such an attractive target for mob-connected bookmakers. The story reaches a dramatic turning point during U.S. Senate hearings on gambling in college athletics, where Mickey Bruce publicly identified Lefty Rosenthal as one of the men who tried to corrupt him. It’s a rare moment in mob history—one where a gambler is named in open testimony by a player who refused to bend.   From there, I trace Rosenthal’s continued rise in the gambling world, from Miami to Las Vegas, where he would help shape modern sports betting while repeatedly managing to stay one step ahead of serious legal consequences. Rosenthal’s story raises enduring questions about accountability, the limits of law enforcement, and why some figures seem untouchable. I close the episode by reflecting on Rosenthal’s legacy—and on Mickey Bruce’s quiet heroism.   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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 The Story Begins 4:14 The Bribe Attempt 7:58 The Aftermath of Scandal 12:26 The Rise of Lefty 14:34 College Sports and Corruption 18:58 The Online Gambling Boom 22:26 The Fall of Adrian McPherson 24:24 Mickey Bruce’s Legacy [0:00] Hey, hey, all you wiretappers, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I worked a mob for about 14 years, and now I tell some mob stories, as many as I can find. And we all know Lefty Rosenthal. We all know Robert De Niro played him as Ace Rothstein in the film movie Casino. And that movie, part of the reason it was so good that Nicholas Pelleggi, the screenwriter, and wrote the book, was able to spend hours and hours interviewing Lefty Rosenthal in real life. He had gone to Florida by then and it seemed like the mob wasn’t after him anymore. They had one attempted bombing of him, if you remember. [0:41] So it was a really good movie. There’s really good depiction of that era and that system that they had going out there. Let’s go back on Lefty Rosenthal’s history to a guy that he couldn’t corrupt. Lefty Rosenthal thought he could corrupt anybody, but he found a guy that he couldn’t corrupt. It was really one of his early cases where law enforcement, the FBI, and other state law enforcement agencies figured out Lefty Rosenthal was somebody, and he was a pretty big gambler. He was a nationwide gambler. In 1960, the Oregon Ducks had a pretty good team. What a name, the Oregon Ducks. They had a man named Dave Grayson and the quarterback with Dave Gross in the backfield. They had a 5’3 All-American receiver named Cleveland Jones. What a name, Cleveland Jones. They went 7-2-1. They lost to Michigan, and they also lost to eventual Rose Bowl champ Washington. But this was good enough to gain a Liberty Bowl invite to play Penn State. Oregon lost the bowl and played in two feet of snow and freezing temperatures in Philadelphia that year. [1:50] But the biggest news of the season was made during their trip to Ann Arbor to play Michigan. They had this potential All-American player named Mickey Bruce, who really was obscure compared to especially this Dave Gross or this Cleveland Jones, who was an unusual player. He was a president of his fraternity. He was a former Little League World Series star. He was the son of an attorney. He was a team captain. He played halfback and defensive back. And there was two professional gamblers came to Ann Arbor that year and they didn’t know much about this guy, but they did know, one of them’s name was Budin, David Budin, and the other one was Frank Lefty Rosenthal. They didn’t know much about Mickey Bruce, but they had a connection to him. A guy who played for the Oregon State basketball team named Jimmy Granada and knew Boudin from when they were little kids growing up on the basketball courts in New York City. Now, Granada told Mickey that he had two friends staying at the team hotel and they needed tickets. This time, players could then were given tickets and they could turn around and sell them to people. Boudin ended up finding him and introduced himself and said he was Jimmy Granada’s friend and invited Mickey up to the room and said, I’m the guy that needs a couple of tickets. [3:15] Mickey was a little bit hesitant, but didn’t know this guy. He’s probably got a New York accent, probably slick, more than likely. He hesitated at first and booted and said, just take a few minutes. I just want to get you to go and get those tickets. And so he goes him, so he follows him into the room and he finds Lefty Rosenthal waiting there, who he doesn’t know and won’t even have any idea who he is till much later. So they chatted a little bit about the game as people will and ask him questions about the team. And Rosenthal mentioned that Oregon was a six-point underdog. He said, do you don’t think a player could be bribed? Mickey said, I suppose they could. Buden then cut in. He said, Mickey, he said, what do you think it would cost to ensure that Michigan won by at least eight points? Mickey plays along. He says, you’re the big-time gamblers. You should know. So Buden said, about $5,000. And Mickey said, that’s probably fine. [4:14] Mickey said, let me check into this. And he said, I’m late for a team meeting and I got to get going. So they made plans to meet later on about 9 p.m. Mickey was no fool or small town rube. His father had been a Chicago attorney and he now practice in El Cajon, California. [4:31] He raced to catch up with his teammates and told an assistant coach about the bribe who told the athletic director, who then called in the Michigan State Police, who called in the FBI. And they told Mickey to go ahead and show up at 9 p.m. at the meeting in the hotel room. They don’t want to apprehend Buden and Rosenthal right now. They want to get some more information and really get a real solid bribery attempt out of them. So acting on the advice of these cops, Mickey goes back to the hotel room that evening. [5:00] Buden and Rosenthal start talking to him. And so they gave him tips about how to carry out this scheme without attracting any attention. Buden and Rosenthal say, we’ll give you an extra $5,000 and you can get the quarterback, Dave Gross, to go along with this scheme. He said, Mickey, you just need to let some pass receivers get behind you once in a while and let them run up the score a little bit. And you’re not going to win anyhow, more than likely. Get the quarterback to call a few wrong plays nobody really ever noticed. And he said, I’ll give you each $5,000 after the game if you’ll do that. He also offered Mickey $100 a week just to call him at his house down in Florida and update him about the health of Oregon’s team before weekly betting lines were released makes you wonder how many guys did Rosenthal have calling him to update him on injuries and everything on different college teams and professional too. Because I know from doing a story before that Ocardo and a lot of the Chicago gangsters really valued Rosenthal’s tips on making their football bets. He seemed to have some kind of an inside track. [6:08] As he got ready to leave, Mickey said, oh, wait a minute. I gave you those tickets. You got to pay me, which were only worth about three bucks each. And so Lefty gave him 50 bucks for the two tickets. Mickey would remember later that he had to roll $100 bills in his pocket, which is typical for a high-flyer, high-rolling kind of a dude like that, have a big roll of cash in your pocket. And then you reach down in, peel some off so everybody can see how much money you got in your pocket. Rosenthal said, hey, I got to leave tonight, but see my friend Buden in the morning, David Buden, and he’ll give you the money. Mickey agreed, went back to his room. The next morning, while eating breakfast with his teammates, he sees a state trooper leading Buden out of the hotel in handcuffs, and then missed Lefty Rosenthal, who, as he had told them the night before, the Lefty was going to be leaving, and they had made a good bribery attempt. I don’t know what the police were waiting on. They were trying to make an even better case or something. I guess they probably They wanted him to go back in and catch them all together with the money. But then lefty left, and they went ahead and pulled the trigger early. You never know how these things work out exactly and what was at play. During the game, Mickey, I tell you what, Mickey played his heart out. He got an interception for a touchdown. It didn’t make any difference. Michigan won easily, 21 to nothing, and easily covered the six-point spread. [7:28] A player will later be asked about this, and part of the reason was he said the coach had called a late-night team meeting and told them about this bribery attempt and asked them if any of them had been approached. Of course, everybody said no. Whether they had or not, they’re going to say no. But this player said it really shook us. We just had no rhythm. We just couldn’t get together for that game. [7:50] Buden, when he was arrested, it turns out he was arrested for registering at a hotel under a fake name. He ends up paying some little fine and leaving town. [7:58] Lefty was long gone the next day. It’s possible that Rosenthal and Buden knew that just attempting this bribe might have the negative impact on Oregon’s chances against the spread anyhow. All we know for sure is they got off scot-free in the end, and Buden paid a $100 fine or whatever. Lefty, but he did get exposed because Mickey Bruce, he didn’t have any idea of what he was getting drawn into, but it became a nationwide scandal. Basketball and football games, college games were being influenced on a wide scale by these gambling interests and Lefty Rosenthal was right in the middle of it all. Part of the McClellan committee, Senator McClellan of Arkansas convened his select committee just to investigate gambling and college athletics later that year. Because of this Michigan interaction with Lefty and college players and attempted bribery, they brought Mickey Bruce in. September the 8th, 1961, there’s a Senate hearing witness table. And sitting at that table is Mickey Bruce at one side and Frank Lefty Rosenthal at the other. And this was the same Frank he’d met at this hotel room. And he literally fingered Rosenthal as one of the men who attempted to bribe him. That photo that I’ve got in there, if you’re on YouTube, Rosenthal fled the fifth, of course. [9:27] Committee here, meetings like that, really what they’re good for is to stir law enforcement and bring people out and bring out and get the public riled up against organized crime. That’s what McClellan’s committee was really good for. They had several of those committees that finally got local authorities and the FBI to start looking at organized crime. And in particular, this is the mother’s milk of organized crime by now is gambling. And college sports gambling was the thing at the time. There was some pro teams going on, but it didn’t have near the action going down on it that the college teams had. There was a lot more interest in college and a lot more college games every week. Later on the next year, Wayne County, Michigan District Attorney’s Office wanted Mickey Bruce to come back to Detroit and swear out a complaint against the people that tried to bribe him and name him and give statements and everything. Bruce, by then, he didn’t really want to mess with it. He was playing football. He had his fraternity work. He had to keep his grades up because he was going to law school. [10:32] But they had a game against Ohio State that November. Michigan authorities thought, just come in and see us when you’re here. But he was out for the season by then. He had separated his shoulder, and he never really played again when they were playing Stanford earlier that year. He wasn’t going to go back to Michigan. His coaches tried to get him to cooperate, but he said, I’m done with the whole matter. In an interview, he said, as far as I’m concerned, this whole thing should have been dead a month ago after it happened. He conferred with his father, and they both said they can’t really make him do that. [11:05] He said, I didn’t have time to go. I’ve got all these school activities that I’m doing, and I just don’t want to go. And he said, the Michigan police botched this thing from the start. They should have stuck around, and they should have got Rosenthal before they left town. There were several things they should have done, and it was a poorly run investigation that probably wasn’t going to succeed anyhow. And he said it had been over a year, and he said, I don’t really remember exactly what happened. I understand all that, and he could have helped him make a case, but there’s an obscure a paragraph in Lefty Rosenthal’s FBI file. And it might explain a little more about why Mickey Bruce didn’t testify in a criminal trial against Lefty. It already testified and pointed him out in the McClellan hearing. But right after that, his mother received a telephone call in her home in El Cajon, California. Now, there’s some, it says name redacted, but you can easily fill in the name. 1961, September 1961, name redacted, El Cajon, received a phone call from an unidentified male asking if, name redacted, can you fill in, Mickey Bruce, name redacted, answered in the negative, at which time this person uttered an oath and added, you’re going to get it, and so is he. I think it’s pretty easy to fill in the names of Mickey Bruce and his mother easily. [12:26] Bruce stayed home Oregon went to Columbus Lost to the Buckeyes again Wayne County DA Dropped any cases Against Buden and Rosenthal For lack of evidence Lefty will continue During these years To run his sports book Out of Florida He’ll continue Traveling around the country And making contact With people in the College sports world Trying to bribe players And coaches And gather information And. [12:50] Cops in Miami were watching Lefty by then, 1960, New Year’s Eve. Police Chief Martin Dardis of Miami knocked on Rosenthal’s door with a group of guys and found him in his bedroom in his pajamas. He had a telephone in one hand and a small black book in the other. Dardis took the phone away from him and started answering the calls, and they were from bettors all around the country. He remembered that there was one guy named Amos who wanted to place a bet on a football game on New Year’s Day. And Dardis handed the phone to Rosenthal who told the guy that was calling in says you’re talking to a cop you stupid SOB. [13:28] During that raid, Rosenthal complained he’d paid $500 to keep local police from harassing his bookmaking operations. He said, you guys must be kidding. [13:37] Evidently, you didn’t get your piece. About a year later, February 1962, after the Senate hearings, detective knocked on his door again in Miami. He came to the door sporting dapper attire, which he was a really dapper dresser, and he had painted fingernails, according to a newspaper account. He said, I’ve been expecting you. [13:58] The detectives arrested Rosenthal, not for bribing Mickey Bruce, but he and his friend Buden faced charges in North Carolina for offering $500 to Ray Paprocki, a basketball player at NYU, and wanted to shave points in a 1960 NCAA tournament against West Virginia. During this time, authorities had uncovered a nationwide network of fixtures who conspired to influence hundreds of college basketball games over a five-year period. In the end, 37 players from 22 schools were arrested on charges relating to [14:31] port shaving. Man, that’s, boy, that was huge. We’ve got these guys going down now periodically that are getting involved because of the apps. And we’re going to get a little more into that. This gambling thing and college athletics especially, but even pro athletics. It’s a corrupting force, guys. I know a lot of you like to bet on games, but it really, there’s a real potential for corrupting the game. And in the end, if they keep it up and people keep corrupting these games, it’s just going to be like wrestling. You’ll just, somebody will control who’s going to win and who’s going to lose in every contest. That’s what these gamblers would like to get, and they’d make all the money. [15:08] Rosenthal pleaded no contest. He got a $6,000 fine for trying to fix this NYU-West Virginia game. He claimed that David Buden gave up his name and that he said later on, trying to clear himself of that, that that wasn’t really me. David Buden did it, and he would have given up his mother’s stay away from what he had to face. That was when the Nevada Gaming Control Board was after him. [15:33] In 1967, Rosenthal, under the watch of the Chicago Outfit, started acting like his outfit bosses and bring outfit tactics down to Miami. He started intimidating rival bookies and others in Miami who incurred his wrath. He ordered bombings of the territory. I interviewed the son of a CIA operative named, his father’s name was Ricardo Monkey Morales. Look back and see if you can find that interview of the son of Monkey Morales. I think Monkey Morales was probably in the title. And he told us about his father’s relationship with Rosenthal. He told him that Lefty had told his dad that he represented organized crime out of Chicago. And he said that Morales said that Rosenthal paid him. He said that Rosenthal paid Monkey Morales to blow up Alfie’s newsstand with a bookie joint in the back. He also had him, they had him blow up a car and a boat owned by a well-known jewelry thief that the mob was pressuring to do some burglaries for them. He also had him explode a bomb. I remember this, explode a bomb in the front yard of a Miami police officer trying to show his power. I guess this guy was messing with him or something, trying to tell everybody he was connected to the outfit and don’t mess with me. [16:50] Morales would also claim that he’d witnessed Rosenthal meeting with Tony Splatron in Miami in 1967. [16:58] 1970s, he goes to Las Vegas at the request of the outfit, which we all know. We’ll go back over it a little bit. Even legitimate gambling people will say he invented the sportsbook industry in Las Vegas. They didn’t really do that before. And Sports Illustrated once called him the greatest living expert on sports gambling. He’ll die in 2008 of natural causes down in Florida after all the skimming investigation went down and people started going to grand juries and being indicted and going to trials and everything. All the mobsters did. Several people in Las Vegas did. A guy out of the Tropicanda who was Kansas City’s man, Joe Augusto, and a guy named Carl Thomas who worked at both casinos and helping in skimming and several other guys that worked in the casino business. But guess who never was indicted? And guess who never even was called in for an interview? And guess who just hid out? Lefty Rosenthal. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Jane Ann Morrison of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Finally, they get an FBI agent to confirm to her that he was a top echelon informant during all this time. They try to blow him up in his Cadillac, another famous attempted mob hit. A lot of people speculate on that. They’ll always say it was Kansas City because they thought he was an informant all along. and never liked him and never trust him because he really, he brought all the heat down out in Las Vegas. Now, the heat was coming anyhow, but he maybe brought it a little bit quicker. [18:24] There’s a former federal prosecutor out of Las Vegas that once said, it’s been said you should never speak ill of the dead, but there are exceptions to the rule, and Frank Rosenthal is one of those exceptions. He is an awful human being. [18:38] Dave Budin, the guy who first approached Mickey Bruce, Yes. Continues in the sportsbook game and draws his son Steve into it. And by the 1990s, the online betting industry has taken over from your neighborhood bookie and a mob just running everything. It’s a multi-billion dollar thorn in the side of the U.S. authorities. [18:59] 1998, federal prosecutors indicted Miami gambler David Buden, same man that tried to bribe Mickey Bruce, and indicted Buden’s son for running something called SDB Global. [19:13] Which later became SBG. Federal authorities prosecuted Boudin under a federal anti-gambling statute because SDB Global was incorporated in Costa Rica, but it was based in Miami. Pleaded guilty and got a $750,000 fine. In Kansas City, during those same years, the son of the feared mafia capo, if you will, Willie the Rat Comisano, Willie Comisano Jr., They headed up a group of bookies that contained the names and sons and other extended relatives of many Kansas City Mafia members out of the 50s and 60s. And they were using the internet and dealing with either SDB Global or one of the other sports betting sites that sprung up in Costa Rica because they were all over the place. Budins were high flyers in this doing business out of Costa Rica. And they were making a lot of money, a lot of money. In 2004, SBG comes to the attention of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They sent an undercover in, and they asked an SBG operator why the company required customers to call before wiring each new deposit. And he got him on tape to say, because we change the names in the countries of the middlemen all the time. The agent suggested that the process made it uneasy, and the employee of SBG said, you don’t have to worry about it. Lots of people do it. [20:35] Well, during this investigation, they also found there was a Florida State star quarterback named Adrian McPherson was placing bets on games that he was playing in and ends up getting dismissed from the Florida State Seminoles football team. He was a rising star, a rising young star quarterback. In the investigation, they learned he’d already lost $8,000 to a local bookie who’d cut him off. He was giving him, extending him credit. Guy owed him $8,000 and he cut him off. So that’s when he turned to online SBG sites. Now, you have to pay up front. So he was getting some money to gamble somehow, and he tried to hide this activity by using a roommate, but a review of his phone records showed several calls to STB, and one time was, like, just before, there were, like, two in a row. And that’s how they were, like, trying to hide it and then pass it off to make it look like there was somebody else making the bet. He eventually gets arrested. He pleads to lesser charges. But one of those charges was check forgery. And when a gambler starts losing, many times they’ll turn to those white-collar crimes like check forgery, embezzlement. They’ll start stealing from their work, shoplifting, drug dealing. They can do anything like a junkie, man. They’ll do anything to keep gambling. [21:52] I once knew a guy said he couldn’t even walk into a casino because he just starts getting a rush. He just can’t stay away from the machines once he walks in. So he totally has to stay out. Adrian McPherson, he was also an all-star baseball player. Even though he is kicked out of college ball for betting on his own team, he then gets drafted. The New Orleans Saints in 2005 draft him. They want him as their starting quarterback. But they also drafted a guy named Drew Brees, who ended up leading him to the Super Bowl in 2006. [22:27] Now, later in that season or during that season, the Tennessee Titan mascot will accidentally hit McPherson with a golf cart. He sues him for several million dollars. The following year, he does this. He’s been injured by this golf cart. I don’t know if it wasn’t a career injury, obviously, but they also the gambling thing. And the following year, he appears with the Grand Rapid Rampage AFL team. Then he goes to a Canadian team. Then he plays on a variety of arena football teams, a different one every year almost. And finally, in 2018, the Jacksonville Sharks, which is an arena team, releases him. His gambling led him to a free fall into obscurity. He was on his way up to life-changing generational wealth, and the gambling just got him. [23:17] Let’s go back a minute, you know, all these, I’ll be telling all these stories about these low rents and degenerate gamblers. Let’s go back to the incorruptible Mickey Bruce. He was injured during 1961 during his senior year. His last game was in 1961 against Stanford. His three seasons of Oregon, he rushed 29 times for 128 yards. At one touchdown, he caught 10 passes for 113 yards and three touchdowns. Defensively, he intercepted six passes in the last season, returned six punts for an 11-yard average. He ends up being drafted in the 24th round of the 1962 AFL draft by the Oakland Raiders, but he never pursued a professional football career. Instead, he followed his father’s footsteps. He went to law school and became a lawyer out in California. [24:08] Michael J. Bruce, his story goes really beyond the gridiron. He’s on that very short list of individuals who have implicated gangsters, pointed them out in court, and survived. And he prospered from then on under [24:20] his own name. He didn’t go in witness protection or anything like that. He might not have agreed to prosecute Lefty going back to Michigan for that other case, but he did stand up and point at Lefty Rosenthal and say, he’s the one that tried to bribe me. 1981, Mickey Bruce will get the Leo Harris Award. Presented to alumni, alumnus Letterman, who have been out of college for 20 years and have demonstrated continuous service and leadership to the university. Some of the other, Alberto Salazar went to Oregon. He got it. A guy named Dan Fouts, I know that name, Johnny Robinson, Bill Dellinger. [25:02] So guys, it’s much better to get a Lifetime Achievement Award for doing good than to get a car bomb or to die in obscurity. So thanks, guys. That’s the story of Lefty Rosenthal and his earlier years before the skimming and really the story of a tribute to Mickey Bruce, a guy that stood up and did the right thing when it needed to be done. Thanks, guys. And don’t forget, stand up and go to your computer and order one of my books online or rent one of my movies or look at my website and see what you like there. Make a donation, if you will. I got expenses. Don’t usually ask for. I got ads. They just cover some things and then other things. Some of these FOIA things cost a lot of money and got a few expenses. Anyhow, so thanks a lot, guys. But mostly, I appreciate your loyalty and all the comments that you make on my YouTube channel and on the Gangland Wire podcast group. It’s inspiring. It really, truly is inspiring. It keeps me coming back. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 2 March 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, continues his deep dive into organized crime history with prolific Mafia author Jeffrey Sussman. Sussman, the author of eight books on organized crime, joins Jenkins for a wide-ranging conversation that spans the rise, violence, prosecutions, and survival tactics of La Cosa Nostra in America. Drawing from works like Backbeat Gangsters and his latest release Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions, Sussman offers sharp insight into how the Mafia enforced silence, eliminated enemies, and adapted to government pressure. The discussion opens with omertà, the Mafia’s infamous code of silence, and how mob warfare enforced loyalty through fear. Sussman recounts notorious hits and mob wars that shaped organized crime, then shifts to landmark prosecutions led by Thomas Dewey, whose relentless pursuit of Murder Incorporated dismantled the mob’s most feared execution squad. Jenkins and Sussman examine the disastrous Appalachian Conference, where Vito Genovese overplayed his hand, drawing national attention to the Mafia and setting the stage for informants like Joe Valachi to break decades of secrecy. The episode also explores the Mafia’s darkest execution methods, including lupara bianca—murders designed to leave no body and no evidence—along with chilling stories involving Mad Sam DeStefano. The assassination attempt on Joe Colombo, and its ties to Joey Gallo, highlight how ego and publicity often proved fatal in the mob world. The episode concludes with Sussman previewing his upcoming book on the Garment District, blending personal family history with organized crime’s grip on American industry. Together, Jenkins and Sussman deliver a sweeping, chronological look at how the Mafia rose, fractured, and endured—leaving a permanent mark on American culture. Get his book Mafia Hits, Misses, Wars, and Prosecutions. ⏱️ Episode Chapters 00:00 – Introduction and Jeffrey Sussman’s Mafia work 03:45 – Omertà and enforcing silence 07:30 – Mafia hits and internal wars 12:10 – Thomas Dewey and Murder Incorporated 18:40 – St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 23:30 – Formation of the Five Families 28:50 – Italian and Jewish mob alliances 34:20 – Capone, Lansky, and Luciano 39:45 – Appalachian Conference fallout 45:10 – Vito Genovese and Joe Valachi 50:30 – Lupara blanca and body disposal 55:20 – Mad Sam DeStefano’s brutality 59:40 – Joe Colombo assassination 1:05:30 – Betrayal and mob survival 1:10:50 – Sussman’s upcoming Garment District book   [0:00] Hey, welcome, all you Wiretipers, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, as you can see. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. I have a guest today. He is a prolific author about the mob in the United States. We have several interviews in the archives with Jeffrey Sussman. Welcome, Jeffrey. Thank you, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be with you once again. All right. How many mob books you got? Eight or nine, I think. Eight or nine. I know you’ve covered Tinseltown, the L.A. Families, the crime in L.A., the Chicago. What are some of those? I did Las Vegas, which had a number of the Chicago outfit members in it. I did Big Apple Gangsters. Oh, yeah. My last one was Backbeat Gangsters about the rock music business. Oh, yeah. And then I did also one about boxing and the mob, how the mob controlled boxing. And then my new book is Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions. The update is February 19th. All right. Guys, when I release this, we’re doing this, actually, we’re doing this before Christmas. But when this comes out, while you’ll be able to go to the Amazon link that I’ll have in there, get that book, we’ll have, you’ll see a picture of it as we go along. So you’ll know what the cover looks like. It sounds really interesting, especially about the Mafia Misses. But I’m sure that’s interesting. [1:29] Well, the mob, that’s their way of enforcing their rules. The omerta, somebody talks, they’re going to rub you out, supposedly. And by mob, we’re talking about primarily La Cosa Nostra, Sicilian-based organized crime in the United States. Yeah. The five families particularly have brought this up front. The five families have really perfected this as an art, killing their rivals, killing people that threaten them in any way, killing people that they even had a contract on Tom Dewey, the prosecutor, I believe, at one time. That would be a bomb miss, wouldn’t it? Yeah, actually, what happened with that is Dutch Schultz wanted the commission to take out a contract on Tom Dewey, and they said, no, we can’t do that, because if we do that, it’ll bring down too much heat on us. And so the mob wound up killing Dutch Schultz because he was too much of a threat to them in some ways. But the irony was that if they had killed him, Lucky Luciano never would have been prosecuted. He was prosecuted by Thomas Dewey. Lucky Bookhalter never would have been prosecuted and gone to the electric chair, several others as well. So, by not killing Dewey, they set themselves up to be arrested and get either very long prison terms or go to the electric chair. [2:57] Yeah, Dewey sent, I think it was four members of Murder Incorporated to the electric chair and the head of it, the Lepke book halter. And then he arrested and got a conviction against Lucky Luciano for pimping and pandering, which should have been a fairly short sentence, just a couple of years. But he had him sentenced to 50 years in prison, which is amazing, the pimping. [3:20] So if they had killed Thomas Dewey, they probably would have been better off. But that’s 2020 hindsight. Yeah, hindsight’s always 2020. And a cost-benefit analysis, if you want to apply that, why the cost of killing Tom Dooley might have been much less than the actual benefit was. That’s right. Exactly. And they came to realize that, but it was too late for them. I think they always do a cost-benefit analysis in some manner. How much heat’s going to come down from this? Can we take the heat? Because I know in Kansas City, our mob boss, Nick Savella, was in the penitentiary. He was about to get out, and he sent word out, said I want all unfinished business taken care of by the time I get out. Because when I get out, I do not want all these headlines, because murder generates headlines. And so there was like three murders in rapid succession right after that. [4:13] So they worry about the press and hits, murders generate press. So let’s go back and talk about some particular ones. One of the most famous ones was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Do you cover that? [4:26] Yeah, I start with the assassination of Arnold Rothstein in 1928, and then I go right into the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I go into the Castel Marari’s War, the birth of the five families. They had a famous meeting at the Franconia Hotel where the Jewish and Italian gangsters decided to form an alliance rather than fight one another. I went through the trial and conviction of Al Capone, the Bug and Meyer gang. Which evolved into Murder Incorporated, and then how Mayor LaGuardia went after the mob in New York and drove out Frank Costello, who had all the slot machines in New York, drove him down to Louisiana, where Frank Costello paid Huey Long a million dollars to let him operate slot machines all around New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana. And then there was William Dwyer, O’Dwyer, and Burton Turkus, who prosecuted the mob, other members of Murder Incorporated, and then how the federal government was using deportation to get rid of a lot of the mobsters, and how the mafia insinuated itself with entertainers and was controlling entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and others. [5:44] And then the Appalachian Conference, and what an embarrassment that was to Vito Genovese, who wanted to declare himself the boss of bosses. Instead, he became the schmuck of schmucks because the FBI invaded this. And there was a theory that this was really set up, Meyer Lansky, Carl Gambino, and Lucky Luciano, because they didn’t want Vito Genovese to become the boss of bosses because Vito Genovese was responsible for the attempted murder of Frank Costello, and they wanted to get rid of him. After they embarrassed him with Appalachian, And then they set him up for a drug buy. Which is ridiculous because you don’t have the head of a mafia family going out on the street and buying heroin from someone. But that’s what they got him for. And they sent him off to prison for 15 years where he died. But in the realm of unintended consequences, which we just heard some, he goes down to Atlanta and a guy named Joe Valacci is down there. And he thinks that Vito Genovese is given to the fisheye and maybe wants to have him killed. [6:52] If Vito Genovese is not in Atlanta, Joe Valacci does not turn and become the first big important witness against the mob in the United States that couple that with Appalachian. And embarrassment to the FBI and then this Joe Valacci coming out with all these stories explaining what all that meant, the organized crime in the United States, why we may not have the investigation that subsequently came out of all that. It’s crazy, huh? Yeah, exactly. In terms of unintended consequences, because if Vito Genovese hadn’t given the kiss of death, supposedly, to Joe Valacci, you never would have had Joe Valacci’s testimony about how the mob operates. He opened so many doors and told so many secrets. It was a real revelation to the world. [7:42] Now, what about these murders? And I understand they call them a lupara blanca, where the body is never found. Did you talk about any of those or look into that at all? [7:53] We’ve had them in Kansas City, where it’s obviously a mob murder. They even will send a message to the family. We had one where the guy disappeared. Nobody ever found his body. But somebody called the family and said, hey, go up on Gladstone Drive and check this trash can. And then they find the guy’s clothes and his driver’s license, everything in there. Now, did you go into any of those blanks? Yeah, there were a number of mob hits, especially during the murder ink era where they would dispose of the bodies and no one would ever find them. But they would leave clues around for members of the family just so they would know that their father or their son or their brother, whoever was no longer in this world. [8:39] Yeah, that was done quite a bit. And when the Westies, which was an Irish gang that operated on the west side of New York, they believed that if you never found the corpse, you could never convict them of murder. So they used to take their dead bodies out to an island in the East River and chop them into little pieces and then dump them in the river and no one would ever find them. And supposedly they did that with dozens and dozens of bodies. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, and it is. It’s hard to prosecute without the body. It’s been done, but it’s really hard to do. You’ve got to have a really lot of circumstantial evidence to approve a murder without a body. And when Albert Anastasia and Leffy Foucault, who were running Murder Incorporated, they believed two things. One, that if you didn’t find the body, it would be hard to prosecute. And if you couldn’t show a motive, that would be the other thing that would make it difficult. So there would be absolutely no connection between the person who killed the victim and the victim. There was no connection whatsoever. So it was almost as if it was a stranger. In fact, it was a stranger who would commit the murder and then disappear and make sure that the body also disappeared. So you’d have neither motive nor body. Interesting. Pretty stiff penalty for murder. So I understand why you take some extra. Exactly. [10:08] Yeah, that tried to disassociate yourself from any motive for the body. There’s a guy in Chicago named Mad Sam DeStefano. Oh, sure. Lone shark and particularly egregious person when it came to collecting and was responsible for some murders and tortures. And they claim that he would buddy up to the person he knew he wanted to have killed and give him a watch. So then when the police came back around, he’d say, he was my friend. I gave him a present. I gave him that watch. Look and see. Ask his wife. I gave him a watch. Yeah. And I think it was Anthony Spolatro who was charged by the outfit of getting rid of Sam DiStefano because he was a friend. He had been like a protege of Crazy Sam. And so Sam didn’t suspect him as the person who would come and kill him. Yeah, that’s common clue. They say, look out. When a friend comes around and it seems a little bit funny and they want her particularly nice to you and you know you’re in trouble, anyhow, look out. Because that’s the guy that’s going to get you. Exactly. At least set you up. Maybe they have somebody else come in and pull the trigger, somebody that’ll leave town or whatever, but your friend’s going to set you up, make you comfortable. [11:24] Yeah, I think that’s exactly how it happened. We talked a little bit about the Joe Colombo murder. Did you look at that? Yes. [11:31] Tell us about that, because I’m really interested in that. I’d kind of like to do a larger story, just focusing on that, what really happened there, because that’s a mystery. Did this Jerome Johnson, this black guy, do it? Why would he do it? Nobody ever came out and connected him directly to Joey Gallo, and that’s the claim. So talk about that one. What happened is Joe Colombo formed the Italian Anti-Defamation League because he thought Italians were being blamed for too many things. And Colombo was responsible for having the producers of the movie The Godfather never use the word mafia in the movie, never use La Cosa Nostra in the movie. And he was making a big splash for himself. And this was driving a lot of people in the mafia a little crazy. They’re getting nervous because he was getting so much attention for himself, and it’s not the kind of attention they wanted. And Gambino was particularly upset about this. And Joey Gallo had been in prison, and he had been involved in the war against Profaci earlier on. And when he got out of prison, he felt that the new head of the Profaci family, who was Joe Colombo, should honor him with the amount of time that he spent in prison. And Joe Colombo offered him $1,000. [12:57] And Gallo was incensed by that. He expected $100,000. [13:02] And so he started another war with Colombo. [13:09] This would be good for Carlo Gambino because then he could use Joey Gallo to get rid of someone and his hands wouldn’t appear to be anywhere near this. And when Joey Gallo was in prison, he befriended a lot of black gangsters who were drug dealers and showed them how to succeed in the drug dealing business. And his attitude was that the mafia was very prejudiced against black people, but he thought that was stupid. He thought that we should use black criminals the same way we use any other criminals. And so he befriended a lot of blacks when he was in prison. And no one really knows how exactly he came in contact with Jerome Johnson. But anyway, Jerome Johnson was given the mission of assassinating Joe Colombo at a demonstration where Joe Colombo would be speaking about the Italian American Anti-Defamation League, which had attracted a lot of entertainers. Frank Sinatra was on the board of it. They raised a lot of money. I spoke to some Italian friends of mine at the time, and they said that people from the Italian Anti-Defamation League went around to small Italian-run stores, pizza parlors, shoe repair stores, whatever, and had them closed down for that day so that these people should attend the rally. And the rally was being held, I believe, in Columbus Circle. [14:36] And Jerome Johnson was there, and he had a press pass. So he was permitted to get very close to Joe Colombo because it appeared that he was a reporter or a photographer for a newspaper. And as soon as he got close enough, he pumped a couple of bullets into Joe Colombo’s head. Immediately, three or four gangsters descended on Jerome Johnson and killed him immediately. [15:02] And those three or four people who killed him, they disappeared into the crowd. No one ever found them again. I know. I wish we’d had cell phone footage from that. No one wouldn’t have gotten away if everybody had their cell phones out that day when they would have seen everything that happened. [15:21] Exactly. Columbo existed in a vegetative state. I think it was for about seven years before he finally died. I didn’t realize it was that long. Wow. Yeah, but he was semi-conscious. He couldn’t communicate. He was paralyzed. But the The Colombo family believed that it was Joey Gallo who was responsible for this. Joey Gallo and his new wife had been having a dinner with friends at the Copacabana nightclub in New York. They were joined at their table by Don Rickles, who had been performing that night. Comedian David Steinberg, who had been the best man at Joey Gallo’s wedding to a second wife, was there. And he suggested to them that they left the Copacabana about three o’clock in the morning. And he suggested to them that they all go down to Little Italy, go to Chinatown, and we’ll have a late dinner there. So Rick Olson and Steinberg said, it’s too late for us. You go and enjoy yourself and we’ll see you another time. Joey Gallo, his bodyguard, a Greek guy, I can’t remember his name exactly. Peter Dacopoulos. That’s it. And his wife, and Decapolis’ girlfriend and Joey Gallo’s stepdaughter. They all drove downtown. They couldn’t find anything open in Chinatown, so they drove over to Little Italy, and they went into Umberto’s Clam House. [16:49] And it was very strange, because supposedly a gangster would never do this. Joe Colombo was sitting with his back to the door. [16:58] Usually, your back is to the wall, and you’re facing the door. Oh, Joey Gallo was sitting with his back to the door. Yeah, I meant Joey Gallo. Yeah. Go ahead. And there was kind of a lonely guy sitting at the bar having a drink, and no one paid any attention to him. He was a mob wannabe, and he recognized Joey Gallo, and he went to a mob social club that was a few blocks away that was a hangout for Colombo gangsters. And when he came in and told them that joey gallo was there and the one of the guys there called a capo from the colombo family and told him who they saw and so forth and apparently he instructed them to go and get rid of him and so they took the mob wannabe guy and they got in two cars and they drove down to or around the block whatever it was to umberto’s clam house they went in and they immediately started shooting. And Colombo flipped over the table. I’m sorry, Joey Gallo flipped over the table and had his wife and girlfriend in the step door to get behind the table. And he and Peter were firing back at these guys. [18:07] Peter got shot in the ass and complained about it for many months afterwards, and Joey Gallo ran out onto the street chasing them, and he got shot in the neck, and I think it hit his carotid artery, and he bled to death on the sidewalk. And the guys from the Columbo and the Columbo wannabe guy, they quickly drove up to an apartment on the Upper East Side where the Columbo capo was. And he told them to go to a safe house in Nyack, New York, where they went. And meanwhile, the mob wannabe guy who had fingered Columbo, he’s getting very nervous. He feels that his life isn’t worth too much. He’s in over his head. [18:51] Right. So he sneaks out in the middle of the night and takes a plane to California to live with his sister. And he tries to get into the witness protection program, but they don’t believe him. They don’t believe he has enough evidence to make it worthwhile. No one knows exactly what happened to him afterwards. And the guys who supposedly killed Gallo, nothing really happened to them either. There was a huge funeral for Joey Gallo in Brooklyn. And it was like one of those old mob funerals that you see in a movie with a hundred flower cars and people lining the streets. And I think it was Joey Gallo’s mother who threw herself into the grave on top of the coffin. Oh, really? And Joey Gallo’s. [19:38] He had two brothers, one of whom had died of cancer, and the other one wound up going into another mob family. That was part of the peace deal. I can’t remember if it was the Gambino family or the Genovese family. He went into one of those two families. I think it was Gambino family, that Albert Kidd Twist gallo, I think was his name. And I think it was the Gambino family. He just kept a low profile until he died of natural causes. I think he’s dead now. He never heard from him again, basically. Exactly. [20:06] Interesting. That’s a heck of a story. A lot more stories like that in there, too. I bet. What was your favorite story out of that, or the one that shocked you or you learned something? Maybe something that you learned that you didn’t know or cut through some myth. [20:20] Probably, I’m just looking at my notes here to see what really fascinated me the most. I think the evolution of the Bug and Meyer gang. This guy, Ralph Salerno, who was a fascinating guy who headed the New York Prime Strike Force, Mafia investigators He’s been dead for about I think 10 or 15 years But I spent about Two or three hours Interviewing him A long time ago Didn’t he write a book Didn’t he write a book Called The Crime Confederation Or something like that Yes he did Yeah And it’s excellent So he knew Meyer Lansky He had met Bugsy Siegel Back once In the early 1940s He knew Frank Costello He knew all of these people And it was fascinating To, to hear his stories. And he said that during the time of the Bug and Meyer gang, they were the most vicious gang in New York. And they had a complete menu for crimes that they would commit on your behalf. Burglaries, murders, throwing people out of windows, breaking arms and legs, killing by stabbing, killing by shooting, killing by knifing. And each one had a price. And he said they actually had it printed. It was like a menu and you could check off what you wanted. [21:40] Crazy. And then he said, as they got more and more involved in prohibition, they got out of this and it evolved into Murder Incorporated, which had about 400 members, primarily Jewish and Italian gangsters. And it was run by Albert Anastasia and Lepke Bookhalter. [22:05] And when Thomas Dewey came into power, he wanted very much to convict these guys, but, Murder Incorporated had this fascinating idea that every member of Murder Incorporated would receive a monthly retainer and then it paid a special price for committing murders. And the more ambitious the member was, the more murders he would commit. So there were a couple who were really very ambitious and did a lot of murders. And each one had a specialty. So there was this one guy named Abe Hidtwist Relis, who only killed people with an ice pick in the back of the neck. And then he would leave the body in a car, talking about getting rid of bodies, and he would burn the body and leave it in the car and let other people know who were the relatives that he had been done away with. And then there was a guy named Pittsburgh Phil, who was the most ambitious of them, who supposedly committed about 100 to 150 murders because he just loved getting money for each one that he committed. [23:15] Then there was a guy named Louis Capone, who’s no relation to Al. He worked with a partner named Mendy Weiss, and the two of them went out and killed people together. They thought it was a fun event for them. It was like a boy’s night out. Who we’re going to kill today. Weren’t they two of them that got the electric chair? Yes, they did. And there’s a picture of them on the train up to Singh on their way to the electric chair. And they’re laughing. This is nothing. This is just another fun time for us. And yeah, I think there were four of them who finally went to the electric chair. And then one member of this was a guy named Charlie the Bud Workman, who finally got indicted for the murder of Dutch Schultz. He was the one who carried out the murder of Dutch Schultz for the mob. And he got, I think he was 30 years in prison. But according to his son… [24:13] Who is a PGA golfer, who is well-known in PGA circles as a very good golf competitor, said that the mob took care of his family for the entire time that Workman was in prison because he never spoke about anybody else. He really observed the rules of a murder, and they appreciated him for that. So that whole episode was like a corporation murder, which is why they called it Murder, Inc., that would go out and kill people on orders only from the mafia. They only worked for the mafia. You couldn’t hire them if you weren’t a member of the mafia. And it had to go through a mafia boss for the instructions to come down to them. A soldier couldn’t tell them what to do. Even a capo couldn’t tell them. It had to go up to a boss, the boss had to approve it, and then assign someone to do it. And they all worked out of a candy store in Brooklyn called Midnight Roses because it was open 24 hours a day. And the phone would ring there from giving whoever it was instructions about who was to be killed, where they were to be killed, how they were to do it, and so forth and so on. [25:27] So what was also interesting is even though Bugsy Siegel had left the Bug and Meyer gang, he still loved participating in murder. He liked killing people. And his partner in these murders was a guy named Frankie Carbo, who became a big deal in boxing. He controlled most of the boxing in America up until at the time of Sonny Liston. And his partner in this was a man named Blinky Palermo. [25:59] And according to Ralph Natale, who for a while had been the boss of the Philadelphia crime family, it was Frankie Carbo who was sent by the mob to kill Bugsy Siegel. Because if he was caught or Bugsy Siegel saw him around, he wouldn’t suspect that he was his killer because they were friends and they had operated as partners together. So this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. It’s your friend who comes closest to you and then arranges you to be assassinated. So I found that whole story just fascinating. Interesting. I’ll tell you what. And there’s those and a whole lot more stories in this, isn’t there, Jeff? Yes, there are. I think that the book covers pretty much the mob history, beginning with the founding of the five families, going all the way up through Sammy the Bulgurvano’s testimony against John Gotti and the commission trial, where they decapitated the heads of the five families. Not literally, folks. Not literally. Not literally. We didn’t literally decapitate. Rudy Giuliano, he tried to. He tried to. He tried to. Metaphorically, he decapitated the heads of the five families. Exactly. [27:15] You know, what was interesting, though, is in the 1930s, you had Thomas Dewey. In the 1960s, you had Robert Kennedy, who went after the mob. And then later on, you had Rudy Giuliani going after the mob. And the mob always managed to reorganize itself and figure out a new way of existing. They were very opportunistic and they always managed to find a way to keep going, even if it was very low key, which is what it is now, where they operate in the shadows and they don’t have any John Gottis or Al Capone’s out there getting a lot of attention for themselves. They’re still out there doing things. Yeah. Yeah. They finally learned something about that getting publicity. And most recently, they put together a whole scheme, and this goes way back, of cheating people. Big whales, I call them whales, of rich men that like to gamble and brush up against kind of the dark side and cheat them at cards. They’ve been doing that for years. They just do it under goes to clear black to the Friars Club scam in Los Angeles where Ronnie Roselli and some others had a spotter, would see who had what cards in what’s hands, then would tell another player. And so now there’s just more electronic, but the same game just upgraded to electronics. [28:30] That’s right. What someone I spoke to interviewed said, he said they’re very involved in electronic gambling poker machines and that kind of thing. And a lot of offshore gambling and offshore money laundering. And to some extent, even drug dealing now. And they’re still very involved in New York in the construction business. Oh, really? Yeah. Union business. They’re still in it, huh? And I know in Kansas City, there’s a couple of examples where they put money into a buy here, pay here car dealership into a title loan place because there’s a huge rate of interest on those things. And there’s a lot of scams that go down out of those places, especially the old crap cars and put them together and sell them to poor people for they’ve got $500 in the car and they sell it to them for $2,000. They charge them a 25% interest and then go repo it when the car breaks down, turn around and patch it up and sell it again. So there’s always schemes going on out there to mob will put their money into. Oh, it’s incredible. I knew of one scheme where they would They would sell trucks to people and give them a special route. And so on that route, they could make enough money to pay off the loan on the truck. But then they would take away the route from them. They couldn’t pay off the truck. So they would repossess the truck and sell it to someone else and do it all over again. [29:50] Oh, I know. They got to tell you that. And Joey Messino and the Bananos, they organized the tow main wagons, the lunch truck, the snack wagons. Right, exactly. Organize them. And then they start extorting money, formed an association. And then to get to good spots, then you had to kick money to them. And just to be part of the organization, that was kicking money to them. There’s always something. They always manage to find a place where they can make money. And it’s like whack-a-mole. You can stop them here, you can stop them there, and then they pop up in three other places. [30:24] Really all right jeffrey susman i’m so happy to talk to you again i haven’t talked to you for a while and i hope everything else is everything’s going okay for you in new york city yep i’m working on a new book uh what are you working on now oh my god you are so prolific i look on your amazon page just when i was getting ready to do this trying to think of some of those other titles Oh, my God. I’m working on a book about the Garment Center. Ah, interesting. Only because my family was involved in that business, and they had to deal with the mob in various ways, with trucking companies, unions, and so forth. And since I knew that, and I had a lot of information, a lot of contacts, I thought I would tackle that next. I remember when I had my marketing PR business back in the 1970s. [31:16] I had a client who was in the fitness business, and I had a cousin of my mother’s who was a very famous dress designer at the time, and he had a big showroom on 7th Avenue, which is in the garment center. I went to see him because I wanted to see if I could get a deal for my client to manufacture exercise clothes and brand it with her name. I made a date to have lunch with this cousin of mine, and he said, come up to my showroom. we’ll meet for lunch, And so I got to the showroom, and I called out his name when I walked in. It was empty. And this guy comes running out of the back, and he just has a shirt on, and he has a shoulder holster, .38 caliber gun in it. And he says to me, who the F are you? I said, I’m so-and-so’s cousin. I’m here to have lunch with him. He disappeared into the back. And a couple of minutes later my mother’s cousin comes out and i said who was that what was that about he says i don’t want to talk about it now i’ll tell you all for lunch so we go down to a restaurant around the corner and i asked him again and he says he said he couldn’t have his dresses delivered to any department store unless he made a deal with yeah i forgot if it was the gambinos or the lucasies that he had to take this guy on as a partner otherwise the trucks wouldn’t deliver his garments. And there was nothing he could do about it. It was either that or go out of business. [32:45] I’ll tell you what, they’re voracious. They’re greedy and voracious and don’t care. Just give me those, show me the money. That’s all it is. It’s all about money and any way to get it. And then there’s always a threat of murder behind it. If you don’t cooperate, think of the worst thing that can happen to you. And that’s what’ll happen. Yeah. I’ve had guys over the years tell I’m like, oh, you ought to throw in with one of those ex-mobsters that’s doing podcasts and try to do something with them. I say, I ain’t doing business with them. They play by their rules. I play by society’s rules. And I don’t have time to mess with that. Yeah. And that was a smart thing to do. Because also, when I had this fitness client, I met someone who was… I didn’t know what was connected to the mob, but a mutual friend, this guy said that he wanted to set up fitness centers all around the country for my clients. So I mentioned this to a mutual friend and he said, whatever you don’t go into business with this guy, I said, regret it for the rest of your life. So I advised my client not to do it. [33:49] Yeah. Cause initially before we knew that it sounded like a great opportunity. And then when you investigate, it’s not such a great opportunity. Yeah, really. Speaking of that, we tell stories for hours. I just heard a story. We had a relocated mobster, a guy that testified against Gigante, came here to Kansas City. And he was, of course, under witness protection and he’s got an assumed name. And he befriends a guy that has a fitness center. He has a franchise of Gold’s Gym or something. And he has a fitness center. And he talks this guy into taking him on, investing a little money in it, taking him on as his partner. Within the next couple of years, this mobster, he’s got two of his kids working there and neither one of them are really doing anything, but they’re drawing a salary and the money’s trickling out. And the guy, the local guy, he just walks away from it because this guy’s planned by the mob’s rules. So he just ended up walking away from it, did something else. So it’s do not go into business with these guys. No, never. Never. [34:48] Jeffrey Suspett, it’s a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you again, Gary. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Transcribed - Published: 23 February 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, steps outside traditional Mafia territory and into a shadowy world just as dangerous—and just as fascinating: the international theft of ultra-rare automobiles.  Gary is joined by author Stayton Bonner, former senior editor at Rolling Stone, and legendary car-recovery specialist Joe Ford, the real-life figure behind Bonner’s book The Million Dollar Car Detective. At the center of the story is a breathtaking pre-World War II automobile—the Talbot-Lago Teardrop Coupé—once described as the most beautiful car in the world. Stolen from a Milwaukee industrialist’s garage in 2001, the car vanished into the international underground of elite collectors, forged paperwork, and high-stakes deception. Joe Ford explains how he became the go-to investigator when rare cars worth millions disappear—and why stolen vehicles are far harder to recover than stolen art. What follows is a years-long global hunt involving disgruntled mechanics, fabricated titles, shell corporations, Swiss intermediaries, and a billionaire buyer now locked in civil litigation. Bonner adds rich historical context, tracing the car’s glamorous past—from European aristocracy to Hollywood royalty—and exposing how loneliness, obsession, and greed often surround these legendary machines. The conversation expands into other notorious cases, including the disappearance of the original James Bond Aston Martin from Goldfinger, and how wealthy collectors sometimes knowingly harbor stolen artifacts. This episode is a true-crime story without guns or gangs—but filled with deception, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of justice across borders. If you love investigative work, high-end crime, and stories that feel like James Bond meets Gone in 60 Seconds, this one’s for you. 🔑 Key Topics Covered The theft of a $7 million Talbot-Lago Teardrop Coupé How stolen cars are laundered through forged provenance Why rare automobiles are harder to recover than fine art Civil vs. criminal liability in stolen property cases The global black market for elite collector vehicles The missing Goldfinger Aston Martin mystery How billionaires and shell companies complicate recovery 📘 Featured Book The Million Dollar Car Detective by Stayton Bonner   🎧 About the Guests Stayton Bonner – Former Rolling Stone senior editor and investigative journalist Joe Ford – International car-theft investigator specializing in ultra-rare vehicles 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Tanscript Gary jenkins: [00:00:00] well, hey, all your wire tapper’s. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective. And I have a story today. It’s not particularly about the mafia, but it’s about a subject I’m really interested in. That’s fast cars and rear cars. And, and I’m kind of a gearhead, as you all know, and love my motorcycles. But, uh, this is about some really cool cars and, and I have here. A couple of guys that, uh, particularly one Joe Ford who is a, a guy, a detective that goes out and finds rare stolen cars, which I think is just fascinating. So I have Staton Bonner, who’s a former senior editor Rolling Stone. He’s written a book called The Million Dollar Detective, and that million dollar detective is Joe Ford. So welcome guys. Gary, thanks for having us. All right. So, uh, I, I guess let’s start off with, with Staton. Tell me a little bit about yourself. You, you are a writer for Rolling Stone and, and written another book. I, I see. And, uh, so just tell us a little bit about yourself. Stayton: Uh, yes, [00:01:00] sir. Former senior editor Rolling Stone Magazine wrote a book a few years ago, uh, Altru Stories. About a bare and knuckle boxer working to give his daughter a, a better life in New York City through these underground fights. This story though, uh, is the most a amazing story I’ve come across, uh, in my years as a journalist. I don’t know if you’re a fan of James Bond gone in 60 seconds. Catch me if you can. Uh, but this story is right in line with that. You know, a lot of my work as a reporter editor is just looking for stories. So I was scouring regional newspapers. When I came across this small story in a Milwaukee publication and it just immediately grabbed me, it jumped off. Uh, you know, in 2001, a $7 million stolen car was stolen in the middle of the night in Milwaukee from an industrialist private garage. Three men in overalls cut security lines broke in. Absconded in the middle of the night with this very rare vehicle case closed with cold years later, a [00:02:00] detective Joe Ford gets a call from the French Alps, and a uh, disgruntled mechanic said he knew the whereabouts of this stolen car that authorities have been looking for around the world for years. That really set off the chase that kicks off this book. It’s about, obviously it’s about a rare car, but it’s interesting because it gets into the veneer just underneath this high society world of people like Ralph Lauren and various heads of of industry. Buying and selling rare cars for many tens of millions of dollars. There is a criminal enterprise underneath that, as you have with any rare art world dealing in fakes, forgeries stolen goods and all of that. And that’s when Joe Ford, the car detective comes in. You know, I talked with authorities police FBI, you know, there’s not a dedicated unit to recovering stolen cars as they have with stolen artwork. So when a, when something a 10 million do dollar car gets taken. Uh, he, they said, they told me there’s one guy they [00:03:00] call and, uh, that’s Joe Ford. You don’t have to be a car person to love this book. The Million Dollar Car Detective just is really a good cat and mouse chase story. Um, and I’m, I’m thrilled to be here to talk about it. Gary jenkins: Great. We all love cat and mouse chase story as I do anyhow. So Joe Ford, uh, tell us about yourself. How did you end up in this position to be the million dollar car theft detective? Joe Ford: Accidentally. I started out as an architect in New Orleans, then went to law school, didn’t practice law, but I had a classic car dealership in Louisiana and in Florida. And being involved in the car world, you learn about things. And then it was, uh, years later I ended up recovering a stolen acid martin for a guy and it was successful. And then, uh, got into a contract to recover a stolen $18 million Ferrari race car. And was successful and then heard about this from a French mechanic who is hadn’t been paid by somebody in Switzerland. So he spills the [00:04:00] beans and, and gives me a clue. And I’ve been on this hunt for a car taken in 2001 and I’ve been litigating for over eight years now against an LLC owned by a billionaire set up just to buy this car outta Switzerland. And. My opinion is it was set up because he knew it was stolen, he knew it had paperwork issues and knew he would have to litigate to clear title. And I’m now litigating to clear that title, but I intend to retrieve the car. And for me and my partner, I partnered up with the heirs of the original Milwaukee theft of victims. And, uh, we’re in court now against this Gary jenkins: LLC. So, if I remember my, uh, property law from law school is you can’t, if you don’t have good title to something, you can’t pass it on to somebody else. Any, any. Passing on is an illegal transaction, and whoever pays money for something with a bad title just by eats it, eats it, is my, if I remember right, [00:05:00] that correct. Joe Ford: That that’s correct. And it, it goes down the chain. You can buy a stolen car from one guy, he can sell it to another, he can sell it to another. Nobody acquires title because the thief didn’t have it, and each guy sues the prior guy to try to get his money back and the property gets returned to the victims. Gary jenkins: That’s, Joe Ford: that is the, the law of the world. Gary jenkins: Interesting. I remember my law school, right? It’s been a few years. Yeah. But I remember that. Right. Uh, so, you know, in this, this world, you know, we know about the jewel thefts. You know, the Marlboro Diamond never appeared back. The Chicago outfit guy stole this Marlboro diamond in, in London and mailed it to somebody. It never did reappear. Many times these paintings don’t ever reappear for years and years. And we always, there’s always a speculation. There’s these, these, reclusive, super wealthy collectors or, uh, Arabian Saudi Arabian princes or something that will keep these things. Are any of those rumors true? Is that what happens with these cars? I mean, how do you hide a car? Especially one is what [00:06:00] this car that you’re looking for is a Talbot Lego. Teardrop coop. Really distinctive, looking real. And I’ll have a picture of this up there, guys. Really distinctive looking car. So how, oh yeah, I see it up on your, uh, uh, up over your head there. So h how does this work? I guess a little bit about how this works. Joe Ford: Lemme Gary jenkins: just Joe Ford: go ahead, Stayton: lemme just give a little context. So just for the big picture, Gary, you know, uh. Again for your listeners, I’m not sure, you know, rare cars it’s relatively smaller niche market in high-end collectibles, but it’s also, uh, the fastest rising sector. So you have, you know, folks who make a lot of money you know, they wanna diversify their assets. It could be any number of things including, Picassos, Basquiats, uh, whatever. But what’s a lot more fun, when I interviewed all these people, is buying a super rare car. ’cause unlike something, a piece of art, you hang on the wall, you get to drive this thing. Gary jenkins: Yeah. Stayton: So the rare, you know, so the rare car market is really one of the [00:07:00] fastest growing markets. It, it is really largely due to Ralph Lauren. He was a guy from the Bronx, just a working class kid. He grew up loving cars. So once he made money with Polo, uh, he started buying and collecting these old, Ferrari racers a lot of times that were just beat up, banged up. These things were raced in all sorts of. Different competitions across Europe, just charred husks. Uh, but he would find them with his team and kind of restore them with the original items that they would find and make it as as true to period correct as possible. And then in the past decade or so as a market, the rare car market. Has increased in value by more than 300%. It’s bypassed assets like, you know, collectible wines, jewelry, artwork, everything else. So there’s a whole hierarchy of cars within that at the basic level, a rare car. Two things. It’s obviously by definition there’s not many of them. A lot of times these are pre-World War [00:08:00] II vehicles that were custom made in Europe by the, the highest level of artisan, uh, in the world. And then number two, a lot of times they, they signify a very special. Innovation in technology or design or just something that makes it special? Obviously, Ferrari, if it raced, if it won something in a competition, if it was a car owned by Steve McQueen, right from Bullet. Yeah, something like that. If it’s a very rare special car, that’s where it gets to this next level. I mean, I’m sure a lot of your readers, our listeners have a. You know, a, a rare muscle car that their dad or uncle left around, they kind of tinker on in the garage or whatever. And that, that is a layer. But this is a whole nother one where these, these become worth tens of millions of dollars. And just like any rare asset if you have a lot of value and it’s hard to find paperwork. For instance to verify these things, you have to do a lot of, of digging, but it also opens up an opportunity for a lot of fraud and theft. And that’s [00:09:00] really what has happened in the rare car market. And that’s, that’s where they call someone like Joe. Joe, I don’t know if you want to add anything else to that. Joe Ford: Yeah. It doesn’t happen often because every thief soon learns you can’t sell the stolen item. Yeah. So then the only pathway to try to legitimize a sale is to try to fabricate paperwork. Or create a paper trail to somehow explain how you came to possess this stolen car. And in this instance, the paperwork was all fabricated, including forged notary stamps, forged signatures, a forged paperwork trail as if it, the car went from this guy to that guy. And it’s just, but what? You just debunk all that and uncover the lies that are trying to paper over a Gary jenkins: theft. So, uh, your investigation in this started with a disgruntled mechanic over in Europe or in France, getting a hold of you. ’cause your, your name is well known out in that subculture, I would assume, and how to get [00:10:00] a hold of you. Then you start find out where it is, and then you have to start looking at that paperwork and discrediting all that paperwork in order to establish a, a claim to it. Would that be, tell us about that trail. Joe Ford: Yeah, well the first thing I do is, uh, it’s a clue that I get out of this French mechanic ’cause I don’t know if he’s telling me the truth or not. So what I did is I located the original theft victims and said, Hey, by the way, did you ever sell the rights to this car at any time? And the, the theft victim’s there says, hell no. I inherited that thing. We didn’t know where it was, so we just waited. Couldn’t complete probate, so we just waited. So I said I got a proposal. I’ll enter into a contract with you where I’ll pony up the money and I’ll go find and recover this car. I have a clue. It’s somewhere in Europe. I don’t know who owns it or who’s possessing it. It’s gonna take years. We may never find it. But if you want, and uh, so I did sign a contract with the heirs and then so began the cat and mouse. Or I should say cat and [00:11:00] rat. You know, mice are, mice are usually innocent. This is a cat and rat situation. Cat rat. Gary jenkins: That’s a good one. So what was your first step then? Did you fly over to France and meet this mechanic and look him in the eye? Joe Ford: No, I, I teased out more data from the mechanic. I said, well, what, can you tell me what, what’s, what, do you know? Why do you suspect this guy took it? Why do you suspect it’s stolen? I get some conflicting clues like he, he wouldn’t commit to where it was. He wouldn’t commit to, uh, photographs of the stolen car, but he did send me a photograph of this other car and it turns out the thief had gone back to the estate. Once the victim died, he went to the estate to buy some other parts, and in the purchase of these other parts unrelated to the stolen car, he generates, he gets signatures and then begins generating a paper trail as if he’s buying the stolen teardrop. You know, paperwork to look like he’s buying this car. But in fact, he was buying [00:12:00] an ordinary body of a black sedan. It kind of looks like a frumpy old Ford model T. Yeah. And um, so with that contact with the estate, this thief then fabricates paperwork. Then waits years and years and ultimately restores the car really nicely to museum caliber restoration. You could bring it to Pebble Beach Concord in a heartbeat. Wow. And it would win. And so he restores it and then he sells it to this. Innocent purchaser. I don’t think he’s so innocent. And that’s who I’m in court with now. He sells it in Switzerland and this guy imports it and he waits a year before even trying to get a title, which is a very suspicious act. Yeah. And when he does apply for a title in Illinois, it pops up as stolen in the state of Illinois. Contacts the state police who contact the Wisconsin Police, who then contact us and say, Hey guys, we found your car. It just popped up. And so, uh, you know, I, I call those people and [00:13:00] say, listen, why don’t you just hand it over and go back against this phony seller? And it’s been a fight ever since. ’cause they won’t do the right thing. They just won’t, they’ll, they’re spending millions on attorneys rather than give up the car and do the right thing. Stayton: So, Gary, I should, I should add, give you a little bit of context here. First off, I obviously interviewed Joe Ford for the book. I also interviewed the alleged thief, Chris Gardner. Oh really? Uh, who I should say denied all charges and the charges, criminal charges were dropped against him. So let’s clarify that up top. Let me give you a little bit of context here. ’cause what was particularly interesting here, uh, was Joe Ford and the alleged thiefs, uh, background together. They both came up in New Orleans. Oh really? Uh, working together in the, uh, rare car import export. Business starting off with gray market imports. These were European cars, uh, that you could buy and import from overseas for cheaper [00:14:00] than you could buy here. Uh, and you were supposed to do some type of modification to make them street legal here. And that was kind of a booming market before, uh, basically the industry and, and government closed it down. But Joe and, and the alleged thief, Chris. We’re in business together and we’re friends and did work together for years, uh, until they had a massive falling out. Over, uh, various disagreements regarding car disputes and land disputes. But, basically that was one aspect of this that was compelling to me, uh, was, was Joe and the alleged thief had this his history together. When it comes to the car, the $7 million TBO logo. It was a car that the Rob report once called the most beau beautiful car in the world. One of only two models built with this race car engine. And I think what’s really interesting to me, it is a, as a journalist in reporting this story, uh, was exploring just the [00:15:00] histories of all of these rare cars. They would. Trade hands over the years. Uh, this one was built in, uh, 1938 by FII fci, these Italian immigrants to France. And it was, you know, uh, made it for basically, we’re not entirely sure but Parisian royalty was probably the best guess. And they would show these things off. You would buy matching outfits, almost like Downton Abbey era to go with the car and you would, go to these grand events. Uh, and it was really almost like a luxury accessory, if you will for royalty overseas. This car was imported into the United States in 1939 by Luigi Chinetti. A former Italian race car driver who won Lamont three times that year. He sold the teardrop to Tommy Lee, uh, who was the son of, uh, basically a, a wealthy businessman in, uh, Hollywood. In fact, literally the Hollywood sign was [00:16:00] on his Lee Mountain or his, his former mountain. He owned all the ca Cadillac dealerships throughout California. Got a piece of it. So his son was like this Playboy, who would. State Starlets raced these cars in the, uh, Mojave Desert, um, and lived this really extravagant lifestyle. He actually, in 1950, had a road accident, left him in chronic pain, and ended up jumping from, uh, a 12 story building, killing himself and leaving behind this world class collection of cars, including the teardrop. It finally found its way, uh, purchased by Roy Leki, a self-made millionaire. And, uh, and the founder of Monarch Plastic Products, uh, this company he ran in his warehouse in, um, in Milwaukee. And, you know, it was an interesting story of, of Leki. Uh, basically his, his wife died of cancer. His son, a pilot, died in an airplane crash. He, according to all reports, became pre pretty reclusive and withdrawn. And he really [00:17:00] focused on this car. So this garage where he kept it. Became piled up with junk pieces, all sorts of, of different things. And he, talking with, um, his nephew and, and various people who knew him, including Jay Leno. I interviewed Jay Leno, uh, who went out to look at the car. He became lonely and he started putting out advertisements that he had this rare vehicle in car trade magazines and saying. Purporting, he wanted to sell it. I, you know, talking to his family, they, they think he just wanted, was lonely and kind of wanted talk to people to meet people. Yeah. Wanted talk to people. ’cause people would come out there. Jay Leno. Oh yeah. Gary jenkins: Uh, flew Stayton: out there. He flew out and looked at it’s kind. Gary jenkins: It’s kind of the Ulti Ultimate Barn. Find the Ultimate Barn find. Yeah. Stayton: That’s the ultimate bar find. That’s right. And Jay Leno said, you know, something about it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t do it. But in the course of that, that is, is when you know, the alleged thief came and saw it and his representative and, you know, aft afterwards. That’s what led to the car being stolen. But it’s this [00:18:00] really interesting backstory, not only of Joe and the alleged thief, Chris Gardner. But also of this car and each, you know, the book details, this, his, this car’s history and other ones as well. That it’s, it was just one, one crazy story after. Gary jenkins: Really, it’s kind of the ultimate cautionary tale for you guys that have some kind of a cool car out there. I, I, my ne my, uh, cousin, he had a muscle car stuck out in the barn, out on the farm, but his brother lived on the farm and his brother had all kinds of, drinkers and different people coming out to the farm. You know, drinking and talking to him, and all of a sudden the trailer and the muscle car is gone and has never been found since. So, not expensive enough for Joe Ford to go after, but still. Mm-hmm. So you gotta be careful who sees what’s what you got in, in that, uh, when you got something like that, it’s crazy. Yeah. Joe, uh, go ahead Joe. You had you started to say something. I was Joe Ford: just gonna say, just to add on that. The first thing you do when you get a car is [00:19:00] apply for a title immediately. Yeah. And before you actually purchase a car, it, you can ask the police to do a VIN check. Just run this vin. Has it been reported stolen? ’cause the police maintain a database to protect and prevent against auto theft of stolen property, especially cars. And that’s something that was, this car was listed as stolen in the database. Yet these, uh, this LLC owned by this billionaire still decided to buy it. It’s just an incredible story and to me it’s a, it’s sort of a, if I had summarized my opinion, it’s a sophisticated laundering of a stolen car by someone with means. Yeah. Because had I not partnered up with the victim, he didn’t have resources or knowledge to battle. Gary jenkins: Yeah. Joe Ford: So, you know, this, this guy would’ve steamrolled him. Gary jenkins: Yeah, so, oh yeah. And you got the resources. I tell you what, uh, as a lawyer, I had a guy come to me and he had a, a dispute with somebody, his landlord. And I says, this landlord got money. He said, yeah. And, and is he a nutcase? Yeah. [00:20:00] If you go after a nutcase with money in the court system, you know, get ready there. You, you ain’t ever gonna get any satisfaction. They’re gonna keep you tied up for years. It’s not worth it. But, so that’s side. Joe Ford: Go ahead. I, I can’t make up I don’t think I’m dealing with a nutcase, but it’s just someone I’m sure who believes he was in the right. But if he would look over his own documents, he would see that no. In fact, maybe you, you were let down. You, you took some shortcuts, you didn’t do your homework. Yeah. And uh, all you need to do is give up the car and then go after the guy who sold you a stolen car. It’s that simple. Gary jenkins: Yeah. I have to ask, as a lawyer, are you in a American, United States courts, or are you in European courts? Joe Ford: I’m in, uh, Wisconsin because the, the car was stolen outta Milwaukee, so a Milwaukee state court. That’s where I’m at. Yeah. But the car is in Europe Gary jenkins: or is it back in the United Oh, it’s back in the United States. Joe Ford: Okay. It’s sequestered in Ma Massachusetts in a really nice shop in Massachusetts where it’s climate controlled storage. So. We just, once we finish this [00:21:00] lawsuit, you know, we’ll be awarded the car. Yeah, yeah. Stayton: Yeah. So, Gary, Gary, just, just for your clarity for your listeners too so once Joe was notified of the stolen car’s existence by this mechanic who had you know, been working with the alleged de. That’s when he began really researching it. Uh, the purchaser of this vehicle, a very wealthy individual who actually started very interesting story, started his own dental practice built it up, built his own software system to handle his own backend for his multiple dental offices. Lo and behold, that software system then became worth a lot more than pulling people’s teeth. And he started, uh, a company. That is, is now worth, hundreds of millions of dollars on paper at least. And, um, that’s when he, he began buying and selling rare cars. This individual bought the car, uh, for over $7 million you know, imported it into the United States. And when he tried to register it, uh, that’s when it triggered as being [00:22:00] stolen on a database list. Okay. That’s right. And that’s when authorities went to seize it. So the car is still in, in litigation and dispute. Uh, the crim, the criminal side of it was charges were dismissed. The alleged thief was arrested overseas, uh, brought over to the United States, held it in, uh, in prison in Wisconsin for years. And until, uh, finally charges were dropped, and then he went free. And but the actual dispute over ownership of the car continues to this day, and the car is currently being held as Joe said by a restoration shock outside of Boston until all matters are settled. Wow. Gary jenkins: So this, go ahead. This super rich guy was arrested over in Europe, brought back in custody and put in a county jail, probably two or three county jails by the time they got him back to Wisconsin and held there. The, Stayton: so the, the wealthy individual who purchased the vehicle’s, been in the United States the whole time. He’s just a car collector. Oh, okay. This is the in between the, [00:23:00] the intermediary. Gary jenkins: Yeah. He, okay, I Stayton: gotcha. He, well, he, he was the purchaser and so he bought the vehicle, he hired people to go do the vetting overseas in Switzerland. On the vehicle. It was the alleged thief, uh, uh, who was living overseas, and he was the individual who was arrested and brought over and the charges were dropped. Joe Ford: I gotcha. By the way, the charges were dropped because my partner, who was the key witness died and the west attorney decided that he might not be able to prove his case without this key witness. Mm-hmm. So is this guy Gary jenkins: kind of guy that goes around and spotting cars like that and stealing, was that kind of his, his occupation, if you will? Or is this just a happenstance thing? Joe Ford: Well, uh, it. The FBI located the other two thieves who did this heist for this car, and they said that this guy from Switzerland was also planning to steal some other cars and asking for their help. Those never came to fruition, but apparently there, there was the [00:24:00] game plan that these cars the few that were not already in museums were targets. Because these cars belong in museums. They’re pieces of automotive history that as well as phenomenal design. This car has a racing chassis. A racing motor. That’s why when Tommy Lee, the man in California, would bring it out to the Mojave Dry Lakes, he would win against the hot rods. And this ball was 1938 and he was racing against 1945 cars. It’s, you know, it’s that good of a car. Wow. And, Stayton: and to answer your question, Gary, yes. I, I interviewed one of the, uh, a person who said he was a thief, uh, who stole the car that night, along with, uh, the alleged mastermind behind it. Um, and he, he described to me in great detail how it went down, how they cased the place, uh, went in after, after dark, uh, and then went through this very arduous journey. To you know, take out what was in pieces, this rare car and put it in the back of a, of a [00:25:00] truck and drive it from Milwaukee back down south to Florida. And you know, at one point he described really the paperwork, uh, and the alleged thief that the person he said was behind it all you know, knowing exactly where to go and take it all. But that said, there, there were some key pieces of paperwork left behind. Which the alleged thief pointed out. But I did also interview a gentleman in Texas who said he had been defrauded by this same alleged thief years ago. He was a wealthy Texan, uh, who just, you know was really into cars. And what he alleged was he had bought what he thought was a specific type of car when it arrived at the airport there in Dallas. And he went to go pick it up. It was not the same type of car. It was kind of modified to look like what he thought he had bought. It was actually a car of lesser value, and, and it, he had trouble making it work. He then pursued this individual for years and he says he eventually found through his legal team the alleged thief in Florida, and basically running [00:26:00] an operation of, of buying, of taking cars and then remaking them to seem they were a, a different car of higher value. So there, there, there are trails of, uh, other allegations, uh, against him. Gary jenkins: Got another cautionary Joe Ford: tale Gary jenkins: there. Joe Ford: It’s like with fine art, you have to come up through the ranks to know about these vehicles being so special. And then if you go to the dark side, you might try to counterfeit documents or counterfeit a car. You might buy a chassis of a similar car, modify it, put a brand new body on it, and try to sell it as an original. So it’s just like counterfeiting artwork. And these guys are masters. I mean, this guy who did this was a con artist, this Chris Gardner Con artist. He earned his name artist. He’s a con artist. Gary jenkins: It’s crazy. Joe, is there other, uh, car cases that are kind of interesting you’d like to tell people about? Joe Ford: Uh, there are others and they are very interesting, but I can’t go [00:27:00] into it. No. Gary jenkins: We talked a little bit. What about the Aston Martin? That was, uh, one of the James Bond cars and Goldfinger that disappeared out of a uh, uh, uh. Airport garage down in Florida somewhere. What, tell me a little bit about that one. Joe Ford: There’s lots of theories. In fact, one of the fees in this case suspected the mastermind. Chris Gardner was also involved in that theft. We have no evidence at that time, but it’s, it’s a good working theory to begin. And that car, I think, has been located, I saw some pictures recently by somebody who I, I can’t name, and it was in, in a collection. And just like you said before, there are some wealthy collectors who just don’t care about anything other than having this coveted item in their basement or garage. So, and let me, Stayton: let me give you a little context on the car, Gary. So this was a car. From the James Bond film Goldfinger starring Sean Connery, [00:28:00] obviously the very famed Aston Martin from that movie, which really kickstarted all the James Bond Aston Martin cars. So there, there were two vehicles made for that film. Or, you know, used in that film, one was kind of a, a road car where they would actually film the scenes driving. And then the other was this stuck car, right? Because that was the car that had the machine guns pop up, had, flame throwers, all sorts of stuff on it. You know, when they, when they finished filming, they just got rid of it. They were like, this thing is worthless. Who cares? Uh, so that car traded hands for years between various collectors ended up. In the hands of, of a wealthy real estate mogul, uh, in the Boca Raton area. And he, he was an interesting guy. I think he had Indiana Jones’ Bull Whip. He had, uh, some items from the Wizard of Oz. He was just a collector. Yeah. Uh, and he kept this car in a hangar, uh, in his private you know, airport hangar there. And in the middle of the night. Kind of a similar [00:29:00] deal. Thieves broke into the hangar. No one’s exactly sure what happened. Uh, there were various. Theories. There were apparently, skid marks there that, and indicated one theory was it was loaded onto a cargo plane and flew off into the night. Other people, uh, would, this made news when it was stolen, uh, you know, claim to have seen it all sorts of places. It was in the Keys, it was somewhere in Appalachia. Uh, nobody really knew. But again, uh, it was, it was probably one of the more famous stolen cars of all time now worth. Millions of dollars. I interviewed another individual and there’s a whole subculture. I interviewed various detectives beyond Joe. A lot of them work for these insurance companies. So basically the police, frankly, probably are, are busy on, on other things. They’re not gonna be the folks who are gonna find this stuff. It’s really the high-end insurance company who’s on the hook for the tens of millions of dollars. They have an incentive to have their own [00:30:00] investigator. You know, tracking down these cars to try to find ’em. So I talked to an individual working with them, or these insurance companies. He had been looking for this car for years. There was a theory, it was bought by a, a, you know, some wealthy individual in the Middle East, and it was in some warehouse full of all sorts of cars. But really it was in the course of this investigation when, as Joe points out, I, I did interview a person who said he had stolen the Tableau logo along with the alleged mastermind. He said he recalled this person and the FBI agent said that they had heard this person talking about, uh, the James Bond car. And so that was a theory. They, it was, he was around the same time, it was similar, uh, circumstances. So, uh, there was a theory which of course the alleged thief, uh, disputed, uh, that, that he had somehow been involved with that. But again maybe Joe has an update. I don’t know. Joe Ford: No updates. Sorry. Gary jenkins: He is not talking. But it’s, it’s covered in, it’s covered in the book. It’s too soon. Okay. Oh, [00:31:00] alright. Cool. Good luck guys. You gotta get this book. It, its, it’s a fascinating look into this. World that we usually don’t, you know, kind of hear about and it doesn’t make a hell of a movie. You know, they’ve got that gone in 60 seconds and they out and steal all these fancy cars. But the actual tracing of, you know, who the casing of the place, picking the car, casing it, getting it, the paperwork trail that going from one owner to another and, you know, over into Europe and everything. Make a heck of a movie. Maybe you guys will get the screen rights sold on this. Stayton: What you think. Yeah. And, and there’s a, you know, and Joe in this alleged thief that had a fallout earlier over another stolen car, a rare, uh, Ferrari. Joe, do you wanna talk about that one briefly? Joe Ford: Well, yeah. That, that’s this Ferrari race car here. Uh, ultimately was located and sold to Les Wexner for around 18 million. Involved a, a sale, a illegitimate sale through a high-end auction house. After we [00:32:00] finally settled the case and one of the board of directors of the auction house resigned right after we settled ’cause he had been. Tricked into believing somebody else owned this Ferrari, when in fact, it was myself and my Ohio partner who owned it, and they sold it in London. So it was international borders and you know, a lot of litigation, litigation in Ohio. That’s where the original theft was, Cincinnati, Ohio, and then exported to Belgium, hidden under a phony VIN number because it was so rare of a car. They just don’t make many of them. And then, uh, finally when the guy was on his deathbed. He tries to settle up and square away the paperwork. He contacts the Ohio heirs and then he sues them to try to clear up title ’cause he’s on his deathbed and he knows his daughter can’t do anything with the car in, in its current status. So that litigation took another six years to resolve and ended up having. Squirrely people come out of the [00:33:00] woodwork claiming ownership of the same car. ’cause the car was once raced in South America since there was somebody from South America who said he owned it. And of course the history and the, the track record and provenance proved otherwise. But you, you get all kind of, uh, crazy people come out of the woodwork when there’s high stakes on the table. Stayton: And this, this was another, another case, Gary, of, of, again a kind of a, a, a wealthy, uh, retired. Actually nuclear scientist, this gentleman in Ohio who had owned the car for years, had worked on the Manhattan Project. He had, then become, uh, disillusioned, uh, with, what he had done there. Also, similar to what happened to Tab Lago kind of became a recluse. Had these vast junkyards full of mostly just junk cars or, or like pieces of airplane, or he would just tinker. He is a brilliant kind of, a lot of these guys are kind of like almost mad scientist guys who would tinker with these things. But it [00:34:00] became known that amidst all this pile of junk, there was this very rare old Ferrari again, after Ferrari himself dies. And these cars become more valuable. That’s when people found out about that car. Same deal. Uh, in the middle of the night, someone cut a fence took the car, loaded it on a trailer, uh, that went down to Georgia and eventually made its way, uh, to Europe, uh, via kind of back channels and, and fraudulent paperwork. So it’s, you know, what’s compelling about this is. Frankly, the logistics, these cars, these cars are amazing pieces of history and art, which it was fun for me to really report on this. And it’s a, it’s a great read to, to learn the history of this car, this Ferrari, raced car that it raced in South America, had raced in all these places. Absolutely beautiful car. And, you know, and, and then wound up in the hands of these kind of you know, unique eclectic collectors and then [00:35:00] stolen. But it’s not like, you know, you think about those guys who, who robbed the louv. I mean, they’re moving hot jewelry. That’s not easy. Can you imagine moving a hot, you know, giant car? Like just the logistics and the operations of this. Are really fascinating. So the book really does go into detail not only in the personal stories surrounding this, obviously Joe and the alleged thief and, and kind of, uh, former associates turned enemies. Uh, but also in, in these cars and the actual mechanics of how you move stolen very rare, tens of millions of dollar cars across international borders. Um, and it’s, it’s just, it’s just an amazing story. Gary jenkins: It sounds, it really sounds like to me that’s what attracted to me when I got the, uh, email from your publicist. I thought that this is a, it is not mafia, but it is a really interesting story that I wanna know more about myself. Uh, guys, I really appreciate y’all coming on the show as Staton Bonner and Joe Ford, the Million Dollar Detective. Uh, it’s just been fascinating, guys, and you guys, I’ll have links to that, uh, book, [00:36:00] uh, Amazon link to that book down in the show notes. So you listeners check those show notes. Yeah. Million Stayton: dollar, million dollar car detective. Thank you Gary. Thanks so, so much for having, I left the car out. Gary jenkins: Million dollar car detective. Thanks Gary. Sounds good. Thank. Thank you.

Transcribed - Published: 16 February 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins takes listeners deep into one of the most chilling and revealing moments in Chicago mob history—a secretive 1967 party for Mob stalwart, Fi Fi Buccieri. It was held at the legendary Edgewater Beach Hotel. What appeared to be a lavish celebration was, in reality, a tightly controlled gathering of roughly 300 mobsters, political figures, and underworld insiders. The occasion marked the 40th birthday of feared Chicago Outfit enforcer Fiore “Fifi” Buccieri, a man whose reputation for violence made him one of the most dangerous figures in the city. Despite not being invited, veteran journalist Bob Wiedrich managed to infiltrate the event, raising serious questions about security, secrecy, and the gathering’s true purpose. This was no ordinary party. Federal surveillance later revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the room bugged, capturing disturbing conversations—including laughter and casual recollections of torture and murder by Buccieri and his associates. Central to this episode is Buccieri’s alleged role in the brutal torture and murder of William “Action” Jackson, a crime that horrified even seasoned law-enforcement agents. These wiretap recordings provide rare insight into the mindset of mob enforcers and the normalization of extreme violence within the Chicago Outfit during the 1960s. The timing of the party was critical. Chicago boss Sam Giancana had recently been released from prison, and rumors swirled that major power moves were underway. Evidence suggests this birthday celebration doubled as a covert mob summit, where leadership issues, alliances, and strategic decisions were quietly discussed away from public view. This party was a who’s who of the Chicago Outfit. Men like Mike Glitta, Teets Battalgia, Ceaser DiVarco, Ross Prio, Larry The Hood Bounaguidi, Irvin Weiner, Dominic DiBello, Wee Willie Messino, Joseph Cortino ( former chief of police in Forest Park and several others. You will learn how Anthony Accardo and his driver Jackie Cerone avoided the scene when the cops started taking pictures and writing down names. I also explore the role of the Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club, an organization tied to questionable fundraising activities that blurred the lines between organized crime, business interests, and local politics. These raffles and social events weren’t just about money—they were about influence, access, and control. Throughout the episode, I break down the cast of characters who attended this gathering: loan sharks, enforcers, racketeers, and political fixers. Their interconnected stories reveal a dense web of loyalty, fear, and ambition that defined the Chicago mob scene at its peak.   This episode uses the Edgewater Beach Hotel as more than a setting—it becomes a symbol of mob glamour masking ruthless criminal reality. It’s a reminder of how deeply organized crime once penetrated American society, and why these stories continue to fascinate, disturb, and resonate today. 0:04 Chicago Mob Tales 1:39 Fifi Buccieri ‘s Infamy 3:19 Giancana’s Absence 4:22 The Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club 5:36 Edgewater Beach Hotel 8:36 Police Intelligence Operation 12:22 The Notorious Players 16:02 Entertainment at the Banquet 18:54 Reflections on the Meeting 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there in gangland, wireland, [0:03] especially you guys up in Chicago. Yeah, I’ve done several stories on Chicago. I’m on a Chicago trip right now, I guess. I’m going to do one more with our friend, Mr. Cooley, Bob Cooley. We just haven’t set up a time yet, but I’m going to do one more with him for sure. But I’m going to keep some of these Chicago stories up. I got such a great reaction. You know, you guys, you know, like and share these, as they say, on the apps and on YouTube. But anyhow, let’s go back to March of 1967. [0:36] There was a real well-known reporter named Bob Wendrick at the time. He really covered the mob in Chicago. I mean, he might as well have been a member of the mob in Chicago. He was so close to so many people up there. And he had some really good sources and some inside tracks. And he went to a party, but he wasn’t invited to that party. You know, they never really were going to invite Bob Weindrich to a party. It was $25 a plate. There was about 300 outfit mobsters and their associates attended this party. Some of their political associates even. They called a chief of police and I think a mayor of a suburban city. It was at the Edgewater Hotel. It was sponsored by the Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club. It was to honor the birthday of outfit enforcer, killer, and loan shark Fiore Fifi Bussieri. Fifi was a vicious killer, man. I mean, he was bad. Straight out of the Capone days. [1:36] And he was kind of best known in more modern times. It happened not too long before this party, I believe, or around this time, maybe right after. [1:48] He took part in the multi-day, I believe, three-day torture and murder of a bookie, a great big fat bookie named William Action Jackson. There’s some images, some pictures, a picture of him in his trunk was showing a lot of the torture that they did to him out there. I’ve seen it on the Internet. They kind of cut back on those pictures and try to keep those from getting circulated around on Facebook and some of the social media apps. I assume it’s still out there. Um, but anyhow, the Bureau had a, had a hidden microphone in a guy’s house, Jackie, the lackey Saron, who was, uh, uh, a Cardo’s driver at the time had a, had a hidden microphone in there and Jackie Saron and a couple others. And one of them was Fifi Sierra, Bussieri. I don’t remember who else it was. We’re laughing about Lacks and Jackson’s reactions to the cattle prod and some of the other gruesome details. [2:45] They thought he was talking to the hated FBI agent Bill Romer at the time, but in fact, he was not. He wasn’t talking to anybody. I did find one blurb where he was thought to be a child molester. So, you know, I don’t know. And I’m thinking it was a child of one of his girlfriends or something like that. I’m not sure. But anyhow, they tortured the heck out of him for about three days. Fifi came out of the 42 gang. If you remember, it was Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, so that meant there was 41 in Alibaba’s gang, and they wanted to have one more [3:17] than Alibaba, so they named themselves the 42 Gang. This party happened just as Sam Giancana was getting out of jail. [3:25] He didn’t attend, and he left for Mexico about that time to avoid further grand jury appearances. He’d been in jail about a year, I think, because they give him the old give you immunity and you have to testify. If you don’t, then they find you in contempt of court and send you to penitentiary or a jail for a year or so for the length of grand jury. And so he left town right after that and went down to Mexico for several years. Some speculate this meeting was really to get everybody together in one place and have some private meetings off the side without law enforcement really knowing what was going on, where Ricardo and Paul the Waiter Rica would name Joey Doves Iupa as the new boss in place of Gen Cona and make some other personnel shifts. You know, a few years later, when Giancana comes back, there’ll be a whole string of murders around the time he’s murdered because of some of his people that were always loyal to Giancana. [4:22] This Santa Fe Saddling Gun Club, anybody ever heard of that? I had not heard of this before. It was a registered club. The president was Joseph Scaramuza, who owned a gun store at Halstead & Taylor, which is, I believe that’s right down there in the middle of Mobland. There was an informant in the jfk files as i was researching scaramusa there was an informant that claimed that scaramusa knew jack ruby well and as they checked into scaramusa over that they found found that this halstead gun store that he owned had sold three pistols that were recovered after some puerto rican terrorists shot up the house of representative a few years before now you know what all that means i don’t know but uh and i remember that when i was a little kid these puerto Puerto Ricans, uh, now, uh, they tried to, they were trying to assassinate Harry Truman, who was staying out of the white house and the Blair house, uh, which is, I think maybe that’s where the vice president stays. Sometimes I’m not sure. Anyhow, he was not in the white house and they, they had a plan to assassinate him. They also went into the house of representatives and shot it up. They wanted complete freedom from the United States at the time. Now there’s not been any Puerto Rican freedom movement since that I know of. Anyhow, um. [5:36] The Edgewater Beach was a faded but once grand dom of hotels along Lake Michigan. They had their own beach for a while. Then something moved in between them and the beach. And it was about to declare bankruptcy. It was located a few guys that live in Chicago. It was 5555 North Sheridan. [5:56] And now members of the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit had found out about that themselves. It was like Weindrich had. Maybe they hip Weindrich to it. That all works, all that little undercover stuff. You have an employee at the Edgewater who knows somebody who knows somebody, and the work starts leaking out. When you have something this big, you have 300 people there, and it was really to make some money too, charged $25 a plate, and they did another little fundraiser. They’ve been selling raffle tickets all over Chicago and all, like down in northwestern Indiana. And in Indiana, anywhere that the outfit had some kind of influence and businesses that they could hold up. It’s like policemen. We used to go out and sell circus tickets. They were like $2 a ticket, but it wasn’t really for a ticket. It was like a support the police circus, which then gave a piece of the money to some police or widows and orphans fund. I don’t remember exactly. This is when I was brand new. and you were given like a handful of circus tickets and you’re supposed to go out to your local businessmen and sell them. Of course, they always bought them. All you had to do was go in and say, you know, I got some police tickets or circus tickets and they’d buy them. And they weren’t exactly even a ticket. They were a coupon and then they helped go buy a ticket. But, you know, that’s what they were doing, and that’s where they were. [7:23] Intelligence unit was milling around the hotel. They were, you know, I think what they were trying to do was waiting to see if the operators of this banquet, as this thing got going, if somebody actually, you know, drew, made a drawing or really raffled off a new car, which is what supposedly the raffle tickets were for, which would give them an excuse then to raid this place, saying it was an illegal lottery and then start really identifying the participants you know all of them that were there make them air everybody give you id and all that and then they had they were really loaded for bear they had 65 cops waiting close by it’s something called the foster avenue beach so it was it was a hell of an operation now the outfit during this time learned that the cops were going to be there and someone called Tony Accardo and Paula Guadarica, who were, you know, supposed to be there. They were like the headliners. They were the big ducks at that show. And really, if it was about having some meetings to realign personnel and name, maybe they’re going to have a making ceremony, but I doubt that. [8:30] But maybe they were going to name Joy Iupa as the new boss because he was the next boss. Somebody warned him not to come. And, of course, Jackie Lackey’s Roan didn’t show up either because he was a Cardo’s driver. [8:47] Cops, I’m going to tell you about some of the people the cops did find there and identify. Ross Prio, his north side loan shark and enforcer who had been Gen Conn’s second command and was reportedly consulted on all outfit murders. Now, Ross Prio, he’d been around. I can’t remember. I think he was out of the 42 gang himself. He had been around since the Capone days and a well-respected guy, had a lot of guys under him. And he was a bad dude. He was a bad actor. He was dangerous as hell and could take part in torturing the whole nine yards. They saw Irving Weiner there. He was a mob-connected bail bondsman. He was a guy who ended up a few years later walking with Alan Dorfman when somebody came up behind Dorfman and shot and killed him. Dorfman was their big guy in the Teamsters. Dorfman had helped him get those loans out of the Teamsters pension fund and loaned to people that wanted to buy Las Vegas casinos. Then everybody would get a kickback from those casinos. So he was integral. He was being investigated as an official of the Twin Cities. [9:54] Food products company and he had my he had partners felix milwaukee phil aldoricio and sam teach battaglia and marshall caifano i mean this guy is erb wiener he was he was a money man for the mob well known as a money man and and he was he was involved with with lombardo joe lombardo and tony splatter and some others and they got a loan for a guy named from the teamsters fund but for a guy named danny seifert they thought danny seifert had started a company with a lot of this money, and he was going to testify about how he got this Teamsters loan is my understanding. And I believe Lombardo and probably Frank Suisse showed up and killed him one day. He never spent a night in jail. Weiner never spent a night in jail. Go figure that. He’s kind of like, almost like Tony Accardo, huh? I saw a guy named Mike Glitta. He was an outfit member who had B-Girl bars, had these kind of hustling bars, and was involved, heavily involved in the porn business now. Um. [10:54] There was a lot of porn shops in Chicago, and Gletta was really, he was the guy on the porn shops. Chicago Crime Commission published something that said he supervised all pornography operations in an area that went from the near north side clear to the Wisconsin state line. So everything from, say, Rush Street on north was his. I guess he wasn’t down in, I think, Old Town is where Redwood met and some porn shops down there. and Frank Suisse was extorting money from some of them. Mob watchers claimed that Glitter always reported directly to Vincent Solano, who was a labor union leader and a capo, and the guy that probably had Tokyo Joe, Joe Ido killed. He was a racket boss on the north side and all the way up to the north suburbs. Identified a guy called Larry the Hood, who I’d seen that name before. It’s a really hard name to pronounce. was a Bonaguiti. [11:54] He was a mob wannabe at the time. As I researched into him, he was really just a wannabe. Hung around the Rush Street bars and he was associated with Mike Glitta. And he’ll eventually get an opportunity when Ross Prio dies and Mike Glitta has a heart attack and he moves on up real quick because he’s always in there around and he knows the porn business and the B-Girl bars on that near north side. And he’s the one that goes around and collects after after Glitter has a heart attack. [12:23] Another Northside vice boss named Joe Caesar Joseph DeVarco, he was dropped off by an underling driver. He came out of the 42 gang himself and is a well-known gangster on the Rush Street area. Dominic DiBello was a Northside gambling operator. He was seen with a friend of his and a fellow gambling operator named Bill Gold, or called Bill Gold. He had a longer name than that, and I don’t know him. If you guys make comments down below, if you know who this Bill Gold was and what the story was with him, he probably just ran a sports book or something or helped with the off-track betting outlets. And they arrived just before a guy named Joseph Cortino, according to the newspaper report. He was a former Forest Park chief of police. He was suspected of protecting gambling operations and leaking law enforcement information to the mob. A guy you hear mentioned, I’ve not really seen much on in detail, Willie Massino, and they called him Wee Willie because he was little, but he was supposedly really, really a bad character. [13:26] Here’s a guy when I believe it was Mario Raginone was invited to go on some kind of a crime, and he saw Willie Massino and somebody else in the area. And he said, uh-oh, if those guys are anywhere in the area where I am and they’ve got me kind of isolated like this, you know, going to do a crime so I’m not telling anybody where I’m going and what I’m doing and who I’m with, you know, they’re going to hit me. And he went in after that. That’s how feared Wee Willie Messino was. He had been a loan shark collector and enforcer for Tony Cardo and a guy named Joseph Gagliano, who I don’t know must have faded off into the woodwork by the 70s. 1970 he went to prison for kidnapping and beating a couple of contractors who owed money to the mob, George and Jack Chiagoris. [14:19] Sounds like they’re maybe Greek, huh? After he got out of the penitentiary, he went to work as an advisor with Marco D’Amico, who was, you know, remember Marco D’Amico had a gambling operation, and that’s who Bob Cooley worked with a lot. And he also did some work for Jackie Cerrone. [14:37] So Turk Torello, James Turk Torello, he was confronted by the cops as he was unloading sound equipment out of his, wherever his car. He yelled at him as they walked up. He said, hey, he said, I got machine guns in these boxes. You want to come and see? He was kind of a wise-ass, you know. He was a capo of the 26th Street crew and directly under Fifi Busseri. One time, he had been sent by an angry mob boss named Sam Giancana, who we all know, Mobo. And he was going to partner up with Jackie Cerrone to kill an outfit member named Frankie Esposito down in Florida. But the Bureau had recorded Giancana’s conversation and warned Esposito. and he came right back around. He didn’t help the Bureau. You know, you go out and you warn a guy and then you try to bring him in and make him a snitch or make him a cooperating witness in the end because they’re trying to kill him. They don’t all come in. And he ended up coming back to Chicago and settled his dispute with Giancana and that hit was canceled. According to the tape recordings, Torello and his killers were going to murder Esposito and cut him up in small pieces and feed him to the sharks off the Florida coast. You know, they had houses down in Florida. That’s where they, that was Jackie Cerrone’s Florida house where they overheard him and Fifi talking about the murdering and torturing Action Jackson. [16:03] Now, I mentioned bringing in the sound equipment. They had entertainment. Vic Dimone was the entertainment that night. Now, Vic Dimone has long-held connections to the Chicago outfit and I believe the Genovese family. I didn’t really go way in deep into him. I’ve got a bunch of notes. I’ll probably do a story just about Vic Dimone. [16:26] Maybe he was the character in The Singer and The Godfather, that kind of a blend of Frank Sinatra and Vic Dimone. As a singer in the Godfather movie. Guys named a couple brothers, Joseph and Donald Grieco, were there. Well, they had been in business with Vic Damone in the Vic Damone Frozen Pizza Company. Paul Rica and Fifi Boussieri had brought the famous singer Vic Damone into the outfits world and got him to lend his name to this frozen pizza business. And what they did, the Grieco brothers, They use it as a cover for their loan shark activities, but, you know, they sold pizzas, too, although I’ve never heard of. I don’t ever remember seeing a Vic DeMone frozen pizza. Vic DeMone had even taken his show to Giancana’s joint, the Armory. And if you’ve ever been by the Armory, it’s just like a neighborhood bar. A neighborhood joint is not a place. But Vic DeMone was big. You know, he would be playing Madison Square Garden maybe at the time or the big clubs, the Copacabana in New York. And they got him to bring his show out to. [17:33] Gincana’s Joint the Armory kind of like at his Villa Venice he got Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis to bring their show there and it was not exactly it was not the Copacabana they tried to make it into the Copacabana of Chicago but it never really got there another guy they saw was an outfit bookmaker and a tough guy out of Cicero who will get killed here in a little bit Sam Sambos Cesario Yeah. [17:59] He was a longtime workhorse. He’s well-liked throughout the whole Chicago underworld, but he made a mistake. He ended up marrying a girlfriend slash mistress, the Gomar of Milwaukee Field Aldericio, while he was in the penitentiary. Two guys showed up with this woman. He marries her. They’re sitting out in front of their house. It was like a brownstone. It was a hot summer night. They’re sitting out in lawn chairs out in front of their house, and two guys pull up and run up and kill him. They say Harry Ailman was the guy that did that. They call that. I’ve had some kickback on this when I said this one time before a few years ago. I didn’t really investigate into it. But, you know, the popular story is that it’s a hit from beyond the grave because Aldericio had already died in prison [18:50] between the time he gave that order and this actual murder. So that is a story of the big meeting at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. [19:02] It wasn’t exactly like Appalachian or some of the other famous mob meetings, and it was just Chicago only. They didn’t identify that they named anybody from out of town at this thing. Seemed like it was a big moneymaker, maybe a meeting that you could hire some other little meetings in, get people in there that you didn’t really want to be seen with in public. This article, they talked about other politicians and businessmen that were there, but they didn’t really name them. I guess they didn’t want to get sued or whatever, but it was a, it was definitely, it was a fundraiser. He charged 25 bucks a plate and then have that, uh, that lottery for that car. And, and, you know, they never gave that car to anybody. And you know how much money you can raise with, with, you got, you know, a hundred guys or so going out, mob guys going out and raising money, selling lottery tickets at five bucks, 10 bucks each. You can raise a lot of money like that. So maybe it’s just one more big Chicago scam and honored Fifi Boussieri at the time. I don’t know. But anyhow, thanks a lot, guys. I thought it was an interesting story, and I thought you would find it interesting. And some of the people that they named that were there, I wish I’d have been there, but writing down license numbers and taking pictures and all that stuff. So keep coming back. Like and subscribe, as they say. And we’re just going to keep doing this and doing this. [20:24] I’ve gotten some you know I’ve got some things up that are like non-fiction books that are based on mob stuff, I don’t know if that’s okay or not, but I kind of like mixing that up. There’s only so many mob stories out there. You know, I don’t want a lot of these that have already been told. I don’t remember seeing any. I kind of looked around in the other podcast having this story. So I try to find them. You know, give me any tips, your comments that you can. I’ll try to look it up. And if I can find enough information, I’ll do the story on it. So thanks a lot. And adieu to you guys out in Chicago. I bet it’s colder up there than it is down here. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 9 February 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins talks with author Linda Stasi about her historical novel, The Descendant, inspired by her own Italian-American family history. Stasi traces her ancestors’ journey from Sicily to the Colorado mining camps, revealing the brutal realities faced by immigrant laborers in the American West. The conversation explores the violent labor struggles surrounding the Ludlow Massacre and the role of powerful figures like John D. Rockefeller, as well as the diverse immigrant communities that shaped Colorado’s mining towns. Stasi challenges stereotypes about Italians in America, highlighting their roles as workers, ranchers, and community builders—not just mobsters. Jenkins and Stasi also discuss Prohibition-era bootlegging and the early roots of organized crime in places like Pueblo, weaving together documented history with deeply personal family stories of survival, violence, and resilience. Drawing on her background as a journalist, Stasi reflects on loss, perseverance, and the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, making The Descendants both a historical narrative and an emotional family legacy. Click here to find the Descendant. 0:04 Introduction to Linda Stasi 3:12 The Role of Women in History 7:05 Bootlegging and the Mafia’s Rise 9:31 Discovering Family Connections 14:59 Immigrant Struggles and Success 19:02 Childhood Stories of Resilience 24:04 Serendipity in New York 26:19 Linda’s Journey as a Journalist 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here.  [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, glad to be back here in studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, and I have an interview for you. This is going to be a historical fiction author. This is going to be a historical fiction book by a writer whose family lived the life of, whose family, This is going to be a real issue. This book is going to, we’re going to talk about a book. We’re going to talk with an author about the book. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi, about her book, The Descendants. Now, she wrote a historical fiction, but it’s based on her actual family’s history. [0:50] From Sicily to New York to California. The wild west of colorado now get that you never heard of many italians out west in colorado but she’s going to tell us a lot more about that and how they were actually ended up being part of the pueblo colorado mafia the corvino family and then got involved in bootlegging and and then later were involved in ranching and different things like that so it’s uh it’s a little different take on the mob in the United States that we usually get, but I like to do things that are a little bit different. So welcome, Linda Stasey. Historical fiction, how much of it is true? Is it from family stories? All the stories are true. I’ll ask you that here in a little bit. Okay, all the stories are true. All right. All the stories are true. [1:41] It’s based on not only stories that were told to me by my mother and her sisters and my uncles and so forth, But it’s also based on a lot of actual events that took place while they were living in Colorado. And it’s based on the fact that, you know, people don’t know this. We watch all these movies and we think everybody who settled the West talk like John Wayne. There were 30 different languages spoken right in the minds of Colorado. So my uncles rode the range and they were, drovers and they were Italian. I mean, they were first generation. They were born in Italy and they made their way with all these other guys who were speaking Greek and Mexican and you name it. It wasn’t a lot of people talking like, hey, how are you doing, partner? How are you doing, bard? Talking like I do. Right. [2:46] But it took a long time for you you can blame the movies for that and the dominant uh uh caucasian culture for that right and you know there was that what was the movie the the martin scorsese movie killers of the flower moon oh yeah all the uh native americans spoke like they were from like movie set in color and oklahoma so he was like what. [3:13] Yeah, well, it’s the movies, I guess. [3:25] Unlike any women that I would have thought would have been around at that time. They were rebellious, and they did what they wanted, and they had a terrible, mean father. And I also wanted to tell this story. That’s what I started out telling. But I ended up telling the story of the resilience of the immigrants who came to this country. For example, with the Italians and the Sicilians, there had been earthquakes and tsunamis and droughts. So Rockefeller sent these men that he called padrones to the poorest sections of Sicily, the most drought-affected section, looking for young bucks to come and work. And he promised them, he’d say, oh, the president of America wants to give you land, he wants to give you this. Well, they found themselves taken in the most horrific of conditions and brought to Ellis Island, where they were herded onto cattle cars and taken to the mines of Colorado, where they worked 20-hour days. They were paid in company script, so they couldn’t even buy anything. Their families followed them. They were told that their families were coming for free, and they were coming for free, but they weren’t. They had to pay for their passage, which could never be paid for because it was just company script. [4:55] And then in 1914, the United Mine Workers came in, and there were all these immigrants, Greeks and mostly Italians, and they struck, and Rockefeller fired everyone who struck. So the United Mine Workers set up a tent city in Ludlow. [5:14] And at night, Rockefeller would send his goons in who were—he actually paid the National Guard and a detective agency called Baldwin Feltz to come in. And they had a turret-mounted machine gun that they called the Death Squad Special, and they’d just start spraying. So the miners, the striking miners, built trenches under their tents for their women and children to hide. when the bullets started flying. And then at some point, Rockefeller said, you’re not being effective enough. They haven’t gone back to work. Do what you have to do. So these goons went in and they poured oil on top of the tents. And they set them on fire. [6:00] And they burnt dozens of women and children to death. They went in. The government claimed it was 21 people, but there was a female reporter who counted 60-something. and they were cutting the heads and the hands off of people, the children and women, so they couldn’t be identified. It all ended very badly and none of Rockefeller’s people or Rockefeller got in trouble. They went before Congress and Rockefeller basically said they had no right to strike. And that was that. So here are all these men and women now living wild in the mountains of Colorado, not speaking the language, not. Being literate, not able to read and write. [6:44] And living in shacks on mountains in the hurricane, I mean, in the blizzards and whatnot. And then it’s so odd. In 1916, Colorado declared prohibition, which was four years before the rest of the country. [7:00] So these guys said, well, we need to make booze. We need to make wine. What do you mean you can’t have booze and wine? So that’s how bootlegging started in Colorado. And that’s how the mafia began in the West. with these guys. [7:18] It’s kind of interesting. As I was looking down through your book, I did a story on the more modern mafia. This started during bootlegging times in Pueblo, and I noticed in your book, I refer to Pueblo, this was the Corvino brothers. So did you study that? Is that some of the background that you used to make, you know, use a story? You used real stories as well as, you know, the real stories from your family, real stories from history. Well, the Carlinos are my family. Oh, you’re related to the Carlinos. Well, what happened was I didn’t know that. And my cousin Karen came across this photo of the man who was her son. [7:59] Grandfather that she never met because he was killed in the longest gunfight in Colorado history when she was 10 days old. And he was Charlie Carlino. So she came across it and we met, we ended up meeting the family. Sam Carlino is my cousin and he owns like this big barbecue joint in san jose california and uh we’ve become very friendly so i i said i look i’m looking at this and i think wait a minute vito carlino is the father he has three sons and one daughter the youngest son charlie who was the the handsome man about town cowboy, they had a rival family called the dannas in bootlegging and charlie carlino and his bodyguard were riding across the baxter street bridge driving in one direction and the dannas were coming in the other direction and the dannas got out and and killed them and it’s exactly what I’m thinking to myself, Vito Corleone, three sons, Charlie gets killed on the bridge while the two cars are… I thought, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I mean. [9:26] It can’t be that coincidental, right? No. No, it can’t be. Even the bridge. Somebody was doing their research. [9:46] And had baby Charlotte, who was only 10 days old at the time. So all these stories are true, and it started other gunfights and so forth and so on. But I thought, holy shit. That’s my family. I had no idea. I mean, I knew my aunt was married to a guy whose name was Charlie Carlino, And I should show you the picture because he looks like the missing link from the village people. He’s got big fur chaps on and a cowboy hat. I mean, he’s got his holsters on and he’s got his long gun over his shoulder. It’s like, wow. Yeah, so that story is true. And my mom was a little girl when the Pueblo flood happened. And she always recalled the story to me about watching in horror as the cows and the horses and people were floating away, dead. [10:54] So now the name of your book is A Descendant, which is you, of course. And you kind of use the situations that you just described and the real life people in this book. So then how does this book progress and what other situation do you use? Well, I used many of the acts. I used the Ludlow massacre, the flood, the bootlegging, the prohibition. I also uncovered that the governor of Colorado said. [11:30] Assigned all these guys to become prohibition agents, but they were all KKK. Yeah. So they actually had license to kill the immigrants, just saying they had a still. They had a still. And they were wholesale killing people. So there’s that story. There’s the story of the congressional hearing of Rockefeller after that. And um the the book ends up with my mother um beating my father um who was not in colorado she met him at my aunt’s wedding and avoided him and avoided him and they finally got together and it ends up the book ends up at the start of world war ii and my father was drafted into the air Force, or the Army Air Corps, as it was called that time, and his was assigned to a bomber. He was a co-pilot or a bombardier or something, I forgot. And my grandfather on my father’s side said, well, wait a minute, where are you going to do this? And he said, well, we’re going to Italy. And he said, you’re going to bomb this? Your own country? And my father said, no, no, Bob, this is my country. [12:47] So the book comes full circle. Yeah, really. You know, I, uh, uh, sometimes I start my, I’ll do a program here for different groups or for the library once in a while. And I always like to start it with, you know, first of all, folks, remember, uh. [13:03] Italians came here after, you know, really horrible conditions in southern Italy and Sicily and they came here and they’re just looking for a little slice of American pie the American that’s all they want is a some of the American dream and you know they were taking advantage of they had they were they were darker they had a different language so they didn’t fit it they couldn’t like the Irish and the Germans were already here they had all the good jobs they had the businesses and so now the Italians they’re they’re kind of uh sucking high and tit as we used to say on the farm they’re they’re uh you know picking up the scraps as they can and form businesses. And so it sounds like, you know, and they also went into the, I know they went in the lead mines down here in South Missouri, because there’s a whole immigrant population, Sicilians in a small town called Frontenac. And it also sounds like they went out to the mines in Denver, Colorado. So it’s based on that diaspora, if you will, of people from Southern Italy. And they’re strapping, trying to get their piece of the American pie. Right. And I think that I also wanted very much to change the same old, same old narrative that we’ve all come to believe, that, you know, Italians came here, they went to New York, they killed everybody, they were ignorant slobs. And my family had a ranch! They were ranchers! They had herds of cattle! It’s like, that’s just been dismissed as though none of this existed because. [14:30] Yes, they were darker, because they had curly hair. [14:34] There’s a passage in my book that’s taken actually from the New York Times, where they say that Southern Italians are. [14:43] Greasy, kinky-haired criminals whose children should never be allowed in public schools with white children. Yeah. They used to print stuff like that. I’ve done some research in old newspapers, and not only about Italians, but a lot of other minorities, they print some [14:57] horrible, horrible, horrible things. Well, every minority goes through this, I guess. Everyone. I think so. Part of it’s a language problem. You hear people say, well, why don’t they learn our language? Well, what I say is, you know, ever try to learn a foreign language? It’s hard. It is really, really hard. I’ve tried. It is really hard. I got fired by my Spanish teacher. Exactly. You know how hard it is. I said, no, wait, I’m paying you. You can’t fire me. She said, you can’t learn. You just can’t learn. My grandkids love to say she got fired by her Spanish teacher. [15:36] But it’s such a barrier any kind of success you know not having the language is such a barrier to any kind of success into the you know american business community and that kind of a thing so it’s uh it’s tough for people and you got these people young guys who are bold and, they want they want to they end up having to feel like they have to take theirs they have to take it because ain’t nobody giving it up back in those days and so that sounds like your family they had to take however they took it they they had to take what they got how did that go down for them, start out with a small piece of land or and build up from there how did that go out well from what i understand um. [16:21] They first had a small plot, and then that they didn’t own. They just took it. And then as the bootlegging business got bigger, they started buying cattle and sheep. And they just started buying more and more land. But my grandfather was wanted because he killed some federal agent in the Ludlow Massacre. So he was wanted. So it was all in my grandmother’s name anyway. So she became, in my mind and in my book, she becomes the real head of the family. And my grandfather had a drinking problem, and she made the business successful and so forth. And then I do remember a story that my mother told me that—. [17:16] Al Capone came to the ranch at some point, and all the kids were like, who’s this man in the big car? There was other big cars. And then they moved to New York shortly after that, although they were allowed to keep the ranch with some of my aunts running it. I think there was a range war between the Dana family and the Carlinos and the Barberas, and they were told, get out of town, and they got out of town. And then they made a life in Brooklyn. And then my mom went back to Colorado and then came back to Brooklyn. [17:54] You think about how these immigrants, how in the hell, even the ones who come here now, how in the hell do you survive? I don’t know. Don’t speak the language. You don’t have the money. How do you survive? I don’t know. I truly don’t know. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t either. I couldn’t either. I don’t even want to go to another country where I don’t speak the language unless I can hire somebody to do stuff for me, you know, try to scuffle around and get a job, work off the books. You know, you got to work off the books, so to speak, and take the lowest, hardest jobs that they are, that there are. I don’t know. It’s crazy. I don’t really understand. Yeah. But, uh, so this, uh, it’s really interesting this, uh, the whole thing with the ranches and, and building up the ranches out there. I know we spoke, talk about Al Capone. Well, his brother, I think it was, it was not Ralph. There was another Capone brother. Which one? Well, another Capone brother who became, came a revenuer and I’ve seen some pictures of him and he looks like a cowboy with a hat and everything. He was in Nebraska or something. [19:02] It’s so funny. And I just, when I was growing up and I would tell people that my mom rode her donkey and then her horse to school, and they’d always say to me, but aren’t you Italian? [19:19] That’s Italian. Italian. Yeah, it’s interesting. Now, of course, your mom was, I noticed something in there about being in Los Animas in that area. Yes. Was there some family connection to that? And I say that because my wife’s grandfather lived there his whole life in Los Animas. Well, Los Animas County takes in Pueblo, I believe. Oh, okay. That’s the northern, that’s the far northern edge of Pueblo. The whole big area. I didn’t realize it was that close to Pueblo. I think my mom’s birth certificate actually says Los Animas County. Uh-huh. Something like that, yeah. Okay, all right. I didn’t realize Los Andemos was that close. I think. I might be wrong. Oh, it could be. It had those big counties out west, a great big county, so it would probably do. [20:10] So let’s see. Tell us a couple other stories out of that book that you remember. Well, there’s a story of my mother and her sister, Clara. Clara was a year what do they call Irish twins you know Italian twins she was like 14 months younger than my mom and um, When my mom had to start school, she was very close to my Aunt Clara, and they refused to go to school without each other. So my grandmother lied and said they were twins. And the teacher said, I don’t think they’re twins. This one’s much littler than the other, and I’m going to send the sheriff to that guinea father of yours and make sure. Well, unfortunately, the town hall burnt down with all the records that night. So they were never able to prove that Aunt Clara was a year younger. [21:14] Interesting. And also there’s a story of how they were in school when the flood hit. And my mother did have a pet wolf who was probably part wolf, part dog, but it was her pet named Blue. They got caught in the flood because they were bad and they had detention after school. And um had they left earlier they would have um so the dog came and dragged them was screaming and barking and making them leave and the teacher got scared because of the wolf and so they left and the wolf was taking them to higher and higher ground and had they stayed in that schoolhouse they would have been killed the teacher was killed everybody was washed away Wow. Yeah, those animals, they got more of a sense of what’s going on in nature than people do, that’s for sure. But she had always told me about her dog wolf named Blue. When they went back to New York City, did they fall in with any mob people back there? They go back to Red Hook. They had connections that were told, they were told, you know, you can, like Meyer Lansky and a couple of other people who would help them, um. [22:33] But my mom—so here’s an absolutely true story, and I think I have it as an epilogue in the book. So a few years ago, several years ago, my daughter had gotten a job in the summer during college as a slave on a movie set that was being filmed in Brooklyn. And she got the job because she, A, had a car, and B, she could speak Italian. And the actress was Italian. So every night she’d work till like 12 o’clock and I’d be panicked that she’d been kidnapped or something. So she’d drive her car home. But then every night she was coming home later and later and I said, what’s going on? She said, you know, I found this little restaurant and right now we’re in Red Hook where the, and it wasn’t called Red Hook. It was called, they have another fancy name for it now. [23:32] And she said and I just got to know the owner and he’s really nice and I told him that when I graduated from college if I had enough money could I rent one of the apartments upstairs and he said yes and she said we’ve got to take grandma there we’ve got to take grandma there she’ll love the place she’ll love the place and so my mother got sick and just came home from college, and she was laying in the bed with my mother, and she said, Grandma, you’re going to get better, and then we’re going to take you to this restaurant, [24:03] and I promise you, you’re going to love it. So my mother, thank God, did get better, and we took her to the restaurant. [24:12] The man comes over, and it’s a little tiny Italian restaurant, and the man comes over, and he says, Jessica, my favorite, let me make you my favorite Pennelli’s. And my mother said, do you make Pennelli’s? And he said, yes. She said, oh, when we first came to New York, the man who owned the restaurant made us Pennelli’s every day and would give it to us before we went to school. And he said, really, what was his name? And she said, Don, whatever. And he said, well, that’s my grandfather. She said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, this is, she said, where are we? And he said. [24:53] They called it Carroll Gardens. And he said, well, it’s Carroll Gardens. She said, well, I grew up in Red Hook. He said, well, it is Red Hook. She said, well, what’s the address here? And he said, 151 Carroll Street. And she said, my mother died in this building. [25:09] My daughter would have rented the apartment where her great-grandmother died. What’s the chances of that of the 50 million apartments in New York City? No, I don’t know. And the restaurant only seats like 30 people. So… My mother went and took a picture off the wall, and she said, this is my mother’s apartment. And there were like 30 people in the restaurants, a real rough and tumble place, and truck drivers and everything. And everybody started crying. The whole place is now crying. All these big long men are crying. Isn’t that some story? Full circle, man. That’s something. Yeah, that is. Especially in the city. It’s even more amazing in a city like New York City. I know. That huge. That frigging huge. That exact apartment. Oh, that is great. So that restaurant plays a big part in the book as well, in the family. Okay. All right. All right. Guys, the book is The Descendant, Yellowstone Meets the Godfather, huh? This is Linda Stasi. Did I pronounce that right, Stasi? Stacey, actually. This is Linda Stasi. And Linda, I didn’t really ask you about yourself. [26:17] Tell the guys a little bit about yourself before we stop here. Well, I am a journalist. I’ve been a columnist for New York Newsday, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post. I’ve written 10 books, three of which are novels. [26:34] And I’ve won several awards for journalism. And I teach a class for the Newswomen’s Club of New York to journalists on how to write novels, because it’s the totally opposite thing. It’s like teaching a dancer to sing, you know? It’s totally opposite. One of my mentors was Nelson DeMille, my dear late friend Nelson DeMille, and I called him up one night after I wrote my first novel, and I said, I think I made a terrible mistake. He said, what? I said, I think I gave the wrong name of the city or something. He said, oh, for God’s sakes, it’s fiction. You can write whatever you want. [27:17] But when you’re a journalist, if you make a mistake like that, you’re ruined. Yeah, exactly. So I have. We never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I said I have a daughter and three grandsons. My daughter is the only female CEO of a games company. She was on the cover of Forbes. And my husband just died recently, and he was quite the character. He got a full-page obit in the New York Times. He’s such a typical, wonderful New York character. So I’m in this strange place right now where I’m mourning one thing and celebrating my book. On the other hand, it’s a very odd place to be. I can imagine. I can only imagine. Life goes on, as we say, back home. It just keeps going. All right. Linda Stacey, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you talking to me. You’re so much an interesting guy. All right. Well, thank you.

Transcribed - Published: 2 February 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with author Craig McGuire to discuss his gripping book, Empire City Under Siege, a deep dive into three decades of FBI manhunts, mob wars, and organized-crime investigations in New York City. Craig explains how the project grew out of his collaboration with retired FBI agent Anthony John Nelson, whose career spanned the most violent and chaotic years of New York’s Mafia history. From Nelson’s early days as a radio dispatcher in 1969 to his transition into undercover and frontline investigative work, the book captures the gritty reality of law enforcement during the 1970s and 1980s. We explore how Nelson’s career mirrored the evolution of organized crime and law-enforcement tactics, including the rise of undercover stings, inter-agency cooperation, and the increasing role of technology. Craig highlights the close working relationship between Nelson and NYPD detective Kenny McCabe, whose deep knowledge of Mafia families and quiet professionalism led to major breakthroughs against organized crime. He tells how these two investigators wathced and uncovered the Gambino Family Roy DeMeo crew under Paul Castellano and Nino Gaggi. Throughout the conversation, Craig shares vivid, often humorous slice-of-life stories from the book—tense undercover moments, dangerous confrontations, and the emotional toll of living a double life. These anecdotes reveal not only the danger of the job but also the camaraderie and resilience that sustained agents and detectives working in the shadows. The episode closes with a reminder that Empire City Under Siege is as much about honoring unsung law-enforcement professionals as it is about mob history. Craig encourages listeners to support true-crime storytelling that preserves these firsthand accounts before they’re lost to time. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:02 Welcome Back to Gangland Wire 2:14 The Journey to Anthony John Nelson 4:46 The Life and Work of Law Enforcement 15:00 Inside Anthony Nelson’s Early Career 26:49 The Dynamic Duo: Nelson and McCabe 30:16 Tales from the Underworld 35:55 The Tragedy of Everett Hatcher 39:12 The High-Stakes World of Undercover Work 40:56 Closing Thoughts and Inspirations transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I say the same thing every time. I hope it doesn’t bore you too much, but I am back here in the Gangland Wire studio. And I have today an author who interviewed and wrote a book with an FBI agent named Anthony John Nelson, who was one of the premier FBI agents in New York City that was working the mob. And even more interesting about him to me was he formed a partnership with a local copper named Kenny McCabe, who you may know the name. I had read the name before several times as I started researching this and looking at the book, but he was a mob buster supreme and Agent Nelson really formed a dynamic duo. But first, let’s start talking to Craig, your book, Empire City Under Seize, Three Decades of New York FBI Field Office Manhunts, Murders and Mafia Wars. How did you get involved with Anthony John Nelson? [0:55] Hi, Gary. Thanks for having me on your show. Big fan. Appreciate the opportunity. Very interesting and winding path that led me to Anthony’s doorstep. I also previously wrote another book, Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys, which was about an enforcer in the Colombo family during the Third Colombo War. And I was introduced to Carmine Imbriali through Thomas Dades. Tommy Dades, he’s a famous retired NYPD detective. So after the success of that book, Tommy introduced me to another member of law enforcement. I started to work on a project that sort of fell apart. And one of the sort of consultants, friends that I met with during that was Anthony Nelson. And then one day as that, due to my own fumbling, as that project was falling apart, I had a delightful breakfast with Anthony and his wonderful wife, Sydney, Cindy, one Sunday morning. And Anthony’s pulling out all these clips of all these investigations and all these Jerry Capiche gangland clips. And it was just fascinating. And so I started to realize that there’s something here because I’m also a true crime fan and I remember many of these cases. [2:08] So it took a while to get Anthony to agree to write a book. He’s not one for the spotlight. He’s really your sort of quintessential G-man, modern G-man. It’s also somewhat of a throwback. But he eventually was interested in doing a book if we didn’t just shine the spotlight on him. Gary, you should know the original, the working title of the book was In the Company of Courage. And that’s really the theme that Anthony wanted to bring forth. You’ll notice throughout the book, there are some vignettes and some biographical information about many of the members of law enforcement that I interviewed, but then we also covered and who are no longer with us. It was my privilege to write this book sharing Anthony’s amazing history, 30 years at the FBI and then several years at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office as an investigator. And just like one of the themes is just to really shed some light on the valuable work that members of law enforcement, including you, sir. Thank you for your service. And we think too often these days, members of law enforcement are maligned and there’s a negative light cast on them. It’s the most difficult job in the world. And we just want to make sure that we’re shining some light on that valuable work that the thousands of members of men and women in law enforcement do every day protecting us. [3:24] I appreciate that. I’ll tell you what, all the way from the rookie on the street making those domestic violence calls and party armed calls and armed robbery alarms calls that are, there’s nothing there the first five times you go. And then all of a sudden there’s a guy running out with a gun all the way up to the homicide detectives. And even the people that handle the budget, they all paid their dues out on the streets and organized crime investigators, of course, and narcotics. I really appreciate that. It’s a thankless job for the most part. Once in a while, you get a little thanks, but not much. As we used to say, it was fun. I can’t believe they pay us to do this. [4:01] Gary, it’s like you’re repeating some of the lines of Frank Pergola to Al King, just like that. And that’s key, that thankless piece. I remember interviewing Frank Pergola, just famous New York City detective, worked on Son of Sam. He also worked on solving 79 homicides related to the Gambinos and the DeMeo family. And he echoed those same sentiments. While you’re investigating a case, it’s the victims’ families and the victims, their nerves are so fraught. It’s such a stressful situation. And the members of law enforcement bear the brunt of a lot of that frustration. [4:41] And too often, there’s no thank you at the end. And it’s not that they want to thank you. It’s just that they want the sort of closure, not even the recognition, just some sort of realization that they did a great job. And it’s unfortunate that they don’t, that doesn’t happen as often as it should. I appreciate it. Let’s talk about Anthony Nelson. He sounds like a very interesting character. Talk a little bit about what you learned from him about his early career. And I want to tell you something, that recalcitrance, I believe that’s the word, $25 word if I’ve ever heard one. His refusal to really make himself a hero or the center of attention. That’s pretty common among cops and FBI agents. I’ve noticed we’ve got, I’ve got a good friend here in Kansas City, wrote a book about the mafia in Kansas City called Mopsers in Our Mist, but he refused to put himself into the book. He had a publishing company that wanted him to do it and was going to pay him to do it, but it had to have him as a hero. He said, we have to have a hero in this book. He says, I won’t do it. So that Mr. Nelson, Agent Nelson, that’s not that uncommon. So tell us a little more about some of his early cases. [5:49] Anthony Nelson, interestingly enough, his career trajectory and really his life tracks with the latter half of the last century. And a lot of the technological evolution, the rise of organized crime post-prohibition, these themes of urbanization, radicalization that came out from the starting in the middle of the century. But really heating up as a young Anthony Nelson joins the FBI in 1969, really mostly in administrative roles, radio dispatcher first, eventually he’s an electronics technician. So I’m sure, Gary, you can reflect on, and some of this will resonate with you, just how archaic some of the technology was. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah. Back then, we have some fantastic anecdotes and stories in the book, but just also like, for example, when you’re responding to a hostage crisis and you don’t have a cell phone, you don’t have minimal communications and talking about, you better make sure you have a pocket full of dimes and knocking on a neighbor’s door because time is of the essence and to establish contact. So just some of this great, really interesting material there. Eventually, Anthony was sworn in as an agent in 1976, and he entered the FBI Academy at Quantico, graduated in 77. [7:13] And interestingly enough, Anthony reflects like some of his fellow graduates, perhaps were not as keen on going to New York, one of the larger field offices, perhaps wanting to cut their teeth at a smaller office, but he obviously wanted to go home. So he was, and he jumped right into the fray, really assigned to hijacking. And he was an undercover operative in Red Hook during the 1970s, like the really gritty. And from the stories and from the various folks I interviewed, this really was gritty New York back then with the economy failing, crime on the rise. [7:48] Gary, you look, I heard an interesting stat last week where you had, there was almost a record setting that New York City had not reported a homicide for a record 12 consecutive days. And that had not happened in decades. So when Anthony joined the FBI, they were recording five homicides in New York City. And also during the 70s, you also had this, when you talk about radicalization, with 3,000 bombings nationwide, corruption was rampant. You had credit card fraud was just kicking off. You had widespread bread or auto theft and hijacking. Again, at the street level, Anthony was the front for a Gambino-affiliated warehouse where he had first right of refusal, where some of the hijackers would bring in the loads. And he was doing this on an undercover basis. So he jumped right in. They set him up in a warehouse and he was buying like a sting, what we called a sting operation. He was buying stolen property. They thought he was a fence. [8:50] Yeah, they started doing that in the 70s. They hadn’t really done, nobody had done that before in the 70s. ATF kind of started sting operates throughout the United States. We had one here, but they started doing that. And that was a new thing that these guys hadn’t seen before. So interesting. He was that big, blurly guy up front said, hey, yeah, bring that stuff on. Exactly. If you look on the cover, there are three images on the cover, and one of them is following one of the busts afterwards where they tracked down the hijacked goods. I believe it was in New Jersey. So you could get the sense of the volume. Now, think about it like this. So he’s in Red Hook in the mid-70s. This was actually where he was born. So when Anthony was born in 49, and if you think about Red Hook in the early 50s, this was just a decade removed from Al Capone as a leg-breaking bouncer along the saloons on the waterfront. And this was on the waterfront, Red Hook eventually moved to Park Slope. [9:49] And this was where Crazy Joe Gallo was prompted, started a mob war. And this was when any anthony is coming of age back then and most of his friends is gravitating so to these gangster types in the neighborhood these wise guys but this was a time pre-9-1-1 emergency response system so the only way to report or get help was to call the switchboard call the hospital directly call the fire department directly so you had the rise of the b cop where it wasn’t just the police they were integral part of the community and there’s this really provocative story Anthony tells the first time he saw a death up close and personal, an acquaintance of his had an overdose. And the beat cops really did a sincere effort to try to save him. And this really resonated with the young Anthony and he gravitated towards law enforcement. And then a little bit, a while later as a teenager, they’re having these promotional videos, these promotional sort of documentary style shows on television. And Anthony sees it, and he’s enamored by it, especially when they say this is the hardest job in America. So he’s challenged, and he’s a go-getter. So he writes a letter to J. Edgar Hoover, and Hoover writes him back. [11:03] So it’s a signed letter, and now Anthony laughs about it. He says it was probably a form letter with a rubber stamp, but it really had an amazing impact. And this is at the time when, you know, in the 50s, you really had J. Edgar really embrace the media. And he actually consulted on the other famous, the FBI television show, several movies, the rise of the G-Man archetype. So Anthony was fully on board. [11:28] Interesting. Of course, J. Edgar Hoover wanted to make sure the FBI looked good. Yes, exactly. Which he did. And they were good. They had a really high standards to get in. They had to be a lawyer or accountant or some extra educated kind of a deal. And so they always think, though, that they took these guys who had never been even a street policeman of any kind and they throw them right into the DPN many times. But that’s the way it was. They did have that higher level of recruit because of that. So, Anthony, was he a lawyer or accountant when he came in? Did he get in after they relaxed that? Oh, that’s spot on. I’m glad you brought that up. So now here’s a challenge. So Anthony needs that equalizer, correct? So if you’re a CPA, obviously a former member of the military, if you’re a successful detective or a local police force, one of these type of extra credentials. [12:20] Anthony’s specialty was technology. Now, when you think of technology… Not the ubiquitous nature of technology nowadays, where you have this massive processing power in your phone, and you don’t really have to be a technologist to be able to use the power of it. This is back in the 1960s. But he always had an affinity for technology. And he was able to, when he, one of the other requirements was as he had to hit the minimum age requirement, he had to work for a certain amount of time, he was able to get a job at the FBI. So he was an electronics technician before he became an agent. [12:59] And he had all of the, and back then this was, it was groundbreaking, the level of technology. And he has some funny story, odd, like man on the street stories about, I’m sure you remember Radio Shack when there was a Radio Shack on every other corner, ham radio enthusiasts. And it was cat and mouse. It was, they had the members of organized crime had the police scanners. And they were able to, if they had the right scanner, they had the right frequency. They were able to pick on the bugs planted really close to them. And he tells some really funny stories about one time there was a member of organized crime. They’re staking out, I believe it was the cotillion on 18th Avenue. And then I believe he’s sitting outside with Kenny McCabe. And then one of this member of organized crime, he’s waving a scanner inside and he’s taunting them saying, look, I know what you’re doing. And so it was that granularity of cat and mouse. [13:55] Rudimentary kind of stuff. Yeah. We had a guy that was wearing what we called a kelk kit. It was a wire and he was in this joint and they had the scanner and so but they had to scan her next door at this club And all of a sudden, a bunch of guys came running and there’s somebody in here wearing a wire. And my friend’s guy, the guy I worked with, Bobby, he’s going, oh, shit. And so he just fades into the background. And everybody except one guy had a suit on. Nobody had a suit on except this one guy. So they focused on this one guy that had a suit on and went after him and started trying to pat him down and everything. Bobby just slipped out the front door. So amazing. I mean, you know, Anthony has a bunch of those slice of life stories. I also interviewed a translator from the FBI to get a sort of a different perspective. [14:42] It’s different. Like the agents a little bit more, they’re tougher. They’re a tougher breed. They go through the training. Some of the administrative professionals, like the translators. So this one translator, it’s a pretty harrowing experience because remember the such the insular nature of the neighborhoods and how everyone is always [14:59] looking for someone out of place. So she actually got a real estate license and poses a realtor be able to rent apartments and then she spoke multiple dialects and then just to have to listen in and to decipher not only the code but also the dialects and put it together when you have agents on the line because remember you have an undercover agent if they get discovered more often than not the members of organized crime are going to think they’re members of another crew so you’re dead either they’re an informant if they think they’re an informant you’re dead if they think you’re an agent yeah just turn away from you say okay we don’t deal with this guy anymore if you think you’re informant or somebody another crew or something trying to worm their way in then yeah you’re dead exactly so interviewing maria for this you get that sense from someone who’s not in like not an agent to get true how truly harrowing and dangerous this type of activity was and how emboldened organized crime was until really the late 90s. And back then, it truly was death defying. [16:02] Oh, yeah, it was. They had so many things wired in the court system and in politically in the late 70s and early 80s and all these big cities. No big city was immune from that kind of thing. So they had all kinds of sources. They even had some clerks in the FBI and they definitely had all the court. The courthouses were just wired. And I don’t mean wired, but they had people in places and all those things. So it was death to find that you got into these working undercover. Ever. Hey, you want to laugh? I don’t want to give away all the stories, but there was a great story. I remember Anthony saying, they set up a surveillance post in an apartment and they brought in all the equipment while they were, then they got the court orders and the surveillance post actually got ripped off twice. So while they try, like after hours, someone’s going, yeah, ripping off all the FBI equipment. So you have this extra level of, so that gives you like, It really was Wild West then. Really? [17:00] So now he gets into organized crime pretty quick, into that squad and working organized crime pretty quick. I imagine they put him in undercover like that because of his accent, his ability to fit in the neighborhood. I would think he would have a little bit of trouble maybe running into somebody that remembered him from the old days. Did he have any problem with that? I spot on, Gary. I tell you, this was he. So he’s operating in Red Hook and actually throughout the next several years, he’s periodically flying down to Florida as a front for New York orchestrated drug deals. So he’s going down to Florida to negotiate multi-kilo drug deals on behalf of organized crime. But at the same time, he’s an agent. He eventually rose to be supervisory special agent. He’s managing multiple squads. So there did come an inflection point where it became too dangerous for him to continue to operate as an undercover while conducting other types of investigations. [18:02] Interestingly enough they opened up a resident agency office the ras are in the major field offices in the fbi they have these they’re called ras i’m sure you’re familiar these like mini offices with the office and they’ll focus on certain areas of crime more geographically based so they opened up the brooklyn queens ra and that really focuses heavily on organized crime but also hijacking because you had the, especially with the airport over there and a lot of the concentrations of, especially in South Brooklyn, going into Queens. So he worked there. Also the airport. Also the mass, you have this massive network of VA facilities. You have the forts. So you need these other RA offices. So you have a base of operations to be able to investigate. But Anthony has such a wide extent of case history, everything from airline attacks to art theft heists to kidnappings, manhunts, fugitives. There was Calvin Klein, the famous designer, when his daughter was kidnapped by the babysitter, it did do it. Anthony was investigating that. So it’s just, and while he has this heavy concentration in organized crime. I mentioned that. What’s this deal with? He investigated a robbery, a bank robbery that was a little bit like the dog day afternoon robbery, a standoff. What was that? [19:30] This was actually, it was the dog day afternoon robbery. They based a dog day afternoon on this. Exactly. What you had, and this was before Anthony was when he was still in his administrative role. So he had a communications position. So he was responsible for gathering all the intel and the communications and sharing it with the case, the special agents on site. So what you had was like, he’s with the play by play of this really provocative hostage. It was a bank robbery that quickly turned into a hostage crisis. And then, so throughout this whole, and the way it eventually resolved was the perpetrators insisted on a particular agent. I apologize. It slips my mind, but he’s a real famous agent. So he has to drive them to JFK airport where they’re supposed to have a flight ready to fly them out of the country. And what happens is they secrete a gun into the car and he winds up shooting the bank robbers to death. And there were so many different layers to this bank robbery. It eventually became the movie. And a funny story aside, the movie, while they’re filming the movie, Anthony’s at his friend’s house in downtown Brooklyn. It may have been Park Slope. And they’re calling for extras. His friends run in and say, hey, they’re filming a movie about this bank robbery that happened on Avenue U. You want to be an extra? And he said, nah, no thanks. The real thing was enough for me. [20:55] I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t for a New York City organized crime and New York City crime. Al Pacino wouldn’t have had a career. That’s the truth. [21:05] Now, let’s start. Let’s go back into organized crime. Now, we’ve talked about this detective, Kenny McCabe, who was really well known, was famous. And during the time they worked together and they were working with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Is that correct? Were both of them working for it? Was he at the FBI and Kenny was with the Brooklyn DA’s office? [21:26] When you think about thematically, in the company of courage, Kenny McCabe was really close. This was a career-long, lifelong, from when they met, relationship, professional relationship that became a deep friendship between two pretty similar members of law enforcement. [21:46] Kenny McCabe had a long career in the NYPD as organized crime investigator before he joined the Southern District Attorney’s Office as an investigator. So the way they first crossed paths was while Anthony was working a hijacking investigation. So he gets a tip from one of his CIs that there’s some hijacked stolen goods are in a vehicle parked in a certain location. So he goes to stake it out. Like they don’t want to seize the goods. They want to find out, they want to uncover who the hijackers are and investigate the conspiracy. So then while he’s there, he sees a sort of a familiar face staking it out as well. Then he goes to the, he goes to the NYA, a detective Nev Nevins later. And he asks about this guy. And so this detective introduces him to Kenny McCabe and right away strike up with his interesting chemistry. And they’re like, you know what? Let’s jointly investigate this. So they wind up foiling the hijacking. But what starts is like this amazing friendship. And I’ll tell you, the interesting thing about Kenny McCabe is almost universally, he’s held in the highest regard as perhaps law enforcement’s greatest weapon in dismantling organized crime in the latter half of the 20th century. For example, I interviewed George Terra, famous undercover detective who eventually went to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. [23:12] And he had a great way. I hope I don’t mangle. Kenny knew all the wise guys and they all knew Kenny. And when I say he knew all the wise guys, he knew their shoe sizes. He knew who they partnered with on bank jobs years ago. So he knew who their siblings were, who their cousins were, who they were married to, who their girlfriends were, what clubs they frequented. For example, during the fatical hearings, where they would do sentencing, often the defense attorneys would want the prosecutors to reveal who their CIs are for due process, for a sense of fairness. And they refused to do that, obviously, for safety reasons, and they want to compromise ongoing investigations. So in dozens, perhaps so many of these cases, they were bringing Kenny McCabe. He was known as the unofficial photographer of organized crime. [24:07] For example, I think it was 2003, he was the first one who revealed a new edict that new initiates into Cosa Nostra had to have both a mother and a father who were Italian. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. He was also, he revealed that when the Bonanno family renamed itself as Messino, he was the one who revealed that. And then when Messino went to prison for murder, his successor, Vinnie Bassiano, Vinnie gorgeous. When he was on trial, that trial was postponed because so many of law enforcement leaders had to attend Kenny McCabe’s funeral, unfortunately, when he passed. So this is such a fascinating thing. Now, why you don’t hear more about Kenny McCabe, and I interviewed his son, Kenny McCabe Jr. Duke, is like Kenny McCabe like really issued the media spotlight. He would not, he wasn’t interested in grabbing the microphone. So you have almost no media on Kenny McCabe. If you do a Google search for him, I believe the only thing I ever found was a picture in his uniform as an early career police officer. [25:19] So it’s really hard to even do a documentary style treatment without having any media because B-roll is just going to get you so far. So really what Duke has been doing over the last two decades or more is really consolidating all of these as much material as he can. And I think eventually when he does put out a book, this thing’s going to explode. It’s going to be like true Hollywood treatment. But now going back to the mid-70s, so these two guys hook up. You have the FBI agent and you have the police detective. [25:49] Craig, what you always hear is that the FBI is suspicious and doesn’t trust local authorities. And local policemen hate the FBI because they always grab all the glory and take everything, run with it. And they’re left out. And I didn’t have that experience myself. They’ve got the case. They’ve got the laws. We don’t locally, county and statewide, you don’t have the proper laws to investigate organized crime. Yes, sir. But the feds do. So that’s how it works. This really blows that myth up that the local police and the FBI never worked together and hated each other. [26:25] I’m so glad you brought that up because this was very important to Anthony. He has so many lifelong friends in the NYPD, and I’ve interviewed several of them. And just this sincerity comes across, the camaraderie. In any walk of life, in any profession, you’re always going to have rivalries and conflict, whether healthy conflict or negative conflict. [26:46] Even more, you’re going to find that in law enforcement because the stakes are so high. But it’s a disservice to… And what we want to do is sort of dispel the myth that there was no cooperation. Why there were very well-publicized conflicts between agencies prosecuting certain cases. This was the time where technology was really enabling collaboration. Remember, and you had a time, if you had to investigate a serial crime, you had to go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and you had to interview investigators. You had to comb through written records to piece this together. So it really was not conducive for collaboration. [27:22] So what you saw was the rise of, and then you had these investigative tools and these legal tools like RICO, while they were still trying to figure out and to build. So now you had the litigious tools where you could build conspiracies and prosecute them. So this sort of helped ferment this sort of collaborative interagency, which eventually led to these joint task force that were very successful. What I really love is this microcosm of Anthony Nelson and Kenny McCain. Now, Anthony Nelson was issued a Plymouth Grand Fury with the full police interceptor kit. If you’re familiar with that make and model, no automobile ever created screams cop-mobile like the Grand Fury. And so what you had was after hours, Anthony and Kenny would join up and they would go prowling the underworld with the Grand Fury on purpose. They wanted to be as conspicuous as possible. to the point where they would park in bus stops across the street from these social clubs. And when I say social clubs, they were… [28:29] Everywhere. There were dozens of them all over Brooklyn and Queens. And these are cafe, social clubs, bars, restaurants with heavy OC presence, blatantly conducting their business. So you have these two, Anthony’s always driving. Kenny’s always riding shotgun with his camera. I assume it was some sort of 35 millimeter hanging out the side, taking down names, license plates. Just a great story. You had Paul Castellano in front of Veterans and Friends on 86th Street when he had Dominic Montiglio start that social club so he could have more of a presence in Brooklyn on the street so that he actually crosses the street and he goes to Kenny and Anthony. And he’s saying, guys, you don’t have to sit out here. You could come down to Ponte Vecchio in Bay Ridge. I have a table there anytime you want to talk to me. So it’s that level of bravado. But pretty soon it changed. Once more of this intel started to build these real meaningful cases, Castellana put an edict, don’t talk to these two, don’t be photographed. What came out of that was an amazing partnership where they gathered so much intelligence and Anthony is very. [29:46] Quick to have me point out, give more credit to the investigators, to the agents, to the detectives. They gathered a lot of the intelligence to help with these investigations, but you had so many frontline folks that are doing a lot of the legwork, that are doing the investigations, making the arrests, that are crawling under the hoods. So it’s pretty inspiring. But then you also had some really good, and I don’t want to share all the stories [30:12] in the book. There’s a great story of Kenny and Anthony. They go into Rosal’s restaurant because they see this. [30:21] There may have been a warrant out on this member of law enforcement. So they had cause. So they go in and there’s actually some sort of family event going on. And they’re playing the theme song of The Godfather. As they go in and then they have to go into the back room to get this member of organized crime who’s hiding. So it’s these kind of really slice of life kind of stories that just jump out, jump out of the book. Really? I see, as I mentioned, they had some kind of a run-in with Roy DeMeo at the Gemini. You remember that story? Can you tell that one? Yeah, there’s, so Kenny and Anthony, throughout the hijacking investigations. [30:59] Were, they were among the first to really learn of this mysterious Roy. And his rise. And then also Nino. Remember Nino Gadgi was the Gambino Capo who took over Castellano’s crew, Brooklyn crew, when he was elevated. And then Roy DeMeo was really this larger than life maniac serial killer who formed the Gemini crew, which was a gang of murderers really on the Gemini Lounge in Flatlands, which is really close to Anthony’s house. And Kenny’s not too far. Didn’t they have a big stolen car operation also? Did they get into that at all? Yes. Stolen cars, chop shops. Remember, this is when you had the introduction of the tag job, where it was relatively easy to take the vehicle identification numbers off a junked auto and then just replace them with the stolen auto, and then you’re automatically making that legitimate. And then, so they’re doing this wholesale operation where they’re actually got to the point where they’re shipping hundreds, if not thousands of these tag jobs overseas. So it was at scale, a massive operation. Roy DeMay was a major earner. He was such an unbalanced, very savvy business for the underworld, business professional, but he was also a homicidal maniac. [32:22] Some say they could be upwards of a hundred to 200 crimes. Frank Pergola alone investigated and So 79 of these crimes associated with this crew. And it got to the point where, and he had a heavy sideline in drugs, which was punishable by death in the Gambino family, especially under Castellano. So then what you had was all these investigations and all this intelligence that, and then with this collaboration between the FBI and NYPD. Oh, wow. It is quite a crew. I’m just looking back over here at some of the other things in there in that crew in that. You had one instance where there was a sentencing hearing and of a drug dealer, I believe, a member of organized crime. And Kenny McCabe is offering testimony to make sure that the proper sentencing is given because a lot of times these guys are deceptive. [33:16] And he mentions DeMeo’s name. So DeMeo in a panic. So then maybe a couple of nights later, they’re parked in front of veterans and friends. And DeMeo comes racing across 86th Street. Now, 86th Street is like a four-lane thoroughfare. It’s almost like, oh, I grew up in the air a few blocks away. So he’s running through traffic. And then he’s weaving in and out. And he’s screaming at Kenny McCabe, what are you trying to kill me? Putting my name into a drug case? They’re going to kill me. And so it’s that kind of intimate exchanges that they have with, with these key members of organized crime of the era. [33:52] Wow. That’s, that’s crazy. I see that they worked to murder that DEA agent, Everett Hatcher, that was a low level mob associate that got involved in that. And then supposedly the mob put out the word, but you gotta, we gotta give this guy up. But you remember that story? Now, this is another instance where I remember this case. And I remember afterwards when they killed Gus Faraci. So what you had was, again, and this is very upsetting because you had DEA agent Everett Hatchard, who is a friend of Anthony’s. To the point where just prior to his assassination, they were attending a social event together with their children. And he would also, they would run into each other from time to time. They developed a really beyond like camaraderie, like real friendship. So then, so Hatcher has, there’s an undercover sting. So there’s Gus Faraci, who’s, I believe he was associated with the Lucchese’s, with Chile. [34:55] So he gets set up on the West Shore. And so he’s told to go to the West Shore Expressway. Now, if you’ve ever been on that end of Staten Island, that whips out heading towards the outer bridge. This really is the end of the earth. This is where you have those large industrial like water and oil tankers and there’s not really good lighting and all this. It’s just like a real gritty. So he loses his surveillance tail and they eventually, he’s gunned down while in his vehicle. So then Anthony gets the call to respond on site to investigate the murder. He doesn’t know exactly who it is until he opens up the door and he sees it’s his friend. And this is the first assassination of a DEA agent. It was just such a provocative case. And the aftermath of that was, again, like Gus Faraci, who was, he was a murderer. He was a drug dealer, but he did not know. He set him up. He thought he was a member of organized crime. [35:53] He was just another drug dealer. He did not realize he was a DEA agent. And then all hell broke loose. And you had just the all five families until they eventually produced Gus Faraci, set him up, and then he was gunned down in Brooklyn. [36:06] Case closed, huh? Exactly. Yeah. And as we were saying before, I don’t remember it was before I started recording or after that. When you’re working undercover, that’s the worst thing is they think that you’re an informant or a member of another crew and you’re liable to get killed. At one say, I had a sergeant one time. He said, if you get under suspicion when you’re like hanging out in some of these bars and stuff, just show them you’re the cops. Just get your badge out right away because everything just, all right, they just walk away then. It’s a immensely dangerous thing to maintain your cover. Yes, sir. Anthony was always good at that because tall gentleman has the right sort of Italian-American complexion. He’s passable at Italian. So with some of these folks, especially from Italy that come over, he could carry a conversation. He’s not fluent. [36:56] And he just walks in and talks in. It’s a different… George Terror was a fantastic undercover detective. And you talk to some of these undercovers, it’s like you have to be… There’s sort of this misperception that the organized crime members are like these thugs and flunkies. These are very intelligent, super suspicious, addled individuals that are able to pick up on signals really easy because they live on the edge. So you really can’t fake it, the slightest thing. And again, they’ll think that their first inclination is not that you’re a member of law enforcement. Their first inclination is that you’re a member of a rival crew that’s looking to kill me looks at looking to rip me off so i’m going to kill you first it’s just it’s just a wild and imagine that’s your day job oh man i know they could just and i’ve picked this up on people there’s just a look when you’re lying there’s just a look that just before you catch it quick but there’s a look of panic that then you get it back these guys can pick up that kind of stuff just so quickly any kind of a different body language they’re so good with that. [38:02] And he’s also, he has to be able to say just enough to establish his connection and credibility without saying too much that’s going to trip him up. And that’s like being able to walk that line. He tells, again, I hate giving away all these stories because I want readers to buy the book, but he has this fantastic story when he’s on an undercover buy and he’s, I don’t know if it’s Florida, if it’s Miami or it’s Fort Lauderdale and he has to go into a whole, like the drugs are in one location and he’s in that with the drug deals in one location and he’s in this location and, but he knows the money’s not going to come. [38:42] So he has to walk into this hotel room with all these cartel drug guys who are off balance, knowing that he’s got to figure out, how do I get out of this room without getting killed? And once I walk out, will the timing be right that I could drop to the floor right when the responding FBI agents, again, these are FBI agents from a different [39:08] field office that he perhaps doesn’t have intimate working. knowledge of. I got to trust that these guys got my back and they’re not distracted. So I can’t even imagine having to live with that stress. No, I can’t either. All right. I’ll tell you what, the book, guys, is Empire City Under Siege, the three decades of New York FBI field office man hunts, murders, and mafia wars by Craig McGuire with former retired FBI agent Anthony John Nelson. I pulled as many stories as I could out of the book from him. You’re going to have to get the book to get to the rest of. And believe me, I’m looking at my notes here and the stuff they sent me. And there are a ton of great stories in there, guys. You want to get this book. [39:50] I also want to say there’s something special going on at Wild Blue Press. My publisher specializes in true crime. And it’s just, they’re so nurturing and supportive of writers. Just fantastic facilities and promotions. And they just help us get it right. That’s the most important thing, Anthony, accuracy. So if there’s anything wrong in the book, that’s totally on me. It’s really hard to put one of these together, especially decades removed. But then I’m just thankful for the support of nature of Wild Blue and Anthony and all the remarkable members of law enforcement like yourself, sir. Thank you for your service. And Anthony, and I’m just so inspired. I just have to say, they’re like a different breed. And you folks don’t realize how exciting. Because there are so many stories like Anthony would come up with and he would say, do you think readers would be interested in this story? And I fall out of my chair like, oh my God, this could be a whole chapter. So it was as a true crime fan myself of this material, it’s just, it was a wild ride and I enjoyed it. [40:56] Great. Thanks a lot for coming on the show, Craig. Thanks, Gary. You’re the best.

Transcribed - Published: 26 January 2026

In this powerful and wide-ranging episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Ken Behr, author of One Step Over the Line: Confessions of a Marijuana Mercenary. Behr tells his astonishing life story—from teenage marijuana dealer in South Florida, to high-level drug runner and smuggler, to DEA cooperating source working major international cases. Along the way, he offers rare, first-hand insight into how large-scale drug operations actually worked during the height of the War on Drugs—and why that war, in his view, has largely failed. From Smuggler to Source Behr describes growing up during the explosion of the drug trade in South Florida during the 1970s and 1980s, where smuggling marijuana and cocaine became almost commonplace. He explains how he moved from street-level dealing into large-scale logistics—off-loading planes, running covert runways in the Everglades, moving thousands of pounds of marijuana, and participating in international smuggling operations involving Canada, Jamaica, Colombia, and the Bahamas. After multiple arrests—including a serious RICO case that threatened him with decades in prison—Behr made the life-altering decision to cooperate with the DEA. What followed was a tense and dangerous double life as an undercover operative, helping law enforcement dismantle major trafficking networks while living under constant pressure and fear of exposure. Inside the Mechanics of the Drug Trade This episode goes deep into the nuts and bolts of organized drug trafficking, including: How clandestine runways were built and dismantled in minutes How aircraft were guided into unlit landing zones How smuggling crews were paid and organized Why most drug operations ultimately collapse from inside The role of asset seizures in federal drug enforcement 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [00:00:00] well, hey, all your wire taps. It’s good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I have a special guest today. He has a book called, uh, title is One Step Over the Line and, and he went several steps over the line, I think in his life. Ken Bearer, welcome Ken. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Now, Ken, Ken is a, was a marijuana smuggler at one time and, and ended up working with the DEA, so he went from one side over to my side and, and I always like to talk to you guys that that helped us in law enforcement and I, there’s a lot of guys that don’t like that out there, but I like you guys you were a huge help to us in law enforcement and ended up doing the right thing after you made a lot of money. So tell us about the money. We were just starting to talk about the money. Tell us about the money, all those millions and millions of dollars that you drug smuggler makes. What happens? Well, I, you know, like I said, um, Jimmy Buffett’s song a pirate looks at 40, basically, he says, I made enough money to to buy Miami and pissed it away all so fast, never meant to last. And, and that’s what happens. I do know a few people that have [00:01:00] put away money. One of my friends that we did a lot of money together, a lot of drug dealing and a lot of moving some product, and he’s put the money away. Got in bed with some other guy that was, you know, legal, bought a bunch of warehouses, and now he lives a great life, living off the money he put away. Yeah. If the rents and stuff, he, he got into real estate. Other guys have got into real estate and they got out and they ended up doing okay. ’cause now they’re drawing all those rents. That’s a good way to money. Exactly what he did. Uh, my favorite, I was telling you a favorite story of mine was the guy that was a small time dealer used to hang out at the beach. And, uh, we en he ended up saving $80,000, which was a lot of money back then. Yeah. And then put it all, went to school to be a culinary chef and then got a job at the Marriott as a culinary chef and a chef. So he, you know, he really took the money, made a little bit of money, didn’t make a lot Yeah. But made enough to go to school and do something with his life. That’s so, um, that’s a great one. That’s a good one [00:02:00] there. That’s real. Yeah. But he wasn’t a big time guy. Yeah. You know what, what happens is you might make a big lick. You know, I, I never made million dollar moves. I have lots of friends that did. I always said I didn’t want to be a smuggler. ’cause I was making a steady living, being a drug runner. If you brought in 40, 50,000 pounds of weed, you would come to me and then I would move it across the country and sell it in different, along with other guys like me. Having said that, so I say I’m a guy that never wanted to do a smuggling trip. I’ve done 12 of them. Yeah. Even though, you know, and you know, if you’ve been in the DEA side twelve’s a lot for somebody usually. Yeah. That’s a lot. They don’t make, there’s no longevity. Two or three trips. No. You know, I did it for 20 years. Yeah. And then finally I got busted one time in Massachusetts in 1988. We had 40,000 pounds stuck up in Canada. So a friend of mine comes to me, another friend had the 40,000 pounds up there. He couldn’t sell it. He goes, Hey, you wanna help me smuggle [00:03:00] this back into America? Which, you know, is going the wrong direction. The farther north it goes, the more money it’s worth. I would’ve taken it to Greenland for Christ’s sakes. Yeah. But, we smuggled it back in. What we did this time was obviously they, they brought a freighter or a big ship to bring the 40,000 pounds into Canada. Mm-hmm. He added, stuffed in a fish a fish packing plant in a freezer somewhere up there. And so we used the sea plane and we flew from a lake in Canada to a lake in Maine where the plane would pull up, I’d unload. Then stash it. And we really did like to get 1400 pounds. We had to go through like six or seven trips. ’cause the plane would only hold 200 and something pounds. Yeah. And a sea plane can’t land at night. It has to land during the day. Yeah. You can’t land a plane in the middle of a lake in the night, I guess yourself. Yeah. I see. Uh, and so we got, I got busted moving that load to another market and that cost, uh, [00:04:00] cost me about $80,000 in two years of fighting in court to get out of that. Yeah. Uh, but I did beat the case for illegal search and seizure. So one for the good guys. It wasn’t for the good guys. Well the constitution, he pulled me over looking for fireworks and, ’cause it was 4th of July and, yeah. The name of that chapter in the book is why I never work on a holiday. So you don’t wanna spend your holiday in jail ’cause there’s no, you can’t on your birthday. So another, the second time I got busted was in 92. So just a couple years later after, basically I was in the system for two years with the loss, you know, fighting it and that, that was for Rico. I was looking at 25 years. But, uh, but like a normal smuggling trip. I’ll tell you one, we did, I brought, I actually did my first smuggling trip. I was on the run in Jamaica from a, a case that I got named in and I was like 19 living down in Jamaica to cool out. And then my buddies came down. So we ended up bringing out 600 pounds. So that was my first tr I was about 19 or [00:05:00] 20 years old when I did my first trip. I brought out 600 pounds outta Jamaica. A friend of mine had a little Navajo and we flew it out with that, but. I’ll give you an example of a smuggling trip. So a friend of mine came to me and he wanted to load 300 kilos of Coke in Columbia and bring it into America. And he wanted to know if I knew anybody that could load him 300 kilos. So I did. I introduced him to a friend of mine that Ronnie Vest. He’s the only person you’ll appreciate this. Remember how he kept wanting to extradite all the, the guys from Columbia when we got busted, indict him? Yes. And of course, Escobar’s living in his own jail with his own exit. Yeah. You know, and yeah. So the Columbian government says, well, we want somebody, why don’t you extradite somebody to America, to Columbia? So Ronnie Vest had gotten caught bringing a load of weed outta Columbia. You know, they sent ’em back to America. So that colo, the Americans go, I’ll tell you what you want. Somebody. And Ronnie Vests got the first good friend of mine, first American to be [00:06:00] extradited to Columbia to serve time. So he did a couple years in the Columbian prison. And so he’s the one that had the cocaine connection now. ’cause he spent time in Columbia. Yeah. And you know, so we brought in 300 kilos of Coke. He actually, I didn’t load it. He got another load from somebody else. But, so in the middle of the night, you set up on a road to nowhere in the Everglades, there’s so many Floridas flat, you’ve got all these desolate areas. We go out there with four or five guys. We take, I have some of ’em here somewhere. Callum glow sticks. You know the, the, the glow sticks you break, uh, yeah. And some flashing lights throw ’em out there. Yeah. And we set up a, yeah, the pilot came in and we all laid in the woods waiting for the plane to come in. And as soon as the pilot clicks. The mic four times. It’s, we all click our mics four times and then we run out. He said to his copilot, he says, look, I mean, we lit up this road from the sky. He goes, it looks like MIA [00:07:00] behind the international airport. But it happens like that within a couple, like a minute, we’ll light that whole thing up. Me and one other guy run down the runway. It’s a lot, it’s a long run, believe me. We put out the lights, we gotta put out the center lights and then the marker lights, because you gotta have the center of the runway where the plane’s gonna land and the edge is where it can’t, right? Yeah. He pulls up, bring up a couple cars, I’m driving one of them, load the kilos in. And then we have to refuel the plane because you don’t, you know, you want to have enough fuel to get back to an FBO to your landing airport or real airport. Yeah. Not the one we made in the Everglades. Yeah. And then the trick is the car’s gotta get out of there. Yeah, before the plane takes off. ’cause when that plane takes off, you know you got a twin engine plane landing is quiet, taking off at full throttle’s gonna wake up the whole neighborhood. So once we got out of there, then they went ahead and got the plane off. And then the remaining guys, they gotta clean up the mess. We want to use this again. So we [00:08:00] wanna clean up all the wires, the radios. Mm-hmm. Pick up the fuel tanks, pick up the runway lights, and their job is to clean that off and all that’s gonna take place before the police even get down the main road. Right? Mm-hmm. That’s gonna all take place in less than 10 minutes. Wow. I mean, the offload takes, the offload takes, you can offload about a thousand pounds, which I’ve done in three minutes. Wow. But, and then refueling the plane, getting everything else cleaned up. Takes longer. Yeah. Interesting. So how many guys would, would be on that operation and how do you pay that? How do you decide who gets paid what? How much? Okay. So get it up front or, I always curious about the details, how that stuff, I don’t think I got paid enough. And I’ll be honest, it was a hell of a chance. I got 20 grand looking at 15 years if you get caught. Yeah. But I did it for the excitement. 20 grand wasn’t that much. I had my own gig making more money than that Uhhuh, you know, but I was also racing cars. I was, there’s a [00:09:00] picture of one of my race cars. Oh cool. So that costs about six, 7,000 a weekend. Yeah. And remember I’m talking about 1980s dollars. Yeah. That’s 20,000 a weekend. A weekend, yes. Yeah. And that 20,000 for a night’s work in today’s world would be 60. Yeah. Three. And I’m talking about 1985 versus, that was 40 years ago. Yeah. Um. But it’s a lot of fun and, uh, and, but it, you kind of say to yourself, what was that one step over the line? That’s why I wrote the book. I remember as a kid thinking in my twenties, man, I’ve taken one step over the line. So the full name of the book is One Step Over the Line Con Confessions of a Marijuana Mercenary. That’s me actually working for the DEA. That picture was at the time when I was working for the DEA, so the second time I got busted in 1992 was actually for the smallest amount of weed that I ever got, ever really had. It was like 80, a hundred pounds. But unfortunately it was for Rico. I didn’t know at the [00:10:00] time, but when they arrested me, I thought, oh, they only caught me with a hundred pounds. But I got charged with Rico. So I was looking at 25 years. What, how, what? Did they have some other, it must have had some other offenses that they could tie to and maybe guns and stuff or something that get that gun. No, we never used guns ever. Just other, other smuggling operations. Yeah, yeah. Me, me and my high school friend, he had moved to Ohio in 77 or 78, so he had called me one time, he was working at the Ford plant and he goes, Hey, I think I could sell some weed up here. All right. I said, come on down, I’ll give you a couple pounds. So he drives down from Ohio on his weekend off, all the way from Ohio. I gave him two pounds. He drove home, calls me back. He goes, I sold it. So I go, all right. He goes, I’m gonna get some more. So at that time, I was working for one of the largest marijuana smugglers in US History. His name was Donny Steinberg. I was just a kid, you know, like my job, part of my [00:11:00] job was to, they would gimme a Learjet. About a million or two and I jump on a Learjet and fly to the Cayman Islands. I was like 19 years old. Same time, you know, kid. Yeah, just a kid. 19 or 20 and yeah. 18, I think. And so I ended up doing that a few times. That was a lot of fun. And that’s nice to be a kid in the Learjet and they give me a million or two and they gimme a thousand dollars for the day’s work. I thought I was rich, I was, but people gotta understand that’s in that 78 money, not that’s, yeah. That was more like $10,000 for day, I guess. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It was a lot of money for an 18, 19-year-old kid. Yeah. Donnie gives me a bail. So Terry comes back from Ohio, we shoved the bale into his car. Barely would fit ’cause he had no big trunk on this Firebird. He had, he had a Firebird trans Am with the thunder black with a thunder, thunder chicken on the hood. It was on the hood. Oh cool. That was, that was a catch meow back then. Yeah. Yeah. It got it with that [00:12:00] Ford plant money. And uh, by the way, that was after that 50 pounds got up. ’cause every bail’s about 50 pounds. That’s the last he quit forward the next day. I bet. And me and him had built a 12 year, we were moving. Probably 50 tons up there over the 12 year period. You know, probably, I don’t know, anywhere from 50 to a hundred thousand pounds we would have, he must have been setting up other dealers. So among his friends, he must have been running around. He had the distribution, I was setting up the distribution network and you had the supply. I see. Yeah. I was the Florida connection. It’s every time you get busted, the cops always wanna grab that Florida connection. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You gotta go down there. I there, lemme tell you, you know, I got into this. We were living in, I was born on a farm in New Jersey, like in know Norman Rockwell, 1950s, cow pies and hay bales. And then we moved to New Orleans in 1969 and then where my dad had business and right after, not sure after that, he died when I was 13. As I say in the book, I [00:13:00] probably wouldn’t have been writing the book if my father was alive. Yeah. ’cause I probably wouldn’t have went down that road, you know? But so my mother decides in 1973 to move us to, uh, south Florida, to get away from the drugs in the CD underside of New Orleans. Yeah. I guess she didn’t read the papers. No. So I moved from New Orleans to the star, the war on where the war on drugs would start. I always say if she’d have moved me to Palo Alto, I’d be Bill Gates, but No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was so, uh, and everybody I knew was running drugs, smuggling drugs, trying to be a drug deal. I mean, I was, I had my own operation. I was upper middle level, but there were guys like me everywhere. Mm-hmm. There were guys like me everywhere, moving a thou, I mean, moving a thousand, 2000 pounds at the time was a big thing, you know? That’s, yeah. So, so about what year was that? I started in 19. 70. Okay. Three. I was [00:14:00] 16. Started selling drugs outta my mom’s house, me and my brother. We had a very good business going. And by the time I was got busted, it was 19 92. So, so you watched, especially in South Florida, you watched like where that plane could go down and go back up that at eventually the feds will come up with radar and they have blimps and they have big Bertha stuff down there to then catch those kinds of things. Yeah. Right, right. Big Bertha was the blimp. Uhhuh, uh, they put up, yeah. In the beginning you could just fly right in. We did one trip one time. This is this, my, my buddy picked up, I don’t know, 40 or 50 kilos in The Bahamas. So you fly into Fort Lauderdale and you call in like you’re gonna do a normal landing. Mm-hmm. And the BLI there. This is all 1980s, five. You know, they already know. They’re doing this, but you just call in, like you’re coming to land in Fort Lauderdale, and what you do is right before you land, you hit the tower up and you tell ’em you wanna do a [00:15:00] go around, meaning you’re not comfortable with the landing. Mm-hmm. Well, they’ll always leave you a go around because they don’t want you to crash. Yeah. And right west of the airport was a golf course, and right next to the golf course, oh, about a mile down the road was my townhouse. So we’re in the townhouse. My buddies all put on, two of the guys, put on black, get big knives, gear, and I drive to one road on the golf course and my other friend grows Dr. We drop the guys off in the golf course as the plane’s gonna do the touchdown at the airport. He says, I gotta go around. As he’s pulling up now, he’s 200 feet below the radar, just opens up the side of the plane. Mm-hmm. The kickers, we call ’em, they’re called kickers. He kicks the baskets, the ba and the guys on, on the golf court. They’re hugging trees. Yeah. You don’t wanna be under that thing. Right. You got a 200, you got maybe a 40 pound package coming in at 120 miles an hour from 200 feet up. It’ll break the bra. It’ll yeah. The [00:16:00] branches will kill you. Yeah. So they pull up, they get out, I pull back up in the pickup truck, he runs out, jumps in the back of the truck, yells, hit it. We drive the mile through the back roads to my townhouse. Get the coke in the house. My buddy rips it open with a knife. It’s and pulls out some blow. And he looks at me, he goes, Hey, let’s get outta here. And I go, where are we going? Cops come and he goes, ah, I got two tickets. No, four tickets to the Eddie Murphy concert. So we left the blow in this trunk of his car. Oh. Oh, oh man. I know. We went to Eddie Murphy about a million dollars worth of product in the trunk. Oh. And, uh, saw a great show and came back and off they went. That’s what I’m trying to point out is that’s how fast it goes down, man. It’s to do. Yeah. Right in, in 30 minutes. We got it out. Now the thing about drug deals is we always call ’em dds delayed dope deals because the smuggling [00:17:00] trip could take six months to plan. Yeah. You know, they never go, there’s no organized crime in organized crime. Yeah. No organization did it. Yeah. And then, then of course, in 1992 when I got busted and was looking at Rico, a friend of mine came up to me. He was a yacht broker. He had gotten in trouble selling a boat, and he said, Hey, I’d you like to work for the DEA. I’d done three months in jail. I knew I was looking at time, I knew I had nothing. My lawyers told me, Kenny, you either figure something out or you’re going to jail for a mm-hmm. And I just had a newborn baby. I just got married three weeks earlier and we had a newborn baby. I said, what are you crazy? I mean, I’m waiting for my wife to hear me. You know, he’s calling me on the phone. He goes, meet me for lunch. I go meet him for lunch. And he explains to me that he’s gonna, he’s got a guy in the, uh, central district in Jacksonville, and he’s a DEA agent, and I should go talk to him. And so the DEA made a deal with the Ohio police that anything that I [00:18:00] confiscated, anything that I did, any assets I got, they would get a share in as long as they released me. Yeah. To them. And, you know, it’s all about the, I hate to say this, I’m not saying that you don’t want to take drugs off the street, but if you’re the police department and you’re an agent, it’s about asset seizures. Yeah. Yeah. That’s how you fund the dr. The war on drugs. Yeah. The war begets war. You know, I mean, oh, I know, been Florida was, I understand here’s a deal. You’re like suing shit against the tide, right? Fighting that drug thing. Okay? It just keeps coming in. It keeps getting cheaper. It keeps getting more and more. You make a little lick now and then make a little lick now and then, but then you start seeing these fancy cars and all this money out there that you can get to. If you make the right score, you, you, you hit the right people, you can get a bunch of money, maybe two or three really cool cars for your unit. So then you’ll start focusing on, go after the money. I know it’s not right, but you’re already losing your shoveling shit against the tide anyhow, so just go after the goal. [00:19:00] One time I set up this hash deal for the DEA from Amsterdam. The guy brought the hash in, and I had my agent, you know, I, I didn’t set up the deal. The guy came to me and said, we have 200 kilos of hash. Can you help us sell it? He didn’t know that I was working for the DEA, he was from Europe. And I said, sure. The, the thing was, I, so in the boat ready to close the deal, now my guy is from Central. I’m in I’m in Fort Lauderdale, which is Southern District. So he goes, Hey, can you get that man to bring that sailboat up to Jacksonville? I go, buddy, he just sailed across the Atlantic. He ain’t going to Jacksonville. So the central district has to come down, or is a northern district? I can’t remember if it’s northern or central. Has to come down to the Southern district. So, you know, they gotta make phone calls. Everybody’s gotta be in Yep. Bump heads. So I’m on the boat and he calls me, he goes, Hey, we gotta act now. Yeah. And I’m looking at the mark, I go, why? He [00:20:00] goes, customs is on the dock. We don’t want them involved. So you got the two? Yeah. So I bring him up, I go, where’s the hash? He goes, it’s in the car. So we go up to the car and he opens the trunk, and I, I pull back one of the duffle bags I see. I can tell immediately it’s product. So I go like this, and all hell breaks loose, right? Yeah. I could see the two customs agents and they’re all dressed like hillbillies. They, you know. So I said to my, my handler, the next day I called them up to debrief. You know, I have to debrief after every year, everything. I goes, so what happened when customs I go, what’d they want to do? He goes, yep. They wanted to chop the boat in threes. So they’re gonna sell the boat and the 2D EA offices are gonna trade it. Yeah. Are gonna shop the money. Yeah. I remember when I registered with the DEA in, in, in the Southern district, I had to tell ’em who I was. They go, why are you working for him? Why aren’t you working for us? I’m like, buddy, I’m not in charge here. This is, you know? Yeah. I heard that many [00:21:00] times through different cases we did, where the, the local cop would say to me, why don’t you come work for us? Oh yeah. Try to steal your informant. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So how about that? So, can you get a piece of the action if they had a big case seizure? Yeah. Did they have some deal where you’d get a piece of that action there? Yep. That’s a pretty good deal. Yeah. So I would get, I, I’d get, like, if we brought down, he would always tell everybody that he needed money to buy electronics and then he would come to me and go, here’s 2000. And to the other cis, he had three guys. I saw a friend of mine, the guy that got me into the deal. Them a million dollar house or a couple million dollar house. And I saw the DEA hand him a suitcase with a million dollars cash in it. Wow. I mean, I’m sorry, with a hundred thousand cash. A hundred thousand. Okay. I was gonna say, I was thinking a million. Well, a hundred thousand. Yeah, a hundred thousand. I’ve heard that. I just didn’t have any experience with it myself. But I heard that. I saw, saw Open it up, saw money. I saw the money. It was one of those aluminum halla, Halliburton reef cases and Yeah, yeah. A [00:22:00] hundred thousand cash. But, uh, but you know, um, it’s funny, somebody once asked me out of, as a kid I wanted to be a cowboy, a race car driver, and a secret agent. Me too. Yes. Yeah. I didn’t want, I wanted to be a, I grew up on a farm, so I kind of rode a horse. I had that watched Rowdy, you got saved background as me, man. Yeah. You know, we watched, we watched, we grew up on westerns. We watched Gun Smoke, rowdy. Oh yeah. You know, uh, bananas, uh, you know, so, um. So anyway, uh, I got to raise cars with my drug money, and I guess I’m not sure if I was more of a secret agent working as a drug dealer or as the DEA, but it’s a lot of I, you know, I make jokes about it now, but it’s a lot of stress working undercover. Oh, yeah. Oh, I can’t even imagine that. I never worked undercover. I, that was not my thing. I like surveillance and putting pieces together and running sources, but man, that actual working undercover that’s gotta be nerve wracking. It’s, you know, and, and my handler was good at it, but [00:23:00] he would step out and let, here’s, I’ll tell you this. One day he calls me up and he goes, Hey, I’m down here in Fort Lauderdale. You need to come down here right now. And I’m having dinner at my house about 15 minutes away. Now he lives in Jacksonville. I go, what’s he doing in Fort Lauderdale? So I drive down to the hotel and he’s got a legal pad and a pen. He goes, my, uh, my, my seniors want to, uh, want you to proffer. You need to tell me everything you ever did. And they want me to do a proffer. And I go, I looked at him. I go, John, I can’t do that. He start, we start writing. I start telling him stuff. I stop. I go, I grew up in this town. Everybody I know I did a drug deal with from high school, I go, I would be giving you every single kid, every family, man, I grew up here. My, I’m gonna be in jail, and my wife and my one and a half year old daughter are gonna be the only people left in this town, and they’re not gonna have any support. And I just can’t do this to all my friends. Yeah. So he says, all right, puts the pen down. I knew [00:24:00] he hated paperwork, so I had a good shot. He wasn’t gonna, he goes, yeah, you hungry? I go, yeah. He goes, let’s go get a steak. And right across the street was a place called Chuck Steakhouse, which great little steak restaurant. All right. So we go over there, he goes, and he is a big guy. He goes, sit right here. I go, all right. So I sit down. I, I’m getting a free steak. I’m gonna sit about through the steak dinner, it goes. Look over my shoulder. So I do this. He goes, see the guy at the bar in the black leather jacket. I go, yeah. He goes, when I get up and walk outta here, when I clear the door, I want you to go up to him and find a talk drug deal. See what you can get out of him. I go, you want me to walk up to a complete stranger and say, he goes, I’m gonna walk out the door. When I get out the door. You’re gonna go up and say, cap Captain Bobby. That was his, he was a ca a boat captain and his nickname, his handle was Captain Bobby. And he was theoretically the next Vietnam vet that now is a smuggler, you know?[00:25:00] Yeah. And so he walks out the door and I walked out and sat with the guy at the bar and we started, I said, hi, captain Bobby sent me, I’m his right hand man, you know, to talk about. And we talked and I looked around the bar trying to see if anybody was with him. And I’m figuring, now I’m looking at the guy going, why is he so open with me? And I’m thinking, you know what? He’s wearing a leather jacket. He’s in Florida. I bet you he’s got a wire on and he’s working for customs and I’m working for the DEA, so nothing ever came of it. But you know, that was, you know, you’re sitting there eating dinner and all of a sudden, you know, look over my shoulder. Yeah. And, you know, and I’m trying to balance all that with having a newborn that’s about a year old and my wife and Yeah. Looking at 25 years. So a little bit of pressure. But, you know, hey and I understand these federal agencies, everybody’s got, everybody is, uh, uh, aggressive. Everybody is ambitious. And you just are this guy in the middle and right. And they’ll throw you to the [00:26:00] wolves in a second. Second, what have you done for a second? Right? It’s what have you done for me lately? He’s calling me up and said, Hey, I don’t got any product from you in a minute. I go, well, I’m working on it. He goes, well, you know, they’ll kick you outta the program. Yeah. But one of the things he did he was one of, he was the GS 13. So he had some, you know, he had level, you know, level 15 or whatever, you know, he was, yeah. Almost at the head of near retirement too. And he said, look, he had me, he had another guy that was a superstar, another guy. And we would work as a team and he would feed us all the leads. In other words, if David had a case, I’d be on that case. So when I went to go to go to trial or go to my final, he had 14 or 15 different things that he had penciled me in to be involved with. The biggest deal we did at the end of my two years with the DEA was we brought down the Canadian mob. They got him for 10,000 kilos of cocaine, import 10,000 kilos. It was the Hell’s Angels, the Rock something, motorcycle [00:27:00] gang, the Italian Mafia and the, and the Irish mob. Mm-hmm. And the guy, I mean, this is some badass guys. I was just a player, but. The state of Ohio, they got to fly up there and you know, I mean, no words, the dog and pony show was always on to give everybody, you know. Yes. A bite at the apple. Oh yeah. But I’ll tell you this, it’s been 33 years and the two people that I’m close to is my arresting officer in Ohio and my DEA handler in Jacksonville. The arresting officer, when he retired, he called to gimme his new cell phone. And every year or so I call him up around Christmas and say, Dennis, thank you for the opportunity to turn my life around, because I’ve got four great kids. I’ve started businesses, you know, he knows what I’ve done with my life. And the DEA handler, that’s, he’s a friend of mine. I mean, you know, we talk all the time and check on each other. And, you know, I mean, he’s, [00:28:00] they’re my friends. A lot of, not too many of the guys are left from those days that will talk to me. Yeah, probably not. And most of them are dead or in jail anyhow. For, well, a lot of ’em are, maybe not even because of you, I mean, because that’s their life. No, but a lot of them, a number of ’em turned their lives around, went into legal businesses and have done well. Yeah. So, you know, there really have, so not all of ’em, but a good share of ’em have turned, because we weren’t middle class kids. We were, my one friend was, dad was the lieutenant of the police department. The other one was the post guy. We weren’t inner city kids. Yeah. We weren’t meeting we, the drug war landed on us and we just, we were recruited into it. As young as I talk about in my book. But I mean, let’s talk about what’s going on now. Now. Yeah. And listen, I’m gonna put some statistics out there. Last year, 250,000 people were charged with cannabis. 92% for simple possession. There’s [00:29:00] people still in jail for marijuana doing life sentences. I’ve had friends do 27 years only for marijuana. No nonviolent crimes, first time offender. 22 years, 10 years. And the government is, I’ve been involved with things where the government was smuggling the drugs. I mean, go with the Iran Contra scandal that happened. We were trading guns for cocaine with the Nicaraguans in the Sandon Easterns. Yeah. Those same pilots. Gene Hassen Fus flew for Air America and Vietnam moving drugs and gun and, and guns out of Cambodia. Same guy. Air America. Yeah. The American government gave their soldiers opium in Civil War to keep ’em marching. You know, I mean, we did a deal with Lucky Luciano, where we let ’em out of prison for doing heroin exchange for Intel from, from Europe on during World War II and his, and the mob watching the docks for the, uh, cargo ships. So the government’s been intertwined in the war on drugs on two [00:30:00] sides of it. Yeah. You know, and not that it makes it right. Look, I’ve lost several friends to fentanyl that thought they were doing coke and did fentanyl or didn’t even know there was any. They just accidentally did fentanyl and it’s a horrible drug. But those boats coming out of Venezuela don’t have fentanyl on ’em. No. Get cocaine maybe. If that, and they might be, they’re probably going to Europe. Europe and they’re going to Europe. Yeah, they’re going, yeah. They’re doubt they’re going to Europe. Yeah. Yeah. And so let’s put it this way. I got busted for running a 12 year ongoing criminal enterprise. We moved probably 50 tons of marijuana. You know what? Cut me down? One guy got busted with one pound and he turned in one other guy that went all the way up to us. So if you blew up those boats, you know, you’re, you need the leads. You, you can’t kill your clients. Yeah. You know, how are you gonna get, not gonna get any leads outta that. Well, that’s, uh, well, I’m just saying [00:31:00] you right. The, if they followed the boat to the mothership Yeah. They’d have the whole crew and all the cargo. Yeah. You know, it’s, those boats maybe have 200 kilos on ’em. A piece. Yeah. The mothership has six tons. Yeah. That’s it. It’s all about the, uh, the, um, uh, optics. Optics, yeah. That’s the word. It’s all about the optics and, and the politic, you know, in, in some way it may deter some people, but I don’t, I I, I’ve never seen anything, any consequence. In that drug business, there’s too much money. There is no consequence that is really ever gonna deter people from smuggling drugs. Let me put it this way, except for a few people like yourself, there’s a few like yourself that get to a certain age and the consequence of going to prison for a long time may, you know, may bring you around or the, all the risk you’re taking just, you know, you can’t take it anymore, but you gotta do something. But no, well, I got busted twice. Consequence just don’t matter. There is no consequence that’s gonna do anything. Here’s why. And you’re right. [00:32:00] One is how do you get in a race car and not think you’re gonna die? Because you always think it’s gonna happen to somebody else. Exactly. And the drug business is the same. It’s, I’m not, it’s not gonna happen to me tonight. And those guys in Venezuela, they have no electricity. They have no water. Yeah. They got nothing. They have a chance to go out and make a couple thousand dollars and change their family’s lives. Yeah. Or they’re being, they’re got family members in the gar, in the gangs that are forcing them to do it. Yeah. It’s the war on drugs has kind of been a political war and an optics war from the seventies. I mean, it’s nobody, listen, I always say, I say in my book, nobody loved it more than the cops, the lawyers and the politicians. No shit. In Fort Lauderdale, they had nothing, and all of a sudden the drug wars brought night scopes and cigarette boats and fancy cars and new offices. Yes. And new courthouses, and new jails and Yep. I don’t have an answer. Yeah. The problem is, [00:33:00] you know what I’m gonna say, America, Mexico doesn’t have a drug problem. Columbia doesn’t have a drug problem. No. America has a drug problem. Those are just way stations to get the product in. In the cover of my book, it says, you don’t sell drugs, you supply them like ammunition in a war. It’s a, people, we, how do we fix this? How do we get the American people? Oh, by the way, here’s a perfect example. Marijuana is legal in a majority of states. You don’t see anybody smuggling marijuana in, I actually heard two stories of people that are smuggling marijuana out of the country. I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that. Yeah. They’re growing so much marijuana in America that it’s worth shipping to other places, either legally or illegally. Yeah. And, and, and you know, the biggest problem is like, what they’ll do is they’ll set up dispensaries, with the green marijuana leaf on it, like it’s some health [00:34:00] dispensary. But they, they just won’t it’ll be off the books. It just won’t have the licensing and all that. And, you know, you run that for a while and then maybe you get caught, maybe you don’t. And so it’s, you know, it’s, well, the other thing is with that dispensary license. It’s highly regulated, but you can get a lot of stuff in the gray. So there’s three markets now. There’s the white market, which is the legal Yeah. Business that, you know, you can buy stocks in the companies and whatnot. Yeah. There’s the black market, which is the guy on the street that Kenny Bear used to be. And then there’s the gray market where people are taking black market product and funneling it through the white markets without intact, you know, the taxes and the licensing and the, the, uh, testing for, you know, you have to test marijuana for pesticides. Metals, yeah. And, and the oils and the derivatives. You know, there’s oil and there’s all these derivatives. They have to be tested. Well, you could slide it through the gray market into the white market. So I know it’s a addiction, you know, whether it’s gambling or sex or Right. Or [00:35:00] there’s always gonna be people who are gonna take advantage and make money off of addiction. The mafia, you know, they refined it during the prohibition. All these people that drink, you know, and a lot, admittedly, a lot of ’em are social drinkers, but awful lot of ’em work. They had to have it. And so, you know, then gambling addiction. And that’s, uh, well here’s what I say. If it wasn’t for Prohibition Vegas, the mob never would’ve had the power and the money to build Vegas. No, they wouldn’t have anything. So when you outlaw something that people want, you’re creating a, a business. If, if somebody, somebody said the other day, if you made all the drugs legal in America, would that put out, put the drug cartels in Mexico and Columbia and out of business? Yeah, maybe. How about this statistic? About 20 to 30,000 people a year die from cocaine overdose. Most have a medical condition. Unknown unbe, besides, they’re not ODing on cocaine. Yeah. Alright. 300,000 people a year die from obesity. Yeah. And [00:36:00] another, almost four, I think 700, I don’t know, I might be about to say a half a million die from alcohol and tobacco. Mm-hmm. I could be low on that figure. So you’re, you probably are low. Yeah. I could be way more than that. But on my point is we’re regulating alcohol, tobacco, and certainly don’t care how much food you eat, and why don’t we have a medical system that takes care of these people. I don’t know that the answer if I did, but I’m just saying it, making this stuff more valuable and making bigger crime syndicates doesn’t make sense. Yeah. See a addiction is such a psychological, spiritual. Physical maldy that people can’t really separate the three and they don’t, people that, that aren’t involved and then getting some kind of recovery, they can’t understand why somebody would go back and do it again after they maybe were clean for a while. You know, that’s a big common problem with putting money into the treatment center [00:37:00] business. Yep. Because people do go to treatment two and three times and, and maybe they never get, some people never, they’ll chase it to death. No, and I can’t explain it. And you know, I, I’ll tell you what, I have my own little podcast. It’s called One Step Over the Line. Mm-hmm. And I released a show last night about a friend of mine, his name is Ron Black. You can watch it or any of your listeners can watch it, and Ron was, went down to the depths of addiction, but he did it a long time ago when they really spent a lot of time and energy to get, you know, they really put him through his system. 18 months, Ron got out clean and he came from a good family. He was raised right. He didn’t, you know, he had some trauma in his life. He had some severe trauma as a child, but he built one of the largest addiction. He has a company that he’s, he ran drug counseling services. He’s been in the space 20 or 30 years, giving back. He has a company that trains counselors to be addiction specialists. He has classes for addiction counseling. He become certified [00:38:00] members. He’s run drug rehabs. He donates to the, you know, you gotta wa if you get a chance to go to my podcast, one step over the line and, and watch this episode we did last night. Probably not the most exciting, you know, like my stories. Yeah. But Ronnie really did go through the entire addiction process from losing everything. Yeah. And pulling himself out. But he was also had a lot of family. You know, he had the right steps. A lot of these kids I was in jail with. Black and brown, inter or inner city youth, whatever, you know, their national, you know, race or nationality, they don’t have a chance. Yeah. They’re in jail with their fathers, their cousins, their brothers. Mm-hmm. The law, the war on drugs, and the laws on drugs specifically affect them. And are they, I remember thinking, is this kid safer in this jail with a cement roof over his head? A, a hot three hot meals and a bed than being back on the [00:39:00] streets? Yeah. He was, I mean. Need to, I used to do a program working with, uh, relatives of addicts. And so this mother was really worried about her son gonna go to jail next time he went to court. And he, she had told me enough about him by then. I said, you know, ma’am, I just wanna tell you something he’s safer doing about a year or so in jail than he is doing a year or so on the streets. Yeah. And she said, she just looked at me and she said, you know, you’re right. You’re right. So she quit worried about and trying to get money and trying to help him out because she was just, she was killing him, getting him out and putting him back on the streets. This kid was gonna die one way or the other, either shot or overdosed or whatever. But I’ll tell you another story. My best friend growing up in New Orleans was Frankie Monteleone. They owned the Monte Hotel. They own the family was worth, the ho half a billion dollars at the time, maybe. And Frankie was a, a diabetic. And he was a, a junk. He was a a because of the diabetic needles. [00:40:00] He kind of became a cocaine junkie, you know, shooting up coke. You know, I guess the needle that kept him alive was, you know, I, you know, again the addict mentality. Right, right. You can’t explain it. So he got, so he got busted trying to sell a couple grams. They made it into a bigger case by mentioning more product conspiracy. His father said, got a, the, the father made a deal to give him a year and a half in club Fed. Yeah. He could, you know, get a tan, practice his tennis, learn chess come out and be the heir to one of the richest families in the world, all right. He got a year and a half. Frankie did 10 years in prison. ’cause every time he got out, he got violated. Oh yeah. I remember going to his federal probation officer to get my bicycle. He was riding when he got violated. Mm-hmm. And I said, I said, sir, he was in a big building in Fort Lauderdale or you know, courthouse office building above the courthouse. I go, there’s so many cops, lawyers, [00:41:00] judges, that are doing blow on a Saturday night that are smoking pot, that are drinking more than they should all around us. You’ve got a kid that comes from one of the wealthiest families in America that’s never gonna hurt another citizen. He’s just, he’s an addict, not a criminal. He needs a doctor, not a jail. And you know what the guy said to me? He goes but those people aren’t on probation. I, I know. He did. 10 years in and out of prison. Finally got out, finally got off of paper, didn’t stop doing drugs. Ended up dying in a dentist chair of an overdose. Yeah. So you, you never fixed them, you just imprisoned somebody that would’ve never heard another American. Yeah, but we spent, it cost us a lot of money. You know, I, I, I dunno what the answer is. The war on drugs is, we spent over, we spent 80, let’s say since 1973. The, the DEA got started in 73, let’s say. Since that time we’ve, what’s that? 70 something years? Yeah. We’ve done [00:42:00] no, uh, 50, 60. Yeah. 50 something. Yeah. Been 50. We spent a trillion dollars. We spent a trillion dollars. The longest and most expensive war in American history is against its own people. Yeah. Trying to save ’em. I know it’s cra it’s crazy. Yeah, I know. And it, over the years, it just took on this life of its own. Yeah. And believe me, there was a, there’s a whole lot of young guys like you only, didn’t go down the drug path, but you like that action and you like getting those cool cars and doing that cool stuff and, and there’s TV shows about it as part of the culture. And so you’re like, you got this part of this big action thing that’s going on that I, you know, it ain’t right. I, I bigger than all of us. I don’t know. I know. All I like to say I had long hair and some New Orleans old man said to me when I was a kid, he goes, you know why you got that long hair boy? And this is 1969. Yeah, 70. I go, why is that [00:43:00] sir? He goes, ’cause the girls like it. The girls didn’t like it. You wouldn’t have it. I thought about it. I’m trying to be a hippie. I was all this, you know, rebel. I thought about it. I go, boy, he’s probably right. Comes down to sex. Especially a young boy. Well, I mean, I’m 15 years old. I may not even how you look. Yeah. I’m not, listen, at 15, I probably was only getting a second base on a whim, you know? Yeah. But, but they paid attention to you. Yeah. Back in those days you, you know, second base was a lot. Yeah. Really. I remember. Sure. Not as, not as advanced as they are today. I don’t think so. But anyway, that’s my story. Um, all right, Ken b this has been fun. It’s been great. I I really had a lot of fun talking to you. And the book is 1, 1, 1 took over the line. No one, no, no. That’s a Friday slip. One step over that. But that was what I came up with the name. I, I believe you, I heard that song. Yeah. I go, I know, I’m, I’ve just taken one step over the line. So that’s where the book actually one step over the line confessions of a marijuana mercenary. [00:44:00] And I’ll tell you, if your listeners go to my website, one step over the line.com, go to the tile that says MP three or the tile that says digital on that website. Put in the code one, the number one step, and then the number 100. So one step 100, they can get a free, they can download a free copy. Yeah, I got you. Okay. Okay. I appreciate it. That’d be good. Yeah, they’ll enjoy it. Yeah. And on the website there’s pictures of the boats, the planes. Yeah. The runways the weed the, all the pictures are there, family pictures, whatever. Well, you had a, uh, a magical, quite a life, the kinda life that they, people make movies about and everybody watches them and says, oh, wow, that’s really cool. But they didn’t have to do it. They didn’t have to pay that price. No. Most of the people think, the funny thing is a lot of people think I’m, I’m, I’m lying or I’m exaggerating. Yeah. I’m 68 years old. Yeah. There’s no reason for me to lie. And you know, the DEA is, I’m telling that. I’m just telling it the way it [00:45:00] happened. I have no reason to tell Phish stories at this point in my life. No, I believe it. No, no, no. It’s all true. All I’ve been, I’ve been around to a little bit. I, I could just talk to you and know that you’re telling the truth here I am. So, it’s, it’s a great story and Ken, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It’s been a very much a, it is been a real pleasure. It’s, it’s nice to talk to someone that knows both sides of the coin. Okay. Take care. Uh, thanks again. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Transcribed - Published: 19 January 2026

In this bonus episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins takes listeners back to 1970s Chicago for a series of lesser-known yet revealing stories about the Chicago Outfit, centered on violent enforcer Frank Schweihs, also known as “Frank the German.”   The episode begins with a personal side quest—tracking down the mystery of Tony Accardo and his rare red 1950s Mercedes sports car, possibly a 300 SL. These exotic cars were produced in limited numbers, and with Accardo’s history attached, the vehicle could be worth a fortune today. The question is: where did it go?   From there, the story moves deep into Outfit territory. Schweihs was a feared figure who worked under Joseph Lombardo and alongside other notorious mobsters. I recount an undercover operation involving a wired Old Town business owner who helped federal agents capture Schweihs, extorting money, one of the cases that eventually put him behind bars. The episode also explores a remarkable undercover IRS investigation in which an agent posing as a criminal associate gained Schweihs’ trust. Listeners hear about crooked real estate deals, political corruption, bribe demands, and just how casually violence was discussed inside the Outfit’s inner circle—including talk of bombing a politician’s car when business deals stalled.   These stories offer a raw, street-level look at how the Chicago Outfit operated during its peak years—how intimidation, corruption, and violence were everyday tools of business—and why figures like Frank Schweihs remain symbols of the Outfit’s brutality. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 00:00 – Introduction and Chicago Bonus Episode 00:24 – Tony Accardo’s Red Mercedes Mystery 02:55 – The Chicago Outfit in the 1970s 03:31 – Frank Schweihs and the Extortion Case 04:42 – Undercover IRS Agent Inside the Outfit 06:33 – Corruption, Real Estate, and Political Payoffs 08:37 – Violence Threats and Taking the Case Down 09:35 – Windy City Mafia and Final Thoughts Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective here back in the studio with a little bonus episode, Gangland Wire. And I’ve been doing a bunch of Chicago stuff, as you know. Well, here’s one more before I stray away from Chicago. I had been away from Chicago for a long time and I missed it. I missed you guys up there. And, you know, here’s another thing before I really get started in this story. Okay. [0:24] I’m on a mission right now. I remembered an old story about Tony Accardo had a 1950s Mercedes SL, and I think it was a Gull Wing, but I’m not sure. It was a 300 SL. [0:40] He for sure had a 1950s Mercedes red sports car. And I always wondered, you know, I wonder what happened to that car. You know, I ought to be able to run that down. I interviewed a guy recently about an investigation into finding an extremely rare exotic car that was worth like $25 million or something. It was a teardrop, German-made, something about a Talbert Lago or some game like that. Anyhow, so it got me thinking. And they were talking about running down the cars and the history on cars, the Provence on cars. And they said, when you have a really good story attached to a car, it makes it worth a whole lot more money than normal. And I called up a friend of mine that wheels and deals in classic cars through Mecham’s. And I think there’s another auto auction. He said, oh, yeah. He said, man, you can find that car. If it hadn’t already had that priced into it, the fact that Tony Accardo sold it or owned it, then it would be worth a whole lot more money. So I thought, well, let’s just see if we can’t find that car. I started looking into it. These 1950s Mercedes 300 SLs, there wasn’t very many I’ve made. There was only a couple thousand I’ve made in over several years’ time. And the best I could tell, they’re all accounted for in some manner. I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. I started asking around and trying to find people that could help me with sources on that. So if you know anybody that’s a real expert on these old Mercedes sports cars. [2:10] Send them to me. Have them email me at ganglandwire at gmail.com or something like that. And if you are, you know, give me a call, 816-931-3535. I just think it would be fun to find it. I’d do a little show on it if I found it. And find out what happened to it. Now, it might make somebody really happy. We can find it, and he didn’t know that it was Tony Accardo’s old car. Now, these old VINs, you know, now they’re 17 digits. Well, back then, they were like six or seven digits, and to trace it through the VIN, that old a car, with no more than I have to go on right now, it’s just almost impossible. I need to find, narrow down that maybe somebody has a story about who had it and try to find that person and then work down from there if maybe that person still has it. I don’t know. But it would be a fun little, it’s going to be a fun little project. But anyhow, let’s go up to Chicago in the 1970s. You know, you were rocking and rolling up there in Chicago. The outfit ruled. We just had all that information from Bob Cooley and all the things that he did and he was involved in up there. And they owned the city. You know, they damn near owned the whole city. So there’s one guy named Frank Schweihs. Now you may have heard of Frank Schweihs. He was called the German, Frank, the German Schweihs. He was a guy that Red Wemette met who has his show. [3:31] Can’t even think of the name of it anymore. He had a show with Adam out in Las Vegas. Red Wemette. He kind of went into the employ of the FBI. Nobody really had a case on him. He was just tired of him shaking him down. So he volunteered, and Frank Schweihs was coming around extorting money from him. He had a dirty bookstore or something like that in Old Town. Frank Schweihs had a restaurant in Old Town. Frank Schweihs started coming around, and Red Wilmette let the bureau wire up his TV. So it had a camera and a microphone in it, and it recorded all kinds of information about Frank Schweihs. And they ended up convicting him of extorting money from Red Wilmette. He was also a defendant in the Family Seekers trial, and I think Red testified in that. Frank Schweihs, he had gotten introduced to an IRS agent named Johnson, but he was going under the name Virgil Williams. Now, Virgil Williams, we’re just going to call him Virgil Williams. He was a black dude. He was a big black dude, looked like a former, you know, defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears or something. [4:42] And he had started out, the IRS had put him undercover, working the South Side and working policy back in the earlier 60s. And somehow he got introduced to Frank Schweihs as this guy who was, you know, involved in gambling and involved in the rackets in some manner on the south side and the black rackets. Frank was trying to sell him his restaurant in Old Town. Of course, he was trying to rip him off is what he was trying to do. You don’t just do business with a guy like Frank Schweihs. Absolutely, you do not do business with him. If you start going down that path, what he’s going to do, he’s going to rip you off in some manner. Guys start telling stories about later on, he’s at the trial and around that time he’s interviewed and he start telling stories about working with Frank, he said, Frank, and he would sit around the restaurant and talk and drink and, and Frank would say, we’re in about undercover agents. And he said, yeah, he said, I can spot him a mile off. He said, no undercover is ever going to get close to me. He said, uh, you know, I can just hear, I can pick out who’s going up and down the street out there and who’s an undercover agent. And he’d point out people. Of course, this guy knew that they really weren’t undercover agents, but you know, he, you know, would act like, oh yeah, you’re really cool, Frank, you’re a guy I need to do business with. You know what time it is. He said the one time, Frank told him, he said, I wish that us whites were as aggressive and binding as you blacks are. He said, the guy said, I said, I almost choked on that. [6:11] He said, who’s more violent than Frank Schweihs? And he worked for Joy the Clown Lombardo. And, you know, Harry Aleman was in that mix and the Wild Bunch. And, I mean, who’s more violent and vicious than those guys? I don’t think anybody. But he thought that blacks really had it going on when it came to the violence thing. [6:33] It was a hell of a story. He also, after he got done, he didn’t have much more on Frank, but talked about he was trying to, he got in. Frank probably hooked him up with this guy, a guy named Herman Kaye. And he told him that he would buy a building from him. And actually, the building was owned by Goodwill Industries. And this Herman Kay was kind of a high-ranking person in Goodwill Industries. And, and he was going to sell it for $325,000 in cash. He said, uh, uh, Johnson walked in. He said, I just dumped $325,000 in cash right on his, uh, desk. And so this guy said, oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. Cause he was, he was, you know, front of himself off was like a black dope dealer. It had just tons of cash. [7:18] He said, you know, we can’t do it like that. You know, we got to figure out how to get that in the check. And then you got to pay me and pay me so much under the table. And so they ended up making a case on this guy for ripping over $400,000 off in a series of real estate deals in which the Goodwill industries are the victim. Now, who would rip off Goodwill? I mean, who would you go in and shoplift from Goodwill? I think this guy probably would. He was an employee. It’s just, it’s crazy. I mean, these are just a few little stories of the outfit in 1970s Chicago. Johnson said he recalled one day he went into the office of a North suburban mayor, started talking to him about getting something done, said he was a businessman from Chicago, and he wanted to start a bar, and he wanted to have gambling and prostitution in it, and he needed some protection. [8:09] And the guy said the guy asked him for $2,000, and he said, okay, you know, I can handle that. And he said, the guy also warned him. He said, you know, he said, if you aren’t who you say you are, you know, uh, I won’t send my police down there to take care of you. I’ll take care of you myself. The guy, the mayor never really figured out after they ended up doing him. Now during this time, also the IRS agent kept telling the German that he couldn’t really. [8:37] Close a deal on the restaurant that Frank was going to sell him. He said, because there’s a politician that was holding up the licensing process on it. And, and Frank Swiss, he didn’t say who it was, but Frank Swiss decided it must be a guy named George Dunn, who was a Cook County commissioner and really was probably, it could have been a successor to Richard Daly. And he was, uh, uh, he was really heavy into Cook County politics. And I believe he was the one who was holding up the transaction and Frank wanted to bomb his car. You know, the guy said, no, no, no, no, we’ll get this worked out. And then they ended up taking the whole thing down before anything happened. [9:15] But it was a hell of an undercover investigation this guy had. So thanks a lot, guys. Just another little story about the Chicago outfit. Don’t forget, I’ve got my book, Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. It is on Amazon and just go to run Gary Jenkins Mafia on Amazon, Mafia Books on Amazon. You’ll find all my books. And I’ve got a bunch of interesting little stories I’ve done on the podcast that are in this book. It especially makes a nice gift for somebody that is interested in Chicago outfit. It’s not very much. And I just wanted to let you know about that. I don’t usually try to sell. Sometimes I try to sell a lot. Sometimes I don’t try to sell at all. It’s kind of a hit or miss with me. If I did this to earn money with, I’d be screwed anyhow. I just do it for the love of doing it. So thanks a lot, guys. And don’t forget about that red Mercedes, little red Mercedes car. We got to find that red Mercedes of Tony Accardo’s. It’s got to be out there somewhere. You just don’t junk out a car like that. So thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 14 January 2026

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Mafia Genealogist Justin Cascio joins Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins to explore one of the most remarkable—and overlooked—figures of the Prohibition era: Pasqualina Albano Siniscalchi, the so-called Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts. At the dawn of Prohibition in 1921, Pasqualina was a young widow living in Springfield’s South End when she inherited her late husband’s powerful bootlegging operation—one of the largest in western Massachusetts. Rather than step aside, she took control. Pasqualina ruled a crew of toughs and bootleggers, oversaw liquor distribution, and launched a relentless campaign of vengeance against rivals who challenged her authority. Newspapers dubbed her The Bootleg Queen, but her fight went far beyond rival gangs. She clashed with lawmakers, battled competing bootleggers, and even faced resistance from within her own family—all while operating in service of a secret society that would never fully accept her because she was a woman. Her story exposes the contradictions of organized crime: loyalty demanded without equality, power wielded without recognition. Cascio draws from years of meticulous research and family histories to bring Pasqualina’s story to life, revealing her pivotal role in early Mafia expansion in New England and the hidden influence women could wield behind the scenes. His book, Pasqualina: The True Story of the Bootleg Queen of Springfield, challenges long-held assumptions about gender, power, and the Mafia during Prohibition. If you’re interested in Prohibition-era crime, New England Mafia history, or the untold stories of women who shaped organized crime from the shadows, this episode is one you won’t want to miss. Learn more about Justin and his work on Mafia Geneology by clicking this sentence. Get Justin’s book, Pasqualina: The Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts Listen now on Gangland Wire — available on all major podcast platforms and YouTube. 0:02 Introduction to Mafia Genealogy 1:16 Pasqualina Albano’s Story 2:30 Family Reunion Revelations 4:56 The Impact of Prohibition 7:45 Prejudice and Organized Crime 10:50 Connecting the Genovese Family 12:34 Views from Sicily 13:50 Cultural Differences in Dress 16:37 Encounters with Modern Gangsters 18:36 Gina’s Documentary and Art 23:53 The Romance of the Gangster 27:24 The Nature of Risk 28:46 The Evolution of Organized Crime 33:16 Closing Thoughts and Future Plans 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’ve got on tap here a repeat guest. He’s been on before. I had a little technical glitch this morning with the internet, and I had to scurry around and do something different. I totally forgot about what I was going to talk about with Justin, but I knew Justin’s been on there before. I knew he does mafia genealogy, and I knew he knows his stuff, and so he doesn’t really need a lot of help from me. So this is Justin Cascio from the website and some books, some mafia genealogies. Welcome, Justin. Thanks so much, Gary. Great to be here. Really. And you’re from the Springfield, Massachusetts area. And so that’s been some of your emphasis has been on that area. But you’ve done a lot of other mob genealogy, correct? Yes. On my website, on mafiagenealogy.com, I write about a whole lot of different places that the mafia has been in the United States. In fact, coming up, I’m going to be writing about Kansas City. But for the last 25 years or so, I’ve lived in New England. I live about 20 miles away from Springfield, Massachusetts, which if you’ve heard of Anthony Aralata or Bruno or the Shabelli brothers, then you know the Springfield crew of the Genovese crime family. [1:12] And I’ve been following them pretty closely since I’ve lived here. A few years ago, I got into the story of Pasqualina Albano, who was a bootlegger in Springfield during Prohibition. [1:25] That’s what my new book is about. Yeah. Oh, that’s a new book, right? I’m sorry. I didn’t pick up real quick there. And she’s done a documentary recently that hasn’t been seen by very many people. And they really, she was a woman. They do use the A at the end. Those of us that know about romance languages would know as probably a woman, but she’s a woman. And she was running a certain segment of bootlegging back during the 30s and late 20s, exactly when it was, which is really unusual. She must have been a powerful individual. I think that she was a very remarkable person, so I couldn’t find out enough about her. I really needed to understand how it was possible that somebody who the Mafia would never have accepted as a member allowed her to lead this crew for so long, even into the years when it was associated with Vito Genovese and that crime family. Yeah. Don’t you imagine it was, she must have been making money for them. [2:24] She was making money for her family, for sure. Got a few people probably pretty comfortable, yeah. [2:30] So that family, you went to a family reunion recently and learned quite a little bit. You want to tell your experiences about that? Yes. So, Pasqualea Albano, that bootlegger, has a nephew who is now 101 years old. His name is Mario Fiore. And when he turned 100, I was invited to his birthday party. And it was an enormous scene. It was tremendous. In fact, it’s a cliche, but the opening scene of The Godfather, if you imagine that wedding scene, it’s what it looks like. There’s a guy singing live on a PA system. There’s a pizza oven parked over here. There’s kids in the pool. There’s so many people, so much food, and this great big lawn and incredible view. Just an amazing scene to be at. And I met so many different people who were in Mario’s family. I met people who came over from Italy to come celebrate his birthday and talked with them as much as I could. I have no Italian, by the way. So we did the best we could. But I also talked to her American relative. She has all these grand nieces and nephews, and nieces and nephews who are still living, who were at this party and told me stories and drew little family trees for me. And what I was able to get a real good sense of is how the family feels about this legacy. Because not just Pasqualina, who was in organized crime, so many of her relatives were involved as well and continued to be up until the 80s, at least. [4:00] So the name, was it Albano? Was it got on in the modern times? The last name, was it still Albano? Was there another name? There are a few. Let’s see. I want some more modern names. There’s Mario Fiore. So he is one of her nephews. And then there’s Rex Cunningham Jr., who is one of her grandnephews. There’s the Sentinellos. So Jimmy Sentinello, who owns the Mardi Gras, or he did anyway. It’s a nude club, you know, a gentleman’s club, as they say. A gentleman’s club. We use that term loosely. Oh, boy, do we? Another old term that I picked up from the newspapers that I just love and like to bring back is sporting figure. Yeah, even sporting man. They don’t play sports. They’re not athletes. They’re sporting figures. I know. I heard that when I was a kid. Somebody was a sporting man. Yep. [4:57] This has been a family tradition. It’s something that has been passed down through the generations, and it’s something that I talk about in the book. But mostly what I’m focused on in the plot of the story is about Pasqualea’s time during Prohibition when this gang was turning into something bigger, turning into a part of this American mafia. Yeah. Interesting. And so tell us a little bit about how that developed. You had a Genovese family that moved in and she got hooked up with them. How did that develop? Yeah. More end of modern times. Early on, so 1920, beginning of Prohibition, Pasqualea Albana was newly married to this sporting figure, we’ll call him, Carlo Sinascocci. And I’m probably pronouncing that last name as wrong as well. He also came from a family of notable people who were involved in organized crime, getting into scrapes in Little Italy, New York City. There’s a whole separate side story about his cousins and all the things that they were getting into before Carlo even got on the scene. So by the time he arrived in New York City, he had a bit of a reputation preceding him because of these relatives of his. [6:06] And Pascalina was a young woman in Springfield. And the first question I even had writing about her is, how did she meet this guy? He was a Brooklyn saloon keeper. She was the daughter of a grocer in Springfield, three and a half hours away on the train. Like, why do they even know each other? And so trying to piece all that together, how that was reasonable for them to know one another and move in the same circles, and then for him to immediately, when he moved to Springfield, start picking up with vice because it was before Prohibition. So he was involved in gambling and police violence. And you could see some of the beginnings of the corruption already happening where he’s getting police protection before prohibition even begins. And then once it starts, he is the king of Water Street, which was the main drag of Little Italy. He was the guy you went to if you wanted to buy wholesale. [6:57] Justin, I have a question here. I was just discussing this with who’s half Italian, I guess, FBI agent that worked the mob here in Kansas City. We were talking about this, the prejudice that Italian people felt when they first got here, especially. And Bill’s about 90, and so he said his father told him. His father worked at a bank in New York, and he was told that with that last name, he had a different last name than Bill does. And with that last name, he said, you’re owning and go so high in the bank. And so talk a little bit about the prejudice that those early people felt. And that’s what drove people into the dark side, if you will, to make money. You had these bright guys that came over from Sicily looking for opportunity. And then us English and Irish Germans kept them out. [7:45] And so can you talk about that a little bit? Did they talk about any of that or have you looked into any of that? [7:52] I have. And it’s a theme that comes up again and again. Whenever I look at organized crime in any city, I’m seeing things like that ethnic succession of organized crime that you’re alluding to, how the Irish were controlling, say, the machine in Kansas City Hall or what have you. And they had that same kind of control over politics in other cities, too. And the way that they were getting a leg up and finally getting that first protection of their rackets was from outside of their ethnicity. It was Irish politicians protecting Italian criminals. And then eventually the Italians were getting naturalized where they were born here. And so then they move into politics themselves. [8:31] And that is one of the theories about how organized crime develops in American cities. It’s because you’re poor and ethnic and you’re closed out of other opportunities. And so the bright kids get channeled into organized crime where maybe in a better situation, they would have gone to college. Right. And then Prohibition came along, and there was such a huge amount of money that you can make in Prohibition. And it was illegal. That’s why you made money. But there was opportunity there for these young guys. Yes. And you really start to see a lot of new names in the papers after Prohibition begins. You have your established vice criminals who you’re already seeing in the newspapers through the 19-teens. Once Prohibition begins, now they have all these other guys getting into the game because there’s so much money there. And it’s such a big pie. Everybody feels like they can get a slice. [9:21] Yeah, interesting. Carry on. I’ve distracted you, Azai, but you were talking about Pasqualina and her husband. Of course, I’m not even going to try that. When you talk about discrimination against Italians, one of the things that makes my job really hard is trying to find news about a guy with a name like Carlos Siniscalchi. First of all, I’m probably saying it wrong. I think the Italian pronunciation is… So I’m getting all of the consonant clusters wrong, but I do it with my own name too. We’ve Americanized Cassio. That’s not the right name. How do you pronounce it? It’s Cassio. But we’re Cassio. That’s my grandfather said it. So how do I find Carlos Nescalci in the newspaper when every reporter mangles that name? And spells it differently. Yeah. Everybody spells it differently. How am I going to guess how all these different English speaking reporters were going to mess up Carlos’ name? And so I find it every which way. And sometimes I’ve just had to plain stumble over news about him and his relatives. It just happens by chance. I’m looking for general crime, and then I find him specifically. So yeah, it’s a little hard to find the Italians sometimes because their names are unfamiliar and they get written wrong in censuses and in the news. So we lose a little bit of their history that way. And that’s what you might call, I don’t know, a microaggression because they can’t get that name. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. You don’t care enough to spell it. I just, I know the thought process, I have to admit. I’ll just spell it anyway. I understand that thought process. [10:51] So you were asking earlier, I don’t know if you want me to continue this, but how the Genovese family were able to get involved in this thing going on in Springfield. Yeah, connected. Because of her second husband. Okay. Pascalina lost her first husband in 1921. He was killed by a fellow bootlegger. He takes over the gang. She conducts a war of vengeance against the guy who kills her husband and his whole family because they’re gangsters. And that takes years. She’s also pursuing her through the courts. And when that all finally gets settled a few years later, she has a quiet little second marriage to a guy that nobody had ever heard of called Antonio Miranda. [11:28] Now, Antonio Miranda is a small time gangster from Little Italy, New York City, and his brother is Mike Miranda, who is very close to Vito Genovese, and he became this conciliator eventually. So that old connections, going back to the days before the Castello-Moraisi War, when it was Lucky Luciano bootlegging with some of his pals, that’s the time frame in which she formed this alliance by marrying Tony Miranda. And that’s when it starts. That’s the relationship’s beginning between Genovese crime family having, before it was even the Genovese crime family, when it was the Luciano family. And so they’ve had that relationship with the Springfield crew ever since. A little bit like old world feudalism in a way, where one member of a royal family marries a member of another royal family. And I know in Kansas City, we’ve got our underboss, his sister, is married to our boss’s nephew. So, bring those two families together, the Lunas and the Savellas together, yes, very well, like noble families. Exactly. Interesting. Absolutely. [12:31] So that’s how they got together. I remembered that, but I’d forgotten it. So, you went to this reunion with people from Sicily there. So, tell us a little bit about that. How? [12:43] How do people in Sicily view the people in the United States? And they didn’t talk about the mafia. I’m sure there’s no doubt that they’re not going to really talk about that unless you got to find somebody that’s really lucky. But kind of care about the sociological impact and the old world and the new world, and the new world people that, you know, established here. Okay, so Pasqualea and his family are from outside of Naples, and they maintain really close ties to their family back in Italy. Like I am the third generation born in America. I don’t speak Italian. Neither does my father. Neither of us has ever been to Italy. We don’t have, we’re not Italians. We’re Americans. Okay. And the Italians will remind you of that if you forget. We’re not Italian. And like spaghetti and meatballs, not Italian. Chicken Parmesan, not Italian. These are things that we invented here out of a sense of, out of homesickness and a sudden influx of middle-class wealth. We were like, let’s have the spaghetti and the meatballs. I had separate courses anymore where the meatballs are, where they’re both a special treat and I’m going to take two treats with chicken and waffles. [13:50] So being around them, they’re formal. You know, I was meeting like Pasquena’s relatives from Mercado San Sivarino, where they’re from in Italy, they own a funeral home. They own the biggest funeral home business in the town, and they also own some other sort of associated businesses, like a florist and things like that. So I would expect a certain sort of decorum and conservatism of tone from somebody who works in the funeral business and from Italy. But they were also among the only people there in suits, because it was a summer day, we’re outside. Most of us were dressed a little less formally. Yeah. Old school, 1950s stuff. He does those old 1950s photographs, and everybody, every man’s wearing a suit. And there were women’s hat on. Also, that ongoing thing where people in Europe just dress better. Yeah, they dress more formal. I see a little bit in New York City. I noticed it when I moved up from the South. In the South, you go to a funeral and flip-flops, okay? It’s very casual because the weather absolutely demands it. I moved that back up North, and I’m like, wow, everybody’s just wearing the same black coat, aren’t we? And you go into New York. People are dressed a little better, even. You go to Europe, and it’s just another level is what I hear. People, they dress better. They’re not like us where we would roll out of bed and put on pajama pants and some crocs and go to the grocery store. They would never do something. Yes. [15:10] I was in a restaurant several years ago, and there’s a guy sitting at a table, and another young guy comes in. And the guy at the table says, dude, you wore your pajama bottoms in the restaurant. [15:22] People need to be sold. And I’ll have to admit, at the time, I hadn’t seen that before. And since then, I see it all the time now. I live in a college town. I see it a lot. Yeah. So i’ll carry on a little more about that reunion there uh okay so how to describe this so much of it was very surreal to me just being in this place like very fancy house the longest driveway i’ve ever seen like more than a mile i finally like when i parked my car because the track you know you can the parked cars are starting i parked and i get out of the car. And I’ve got this big present with me that I’m going to give to Mario. It’s unwieldy. And I’m like, oh man, this is going to be quite a schlep. And I’m wearing my good shoes and everything. And these two young fellas come up on a golf cart and bring me a ride. So I get in the golf cart and we get up to the house and my friend Gina was trying to point people out to me. Oh, he’s somebody that was in my documentary and you got to talk to this guy. And there was a lot of that. you’ve got to talk to this guy and you’ve got to talk to this woman and dragging me around to meet people. And one of the groups of people that I was, that I found myself standing in, [16:35] I’m talking to gangsters this time. Okay. This is not cousins who won a funeral home. These are gangsters. And I’m standing with them and they’re having the absolute filthiest conversation that I’ve heard since high school. [16:48] And, but the difference is boys in high school are just talking. These guys have done all the things they’re talking about. Wow. What a life is. The lives you would have led. Bye. I’m just trying to keep it. Are these American gangsters or are these? Americans. Okay, yeah. Current gangsters, they’re in the Springfield area with Anthony Arilada there. They’ve all hated him, probably. I’m sorry? I said Anthony Arilada when he’s there, and they all hated him. You probably didn’t bring his name up. Yeah, really. There are different factions in Springfield, it feels like to me, still. bill. And I haven’t got them all sorted. There are people who are still very loyal to the old regime and they have their figure, their person that they follow. And sometimes they can live with the rest of them and sometimes the rest of them are a bunch of lowlives and they want everybody to know about it. Yeah. [17:45] I’ve heard that conversation before. Interesting. Now, whose house was this? Somebody made it well in America. Yes. And I think it was one of his nephews. I don’t know exactly whose house it was. I was invited by Gina’s brother. He texted me and invited me to the party. And people just accepted me right in. The close family members who have seen Gina’s documentary, who have heard her talk about Pastelina and the research and meeting me, they think of me as the family a genealogist. And so I have a title in the family and belong there. Oh yeah, it’s here to document us. As you do, because we’re an important family. And so they didn’t really question my presence there at all. And you were able to ask questions from that standpoint too. That’s what was nice. Yeah. [18:37] And a lot of times it was just standing still and listening because there was so much going on, That was enough. Interesting. Now, her documentary, you’ve seen it, so tell us a little bit about it. Folks, it’s not out there streaming yet. She’s trying to get something going, I would assume. [18:58] Explain her just a little bit, too, in her book. Talk about her and her book and her documentary. Yeah. Okay. Gina’s a part of this big family that has got some wealth still and goes back to bootleggers in Prohibition and has gangsters in it, including her brother, Rex Cunningham Jr. So Cunningham is the name you don’t expect to hear in the mafia. Yeah, yeah. Done by Marietta Beckerwood. I don’t know if he was a member or associate, but at any rate, he was a known figure around here. Sportsbook and that kind of thing. Sportsbook, yeah. Yeah. She grew up with a little bit of wealth and privilege, but also feeling a little bit outsider because her family was half Irish. So among the Italians, it was a, you go to the wrong church, you go to the wrong school kind of vibe. And she grew up into more of a countercultural person. Her family is very conservative politically, religiously. I don’t know if you would expect that of a gangster family, but that’s what I’ve noticed is pretty common, actually. No, it’s pretty, that’s the way it is here. Yeah, real conservative, yeah. Yeah. You have to be socially for the whole thing to work. I can get into that, but And they keep going to the same church and school and everything, and you maintain these close ties with the neighborhood and local businesses and so forth. But she really was like, I’m going my own way. And so she became this free spirit as a young woman. And Gina’s, I don’t know how old she is. I want to say in her late 60s, around 70, about there. [20:23] That’s Gina Albano Cunningham. Cunningham. Oh, Gina. Okay, Gina Cunningham. See, I’m getting mixed up with the names. And Cunningham was… Ask Elena Albanos. Her sister married and became a Fiore. Okay. All right. That’s a little bit confusing. People have to go to your website to get this straightened out. Or maybe you have this, a picture, an image of this family tree on your website. In the book, you can find multiple family trees because I’m working with all these different branches. I’ll take a look if I can’t put an image in here for everybody to get this straight. But the modern woman that did the book and the movie, she’s in her 70s now. [21:04] Yeah. Yeah, and she’s a grandniece of Pasqualina, and her brother and her cousins were in organized crime in this room. Okay, all right, all right. Go ahead, go ahead. She’s absolutely immersed in this life, but she did not want any part of it, and so she left. And there are other people in her family that you can point to that did the same thing, like some of Pasqualina’s children just did not want to have anything to do with the family. Well, they left. They went and moved to another state. They stayed in another place. They didn’t come back. And she did the same thing, but she’s not cut ties. She keeps coming back and she has good relationships with her family members, even though she’s not aligned with them politically and so forth. [21:42] And she’s an artist. I’ve seen her work on a couple of different mediums. I don’t want to really try and explain what her art is, but she’s a feminist artist. And she’s also really been pointing the camera at her family quite a bit. And it seems like film might be a newer medium for her. She’s used to do more painting and sculpture and stuff kind of thing. How’d the family take that? A lot of these people, I’ve talked to some relatives here, and one of them come on to talk to me, but I said, your Uncle Vince, he said, yeah, I know. But then he never would get back to me all of a sudden. So a lot of pressure to not say anything about it. Oh, yeah. Sometimes I will get started talking to somebody and then it’ll reach a certain point where they’re like oh no we can’t don’t be recording this don’t put my yeah anything so yeah news to that but gina was like no this is going to be part of my, political art. I’m going to point the camera at my family. I’m going to expose, some of the hypocrisy that I see there, the things I disagree with. [22:41] It’s a short documentary, and I find it very powerful because it’s a family video. One of the first people she’s aiming the camera at is, I think, one of her nieces. Talking to this young woman who is leaning on her car, maybe in her late teens, early 20s, and this young woman is saying, oh, yeah, I would marry a gangster if I had the chance. And I’m just like, do you not know your family? Do you not know the heart? And later on in the video, you get to hear some of the really just like gut wrenching stories of what pain people in her family have brought upon themselves through their involvement in organized crime and all the things that it entails. And this young woman is, I don’t know, she’s acting because she doesn’t even know this other uncle or this other cousin that she’s got that can tell her these stories. Or is it, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter or something. And that to me was shocking. That’s the kind of thing that needs, that’s somebody who needs their mind changed. And I was like, I hope she watches this video she’s in and changes her mind about how she feels about that life and wanting to be a part of it. But that’s what mafia culture creates more of, is people who want to be a part of that. [23:53] There’s a certain romance to it that started out with Robin Hood, if you will. You get a romance of the gangster, the criminal that maybe is good to some people, good to support people, good to their family. And it continues on to this day to John Gotti. He’s the most recent iteration of Robin Hood and Jesse James here in the Midwest. People love Jesse James. When I grew up, everybody, every family had a story about how a couple of guys came by their house back in the 1800s and they gave them a place to stay and a meal. And they left them like a $20 gold piece, which was like $500 or something. And they said, it was Jesse James. I know it was. It’s the romance of the gangster continues. Yes. We all would love to imagine that we’re on the gangster side and that the gangster agrees. Yeah. As long as we don’t have to go to jail or pay that price. Because to me, I’ve got a friend today that he spent about 12 years and he would give all that gangster life back to get that 12 years back for these kids growing up. He’s turned over a new life today. I had lunch with him and his son not too long ago. And it’s just his son has told him, he said, every time I had to walk away from you in the penitentiary and come back home after our visit, he said, I was just crushed. It’s a huge price to pay for that. But there’s still that romance continues. [25:13] That terrible price, I think, is part of what feeds the romance. If there was no risk, there wouldn’t be that allure. Yeah, that’s true. You met that risk and overcame it and went on, came out on top. It’s what they always like to claim that came out on top of it. So I understand that thought process. I take a lot of risk in my life just from the other side. I said, live to fight another day. Yeah, there really are different kinds of risks that you can take. I was writing about a contract killer in Texas, and one of his targets was a guy who was a grain dealer. And I was like, that’s a really weird target for murder, right? Like, why would you kill a grain dealer from rural Texas? And it was because his old partner had an insurance policy out on him and decided to cash in on it. That was Charles Harrison, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sad story. Charles Harrison. Yeah. It was like, these were two guys that took very different kinds of risks, right? You got Charles Harrelson, who kills people for money. That’s a certain kind of risk you’re definitely taking. And then there’s the guy who buys grain and then sells it. So he’s taking these risks for his community of farmers. [26:27] And I was like, that’s really wholesome. And that’s, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a really positive example of masculinity. That’s the kind of risk we’re supposed to take for the safety and well-being of our neighbors? Yeah. Even the farmers, they risk everything every year. Smaller farmer, I grew up in those families and a smaller farmer practically risk everything every year, being in on the weather. That’s why I didn’t stay on the farm. And the markets, you don’t know what the markets are going to do. It’s a gamble every year. That Charles Harrelson, that’s Woody Harrelson’s dad who killed the Judds, famous murder down in El Paso. And he had a business. He carried a card that said he was a hitman. It was his story. [27:10] Bold. He was a crazy bold dude. I did a whole three-part series on that whole Jimmy Chagra marijuana business [27:20] down there on the border. and his connection to it and the killing of Judge Wood. So it’s just a business in these guys. Hey, it’s not personal. It’s just business. Yikes. It’s crazy. But Justin, you got anything else you want to tell us about? Anything you’re working on? And remind guys your website and what you can find there. He has some really interesting stuff about the old early days in Chicago. I know that. I referred to some of that several years ago when I was doing something on Chicago. So give guys a little walk through on your website. It’s really interesting. Okay, so John Gotti is one name I don’t think you’re ever going to find on my website. Yeah, good. [27:59] I’m really addicted to origin stories. I like to find out how the Mafia was already present before that point when we say it started. Yeah, in the 20s. But gangsters don’t come out of nowhere. Gangs don’t come out of nowhere. They evolve. They grow. There are forces to create them. And so that’s what I’m interested in. I like to go around. And I spent a lot of my early career writing about one place and its effect on the United States, Corleone, where my family’s from in Sicily. And that was my first book, In Our Blood. And some of my first posts on mafia genealogy are in that thread. They’re about my family and the Corleonesi. But then I started to get into other [28:42] places and wanting to know about their stories and getting into other parts of Italy as well. So if you go to my website, you’re going to find stories like Charles Harrelson and the two guys that he killed before the judge, or in Chicago about the different little Italys that existed before Capone consolidated everything, or Kansas City I’m writing about, Nick Fatsuno and the Passantino brothers. I don’t even know if you know those guys, but I thought their further stories were amazing. [29:09] Passantino had a funeral home today, but the other names I don’t really know back then. I don’t know much about that or those early days. Did they seem to come from the same little town, the same general area? They didn’t, actually. A lot of them were Sicilian, and they come from Palermo province, but not all from the same town. Not from okay. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn’t able to put—there’s not a strong current there in Kansas City like I’ve found in other places where everybody is from one town. Yeah. [29:37] But not so much in Kansas City. A little more varied. Interesting. So that’s what you’ll find on my website. And then Pasqualina is my second book, and you can buy both of my books at Amazon. Got them behind me here, Airblood, Pasqualina. And Pasqualina is about that prohibition era, and if you like to understand where big-nosed Sam Koufari got his start, it’s in there. And the Shabelli brothers show up. It’s about those origins. I was talking to a friend of mine about this name, Skeeball or Skeebelly. Yes. Who had some relationship back in Springfield, and he just really knew Skeeball when he was young. [30:17] Yep, because it was the spelling of his name. I’m not even sure how they pronounced it. I think it’s Skeebelly. Skeebelly. That probably was. Yeah, Skeebelly. I know somebody named Skeebelly, so probably was. That’s like the name of the body shop here in Kansas City, and it’s P-A-C-E. But really it’s Pache. We’ve got to do it right. And that’s probably short for Pache. I don’t know. I wonder if the family pronounces it Pache or Pace. I think business-wise, but then the person who was talking was close to the family and they said, oh no, it’s Pache. So I thought, okay. [30:53] Interesting. The immigrant experience in this country is really always interesting. There’s always conflict and the interest is in the conflict. And as people try to make their way, and stopping with, oh God, it was an author, T.J. did the Westies. You guys know T.J. that did the Westies. And he said, yeah, he said, and he really was articulate about, as we’ve discussed this, that people come here want an opportunity, because they didn’t have any opportunity in the old country, whether it be Naples or southern Italy or Sicily. They came here, they really just wanted opportunity. And then the opportunity, you have to start fighting for opportunity. That’s the nature of the beast in this country. In any kind, any society, you’ve got to fight for opportunity when you’re an outsider and you come in. And so that was the early development. These people just wanting a little slice of this American pie that they’d heard so much about. The streets are paved with gold over here, but found out you’ve got to dig that old man. [31:52] Some people probably came over here thinking they were going to make an honest living and found themselves, by one step and another, involved in organized crime. And then there were other men who came here from Italy for whom the opportunity was to be a criminal here. Richer pickings. Yeah. And they started restaurants and had your typical immigrant, all the immigrant restaurants, all these Chinese, whatever kind of ethnic food is, they start out with an immigrant who then puts his kids and his cousins and his nephews and sisters and grandmas in the back room kitchen, start those restaurants. And people, us people that are already here like that food and they run them, they do a really good job at it. And so that’s a way to get started in grocery stores for their other fellow paisans. And those were the ways that they made it here, at least now, probably the same way in every city where there’s a large Italian population. Got to feed the other Italians. And so an Italian restaurant is natural. Yeah. And also owning your own business is just really smart for a lot of people. If you’re an organized crime, it’s a great way to hide what you’re doing. [32:59] And if you’re trying to get a naturalization status, especially now, being a business owner is really advantageous. Yeah, I bet. I was talking about that on getting a naturalization process that showed that you’re an entrepreneur and you believe in the system and you’re doing well. Yeah, interesting. [33:17] All right, Justin Cascio, and the website is Mafia Genealogy. He’s got a couple books on there in this documentary. I don’t know. Keep us up on that. Maybe if it comes out, I’ll make sure to get it out on something where people know that they can go out and see it. It sounds really interesting. Thanks, YOL. All right. Thanks, Justin. I’ll do that no more. Thank you, Justin. It’s really a pleasure to talk to you again. Always a pleasure being on your show. Thank you. Great. [33:44] Justin, see, I was going to ask you about something. What? Are you going through a publisher? You got a publisher? No, I’m self-published. You’re self-published? Okay. Yeah. See, I self-published several books, and I’m doing probably my last ones, a story of my life, kind of more of a memoir, my struggles and my moral dilemmas and all that during when I worked intelligence. And then I’ll explain all about the big civil mob war we had here during those years. And I don’t know. I started poking around. I thought, well, maybe I’ll try to get a regular publisher. But boy, it’s hard. You’ve got to get an agent. You can’t get attention of an agent because there’s hundreds and thousands of people out there writing books wanting to do all this. So thank God for Amazon. Yeah. I think if you already have your audience. Yeah. And you know who they are and you’re already talking to them. You don’t need to pay somebody else to do that for you. Yeah. Yeah. I’m paying an editor to go over to… That’s different. That’s no other strengths. But to get it sold out there. Out here making videos every day. The good thing about getting a publisher is you can get, and then you got a chance of getting it into Barnes & Noble and into libraries. [34:59] See, libraries. You might into libraries anyway. How’d you do that? How’d you figure that out? The local library has an interest in the book, so they bought it. Yeah, they did. But I’m talking about other libraries. Yeah, they can all buy the book the same way. Yeah, but how do they find the library buy books? [35:18] I think buy them from the publishers normally. And if your book is self-published and they want to carry that book, because, for instance, about local history, then they’ll buy it. Yeah. I’m thinking about how do they get it out in other New York or Chicago or some other city that will be looking for nonfiction books. Publishers. You have to do every step yourself instead of being massive. Yeah. And then like Barnes & Noble and places like that to get it in, that’s hard too. You can do that locally. Those places carry my books on the website. Who does? They’re buying it from Amazon. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, really? Yeah. Because that’s the only place you can get it. I think I sell a couple of my, I’ve seen some people from, I think it’s through at Brafta Digital, I think’s the name of it. That’s another thing that this thing went up on that Barnes & Noble did sell a few copies of it. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it. [36:21] But it’s interesting. It’s fun. How are you ever going to get a screenplay sold if you don’t get their attention? [36:30] That’s why most people I talk to, they’re trying to figure out how to get a movie made from their book. Gangsters ask me that question. They’re like, you figure I know the answer to how to get a movie made from YouTube? and I do not have that answer. Nobody knows that. It’s hard work. Yeah, I tell them nobody knows that, the answer. It’s God. A divine being that strikes you, whether it be the Apollo or the God of Abraham, or Jesus or some higher power reaches out and touches you and says, okay, I bless you, and now you’re going to have a movie made and Robert De Niro is going to play your part. Although anymore, they don’t want De Niro to play him because they hate him now, and they want somebody else. Oh, my God. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Justin. Likewise, Gary. Thanks so much. If I can do anything for you here in Kansas City, and as you’re going through your thing, if you’ve got any question or anything, I’ve got that one friend, that FBI agent, that he could maybe help you with if you’re looking for a connection or something. He knows quite a little bit. And somebody else was just talking about that, looking into that, those early days. But if you do have any questions or anything that you’re stumbled about here in Kansas City, be sure and give me a call, and I’ll see if I can’t steer you to somebody. I don’t know myself. I don’t really ever look at it. Okay. Okay. Stay safe. Thank you. You too.

Transcribed - Published: 12 January 2026

In this episode, we delve into the intricate world of the Chicago Outfit’s informants, featuring insights from my late friend, Cam Robinson, and Paul Whitcomb, a well-respected expert on the mob. This special compilation draws from past interviews and shorts that once highlighted various informants who operated during the notorious 1980s era of organized crime in Chicago. Through a series of concise segments, we explore the lives of key players who chose to turn against the Outfit, revealing the complex motivations and consequences of their decisions. We kick things off by revisiting the tale of Paul “Peanuts” Pansko, an influential figure leading the Polish faction of the Outfit. Pansko’s criminal activities, including a racetrack heist, not only placed him in dangerous territory but also set into motion a chain of events that would later link to the infamous Family Secrets trial. It’s during this journey that we outline how interconnected the informants’ narratives are, showcasing how Pansko’s actions inadvertently unraveled parts of the organization.   The discussion shifts to more dramatic stories, including Mario Rainone. Rainone’s infamous decision to cooperate with the authorities opened the door to significant revelations about Lenny Patrick, one of the highest-ranking Outfit members to switch sides. Rainone’s tapes ultimately led to the dismantling of major sections of the Outfit’s operations, including political connections that had long shielded them from legal repercussions.   We also explore the tale of Ken “Tokyo Joe” Eto, a Japanese mobster who thrived within the Outfit’s ranks. His attempts at self-preservation after surviving an assassination effort highlighted the stark realities faced by those who navigated the perilous landscape of organized crime. As he eventually became a witness for the prosecution, Eto’s insights illuminated the internal workings of one of Chicago’s most feared organizations. The episode further examines dramatic betrayals and deadly encounters that shaped the Outfit’s legacy. From the chilling events surrounding the murders of the Spilotro brothers, orchestrated by their own associates for reasons steeped in loyalty and betrayal, to the grim fate that met informants like Al Toco and the impact of domestic discord on organized crime, each tale is a window into the bleak realities faced by both mobsters and informants alike. As we round out the episode, we reflect on the cultural dynamics surrounding informants, particularly how personal relationships and family ties heavily influenced their decisions to cooperate. It becomes clear through the interviews that while fear of retribution often compels loyalty, the specter of betrayal looms large within the mob. This multifaceted examination blends personal stories with historical context, providing a deeper understanding of the Chicago Outfit’s complexity and its operatives. Join us in this retrospective journey through the shadows of organized crime as we pay homage to those who bravely shared their stories, revealing the inner workings of a criminal empire that continues to fascinate and terrify in equal measure. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, guys, after listening to Bob Cooley, one of the more damaging sources and witness and informant to the Chicago Outfit outside of the Calabrese family, [0:13] Nick and his nephew, Frank Jr., I got the rest of the Chicago Outfit informants on tap here. No, not really. They’re not coming in. But I did do a story. I did a series of shorts a few years, or I don’t know, two or three years ago, maybe. [0:32] I interviewed my late friend, Cam Robinson, rest in peace, Cam. So you get to hear from him again. And Paul Whitcomb, who is a Chicago outfit expert, he’s been on this. They used to have some kind of a round table show up there. I don’t know if they still have it or not with the Seiferts. But anyhow, I got these guys to sit down with me and talk about all the different informants in Chicago during the, it was during the 80s. So this is just kind of a series of shorts that I put up before. They’re six or eight minutes long, I think, each one of them, that they talk about different informants. This kind of threw it together as another little bonus episode we’ve done. And I went to Chicago, if you notice, after Johnny Russo, which I apologize for in a way, I don’t know. I mean, the guy’s got some crazy-ass stories, doesn’t he? Who am I to say that he didn’t do it? But most people know that he didn’t do most of that stuff. Anyhow, so I threw up another Chicago right away about the guy that had the race wire that they killed, James Reagan. [1:38] Then i had this interview that i’d been doing during those last couple weeks with bob cooley who’s appeared uh out of nowhere and he’ll maybe see him on some other shows now he’s he’s wanting to do shows he tells me so after hearing bob cooley talk i thought well i’m doing do one more i want to just throw it up as an extra uh from some of my old chicago outfit stuff and that’ll finish me off on the Chicago outfit for a while. I hadn’t, I hadn’t been in Chicago, uh, doing shows about Chicago for quite a while. And, and I didn’t want to, uh, neglect you guys. You know, I get a lot of books written about New York and I’ve got all these authors that are wanting to do these books about New York. Uh, not so much about Chicago. So if you got anybody that, you know, wants to, got a book and wants to come on the show, uh, talking about the outfit, why steer them to me. So anyhow, just sit back and relax and enjoy. [2:37] My late, great friend, Cam Robinson. One more look at Cam, for those of you who remember him, and Paul Whitcomb. And we’re going to talk about famous snitches from Chicago. Thanks, guys. Well, let’s move along now to, this is kind of interesting, Paul Peanuts Panczko, who was the leader of the Polish branch of the outfield. Is that what you would call Peanuts Panczko, the leader of the Polish branch? If the Polish branch is the Panczko family, which you could easily say there were three brothers, then yeah, that wouldn’t be right. We haven’t really done a show on them. I don’t know a whole lot about them other than they were released at all. So we said non-Italian, Peckerwood, as we call them at Kansas City, professional criminals who did a lot of business with different outfit people. And he did a robbery of a racetrack. I think it’s the Balmoral Racetrack. It’s the name of it. James Duke Basile and then Panczko was in trouble for that and he convinced Basile to come in and they did some talking remember anything about that situation, you know in a lot of ways you. [3:50] Panczko could be considered one of the first dominoes that eventually led to the Family Secrets trial. Panczko, as you said, led to Dookie Bazile, who they had done robberies together. Bazile led them to Scarpelli, who was a much higher guy. I mean, there’s debate, but he was, because there was a making ceremony at this time, but Scarpelli was pretty highly ranked. I mean, he was a known killer, and he was up there. He was in the wild bunch. But Scarpelli then did tell them about a lot of the things that Frank Calabrese had done. [4:28] He wasn’t known as well as Scarpelli had brought him up to be. And a lot of those things dominoed into what would eventually lead to family secrets years later. [4:42] Scarpelli, I think, did not know so much about Nick, but he did know about Frank. And so a lot of that information sort of filled in the gaps. And even though Frank Calabrese Jr. Led them led them to Nick They A lot of seeds were planted And can be traced back to Pianus Pansico Um. [5:01] So it is kind of an interesting line. Basile, he wore a wire on Scarpelli and not even talking about a lot of these things. It’s not the FBI knew about that. They were in a car together. Right. If I remember right, he even talked about a mob graveyard. They went up there and they found two or three bodies. One of them was connected. It wasn’t anybody really important, but one of them was connected to Harry Aleman. So it was a pretty important wearing of a wire on Scarpelli, who then came at himself for a while. And that’s what led to the family secrets. He talked about Frank Calabrese. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that’s right. And some of those bodies in that graveyard were 10 years apart, which was interesting. I’ve got, it’s on the map that I created, but some of those bodies, there was years in between them. So it was something they were going back to and they believed that there were a lot of things there they did not find. Yeah, because they built a health care facility or something. They built some big building over where there would have been bodies. Right. Right. And the fascinating thing about this is Scarpelli, like, just like Cam said, this guy was a serious killer. He was a muscle builder. He was a terrifying guy. I mean, he had almost inhuman physical strength. Yeah. And when he flipped, he was completely debriefed by the FBI and the DOJ and then decided to try and change his mind. [6:27] But before he could do that He hung himself in the bathroom Of the Metropolitan Correctional Center With his hands behind his back And a bag over his head, Who was he in prison with? Who was he in MCC with, Paul? Was it anybody? He did happen to be in the MCC with the German at the time. He bound his hands behind his back and put a bag over his own head. He did. He did. And so the outfit continues to somehow persuade people to take their own lives rather than testify against them. [7:07] It’s a hell of a way to die by suicide it is by suicide at least they didn’t have arrows in his back, not as far as we know yeah it was terrible he cut his own head off I saw a cartoon once that the homicide guy liked to go ahead and maybe real suckle of suicide because then you could just walk away from it so there’s a dead body laying there with a bunch of arrows at his back and a homicide detective standing over him with a hand and pencil and says, hmm, suicide, huh? [7:44] Got the inside joke. It worked homicide. You see how those guys sometimes will try to make something into a suicide that probably is a homicide. On the other hand, we had one, we had a mob guy, he wasn’t really a mob associate, who had gone to Vegas. He lost a lot of money and they found his body in his car at the airport parking lot after coming back from Vegas and they found out later lost a lot of money and the car was parked up against the fence and he was shot in the head and there was no gun in the car you know found so just assume that somebody shot him in his head the car kept going and rolling up against the fence. [8:25] But this one detective, I remember Bob Pence is his name. He was dumb. And he started, he went back over and he dusted that car for prints again. And he got some more evidence out of it. And then he went back to the airport and he looked and started asking questions. And he found out later that somebody who had a pickup truck parked there had a week later, three or four days later, come back and got his truck. When he got home he found a pistol inside the bed of his truck and he called the airport or he called somebody turned it in Pinson found that pistol that was a pistol that that shot the guy so Pinson’s theory was he was rolling along in his car he shot himself in the head and then he flipped that pistol out is with a reaction he flipped it out and went in the bed in that pickup and then it rolled on up against the fence and they ruled it a suicide wow damn that’s not that different than Scarpelli I mean the fbi to this day insists it was suicide yeah well, Oh, well, right. All right. Let’s move along to Mario. John, the arm. Rainone. [9:41] Is that correct, Cam? That yeah, that’s Rainone. Yeah. So tell us about that. I know we talked about this, you know, a little bit about this one. [9:50] This is kind of a funny one. He was he was sent to kill a building inspector. Raynaud was with the Grand Avenue crew and so he’s en route to kill this guy and this is one of those mob blunders and he sees a couple guys following him and it’s Rudy Fredo and Willie Messino and he recognizes him when he’s driving over there and it’s important to point out who these guys are, Cam, not to interrupt you Willie Messino, was the right hand man and bodyguard for Tony Accardo for 30 years I mean, he was serious, serious business. Rudy Frayto, you know, the chin, but Massino was serious news. If you saw Willie Massino, you knew he were in for trouble. Yeah, he wasn’t there as backup to do anything except clean up after Rainone, including Rainone. So Rainone saw the writing on the wall. He pulls up and he goes straight to the FBI. [10:54] And he informs, he talks to them and gives them his information. And later on, he sort of regrets doing so, denies that he ever did. Uh, there were, there were, uh, articles written about him. There’s a, there’s a Chicago Tribune writer, John Cass, and Ray Nolan had a back and forth with him writing letters. This is how these mob guys in Chicago operate, talking about, I’m, I ain’t no beefer. And, uh. Once he was out of prison in 2009, he was busted several more times. If you can believe it, he stayed in the criminal life. He was robbing a liquor store with another guy. And the guy he was robbing with, this is why I jump ahead a little bit, was a guy named Vincent Forliano. He claimed that he didn’t even know Fratto or Messino. These were guys he didn’t know, so he never would have informed against them. The guy he was robbing the liquor store with and he was committing other robberies with, Vincent Forliano, was Fredo’s son-in-law. [11:56] So he was committing robberies with a guy related to the guy, but he didn’t know who they were. And to say that somebody didn’t know, as Paul said, Willie Messino, is just ludicrous. Anybody in the criminal atmosphere, period, knew who Willie Messino was because you were probably paying money to it. to exist. And this is extremely important because Rainone, at the time this happened, Rainone cooperated long enough to record conversations with Lenny Patrick. That’s right. That’s right. And that set dominoes in place that would lead to the fall of the outfit. Even though he tried to take back his cooperation, to say he never cooperated, I’ve heard those tapes that were played in trials that I participated in, so I I know better. Uh, and that’s why they call him Mario flip flop Rainone because he, uh, would cooperate and uncooperate and then cooperate. But he is the one who got Lenny Patrick on the hook. Yeah. [13:00] Interesting, interesting. Let’s just continue on with this Lenny Patrick because we weren’t going to talk about him. That’s a good lead hand to talk about another, really one of the most important informants that year who testified. [13:13] Can you talk about the domino that led to the end? Rainone really, really flipped the domino that kicked over. Go ahead, Paul. Well, Lenny Patrick was the highest, and even to this day, remains the highest ranking member of the outfit to ever turn state’s evidence. The guy was a capo in all but name. He had been in charge of Rogers Park, the gambling. He was essentially the head of the Jewish arm of the mafia, kind of the Meyer Lansky figure of Chicago. And when the Lawndale neighborhood moved north to Rogers Park, he moved with them, and he had his own crew. He reported directly to Gus Alex, who was, of course, at the very top, and Sam Carlisi. And he was dealing with Marcello and Carlesi in a number of different outfit ventures, loan sharking. He personally had been staked by Carlesi with a quarter million in cash to put out on the street. And he was involved in extortions Bombings of theaters All these things directly at the command of Sam Carlisi Who was then the boss of bosses of the Chicago outfit So when Rainone got him on tape They set up what was the beginning of the end for the outfit And I think people need to understand who Gus Alex is also For people outside of Chicago Gus Alex was. [14:40] Basically, I guess you could call him the equivalent of maybe the consigliere in Chicago. When you look at Chicago, the triumvirate in the 70s, once a guy like Paul Ricca died and several major outfit leaders died in the early 70s. [14:58] Tony Accardo decided that the outfit would be led by himself, by Joy Iupa, and the political wing and all of the non-Italians and all of the grift and a lot of aspects would be led by Gus Alex. So he was essentially on the same level as Joey Iupa, and he was responsible for much more for things of greater import than Joey Iupa. I mean, controlling the political arm and all the payoffs and all of that is much, much more than the streets and the murders. So all the politics and all the anything that had to do was definitely fell under gus alex and he was part of a ruling triumvirate he was a non-italian part of a ruling triumvirate with iupa and uh acardo so he was the the leader top of the outfit and he had been for years going back to going back to the 30s and the 40s 40 he had come up under, the Murray the Camel Humphreys and had made those connections he was the most connected guy in the Chicago outfit, so for a guy like Lenny Patrick to be. [16:15] Rollover against is essentially the political leader, national political leader and political leader of Chicago. This was absolutely crippling to the outfit. That was he wiped out the entire political arm of the Chicago outfit. After Lenny Patrick brought down Gus Alex, this became a basically a street crime organization. It was that those political contacts. I mean, I think that’s a fair statement, right, Paul? Those political contacts and judges, I mean, that was all but eliminated with Gus Alex going away. You’re absolutely right, Cam. And he not only took out Gus Alex, but he took out the boss of the Italians, too. That’s right, yeah. Both of them at the same time. He wiped out the outfit, and you put it beautifully by saying it became a street crime organization. You think about the division of labor and it started with IUP and IUP and. [17:19] La Pietra, Jackie Cerone, they had all the gambling, a lot of the sports gambling, but they also had the skim from Las Vegas, and they ran all that stuff, while Gus Alex, along with Lenny Patrick, ran all that politics, and you can’t have a mob organization if you don’t have cover politically. That’s why even in Kansas City, we’re pretty clean here, but we still never had any real mob prosecutions. [17:47] And it certainly had very few, if any, little, if any mob prosecutions at Cook County. And you couldn’t even get convicted of a real crime, murder, assault, or something. It’s just a straight-out crime. You weren’t even trying to do a RICO, I think, on anybody. So it was, you know, they just operated with impunity. Well, you took out that whole gambling side. That was all the money coming in. And then shortly thereafter, you take out the political side, who then turns back and gets the new boss on the gambling side and loan sharking and all that. [18:23] I’ll tell you, by 1990, the outfit’s gone. It really is. It still exists to a degree, but Sam Carlisi was the last traditional old line boss of the outfit. you, that, in my opinion, that ever ruled. After that, it was never the same. Yeah, I think a guy like Gus Alex, you know, like you said, Gary, you had Aiuppa who was dealing with gambling, but I think that’s a lot of, there’s a lot of optics to that, you know, and you’ve got all these cities who have got characters who are not Italian, Gus Alex in Chicago, and, you know, as Paul said, Meyer Lansky, who was New York, and you had Mashie Rockman in Cleveland, and these characters not italians so they know when to step back and let and let the italians talk but that doesn’t mean that they’re not running things it’s just for the optics of city to city where the italians have to see that they’re dealing with italians they don’t walk in the room it doesn’t mean that behind the scenes they’re not pulling the levers they just because of of the uh uh criminal um. [19:34] The the criminal view of of non-italians in that world sort of sort of their own prejudices these guys don’t always walk in the room when they’re dealing with other cities gus alex is is sitting down with anybody in chicago but you go to kansas city you go to new york, you know meyer lansky would leave the room when they were when they were talking you know italian to Italian. And the same thing with Gus Alex or Mace Rockman or any of those other guys who are not Italian. It was just an optics city to city. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t pulling the levers. Is it Yehuda or Jehuda, Cam? Jehuda. I’ve always heard of Jehuda. Yeah, Jehuda. So he kind of dealed with the IRS that year. [20:23] He must have had some. The IRS was really strong working the mob in Chicago. I’ve noticed several references to IRS investigations. We did not have that in Kansas City, and the IRS did a little bit, but they were not as strong as they were up in Chicago. [20:38] Yeah, he met with an agent, Tom Moriarty, who’s been around and worked Chicago for a long time. He was a pretty well-known guy up here. But Bill Jehota worked under Ernest Rocco Infelice, who was a real powerhouse going back a long time. And out in Cicero, and his crew, a lot of these crews had their own little names, and they called the good shit Lollipop. He was a huge gambling enterprise, you know. And they bought a house up in Lake County, which is north of the city. It’s funny, this house they bought was actually the family that had lived in it. The son had murdered the family. It was a murder house before the outfit bought it. and uh they bought it used it as a as a gambling den and and after that moved out they used it for prostitution and they would park cars at a nearby motel that they ran and then then have a uh a, valet service that drove him to this this gambling house and there was also quite a few uh murders that uhJahoda witnessed i’m sure he took no part in it he just happened to be standing outside of the house when they when they these murders were committed there was a uh was it hal smith and um. [21:57] Oh i can’t remember the they killed somebody else in this home and they burnt these were guys who didn’t want to pay his tree tags, and they were gamblers who refused to give in. And he brought down this entire crew. I mean, Rocco and Felice was… There’s a famous picture of the day after the Spolatros were killed. And it was really the upper echelon of the up that you’ve got. You’ve got little Jimmy Marcello. You’ve got the boss, Sam Wings-Carlesi. You’ve got the street boss, Joe Ferriola. And you’ve got Rocco and Felice, who’s right there. These are the four top guys, basically, in the outfit as far as at this time, the Cicero crew had risen to the top. That was the powerhouse crew. And so he was involved in those discussions because he was such a powerhouse out there with Ferriola being the street boss. So he was, it really can’t be thatJahodatestimony that eventually brought down this crew was really, it really crippled that crew for a long time. Well, those people that went down in that trial have only in the last five years come out of prison. Yeah, we’ve actually had been talking to somebody. We’ve had the… [23:13] Opportunity to meet he brought down uh uh robert um to go beat um bellavia and another guy who doesn’t like to be mentioned who runs a pretty successful pizza pizza chain up in lake county and uh these guys went down for a long time the beat was down for 25 years and he just came out. [23:39] So and billJahoda have if you read his testimony it is kind of kind of odd that he was standing outside of the building and just looked in the window and they were committing a murder and he just he he places himself outside of the house witnessing a murder through the window which is convenient when you’re the one testifying against murderers it certainly is yeah. [24:03] So so that was he was involved in the gambling so that makes sense then the irs got him and millions of dollars millions of dollars a month they were bringing and he met uh, i don’t remember paul and you did he he contacted moriarty right or did moriarty reach out to him because he was under investigation i i thought Jahoda was was worried about himself so he reached out to them i can’t remember the details i think you’re right yeah i i think he was worried about his own his own safety gary and he reached out to moriarty and they met up at a hotel just outside the city on the uh up in the northwest and uh they talked about things i actually found the location and on the little map you can find where where they met each other but he they met each other in disgust and they would meet different locations and and jahuda wore a wire and some of those some of those wiretaps are they really make for that. [25:05] That those conversations come right out of the movie just i love what we’re doing out here and i love my job and and you actually where i’m going to make you trunk music i mean you really hear these things that that you see it right in the movies i mean you you can’t write the dialogue that these guys are actually using it’s it’s it’s you know it it comes straight out of a book i mean You’ve got, you’ve got, uh, this is the toughest dialogue you’ll ever hear. Interesting. How’d you buy it? Where’d you find that at? Is that, uh, it’s probably not the audio in probably anywhere. No book or something. Yeah. You can, if you look up, if you look up different, different, you know, you go on newspapers.com or you go in different, uh, I believe, uh, I’ve got, um, uh, mob textbook by, um, Howard Abedinsky. I’ve got a couple of copies of his, of his textbook, organized crime. And he’s got some clips of it. This guy who owns a pizza shop up north is talking about how he loves his job. He loves what he does. And it’s funny to hear he talk about smashing somebody and loving what you do. Really? I’ve heard a few conversations like that back at the station house. [26:25] I don’t care. It’s on both sides. Is that what you’re saying? When you live in that world. Those guys can go either direction. [26:37] Well, let’s talk about ex-Chicago cops. Speaking of cops, let’s talk about, Vince Rizza, his daughter actually appeared on that Chicago Mob Housewives, or they tried to do a show. And Frank Schweiss’ daughter was on it. And Pia Rizza, who has gotten some notoriety as a model or something, I can’t remember. And she really, she was tight. She would not talk about her dad at all. I read an interview of her. She would just talk about her dad at all. But he came in and he testified against Harry Aleman, of all people, and linked him to the murder of this bookie, Anthony Ritlinger. Remember that one? [27:22] Go ahead, Paul. No, that one I’m not very up on, Cam. I’m sorry. So, Ritlinger, I believe he didn’t want to pay his street tax, if I’m right, Gary. Yeah, you’re right. He had been warned. Rattlinger had been warned that he needs to pay, he needs to pay, and he was making a good deal of money. And Ratlinger was he was brought in just the normal course of action with the wild bunch because he was a wild bunch murder I’m a little rusty but here it comes so he was a wild bunch killing, he was brought in he was warned it was the typical Harry Ailerman and if I’m remembering correctly and people correct me if I’m not it was Butch Petruccelli they sat him down. [28:11] Usually it would be Butch and, um, uh, Borsellino who would do the talking, uh, Tony Borsellino, and they would do the talking. And then afterwards, Butch Petruccelli would just sit down and glare. So he was a pretty scary guy. And he had that, uh, uh, Malocchio, the, the evil eye, and he would just glare at people. And that would send the message and Rattlinger didn’t, didn’t listen. He was making too much money, he’s not going to pay any damn Degos, that kind of line. And so he, of course, fell victim to these guys. And I believe he may have been trunk music. I think I remember this one, Matt, but I can’t remember. Yeah, I got this one. He went to a restaurant. That’s right. That’s right. And he had already, his daughter lived with him. I’m not sure about the wife, but he had warned his family to take all kinds of extra cautious. He knew something was coming. And it was, you know, after reading that thing, it’s, It’s kind of like, well, we talked about Spilotro taking off their jewelry. Ken Eto did this similar kind of a thing and told his wife he may not be coming back. [29:22] I tell you, another guy that did the same thing was Sonny Black. That’s right. It came out about Joe Pistone, the Donnie Brasco story. He did the same thing. He went to a sit-down or a meeting, and he took off his jewelry, I believe left his billfold, when he went to the meeting. this. Ken Eto was the same way. Ken Eto, I think, thought he could talk his way out. I think all of them thought they could talk their way out of it. So Rettlinger went out by himself and sat in a prominent place in this local restaurant that was really well known up there in the north side. It’s north of downtown Chicago, and I can’t remember the name of it. [30:02] And he just sat there and pretty soon a car pulls up and two guys run in kind of like a Richard Cain kind of a deal and just start popping. And that was a Harry Aleman deal. That’s right. He did, I believe. There’s an old guy who married the girlfriend of Felix Adlericio, I believe. He and this woman are sitting out in front of their brownstone, and Aleman and some other dude pull out and get out when guys walk up to him and shoot him and kill him. [30:31] And so that was – Yeah, that was Petrocelli and Aleman walked up, And he had been, he had been dating, uh, uh, Aldericio’s, Alderico’s girlfriend. Now that’s the famous hit from beyond the grave. Because we’re going to go on the old Samuel’s just sitting in the lawn chair thinking he’d got it made. That’s right. You know, Gary, you and I did the show on the outfit, uh, a long time ago. No, I’m sorry. On the wild bunch, a long time ago. So a lot of those, and they did so much work back in the day. A lot of those run together, but yeah, you’re now, uh, now that you’re right, writing her was he was eating in a restaurant. I’m, Uh, I can’t remember the name. It may have been, been Luna’s, but he was, went out in public. He thought he’d be safe. And like you said, a lot of these guys have a six cents because they come up on the street and they know these things. And, uh, like a guy like Sammy and Reno knew it was coming. He was dodging them for a long time, but they, they know that their time is coming. Eventually they just, they stay ahead of it for a while and figure they can fight their way out or talk their way out. And yeah, they, he was blown away right in public. Like it was similar to the, I remember it being similar to the, to the Richard Cain murder. And this was in, it was right around the same time. It was, it was in the mid seventies, 75, 74, 75, 76. It might’ve been 75 that writing or happened right, right in the middle of the restaurant. [31:58] I’ve been a lot cheaper to pay the street tax, I reckon. You know, and it wasn’t, I don’t recall that they’re asking for so much, but once these murder started happening yeah i think it was it wasn’t like it was half or 75 i think they just wanted it was you know it might have been a quarter it might have just been a flat fee across the board but once that street tax was was instituted i mean we’ve talked about this before gary that was when the wild bunch was out there that was that was they really didn’t play around When Ferriola told these guys, get everybody in line, [32:31] they really cracked down and they weren’t playing at all. You pay or you die. And guys like Alem and Patrick Shelley, whether it was right in public or whatever, in the outfit in the 70s, Paul, you know this from Richard Cain and several others. They just write in public would just blow you away. and writing her was just was almost textbook just like the Richard Cain it was it was right in the right in the restaurant yeah I’ll tell you I’ll tell. [33:05] I was conflating him with Hal Smith. Okay. I’ll tell you something about those mob hits. When they kill somebody in public like that in a public way, more than likely it’s because whoever the victim is has been alerted, and they can’t get anybody to get close to them. They will already try to send somebody around to get them isolated, and when they can’t get them isolated, then they want them bad enough. They’ll just lay, as Frank Calabrese, I heard him say once, well, lay on them. And I thought, oh, that’s interesting. Well, lay on them. I read that somewhere else. They use that term when you’re following somebody and you’re trying to set them up, or yet they lay on them. Calabrese even said, you know, you’re like, get an empty refrigerator box and hide inside of it. I mean, it’s just like the kind of stuff we used to do at the intelligence unit to run surveillances on people. And so they’ll lay on them for a while until they can get you somewhat isolated. And if they can’t, then they’ll just take you out in public. It might be to send a message, but I don’t think so because it’s so risky to get somebody in public. You can have a young, all-fitty cop in there that you didn’t even notice, and he comes out blazing. And, you know, it’s just not worth it. Even if you take him out, he’s probably got to get you. [34:21] So it’s kind of a last resort. A desperation. Yeah, it’s desperation because they can’t get you isolated. [34:28] You look at some of these public murderers, guys like Richard Cain or Ridinger, like you said, who was on the watch. Sam Annarino, who was right on Cicero. [34:39] A guy like Chris Carty, who was years later. I mean, these are guys who would have been smart enough and street smart enough to be on the watch, to watch their step, to know what was going on. With the exception of a guy like Michael Cagnoni, who just happened to be difficult to get, and he probably might have had an idea that something was happening, but I think just he was a family guy, and so it was hard to isolate. They blew him up on the interstate, but I think that in general, that’s a good point, Gary. These guys, if they just run up and blow away, it’s just a last resort. That’s an excellent point. I have always been in that camp of, oh, that must be sending a message. But you, with your experience, I think you’re exactly right. One thing, guys, I think we’re mixing up Sambo Cesario with Sam Annarino. I was thinking when they – yeah, you’re right, Paul. I was thinking, though, when they blew away Sam Annarino in the parking lot with his family, though, they had been trying to get him for several months. And they finally just went after him in the parking lot, called in a robbery, and blew him away in the furniture store parking lot. That was what I meant. Yeah, Gary was referring to Sambo earlier. I just meant they had been trying to get Sam Annarino for a long time, and when they couldn’t, they just got him in the parking lot. [36:08] Well, interesting. You know, no matter how much terror these guys strike in the heart of their underlings, in the end, they still will turn once in a while. And I think people don’t really not turn because they’re afraid of getting killed so much if they don’t turn because they don’t want to have their family suffering the disgrace of them being a rat or a snitch. I think that’s more important to be a man and go out like a man in this subculture and believe me I’ve lived in a subculture where being a man and being a tough guy is more important than anything else, I think that’s the most important thing that keeps people from coming in you’re like a wimp you’re a puss, you can’t take it, can’t handle it you know what I mean you can’t handle five years I could do five years standing on my head or a tray like the dude told me so uh you know but even even with all that and still there’s a certain percentage that will end up coming in sure and usually there are people that either don’t care about their family like lenny patrick yeah or that don’t have close family so that they don’t have it so much of that pressure that you’re talking about gary because you make a really valid point that that that cultural value is so strong yeah yeah it’s it’s. [37:36] In a lot of these small towns, you see in Detroit where they’re all family tied in and everything, you don’t see informants. I think they’ve had one. Kansas City, as you said, Gary, you don’t see. But then you look at a place like Rochester where they’re all just lower tier mob guys. Everybody was informing on everybody because they really weren’t as upper echelon sort of mob guys. So I think that, like you said, once you get that culture seeped in, you’ve got those families and all, there’s a lot of factors. But if it’s a deep-rooted mob town, you really don’t see a lot of real informants. [38:11] So, guys, now we’ve got one that I did a show on. I did a couple of shows on him. I talked to the FBI agent who brought him in and dealt with him for quite a while. Ken Tokiojo Eto. He survived a murder attempt. When that didn’t happen for him with the outfit, what happened after that? [38:32] I believe his attempted assassins got killed themselves. So tell me a little bit about Tokyo Joe Eto. There’s a photograph I have from the late 50s, early 60s And it shows Joe Ferriola And a couple of other heavyweights Hanging around with a young Ken Eto, And a lot of people didn’t know who Ken Eto was But he ran the Japanese game, Gambling, Bolita And lots of money Poured into the outfit through Tokyo Joe As they called him And there was a rumor that perhaps Tokyo Joe was going to turn under a little bit of pressure. And so Jasper Campisi put three slugs in the back of his head. [39:22] Miraculously, he survived three slugs at point blank range. And if he wasn’t going to turn state’s evidence before, he certainly had a powerful incentive to do so now. He seems to insist As I’ve heard that he was not His intention was not It’s hard to say at this point But he says he had no intention Of flipping and that he’s not sure What the evidence was against him But he was not going to flip until, It was Yeah. [39:55] I’m drawing a blank, Paul. Who was it that sent? It wasn’t the saint. It was Vincent Solano. He was kind of Vincent Solano, who was a union guy and a made guy up there. He kind of had which one. [40:11] He was a capo. And which crew was it? Do you remember? He was on the north side. North side crew. North side crew. And actually, Ken went to Vince Solano and had a talk with him. Said you know what i can do this he was looking at a tray i had a dude tell me what’s that pressure and tried to get him to talk and he said uh he said what am i gonna get out of this a tray he said man i can do a tray standing on my head and i threw him right then that’s right gotta talk to me so uh and that’s all he had to do but solano for some reason uh who knows what was in his head because uh ken Eto had made him a lot of money a lot of money and he was a tough little dude he had he had survived he had been put in the uh concentration camps if you will during the internment camps yeah internment camps and then came as a young man up chicago and been around for a long time by the time this all came down he’d been with him for a long time and made him a lot of money and all kinds of different gambling operations but particularly the bolita. [41:13] So uh it just didn’t make sense i heard one thing that these guys in chicago got the idea Yeah, to keep the noise down, they were loading their own rounds with lighter loads of powder. I don’t know. They had like a hit car up there. The guys in Chicago were pretty sophisticated or tried to be. And so they used these lighter loads. And when it went into his head, it just didn’t penetrate his skull. I remember I was at the hospital once, and there was a young guy who had gotten shot in the head. And they said that the bullet was not a good bullet because it went in under his skin and then went under his scalp, along his skull, and then lodged up on his forehead. [41:56] Wow. And so Eto was kind of the same way. Those bullets were probably lodged up underneath his scalp. He pulled himself to a neighboring, I believe it was a pharmacy that was right there, a corner store. And then that guy went to help him. I think he had to dial a call of 911 or whatever. 911 was in place then. He had to call for help for himself from a phone booth. You know, he saved his own life by being smart and playing dead. Yeah, that’s right. And you look at Chicago, it’s a city of neighborhoods, and you’ve got the Mexican town, and you’ve got the different towns, and you’ve got Chinatown where there’s so much money and so much gambling. And while Haneda was Japanese and there’s obviously division between Japanese and Chinese, it would be much easier for him to go in and then some of these outfit guys and because of different things going on back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But he could go into neighborhoods and represent the outfit in ways in different communities that the outfit wouldn’t go into or a lot of these made guys. [43:12] And that gave him entry into a lot of communities. In the Asian community, there’s a lot of gambling that he was able to tap into. He was smart enough to see that as a route that maybe the Italian guys didn’t, just like Lenny Patrick, who we’ve talked about in other episodes, had that access into the Jewish communities and other Jewish gangsters. There’s a lot of gambling there. If you can get somebody who has an in to different communities, that’s really a way to go and that’s part of why he made so much money. A game like BolEto wouldn’t normally be and that’s huge in the Hispanic communities and huge with Asians also. You know in kansas city that’s interesting that you should point that out camp we had a um large vietnamese community moved in after the the boat peoples when it started and they moved in through the same church uh. [44:09] Sacred Heart Church and Don Bosco Center that the Italians moved in, the Sicilians moved into back in the turn of the century, the same neighborhoods. And Italians are getting successful and they’re moving out the suburbs and the Vietnamese are moving in and creating the Vietnamese restaurants and Vietnamese shops. And they brought, they have a love for gambling. Like you said, they have huge love for gambling. They don’t drink so much or do so many drugs, but they do love to gamble, it seemed to me like. [44:36] And so they had their own book. he was called the king a guy a friend of mine told me a story uh there’s a mob book he got on the periphery that neighborhood’s got a joint and he he was running a sports book and he had a lot of action going in and out of his joint so this one vietnamese guy had a big debt owed to the king so he goes down and talks to this guy’s name was Larry Strada, he ends up getting killed by some other uh mobsters in a deal they thought he was going to testify but i just needed to hear are there, this young, middle-aged Vietnamese guy goes down to the Caddyshack, Larry Strada’s bar. And he starts telling him about the king. He said, man, he said, the king, you take all your business. He said, he got all business down here. He take all your business. He said, you know, you need to do something about the king. He said, you know, we’re close to the river here. And then he made a motion across his throat like he was cutting his throat. So he was trying to get out of his gambling debt to convince this Italian, La Cosa Nostra bookie to go back and kill me yeah king piano. [45:42] You know i’ve heard a lot of stories and some of them are true some are not that one had to ring a truth to it it had a definite ring of truth that that got to do that playing them against each other yeah you bet and you know another thing about tokyo joe and you know he could testify But Ben Solano had Campizé and Gattuso killed right away. Found them in the trunk of their car, I think. Maybe at the airport, even. [46:09] Chicago trunk music, but they have some saying like that. And so Solano knew that they could testify against him, and they didn’t want to go down for attempted murder, more than likely, and he just didn’t take a chance. So he had them killed, and I can’t remember if he went down behind this or not. But another thing Tokyo Joe was able to do, I mean, he certainly could expose all the inner workings of what he knew about to the FBI, which gives you a lot of tips on where to go, who to work on, and maybe where to throw up microphones or some wiretaps. But he also traveled around he came to Kansas City during the skimming trial because they’re working on the Chicago hierarchy. So they just fly him into town. They show him that picture, the last separate picture where everybody’s in the picture. And they say, now, who’s that? Oh, that’s Aiuppa. Okay, then who’s that? Oh, that’s Vince Solano. Yeah, he reports to Aiuppa. You know, and who’s that guy? I can’t remember the other people at all. So the nation said that Joe is up hard. Oh, yeah, he reports to this guy. So to show the organization of the mob in Chicago and that it is an organization that gives orders to have other people carry it to make the RICO case, that he was a storyteller for that. And he didn’t know anything about the skim at all. But he was a storyteller on getting the mob name and the organization in front of a jury. That’s huge, as you know, Paul. [47:35] Absolutely. We had a similar arrangement during the Carlesi trial about how [47:40] the Carlesi crew operated and who was who, and to tell the story. Yeah. You have to make it a story. Let’s take a look at Betty Toco, which, uh, this is pretty interesting. There was a, um, I’m not sure. Albert Toco was your husband. Remind me what his position was at the outfit at that time. So Al Toco was, there’s sort of a division on who was the leadership of, who was the central leader of Chicago Heights. There’s Dominic Tuts Palermo and Al Toco, who was really a powerhouse in Chicago Heights. And Tuts Palermo was definitely highly connected and across the pond too, also in Italy. But uh Toco was involved in the in the chop shop wars really really heavily involved and he had a lot of connections in chicago too he was involved with lombardo and a lot of these chop shops throughout chicago he had a lot of partnerships and so this was a 30 million dollar a year racket stolen cars chop shops international car rings uh car rings throughout stolen car rings throughout the country. Toco was responsible for burying the Spolatro brothers. It was very sectioned off. Each crew had a part in their murder. And then Chicago Heights was responsible for the burial. [49:02] And they were down in Enos, Indiana. They got kind of turned around a little bit. They were down a farm road. They were burying them in a freshly tilled field. And the road where they’re on, there’s a little side road that you would drive down. There’s very little down there. I’ve, I’ve seen it, but a car happened to come down middle of night and they were in a, there’s a, there were a couple of feet off of a wooded area and they see this car coming down and they sort of all panicked and before they had a chance to cover the area or really do anything, it just looked like a freshly dug, it really just looked like freshly dug mound. And so they all fled and three of Toco’s guys went one way and he went the other. They had the car in both radios. [49:46] He’s wandering around barefoot, and he calls his wife finally. She shows up, and he’s screaming and yelling. And he runs to Florida, and he’s waiting for permission to come back from Joe Ferriola. He’s worried he’s going to get killed because they find the Spallachos immediately because the farmer sees his field all messed up, freshly tilled ground, and it looks really suspicious, like somebody had been poaching deer and burying the carcass. Uh but Toco was a tyrant to his wife he was he was horrible to her he was he was when you think of what a mob guy was that was Toco you know tipping the guy who mows his lawn the kid who mows his lawn hundred bucks and wandered around town everybody knows him but he’d come home and unlike a lot of these guys he was he was a real you know a real. [50:36] Real bastard to his wife you know and for years she put up with this sort of abuse and finally after this this happened and it was in the news and all he finally pushed her too far and she began informing on him and and he was arrested later on he was in his jail cell talking about all the murders he had committed and and this and that about his wife and uh his his uh uh A cellmate repeated everything that he said to try and lessen his sentence. So really, Toco got buried by his big mouth and his terrible behavior. He initially fled to Greece before he was arrested, and they extradited him back from Greece. So this is, I mean, Toco is like deep in mob behavior. [51:22] I mean, fleeing the country and all. I mean, it doesn’t get much more mafia than Al Toco. I hesitate to use that word with Chicago, but that was, Al Toco was running deep. and that Betty Tocco’s testimony eventually led to the trial of Al Tocco. And that was really a blow to the Chicago Heights crew that nowadays, I mean, they continued on and had a few rackets, but after the eventual trial that stemmed from that, it really wasn’t, there’s not much activity now. I’m in that area and there’s just, there’s really nothing here. [51:59] Interesting. Now, so Tony and Michael Spilotro had been lured to somebody’s house on the promise that Michael was going to be made. It’s my understanding. I believe that’s what Frank Collada had reported. And some other people, not part of the Chicago Heights crew, killed him. How did that go down? And how did they pass off the body? You guys, is there anything out there about that? Wasn’t that the family secrets trial, maybe? It was. And, of course, it’s been popularly portrayed in the movie Casino. And it’s surprisingly accurate Except for the fact That where they were beaten But what happened was Little Jimmy Marcello called them. [52:41] And said Sam, meaning Sam Carlisi, the boss, wanted to see them. And they knew that that was ominous because of what was going on beyond the scope of this show. But they took off the jewelry. They left. They told their wives, if we’re not back by 930, it’s not good. They really did not suspect that it was to make Michael. That’s what Collada said. You’re absolutely right about that, Gary. But I don’t think that’s correct at all. They knew that it was bad. And they went. He took a pistol, which was against the rules. They hit him a pistol. Tony hit a pistol on his brother, which you do not do when you go to see the boss. And they were picked up by, by Marcello and taken to a house. I, uh, was it Bensonville? Yeah. Up in Bensonville. Uh, in, in the basement, they walked down the stairs and all of a sudden they looked into the eyes of Carlici and, uh, DeFranzo and everybody, the whole, all the couples were there to spread the, the, uh, liability around and they were beaten to death with, with fists and feet, uh, in, in that basement and then transported to that burial ground, which coincidentally was just maybe a couple hundred yards away from Joey Aupa’s farm. [54:00] Right. So I guess that they must have had, uh, Toco standing by, because I don’t believe he was in that basement. I like that. He must have had him standing by to go grab the bodies and take them out. Really interesting. He should have had the old Doug before he got there. You know, that’s what they always say. First you dig the hole then you go do the murder right and i don’t think he had it done before he got there yeah i don’t i really that’s a good that’s a good point gary i really don’t know and nobody’s ever come forward to say what the status of the hole was beforehand uh you know it was a deep it was a deep it was it was a pretty deep hole uh but they may have had a dug ahead of Tom, but, but, uh, cause they knew the location and it’s pretty obscure location. So they had clearly been there before. And, and, you know, everybody knew that that was, I, I hope was, I got it right. Farm. And, uh, So they may have had it dug, and they just did a shoddy job covering it up. [55:05] But I also haven’t heard the specific details about how they handed it off to Toco. I don’t recall seeing that in Calabrese’s testimony. Yeah, it was Nick Calabrese that testified about that. It brought up the light. He named the killer. So he may not have gone that far, probably having Toco and having his wife testify that he did do this. that she picked him up out there. It was just a piece of the entire prosecution on the spot, which it really never was a trial or anything on that. I don’t believe. Another odd thing is he, I believe he ranted and raved the entire car ride back. And from where he was, you would run up with, It’s now turns into Indianapolis. So it’s a good car ride from where they were to Chicago Heights. I believe he ranted and raved about the guys and his crew and the burial and everything, the entire car ride, which was not something most guys would do in front of their wives. But I really, especially when he treated like that. Right. And complained about how long it took her to get there and everything. So she was able to verify a lot of what Calabrese was saying from the final end of it. Interesting. A friend of mine was in the penitentiary, and he said, there’s a guy in there who called himself a verifier. He said, what do you mean? He said, I’m a professional verifier. What he was, he was an informant. That’s what he was, but he called himself a verifier. [56:33] A girl would come to him and say, well, I heard this, this, and this. Is that true or not? He’d say, well, that’s true. That’s not true. [56:40] I guess that’s a more preferable term. Yeah, she was a verifier. Well, that was great. I really appreciate having that on there and Paul. And I really, I still miss Cam. Every time I get ready to do a Chicago show, I think, oh, I want to get Cam or Rochester. [56:58] We did one about Rochester. We did one about Utica. I did several other shows about other families. And he was a good guy and a real great researcher and a real expert on the outfit and other mafia families. So rest in peace, Cam and Paul. I hope to talk to you again one of these days. Guys, don’t forget, I got stuff to sell out there. Just go to my website or just search on my name for Amazon. I can rent my movies about the skim in Las Vegas, about the big mob war between the Savella brothers and the Spiro brothers in Kansas City. Then one about the great 1946 ballot theft in which the mob… Rigged election, helped Harry Truman rig an election. It’s a little harder to find than mine. You need to put ballot theft and Gary Jenkins. I think you’ll find it then. The other two, Gangland Wire and Brothers Against Brothers, Sabella Spiro, were a little bit easier to find. Had to put it up a different way because Amazon changed the rules, but I got them up there. So thanks a lot, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 5 January 2026

In this special short episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins presents a wild and largely forgotten chapter from Bob Cooley’s life—the former Chicago Outfit fixer, gambler, and lawyer whose career straddled the worlds of organized crime, corruption, and courtroom drama. Fresh off a long-form interview with Cooley, Gary pulls out a standalone story that feels almost too strange to be true: Cooley’s first real legal case, involving the infamous Chicago martial arts cult figure Count Dante, self-proclaimed “Deadliest Man Alive.” The episode revisits 1970s Chicago, when Count Dante ran multiple dojos across the city and cultivated a fearsome public image. A rivalry with a competing martial arts school—the Green Dragon Dojo—boiled over into violence when Dante and his followers stormed the school armed with medieval-style weapons. The confrontation ended with one man dead, and Dante charged with murder. At the time, Bob Cooley wasn’t even officially a lawyer yet—he had just taken the bar exam and was still working as a Chicago police officer. Despite that, Count Dante tracked him down, hired him on the spot, and insisted Cooley would be his attorney. What followed was a surreal two-year relationship involving Chicago nightlife, the Playboy Club and Mansion, mob figures, bar fights, and mounting public attention. When the case finally went to trial, the courtroom devolved into chaos as rival martial artists from both sides reenacted the violence with shouting, threats, and theatrical testimony. The judge, fed up with the spectacle, dismissed the case outright—instantly launching Bob Cooley’s reputation as a lawyer who had “beaten” a murder charge. Get Bob Cooley’s book When Corruption Was King. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey guys, this is a little shorty, uh, part of the long interview I did with Bob Cooley, former Chicago outfit, mob fixer, lawyer, uh, general man about town gambler been in, uh, not in witness protection, but he has been off the radar for several years and in hiding. He recently came back and he got hold of me and he wanted to come on the podcast. And you know, I’ve done one story about him, part of his story. This is another part of his story that’s kind of separate from everything else. It’s about a guy by the name of Count Dante. Now, he was kind of well-known in Chicago at the time back in the 70s. You’ll see some images of him in the show. He liked Bob. He got hold of Bob, and he wanted him to defend him. And Bob wasn’t even out of law school yet, but he wanted him to defend him. He had got in an argument with something called the Green Dragon Dojo. He had a dojo, and he had a whole bunch of dojos around town. [1:04] And he was pretty successful, but he built himself as a deadliest man alive. And this other dojo, they said something bad about him or something. I don’t know exactly how it started. So he took a crew of his and went over to the Green Dragon Dojo and kicked in the front door and went in. they had a big battle and they had maces and spears and, and a huge big fight. And somebody ends up getting killed in this fight. So they charged the count with murder and end up going to trial. Uh, Bob’s got, he’ll talk a little bit about it and, and, and his relationship with the count. They became good friends and he did a lot of stuff with the count over two years. It’s, uh, he didn’t say a lot, but, uh, enough to let you know that he and the count were, were pals for a while. In the end, Bob defends him. He’s just out of law school. It was first case, really first client, I think maybe. And they go to trial and, and both the prosecution puts on all their. [2:03] Prosecution witnesses, which are people of this Green Dragon dojo. And then Bob puts on the count and some of his people. And by the time they get done screaming and yelling and almost replaying this whole fight in the courtroom, the judge is so fed up with the whole thing that he just dismisses the whole case. And of course, when the count, he goes around telling everybody how Bob Cooley helped him beat a murder case. And from then on, you know, that’s the start of his reputation as a lawyer so it’s a it’s a hell of a story i’ll tell you that right now it’s a it’s a heck of a story so i’m in the police station now i’m in in fact after that that’s when i got involved out there with all the mobsters and the rest of them in the 18th district when i wasn’t able to work i was i was working undercover out there with them because it was something to do and uh. [2:58] I’m in the police station. I get a call to come into the police station because I’m in law school. I had just taken the bar. I had just taken the bar, and I knew I passed it. I just did. I never had a problem with anything. I knew that it was just a matter of when I’d be practicing law. I get a call to come into the police station. And when I come in there, there was this silly looking guy with a cape, with one of those, a C-tooth mesh outfit with a cape on and using blue eyes and with what I call the Dante beard. And he says, you’re Bob Foley? Yeah. Yeah. He says, you know, can I talk to you? [3:46] Can I talk to you? And I said, he says, John Began told me that, you know, this is where you’re working now. He said, I’d like to talk to you. He said, I have a little problem. And we go upstairs. His little problem was it was front page news in the papers. And I didn’t notice it or realize it. He was involved. He was charged with murder because he had been involved in that situation up there at the Green Dragon. He had broken in there, and they had killed, and his friend Jim Concevic had gotten killed. But anyhow, he said, and I’m charged with murder. He says, and I want to hire you. I says, you want to hire me? I says, I’m not a lawyer yet. He says to me, I’ve been following you. I’ve been, he says, I’ve noticed, I’ve known who you were for a long time, he said, and I’ve really been anxious to maybe get to, you know, I didn’t know where you were or whatever happened to you, he said, but he said, he said, I knew you at Mount Carmel, he said, you were a wrestler, he said, I was a wrestler too, he said, I was a wrestler too, and I didn’t remember his name, because it was John Kean at the time, I didn’t, I didn’t remember him, you know, for anything. He says, I haven’t passed the bar yet. He says, but John, sure you are, and I’m sure you will. [5:16] And if you don’t pass the bar, I want you to find me somebody. He says, because John tells me, you know all kinds of people. You have a lot of connections, which I did. I had been friendly with a lot of judges and a lot of other people who had known me for a number of years as a policeman and whatever. And when I first started practicing, even before I started practicing, a lot of these were friends of mine at the time. But anyhow, he says, so he gives me $5,000, and he says, and he said to me, if you don’t, he said, I said, well, then here’s what you can do. I said, and he had one of the big-name lawyers in Chicago. I think his name was Conley. He was one of the top lawyers in the city. Just tell him, tell him, continue. You don’t want to, because the case was set for trial. It was supposed to go to trial in a couple of weeks. Oh, yeah. I says, tell him you want to get it continued. Yeah. No way. This is front page. This is front page. Newspaper. Yeah. [6:26] The deadliest man in the world. And it was, you know, when they broke into this place and constipated a spear put through him, the count had pulled the guy’s eye out or whatever. This is at this Green Dragon. It was like a Green Dragon. It was a restaurant. No, no, no. The Green Dragon was a school. It was a Kung Fu school. Oh. In the Kung Fu school, they teach you how to use weapons, maces and swords and daggers. The Count had a number of skulls, but they were skulls just to teach you how to fight with your hands and teach you how to do it, you know, not with weapons, just by your hands. They broke the count. [7:12] The place itself had like one of those real thick wooden doors. I don’t know how he did it, but he broke it off the hinges when he went in there, and he came in with like four people. There were four people and himself, Joey Casello, Konsevic, and I forgot the other two guys’ names. But they broke in there. When they broke in there, one of the guys came at the count with one of those maces, those big ball things that you throw around. And the count took his eye out. He blocked it, took his eye out. Wow. In Konsevic, they threw a spear through him. They first hit him with a, and they put a spear right through him. What was this all about? What was the deal? What had happened was the count, the count got a call from the guy, the guy who owned it. They were competitors. The count had all kinds of these schools. And the other guy from the other school, the count had about six schools all throughout the city. [8:17] The other guy that owned that called the count and called him a pussy. He called him because he was upset because a lot of his students were going to the count. And he calls up there and basically said, you’re nothing but a pussy or something like that. Whatever he said, I don’t know what it was. But the count told him, you motherfucker, I’ll see you. And with six of his guys he went over there and broke in the door during one of the classes, and that’s when this quick fight broke off but when Tonsavik got stabbed he ran about a block away and that’s when he fell over for dead, so anyhow so you got a continuance I assume you got a continuance so then what happened at trial was this one of your early fixes you got put in for this dude. [9:13] Well as i said i’m i’m not even practicing yet i just said i just get them i i had taken the bar already and the results were going to be coming out the results are going to be coming out real soon because it had been about maybe two months or three months since i had taken them and uh and i told them i said well i said if or he said let me too if you can’t if you don’t pass the bar I’d still like you to find me Find me a good lawyer or whatever Because I have, you know, John has all kinds of faith in you And I’ll have all kinds of faith in you, And I won’t. [9:53] And that same night, in fact, the same night, we go out together. He wants to go out. He wants to take me out to dinner over at the Playboy, and he wants to take me over into the mansion and take me to the mansion with him. And why not? You know, so anyhow, we go out that night, the very first night we go out and went to the Playboy Club itself. We had dinner, and we went over to the mansion, and he introduced me to Hugh Hefner and some of those people there. He tells me this is going to be my lawyer, he says, this is going to be my new lawyer. He’s a policeman in that district yeah, I’m there in 18 at the time I’m there in 18 at the time. They all probably thought he was crazy too a lot of people thought he was crazy when he indicated I’m continuing to make a case until I, until i get him but anyhow uh now during that same period he’s calling me all the time he wants to go out with me and and he’s going out we’re getting we’re getting into two or three different fights in different areas he was after you know i think he was looking to start fights with people, and and he’s telling the people now everybody uh. [11:15] I’m one of the toughest people he’s ever met. This is what he’s telling everybody. Here’s the deadliest man alive, and he’s telling these people that. Yeah, be careful what that guy would claim. [11:30] Including, you know, with all these people, with all these people that I’m involved with now, Marco D’Amico and Ricky Borelli and all these mobsters. And I took him one time over to the club and introduced him so he could say hello to these people. [11:53] What happened at trial? Yeah. Oh, I’m not guilty. Okay. It was about maybe about two weeks later when I got the results, I passed the bar. Yeah. Now the lawyers were going to be sworn in, and it was going to be two or three weeks afterwards. My father knew a judge in Springfield. And my father, we took a train ride down to Springfield, and I got sworn in the next day. The judge in Springfield swore me in. So now I’m a lawyer. Now I’m a lawyer. And so I go and I file my appearance right away. Right away on him. The same day, I quit the police department. I resigned. I resigned from the police department. In fact, I had already had four or five other cases already lined up before I even got on. before I even got off the job. And we went to trial. We went to public sites. Now we’ve got a new lawyer. [13:05] A new lawyer. Bob Cooley. Who the hell is he? I mean, a lot of people knew me in the court system because— But not like that. Well, not just—yeah, because I was involved in all kinds of trials. I had made all kinds of arrests, and I knew a lot of these people. Thanks a lot for listening and keep coming back. I keep putting something out all the time. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 30 December 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with Bob Cooley, the once–well-connected Chicago lawyer who lived at the center of the city’s most notorious corruption machine. After years out of the public eye, Cooley recently resurfaced to revisit his explosive memoir, When Corruption Was King—and this conversation offers a rare, firsthand look at how organized crime, politics, and the court system intersected in Chicago for decades. Cooley traces his journey from growing up in a police family to serving as a Chicago police officer and ultimately becoming a criminal defense attorney whose real job was quietly fixing cases for the Chicago Outfit. His deep understanding of the judicial system made him indispensable to mob-connected power brokers like Pat Marcy, a political fixer with direct access to judges, prosecutors, and court clerks. Inside the Chicago Corruption Machine Cooley explains how verdicts were bought, cases were steered, and justice was manipulated—what insiders called the “Chicago Method.” He describes his relationships with key figures in organized crime, including gambling bosses like Marco D’Amico and violent enforcers such as Harry Aleman and Tony Spilotro, painting a chilling picture of life inside a world where loyalty was enforced by fear.   As his role deepened, so did the psychological toll. Cooley recounts living under constant threat, including a contract placed on his life after he refused to betray a fellow associate—an event that forced him to confront the cost of the life he was leading. Turning Point: Becoming a Federal Witness The episode covers Cooley’s pivotal decision in 1986 to cooperate with federal authorities, a move that helped dismantle powerful corruption networks through FBI Operation Gambat. Cooley breaks down how political connections—not just street-level violence—allowed the Outfit to operate with near-total impunity for so long.   Along the way, Cooley reflects on the moral reckoning that led him to turn on the system that had enriched and protected him, framing his story as one not just of crime and betrayal, but of reckoning and redemption. What Listeners Will Hear How Bob Cooley became the Outfit’s go-to case fixer The role of Pat Marcy and political corruption in Chicago courts Firsthand stories involving Marco D’Amico, Harry Aleman, and Tony Spilotro The emotional and psychological strain of living among violent criminals The decision to cooperate and the impact of Operation Gambat Why Cooley believes Chicago’s corruption endured for generations Why This Episode Matters Bob Cooley is one of the few people who saw the Chicago Outfit from inside the courtroom and the back rooms of power. His story reveals how deeply organized crime embedded itself into the institutions meant to uphold the law—and what it cost those who tried to escape it.   This episode sets the stage for a deeper follow-up conversation, where Gary and Cooley will continue unpacking the most dangerous and revealing moments of his life. Resources   Book: When Corruption Was King by Bob Cooley 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 Prelude to Bob Cooley’s Story 1:57 Bob Cooley’s Background 5:24 The Chicago Outfit Connection 8:24 The Turning Point 15:20 The Rise of a Mob Lawyer 23:54 A Life of Crime and Consequences 26:03 The Incident at the Police Station 50:27 The Count and His Influence 1:19:51 The Murder of a Friend 1:35:26 Contracts and Betrayal 1:40:36 Conclusion and Future Stories Transcript [0:00] Well, hey guys, this is a little prelude to my next story. Bob Cooley was a Chicago lawyer and an outfit associate who had been in, who has been in hiding for many years. I contacted him about six or seven years ago when I first started a podcast, I was able to get a phone number on him and, and got him on the phone. He was, I think it was out in the desert in Las Vegas area at the time. And at the time he was trying to sell his book when corruption was king to a movie producer And he really didn’t want to overexpose himself, and they didn’t really want him to do anything. And eventually, COVID hit, and the movie production was canceled. And it was just all over. There were several movie productions were canceled during COVID, if I remember right. A couple people who I have interviewed and had a movie deal going. Well, Bob recently remembered me, and he contacted me. He just called me out of the clear blue, and he wanted to revive his book and his story. He’s been, you know, way out of the limelight for a long time. And so I thought, well, I always wanted to interview this guy because he’s got a real insider’s knowledge to Chicago Outfit, the one that very few people have.   [1:08] You know, here’s what he knows about. And he provides valuable insight into the inner workings of the Outfit. And I don’t mean, you know, scheming up how to kill people and how to do robberies and burglars and all that. But the Chicago court system and Chicago politics, that’s a, that’s a, the, the mob, a mafia family can’t exist unless they have connections into the political system and especially the court system. Otherwise, what good are they? You know, I mean, they, they just take your money where they give you back. They can’t protect you from anybody.   [1:42] So I need to give you a little more of the backstory before we go on to the actual interview with Bob, because he kind of rambles a little bit and goes off and comes back and drops   [1:54] names that we don’t have time to go into explanation. So here’s a little bit of what he talked about. He went from being, as I said before, Chicago Outfit’s trusted fixer in the court system, and he eventually became the government star witness against them. He’s born, he’s about my age. He was born in 1943. He was an Irish-American police family and came from the Chicago South side. He was a cop himself for a short period of time, but he was going to law school while he was a policeman. And once he started practicing law, he moved right into criminal law and into first ward politics and the judicial world downtown.   [2:36] And that’s where the outfit and the old democratic machine intersected. He was in a restaurant called Counselor’s Row, which was right down. Bob had an office downtown. Well, he’s inside that system, and he uses his insider’s knowledge to fix cases. Once an outfit started noticing him that he could fix a case if he wanted to, he immediately became connected to the first ward power broker and outfit political conduit, a guy named Pat Marcy. Pat Marcy knew all the judges He knew all the court clerks And all the police officers And Bob was getting to know him too During this time But Bob was a guy who was out in He was a lawyer And he was working inside the court system Marcy was just a downtown fixer.   [3:22] But Bob got to where he could guarantee acquittals or light sentences for whoever came to him with the right amount of money, whether it be a mobster or a bookmaker or a juice loan guy or a crap politician, whoever it was, Bob could fix the case.   [3:36] One of the main guys tied to his work he was kind of attached to a crew everybody’s owned by somebody he was attached to the Elmwood Park crew and Marco D’Amico who was under John DeFranco and I can’t remember who was before DeFranco, was kind of his boss and he was a gambling boss and Bob was a huge gambler I mean a huge gambler and Bob will help fix cases for some notorious people Really, one of the most important stories that we’ll go into in the second episode of this is Harry the Hook Aleman. And he also helped fix the case for Tony Spolatro and several others. He’s always paid him in cash. And he lived large. As you’ll see, he lived large. And he moved comfortably between mobsters and politicians and judges. And he was one of the insiders back in the 70s, 60s or 70s mainly. He was an insider. But by the 80s, he’s burned out. He’s disgusted with himself. He sees some things that he doesn’t like. They put a contract out on him once because he wouldn’t give somebody up as an informant, and he tipped one of his clients off that he was going to come out that he was an informant, and the guy was able to escape, I believe. Well, I have to go back and listen to my own story.   [4:53] Finally in 1986 he walked unannounced they didn’t have a case on him and he walked unannounced in the U.S. Courthouse and offered himself up to take down this whole Pat Marcy and the whole mobster political clique in Chicago and he wore a wire for FBI an operation called Operation Gambat which is a gambling attorney because he was a huge gambler   [5:17] huge huge gambler and they did a sweeping probe and indicted tons of people over this. So let’s go ahead and listen to Robert Cooley.   [5:31] Uh, he, he, like I said, he’s a little bit rambling and a little bit hard to follow sometimes, but some of these names and, and, uh, and in the first episode, we’ll really talk about his history and, uh, where he came from and how he came up. He’ll mention somebody called the count and I’ll do that whole count story and a whole nother thing. So when he talks about the count, just disregard that it’ll be a short or something. And I got to tell that count story. It’s an interesting story. Uh, he, he gets involved with the only own, uh, association, uh, and, uh, and the, uh, Chinese Tong gang in, uh, Chicago and Chicago’s Chinatown. Uh, some of the other people he’ll talk about are Marco D’Amico, as I said, and D’Amico’s top aide, Rick Glantini, uh, another, uh, connected guy and worked for the city of Chicago is Robert Abinati. He was a truck driver.   [6:25] He was also related to D’Amico and D’Amico’s cousin, former Chicago police officer Ricky Borelli. Those are some of the names that he’ll mention in this. So let’s settle back and listen to Bob Cooley. Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. And, you know, we we deal with the mob here once a week, sometimes twice a week on the podcast. And I have a special guest that hadn’t been heard from for a while. And, you know, to be honest, guys, I’ve kind of gotten away from the outfit. I’ve been doing a lot of New York stuff and Springfield, Massachusetts and all around the country. And I kind of got away from Chicago. And we’re going back to Chicago today. And I’m honored that Bob Cooley got hold of me. Now, you may not know who Bob Cooley was, but Bob Cooley was a guy. He was a mob lawyer in Chicago, and he really probably, he heard him as much as anybody’s ever heard him, and he did it all of his own accord. He was more like an undercover agent that just wasn’t officially designated an FBI agent rather than an informant. But anyhow, welcome, Bob.   [7:37] Hello. Nice meeting you. Nice to meet you. And I’ve talked to you before. And you were busy before a few years ago. And you were getting ready to make some movies and stuff. And then COVID hit and a lot of that fell through. And that happened to several people I’ve talked to. You got a lot in common with me. I was a Kansas City policeman. And I ended up becoming a lawyer after I left the police department. And you were a Chicago copper. And then you left the police department a little bit earlier than I did and became a lawyer. And, and Bob, you’re from a Chicago police family, if I remember right. Is that correct? Oh, police, absolute police background, the whole family. Yes. Yeah. Your grandfather, your grandfather was killed in the line of duty. Is that right?   [8:25] Both of my grandfathers were killed in the line of duty. Wow. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I eventually did what I did. I was very, very close with my dad. Yeah, and your dad was a copper.   [8:38] He was a policeman, yeah. And in fact, you use that term. I, for many, many years, wouldn’t use that word. It just aggravated me when people would use the word copper. To me, it would show disrespect. Oh, really? I said to us in Kansas City, that’s what we call each other, you know, among coppers. Oh, I know. I know. But I know. But, you know, I just, for whatever reason, one of the things that aggravated me the most, in fact, when I was being cross-examined by this piece of shit, Eddie Jensen, the one I wrote about in my book that was, you know, getting a lot of people killed and whatever. And he made some comment about my father. and I got furious and I had to, you know, my father was unbelievably honest as a policeman.   [9:29] Everybody loved him because they didn’t have to share, uh, you know, but he was a detective. He had been written up many times in true and magazines and these magazines for making arrests. He was involved in the cartage detail. He was involved in all kinds of other things, but honest as the day is long. And, and, um, but, uh, again, the, uh, my father’s father was, uh, was a policeman and he was killed by a member of the Capone gang. And, uh, and when he was killed, after he was killed.   [10:05] The, uh, well, after he got shot, he got shot during a robbery after he got shot, he was in the hospital for a while. And then he went, then he went back home. He went back home to his, uh, you know, to his house, uh, cause he had seven kids. He had a big family too. And, uh, stayed with his, you know, with his wife and, and, and eventually died. And when he died they had a very mediocre funeral for him. They had a bigger, much bigger funeral when Al Capone’s brother died. But during that time when I was a kid when I was about 13, 12, 13 years old, I worked among other places at a grocery store where I delivered to my grandmother. My grandmother lived in South Park which later became Mark Luther King Drive. She lived a very, very meager life because she basically had nothing.   [11:09] What they gave them for the, at that time, what they gave them for the police department was a portion of the husband’s salary when they died, whatever. It was never a big deal like it is now, you know, like it is now when policemen get killed in the line of duty. and I’m thinking at the same time I’m thinking down the road, You know, about certain things from my past did come back to affect me.   [11:38] Doing what I was doing, when I got involved, and I got involved absolutely with all these different people. My father hated these people. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t realize how much. I didn’t realize much when I was growing, you know, when I was growing up and whatever. And even when I was practicing law and when I opened up Pratt-Mose, I would have my father and mother come along with other people. And the place was all full of mobsters. I mean, we’re talking about, you know, a lot of Capone’s whole crew. A lot of the gunmen were still alive. In fact, the ones that ran the first award were all gunmen from Capone’s mob. And never said a word, never said a word about it. You know, he met my partner, Johnny Diaco, who was part of the mob, the senator, and whatever colitis could be. My dad, when my dad was dying.   [12:38] When my dad was dying, he had what they didn’t call it, but it had to be Alzheimer’s because my dad was a unbelievably, he was a big, strong man, but he was never a fighter, sweet as could be to anybody and everybody. When he started getting bad, he started being mean to my mother and doing certain things. So we finally had to put him into a nursing home. When I went to see him in the nursing, and I had a close relationship with my dad because he saved my life many times when I was a kid. I was involved with stolen cars at school. I should have been thrown out of school. It was Mount Carmel, but he had been a Carmelite, almost a Carmelite priest.   [13:25] And whatever, and that’s what kept me from being kicked out of school at Marquette when they were going to throw me out there because I was, again, involved in a lot of fights, and I also had an apartment that we had across the hall from the shorter hall where I was supposed to stay when I was a freshman, and we were throwing huge parties, and they wanted to throw me out of school. My dad came, my dad came and instead of throwing me out, they let me resign and whatever he had done so much, you know, for me. Yeah.   [14:00] Now when I, when I meet, when I meet him up in the hospital, I, I came in the first time and it was about maybe 25 miles outside, you know, from where my office was downtown. And when I went in to see him, they had him strapped in a bed because apparently when he initially had two people in the room and when somebody would come in to try to talk to him and whatever, he would be nasty. And one time he punched one of the nurses who was, you know, because he was going in the bed and they wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t let him take him out. You know, I was furious and I had to go, I had to go through all that. And now, just before he died, it was about two or three days before he died, he didn’t recognize anybody except me. Didn’t recognize my mother. Didn’t recognize anybody. Yet when I would come into the room, son, that’s what he always called me, son, when I would come in. So he knew who I basically was. And he would even say, son, don’t let him do this to me when he had to go through or they took out something and he had to wear one. Of those, you know, those decatheters or whatever. Oh, yeah.   [15:15] Just before he died, he said to me, he said, son, he said, those are the people that killed my father. He said, and his case was fixed. After, I had never known that. In fact, his father, Star, was there at 11th and State, and I would see it when everyone went in there. Star was up there on the board as if there’s a policeman or a policeman killed in the line of duty. When he told me that it really and I talked to my brother who knew all about all that that’s what happened, the gunman killed him on 22nd street when that happened the case went to trial and he was found not guilty apparently the case was fixed I tell you what talk about poetic justice there your grandson is now in that system of fixing cases. I can’t even imagine what you must have felt like when you learned that at that point in your life. Man, that would be a grief. That would be tough. That’s what eventually made me one day decide that I had to do something to put an end to all that was going on there.   [16:25] I’m curious, what neighborhood did you grow up in? Neighborhood identity is pretty strong in Chicago. So what neighborhood do you claim? I grew up in the hood. First place I grew up, my first place when I was born, I was at 7428 South Vernon. Which is the south side, southeast side of the city. I was there until I was in sixth grade. That was St. Columbanus Parish. When I was in sixth grade, we had to move because that’s when they were doing all the blockbusting there in Chicago. That’s when the blacks were coming in. And when the blacks were coming in, and I truly recall, We’ve talked about this many times elsewhere. I remember knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell all hours of the day and night. A black family just moved in down the street. You’ve got to sell now. If you don’t, the values will all go down. And we would not move. My father’s philosophy, we wouldn’t move until somebody got killed in the area. Because he couldn’t afford it. He had nine kids. he’s an honest policeman making less than $5,000 a year.   [17:45] Working two, three jobs so we could all survive when he finished up, When he finished up with, when we finally moved, we finally moved, he went to 7646 South Langley. That was, again, further south, further south, and the area was all white at that time.   [18:09] We were there for like four years, and about maybe two or three years, and then the blacks started moving in again. The first one moved in, and it was the same pattern all over again. Yeah, same story in Kansas City and every other major city in the United States. They did that blockbusting and those real estate developers. Oh, yeah, blockbusters. They would call and tell you that the values wouldn’t go down. When I was 20, I joined the police department. Okay. That’s who paid my way through college and law school. All right. I joined the police department, and I became a policeman when I was 20.   [18:49] As soon as I could. My father was in recruit processing and I became a policeman. During the riots, I had an excuse not to go. They thought I was working. I was in the bar meeting my pals before I went to work. That’s why I couldn’t go to school at that time. But anyhow, I took some time off. I took some time off to, you know, to study, uh, because, you know, I had all C’s in one D in my first, in my first semester. And if you didn’t have a B, if you didn’t have a C average, you couldn’t, you kicked out of school at the end of a quarter. This is law school. You’re going to law school while you’re still an active policeman. Oh yeah, sure. That’s okay. So you work full time and went to law school. You worked full-time and went to law school at the same time. When I was 20, I joined the police department. Okay. That’s who paid my way through college and law school. All right. I joined the police department, and I became a policeman when I was 20, as soon as I could. My father was in recruit processing, and I became a policeman. Yeah, yeah. But anyhow, I went to confession that night.   [20:10] And when I went to confession, there was a girl, one of the few white people in the neighborhood, there was a girl who had gone before me into the confessional. And I knew the priest. I knew him because I used to go gambling with him. I knew the priest there at St. Felicis who heard the confessions. And this is the first time I had gone to confession with him even though I knew him.   [20:36] And I wanted to get some help from the big guy upstairs. And anyhow, when I leave, I leave about maybe 10 minutes later, and she had been saying her grace, you know, when I left. And when I walked out, I saw she was right across the street from my house, and there’s an alley right there. And she was a bit away from it, and there were about maybe 13, 14, 15 kids. when I say kids, they were anywhere from the age of probably about 15, 16 to about 18, 19. And they’re dragging her. They’re trying to drag her into the alley. And when I see that, when I see that, I head over there. When I get over there, I have my gun out. I have the gun out. And, you know, what the hell is going on? And, you know, and I told her, I told her her car was parked over there. I told her, you know, get out of here. And I’ve got my gun. I’ve got my gun in my hand. And I don’t know what I’m going to do now in terms of doing anything because I’m not going to shoot them. They’re standing there looking at me. And after a little while, I hear sirens going on.   [22:00] The Barton family lived across the street in an apartment building, and they saw what was going on. They saw me out there. It was about probably about seven o’clock at night. It was early at night and they put a call in 10-1 and call in 10-1. Assist the officer. Is that a assist the officer? It’s 1031. Police been in trouble. Yeah. And the squad’s from everywhere. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So you can hear, you can hear them coming. And now one of them says to me, and I know they’re pretty close. One of them says to me, you know, put away your gun and we’ll see how tough you are. And I did.   [22:42] Because you know they’re close. And I’m busy fighting with a couple of them. And they start running and I grab onto two of them. I’m holding onto them. I could only hold two. I couldn’t hold anymore. And the next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital about four days later. Wow. What had happened was they pushed me. Somebody, there was another one behind who pushed me right in front of a squad car coming down the street. Oh, shit. Yeah, man. And the car ran completely over me. They pulled me off from under the, just under the back wheels, I was told were right next to, were onto me, blood all over the place. Everybody thought I was dead. Right. Because my brothers, my one brother who was a police kid that, you know, heard all the noise and the family came in. I tried to prostrate my house and they all thought I was dead. But anyhow, I wake up in the hospital about three days later. When I wake up in the hospital, I’m like.   [23:54] Every bone of my body was broken. I’m up there like a mummy. And the mayor came to see me. All kinds of people came to see me. They made me into an even bigger star in my neighborhood. The Count lives down the street and is seeing all this stuff about me and whatever. Jumping quickly to another thing, which got me furious. Willie Grimes was the cop that was driving this quad. He was a racist. We had some blacks in the job. He was a total racist. When my brother and when some others were doing their best to try to find these people, he was protecting them. Some of them, if they caught, he was protecting them.   [24:48] I was off the job for like nine months when I came back to work. I never came to the hospital to see me. I mean, everybody came. Every day, my hospital went. Because one of the nurses that I was dating, in fact, she was one of those killed. That’s when Richard Speck wound up killing her and some of the others at the same time. It was at the South Chicago Hospital. Holy darn. What they did for me, I had buckets in my womb with ice. We were bringing beer and pizzas and whatever. Every day was like a party in there. When I finally came back to work, it was 11 o’clock at night. I worked out in South Chicago, and I’m sitting in the parking lot, and the media is there. The media, they had all kinds of cameras there. Robert Cooley’s coming back to work after like nine months. They wouldn’t let me go back.   [25:51] I’m walking by the squads. And Willie was a big guy. He was probably about 220, a big one of these big muscle builders and all that nonsense.   [26:04] He’s sitting in the first car. The cars are all lined up because when we would change, when we would change at like 11 30 uh you know the cars would all be waiting we jumped into the cars and off we go as i’m walking by the car i hear aren’t you afraid to walk in front of my car.   [26:26] I look over and he had a distinctive voice i walk over to the car and i reach in and i start punching them, and I’m trying to drag them out of the car. The cameras, the cameras are, you know, they’re all basically inside. They’re all inside. You know, as you walk in there, they’re all inside there. When I do, I eventually walk up there. But the other police came, and they dragged me. They dragged me away, and they brought me in, and whatever. We got transferred out the next day out of the district. And the first policeman I meet is Rick, Rick Dorelli, who’s connected with, who’s a monster. He’s connected with them. And, and he’s the one who told me, he said to me, you know, we played cards and he realized I was a gambler, but I had never dealt with bookmakers. And he said, he says, yeah, you want to make some money? You want to make some easy money? Well, yeah, sure. You know, uh, you know, and thinking that’s, you know, working security or something like that, like I had done back in Chicago, you know, like I had done on the south side. And he said, I want you to make some bets for me with somebody who said.   [27:43] And I remember him using the term. He said, I want you to be my face. He said, and I want you to make some bets for me. He said, and he said, and if you, if you’ll do it, I’ll give you a hundred dollars a week just to make the bets for me. And then, you know, and then meet with these people and pay these people off. And I said, sure. You know, I said, you know, why? He says, because I can’t play with these. people he said i’m connected with him he said and i’m not allowed to gamble myself he said but he told me he said i’ve got a couple people i take bets from i’ve got my own side deal going so i want you to do it i want you to do it and i’ll give i’ll give you to them as a customer, and you’re gonna be a customer and he’s and he tells people now that i got this other police He’s in law school. He comes from a real wealthy family, and he’s looking for a place to bet. He’s in Gambia. He’s looking for a place to bet.   [28:47] So I call this number, and I talk to this guy. He gives me a number. When you bet, you call, and you do this, and you do that. And I’m going to get $100 at the end of the week. Now, I’m making $5,200 a year, and they’re taking money out of my chest. I’m going to double my salary. I’m going to double my salary immediately. Why wouldn’t you do it? That’s fantastic money at the time. So I start doing it. And the first week I’m doing it, it was baseball season.   [29:19] And I’m making these bets. He’s betting $500 a game on a number of games. And he’s winning some, he’s losing some. But now, when I’m checking my numbers with the guy there, he owes, at the end of the week, he owes $3,500.   [29:38] And now, it’s getting bigger and bigger, he’s losing. I’m getting worried. What have I got myself into? Yeah, because it’s not him losing, it’s you losing to the bookie. That’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, holy, holy, Christopher, I’m thinking. But, you know, I’ve already jumped off the building. So anyhow. I’d be thinking, you better come up with a jack, dude. It’s time to pay up, man. Anyhow, so when I come to work the next day, I’m supposed to meet this guy at one of the clubs out there in the western suburbs.   [30:21] I’m supposed to meet the bookmaker out there. And Ricky meets me that morning, and he gives me the money. It’s like $3,400, and here’s $100 for you. Bingo. That’s great. So, okay. When I go to make the payment to him, it’s a nightclub, and I got some money in my pocket. Somebody, one of the guys, some guy walks up. I’m sitting at the bar and, you know, I hear you’re a copper. I said, pardon me? He says, I hear you’re a copper. He was a big guy. Yeah. I hear you’re a copper. Because at that time, I still only weighed maybe like, well, maybe 60, 65 pounds. I mean, I was in fantastic shape, but I wasn’t real big. And I said, I’m a policeman. I don’t like policemen. I said, go fuck yourself. or something like that. And before he could do anything, I labeled him. That was my first of about a half a dozen fights in those different bars out there.   [31:32] And the fights only lasted a few minutes because I would knock the person down. And if the person was real big, at times I’d get on top and just keep pounding before they could do anything. So I started with a reputation with those people at that time now as I’m, going through my world with these people oh no let’s stay with that one area now after the second week he loses again, this time not as much but he loses again and I’m thinking wow, He’s betting, and I’m contacted by a couple of people there. Yeah. Because these are all bookmakers there, and they see me paying off. So I’m going to be, listen, if you want another place to play, and I say, well, yeah. So my thought is, with baseball, it’s a game where you’re laying a price, laying 160, laying 170, laying 180. So if you lose $500, if you lose, you pay $850, and if you win, you only get $500.   [32:52] I’ve got a couple of people now, and they’ve got different lines. And what I can do now is I check with their lines. I check with Ricky’s guy and see what his line is. And I start moving his money elsewhere where I’ve got a 30, 40, sometimes 50 cent difference in the price. So I’d set it up where no matter what, I’m going to make some money, No matter what happens, I’ll make some money. But what I’m also doing is I’m making my own bets in there that will be covered. And as I start early winning, maybe for that week I win maybe $1,000, $1,500. And then as I meet other people and I’m making payments, within about four or five months, I’ve got 10 different bookmakers I’m dealing with. Who I’m dealing with. And it’s become like a business. I’m getting all the business from him, 500 a game, whatever. And I’ve got other people that are betting, you know, are betting big, who are betting through me. And I’m making all kinds of money at that time.   [34:14] But anyhow, now I mentioned a number of people, A number of people are, I’ve been with a number of people that got killed after dinner. One of the first ones was Tony Borsellino, a bookmaker. Tony was connected with the Northside people, with DeVarco, the one they called DeVarco. And we had gone to a we had gone to a I knew he was a hit man, we had gone to a basketball game over at DePaul because he had become a good friend of mine he liked hanging with me, because I was because at that time now I’m representing the main madams in Chicago too and they loved being around me they liked going wherever I was going to go so I always had all kinds of We left the ladies around. And we went to the basketball game. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant, a steakhouse on Chicago Avenue.   [35:26] Gee, why can’t I think of a name right now? We went to a steakhouse, and we had dinner. And when we finished up, it came over there. And when we finished up, I’d been there probably half a dozen times with him. And he was there with his girlfriend. We had dinner and about, I’d say it was maybe 10, 30, 11 o’clock, he says, you know, Bob, can you do me a favor? What’s that? Can you drop her off? He said, I have to go meet some friends. I have to go meet some friends of ours. And, you know, okay, sure, Tony, not a problem. And, you know, I took her home.   [36:09] The next day I wake up, Tony Barcellino was found dead. They killed him. He was found with some bullets in the back of his head. They killed him. Holy Christopher. And that’s my first—I found that I had been killed before that. But, you know, wow, that was—, prior to that, when I was betting, there was i paid off a bookmaker a guy named uh ritten shirt, rittenger yeah john rittenger yeah yeah yeah he was a personal friend yeah was he a personal friend of yours yeah they offed him too well i in fact i he i was paying him i met him to pay him I owed him around $4,500, and I met him at Greco’s at my restaurant he wanted to meet me out there because he wanted to talk to me about something else he had a problem some kind of a problem I can’t remember what that was.   [37:19] But he wanted to meet me at the restaurant so I met him at Greco’s, And I paid him the money. We talked for a while. And then he says, you know, I got to go. I got to go meet somebody. I got to go meet somebody else. I got to go straight now with somebody else. And he said, I’ll give you a call. He said, I’ll give you a call later. He said, because, you know, I want to talk to you about a problem that I have. He says, I want to talk to you about a problem that I have. I said, okay, sure. He goes to a pizza place. Up there in the Taylor Street area. That’s where he met Butchie and Harry. In fact, at the time, I knew both of them. Yeah, guys, that’s Butch Petrucelli and Harry Alem and a couple of really well-known mob outfit hitmen. Yeah, and they’re the ones that kill them. I’m thinking afterwards, I mean, But, you know, I wish I hadn’t, I wish I hadn’t, you know, I wish I could save him. I just gave him. Man, you’re cold, man.   [38:34] You could have walked with that money. That’s what I’m saying. So now, another situation. Let me cut in here a minute, guys. As I remember this Reitlinger hit, Joe Ferriola was a crew boss, and he was trying to line up all the bookies, as he called it. He wanted to line them up like Al Capone lined up all the speaks, that all the bookies had to fall in line and kick something into the outfit, and Reitlinger wouldn’t do it. He refused to do it no matter. They kept coming to him and asking him his way. I understand that. Is that what you remember? I knew him very well. Yeah. He was not the boss. Oh, the Ferriola? Yeah, he wasn’t the boss, but he was kind of the, he had a crew. He was the boss of the Cicero crew. Right. I saw Joe all the time at the racetrack. In fact, I’m the one who, I’m the one, by the time when I started wearing a wire, I was bringing undercover agents over. I was responsible for all that family secret stuff that happened down the road. Oh, really? You set the stage for all that? I’m the one who put them all in jail. All of them.   [39:52] So anyhow, we’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves. Reitlinger’s been killed. Joe Borelli or Ricky Borelli’s been killed. These guys are dropping around you, and you’re getting drawn into it deeper and deeper, it sounds to me like. Now, is this when you – what happens? How do you get drawn into this Chicago outfit even more and more as a bookie? Were you kicking up, too? Well, it started, it started, so many things happened that it just fell into place. It started, like I say, with building a reputation like I had. But the final situation in terms of with all the mobsters thinking that I’m not just a tough guy, I’m a bad guy.   [40:35] When I get a call, when Joey Cosella, Joey Cosella was a big, tough Italian kid. And he was involved heavily in bookmaking, and we became real close friends. Joey and I became real close friends. He raised Dobermans, and he’s the one who had the lion over at the car dealership. I get a call from Joey. He says, you’ve got to come over. I said, what’s up? He says, some guys came in, and they’re going to kill the count. They want to kill the count. And I said, And I said, what? This is before the Pewter thing. I said, what do you mean? And so I drive over there, and he says, Sammy Annarino and Pete Cucci. And Pete Cucci came in here, and they came in with shotguns, and they were going to kill them. I said, this was Chicago at the time. It’s hard to believe, but this was Chicago. And I said, who are they? I didn’t know who they were. I said, who are they? I mean, I didn’t know them by name. It turns out I did know them, but I didn’t know them by name. They were people that were always in Greco’s, and everybody in Greco knew me because I’m the owner.   [41:49] But anyhow, so I get a hold of Marco, and I said, Marco, and I told him what happened. I said, these guys, a couple of guys come in there looking for the talent. That are going to kill him because apparently he extorted somebody out of his business. And I said, who were they with? And he said, they were with Jimmy the bomber. They were with Jimmy Couture.   [42:15] I said, oh, they’re for legit then? I said, yeah. I said, can you call? I said, call Jimmy. I knew who he was. He was at the restaurant all the time. He was at Threatfuls all the time with a lot of these other people. And I met him, but I had no interest in him. He didn’t seem like a very friendly sort of anyone. I could care less about him. I represented a lot of guys that worked for him, that were involved with problems, but never really had a conversation with him other than I.   [42:53] I’m the owner. So I met with him. I wrote about that in the book. I met with them and got that straightened out where the count’s going to pay $25,000 and you’ll get a contract to the… He ripped off some guy out of a parlor, one of those massage parlors, not massage parlor, but one of those adult bookstores that were big money deals. Oh, yeah. So when I go to meet these guys, I’m told, go meet them and straighten this thing out. So I took Colin with me over to a motel right down the street from the racetrack, right down from the racetrack, and I met with him. I met with Pete Gucci. He was the boss of, you know, this sort of loop. When I get finished talking with him, I come back, and here’s the count and Sammy, and Sammy’s picking a fork with his finger and saying, you know, I rip out eyes with these.   [43:56] And the count says, I rip out eyes with these. And I said, what the fuck is going on here? I said, Pete, I said, you know, get him the fuck out of here. And you all at the count said, what’s the matter with you? You know, these guys are going to kill him. And now the moment I get involved in it, he knows he’s not going to have a problem. You know, he’s pulling this nonsense.   [44:23] So anyhow, this is how I meet Pete Gucci and Sammy Annarino. After a while, I stopped hanging around with the count because he was starting to go off the deep end. Yeah. Yeah.   [44:39] And we were at a party, a bear party with, I remember Willie Holman was there, and they were mostly black, the black guys up there on the south side. And I had just met this girl a day or two before, and the count says, you know, let’s go up to a party, a bear’s party up there on Lakeshore Drive. If we go up there, we go to this party, it’s going to be about maybe 35, 40 people in there, one or two whites, other than the players. And other than that, we’re the only white people there. When we walk into the place, there’s a couple of guys out there with shotguns. It was in a motel. And you walk through like an area where you go in there, and there’s a couple of guys standing there with shotguns. We go in and we go upstairs and, hey, how are you? And we’re talking with people. And I go in one room. I’m in one room.   [45:45] There were two rooms there. I’m in one room with a bunch of people and, you know, just talking and having a good old time. And the count was in the second room. And I hear Spade. He always called me Spade. Spade, Spade, you know. And I go in there, and he’s talking with Willie Holman. I remember it was one of them. He was the tackle, I think, with the Bears and a couple of others. And this whole room, all these black guys. And he goes, that’s Spade Cooley. He says, him and I will take on every one of you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re in a room, and he goes, that’s what he says. You know, him and I will take it on every one of you. And Willie did that. He calmed down. He’s telling him, calmed down. What the fuck? It was about a week or so after this. And because I had been out with the county, he’s calling me two or three times a week to go out. And we’re going, a lot of times it was these areas in the south side with a lot of blood. He liked being around Blacks.   [47:00] That’s when I met Gail Sayers, and I met some of these others through him. But a lot of the parties and stuff were in the South Side out there, mostly Blacks and all. But we had gone someplace for dinner, and we’re heading back home. We’re heading back to my place, and we’re in his car. He had a brown Cadillac convertible. On the side of it, it had these, you know, the Count Dante press. And he always ran around. He ran around most of the time in these goofy, you know, these goofy outfits with capes and things like that. I’m driving and when we’re talking and I’m like distracted looking at him. And I’m waiting at a stoplight over there right off of Chicago Avenue. And as we’re there.   [47:48] I barely touched the car in front of us, you know, as I’m drifting a little bit and barely touch it. There were four guys in the car and, you know, and the one guy jumps out first, one guy jumps out first and then second one, and they start screaming. And when the count gets out, the guy starts calling you, you faggot or something like that, you know, whatever. And as the other one gets out, I get out of the car. And the next thing I know, they jump back in the car, and they run through a red light, and they disappear. Somebody must have recognized them. One of the other people there must have realized who this is that they’re about to get into a little battle with. In fact, they ran the red light. They just ran the red light and disappeared. They come, no, no, no, no, no. And we go off to my apartment and I’m here with this girl, another girl I had just met a day or so before, because I was constantly meeting new people, uh, running around and, uh, we’re sitting on the couch. I’m sitting in the couch next to her and the count, the count was over there. And he suddenly says to her, he says, he says, this is one of the toughest people I’ve ever met. He said, and he says, tell her how tough you are. Tell her how tough you are.   [49:10] I said, you know, I said, you know, you know, and he says, tell them how tough you are. And I said, John, you know, and he walks over, And he makes a motion like this towards me. And he barely touched my chin. But I thought he broke it. He then steps back and he goes, I got to cut this hand off. He says, you saved my life. He said, you saved my life. He said, the only two friends I’ve had in the world were my father and you. He says, I wasn’t even that crazy about my mother. That’s when I said then he goes and he stands and I’m looking at it now he stands up against the window I looked up on the 29th floor, he stands by the window he says get your gun he says and I want you to aim it at me, and say now before you pull the trigger and I’ll stop the bullet, I’ll stop the bullet this guy was nuts and I said I said, what?   [50:28] He says, before you pull the trigger.   [50:36] Tell me before you pull the trigger and I’ll stop the bullet. He wanted me to shoot him. He stopped the bullet. When I got him out of there, Now when he’s calling me, I’m busy. I’m busy. Once in a while, I’d meet him someplace. No more driving or whatever. That was smart. I hadn’t seen him in probably five or six months. And this is, again, after the situation when I had met with Anna Randall and Gooch and the others. I’m up in my office and I get a I get a call from the county, and he said and I hadn’t probably seen him even maybe in a month or two at all and he said, can I come over and talk to you and I was playing cards in fact I had card games up in my office and, we called him Commissioner.   [51:41] O’Malley Ray O’Malley, he was the head of the police department at night. On midnights, he got there at 4 to 12. He started at 4 to 12 until midnights. He was the head of them. He was the commissioner. He was in charge of the whole department. He used to play cards up in my office. We had big card games up in my office. And when he’d come up there, we’d have the blue goose parked out in front. We’d have his bodyguard sitting out there by my door. When he was playing in the games. This went on for a couple of years.   [52:15] I was at the office, but, you know, I’m at the office playing cards.   [52:20] And I had a, it was a big suite. We had, you know, my office was a big office in this suite. We had about six other, you know, big, big suites in there. And so he comes over, he comes over to meet with me. And so I figure he’s in trouble. He’s arrested. He says, I’ve got a situation going. He says, well, you can get a million dollars. And he said, but if I tell you what it is, he says, and you’re in, he said, you got to be in. I’ll tell you what it is. I said, John, if I need money, I said, you get $2 million, then you can loan me if you want, but I don’t want to know what it is. I said, I just don’t want to know what it is.   [52:59] It was about a week or two later. It was a pure later, basically. It was a pure later caper. Yeah, guys, this was like the huge, huge. And the one he set it up with was Pete Gucci, the guy that was going to kill him. That was the one who set it up. I knew that. I thought I remembered that name from somewhere. I don’t remember. They ended up getting popped, but everybody got caught, and most of the money got returned. No, no. No bit that the outfit kept, I understand, if I remember right. What was the deal on that? There was more to it than that. Just before that happened, I go up, and Jerry Workman was another lawyer. Actually, he was attorney up in the office, post-rending bank. When I’m going up into the office, I see Pete Gucci there. This is probably a week or so after the situation with the count. Or maybe even a little bit longer than that. I said, Pete, what are you doing? I said, what are you doing here? Jerry Workston’s my lawyer. Oh, okay.   [53:55] Okay. He said, I didn’t know you were off here. I said, yeah. I said, Jerry’s a good friend of mine. Okay. And as I’m walking away, he says, you tell your friend the count to stop calling me at two, three in the morning. He says, I got a wife and kids and whatever. And I said to him, I said, Pete, you got no business dealing. I don’t know what it is. I said, but you guys got no business dealing involved in anything. You got no business being involved with him. And I walked away. I see him and I see him as he’s leaving. I see him as he’s leaving and say goodbye to him. Jerry was going to be playing cards.   [54:39] It was card night too. Jerry was going to be playing cards in my office because the people would come in usually about 9 o’clock, 9.30 is when the game would usually start. I talked with Jerry. He had been in there for a while. He was arrested a day or two later. The fbi comes in there because he had stashed about 35 000 in jerry’s couch oh really that was his bond money he got that was his bond money if he got to get bailed out to get him bailed out that was his bond money that was there that’s how bizarre so i got involved in so many situations like this but anyhow anyhow now sammy uh, So it’s about maybe a week or two later after this, when I’m in the car driving, I hear they robbed a purulator. The purulator was about a block and a half from my last police station. It was right down the street from the 18th district. That was the place that they robbed. And not long after that, word came out that supposedly a million dollars was dropped off in front of Jimmy the bomber, in front of his place. With Jimmy the bomber, both Sammy Ann Arino and Pete Gucci were under him. They were gunmen from his group. Now I get a call from, I get a count was never, you never heard the count’s name mentioned in there with anybody.   [56:07] The guy from Boston, you know, who they indicated, you know, came in to set it up. The count knew him from Boston. The count had some schools in Boston. And this was one of his students. And that’s how he knew this guy from Boston that got caught trying to take a, trying to leave the country with, you know, with a couple thousand, a couple million dollars of the money. Yeah, I read that. It was going down to the Caribbean somewhere and they caught him. And Sammy Ann Arino didn’t get involved in that. He wasn’t involved in that because I think he was back in the prison at the time.   [56:44] Now, when he’s out of prison, probably no more than about maybe three or four months after all that toilet stuff had died down, I get a call from Sam, and he wants me to represent him because he was arrested. What happened was he was shot in a car. He was in a car, and he had gotten shot. And when they shot him, he kicked out the window and somehow fought the guys off. When they found him there in the car and in his trunk, they found a hit kit. They said it was a hit kit. How could they know? It was a box that had core form in it, a ski mask, a ski mask, a gun, a gun with tape wrapped around it and the rest of it. Yeah. And he’s an extra time. Mask and tape or little bits of rope and shit like that. I’d say no. So he was charged with it, and he was charged with it in his case, and he had a case coming up. I met him the first time I met him. He came by my office, and he said, you know, and I said, no, that’s not a problem. And he says, but I’ve got to use Eddie Jensen, too.   [57:52] And I said, I said, what do you mean? I said, you don’t need Eddie. And he says, I was told I have to use him. Jimmy Couture, his boy, he said, I have to use him. I know why, because Eddie lets these mobsters know whenever anybody’s an informant, or if he’s mad at somebody, he can tell him he’s an informant, they get killed. And so I said, you know, that piece of shit. I said, you know, I want nothing to do with him. I had some interesting run-ins with him before, and I said, I want nothing to do with that worthless piece of shit. You know, he’s a jagoff. And I said, you know, I says, no. He said, please. I said, no. I said, Sammy, you know, you don’t need me. He knows the judge like I know the judge, Sardini. I said, you know, you’re not going to have a problem in there. I get a call from him again, maybe four or five days after that. He’s out of my restaurant and he says, Bob, please. He said, You know, he says, please, can I meet you? He says, I got a problem. I go out to the meeting. And so I thought, there’s something new. I want you to represent me. I want you to represent me, you know, on the case. And I says, did you get rid of that fence? He says, no, I have to use him. But I says, look, I’m not going to, I want, no, Sammy, no, I’m not going to do it. He leaves the restaurant. He gets about a mile and a half away. He gets shotgunned and he gets killed. In fact, I read about that a couple of days ago.   [59:22] I know it’s bullshit. They said he was leaving the restaurant. It was Marabelli’s. It was Marabelli’s Furniture Store. They said he was leaving the furniture store. What they did was they stopped traffic out there. They had people on the one side of the street, the other side of the street, and they followed, they chased him. When he got out of his car and was going to the furniture store, They blasted him with shotguns. They made sure he was killed this time. After that happened, it’s about maybe three or four days after that, I’m up in my office and I get a call. All right, when I come out, I always parked in front of City Hall. That was my parking spot. Mike and CM saved my spot. I parked there, or I parked in the bus stop, or in the mayor’s spot. Those were my spots. They saved it for me. I mean, that was it, for three, four, five years. That’s how it was. I didn’t want to wait in line in the parking lot. So my car is parked right in front of the parking lot. And as I go to get in my car, just fast, fast, so walking, because he was at 134 right down the street from my office and he parks like everybody else in the parking lot so he can wait 20 minutes to get his car.   [1:00:40] And, and, and Bob, Bob, and, you know, and when I meet up with him, I’m both standing and we’re both standing right there in front of the, in front of the, uh, the parking lot. And he was a big guy. He weighed probably about 280, 290, maybe more. You know, mushy, mushy type, not in good shape at all. In fact, he walked with a gimp or whatever. And he says, you better be careful, he says. Jimmy Couture is furious. He heard what you’ve been saying about me.   [1:01:17] You’ve been saying about me. and something’s liable to happen. And I went reserved. I grabbed him, and I threw him up on the wall, and I says, you motherfuckers. I said, my friends are killing your friends.   [1:01:34] I said, my friends, because he represented a number of these groups, but I’m with the most powerful group of all. And when I say I’m with him, I’m with him day and night, not like him just as their lawyer. Most of them hated him, too, because most of them knew what he was doing. Yeah most of these and most of these guys hated him and i said you know but i and and i just like you’re kissing his pants and i don’t know if he crapped in his pants too and uh you know because i just turned around i left that same night jimmy katura winds up getting six in the back of the head maybe three miles from where that took place yeah he was uh some kind of trouble been going on for a while. He was a guy who was like in that cop shop racket, and he had been killing some people involved with that. He was kind of like out away from the main crew closer to downtown, is my understanding. Like, you were in who were you in? Who was I talking about? Jimmy Couture? Jimmy Couture, yeah. He was no, Jimmy Couture was Jimmy Couture, in fact, all these killers, we’ll try and stay with this a little bit first. Jimmy Couture was a boss and he had probably about maybe a dozen, maybe more in his crew and, He didn’t get the message, I’m sure.   [1:03:01] Eddie Jensen firmly believes, obviously, because it’s the same day and same night when I tell him that my friends are killing your friends.   [1:03:14] He’s telling everybody that I had him kill, I’m sure. Yeah, yeah. Because it was about another few days after that when I’m out in Evanston going to a courthouse. And there you had to park down the street because there was no parking lot. Here I hear Eddie, you know, stay. I’m going to say Bob, Bob. And when he gets up, he says, Bob, he says, when I told you, I think you misunderstood. When I told you it was Jimmy Cattrone. it was it was jimmy katron was a lawyer that you know worked in out of his office close friend of mine too he was a good friend of mine it was jimmy it was jimmy katron that you know not because he obviously thought he believed so he’s got all these mobsters too bosses and all the rest thinking that i was involved in that when i when i wasn’t uh when i was when i wasn’t actually But it’s so amazing, Gary. And that’s one of a dozen stories of the same sort. I met unbelievable people. I mean, we’re talking about in New Orleans. We’re talking about in Boston. Now, if you were to say, who were you with? Always somebody’s with somebody. Were you with any particular crew or any particular crew.   [1:04:41] Buzz, were you totally independent?   [1:04:46] Everybody knew me to be with the Elmwood Park crew. And that was Jackie Cerrone before Michael, I mean, before Johnny DeFranco. That was Jackie Cerrone. Okay. That was Giancana. That was Mo Giancana. Mo was moving at the clubhouse all the time. That was the major people.   [1:05:13] And where was their clubhouse? What did they call their clubhouse? Was that the Survivors Clubhouse, or what was the name of their operation? Every group had one, sometimes more clubhouses. Right. That was where they would have card games in there. They’d have all kinds of other things going. the place was full of like in Marcos I call it Marcos but it was actually Jackie Sharon’s when I first got involved Jackie Sharon was the boss who became a good friend of mine, Jackie Sharon was the boss and Johnny DeFranco was, right under him and then a number of others as we go down, our group alone we had.   [1:06:04] Minimum, I’d say, a thousand or more people in our group alone. And who knows how many others, because we had control of the sheriff’s office, of the police department, of the sheriff, of the attorney general. We had control of all that through the elections. We controlled all that. So you had 1,000 people. You’re talking about all these different people who we would maybe call associates. It would be in and out of our club all the time. Okay. Yeah. We’re talking a number of policemen, a number of policemen, a number of different politicians of all sorts that we had. I knew dozens of people with no-show jobs there. We had control of all the departments, streets and sanitation, of absolutely urbanizing. We controlled all the way up to the Supreme Court. What about the first ward, Pat Marcy, and the first ward now? Was your crew and Jackie Cerrone’s crew, did that fall into the first ward, or were they totally there? How did that relate, the Pat Marcy and the politicians? And I found out all this over a period of time.   [1:07:28] Everything had changed right about the time I first got involved with these people. All these people you’ve read about, no one knows they were still alive. I met just about all of them when I got connected over there with the first word. A lot of the, we were talking about the gunmen themselves. All the Jackie not just Jackie but I’m talking about Milwaukee Phil Milwaukee Phil and all the rest of them they were over there at Councilors Row all the time because when they were to meet Pat Marcy, what they had there in the first war and, It just so happened, when I started in my office, it was with Alan Ackerman, who was at 100 North, where all their offices were upstairs. The first ward office was upstairs.   [1:08:22] And below the office, two floors below, I found out on this when I got involved with them, we had an office. looked like it was a vacant office because the windows were all blackened out. That’s where he had all the meetings with people. When Arcado or Yupa, anybody else, any of the other people came in, this is where he met them. When the people from out of town came in, we’re talking about when, what do you think?   [1:08:58] But when Alpha, when Fitzgerald, when all these people would come in, this is where they would have their meetings. Or these are the ones who would be out with us on these casino rides. When these people came in, this is where they would do the real talking because we’d go to different restaurants that weren’t bugged. If this office was checked every day, the one that they had down below, and nobody, nobody, their office was, I think it was on the 28th floor, the first ward office. You had the first ward office, and right next to it, you had the insurance office when everybody had to buy their insurance. Obviously at upper rates big office connected to the first ward office when the back there’s a door that goes right into into theirs but the people were told you never get off or you get off you get off at the office floor but then you you walk you you get off it and i’m sorry you get off it at the.   [1:10:11] You don’t get off at the first ward office you get off at one of the other offices one of the other offices or the other floors and when you come in there, then you’ll be taken someplace else after that a double shop that’s where they would go and in fact when I had to talk to Petter Cary messages or whatever people like Marco couldn’t talk to Marcy.   [1:10:41] Only a few people could. Only people at the very top level could. Marco, he was a major boss. He could not talk to Marco. If he needed, you know, whatever. Marco D’Amico. Marco was, you had, Marco was the one right under Johnny DeFonza. Yeah. Marco’s the one that was in charge. He was the one who was in charge of all the gambling. Not just in Chicago, but around all those areas in Cook County. We had not just Chicago. They were also the ones that were in charge of all the street tax, collecting all the street tax. That’s where the big, big money was also. Everybody paid. What happened was in the 70s, right as I got involved with these people, that’s why I’m sure that’s why Jimmy the Bomber got killed. And I know that’s why they killed Moe. I know that’s why they killed him. I know who killed him. A lot of people know who killed him. It was his bodyguard. He’s going to kill them. The whole system had changed. It changed during the time when Giancana was off in Mexico. I knew Giancana from when I was still a policeman, and I was connected with those mob people. When he was there in the Cook County Jail, I’m the one who brought in the policeman to bring him his sandwiches. He had to think just like me about beef and sausage sandwiches from his favorite place. So I could bring the policemen. That’s when I first met them.   [1:12:10] I had contacts there in the county jail to bring anybody I wanted in there at any time. That was to help some of the other people. When they’d be in there, they weren’t supposed to have visitors. These guys didn’t get the message. The whole system changed. And what happened now was when they started collecting street tax, they were collecting street tax not just from the bookmakers, from the chop shop guys. From the dealers, the mob. They were collecting street tax from the street gangs. Blackie Pasoli was the one that they reported to from the— What do you call it? Black B-Stone Rangers? Black B-Stone Rangers? With Jeff Ford. Jeff Ford, yeah. Blackie Pasoli was the one that these guys had to come to.   [1:13:01] But the money was unbelievable. You did anything, you paid a street tax. That’s why they started killing the people like they did to give them a message. But the way the thing changed, and I had all this on tape for the FBI, and they never followed up on it because that’s when Fitzgerald became the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, and that’s when Anton LaLukas started collecting millions of dollars from the mob. Now it was a new deal. When you grab somebody, he belonged to you. He belonged to this group that I know of. Like actually five major groups. You had the Cicero group. Joe Ferriero was in Rocky. And Rocky and Felice. Rocky and Felice was his great guys. Rocky and Felice was actually doing a lot more on the upstop on the streets than he was. You had that group there. You had the Chinatown group. You had the Chinatown group. You had Lombardo. You had Joey Lombardo, who actually lived over there, and everybody thought he had the crew. But actually, he had his crew went all the way out there to Indiana.   [1:14:12] The whole south side, the south side area, all the way south out to Indiana. That was him. That was his group. And then you had the other major group with Caesar, Caesar DeBarco. DeBarco. That was the, what do you call it, the Rush Street crew, Going all the way out to the interesting, how I met him the first time, DeMarco, how it went out to the, uh.   [1:14:42] Onto the city limits. Okay. When they grab, when somebody, when you grab somebody doing something, this became a huge business. When you grab somebody doing something, he belonged to you. Yeah. Yeah. And he paid you so much for whatever he’s doing. When I say he belonged to you, he was the person that paid you for whatever he’s doing. And you would pay a different amount depending on what you’re doing. As a bookmaker, as whatever. You paid them street tax and you paid or you died. I mean, that was the name of the game. So did you pay? Did you pay? Who did you have to pay? How did it work for you personally? You were making books. I was probably the only one that I know of that never paid them anything until I’m wearing a wire for the feds, and I wanted to show them what was being done and how it was being done.   [1:15:48] When I did what I did in the very beginning, these people had no idea. You know, they just knew that was a huge gamble and all the rest of it. But again, I was such an integral part of it. You know, they never even suggested, you know, they never thought in terms of, and they never realized how much I’m actually making. I was making huge sums of money. If they’d have known, if they would have known, they would have been after a piece of it, wouldn’t they? Oh, going how they are, sure. Yeah. Same as when Pat Marcy wanted me to fix that case, this is how they are with money. When Phant Marcy wanted me to fix that, the Chinese case, the only own case, which got me involved with their whole world. I became the lawyer for the only own.   [1:16:36] I was their lawyer in this country. I talked about that a little bit in the book. He wanted me to charge them $25,000 for that murder case. He said, see if you can get $25,000. And he says, and when you meet him, don’t tell him you’re connected with us. You know, don’t tell them you’re connected with us or whatever, because I guess they’re paying huge street tax, you know, for the gambling they’re doing there. Yeah, yeah. And I said, okay. And when I met with Wilson, you know, I just said, you know, thinking to myself, why not? This is shortly after they were going to whack me.   [1:17:17] So I was more than happy to get involved doing something like this. This is after they put a contract on me because I wouldn’t tell them about an informant. An informant, yeah. Let’s finish the own Leong. It’s like a Tong society, and they had all the gambling in Chinatown lined up. One of them committed a murder, and you’re going to represent one of their members of their organization, correct? Well, not one. I represented all four of them. There’s four of them. That was Lenny Chow and the other three that killed one of the other Chinese kids. But he asked me to try to get $25,000 from him. And when I met with Wilson Moy, who was the chairman there, I told him, And I said, well, I said, how much will you charge? And I said, well, I’ll tell you if you want. I said, if you want a jury trial, I said, that would be $25,000. I said, and if you want a bench trial, that would be $100,000. Yeah, and the bench trial is the ticket.   [1:18:32] I was unbelievably cautious. I never talk to strangers. That’s why these people love me so much and all the rest of them. I never talk to strangers. I call anybody a stranger I don’t know for 20 years and whatever. When I meet somebody, I don’t care what I’m told about them. I don’t say it. My attitude wasn’t as I taught these guys, and they forgot when I turned on them. You never discuss something you did before. always assuming you talk to somebody you’re talking into a wire and assuming you have no problem listening to it while you’re in a jury trial I said anytime somebody tries to talk to you about something what do you mean? I said say you robbed a bank with somebody afterwards for whatever reason he says remember that bank that we robbed I said the way you respond to him is what are you talking about, the bank I robbed. I would never do something. Are you trying to set me up?   [1:19:41] That’s exactly what I did with Bill Swano. He tried to clean up on the case with the judge.   [1:19:48] Back to only own. So did they give you the 25 or the 100? Because with the 100, you could pick the judge and pretty much guarantee a non-guilty. No, but see, what I’m saying is when I’m talking to him, When I’m talking to him, I want to talk to him in a way that it’s not going to be a problem for me down the road. So I just said to him, I’m friendly with a lot of people. And I think because I’m their friend, a lot of people give me every break in the world, I said.   [1:20:28] I did not say to him, I need the money for the judge. or anything else, and I did not say the case was fixed, but now when I go tell Penn, you know, I gave him a fee of $100,000 of $100,000, You know, I said, how much do you need? You know, what do I get now? And he says, you know, how about $5,000 or $10,000? And I said, what do you mean $5,000 or $10,000? This was after they were going to whack me. And so I said, I’m not bad. I said, you know, I should get at least like $25,000. And that’s exactly what I did get. But you were wearing a wire at that time on Pat, right? What’s that? You were wearing a wire on Pat at that time. Oh, no. That was four or five years before. Okay. So let’s get to that. Let’s get to that. We kind of know how it works now and who’s with who. Let’s get to that. You say they tried to kill you once. Let’s follow up on that a little bit. That they put a hit out on you at one time. What happened there? When Nick the Salesman, when Nick Balances, when they went to extort him, he was paying street tax.   [1:21:56] He was paying the street tax. And he was paying the Marco’s group, the Elmwood Park group. And he was paying. He had a card room where they had poker games and in other games and blackjack and the rest of it. He also was a bookmaker. He was making book. So he was paying for one. He was paying for the other. And now they found out he was booking at the racetracks. They had guys at the racetrack that were booking and they had to pay for that. So now they were going to give him and they gave him a third tax. The ones that went over to see him, Donnie, Frank Bernal, Donnie Scalise, and Nicola Annis. These were all good friends of mine, and I represented all three of them in the past.   [1:22:54] When they went to collect the money, he’s complaining, I got to pay for this and pay for that. How come I got to pay some more? And he was complaining about it. And they just said, you’ve got to pay. and he goes from what Nick told me afterwards, you know, he kept complaining and they just said, we’ll be back on such and such a day and we want the extra money now. It’s not going to be whatever it was. I don’t know what the exact numbers were. Yeah. But they will charge sometimes up to $25,000 with people, you know, for one thing. We’re not talking about nickels and dime stuff. We’re talking big B money. And so anyhow, when they go to see them and collect them, they don’t know it. He’s wearing a wire.   [1:23:46] And the FBI are listening in on this. And so a period of time afterwards, they get indicted. And Nick Philanesis, he goes into witness protection. They get indicted. And Marco had told me a number of times, Nobody wears a wire on us and lives to talk about it because I had talked about some other things. I’m too worried about these people or whatever. And he had said it many times. He had told me that. Frank Ranallo wanted me to represent him after he got indicted. And I told him no, because Nick Bolanis was told he had to use Eddie Jensen.   [1:24:36] And I wasn’t, I wouldn’t get any of their business. I didn’t want any of their business. When I represent, when I got one, I got a burglary case early in my career, before I started getting all the gambling from Marco. And it was a burglary case. And he told me, if you find out now that, you know, your informant, there’s an informant, you let us know. And I said, no, Mark, I’m not going to do that. What do you mean you’re not? I had already gotten the case. They had given me the case. I filed my parents and whatever and met the guy. I says, no, I don’t do that. And then he said, well, then you’re not going to get any more of our business. And I said, then fine. I don’t want that business then. It’s not a problem. I said, but I’m not going to do that. It’s just not going to happen. This is when I first got involved, you know, when I first got involved with those people, you know, as a lawyer. At this stage now, Jackie Cerrone’s kid, who was also a good friend of mine, he was representing the third one. So I told him, no, I’m not going to represent you. He starts bugging me. And Frank was a real close friend. In fact, Frank was the one I sent over when I thought maybe when Ricky Barley owed me that $50,000, I thought maybe rather than pay me, he’d kill me. That’s exactly what it was.   [1:26:02] So anyhow, I told Frank no, but he kept bugging me and kept bugging me. I get a call from Marco. He wanted me to meet him for dinner over at Billy’s. Billy’s is a restaurant that was right above Faces, one of the biggest nightclubs in the city. When I go to meet him, Jensen’s there. And I told him I wouldn’t because Jensen was involved representing Donnie Scalise. Donnie, too. Donnie, like, begged me, please, you know, Frank wants you, Frank wants you. And I says, no, I don’t, I’m not going to do it. And he said, you know, and Jensen was representing him. And, uh, in fact, you know, a number of times he, I just said, no. So when I meet Marco at Billy’s and when I walk in there, when I walk into the restaurant, there’s Jensen sitting at the table with him and with Donnie and a couple other people. And I walk in, and when I walk in and I see Jensen sitting there, I turn around and start to walk out. And Jensen, you know, Bob, Bob, you know, please, Bob, you know.   [1:27:10] And he comes over and he says, you know, can I talk to you? He says, you know, Frank wants you. He said, Frank wants you. He said, if you’ll do it, he said, my office will do all the work. He said, I’ll tell my secretary, I’ll tell my secretary, it’s the same as me, you can, you know, if you want to get any paperwork or whatever, but let’s bury the hatchet, he said, and let bygones be bygones. And, uh, and whatever. And this, I’m pretty sure was, this was after the incident with, you know, with, uh, where, where he, I, he threatened me and whatever. And, uh, so I said, all right. Anyhow, now I’m representing, I’m representing Frank. And we’re having our meetings all the time up in Eddie Johnson’s office and so forth. And we’re getting ready. And we’re preparing for trial. And at the same time, I’m doing obviously a lot of other gambling stuff. And I’m meeting Marco every week over there at the club to collect my money.   [1:28:24] I’m funny, I start our court hearing. Marco calls me. And he says, I want you to come to the club. I’ll meet you at the club. And when I meet him at the club, we take a walk around the block. And he says, you don’t have to worry anymore about the case. And I said, why is that? He says, because we’re going to kill him. And I said, Mark, I said, you know, why do you want to do that? I said, it’s going to hurt the case. I said, because he’s already testified before the grand jury, and I can’t cross-examine him and whatever. You don’t tell us how to run our business. And he says, he’s never raised his voice to me before. And he says, nobody wears a wire in us and lives to talk about it. And he’s in witness protection. But he’s in witness protection. I’m not thinking, you know, I’m hoping he’s just talking through his nose. And anyhow, we finish the talk and we get back and we go back into the club. And I collect the money and I go about my business.   [1:29:47] And I’m with Johnny DiArco. I’m pretty sure it was the same night. I’m with Johnny DiArco. So we double-dated and we went to a movie over on Michigan Avenue. And when we come out, I hear on the radio, somebody was just assassinated. And whatever. It was Nick Valensis. Holy Christopher. You know. Oh, wow. And whatever. I knew we were powerful. Even at that stage, I didn’t realize how powerful in certain sense we ran witness protection. When I say we, I mean, Marcy and company had obviously contacts in all of that. I knew also already we had contacts with the whole federal system in terms of people get, we could get people any penitentiary we wanted. When I became partners with Johnny, I was introduced to a number of judges up there, federal judges. He’s my law partner. I mean, they had everything. So, eligible, so be it. I get a call from Frank. The FBI wants to interrogate him. Where do we do it? In the Homewood Park Police Station.   [1:31:09] But when we own the Homewood Park, the police chief is a good friend of mine. Yeah. In every way with them. And so now when I’m in court, when I’m in court for one of the hearings, we go in there, we finish up court, and I get a call after I go back into my office from the U.S. Attorney, and he says, you know, I want to talk to you about something. And when I go in to see him, he tells me it’s going to come out in court tomorrow that Frank was an informant. Frank Rinella was an informant with us. The moment he tells me that, Frank’s a dead man. It’s Jackson that is involved in the case. I go over to Frank. I know where Frank lives. I go over to his house. He puts him in the little apartment. I tell him, I said, when I come in there, I said, Frank, there’s going to be a problem. I said, hey, it’s going to come out in court tomorrow that you were an informant. He’s standing there looking at me. he doesn’t say a word he walks over to he had a it was an old place years ago the refrigerator was there like in the living room and he opens the refrigerator opens the top part in the freezer he had a gun he actually had two guns in there yeah he took out he took out equally oh he said to me, are you carrying a weapon? And I said, no.   [1:32:39] Because the only place I didn’t was in federal court. Yeah, a big part. I was worried about it because nobody would ever throw to me.   [1:32:49] Anyhow, so he takes out the gun. He had a little thing with some ammunition in it. And he gets his hand, he gets his coat. We start walking out. He said, you’re going to walk out in front of me in case this is a trap, he said. Yeah. And he said, you’re going to have a problem. He said, you’re going to have a problem. And he gets in his car and he drives off. Yeah. I’m standing out there with this little gun in my hand and some bullets in my other hand and watching them drive away. Yeah. And I figured, I’ll have a problem, but we’ll get over it. And they’ll get over it. I’m out that night. When I come back, I get a call, one of the things I was doing, to make money. I mean, because it was like extra $500, I could get people out of PlayStation right away. I could get them. I had friends up there at the main station. And so when I went in there, they would process them right away and make sure we got, and I had a judge I could call.   [1:34:00] The night judge there left, but I had his home number and I could call and he would settle bonds. We could get out rather than sit in jail all night. I get a call from somebody, and Marco always called me when it was to go somewhere, I mean, to go get somebody. And actually, I wasn’t doing it by now. At this stage, I’ve got other people, a couple of lawyers that work for me that I would usually send myself and give them a couple hundred. They were pleased they should be to do that.   [1:34:34] So somebody calls me, and he says, I just got arrested. He said, I was told by Marco to call you, and if you can meet me, I’ve got the money for you to get my friend out of the jail who was just arrested. Something was wrong here. Nobody ever said, I’ll meet you. I had a time to give you the money. They knew I always had thousands in my pockets. So I just said, look. I said, I’m home right now. I said, I’m getting ready to go to bed. I got a girl over here. About 20 minutes later, I get another call from one of my good friends, another mobster. And he said, Bobby, he said, you know, they put a contract on you. And I said, oh, really? Really?   [1:35:21] And he said, yeah. He says, and you can’t ever tell anybody. I said, don’t be silly. I said, I never would. When I was with these people, like I told you, money to me meant nothing. I had dozens of these guys that I gave money to all the time. I did all kinds of things for them. These guys loved me, a lot of them. So anyhow, the next thing I go to court, and when I go to court.   [1:35:51] There’s nobody here. The judge says, I’ve got the room is full of people. But I’m with people because it was the easier case. And the judge says, where’s your client? And I said, yeah, I don’t know, judge. I said, I don’t know. And he said, you know, well, and he said something really interesting. He said to me, were you paid yet by your client? And I said, I said, no. I said, not fully. And he says, well, if you want, he said, you, You write out a request, and I’ll make sure we get that paid. I never sold that before, but whatever. I left town that afternoon. I flew out to California, moved in with a friend of mine, a florist. And now I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m going to get this thing straightened out once and for all. I’m coming back. So I did come back, and I got a hold of a friend of mine. Ronnie came in. Ronnie was a builder. And he had a building company and a big guy, a real big guy. And I said, you know, Ronnie, I got to go meet some people. I said, I want you to take a ride with me. Now, I don’t tell him anything about what’s going on. Oh, man.   [1:37:10] He knows me as the other person. And so I knew where they went and had dinner on this particular day. I think it was a Wednesday. And I knew every one state. Every Wednesday, they went to this one restaurant on Harlem, and it’s a restaurant or a window right in front of it, and there’s a bus stop, and Marco would always be at the big table right in the middle with about half a dozen of his guys. I knew that’s where it would be. And so I have Ronnie sitting, and Ronnie always carried weapons, too. I put on two. I put on my two in case I needed them. he’s sitting in the car he doesn’t know he’s sitting in the car and he’s maybe, 10, 15 feet, you know, from the window. And he’s looking, watching me as I walk in there. And these guys are, when they see me, all of them, their eyes all bit pop open. And I walk in there and I just point in motion to Marco. I said, and I pointed to the bathroom.   [1:38:23] And we go in there. And I said, Marco, I said, I left, but I’m back. I says, and I’m back to stay. I says, if I see anybody around me, I said, I’ll fucking kill them. I says, and if I thought I had a problem with you, I’d fucking kill you too. I said, I don’t want a problem. I knew Margot would never physically fuck with me. I knew these guys wouldn’t have guns because they’re in there, and I know they never care under those circumstances.   [1:38:56] And he said, well, mother, you never get any more business from us. And I said, Mark, look, I don’t want a problem. I said, I don’t want a problem. I said, but I’m telling you right now, you know, I’m here to stay. I said, I didn’t do a thing to hurt you people. I said, Frank wasn’t going to hurt you people. He was your friend as well as mine. He was your close friend. he was dealing with them with narcotics people he i said even if i said years before he was an informant uh he was giving him information on i could never gave him information on you people whatever i said and i said if i see anybody else by me i said you know i’ll film them I said, now, what I did too, I went back the next day. I went back the next day, and I saw John DeArco Sr., because.   [1:40:02] I believe, as others have said, they can’t do it without permission and all the rest of it with the top people. And I told him, I said, John, I want to break away from our partnership with Johnny. I want to break away from our partnership. Okay, guys, that’s enough Bob Cooley for today. I’ve got much more in the second episode. I’ll play that next week. It’s been most enlightening for me to listen to this guy talk.   [1:40:36] And I appreciate y’all listening in. And be sure to come back next week. Thanks, guys.  

Transcribed - Published: 29 December 2025

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Robert “Bob” Cooley, the Chicago lawyer whose extraordinary journey took him from deep inside the Outfit’s criminal operations to becoming one of the federal government’s most valuable witnesses against organized crime. Cooley pulls back the curtain on the hidden machinery of Chicago’s underworld, describing how corruption, bribery, and violence shaped the Chicago Outfit’s power in the 1970s and beyond. As a lawyer, gambler, and trusted insider, Cooley saw firsthand how mob influence tilted the scales of justice—often in open daylight. Inside the “Chicago Method” of Courtroom Corruption Cooley explains the notorious system of judicial bribery he once helped facilitate—what he calls the “Chicago Method.” He walks listeners through: How defense attorneys worked directly with Outfit associates to buy favorable rulings. The process of approaching and bribing judges. Why weak forensic standards of the era made witness discrediting the key mob strategy. His personal involvement in the infamous Harry Aleman murder case, where clear guilt was erased by corruption. Life in the Outfit: Gambling, Debt, and Mob Justice Cooley recounts his early days gambling with Chicago Outfit associates, including Marco D’Amico, Jackie Cerrone, and John DeFranzo. Notable stories include: The violent implications of unpaid gambling debts in mob circles. Tense interactions with bookmaker Hal Smith and the chaotic fallout of a bounced check involving mobster Eddie Corrado. How D’Amico often stepped in—sometimes with intimidation—to shield Cooley from harm. These stories reflect the daily volatility of life inside the Outfit, where money, fear, and loyalty intersect constantly. Bob Cooley has a great book titled When Corruption Was King where he goes into even greater detail and has many more stories from his life inside the Chicago Mob. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:06 Introduction to Bob Cooley 1:32 Life as an Outfit Gambler 2:00 My Relationship with Marco D’Amico 10:40 The Story of Hal Smith 11:05 A Dangerous Encounter 20:21 Meeting Sally D 22:23 A Contract on My Life 22:37 The Harry Alleman Case 34:47 Inside the Courtroom 51:08 The Verdict 52:26 Warning the Judge 53:49 The Case Against the Policewoman 58:36 Navigating the Legal Maze 1:08:14 The Outcome and Its Consequences 1:11:39 The Decision to Flip 1:24:38 A Father’s Influence 1:33:57 The Corruption Revealed 1:50:12 Political Connections 2:02:07 The Setup for Robbery 2:20:29 Consequences of Loyalty transcript [0:00] Hey, guys, my guest today is a former Chicago outfit associate named Robert Bob Cooley. He has a book out there titled When Corruption Was King. I highly recommend you get it if you want to look inside the Chicago outfit of the 1970s. Now, Bob’s going to tell us about his life as an outfit gambler, lawyer, and I use payoff to judges to get many, many not guilty verdicts. Now, I always call this the Chicago method. This happened for, I know, for Harry Ailman, a case we’re going to talk about, Tony Spolatro got one of these not-guilties. Now, the outfit member associate who is blessed to get this fix put in for him may be charged with a crime, even up to murder. And he gets a lawyer, a connected lawyer, and they’ll demand a bench trial. That means that only a judge makes the decision. A lawyer, like my guest, who worked with a political fixer named Pat Marcy. [0:53] They’ll work together and they’ll get a friendly judge assigned to that case and then they’ll bribe the judge. And all that judge needs is some kind of alibi witnesses and any kind of information to discredit any prosecution witnesses. Now, this is back in the olden days before you had all this DNA and all that kind of thing. So physical evidence was not really a part of it. Mainly, it was from witnesses. And they just have to discredit any prosecution witness. Then the judge can say, well, state hadn’t really proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt and issue a not guilty verdict and walk away. Now, our guest, Bob Cooley, is going to take us inside this world. [1:29] And it’s a world of beatings, murders, bribes, and other kinds of plots. He was a member of the Elmwood Park crew. He was a big gambler. He was a big loan shark. And he worked for a guy named Marco D’Amico, who was their gambling boss and loan shark in that crew. Among other bosses in this powerful crew were Jackie Cerrone, who will go on and become the underboss and eventually the boss for a short [1:55] period of time. and John no-nose DeFranzo, who will also go on to become the boss eventually. What was your relationship with Marco D’Amico? I talked about when I first came into the 18th district, when I came into work there, and they put me back in uniform, the first person I met was Rick Borelli. Rick Borelli, he was Marco’s cousin. [2:23] When I started gambling right away with Rick, within a couple of days, I’m being his face, and I’m calling and making bets. There was a restaurant across the street where every Wednesday and sometimes a couple days a week, I would meet with Ricky. And one of the first people he brought in there was Marco. Was Marco. And Marco would usually be with a person or two. And I thought they were just bookmakers. [2:55] And I started being friendly with him, meeting him there. Then I started having card games Up in my apartment And, Because now I’m making, in the very beginning, I’m making first $100 extra a week. And within a couple of weeks, I’m making $500, $600 extra a week. And within about a month, I’m making $1,000, sometimes more than that. So now I’m having card games, relatively big card games, because I’ve got a bankroll. I’ve got probably about $5,000, $6,000, which seemed like a lot of money to me. Initially uh and after a while that was a daily that was a daily deal but uh so we we started having card games up there and then we started socializing we started now he’d be at these nightclubs all the time when when i’d go to make my payoffs he was part of the main group there he was one of the call he was right he was right under jack right under at that time originally Jackie Cerrone, and then he was right under Johnny DeFranco. [4:07] But he was… And we became real good friends. We would double date and we spent a lot of time together. And we had these big card games. And that’s when I realized how powerful these people were. Because after one of the card games, there was somebody that was brought in, a guy named Corrado. I’m pretty sure his name was I can’t think of his first name, but Corrado was this person that somebody brought into the game. And after we finished playing cards, and I won all the time. I mean, I was a real good card player, and I wouldn’t drink. I’d supply liquor and food and everything, but I wouldn’t drink. And as the others drank, they were the same as at my office. After we finish up, this guy says, you want to play some? We can play maybe some gin. just human being. And he was there with another friend of his who just sat there and watched. So we played, not gin, but blackjack. We played and passed cards back and forth when you win. Then you’re the dealer and back and forth. And I lost, I think I lost about $4,000 or $13,000 to him. [5:26] I lost the cash that I had. I had cash about $5,000 or $6,000. And I gave him a check for the rest. You know, but everything I was doing was wrong, you know. Yeah, one of those nights. It’s in there. And it’s funny because you asked about Marco. [5:47] And I thought, you know, oh, well, and whatever. And I gave him a check. I said, no, it’s a good check. And it was. It was for my office. It was an office check that I gave him. And that next morning, I’m meeting with Ricky and with Marco at this restaurant across from the station before I go in and to work. And I said, son of a B. I said, you know, they had a bad night first ever. Marco wasn’t at that game, at that particular game. And what happened? I said, I blew about 12,000. Okay, but you? Wow. And I said, yeah, I said, one of the guys at the game played some, I played some blackjack with somebody. What was his name? Eddie, Eddie Corrado. Eddie Corrado. He said, that mother, he said, stop payment on the check. He said, stop payment on the check. He said, because it wasn’t nine o’clock. It was only like, you know, seven, you know, seven 30 or whatever. He said, and when he gets ahold of you, arrange to have him come to your house. Tell him you’ll have the money for him at your house. So that’s what I, that’s what I do. So I stopped payment on it probably about five after nine. I get a call from, from Mr. Corrado. You mother fucker. [7:17] I said, no, no. I said, there wasn’t enough money in the account. I said, I’m sorry. I said, all right, then I’ll be over. I said, no, no, no. I said, I’m in court right now. I said, I’m in court. I said, I’m going to be tied up all day. I’ll meet you at my place. I’ll meet you back there. Well, I’ll be there. You better have that. I want cash and you better have it. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m at home. Marco comes in. And he was there with Tony and Tony was there and Ricky was there. And Ricky was there. And they come over a little ahead of time and he comes in. I live on the 27th floor. The doorbell rings. Up he comes with some big mustache. [8:00] I open the door. You better have the fucking money and whatever. And I try to look nervous. I try to look real nervous. and when you walk into my apartment you walk in and you see the kitchen right in front of you and to the left to the left you’ve got an area away and you’ve got the the kitchen wall blocking what’s behind it over there and these three guys are standing marco and you are standing right there alongside of it and and when he walks in behind me, He sees Marco and all but shit in his pants. When he sees Marco, he goes, and Marco, you motherfucker. And, you know, oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was with you. He says, how much money you got me right now? And, you know, he says, pull your pockets out. He had about, he had about three or 4,000 with him. [9:02] And he says, you give him that. He says, you, he says, you, and he says, you give him that right now. And you apologize to him. Oh, and he says, he says, and I may give you a number. I want you to call. He says, we can put you to work. Apparently this guy had done the same thing to them a few years before and got the beating of his life somebody brought him into one of their card games, did he have a technique a cheating technique or had some marked cards no it was a card mechanic he could play games with cards they call him a mechanic and, in fact the guy was great at it because he had his own plane and everything else. But again, he had moved from Chicago and had just come back in the area. And they mounted. And so anyhow, he leaves. And he leaves then, and Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Marco took the money. Typical Bob guy, man. [10:19] And I says, what about the cash I lost to him? He says, well, you lost that. He says, you lost that. That’s when I realized how powerful. That’s when I realized how powerful that [10:35] he was part of the mob, not only a part of it, but one of the operational. Yeah, important part of it. That brings to mind another unbelievable situation that occurred. [10:49] The, uh, this is probably the, we’ll know the year by when it happened. There was a bookmaker named Hal Smith. Oh yeah. I remember that name. He got, tell us about Hal Smith. [11:05] Well, Hal Smith was a, he was a big guy too. A real, a real big guy. I met him on Rush street. He knew I was a gambler. He knew that I was a big gambler and I started gambling with him. Thank you. And I was with him probably for about maybe five or six months. And I’d win with him. I’d lose with him. And he would take big places. He would take $5,000 a game for me. And as they say, so the numbers were big. At the end of the week, we were sometimes $60,000, $70,000. [11:42] They were big numbers back and forth. And he was always good for the money. I was always good for the money. And one particular week, it was about $30,000. And I was waiting for money. Somebody else was supposed to give me even more than that. And the person put me off. And it was a good friend of mine. And I knew the money would be there. But a lot of times, these guys are going to collect it at a certain time. And then they’re expecting to give it to somebody else. Well, he was short. So I said, look, I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it tomorrow, I said, because I’m meeting somebody. Well, okay, it better be there. [12:31] And look, it’ll be there, okay? Not a problem. So the next day, the person I’m supposed to get it from says, I’ll have it in a couple of hours. I don’t have it right now, but I’ll have it by late this afternoon. And I’m in my office when Hale Smith calls me and I said, I’ll have it a little bit later. And he slams the phone bell. I’m downstairs in Counselor’s Row. In fact, I’m meeting with Butchie and Harry. We’re in a booth talking about something. They had just sent me some business or whatever, but I’m talking about something. And George, the owner of the restaurant, comes over and he says, somebody is asking who you are and they want to talk to you. And they point out this guy. It was a guy I had seen before, because a lot of times at two in the morning, I would go down on West Street, and they had entertainment upstairs. And there was this big English guy. He was an English guy, as you could tell by his accent, a real loud guy. And when I walk up to talk to him, and he’s talking loud enough so people can hear him, and he says, you better have that. I’m here for it. You better have that. You better have that money. [13:51] Bob Hellsmith sent me, you get the money and you better have that money or there’s going to be a problem or whatever. And I said, well, the money will be there, but people can hear what this guy, this guy talking that shit. And he leaves. And he leaves. He’s going to call me back. And he leaves. I said, I’m busy right now. I says, give me a call back when I’m in the office and I’ll meet with you. So Butch, he goes, what was that all about? And I said, you know, it’s somebody I owe some money to. Well, who is he? Who is he with? I said, Harold Smith. And he said, who’s Harold Smith? You don’t pay him anything. He said, you don’t pay him anything. And he calls, when he calls back, he says, you will arrange to meet him. And I said, you know, I said, well, where? [14:44] And they knew where I lived. They’d been to my place at that time. I’m living in Newberry Plaza and they said, there’s a, there’s a Walgreens drugstore in Chicago Avenue. Tell him you’ll meet him there at Walgreens, and we’ll take it. And he says, and we’ll take it from there. When he does call me, I said, look, I said, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning for sure at Walgreens. I’ll have the cash. I said, I’ll have the cash, and I’ll have all of it. I said, but, you know, I’m tied up on some things. I said, I’ll go to my own bank when I’m finished here and whatever, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning for sure at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. Okay. I sit down with them and they just said, I said, they said, go there and go meet them. And we’ll take care of it. The Walgreens is a store right in the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue, south side of the street. And it’s all windows. Huge windows here. Huge windows here. And a bus stop, a bus stop over here. When I get there, I park in the bus stop and I’m looking to my right and here he is sitting in a booth by himself, right by the window. And I look around and I don’t see anybody. I mean, with a lot of people, I don’t see Butchie. [16:06] Uh or red or anybody around but i i go in there anyhow and uh sit down and i uh sit down in the booth across from him and he’s eating breakfast he’s got some food in front of him and uh the girl comes by right away the girl comes by and i says you know just get me a coke and and he says have you got the money and i said yes and why i got i got a lot i got a lot of money in my pocket but not the, whatever it was he wanted, not the 27 or 28,000. There’s nobody there. And, uh, so we’re talking for no more than about two or three minutes. They had a telephone on the counter. I hear the phone ring and the waitress, the waitress is on the phone. And then she comes walking over and she says, it’s a call for you. And, and when I go get in the phone, I woke up and there’s a phone booth there. And here’s Butchie in the phone booth. And he’s there with a couple of other people. I hang the phone up. I walk over and I had my appointment booked. And I walk over and I just pick up the book. And as I’m walking out there, walking in, we pass each other. And so now when I get in my car and he’s looking at me in my car and right next to him is Butchie. And across from him was a red old male and Fat Herbie. [17:34] Herbie Blitzstein? Herbie Blitzstein? No, it wasn’t Herbie. This is another one. That’s one thing of Herbie. We called Herbie Fat. It was Fat Herbie. And the third guy is like sitting facing him. This is like, that weighs about 300 pounds. Oh, Sarno. Make Mike Sarno. Mike Sarno. That was it. And that’s, that’s, that’s who it was. You know, and I, I drive off, go to my office and go about my business. I get a call later that day from, uh, Hale Smith. Where’s my money? Where’s my money? I said, I gave it to your guy. You what? I gave it to him. I met him at nine o’clock this morning and I gave him the money. You did. And I said, yeah. Um, okay. And he hangs, and he hangs up. I don’t hear anything for a while. I never saw him again. I saw Hale a couple of times because he was always in one of the other restaurants. I lived in Newberry right across from there, but he never talked to me. I never talked to him, never said anything. It was about maybe it had to be a good couple of months later, When I read about Hale, Hale’s no longer with us. [18:52] That’s obviously how they found out about him. I never saw the other guy again. I’m hoping they didn’t kill him, but I’m assuming that’s what probably happened to him. In a public place like that, they probably just scared him off. He probably said, you know, I’m way over my head. I’m out of here. [19:15] They didn’t kill him in the public place he wouldn’t have been in the newspapers my little thought is like with the three guys they took him for a ride, I don’t know they just told him to leave town and he realized what it was and he did Hal didn’t get a chance to leave town Hal had other problems if I remember right I’d have to look it back up but he had other problems with the outfit what I found out later what they had done, was they had gotten one of their guys connected with him to find out who his customers were. In other words, one of the other people that he didn’t realize, that Hale didn’t realize was with them, they got him connected with them where he’s the one who’s doing his collecting and finding out who the customers were because they wanted to get all his customers as well as his money. It turns out he was He was a huge bookmaker for years. That’s what happened to him. And they just took his book. Yeah, I remember something about that story because I killed him in his house, I believe. Yeah, Sally D. [20:22] Sally D, yeah. Sally D was one. When I first met Sally D, he was with Marco’s Fruit, too. [20:30] He owned a pizza place up on the north side, north shore, and I broke him. I was betting with him and beating him week after week. And one of the last times I played with him, he couldn’t come up with the money. It took him an extra couple of weeks to get the cash to pay me. But we were real close friends with him. He’s a bizarre character because he was a totally low level at that time. Yeah. When he then connected up with the Cicero crew, with Rocky and Felice, with Rocky and those people, he became a boss with them. It turns out it was after they killed Al Smith. He was part of all that. That’s Salih De Laurentiis. He’s supposed to be a boss. He moved on up after the Family Secrets trial. He didn’t go down with that, I believe, and he kind of moved on up after that. I don’t know what happened to him. What was so funny about that, when he would come into the club, Marco’s club, Bobby Abinati. [21:42] Who was strictly a very low-level player, although we indicted him with the Gambia star. He’s the one who set up the robbery. Would that have been great if that would have gone through? He’s the one who set up that robbery in Wisconsin. He’d be making fun of Salihide all the time. [22:03] When Salihide would come in, he would make fun of him and joke about him and talk about what a loser he was. This is when he’s a boss of that crew. I mean, just a strange, I mean, nobody talked to bosses like that, especially when, when you’re, when you’re what they call Bobby, you know, what was Marco’s nickname for Bobby Knucklehead? [22:23] That was his nickname, Knucklehead. Pat Marcy, uh, contacted me about, you know, handling me in the only own case. [22:32] I couldn’t have been happier because that was a short time after they put a contract on me. So now i realized if they’re going to be making money you know they finally stopped because for good six seven months when i when i came back to chicago uh i was checking under my car every day in case there was a bomb i moved i moved from uh from a place that i own in the suburbs into an apartment complex so i wouldn’t be living on the first floor yeah it’d be impossible to somebody to break into my, you know, took them thrashing into my place. I changed my whole life around in that sense. [23:10] And when I drove everywhere I went, you know, I would go on the highway and then jump over. I would do all, I wanted to make absolutes. Even though nobody came around, I wasn’t taking any chances for a long period of time. And that was too when it cost me a fortune because that’s when I stopped dealing with the bookmakers because I wasn’t going to be in a position where I had to go meet somebody at any time to collect my money and whatever. [23:39] So what had happened, though, was somebody came to see me. And when I was practicing, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t do. I set my own rules. I would not get involved. After the Harry Alleman case, I never got involved anymore myself fixing certain cases. But even prior to that, I wouldn’t fix certain cases. I wouldn’t get involved in certain cases, especially involving the police, because my father was such a terrific policeman, and I felt I was too in a lot of sentences. I loved the police. I disliked some of the crooked cops that I knew, but on the surface, I’d be friendly with them, etc. Harry Ailman was a prolific hitman for the Elmwood Park crew. He killed a teamster who wouldn’t help set up trucks for the outfit, a guy named Billy Logan. He was just a regular guy. He’s going to take us right into the meeting with the judge. He’ll take us into a counselor’s row restaurant where these cases were fixed. Now, Bob will give us a seat right at Pat Marcy’s table. Now, Pat Marcy was the first ward fixture, and he’s going to take us into the hallway with Pat Marcy where they made the payoffs. [24:57] Now, Bob, can you take us inside the famous Harry Aileman murder case? I know you fixed it. And tell us, you know, and I know there was a human toll that this took on that corrupt judge, Frank Wilson. Okay. The Harry Aileman case was, it was not long after I became partners with Johnny DeArco. I get a call from, I’m in Counselor’s Row at the restaurant. Whenever I was in there now, my spot was the first ward table. Nobody was allowed to sit there day or night. That was reserved for first ward connected people and only the top group of people. [25:40] I’m sitting there at the table and Johnny DeArco Sr. Tells me, you know, Pat wants to talk to you. About something. And I said, you know, sure. Not long afterwards, Pat comes downstairs. We go out. We go out in the hall because we never talk at the table. And he tells me, have you got somebody that can handle the Harry Alleman case? I had seen in the news, he was front page news. He was one of the main mob hitmen. He was partners with Butchie Petrucelli. But it was common knowledge that he was a hitman. He looked like one. He dressed like one. He acted like one. And whatever. And he was one. In fact, he was the one that used to go to New York. And I know he also went to Arizona to do some hits and whatever. He traveled around the country. I said to Pat, they thought the case was a mob hit on a team street. a teamster. I assumed that it was just that. It was people doing what they do. But I said to Pat, I said, well, get me the file. Get me the file. Let me see what the case looks like. Because I would never put a judge in a bad spot. That was my nature. [27:06] When I had cases, a lot of these judges were personal friends of mine. What I would do, if I wanted to have a case, if I wanted to fix a case to save all the time of having to go to a damn long trial, I would make sure that it was a case that was winnable, easily winnable. When I got the file, when I got the file from Pat, he got me the file the next day. The next morning, when he came in, he gave me the file. I looked at the file. It was a throw-out case. When I say throw-out case, absolutely a nothing case. [27:46] The records in the file showed that a car drove up down the street. Suddenly somebody with a shotgun blasted a guy named Billy Logan in front of his house and drove away. They were contacted by a neighbor, this guy, Bobby Lowe. Was it Bobby Lowe? Yeah, I’m pretty sure Bobby Lowe. Who indicated that he opened the door and let his dog run out. And when he looked, he saw somebody. He saw a car, and he gave a description of the car. And he saw somebody pull up, and he saw him shoot with a shotgun. And then he saw the person get out of the car and shoot him with a .45, and shoot him with a .45. And then the car sped away. That was pretty much the case. Some other people heard some noise, looked out, and saw a car driving away. A period of time after that, it had to be about a year or so after that, somebody was arrested driving to Pennsylvania to kill somebody. There was a guy who stopped. [29:16] Louie Almeida was his name. Louie Almeida was stopped in his car. He was on the way to Pennsylvania. And in front of his car, he had shotguns. And he winds up, when he gets arrested, he winds up telling the authorities that he can tell them about a mob murder back in Chicago and winds up cooperating with them. He indicates what happened. He indicated that, you know, he was asked to, you know, or he got involved in it. He got the car and whatever. They did this. They did that. And he pulled up alongside Billy and wound up shooting the victim as he came out of the house. [30:09] Now, I look at some other reports in there, some reports that were made out, new reports. They talk about the Louis Almeida. They talk about the witness that gave the first statement. and they said that they found, or he’s giving us a new statement now where he says he’s walking his dog. He hears a shotgun. His dog runs towards the car where the shooting was coming from. He saw Harry get out of the car and walk over and shoot him, walk over and shoot the victim, and he was looking at him, And then he jumped in the bushes and the car drove away. A complete new story. Yeah. A complete new story. And. I looked at the reports, and this is an easy winner. And so I told Pat, you know, I’ll take it. You know, I’m sure I can handle it. I said, I’m sure I can handle it, but, you know, I’ll let you know. [31:21] That’s when I contacted, I met my restaurant, Greco’s, and I had Frank Wilson there a lot. Well, I called Frank Wilson, invited him and his wife to come to the restaurant. I had done that many times before. When he gets there, I tell him, I have the case. You know, I told him I was contacted on this case, I said. And I said, it’s an easy winner, I said. And I explained to him what it was. I told him, you know, it’s the driver of the car who’s doing this to help himself. And this other guy, Bobby Lowe, that gave a complete new story from the original story that he gave. And I indicated, you know, can you handle the case? And he tells me, I can’t handle the case, he said, because I was SOJ’d. In Chicago, Illinois, they have a rule that makes it easy for people to fool around because for no reason at all you can ask to have a judge moved off the case. And you can name a second judge that you don’t want to handle the case. [32:34] Frank Wilson’s reputation was as such that the lawyer that turned out to be a judge later on, Tom Maloney, who had the case, named him in the SOJ. It was assigned to somebody else, and he indicated he wanted any other judge except Frank Wilson. Frank Wilson on the case. And this was Harry Aileman’s lawyer. Yeah. Okay. And who Tom Maloney, who then ends up being the judge years later. But yeah. Well, because we knew he was going to be a judge. Yeah. We knew ahead of time. I knew at that time. That’s what makes the story so unbelievably interesting. Yeah. Anyhow, he says, I can’t do it because… In Chicago, in Chicago, it’s supposed to keep it honest. I love this. To keep it honest. Yeah. To keep it honest, each judge is supposed to be picked by computer. [33:33] Same thing they’re doing to this day. Trump wondered why the same judge kept getting all his cases. Because they’re doing the same thing we did, some of us could do in Chicago. He was the chief judge in the area. he said to me, I don’t think I can get the case. I don’t think I can’t get the case. I said, I’ll get the case to you. I said, I’ll get, because I already, I, in fact, through Pat Marcy, anytime I wanted a case to go anywhere, I would contact Pat and I’d give him a thousand dollars and he would get me any judge I wanted. Uh, I said, well, I think I can. I said, I said, And I gave him $1,000. [34:16] I said, here, this is yours. And if I can’t get the case to you, you keep it. If I can’t get, I never said to him, will you fix it? Will you this or that? I mean, he understood what it was. I didn’t know how he would react to it. When I asked him, would you handle it? Were the words I used. I had never fixed anything with him before. [34:43] In case he was, you know, he would want to report it to somebody. I wasn’t worried because Frank had a reputation as being a big drinker. After I got the Harry Elliman file, Pat tells me, I’m going to have somebody come and talk to you. Who comes? And we meet in the first ward office, and then we go downstairs into the special room they had for conversations. It’s Mike Ficarro. He’s the head of the organized crime section. He’s the one who prosecutes all the criminals. He’s one of the many prosecutors in Chicago. That’s why there were over 1,000 mob murders and never a conviction from the time of Al Capone. Not a single conviction with over 1,000 mob murders because they controlled absolutely everything. He’s the boss. [35:35] I knew him. I didn’t like him. He had an attitude about him. You know, when I would see him at parties and when I’d see him at other places, and I’d walk by and say, hi, he just seemed coldish. [35:47] I found out later why. He was jealous of the relationship I had with all these people. [35:54] He says, I’ll help you any way I can, anything you need, whatever. So the prosecutors on the Harry Olliman case were our people. That’s who’s prosecuting the case anyhow. But they couldn’t get one of their judges apparently who would handle the case. So, but anyhow, uh, so, uh, when we, um, when we go, when we, when we go to trial, um. [36:25] Before to help me out, I told Pat, I’ll get somebody else to handle the case. I’ll have somebody else. I said, I won’t go in there. I won’t go in there because everybody knows I’m close to Frank, very close to Frank. I said, so I won’t go in there. I’ll get somebody. He says, no, no. He said, I’ll get somebody. And so he gets a guy named Frank Whalen, who I didn’t know at the time. He was a retired lawyer from Chicago. He was one of the mob lawyers. [37:00] He was one of the mob lawyers. And he lived in Florida. He lived in Miami. I think it was, no, Lauderdale. He lived in the Lauderdale area. He was practicing there. So I fly out. I fly out to meet him. I i do all the investigating in the case the i’m using an investigator that harry alleman got from me in fact he was the same investigator that got in trouble in in uh in in hollywood for what for a lot of stuff i can’t think of his name right now but he’s the one who got indicted in hollywood eventually for you know wiretapping people and whatever it was the same one. And he got me information on Bobby on this Bobby Lowe. He found out Bobby Lowe, Bobby Lowe was a drug addict. [37:59] When the FBI got a hold of him, Bobby Lowe was living out in the street because he had been fired from his first job. He had a job in some kind of an ice cream company where they made ice cream, and he got fired there for stealing. And then he had a job after that in a gas station, and he faked a robbery there. Apparently, what he did was he called the police and said he had been robbed. This is before they had cameras and all the rest of that stuff. He said he had been robbed. And somebody happened to have been in the gas station getting gas. It was a big place, apparently. [38:45] And when the police talked to him, he said, I didn’t see anything strange. He said, I saw the attendant walk out to the back about 10, 15 minutes ago. I saw him walk out to the back of the place and then come back in. And so they go out, and he had his car parked behind it, and they found the money that was supposed to have been stolen in the car. So not the best witness, in other words. Well, that’s an understatement, because that was why… That was why now he suddenly shows up, and they know all this. The FBI agents that obviously know all this, that’s their witness. That’s their case. To me, it’s an airtight, you know. Yeah. Anyhow, I developed the defense. I went back to see Frank a second time. I flew out to Florida a second time, gave him all this information. [39:48] I had talked to some other people to a number of people that were going to indicate that Harry played golf with them that day see how they remembered not golf but he was at a driving range with them with about five people they remember what they were three or four years three or four years before that what I also found out now, and I didn’t know and it changed my whole attitude on that this wasn’t a mob killing you, This guy that he killed was married to his, I think it was his cousin or some relation was married. I’m pretty sure it was to his cousin. She had told Harry, I got this from Butchie, Butchie Petrosselli, who had become a close friend of mine after I got involved with Harry’s case, his partner. And that was why he killed them, because apparently the sister, his sister-in-law, whatever she was, had told him, you know, when he was beating her up, she had said, well, my Harry Alameda won’t be happy about this. And he said, supposedly, he said, fuck that, Kenny. [41:02] And that’s why the shooting took place. Wow. This changed me. You know, I’m in the middle of it. There’s no getting out of it now. Yeah, they’ll turn it back. And by now, I’m running around all the time with Butch and Mary at night. I’m meeting them at dinner. They’re coming to one of my places where I have dinners all the time. You know, I’m becoming like close friends, close friends with both of them. Yeah. So anyhow, but anyhow, the lawyer that he got, Frank Whalen, who was supposed to be sharp, turned out like he was not in his, let’s just say he was not in his prime. [41:46] Charitable. And when he went in, you know, while the trial was going on, you know, while the trial was going on, I get a call from Frank. From Frank Wilson, because I told him, you don’t come back into the restaurant now. You don’t come back into the restaurant. I used his office as my office all the time, along with a bunch of other judges. I had a phone, but it cost about a dollar a minute to talk on my phone. I had to talk on my phone. So when I’d be at 26th Street in the courthouse, even though no lawyers are allowed back there in the chamber, so I’m back there sitting at his desk using the phone taking care of my own other business. I stopped going in there while the trial was going on. [42:35] So, anyhow, he calls me, and he wants to meet me at a restaurant over on Western Avenue. And, okay, he called me from one of the pay phones out there in front of the courthouse, and I go to meet him. What did he want? Was he complaining about the lawyer, Waylon? What was he complaining about, Waylon? and I was screwing it up. [42:59] When I meet him, I said, you know, he’s like, you know, he said, you know, we go into the bathroom and he and he said he’s all shooken up. He says, this is going to cost me my job. He said, he said, you know, they’re burying him. You’re burying him. You know, because I had given this information on the two witnesses. And he says, Frank Whalen, he said, isn’t doing a thing and cross-examining these people and whatever. [43:32] And he says, and he’s all upset. And I said, Frank, no, I’m shook up one of the few times in my life where it’s something I can’t handle. He had never told me, you know, I’ll fix the case, never. And I said to him, and I said, Frank, I said, if something goes wrong, I said, I’m sure they’re going to kill me, is what I said to him. Yeah. I said, if something goes wrong, I’m sure they’re going to kill me. And I left. I left the bathroom. Now, I have no idea what’s going on in his mind and whatever. Yeah. I see Pat the next day. And by something goes wrong in this case, you mean if he gets found guilty, that’d be what would go wrong and you would get killed. Is that that’s what you mean? Well, no question, because when I met, I didn’t go into that. I met with Harry Alleman. I get a call after I got involved in the case. A couple days later, I get a call from Markle. Meet me at one of the nightclubs where I was all the time at night with these people. [44:47] Above it, you’ve got a motel, a bunch of hotel rooms. I get a call from Markle. The reason everybody loved me and the mob, I never discussed what I was doing with anybody or any of the other dozens of mobsters I run with that I was involved in Harry’s case. Never said a word to anybody about any of this. That was my nature, and that’s why all these people love me. I never talked about one thing with anybody else or whatever. He says, I want to meet you. When I get over there, he says, let’s go upstairs. Somebody wants to talk to you. And we go upstairs, and there’s Harry Alleman. And Harry, how you doing? How are you? [45:27] And he says, listen, you’re sure about this? And I said, yeah. I said, I’m sure. And he said, well, if something goes wrong, you’re going to have a problem. Those were his words to me. You’re going to have a problem. And I said, you know, he says, because this judge, he says, this judge is a straight judge. And he said, Tom, you mean Tom Maloney. He says, and Tom wants to handle my case. And he tells me he’s going to be named a judge by the Supreme Court real soon. And he wants to handle and he wants to handle my case before he… Uh, you know, before he becomes a Supreme court, before he becomes a judge, I knew the moment he told me that I knew for sure that was the case because we control everything, including the Supreme court. I said, you know, I said, don’t, you know, don’t worry about it. I lied to him. And I said, uh, I said, yeah, the judge is going to, I said, yeah, he’s going to throw it out. He knows, I said, he knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t. That’s what I told Harry. I want to keep him happy. [46:34] I’m going to keep him happy probably for a few hours I’m a little nervous and then that’s all behind me like so many other problems I got in the middle of oh my god talking about walking a tightrope so now the lawyer came into Chicago he was in Chicago I met him when he came in he was staying at the Bismarck was at the Bismarck Hotel right around the corner from you know where Counselor’s Row was that’s where he was staying in the in the hotel right there by the first board office and there was a way to go in there without being seen and there was a, You go through another restaurant and you go through the alley and go up there. And I wouldn’t, I didn’t want to be seen walking into there because I know the FBI are probably, are probably watching and whatever. When he comes into town, they handle the case. So I go upstairs to see him. You know, I said, what the hell’s going on in court? He says, I’m going, it’s going great. It’s going great. I said, it’s going great. I just, you know, I just got a call last night. I had to go meet the judge. And he said, you’re not doing any cross-examining. Oh, I’m doing a great job. You know, I’m doing a great job. So after a few minutes of, I leave. Yeah. [47:52] That’s when I saw Pat Marcy, too. And I said, Pat, I said, the judge is upset about whatever’s going on. I said, maybe we should give him some more because I agreed to give him $10,000. And he said, you know, what a piece of work he is. You know, he said $10,000, and that’s all he’s going to get, not a nickel more or whatever. So now to say I’m nervous again is an ultra statement. The case, I walked over, and I wouldn’t go in the room, but I wanted to just be around that room for some reason. FBI agents all over the place. [48:30] FBI agents all over the place. And so now I’m at home and I’m packed. I’ve got my bags packed because if he finds it, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m worried he might find him guilty because of all that had happened. He, when the trial ended a given night, and the next day he was going to give the result. In fact, I didn’t go out and play that night. I was a little nervous, and I stayed home, and I packed up my bags. I packed up my bags, and about 9 o’clock, I got in the car, and I started driving. And by the time he gave the ruling, I was probably about 100, maybe 150 miles away. And I hear on the radio, you know, found him not guilty, found him not guilty. So I turn around. Hit the next exit, turn around and come back. I turn around. Northbound on I-55. [49:27] Probably a couple hours later, here I am parked in my parking spot. My parking spot was in front of my office, right across from City Hall. And I parked in the mayor’s spot when she wasn’t there. And drove probably to drive her crazy. But that was where I parked. That was my parking spot. We’d see my big car with the RJC license plates parked in the bus stop. And so here I am. I parked the car and I go in. I go in. [50:01] And I’m sure Pat told some people, probably not, but I’m sure they told all the mobsters, all the top mobsters, because these guys all wanted to meet me afterwards and get the restaurant. I go in to see them. We walked into the janitor’s closet. You walk out of Counselor’s Row. You go to the left. It goes into the 100 North Building. Now, you’ve got the elevators to the right. And behind that, you’ve got a closet where the janitors keep all their stuff. And you’ve got some stairs leading up to the, there was a, what do you call it? There was an office there where the commodities, big commodity exchange was right there. that there was a stairway leading up to where the offices were with some doors with bars and everything on it. And Pat is standing on those stairs, about two or three stairs. You know, I said, wow. I said, you know, everybody’s going nuts. And he goes, well, you know, you did a good job. And he gives me an envelope. He gives me an envelope. And, you know, I put the money in my pocket. [51:09] We said we had some more. We said a couple other words about, you know, this and that. And then I just go in there. I go back in the counselor’s. [51:21] Now, after the feds started getting indictments, did you try and warn the Aleman case judge, Frank Wilson? Why did you do that? And when I went to see Frank Wilson, I went to help him. I said, Frank, I said, look, I said, I was contacted by, I said, I was contacted by the, by the, by the FBI. They were investigating the Harry Aleman case. I said to him, I said, they, they feel the case was fixed. I said, when they come to see me, I said, you know, I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I said, I’m not going to talk to them. I’m going to take the fifth. And in your case, you can do the same thing. When they, if they come to talk to you, you just take the fifth amendment. If they give you immunity, I said, you know, then you, then you testify, but you tell them the truth. I said, don’t worry about me. Tell them the truth. This is how I talk to him. When I’m talking to him like that, it’s almost like he’s trying to run away from me. [52:27] We’re at a restaurant in a big complex. It was in one of those resorts in Arizona. He’s all but running away from me. I was trying to help him. What I said to him was, Frank, I said, the statute of limitations ran on all this. It’s been more than five years. There’s nothing they can do to you or to me, I said, because the statute ran. I said, so don’t lie to them. What the feds were concerned about, and I don’t know why, that he would deny ever fixing the case when it went through. I don’t know why they’re worried about that, but they were, and I didn’t want to see him get in trouble. [53:13] That’s why I went there to protect him. Hey, Bob, you were asked to represent an outfit associate or an outfit associate’s son who was accused of breaking the jaw of a Chicago policewoman. And you know, when a cop is injured in a fight with somebody, the cops follow that case. And I do not want to see any shenanigans going on. So, so tell us about how you walked that line. And I bet those cops were, were not happy with you in the end. Some people think this is a reason you flipped. Take us inside that case, will you? [53:45] And the reason I mentioned that it had a lot to do with what I eventually did. Now we’ll get back to what made me do what I was going to do. When I was practicing law now, and now I have been away from all this for years, I was out of town a lot because I’m representing the Chinese all around the country. I’m their main lawyer right now. [54:10] And I get a call from Lenny Colella. And he says, my son, he said, my son is in trouble. I want to come in and I want to talk to you about handling his case. This was a heater case, too. This was a front page case because he was charged with aggravated battery and attempted murder. Supposedly, he had beat up a policewoman and it was all over the place. He was a drug addict and whatever, supposedly he did all this. And when he came into the office with his dad, he was high. When I talked to him, he’s got his kid with him. And the kid is a smart aleck. As we’re talking, the kid, and I asked the kid, well, whatever. The kid was a smart aleck. And I just said to him, I said, Len, I can’t help you. I said, get him out of here. I want nothing to do with him. I said, I can’t help you. You didn’t take cases that were involved with cops anyhow, for the most part. No. I didn’t know what had happened in this case. I know what I saw in the paper. I didn’t know what the facts or anything were or whatever. I mean, if it turned out that if I felt when I talked to him that he had done it, whatever, I would not have taken the case anyhow. [55:26] I mean, I would not have. That’s why I say, too, that may be, too, why I was as quick and as rude as I was when he came in there and was acting and was a little bit high. I just wanted nothing to do with him, period. I said to his dad, his father said, you know, if I get him cleaned up, you know, I said, well, if you get him cleaned up, then we’ll talk again. I said, but I can’t help him, and I can’t help him. [55:54] And off he goes. the father re-contacted me about a week later. And he said, I had him in rehab and he straightened out and whatever. And he brought him back in and it was a new person. And when he told me the facts of the case, when he told me what happened, because he was a big, tough kid. He was a big, you know, he was a weightlifter, but he was a big, tough looking kid. [56:19] And it’s a little police woman. When he told me what happened, I believed him. Because I’ve been out in the street and whatever. And he says, you know, he told me what happened, that he had gotten stopped. He was out there talking to her. And when she said, you’re under arrest for DUI, he just walked. He says, I walked. I was going to get in my car and drive away. And she grabbed me and was pulling me or whatever. And I hear all these sirens coming. And within a few minutes, there’s all kinds of police. There’s about half a dozen police there. He says, and then they started jumping on me. He said, she was under me. He was all beaten up. He was all bloody and whatever. And she apparently had her jaw broken. And there’s no doubt in my mind when he’s telling me that, you know, when they were hit with his clubs or with this thing that they claimed he had without his fingerprints, it was a metal bar. Right, a slapper. A chunk of lead covered by leather. Everybody used to carry a slapper. How about you carry a slapper? They claimed, but there was no cloth on this. It was just the metal itself. Yeah, oh really? [57:45] Anyhow, that makes it interesting during the trial when they flat out lied. No, he had no blood. I got the hospital reports. They wouldn’t take him in the station because he was too badly beaten up. But anyhow, he also had two other charges. He had been involved in a fight in a bar. And he had been involved in another situation with the police. And he was charged with resisting arrest and battery on a policeman out in Cicero. So he had these three cases. So I gave the father a fee on handling, you know, the one, I was going to, I gave him a fee one case at a time. I said, you know, first thing we’ll do, I want to get rid of those other two cases. I’ll take them to juries, I said. [58:36] I’ll take them to juries because I wasn’t going to put them. I knew both the judges on those cases, but I wasn’t going to put them in a position on a case like that. I take the first case to trial. And I get him a not guilty. That was the fight in the bar. [58:54] That was out in one of the suburbs. That was out in, I’m not sure which suburb, in the northwest side. After we get that case over with, before that case, I get a call from Pat Marcy. Pat Marcy, I hadn’t seen him probably even for a couple months, but I hadn’t talked to him for quite a long period of time. And he says to me, you got a case that just came in. He said, we’re going to handle it. And I said, there’s no need, Pat. I said, I can win these cases. I said, there’s no need. I can win these cases. And he said, we’re going to handle this. The case is going to go to Judge Passarella, he said, and we’ll take care of it. I said, Pat, there’s no need to. I said, I can win these cases. I said, they’re all jury trials, but I know I can win them all. And he says, you do as you’re told. Pat had never talked to me like that before. [59:54] Powerful as he was and crazy as I am, And he never, you know, you never demand that I do anything or whatever. We had a different type relationship. And although I hadn’t broken away from them by now, it’s been years. I had broken away from them for about, you know, two, three years. And he says, you know, take the case to trial. I said, well, he’s got some other cases, too, and I’m going to take the one. And she says, I’ll take it to a jury, and I’ll win it. You’ll see how I win it. I take her to trial, and I get her not guilty. The second case was set for trial about a month after that. Not even, yeah, about a month or so after that. And during that time, a couple of times I’m in counselors, and Pat says, when are you going to take the case to trial? I said, well, Pat, you know, I won the one case. I got the other case on trial, and it was before Judge Stillo. He was a judge that we eventually indicted. [1:00:51] Stillo was very, very well connected to the first ward. He’s one of the old-time judges out in Maywood. And I told him, you know, when I came in there, he assumed I’d take it to trial and he’d throw it out. And I said, no, no, no, there’s no need to. I says, I’m going to take the jury on this one. Number one, I had stopped fixing things long before this. And, but he was, to make money, he was willing that he would have thrown the case out. It was a battery with a Cicero policeman. And I says, no, no, I’ll take it. I’ll take it to, you know, I’ll take the jury. I said, I don’t want to put you in that pursuit. Oh, don’t worry about me. I take that one to trial and I win that one too. Now Pat calls me, when the hell are you going to take the case to trial? And that’s the original case with the police woman. That’s the main one. The main one. Okay, go ahead. [1:01:44] When are you going to take it to trial? And I don’t want to take it to trial. In fact. I had talked to the prosecutor, and I said, look, I said, because he was charged with, he was charged with, you know, attempted murder and arrest. I said, if you’ll reduce it, the prosecutor was an idiot. He knew me, should have realized that, you know, that I never lose cases. Yeah. You know, but I want to work out something. He was a special prosecutor on it. He said, we’re not going to reduce it. We said, you know, if you want to work out a plea, we went five years, we went five to ten or whatever in the penitentiary. And I said, well, that’s not going to happen. I said, well, then we’ll just have to go to trial. So now, while I’m at Counselor’s Row, on one of my many occasions, because I was still having some card games over there at somebody else’s other lawyer’s office, because I had had big card games going on there for years. I’m sitting at the counselor’s row table, and Judge Passarella comes in. There’s just him and me there, and when he comes in, I say, Oh, you’re here to see Pat? [1:02:56] And he goes, Pat, who? No more conversation. Who the fuck? No more. The guy’s treating me like I’m some kind of a fool or whatever. And I developed an instant disliking to him. I had never seen him around that much or whatever before that. So now, after the second case, you’re going to go to, you know. So I talked to Lenny. When Lenny came in, Lenny came in with him when we were starting to get prepared for the case. And, oh, this is before this is before I talked to the prosecutor. And I said, Lenny, I said, I says, if I can get it reduced to a misdemeanor, to a misdemeanor. I said, you know, can we work with, you know, and work out a plea, let’s say, for maybe a month or two, you know, a month or two. Is that OK with you? Oh, sure. He says, oh, sure. [1:03:57] Now, this Lenny, this was the kid’s dad, your client’s dad. This is his dad. Now, explain who he was, who Lenny was. His dad was. What’s his last name? Yeah, Karela. Karela, okay. Lenny Karela, I’m pretty sure was his name. He owned a big bakery out there in Elmwood Park area. Okay. And he was friendly with all the mobsters. Okay, all right. I got you. For all I knew, he may have been a mobster himself, but I mean, he may have been because we had thousands of people that were connected. He was a connected guy. All right, go ahead. I’m sorry. And he said, oh, yeah, sure, no, not a problem because the papers are meant, they’re still, after a year, they’re still mentioning that case will be going to trial soon and every so often. [1:04:43] What I had also done, I tried to make contact with the policewoman, not with her, but I put the word out and I knew a lot of police and I got a hold of somebody that did know her. And I said, look, I said, no, the case is fixed if I want it. Yeah. But I don’t want it. Even though I know that, you know, that it’s all BS, you know, I said, look, I said, get a hold of her and get a hold of her lawyer and tell them if they want to file a lawsuit, you know, you know, we can, they can get themselves some money on it. Uh, you know, he’ll indicate, you know, he’ll, he’ll, he’ll indicate that, you know, he, he was guilty or whatever, but I wanted to get her some money. The word I get back is tell him that piece of shit, meaning me to drop dead, to drop dead. You know, we’re going to put this guy in prison and that’s where he should be too. When the case now, now when the case goes to trial. [1:05:48] The coppers lied like hell and talk about stupid. I’ve got the police reports there. When they took him into the police station, they wouldn’t take him. The station said take him to a hospital. He goes to the hospital and the reports, you know, bleeding here, bleeding there, and, you know, marks here, marks there. They beat the hell out of him. [1:06:10] You know, nobody touched him. You know, nobody touched him. Nobody touched him. Was he bleeding? No, no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t bleeding. Didn’t have any, you know, along with, you know, along with everything else. Flat out lied. How many policemen were there? There were two or three. There were about 10 by the time it’s over. But it’s an absolute throwout. Any fingerprints on that metal? Well, we had some fingerprints, but not his. And on and on it went. It’s a throwout case to start with. The courtroom now where the case was, was very interesting. You walk in there, and when you walk in there, there’s about 20 people that can sit. And then there’s, it’s the only courtroom in the building where you have a wall, a glass wall, all the way up, all the way up. Covering in the door, opens up and goes in there. You go in there. It’s a big courtroom. A bunch of benches now in there. You go to the left, and here’s the judge’s chambers. You come out of the chambers, and you walk up about four steps. And here the desk is on like a podium. And it’s not where all the others are, you know, where you look straight forward. It’s over on the side. It’s over, you know, to the left as you walk out of his chambers. [1:07:40] When the judge listens to the case he goes in there I’ll come up back with my ruling he comes out about 10 minutes later he walks up the steps, And now he turns off the microphone. Somebody turns off the microphone so the people in the back can’t hear anything. The ones inside there can, you know, can hear. The one back there can’t hear anything because it’s all enclosed. [1:08:11] That’s why they got the microphone back there. Somebody shut it off. He says, basically, I’m not guilty in a real strange voice. And all but runs off the all but run and don’t ask me why this is what he did all but runs off all but runs off into the into his chambers, you know he’s afraid all those cops out in the audience were going to come and charge the stand I guess and put a whack on him. [1:08:43] But think about it this is Chicago he’s with the bad guys but I’m just saying I don’t know why he did all that, but that’s what he did. And so now, as I come walking out with Mike, and they’re all in uniform, and most of them are in uniform, and then you’ve got the press and all kinds of cameras and whatever there. And as I come walking out along with him, some of these guys I know, and these jerk-offs are like calling me names and whatever. I go, I go see Pat. [1:09:23] And when I go back into Counselor’s Row now, he’s there at the table. And when I come in, it’s a repeat of the Harry Allerman thing. He walks out. He walks directly. And I’m following him, and he walks in. He goes back into the same janitor’s closet and stands on the same steps just above me, you know, talking to me. And I said to him I said this judge is going to have a problem, I said, he’s going to have a problem. I said, what if he says something? And he said to me, nobody would dare. He said, nobody would dare cooperate against us. They know what would happen. Or words to that effect. And don’t ask me why. So many other things had happened before this. But now I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, you know, somebody’s got to stop this craziness. All this stuff. I’m thinking that at the moment, but then I’m worried for some reason, I think he can read my mind. [1:10:34] Stupid as all of this seems, I’m afraid to think that anymore. I’m almost, you know, cause Pat’s such a powerful person and every sense I know, I know his power, but anyhow, so I leave. And like I say, 10, 15 minutes later, that’s all forgotten about. He paid me the rest of the money I was supposed to get from them. [1:10:56] Obviously, he wanted to do it because he was probably charging a lot of money. That’s why he didn’t want me to take things. He wanted to collect the money because while the case was going on too, he puts me in touch with the head of the probation department because he was able to help in some way. He knew some of the, you know, some of the, some of the policemen involved in the thing had been contacted too. Yeah. But they were contacted and they messed up by, you know, they messed up by lying about all that. Yeah. When there’s police reports saying, oh, no, but anyhow, that was that particular case. Tell us why you decided to flip. [1:11:38] These had been your friends. You knew you had explosive information. You knew as a lawyer, you knew what you had to say would send these people to prison for many, many years. if not life. It had to be hard. As other things happened, why did I commit the, Probably two or three other times things happened. But the most important thing was to think when my dad was dying, and I was very close to my dad. When my dad was dying, he was in the Olympia Fields Hospital. [1:12:13] He had what they called it something else, but it was Alzheimer’s is what it was. Because my dad was a very easygoing person. A big guy. He was a real big guy, but he was not the tough guy. He was just a real easygoing person. He started getting mean with my mother, which he had never been. [1:12:40] One time she comes home from church, and he had been going to Mass and communion every day of his adult life because he was almost a priest. That was my parents. Every morning went to church, went to mass and communion every morning. He had stopped going because, you know, he was acting up and giving her a hard time and didn’t recognize her, started not even recognizing her. She comes home one day and he’s out in the street naked. This is in the wintertime. He’s walking. He came out of the house and he’s naked, I guess maybe in his underpants or whatever. But, you know, when she calls and tells me that, you know, he’s got to go into the hospital. [1:13:23] We want to get him into a nursing home, but they wouldn’t take him until he was in the hospital for, you know, to get some other attacks and whatever. When he’s in the hospital, when I go to see him the very first time, he’s all strapped in there. They’ve got him all strapped in a bed and his bed is all wet. He’s laying in his own urine he’s laying in his urine and whatever and and i kind of exploded you know what the hell is going on here and whatever and, The nurse comes in, she said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she said, nobody could control him, she said. Went to ask the nurse something and when she bent down to ask what they want, he punched her in the face. Uh, you know, so we, so we, we strapped him in now when I walked in, son, you know, look what they’re doing to me. And that’s what he always called me. Son. He didn’t call me Robert all my adult life. Son, son, son. [1:14:25] And he recognized, obviously he recognized me. He hadn’t recognized anybody else for weeks. Didn’t know who anybody else was. [1:14:34] So anyhow, I get him. I get him. cleaned up. I take him into the bathroom, get him cleaned up and whatever. And when we come back and when he’s laying in bed and he said to me, he said, you know, son, he said, you know, I, what, why are you, why are you, what were his words? Why are you wasting your God-given talents with these people? He said, they’re the ones who killed your grandfather. And then they fixed his case, and I had never known anything about that before. I knew he was killed and whatever in the line of duty. As I mentioned before, I was delivering groceries to his mother, who lived over on South Park, which became Martin Luther King Drive when I was younger. So I was bringing her groceries every two or three days when she ordered them from Verimus, a grocery store where when I was about 14, 13, 14 years old. I never knew that before. These are the same people that fixed your father’s case or your grandfather’s case or whatever. And it wasn’t long after that when he died. That part stuck with me. There were a couple of times, there were a number of times when I saw certain things. And like I mentioned before, all these people that had been killed around me. [1:15:57] These people had destroyed. The one other thing that really got me angry with these people was always wanting to make more money and destroying people doing it. What they were doing in the civil courts. Really got me angry because they would go in there and they would just steal people’s businesses and cheat them out of everything and smile and laugh when they’re doing it. Not that they needed the money, but just so many things about the system had to be cleaned up. [1:16:29] And I thought about doing something, but then I thought, no, that’s crazy. You know, I give up the life that I have because I’m living an unbelievable life. It just so happened, I’m playing cards upstairs, I’m playing gin with Alan Ackerman and a couple of others on a Saturday. I’d been doing that, driving back down, because I had moved out to the suburbs, too. And I want to go get a corned beef sandwich. I think it was called the Dill Pickle or something. There was a place under the L tracks, not far from there. And you walk by the federal building to go there. As I’m walking by the building, I have no idea. I just got the urge. It happened to be, it was either a Saturday or a holiday because I got the urge. When I thought about doing it too, I would not go to the, I would not go to the U.S. Attorney because I knew they were crooked. We were paying the U.S. Ah, yeah. The regular U.S. attorney. There’s, there’s, and the U.S. Attorney’s office, they’ll be the strike force or the organized crime division or whatever. than the regular U.S. attorney, just so guys will. Go ahead, Bob. [1:17:39] I’m talking about when I was with Pat, there was a period of time when I’d go on the limousine rides with these people. After I fixed Harry Alleman’s case, we would go on these limousine rides. It would be on a Thursday night. The limousine, it was Ben Stein, who was the head of the janitor’s union. It was his limousine that would come. [1:18:04] When I first got involved, initially, they would have dinners. They would have dinners there at counselors. They’d cook all kinds of special stuff for the group. And the group would consist of different major people, like the head of the Teamsters, a bunch of other people, a bunch of other mobsters from out of town, celebrities. They would go with us on these different rides, and we would go to different restaurants each week, different famous restaurants around the city. This went on for about three years when I was with them. During one of the rides, the U.S. attorney at the time, Pat was, no, Tom, Tom Sullivan, Tom Sullivan was the U.S. attorney in Chicago. One of the mobsters had a friend who, I don’t know who the, if it was somebody from Detroit or somebody from Cleveland, but one of the bosses came in and one of his good friends had been sentenced in Chicago. He had been convicted and sentenced to a number of years. I think it was like 20 years. He had been sentenced to like 20 years in prison. And Pat Marcy told him, not a problem. He said, what we can do, he said, we can have him ask for a new trial. [1:19:27] We can hope that we can get the sentence reduced. There’s no way. And now the U.S. Attorney during this time when I came in is Anton Veloukis. Anton Veloukis had come from Jenner and Black. [1:19:44] Uh, so I knew he was, he was corrupt. General and Block was getting millions of dollars from the mob. And the mob had control of all the money in the city, uh, and, and everything else. The, the, the mob and General and Block were the ones that they were paying. General and Block represented them. Uh, the U.S. Attorneys that were working on these, on these cases, including mine, the U.S. Attorneys that were working on these cases would retire and they either either with their own firm or otherwise would be representing these people and a lot of them would never get indicted that’s what happened in my stuff too there were nine people main people that never got indicted including johnny de franzo the head of the mob the head of the mob street crews there’s no way i was going to go to him, Gary Shapiro was the head of the organized crime section. So when I went upstairs that day, it was just, I didn’t, I got up that morning. I wasn’t planning on doing this. Really? An hour before I was not planning on doing this. Something as I’m walking by made me go up there. And the reason I did too much because the place was always full of people. [1:21:06] Before there’d be all kinds of people around there you know i walked in there because at the time. [1:21:14] There’s nobody in the building other than a couple of security people and i’ll check and see if anybody’s up in the organized crime section i thought it was a separate section, so when i go upstairs when i go upstairs i there was a woman back there in the office. [1:21:33] There’s a window there you look in. And I come in and I said, you know, I’d like to see, I looked it up, I’d like to see Gary Shapiro. And, you know, what’s this about? And I said, you know, it’s something personal. You know, what’s your name? You know, Robert Foley. And she goes back to wherever. He comes walking back out of your office and, you know, what can I do for you? And I said, I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to talk to you. and he said you know okay so I go into the office and I said I’d like to help you put an end to the corruption the corruption in the court system I said, I said and he said he he was like shocked and you know said well why he said why do you have a problem, I said, no, I don’t have any problems. I said, I would like to help you. I said, I can help you clean up the whole system. I was talking not just about the court system too, about the whole state. And I told him, I said, I was involved in some things a while back in the statute, maybe to run on my stuff, because I hadn’t been doing anything wrong for a long time. And in Grey Lord, nobody cooperated against me. I knew nobody would dare. Nobody would dare cooperate against me or other people in the upper echelon. [1:22:58] And nobody did. With all the people invited, I dealt with most of them, and none of them gave my name up as being involved. And so anyhow, he said, well, what do you want in return? I said, all I want is use immunity. I said, I don’t even need an immunity. I said, just use immunity where you can’t use my words against me. I said, then I can help you. And I said, but before I do that, I want you to check and make sure I don’t have any investigations or problems. [1:23:29] And he said, what do you mean? If there are any investigations, I can’t help you. I said, because a lot of things I tell you, the statute is run and whatever, and it’s strictly me saying it, it wouldn’t help you and it could possibly get me in trouble. I said, I want to do what I want to do. I want to make sure I’m successful if I do it because I’m giving up a fantastic life. Should I put to Chicago, too? Should I put to Chicago authorities and make sure there’s no cases pending? And if they’re not? If they’re not? And he said, okay. And then he said to me, but I’m going to have to talk to Anton Veloukis. And as soon as he said that, and I said, to Veloukis, why? He said, well, he’s my boss. And I thought to myself, what the hell have I done? I thought I just committed suicide. Okay. That’s what I thought as I’m sitting there looking at him. Now, I want out. I couldn’t tell him he’s a crook or I think he’s a crook or whatever. So I just said, well, check on everything and then let me know if I don’t have anything. [1:24:38] And now I said, I’ll decide if I want to do something. But I have to think about it. As I left that building, I’m a nervous wreck because I had no idea that, you know, that he would, I thought this was something out of Washington. So now it’s about a good week later. I had one of the worst probably gambling days of my life that week. Everything I did was wrong. [1:25:08] Now the people I’m betting with too, none of them are the main bookmakers there. In Chicago. I had stopped dealing with all them. I had developed some other people myself, including somebody from out of town, including a major bookmaker in New Orleans. And there were a couple of people that I have known for years now in Las Vegas. And these are the people I’m dealing with. Now, this is a sports book. You’re betting on games. You’ve started betting big on a bunch of games that were going on at the time. Oh, yeah. I’m still probably close to the biggest veteran town. Yeah. You know, then that’s why they knew it too ahead of time because they named an Operation Gambit for gambling attorney. Gambling attorney, yeah. I mean, they knew this. Everybody knew this. About a week later, it’s about a week later, when I come into my office on our trip, another secretary now, it wasn’t Kathy anymore, it was Judy. And when I came into the office, Judy said to me, there’s some people here to see you, and they think they’re FBI agents. [1:26:14] I have no idea how she got that idea they didn’t say we’re agents you know and because she had them sitting in my office nobody sat in my office they sat in the outer offices and whatever yeah when i come in there to see them there’s these three agents and one of them says to me you know are you sick have you got any maybe you got some problems you know they think i’m nobody can believe when i come in nobody can believe that i’m from i’m legit and i’m coming in for the right reasons, They thought maybe I was sick and I’m dying and whatever. Because he said, are you sick? Are you okay? And I said, no. And I said, we agreed to have me meet with the U.S. Attorneys and some other people in the motel a couple days later. When I go to meet with these people, prior to going in there, what I did, I owed something like about $260,000, $270,000. In cash, I had more than that. I had more than that in cash in my boxes. But I wanted to get everything cleaned up, cleaned up as best I could. So before I did, because I was worried, too, that they might tell me I got to stop gambling. I’m making a lot of money in my practice, but I’m making a lot of money gambling. [1:27:38] So I go to see Marco D’Amico. There was one of the people that I owed the money to, a guy named Bob Johnson, a big, he was a big Xbox or whatever. I wasn’t afraid of him physically. He was giving me a hard time that week. I didn’t want to make those payments to those people, use up my money right now until I saw where exactly I could go and make sure I could keep gambling or whatever. I had put him up. I was supposed to give him, I think it was only like $30,000 or whatever. I was supposed to give him some money, and I called up, and I said, look, I’m tied up right now. I’ll see you in a day or two. He called back, and he was screaming and yelling. The next day, somebody shot a bullet through my window at the office. I come in, and there’s a bullet hole through the office window, a big play class window, right on the street there where I was with Lemke. So I go to see Marco. [1:28:38] And I said, Marco, I said, he was playing cards. And I said, Marco, you know, can I talk to you? I hadn’t been there probably in two years, three years into the office. And he says, I’m kind of busy right now, you know. And so I just left and I went to see the boss. Johnny DeFranco was the guy in charge of everything. He’s the street guy. He was right on to Jackie Sharon. I passed away. He was the boss. He’s the one who set up the Tony’s Black Show killing and didn’t get arrested, because he was on the payroll with the U.S. attorneys. No, because he was paying big, big money to the Jenner and Black. That’s why he never got… He set the whole thing up. They knew it. I told him… In fact, I told him years ago that he was the one who did it. I knew the whole story on that. I went to see Johnny. Johnny owned a car dealership, a Chrysler dealership. [1:29:35] And, uh, I went in to see him and I said, and I said, hi, John, how are you? And, uh, what’s up? You know? And I said, John, look, I said, I got a problem with some people. Uh, who’s that? And I said, you know, I owe some money. I said, I’ll get it together in a little bit. I said, but I need a little time. And he said, well, who are these people you owe money to? He says, get me a list of the people you owe money to, and you don’t have to pay anybody. [1:30:06] Okay, he said, Bob, he said, look, he says, don’t get yourself in trouble. He said, you know, meaning like that. He said, don’t get yourself in trouble. You know, ease up. You know, ease up. He says, you’re a super sharp guy and this and that. He said, you don’t have to pay anybody. Give me a list of the names of the people in the world. The only names I gave him were a couple of local people. And I gave him Bob Johnson and a couple of the others. And he said to me, oh, he said, who’s Bob Johnson with? And I said, you know, I don’t know if he’s with anybody. He said, oh, okay. And I left. Now, when I went and met with the FBI agents in the motel, there were about five people there, U.S. Attorney. [1:30:56] I’m pretty sure it was Tom Durkin, who’s the judge now. So anyhow, when I went to see them, well, I said, all I want is use, immunity, and the rest of it. And I told them about a couple of the things I was involved in, a couple of the cases I was involved in from a while back, just a few of them. I said, you’ve got a guy right now who’s your liaison, who’s with us, meaning with the mob, who’s with us. And he said, who’s that? And he said, Amanda. Oh, the cop, the, uh, uh, the high school, William Hanhart, you, you told him that William Hanhart was, uh, was with you guys. So go ahead, start over a couple of days ago. [1:31:43] Anyhow, I said, I said, Hanhart is your liaison and he’s been with us for years. In fact, I said, he’s the one who had some of the people that he’s the one that helped kill some of the people. And the agent looks at me and the agent said, you don’t like him, do you? And I said, no, I don’t like him. Is that why you’re making up these things about him? And I had a few choice words with him. How bad. That agent didn’t realize that William Hanhart was running the biggest jewelry theft ring going to Chicago at the time and had done tons of things for the outfit, tons of things, helped set people up and all kinds of stuff. It came out eventually. They got all that information from me. He was the liaison between the FBI and Chicago. Whenever they were going to do anything, he’s the one that they contact and they, quote, unquote, work together with. And was obviously a good friend of this FBI agent. Obviously. He said, who I never saw again. They never brought him around me again. Anyhow, and that’s how the whole jury thing got. That’s how the whole investigation with him got started. Because I told them also. [1:32:58] But he was the one, there were a couple of those burglars that robbed, was it? I was at Iubo’s house. Oh, Icarus. Tony Icarus. Joe Batters. The ones that robbed him that were killed, he’s the one who had people go pick him up and deliver him to these people. Yeah. Butchie told me that. I met with Butchie on something else one time when somebody else got killed. And I thought, how could these guys be so stupid? But, you know, when those two guys that tried to kill Ido, the gambler, and he said, well, what do you do if the police come in? If the police come in and say you’re under arrest, what can you do? He said, Hanhart took care of that. And I used to see Hanhart all the time there with Pat Marcy. He’d openly meet with Pat Marcy at Council’s Road Table. He’d have the car sitting out in front. He’d have the car sitting out in front. He’d be in an openly meeting with them. [1:33:58] Just obviously blatant and he’s the FBI’s liaison and they didn’t know it yeah right they were all corrupt at that time, that was why too only very few people knew what I was doing for the first period of time very few because they knew a lot of the others there were corrupt because they were getting millions of dollars, With all the city business that would go, and I was there when these guys are cutting all the money up, the way they’re splitting it all up, and that’s going on to the present day. Well, you’ve got to quit gambling and this and that. And I said, look, I said, I don’t have to pay any of these people. They’ll say, how much do you owe? And I said, I don’t have to pay anybody. Why not? I was told not to pay them. By who? By Johnny DeFranco. It wasn’t the one I had words with. It was another FBI agent. You can’t talk to. You can’t talk to Johnny DeFranco. Johnny DeFranco was one of my closer friends for years. And I said, in fact, I went to see him and he told me not to, oh, you want me to go see him again and get that on tape? [1:35:10] And that’s what I did. And the next day, I got the okay to go to wear a tape. I went to see Johnny. We played the tape in court. And I went to see him. Hey, Bob, how are you? Everything okay? You got everything straightened out? And I said, I said, yeah, thanks. I said, yeah. I said, thanks. I said, John, I said, I want to pay this. I want to pay this one guy. Who’s that? I want to pay Bob Johnson. [1:35:41] And he said, why? He said, you’re not afraid of him, are you? These are his words on the tape. Because they know I wasn’t afraid of anybody. He says, you’re not afraid of him, are you? And I said, Johnny, I said, somebody put a bullet. [1:35:57] Somebody shot a bullet hole. I said, the guy’s a lunatic. Can somebody shot a bullet hole through my window and so forth? And he said, well, if you want to, if you want to, so be it. This leads to an even better story. I called Barbro. That’s his name. I called Barbro. He was a bookmaker in the Western suburbs. He had been on TV a couple months before when he got arrested. He was a major bookmaker, but he was out in one of the Western suburbs. I called him and I said, I want to give you some of the money. [1:36:30] I owed him about, I think about, it was only about maybe 20,000, 25,000. I said, I want to, meet you and get you some of the money. And he said, you don’t have to. That’s okay. You don’t have to. And I said, look, I said, you know, you’re a nice guy. I want to. And I could have gotten myself really in trouble by insisting on paying people if they realized what the hell, why would somebody was told they didn’t have to. They want to make cases on these people. That’s why they want me to pay them. They want me to make cases on them. So I meet them at my office when i’m gonna meet him when i meet him at my office and this is all on tape i said i got a couple thousand here for you he says look he said i didn’t threaten you did i they’re gonna kill bob johnson he said because they’re gonna kill bob johnson this is all on tape because he’s not paying anybody. [1:37:30] And he said, and I want to make it real clear, I’m not threatening you with anything. I said, no, no, no, you’re a good guy and you’re a good guy and whatever. And so now they notify Bob Johnson. They said, well, we have to let him know that they’re going to kill him and whatever. Bob Johnson, no more than a couple months after that, gets indicted by the feds when he was a major bookmaker. He got caught coming off the plane from Vegas with a couple hundred thousand in cash or whatever, and they put him in the MCC. I didn’t know this until later. He’s in the MCC and they put him in the same, on the same floor with Rocky and police and a number of the Cicero people. This is all information I gave them led to their arrest. Like I say, all those people involved in that family secrets, they were arrested based on my information and my introductions to those people, the agents that I brought into the racetrack to meet with, to meet with Joe Nagal. [1:38:52] A short time later, he’s found dead. They claim he committed suicide holding a bag over his head. No question. These people put him in the MCC on the same floor when they knew that these people were going to kill him. And he was the second one. another good friend of mine about a year before that was cooperating and I met him in an interesting way he was a hit man but I had met him in an interesting way and he had become a good friend all these guys loved hanging with me after they met me but uh he wound up he wound up supposedly on the same floor with the same people killing himself with a bag over the head, And the end of case, that’s how corrupt the system was, even when I was there. But let’s get back now. Was that Jerry Scarpelli by any chance? A guy named Jerry Scarpelli. I’m pretty sure it was. He was the one that. Was going to inform him and then he came, then he decided not to. Yeah. Okay. I’m pretty sure it was Jerry because he was also a good friend. I’m pretty sure he was the one that was in there. [1:40:13] And they put him on the same floor when you had about half a dozen of the other top mobsters, the most vicious ones in there. But frank swiss did you ever run into frank swiss the german he was a bad dude, yeah he was he was up there in fact he was with the north side yeah i knew him real well yeah uh along with uh he was up there his area was the old town area right yeah he was he was he was a porn store owners and that guy redwood met was uh was uh running the red o’malley wire was a guy named Redwood Met that had his office bugged and he was taping Frank for a couple of years, really. It was a hell of a case. Well, I wasn’t real close to him, but I knew him. I saw him a lot because I lived right there in Newbury Plaza, and I spent a lot of time. A couple of the girls I was fooling around with were there and were waitresses there in Old Town. Old Town, yeah. He was connected with DeVarco, with Caesar. He was with Caesar’s crew. [1:41:22] It’s funny how I met, jump in real quick to that. And the way I met Cesar, I was dealing with a new bookmaker who I went to collect. I was supposed to go collect money from the first time, and he wanted to meet me at a restaurant up on the north side, up on the north shore. And when I went to meet him, I go in there, and I go into a small— it’s a small little restaurant, a little restaurant with a couple tables and with a little bar in the corner. And when I come in there and I sit down, there’s only one person there at the bar. And I sat a couple seats down from him. And there were about three or four other people at one of the tables close by that look like mobsters. They just had that look about them. And I’m looking for my bookmaker. I don’t see him. And this person, this old timer, moves his chair over a little bit. And he looks at me and he says, do you know me? Do I know you? I don’t think so. [1:42:28] You don’t know me? No. Then why are you saying you’re connected with me? I said, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? And he said, and then Woody O’Clock comes out of the back room, the bookmaker comes out of the back room. And he said, you told him that you were connected with me. I said, I told him I was connected with Johnny Diarco. And I meant this, and I was talking about this. When I had met with him at the restaurant or whatever, where people are talking about me being partners with Johnny DeArco. And he’s thinking Johnny DeArco, the mobster. And I said, no. I said, you know, I’m an attorney. I said, I’m a blog partners with Johnny DeArco Jr. His name was DeVarco. No, DeVarco. Yeah, Cesar DeVarco. I got you. [1:43:22] He says, it was a short time after I had become partners. It was probably only maybe a couple weeks or whatever afterwards. He became a great source of business after that. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. In fact, I’ve seen the counselors once in a while when they come in there. And by now, I’m meeting all these other people. But see, the way I got to be so familiar with everybody, I bought Postals, the health club. That’s where the mobsters were all going. I bought that place. What was the name of that? Post TLS, Postals Health Club. Postals Health Club. Where was that? Downtown? We’ll read about that in the books. They talk about Postals Health Club. Charlie Postal was a world-renowned wrestler, not like we wrestled, but from the old times. But when I was a policeman in 18… [1:44:20] One day at roll call, they tell us, don’t anybody go to Mama DeLuca’s anymore. It’s a mob joint, and nobody’s supposed to go in there. [1:44:32] That’s why I went for lunch that day. And I meet Pat Marcy for the first time in his schmock and the rest of it. And he says, oh, you’ll see a lot of your friends here? And I says, no, I won’t. And he said, what do you mean you won’t? We were all told not to come in here. Oh, really? And why are you here? Because I was told not to come in here. I became unbelievably close friends with him. He was an old-time mobster who had connections. He had connections in traffic court and a lot of places. And I started having, when I was a policeman, I started having dinners there all the time. And inviting all these mobsters. And when I would have a dinner, we would take up just about the whole restaurant. He’d have a leg of veal. He’d make a leg of veal. He’d send his kid out to Lake Michigan to catch lake perch and make all kinds of dishes. And we would take just about most of the restaurant. All these different mobsters wanted to come with me to these dinners. Butchie and Tony and all kinds of others. This is when I’m still a placement. And I’m meeting some of these people because I’m involved in the gambling and I’m over in those places all the time. And when I first started going, that’s when everybody challenged me. Oh, you’re a copper. They hated coppers. And after all my activities, everybody wants to be my friend. [1:46:00] But now when I became partners with Johnny, Johnny flew me down to Springfield. The state plane went from Meigsfield down to Springfield. And it was just for the senators and the congressmen and, you know, and the political people. I would go, I went with Johnny the first day, you know, the next day when he’s going, when he’s going down there. He’s telling everybody that this is my partner. This is my partner now. And all these people are coming into his office, you know, tell your dad I said hi and the rest of it. That’s how I initially met with these people. [1:46:45] And now when we had the elections back in Chicago, all these people would come there at the first ward office. Just about everybody was anybody. Anybody running for office, anybody wanting to be a judge. You had judges, you had all the politicians. and there were no Republicans. They were just rivals. Everybody there, in fact, as I got to know and meet with these people, all these people were, initially they were Democrats, and they would call themselves Republicans when they were running in a Republican area. All of them, including the governor, including Thompson, and I wrote about him in my book, and he never denied it. [1:47:31] He’s the one that was meeting with Johnny in the steam room that one day and as I said before when Harry when Harry Alleman’s case was going on Tom Tom Maloney, Knew he was going to be named a judge, even though he had a reputation, even though he had been under investigation for killing a couple of people. And I found out later about that from Butchie. That was the reason he wanted to represent Harry was because Harry had killed a few people for him years before. He was involved with all kinds of narcotics people. Uh he was his hangout was a restaurant over there on west 26th street uh his girlfriend who became his wife was a dope dealer who came to me who came to me for representation at one time uh and uh when i’m wearing a wire i build up my own reputation and my own business by doing that a lot of these mobsters. [1:48:36] Whenever they got in trouble, I would help them out. A lot of them were gamblers themselves. And when I would go to these dice games and these other games with girls I’d pick up to impress them. There’s a casino right down the hill, a casino. And when I would walk in there, everybody could see I was the star when I’d walk in. Everybody wants to shake my hand. But a lot of these guys, Bob, have you got 100 or two? They never gave it back to me. I didn’t mind doing it. I didn’t mind doing it for a lot of reasons. They were out getting me business. In fact, the one who warned me about was one of these people. He was somebody I had loaned money to a couple of times and done things for. But the senators, too, they would call me when their family got in trouble, when their kids got arrested. That’s why I’m Leroy. [1:49:30] Frank Savickas was one of the uttermost powerful senators. I was with Frank probably two, three times a week for a couple of years. In my restaurant, I would meet all these people. They all wanted to be my friend for a lot of reasons. They could talk to me. A lot of them that couldn’t talk to Pat Marcy would have to go through me. Even Marco, Marco couldn’t talk to Pat Marcy. If he needed something or wanted to get a message, I’m the one who carried it because I could see Pat five days a week. That we’re talking about not just the senators, the congressmen, judges, these other people. [1:50:09] I’m talking after being with them for a few years. What I would do, too, when we had every election… They were run out of the office. They were run out of the first ward office. And what I would do was I would sit in Johnny’s office, you know, behind his desk when he’s not there. So when these people come in, you know, come in to say hello and whatever, who do they see there but yours truly? And people began to realize this is the person that can get a lot of things done. So now tell us about the robbery he set up in Wisconsin. That was a story all on its own. Now remind us who this guy is, Bobby. Tell us a little bit about him. Bobby Abinati. [1:50:58] He had a no-show job as a tow truck driver for the streets of sand. That was his job. And he used it as, and I mentioned in the book, that was where he did his booking from. That was his office. Okay. But I knew dozens of people that had no-show jobs. They got a paycheck. And they had a job with Streets and Sand or with the city or with the county or whatever. They never went to work. And what they did, the deal was with them, they gave half the money they got after taxes to the mob. They gave half of it. That’s why they got all these people, these different jobs, the no-show jobs. The ones who got other jobs paid 10%. That’s what it costs you if you want to go in there and get a job. And we’re talking with everything in the city and the county. They had control of all of that. Crazy. So what was this robbery set up up in Wisconsin? What must have gone wrong? When it’s time for me to go, these are the people who are going to kill me. I want to make sure I get them. What I did was I had been told, well, Veloukis, when Veloukis was the U.S. Attorney running everything, he would not give me the okay to wear a wire on a number of people, any of the mobsters. [1:52:21] I was told I couldn’t wear a wire on them because he said it was too dangerous for me. He was trying to, I knew why, he was trying to protect them because they’re making millions of dollars off them. He told me I couldn’t represent any of these people, so I had to try to find a way to do it. Uh, so what I did, uh, Johnny DeFranco, the boss, you state, we used to go to Maywood racetrack every Friday and he’d sit there with being sheriff. With Dvorak, who was the sheriff. They’d sit there at the table every Wednesday night. And I’d be going there a lot with Jimmy Andreacci, Joe Andreacci, one of the top bosses, a younger brother. Oh, yeah, Joe the trucker, I think they called him. Yeah, but his brother, he had a brother, Jimmy Andreacci. And Jimmy was a real close friend of mine. [1:53:26] And Jimmy would have the table. He was the one who gave all the juice loans out to all the people involved in the racetracks. He was the one that handled the juice for the drivers, for the owners, for the trainers. They all went through Jimmy. And he had a table right by the window in the clubhouse. [1:53:48] And Johnny and Dvorak would be about five rows up at a table, always the same one every Friday. And Tony Doty would be there and different mobsters would be there, but I would be there every, I’d be there four or five nights a week. I had nothing else to do. And that’s where I would take a lot of girls I’d be meeting. I’d be on, I’d be to the newspaper. I’d be meeting all kinds of girls because I no longer went to Guacolos or those places. I had stopped going, you know, for quite a while. By this time, I’m collecting at the window, and as I’m coming down, Tony Doty stops me. Hey, Bob, what’s up? I said, and he says, gee, you haven’t been with us for a long, you haven’t been betting with us for a long, long time. And I says, I got my own operation going. Oh you do and he said uh i said yeah i said it’s not real big i said i’ve only got about half a dozen people i won’t i won’t let them bet more than a thousand which was big big money at that time and i went back and i sat down when i went when i went to when i went to the office on monday i get a call from marco and he says you know can you stop by the can you stop by the club. [1:55:04] And uh yeah sure i knew why i knew by telling don’t telling dodie this that i’d get whistled in. [1:55:13] So i called tom and i said you got to get the okay for me to wear a wire i said i just got a call from marco and i told him what i did he said what he said what are you crazy you know what are you nuts i says look you gotta get the okay because i told him i’m going over there and i’m going over there so i got the okay to wear wire uh i had been told clearly i couldn’t against pat marcy and i could not against eddie burke and i could not against certain other people and so i get the wire and i go to see him and and he said what’s this about about whatever and about you having an operation yeah yeah mark i said that it’s not a real big he said look he says bobby this is all on a wire now. He says, Bobby, you got to pay. [1:56:03] Even you, I can’t help you. You’ve got to pay. You’ve got to be with somebody. And if you’re not and you get caught, something’s going to happen. You can’t mention any names unless you’re already lined up. Now, I was with them when all this, this whole thing began right about the time I got with these people. [1:56:25] They were meeting over at the club, at the club. There was a separate little room for Mirko in the club when you went in there. And that’s where, at the time, initially, it was Jackie Cerrone. It was Johnny DeFranco. It was other top mob bosses. People from all around were coming in there. That’s when they were setting up the whole scam with everybody has to pay. And that’s when everybody now had to pay street tax. If anybody messes with you, you give them by name, say you’re with me, and that’ll be the end of it. You’ll have no problems. They won’t mess with you. That was the deal. In fact, it became like a business in the courts. The clerks, The police working in there, you know, the policemen all around the city, other people, anybody who found out somebody was doing anything, not just gambling. We’re talking about with the bookmaking, with chop shops, with stealing cars, with even being involved in insurance scams, anybody, burglars, burglars had to use mob. [1:57:52] And all of them paid a street tax. In other words, if you were a major burglar, you had to use one of their offenses. So you paid a portion. They got a portion of what it was. Everybody, even the one you dealt with, would all pay. We’re talking millions of dollars a month, not just in Chicago, but in all the suburban areas out there, all the way into Indiana and Wisconsin. Listen, this was the new thing now. They would come in there all the time and they would exchange. In other words, I’ve got this customer, I’ve got that customer, I’ve got another customer. [1:58:31] And the person doing it would get a piece of the action. With bookmakers, it was 25,000 in front. I know this because one of them that got caught came to me for help, a jeweler upstairs. He got grabbed and knew that I knew these people and came to me terrified, wanting to pay. He wanted out of the business, but he was still going to pay them. And he wanted to make sure he wasn’t killed when he went to go pay them. I had to go with him. That’s another story. But anyhow, Marco tells me the whole thing. and you’ve got to pay. It depends on how much you’re doing and how many plays. So we arranged where I would pay, I forget the exact, I don’t know if it was $5,000 or $10,000. I was getting a discount because, you know, I had known those people. But where I would pay, and he told me, if you get more customers too, or if we find out you’re lying, you know, you’ll be paying more, but you can’t be lying to us because then something might happen to you. This is all on tape. But they did give you the friends and family discount. Yeah. [1:59:42] Then what I do, I was able to make a new law in Springfield. I talked about that in the book. I’m paying John $50,000. In Diarco, I’m paying him $50,000, and we’re going to pass a law in Springfield. It’s all set to be done. I tell Marco, and I’m paying Johnny $5,000 at a time, But I tell John, I tell Marco, after I made a couple payments, I tell Marco, I tell him, I need $50,000. I got to pay Johnny $50,000 because, you know, we’re fixing a matter. We’re fixing something and we’re getting a law passed at Springfield. I don’t want to go into my box and take a lot of money. You know, can I get $50,000? Yeah, sure. And what will that cost? I got a discount, too, because I’m family. Even though they were going to kill me a few years before. [2:00:37] But, and this is all on tape. And he gave me the 50,000. And now, and I made a few payments on that. So we got all that information. And we got all that information on the street tax that goes on to this day. None of the U.S. attorneys ever indicted anybody on any of that. So, yeah, we’re going to get the robbery. We’re going to get the robbery set up. I mean, they wouldn’t let me gamble to the last two weeks when I was there. And when I was, and when I was finally allowed to gamble, I only had like four or five bookmakers. and I won close to $200,000. I won close to $200,000. [2:01:18] No, I’m sorry. It was actually three weeks, only two weeks and a couple of days. But I told these people, I’m going to be betting and I’ve got other places I’m playing. I said, so this week, no matter what, we’ll carry it over until next week. We’ll carry it over until next week. We won’t be, there’ll be no straightening out for this week. It’ll be, it’ll start next week where we straighten it out, but I want to play with you guys. Okay, no problem. So, uh, I lost about four or 5,000 in those two days. It was a Saturday and Sunday. So we start playing the next week. It’s going to be straightened out, you know, on the following Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. So the next week I went a little over 200,000. [2:02:08] And I’m betting with Bobby, which kind of brings up, begs the question and have to bring this up is there’s going to be people that say, well, the only reason he came in was because he had huge gambling debts and this was a way to get out of paying them. What would you say to those guys? Well, because the facts of the case, I’ll get into this. The facts of the case are in terms of that, I had given him big money in the past and never got paid back. He never did. He didn’t have the money. [2:02:40] And like there were a few others like him, I had loaned him like maybe the first time $1,500. Then I loaned him like $4,000, a couple times $5,000 when he had to pay off money that he owed and whatever. And the last time I did it was, I got him a $10,000 Judas loan. I did it with a friend of mine who had the parking lot over there in Halsted with George. And I said, George, I said, you know, I’m going to bring in Bobby Ebenati. He’s one of Marco’s guys. I said, because he’ll maybe pay, I’m sure he’ll pay you back. I’m sure he’ll pay you back. I said, because I keep loaning him big money. I never get it back. And he’s a good friend. But, uh, so I figured I’ll get the money back that way. And, uh, so, okay. So I set up a juice loan with, uh, with George, Bobby made one payment and then stopped and then just stopped. He figured he could because he’s with, with whatever. And so I paid George the rest of the money. I mean, it sounds bizarre, but I began that at that time I was making unbelievable money, you know, because of the way I was able to gamble with all those people. So anyhow, when I win the $200,000, when I win that, I tell Bobby, I want to set up this bullshit card game. [2:04:05] Hey, Bob, tell us about your last operation working with the feds. I know you wanted to lock something in where they’d go to jail for a long time because you didn’t want them out there. You didn’t want to have a bunch of not-guilties. And you know anything can happen when you go to trial. But when you catch somebody in the act, it’s a different story. So tell us about that. It’s a pretty exciting case, guys. And I said, oh, Bobby, I said, Bobby, I said, when I collect this money, I’ll give you 25% of it. [2:04:35] His was like 40-some thousand. I said, when I collect it, I’ll give you 25%. I’m having a real good thing. I’m never going to. I know now the robbery’s going to take place probably in the next week or so where you get it lined up. Beforehand, I had seen Marco, and I told him, you know, I got a card game. When I made one of my payoffs, I think I made my second payment on the juice loan. And I said, you know, I play cards with these people. And I told them, I says, I play cards up in the, what was that building there? It’s a hundred stories on Michigan Avenue. Dave, John Hancock. I said, the person who has the game, we play up in the Hancock. We play up there. I said, it’s a big game. What kind of money? I said, oh, there’s probably a hundred, 200,000 in the money. I said, we’ve got some dope dealers coming in. He said, okay, we can hit the game. And if we do, he said, you get 25%. And I’m wearing a wire at this time. And he said, don’t worry about it. We’ve done it there before. We got somebody over there and we’ve done it there before. We can do it. And then when I talked to my people, Steve Bowen. Steve Bowen was the agent I worked with from day one. [2:05:58] Steve said they said it would have been too dangerous to to go when they’re, you know, with people, other people being around, obviously hundreds of people being around, they, they decide to arrange to set it up in Wisconsin and they set it up right there, in Lake Geneva where people are not there in the winter time. This is in November where there’s not a lot of people. So it’s set up to go there in Lake Geneva. I’m talking with, talking with, I talked with Marco and Bobby gets a hold of me. You’re going to, you’re going to have a card game that they’re going to rob. Yeah. He says, well, he says, tell Marco that I want to do it, that they’re going to have somebody that’s not my group. That’s not my, that’s not everybody’s. They’ve got crews to do certain things. Certain crews that go out to do the killings, certain crews that go out for robberies, certain crews that go out for burglaries. He’s with the burglary crew. He says, I’m with the, I’m with the, uh, the burglary guys and whatever. He says, tell Marco. So, you know, I meet Marco and I said, Bobby wants to fuck him. The knucklehead. No, he’s not going to, he’s not going to do it. We got somebody else. And so now I’m hanging around those people again. Now, now that I’m paying, obviously something won’t happen to me. I got their money. You’re paying street tax. You got some of their money. [2:07:26] Now I’m back in the clubs all the time. And setting up other people uh you know the bad guys i mean the real bad guys a lot of the bad guys a lot of the guys we’re friends about and i never turned in any of them i’m telling now as i’m talking to bobby they were talking about there’s another game i said i want to get into, this game up there in lake geneva he says that’s my area he said he says i got you know i got a place up there. And Marco has a place up there. They’ve got places up there. They’re up there all the time, you know, and whatever. So it’s going to be in Lake Geneva. Oh, that’d be great. And I’m telling Bobby now that, you know, there may be close to a million dollars in the game because we got some other major dope dealers that play and whatever. I says, and whatever, he’s pressuring me, pressuring me, pressuring me. And Marco keeps saying knucklehead. No, not the knucklehead. [2:08:26] Then a couple of days before it’s set to go, it’s all lined up to go on a certain day. Marco calls me. He says, we’re going to let Bobby do it. We’re going to let his crew do it. The other guy, the one who was supposed to do it, and the one that was supposed to do it is one of my closest friends i just saw him a couple days ago he the one who would the one who they wanted to do it didn’t want to do it it turns out he didn’t want to do a cowboy thing like that yeah i don’t uh and that’s that’s why bob that’s how bobby got involved in it on the day it was supposed to happen i was supposed to collect that 40 some thousand from bobby because that was it was like that was collection day. Bobby only gave me, or maybe it was even like 60. Bobby only gave me about half of the money he owed me and said, I’ll give you the rest of the money later. I’ll give you the rest of the money later. I obviously told these people that he had delivered the money to me when he did that. Because it turns out they were going to kill me. I found out from Lantini, from Rick, they were going to kill me at the card game. Rather than give me my percentage and whatever, Rick told me, yeah, he said, I was supposed to do it. He said, but I turned them down and they kept pressing and I kept saying no. That’s when they gave it to knucklehead, to knucklehead. [2:09:56] So now when we get it all lined up, it was around maybe three o’clock when I met Bobby. He gave me the money and he told me everything is all set to go. We’ll see you later on. What they’re supposed to do, it’s a house that they’ve got. And it’s probably about a good distance away from where the dirt road is. There’s a circular dark road, or a semi-circle. It goes from the street here and goes around in those houses. There’s houses around there, big houses, and comes out back a little distance away on the other side. And what they had done was they had set up flash grenades in there. So when the guys come in, they have to come this big distance, and that’s when they announce that you’re under arrest or whatever because these guys were trying to fence. Tactically, they could, like, trap them in with something blocking the street on both sides on that circular driveway and then set off the flashbangs. [2:11:03] Trying to think tactically, and then have agents hiding in the woods and then come in on them. So, yeah, that was pretty good. They had them all over the place. They had them all set up. It was a long distance down there, and across the way they had some bushes, issues and but but again you know getting well getting into that uh itself bobby you know bobby paid me only a portion of the money uh a portion of the money and uh and i talked with him and he said yeah he said you know we’ll be there we’ll see you and the deal was i was supposed to call them uh i was going to be staying in the lodge there and i was supposed to call them uh call him after I got in there and I’m ready to go to the game. And so when I get there, there had to be, in that room, there had to be 30, 40 people. It turns out they had two whole SWAT teams. The Wisconsin SWAT team and Chicago SWAT team. And the Wisconsin guy was in charge of it. When we finally get to the hotel room, I call Bobby. [2:12:14] Uh, and I said, I said, he said, I said, yeah, I’m here now and I’ll be going over to the, oh yeah. He said, we saw the place. It’s going to be perfect. He said, you know, I can see, I can, you know, I can see the, I can see the, uh, smoke coming out of the windows and whatever. Uh, it’s going to be ideal. It’s a secluded place. Uh, he says, and he says, and he says to me, and I’m here, we got the shotguns, we got the shotguns and whatever. cover and we’re all the time he’s setting you up to kill be killed. [2:12:49] He said and and and uh and he says and uh you know we’re ready to go i said okay i said uh, so when i hang up i said the gym jim wagner was there with me from chicago he was the head of the strike force there in chicago uh and i said to jimmy okay let’s go and he and and now the Wisconsin guy running the show says, you’re not going in there. No, you’re not going. I said, I got to go. No, no, no. It’s too dangerous. He said, he said, you’re not, you’re not going. And I said, I have to go or it’s not going to happen. I said, you know, and, and, uh, Jimmy says, I’ll put on your coat. And that’s Jimmy. Yeah. Yeah. [2:13:32] You’re not. If I don’t walk in there, nothing happens. I have to go. So the other guy gives in and agrees to let me go. They were worried I might get killed. It turns out they were right. [2:13:46] But I was going anyhow. I mean, my life is, I knew my life is over at this stage. Anyhow, we go in there, And, uh, when I get in there, there had to be 30, 40 people in there. And when I get in there, they tell me, you got to go upstairs and it’s a two level and you got to go in the bathroom and you got to go stay in the bathroom. No, they’ve got it. They’ve got it wired and they’ve got a plane up above. They’ve got a plane, a silent plane up above. And I’m listening to all this. It’s all being, you know, it’s all loud as hell in there. All these guys are with shotguns and with vests. And they’ve got, I don’t know how many people outside, outside, across the way and whatever. And in about maybe half an hour, not even that, half an hour later, I hear, here they come. Here they come, that must be them, because there’s no traffic at all around there and in there. And yeah, oh, the car stopped. The car stopped in front. It stopped in front. and somebody got out. Somebody got out and they went in the bushes across the way. Oh, fuck, we got some guys over in that area. We got some guys in that area. [2:15:07] Okay, and then the car moves around and I never saw the area. It goes all the way around and comes back to the street and the car goes around and the car comes back, it comes back about maybe, About 10, 15 minutes later, here it comes again. It’s slowed down. It’s moving now. They’re still driving. They’re driving around. They disappeared. Nothing for a little bit. And then after a while, here it comes again. This time, Gorbos in the bushes comes out and talks to them And then goes back into the bushes, and the car leaves. Oh, man. Cautious, cautious. And the car leaves. And it’s gone. It’s gone for a while. This time, probably maybe like a half an hour. Here it comes again, and the guy gets into the car, and the car leaves. in nothing. We’re in there for an hour, hour and a half, and nothing. That said something must have happened. We leave. Now, I’m leaving town the next morning. I don’t know where I’m going. [2:16:37] But I made it clear I was not going to witness protection. I told them there’s no way. I said we own protection. We own that. That’s a death sentence in there. And as we’re going, we drive in and we go to the north side FBI station. Let me call Bobby and let me see what happened. Maybe we can still do something. Maybe we can do this another time, but let me talk to Bobby. So I call Bobby. I call this house and his wife tells me he’s not home yet. So I know where he’ll be at this particular bar, nightclub that’s owned by Rick Lantini, my buddy, the guy that I’m dealing with to this day. [2:17:27] Rick Lantini owns the club, and he’s one of his top guys. This guy’s got a 30-piece crew of his own. [2:17:37] And he answers the phone. What’s up? Is Bobby there? Oh, yeah. He says, Bobby’s here. He says, what the fuck is going on? I says, what do you mean? He said, he’s here, and so many people are here, and they’re yelling about something happened. And he says, what the fuck? He said, did something go wrong on that robbery? Or words to that effect. Rick was the one they wanted to have do it, and he wouldn’t do it. But they come back, and they’re there. holy shit, what happened was, When they went around, there was a copper undercover police were there. [2:18:19] When they called the local police department and they told them there’s going to be something happening. They wouldn’t tell them where. Don’t go at all excited if you hear some noise and commotion or whatever. So this is some goofy copper who wants to be around the action. And that’s the place he picked the park. yeah and these guys come by and they see him and they figure to top or screwing somebody, and that’s why when they went by the first time they saw him when they went by when they went by the the uh when they went by the second time and they saw him they figured you know he’s sleeping that son of a bitch must be sleeping there yeah and they’re in but and they’re going to do it But anyhow, because it’s like a block away on the other side, air holes or something breaks in the car. [2:19:14] When they leave there to go, The car, the car, but it’s their work car. They never, it’s a stolen car. Yeah. They never, you know, they never, so they’ve got another car that they came down there in and all. So they, they went over to, in town to see if they could find somebody in town. Apparently some people sometimes, you know, we’re late in those places. They couldn’t get the car fixed. So the guy running the show called it off. He says we’re not gonna we’re not gonna do it oh man he says he says we’re not gonna do it we indicted them and convicted him anyhow because i’ve got i’ve got bobby on tape saying when i was there i’m here i’ve got the shotguns yeah uh they’ve got they’ve got all it off because they wanted to. They called it off because they couldn’t do it. We wound up convicting all of them. But Bobby wouldn’t give up his crewmates. He wouldn’t give them up. Bobby did 10 years rather than do that. Wow. [2:20:30] Crazy, crazy, crazy. God. Bob Cooley. Guys, there’s many more stories like this in When Corruption Was King. I’ll have links in under the show notes.

Transcribed - Published: 22 December 2025

Retired Kansas City, Missouri, Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins tells the story of the unsolved murder of James Ragen. Gary Jenkins digs into an old-school Chicago Outfit story pulled from a vintage newspaper clip by legendary columnist Drew Pearson. The article centers on James M. Ragen,” a key figure in the Continental Press and Racing Wire—and what happened when the Outfit decided it wanted total control of the race wire business. This is a gritty snapshot of how Chicago’s underworld allegedly dominated legitimate businesses in the 1940s—bars, taverns, suppliers, and especially gambling infrastructure—then used violence and influence to keep it that way. Gary returned to Chicago Outfit history after spotting an old Drew Pearson column: “A Songbird Who Sang, Murdered.” Who James Ragen was: a major player in distributing horse racing results nationwide How race wire services powered mob-controlled bookmaking across U.S. cities The Outfit’s push to muscle in with a competing racing wire—and the warning: don’t compete with Chicago Mob-linked figure Mo Annenberg and the money behind race wire “tolls” and kickbacks.  Outfit names mentioned in the takeover fight, including “Greasy Thumb” Jake Guzik and others from the era. Pearson claimed that Ragen gave information about mob domination in Chicago to the U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark, and that resulted in his murder. The broad daylight attack: a fruit truck pulls alongside, and a machine gun ambush erupts at a stoplight, and James Ragen goes down in a hail of .45 bullets. The “stranger-than-fiction” twist: Ragen later dies, and an autopsy allegedly finds a tube of mercury in his stomach. Why the case remained murky: the coroner allegedly refused to pin it cleanly as murder (per Pearson’s reporting) Gary frames it as a reminder of how deep the Outfit’s influence ran in city systems and politics. Memorable Moments Ragen/Reagan’s fatalistic line (as told by Pearson): “If they want you, they’re gonna get you.” The bizarre mercury detail and Gary asking listeners if they’ve ever heard anything like it Why This Story Matters This bonus episode connects the dots between information networks (race results), organized gambling, and the Outfit’s approach to business: control the pipeline, control the profit—and crush anyone who won’t move aside. Gary invites listeners to share any other “old but gold” Chicago Outfit stories or clippings worth covering in future bonus episodes—and reminds everyone to check out his books and films (search Gary Jenkins on Amazon or visit his website). 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript James Ragen race wire story Speaker: [00:00:00] Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio. Gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City, Missouri Police Detective, formerly of the Intelligence Unit. I spent 14 years there investigating organized crime in Kansas City. Best 14 years of my life. Speaker: I think sometimes you know, I’ve got this True Crime podcast and we focus on the mob and I haven’t. Been to Chicago for a little bit, it seemed like. And I was, I was looking through some stuff from the Chicago outfit Facebook page, and there’s a newspaper clip on the, the, the group that has newspaper clips on it that had an article by a man named Drew Pearson. Speaker: Now, drew Pearson was a real famous columnist back in the forties and fifties, and the title of it is A Songbird Who, mur, who Sang, murdered. Now he starts off talking about the singing of Joe Vce. I guess he, he wrote this article about the time Joe Vce had all the newspapers, Andre, and talked about the New York mob. Speaker: But he had [00:01:00] a guy who talked about the Chicago outfit. He said that, he feels, he said that he felt responsible for the death of this informant outta Chicago. So he dropped in, he said he dropped into the morgue of Chicago’s American newspaper to refresh his memory just about this guy and, and what he said. This guy was a man named James M. Reagan, who was a of the continental press and racing wire. He was machine gunned down from a fruit truck. In August 14th, 1946, Speaker: Reagan, before he died, had told him many things in, in 1946 four years before the Koff Commission and just before he got killed. Reagan told Drew Pearson about the Chicago Mob rule and gave him permission to take it to the Attorney General of the United States, Tom Clark. Now, Tom Clark is the same guy who [00:02:00] commuted the sentences of. Speaker: The four Chicago outfit bosses who were given tenure prison sentences for the Hollywood scandal for, for trying to extort money from Hollywood unions and Hollywood film companies. Now this story that he told was about hotels and taverns and nightclubs and restaurants, and he said they’re all dominated by the mob in Chicago. Speaker: He said to hire a bartender, to buy ice cubes or to launder. Roller towels. Those are the old towels that you used to pull down in the bathrooms. I don’t think they have ’em anymore. Speaker: And they take those towels out and send them off and they’d launder ’em and give you a freshman to buy any beer. To replenish your alcohol supply in a bar, you had to do business with the mob. The mob ruled a very large part of Chicago. He took this story back to Attorney General Clark, who authorized a dozen or so FBI men to check on Reagan’s facts. Speaker: Couple weeks later, they reported back and he said, this is all [00:03:00] true. They also reported that the control of the underworld reached in a very high places in Chicago and political places, and then Illinois too, also to Tom Clark, although nobody really knew that at the time and, and only indirectly. Some of these rules of the underworld in Chicago were on the surface, respected businessmen and, and politicians whose names were household words in Chicago. Speaker: Some of them had reformed, but they still controlled the mob. They, which means that they maybe didn’t go out and do mob stuff anymore, but they still were, had some control in the mob. In some respects, Reagan’s information was much more important than that at Joe Bachi, especially when it came to Chicago. Speaker: Achi didn’t know anything about Chicago, didn’t talk about Chicago, but the Justice Department in Washington had no jurisdiction at the time, which is kind of interesting. They had to pass a lot of special laws in order to bring the feds in or catch these guys on a, some kind of a interstate. Violation [00:04:00] now, they just didn’t wanna do it because they had interstate theft at that time. Speaker: There’s a lot of things they could do. Transportation, women across state lines for immoral purposes. They could use the interstate transportation of stolen autos. There was all kinds of stuff they could use, but, but they wouldn’t use it. Claim the state’s rights city of Chicago and state of Illinois responsible, not the FBI or the Justice Department now, ain’t, that’s something they claim they had no responsibility for all this crime going on in Chicago. Speaker: Lot different than it is today. The feds are trying to, to send the national Guard in and, and all the new federal police, a newly hired federal police , into Chicago to. Clean up Chicago. So back then they didn’t want anything to do with Chicago. Called drew Pearson back a little later, shortly after, and there was a leaky place up there in Washington. Speaker: He said the mob. Was wise to him. They were out to get him and he asked for FBI protection, the FBI did give him a bodyguard for a short period of time. But you know, it, that didn’t last. And Reagan [00:05:00] himself was not exactly a saint. He was, he was the the bar boss of the continental racing wire. And he, you know, he distributed raising results. Speaker: And there’s a huge amount of gambling in all the different cities that was ran by the mob. And the results came over this continental racing wire. Immediately you could have a race in, in upstate in Saratoga. And when that, that race was done, the results were sent back to Chicago and Kansas City and Baltimore, and, and Cleveland and all those states. Speaker: And he was involved with a mob associate named Mo Annenberg and distributing this news to RS all over the country. He actually had some minor altercations with this Mo Annenberg, who was definitely a mob associate when Annenberg wanted to increase the race wire tolls to some certain publications that that weren’t kicking back to the mob. Speaker: He wanted almost, he wanted to almost triple him from $200 a week to $500 a week. And his troubles really began because [00:06:00] Chicago Mob had started their own racing wire that was gonna compete with them. And, you know, you just don’t compete with the Chicago outfit on a business level. You just don’t compete with them. Speaker: A couple of names he said, Jaime Levin and greasy th. And greasy thumb, Jake Guzzi directed that battle to take over the race wire. The former Illinois State Senator involved Pat Burns. He was working for the mob acquired property over over, over the tracks where men with binoculars could flash the odds and the race results to offices, which then in turn sent ’em out over the wire to bookmakers all over the country. Speaker: And Reagan’s continental wire was already doing the same thing. And the take on this was fabulous for the mob and the mob demanded Reagan move over and let them have it all. You know, the mob, you just don’t, if they wanna move in, they’re gonna take it all. They’re always gonna take it all. Probably that’s what induced Reagan to talk to him. Speaker: Do Drew Pearson [00:07:00] opines and ’cause he had threats on his life even before this. And, and I think he thought maybe he could bring a lot of federal heat onto the mob in Chicago. That then would back them off from trying to take over the race wire business. You know, it’s you know, it’s a way to use the FBI or the police to take out competition really, is probably what it really comes down to, what it really was. Speaker: You know, drew Pearson says, you know, when a man calls you on the phone and tells you in detail about one time he found two gunmen laying outside his home, waiting for him to come out, and he tries to do something about it. And that’s when he called the FBI you know, and they said, manpower short, we got other problems to handle. Speaker: And. And Reagan kept calling Drew Pearson and kept calling saying, you know, my life’s in danger. And, and Drew Pearson, he was telling the truth. Reagan finally hired two bodyguards, what he should have done all on his own before a retired policeman named Walter Peltier and a truck driver named Marty Waltz. Speaker: The retired policeman might be okay, although that [00:08:00] would be suspect with a mob in Chicago. He just as soon turned him over for a little more money as guard him. I got a feeling. Two months after. Reagan talked to Drew Pearson. He was driving home about five 30 in the afternoon. A gray sedan with Indiana plates stopped in front of him in per Pershing Road and State Street. Speaker: The traffic light turned and the two bodyguards were following him in a close behind. They expected trouble, but not till they got home. And not in broad daylight on the streets of Chicago and downtown Chicago with all the traffic around. Well, a fruit truck, a light delivery truck with crates of fruit on it, and a tarponing across the top. Speaker: Pulled up alongside Reagan at this light. All of a sudden the Taron was pulled aside. This just like TV folks, machine gun stressed out and bam, bam, bam. I mean, they, they fired off round after round into Reagan’s car, light changed in the fruit truck, and the gray sedan moved on out. [00:09:00] Reagan was taken immediate to a hospital, and he was still alive, and he was kind of philosophical. Speaker: According to Drew Pearson. He says, well, I guess if they want you, they’re gonna get you. This was not the end of the story though. Re Reagan began to recover from the mods bullets. Three Chicago cops had sat in shifts outside his hospital room, one on each shift, and, and so, you know, they couldn’t finish the job in the hospital room, and Reagan got better and better. Speaker: But then finally on August 14th, this is about what, two months later, he dies. The autopsy showed that there was a tube of mercury had been placed inside his stomach enough to kill three men. Now, go figure. Have you ever heard of that? They placed it, I somehow they placed a tube of. Mercury in his stomach. Speaker: I guess he threw some of the wounds he had or something. They must have had a doctor involved. I’m not sure how that happened. That’s a, that’s a weird one there folks. That is something else. Any of you guys ever heard [00:10:00] anything more strange than that? Let me know. But put his tube of mercury in his stomach. Speaker: Crazy. The coroner ruled that he could not charge murder since he couldn’t say whether Reagan had died of gunshot wounds or of mercury poison. I think he’d charge murder either way. Well it sounded like the coroner was on the take too. You know, the outfit had Chicago wired in most of the political offices in 19 46, 47, 48. Speaker: Clear up to really up to the seventies, and the operation Graylord started knocking some of that out. They don’t know. They just don’t know whether some mobster came in there and or they bribed somebody. But more than likely, they bribed somebody to get that tube of mercury in his stomach. Death of James N. Speaker: Reagan remains one of Chicago’s 974 unsolved Gangland Slain since 1919, and that this was back in the fifties or so when this article was written. So that’s the end of James Reagan and the end of [00:11:00] his. Wire service, a continental press and racing wire in the total domination of Chicago, of the wire services, especially west of New York. Speaker: I mean Chicago. They wanted to rule everything west of New York and they did so. Anyhow. If you got any other old stories like that that are kind of interesting, let me know. I’m putting this up as a little bonus episode, and I really appreciate y’all tuning in. Don’t forget, I got books and movies out there to sell and go to my website or go to Amazon, just search for Gary Jenkins. Speaker: You might wanna take a look at the VA website. If you’re in, been in the service and you think you have a problem with PTSD or alcoholism or anything like that, if you have a problem with gambling via 8 1 800. Bets off or whatever. Your state has all the gambling casinos in the United States. Speaker: Whenever they get awarded a gambling license, they have to kick in so much money to provide services for people with problems with [00:12:00] gambling. They have problems with alcoholism straight you know, our friend Anthony Ruano, he’s got a website out there. Just go to his website and he’s, there’s a way to contact him on that. Speaker: I used, I sometimes say a number. I’m not sure if that number’s still any good. And I guess that’s all I got. Thanks a lot guys.

Transcribed - Published: 19 December 2025

In this explosive episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with actor, entrepreneur, and mob insider Gianni “Johnny” Russo, best known for his unforgettable role as Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather. Russo pulls back the curtain on a lifetime of stories that stretch from Frank Costello and Joe Colombo to Las Vegas skimming, the Vatican Bank, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Hoffa, and even Pablo Escobar. Russo discusses his new book, Mafia Secrets: Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather, co-written with Michael Benson—an unfiltered account of power, violence, politics, and survival inside the criminal underworld and Hollywood royalty. This is not recycled mythology—this is Gianni Russo’s personal version of history from the inside. Whether you believe every word or not, the stories are raw, violent, and utterly fascinating. This episode discusses: The Godfather, The Kennedy assassinations, Vegas skimming, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Hoffa, the Chicago Outfit, Pablo Escobar 🔥 Episode Highlights 🎬 How Gianni Russo REALLY Got Cast in The Godfather. Russo reveals that Joe Colombo personally helped secure his role. Paramount Studios negotiated directly with Colombo to avoid trouble. The real-life mob influence behind Carlo Rizzi’s casting. Initially, James Caan was slated to play Michael Corleone 🏛️ Growing Up Under Frank Costello Russo describes how Costello became his protector. Living for decades in a Manhattan apartment, Costello employed him as an errand runner and messenger for influential mob figures 💰 Vegas Skimming & Vatican Money Laundering Russo details moving hundreds of millions of dollars through the Vatican Bank. How casino cash from Las Vegas was “cleaned” overseas, and how Chicago Outfit figures like Jackie Cerone were tied to the financial pipeline. 🎭 Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedys & a Dark Secret Russo claims Marilyn was pregnant with Bobby Kennedy’s child. The explosive fallout and her alleged assassination. Why her body would never reveal the truth, according to Russo. The mysterious death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen 🚬 Jimmy Hoffa’s Fate Russo shares what he says is the real story about Hoffa’s murder, the crushing and disappearance of the body. Why Hoffa was marked for death after returning to union power 🔫 Pablo Escobar & the Vegas Casino Shooting Russo describes killing Pablo Escobar’s underboss in a self-defense shooting. The terrifying private meeting that followed—with Escobar himself, how respect between two men prevented a bloodbath ⚰️ Tony & Michael Spilotro: What Casino Got Wrong Russo disputes Scorsese’s version of the murders. First-hand account of seeing the brothers after their brutal beating. The real setup and why Tony Spilotro sealed his own fate Mafia Secrets: Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather by Gianni Russo & Michael Benson A memoir covering: The Mob, Hollywood, Politics Vatican corruption, Murder, betrayal, and survival 👉 Available now wherever books are sold 🎯 Why You Should Listen Few guests in the history of Gangland Wire have touched so many legendary crime stories in one lifetime. 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Speaker: Well, hey, are you wire tapper? It’s good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a guest today, which is, as you can see, if you’re looking, it’s, Johnny Russo. And I know a lot of you guys know Johnny. , He is, been a, a character, a mover in the shaker in this mob entertainment business for a long time. Starting with The Godfather, I think the first time we heard of him. He, , somehow got selected for the part to get beat up by James Conn and earned the, the reputation of being a wifebeater. Now that was all fiction. You guys realize that was all fictionalized for the story. But anyhow, welcome Johnny. It’s great to have you on the show. Speaker 2: Always my man. So much fun. Always. And I, the fact you’re still doing it and you know, the intrigue of the mob is never going away. Speaker: Never going away is it’s just, it’s gotten more in the last, I’ve been doing this for five, six years and it’s gotten more and more each year. It’s crazy. Speaker 2: Well, yeah. The funniest thing you say that, most people don’t know I own all the IP of the Godfather.[00:01:00] Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: All the intellectual property. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: Like if all your listeners go on right now to quarterly own fine Italian foods. Speaker: Uh, Speaker 2: my, all my food. I’m in 83 countries, Gary. Speaker: That’s right. You got in the food business, didn’t you? Crazy, Speaker 2: crazy food business. I got in the liquor business. I, I mean, clothing. My, I mean, it’s crazy. My clothing line is called the mia. By Gianna. I try to keep everything in the mod mob feeling. Speaker: Well now you got a new book out called Mafia Secrets, untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about those mafia secrets, which that’s what, you know, that’s what we all wanna know. We wanna know the secrets of mafia. That’s think that’s part of the, that’s part of the, uh, j quo, the, uh. A little bit of something different. What we, what’s, intriguing about the mafia is this code of erta and the secrets that they had tried to keep over the Speaker 2: years. Well, you know, the situation with this, which book here that you’re talking about, that this [00:02:00] book. On, on the, one of the cove notes is Chei had it wrong in Casino. Speaker: Interesting. Speaker 2: Because I was, I one of the highlights, one of the big chapters in here. It’s pretty gory. I mean, we were just talking about Michael Benson Pryer going on. This guy is really a great graphic. Uh, writer and I mean, when he, when he’s talking about killing somebody, you could smell the blood. Speaker: Cool. That’s what we like. Well, let’s, let’s talk just a little bit about your history, your background. You go clear back to Frank Costello when you were a kid in, in New York City. You grew up in New York. Right. Tell us a little bit about that. Speaker 2: In, in 73 when he died, he left it to me. I’ve been in this apartment 70, I’ve been in this apartment 71 years. Speaker: On the Upper East Side, I guess. [00:03:00] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Speaker: yeah. Oh yeah. Speaker 2: Like sit 16. I mean, it’s ridiculous. People come and say, how did you, how could you afford it? I said, I can’t. It was given to me. Speaker: Really? Especially these days. Speaker 2: Oh my Speaker: God. Now you still living in New York City? Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That’s my base. Yeah. I, I, I, I have a house in Sicily. I’ve had for a while now. I bought different properties in different, where I like going. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: And then. I kept them all by made, I’m the only guy, even, even when I bought my boat, they said, that’s gonna be a money pit that’s gonna eat all your money up. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: So I, I bought a boat when I was 21. I bought a Riva 148 foot Riva Speaker 4: Damn. Speaker 2: And I was good friends with Grace Kelly. ’cause Grace was going to the Baran school right around the corner on 62nd Street. Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: Well, I got to know all of these young actresses when they were just coming out. [00:04:00] That’s how I got invited to her wedding. Sinatra couldn’t believe I got invited to the wedding. What happened? I, I got the boat and the boat had a slip in Monaco. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 2: So I used to go there April, stay on my boat for a couple of months, and then I gave it to the Carlton Hotel to lease out. I made money from that boat every year. Speaker: I bet. And so it wasn’t holding the water. You stuck money in, as we say, that’s what you always hear about a boat. So, uh, speaking of of money and money, you talked about money laundering for the Vatican. Now I heard a story here in Kansas City, bear with me. This guy gave, he wanted to buy a church. He gave like a million dollar. Donation and the only way they’d take it if he had it converted to gold, actual gold and he took it over to the Vatican. Does that sound right to you? Speaker 2: [00:05:00] Uh, that we do Well, I used to do that myself, so I mean, I know that, but they, gold got too heavy. And then when they put all these restrictions after nine 11, yeah, you would never get on the plane. Speaker: Oh. Speaker 2: So, so I did something new. I’ll reveal it to your audience. I started buying diamonds. Speaker: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: Which they don’t even reflect going through the machine. So I have a solid gold Davidoff cigar holder. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: I put a hundred karats of diamonds. I put it in my suit jacket. I don’t smoke. It goes right through the machine. Speaker: Huh, interesting. Speaker 2: I guess every drug dealer in the world is doing because Speaker: it probably smell no problem. Smell that cocaine going through the machine. Be all over that cocaine. Try that. Speaker 2: I mean, I never took a drug. Thank God. Speaker: Yeah, me neither. So I see in the background you got the Godfather. I mean this is, I [00:06:00] know it’s been told before, but, so we got some guys out here that that may not know that story. You’re you, how did you get that part anyhow? You were the son-in-law of the Godfather and the brother-in-law to Son Corleone James. James Conn James Conn’s character. How’d you get that part? Speaker 2: I, I, I left the country for about three or four years after the Kennedy assassination. ’cause I, I mean, I was a messenger. I knew nothing about who, what and where. Yeah. But they wanted to question me. So Costello sent me on a nice trip and while I was out the book of the Godfather that came out. I’m an illiterate. I had somebody read it to me because I never went to school. ’cause when I got outta Bellevue from polio, I was 12 years old already. And then I was selling ballpoint pens on the street corners, and that’s how I met Costello. And the rest was history. But so what happened to me was that I had to read the book. And then I, [00:07:00] I was in la. I landed in LA ’cause nobody knew my name because Costello named me the kid. They couldn’t even get a subpoena on me. Who’s the kid? What’s his last name? What’s his first name? People got to know my name. Once The Godfather to come out. Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: That was it, which was great. I mean, the guy was a genius, but long story short, I read that, you know, Joe Colombo. Created the Italian Anti-Defamation League in New York and he had a big rally in, in 71 and a hundred thousand people came and there were cops got stabbed and everything else. The only good thing he did do was hire Barry Sch Slotnik, a great Jewish attorney, and in fact, his son now is still my attorney. Speaker 5: Oh, Speaker 2: really? So it, but uh, a long story short. I came to see Castella, I mean, uh, Colombo. I was in LA. I said, Joe, you’re gonna be in the [00:08:00] club on 86th Street tomorrow morning. I’m gonna fly in from la. He said, yeah, come up, come on over. I don’t even wanna see you. I haven’t seen you in a while. So I get there and there’s a car outside. He’s, come on, we’re gonna go to the new headquarters on Madison Avenue. And I, that day I met Barry Sch Slotnik. And they were telling me what they were doing. I said, well, you know, whatever you don’t like in the book, now that you got this great attorney, why don’t we have a meeting? Paramount and whatever you don’t like in the, in the film that you think is detrimental to the Italian image, if they take it out, we can make a lot of money. You So we i’s why? I got the idea. What do you mean this ain’t a gift. I’m on a red suit and a white beard on we, I don’t see a mouse in my pocket who says what’s his? We so that, with that said, I told him what my idea was. He said. Could you get it on? I said, gimme permission to [00:09:00] go talk to you. So unbeknownst to me, when I shot that screen test for in, in la, I shot it on 18 millimeter Mag Stripe film. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: And unbeknownst to me, Francis Ford Coppola was trying to convince them to do it in a C tone. Don’t shoot it in color or black or white. Give it a SIA tone. So it has that old tinge to it. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: And, and I happen to buy 18 millimeter film that was old. It came out Sia. So I, I’ve always had my life has always got opportunities and obstacles. Thank God I got more opportunities. Well, this was an opportunity ’cause they passed my test to everybody. Bobby Evans, Stanley Jaffy, everybody saw the test. They didn’t know me. They didn’t even care about, that was the tone. So when I walked in the Gulf of Western building, the next morning, they’re all looking at me and they know me and I’m saying how they all know me, [00:10:00] but I only knew Bobby Evans because he was going out with Ali McGraw at that time. I walked right over to ’em. I said, you know, you have a big problem in New York. I think I could strain. I, he said, oh no, we got no problem here. Yeah. I said, I just left Joe Colombo. You got a problem. Speaker: You do have a Speaker 2: problem. You just left Joe Colombo. I said, yeah. I said, he wants to meet, he will he come here? I said, I’ll bring him anywhere you want. So they said, bring him here tomorrow, 10 o’clock. So I go back down Madison Avenue, I down, 59th Street in Madison Avenue. I said, Joe, we gotta go tomorrow. He said, great, let’s do it. I said, but do me a favor. They know the book In and Out, obviously. They bought the script. They got Mario Zo and the director Coppola writing it. Speaker: Coppola. Yeah. Speaker 2: Let, let us just go with two of your heavies. So we, we took a butter Dec Chico. Who was a butcher deco was a [00:11:00] tough guy collecting for them. And the other guy was Lenny Montana who got the part of Lenny, uh, Lu Razzi in the movie Speaker: Razzi. Yeah, that’s right. They probably saw him say, I want him for heavy. And Speaker 2: yeah, so we go with these two guys, Barry Sch, Slotnick, Joe and I, the five of us only go, we go up to the 33rd floor. Everybody’s there. Even the Charlie Blue Dawn who just bought Paramount. And they’re all talking and Barry addressed all the things and said, you know, we’ll go through the script. If you agree to make the changes, I think we can work out a deal. We’ll guarantee you all the locations you want. All the neighborhoods get the cooperation. And they’re getting up there shaking hands. So I’m still sitting. I said, Joe, I pull on his sleeve. I said, Joe, what about me? He goes to them, what about my boy here? Oh, we’ll give him a part. I said, excuse me, Joe. Tell him to sit [00:12:00] down. He didn’t tell him to sit down. He went like this, like gorged. They all sat. So I got out. I said, listen, I brought this guy here. This is gonna work now I want a big part. I said, who’s playing Michael? So. They all looked at each other, and this may shock your audience. James Karn was playing Michael originally. Speaker: I think I read that somewhere. Originally. Speaker 2: Yeah, originally. And then I said, well, who’s playing Sonny? They said, Carmine edi. He’s in a play called the Manful LA mantra. They thought he should be a big brawly guy. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: So I said, who’s playing Carlo? Says, we didn’t get there yet. So I said to, to Costello, I said, I wanna play Carlo. So he looked at them. Stanley, Jeff, everybody was there. He says he’s playing Carlo. They all looked at each other. So Ruddy starts to say, well, are you in the union? I said, excuse me, I did my [00:13:00] homework. New York is a taf Hartley Acts, state. Yeah, you gimme a little bit a part. I’ll go get in the union. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: That’s how I got the part. Joe Colombo cast me in the movie, nobody Else. Speaker: Interesting, interesting. Speaker 2: It changed my life 55 years later. Here we are. Speaker: Oh yeah. Here we are. You know, I, I, you talked about JFK and I’ve already been. Done a couple other shows here recently. That’s kind of a hot topic right now. It seems like with the release of all these, uh, documents and, and everything, uh, you had some, uh, dealings with Joe Kennedy maybe and, and as well as Speaker 2: how I met Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy and Frank Costello during prohibition. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: They made $30 million each. That’s like 3 billion today In the thirties. Speaker: Yeah. Damn. Speaker 2: And he went to Costello early on. He wanted his son to become president and the deal he made with the mob and nobody realized it. [00:14:00] He said, if my son becomes president, the first thing he will do that week was to evade Cuba and give you all your casinos back. So it was a win-win deal. The great deal everybody. Now, obviously we know he wins. The mistake they made was put Bobby Kennedy and his attorney general, he hated all these guys. He hated all his father’s friends. And he started going after them. Marcelos, all of them. Yeah. So one year goes by, two years go by. I’m at Cal nva. He says, go to Cal Niva. I want you to be up there. Be my eyes and ears. I did that a lot. Now for your audience, Cal NVA is a casino. Built in Nevada on the California border. Speaker: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: So if you in the black book or a mob guy and can’t go at the casinos, you stood in the bungalows on the California side. Speaker: Ah, Speaker 2: when you wanna go to the casino, you walked across the pool, you were in there. Speaker: Yeah. Didn’t Frank Sinatra have a piece of that? Wouldn’t [00:15:00] that his Speaker 2: for Oh yeah. Sinatra had a, in fact, I was there with Sinatra when I got there. Sinatra was there, Marilyn Monroe was there and a couple of and, uh, Sam Jean Con. From Chicago. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 2: And he was running the whole thing. And what they wanted Marilyn to do was to sleep with Bob because when John became president, he convinced Marilyn, I can’t see you anymore for a year or two. Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaker 2: because I’m a Catholic boy, but in a year or two I’ll divorce Jackie and marry you. That’s how naive she was. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: We know that didn’t happen. Speaker 3: No. Speaker 2: So Bobby was supposed to keep an eye on her. Well, he kept a couple of hands and everything else on her too. That night we found out she just had an abortion six weeks with Bobby’s kid. Speaker: Hmm. Man, Speaker 2: and she was hysterical. She, I’m going to the press, these [00:16:00] Kennedys are phony, and we all looked at each other. I flew right back to New York. He said, how’d that meeting go? I said, it didn’t go. She ain’t doing it. I said, what are you talking about? He said, she’s having an abortion with Bobby’s kid, and she’s going to the press. This was a Monday morning, Gary, you won’t believe this. I said to him, they can’t kill her. She’s a big movie star. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 2: He says they’ll kill her. Believe me, on Thursday, she was dead. Speaker 5: Mm. Speaker 2: And it’s funny you bring where you brought this up this past Saturday on the eighth, I dedicated a street on Bark Avenue in 68th Street to Dorothy Kga. Speaker: Yeah, Speaker 2: I just heard about that when the investigation on the Kennedy assassination. Speaker: Yeah. See Speaker 2: it was, and the Marilyn Monroe assassination. Speaker: Yeah. She had a mysterious death herself after she had really dug into that big time. Speaker 2: The same guy I know, the same [00:17:00] anesthesiologist that killed Marlin. All they did. All he did was inject it with oxygen in her fallopian organ in her groin. You’re not gonna see it through the pubic hairs. Yeah. And when every time they wanted to exhume her body, there’s, what are you gonna exhume? It’s oxygen. There’s nothing there. I mean, Marilyn always had barbiturates in her system. She lived on them. Speaker: Now there’s a guy in from Chicago that claims that the guy named called the German. Frank SW was going around Chicago, claiming he was the one that that off Marilyn Monroe. Have you ever heard that story? Speaker 2: Unless he’s an anesthesiologist, he’s full of Speaker: shit. Okay. Speaker 2: English. Speaker: All right. A lot of stories about Marilyn Monroe’s death isn’t there. And JFK’s. And RFKs. There’s a lot of stuff out there about that that, that you don’t know what to believe Speaker 2: anymore, never come out, and it’s so, it, I, wait, you know what’s so interesting to me? I got to know. Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kga [00:18:00] because I got caught on the streets of New York. I was 15 and a half by a true officer and says, you gotta go to school till you’re 16. This was in August. So I give Costello the ticket. He says, I’ll handle it. So he says to me, when you come out. Of De Dempsey’s upstairs. There’s Wilford Academy. I said, I’m no fan. I don’t want to pick become a hairdresser. You’re crazy. He said, no, just check in and leave. You’re gonna meet me at 11, go there at nine o’clock and don’t stay. So I got there, carry the first day and it was just like you said, the girls had just signed the book. ’cause they’ll come and check and then leave. So I look over her shoulder, there’s 30 young girls there. 30 young girls. We gonna find 30 young girls in New York City at nine o’clock in the morning. Speaker: There you go. Speaker 2: I was there every day for a couple hours before I had to meet him Speaker: working that Russo charm. No doubt.[00:19:00] Speaker 2: That was, so that’s how I got to meet Marilyn because Kenneth. Marks and Claire, they were lovers when they said they were partners. I didn’t know what they meant. I thought they were partners of the business. They were hairdressers for Lilly Dasher. They came there looking for shampoo boys, and again, a great opportunity. They hired me. So now I didn’t have to go to the school. I get the credits, I’m making tips over in Lilly Dashay. She was on 56th of Park. Mm-hmm. And the fourth head of hair. I’m, I’m washing Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t believe it. Speaker: You’re 15. Speaker 2: I was 15 and a half. Speaker: Wow. Speaker 2: That was August in December. I, I could walk out. So now, and, and it’s not like I want your audience to know, it’s not like a salon where we have all the shampoo basements lined up. These were rooms, these ladies changed. They got that there [00:20:00] cashmere that put a robe on. So she’s laying back in the sink. ’cause the maid put her in the sink already. I walk in, read the card, and I don’t even know how long I was staring at her. Because I went to see something like it hot. I saw something like it hot 10 times already every night. I was upstairs masturbating in the, in the in the balcony. Crazy times. Speaker: Really? Yeah. I’ve been talking about all these mysteries with a lot of stories around about ’em. What about Jimmy Hoffa? I see that you’ve got a little, something about Jimmy Hoffa in there and his body, that that seems to be a much discussed topic. Speaker 2: There was no big mystery about what happened to Jimmy because, you know, Jimmy came out, found God and Frankford Simmons, including myself, borrowed a lot of money already from, I mean, Vegas was built on the chief’s pension fund. Every dime was down there. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Now this guy’s gonna [00:21:00] come out and they had, they got rid of him. You know, was everybody’s gonna dig him up every time the FBI. Once a raise some money off, get some, they’d say someplace else and they go dig something else. They’re never gonna find this guy, this guy was crushing a car presser on Staten Island. By, by, by the Dreezy brothers. Speaker: Yeah. Interesting. So, you know, it’s always a point of contention about that. Did they did they take him? Do him right there in Detroit, in the Detroit area and get rid of him. That was always my contention. ’cause he wouldn’t wanna haul a body that far. There’s another guy that said that took him to New Jersey and buried him. Speaker 2: No, this is what happened on the highway. They had it set up in the Buick. He was in on the highway, a big one of those big like bust. Tow trucks came behind his car. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: And they pushed him right up in a ramp, into, into, uh, a semi. They closed the doors and they [00:22:00] asphyxiated themselves by the exhaust of, of the tractor trailer. ’cause they tapped it through the floors. By the time they got to stand Island, both of them were dead. Speaker: Ah, both of them. Who was the other guy? Well, who was now Chucky O’Brien wasn’t had gone by then. Who else was with him? Speaker 2: No. Some guy he knew. Speaker: Oh, okay. That Speaker 2: He put a bunch of new people together when they got out. Speaker: Okay. Who is his new driver? Is that that’s what you’re saying? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I hadn’t heard that, uh, that theory or that story. A lot of ’em out there. He got some stuff in there about Pablo Escobar. Now, how could you. A little nice little Italian boy from New York City who admittedly had a big part at a very young age and met a lot of important people. How could you end up with Pablo Escobar? Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it’s funny because I, we spoke earlier, one of the forwards on my new book is Steve Shepa. And [00:23:00] she ripped, you know, was from Baccala from the Sopranos and now Blue Bloods, and he was going to the University of Nevada and I used to hire all these guys to work my club, Johnny Russo State Street, and that club was 10,000 square foot with a casino and everything else that was in the eighties. One night a guy came in, we used to have all kinds of people come. We operated 12 hours a day, six at night to six in the morning. I served gourmet food until six in the morning. That’s where I got my biggest clientele. ’cause in Nevada, with the unions, they only had coffee shops after midnight. Speaker: Ah, Speaker 2: they would send me all the high rollers. And this guy came in one night with a girl, and we was comped. They brought him out to the comped area. So I called Steve, I said, Steve, who was the guy? He said, I don’t know who he is. I said, who comped him? They said, Caesars said, all right. The next thing I know, the. We send over a bottle of [00:24:00] a Kristal bottle of Luda 13. We whw whacked him right up because Caesar’s paying $1,800 Bill he opened up with, he ain’t paying. He gets the Kristal bottle, breaks it on the table and sticks it in the girl’s face. Speaker: Oh my God. Speaker 2: So now I call Steve, I said, get to seven. Look what happened. He said, I ain’t going over that guy’s nuts. So I get involved. I gotta go over there. Yeah. And thank God I, I was wearing, I was wearing Ralph Lauren, the three piece suit I had a vest on and, and Jack Weinstein of tower jewels made me two five shot solid gold derringers. And I had one in each pocket in my vest. So I go over there and I said, sir, you hear these sirens. They’re coming for you. Why don’t you just get outta here? I don’t need any problems. He said, no, man. I said, no, man. Where the hell are you from? He said, you don’t wanna know. I didn’t know he had the neck, a bottle in his hand. The neck. He [00:25:00] went for me. I went back. I got 81 stitches along my jaw boat. My chin is hanging down and I’m saying, how am I gonna diffuse this guy? So now I said, look what you did to my shirt. I waited six months for this, the sea island cotton. He’s looking at me like I got two heads. Blood is all over. I just wanted to get my hand on the gun. Soon I got my hand on the gun and I put a righteous fight. I put three right between his eyes. A hundred people at my casino watched me do it. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Guy was Lorenzo Morales. Pablo Escobar’s. Under boss. Speaker 3: Under Boss. Speaker 2: That’s how I met Pablo. Wasn’t a meeting I wanted to go to, but Rieger called for me. I said, you sure I’ll get out? And he said, I’ll call. Go. And I went. So I’m in Pablo Escobar’s house that he just built a prison in. Remember? He built a prison. They made a deal. Yeah. [00:26:00] So I’m there. I’m having dinner with him. He’s got people all around him and it’s just him and I on a long table. He said, I know we meet, we have mutual friends. They said, you wanted to explain what went on? I said, yeah. I said, I didn’t know who your guy was. I said, I did my homework. You have a daughter, Pablo Gina. She’s the same order, same age as my daughter, GIA. I said, I know what you know my alitos do. They’re gonna kill my kids, my family and all that. And I don’t think it’s justified. That’s why I wanted to come and talk to you. So he is looking at me because I didn’t, you know, if I’m gonna go, fuck it, I was already there. Yeah, I’ve been shot. Run over, take me out, but don’t touch my kids. He gets up, Gary and he walks towards me and I don’t know if that guy’s gonna put a knife in me. He says, stand up. I stood up. He gave me a kiss. He says, there’s very few men like us. He [00:27:00] says, what happened? I said, the girl, he came in with a girl. He broke the bottle, stuck it in the face, had nothing to do with it. I went over looking, I still had this, you know, he still had bandage stitches. I said, guy slit my throat. I said, I don’t know who he was. If I knew he was shook guy, I would’ve never killed him. Had we stayed French from that point on. So crazy. Yeah. Speaker: Interesting. That’s a crazy story there, man. Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Tell me. I didn think I was coming back. In fact, I bought a one way chicken. Speaker: Yeah, figured you’d come back from that one. Oh yeah. So Las Vegas, you, you spent a lot of time in Vegas, didn’t you? After New York, Speaker 2: I went down and realized, I went down in the thirties. I mean, I went down thirties. I went down in 1959 for 30 years. They were watching the transition that Howard Hughes was [00:28:00] making, taking over their casinos. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: And as long as they had the count room, they didn’t care who owned them. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: And that’s what I was doing. ’cause as you know, in my last book, I, I moved Nick Nady, Frank NA’s kid at a Chicago. He and I moved $600 million to the Vatican. From Vegas legal quarries. We were quarries bound by the Lloyds of London, and our employee was the Vatican. When they stopped us at the airports, we had showed ’em the letter tell we here, we, we locked, we legal man. They said, Speaker: how come the money, why was the money going to the Vatican from Las Vegas? I don’t quite follow that. Speaker 2: They were cleaning it for him and red depositing it. We were bringing three or 4 million, just Vatican. They’d take their piece and then they’d deposit it wherever they wanted. Speaker: Oh, they were watching it. Somebody over there was watching it for somebody in Vegas. Speaker 2: Oh, well who was, who was watching over there [00:29:00] was, hello? He was a bishop from Chicago. Okay. Tony Ocado had that wired man. Speaker: I see. What they didn’t take right back to Chicago. Why they sent over to, out to Las Vegas. ’cause there was some money coming back to Chicago. I’m pretty sure they needed some walking around money divide up for the guys. ’cause Angelo LaPierre and all those guys were getting a piece of it. Or they should have been Speaker 2: everybody when it came back, they deposit where you wanted it. The Vatican Bank or drop out? Any, any give the account number. Speaker: What’s, oh, supposed the Vatican would deposit it for those guys. The Jackie Cerone and Angela Lap. Piera and Speaker 2: Jackie. I love Jackie Senior too. Speaker: Who? Ja. Speaker 2: Jackie. I, I was in Chicago when Jackie first got outta jail. Speaker: Oh really? You knew him? He was a bad dude, man. His Speaker 2: son became a lawyer, you know. Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I know he was, he went to law school with an FBI agent. I know. And they called each other C You know how you guys [00:30:00] are, you call each other C but if they’re joking around, calling each other C. So this F FBI agent tells me he’s in the courtroom when and here in Kansas City when Jackie Cone’s being charged with the skimming in a trial. And he comes out and he said, he said something about. A hi cousin and then some, one of those other guys from Chicago went up to him and he said, what’s wrong with, you’re like a traitor. He said, here you are a cousin to Theones and, and you do this to us. He said, no, no, no, no. He said, I just know his son and we jokingly called each other C Oh, okay. Right. Speaker 2: Yeah. He was his character. Even I love the S Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: God. Speaker: Cork was a character. Nick was not much of a character. He was Mr. All business. Oh, Speaker 2: no. He was just, no, he was all business. Speaker: He never saw him out in the joints. Cork was all out in the joints all the time, man. You probably knew him well. Were you, Speaker 2: were you from Ohio originally? Speaker: Who me? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker: No, [00:31:00] I, I grew up right here. Speaker 2: Where’s right here? I dunno where you are? Speaker: Kansas City. Kansas City. Where I am now. Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: Well you’re close enough. Kansas City. Hello? Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Cork was out in the joints all the time. Did you know their nephew, Butch, who ended up out there in Las Vegas and, and Speaker 2: Oh yeah. He came out, he came to my club a lot. I liked Butchy. Speaker: Did he? Yeah. Speaker 2: I dunno if he’s alive anymore. Speaker: No, I understand. He is in a nursing home now. Speaker 2: What shame Speaker: and, and I think he’s back Kansas. He’d be a little older than Speaker 2: me. Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. He’s gotta be closer to 90. He was several years older than me. I remember him. He was never really part of it. The the, Speaker 2: oh no. They kept him clean. Speaker: Yeah. He ran joints for him. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker: Here’s, here’s a good story about him. The IRS wanted to get him so bad. That they took a, a, an undercovered him up, put him in as a bouncer and a doorman, and he. Let him in one night and they got all the records [00:32:00] ’cause they wanted to make his IRS case on him. And the only thing they found was that he was not declaring the cash money that they were handing to the doorman. He was charging like a $2. $2, cover charge or something like that. Just some modicum of, you know, a little bit of money cover charge to keep some of the riffraff out. And he didn’t declare that’s the only thing they could get. So they ended up filing a case on him and of course it got kicked out pretty quick. So he was, he was clean. He, they kept him out of it. Speaker 2: What a gentleman too. Very Speaker: nice guy. Yeah, nice guy. People seem to like him. So what else would you want people to know outta this book? When they get it? Speaker 2: The book the interesting thing, one of the catchy things that we did on the cover note is that Scorsese got it wrong with Tony and Michael Spilotro. Because as you know, in the movie, they got beat to death in Indiana in a court field. Yeah, well, on the Sunday [00:33:00] night before they got killed, Tony Scho hated me. He, they Chicago sent him to watch the Stardust and all that in Vegas. And I never got along with the guy. He’s a little short guy. That’s why they call him the an, I had all kinds of broads. I had 86 girls working for him in my club and I wouldn’t let him in ’cause he was in the black book. I said, I can’t let you in here. Speaker: Yeah, Speaker 2: you were in the black book. For your audience that don’t know, if you’re in a black book, you can’t go into a gaming decision. I could lose my Speaker: license. You can’t even walk inside. Can’t even go into the coffee shop. Right. Speaker 2: Right. So he always had me at the end of his nose. So the night before on a Saturday night, he comes to my club about four in the morning and he wanted to come in. He was drunk. I said, you can’t come in. He says, right, there’s nobody in here. I says, I can’t let you in. I, and I locked the door on him. Speaker: Hmm. Speaker 2: That Sunday night, he machine gunned my house. Speaker: Oh really? Speaker 2: My house on La Paloma Avenue. Yeah. He [00:34:00] got some guys to come up from San Diego and they cut my house in half because he knew I had my Sunday dinners. Thank God my house was built on a little knoll, so they were shooting up. Speaker: Uh, Speaker 2: but what he didn’t realize, Rex Bell, who was the district attorney in Nevada, was my neighbor. They didn’t get off the block. They gave him up in two minutes. Speaker: Yeah, Speaker 2: so I call, I called Chicago. I said to I, I never talked to, I never talked to any anybody, but you know the old man. And I said, Tony, the guy’s getting crazy now you shot up my house. He said, I heard about it. He said, come in on Wednesday. So I get to the airport O’Hare and who picks me up is Frank Colada. Speaker: Oh Speaker 2: really? Who I knew was with him. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: He part of that Vulner war gang. And I’m saying as well, wait a minute, maybe they’re doing the [00:35:00] switch here. Maybe I’m gonna get whacked. Really? Well you see him, but the only good grace that they had, another guy, Frankie b Frankie, be that I knew. So we, you know, I, I get and. We walked to the car, they opened the door, they put me in the back. I said, well, they’re not gonna choke me. I thought I was, you know, gonna do another collar with which, you know, Speaker: the old Speaker 2: Frank next day, Speaker: and they Speaker 2: near the Leiden Motel. We get to a residential house. There’s a couple of cars out it, it’s maybe midnight now. We go down, we get into the house, we go downstairs, and I could smell the stench. They had the tarps up Michael, who had nothing to do with his brother at all. Speaker 4: Yeah, Speaker 2: a nice kid, Michael Citro, how they lured Tony to Chicago. They said, Michael’s gonna be made, you’re getting too much attention and you’re gonna be [00:36:00] his underboss and we want you to sponsor him. So he came. They were stripped nude, shackled to chairs and Joe Batters, I don’t know if you know, that’s how he got the name. He liked beating up bodyguard for Capone. He used baseball bats. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 2: So all they were doing, not all they were doing, they broke every bone in their bodies. And Tony wanted me to see this, and I’m saying, I don’t wanna see this Speaker 4: really, Speaker 2: you know, and just to smell alone. I don’t want to get vulgar, but just imagine Speaker 4: who, Speaker 2: but anyway, then Tony calls me out of a whisper ’cause he catch me at, at the corner of his eye and I go over close enough and Colorado’s stopping me. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 2: And he said, tell him to kill my brother. He didn’t do nothing. And I said, I can’t say anything. And I walked back and then I laughed. And then [00:37:00] that’s when they brought him to Indiana and buried him. But it was terrible. Speaker: Yeah. It was, it was a hard, tough way to go. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker: I know the, I know the autopsy said that they’d really been beaten bad. I didn’t know the extent of it, but the autopsy for sure said they’d been beaten bad. No, Speaker 2: there, I don’t think it was a, a bone that wasn’t broken. Speaker: Crazy, crazy, crazy. All right, Johnny Russo. The book is Untold Tales from the Hollywood Godfather Mafia Secrets, with, Michael Benson. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Johnny. Speaker 2: Oh, thank you man. Always. Anytime. All my, my and great pleasure. I’ll send you a book. I wanna sign it and send Speaker: it. I got one. I got one. I don’t have a signed one though. Speaker 2: Alright. Speaker: I got one, but I don’t have a signed one. Soll send, feel free to send me a signed one. Send. All right. Speaker 2: Thank you so much, everybody out there. God bless you all. Speaker: All right. All right, Johnny. Thanks for coming on. Alright, I’ll see [00:38:00] you.

Transcribed - Published: 15 December 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins interviews bestselling author Mark Shaw about his explosive new research into the JFK and RFK assassinations — and the hidden role of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Shaw breaks down newly uncovered FBI documents, including Marcello’s alleged 1985 prison confession claiming involvement in JFK’s murder. We explore Marcello’s long-running war with Robert Kennedy, the suspicious death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, and significant inconsistencies in the official story of RFK’s assassination. This conversation challenges the lone-gunman narrative and exposes how organized crime, politics, and government investigations may have collided to shape American history. Subscribe to get notified about new content. 0:10 The Kennedy Connection 21:37 Sirhan’s Background Uncovered 31:56 The Role of Marcello in Assassinations 44:54 The Quest for Justice 🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Aaron Cohen began to expose a goings-on in Louisiana, which eventually came to the attention of Robert Kennedy and a Senate committee investigating corruption. [0:11] Through Robert Kennedy’s efforts in the Justice Department, our organized crime and racketeering section really was established. That was a Robert Kennedy brainchild. To concentrate a group of prosecutors, who were specially trained to engage in traditional organized crime investigations. Marcello and other mobsters who appeared before the committee refused to acknowledge the existence of the mafia. Even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover seemed to concur. For the reason for Marcello’s absence, he was still subpoenaed to appear before the McClellan Committee. Marcello defiantly pleaded the Fifth Amendment to 66 questions that Robert Kennedy directed toward him. His arrogance and contempt for the proceedings provided even more incentive for Robert Kennedy to attack the mafia. [1:02] Marcello even refused to answer the question of where he was born. This very withholding of information became the weapon that Robert Kennedy would use to go after Marcello. Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective with a special guest today. Man, you know, recently, guys, I had always just gone along with the fact Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Sirhan Sirhan acted alone. And those investigations were all legit and they were accurate. [1:36] And, you know, over the last year, there’s been a lot of stuff come out and I’ve started looking into this and I’m beginning to wonder myself. And so I was able to find Mark Shaw, who we have sitting here, who has done more work than maybe anybody on this whole thing. And he’s come up with some really compelling evidence on a mob connection on Carlos Mosello. So welcome, Mark. I’m really glad to have you on the show. Thank you, sir. So Mark, God, I was looking over your credentials here. You’ve been doing this for 30 years or so, or your whole life, I guess. And, and you’ve got him. Oh, you got 30. I know where I got the number 30. You got 30 books out there. You’ve done, and you’ve really, you’ve done a bunch of them on the JFK investigation and murder. So, guys, I’m going to put up his website, put a link on his website, and you’ll see what all those books are. So, if you want to really take some more deep dives into the JFK thing. [2:32] Go to that and get some of his books. And this book is a little more about the RFK. See, I just really always assumed Sirhan Sirhan did it, Mark. I don’t know what to say. It’s just that’s the only information I ever heard was Sirhan Sirhan did it. And they got the video of him doing it. So there’s no doubt, I guess, I don’t know if he did it or not now. So let’s, uh, uh, and Carlos Marcello was so involved in all this. Let’s start unpacking this a little bit, if we will, if we could like, okay, let’s talk a little bit about Carlos Marcello. How does he figure into both of them? Well, I felt like you did. You know, I grew up when I was real young, when JFK was assassinated, I just took what J Edgar Hoover said about Oswald alone. You know, I’d never even thought about it for years and years and years. And then I practiced law with Melvin Belli, who, you know, that name, the famous lawyer in San Francisco. Yeah. And I wrote a biography of him and I started to learn about his mafia connections. [3:32] And his main client, for instance, was Mickey Cohen, who you I’m sure you know that name. Yeah. Oh, yeah. West Coast racketeer, killer, all of that. And I started to wonder about Belli’s representation of Jack Ruby. So I looked into that and that led me to the 1960 election. and some of the mafia, Joe Kennedy, bringing them in to win Chicago so they could get JFK elected. So that made me wonder about all that. I wrote a book called The Poison Patriarch about that. And then I found out about this Dorothy Kilgallen that was the most credible reporter to have ever covered the JFK assassination. So that got me into writing these different books. The Reporter Who Knew Too Much was the first one, and it did well, and so I kept going and going. But today we want to talk about the Marcello effect, I would call it, on both the JFK assassination and now the new evidence that I have in the book Abuse of Power coming out December 2nd, indicating that Marcello was not only responsible, in my opinion, for JFK’s assassination, but also Robert Kennedy’s. And I think the most amazing news to your listeners, as it was to me when I found out about it earlier this year, when the JFK assassination records were released, finally, after all these years, I came across a FBI file. [4:58] And basically, the long and short of it is a confession by Carlos Marcello. And it happened on March 4th, 1985. I’ve got it in front of me. When Jack Ronald Van Landingham, an inmate at the Seagalville Federal Institution, Pareto Institution in Texas, said the following. He was in the company of Carlos Marcello and another inmate at the Federal Corrections Institute yard in Texarkana, Texas, in the courtyard, engaged in conversation. Carlos Marcello discussed his intense dislike of former president John Kennedy, as he often did. Unlike other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion, Carlos Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself. Now, you have to pause and really think about those words. [5:53] Would Marcello have done that? Because, as you know, most mafia were supposed to keep their mouth shut. Was he just bragging? What was he doing this? or, you know, what was his motive for saying that to this Van Leningham, who actually was a government’s plant who they had put in there to set up Marcello, trying to get information about him regarding the JFK assassination. So I was a little bit dubious of it. And I went, though, back into some research and everything. And I found out more about why this happened. And it seemed to be more credible to me all the time. And then I found out that there was actually an auto recording. [6:35] And I think you know that what they had done is give this snitch a transistor radio with a microphone in there. And so the confession was audio taped. Now, the location now of that audio tape, which has never been released, I want to talk about a little bit later. But this changes everything because I feel like, in fact, that it validates a lot of my research and that of Dorothy Kilgallen in my first four books. Because we always pointed the finger at Marcello, And Kilgallen, who was the only reporter to have interviewed Jack Ruby, and Jack Ruby sent her to New Orleans, the home of Carlos Marcello. And things go on from there to where Dorothy, finally in 1965, 60 years ago, is mysteriously killed right as she’s writing a book for Random House implicating Marcello. So Marcello is in the middle of all of that. And if you know if you’re if you and your listeners know his history it was frank costello in new york who set up marcello in new orleans now i’ve interviewed several people down there who knew him and he was not somebody that you want to mess around with that’s for sure and it’s it’s very i always look at motive like you did when you were a detective and marcello obviously and now shut up for a minute uh marcello had obviously the strongest motive to have eliminated uh jfk. [8:02] When Bobby Kennedy became attorney general, the first thing that he did was go after they swore that they would never go after the media or go after the mafia if they’d help him elect JFK president. First thing he did was was deport Marcello to Central America, where he almost died. Marcello spent two agonizing months in exile. After making his way through the rugged Central American jungle, Marcello somehow got back to Louisiana. How exactly Marcello was able to re-enter the U.S. is uncertain. Investigator Ed Becker believes Marcello used his connections to sneak back into the country. When he got back in the United States, Robert Kennedy charged him with racketeering. [8:43] And Marcello knew that Bobby Kennedy was going to keep going after him. So what did he think? Smart man that he was. [8:52] If I kill Bobby Kennedy, which I want to have happen, then Jack Kennedy will come after me with everything the government has. But if I eliminate JFK, Bobby Kennedy will be powerless. And that’s exactly what happened. Now, we’re going to tie that in a little bit, if I may, to what happens five years later when Robert Kennedy is running for president of the United States. And he’s in California at the Ambassador Hotel. He’s just won the California primary. And if you’re Marcello, you’re smart enough to say, wait a minute, I can’t let that guy become president because I know he knows that I set up his brother for the assassination. He’s going to come after me. And we’ll talk about how I have then connected that into his involvement in the Robert Kennedy assassination. Richard, was it Richard Van Leningham? He was a white collar criminal that was already in prison with. So he had credibility within the prison. And I know these guys sit around on those tables outside and in a communal area many times and talk, I’ve got a buddy that used to talk to a guy, all the mob bosses down in Springfield, down at the hospital prison. So all that, all that really, really rings true. And now you tell me they’ve got a, the actual, the actual audio tape is there. So that’s, uh, as most interesting, I had, I’d seen that clip before, uh. [10:16] Where it’s, you know, it claimed, but I didn’t know, you know, in this day and age, who knows if anything’s true or not, but there’s an actual audio tape that that’s dated and signed and gone into evidence. So that’s, uh, that is the most interesting little thing. And, and, you know, for our, our list, there’s a lot of them a little bit younger. Dorothy Kilgallen was a pretty well known reporter in New York city. And I think she was on a TV show for a while. And, and she was like i’m trying to compare her to somebody in modern time she was uh she was like almost too big to kill in many ways too big reporter to kill yeah her her career uh overwhelms diane sawyer, oprah uh you know all of those barbara walters and all of that wrote a newspaper column uh read by 200 000 people every day for the hearse corporation was on what’s my line the uh The famous quiz show that was on for 15 years. She covered the Dr. Sam Shepard case and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case and all of that. Very close friend of JFK’s. She was the real thing. And the New York Post called her the most powerful female voice in America. And as I mentioned to you before, I was in New York City this past weekend where they renamed the street at East 68th Street and Park Avenue, Dorothy Kilgallen Way in honor of her. [11:38] The biggest thing, though, that we need to know there is that she was at the Jack Ruby trial. A lot of these experts like me, supposedly, weren’t in Dallas. Dorothy was there right away. She interviewed Jesse Curry. He told her the shots came from the overpass. [11:52] She did experiments to see whether Oswald could shoot Kennedy from the sixth floor depository. She was really on this, but interviewing Jack Ruby made all the difference because basically, I think he told her his involvement in the JFK assassination. And where did he send her? Where did he send her? He sent her to New Orleans. And she went ahead and investigated Marcello down there, connected him to Jack Ruby, connected him to Lee Harvey Oswald. And then as the fall of 1965 came along, she made a big mistake. She let the wrong people, who I believe included Marcello, know she was writing a book for Random House, a tell-all book that would expose him for his involvement in the JFK assassination and J. Edgar Hoover for covering the whole thing up. And a few, very few days later, she was found dead in her townhouse in New York City in Manhattan, in a bed she never slept in, wearing her eyelashes, makeup, everything. It just didn’t make any sense. She was found dead there. And I have proven through my books, especially the reporter who knew too much and collateral damage and others, that she was poisoned because the autopsy only showed one, and there was a cover-up, only showed one barbiturate in her system, and the new autopsy showed there were three. [13:12] I interviewed Dr. Michael Bodden this past summer, and he admitted to me they didn’t know what happened to Dorothy Kilgallen, but unfortunately, they let the media know that she had overdosed on drugs and so on and so forth, which ruined her reputation at the time. [13:27] Yeah, that’s a no-brainer. Just slip that out, and it just takes over everything. The myth is much more powerful than the truth, and the lie of running around the world before the truth gets out of bed. So that was really smart. And I always thought about this, and you just explained something to me. Why kill JFK? [13:50] Because RFK is the one that personally, he attacked Sam Giancana. You know, he said things like, what are you going to giggle like a little girl? He personally attacked Hoffa. He was personally, you know, going after Marcello. I mean, he made it personal. Why not go after him? Well, now you explained it, that go after him, you know, kill one brother. You better kill them all and go after him. You take out, you know, the president. Then the next, uh, and Lyndon Johnson’s not going to do anything. He’s not going to really allow too much to, to go on there. Plus he got rid of, uh, RFK pretty quick and RFK immediately, you know, went head to head with Johnson. So that was, that was brilliant on their part. So he really explained something to me. [14:35] This whole thing started with this book, I think, The Enemy Within, which is Bobby Kennedy’s book. And if you go in there and look at what he says about the mafioso, their slick back hair, they’re giggling. I mean, you talk about hatred coming towards him with that. You know, Bill Alexander, who was one of the prosecutors of Jack Ruby, when I interviewed him, he said, you know, Bobby Kennedy had a lot more enemies than JFK. I thought Bobby would get killed. Yeah. And, and, uh, you know, finally in 1968 he was, but, uh, yeah, Bobby, Bobby brought all that on the Kennedy family and, and everything with regard to his hatred for the mafia and for sure. Yeah. Really? I tell you, there’s a, there’s a trail of dead women behind these Kennedys and mob guys. It seems like, can I tell you just a quick story? Sure. When I was a correspondent for good morning America, I covered trials for them and everything like that. So they sent me to Atlantic City to interview Angelo Bruno. [15:36] That’s probably a name people know, the big mafia boss in Philadelphia, about them getting into the gambling in Atlantic City. So I went to his, I couldn’t get him, but I got his lawyer. I went to their office and I interviewed the lawyer. And he told me things we couldn’t believe. It was on Good Morning America the next morning. Huge audience for it. The producer sent me, said, stay there and see if you can interview him again. Then I went, I called his office, secretary came on. I said, is such and such there in a silence and said, wait a minute, are you okay? Are you crying? She said, yes, Mark. I guess you don’t know. When my boss started his car this morning, you can’t mess around with those guys. You know that. No, no, you can’t. You can’t. Oh, you can’t. So Marcello especially was, I’ve done an awful lot of research on him and that’s one guy you couldn’t mess around with. Yeah, really. He was, he was scary. [16:28] So uh let’s talk a little more about the uh just a little bit more about the jfk thing i think that ruby it’s really interesting that ruby spilled a lot to dorothy kilgallen now was that part of what she was writing in her book or how much of that had already gotten out that was going to be a part of the book for sure i think she was going to nail marcello and hoover but also she’s the one who exposed the Jack Ruby Warren Commission testimony, before it was supposed to be released. So she was making enemies all the way along in terms of, and she wrote all these columns, the Oswald file must not close and everything else. But, you know, yes, that would have been in the book for Random House. And unfortunately, I will tell you, all of her notes about the JFK assassination and the manuscript for the book, Right after she died, there was a raid on her apartment, and those papers have never been found. I’ve tried to find them everywhere. I still hope they’re out there, and someday we will. But they were confiscated and probably burned. Wow. That was my next question. What happened to her manuscript and her notes and everything? Now, let’s switch a little bit over to RFK. How is Sirhan Sirhan? It was so interesting. I thought he was. [17:45] In my mind, I think a lot of people felt like I did. And he was like a busboy or some low-level employee there in the hotel, which gave him access. And, you know, he just was able to stumble into RFK walking off the stage and kill him and get close enough to shoot him like that. But this started, he was talking about this whole deal with the Santa Ana racetrack and Mickey Cohen and Los Angeles hoodlums and all that. That’s so fascinating. The Ambassador Hotel Los Angeles, on June 5th, 1968, headquarters for the Robert Kennedy for President campaign. Victorious in the crucial California primary, Kennedy addresses an enthusiastic crowd in one of the hotel’s ballrooms. My thanks to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there. [18:31] As he turned and went by me, he turned to the right toward the kitchen. When he did come through, lots of television cameras and stuff, and we were going into a press conference. He was shaking hands with the two busboys, talking with him, and it was at that time that the shots started. We’ve made sure they recorded that Senator Kennedy has been shot. He’s been shot? That’s right. I just heard this crackling noise, and was shaking violently, and I thought it was being electrocuted. That was my impression. Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible? Is that possible? I saw him laying on the ground. I knew he wasn’t going to live. Everybody else, just please stay back. 25 1⁄2 hours after he is shot, at 1.44 a.m. on June 6, Robert Kennedy dies. [19:27] Immediately following the shooting, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind the 24-year-old Sirhan B. Sirhan, using an eight-shot, .22-caliber revolver, was the one who killed Kennedy and wounded five others. There were 77 people in the pantry that night, witnesses. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. An open-and-shut case. Or was it? Greg Stone has spent over a decade looking into the Kennedy assassination. He is one of a number calling for a reinvestigation of the case, a call based on seeming inconsistencies in the physical evidence, and on a belief that the original investigation is flawed, a belief that is remarkably shared by former LAPD Sergeant Paul Chiraga, the first police officer on the scene the night of the shooting. When asked if he thinks there has been a cover-up inside the LAPD, I would have to come to that conclusion. If there is a cover-up, the question is why? To hide a conspiracy or to conceal slipshod police work? Who really shot Bobby? A much simpler question 20 years ago. I don’t think we have to accept the idea that the stain of bloodshed is going to be ever across our country. Well, every time I finish a book, I tell my wife, that’s it. I’m done. But I’d always been quizzical about the Robert Kennedy assassination. It just didn’t make sense to me, especially with regard to Sir Han. [20:44] So it’s amazing, really, in many ways, where I find my material. People all around the world send me tips and things like this. And so about a year ago, somebody said, look into Sirhan Sirhan, his job in California at Santa Anita Racetrack. So I did. And I found this account, which is in the book. And the link is to it on YouTube and also other parts of it. Internet. It’s been out there for years. But it’s an account by John Shear, who was a paddock captain at Santa Anita Racetrack. My grandparents, my mom would stroll me out to the track of the paddock area. A hot walker would come by and greet my family, greet me. And that man’s name was Sir Han Sir Han. [21:38] This young man comes right at the bar and he says, I’m looking for work. Do you need anybody. So I looked at me, the guy not much taller than me. I said, the only job we have is a hot walker. A hot walker is a man or a person that walks the horses after they’ve exercised. They’re washed off and they walk them around in a ring until they’re cooled out. And I said, well, that’s the only job I have and it pays 200 a month. I said, if you’re interested, I need a hot walker. He said, I’ll take it. We call him Saul. Very quiet and he was like subservient in a way. Not only would he walk the horses, he’d clean all our racing tack, he’d sweep out our little office, he’d sweep the shed row, he’d do all this work for nothing, because he liked to work. We were in the tack room one day. A friend of mine and I, we were sitting in the office there, and he was reading the Los Angeles Times. [22:28] And on the front page, I think it was, he said, oh, he shouted out, like, hey, Bobby Kennedy is arming Israel, or something like that, he said there. As soon as he said that, at Sirhan Sirhan, he went into a rage. He roared and shouted and he screamed, and how wicked of a man he is, a man should be dead, he’s killing my people, because he is Palestinian. My friend and I were looking at him with our mouths wide open, because he’d been from a mouse to a lion in a matter of seconds. And finally I said, so calm down, calm down. I said, what do you know about politics? He rattled every senator and congressman in the United States and what state they was from. He knew everything about politics. [23:10] So he calmed down, eventually calmed down. We’re over at Hollywood Park. I saw him going up the steps with these people, and I said, it’s funny, I saw my wife later on that evening, I said, you know, I saw a soul at the racetrack. We all dressed up, we had money, and he doesn’t seem to be working yet. He had a couple of hoodlums with him. I can’t remember who they were. I’ve seen these people before. I think they’d been thrown off the track once. The day that Kennedy was shot, I was working the racetrack, and they flashed his picture on the TV. They said, do you know this man? So my wife saw it and she saw who it was. Called Hollywood Park, and they said, I’d like to talk to my husband. It’s very, very important. So they got me to the phone, and she said, guess what? Bobby Kennedy’s just been shot, and guess who shot him? Saul. You have to tell somebody. So I put the phone down in a hurry. I ran down to the security office, and I told him, I said, I know the man who shot Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy. I told him who he was, said he worked for me. [24:07] Actually, he was a hero, because one day a horse in the paddock area got loose. And went after a little six-year-old girl. And John Shear put himself between the horse and the little girl and saved her life. All of his bones were broken and everything else, but he was a real hero. So I started reading this account, and it said that he was at Santa Anita Racetrack. And one day, this man, kind of a subservient-type man, quiet and everything, came in there and said, I need a job. And and john sheer said well the only thing i have is a hot walker and it pays two hundred dollars a month he said i’ll take it so sir han sir han then was a stable boy like or whatever you want to call it hot walker for several uh for several years he talked about how um he was subservient how he was shy how he was easily manipulated um things like that about his behavior and everything but But they really liked this guy. The only thing that happened was at times when Robert Kennedy’s name would be, and people read about this in the book, when Robert Kennedy’s name came up, he kind of went into a little bit of a rage. I think John Shearer’s word, he went from a mouse to a lion. [25:29] And John Shearer didn’t understand that exactly. So he did have that ill feeling to Robert Kennedy. So now we move towards the day that Robert Kennedy is killed. [25:40] John Shearer is at Hollywood Park and he’s watching and he sees Sir Han in the accompaniment of two men, one on each side, hefty guys, kind of looking like they are controlling where he’s going. He has on a brand new suit even though he’s unemployed and it just looks like to to uh um to uh john sheer what’s going on here it looks like you know he’s in in control of a couple guys and plus i i believe they’re ones that had been thrown out of santa nita racetrack so rfk is killed on the screen on the la uh television is do you know this man with a photograph of Sirhan? Well, of course, John Shearer knows. And this is where, again, a little chill when I read this and watched this video. [26:34] He said, I called, my wife had me call Hollywood Park and I told the authorities, whoever it was there, probably the security people, that I knew who he was. And I knew him because I knew him at Santa Anita Park and so on and so forth and everything. And I expected then that they would give that information to the LAPD or the FBI, and I’m pretty much sure they did, and they would get back to me. They never did. They never followed up. And the kicker there then is that he says in his videotape, you know, what was most interesting, though, is for the next year, my wife and I would pick up the phone and hear a click. [27:11] And we knew that somebody was watching what we were doing. So if you go on and take that on through, okay, what I did was I started to figure out if Marcello could be connected to Sirhan. [27:25] And I started to think, how could that happen? Because Marcello’s in New Orleans. This is happening in L.A. But the kicker was Mickey Cohen, who was the close associate of Carlos Marcello, ran the racketeering business on the West Coast, and that included Santa Anita Racetrack and Hollywood Park. So I tried to put two and two together there, that how could that connection have occurred? And what really triggered my more interest on that was the fact that one of the hotels that Mickey Cohen controlled with racketeering was the Ambassador Hotel. And he knew all the workings of the Ambassador Hotel. [28:09] So we go on forward, and then Sirhan is arrested. He’s there when Robert Kennedy is killed. He’s arrested for murder. And one of the most amazing things to me, and I think you will find it true as well, because you were a superb detective and you would look into every element of a crime. When Sirhan was arrested, he had four $100 bills in his pocket, even though he was unemployed. Floyd. That had never been explained until I believe I have with all the corroborative evidence in abuse of power. Because obviously, who paid that kind of money at that particular point? Now, John H. Davis, who I think is one of the best researchers of Carlos Marcello, Mafia Kingfish and everything, people should read that book too. Because he sets up the whole thing also with regard to Sir Han, Marcelo, Mickey Cohen, everything, but nobody paid any attention to him back in the day. So then Sir Han is, there’s another interesting aspect of Sir Han. When he’s arrested, one of the detectives says they were amazed at how cool he was, how calm he was. All right. Well, who does that go back to? It goes back to Lee Harvey Oswald, And it certainly goes back to Jack Ruby, because I had shown that when when he found he was really excited and smoking, even though he didn’t smoke and everything. But when he found out Oswald was dead, he relaxed completely. [29:39] So there’s some connections in there that I’ve been able to put together. Sirhan then is given counsel, terrible representation. And I have listed in the new book about 25 different reasons why I believe Sirhan Sirhan should be either given a new trial, paroled, whatever it is, because he’s been in prison too long. And as RFK Jr. Says, he doesn’t believe that he was accountable, Sirhan was, for his father’s death. Now, over the years, RFK Jr. Has changed his story a lot. At first, he said it was the mafia and Marcello, as his dad did when JFK died. Then he switched to the CIA. And so I agree with some of what RFK Jr. Says with regard to Sirhan not being accountable and needing a new trial and being paroled or whatever. On the other hand, I can’t go along with what he believes happened because I believe Marcello, again, he could not let Robert Kennedy become president. No question about that. [30:41] Really? It’s kind of interesting here as you compare the two murders. In both of them, the alleged trigger man were the same, almost the same personality type. They were meek, humble, unassuming, uh, even had the same kind of a, a hang dog look, kind of a down, downcast look. Good point. And just the same kind of person. And, and then you take Jack Ruby that gets into it. He’s the kind of guy that’s, that’s, uh, you know, he’s a follower. He’s not a. [31:13] We’ll do what somebody else gets him to do. I mean, all these guys are like that. They’re not people that go out and act on their own. It doesn’t seem just, that’s just my, you know, armchair analysis of these guys. I understand maybe how Oswald came to the attention of Marcello because he was down there. He was down in New Orleans. He was on that free Cuba committee. He was on the streets of New Orleans. I understand. And it was down in Dallas. I understand how they may find that guy. How did they find Sirhan Sirhan? And how did they choose him and develop him on out to do this? Because obviously it appears to me that maybe somebody groomed him on out. How did was Mickey Cohen involved in that? [31:51] Well, one of the things Cohen controlled were the racketeering part of L.A. And that’s been proven through the years. But, you know, when you’re looking at a patsy, and I believe there’s a patsy involved in Dorothy’s death, as we could talk about maybe another time, a patsy in JFKs and RFKs, okay? You look for somebody that can be easily controlled and there has to be something, maybe there’s a couple of things that, that connect you to believing, okay, we could compromise this guy. First of all, Sirhan is poor. Second of all, he he has a hatred for RFK. OK. And the other thing is, and it’s been proven that he had gambling debts. All right. So he’s vulnerable. [32:37] Oswald was vulnerable. You can. And I think I’ve discovered that the real modus operandi by Marcella, who was a smart guy, was to use patsies with these three deaths, including Dorothy Kilgalland’s using her one of her best friends to set her up. You pick these guys out and and then you use muscle to convince them that it’s in their best interest to go ahead and go forward, because there isn’t a reason in the world why Sirhan would have gone ahead to the Ambassador Hotel that Cohen controlled. [33:12] And then he’s, you know, it’s always been the question of the ballistics. He’s standing in front of Robert Kennedy and Robert Kennedy is shot from the back. I have new ballistics tests in the new book, In Abuse of Power, showing that that almost is impossible for. Now, Sirhan had a gun. Sirhan shot the gun. There’s all kinds of questions about the bullets, just like there was with Oswald and so on and so forth. But I think there’s enough evidence there for, you know, there to be an investigation of, again, of Sirhan’s accountability. And I’m hoping Bobby Kennedy, I’d like to provide closure for Bobby Kennedy Jr. Here if he wants it, because I think this is the most compelling evidence that will tell him, yeah, you’re right about Robert. You’re right about Sirhan Sirhan. Now, let’s get this guy out of prison after 60 some years. Interesting. You know, you, you talk about Carlos Marcello and using these patsies, uh, a friend of mine, Ron Rosson is a kind of an expert on, uh, Carlos Marcello has never written anything, but believe me, this guy, he knows a lot of stuff about New Orleans mob, but going way back to the turn of the century and everything. And, and Ron told me that, and I believe I found that somewhere else that, uh, one of the first known crimes of Carlos Marcello when he was young was not something he did. He got two other young guys to go rob a grocery store. He set it up and then I gave him the guns and everything and then met him afterwards. [34:38] So, uh, this guy started out using people early, didn’t he? [34:43] Well, and he, you know, that’s why, you know, I look to see what his financial situation was with his empire in 1963, and he was pretty much a millionaire. But by 1968, I mean, he was almost a billionaire. All this property owned everything that he did. I mean, he’s not going to let Bobby Kennedy become president and tear all that down. He just think about, you know, common sense here and logic with regard to the motive that he had. That’s why it’s so disturbing. And I mentioned, I think, a little bit earlier, this task force on government secrets and so on and so forth. Boy, when I found out they were going to look into the assassinations, I was euphoric. And so I wrote several letters to Congressman Luna telling her of my research and said, I want to contribute to your investigation. And here’s the material I have about JFK and the confession. Here’s the material I have about Bobby Kennedy and so on and so forth. I sent several letters. I even had a short conversation with her about perhaps inviting me to one of the hearings and all of that. And then all at once, bang, that just stopped. [35:48] And they will not look into that kind of research. They don’t want anything to do with Marcello, even though I gave her the confession and all of that. And now worse is that a couple colleagues of mine and myself, we’ve tried to get her with all the power she has to go into that Texas court and get the audio tape, and she refuses to do so. In fact, I don’t know if you know one of her comments recently. [36:14] I want to be clear, the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets is not here to provide the definitive account of what happened on November 22nd. [36:27] 1963. Well, why in the world are you there? Sounds like the Warren commission all over again. Yeah, it does. You know, you, uh, you said something, something that kind of caught my attention there. And I want to follow up on, uh, the, uh, ballistics test out of the gun at the ambassador hotel. Now, did it, did it show there was more than one gun fired for sure. More than one gun was fired in that because, you know, I miss a hotel. There shouldn’t be, but one gun fire because no law enforcement shot anybody shot at anybody. [36:58] Well, uh, I’m going to say the same thing I’ve said about, uh, what happened with the, the rifle and the shots in daily Plaza and all of that. I know expert on that. As far as the shots being fired at the Ambassador Hotel, that has been a question for many, many years as to what happened. Now, Sirhan had a gun and he supposedly shot. And these new ballistics tests that I put in the new book show that they were scattered all over the place. But you’ve got you’ve got, you know, you’ve got Noguchi, the autopsy guy, Cyril Weck. I don’t know if you ever interviewed Cyril Weck, the foremost forensic guy in the world. [37:40] You’ve got a new ballistics test and everything saying that Sirhan was standing in front of Bobby Kennedy. And the shots came from behind the shoulder and the neck and killed Bobby Kennedy. Well, there’s no way he could have, you know, shot Bobby Kennedy unless he turned all the way around and put his gun up that way or Bobby Kennedy shifted. But those are speculation and i don’t deal with speculation so i think when you put everything else together i think uh sir han was set up as a patsy uh and marcello is so smart i’m not going to forget you said that because i think it’s important that early on he wanted a grocery store rob and so he got two other guys to do it yeah that’s mafia at its best isn’t it oh yeah yeah that’s how it works man that is how it works we sit here and watch it in kansas city or i did back in the day when when they were something you know i mean they had you know the boss had his underboss tuffy the luna take care of all the street business you know you could see it i mean we got tapes you know listen to him telling talking to people and taking care of all the street business say well i’ll carry this back to unk or zeo as he called him so that’s you know that’s mafia at its best and and marcello was a master at it sounds to me like and he learned from Frank Costello, but he learned from somebody who helped form the mobs. Right. Exactly. Exactly. For sure. If, if Sirhan were to have a trial, if they were to have a retrial. [39:07] Was there, is there some kind of particular smoking gun kind of evidence that might come out that would, you know, have ever like people on the jury go, Oh, wow. [39:17] Well, I think the John Shearer account for sure is very, very important. Uh, and then I think, uh, you would, you would look into motive again, you’d look into motive of Marcello. How am I going to get rid of Bobby Kennedy Jr. And in the book, I say that when Bobby Kennedy completed that speech in the ambassador hotel and just won the California primary, looked like he was going to be president and said, it’s on to Chicago and everything. I’ve put in there, and I guess this is some of my better writing, the long arm of Carlos Marcello reached into that ambassador hotel and changed the smile on his face into one of death. Because, you know, I believe that’s what happened. Marcello, motive wise, everything else. I think that would be the kicker, the smoking gun. And you could, You know, you’re a former detective. I lay out in my books, like I try to have the reader read it by I lay out the evidence like a prosecutor would. Yeah. OK. And that’s what you did as a detective when you went into when you into the courtroom, you know, the evidence against the accused. And so I think that’s what what would happen here. I think a first year prosecutor or defensive attorney, I’m sorry, first year defense attorney could present all of this evidence and all of these things happening. with some other interviews and so on and so forth. And I think Sirhan would be released the next day. [40:38] Yeah, interesting. Now, you are an attorney yourself, and you’ve been in the courtroom, and you’ve reported on a lot. Did you get the trial transcript from Sirhan’s trial? [40:49] I’ve partially looked at it. It’s so lengthy, but I will tell you this as well. His legal representation, you know, go back to Oswald just a second. Who did they get for him? A lawyer. [41:04] Mafia connected Melvin Belli. Melvin Belli. He was a cream of the crop back then. Absolutely. But he’s connected to the mafia, and I think he had orders. He wouldn’t let Oswald testify. Made him look crazy and everything. Now we go to Sirhan. they get in a lawyer that’s connected to johnny roselli oh really okay yeah and so you know the the representation was terrible they finally uh i think uh unfortunately uh he he confessed to what had happened but it didn’t really make any sense as to what occurred so he never had a chance and again i’m all about justice just as you are you know fighting for justice with these uh with these people that I’ve, you know, written about in my books. In fact, I was on a radio show not too long ago, and I was asked, why do you keep doing this, fighting for justice? And I said, well, they’re just like my clients when I was a criminal defense lawyer and a public defender. [41:58] You know, Oswald and Sirhan and Dorothy Kilgallen and JFK, they deserve justice. And unfortunately, And as I said, when we first talked, we needed detectives like you that would go after the evidence and not do what you called it, cherry pick, because all of these people have written these books about JFK assassination and Dorothy and RFK. What they do is they pick a sensational headline and then they fit the evidence to that. That’s not how you do it. You go out and grind out the evidence and everything like that. And then you come up with some sort of conclusion or how you’re going to prove what happened. And that’s one of the problems that we have today. I think that there aren’t more detectives like you on the job. Interesting. It’s, um. [42:45] I don’t know, you know, and J. Edgar Hoover, you think about that, he was such a politician that wanted to hang on to his power and his position that I could see where he would be motivated to if powers, political powers, powerful people wanted him to sit on that and finish it, that he would do that. Did you find any much more about that? I mean, it really, he’s so, he was so secretive. It’d be hard to find any kind of smoking gun there. [43:16] First of all, he and Frank Costello used to meet in the, in Central Park in New York City and talk about J. Edgar Hoover’s gambling debts. So, but as far as Hoover, what does he have to do when JFK dies? He cannot possibly let anybody believe there’s a, I hate to use the word because I don’t like a conspiracy. It’s got to be one person. And so right away, he’s yelling out, Oswald alone, Oswald alone. And he doesn’t want anybody, even though he knows about Marcelo and his connections and so on and so forth, and how the Kennedys betrayed him and the other mafioso when the 60th election happened, he can’t let that happen. So he just covers all that up. What happens when you get to Robert Kennedy? He doesn’t want anybody going back into a full investigation of Robert Kennedy’s death. And especially with Sirhan. So what is it again? It’s Sirhan alone. Yeah. And that’s and same thing happens with Dorothy Kilgallen’s death. So he was a very smart man. You mentioned the word. He was more of a politician than he was. Yeah. And then the police enforcement officer. Yeah. He was always watching his back. Don’t they say that Hoover had this black book with all of the dirty, you know, information about everybody? And that saved his, his job all the way through the, those years, that guy. Help him get those big, uh, appropriations from Congress and build the FBI. [44:43] And it’s the first, it was like a personal power, which a lot of people that rise to that position, they want to hang on to that personal power. [44:50] And that’s, you know, that’s what, that’s a good way to do it is having to hang on to those secrets. And he was a master. Well, Mark Shaw, this is a most interesting, uh, abusive powers, a book guys, uh, I’d highly recommend you get this. You’re going to learn more than you ever want to know about the, these two murders. There’s been a lot of books about JFK, but there’s a lot of different angles and everything. And I had a guy on here not too long ago that said that his father worked with the CIA and that he was part of a team who went to Dallas the weekend that JFK was killed. So there’s just a lot of stuff out there. And I’m not sure what to think sometimes, but this has definitely been well researched. I can tell you that I got the book and it’s definitely well researched and footnoted. [45:40] And, uh, you know, the, the evidence is out there and some of it’s hidden, uh, some of it, you, you find out from a couple of different places and you can’t get that tape to support that FBI transcript. And that was a FBI document that you got that had that statement by Marcello in it. You just can’t get the tape. You need to tape to really support that, make sure That wasn’t just that guy making, you know, how prisoners are, they’ll make shit up in order to get a break. And, and he got the tape with Marcello’s voice and his voice on it. You know, that would, that would make that irrefutable. So it’s, there’s a lot of stuff in this book, guys. [46:17] Mark, you got any last words here? You got any last words here? Well, thank you very much. And I want people to know my email is mshaw, I-N, at Yahoo. I answer every email because I’ve gotten tips over the years and so on and so forth that way. I don’t expect everybody to agree with my evidence and conclusions. But I’ll tell you, I think what’s different here is nobody has ever really looked at the connection between JFK’s death and Robert Kennedy’s death five years later and looked at both of those in the context of the other. Because when you do that, you get a different perspective of what happened and why and why Marcello is the most logical person to have decided those Kennedy brothers could not live. Yeah. If you do a thing we call a Venn diagram, you know what a Venn diagram? That’s where people have these different connections and you draw a circle around all the ones that have been connected to each other. Well, you’ll put circles around Sirhan Sirhan and JFK and RFK and Oswald and Marcello and you start drawing those circles. You see Marcello’s in all those circles. [47:26] I am not smart enough to know what that was called, but when we’re done, if you open up the book and go back to about the last 20 pages, there’s a circle there with Marcello and all of them in there. I just didn’t know what it was called. I did it at three o’clock in the morning, so you’ll see it there. All right. I’ll do that. Yeah, we learned that in an intelligence school I went to back in like 1978, 77, something like that. What’s it called again? V-E-N-N. V-E-N-N, V-Vector, E-N-N, Venn Diagram. I’ll tell my wife, she’ll think I’m really smart. [48:05] Yeah, that’s what we got going here. Hey, thanks so much. It’s a Venn Diagram. All right, Mark, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you, sir. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. You just have to search around for it. I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 8 December 2025

In this powerful episode of Gangland Wire, retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tegan Broadwater, a former Fort Worth Police officer, musician, and undercover operative whose story reads like a movie script. Broadwater takes listeners on a riveting journey from his early years as a professional musician to his dramatic turn infiltrating one of America’s most dangerous street gangs—the Crips. Drawing from his book Life in the Fishbowl, he details how music, culture, and human connection became unexpected tools for survival and success inside the underworld. Listeners will hear: How Tegan Broadwater transitioned from touring musician to undercover police officer, bringing creativity and adaptability to the streets. The story of his two-year infiltration into the Crips—posing as a South Texas drug dealer with the help of a trusted informant. His insights into gang hierarchy, loyalty, and manipulation, and how understanding culture was key to earning trust. The moral challenges of living undercover—forming friendships with men he would eventually arrest. The emotional impact of a major gang raid that ended with over 50 arrests, and how it changed his outlook on justice and humanity. His decision to donate proceeds from his book to the children of incarcerated parents aims to break the cycle of violence. He continues to share lessons on leadership, empathy, and cultural understanding through his private security firm and new podcast projects.   Broadwater’s story isn’t just about crime and undercover operations—it’s about identity, compassion, and the human cost of violence. This episode offers a rare look at what it means to live behind a mask while still holding onto one’s purpose. 🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube 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” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 1:08 Life in the Fishbowl 4:54 The Dangerous Fishbowl 11:09 Going Undercover with the Crips 14:14 The Kingpin and His Operations 26:54 Encountering the Mob 34:27 Comparing Gangs and Organized Crime 44:30 Tegan’s Current Projects and Future Goals Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I have a guest today that is another former cop, just like me, worked for the Fort Worth PD. I’m talking with Tegan Broadwater. Now, Tegan has an unusual background. He was a professional musician at one time who ended up going deep undercover to infiltrate the Crips. Now, you know that the Crips is a black gang, don’t you? I know you guys do. The Crips and the Bloods. If you know anything at all about inner city crime, the Crips and the Bloods or the gangs, well, here’s this white dude goes undercover with the Crips. Now, we’re going to find out how he did that. I’m dying to know myself. So welcome, Teagan. [0:42] Thank you. I appreciate you having me. All right. Now, let’s tell us a little bit about yourself. You just told me kind of nomadic growing up. You went to high school in Houston. You ended up in Fort Worth working for the PD. But you also have been a professional musician and you have a podcast today, written a book, Life in the Fishbowl. You have a company called the Tactical Systems Network. So tell us a little bit about yourself. [1:08] Yeah, I mean, music was my original passion, and from fourth grade on until my late 20s, that was all I wanted to do. So I went to college for music, went to a prestigious jazz program, and was touring on the road and got signed by a label at one of the early South by Southwest conferences back in the 90s, and just grew a little weary of the music industry itself. I love music, and I still consider myself a creative for the book and the music and stuff that I still do today. I still love to express myself. I think it also played a great role in leveraging it in cop work. So ultimately what happened was as I grew tired of the industry and sharing two beds with five dudes at a day’s end in Oklahoma City on the road, I also had a kid. [1:57] In 95 I had a kid and I thought, man, I do not want to be gone. So I decided to, at the behest of a few cops that used to come see us play when we were in town they talked me into doing that which was crazy because i just never imagined anything else so i cut eight inches of locks off and retook my driver’s license picture so the guys wouldn’t criticize me when i applied yeah and got into the pd i applied actually at houston pd and for pd and whoever was going to take me first and fort worth was quick to the draw and and although i had absolutely no experience in police work or firearms or anything like that i feel like I really had the type of personality that they needed. I don’t know if they realized that or not, but from the jump, I really wanted to work undercover because I felt like, you know, here I am. I’ve been touring with multicultural bands. I’m the only white guy in this group and that group and whatever. And I’m going to a music school, a bunch of artists and stuff. And so I feel like even in high school, I’d hang out with the jocks, I’d hang out with the smokers, hang out with the whoever. We’re just kind of a pliable personality, just like good people. So I felt like I could really excel at that. And it turns out that I really could. So I got into the police work and ended up being really. [3:14] Really proficient with a firearm because, again, they teach you how to use it. And I had no bad habits to unlearn. So, you know, I took to all that stuff really well. Yeah. And so, most of us do somewhere. But, you know, I ended up just politicking to try to go to the worst part of town, so to speak, with the highest crime areas so that I could gain more experience. I was super ambitious, learned a lot about the neighborhoods. And at one point, you know, I was trying to. [3:44] Get into a narcotics unit and as a six foot one white stiff nerd a little more difficult to do so, i started creating my own resume i politicked some of the captains to try to re-implement some of the old weed and seed programs and and learned how to write search warrants and procured some old used expired gear from swat and after just a few years i was i was spending my shift, making covered buys and learning how to do a few undercover buys. And then at the end of every shift, we would earn overtime and go crack doors down some old dilapidated crack houses and, you know, make some cases that way. And so by the time I applied to narcotics for my fourth time, they couldn’t deny me because I had a bunch of informants. I had, you know, several hundred, pardon me, several hundred dynamic search warrants under my belt and all that kind of stuff. So, ultimately, I was accepted there, and what ironically turned out to be a place that I used to work a lot in, there’s an area of town where it was a gang-ridden part of town where you had the Bloods and the Crips divided by one single street. [4:54] But in terms of the turf, there was a six-square block area with one way in and one way out that was particularly dangerous and particularly problematic. [5:03] We always rode down there too deep and the cops deemed it the fishbowl because every time you went down there people were radioing in everybody got a warning ahead of time and it made it really difficult for for us to do work down there tons of violence i remember answering calls down there you know bloody females and kids screaming and you know having domestic disturbance calls and displacing these kids and just a real crazy situation but fortunately for me having done those warrants for the few years preceding narcotics when the problems finally arose where the finally they had a killing down there that that drew the attention of the city council. [5:41] They got together with the chief of police and said, what can we do? We need to pull all stops to get this little segment of town cleaned up. Because obviously there are good people that are down there being held hostage by these jerks that are just shooting each other and making it impossible for anyone to live a normal life. And these people that are innocents are too poor to just stop and move. It’s not as easy as that. So they started doing all the typical things. Of course, they’re not consulting me. I’m just a grunt. And they’re doing jump outs with unmarked bans and writing search warrants and pulling over everybody that moves and trying to get people to flip and obviously to no avail or else that would have worked prior. So, yeah. My whole idea, me being the genius that I am, I went to an informant and said, hey, what do you think of this idea? I said, you pose as somebody that I’m trying to fund. I’m going to pose as T. I’m a big-time dope dealer from South Texas and just had my source busted by the feds. I’m coming up to North Texas, and I’m trying to get my game restarted. [6:43] But you are the poor crack dude that’s trying to do his little hustle. Because if I’m some kind of big timer and I’m trying to infiltrate Crips here via the dope trade, I certainly can’t go start down at the corners and start buying $25 rack rocks. But I could roll down there with you and tell them that I’m just buying for you. And that was the premise that we went with. He laughed his ass off at first, obviously, too, because obviously the fitting in, I fit in by fitting out, by standing out, right? I wasn’t going to try to fit into that mold. And I even played ignorant along the way by wearing, you know, 49ers, Falcons jerseys and stuff down there in the blue territories. [7:28] And they’d pull me aside and say, fool, what are you doing? You fool, what are you wearing in this red shirt? And I was like, what? What? You know, I don’t know. You know, give me the evidence. So it was tons of questions, but I feel like I leveraged my own personality and, way more than most would. And between not having an elaborate story to memorize and by knowing that I was going to take this on as a long-term deal, it was easy for me to tell people no. So when they start giving me all these 20 questions, where do you live? Where are you from? I’ve never seen me all of this. I’m like, hey, I’m way higher than you in this game. You don’t even know who you’re talking to. And I’m damn sure not going to tell you where I live. And I’m not going to ask you where you live, you’re obviously an amateur, so I’m going to move on. I got to do my business somewhere else. And then they would think, oh, well, no, I kind of want some money. So they would, you know, ultimately would end up talking me into doing deals. And slowly but surely, I would spend time down there on a little PD budget that we had for our team. [8:31] And so on days where I knew that guys, key players there were not around, I would pull down to the blocks and ask for them knowing that they’re not there on purpose because I couldn’t afford to spend tons of money every day. So I would go down there and ask for somebody that wasn’t there and then end up hanging out and, you know, share 40 ounce Magnums or playing video games or whatever and getting to know these fools on a different level. And it was just as much learning about their way of life and earning street cred without having to buy bricks yet. So, and that was just on that, you know, skimpy PD budget. [9:08] So I promised my wife. Now, how did you, how did you like show cash even? Did you, did you borrow some cash from the feds to show cash? The PD gets real nervous. If you want to sit some show money, you know, you’re saying, okay, I’m going to bring this back. This is just for show, but to generate, you know, 10, $15,000 in show cash is hard to do. [9:31] You’re right. And because you put yourself at risk of being jacked. And you’d be robbed, too, yeah. Yeah. So that was the biggest concern that I had. And what I was actually doing at the time, by facilitating other people. [9:45] Eventually they would see me come and go, and they would see me doing these deals for my partner and say, man, no, don’t talk to me, just give it to him. And they would see me pull out the swads of cash and give it to him so he could make these buys, and nobody was getting busted. So they knew I was a somebody, but I was literally taking our monthly budget from our NARC crew and cashing in a couple hundred ones and then putting a stack of 20s on the top so that when I pulled out this massive wad. So that was my flash. But after about eight months, I promised my wife it was going to take three months and we’d be done. But I was climbing this ladder rapidly and bad guys introduced me to other bad guys. And it was just turning into a giant operation. I went to my sergeant, who was the only reason I was able to do this deep cover thing and work off the books so often. And just said, look, I’m running out of resources because these dudes are going to start calling bulls on this. Because, you know, I keep telling them I’m this big player. and i go down there and all i’m doing is buying samples or letting guys talk me into trying some of their crack instead of you know the powder because i’m i always tell them it’s like i don’t do no crack i mean i’m i’m looking for bricks and powder because i i move the big stuff so yeah you know i’d buy samples of the favor i said but i can only get away with that for so long so we decided to purposely go shop the feds and. [11:10] Started with DEA and I presented all this thing. I have this hierarchy. These are the guys. This is where they rank. This is how they’re working together. [11:21] And ultimately they said, hey, we love this case. This looks like a great deal for us. We’d love to take it from you and we’ll let you know how it goes. And I was like, no. I mean, this isn’t just my ego talking, but by the time I’d been doing this eight months and down there seven days a week and building this massive case, There’s no way I’m handing it off to somebody, even if they are DEA. There’s no logical reason to bring in a new undercover when I already have this kind of momentum going. So then we went to the ATF. They didn’t really have the resources of the people. And somebody mentioned that the FBI had an agent assigned to our gang unit that was there for the gang and violent crimes task force. [12:04] And she was currently working on another case, but sat down with her, and she was a hustler. She’s fantastic, perfect fit. She loved the idea. [12:13] She was going to obviously let me continue the undercover work, and she spent a few months finishing up her other case. So for those few months, the advantage slash disadvantage I had was, since I’d been working off the books anyway, now my sergeant thought, well, you’re working for the FBI. And the FBI thought, well, you still have a sergeant. and I was just saying, hey, could I get the 17K? I need to buy a bird. And by the way, could I get a different car? And then, you know, in two days, I’ve got cash money and a Range Rover. So now I’m balling, you know? So now I’m showing up and really able to play the part. And, you know, after a solid year, this thing, I’ve stayed undercover for almost two years. And, you know, after that first year, I started having people come to me trying to do deals. And I had gotten to the point where I was telling people I couldn’t do deals because in my mind I’m thinking, well, this cat is actually too small for me or this cat is not actually a crit because it wasn’t a dope case. And that’s the whole misnomer about the case that we had in the first place. The whole point was to eradicate the violent gangsters that were in this part of the neighborhood, and it ended up spreading into other parts of the neighborhood and a larger area of town, obviously, as ultimately what happened is when the U.S. Attorney said, it’s time to wrap this up. You have your top gun guy. [13:36] My top, my kingpin, so to speak, in Fort Worth was moving $250,000 of product a week. Wow. Then it was time to wrap it up. So after that long, I probably would have just kept going because I got so into it and just so bought into, you know, the relationship building and the momentum of the case that I, who knows when I would have stopped, but I would have certainly burned out at some point. But it turned out that we ended up arresting 51 people. Crips and 41 went federal and 10 went state. [14:11] And it was, you know, one of the more successful gang cases a lot. They got tons of time too. Yeah. Interesting. Now you’re a kingpin. How did you work up to him? How was he set up? How did he instantly, can you tell us a little bit about their procedures and how they had that set up? [14:29] Sure. And the most difficult part was the kingpin was obviously you’re smarter, even though if you’re in a gang, there’s some level of intelligence that must stop at a certain point. But this cat had, he had car lots, he had a real estate license, he had storage units and things like this. So he was sophisticated in terms of a street thug because, you know, typically Crips are, you know, violent dudes that will, you know, take what they need in order to achieve what they need to achieve. But he was smart also. So, you know, he’s a dangerous cat to deal with. And ultimately it was really ironic because it was really what happened is they had what they call the four tray day. And now a four tray crip is a crip that originated on 43rd Street in Compton, you know, Southern Cal. But they carry those five deuce and four tray, they call them. Those sets were heavily populated in Fort Worth and so they had a four tray day and they had everybody in the park behind this fishbowl area all coming together to glorify cryptum i guess and and they’re all there together yeah i know they even got a city permit that’s how smart this oh my god oh my god. [15:54] So it’s doing so of course i’m you know i’m t from south texas and i go rolling into the barbecue i’m still standing out like a sore thumb oh my god Who’s that white dude? Hey, who’s that white dude? So for every person that would question me and say, what the hell are you doing here? I had just as many people saying, hey, wait, that’s T. Are you kidding me? He’s okay. And they would start introducing me around. Yeah. Well, it turns out that my kingpin, I almost thought I was going to have to wrap it up early because my kingpin had left for California to lay low because he was feeling heat. I don’t know that it was necessarily for me because I hadn’t started wrapping up this case or anything, but for whatever reason, he laid low for a couple of months. And when he came back amidst all this, there was a basketball game that I got caught up in and met up with a few people around this basketball cart in an apartment complex right outside the park. It was just, you know, hundreds of people out there. And turns out he was in one of these games and went to smoke a cigarette outside of one of these apartments. and I met one of my informants out there and I was like, man, I got to go in and see if he’s got a little something. [17:05] It was a stab in the dark, but at this point, the AUSA had said, hey, you got to wrap this up. So I’m thinking, I got to get this kingpin somehow. And as goofy as my informants have been over the years, this one statement rang true and it ended up being really profound. And he said, T, you know you’re way too big to be asking him for something small and the chance that he has anything on him is already low and you know being so presumptuous to walk up and ask for something small since I only had you know so much money to spend that particular day he said let me let me do it let’s go back to our first little premise and so we ran it the same way and say you know I’m hooking this cat up or whatever I know we haven’t seen you for a bit I know you’re back in town man we’re just trying to get a little something something and just kind of made it really casual if you don’t got it it’s all cool and he’s like man i got you and he reached into his pocket and pulled out this little bit for my partner uh you know i spent a few hundred bucks and you know and then wrapped it up so ultimately we were able to wrap him up in the conspiracy also by the time you debrief all these people they’re all connecting the dots that you haven’t connected for yourself and you know he ended up getting 25 years, we had a 60-year sentence, a life sentence, and then most of the others ranged between 17 and 30 years. [18:27] Convicted so it was really really traumatic for me honestly because i i didn’t play emotions at all when you’re working undercover you’re you’re highly goal-based you know i’m trying to accomplish certain things and i’m always keeping in mind what i’m trying to do yeah if you get emotional well you would know i mean you know as well or better than i you get emotional in any level of cop work you’re asking for trouble yeah it needs to be a it’s it’s all business and you’re doing your job and that’s the way it needs to be so but we start wrapping these people up many of whom i thought please go away forever but also many of whom who i i really adored as people because i thought man if this kid weren’t a sociopath all we did was play video games and he’d talk about the chicks on the west side of town and we’d share beers and talk about if the cowboys were going to get their ass kicked or whatever and just and i felt like these dudes are just dudes i mean And, you know, it has nothing to do with race. I think most of us would agree that most people don’t have anything in common with criminals that make a living selling dope and moving prostitutes and selling and buying guns. I mean, that’s just not the type of people that we associate with. But I found profoundly that there was so much more in common with some of these guys. And it was at that point that I really felt like emotionally overwhelmed and drained. I’d been put in all these extraordinary hours. [19:53] And so it really, it wiped me out and during that roundup time. And a lot of people don’t know, just, just actually the act of being out there on the street, hanging out with these guys. [20:04] Man, in that, what he’s talking about, the fish bowl and these projects and, and these apartments he’s been in and at any time something can jump off, but it might not have anything to do with you. Something else would jump off and the bullets start flying, man. And it’s always that edge of danger and fear going on all the time. [20:25] And you can’t show that. No, and I think part of it was my natural personality is kind of calm and analytical when it comes to that, which is why, again, I think my creative brain being engaged was part of my advantage. Sometimes I get too creative for my own good, but other times, you know, when guys pulled guns on me, which happened more than once, you know, I would just, I would act like, man, why are you, you’re going to do this? You don’t even know what you’re doing or who you’re dealing with yet. Why don’t we have the conversation and then we’ll figure out if you still want to pull that out. You know, that kind of thing. At the same time, I’m still moving 100 miles an hour in my mind about what I’m going to do. Do I need to drill them a new eye socket or can I talk my way out of this, you know? Really, it’s kind of like the story about the duck you see going across the pond. On the surface, the duck just looked like it’s calm and serene just kind of going across the pond. But underneath the surface, those little feeders going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s exactly right. That’s a great analogy. It’s exactly right. My brain’s going, holy… [21:26] Okay do this do this okay do this okay say that okay all right all right yeah dude what’s up, yeah but you just stay in character and just like this this isn’t how this isn’t how we do business man you know i’m if you want to learn from people that have been there before you need to put that down and hear what i’m going to tell you because i’ve been at so many levels beyond what you’re talking about i’d be willing to share it if you put that shit down and stop playing around because This is not how we do it. So I would just, I would play it calmly, not even yelling at them. They would yell and whatever, but, you know, I wasn’t intimidated. I think I probably got slightly complacent to a certain point. Yeah, I can see that, yeah, I bet. Yeah, about 12 months in, I can’t remember the exact date. I could look it up, but ended up in a little shotgun house with, you know, trying to do a deal with this kid who was, again, he begged me to do the deal. I confirmed it was a crip I’m like okay and I go to his house and there’s, A couch, a coffee table with a gun and a scale and some dope and then a big screen TV and practically nothing else in there. I’m sure as a cop, you would know. There’s probably a Bible in there somewhere. Probably. [22:41] Probably. Maybe some porn, but otherwise that’s it, right? So as I’m talking to these cats, I’m hearing an eerily familiar voice. And you got to realize this is about 2006. So, you know, we had three main TV channels. We had, you know, Fox, ABC, NBC, or four, because CBS, I think Fox was there by that time. And Fox was running cops like a mother. I mean, if you hadn’t heard of Fort Worth, yeah, if you hadn’t heard of Fort Worth before cops, you knew who Fort Worth PD was after cops because those suckers followed us all day for years. [23:21] And we used to have these guys that loved to go out with those crews. It was not me, but when they were off, my sergeant would always assign them to me because me and my partner were hustlers and we would go out and find stuff. So I ended up on a couple episodes of Cops. And so as I’m standing there negotiating this deal with my back to the TV, I hear a familiar voice. I’m thinking, no way. But yes, it was one of the episodes of Cops with me arresting a kid for a bunch of eggs that he had in his pants. And I’m just filibustering and talking loud and everything. And you know how it is too. You could be best friends with somebody that you know is a cop that you see on their off-duty all the time. And then you see them in the grocery store in plain clothes and all of a sudden you don’t recognize them. Well, that was the only advantage that I had because nobody noticed it the entire time. Even when I wrote the book later on, there was no way I could pull a quote from that experience because the only time I truly panicked was then. [24:18] And then it caused me to really come back to reality. Once I got out of that alive, I thought, Every other deal I did after that, I thought, man, has somebody else seen this? And I’m not aware that they’ve seen it. Yeah. So it really kind of put me back on my toes and made me really regret doing that TV show too. Even though I was ready to do it. Because, you know, there’s some people that are really good with faces and they remember a face. I’m not very good with faces. I know that, but they’re really good with faces and are your voice, you’re hearing your voice. They’re really good with that. mm-hmm so I could see that and I you know. [24:55] I was a dork in both cases, undercover and in uniform, but I was more of a dork in uniform. So I think it helped that I had, you know, the next to shaved head and all that kind of stuff and then a little bushier hair or whatever. But, you know, in my mind, just the consequences that came to bear were incredible. And so I was just fortunate to get out of that situation. What about chasing down the money? Did you have much luck chasing down any money? Did you end up getting any – did you have a civil forfeiture unit by then? I don’t remember when those started. [25:27] Yeah, we did. And we were doing our own forfeitures. We seized cash, but it wasn’t anything outrageous. And we got a few hundred thousand bucks in cash. But I know that the Kingpin had cash somewhere. And so my goal immediately after was to, his girlfriend actually took over the operation, which was already sort of a mistake. I don’t know how much he had to do with that. So I started following her around, and within a week, she was executed. So I never did figure out where his money was. He’s since gotten out and probably has it. Yeah. No, I did not find it. You know, we checked a few of his storage units and tried everything we could to make connections there and just never could. There’s always one step ahead. I don’t know if he buried it or what, but, you know, he’s got plenty of people on the outside, even when he went in that would have done his bidding to hide that stuff. So I’m certain it was there, but no, I never got to seize that, unfortunately. Never got the big cash hoard. The big briefcase full of money that everybody says, I ain’t mine, that ain’t mine. I know. Oh, it must be mine. [26:41] Well, they all got off the street. That was ultimately the idea was, let’s lower the violent crime by getting active gang members off the street. You know, it was kind of the original intent anyway, so… [26:54] Well, interesting. Now, what about, you talked about having some brush with Gotti. What’s the story with that? Yeah, so the transition time between being a musician and being a cop, while I was in music school, I had this longing to try to get an experience with being on the road and ended up auditioning for this. It was, I guess, pop music, rock music, and some show music, along with a comedian and all this craziness that I auditioned for. And they were out of Pennsylvania in the Poconos. And out of Jersey. And so obviously I didn’t know anything about the mob at the time. I’m just a long-haired drummer who’s trying to get experience on the road. So I auditioned for this outfit, make the audition, go up and they have a spot in the Poconos at the Caesars Palace Resorts in the Pocono Mountains, which is where all of the Goombas hung out. I mean, that was their spot, you know, and it was kind of accepted. I was just learning the ropes. I literally, on day one, was going to the cafeteria line at one of these resorts. [28:08] And literally looked over at the girl that was serving the whatever it was. I don’t remember what it said. I don’t even know what I said. It was something innocent enough, but yes, she was pretty. And my boss immediately looks down at me and says, you can’t talk to her. That’s, you know, Tony, whoever’s daughter. And I’m thinking, I don’t know who that is, but, you know, but he’s given me an order. I’m just thinking that’s that’s strange so we’re what we would do is typically as the band guys we wouldn’t intermingle with a lot of the resort guests and stuff so we would go off in these little booths and stuff or go to the nightclubs where we they had these big nightclubs and we would tour between each of the nightclubs and play do comedy and all that open for tony bennett types and all that yeah so we’re over eating the sandwich one day and my boss. [28:55] Whose name was Terry Moretti. And he was, man, he wanted to be connected. He could just tell. But he, and you got to realize, I’m still a musician, no cop experience, no, I’m the most nonviolent, hippie kid, whatever, I just want to play music kind of guy, right? I’m on this gig. And he answers the phone in this club area. They bring a phone over. It’s an actual landline phone. [29:23] And he takes this call. Yeah, and I don’t know how much I can quote him because it was filthy mouth stuff, but he’s screaming, he’s spitting into the phone. He’s screaming, you mother, you blah, blah, blah, you never talked to me. He starts screaming, and I’m just looking across the table just flabbergasted, like, what is going on with this guy? He’s nuts, and he’s just going off. He slams the phone down and says, come on, we’re going back to the cabin. I said, yes, sir, I’ve got all my food. I’m just leaving all my food because I’m just freaking out. So I go up there and we jump in his Honda and he drives me up as he’s pulling up to my cabin where I stayed. This big Lincoln pulls up behind us and slides sideways in front of us. And my boss reached down to the console and pulls a gun and says, run. Oh, shit. All these guys start bailing out of this Lincoln in front of me. I’m like, am I in a movie? What’s going on here? But no sooner did I think, am I in a movie? I also hauled ass. To my cabin, because I’m not sticking around to find out what’s going on. So all these guys are bailing out this Lincoln, and you could tell this had to be the people that he just cursed out. I don’t know. They had some big standoff. And so they had all this, and nothing ended up happening. I didn’t even watch the end of it, because I went as far away from potential bullet flying as I could. [30:45] But the next day I go to a payphone and I’m calling my roommates and I’m saying, man, I’ve had some experiences here and I’m really kind of concerned that I think like the mob is everywhere here. And I thought the mob was just in the movies. I said, but I told him about this story and I recounted that and recounted all these orders about these people’s daughters and everybody that works there and can’t talk to anybody. And I said, this is the weirdest experience I’ve ever had. And the very next day before our show, my boss walked into the dressing room and said, don’t you ever mention the word mob again. None of this is your business. You know what you’ve been told and just do what you’ve been told and you don’t understand what you’re getting into. And I’m thinking, I called my friends from a pay phone at a 7-Eleven. And this guy is getting onto me for those types of things. So I was, honestly, it scared the crap out of me at that point. I was like, okay, well, I’m not doing anything. I’m not supposed to. I’m not looking for trouble. But I thought, I didn’t think the mob even existed in the 90s. Like, you know, this is passe. Well, you know, to whatever extent. I mean, obviously, Gotti’s a rock star. And that’s what happened, you know, within the next couple of months is my boss was heard that Gotti’s wife had fell ill, which she had. She was in the hospital. So, he went and visited her. [32:10] Gotti came out to the show that night. And this was another perspective for me is, you know, he walks up to me and he literally puts his hands around my neck. This is nothing that would happen to me today, I assure you. But as a hippie kid, just like trying to learn life, he puts his hand up and pushes me against the wall. He said, this is how you were going to greet Mr. Gotti. You don’t look up. You only reach out your hand if he reaches out his hand and don’t say a damn thing unless you’ve spoken to. And I’m thinking, okay, okay. But then I thought, wait, did he say Mr. Gotti? And then I’m freaking out. Like, what? So that night during the show, we go out on the stage and we play. And, you know, after the third number where we’re telling a few jokes, he said, I’d like to introduce a dear friend of mine. And, you know, his wife is ill, but, you know, Mr. John Gotti’s in the audience today. And this is an arena with 4,000 people in it. Every single person stands up, standing ovation, clapping, cheering loudly. And Mr. Gotti stands up from the middle of the crowd and just kind of waves at everybody. I thought, oh, my gosh, this dude’s a rock star. [33:19] He’s a rock star here. So then I’m super confused. Because, again, this is like the Pablo Escobar thing. Well, the poor people swear he gives them free things and helps the community. And it’s the same thing. Robin Hood, Jesse James, same thing. Wow. That’s the most confusing experience of my life. And he comes backstage, shakes everybody’s hand. Of course, I’m staring at the floor when he walks in, sticking my hand out when I see a hand. So the experience was not that notable because I didn’t even hardly speak to the guy. But the fact that he was there and I got that type of impression amidst that kind of environment really woke me up to the fact that, wow, organized crime is no fallacy. These guys are alive and well, and they have the public’s support. And, you know, it was an absolute eye-opening experience for me to be able to meet that guy. Really. You know, talk about the mafia. And, you know, the mafia is organized with a boss, an underboss. Capos are like capo regimes. They have so many guys working under them. [34:26] Then you’ve got soldiers. Maybe you’ve got a consigliere. Now, can you compare and contrast that with a crypt street gang? Do they have any kind of organization at all? [34:35] They do, but they are not nearly as organized as they should be. I think if they were more organized, we’d all be in a lot of trouble, honestly. They have guys that they’ll call themselves OGs. There are not that many OGs. There was an OG in this case, but he wasn’t even really the kingpin. He was a guy that was in his 40s who shouldn’t have been playing around anymore, but just got out of prison and ended up kind of back in the game a little bit. But he was an OG because he actually was out with running the parks with Tukey Williams, who started the Crips in L.A. And he was displaced here into Texas and was running around with these guys, but wasn’t playing a significant role, didn’t really play that. But they called him OG. [35:18] Most of it, I found, was predicated on the level in which you ran business, whether they’re selling guns or running prostitutes or selling dope. So it was almost like that kind of hierarchy. I didn’t hear the mention of lieutenants and things like that much, but I knew exactly who was on different tiers. But it turned out that it coincided directly with, all right, well, if you want to start buying multiple keys, you need to go see this guy. If you want to buy street level whatever or get a whore, you go talk to this guy. And so there were still social levels of people there. And pretty much the guys at the top were recognized as guys at the top. Everybody else was kind of fighting to be known, but they did so in their work. I think a lot of that does align with the way the families or, you know, in terms of. [36:13] Not necessarily in terms of a formal title, but in terms of how you earned your keep. You know, that’s how you moved up in those families, too. You were a real hustler, and you started bringing in big business. You earned opportunities to move up. It was the same thing, which is less formalized in this case. Yeah, like in a mob, there’ll be a guy who was a little more, he’d be a soldier, even an associate, but he’d be a little more of a natural leader. And then guys will gravitate to him because he has this certain skill or these connections and certain skills that set up jobs that are lucrative for everybody. And so what I hear you’re saying is within these crypts, did they call them sets down there? I remember we used to have different sets, which would be a smaller group within the larger group. And so a certain set will then have a pretty lucrative, have a good connection for dope. And so that, you know, they may be higher in the hierarchy, but these sets are all totally separate from each other. Right. It seems like they’re not, whereas the mob, they really have a real pyramidal thing, but it doesn’t sound like they really are so pyramidal. [37:21] There aren’t as pyramidal. They are in concept, but they aren’t really as in formality. And when you think of sets, you can just think of it as the different families. Because you couldn’t just volunteer to be a mob family. I mean, the mob families were the mob families. But you also didn’t encroach on other people’s business. There were rules about encroaching into other territory and things like that. That’s exactly how the Crips work. And unfortunately, and probably the same for Mobland, I mean, if any of those guys decided we’re going to become one entity. [38:00] It would have been a huge nightmare for society and law enforcement and everybody because then you would multiply the amount of weight that they pulled. And it’s the same thing within gangs. I think the best thing you can do is just lean on the fact that they’re not smart enough to all come together as one and remain organized and civil enough to do that for a bigger purpose, which is fortunate for all of us law-abiding citizens. Yeah, really. If you think about the mob, the mafia brought this organization that I described, you know, the boss, the capos, and they brought that from Sicily. That’s been going on for several hundred years in Sicily. They brought that here. Now, the Crips, this is a homegrown thing that just started in like the 1960s. More highly organized as gangs. We ran into a deal when they first came out here from L.A. We started the L.A. Boys Task Force, and I was part of that with my TAC team. We started figuring out that a lot of these taggers, everybody is freaking out about taggers. We got all these different gangs. Sometimes we’d learn that the 31st Street Crips were nothing but three kids running around with spray cans. And, you know, it was, you had to look at the narcotics angle to figure out who was who. And that it’s the same down there. It sounds like. [39:23] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because you have wannabes, but it’s similar. You know, like I compare it now to a lot of the terrorist organizations that we’re combating. When it seems like you have a terrorist occurrence, something happens, and then someone like the FBI would say, well, you know, they weren’t on our radar. They’re not claiming to be a part of a whatever group or whatever. Some cases, that’s more dangerous than being a part of a bigger organization because you can’t keep track of rogue actors. So you get three kids that are taggers. You’re right. Most of the time, they’re just artists trying to be relational with other people that are lost. They have people that are in common. They take them into the group, but they’re kind of harmless. But you also get some of those smaller sets with people with very little to lose and you get the right sociopathic combination and then they’ll just walk up and murder you like it’s nothing because they don’t care if they get caught. And in that case, same with, you know, a Gambino family. I mean, they decide you’re going to be offed. Even the guys within the family would figure out, well, it’s, you know, time for me to do my Sonny Black. I need to turn in my stuff and, you know, prepare myself because it’s, yeah, it’s about to happen. And so, you know, it’s, it’s kind of that, that it’s a lot of parallels in that criminal world. Really interesting. Did you ever watch the wire? Did you get into watching the wire? [40:52] Man, I started to. I need to go back and watch it. I don’t know if it still stands up. That gives PTSD, man. That puts you right back on them streets. [41:00] So I was still working. I was still working when I came out. And that’s literally the only thing that I hated was I felt like I was just extending my already long work day. But it wasn’t bad. You would. [41:16] Ultimately, the one thing about the wire that I appreciate the most, and is the way I approached my book too is that I appreciated that as an audience. [41:27] You’re kind of rooting for some of the bad guys and some of the good guys. And you kind of pick and choose based on some of the characters you’ve grown an affinity toward. And I felt the same way in my case. Like when I wrote the book, I thought I’m not making enemies out of all these people. Some of these guys are really, have endeared themselves to me and are really kind of good dudes otherwise. And so when I present it, I present it like, man, you know, I know some people are going to read this and kind of hope that guy makes it out because you know what? I hoped that he would make it out. I hoped that at the end he would go ahead and cooperate and get a downward departure and I would testify as to his character and the dude would get a minimum sentence and be out and contributing to his society. And that’s the beautiful thing about the way the story was set up and in the wire too. So that’s, because that’s real life. You know, it’s not, everything’s not black and white. No pun intended. [42:21] That’s for sure. Yeah, really. And in this case, for sure. But yeah, things are not all one way or all another way. And that’s the thing. When you work close to people on the streets, undercover like you did, you have a lot of informants. You really, when I was a patrol officer, I would get out of the car and I would go talk to people and talk to them a lot, trying to develop informants. And you find out. That is, it’s not, you’re not like a soldier in a war zone. You know, there’s a lot of really good people out there and there’s a lot of kids that are just lost and they just need a direction, try to get some kind of direction. And it’s, you know, it’s emotionally harder when you really get close to people. But I think the bank cops are the ones that will get close to people. [43:01] I totally agree with you. And I appreciate that you did that because there’s not enough of that going on still. I think there’s, there’s a lot to be said, even, even if you’re not gathering information and you’re just trying to. Gain some kind of rapport and have a relationship with the people in your city and, you know, some of the, you know, gang parts of town or whatever. I think it’s admirable what you did. And I think that there’s a lot of people back in your day, my day, and on forward that need to take those lessons forward and just, you know, try to be humans, man. Come on. I had guys tell me we had a big sector. Half of it was more in the white neighborhood and nicer businesses. And then half of it was, was, was all black. And, and these guys used to say, well, Jenkins, you just go over there in the east side and never come out. You know, it’s boring over there where you are sitting around at 7-Eleven talking to each other. Come on over here, it’s not so boring. [43:59] Being productive here. Yeah. And that’s a beautiful thing. That’s a beautiful thing to that. I mean, they’ve talked about segregating cops to where you can put black officers in black neighborhoods and Hispanic officers in Hispanic neighborhoods so that there’s that cultural relationship. And I think that also tends to be a problem because I think we just need to acknowledge that we have a lot to learn about other cultures and make a concerted effort to learn about other people. That’s really all it takes is a little effort. Yeah. [44:30] Because it’s interesting. It’s interesting as hell. And I tell you, I made a friend over there, and I went into a barbershop. I came back off duty, and we went to a barbershop they always like to go to. You know, in the black community, the barbershop is a center. And sit there and play checkers with guys and talk with them. And, you know, you just find all these really fun people that, you know, you just have this stuff with. They worked at different places. Some of them were criminals. A couple of them were, all of a sudden, one of them says, quit talking to me about that bank robbery. He says, that’s a cop sitting over there. [45:00] You know, they had everything in there, you know, most of them worked at the Ford plant or Chevy plant or, or, you know, for the post office and things like that. It’s really nice people. That’s beautiful. And there’s, you know, there’s other dudes that would be scared to go in one. So again, you can really experience it and you can’t judge, you know. Really? All right. Deegan Broadwater, tell us a little more about what you’re up to now. Let’s sell your book. You’ve got companies and you’ve got a podcast. You’ve got all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I’ll whip through it. But after this case became public and after a while I was outed as the undercover, people were encouraging me to write a book. And ultimately, during the debriefs of these guys and getting their backgrounds, we discovered there were 104 children left fatherless after rounding out these 51 people. And it made me really think about whether or not this was solving any of the problem or not. And I acknowledged that, yes, these dudes have to go to prison. But no, it’s not solving the problem. This is step one of many steps that have to happen. And so what really inspired me to write the book was when I discovered that, I thought, okay, well, I’m going to write the book. Will tell the story in a realistic manner and then we’ll donate all the profits of the book to charities that mentor children of incarcerated parents. [46:26] So, and I’m thousands of dollars in the hole having written this book, but I’m proud to say, you know, we donate all of what would have been money in my pocket to those organizations because ultimately you’ve got to keep their kids from becoming part of that cycle of violence, you know, because everybody knows what a poor fatherless home for a kid is going to serve him. And the stats are too high that they’re just going to be susceptible to gang life and everything all over again. And you got to do a whole nother Operation Fishbowl in 20 years. And we don’t want to have to keep doing that. So I wrote that book and have been promoting the book for some time. You can get it on Amazon. It’s called Life in the Fishbowl. And I have a copy right here. You know, if you find that on Amazon, that’s the copy. All right. And again, it’s for a good cause. Other than the show notes too, guys. [47:19] Appreciate that. And I left, I got so burnt out doing this. I mean, I’d never made more money in my police career because the feds are paying all my overtime and I literally have been overtime doing this thing. But I left and decided to do something with no risk, like leave with no retirement and start a company from the ground up. And so I say that facetiously, of course, but I started a private armed security firm and we do protection and armed security. [47:47] Been doing that for 18 years and after covet i got back into the creative biz started writing music again because we were i was being courted to do a movie based on the book and so i told him i was a musician started getting all the stuff and i started writing music that was going to be placements in my own movie which i thought was a cool idea covet hits and you know spoils everybody’s plans but by then i’d kind of started i had the book out and i was writing music again and decided to do a podcast try to get just a little ip and now the podcast has turned into something of a passion project for me also because as you certainly well know we’ve been doing it a lot longer than i have it’s a fabulous experience to be able to to background and learn about all these different people and and in my case i i try to find commonalities and very unique people with extraordinary stories and we just try to find that through line that is so common between people and I just I feel like it’s a it’s a constant learning experience so. [48:50] I’m doing that. I write a column for SoFRAP based on, you know, military, police, and music. And so I’m writing every week. And I just, you know, I fill my time is what I try to do. So I’ve got people helping me run the company right now that are doing a fantastic job. And so it’s been a rewarding life. I feel very blessed. I’m just trying to aim for things that will help impact positive change ultimately with all the projects that I’m doing. Okay. Tegan Broadwater, I really appreciate you coming on the show. And it’s been really fun for me, us sharing our little stories and our experiences because they’re not December. For sure. That’s for sure. Yeah. I’m very honored. I’m honored that you have me on. And I appreciate your service as well, sir. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Tegan. Thank you. You have a great one.

Transcribed - Published: 1 December 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with former FBI agent Séamus McElearney, author of Flipping Capo, for a deep dive into one of the most remarkable Mafia investigations and how he took down the DeCavalcante Family. McElearney recounts his unlikely path from the world of banking to the FBI, driven by a lifelong fascination with law enforcement. Despite being told he didn’t have the “right background,” he pushed forward—eventually landing in New York’s Organized Crime Squad C-10, where he investigated both the Bonanno and DeCavalcante crime families. He describes the rare and demanding experience of working two Mafia families at once, and the teamwork required to dismantle them from the inside out. As the conversation turns to his book, Flipping Capo, McElearney explains the years-long process of writing it and the rigorous FBI review needed to ensure no sensitive investigative techniques were revealed. He shares early memories of notorious boss Joe Massino, and the high-stakes surveillance and arrests that defined his career. A major focus of the episode is the arrest and flipping of Anthony Capo, a feared DeCavalcante soldier—and the first made member of that family ever to cooperate with the government. McElearney walks listeners through the tension of that operation, his calculated approach to treating Capo with respect, and the psychological tightrope that ultimately persuaded Capo to talk. That single decision triggered a domino effect of cooperation that helped bring down the New Jersey mob family many believe inspired The Sopranos. Gary and Séamus dive into the proffer process, cooperation agreements, and the behind-the-scenes strategies used to turn high-level mobsters. McElearney also draws comparisons between real mob figures and the fictional world of The Sopranos, revealing how much of the hit series was grounded in the actual cases he worked. The interview closes with McElearney’s reflections on how organized crime continues to evolve. While today’s mob may look different from the one he battled in the ’90s, he stresses that the methods—and the money—still flow. His candid insights offer a rare look into the changing face of the American Mafia and the ongoing fight to contain it. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 2:26 Seamus’ FBI Journey 6:26 Inside the DeCavalcante Family 9:05 The Process of Flipping 10:27 Comparing Families 12:30 The First Cooperation 17:43 The Proffer Process 25:03 Protecting Cooperators 27:44 The Murder of Joseph Canigliaro 29:42 Life on Trial 30:28 The Real Sopranos 39:43 Leading the Columbo Squad 44:15 Major Arrests and Cases 50:57 Final Thoughts and Stories 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00]Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. [0:07]Welcome to Gangland Wire [0:07]I have a former FBI agent as my guest today. And, you know, I love having these FBI agents on. I’ve had a lot of them on and I worked with a lot of the guys and they’re really good guy. Everyone I ever met and worked with was a really good guy. Now they got their deadhead just like we did. But these aggressive guys are the ones that write books and I’ve got one on today. Seamus McElherney. Welcome, Seamus. Thank you. It’s great to be here. All right. Well, an Irish name now working on the Italian mob, huh? How come you weren’t working on the Westie? So they were maybe gone by the time you came around. There’s no such thing. [0:47]Oh, yeah. You got your code. You Irish guys got your code, too. All right, Seamus, you got a book, Killing, or Killing, Flipping Capo. I want to see it back up over your shoulder there. Really interesting book, guys. He flipped a guy named Anthony Capo. And he really took down the real Sopranos, if you will. So Seamus, tell us a little about how you got started with the FBI, your early career. Okay. When I got out of school, I really didn’t know what to do. And I got into banking and I just decided that was really not for me. And I got lucky where I got to meet an FBI agent. and I was just so fascinated by the work. It seemed like every day was different. You know, one day you could meet a CEO and another day you could be doing surveillance. It just, the job just seemed really interesting. [1:38]Like fascinating to me. So I decided to try to become an agent. And I was constantly told, Shane, you should never become an agent. You didn’t have the background for it. And one, one, a motto in life to me is persistence beats resistance. And I was just determined to become an agent. And back then in the late 1990s, it was a long process and it took me close to two years to actually become an agent. And I was selected to go down to training and I was very fortunate to be selected to go down to training. Now it was your first office back up in New York and the, one of the organized crime squads, or did you go out into boonies and then come back? I actually was born and raised in New York, and I was fortunate to be selected to be sent back to New York. So my first squad, I was sent back to the city, back to 26 Federal Plaza, [2:26]Seamus’ FBI Journey [2:24]and I was assigned to a squad called C-10. And C-10 was an organized crime squad, which was responsible for the Bonanno family, and then later became the DeCavocanti family as well, which I can explain to you yeah yeah we’ll get we’ll get deep into that now now let’s let me ask you a little bit about the book tell the guys a little bit about the process of writing a book from your fbi experiences. [2:47]It’s a long process. First of all, I was contacted by someone who was interested [2:55]Writing a Book [2:53]in writing a book based upon my career. People had encouraged me to write a book because I had a very successful career. And when you work organized crime, it’s never just about you. It’s about the people that you work with, right? It’s definitely a team. It’s never just one person. I had great supervisors. I had great teammates. I had a great partner. And so I was approached to write a book. So then I had no idea. So there was an agent, a famous agent, an undercover agent named Jack Garcia. So I kind of really leaned on him to kind of learn how to write a book. And it’s a long process. You have to get an agent, the publisher, a co-author I had. And then when you finally have all that, and you do have the manuscript ready to be written, you have to send it down to the FBI. And that is a long process. The FBI, in this instance, probably took over a year for them to review the book because what they want to make sure is you’re not revealing any investigative techniques. Fortunately for me, a lot of the information that is in the book is public information because of all the trials that I did. Interesting. Yeah, it is. It is quite a I know it was quite a process. [4:00]Now, the banana squad, you work in a banana squad. You know, we know a little bit about the banana squad. [4:07]Was Joe Pacino the boss when you first came in? Yes, he was. And I actually had the pleasure of arresting Joe as well. Ah, interesting. I did a show on Joe. He’s a really interesting guy. I know my friend, who was at the banana squad, I think just before you were, and he talked a lot of, to me personally, he won’t go on the show, but he talked a lot about Joe Massino. He said, actually, saw him in the courtroom one time later on, he hadn’t seen him in several years. And, and Joe looked across the courtroom. He said, Doug, how are you doing? He said, Joe was that kind of guy. He was real personal. He was. [4:44]Yeah, so when I first got to the squad, the supervisor at the time was a gentleman named Jack Steubing, and he had the thought process to go after Joe and his money. So there was two accountants that were assigned to a squad at that time. It was Kimberly McCaffrey and Jeff Solette, and they were targeted to go after Joe and his money. And it was a very successful case. And when we arrested Joe, I think it was in January of 2003, I believe it was, I was assigned to be part of that arrest team. Interesting. You know, McCaffrey and Sled are going to be talking about that case out at the Mob Museum sometime in the near future. I can’t remember exactly when it is. And it was a hell of a case. I think it just happened, actually. Oh, did it? Okay. I actually just spoke to Jeff, so I think it just happened about a week or two ago. Okay. Yeah, I tried to get him to come on the show, and I think maybe he was committed to doing something else, and I didn’t keep after him. And I don’t like to pester people, you know. [5:44]And Fensell was the one that said, you got to get Jeff Sillett. You got to get Jeff Sillett. When I looked into that money angle of it, that was pretty interesting about how they were laundering their money through the parking lots and just millions. And when he gave up, like $10 million or something? I mean, it’s unbelievable. Yes. And that’s that’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I don’t think the public or the press really put this together where that squad, C-10, is a very unique squad where we were dismantling the two families at the same time. Half the family was working the Bonanno family and half the family was working the Cavalcanti family. So it’s a very unique squad during that six or seven year time period where we were dismantling two families at the same time. [6:26]Inside the DeCavalcanti Family [6:26]Interesting and and that gets us into the dekavocante family i could always struggle with that name for some reason but that’s all right guys know i butcher these names all the time. [6:37]Forgive me guys anyhow so you ended up working on the dekavocante family down in new jersey now that you know that’s unusual how did that come about we got we got a new jersey branch of the fbi down there too, Yes, we do. So what happened was I went to training in February of 1998. The case actually starts in January of 1998, where an individual named Ralph Guarino was the mastermind behind this, but he had the idea of robbing the World Trade Center. So he had three people that actually tried to execute that plan. They did rob the World Trade Center, but when they came out, they took their mask off and they were identified by the cameras that were actually there. So those individuals were actually arrested pretty quickly. I think two were arrested that day. The third person, I think, fled to New Mexico and was found pretty quickly. Ralph was smart enough to know that he was going to be apprehended pretty quickly. So he reached out to an agent named George Hanna, a legendary agent within the office, and George was able to convince him to become a proactive witness, meaning he would make consensual recordings. That was in January of 1998. I think it was January 14th. [7:51]Approximately nine days later, there was a murder of an individual named Joseph Canigliaro. Who was a ruthless DeKalocanti associate assigned to a wheelchair. How he got in a wheelchair was back in the 70s, a DeKalocanti soldier and him went to go collect money from a loan shark victim. And the story goes that Jim Gallo, James Gallo, actually shot Joseph Canigliaro by accident and paralyzed him. No hard feelings. It was just the course of doing their business back then. But he was paralyzed from the 70s to the 90s. He was a ruthless individual. though. And the reason that they killed him is his crew around him had him killed. They actually killed him because he was such a ruthless person and who would extort people and just really was a bad person. There were stories that he would call people over to him in his wheelchair and shoot them. So a ruthless guy. And he was killed in, I think, January 23rd of 1998. [8:50]So that’s how this case starts. Ralph Guarino, as I said, became a proactive witness. When you have a proactive witness. You just don’t know where they’re going to go. What I mean by that is you would direct him through mob associates and many guys, and you’re trying to gather evidence on tape. [9:05]The Process of Flipping [9:06]Where Ralph Guarino led us was the Brooklyn faction of the DeCavalcanti family, namely Anthony Capo, Anthony Rotondo, Vincent Palermo. [9:17]Joseph Scalfani, a whole host of DeCavalcanti people that were located in Brooklyn. And that’s how we start to build this case. Now, granted, I was just in training at that time in February of 1998. I don’t get sent back to New York until May of 1998. And from May of 1998 until December of 1998, they put you through a rotation, meaning I go through the operations center, I go through surveillance, and then I finally get assigned to C-10 in December of 1998. At that point in time, Jeff and Kim are already on the squad, so they’re operating the case against Messino. I come to the squad, and the Decalvo Canty case has now started. So I’m assigned to the Decalvo Canty portion of the squad to work them. And as I said, that’s why we’re working two parallel cases at the time. One is against the Bananos, the other is against the Jersey family. And we operate, Ralph, proactively from January 1998 up until the first set of indictments, which was in December of 1999. So compare and contrast the Banano family structure and how they operated in [10:27]Comparing Families [10:24]a DeCavocante family structure and how they operate. Were they exactly the same or were there some differences? [10:31]They’re into the same types of the rackets that the Waldemar people are into, but I would say related to the Decalvo Canty family, since they’re based in Jersey, they really had a control of the unions out there. There was two unions that they basically controlled, Local 394, which was the labor union, and they also started their own union, which was the asbestos union, which was Local 1030. [10:53]And those were controlled by the Decalvo Canty family, so that was the bread and butter of the Decalvo Canty family. So, as I said, the first set, you know, we operated Ralph proactively for almost close to two years. And then in December of 1999, we executed our first set of arrests because there was whispers that Ralph, why wasn’t he arrested yet? Where he was the mastermind behind the World Trade Center being robbed, but he hasn’t been picked up yet. So there was whispers that he might be cooperating with the government. And for his safety, that’s why we took him off off the street and we executed our first round of arrest in December of 1999. [11:33]I’m a relatively new agent. I’d only been on the squad now for a year and we arrested 39 people that day. I get assigned to arrest Anthony Capo, who’s a soldier within the Decavacanti family based out of Staten Island. And I was really surprised by that because, as I said, I was just an agent for about a year. Usually when you’re a new agent, you’re assigned to the back, you know, like we are security. I was even surprised that I was going to be on a team. And I was fortunate enough to be the team leader, which is very surprising to me. And the case was out of the Southern District of New York. And in New York, just for the public, there is two districts. There’s a Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York. And the Eastern District of New York also had charges on Anthony Capo as well. So for my arrest team, I had members from the Eastern District of New York as well. There was a separate squad that was looking into Anthony Capo there. [12:30]The First Cooperation [12:27]So I got the ticket to arrest Anthony Capo in December of 1999. And that’s how this case starts. [12:33]Interesting. Now, nobody’s ever flipped out of the DeCavocante family before, I believe. It’s been a pretty tight family, really rigidly controlled by this Richie the Boot. I mean, he’s a fearsome, fearsome guy. I mean, you did not want to get crossways with him. And a smaller, tighter family, it seems to me like, than the New York families. That was right. Well, like up and up until that point, up until that point and unbeknownst to me that no made member in the DeKalbacanti family had ever cooperated with the government before. [13:08]So I had watched George Hanna, how he operated Ralph Guarino for those two years, and he always treated him with respect. And prior to going to arrest Anthony Capo, Anthony Capo had had a reputation of being an extremely violent person, hated by law enforcement and even hated by a lot of people within the mob. But I was going I wasn’t going to let that, you know, use that against him. I was going to treat him with respect regardless. Right. I didn’t know I didn’t know him. I never dealt with him before. And I would basically before I went to go arrest him, I was going to study everything about him, learn everything about him. And I was going to use the approach of treating him with respect and using some mind chess when I was going to arrest him. What I mean by that is I was going to learn everything charges about him, everything about his family. I wanted him to know that I knew him like the back of my hand from head to toe, the start of the book to the end of the book. [14:02]And when I went to arrest him, I remember when we went to his house, he wasn’t there. So all the planning that you do related to going into an arrest, the checks that you do, he’s at the house, you knock on his door, and guess what? He’s not there. So his wife basically tells us that he’s at his mom’s house. So then that throws all the planning out the window, and now we go to his mom’s house. And when I met him, you know, I saw that he had a relationship with his parents, which, you know, it gives me a different perspective from what I heard from him. Interesting. And that says something about him, that’s for sure. So everything that I heard of this violent person and hated person, the way he treated law enforcement, he wasn’t that way with me. [14:49]So when I get him in the car and I start to read him his rights and start to ask him questions, every question that I would ask him, I already had the answer to, like, your date of birth, social security number. And then he would invoke his right to counsel, and then you’re not allowed to ask him any more questions. So what I would do is I would let the mind game start then. And I would ask him, you know, tell him about the charges that he had at that point in time. He was only charged with a conspiracy to murder Charlie Maggiore, who was an acting panel boss of the Decalvo Canty family. At that time, that point in time, they had three panel bosses. It was Charlie Maggiore, Jimmy Palermo and Vincent Palermo. Vincent Palermo was known as the stronger personality and really known as the acting boss. And they wanted to kill Charlie Maggiore. So he was charged with that. conspiracy to murder. And he was also charged with, I believe, stock fraud or it was mail fraud that would lead to stock fraud. So when I would question him, I would tell him, since he already invoked his right to counsel, don’t say anything, just listen to me. For an example, I would say your plan was to murder Charles Majuri. Your plan was to ring his doorbell and shoot him right there with James Gallo, Joe Macella. But you guys didn’t do that because there was a cop on the block. So instead of just doing a ring and run, you guys were going to ring and shoot him, right? [16:17]And now you’ve got to think, I told him, don’t say anything. Just listen to what I just said, right? Because I can’t have him answer any questions. And this wasn’t a question. This was a statement. Yeah. So that gives him food for thought, because you got to think, how would I know that? He doesn’t know at that point in time, this is an indictment. How do I know that? He doesn’t know who the cooperator is. He doesn’t know who made a recording. So I’m just throwing this at him. And this is the first time he’s hearing this. So it’s got to make him think, like, what else does this agent know? And I did this with the other charges as well. And then I would just throw these little tidbits at him. And then I would speak to the driver. How are you doing this? just give him food for thought. And then we just developed a bond that day, just talking sports back and forth. He actually was a cowboy fan. I’m a Steeler fan. So we have that little intensity going back and forth about that. And then we just developed a bond that day. I think that was the first time that he had an interaction with law enforcement, where it was more of a respect thing, as opposed to someone yelling at him or being contentious with him. I don’t think he’s ever or experienced that before. [17:27]Also because of his delivery as well, right? You know, it works both ways where you can, he can have his delivery really angry and that could, you know, provoke law enforcement to be angry towards him too. [17:43]The Proffer Process [17:40]So I think that helped it that way that day. And then just throughout the whole day. And I think one of the things that I do talk about within the book is just explaining processes to people, which is generally, I haven’t seen that done in a book before about how pretrial works. So what is pretrial? How cooperation works? How trial works? So I think there’s a lot of tidbits within the book that kind of explain things like that. Even some crimes, too. Like everyone hears what loan sharking is. I go into detail as to what loan sharking is and how it really works, because it’s a very profitable way to make money. So we have our day together. And, you know, then I had to meet his stepfather. I think he had heard that I treated his stepfather with respect. And then approximately a week later, I get a call from his lawyer and I basically almost fell out of my chair when his lawyer said he wanted to cooperate. [18:37]I bet. And then, yeah. And, you know, keep in mind, I’ve only been on the job for a year and I immediately call the assistant who is a seasoned assistant. Maria Barton, what was her name? And she’s really concerned, like, what did I say? Right. So I told her in these situations, less is more. I just told her I was going to call you. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anything else. Didn’t promise anything at all. I said I was going to call you. So, you know, that started with the process and then you go through a proffer. So I explained what the proffer is and how that process works. Interesting. Yeah. A proffer, guys is is like a kind of agreement you know and you you have to be totally open and admit to every crime you ever did and and we’ll cover you but to a certain point the basis you’ll lie down the basics. [19:31]Right. So what, you know, what we kind of like call it is queen for a day, right? Where you come in, we can’t use your words against you unless you lie to us, right? If you were, if you were to lie to us and then go, go to trial and, you know, we could, if you were to take the stand, we could, we could use it against you. But as long as you come in and you tell us the truth and you tell us everything, all the crimes that you’ve done. And the beauty of the mob is when they do a crime, they never do a crime alone, right? They involve a lot of people within a crime. So that’s the beauty of that. So when we have our first proffer, you know, in time, you only have a short amount of time to actually speak about this because you can only be away from jail for a certain amount of time right before the bad guys start to realize that something might be up. Right. So he comes in. And even even before that, on his on his way back, when we’re taking him back to 26 Federal Plaza, one of the things that he tells us is and it makes sense when we went to his house, he wasn’t there. He was at his mom’s house in the car ride back. He throws a little shot at me and he goes, we knew you were coming. [20:33]Meaning that there was a leak. They got a leak. Yeah. Right. So then when we have the first proffer, he explains the leak to us. And it appears allegedly there was a court reporter within the Southern District that was feeding them information. So that’s not good. And then in the proffer, he tells us about two murders. So, and there might be the bodies, a body might be buried up in Phil Lamella, who was a DeCalvo County soldier, up in Marlboro, New York. So that’s the first thing that he tells us. So these are jewels to us, right? He tells us about a leak. He tells us about two murders. Bodies might be buried. So we have to huddle and we have to decide, is he telling us the truth or not? We all decide that he’s telling us the truth. The proper takes place with George Hanna, as I mentioned him before. Kenny McCabe, a legendary Southern District investigator, and me. And in these situations, again, I’m a new agent. Less is more. I don’t want to say something stupid. So I kind of keep my mouth shut, right? And just listen. So that went really well. And that kind of started this whole process. So now, as we said before, you have… No one cooperated in 100 plus years of this family. And now we have the first [21:49]A Spiral of Cooperation [21:48]made member to cooperate. And basically, Anthony starts a spiral effect of cooperation. [21:56]After he where he reported to in the family at that particular time, since he was such a violent person and hard to control within the family himself. Well, he reported to Vincent Palermo, who was the acting panel boss out of that panel that I talked about, but viewed as the acting boss because of his strong personality. So you have Anthony cooperating. He reports to the acting boss. So from our perspective, our perspective, that’s golden, right? Because now Vinny is going to have to make a decision. Is he going to cooperate or not? And then about three months later, guess what? Vinny decides to cooperate. So now we have a soldier and we have the acting boss who’s going to cooperate. So we go from no one in a hundred years to basically two people in three months. [22:45]Then we have an associate, Victor DiChiro, decides to cooperate. So we go and we arrest him. So now we have three people in four months. So we take all their information, and they have to plead guilty, and they get a cooperation agreement. I explain all that. And when you have a cooperation agreement, as I mentioned before, Anthony was initially arrested for conspiracy to murder, and I believe it was stock fraud. When he pleads guilty, he has to plead guilty to all his crimes that he committed throughout his entire life. Off the top of my head, I remember he pled guilty to two murders. [23:23]11 murder conspiracies, boatload of extortions, and basically every other crime you could think of. And then the same thing with Vinny and Victor. We take all their information, and then we have our next series of indictments. So the first series was 39 indictments. And then the second series of indictments is in October of 2000, October 19th, which we just we just passed the 25th anniversary of that. And that was known as the hierarchy arrest, where we arrested the official boss, John Riggi. We arrested the two other panel bosses, Charlie Maggiore and Jimmy Palermo. We arrested the consigliere, Steve Vitabli, a bunch of captains and soldiers. So that’s a significant arrest, right? So now, as you know, when you have an arrest, there’s trials, there’s plea negotiations. So now we arrested 39 people plus another 13. We’re already up to like 50 something like something people out of that arrest. We get a little shockwave in the sense is that there’s an associate named Frank Scarabino. Frank Scarabino comes forward one day and tells us that there’s a contract on Anthony Capo’s family and Anthony Capo. [24:43]And also, there’s a contract on law enforcement. They want to go back to the old Sicilian ways and basically send a message. So, you know, that’s basically a little bit of a jolt where now we have to try to move Capo’s family. [25:03]Protecting Cooperators [24:59]And Capo’s in prison. He’s defenseless. And I explain all that. People have this sense of you go into the witness security program, you get a whole new life and you’re off and having a great time. They don’t realize that there are prisons within the United States that you have to go to prison. So I can’t say where the prisons are, but I kind of explain that process of how the WITSEC program works, which is run by the marshals. So that’s in that’s in the book as well. Yeah, they have a whole prisons that are just for people in WITSEC. I heard about a guy that said he was in one out west somewhere. Yeah. So and, you know, for those prisons, it’s not like you have to prove yourself. They’re all doing the same time. So they’re basically just trying to do their time and try to get out and get into the next phase of the WoodSec program. So that was kind of a jolt, right? So now we have Frank Scarabino cooperate. So now we have another person. So it’s the list is just getting more and more now. You got to stop taking cooperators and start putting people in jail for the rest of their life, man. [26:03]So it got to after that, we had like two more people cooperate. So we went from having nobody to having seven people cooperate in this period. And it’s interesting. And I know we’re going to go back and forth, but we went from 100 years of having no one to having seven people during this three year period. And since that time period, no other members have cooperated since. So we’ve started the clock again. I think we’re at 25 years plus again since no one cooperated during that period. And I mentioned the murder that we started this case, Joseph Canigliaro. So he was the guy that was in the wheelchair. So as I said, they wanted to kill him because he just tortured his crew. We were able, one of the guys who was initially arrested as part of the December 1999 arrest, he sees everybody’s, he is deciding to cooperate with the government. So he decides to cooperate. His name is Tommy DeTora. So Tommy DeTora decides to cooperate. He’s out on bail. So since he’s out on bail, we decide, let’s make him make a consensual recording. And he makes one of the best consensual recordings the Bureau has ever made. He gets everyone involved in that murder together. [27:28]And they talk about the murder from A to Z. It’s a priceless consensual recording that we used at trial. And it just, you know, one of the things that does stick in my mind is the shooter was Marty Lewis, who got a life sentence. [27:44]The Murder of Joseph Canigliaro [27:45]Marty Lewis is describing when he shot him. And he’s like, I shot him like five or six times in his car. Right. And then Marty Lewis gets out of the car. Joseph Canigliaro drives away, gets to the top of the block in Brooklyn, puts a signal on, put a signal on. And drove the traffic laws, drives to Joseph Wrightson’s house. A guy who was part of the murder conspiracy honks his horn for Joseph Wrightson to come downstairs. So can you imagine Joseph Wrightson looking down the window seeing the guy that’s supposed to be dead right now and telling him to get in the car to go to the hospital with him? [28:32]Unfortunately, when they go to the hospital one of the things that does happen is joseph brightson has uh unfortunately an nyp detective cop who’s a cousin and involves him in this as well and the cop takes shells from the car and he becomes he gets locked up by us as well they all go to trial they get convicted and. [28:55]You know, we also arrested a Genevieve’s captain related to the leak. So in total, I think the numbers were 71 defendants were convicted, 11 murders were solved, seven trials transpired. You know, as everyone knows, you have the arrest, but then you have the trials, right? And I know that from December 2002 up until November of 2003 was the year that I was on trial. There was three trials that I had, and then there was another trial. There was two trials that one was a mistrial. Then we had another trial. So during that one year, we had a year of trials, and the biggest trial I had went on for two months. [29:42]Life on Trial [29:38]So I basically had a year of no life where it was just trials. And as you know yourself, when you have trial, it’s not just you just show up at trial. You have trial prep beforehand. And then when you’re actually on trial every day, it’s 20, it’s 24, seven, you have a trial, you have trial, then at night you have to prep a witness. So there’s just constant stuff throughout the day. Yeah, really? It’s a, it’s a long, boring process for you guys. [30:05]You know, these are like what we would say the real Sopranos, you know, the Sopranos, Tom Soprano, and that’s kind of based on this New Jersey family. I tell you, that Soprano, so much of it was ripped from real life. I don’t know. They interviewed you for details. They interviewed some agents and looked some court cases in order to write those scripts. I know that. And in particular, I think of the gay member that was killed. [30:28]The Real Sopranos [30:27]You know, you guys had that down there. So there’s a lot of references in your book or things in the book that the guys will say, oh, yeah, they did that in the Sopranos. Can you tell us about some of them? [30:37]Well, the thing that was great, especially for trial, is in March of 1999, the show starts in January of 1999. And we have a consensual recording in March where we have DeCavocanti members talking about the show and them saying, saying, this is you, this is you, and this is you, which was priceless for trial. Right. It’s like a jury’s going to hear that. And even during the trial, the judge had to give the jury instructions about the show to make sure that it wouldn’t sway their decision. Then if you watch the show, the first season, the official boss in the show dies of stomach cancer. In real life, that’s happened in real life. In June of 1997, Jake Amari was the acting boss of the Decaval Canty family. He dies of stomach cancer. So that’s a… [31:40]It’s a part of the show right there. Then I know everyone sees the strip club, right? Well, the acting boss, as I told you at the time, Vincent Palermo, he had a strip club in Queens, Wiggles. [31:53]So there’s a similarity there. Then they have the meat market that they go to, right, back and forth in the show. That’s a real meat market. I don’t want to say the name of the real meat market here, but there is a real type of meat market there. We discussed the union angle, the two unions that they have. So there’s so many scams related to the unions. There’s the no show job, right, where you don’t have to show up to work. There’s the no work job where you come, but you don’t have to do any work at all. [32:26]Back then, what it was called was they had union halls, right, where you actually had to show up early in the morning. There’d be a line of people, and you would show up. It was called the shape up. and you would wait online and hopefully that you would get work that day. Well, the DeCable Cante members, they wouldn’t show up early and wait online. They would show up whenever they want and they would cut the line and they would get work. So these were their types of unions that they had. Then, as you mentioned, there was the gay angle too. So on the DeCable Cante real side, there was a guy named John D’Amato. And John D’Amato basically made himself the acting boss when John Riggie went to jail in the early 1990s. John D’Amato was part, was very close to John Gotti. There was a murder. It’s probably the most indictable murder in mob history called the murder of Fred Weiss. John Gotti wanted Fred Weiss killed because John Gotti thought that Fred Weiss was cooperating with the government. all because Fred Weiss switched lawyers. [33:35]He was paranoid that Fred Weiss was cooperating. So it became a race to kill Fred Weiss. So you had two mob families trying to kill him, the Decalvo Canty family and the Gambino family. So in total, I think either 15 people at least have either pled guilty or have been convicted of that murder. That murder happened on 9-11-1989, a horrible day, right? So, where I’m going is that happened in 89. In 1990, 1991, John D’Amato becomes the acting boss of the family. So, now he’s the acting boss of the DeKalb Alcanti family. John D’Amato had a girlfriend. His girlfriend starts to tell Anthony Capo that John D’Amato is going to sex clubs with her and they’re having sex with men. So this is this is brought to Anthony Capo’s attention. And he has to tell his superiors that we have a gay acting boss representing our family. And in his eyes, this cannot happen. Right. So he brings it to Vincent Palermo, brings it to Rudy Ferron, and the superiors that this is what’s happening. And they decide that he has to be killed. Now, also what he was doing was, and you speak to Anthony Rotondo, who also cooperated with the government. [34:58]John DeMotta was also stealing money from the family. He was borrowing money from the other families, telling him that it was for the DeCalbacanti family, but it was really to cover his game of the gambling losses that he was incurring. So those are two things that he was doing. Right. He was he was if you ask Anthony Rotondo, he says he was killed because of the gambling that he was incurring the losses. And if he asks Anthony Capo, he was killed because it was looking bad for our family, for their family, that he was a gay acting boss. And at that time, it wasn’t acceptable. Times have changed. But back then, it wasn’t an acceptable thing. And that’s similar to the show. There’s a gay angle within the show as well. [35:41]The Gay Angle in the Mob [35:42]Interesting. It’s the real Sopranos. I remember I watched that show, even going back and watch some of them every once in a while. And I just think, wow, that’s real. So, so even though the director says no one was speaking to them, it’s kind of ironic that there are a lot of like similarities between the show and real life. Yeah. And especially down there in New Jersey and, and, and their connection to the Bonanno family or to a New York, the New York families. And then also, and then also within the show is, is, is the stock stood. There’s also stocks. Oh yeah, the stock fraud. Yeah. They did a boiler room or something. And they were pumping and dumping stocks and Tony was making money out of that. So, yeah, that’s I’d forget. And then from and in real life, Bill Abrama was like the wizard of Wall Street. [36:37]So interesting. Well, you’ve had quite, quite a career. What do you think about New York organized crime now that today, you know, we just had quack, quack, Ruggiero, Ruggiero’s son and some other guys that were connected to families indicted for gambling. He’s got my gambling fraud. I haven’t really studied it yet. It is like they had some rig gambling games, which is common. Like in Kansas city, when I was working this, they would have, they would bring in guys who would love to gamble and had money businessmen. And then they’d, they’d play them for sure. They would cheat them and take a bunch of money from them. This was much more sophisticated, but that’s a, that’s a story that’s been going on a long time. You think that Bob is on a comeback from that? Ha, ha, ha, ha. [37:24]The mob has been around for 125 years. They’re not going to go away. Okay. They get smarter and they adapt. And it’s like, I haven’t read the indictment from head to toe, but they’ve used some, you know, sophisticated investigative techniques just to kind of con people. So they’re getting better, right? So some of the techniques that they use when you hear, it’s like some of the things that I saw where the poker tables that they use, the tables that they use were able to see the card. So they use some pretty, you know, slick techniques, you know, and then like some of the glasses or the contact lenses. So, you know, they’re not going to go away. They’re just going to keep on trying to rebuild. That’s why you have to continue to put resources towards them. Yeah. I think what people don’t understand for these mob guys, it’s if they don’t get out and go into legitimate business selling real estate or something like that. It’s it’s a constant scam a constant hustle every day to figure out another way to make money because they don’t have a paycheck coming in and so they got to figure out a way to make money and they got to make it fast and they got to make it big and in a short period of time it’s just constant every day every time they walk by knew a drug addict one time as a professional burglar and he said every time he’s in recovery he said every time i’ll buy a pharmacy he said in my mind I’m figuring out how to take that pharmacy off. So that’s the way these mob guys are. [38:52]And sports betting has been a staple of theirs forever. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the apps are getting into them a little bit, but I see what’s going on now. Also, we had these players, Trailblazers coach and a couple, three players, are now helping people rig the bets. And you go to the apps, and you bet a bunch of money on some guy who’s going to have a bad day. And then he just doesn’t show up to work. You end up being the supervisor of the Columbo squad, I see. Same as after that DeCavoconte case, and you spent all that time, you ended up getting promoted to a supervisor and you must’ve been good because they kept you right there in New York and gave you another mob squad. I know one agent here in Kansas City that was promoted and he kept the one squad here, as they called it. [39:43]Leading the Columbo Squad [39:40]And that was really unusual. Usually it’d be somebody in from out of town. So that says something about you. So tell us about your experiences doing that. [39:48]Well, after we did this case, which was about six years, I was requested to go down to run the Columbo squad. And at that time, I think the Columbo squad had eight supervisors in eight years. I really thought I was too young to be a supervisor because I only had six years on. So I was basically voluntold, I would say, to go down there. And guys, that is young. I want to tell you something. I’ve seen a lot of different Bob squad supervisors come through here in Kansas City. And and they were all you know like 20 year agents 15 18 year agents that came from somewhere else so yeah so you know again I thought I was just way too young to be a supervisor as I said I was just on the job for about six years and I was voluntold to go down there yeah and I said if I’m going to go down there there’s a couple of things just based upon what I saw a I’m not a yes man and two the squad needs some sort of stability so I went down there and I was able to stay there I was there from actually December of 2004 all the way up until June of 2013. [40:51]So we at that time when I first got there we really didn’t have a lot of cases going trying to go on so I was able to change the tactics right because I think juries had changed at that point in time where instead of having a historical witness just go on to stand and tell things, now we had shows out there, right? You had NCIS where the whole DNA-type stuff came in, so I had to change our approach, and proactive witnesses making consensual recordings were the way to go. And I think during a seven-year time period, our squad. [41:24]Did an amazing job. Now it went from C10. I went, the squad went down to, it became C38. And we made probably 1,800 recordings in a seven and a half year time period. So, which is an amazing amount of recordings. So, a lot of transcriptions too. A lot of transcriptions. And I, you know, a three-hour tape could take you a day to listen to because you’re just trying to find that little piece of information. Yeah. Because a lot of it is just talk, right? Yeah. So I think our first big case was in June of 2008. And we took down the acting boss, a bunch of captains. And that’s when things really started to take off. We had a violent soldier cooperate named Joseph Compatiello. And, you know, we talk about proffers. His first proffer, he comes in and he basically tells us that there are three bodies buried right next to each other. So the layman would think, OK, they’re right next to each other. They weren’t right next to each other they were about 1.1 miles apart from each other. [42:28]And you could be in your your room there and we’re trying to find a body it’s really hard to find so we were actually able to find two of the bodies one of the bodies was a guy named while Bill Cattullo he was the under boss of the Colombo family we found him in Formingdale Long Island he was behind a berm we were out there for about eight days and each day you know I’m getting pressure from my superiors. We’re going to find something because there’s a lot of press out there. There was another victim named Cormone Gargano who was buried. He was killed in 1994 and buried out there. Unfortunately, there was a new building built. [43:06]And we could not find him there, but he was initially killed at a body shop in Brooklyn, and they buried him in Brooklyn, and then they decided to dig him up and bring him out to Long Island. So we went back to the body shop. What the Colombo family used to do, though, is they used to kill you, bury you, and put lime on top of the body. What lime does is it kills the smell, but preserves the body. Oh, I didn’t realize that. I thought it was supposed to deteriorate the body too. I think most people bought that. So good information. So, so when we found wall of bill, basically from his, from his hips up were intact. Oh, And when related to Cormier Gargano, because they had killed him in the body shop and then dug him up and brought him out to Long Island. We went back to the shop and figuring, let’s see if we can actually see if there’s any parts of him there. And there actually were. And we’re able to get DNA and tie it back and confirm it was him. [44:15]Major Arrests and Cases [44:12]So that’s how that dismantling of the Colombo family started. And then just to fast forward a little bit in January 2011, we have I spearhead the largest FBI mob arrest where we arrested 127 people that day across the states and also went to Italy, too, to take down people. [44:32]And after that, the Bureau decides to reduce the resources dedicated to organized crime. And I then get the Bonanno family back. So C-10 merges back into my squad. And then I have the Bananos, the Columbos, and the Decafacanthes as well. So now I have all three families back. And I basically run that for another two years. And I guess my last official act as a supervisor is related to Goodfellas, where Jimmy Burke had buried a body in his basement. We saw a 43-year-old cold case murder where he killed an individual named Paul Katz, buried him in his basement. And when he went away for the point shaving, the Boston College point shaving case, well, he killed him in 1969, buried him in his basement. Then he goes to jail in the 80s. He gets fearful that the cops that he had on his payroll back in the 60s were going to talk. So he decides to have our witness at the time, Gaspar Valenti, who came forward back in the 80s, moved the body with Vincent S. Our son so they move the body but again they’re not professional so pieces are going to be back there so in 2013 we go back and we dig and we actually find pieces of paul cats and we tie that to dna to his son to his son and we confirm that it was him. [45:57]So that was my last official act as a supervisor. Talk about art, art, imitating life again, you know, in the Goodfellas, they dug up a body. In the Sopranos, they dug up a body. I think I saw another show where they dug up a body. One of them, they were like, man, this smells. [46:13]I mean, can you imagine that going back and having to dig up a body? And then, you know, and, you know, they’re just wearing t-shirts and jeans and maybe leather gloves. And they’d have to deal with all that stuff and put it in some kind of a bag can take it somewhere else oh my god you know i have a question while bill cutello that this guy was part of the the hit team that took him out do you remember anything about right i’m trying to remember i’ve read this story once he was kind of like more of a peacemaker and and if i remember right you remember what the deal was with him well back like what happens is in the early 1990s there’s a colombo war right you have the persicos versus the arena faction and one thing about the Colombos and the Persicos, they never forget. So in the early 1990s, while Bill Cotullo was on the arena side, and as I said, there was a war where approximately 13 people were killed. In the late 1990s, Ali Persico was going to be going to jail, and while Bill Cotullo thought that Ali was going to go to jail and that he would take over the family, Ali didn’t want that to happen. So basically while Vilcunzulo thought he was getting the keys to the kingdom and they were going to kill him. [47:28]And what they did is they lured him to Dino Saraceno’s house in Brooklyn and Dino Calabro lured him into the basement and shot him in the back of the head. And we had all these guys then decide to cooperate. As I said, Joe Caves was the first person to cooperate. Dino Calabro cooperated. [47:48]Sebi Saraceno cooperated. So we had a whole host of people cooperate and we were able to dismantle the Colombo family. And I’ve been extremely blessed to be part of teams that have dismantled three families, Bananos, the Columbos, and the D. Calacanti family. So, you know, as I said, and it’s never just one person. It’s always teammates, partners, and also other supervisors that I’ve had. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it does take a lot of people to take those down. When you’re writing books, you try to make sure everybody gets a little bit of credit. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, the thing that was that was, you know, crazy when related to the recovery of Wild Bill is we had our evidence response team out there. And, you know, the witness takes us out there to show us where he thinks the bodies are buried. And related to Wild Bill, it was in the back of a field. And he kept on saying it was behind a berm. So we took him back there and he showed us where he thought it was. So we had our evidence response team dig. And they basically dug us an Olympic-sized pool. [48:57]We could not find him. So there was two other sites that we were trying to look at because Richie Greaves was supposed to be next to the train tracks. And as I mentioned, Cormac Gargano was next to a building that had been replaced. So my squad, actually our squad, C-38, decides, Seamus, do you mind if we get some shovels? So I was like, sure. So there was, because we were just looking at each other at the time. So my team, Vincent D’Agostino, they’re pretty close by. He got some shovels and came back. And there was like six of us. And we just started digging ourselves. So we dug in one area, nothing. Then another agent basically said, let’s dig over here. [49:38]And sure enough, like talk about, you know, I always say hard work leads to good luck. We started digging and then we found the white stuff. We found the line and jackpot. It was while Bill, he was hogtied face down with his feet up. And as soon as I saw the white stuff and then I saw, you know, like his foot, then we stopped and I said, let me go get the professionals. I ran over, I drove over, and I got the team leader from ERT. She got in the car. And, you know, of course, she’s very excited. I was like, you know, we F.M. got him, you know. And so I drove her back over there. And that’s when you kind of contain the crime scene. And we were able to find him. But, you know, it was our squad that found him. And then, as I said before, then, you know, our squad decides to go back to the body shop. And we found remnants of Carmine Gargano there. So the squad just did an amazing job but really we basically found two bodies ourselves you know and i think in my career i’ve been extremely blessed to find five you know which is just crazy well that’s not something those accountants and lawyers and stuff were trained for you need to get those former cops out there on those shovels and digging for bodies. [50:57]Final Thoughts and Stories [50:57]Well interesting this this has really been fun seamus any any other stories you can think of You want to you want to just want to tell just busting to make sure people know that’s in this book. I tell you what, guys, this is an interesting book. It’s it’s, you know, as I said, those kinds of stories and the procedures and how FBI works. There’s there’s a lot of stories in there. I don’t want to give to give the book away. You know, there’s a lot of stories even. Yeah. You know, there’s an even during that year of trials. There’s plenty of stories there. There was a blackout that that year, too. So there’s a lot of stories related to that. You know, even even the trials, there’s a lot of things that came up at trial. So I don’t want to give to give those stories away. But I think it’s a good read. As I said, I think it’s one of the few books that actually explains things because, you know, I think the public hears these words, but they don’t know what these words mean. And I just think it’s important that they do know what it means, because there’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, especially with the jury. Right. You know, the jury only sees what they see. There’s a lot of things that go on when the jury leaves the room between the government, the judge and also the defense attorney. So I try to bring to shed some light related to that as well. [52:13]Interesting. Well, Seamus McElherney. And the book is Flipping Capo. That’s Anthony Capo. The first guy to be flipped in the Cavalcante family ever, which led to a cascade of other mob guys flipping, didn’t it? [52:32]Sure did. Just like in a Bonanno family, you know, they start flipping there. And it just, I didn’t know where it was ever going to end. Finally, it ended. [52:41]It sure did. Well, I have to say, it’s been great to meet you. I wish you continued success. And this has been a lot of fun. All right. Yeah, it’s been great to have you on Seamus. Thanks a lot. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 24 November 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jay Baer to explore the hidden, human side of organized crime’s biggest names — Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John Gotti, and Paul Castellano. Jay’s book, Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano, takes a unique look beyond the murders, rackets, and headlines to reveal how these mobsters actually lived — what they ate, how they dressed, their relationships with religion, and how they handled immense power and wealth. Listeners will hear: How Al Capone’s family sold his spaghetti sauce recipe to Ragu — their first commercial product. Why Meyer Lansky, the most devout of the four, was denied the right to die in Israel by Prime Minister Golda Meir. The lavish lifestyle and fatal missteps of Paul Castellano, the “Howard Hughes of the Mafia.”   The contrast between Gotti’s flamboyance and Lansky’s low profile — and how each approach shaped their downfall. The staggering fortunes these men built — and how, in the end, they all lost it. Jay also shares his own lifelong fascination with organized crime, his career outside writing, and his upcoming project, How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required, a look at mob values like loyalty, respect, and power through a modern lens. Gary and Jay swap mob history from New York to Kansas City, including a discussion of the real story behind scenes from Casino and Kansas City’s own underworld power struggles. ON AMAZON Wayne said 5.0 out of 5 stars Great Facts on the Mob Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021Format: Kindle If your looking for a good fast interesting read on the Mafia, this is the book for you. Full of information on mob types that most have no clue about. You can’t lose with this book I believe. 🎧 Listen now to uncover the side of the mob you’ve never heard before. 📘 Get the book: Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Robert Baer on Amazon 00:00 – Intro: Gary Jenkins welcomes Jay Baer 01:00 – Why Jay wrote Mob Life and his lifelong fascination with gangsters 03:30 – From detailing cars to writing true crime books 05:30 – Gary and Jay’s early mob reading influences 07:00 – Researching Al Capone’s private life 08:00 – Capone’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe sold to Ragu 09:00 – John Gotti’s love for Cracker Barrel and biscuits & gravy 10:00 – Meyer Lansky’s religious life and denied burial in Israel 12:00 – Castellano’s wealth, arrogance, and fall 14:00 – Jay’s next book: How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required 15:00 – Loyalty and respect in the mob vs. business life 16:00 – How Castellano’s aloofness led to his murder 18:00 – The real Joe Watts story — the German who made millions 20:00 – Gary shares Kansas City mob stories and Casino connections 23:00 – The failed car bombing of underboss Tuffy DeLuna 25:00 – The Mob Museum and modern mob myths 26:00 – Jay shows his book Mob Life and shares fun mob trivia 28:00 – How much money mob bosses really made — and lost 30:00 – Why law enforcement didn’t chase mob money before the drug era 31:00 – Joe Massino’s $10 million cash and gold surrender 32:00 – Final thoughts: The mob’s empire always ends the same way Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Gary Jenkins: Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective and I am now a mob historian and with the podcast and a few other things, some books and stuff out there. Gary Jenkins: And I interview other mob authors as well as research stories. And today I have an author named Jay Bear. He has written a book about the mob, a really good, solid, historical, factually true book as kind of a basis for a novel he wants to write. So Jay, welcome. Jay Baer: Oh, thank you. I’m, I’m happy to be here. Jay Baer: This is really great. So I’m looking forward to this interview. Gary Jenkins: All right, Jay. Well, you know, we, we like the mob here and we like the the facts about the mob. When I read about your book, that’s, that’s when I got hold of you. I thought, well, this is so interesting. It is Mob life, the private world of [00:01:00] Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano. Gary Jenkins: And what did Al Capone wear? How much did it cost? Where did he buy it? You know, what, what kind of Italian, right? What kind of, what kind of food did Gotti like besides Italian and, and that kind of a thing. So I, that, that was really interesting, those esoteric little details that we don’t really know usually. Jay Baer: What I wanted to do is I wanted to tell a different story. Everybody writes books about their crimes and law enforcement’s effort to put them away. We’ve heard all that. So this was like something I wanted to do for years. Let me just tell a different story. And I did, and the book is filled with, you know what? Jay Baer: How much money they made, what they, how they dressed religious views really. Which there wasn’t very much in religious views except for May Lansky. The rest of them were, even, even Paul Castellano, the the bishop did not wanna bury him in a Catholic, in, in a Catholic cemetery. And they fought him on it and they got him to do it. Jay Baer: [00:02:00] But yeah, none of ’em had really any religious views except for, may Lansky. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: He went to synagogue on a regular basis. He belonged, he did a lot of stuff, you know, during the war to help you know, catch the Nazis. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: In fact, there’s a book out there, an older book with called Luciano’s Luck and it’s about their, what they did and how they got involved in the, you know, world War ii. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Yeah, I had heard that. I’ve never really, I talked to one guy, an author that had a book really about the, more about the Navy guy that approached Luciano in prison and then worked with this guy named Sox Sox Lanza, who had the Fulton Street Fish market in, in trying to gather information about any possible Nazi saboteurs. Gary Jenkins: But I’ve never really got into that. Mayor Lansky area. So Jay, tell us a little bit about where you come from. You’re not, you’re not a career author. Sometimes I have guys that that’s all they ever done. They’ve been newspaper reporters and written books and stuff. Tell us a little [00:03:00] bit about yourself. Jay Baer: Well, I’m from New York based, you know, originally you can probably tell with my voice, you know, forget about it and all that stuff. I knew you were from north of me. Where are you? Kansas, Missouri. Oh, okay. So. My father moved us down here to Florida, like, oh my God. 1972, and I’ve been here ever since. So, but I, I de, I started detailing cars when I was 28, and I’ve been doing that ever since and it’s, you know, brought me, right now I’m kind of like, I only work in the mornings, you know, I’m almost 70, so I’m kind of like maybe semi-retired. Jay Baer: Yeah. But I’m never gonna retire because, I gotta find something to do all the time. So I write, and right now, you know, I wrote this book, mob Life and I wrote a book before that called Angels of Death. It’s about two girls who are on the run for murder and they become killers for hire and realize they’re in love with each other. Jay Baer: And I also wrote a nonfiction book about public speaking ’cause I [00:04:00] used to teach public speaking. I’m a distinguished Toastmaster. I did a lot of speaking over the years. I taught hundreds of people how to overcome their fear of speaking. So I wrote, I, I took my course and I put it into a book. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: It was only a very short book. Jay Baer: ’cause you know, people don’t need a lot. I don’t think people need a lot of information to be successful, but I’ve always been interested in gangsters ever since I was a kid. You know, my, my friends were listening to The Beatles. I was reading books about. Capone and May Lansky. So there’s something about them that always intrigued me, their power, the women, the way that they just controlled so much, you know, they’re very powerful men. Jay Baer: And it’s just something I’ve kept, kept on for, oh my God, since 35 years. No, 55 years. Ever since I was a kid, 15 years old, I’ve been interested in gangsters. So, and I decided, hey, it’s time to write about ’em. [00:05:00] Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You know what just outta teens in my teens, I first read my first. True Crime book, which was in Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Gary Jenkins: And man, that book, I was hooked then in that true crime. And so I was, I was in junior college right outta high school and, and I found green was it Greenfeld Jungle? By Ova DeMars. It was all about the mob in Las Vegas. It was. Thick, real dense book, but, but I bought into it, man, I, I love that book. I devoured that book. Gary Jenkins: I, I read one by a guy named Ken, a New York City detective named I think it was Joe Erno or Tony Tony Erno, I can’t remember his erno and read that. And he really. You know, made these gangsters come alive in that book back then. And I remember even, even back then, I thought, boy, that veto genovese, that was a bad, that’s a bad dude. Gary Jenkins: So they I understand. I got hooked on it early myself. Jay Baer: Oh, that was a nonfiction book. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Right. Oh, okay. Jay Baer: Yeah. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of stuff [00:06:00] out there like that. I mean, fiction, like, I’m, I’m, I’m rereading The Godfather ’cause I like the way Mario Puzo writes. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: And I also listen to it, you know, so I’m learning, I’m learning from that. Jay Baer: And I also I, I like to read Elmore Leonard. Speaker 4: Yeah. Jay Baer: You ever read any of his stuff? He’s got, yeah, he’s a good one. I started, I started reading him because that’s what Quentin Tarantino learned how to write by reading his books. Gary Jenkins: Mm-hmm. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So this book about private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellanos now, like Al Capo, where, where did you go? Gary Jenkins: How did, how did you start researching. Information on Al Capone. And what are some of the interesting things? You know, we all know a lot of the public things and the myths. We know more myths than the real life things. I think like the old myth about him beating two guys to death with a baseball bat and some different things like that. Gary Jenkins: So how’d you go about working on Al Capone and what are some of the interesting things you learned about Al? Jay Baer: What I, [00:07:00] what I did was is I had about 11 different, I think the, I think I have 11 different chapters. I’m pretty sure that’s it. And I focus on one thing at a time, and I researched all of them. So like when I was doing food, ah, I mean now we have ai, but when I wrote that there was no ai, so I’d put in John Gotti food, hashtag whatever, you know, I, I did, there’s a lot of ways to. Jay Baer: To research on Google. Mm-hmm. And so I would look it up and I’d find stuff about them. And I, I went on encyclopedia that’s online. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. And I just researched and I spent months doing it. Jay Baer: You know, I do it at night after working and it’s, it was a lot of work, but I, you know, I enjoyed it. And what I found out about Capone was different thing, well, I’ll give you something really unique about him. He, he had a walnut spaghetti sauce. It was his recipe. Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: And when [00:08:00] he died, his sister Mafi sold it to Ragu and it was their first sauce they ever made. Jay Baer: Interesting. And he, he was a, he was a heck of a dresser. He he had like lime suits and purple suits and he had Oh, really? Stuff made for him for down here when he lived here. And I found out all these things about him. What he, you know, I, I don’t remember much about what he liked to eat. It was usually Italian, you know. Jay Baer: And the thing about John Gotti that I always about the food that I always find interesting is he was in a cracker Barrel one time with a friend. And a reporter came over to him and said, what are you guys doing here? You’re Italian. And his friend said, how much Italian food can a guy eat? And and Gotti liked to eat biscuits and gravy with a country fried steak, but his favorite Italian food was eggplant tini.[00:09:00] Jay Baer: These little things you find out. Yeah. And that’s why I wrote the book. ’cause I, you know, something different, something unique so people could s see a different side of them. Instead of, you know, looking at all the murders they created, all the people that they had whacked, I figured it was, you know, time to find something else for them to know about. Gary Jenkins: So talking, you, you mentioned something about when we were talking about their spiritual life and their relationship with the church and, and I know in, in Kansas City when our mob boss died, Nick Novella, there was a big hubbub among the Catholic church if he could be buried in the church and if what priest was gonna conduct the ceremony. Gary Jenkins: And, and in the end he was buried in the church. And, and, and they I know actually know the young priest. He was a real young priest that. You know, he wasn’t he, he wasn’t even old enough I think maybe when the mob was really rocking and rolling in Kansas City to, to be that affected by it. And, and so he conducted the ceremony. Gary Jenkins: So what did you learn about that? You, me, something about Lansky’s pretty connected to a synagogue and, [00:10:00] and that kind of thing? Jay Baer: Well, you know, Lansky was probably the most religious out of these four men, but he did belong to a synagogue and that’s where he met. No, he met. Arnold Rothstein at a bar mitzvah. Speaker 3: Hmm. Jay Baer: And that’s when Rothstein took him under his wing. They met at like the Park Avenue Hotel and they just talked for us like six hours. And then he bankrolled Lansky and Luciano during prohibition. See Rothstein. You ever read a book about him? No, I haven’t. Haven’t. Very interesting. You should check him out. Jay Baer: ’cause they call him the father of the mafia Uhhuh because he was the one that started bankrolling these guys so they could you know, sell booze. And he had the booze brought in from England and when it got here they would cut it with cheaper stuff. They made millions, millions and millions. But he always kept himself out of everything. Jay Baer: He ran it. No connection. [00:11:00] He just made sure that he was never involved with what he had going on. Other people had to take the fall. So and your question, so, well, you know, Lansky wanted to die in Israel and Goda Maier, who was the Prime Minister then said no. And she basically kicked him out of the country. Jay Baer: She didn’t want him there. And his, his life, that was his, that’s what was his dream to die in Israel. But she made sure it never happened. Gary Jenkins: Wow. Seemed like the TRO brothers up in Chicago when they found their bodies that I believe with with Tony, I don’t think they could get a, a, a church to to approve of that one. Gary Jenkins: His, his brother Michael. They may have, but that’s, that’s been a constant ongoing kind of a theme. Between the church, especially the Catholic church and the Italian mafia, somebody is, is so prominent that it’s like then Lansky and gold. My ear is so prominent, she even [00:12:00] stopped his right of return because every Jew has a right of return to Israel and she denied that based on, really, based on myth and headlines and stuff. Gary Jenkins: She didn’t, you know, there he’d never really taken a conviction. Come on. Jay Baer: Well, from what I read about him, the only time he was in prison was in upstate New York, and it was just a gambling charge. He went to jail for two months. He was too smart to get put away. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: He wasn’t flamboyant like Gotti. He didn’t want anybody seeing him. Jay Baer: Even when he walked his dog, he just did it and then he went home. He didn’t want pe, he didn’t wanna make a a, a scene where, you know, got, Gotti would go into. Restaurants and throw kisses at people, you know? So he didn’t keep a low profile and that was one of the things that led to his downfall, I think. Gary Jenkins: Oh, got, he’s, yeah. Oh yeah. No doubt about it. And law enforcement can only take so much when a guy keeps throwing it up your face, he’s get there. I tell you what, I used to watch these guys, and I think [00:13:00] if you only knew. The array of forces that were written ready to come down on you, you wouldn’t be doing this stuff. Gary Jenkins: But somehow they don’t care. They’re different. Jay Baer: They, they, you know, I’ve been writing in my new book that they just didn’t care. They knew what the life was like. They knew the consequences and they did it anyway. And they all did the same thing. I mean, all of ’em were either put in prison or they died. Jay Baer: Some of ’em died of natural causes like Banana and Lansky. There wasn’t many. Oh, and Gambino Carlo, he died of natural causes. I know he went to prison, but that’s the fate and they know it, and they, like I said, they actually don’t care. They just lived a life. Speaker 3: Hmm. And, Jay Baer: and some of ’em got out like, you know, banana. Jay Baer: Like I said, he got out, he lived, he moved to Arizona and he lived the rest of his life there. So, but not many of ’em have done that. Gary Jenkins: No, not many of ’em. Such a strong way of [00:14:00] life. And you mentioned, you mentioned your next book that you’re working on is gonna be how to live like a mobster. And so what did you , glean from these guys here? Gary Jenkins: How they live like a mobster that was success, made them successful or work for them. . Jay Baer: How to live like a gangster. Jay Baer: No prison required. Yeah. I’ve got some things about these guys, but it’s gonna go deeper than that. I’m gonna use other gangsters. There’s a lot of information out there, especially now with ai. You can just pick stuff up in seconds. I mean, I could, you could even have write the whole thing if you want, but I don’t do that. Jay Baer: Yeah, don’t do that. I like to put my own stuff. Yeah, no, and it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t come out well anyway. No, but you know, one of the things I’m looking at in that book is loyalty and respect. You know, loyalty was a big thing, but you know what, that’s, that’s the same in regular business. You have to be loyal. Jay Baer: You have to show respect to your boss, and if you’re the boss, you know, you have to show respect to your employees. But the, you know, the difference is [00:15:00] in the mob, if you screw up, you get dead. In regular life, you just get fired. So you know, it’s a big difference. Yeah. But you know, everybody, even the soldiers, they know it. Jay Baer: They going in, they know I can screw up. Bam, you’re gone. So that’s just, you know, and if you don’t want that kind of life, that’s fine, then stay out of it. But you know what they say, once you’re in, you’re in. That’s it. You’re not getting out. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. And, and that brings to mind Paul Castellano. That was one that was a mistake he made. Gary Jenkins: He, he stayed so aloof from the street guys and even the, the capos that they became jealous of him. And, and so the way he lived his life, he lived in this huge mansion that he would have him come in once in a while, but he, he didn’t come down to the club anymore and he had this different life and his clothes and everything. Gary Jenkins: What did you learn about Paul Castellano’s life? Jay Baer: Well, you know, he was just like you said, [00:16:00] he, there’s a, there’s a big part in the book about how he had friends, like the guy that started the grocery store what’s it called? IRA Wall Baum Wall Baum Wall Baum G groceries. He was good friends with him. Jay Baer: He was friends with Frank Purdue. He helped Frank Purdue get his chickens in the grocery. Of course, probably not for free, but he did. He was friends with a, a woman who owned a it was like a, a lumber company. So he hung around with them instead of hanging around with his own men. And people got tired of it, especially Gaia. Jay Baer: And what I heard, I don’t know but Castellano found out that. Gotti’s brother was selling drugs and he was gonna whack him, but Gotti got to him first. See, that was the thing. If he would’ve acted on it right away, that would’ve been it. That would’ve been the end of it. And he, I mean, he might be in prison now, but he may still be alive, [00:17:00] but he screwed up and he didn’t, I guess he didn’t fear Gotti as much as he should have. Jay Baer: Mm-hmm. You know, let’s face it, a lot of these guys get to the point where they think they’re invincible. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: And. Well, you know what happened to him? Yeah. You wanna hear a funny, you wanna hear a funny story about that? Jay Baer: Joe Watts went one day, went to Castellano’s house and said, I am cooking on a really big re real estate deal. You want in. So I. Castano says, yeah, you know, I’ll give you like 6 million. So he is walking to the door with Thomas bti and BTI says to him, Hey, the boss has plenty of money. Jay Baer: Why don’t you count me in? He goes, yeah, no problem. So a couple days later he goes, he picks up $8 million or 7 million total. I think it was 7 million total. Five from Castellano, two from Bella. And you know, you know who Joe Watts was? He was on the backup team to kill Castellano. Yeah. [00:18:00] He wasn’t one of the, the, the four, he was backup. Jay Baer: So he knew they gonna get whacked. Guy made himself $7 million like that, like that. And then, and then Gotti gave him Pilate’s, black book. He made, made millions and more dollars. And the guy’s still alive. He’s like in Gary Jenkins: his eighties. Yeah. I think he, maybe he just got outta jail or maybe he’s still in prison. Gary Jenkins: I can’t remember they call him. No, no, you’re right. He, he got out a while back. That’s what I thought. Yeah, that’s Jay Baer: it. That’s Gary Jenkins: him. It’d be a great interview the German to get him on. Joe. Anybody out there know Joe, the German? Give him a call. Tell him I wanna have him on the show. Jay Baer: Smart guy. That takes though. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. You know, think Jay Baer: about it. If Castellano would’ve found out, Gary Jenkins: yeah, Jay Baer: he would’ve made it. He would’ve made it down the street. Gary Jenkins: Well, let’s breed man. I’ve heard of that before where they know somebody’s gonna get hit and then they Joe Macino did this and then he went to the guy and got him to a bunch [00:19:00] of money out of him that he was gonna, you know, have to pay him back. Gary Jenkins: And then, but they know they’re gonna get hit, so that’s yeah. Yeah. Bob Life. Huh? Bob Life. Yeah. How to, how to live like a mobster a gangster. Don’t don’t be loaning anybody any money. ’cause anybody that’s dangerous. Jay Baer: Yeah. But you know what’s kind of funny about that is people should know when they’ve screwed up and they’re gonna come after them. Jay Baer: I don’t know how they always get like whacked. They just don’t believe it. I don’t, I don’t get it. I mean, me, if I knew my life was in danger, I’d pack my crop and go, man. Exactly. I Gary Jenkins: would not be hanging out on those same streets. I would not be holding, keeping that same pattern that I usually keep. I, I, I don’t get it. Gary Jenkins: I don’t get it at all. And we’ve seen it here in Kansas City, never big city. You know, they know that somebody’s after ’em, but yet they continue to do the same things. They keep the same patterns. [00:20:00] Over and over and over and really take very little precautions. I, I don’t know. Jay Baer: So Kansas, Kansas City, was the, they filmed a part of casino with those guys that Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: In the market is was that real? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Well, they didn’t actually. Yeah. And they did actually film that in Kansas City, that that sequence of events happened. But it was in a bar and, and there was a bug there. But, and, and they didn’t pick up exactly everything that, what they used, but it was, it is somewhat along those lines, but yeah, it was, it was just, wasn’t in a market. Gary Jenkins: Everybody thinks that was a, everybody’s in Kansas City was trying to, oh, that was Jamaica’s, or that was Orlando’s, or it was this market or that market. But I know for a fact it was in a, a pizza joint called the Villa Capri, which is more of a neighborhood tavern. Jay Baer: Was there a guy like Remo out there? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Oh yeah. That was, I think that was the toughie doing that was our underboss and, and he handled for Arc family, he handled. All that Las Vegas business. He made the contacts with people. He talked to him on [00:21:00] the phone, you know, and he would carry the information to our boss, Nick, and say, okay, what, here’s what they’re telling me. Gary Jenkins: What do you want to do? If there’s a decision to be made, you know, what do you want me to do? And then he’d get back with a guy in Las Vegas. They’re, they’re kind of their mole out in Las Vegas. And, and so he was, he did his underboss job there. He insulated the boss. From these people that were on the streets in LA in the casino in Las Vegas to do that. Gary Jenkins: So yeah, that, that’s all true. And they did have a big meeting with Chicago to decide how to cut up things. And there’s a lot of Nicholas pledging in that movie. I’m getting off on my own story in a way, but Nicholas pledging that movie. He came to Kansas City and he spent about three days with a case agent on that, who also took a lot of documents and things home. Gary Jenkins: And, and so he went through all that and, and really gathered. The background information from primary sources to put into his book and the, and the screenplay. They just for the screenplay, you know. Okay. They gotta they gotta change things around. Jay Baer: Yeah. Yeah. ’cause they, [00:22:00] they have to cut 500 page, book four. Jay Baer: Oh, page book. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: They gotta put it into 120 page screenplay. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. It’s tough. But, Jay Baer: One of the things I like that Remo said, and I use it all the time, why take a chance? Yeah. That’s how he said when they, when they were whacking everybody. Yeah. And they were saying, you know, this guy’s a good guy and he’s a good guy. Jay Baer: And Rema was like, well, I take a chance. That’s how I look at it. Speaker 4: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: I got killed. Yeah. Well, he ended up dying in prison a after that. Really. I’ve just been working on a book myself and, and part of it is about the time that they tried to plant a bomb underneath his car. He is so lucky. Jay’s so lucky that they had a remote control. Gary Jenkins: Ated bomb. They put it underneath his car. They watched him come out and get in it, and then as soon as he got in, they started hitting the, the switch and it wouldn’t go [00:23:00] off because the antenna wasn’t quite long enough to make the connection to the receiving unit on the bomb. And they had to run up and get the bomb and the plastic air paper back and go back and experiment with it. Gary Jenkins: Were they Jay Baer: trying, who were they trying to kill? Remo? Gary Jenkins: Yeah, the Remo character. Tuffy de Luna. That was in real, I was in real life here in Kansas City. Yeah. Okay. That wasn’t, and none of that was in the movie casino at all. There was a mob war going on while all that stuff was going on in Las Vegas, we had a inner family conflict in Kansas City that they were killing each other off right and left for a while. Jay Baer: Oh, really? I don’t know. Well, I, I’ve always focused mainly on New York. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: Yeah. There’s, there’s, I mean, there’s a lot of mob, you know? Have you ever been to the, the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. I have, Gary Jenkins: yeah, twice actually. It’s really good. It’s, it is worth the trip. It is, it’s worth the 35, 40. Jay Baer: There’s like a hundred pictures of gang gangsters, people you never even heard of. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: Yeah. I, I really enjoyed that. I spent, I went downstairs to [00:24:00] the still. Did you do that? Gary Jenkins: No, I didn’t. I don’t, I don’t know if it was there yet or something. I can’t remember, but no, I didn’t, I didn’t go down to the, the bar. They have a bar or something downstairs? Jay Baer: Well, they, they have a bar and they have their own, they make moonshine, but it’s a modern steel and they, they sell the booth to all the restaurants. Jay Baer: So I went down there, you know, you pay the lecture and you get these little cups. These little tiny cups Yeah. Of booze. And so he asked a question. The guy that was talking, he said, does anybody know who the Flamingo was named after? So I raised my hand and he goes, who is it? I said, it was Virginia Hill. Jay Baer: He goes, oh wow, we have a gangster in the room here. People at my table got a extra drink of Peach Moonshot. What? What was the, lemme do that Gary Jenkins: again. What was the question again? Jay Baer: Who was the flamingo named after? Gary Jenkins: Oh, okay. Yeah, I, yeah, Virginia Hill. I couldn’t have called that one up off the top of my head, but I had heard that before. Gary Jenkins: That’s a [00:25:00] good, he got a gangster among us here. Somebody knows his gangster history. Jay Baer: You wanna, do you want, you want me to show the book? Gary Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, let’s see it. Book, its Folks Mob Life, the private world of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Bear, actually Jay, Robert Bear. . I’ll have a link in the show notes to the Amazon link if you want to get that book. Okay. And I’ll have Cool, I’ll have a link to Jay’s Facebook page too. So our Facebook group, if you wanna get onto that, it’s Jay Baer: also it’s also on, it’s on audio and it’s, and it’s ebook, it’s all three. Jay Baer: Yeah. You can get all three of it. So and it’s, it is, it’s a short audio, like an hour and a half, you know. Mm-hmm. I found a guy on five who did a really nice job. Gary Jenkins: What’s one last thing that you found the most interesting in their kind of private personal lives that people might not know? Gary Jenkins: What, what, what would you want to tell us about there? Jay Baer: [00:26:00] Well, I thought the food thing was pretty interesting, but what really became interesting was the money they made, the millions. I mean, John Al Capone was worth over a hundred million dollars when he was 23 years old. Hmm. That was in the twenties. You know what that’s worth today? Yeah. Oh my God. I couldn’t even imagine that meeting today. Jay Baer: He, he had, he owned a building where they cut out the second store story. So they could put a gigantic vat of beer. Speaker 4: Hmm. Jay Baer: That’s how smart this guy was. And they, you know, he owned brothels also, which to me, there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, it’s like you are, you are giving a service. He owned brothels and he did that, and actually he took all that over from Johnny Torrio because they tried to kill him. Jay Baer: So he handed everything over to Capone and he retired. Then I think like four or five years later, he died of a heart attack. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: But I found that what they made the kind of money when when Sammy the Bull wrote that book, my [00:27:00] boss Gary Jenkins: mm-hmm. Jay Baer: The Underboss, it was called Under Boss. Underboss. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, underboss. Jay Baer: He was on an interview with Diane Sawyer and she said, what did you guys, what happened to all your money? And he said, nothing. We still have our money. Jay Baer: They didn’t want our money. They wanted us, and they found out, I said, how, well, how much did you make? He goes, I think he said he made like five or 6 million a year where Gotti was making like 10 or 20, $30 million a year. It was cash. It was all cash. They had duffle bags full of cash in their basements. Jay Baer: So that’s the thing I found out that I found, you know, interesting. And they, they had, they were persistent men. They weren’t just guys that were like you know, we’ll just go to work today. They weren to work. They worked the streets. They were street men. They knew how to handle things. They knew how to make money. Jay Baer: Especially Castellano, you know, he was called the Howard Hughes of the mafia. He was so smart. But they all, I think all of ’em were like that. Lansky made millions. [00:28:00] They all made millions and millions of dollars. But you know what, in the end it was all gone. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: Every one of ’em lost everything. Gary Jenkins: I’ve noticed, I’ve noticed that. Gary Jenkins: I have people ask me about that and I say, you know, I, I don’t know. I, I don’t know whatever happened to their money. I know a lot. Nicks of El made a lot of money. They were bringing 40 grand a month just out of the Tropicana. That was not even out of part of the Stardust, hacienda Frontier, and there was another one in there. Gary Jenkins: And, and that was just for him. And then he split, he split a lot of it up among his men, and that’s what these mob bosses do. Some of ’em, the good ones will split it up among their their maid guys that they can depend on have depended on for a long time. But back in those days, Jay, the law enforcement before drugs, before cocaine hit and all that money hit, the government didn’t really go. Gary Jenkins: Tooth and nail after the money. They, if they got the guy, like you said, if they got the guy, then they [00:29:00] just moved on. That was enough. They didn’t really go try to run down the money and, and trace it down after cocaine hit and all that drug money hit, then they, the government started going after money and then we developed whole units, you know, the, the civil forfeiture unit and had civil for forfeiture laws, state and federal that were not really in place before. Gary Jenkins: So, so that’s why government, they just didn’t care about the money. Jay Baer: What did you say earlier? What did you, you were a police officer? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. A Jay Baer: detective, Gary Jenkins: yeah. Here in Kansas City. Jay Baer: My son just my son was with a city called Margate in Fort Lauderdale, and he just retired, not retired. He went to work for Monroe County, the Keys, and he became a he’s head of emergency management. Gary Jenkins: No, that’d be a good job. Jay Baer: Well, it’s better than he’s, he does not have a bullseye on his back anymore. But he was the detective for what, for like the last two years and what I was, you know, they, I was Do you ever listen to that podcast? It’s called Law and [00:30:00] Order. Gary Jenkins: I don’t think so. Who does it Jay Baer: check that out? Jay Baer: Because they they would, they, one of the last ones I listened to, this is their second year Law and order. It’s a podcast and, i, I listened to one where they, they were getting Joe Massino, I think that’s his name. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Jay Baer: And they, Joe was a Gary Jenkins: bonno. They, Jay Baer: they stopped using Rico. They said Rico was not working anymore. Jay Baer: So you know what they did? They hired like a dozen accountants. Yeah. And they went after me. Yeah. And you know how they got ’em? They found a guy in New York that owned a bunch of parking lots, right? Gary Jenkins: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: And you know the story. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I, I did a whole two or three parts series on Joe Macino in that parking lot guy. Gary Jenkins: And he, he was like kicking money to their wives and, and they started tracing through their wives and all that. Joe Macino gave up. This is solid numbers. This is not meth. He gave up like $10 million in cash and Gold Bull in when he made his [00:31:00] deal in the end to save himself for life in prison or the death penalty. Jay Baer: Oh, he did? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That Jay Baer: I didn’t, that I didn’t say. Gary Jenkins: That’s, that’s the one case I know of where. Factually, law enforcement or anybody actually saw the money that these guys claim to have, and, and he had it. So it’s out there. I don’t know what they do with it. Jay Baer: Did you ever hear of the, this guy, his name was Slu, C-E-F-A-L-U. Jay Baer: He was a Gambino boss. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: And I don’t think he’s ever gone to prison. Now, there was another guy after him called Marino, but you should check this guy ou because, he was there for a while and but you know, again, in the end, Speaker 4: yeah, yeah. Jay Baer: We get it all. Just like they said in casino, in the end we get it all. Speaker 4: Yeah. Juniors, Jay Baer: juniors college fund, the house payment, we get everything. Yeah. Interesting. [00:32:00] Alright, well this has been great. I really appreciate the opportunity Gary Jenkins: Jay Bear, I really appreciate you coming on the show, Jay. Gary Jenkins: All right, thank you. All right.

Transcribed - Published: 17 November 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Burt Gonzalez, a veteran officer from the Miami-Dade Police Department, for an unfiltered look inside one of the most violent and chaotic eras in American law enforcement history. Bert has published his story title The Real Greatest Show on Earth. With decades of experience spanning multiple divisions, Burt recounts the transformation of Dade County’s police force—from Metro-Dade to Miami-Dade—and now back to an elected sheriff. He walks us through the gritty evolution of policing in South Florida, where the drug trade fueled daily violence and cartel wars left bodies in the streets. Burt shares firsthand stories from Miami’s cocaine-crazed years, including a shocking drug bust that netted 208 kilos of cocaine and over a million dollars in cash, offering a vivid glimpse into the unpredictable and dangerous life of a street cop. Beyond the shootouts and seizures, we explore the human side of policing—the growing mental health crisis in Miami-Dade, the deadly unpredictability of domestic violence calls, and the emotional toll that constant exposure to trauma takes on officers. Burt emphasizes the importance of training, de-escalation, and support systems for those on the front lines. The conversation also previews Burt’s upcoming show, Sergeant Maverick, a podcast where he’ll tackle everything from police work and politics to financial advice for first responders—and even the decline of customer service in America. Join us for this candid, eye-opening conversation as Burt Gonzalez pulls back the curtain on the realities, dangers, and hard-earned lessons of Miami policing during the height of America’s drug war. Click here to get the book, The Real Greatest Show on Earth Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, welcome to the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m back here, and I have a fellow copper from down in Miami-Dade County, Florida, Burt Gonzalez. And, you know, I worked all the jobs on the police department, mainly spent my time in intelligence, so that’s why I focus on organized crime. But I worked all the rest of the jobs, almost all of them. I never was a wheel man. But other than that, I think I did everything. And Burt’s done a lot of things, too. So welcome, Bert. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. And guys, you need to know, and we’ll talk about this later, Bert has a book out there about his career and some great stories called The Real Greatest Show on Earth. And believe me, Bert, it is the real greatest show on Earth, isn’t it? Well, that’s why I named the book that. [0:49] I was thinking about what is it that we do and what do we call it out there ourselves, in the street, in the homes of our citizens and everything. And really, it’s a circus. So that’s where I came up with that. True circus. All right, now tell the guys a little bit about your department that you spent your time in and how you ended up going on that department and a little bit about the history of it and what it was like as you went over the years. So go ahead. So I was with Miami-Dade Police, formerly known as Metro-Dade Police, when I joined in 1983. And in the areas where my family moved here from New York and I followed a year later, the area was unincorporated Dade County at the time. It wasn’t called Miami-Dade County yet. [1:40] And so the police of the jurisdiction was Metro Dade police. And our neighbor behind our house, Bob Johns, was a sergeant with Metro. So then all of my interactions, I’ve seen Metro everywhere. And then as I got to know Bob and I got to know more about the department, [2:00] Metro Dade is the largest department in the Southeast United States. Now is Miami Dade. It still is. And it’s the sheriff’s office, even though we didn’t call ourselves that. We just called ourselves Metro-Dade and now Miami-Dade Police. It is a sheriff’s office as of a few weeks ago again. First time in 60 years we’ve elected a sheriff. And that involves all the politics about the county governing itself away from the capital, Tallahassee. And then the voters here a couple of years ago said, we want to have an elected sheriff again, as opposed to an appointed director by the mayor and the county commission. And you know, as well as I do, that if you have an appointed chief or an appointed director, the mayor has control over them. So the director is not answerable to the citizens or the chief of police isn’t really answerable to the citizens. They’re answerable to the mayor. [3:04] And it caused a lot of problems. And finally, the citizens down here said, we want an elected sheriff again. In November, we elected a sheriff. One of my colleagues, Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who highly qualified, she was an assistant director with us. So now we’re the sheriff’s office again. [3:22] So the more I learned of what department I wanted to apply to, it was going to be Metro-Dade and only Metro-Dade. I didn’t think about the city of Miami, which is another, the second largest department in South Florida. [3:37] But it was going to be Metro all the way. And there’s going to be folks that may be here, listen to this, and going to say, well, that sounds pretty arrogant. Well, it is the best department down here for sure. And it is a leading agency around the country. And we’re very proud of that reputation. So I joined Metro, like I said, in 83. [4:00] And two years later my brother got out of the army and he came on as well and I gotta tell you at that time it was the height of the cocaine cowboy wars when we came on. [4:13] This is what I was thinking, Miami Vice. You say Miami area in 1983. I’m thinking Miami Vice, maybe. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a kilo of cocaine anywhere. I mean, it was everywhere. And the district that I work, Southwest District, we had a lot of dopers that lived there. They built these big houses. And of course, oh, that’s not a doper there. Of course not, right? [4:41] Cameras outside. You know, and the thing about the cowboy wars at that time, besides the fact that cocaine was everywhere, we had a lot of dead bodies dropping all the time. And there was a time literally every day we were finding bodies all over the county, all our different districts. And the homicide rate was so high that our department had to create a specialized narcotics-focused homicide squad to handle it. So when you say Miami Vice, and also, I’m sure you’ve seen it and many of your viewers and our fellow colleagues, Scarface. Yeah. The movie Scarface. And that scene, I’m always reminded of that scene where Tony Montana and his crew are walking into the banks with duffel bags full of cash. Yeah. Well, I’ve got one story about that. And I was working, I worked mostly uniform in my career. I did a lot of training as well, but I also did plainclothes work. [5:58] And we did a lot of street-level narcotics. So I was on this crime suppression team playing clothes, and we were getting hit with a lot of driveway robbers. We have an affluent area in the district I was working. And from the expensive department stores. [6:19] Macy’s, Bloomingdale, Neiman Marcus, the people would get followed home and get robbed in their driveway. And they’re driving an expensive car, You know, so we got assigned to do surveillances and try to catch these bad guys. And, uh, like I wrote in the book, I always describe a bad guy as an asshole bad guy. Yeah. Cause that’s what they are. Right. So what we were doing these surveillances and we hired extra officers, uh, to increase our numbers. Cause we were a small plainclothes squad. Mark, Sylvia and I, uh, went down this one street one night about eight o’clock at night. And it was dark, and as we drove by this one house, we see two guys looking in the picture window next to the front door. Look really suspicious. We drove down the street. We didn’t see a car in the driveway. We came around. They were gone. Okay, we got something here. Go down, park in somebody’s driveway. I got out, told the owner who we were. Can we park in your driveway? We’re going to watch this house. We called the rest of the squad in. we surveilled for a while. [7:30] No movement so we went to the house Mark and I went to the back of the house, and what we in the backs of a lot of Florida houses they have what’s called the Florida room it’s like a second living room that’s in the back of the house next to the yard or the pool, generally screened in or something like that when the other guys went to the front door and knocked on the door and a relatively of a young woman came to the door and Joe on our squad who had the gift of gab, she, he started, uh, interviewing her and said, well, there’s two guys that were just here and they’re gone. And she goes, there’s nobody here. [8:13] So they relayed that to Mark and I, and we’re staring at the two guys in the floor room with the kids in the, in the back of the house. Uh-oh. Okay. Right. So, you know, the, the plot thickens, right? Yes. Joe talked his way into the house and got the lady to sign a consent to search. We secured it. He did have a gift to gab, man. Big time. Big time. We secured the two. [8:40] Asshole bad guys, because that’s what they turned out to be. And we searched the house. In one of the rooms, we found Mac 11 machine guns. We found a table with a ledger book on it that was a code book that we sent to the DEA. [8:59] We found suitcases with coffee grounds. Because at that time, the dopers were running the drugs or coffee grounds to throw the dogs off, as many people know. And then, you know, the acetylene torch tanks, their steel, well, those were used to drop from the airplanes into the Everglades. And they had a couple of those in the room. And then we found a garbage bag full of cash. Okay. Later on, when we counted it, it was $1.3 million in cash. Oh, my God. And then when the guys got up into the attic to check there, 208 keys of Coke. Ooh, 200? 208 keys, yeah. Oh, my God. So at that time, it was the biggest seizure in Dade history, Dade County history. Since then, it’s been eclipsed by tons. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But the ledger book, when the DEA broke the code, came back to a real estate office in Miami, Columbia, and a place in Milan, Italy. So it was a triangle and the lady was in the house with her husband and her three kids living as a family. They were from Columbia, no drug dealers from Columbia, right? [10:17] So they were there set up to funnel the drugs and cash in and out of the house. Was it great police work? Okay, something suspicious. We jumped on it. It was dumb luck. Yes. It was just dumb luck. That’s how it works, man. I know. I got my own stories like that. Just dumb luck. You just stumbled into it. And then when everybody hears about it, oh, you guys did a great job. All right, we’ll take it. [10:48] But I’ll tell you what, that day you guys were running around the station high-fiving each other as you put that coke in the property room it would counted that money out today everybody come and look look at all this freaking money they’re counting absolutely oh yeah oh yeah you know you take the win and then you move on to the next yeah yeah yeah well you know it works that way it’s just how it works you know then you put 100 hours in something else and nothing happens you know then all of a sudden something little something falls and it and it starts happening it for you i’ll tell you what that is how it works and and that’s one reason it’s fun it’s uh you know those guys like that or uh that would that’s just something i mean the most most marijuana or most cocaine we ever discovered during my short time i spent about two years in this business was five kilos that came in from california so that that tells you the difference in miami and dade and and kansas city we just you know we get that was the most [11:46] you know that was the most anybody found for a long time. Finally, they found more. It was crazy everywhere. The same squad I was on, we were in uniform first and we transitioned to plain clothes. [12:00] So what we used to do, we did something called working the pay foams. So in our marked cars, green and whites, as we called them, those were the colors. We would watch a bank of telephones, pay phones with binoculars. And the thing is that our cars are visible everywhere. So the bad guys were used to seeing our green and whites around. And they’d go to the pay phone with their roll of quarters and they’d be throwing quarters in there, calling Colombia or Bolivia, wherever it was. And we would watch them and then we would follow them afterwards. We’d stop them and then we’d get them to let us search the car, half a key, guns, you know, whatever it is. It was almost like shooting fish in a barrel. So then what we would do is we’d call Border Patrol because these guys are probably here illegally. And then Border Patrol didn’t need a warrant to go into their residence. Oh, really? Yeah, because they were here illegally. So they would get an entry. We would follow them in and back them up, and then we would find the rest of the narcotics or whatever it was. And we’d take all that. We would drop arrest forms on them, and then Border Patrol would take them away also and put an immigration charge on them. So as you know, paperwork is tedious. Yeah. [13:20] Tedious. But it was fun. And that was just a brief moment in time during my career. Um i worked uniform most of the time i was a field training officer i was a field training sergeant um i did a lot of training over the years in different things different disciplines, but i really uh spent most of my time in uniform and you know i i liked it that way because that’s where the action is yeah and i like the craziness of the street the crazier it is on the street the more I was enjoying it, you know, everybody just lose their collective minds. We’d have, you know, big scenes or whatever, burglars running, perimeters, fires, hazmat situation, whatever it was, the crazier it was, the better I liked it. And I also, also had colleagues that were like that. You know, we liked the act. Yeah. [14:14] Yeah. I know what you mean. I was the same way. You go, you go to the, uh, you go to the area, the district, you volunteer for the districts that they’re the highest crime. And that’s where the most action is. You could easily, you know, we had two kinds of policemen. We had the guys that were frantically trying to get out to the suburbs where there wasn’t anything to do. And then you had the rest of us that were frantically trying to get into the hot districts and, and get, if you had a beat car, get that hot car. So you could, uh, or get up maybe a, uh, a wild car. And once in a while they, they have programs where you’d have a wild car and you could just cruise around and just get into whatever you could get in. [14:52] So that’s, that’s what we, that’s what we like to do here. I know that I had, uh, you know, and, and I remember one night I’m like. [15:01] We’re on this kind of a burglary deal where we’re wild cars and there’s about four or five of us. And there was a high dollar district in which they were burglarizing in the evening while people were out to dinner. And then they come back over toward the ghetto. So all of a sudden, you know, we have, they jump one up. There’s been a burglary. Somebody’s came home. They caught them on the inside. They jumped in their car and they lost them. Then they found them. We lost them. And then they jumped out of their car. And I jump out of mine and we’re all one person cars. and I’m like chasing this guy through the backyards. Then I lose him, of course. And I’m running pell-mell and all of a sudden I thought, you know, I better slow down just a little bit. This son of a bitch will be waiting around the corner for me. [15:45] And sure enough, they found him, you know, after I ran by him, he got underneath a bush. And another guy came along behind me and said, oh, he’s down here underneath the bush right here. I tell you what, it’s crazy out there. It could be really dangerous too. One bad guy means two bad guys. One gun means two guns. And you’ve always got to think that way. [16:08] In our profession, while we like the action, when you leave the house in the morning, and here, we didn’t go to the district, like let’s say a precinct in New York at NYPD or some other places where you change at the station, right? You’re in civilian clothes when you’re commuting, and then you change. Well, we don’t do that. We just put our uniform out at home, and we go. Yeah, that’s what we did. And then in 92, one of our districts did a pilot program. Actually, it ended in 92, five years, to see if having assigned cars that you can take home was cheaper for the department because they didn’t get abused 24 hours a day. Yeah. And our union did that, the PBA, and the department agreed, the county agreed. So in 93, I got my first take-home green and white. And it was like, I was a little kid driving, you know, like when I was 16 years old and got my license for the first time. And now I’m driving without my parents or, you know, whatever. And I remember driving home from the station when it came to my car. I go, you know, remember Flounder and Animal House? Oh boy, is this great. [17:22] And then we had the benefit of you’re allowed to drive it off duty anywhere in Date County because part of the package was that the visibility of the car being everywhere. So we did a lot of us did that. And I would say that, uh, until 2012, when I bought my 2008 Corvette convertible. I drove my green and white to tennis for decades. [17:54] And then when I got the Corvette, of course, I needed to drive that with the top down and go play. Right. Yeah. And then when I got rid of the Corvette, it was back to driving the green and white to play tennis again. So it was a great benefit for us. It was good having it. You didn’t have to pay a dime for it. You didn’t have to put anything into it if you didn’t want to. The gas was paid for. The insurance was the county self-insured. [18:16] And it was a great thing. Now, the other side of that coin, when you’re off duty and you come across a crash, you come across somebody broken down or something, stop and render aid. And I always did. That could be at the time, my mother who was broken down or somebody needed help. I’m in a patrol car. I don’t care. I’m off duty. I’m going to stop and I’m going to help. So unfortunately, a lot of our young, uh, Jedi Knights, as I refer to them now, they’re more involved with their phone and they just want to get where they’re going and they don’t want to be bothered if they’re off duty. And I, I can’t stand that. Um, I taught my son how to do it and he’s very good about it. We’re here to serve. So that’s what you have to think. Well, they still have take home cars like that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. They talked about that here, but they never, I don’t think that, not when I was in patrol that they ever did it. You know, you got to be ready. Like you said, if you’re going to take it home, you got to be ready. If you see a wreck, you got to stop and do something. If somebody’s going to be flagging you down, you got to stop and do something. So I bet a lot of guys drove them home and didn’t go back out again. [19:31] I’ve come across a bunch of stuff driving around in that car off duty. Yeah. Or on my way home from work or to work, something happens and i can take action you know i helped find a child with autism at one of our local parts here near our house when i was on my way home from the airport it is near the end of my career 20 in 2019 uh the call went out i’m on my way home i’m five minutes from home and the call went out over all the frequencies uh you know four-year-old with autism walked away okay. [20:07] Why did he walk away? Well, that’s unanswerable. You know, the parents weren’t paying attention. And from my training that I had with autism, and I also trained a lot of officers in dealing with the mentally ill. So I did a lot of that. I was well-versed in that. But with autism, children are drawn to the water. And there’s a lake in the park over here. So when I told the dispatcher, I’m off duty, coming home, but I’m going to go to the park. And I went straight to the lake in that park. It’s a park near my house, a mile away that I’m very familiar with. Walking, cycling, playing tennis there, played softball there, played soccer there. I went to the park. Somebody was walking that kid back towards me. [20:54] He fell in the water. Oh, wow. He didn’t drown. Thankfully. but and I said I’m glad that I went you know I didn’t have to go in the water or find a drowned child yeah, but like I said it comes with the territory you know you gotta take action you just can’t hide your you know bury your head and go home you know you’re listening to the radio even if you’re off duty which you have to do, in case let’s say in the case you worked you know for my department I’m on my way to play tennis and you’re in the jackpot screaming for emergency backup. And I happen to be the closest unit. Am I going to go to the tennis court or am I going to stop and help you? [21:44] That’s a no brainer. Yeah. Fortunately, a lot of the young guys are like that. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do it. If you’re going to take, you’re going to take that advantage. You audit it. If you got to stop, if you see another policeman, I mean, I drive down the highway and I see some policeman got somebody stopped. I kind of slow down and watch and make sure everything looks copacetic and before I keep on going. So you got to, cause you’re out there when you’re out there by yourself, man, you’re, you’re alone and they’re not super bad and you’re not bulletproof. And I don’t know about you. You may have your own stories, but you ever tie into somebody who was crazy and, and was so strong that you couldn’t, one man couldn’t even hardly hold one arm down. Let alone take three or four of you, even just to hold this person down and get them under some kind of control. I mean, there’s a lot of people out there like that, and you run into them by yourself. You know, you better hope help gets there pretty fast. And so since we’re talking about my book, I have a chapter dedicated to mental illness. [22:46] And here in Florida, the law that allows us to take somebody into protective custody for a mental disability when they’re acting out self-neglect, harmful to themselves, harmful to somebody else, is called the Baker Act law. [23:06] Which was instituted in 1971 in Florida. And it’s a great law. So the title of my chapter, I used the code for our Baker Act calls, 43. And then I said, 43 mental illness, what batshit crazy is really like. I give it a little bit of a comical twist, but it’s a very serious chapter. And you know as well as I do, when someone has mental illness or they’re on drugs, they are so strong. And no matter what you do, they don’t feel the pain and you’re trying to take them into custody and you’re trying not to hurt them. But it gets to the point every once in a while where you’ve got to hurt them bad just to get them into custody. You know, we don’t want to do that, but they’re not going to give up. And I’ve run into that so many times. In Miami-Dade County, the national average for mental illness in the United States is about 3% of the population. [24:14] In Miami-Dade County, it’s 9%. It’s three times higher than anywhere else in the country. So we’re Baker acting, as we call it, people every single day. Almost every police agency here in Miami-Dade County, and there’s 36 of them. Uh miami-dade mine and city of miami the next largest department, baker acting people all day long every shift every district or sector um it is just amazing how many people have it and then act out or something happens they get off their meds the police get called they’re tearing up the place a lot of uh um assisted living facilities These ALFs have people with mental illness and they end up throwing the things around and 911 gets called and we got to go fix the problem and you got to take them into custody. And as you know, getting him into custody sometimes just is not easy. And then after the four of you fought this guy or gal, shoehorned him into the backseat of the car or put him in a rescue truck or ambulance to take him on a gurney. You get to the crisis receiving facility They’re calm now, And then the doctor gets them. And then the doctor disagrees with your assessment. [25:37] Where your uniform’s all disheveled, your name tag, the pen came out, you know, and the doctor’s in this clinical environment saying, oh, they’re fine. They’re fine. No, they’re not fine, doc. You know, so we’ve run into that a lot as well. I didn’t have like that. I mean, this guy, we just couldn’t even hardly control him and get him down to what we used to have. what they call a PRC psychiatric receiving center. And we get him down there. And all of a sudden this is like Mr. Meek, Mr. Mild. Those tenants are looking at us like, well, what’s wrong with you guys? You know, there’s nothing wrong with this guy. I said, okay, whatever you think we’re leaving him with you. He’s yours. We’re gone. Exactly. Exactly. And then unfortunately within an hour or two hours, they’re just walking out the door because the doctor, you know, he’s calm. Now the doctor doesn’t see anything that he might be harmful to himself or others and doesn’t hold them, uh, for a more thorough examination. So, but that’s the nature of our job. It’s things we have to deal with. And then we go on, go to the next one. Really? [26:44] We had a guy at an intersection. He had a big truck and, and I don’t remember if we got a call or somebody noticed him. And then I think this other guy noticed him and called me over. I was nearby. And so we get out of service and we walk up this guy and he’s just like steering straight ahead and he’s just like pushing the clutch and then letting it out pushing in letting it out and this big truck is rocking back and forth and and we can’t get his attention so i reach up in there and i turn it off and it’s it’s in gear and then he and then they like start pulling him out well he’s resisting us the whole time and he’s a big dude so we pull him out we wrestle him around and they a bunch of other guys come in. We rough him all up a little bit, just trying to get him under control and, you know, finally get rid of him. And I remember this other guy, he was bad. And so he went back to the station. He wrote a whole bunch of tickets on this guy. And then the next day, they tell me, I said, oh, well, he was in insulin shock. Oh my God. I mean, you know, what are you supposed to do? I mean, you know, what the hell are you supposed to do? You just got to do something. And then we, you know, we had to call a tow truck and get that truck out of there. It was just, it was a nightmare. And all he needed was a piece of candy. I came as a young officer. I came across one evening and by the way, afternoon shift was always my favorite. The transition from day into night. [28:09] Didn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn and, you know, and on mid nights, I had a hard time functioning. But one afternoon I got a call. There’s this guy in the parking lot of an apartment complex on his knees. He’s incoherent. Fortunately, we get really good training and we get updates all the time. And I remembered, okay, something wrong. His door was open to his apartment. I went in and I found an address book where we had address books. Remember? Yeah. For our phone numbers. For our phones. Yeah. And I thought it was family. So I called him and they said, he’s diabetic. He’s an insulin shock. I grabbed orange juice from the refrigerator and I put it in his mouth, woke right up. I mean, came out of it just like that. Yeah. I heard that. Damnedest thing. But, you know, yes, sometimes these things, they don’t look right. You know, something’s wrong, but you’re not really sure what it is. You know, later on, now this is going to sound sarcastic and maybe it is because sarcasm is one of our superpowers as cops. We know that, right? Yeah. So in the last 20 years, many more children have been diagnosed with autism. [29:30] Back when we started, you know, it was rare. Yeah, I’ve read that. That there’s, I don’t know what the story is. Now, there’s HDD and a whole bunch of things, right? So, and autism is one of the big ones. And now, you know, dealing with some child, especially a child that has severe autism, it’s very difficult. And you have to learn some techniques. And we went through the, all of us went through the training to try to learn these things. Because not only do we have the highest mental illness rate in the country, [30:03] but it seems like we’ve got a lot of kids with autism. And as a side note, my oldest daughter, Christina, is going to our local college, Miami Dade College. Uh, she just got her associates in education and now she’s working on her bachelor’s and she’s going to be specializing teaching kids with autism. She has a knack for it. You know, she gets them to do what the other teachers can’t get to get the kids to do. It’s pretty cool. And, uh, when she told me this the other day that she had this class as a substitute and the T the main teacher said, how do you get the kids to follow you? They don’t listen to me. Christina has a knack for it. So I asked her, do you have a whistle? She goes, no. I go, well, let’s start calling you a kindergarten cop, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. [30:48] Then I’m marching around the classroom. But she seems to have the knack. So for us, you come across somebody with autism. Hopefully you went through the train to try to deal with that because it’s super difficult. It’s not a mental illness, so you don’t bankrupt them. You don’t take them to a crisis center. It’s a different protocol. And one of the techniques that we learned was, especially with children, and let’s say that the child’s name was Gary. I’m going to use yours as an example. [31:19] The child’s acting out, having an episode. Gary, 10, 9, 8. Gary, how are you feeling? And the kids are taught that way to de-escalate. So when you start counting backwards, they start counting. It doesn’t always work, but it is one of the techniques where someone with mental illness, they say, and you know the magic words, well I think I want to kill myself, you’re gone we’re taking you right there is no debate anymore but the autistic thing is different, it’s more difficult for cops, interesting yeah to get them to focus on those numbers I can see where that might work that is really interesting you bring your attention back they’re all over the place. [32:13] Our neighbor last week The son, 37 years old, autistic, went running down the street and took off. Didn’t find him to the next day. 37 years old. So I can only imagine what that family’s gone through for 37 years. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’d be a tough one. So tell me something, Bert, did you ever like drive around the corner and just find yourself in a real jackpot? In a real mess and you’re all by yourself you had to jump out and start doing something, um crashes come to mind yeah because that seems to be the most prevalent you know for a patrol officer uh come around the corner and there’s you know three or four or five cars in a crash and you got people bleeding and all that all over the place and uh funny story about that when you know, [33:11] the enormity of a scene, right. That can overwhelm a young officer. So I was a field training officer on midnights in our Midwest district. And I had George with me. He was on his first month writing assignment out of the academy. [33:26] And at this big intersection that we have, it was a crash. Two U.S. Marshals were transporting a prisoner northbound on 87th Avenue. And a guy in his little work pickup truck blew the red light, whatever it was, three o’clock in the morning, and T-boned him. Everybody’s hurt. A lot of fire rescue response. Several engines a couple of rescue trucks so we get to the scene and it’s everywhere this this is a huge intersection and we got fire lights everywhere we got six police cars there and i tell the officer who got the call um we’re going to handle it for training because i was teaching George. So I go, George, get your clipboard. We’re taking this. And he literally looked at the scene and did this. [34:30] He froze for a second, right? Oh, it’s overwhelming. I know it’s overwhelming. Exactly. One month, you know, it was first month on the road. So we got it. We started handling it, got all the information from all the parties involved and rescues doing their thing and transporting. And now we’re finally sitting in the car and we’re starting to report. And I said, you seem a little overwhelmed. He goes, I was in shock looking at all of this, right? And I said, okay, let’s break it down to its most basic component. What do you have? And he had to think about it for a second, and then I had to lead him. I said, George, you got one car going northbound. You got one car going westbound that blew the light, T-Bone. I want you to remove all the fire rescue trucks and all the police cars. All you have is a T-bone accident. That’s it. We have injuries. Yes. But that’s all it is. It’s only two cars. And he looked at me and it’s like I gave him a secret to the Holy Grail or something. Yeah. So. Yeah. [35:36] Breathe, take a look at what you have and calmly start to assess, right? So to your point, you come around the corner and you see something. And then after a while, like I said, I like the chaos and the craziness, but after a while you come across and you see all this happening and you just go into that mode and you know what to do, right? When we’re young, not so much, But as time goes on, you just get better and better and better at it, no matter the enormity of the thing. [36:12] Fortunately, one day, I was driving down one of our streets, and one of our officers that worked the Midwest District, which is around Miami International Airport, he came on the radio in a panic, and he said, a jetliner just went down. Oh, wow. It was fine air. It was a cargo plane. It took off and they didn’t secure the cargo. And as it was going up this, the cargo came loose and went toward the tail and put that plane down. It was a 757, which is a large jetliner. I’m into aviation. So when he said that, I could feel in my heart, It kind of stopped for a second because at first we didn’t know it was a cargo and not a passenger. [37:10] And I talked to him later on about that. And he said he was so scared shitless because he witnessed it. Right. And you don’t ever want to witness something like that. [37:24] Uh the the two crew or three crew that were on board were killed and one guy on the ground that just picked up his wendy’s lunch and was parked in his car near a business got killed, it just happened to be parked there yeah and you know i think back to that and i go wow it just to this day you know thinking what that officer saw or anybody else that saw it. [37:53] Um and i’m glad i never had to witness something like that really you come around the corner you got bad guys running and it’s like okay what do i do all right i’m not going to run after them, i’m going to set up a perimeter and then get everybody in there because you know as well as i do the foot chase can end up in something real bad oh yeah you can get hurt in the foot chase Mainly you bust your, blow your knees out, things like that. But you can also get behind those houses and, and you can really get hurt bad. Yeah. And, and you don’t know where the bad guy’s waiting for you, you know, an ambush or there’s more than one bad guy. Yeah. You know, so I’m glad to say, you know, it experiences the best teacher. And as we go along in our careers and then you, you get to see things and assess it immediately. Right. This is what I got. This is what I have to do. I need help. I can’t do this alone. And you just kind of go into that automatic mode and start calling out stuff. You know, I need a box set up. I need a unit on this corner. I need a unit on this corner. I need aviation. I need canine. [39:04] When I was an officer, start a supervisor. When I was a sergeant, I hear that. Time for me to go. Right? My officers are handling it. Time for me to go to the scene. Yeah. So it’s just. While it’s crazy, it’s serious, it’s dangerous, to me, it was fun. I had a blast. I really did. [39:26] What about domestic violence calls? Those can be awfully dangerous. So I have a chapter in the book on domestic violence. [39:38] You probably would agree that early on, especially in the early 80s, domestic violence calls were handled more like a personal matter, like between his houses, right? [39:51] And we weren’t properly trained to handle them. Depending how serious the injury was, we make an arrest or not make an arrest. Usually the husband into leaving for the night, you know, it’s always a husband, ain’t it? Right. So in the wake of the OJ Simpson event, I think it’s either, I think it’s Netflix or prime or the other. There’s a new four-part documentary on the entire OJ case with behind-the-scenes stuff that we didn’t know about before. Oh, really? That’d be interesting. And the infighting in LAPD between Mark Furman and Lange and Van Adder. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And how the crime scene technician screwed up the scene. I mean, it was a whole bunch of stuff that I highly recommend cops watching it. You’re going to learn a lot of stuff. So in the wake of the OJ disaster, our department with one of the universities did a study on domestic violence calls. Officers would respond to a domestic violence call, remove the felony. If it was a felony battery or something like that, you’re going to jail. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts, you’re going to jail. [41:10] If it’s a misdemeanor battery on, you know, the husband slapped the wife, the wife slapped the husband, or pushed or shoved or grabbed, you know, something like that. The dispatcher on her console, and I say her because it was almost all female dispatchers at the time. We got a lot of male dispatchers now. [41:30] You would tell her that the call is eligible for the study. She’d hit a button on her console, and we called it the roulette wheel. It would come up A or come up B, you know, like come on red, right? When you, when you throw the ball, if it’s an A, we make the arrest. If it’s a B, we don’t make the arrest. And the idea was when all the stats were compiled after six months, when we made the arrest, did it reduce the recidivism rate on those calls for us going back to that same household? Either reduce it or eliminate it completely. Or when we didn’t make the arrest, did we have to go back to the house? And after a six-month study, it showed absolutely if we made the arrest, it almost eradicated domestic violence in that particular household or reduced it greatly because we didn’t want, as you know. [42:33] Women die the most by abusive spouses in this country. We made a lot of arrests and after the study was over we didn’t take any chances she’s got a red mark on her or something you’re going to jail okay you know if you can you can assess, that they’re telling the truth yeah the guy’s full of shit or she’s full of shit or whatever the case is but because of that study and the amount of domestic violence in a very busy county like Miami-Dade. [43:06] We developed our, or formed our own domestic violence bureau detectives that just handle only that because it was so, you know, prevalent. So the, and, and you know that that is besides the traffic stop, the most dangerous thing cops do, the domestic violence calls, the most dangerous call cops go to. And I’ve been a lot of fights in domestics, um, where, uh, You’re going to go arrest the husband or the boyfriend or whatever it is. Yeah. Now she is, oh, don’t arrest him. And she jumps on you or the family attacks you. Right. And now everybody’s going to jail. Yeah. You’re asking for emergency backup. The world is coming. You’re just throwing bodies around and getting in a fight. I mean, yes, it’s crazy. And to a civilian, when they hear you and I and the other cops talk about those things, they go, oh, my God. You know, to me, it was great. I had a blast. No, you know, so, but domestic violence is that one call. And I chapter on that by itself. And I talk about. [44:20] The walking up to the front door of a house, which is no man’s land for a cop. How many guys have gotten shot just walking up to the house? Because that asshole bad guy is waiting back there with a shotgun or a rifle or a handgun, and he’s not going to let you get to the front. And I’m sure, you know, you watch TV. And Gary, I would love to be a technical advisor on a police drama. Yeah, they kill me. They kill me. I know. They kill me. Why are you standing in front of the door, knocking on the door? I mean, you don’t do that. Yeah. You know, you just don’t do that. And especially when I was training rookies, right, this is the way we’re going to walk up. If it’s a hot call, we’re parked about two houses down. If it’s a single family house, not an apartment complex. and then we walk to the house, keeping an eye on things and trying to stay away from that funnel, the fatal funnel of the front door. And how many times if you were training young guys yourself, you’ve had to grab them and go, get over here, you know, like a puppy. So. [45:36] The domestic, yes. Is it fun to handle? Well, it depends on your definition of fun, but I found it at times you know, and then walking into the house, separating the warring factions, as I call it. And the thing I learned from some senior officers when I was a rookie, when you walk in, scan everything and see if there’s any potential weapons laying around, kitchen knife, a pair of scissors, a screwdriver, you know, and if someone is going to go sit on a couch, get them off the couch. Yeah. Yeah. They’d be hiding a firearm, you know, so. The shit you and I didn’t know when we came out and we’re learning and everything, right? And we got our heads up our asses like every rookie does. And then later on you learn it. And then you can just, you can scan and see exactly what the threat environment is like. [46:29] Make the arrest, not make the arrest. You know, on the hot calls when I was a sergeant, uh, that 22 of my 37 years was as a sergeant. So I did a lot of teaching, a lot of training. [46:41] And I would go to the hot calls with my officers because it was my obligation to go with them. And especially when I had young squads to teach them and go in there and just keep an eye on things. You guys are going to handle this, but I am here. Don’t think of me as just your sergeant. Think of me as your backup. If the shit goes crazy, right? This, you know, you asked about any stories. So this leads me to this. [47:10] July 20th, 1998 at 1045 p.m. at 2288 Northwest 46th Street in our Northside District. Northside District, for our department, everybody around the country might remember the 1980 riots. Northside District for us is where part of those riots took place. Overtown was in the city of Miami, and that was the other part of the riots. It’s late. Two of my rookies are handling a domestic call, domestic violence call. I don’t hear from them for a little while. So I go by the scene and it’s a duplex with a wall between the duplexes, a wall in the front with a gate. I get there and I’m listening to my two rookies debate with the subject boyfriend who apparently struck his pregnant girlfriend. So if you’re pregnant and you get hit, it’s an automatic felony, right? Somebody’s going to jail tonight. Yeah, in Florida, it’s an automatic felony. [48:07] So I’m watching this and I, and then I say to the guys, what are you doing? Right. The subject’s sitting on the front stoop. I go, stop. You open this gate. He gets up and he walks inside the temp, the, the, the apartment, right. The duplex. I said, okay. So the gate’s locked, but I’m looking at the duplex next to it. It has no gate and it’s got a three foot wall between them. And I don’t guys, what are you? Doing? Come here. Follow me. We go to the next one. We jump over the little wall and now we’re at the front door. Okay. These guys couldn’t figure that out, but you know, they’re, they’re young. The subject battered his pregnant girlfriend. All right. He’s going to jail today. I said, come on out. And he says, I’m not coming out. I’m going to shoot the baby. You got a 20 month old son in there. No. Soon as I heard that I go move. And I start kicking in the door. It took about three shots. I kicked in the door. He picked up his 20 month old son and had him in a bear hug like this. And he was squeeze, trying to squeeze into death, literally squeeze the life out of him. So he had, he was like this and I jumped on top of him and pushed him on his back. My two rookies were with me. We got on top of him. We could not get him to let go of the baby. Gary, I am pounding this guy. [49:36] I did boxing and martial arts, and I’m hitting him with everything I got, the right way of hitting somebody. He wouldn’t let go. I thought about shooting him in the head, but I was afraid that the round would come out and hit the baby. I put my hand between his head and the baby’s head. The baby’s head was right here with him. [49:56] And I tried to squeeze it in so I can grab him and pull away while my thumb was exposed. Next thing I know, he’s biting down on my thumb. Oh, this is 1998. I still have the scar. It’s down to the bone and I’m yelling or he’s biting my thumb. So I’m pounding him in the side of the head as hard as I can. He won’t let go. So I remembered a pressure point right under the nose. So I reached under and I yanked as hard as I could. And he opened his mouth, right? Got my thumb out. So now I grabbed him. The guys were able to pull the, uh, his arms apart to get the baby away. We beat the dog shit out of this guy. That’s what I’m thinking. Right. So then my guys got him in custody. We’re going to go put him in the car. I come walking out and I asked the girlfriend, does he have any diseases? And she said he has AIDS. Oh, good. Oh, boy. I remember when that AIDS first started, that was a huge deal, man. Every once in a while, somebody gets stuck with a needle or somebody gets spit on or they get bit. Yeah, that was huge. A little bit of time. So I got on a radio. I requested fire rescue. The dispatcher asked me, who’s it for? I go, it’s for me. The subject bit me. [51:14] My lieutenant heard that, and he goes, haul an ass out of the station. Rescue arrives, and it’s a truck company. And they send one of my rookies to the store for a bottle of Clorox. [51:25] I’m not paying any attention to it, right? So he gets back, and you know how the fire trucks have that five-gallon water jug on the side of them for the firefighters? Yeah. Well, they didn’t let me see it. They took one of the Dixie cups. They put half water, half Clorox in it, and they go, Sarge, come here. Oh God Three firefighters Grabbed my hand and put it in a Dixie cup Oh God When the Clorox hit the wound Of course I started to pull out And the three of them were holding They go. [51:59] Fight it, take it Because we’re trying to kill any chance Of the AIDS virus being transferred I gotta go to the hospital now I had to take one of those horse pills That kind of covers all the communicable diseases Yeah And the next day, they sent me to a satellite center for the hospital to meet Dr. Ross. And when I walked in there, he was on the phone with this disease specialist out of Coral Gables near the University of Miami. And I heard him say, yeah, the best time to be on the drugs is before it happens. And I went, what the fuck is he talking about? I was sent to the specialist, and he put me on the AIDS cocktail, AZT, Epivir, and Crixivan, to try to stop it before it did anything to me. Now, this is not the end of the story. You would think, I’m taking the medication, and I’ll be fine. Well, this is the first time this has ever happened to a Metro-Dade cop, right, or a Miami-Dade cop. Risk management for the county did not want me to see the specialist and didn’t want to pay for the drugs. [53:10] Which costs $3,020 for the month. You would think this is a workman’s comp thing, but since it’s never happened before, they didn’t want to do it. So now I’m fighting with risk management. I’m on the phone yelling with these people over there. They wanted to have me written up for insubordination. And I’m telling them, you can go fuck yourselves. You have no idea what I’m going through right now. The drugs themselves were so potent. I lost a week from work. I could not leave the house and I had to keep running the bathroom every 30 minutes. Right. It was that bad. So since the county didn’t want to pay for it, it was time to play hardball. So my lieutenant sent faxes to all the local TV stations saying one of our sergeants rescued a 20-month-old that the father was trying to kill and he bit the sergeant and he’s got AIDS and the county doesn’t want to pay for it. And then my wife at the time did two television interviews till finally the county capitulated and they paid for the medication. [54:05] After that, the proper policy was written for anybody that had this happen to them after me. Some months later, one of my officers got hit with a knife. This guy was trying to kill himself, and Sharky went after him. And when he went to grab the knife, the guy pulled back, and it hit Sharky in the hand. This guy was scraping the knife across his belly. It was a domestic, male-in-male domestic. And the guy broke up with him and he’s losing his mind and now he wants to commit suicide and Sharky got cut. The guy had AIDS. Now Sharky’s got to go through the same protocol that I did. So me being the asshole that I am. [54:46] I called the director of risk management. She answered the phone. I got lucky. And I said, this is Sergeant Norberto Gonzalez. Norberto’s my formal mate. I said, do you remember my case where I got bitten by the guy with AIDS and you guys didn’t want to pay for it and everything? And finally you did. Well, Officer Benavides is one of my officers. And now he just got exposed to AIDS with a knife cut. I said, I hope that we’re not going to have to go through the same thing that you did to me. And then she said, no, no, no, no. He’s going to be covered. She turned around when we hung up and called my director and said, who the fuck does this sergeant think he is? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. [55:29] The director called my major at the district. Oh yeah. It starts rolling downhill. Yeah. But he was, he was really cool about it. He goes, just tell Bert to back off. Calm down, Bert. It’s going to be okay. Calm down. But this guy that bit me, we got a warrant that night to draw his blood in the jail and have it analyzed. Yeah. You know what the infectious disease doctor told me? He said, this guy was so polluted with AIDS that had he hit you with a syringe of his blood, you’d have been in big trouble. Right. Now, for two years, I had to get checked every six months. When we went to the hearing for him, now, he was already a multi-time loser, 48 years old, alcoholic. That’s why he didn’t feel any of the punches. When we went to court for his sentencing, the jail doctor had to give a medical report on the guy. He suffered a brain aneurysm while he was in jail. The neurosurgeons at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the county hospital, and the Rattler Trauma Center, saved this guy’s life. The judge asked the doctor, how much does that surgery cost? It goes about $110,000. And the judge said, this guy’s got better healthcare than I do. [56:44] So he got, he’s dead now. He died in prison. The county was paying for his AIDS medication when he got out of jail. And here I am, the officer’s son, and they didn’t want to pay for mind. [57:00] Bureaucracy at its finest. Yes. Exactly. Bureaucracy at its finest. All right. Burt Gonzalez. Burt, this has been great, [57:10] but we got a few things to talk about and you’re going to start a podcast. So tell me about that before we hang up here. I came up with the idea, of course, after the book to help promote the book, but also to be able to talk about those things that affect this all as cops. So my podcast, which is going to launch in about a month, and my son, Burt Jr. is the engineer. [57:34] So he’ll be doing all the stuff that you do yourself that I don’t want to learn about. I do it all myself. Yeah, he’s going to do all that for me. So the podcast is going to be called Sergeant Maverick, the podcast, all things police work, politics, and life. I developed a guest questionnaire that I’ll email to my potential guests to give me more background information on them so that I can formulate questions. And then we’ll do the podcast, ask them questions, but talk about their careers, how, you know, for all of us, what was your decision to become a cop? You know, what was your background before that? Do you have a family? Where have you worked? And then we’ll transition, maybe, depending on the way the podcast is going, into the political topics of the day. [58:20] I love presidential politics. I’m a political animal, so I’m into it a lot. So we may talk about the things that are happening that week, you know, or the president, the Congress, you know, what’s going on around the world. Some of the insanity that we see on a nightly basis. And then the life part of that, I’ll get into topics that affect all of us, not just cops, but that affect us all as citizens. And I think one of the first things I’m going to talk about is customer service and how piss poor it is, you know, that we all have to deal with almost on a daily basis when you go to the store. Or how about when you need to call one of your credit card companies or a cable company and all that nonsense, right? But it’s not just going to be cop-centric. Yeah, okay. I’m going to have firefighter friends on to talk about their profession, the similarities and differences between the two of us. And also, I’m going to get into financial and tax issues. So we all invest. [59:31] Well, how do you invest? How do you know about money? How do you learn about money? So my financial advisor at Wells Fargo will be coming on and we’ll be doing a segment with him to talk about your pension and your deferred compensation and other funds that you have going into retirement. You know, how do you invest those things? Because we really don’t know how to do that. Unless you’re trained in money, you don’t know how. And then the other side of that coin, I’ll have my accountant Tom on. [59:58] To talk about the tax implications for all that money that you now have set aside in an IRA or other funds so you don’t get yourself into tax troll. Officers and firefighters will have these funds and then they’ll take them out and they won’t pay the taxes on them. When they deferred all these years, right? Tax deferred and now you get yourself into a big tax jackpot. So I want to cover issues like that, as well as I’ll be doing family segments. [1:00:29] So the first family segment will be my wife, Rosie. I’m back to the book. Of course, I talk about cops and relationships. And one of the sub chapters in there is called marriage, divorce, marriage again and again. So I’ve been married three times. Me too. My wife’s been married three times, you know, third time’s the charm, right? So then I’m going to bring her on first family segment completely expose myself and say go for it you know we’ve been together 21 years, and you know you want to call me an asshole call me an asshole I mean I’m not a box of candy to live with all the time like most of us. [1:01:10] And then children’s segments I’ll have all my kids on what’s it like having a parent as a cop you know and let them go for it and go at it my nieces is Megan and Alina, my brother, both parents were cops. In the back of the book, the last chapter is war stories from a bunch of my colleagues. And the reason I included war stories by other cops, my colleagues, my brother, my niece, my son, and a whole bunch of others, you know, the thing, big, big things that happened to them or funny, crazy things that happen to them is that throughout the book, I have my war stories, depending on what the chapter is, right? The topic in the chapter, I wanted to add legitimacy to my stories by telling other cops stories because the crux of the book is that I’m writing not about me, [1:02:06] but about us cops everywhere because we’re all the same. I ended with one last war story of mine. My wife told me, you need to put this one story in there because it was such a big factor in my career. January 7th, 1987, my son’s godfather, Gary, and I were heading back to the barn for the end of the shift. It was 9.30 p.m. A call goes out, man at the door with a gun. [1:02:36] And Gary and I were going to be passing the new crew coming out of the station, uh, heading to the call. And we were close by. So we said, all right, let’s go. You know, that sixth sense that we have, right? I call it Spidey sense, like Spider-Man, you know, it’s tingling back here. I pull up a little way from the house, not in front of the house. Gary goes straight down. He’s the passenger. He goes out that way. And I worked my way around the house, the front of the house and to the back. And as I start working my way to the back, I’m looking into windows and I get to this big picture window in the back of the house. [1:03:17] I look in. There’s a guy standing at the front door looking out the peephole, with a 30 caliber carbine in his hand. And there’s a 12 gauge on the couch. Asshole bad guy with gun. This is not good. I work my way. I get on the radio. Of course, I advise. got bad guys with guns inside the house send the world i get to the sliding glass door for the kitchen and as i come up like this the 18 year old of the three subjects meets me right at the sliding glass door he’s holding a semi-auto in his hand at that time i have a revolver we hadn’t transitioned to semi-autos yet that was this was 87 and we didn’t transition till 89 so i got a six-shot Ruger, whole 18 rounds on me. We meet eye-to-eye, and Gary literally, he goes, and I went, oh shit, right? Yeah. [1:04:12] He runs inside and there’s a big pit like they use for a smoking mead or something like that. Concrete about a foot and a half tall. It’s the only cover I got. I get behind it. I’m pointing at the sliding glass door and I tell the dispatcher so the world knows what we got in there. I said, now we got two asshole bad guys in there with guns. A third guy, the 32-year-old in the suit, the 56-year-old was the guy at the front door. The 32-year-old in a blue suit comes out, and he’s at the glass door, and he’s going, everything’s okay, everything’s okay. And I’m yelling at him. I got my gun pointed at him. The family comes out behind him. They’re in their pajamas. Oh, man. Husband, the father, the kids, and grandma. It was a home invasion. So I’m yelling at him to open the door. It’s okay, it’s okay. One of the family members reaches underneath, unlocks the door, slides the door open, and pushes him out to me. So I jump up, I grab him, I put my gun to his head, I grab him around the throat, and I’m dragging him to the side of the house, and I yell at the family, go this way. Gary was waiting for him at the corner of the house. So we rescued the family. I drag his ass to the side, we handcuff him, the world is arriving, they put him in a car, I take cover again. The other two guys are not coming out. So we called for our special response team, SRT, right? [1:05:42] And one of the guys who would become a very close friend later on was on that team. They negotiated for about two hours, and Frank told me later on, yeah, we told them basically, you come out or we’re going to come in here and kill you. We found the cut zip ties that they used to tie up the family in the kitchen, a little bit of cocaine, another pistol, a couple things, along with the shotgun. As it turned out, they hit the wrong house. The house, the doper house they were looking for was the next one over with all the cameras. Now we go to court. We have the bond hearing. Each guy has his own attorney. So the state attorney has me tell the judge what happened. And I give him the same story I just gave you. This guy did this. He had the gun at the front door. This guy had the gun at the glass door. This guy seemed to be the head guy calling the shots that we pulled out and we rescued the family. The judge holds him without bond. The background investigation the state attorney’s office did, the 56-year-old with the carbine, He was part of a truck hijacking gang that when the troopers stopped the truck after it was hijacked, his job was to drive by and kill the trooper out on the highway. Said, okay. [1:06:55] Not a nice guy. The 32-year-old in the blue suit escaped from our jail. Don’t ask me how that happened. Right? Okay? How do you escape? [1:07:07] Somebody- Good one. I never heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a corrections officer that was paid off. I have no doubt. So this guy fled to Costa Rica. And this took a few months. And the Costa Rican police found him. He was sent back with his arm in a cast like this. a cast down to here and a cast over one of the legs. Well, when the pull the Costa Rican police found him as a fugitive and coast there, it was a five story apartment building. He was on the fifth floor. I don’t know how it happened, Gary, but he flew out that window five stories down. He was trying to escape again. I guess, I guess. Yeah. We’ll have to go with that. Yeah. And then he was extradited back here and they all went to prison for, you know, 25 years or whatever the case was. But the reason I said that that and my wife said it should be in the book was a very important case is because had Gary and I walked to that front door straight to that front door yeah yeah exactly yeah you just don’t know those home invasion crews that are drug ripoff artists those guys those are the worst most dangerous criminals out there and you just stumbled into it that’s a man. Dumb luck again, right? Just dumb luck. During the cocaine cowboy times, we had guys impersonating cops doing these home riffs. It was a bad time. [1:08:36] Then, I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the Miami River cops. Yes, I have. At that time, where it was real cops killing bad guys. Those guys jump in the river and took their cocaine and they couldn’t swim. I know I shouldn’t laugh about this, but there or something funny about it. [1:08:53] Well, you know, I’ve done a couple of television interviews and the host of one, the Channel 4 here in Miami, near the end of the interview, he wanted to talk about corruption. You know, okay, I was ready for it, but I didn’t want to talk about corruption. I want to talk about my book, right? And our experiences. But he wanted to talk about corruption. Okay. And I said, yes, we had corruption. the temptation was so strong for some guys it was cash everywhere yeah like i can imagine what i told you about with the bag right yeah and i said it happens but then that’s why we have internal affairs yeah and they investigate these guys and we don’t want them either they get rid of them, i play tennis with this lieutenant. [1:09:37] Quite a few times. He ended up getting popped by the DEA because someone ratted him out. He was helping drug dealers transport and guarding stuff. And of course I didn’t know it, but I know full well that the DEA looked into me because they were probably following him to the teleport. Oh yeah. He played. Yeah. And then they’re catching, they’re catching the number on my patrol car. Yeah. And then investigated to me to see what my finances were like to see if I was in cahoots with them. And then when he was arrested, it was like, we were all shocked. You know, the nice guy, I never knew that type of thing. But, you know, when you have that kind of money floating around, there’s going to be some bad cops. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We need to get rid of them. We don’t want to read. If you don’t have that big money around, there’s going to always going to be some bad cops. It’s just, that’s part of it. You know, that’s part of it. As I used to say, you know, if you didn’t have a little corruption, it wouldn’t be a big city. You know, all big cities got a little corruption. Come on some more than others some more than others yes some more than others we had our share then i was never i i was never brave enough to do anything like that i was like oh no. [1:10:48] One of our guys uh was going through a a protocol and he went to the uh staff psychologist or psych services and he was asked you know would you stop a guy and the guy says you know don’t arrest me with the cocaine in the back seat or whatever you know and he offered you money, and he goes you know would you would you ever consider taking it and the officer’s response was well i’ll tell the guy you got 10 million dollars in your pocket right now right being sarcastic of of course, that it would take, you know, and he wasn’t serious, but no one’s going to carry $10 million with them because you’re going to lose your job. At least the 10 million, you can flee, right? At least. [1:11:38] All right. Well, Bert Gonzalez, guys, there’s that story and many more in the real greatest show on earth. And also he’s got the podcast. What’s the name of your podcast i don’t think you said the uh the title of it sergeant maverick the podcast okay sergeant maverick the podcast and and i’ll put this show up about the time your podcast starts so be sure and send me a link to uh early show and let me know that it’s up and then i’ll work you in right after that all right absolutely absolutely i appreciate it i appreciate your time today bird it’s it’s been a pleasure talking to you as a brother and in many ways as as you know and we have a lot of similar experiences. I can tell you that right now. Like I said, like I wrote in the book, we’re all the same. All these things happen to us. We’re all the same. Okay. Thanks a lot for coming on the show, Bert. Thank you, Gary. I appreciate it. [1:12:33] Hey guys, that’s, uh, that’s why my brothers, I’ll tell you what, those stories, I got a ton of them like that myself. I don’t know. I’m, I’m working on a book guys, a memoir. It’s hard. It’s really hard to write about myself. [1:12:46] And I like to remain humble at least to as much as I can. I don’t know. It’s hard to do. Uh, you know, we all got ego. So it’s, uh, and, and, you know, and I don’t want to put it out there. If I look like, you know, I’m not just a regular guy and humble, but I have had some fun experiences that I think people would be interested in and, and some, I want to make some points out of my memoir and I’m sure a bird has done that with his. So I’m going to be working on that over the next year. Uh, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So if you’re out there in your big SUV, as I’m saying now, or your big F one 50, watch out for motorcycles or your little Volkswagen bug. If you have a bug and I don’t know if you’ve had bugs anymore or your little car, uh your little miata you know watch out for motorcycles out there because it’s uh you know there’s no protection on the motorcycle you get hit by a car and you’re going to be injured there’s just no doubt about it and you’re probably going to be killed if you’re out on the interstate some way uh if you got a problem with ptsd or drugs or alcohol go to the va and get their uh website get their uh hotline number and if you’ve been the service you’ve not been the service and you got a problem with drugs or alcohol, why be sure and look up our friend Angelo Reggiano, former Gambino prospect, son of a Gambino soldier. He’s down there in Florida running there working at a drug and alcohol treatment center, I understand. [1:14:13] I hope he’s still doing it. If he is, let me know. If anybody has experience with him, why let me know. I’m curious about it. It’s like Burke talked about. He’s got some going to have public service announcements at the end of his podcast. I feel like we should all be giving back. I’ve been blessed with a, you know, a good job and a lot of opportunities over the years and have a lot of fun with this podcast. And so I give back as much as I can. I’ve got things for sale. I got my own books. Just, uh, I’ll put a link to my author page on Amazon and go check my books out. If you do, especially that New York book, give me a, give me a review. I’ve only got one review. I got a bunch of reviews on my Chicago book, but if you’ve got my New York book if you’re a verified purchaser, which looks a lot better, give me a review on that. I really appreciate all you guys out there. Subscribe and like and watch my YouTube channel if you’re not on the audio podcast and share it with your friends. Helps. Everything a little bit you do helps the podcast and I’ll keep putting stuff out as long as I can. I’m getting old. Sometimes I think I should cut back. I just had a discussion with somebody about that the other day, and it’s hard to do. I need a mission in life. I need something to do, so I’m going to keep doing this for a while. Thanks a lot, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 10 November 2025

In this explosive episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into one of the most complex and mysterious figures of the Cold War era—Ricardo “Monkey” Morales, a Cuban exile whose life intersected with the CIA, the anti-Castro underground, Las Vegas mobsters, and even the JFK assassination. Gary welcomes Rick Morales Jr., son of Monkey Morales, and author Sean Oliver, co-writer of the new book Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad. Together, they unravel the incredible life of a man who was at once a patriot, a spy, and a killer. Rick recounts growing up in Miami’s Little Havana, where his father’s shadow loomed large—rumored to have ties to the JFK assassination and known for his secret missions across the world. From escaping Cuba as a disillusioned Castro loyalist to training as part of the CIA’s Operation 40 assassination unit, Monkey Morales lived a life that reads like a spy thriller. Sean Oliver walks listeners through Monkey’s covert missions in Africa’s Congo, his deep ties to other operatives like Frank Sturgis and Barry Seal, and the secret wars that connected Cuban exiles, the CIA, and organized crime. The conversation also explores how Monkey became entangled with Lefty Rosenthal, the Chicago Outfit’s Las Vegas gambling mastermind, and how his bomb-making skills were used in mob turf wars across Florida. The discussion culminates with Morales Jr.’s chilling memory of his father confessing he was in Dallas on the day President Kennedy was shot—and that he had seen Lee Harvey Oswald in a CIA training camp. Whether you believe Morales was a hero, a villain, or both, his story weaves through some of the darkest and most intriguing chapters of 20th-century American history. 📘 Get the book: Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad 🎙️ Highlights include: • How Monkey Morales went from a Cuban intelligence officer to a CIA-trained operative • The secretive Operation 40 and its links to the Bay of Pigs, the Congo, Watergate, and Dallas • Morales’s work for the FBI and the CIA—and his dangerous double life in Miami • His connection to mob figure Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and the Outfit’s Florida operations • A firsthand account from Morales Jr. about his father’s claim to have seen Oswald in CIA training • The moral code of Miami’s Cuban bombers—and how it vanished when Colombian cartels arrived Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Speaker: [00:00:00] All right, well, hey, all you wire tappers out there. It’s good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. Uh. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective turned podcaster now, and I have another story and we’re gonna talk a little bit about the JFK murder and a connection to it, and a little bit about Lefty Rosenthal. Speaker: And you guys know that I know a lot about ref lefty Rosenthal because he was calling back to Kansas City every once in a while to our mob guys and, and so, so I’m really anxious to talk about this story, but first, let me introduce my guest today and I’m really excited to have these guys on here. Speaker: I have Rick Morales, Rick Morales, Jr, actually, and Sean Oliver. Welcome guys. Well, thanks Gary. Love the show. So, uh, you know, I, I looked at the two chapters you sent me and, and learned about the book and, and a little bit about your lives and especially yours, Rick, and it’s, it’s just fascinating as hell. Speaker: Rick and I were talking a little bit before you [00:01:00] came on here. We, I didn’t tape it or anything, Sean, and about I had, you know, I was a policeman and I had kids growing up and, and Rick, his dad wasn’t a policeman, but his dad was, was in that. Kind of a violent, kind of a uh, occupation, if you will, about bringing that edge of violence home to your family. Speaker: And there’s no way to, you don’t, you know, you know, let it loose on them, but you’ve been in some violent circumstance. All day long, or Rick’s case, maybe his dad’s case, maybe for the last several weeks. And then he comes home and, and so it’s, it’s just an interesting, uh, family dynamic I always think. But, let’s start with you, Sean. Speaker: Tell us a little bit about where you came from. I know you’re an author and you’ve been into wrestling. Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I’m from a planet called New Jersey. No, no. Strange. I think you’ve covered a lot of my residents in the past. I, neighbor, just a couple of weeks ago ago, I heard you doing Bobby Manna, who was very much a, a local of mine. Speaker 2: Yeah. And my neighbor, Chuck Webner, who you may or may not know, not a mobster, [00:02:00] but I was a, I was a film and television actor for a long time. I, um, I directed television commercials. I, I was in entertainment and then I fell into covering professional wrestling. I wasn’t a wrestler myself. I know the physique has you fooled. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had a pro wrestling production company, and then through that, kind of fell into that world. And so my first few books when I started writing were covering that world. And then, um, wrote some novels and then, uh, my first foray into true Crime, certainly not reading it, but writing it came when I met a man. Speaker 2: Beside me known as, uh, Rick Morales Jr. When I found out who his father was. And I went on a hunt for someone alive who could talk to me about Ricardo Monkey Morales. And that’s how I met Rick, I guess six years ago now, Rick. Yeah. Speaker 3: Six years. Speaker 2: Yeah. And we began [00:03:00] developing the story initially for television, um, as it’s, uh, really lends itself to an episodic. Speaker 2: It’s, yeah, it’s so vast to the story, but COVID hit production shut down. We, it was impossible for anyone to produce anything of this scope. So about two years ago, I said to Rick, we had been past our last. Pass was, uh, Rob Reiner, I guess. And I said, Rick, I, let’s do this as a book. You know, I have an inn in the publishing world. Speaker 2: I have, you know, multiple books out. Let’s tell your dad, we gotta get the story out. So that’s when we started doing this for publication. Speaker: Interesting, interesting. And it is interesting story. We go from, uh, JFK assassination to Las Vegas, like I said, and, and a whole bunch of stuff down in South America. Rick, you gotta tell us about yourself. Speaker: You know, Richard Morales. Yeah, Ricardo Mon Monkey Jr. I guess her dad was called Monkey Morales. So tell us a little bit about [00:04:00] your childhood. It had to be a little bit different than a lot of other childhood. Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaker: yeah. A little Speaker 3: bit different than Sean’s, I would say. Yeah. I was, uh, born in Miami. I got older brother, younger brother, and a sister. Speaker 3: I was born in 63 in Miami the same year. JFK gets second vaccinated. So I was there, but I wasn’t able to. To watch my dad do much ’cause I was only a couple of months old. So grew up in Miami. My dad and my mom left Cuba. My dad was a G two government agent for the Castro government when it took over. Speaker 3: And then during the two years between 58, 59 or 59 and 60. Disillusioned as much as many were. He was trying to figure out which way the direction of the country was going, and eventually they, uh, tried to kill him. They, they put him on a hit list because his father was a judge for Batista’s regime and [00:05:00] had, his father was a judge in the Batista regime, so they were eliminating anybody that had to do anything with the Batist regime. Speaker 3: So eventually he escapes through the Brazilian embassy. He spends like 82 days there with a bunch of other people. And, uh, eventually they’re taken out and he moves to Miami where he immediately goes to work for Cuban revolutionary groups. Because he’s, he is got the abilities. He’s a bomb maker. He is a master bomb maker. Speaker 3: He is a sniper, so he’s been trained in the government and all those things. So he joins Cuban power groups in Miami trying to fight. Against the castor regime and, and the power. And that’s where he starts making his name for himself and then that leads to further jobs with government agencies. CIA what All this time we’re kids. Speaker 3: We’re not aware in the early ages, like when I’m young, I’m not aware of what my father is [00:06:00] doing, but eventually there comes times when I see news stories on tv, they try to hide it from us, but they can’t. We hear stories from friends. I would go to friend’s house when I was young and they would one day be my friend, and then the next day they weren’t allowed. Speaker 3: And when I would ask them at school, what happened is, your dad’s Monkey Morales, he was involved in the JF Kennedy assassination. That’s what everybody in Little Havana was saying. And so they weren’t allowed to come to my house anymore for fear of anything happening at my house that they would become, uh. Speaker 3: Involved and heard or something. So I grew up with that stigma, you know, uh, as a child. Wow. Speaker: Crazy. Well, like, do you guys, uh, Sean, did you did you get into investigating any of these pro anti-Castro groups down in Southern Miami? They were, it was Southern Florida. They were all kinds of little groups down there. Speaker 2: Yeah, so you’ve got Cuban exiles coming here [00:07:00] landing in the waiting arms of the CIA who are able to train arm, and with the intention of sending them back into Cuba to take care of Castro all the while keeping the US’ name. Off any documents. These, the, the brigade 2, 5, 0 6, uh, who were sent down for what became known as the, the Bay of Pigs failure, um, were, were, were shielded and, and, uh, masks as having been a part of, of any US operation. Speaker 2: Right. So, uh, I mean, we didn’t even. Provide the air cover for them. That’s a whole other ball of wax. But, so here are these guys well-trained. 1500 Cuban exiles, well-trained demolition experts, snipers, intelligence counterintelligence in one city, in a very concentrated area in one city, all with a [00:08:00] common mission. Speaker 2: And throughout this book, something that really differentiated. Those, the Cuban exiles and the crime that came with it, bombings, et cetera, was, and it differentiated from like typical Cosa Nostra or, or a lot of the other organized crime was that it was all mission based. This overarching mission for these guys in Miami was the anti-communism, anti-Castro movement. Speaker 2: Even something like. Ratting, which if you’ve watched Scorsese movies, you know that, you know, that’s the, that’s a death penalty in this community. These guys freely gave information to authorities. Because they could go get that guy and the mission kept moving and you weren’t marked for death. When you gave somebody up, it was seen as one [00:09:00] mission. Speaker 2: You fed some crumbs to the authorities, who by the way, were well behind the eight ball with trying to to learn the Cuban culture as it descended on South Florida, which was largely Jewish and Irish. Even the police officers, all the reports I have from those years. There’s no Spanish names of any kind until the seventies or right the turn of the sixties. Speaker 2: So, yeah, it, it was, you had such a concentrated area and, and a, and a law enforcement that was not prepared to deal. Speaker: Really? Now, Rick, that’s, uh, that’s Little Havana I think we’re talking about now. You grew up in what the, what’s known as Little Havana. That’s correct. Right. So, so your neighbors, I mean, how, how is it, you were all unified, I’d say, by this hatred of Castro and, and wanting to get back to Cuba. Speaker: Is that did that continue out throughout your whole life? How did that play out in your life? Speaker 3: Yeah, for the, for the people [00:10:00] that had come over from Puba, it was a singular objective. That’s why there were so many groups running around. The problem was the, the way some of the groups wanted to approach as versus others. Speaker 3: Uh, you had some groups that wanted to be extremely violent towards any international company that was doing business with Cuba, but they were, they were bombing places. They were wanting to bomb places with people on it, like ships. They were trying to bomb ships that were in the harbors of Cuba and in Miami. Speaker 3: My father was working with the FBI to make sure that that didn’t happen because then it’s an international problem. It’s no longer the US ’cause you’re allowing Cubans to use US soil to bomb international, uh, companies and, uh, and vessels and whatnot. So he was trying to stop the other factions from doing those things by supplying them with fake bombs.[00:11:00] Speaker 3: Bombs that didn’t work. If he liked the target, he would allow it to be a bomb that worked. So he would then report back to his police handlers, there’s a bomb here. There’s a bomb there. This one’s good, this one’s bad. You gotta find this one, you gotta take that one out. And all those things were going on while he was playing every every side. Speaker 3: Oh my God. So, yeah, Speaker: man. Talk about walking at tight wire. And Speaker 3: they, and my uncle, who is in the book Hector Corner, a lot, he ended up replacing bombs at businesses. They would always do it at night when there was nobody there in the office. The offices were closed. It was always make sure nobody gets injured. Speaker 3: The groups that were trying to injure people were the groups that my father was trying to infiltrate and, and give info on and give bad munitions. There’s one time where they’re trying to fire a bazooka at a Polish freighter, and my dad provides them the rounds. But they’re dummy rounds that they’ve painted green because the dummy rounds are blue and they’ve painted them green to look like [00:12:00] good rounds. Speaker 3: They fire it, it hits the ship, but it doesn’t explode. They can’t figure out why it didn’t explode. Oh, a dud, that’s too bad. Let’s get outta here. So they never sink the freighter and he knew it was a dud. And so he is, you know, if they find out he is the one that’s doing it, he’s, he is a dead man. You know? Speaker 3: He’s a dead man. It, it, it didn’t matter. He, he got by that so Speaker: well, maybe he was Speaker 3: trying to help and fight at the same time, not create a national incident, but still be able to do things against Castro. But he wanted to do it with the backing of the US as opposed to some other Cubans that wanted just to freelance it and do whatever they wanted really. Speaker: Which kind of, you know, gets us onto into the question of. CIA and training people, training the Bay of Pigs people and, and training other people. And, and your father monkey. And did he become known as Monkey Morales? By this point in time, Speaker 3: he becomes the Congo and the Congo in Africa. Um, what happens is the CIA creates a team called OP [00:13:00] 40, which is a specialized unit of assassins pilots, bomb makers, fighters, you know, specialized. Speaker 3: Certain things. And that Op 40 team is then used Inc. Conde Incandescent, and they’re sent to the Congo to fight against the Cubans that Castro has sent to the Congo to fight against the forces there. So they go to the Congo to fight, and there’s a very famous mission that Sean could tell you really better than I can. Speaker 3: He’s done the, a beautiful telling of the story, but there’s a, there’s a rescue mission that they go on. Fighting against the local and the Cubans that are there to rescue missionaries in the Congo. Speaker: Alright, yeah, Sean, tell us a little bit about that. Now, let’s, let’s set the scene. Castro sent soldiers over there to bring communism, correct? Speaker: Correct. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker: Africa, with the support of the Russians. Is that the Speaker 2: Russians? Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So this at the Belgian Congo, uh, and the United, the Speaker: United [00:14:00] States, the CIA now has got. Some anti-Castro Cubans put together into this team and sending them against the Cubans over in, uh, who are working for the Russians. Speaker: I tell you what guys this book is, is, yeah, is you gotta get it. This book has got some stories. Go ahead. Speaker 2: You could see why there are 675 footnotes at the end of this book, taking up a fair number of pages. So, yeah, so what you’ve got is the, the Belgian Congo, right? You, you’re, we’re trying to, uh, we send an interest, we have an interest in this, obviously ’cause of the spread of communism at the time. Speaker 2: And, uh, US boots on the ground is a, is a problem anywhere. You know, it needs sufficient justification so. Who can we go to? Well, our friends, the Cubans were tried to use them with Cuba and Castro. So this specialized OP 40 group is sent over to the Belgian Congo. Ricardo’s father, uh, [00:15:00] monkey is one of them. Speaker 2: And, um. He’s, he’s put there and they discover on their own. They’re not told much about this. The windows are blacked out, takes a couple of days to get over there. They don’t know where they’re going until the wheels hit the ground. And rip Robertson pulls open a map. And, and tells ’em this is where we are. Speaker 2: These are the areas we need to go to. And, uh, we need to, uh, we need to rescue this city, which, which has been over stanleyville, which, which had been overtaken by the rebels. Simba Rebels, very different enemy, uh, voodoo. I mean, they, they watched some hostages, spoke about being ensconced in a bank, looking out the window and having. Speaker 2: The, the Congolese army, the good guys, uh, lining the bank, keeping the people safe, who were inside, uh, missionaries politicians, business owners from Europe and the United States, [00:16:00] and a witch doctor is sent down the street by the rebels. Doing some spell and they watched their protectors, the Congolese army drop their weapons and abscond. Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and they were taken a hostage, obviously, so very different tactics than, than anyone was used to in the training of traditional warfare. So he gets over there and the story about the moniker monkey, it’s usually attributed to him because of the chaos he created. Or every organization for which he worked, which is certainly true, but the name was actually given to him by another Cuban in the Operation 40 Outfit. Speaker 2: One of the villages they happened upon, everyone had been slaughtered by the rebels and there was this little Congolese girl who was alone and they were kind of just marching through and Morales took her, threw her on his back. Whenever there wasn’t, whenever they weren’t going to encounter fire, [00:17:00] she stayed with them. Speaker 2: She slept with them, and he was always running around the jungle with a girl on his back. So one of the other soldiers says, Elon. Here comes the monkey running around with a baby on his back. So that’s how silly it really was when he first got that nickname. But then when he comes to, he’s in the US and everything’s going on in Miami, his connections to Lefty Rosenthal, which we’ll touch on. Speaker 2: The press falls in love with the moniker and they begin to splash monkey everywhere because of the chaotic, whimsical, wild actions of Ricardo Morales. But it was really just because he was running around with a baby on his back. Speaker 3: Oh wow. Great. Let me add something real quick there. Toria, the OP 40 team that they created was created in 61. Speaker 3: This is 68. We’re talking about the Congo. This is that OP 40 team that’s run by Sturgis. Which connects to Hunt, which connects to [00:18:00] JFK. So remember that when for later on, when we discuss JFFK guys, that the OP 40 team is created immediately upon the Cubans arriving in Miami 59. They’re in 60 and 61. So by 61 they’ve got this OP 40 team already created. Speaker 3: Barry Seale was one of the pilots. The original pilots, he was a smuggler in that movie. American made that starred Tom Cruise. So they’re the team and they’re control Sturgis, which works for Hunt, which then you see the connection with the team that gets put together and sent to Dallas. Which we can touch on later on. Speaker 3: That’s Frank. Speaker: Frank Sturgis. Right? Frank Sturgis. Correct. He was CI. He didn’t end up in Watergate. Also wasn’t, he wanted the Watergate burger. Correct? All of them are. That’s the whole thing. There’s a seam. Yeah. There’s a seam that runs through this. A, a string that runs through this whole thing. That’s all the way up to Watergate. Speaker: It’s a That is correct. It’s a half of this. All of that Speaker 3: comes from Op 40. Yeah. Sturgis [00:19:00] Hunt and that whole team. Created is, is created from OP 40, and that’s how they use all those Cubans in their specialties, snipers and bombers. Remember? Yeah. For the words. Speaker: Well, now, uh, El Mano, as we would say in Spanish. Speaker: Yeah, right? If I get that right. Rick El Yeah. You got it right? Yeah. Is how, how’s it getting all this publicity at the time? I mean, is somebody uh, has it got a publicity, an agent out here feeding the, well, actually y. Speaker 3: A story. Speaker: Sean, Speaker 3: go for Speaker: it Speaker 3: man. You want, you want me to say it? Which, which story? How he’s getting the news because he is got an uncle who runs that, that works at the Herald and his girlfriend. Speaker 3: Yeah, he had family in Speaker 2: in the Herald uncle. Speaker 3: My uncle, my dad’s sister’s husband is an editor at the Miami Herald at the time, and he is the first editor in Spanish in Miami at the time. And his second wife was a reporter for. Harald also, which [00:20:00] he eventually marries her. So he had connections at the Miami Herald and a lot, knew a lot of Cubans in power. Speaker 3: So the stories would get out in the news the way he wanted them, the way he wanted to get out into the news. There you go. So there’s always a connection. Yes. Speaker: Yeah. Which, which gave uh, Sean a lot of fodder to go out and find Yes. Stories. I mean, that’s invaluable, that kind of stuff. Speaker 2: The, the, the press, the, the old newspapers was definitely invaluable. Speaker 2: But also it, this is a good time to write a book like this because of, because of the internet. My god, I sound like I’m 95 years old. The internet makes it all easy, but the access to documentation. Yeah, I know. CIA documentation, FBI, white House memos. We were talking earlier about the US trying to keep its fingerprints off anything. Speaker 2: Clandestine like this, but still take action against Castro or in the Belgian Congo [00:21:00] and the lengths to which after the failure of the Bay of Pigs, the lengths to which they considered doing things to justify putting American boots on the soil in Cuba. I have a memo, a joint Chiefs of staff memo to Kennedy. Speaker 2: Where they were considering sinking boatloads of incoming Cubans or setting off bombs in areas in Miami, basically killing Cubans that we’ve taken. Yeah. Assigning it to an agent from Cuba to justify going down there. Yeah. Red Speaker 3: flying operation. Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I recreate part of that memo in the book there. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow. Crazy. One of the things, Gary, I, I, if, if I may, uh, that we touched on before where Rick was saying the Cubans were great at. Knocking out targets without a body count. Ships, offices, warehouses. [00:22:00] That was one of the things that attracted Lefty Rosenthal to monkey. He was first working with Louis Posada, uh, another OP 40 who was on his way to Venezuela placed there by the CIA to run intelligence. Speaker 2: In a, a friendly country at the tip of South America, you know, also mi just miles from Cuba. Mm-hmm. So lefty would always say the orders from the outfit, no body count. We need this taken out. We need, when they were trying to, you know, Florida was kind of an open. Flea market for organized crime. You had a genuflect at the bench of Santo, but then you could work Florida. Speaker 2: So, um, when Lefty was down there to kind of get a stranglehold on the, the bookies for the outfit, Giana, one of the things that Morales, that attracted Morales to him was his ability to get very difficult jobs, done a boat in the water [00:23:00] a house the wall of a gambling parlor, just the wall, nobody else taken out. Speaker 2: Those were the things that Lefty most respected about, uh, about Morales’s craftsmanship. Speaker 3: Yeah. Adding to that, a lot of people don’t realize that they think that the drug wars and the Cuban wars and all that in Miami, but if you really look at it and you look at all those bookie wars and where they had a, they were, uh, tracking the bombings. Speaker 3: They had a, the newspaper had a tracker on, and every day how many bombs have been placed and how many bomb had gone off, there was zero body count. Even Cubans killing Cubans, they didn’t kill anybody else. Like if you were going to kill somebody. There was, let’s say you were putting a bomb in a car and he brought his wife with him. Speaker 3: The bombing was off. Mm-hmm. Child, children are off limits. Family members were off limits. Nobody, there was no, no, uh, collateral damage to say, so you, they had, it [00:24:00] was, they had this conscience about making sure that they didn’t kill innocent people. And you’ll see it, you can go back and Google. There’s no deaths. Speaker 3: There’s nobody dead in most of these unless it’s a directed target that you’re trying to kill, which was what happened where it went wrong with the Orlando Let Air bombing. He was a Chilean diplomat working for the Chilean government at the United Nations, and they put a hit on him and the, there was a Cuban hit squad that went after him and his mistress was in the car with him. Speaker 3: They blew up the car and killed them both. And my dad made a point of saying if I had been involved, that woman would be alive because we never kill women. We honor women. We don’t murder women. So yeah, there was code of ethics, code of conduct, but it still didn’t stop ’em from placing the bombs. But at least they had, uh, the code of ethics, the Cubans did in Miami at that time. Speaker 3: That’s before, gotta have a [00:25:00] code. Man’s got even with a co code as they say. Yeah, there was a code. There was a code, yeah. Till the Colombians came in. Then when the Colombians came in, everything went out the window. Speaker: I’ve read, I’ve read that, you know, and that no collateral damage of somebody was talking on some, somebody I was interviewing about, there’s very few bombings in New York City between mobsters like some other cities because New York is so. Speaker: Congested and there’s so many people around all the time, and they do not like collateral damage. It, it brings down the heat like you can’t believe, right. So you’re talking about, uh, lefty Rosenthal. There’s a story in there I thought was kind of interesting when, uh, when El Mano first met, uh, lefty and then he, he had a friend, a guy named John Clarence Cook, who was a master jewel thief, kind of a, these mob guys, they move into another city and, and then they. Speaker: They gather all the professional criminals around them. They’re just attract ’em like flies, I think. Yes. Because everybody knows that’s where the connections are to other cities and job big jobs and things like that. [00:26:00] So, can you guys tell us a little bit about that story that, that, uh, lefty and, and, uh, monkey Morales? Speaker: I’m get started in Speaker 3: Sean. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll get it started. I know there was, there was a robbery at the Museum of National History, I believe it was. Massachusetts, Boston, New York? No, the one in New York. New York. New York. Oh, sorry. New York. And, uh, they stole a bunch of diamonds and, and whatnot from, uh, from the museum. Speaker 3: And they got away with it. The guy was nicknamed Murph to surf. Yeah. Who, uh, who did, uh, the theft and then, then my. Then Lefty becomes involved because he wants something Speaker 2: so, well, John Clarence Cook was good friends with Murph, the Surf, and Alan Kuhn also, who is the other, uh, party responsible for the theft of the, the sapphire of India was the big jewel that was taken in that, in that theft. Speaker 2: But the, the initial job that Lefty has Morales do is a cleanup of a [00:27:00] job that Louis Posada. Former CIA Operation 40 had blown, there was a newsstand, Alfie’s 24 hour newsstand, which was a haven for gamblers basically. And uh, and next to it was Epicure Food Market. Um, epicure is bombed one night, oddly. Speaker 2: There’s no Cuban interest in this, so law enforcement that’s been tracking with the help of the Miami Herald’s bombing box score, which did appear in there, we just keep a count of all the bombs in the city. This was weird that and uh, dry cleaning, Jack Rands dry cleaning on Alton Road in Miami Beach. Speaker 2: But what these two things had in common was. Chappy was a bookie. Mm-hmm. But also next to Epicure Food Mart was Alfie’s, which was a news stand where the bookies hung out. So now you have two. The proximity was, was interesting. Louis had goofed and bombed the wrong place. [00:28:00] So Lefty said, I need Alfie’s hit not epicure. Speaker 2: So, uh, POS is headed to Venezuela to do his, uh, CIA work down there. So he introduces Morales to lefty. He says, I, there’s a glass partition in the back. I just need the partition taken out with a bomb. No body count. I need a reason for police to respond because they were all, there was already an agreement that once the police got there, they would go to the back and bust the bookie operation for Lefty and Company. Speaker 2: So that’s the first job. Morales gets it done. And then the second one involves, uh, John Clarence Cook. Cook needs somebody bombed. They, uh, an, an address is provided. He just wants the property bombed front of the house. Lawn Landscaping Morales does it to his dismay. He [00:29:00] sees in the newspaper the following day. Speaker 2: It was a policeman’s house that also violated a code. For him. And he was, he was pretty angry with Lefty. Um, lefty couldn’t share everything obviously with his, with the operatives he was hiring. So, um, he, Morales was initially told someone was bothering Clarence Cook’s son, but it happened to be a cop. So that, yeah, that, that’s the initial, that’s the initial introduction to John Clarence Cook into this fold, master Jewel Thief. Speaker 2: And then, um. Eventually lefty hires morales to bomb Clarence Cook’s property, a boat in the, uh, in the, in the bay behind him, as well as a car in the, uh, in the, in the carport also. Speaker: Yeah, he, and he was, uh, trying to line up the book. He’s kinda like Allah, Chicago. I remember I did a story once, a guy named Joe Ferry, Olin. Speaker: He said, we need [00:30:00] to line up all these bookies, just like Capone had all the uh, uh, bootleggers lined up and Right, you know, kick up and so lefty. Then I guess he was probably sent down there with that idea to line up all the gambling that he could and kick back up to Chicago. So there was also. Go ahead. Speaker: Mr. Morales along on one of those jobs, he doesn’t really know what he’s getting into, I don’t think. Right. Speaker 3: That I, I don’t think my father knew why Rosie, why Rosenthal took ’em with him that day. But I’m pretty sure there a lefty knew that the guy was fencing the jewels from the occasion where they stole those, those diamonds, whatever were left over. Speaker 3: So at some point. My father pulls out his gun and shoots him in the, and it goes through his eye, I believe. Hyman Speaker 2: Gordon High. Gordon Speaker 3: High Gordon was, it’s the fence. He’s the fence. And they shoot High Gordon. And, uh, there, I don’t know if they stole all the, I’m guessing there must have something from him. Speaker 3: They wouldn’t have. [00:31:00] But we don’t, I don’t know what it was. Speaker 2: This is also unique, uh, a unique time in his life Gary because. He’s for the first time and only time taking jobs outside of that overarching mission of the Cuban bombers. Yeah. This is organized crime now. It’s a contract job, right? It’s, it’s a, it’s a 10 99 yeah’s. Speaker 2: It’s not. It’s not for the mission and when it ends. Something we had to talk about, Rick and I was well. Lefty, this is his stop before Las Vegas, as you know, Gary and, and his and his buddy Tony from, from Chicago head to Vegas. Why? Would an operative so effective as morales not have been asked to go, and the likely answer is whether he was asked or not to accompany him. Speaker 2: He wouldn’t have because it was, [00:32:00] it was not mission-based. It was, it was a money thing and a job thing, and that was not really where he, and, and the, the violent Cuban exiles that, that had that overarching mission in. Mind. They didn’t do stuff like this, so he needed money. He was, he was back in Miami after the Con Belgian Congo. Speaker 2: So he takes this job, he works for Lefty for the better part of a year, and then left Lefty moves on to Vegas and Morales stays there and works with the bombing roots there until he himself is placed as the one of the commandants in. Venezuelan Security Dsip, D-I-S-I-P, their agency. But you joined some other Cubans down there. Speaker: Crazy. Yeah. Let’s, uh, let’s, let’s do one more story here. Let’s talk about, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald in a CIA camp. So, uh, yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit. Speaker 3: Sure. When, uh, when, when I was about [00:33:00] 18, 19, this is about a year before my father was killed. So he had been in the Witness protection program for a little bit. Speaker 3: They had put him up in New, in New York, somewhere in the city, in one of the boroughs. And he was unhappy. He didn’t wanna be there, he didn’t wanna live that life hiding and getting a job and whatnot. That wasn’t gonna work for him. So he gave up his witness protection program and he just went back to Miami on his own. Speaker 3: And, uh, so. He, uh, used to show up. What he would do with us, with us and my brothers and whatnot would be, he would show up out of the blue. He would never call us and tell us I’m coming by or anything. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: We’d be playing basketball or something and take a shot, turn around, there’s the car parked, get in. Speaker 3: There were a couple of times where we would go. He would take us out to the Everglades to teach us how to shoot, so we’d be out there shooting with him and there was a couple of occasions where we were shooting and stuff and whatnot. This last time that he took us. He, uh, [00:34:00] he was different ’cause he, he was worried that he had no protection. Speaker 3: He had multiple contracts on him that were valid contracts of people that were trying to kill him in Miami. So I think, and he was also planning a book that he was writing, that was his exit strategy. He was gonna write a book about his life and he had already had been given new identity. He was gonna move to Spain with the royalties from the book and, uh, just disappear and, and go to Spain. Speaker 3: That was his plan. So he was worried that he would never see us again and he could die. So he was talking about stuff that he had never talked to us about from his past, and he asked us to ask any question we wanted and I wasn’t asking a question ’cause I really wasn’t a fan. I grew up a little bit, miss, you know, oil and vinegar with my dad. Speaker 3: Uh, but my brother asked if he was involved in the JFK shooting. He asked him straight up, did you kill JFK? And he said, no, I didn’t kill JFK, but [00:35:00] I was in Dallas that day. And we asked him, what were you doing in Dallas? He goes, well, I was sent to be a cleaning team. And that’s what we did. I took him to Dallas, waited for a phone call. Speaker 3: The phone call we got was go home because obviously. The had been assassinated. So there was nothing for him to do. It was for after action if something had gone wrong, to eliminate people or whatnot. So that was the first thing he told us. And then the second thing he told us was like, we asked him, did, uh, do you think Oswald killed him? Speaker 3: And he says, there’s no way that guy killed him. Because I saw that guy in a CIA training camp sometime before that assassination, and he couldn’t shoot. He could barely shoot. So he was a barely, you know, when they say a marksman in the Marine, that’s a guy sitting static shooting at a static target at a distance. Speaker 3: Yeah. I’m a master sniper in the Marines, if you want to say that. [00:36:00] What we’re talking about is training people to shoot at moving targets. Mm-hmm. And at moving targets was what he was training on. He was not good. And my dad has a photo. Memory, you, his people from his pass will tell you he would drive through town and ride alongs with his cop friends and they would write down 40 tags and he would tell you the 40 tags later on. Speaker 3: So one are they? If he saw you, he remembered you. Yeah. So I believe him when he says he saw him. Now, whether it was a year before, but. And it wasn’t at some camp where there’s thousands of people, it’s just five, six people that he’s helping to train. So he has that memory of seeing him at a camp training to shoot and maybe the CIA was just putting him out there so people would see him so that later on they would say, you know, I saw this guy training or whatever. Speaker 3: Who knows? ’cause they, but they [00:37:00] were. That’s what he was doing. And he says At the static targets, yeah. Everybody that comes from the Marine Corps can hit a static target pretty good. But moving targets, that’s a different story. And also in real life, your heart’s racing, you know, it’s, it’s a, a sniper knows how to control the environment around them. Speaker 3: And all the things that come into shooting. Oswald missed the easiest shot, the first shot. ’cause after that. You’re nervous, you’re reloading, you’re moving. The first one, you’re sitting there waiting, and so if you couldn’t hit the first one, which was closest and easiest. The next ones are impossible. So really he didn’t, that’s, and he told us there’s no way he would’ve hit ’em anyway if he was moving. Speaker 3: Yeah. So Speaker: now, Sean, did you, there’s been a lot of documents released from this JFK thing even more recently. Even more, and I know you probably spent hours and hours in these documents. What, what, what were you finding? Were you finding any of this in there? [00:38:00] Speaker 2: The thing that the commonality in many of these documents. Speaker 2: As of the, as of the publication or when we had to turn it in there were still 15,000 outstanding. I think after the last release there’s still about 5,000 outstanding in what has been declassified and we see what are the commonalities in all of them? Gary Cubans, they appear a ton in the declassified JFK documents, Cubans. Speaker 2: Brigade 2 5 0 6 CIA, Tran Cubans and the Mob. Speaker: Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: And, um, you’ve probably seen read and covered a lot of, a lot of what I saw, like where they were again, white House memos about involving traffic ante Ana in, in, in, um, first in, um, uh, uh, in, in Cuba with [00:39:00] Castro. So there’s a relationship, there’s an off to the side relationship with our government and the mob. Speaker 2: So their names appear the, the Cubans, it’s. It’s, there’s so much and so much has happened with blogs and vlogs and documentaries. You could just search JFK assassination on Amazon and you’ve got every Cucamonga theory in the world, and they all carry different weight. So it’s a story that continues to invite interpretation. Speaker 2: Because there’s no real smoking gun, there are no real answers. The best you can do is use a little logic and extrapolate what would’ve been feasible and reasonable at the time. And, um, there’s never gonna be a smoke. You can release every document, Gary. There’s never gonna be anything on paper where a government implicates itself. Speaker 2: Or someone working with [00:40:00] them. Speaker 3: Yeah. Let me add something to that. There, there was some new releases on, uh, file, which is, that shows that the CIA, which is a Cuban file that they’ve been holding, the CIA’s been holding and now wanting to release, where it shows that the Ccia a had been monitoring Oswald for a period of time before and had been even going through his mail. Speaker 3: So the CIA knew who he was. More than they let on, and that just came out. So there is, and there is a, the files that they’re holding onto the most are anything that has to do with the Cubans and that makes you wonder why those are the files that they hold onto the most because, and then the, what did they get rid of? Speaker 3: You know, the burn bags must have been in, uh, you know, hundreds. Yeah. So, but there’s new files that show more CIA knowledge. Than they ever let on about what they knew about Oswald, how much [00:41:00] they followed Oswald, how much contact they had with Oswald. Were they working Oswald, were they just following him or were they directing him? Speaker 3: Those are the papers that are all missing. The outer stuff is there showing contact and, and surveillance and, and all those things. You’re just never gonna find a document that says. We want you to go to Dallas and kill the president, you’re not gonna find it. It’s just not gonna exist. And everybody’s dead now. Speaker 3: So they, they’ve achieved, they wait till everybody’s dead and they destroy the papers that connect. And now we’re left with. Speculation for the rest of our long lives. Speaker: Very, very, very, very interesting guys. I would highly recommend you get this book if I know a lot of people out there are really interested in this, uh, JFK thing, but, but the whole story of Cubans and, and Castro and the CIA is just fascinating and I hope you get this [00:42:00] sold and made it into a miniseries for. Speaker: Netflix because that’s, uh, your lips to God’s ears. It’d be a hell of a show if they do it right. You never know. Speaker 2: An expensive show. Maybe you can finance it. Gary. I don’t know what, what? Yeah, Speaker: I don’t know what your nest, your retirement, Speaker 2: nest egg from. We’re always looking for Speaker: help. Yeah, I know what you mean, man. Speaker: All right, guys. Uh. Rick Morales Jr. And Sean Oliver, and the book is Monkey Morales, the true story of a Mythic Cuban exile Assassin, CIA operative FBI, informant smuggler, and Dad and dad. So it’s, it’s a hell of a story. Guys, I really appreciate y’all coming on. We appreciate you having Speaker 3: us. Speaker: All right. Bye.

Transcribed - Published: 3 November 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins welcomes author Gregory Macalino, whose book “Little Pussy and Long Branch: Perfect Together” offers a deep dive into New Jersey’s underworld and the life of one of its most notorious figures—Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo. Gregory begins by sharing his own story, growing up in Monmouth County amid the Italian-American enclaves where whispers of mob activity were part of daily life. His firsthand familiarity with the gambling, politics, and personalities that shaped the Jersey Shore inspired him to explore Russo’s remarkable and brutal reign. Gary and Gregory trace Little Pussy Russo’s rise from a small-time Newark street thief to a powerful player in the Genovese crime family, detailing how he infiltrated Long Branch’s political and law enforcement circles to control the town for over twenty years. Gregory explains Russo’s business acumen, his use of gambling and real estate ventures to mask criminal operations, and the dangerous rivalries that emerged with independent drug dealers who threatened his dominance. Listeners will hear how Little Pussy Russo’s empire ultimately unraveled amid violence, betrayal, and federal pressure. Gregory recounts dramatic gangland episodes, family connections, and the eventual collapse of a criminal fiefdom that had once seemed untouchable. The conversation also touches on how Russo’s world parallels modern portrayals of mob life—especially The Sopranos—revealing just how much real New Jersey mobsters influenced America’s favorite mafia fiction. As the discussion closes, Gregory reflects on the lasting cultural footprint of men like Russo and what their stories teach us about power, corruption, and community identity. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. For those of you who don’t know me, most of you do, I think, sometimes, a lot of repeat listeners out there, and I really appreciate all you guys that always come back and make comments on my YouTube channel and comment on my Gangland Wire podcast group page, and so I really appreciate all you. And for you guys that don’t know me, I was with the Kansas City Police Department. I spent about 14 years in the intelligence unit. We worked the Sabella crime family here in Kansas city and a variety of other things like that, uh, retired and did a couple other things and find out my last retirement gig is I’m a podcaster. And then this has just been so much fun for me, guys. I really appreciate all your support. I’m getting to know all these authors all around the United States. There’s not a place. If you’re an intelligence, you like to have contacts where you can learn something or find out something or get something done. Well, there’s not any city, I don’t think, in the United States, I don’t know somebody that’s been on my podcast that I can call them up or email them and say, what about this or what about that?   [1:06] So it’s really broadened my life and this made my life much richer. So anyhow, today, without further ado, we have Gregory Macalino. Gregory, welcome.   [1:17] Thank you. Great to be here, really, truly. Yeah, well, I really, as I told you when we were talking before, I really am pleased about getting you on the show and about your book that you wrote, Little Pussy and Long Branch, Perfect Together. This is about New Jersey and not just like New Jersey, just across the river, but down into New Jersey. And there’s a lot of mafia activity that went on down there. And I’ve not really covered it very much, just a little bit. Years ago, Scott D.J. did a book. Uh, I can’t remember the name of it now that got up into New Jersey. Uh, gang state, or I’m sorry, garden state gangland, garden state gangland. Yeah. And that was a God, that was, I was one of my early interviews. I sometime maybe in the first year, like five or six years ago. So.   [2:04] Gregory has put together a book about Anthony Little Pussy and Long Branch, which is part of the Genovese family. And he has really studied this, but he grew up here. So, Gregory, tell us about your life. And you grew up in this area in Monmouth County and Long Branch. And what did you see that then stirred you to eventually write this book about it? Well you know um being in lawn branch you will find out that there is a huge italian community and someone everybody knew everybody that knew someone that was connected and somehow and not like heavy hitters or anything like that but more like you know there was tons and tons of bookies there was numbers runners uh the local the local mob dudes used to hire high school kids that I went to high school with to be the runners.   [2:56] And so everybody knew somebody that was connected. And you couldn’t help but know. And as you read the book, you will come to find out that Little Pussy completely infiltrated the whole municipality in terms of the local politicians, the city council.   [3:14] There’s accusations of the police chief. There’s also Monmouth County police higher-ups that he completely corrupted and he basically ran the town of long branch for 20 years and he was in headlines constantly making headlines for 20 years and you’ll be amazed that there used to be a local newspaper it was over 100 years old it was called um the the daily register i’m sorry the daily record it was out of long branch it was over 100 years old it stopped i think it started in the 1880s and it stopped in like the late 1970s so or just around just about 100 years old and And if you went a month without a blaring headline about the mob in Long Branch, you’d be completely surprised. Because I went through micro-spice and tons of records from the old newspapers. And every other week, there was some big major headline about Anthony Pussy Russo and his little gang of guys and what was going down.   [4:14] And it was prevalent. It was just a constant. It’s amazing. I believe it. I tell you a little side story. Uh, when my son was in high school, he had this friend from who actually spent all of his life up until they got to high school and his dad moved back here in Tom’s river, New Jersey, which is kind of down in that area. And so my son, what they had, he loves sports and this kid loves sports. And he had, I looked down what he had. He had a parlay card. I said, where did you get that? He said, oh, he said, Eddie gets them. His dad gets them at work. He gets them from some guy that has one of those, uh, tow main wagons that comes around those coffee wagons and he gets them. And so we’re making our picks. I said, what are you doing?   [5:02] And he said, well, you know, I don’t know. Big Ed got them, gave them to Eddie’s, you know, we’re just making our picks. We like put five bucks down or I think like put, I think only put a dollar, a dollar down on our picks. I just said, oh my God. I tell you what, we didn’t have anything like that growing up, but in Tom’s River, New Jersey and Long Branch in New Jersey, that was pretty prevalent. I got to say, you probably saw stuff like that yourself when you were in high school and on up since then. Yeah. That’s like, that’s like 40 minutes South of Long Branch. Also, Eddie Murphy, Eddie will be so proud of me to do this show. And I have to, I got to get ahold of him as soon as I get off of here.   [5:42] And I’ll probably give him this book after I get done with it. Cause he’ll be really excited to read it. Anyhow, let’s talk about Anthony big pussy Russo.   [5:54] And, and he was, he was little pussy. His brother was big pussy. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. I got a little pussy. I just, my, my, I was trying to do two things at once in my mind. So go ahead. You go ahead and start telling us about this guy. Okay. So Auntie Little Pussy is from the Newark area. They migrated up to Newark from Brazil, the family. They were from a lot of Italians. Half of the Italians went to America and half the other Italians went to South America. So his family went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, I believe, and then they migrated to Newark. And he was born 1916, I believe. He was one of 13 children. the father died early and so he was on the streets of newark and he had two older brothers one was called ralph and the other one was called john ralph and john started working for richie boyardo who was a big you know big time bootlegger in newark and this is before the mafia was formulated before you know there was five family all that this is during prohibition and and So Anthony was like the runt of the family, and he idolized his brother, John.   [7:05] Well, one thing led to another. They all started working for Richie Boyardo. The only reason Anthony Little Pussy rose to the heights he did is because of his brother, John. John was the opposite of him. Anthony was boisterous, a loudmouth. He loved to draw attention to himself and supposedly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. But his brother was the total opposite of him. And he was a heavy hitter. He ended up going to jail in the 20s for a prohibition murder in the service of Richie the Boot. But because Richie at this point had influence, the 30-year stint that John got was reduced to only 10 years he got out. Meanwhile, the older brother, Ralph, was an incorrigible, unbelievable, and he was being told constantly by Richie the Boot, cool it, cool it, cool it. He didn’t. And supposedly, with the two brothers knowing, a little pussy and big pussy, knowing that Richie was going to whack their older brother, Ralph… It was okay with them. That’s how incorrigible and a wild man the older brother was.   [8:12] Well, so they went from, and the way they got their nicknames, by the way. Yeah, I was just getting ready to ask that. They got to tell us about the nicknames. Yeah. So, and of course, this comes from the Sopranos as well. The Sopranos bought this. Yeah. You’re right. So with Ralph dead, the two brothers had been, before they joined Richie’s gang, they had been petty thieves. But they were renowned for being great cat burglars because they could climb up you know they were very athletic they could climb up the drainage pipes break into buildings second, story men b and e guys and they were renowned for doing that and when they when they became known throughout the streets of as because they were cat burglars as big pussy and little pussy so that’s where that’s where that comes all right okay so then they said right so And then they joined Richie the Boot’s organization full-time through Prohibition and then later into the 30s. And then, you know, Richie the Boot came under the auspices of the Genovese family through Lucky Luciano. Before it was even called the Genovese family, it was the Luciano family. And he had some problems in Newark with the Jewish gangsters, Longy Zwillman. And Longy Zwillman, you know, had some big associates. I mean, he was really good friends with Lucky Luciano. And he was very good friends with Al Capone, where Richie the Boot was not, regardless that he was Italian and he was Jewish. But they had a gang war. But after a while, it was settled. They became really good friends, as a matter of fact, Richie the Boot and Longy.   [9:41] And as he grew in all his endeavors, which after Prohibition, of course, included gambling, number one, try-locking, number two,   [9:50] and the numbers running policy racket. That’s where the Pussy Brothers went from being petty criminals to racketeers. And they just moved up and up and up. So now how did they end up down in Long Branch? We got Newark, but Long Branch, what you described for me is, what, an hour, a couple hours south of Newark, mid-state along the coast. It’s 50 minutes. Without traffic, it’s a 50-minute ride south from Newark to Long Branch. 50 minutes. Okay. And the way that happened was this. in, you know, I don’t know if you saw the movie The Alto Knights, the story of Costello and Vito Genovese. Those two were engaged in a, you know, for who was going to run the family. Right. The Luciano family. As we know, Vito Genovese’s chauffeur bodyguard, Vincent de Cingiganti, took a shot at Costello, wounded him, but he had to go on the lam because a doorman had witnessed and recognized him. While he was on the lam, Vito Genovese needed a new driver. So he asked Richie the Boot, give me one of your best guys to be my driving bodyguard.   [11:01] Well, everybody thought that big pussy, John, big pussy should get that gig, but Richie didn’t want to give him up because he was so valuable to him. He gave up his younger brother, little pussy, who at this point in the late 50s was annoying everybody in Newark.   [11:20] If it wasn’t for John… they would have not tolerated Anthony Little Pussy Russo. They would have probably killed him in the 50s. But he ended up getting the job as the chauffeur for Vito Genovese. As you know, that is a big-time position. That opens you up to—I mean, there’s been—Vincent Giganti was Vito’s chauffeur, and he ended up being the godfather. Other ones become—underbosses, other become powerful lieutenants and captains. So this was like a plum job to get. And he got it and the reason why he got it is as as loud mouth as he was and not as smart, he had two things going for him he was able to pull a pistol and shoot people yeah yeah which which you know when you’re doing bodyguard detail is a must but he could also make money he was he had he had a penchant for making money and and after at this point not so much i mean he was doing okay with his his what do you call it to the machines that they put in bars you know he had like Poker, slot machines, video poker. Back then it was slot machines. Now it’s video poker. Yeah, Joker. Joker, right. I know, pinball. So he had that going. And, you know, gambling and sports betting and even loan shark and all that. But so anyway, to answer your question was.   [12:37] Vito Genovese used to come to Jersey a lot. And when he came to Jersey a lot, he used to go to Long Branch a lot because there was a huge concentration of Italians there for about forever. And Vito ended up buying a lot of properties, a lot of businesses. Okay.   [12:53] And then his daughter ended up marrying a guy that lived in Long Branch by the name of Pat Simonetti. And Pat Simonetti was originally from Newark as well. A ton of people,   [13:03] everybody, all the Italians that were from Long Branch had migrated down from Newark. Okay okay it wasn’t only just a a summertime resort destination when it it also became home to a lot of these people that decided to leave newark so so next thing you know while little pussy is driving for veto he ended up spending a lot of time in lawn branch made a lot of friends, and veto used to school him you know buy property buy property you know it’s the best thing well Well, then that gig only lasted less than two years as his chauffeur because Vito ended up getting convicted and going to prison for narcotics trafficking. Okay. So at this point, everybody thought that Anthony Little Pussy Russo was going to be like, you know, disappear, you know, not ever be heard of again. But while in jail, Vito wanted Long Branch to open up Long Branch for the rackets. He saw real potential down there and he actually liked, a lot of people didn’t like Anthony Russo but Vito did, and he thought he was funny, that’s what I’ve been told, he thought he had a good sense of humor he was very voicey, so he instructed Richie the Boot.   [14:16] To put Anthony in charge of the Monmouth County Rackets with the mission control seat being in Long Branch. And next thing you know, Little Pussy started buying a lot of businesses in town, started making more money. And this is the point where he starts making a lot of money because now he learned the real estate business. He learned labor racketeering. And when you read the book, you’ll be amazed at how many legitimate businesses as he owned, including golf courses, hotels, mega restaurants, pharmacies, delis. He was all over the place.   [14:56] Wow. So now he’s got, he’s basically a crew now. Did he like become a capo or how did they refer to him as a capo down in New Jersey? Right. That’s funny how you became that because he was still just a soldier. But because Vito had picked him to be the, you know, to give him a territory to run. But I was told that there is sometimes they use for a cop, they use the word captain or they use lieutenant. Well, I’ve been told, I’ve been told that it’s sort of like a lieutenant was   [15:31] just under a captain, but over regular soldiers. Just like that’s our police department. Yeah. Right. Right. So exactly. So this is where he was. So technically, in a weird way, a little pussy, who had never been respected much within his best brethren, had actually risen to a higher position than his brother, who was very, very respected, technically.   [15:58] Oh, interesting. Because he was such a big moneymaker and had people under him and had a lot of power. I mean, you got a lot of people under you. He’s going to have political power down there. I assume he was instrumental in buying off the police and all the everybody in that county down there.   [16:15] Yeah. They owned that county politically, didn’t they? Correct. Absolutely. He did. And it wasn’t just that. And whenever Richie DeBoot needed him to go far and wide, he sent him down to the Caribbean to take over the casinos down there. He sent him to Las Vegas, where by the weirdest coincidences, they infiltrated a small mom and pop casino. Nothing, I mean, like almost like a joke of a casino. But it just so happened this casino happened to be owned by two guys from Long Branch over here. They own this outpost of the casino.   [16:51] The Jolly Trolley Casino, and Pussy Russo infiltrated it. And again, he was always seen as not too smart in making these absurd assumptions and all this. But there is a scene where, from the movie Casino, the character played by Joe Pesci, he was a real-life gangster by the name of Anthony Spilatro. They nicknamed him Ant. He was a very, very scary individual. well he happened to have a a jewelry store called the gold mind right behind the jolly trolley casino and he was extorting the casino okay and he said yeah well then pussy russo shows up there and there’s an encounter between the two and yeah and pussy russo didn’t know didn’t didn’t know when to shut up okay he always kind of made himself out the bigger he was and he gotten into Spolaccio’s face and threatened to kill him on the spot.   [17:53] You know, Spolaccio was someone you didn’t do that to, but Spolaccio then, figured out who he was and that he was hooked up with Richie the Boot. And if you know about anything about Richie the Boot, he was a very scary person himself. And you’ve probably heard of the famous, or maybe you haven’t, but I’ll tell you now, of the incinerator that he had way back in his… Did you ever hear that? No, I didn’t hear that one. Okay. There’s a great book called In the Godfather Garden. It’s all about Richie the Boot. and he was known to have he had 60 acres I think 30 acres up in Livingston and way way way back in the forest he had like a great like a big grill, giant, human sized grill where he was known to get rid of his yeah.   [18:46] It’s actually, they actually recorded them having this conversation on those books in the early 1960s, you know the Cavalicante family and pussy Russo’s on there talking about it so as as scary as Anthony Spilatro was he had heard rumors about the the newer crew and they were and he backed down and he backed down to Russo yeah that’s interesting that’s kind of like mob deal you know like if if somebody’s connected guy if you find out somebody’s a connected guy you got to hold that back and then go to the bosses and And then let them talk about it and then   [19:23] figure out what you’re going to do. And it’s Latro. He was a violent guy, but he knew the rules. He did know the rules. Right. No. And almost pussy Russo almost didn’t, you know, it’s like, he just, you know, acted. He was a reactionary, but in this one time it worked in his favor.   [19:42] Ah, interesting. That was, that’s crazy. And, and, and so they were, I believe that, did he just move in on these guys because they were from Long Branch and he was so intimidating that, that they just start giving him a piece of it. Is that how that worked? Cause you know, normally these casinos were controlled by mob because they arranged for loans from the Teamsters pension fund. But I don’t sense that was going on here. This is what happened. So the guys that owned the casino in, in Las Vegas that lived here in Long Branch. These three guys, two of them lived in Long Branch. There were three of them. These three guys owned about 10 restaurants in the Long Branch area. Well-to-do restaurants, classy restaurants. Okay. So two things are happening. One, these three guys are being extorted by Anthony Spolatro in Vegas and they didn’t like it. Okay. The other thing is when Pussy Russo found out that the guys that owned that casino were living in Long Branch, he sent his men to all the restaurants and said, look, you’re going to have labor problems here. You’re going to have picketing out front. We’re going to, we’re going to unionize all your, so they said, give us a piece of that casino or you’re going to have union problems. Okay. Well, they all heard about Pussy Russo. They knew who he was. They knew he was like as serious as any thing can be.   [20:58] And in a weird way, it was, they were happy to get Pussy Russo to get the aunt out of there, to get Spolaccio. who they didn’t like. So, by the way, those three guys ended up going to prison. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. They were like, you know, rich guys that owned, you know, well, they went, two of them went to prison. I think the third one didn’t for some reason. I can’t remember correctly, but it’s an interesting story.   [21:25] Yeah, that’s, Little Pussy, that’s a name that was real familiar in The Sopranos. And you mentioned when we were talking about how David Chase must have read that. Now, was there some of these stories that you remember that are really ripped from real life here in Long Branch? Okay, so this is going to blow your mind too, and you’re probably going to think it’s not true, but it is. Okay, about three years ago, I used to own a bar, a rock and roll bar. It was called the Brighton Bar, okay? And it’s one of the oldest rock and roll original, not cover bands, right? Not doing original rock and roll venues. you know they started doing original music in the mid 70s like 74 i ended up buying it in the 96 and i sold it in 2022 okay okay it’s the only rock and roll joint in long branch for mega years and again it’s original so i don’t know if you’re you know familiar with the sopranos there is a whole two years worth of a story where.   [22:36] The character Montessanti, Christopher Montessanti. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Girlfriend take over a live rock and roll bar in Long Branch, New Jersey. Yeah, I remember that, yeah. And being convinced by the FBI and the state police for illegal activities with drugs and all that, okay? That directly comes from my bar, Brighton Bar, okay? Everybody knew it. And as a matter of fact, on two different episodes, while in the bar they have two bands that play themselves on the show were actually play the brighton all the time and a guy that lived right around the corner from the bar ron haney he was the technical advisor for clothing on the soprano show he was he was one of those bands that played at the brighton all the time and i’ve he’s a friend of mine from way back and he lived right around the corner from the Brighton bar.   [23:32] So that’s, there’s that connection, you know, David Chase, I’m sure knew this. Okay. Yeah. Right. So, and just the word, just the nickname pussy as, as that comes from that. And then there’s the whole drug, the whole drug thing, because Vito Genovese, when he got busted in 59 for drugs, the Genovese family went in the opposite direction and had this moratorium totally against any kind of narcotic,   [23:57] any kind of narcotics. Okay. So there ended up being a gang war in Long Branch starting in 75, ended in 1980 between Pussy Russo and this loose knit of, of, of criminals of a drug ring. And he didn’t want any drugs in Long Branch and they were pushing for drugs. So they actually, what ends up happening, about eight people died. Eight people died. Yeah.   [24:23] So he had, he had guys under him, The Genovese family came down hard on no drugs, and he had guys that were already working under him that were making money off of drugs. Yes, but that’s not the other. He was battling a whole set of guys that weren’t even involved in the mob. They were just drug pushers. They were just drug pushers. Oh, okay, I got it. He was trying to get them out of town. They were trying to stay in town, and not just in town, you know, surrounding towns too, Asbury, Redback. Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of history there. Yeah. And it’s all, it’s all in the book. You’re going to, you’re going to, you’re going to enjoy reading about the mob, the mob war between the two factions, you know, and see who’s who and all that. I think you’ll really like it. What is, you got a lot of stories in here. I’ve brushed through it. Haven’t been had time to do it. A lot, a lot of stories in here. Tell us another one that, you know, that, that you found particularly interesting.   [25:23] Well, to me, it was always, so here’s how, this is what happened. Because of all these weird connections, I was a kid, you know, we happened to like rent our house out to an individual who was one of the guys that ended up going to war with Pussy Russo over this drug thing. So, you know, we rented our house out to them and we found out soon after like, oh my God, what did we do? you know? And, and, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s all this intercalculated like connections   [25:52] that just kept revisiting and revisiting, revisiting. And, you know, I, I was present one time, well, I met Pussy Russo one time and. What were the circumstances of that? Oh, so here’s what the circumstance was. It was my, it was my, my parents’ 25th year anniversary of marriage and we had gone over to dinner as it was like sort of like a family own only, pre-anniversary just a family my sister flew in from california and we went to the surf lounge now the surf lounge you know unbeknownst to me at the time i was i was only like 12 years old, is owned by pussy russo and his guys but it was known as the best italian restaurant around so we went there and this weird circumstances occur where there was these two men there. And my sister was staring at one of them, which I didn’t understand why, while the other one was staring at my father.   [26:46] And, and I was the only one to notice this, you know, that these two staring contests were going on.   [26:52] And then all of a sudden there’s some guy comes over to the table and he, in a not a nice way, he was like to my father, I know you, but it’s bothering me. Where are you from and my father my father who’s a complete legit guy completely just was very happy to tell him it’s it’s i used to do your floors my my uncle my father and all his brothers had a floor waxing business uh-huh and they used to do all the businesses around here and the guy that would said to my father who who are you was pussy russo and my father recognized him right away and said i used to do your floors and before i used to do your floors i used to do vito genovese’s floors And I know you from both times. So that came out. And then it turns out that my uncle, my father’s brother, who invented a floor wax, and that’s the basis for their business, made a ton of money off of selling it, ended up buying a million-dollar house in deal in the 60s. And he lived maybe five blocks away from Pussy Russo, who owned like an $11 million house, and they became friends. So meanwhile my sister’s staring at the other guy and the other guy was tony dale agolino who was one of pussy’s intimates my sister recognized him and you won’t believe from where from las vegas my sister moved to california and california she used to go to vegas.   [28:19] While in Vegas, some guy comes up to her, who’s this guy, Tony Dale, and offers her two free tickets to her and her girlfriend over there to go see Elvis at the Hilton. Oh, wow. So in 1971, 72, my sister got to see Elvis for free. Yeah. One of those half moon booths. Oh, yeah. She said it was one of the greatest concerts she’d ever seen. And she was treated like a queen, you know, free champion, all this. The guy who did this was the guy that was in that restaurant. I recognized him. The guy, plus he was recognizing my father. It was like all the weird, weird, weird stuff. Unbelievable. It’s all in the book.   [29:02] Crazy, crazy. You got a lot of great stories in this book. I know that. I don’t know if I’m doing it justice and you’re following if I’m giving too much detail. That’s exactly what I want. We don’t want to give it all away, but there’s no way as big as this, as thick as this book is, guys, there’s no way he’s going to tell all the stories. No matter how many stories you tell, Greg, there’s going to be a whole lot more in this book. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, it’s just a taste.   [29:27] These are really great stories. Yeah. Now, little pussy in the end, what kind of an end did he come to?   [29:33] Well, okay. So it was during the time that he was having this gang war with this drug ring, independent drug ring. And everybody thought that the independent the drug ring had killed him but it wasn’t he was killed by his own people because his chauffeur was a guy by the name of patrick pazuto patrick pazuto now patrick pazuto he met in in jail they were they were bunkmates and he was a very tough guy patrick pazuto he was not a mob guy he was not a mob guy he was a he was a gunman you know a stick-up man yeah but but he was a tough guy and he used to do favors for Pussy in jail, you know, go get him his meals. Pussy Russo was illiterate, by the way. He couldn’t read or write. So Patrick Pizzuto, who happened to be very intelligent, by the way, very, very intelligent and a tough guy, would write all his letters, read all his letters. And at one time, Pussy Russo, who was in jail at the same time with his second in command, a guy by the name of Babe Miraglia, were stabbed by the black population.   [30:37] And who came to their, to their, to their rescue was Patrick Pizzuto. And throughout a couple of weeks, he stabbed a couple of black guys in jail and all that. Anyway, when they both got out of jail at the same time, and he immediately went to work for him as a chauffeur. Now, again, a chauffeur is always a stepping stone to a big… Oh, yeah. So…   [30:58] So now they’re battling this drug ring and they set up a guy to get killed. He gets killed. They forgot to wipe the fingerprints off the car. Patrick Pizzuto was one of the guys on the hit. Went back to the location at a rest stop after the murder and wiped it down. And then based on the fact that it took place in a murder and that he went and wiped down the thing and really put his life on a line twice in one day. Yeah pussy russo put him up for induction official right and then unfortunately.   [31:34] He got caught patrick brazuto with an old indictment from the 60s before he even met pussy russo he had he had robbed a grocer an 81 year old grocer up in posaic and then the guy, lunged at him he shot him and killed him and he had been able to stay you know stave off the the prosecution but now they had him dead to rights so he actually turned state’s evidence against the mob this is right towards the end of the of the of the warring faction over the drug ring so what ends up happening is the head of the genovese crime family from new york sent word down to richie the boot that pussy russo had to go no matter how much money he was able to generate and he was able to generate a lot of money for the family but the fact that he almost was you know a hair   [32:22] away from letting in a guy that just turned state’s evidence he had to go. So most people thought it was the drug ring that killed him, but it wasn’t. It was his own people. So his two very good friends came to Long Branch, and they whacked him out right in his great Long Branch here at his apartment. Yeah, that’s a great story. They found him surrounded by stuffed cats. Right, exactly.   [32:45] Crazy, crazy, crazy. Gregory Macalino. I’m looking forward to really getting into this book. And I know my little friend Eddie is going to be reading this too. We’ll be passing this around. Great. I really appreciate that you put all this together. Like I said, this is not covered that much. Five families up there are covered too much almost. And I cover them too much, but there’s so many great stories. But now I moved down into New Jersey. I’ll probably go through this and maybe come up with another show or two out of your book. I’ll give you credit. I’ll make sure I let them know that I got this out of there. I was thumbing through there. I see Bruce Springsteen’s name. You know, he was, did he ever play your club? I guess you didn’t have his club until after he got big tied, did he? Yeah. As a matter of fact, I was there now. Listen, this is, I was at the time I was actually underage. I didn’t know it then. I said, I’m a musician and I used to play at that club, the Brighton bar all the time. And I was always using my brother’s ID, but when he played there a couple of times, Bruce, and I was there one time. Yeah. So we have a wall of fame and it’s now in my basement. I took it because, you know, I sold the place because of a pandemic. I owned it for 26 years, but I sold, I sold, but I have, he’s on the wall, he’s there. And, you know, he, his wife.   [34:02] Was Next Door Neighbors with Pussy Russo. I mean, literally, her family lived right there. Really? That Patty Scaffo? Yeah. And as I say in the book, you know, Bruce sings about the pink Cadillac. There’s only one that had a pink Cadillac convertible, and that was Pussy Russo.   [34:20] Interesting. I know he has a pretty good one about Atlantic City. That’s a pretty good one. He’s got a pretty good mob song. And not a lot of songs about the mob, but that’s a good one. I agree. I agree. Yeah.   [34:33] And, and, and Pussy Russo was like, you know, was in with all those guys with Angelo Bruno and Nicky Scarfo. He did time. They became really good friends. So, you know. Yeah. That’s another little explored aspect is that connection with Philly. Yeah. Atlantic City. That’s right. New Jersey and New York. I mean, they were really all intertwined with each other. Exactly. And you, and you do know that the Philly mob also has an outpost in Newark. They have a little section of Newark as well. Oh, I didn’t realize. Oh, as a matter of fact, Angelo Bruno, who was killed, I’m sure you know that, he was killed by his own consigliere who was running Newark for him. Okay. A guy by the name of Tony Banan Cabanigro. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. I remember that name now. I’m trying to put that together. There’s so much sometimes runs through my head. I can’t remember it all, but I do remember that name, Cabanigro. So that’s why those names I probably have butchered in stories in the past. Right, right, right.   [35:39] All right, Gregory, I really appreciate you coming on the show and imparting some of these stories with us. And guys, you got to get out and get this book. It’s just if you want to know about Newark and New Jersey and on down the coast in New Jersey, it’s got it all in there. It’s got it all.   [35:57] And I want to, I want to thank you and I’m honored for being on your show. And by the way, I loved your Bobby Maddo section. That was good.   [36:04] Fantastic. Tons and tons of details that I never knew. Great stuff. Yeah. I worked like, I worked a lot on that one. I actually had a guy from New York help me. He gave me kind of the basis and I went in and, and learned a bunch more. So it was, it was a pretty fascinating story. Yes, definitely. Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. Thanks a lot for coming on this show. Thank you for having me, Gary. Appreciate it. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go. And I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 27 October 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tim Richards, a former St. Louis intelligence officer and author of Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie. Tim brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge from his years investigating the mob and navigating the thin line between law enforcement and organized crime. We dive deep into the history and dynamics of the St. Louis crime families and their ties—or lack thereof—to Kansas City and Chicago. Tim reveals how the St. Louis mob and the Syrian mob were into labor racketeering, ghost workers, and union control, profiting off federally funded projects. Click here to buy Crooks Kill and Cops Lie and to see all of Tim’s books • Listeners will hear gritty stories about: • The interplay between Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago mob families. • The “Syrian” mafia’s role in local unions, vengeance, and violence. • St. Louis mob figures like Paul Leisure, Mike Trupiano, and Jesse Stoneking. • An unforgettable encounter with Trupiano during a traffic stop. • The challenges police faced without legal wiretaps, relying instead on FBI intelligence. • The ripple effects of mob influence reach as far as Las Vegas gambling operations. From bloody reprisals to uneasy alliances, Tim shares not just history but lived experience—vivid accounts of hit jobs, betrayals, and the complexities of policing organized crime. As he reflects on how law enforcement strategies and technology have evolved, Tim leaves us with a powerful reminder of the mob’s enduring mark on Midwestern history. If you want an insider’s perspective on St. Louis mobsters and the Midwest underworld, you won’t want to miss this one. Subscribe to get more stories every week. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 Welcome to Gangland Wire 1:02 Exploring Kansas City and St. Louis Mob Ties 4:19 The Influence of the Chicago Mafia 8:56 The Aladdin Hotel and Skimming Operations 11:41 A Deep Dive into Paul Leisure’s Fate 15:12 The Old Italian Mafia and Its Tactics 23:09 Changes in Policing and Mafia Control 24:54 Personal Stories from the Streets 27:43 The Rise and Fall of Jesse Stoneking 33:05 Reflections on Organized Crime and Histor [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. I have another former intelligence unit detective, Tim Richards. Now, you know, and if you don’t, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m sorry, guys. Some of you all may be new listeners. I’m Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Got this podcast, Gangland Wire. We deal with the mob. And I worked a mob in Kansas City, and Tim Richards worked in it in St. Louis, just across the state. So welcome, Tim. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I’m really glad to have you. I was really glad to find this book. I’ve been working on a book myself. So I’m looking at your book, seeing how you did certain things and then going back to mine. And my story is a little bit different, I guess, but different, but the same. You know, we had very similar experiences, guys. When Tim and I first started talking on the phone, you know, it was like, oh, my God, that’s like I was talking to another guy in the same unit, you know, because we had the same kind of experiences. [0:59] Some of them we’ll talk about, some of them we won’t talk about on here. But we’re going to talk about the mafia primarily. And Tim, what I always found interesting, even back then in the 70s, there seemed to be little to no relationship or connection between Kansas City and St. Louis crime families. Do you remember that like that? Yeah, I recall that. We knew that Nick Zabella was a powerful guy in the families. But we never really saw anything that he was insane. St louis the chicago mafia controlled st louis with some help from detroit the detroit mafia. [1:37] They the chicago mafia came in here in the late 50s when they were rebuilding downtown st louis and they built the poplar street bridge which was called the tunnel project, they came through east st louis with a guy by the name of buster workman who controlled everything in East St. Louis, and they used ghost workers. It was a federal-funded bridge-building event, and they used ghost workers there, and these guys were getting rich. And in the meantime, they came over to St. Louis and infiltrated our two labor workers, 110 and 42. They also infiltrated 562, which is a five-fitters union, a very wealthy union, and they had them for decades. And they apparently Eventually controlled them 110 was controlled totally And 42 was controlled totally By the Chicago mob. [2:34] 562 eventually went under It was controlled totally by the Chicago mob And The Chicago mob ran everything here, Allegedly Some dabbling by Detroit I don’t know how they worked that out But Detroit had some function here But um, Yeah, Tim, you go in your Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie book, guys, and I recommend you get this if you want an inside look at the St. Louis Police Intelligence Unit at Police Intelligence Everywhere, why this book will give it to you. And you have a second book before we get too far into this. Hold that one up. I couldn’t find my copy. It’s over across the room somewhere. This is actually the sequel to Crook’s Kill, Cops Lie. Okay. It’s just another St. Louis Intelligence book. The unit was referred to as Intel 210, which was the code name for the unit within the police department. And this is my second book pertaining to the St. Louis Organized Crime Advice. This goes deeply into the intelligence unit and what we actually did and the things that went on between cops and crooks and FBI agents. And we were whores for the FBI. [3:48] We did all this shit. And the FBI would come over to our office and glean it all. But we didn’t care. We enjoyed what we were doing. And we got to know these FBI guys, and we didn’t mind helping them. The thing is that we couldn’t get legal wiretaps. They could. And so we gave them information, whatever they needed. But anyway, both of my books pertain to that, intelligence and how the unit cops and the FBI and the other feds worked together trying to get these guys together. [4:20] It’s interesting. In St. Louis and Kansas City, from looking at your book, it was basically the same, different than in other cities, I think. [4:30] We really worked closely with the FBI also. And like you said, we were their go boys. We went out and they said, hey, we got this going on. Why don’t you go check this out? Well, see the FBI, they have these high level sources because they’ve got all this power and all this money to spread around. And, you know, they can kick a damn grand jury indictment aside if they want in order to put pressure on somebody. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have any local wiretaps. We finally got a law. We ran one here and it was, I tell you what, you never want to do a wiretap unless you got a huge, huge, huge budget, which we never do. So, you know, it’s the same way here. It’s really interesting, you know, the talk about the labor racketeering in particular. You go into that pretty in depth because there’s more than just Chicago and more than Italian mafias. And then you had the Syrian mob in St. Louis that got heavy into union racketeering. So it’s just a really interesting mix down there, Tim. [5:32] Well, the Syrian mob, it was named, it was actually Lebanese. Oh, that’s right. The FBI named it the Syrian mob, and it stuck. The newspapers picked up on it. We picked up on it. It was referred to as the Syrian mob. But they were political people. They were all politicians and business people within St. Louis. And the Leisure, Paul Leisure, Anthony Leisure, Paul Leisure was a hitman for years for the Chicago mafia here in St. Louis. But Tony Giordano, they wanted to kill another Syrian guy by the name of Jimmy Michaels for control of a 110, local 110. [6:11] Anthony Giordano told him to lay off of him because the Chicago mob told him, we don’t want him killed. He had worked with them, for them, for years over in East St. Louis for Buster Workman. So Anthony Giordano told the Leisure to lay off of him. The reason they hated him so much is because some Michael’s family killed a Leisure guy over in East St. Louis was back in the 50s shot him in a bar and got away with it and killed him and so there was there was a feud there between the two Syrian families the Lebanese families so the feud just festered and festered and festered and they wanted to kill jimmy michaels for two reasons revenge and control of local 110 jim uh anthony giordano died and that left jimmy michaels wide open so they blew him up in broad daylight with a car bomb on i-55 during rush hour and uh, But then this gang war broke out. Then the Michaels retaliated and blew up Paul Leisure in front of his mom. So I was at both of those scenes, certainly. They’re in my book. My picture’s in the book at the scene. [7:21] But it was an interesting time there. And the politicians were scurrying because they’d been in bed with these people for the last 30 years. I bet, yeah. I mean, yeah, they were scurrying. And it was just really crazy. There was another Lebanese family by the name of Webby, Sarkis Webby Sr. Was a lawyer and a very influential guy. And he owned the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. And they were skimming the money there. Somehow, this is how the Detroit Mafia comes into this. The Detroit Mafia, the New York Mafia, and the Chicago Mafia were skimming funds from Sarkis Webby’s casino. And they would meet up here in St. Louis and divvy up this cash money. And we had gangsters coming in and out of here, like you would not believe it, from New York City, big gangsters. [8:11] But it was just crazy how they were going after the skim money. But Sargis Webby, they indicted him and Mike Trippiano, who was the head of the mafia here, and they had one local 110. And they indicted them. And they also indicted Sargis Webby Jr., the son of Sargis Webby. And the dad died. Sargas Lombi died before he could go to trial. But little Sarg did not, and he went to prison. He did a hard time for a lot of years down in Florida. He’s out now. He’s a big-timer, influential guy. And that was for skimming from Aladdin? No, it was a cable TV show. [8:56] Oh, scam. Another scam. They were going to allow, okay, this is when cable TV just began. And they wanted to come into St. Louis. And then these two guys, these two gangsters said, yeah, you can come into St. Louis, but this is our town. And you’re going to have to pay us. So they had it all on tape. And they all went down. They did not convict Trupiano, Mike Trupiano. [9:24] But everybody else got convicted on it. And, uh, well, of course, Sarkis will be seeing your diet before he could go to prison. Okay. Little Sarkis, little Sarkis will be went to prison, but, uh, that that’s what they went down on. Uh, it wasn’t the skimming and it wasn’t anything else that they had all the dastardly things they had done. It was for something stupid, like being greedy and one, one thing there, it were the cut of the cable TV money. And now that’s, that’s, that’s how they went down on it. So you really had three, uh, Lebanese blood, blood families, separate blood families. That were then connected with the Italian La Cosa Nostra Mafia in many ways, both in local schemes and national schemes. Yeah, back to the only two because Sarga’s way to senior was part of the leisure gang. Okay, I didn’t realize that. He was allegedly the guy that was keeping the peace. He was an attorney. He was a smooth guy. And little Sarga’s way to junior is a smooth guy. I mean, you know, he drives nice cars and he’s a wealthy guy now. And he always was a wealthy guy. He grew up in Las Vegas. He was a St. Louis kid who grew up in, his daddy owned a casino in Vegas. So you can imagine how he grew up. Yeah, yeah. Hell, he’s a scratch golfer. [10:39] You know, he has women. I mean, he’s a guy that people would look up to. But he’s not a gangster anymore. In fact, I don’t think he ever was a gangster. He was just a kid that wanted to be tough. and he wasn’t something. He’s a small guy. But the reason they got him instead of the daddy, it wasn’t the daddy died. But the reason I got him is that they had his phone tab. They owned a hotel here in St. Louis called the Mayfair. And they were all afraid of Paul Leisure because he was a monster. He had killed 20 people for the Chicago mob. The Chicago mob would call telling Leisure, I don’t want this guy here. They’d go to Paul Leisure. We want this guy here. He killed 20 people for them. So they were all terrified of him And he was crazy Besides that he was nuts I wanted to stay on the good side of Paul Leisure, And so Paul Leisure called him on the phone At his Mayfair hotel And they had just a casual conversation And Paul Leisure said I quote He said give me two [11:39] .45s And I’ll shoot it up with these damn St. Louis cops I’ll kill a man And Little Sark said bye bye birdie And all that stuff was taped So in the meantime All right. [11:51] David Leisure, who actually pulled the pin to kill Jimmy Michaels on I-55, he’s the one that pulled the trigger on it. And everybody knew it. Well, he was hiding out because there was an arrest warrant for him. He was hiding out. So he went down to the Mayfair Hotel and Little Sargast, what, he hit him. He hit him in a, the police came in looking for him. And they hid him in a laundry, a big laundry, hotel laundry basket type thing, and put blankets and stuff on top of him. Well, everybody knew that. And so Lil Sark went to prison for all that, aiding and abetting, running his mouth. What they did, they said, listen, you can plead guilty, or if you want to go to court, you can go to trial. And he had a good lawyer. And they said, but we got this takeover. You’re talking to Paul Leisure about being a tough guy. You know, and Lil Sarg said, yeah, I’m a tough guy, man. I’ve killed people before. I’ve done this and I’ve done that. I’m a street. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. But he talked all that bravado on this tape. They were going to play it for the jury. And so I’ll plead. So he pled. [12:57] And that Paul Leisure, didn’t he get his legs blown off also? Yeah, he got one of them blown off. I was there when he was still in the car. He was living with his mom. If you believe that, he lived with his mom. It was a nice beautiful day fall day in St. Louis and a call came out for an explosion I drove down there immediately and he was still in the car and his mom was standing outside the car he was a big, powerful, mean guy, man, talking to his mother. It was pitiful. It was just pitiful. She was standing by the car and she had heard the explosion. And as one of his legs was gone, his fingers were all mangled and gone. There were dogs in the neighborhood grabbing his fingers. Grabbing his fingers. Yeah, grabbing his fingers. We were trying to get the dogs out. Get out of here. Get out of here. Oh, my God. And the car was blowing the smithereens, man. And it was a nice neighborhood. Oh, yeah. But when everybody said, everybody said, get those dogs out here. He’s eating those fingers. [13:53] And then it’s his mom standing there and he’s in the car going, mom, mom. It was pitiful, man. It’s like a friend of mine told me, he said, you got shot in Vietnam. He said, you know, when you get shot, he said, the first thing you do is call out for your mother. He had his right there. And I’ll tell you what, after all that crap that he had pulled before he got blown up, they didn’t even give him. Local 110. They gave him local 42, which is a lower local. And so he was, he was a, uh, uh, an organizer for local 42 and he had his brand new helmet on white helmet. He had it in the car and it said, Paul, these are organizer local 42. And, uh, so I grabbed it. I grabbed, I globbed onto it and I took it to the office and I put it on filing. And it was going to be in my memorial you know and uh i i came back to work one day and the damn thing was gone i said what happened to paul leisure’s helmet and they said oh the fbi came in and got it i think you liars man somebody took that home somebody took it home yeah yeah some captain or major, said i want that yeah i want you got it sir yeah yeah you know how it goes shit rolls downhill as. [15:13] Well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about then the Italian mob and it goes way back. Uh, to the thirties and, and, you know, Prohibition and all that ends up with Giordano was, uh, the boss for quite a while. And if I remember right, Giordano and Truppiano, what Mike Truppiano was the last, basically the last boss, I think Italian of La Cosa Nostra. Uh, and they have some connection with Detroit and he come, didn’t they send that kid down there from Detroit? Was he a nephew of Giordano? Yeah. Yeah. He was a nephew of Giordano and he came from Detroit. He still was controlled since Giordano died. And so they said Mike Truppiano. But he was still controlled by the Chicago mafia. How that worked out. I think I heard somewhere that Iupa had to approve of Truppiano then taking over. Yeah, yeah. And Truppiano was not known to be a really skillful mafia boss is my understanding. No, he was pretty inept. I had dealings with him personally. [16:18] I got to the point where I got tired of following these guys around, so I’d pull them over and talk to them. And one time, the New York Mafia was in town. I can’t remember their names now, but they were high up on the Mafia scale. There were two guys in my unit that did a lot of undercover stuff, and they would stay out at the airport. So they saw them come in, and they followed them, and they went to a house. I don’t know whose house it was. It could have been Giordano’s house in South St. Louis County. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t John Vitale’s. Anyway, they had a big meeting there. And Chupiano was chauffeuring them. And so these guys that had been surveilling them got me on the air and said, would you do a car check on Mike Chupiano? Fine, I’d do some car with him. I said, yeah. [17:08] So I pulled him over on a busy St. Louis street. They were on the way back to the airport. And I made him get out of the car and Trippiano was furious these were high ranking, guys you know he was furious and I said who got in the car with you and he said they’re friends of mine I said get out of the car everybody get out well one big guy who was in the front seat got out I don’t remember his name, but then this big other big Monty guy just sat in the back seat they all had, real expensively dressed so I said give me your ID and he said I don’t have an ID And he went like this, and he had this black suit on with a red silk on the inside of it. I bet it cost $2,000. Anyway, his airline ticket was in his pocket. And I went, oh, you don’t need an idea. And I know who you are now. I said, what’s your name, man? So I just, I got their names and days of birth and everything. Well, it upset the FBI. I was, I got called into the office. He said, did you do a car check on Mike Trippiano? I said, yeah. He said, who do you have in the car? I was really at least hots from New York city in there. He’s big time house. And, uh. [18:17] He said, well, there was a guy there. And I said, who’s this guy? He said, he’s an FBI agent. He didn’t introduce him to me, the FBI agent. He was furious. He was furious that I did this. I don’t know why. Apparently, one of them was probably a snitch, this young agitator. And they didn’t want anybody messing with him. But it was crazy, man. You could throw a rock around here and say, listen, hit some goddamn FBI guy or hit some organized crime guy. [18:43] You mentioned John Batali. Tell us about John Batali. He was kind of the Italian mafia’s union guy, if I remember right. Well, you see, back in the day, the unions, they were a plum that they wanted to control. Oh, yeah. They were mostly controlling gambling and prostitution. And I’m sure back in the day, like in the 70s, when I first became a cop, the black people were all addicted to heroin, white heroin. I was in a mid-city area. They were all addicted to everybody you stopped, everybody you had dealings with, was having withdrawal from white heroin. Now, the white heroin was coming from Europe. And it wasn’t a situation like it was coming from Mexico or whatever. That’s brown. That’s brown heroin. And everybody said the mafia didn’t deal with white heroin. Well, I don’t believe that, man. I mean, all these guys were addicted to white heroin. And what they would do, they would buy this heroin from, I presume, a representative of the Chicago Mafia. And then they would cut it, and they’d have their own business. And they were killing each other left and right with machine guns, just like it is today. But they were killing each other left and right over, you know, the money had gotten screwed up. But everybody that we dealt with was screwed up with white heroin. And I’m sure that was part of John Vitale and Tony Giordano. [20:07] You know, I met Tony Giordano one time. When I first became a cop in the 70s, we had a towing service. Most of those kind of places were run by the Chicago Mafia. [20:18] And they were city organizations, and they had city employees, but the Chicago Mafia ran them. And one time, what they would do is they had a scam where they would tow your car, and they wouldn’t let you have it back. and if it kept it for a certain amount of time, they could apply for another title and it would be their car. And so they were doing this. And this was 1970. And Tony Giordano was one of the guys and he had another gangster with him whose name I can’t remember right now. And they ran this towing service called Metropolitan Towing for the city. [20:55] And so they played this scam where they wouldn’t get people’s cars back for a certain amount of time. I don’t care what you brought in there. They would say, that’s not good enough, that’s not good enough. People were turned away. So a Catholic priest had his car towed, and they towed it to Metropolitan Towing in my district at Duncan and Van Aventer, is where the lot was, and he was, The Catholic priest didn’t have his priest outfit on. Dollar, yeah. Yeah, and he went in there to retrieve his car, and they wouldn’t give it to him. And he got upset about it. Tony Giordano pulled a sawdove shotgun on him. He said, either you get out of here, or I’m going to blow you in half. He didn’t know he was a Catholic priest. Well, the Catholic priest had influence. He had people that—anyway, he got his car back, obviously. But then they said, oh, my gosh, there’s a problem at Metropolitan Towing. I don’t know what it is, you know, these politicians. So they put a cop sitting in front of Metropolitan Towing 24 hours a day. And I only had like, I had like six months on the police department. I was one of the cops. I had to sit in front of this place for eight hours a day in a police car. So I said, Rose, downhill, man. Yeah. I said, what if I got, what if I have to use the restroom? He said, well, okay, we’ll let you go in there and use the restroom, but don’t you go in there for any other reason. And you come out of there. I said, all right, fine. So I went in there. I went in there. And hell, I hung out in there. And Tony Giordano and his other car thief, I can’t remember. [22:22] Well, Tony Giordano was real talking to him. He was saying, like, yeah, when I was a kid, man, I got arrested. They didn’t have juvenile. They just put me in with the regular guys. And I grew up tough and blah, blah, blah. He was talking. He was all the time talking. And there was a room there. I can see. They had this full of golf clubs in bags. And he said, are you? [22:43] Guns and clubs, officer? Yeah, I know. Oh, yeah. They had Phil for these clubs. He said, hey, you play golf? I said, sure, I play golf. You want to set a golf club? No, man, I don’t want any golf clubs. I mean, it was crazy, man. You know, they were so used to giving cops or whatever, anybody, whatever they wanted. Especially back in the sixties. He came on in the early seventies. That’s when things kind of started changing. [23:07] And I know you went, saw those changes. The older guys that were like the generation before you, when you came on as a young troop, you know, you know, it was different and we changed things, you know, we quit doing a out of that stuff and things modernized real quick but there was always a rub between those older guys and us younger guys we started getting federal money for one thing for cars yeah guns and uniforms and and yeah then eventually we started getting some pay raises and pay raise pay yeah but the old guys that i when i came on they’re the old guys that were there they were crooks i mean they were they were as big of crooks as the gangsters yeah i heard one guy say you You know, we used to make $100 a month and all you could steal. Yep, yep. They were crooks, man. Yeah. [23:55] Oh, well, that was the good old days, as they say. You know, I had this one intelligence guy who was one of the early members of the intelligence unit that was first, I think, the first one or first one of two selected because he was known as such a straight arrow guy. And he told me a story. When he came on, they assigned him with an older policeman. They didn’t, when they break in, you know, you just get, you know, dried. This guy tonight and he rode the west 12th street car where there’s a lot of joints and said that guy you know he drank all night and he took money all night and then the end of the shift he said he counted out the money on the on the bent seat and said and pushed part of it over said here this is yours and ray said i told him i said yeah i don’t need that man it got on out he said they’d never assigned me to ride with anybody again i’m a one-man car from then on so. [24:44] Yeah, man, being a cop was wild back in the old days. [24:50] It was crazy. It was a great life, though. I tell you, I had a great 25 years myself. It was interesting. Paid me to do some of that stuff. You got me nine books. You got nine books out there? I got nine books out, yeah. All right. Well, guys, I’ll make sure I put a link to his author page. That’s the easiest way to find Tim’s books is go to his author page on Amazon. Tim, tell me some other stories that you remember, those kind of little personal stories. Remember anything else about dealing with these guys? [25:25] Yeah, there was a guy, another, he wasn’t a mafia guy. He was too smart to be a mafia guy. I’m talking about Donald Ray Wolbright. Have you ever heard that name? It sounds vaguely familiar. I may know it from your book. I get so much in my head. Donald Ray Wolbright was the guy that did the burglary on Howard Hughes’ warehouse in Long Beach, California, and stole a bunch of stuff, including a lot of money. He was a safe man. He was actually a car dealer, but he was a safe man. And he went to L.A. and was selling Cadillacs. And in the meantime, he was staking out. He had a long-range plan. It was to do Howard Hughes’ safe. in Long Beach, and he did it. He was a safe cracker. Anyway, he came back to say, well, he stole all this stuff, and he stole these CIA documents pertaining to a Russian submarine that had sunk. [26:24] And the CIA paid Howard Hughes to try to retrieve the submarine or whatever. Anyway, he had all these documents. It was supposed to be top secret stuff. And Donald Ray Wilbright obtained him in a lot of money and a lot of jewelry, too. And he came back to St. Louis flush with money because the FBI was going to arrest him. And he said, I didn’t donate. I’m in possession of this stuff because a guy gave him to me. But I want to get rid of him, and I’ll sell him back to the government. And so he did. He sold all this stuff back to the federal government because the federal government didn’t want any publicity on it. So he sold all this top secret CIA stuff back to the government for a lot of money. And he came back to saying, oh, it’s flush. Well, the FBI here was furious, man, because they knew Donald Ray. He was a notorious murderer and burglar. He was notorious. [27:19] And he was just a very successful crook. And so the FBI hated him. So they had to follow him around all the time. You know, whores for the FBI, man. They said, follow Donald Ray Wolbright. And so this is what we did. Like for a week, we followed him around, you know. And he knew he was being followed. And we would write his license plate number down from people he talked to. And then he’d stop and write our license plate number down. Oh, it was crazy. Yeah, I know. [27:43] So Donald Ray Wobright, he was just notorious, man. And, you know, Jesse Stoneking, did you ever hear about Jesse Stoneking? Oh, yeah, you got a bunch of them in your book. Now I can’t remember, but… Well, Jesse Stoneking is the reason there isn’t any more mafia in St. Louis. He was a notorious murder thief. [28:03] Professional crook. And he was also a car thief. And he had gone to prison over here in Illinois for some kind of a car theft. I don’t know what it was. And Tom Fox, an FBI agent here, who was really, really smart, and his partner, whose name I can’t remember, they went over and interviewed him. They tried to roll him over. And he said, it isn’t going to work, man. I’m not going to do that for you. But before he went to prison, And he had told Art Burney, who was in charge of, now in charge of the Eastside mob, he took a bus to Orton’s place. And he worked for Art Burney. He said, I’ll go ahead and take the ball on this. But he had two families. He said, you take care of my families. He actually had two sets of wives, kids, dogs, cats, houses. And he said, you take care of my families while I’m going. And I said, we’ll take care of them. We’ll take care of them. Well, they didn’t. And his wives would come to the prison to visit him and say, we’re destitute. Nobody’s taking care of us. Well, it pissed him off. So he got out and he called Tom Fox and he said, I’ll work for you. So they wired him and he went into all these people. He had the reputation that if he walked in a room, Crooks would flock to him, brag about what they’d done. And, uh, it was, it was just amazing. [29:19] Even people that want Crooks would go up and say, I did a, I burned my car the other day, you know, because it was in the car I burned. I got the money for, I mean, it was all on tape. All these people went to prison. He even got some guys. I think Joey Ayupa may have gone to prison because of that. But all these dark and nice crime guys took falls. And he did it. Jesse Stumpkin did it. But he robbed a guy, a friend of mine, over in Brussels, Illinois, an old politician. He was really wealthy. And they were gambling together. And he beat him up and took his diamond ring. It was like a 15-karat diamond ring. And they sealed off. It was on an island. And they sealed the island off. [30:00] And they started taking names to everybody that came out. Well, Jesse Stoneking’s best buddy was there. And they got his name. So the Illinois police came over to our office because they knew we had dossiers and all these people. They said, what do you think it went on? I said, what the hell does Jesse Stoneking? And they said, well, he’s in prison. I said, no, he’s not. I just saw him last week at a restaurant over in Belleville, Illinois. And we used to go over there. There’s this restaurant all the house used to eat at. We’d go over there and glare at them. They’d glare back. But he was over there anyway. Yeah. so jesse i i hated him for knocking that old man over he was a friend of mine so we did a car check he was he was with mike trippiano and they split up and they ran to their cars and took off and so i i told my partner stop jesse’s talking so we stopped him broad daylight, i was mad at him i made him get out of the car yeah and i i told him i said. [30:52] I said, Jesse, you better carry yourself back to East St. Louis where you belong, man. You don’t belong over here. And I said, and you knocked over a buddy of mine over in Brussels, Illinois. I don’t appreciate that, man. I said, you probably don’t know how I know that, do you, Jesse? And he just looked at me. And I said, you’re going to get hurt real bad if you don’t carry yourself back to Illinois. And he said, well, maybe the FBI would like to know that. And I said, hey, man, I don’t get a damn about the FBI. Are you either? So he took off. I got back in the car. They called me in the office. Did you do a car check on Jesse Stone King? I said, yeah. I said, did you threaten to kill him? I said, no. They said, it’s on tape, man. You did. I said, oh, that’s Jesse Stone King. Yeah. Oh, shit. It was on tape. He was wired, Tim. Yeah. He was wired, man. Oh, shit, Tim. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. I got all kinds of shit for that one, man. Oh, I can imagine. I was in big time trouble. And so Jesse Stone King Everybody wants to kill him For being a snitch He snitched on I don’t know 50 guys 50 guys Including you Yeah including me He got it all on tape He was all taped. [32:00] In fact he even went to trial And testified it In federal court What he had done And, But he didn’t get Mike Trippiano He didn’t get He didn’t take But the jury wouldn’t go along with it Because I hated Jesse Stone King More than I hated Mike Trippiano Everything was over with And he didn’t want to go into witness protection. He had these two families. You know, he just wanted to live. So he bopped around hiding, and he’d come in and see his families, and he’d go hide somewhere else. [32:30] Eventually, he ended up in, Arizona, somewhere in Arizona, and he had a car repossession company. And this is FBI information. It was in a newspaper. He was in a car, and a cop, a local cop, did a car check on him. And the guy driving the car got out to talk to the cop, and Jesse allegedly shot himself in the head, committed suicide. That’s a damn lie. And so they put that in the same newspaper. He’s still around here. I’m sure he is. [33:01] Interesting. So then, yeah, he’s still kicking because he’d be 80 now. Tim, Timothy C. Richards, Cops Kill and Cops Lie and several other books, which, guys, if you want to learn a whole lot more about St. Louis and Eat St. Louis. And, you know, we talked a lot about, guys, if you’re not familiar with the geography of the area, it’s kind of like Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. You got the Mississippi River over there, and then you talked about an island. And I assume that was an island out in the river where they did that robbery. It was way north. Way north up by Alton. And so that whole East St. Louis area is notorious for strip clubs and library racketeering and really more notorious for two-bit criminals. And you can get anything you want in East St. Louis. It’s kind of like KCK. Kind of like a third world country in a way. Definitely. It definitely is. [33:55] All right, Tim. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for coming on. Okay, Gary. Thanks for having me. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, If you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon just going. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate you all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 20 October 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins pulls back the curtain on one of the FBI’s most troubling scandals—the case of Joe Stabile, a corrupt FBI agent whose fall from grace revealed just how deep organized crime’s influence could run. The story begins in November 1978, when Stabile pled guilty to corruption charges. But as Gary explains, that plea was only the tip of the iceberg. Behind it lay years of whispered rumors, shady deals, and quiet payoffs—stories that painted Stabile not as a straight-arrow G-man, but as a hustler working both sides of the law. Drawing on conversations with retired FBI agents who once worked alongside Stabile, Gary explores the tangled web of mob connections and compromised investigations. Listeners will hear how mobsters slipped him bribes to make gambling cases disappear, and how his background as a New York City cop may have set the stage for the choices that pulled him deeper into the mob’s orbit. The episode also highlights the work of honest agents, such as Tony Villano, who began piecing together the truth about Stabile’s corruption. Through case files, informant accounts, and law enforcement interviews, Gary demonstrates how the FBI struggled with a culture of silence that often protected its own—even when integrity was at stake. As the story unfolds, the lines between right and wrong blur, exposing systemic cracks inside federal law enforcement during a time when the Bureau was shifting its focus and fighting for credibility. Gary closes with reflections on the lasting impact of the Stabile case: what it meant for the FBI’s war on organized crime, and how Stabile himself may have continued to live in the shadows after his conviction—a man caught between two worlds, crime and law enforcement, never fully belonging to either. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:06 Introduction to Joe Stabile 1:19 The Corruption Unveiled 3:14 Breakfast with Retired Agents 5:59 The Connection to Organized Crime 9:06 Investigating Stabile’s Allegations 14:18 The Gambler’s Payoff 20:19 Confronting Stabile 21:39 The Aftermath of the Indictment 23:35 Stabile’s New Life 25:39 Reflections on Undercover Operations [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence [0:04] Unit detective back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I welcome each and every one of you. I’ve got a story that it’s really interesting how I found out about this. That’s part of the story. Let’s go back. Here’s what I’m talking about. A corrupt FBI agent named Joe Stabile. That’s S-T-A-B-I-L-E. November 1978. [0:26] It was a Monday and FBI agent Joe Stabile was pleading guilty in federal court to corruption charges. Now, you don’t hear about this very much. I know a couple of three here in Kansas City over the years that got popped for doing something. A couple of them were involved in a stolen party or a stolen property ring. A couple of others were one of them was just running his mouth too much and he was drinking too much. I don’t think they actually end up charging him anything, but he did run his run his mouth way too much. Joseph Beal only admitted in this guilty plea that he lied about some money transactions, but that’s just a tip of the iceberg in this, folks. [1:03] The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District was sitting in the spectators that day, and afterwards he would say, you know, this just shows the determination of the Department of Justice to root out misconduct wherever it may be found in federal law enforcement. [1:16] Well, you know, that’s a pretty strong statement after. So you’ll find that they kicked this under the rug as long as they could. Absolutely as long as they could. The head of the organized crime task force there at the time said that there was a bunch of money that Stabile could not account for. He was writing some checks. He was taking some money in and then paying some money back out in a deal. And it was dirty and they had him, but they didn’t have him that good. So they dismissed some other charges and charged him with perjury, and he denied receiving any illegal money. He had actually been involved with a New York City policeman and got a $15,000 payment for dismissing getting a case handled for the Clumbo family. But it really, in the end, he wasn’t really convicted for that. It was a gambling deal involved. He was involved with New York City policemen. [2:06] Now, during that time, there was another New York agent named Anthony Avilano, who had made several allegations of wrongdoing against Joe Stabile. They both worked in the Colombo squad early on when they first met. And really, this became, there was a lot of agents sticking up for Stabile, just like I found that with that H. Paul Rico. There were agents, and they never really found any agents. There were policemen who made a case on him for being involved in a murder, a contract killing. He was a Boston agent. But there was a couple of agents that I interviewed and wrote a book several years ago, and they swear that he didn’t have anything to do with that. So that was part of that whole filthy Boston office where John Conley ended up getting popped out of. And anyhow, they tried to say this was a Sicilian feud between several agents that were of Italian-American extraction. Well, that’s a good way to pass this off and denigrate people. But it really wasn’t that. This guy, this guy was dirty. [3:10] He ended up, he got about five years in the penitentiary and a fine. But let’s go back and take a deeper look at this case. And here’s how I got into it. I was having breakfast with a couple of local retired FBI agents. I mentioned this book, Brick Agent, and asked if they had ever read it or heard about it. And it’s written by a former agent who was assigned to the OC squad in New York City in the 60s and 70s. His name was Tony Villano, and it’s a pretty good book. [3:39] It’s hard to find. It’s really hard to find, folks. So good luck if you go out and try to buy it. I’ll put a link to, I think there’s one that’s like $35 or $36, maybe $40. I can’t remember. I was able to find it online. If you work real hard, you can find it in the Internet Archive online and get a look at it. But it’s hard to do. Now, Volano, I started looking at Volano partly in this book and got interested in him because he was actually the first agent to develop Greg Scarpa. And he worked with Scarpa for quite a while. And when Villano retired and really with no, you know, no smell of any kind of hinky panky going on, like what later happened with Scarpa. Uh, but when he retired, Scarpa refused to be introduced to another agent, carry on any kind of relationship with the FBI. Uh, several years later, this Linda Vecchio made a run on Scarpa and brought him back in as a top echelon informant. And then they did a lot of stuff with him. Now, now, uh. [4:41] Villano is the guy that sent Scarpa down into Mississippi, and in his book, Brick Agent, he tells that story a couple of different ways with some slightly different twists on some of the things that have come out since. And he also names two different people as the informants that they sent down to the south to do these different undercover things on the Ku Klux Klan and try to find those bodies down there and the three civil rights workers down in Philadelphia and solve the murder of Medgar Evers. And there was another one, too. And he names, Villano names two different people trying to cover for Scarpa to make sure nobody can trace this back down to this one guy and it was Scarpa. So anyhow, that morning we were talking about Brick Agent Book and the name Joe Stabile came up because Bill Owsley has read the book. And he said that he worked with Joe Stabile when he was a pretty new agent here in Kansas City who was assigned to the OC squad in Kansas City. Now, Bill has two books on the Kansas City crime family, really great books. You want the whole overall picture of organized crime in Kansas City, his book Open City. [5:53] And then concerning his career, the second book is Mobsters in Our Myths. And that really starts about the time he got here in the 60s. And he was a case agent on the straw man case or the guy that really started the whole thing that brought down the Midwest crime families from skimming from Las Vegas casinos. Bill Owsley was the original case agent on that. You know, it’s funny, by the time they actually had their trials, he was retired. And an even funnier story, ironic maybe you might call this, he was retired and he was doing different jobs in retirement. He worked for the NFL, I think, and maybe the NFL. [6:32] Major league baseball but he did some of those kinds of things and and alan glick came to town to testify now alan glick was a guy that got the 62 million dollar loan thanks to the bob and was kicking back through lefty rosenthal to put him in the context and and bill owsley he needed a bodyguard and a chauffeur so bill owsley took the job of bodyguarding and chauffeuring uh alan glick back and forth to the court when he came in to testify and you know uh you know so much for the mob’s going to go out and kill you if you testify against them because they never did anything to this guy. And he did hire some off-duty policemen out in San Francisco and he hired Bill at the time to do the bodyguard. But he didn’t take great pains to get protection. But I digress. Let’s go back to Joe Stabile. And he remembered this Joe Stabile, a new agent with him in the 60s. And he had been assigned in Portland. And he said they both related really well. They’re both from New York City, grew up in New York City. [7:29] Stabile was not really ever happy here. And he always worked every angle he could to get back to New York. He had a lot of family and friends. He said he was from a cop family. He used to be a cop, I believe, in New York. And he had a lot of friends in law enforcement there. And eventually he remembered that Stabile did get transferred back. And he said, you know, he said he and Stabile and his wife and he and Bill’s wife, they socialized together. And he was a great storyteller and, you know, just all around good guy to work with. And he lost track of him until he read about him in this brick agent book by Tony Villano. Tony Villano was the kind of guy like Lindy Vecchio. He developed Greg Garpa first, of course, and he was the kind of agent in these offices. Some agents are really good with informants. [8:11] And he’s a guy that was good with informants, could relate to people and get them to trust him and give him information. And that was one of his strong suits. And he, like I said, He said he developed Greg Scarpa early on, early, early in Scarpa’s career. Now, the other agent I was with, this is kind of interesting, Doug Fensel, ended up in Kansas City after spending many years in New York City in the organized crime squad. He came long after it, long after Owsley retired. I remember Doug as my last go-around in the intelligence unit when I came back as a sergeant. [8:44] And Doug worked with us quite a little bit, mainly we were working drug cases by then. And he remembered working with DeVecchio. He said he was a really good guy. He was a great agent. He did remember that his demeanor when he was on the phone talking to informants, he said it was more like one mob guy talking to the other. But, you know, he never really suspected. [9:02] And I don’t know if DeBecchio was really, you know, what they claimed he was. I don’t know how corrupt. I don’t think he was that corrupt. I think maybe he might have talked out of school a little bit and, you know, trying to talk like another mob guy. I understand that. You try to go to their level, but don’t get sucked into it. And he actually, DeBecchio, was tried and found out guilty in a corruption case involving Scarpa. But I’m digressing again. Now, we’re going to look at this FBI agent Joe Stabile. Howdy said, you know, what happened to him was exactly what Hoover tried to prevent by not allowing agents to serve in offices from their hometown. Like he had been raised in New York City. His first office was Portland and his second and last office was Kansas City. He never got back to New York. [9:48] But Joe Stabile did get back to New York. So in Brick Agent, Tony Villano writes that he got a call from another agent who he never names. And the guy said, who do you think in your squad? And he was working the OC squad. Who do you think in your squad might be on the take from the mob? They talked about it a little bit and finally said, you know, he said, it’d probably be an ex-New York City policeman. It’d have to be a pretty savvy guy. [10:15] And then he said, you know, a guy I can think of on the squad would be Joe Stabile. Well, this agent now knows he’s on the right track because he continues telling Berlano a story that he’d heard from an informant about Joe Stabile. And it made him pretty suspicious. The story goes that a Genovese-made guy approached an off-duty NYPD copper moonlighting as a bartender in the Fulton Street Market area. Now, this copper had been working gambling cases on duty. He told the officer to give a certain sergeant a call about a gambling case in which that sergeant would be a witness and this copper knew about it if this case ever went to trial. So the cop calls the sergeant and he shows up. The sergeant shows up shortly after and he offers this off-duty officer working as a bartender, part-time, $1,500 to not testify or alter his testimony a little bit. The guy took it and he looked into the case later on. He really didn’t remember exactly what it was and he found out it was a pretty good case on a Columbo guy. And he went back to the sergeant and he complained about that’s kind of short money for, you know, putting a spin on a really good case on a Columbo member. [11:30] And the sergeant said, well, you know, the majority of this goes to an FBI agent named Joe Stabile. He’s a guy that’s going to really put the fix in on this. Well, from this story, Villano said he was getting convinced. This guy, you know, he got this story. He’s an ex-NYPD copper. He’s very savvy. He’s a good storyteller. [11:49] He’s a raconteur, as we call him. That’s what Bill Ouseley said. He was a very savvy guy and a good storyteller. Villano remembered that Stabile had been transferred to the Organized Crime Squad because he had come from the OC squad in Kansas City. And they said he remembered that they had an ongoing friendly rivalry when they first got there, and they were both young agents, and they tried to see who could get the most informants. But Stabile wasn’t very good. Villano had a lot of informants pretty quick. Stabile didn’t have any. Villano kind of felt sorry for him and said, you know, he tried to help out, you know, his goomba, I’m going to help you out here. [12:21] And he knew about a guy who had had an argument, Joey Gallo, while both of them were in the prison, and Gallo had called him a rat. So, you know, maybe, maybe this guy might be that guy who would talk. The guy had tried to hang himself after that. So, you know, it’s like, here’s a weak link. Guy had come out. He was out by this time. He was under Charlie the Sidge LeCicero, who was in the Columbo family. And the Columbo family, by this time, were sworn enemies of Joey Gallo. So, you know, here’s a guy who is in the Columbo family and would be an enemy of Joey Gallo and was weak. It looked like he had some weak links there. some little places you could stick a knife in and twist a little bit and open him up and get him going because you need those you need those openings you need those little weak spots in a guy to open him up Stabile approached a guy with another agent actually and the guy refused to talk he just blew him off so forget about that Lano Stabile still doesn’t have any informants Lano then got with Stabile they started following another guy in an attempt to turn him he remembers and found him and a guy disappeared into an apartment building and and. [13:29] Villano parked the car while stabile ran inside to see where the guy went and stabile said he lost the guy and then they went floor to floor until they heard him talking inside a room so they figured out where he lived and then they came back later and tried to turn him but it couldn’t get him done this guy still doesn’t have any informants the bureau transfers him to the gambling squad where they give you cases maybe informants aren’t so uh important as they are in organized crime gambling squad you just get complaints you get complaints from they get cases from the local PD vice units and things like that and work them up. And during this time, Joe Colombo had started the Italian American Civil Rights League, and Stabile was really vocal in his support of that. Now, this first agent that came to Villano, he didn’t really want to get involved. [14:14] They came back to him and told him another story about some New York City police officers. Some NYPD detectives had raided a gambling game. And shortly after. [14:23] While they were still there, a Sergeant Lombardo arrived. And then Lombardo takes one of the Columbo gamblers named Salome out into a back room and then just kicked him loose. And he left. And then the Sergeant Lombardo comes up front and takes one of the detectives to the one side. He said, here’s something for you. And gave him 200 bucks. And then he says, we got $15,000 to fix the case for Salome. And the detective looked, well, wait a minute. You only give me 200. He said, you know, i only get part of this the bardo said i only get part of this man the fbi agent on the case to be he gets the major piece he’s going to do the fix well just like before might even be the same story he got conflated i don’t know but there’s a same kind of a story twice it comes to volano you know they they remember this and they keep watching internal affairs will later bust this sergeant lombardo and extortion ring called the sergeant’s club volano remembered stabile’s name had been mentions a guy who had gotten money from this previously mentioned bribery and so he went back to this other agent who so far he’s not named and doesn’t really want to get involved in this but knows all these people. [15:31] And he went to this other agent and got this agent to go to Joe Stabile and mentioned this extortion ring thing called the sergeant’s club and this big internal affairs bust on the deal. [15:42] Remember the gambling bribe and the cop’s name? And then he says, I heard you made a big score on that. He says, Stabile kind of played dumb at first. But then the agent mentioned a lot more money than Stabile must have gotten. He must have mentioned like, you know, $25,000 bribe went down or something. And Stabile got in since. He said, that motherfucker held out on me. You can just see that. That motherfucker held out on me. I can see that now. And he started complaining how somebody lied to him and held out on the deal. And he thought from the agent’s demeanor, the way he was talking to him, that he was not being critical of this. He just was interested and curious. And maybe he wanted to be in on that, get some of this action. And he tried to sell him on helping sell information and fix cases for mob. He said, man, he said, there’s a lot of money in it. Well, the agent played dumb and didn’t go along other than listen to the guys he expounded on how much money was to be made. He said as much as $100,000 just for naming where a wiretap is and who was the target. This agent continually, he does not want to get involved in ratting out a fellow agent. You know, talk about Omerta, bugged a mob, all these FBI agents and cops are even worse, probably. Even though the guy’s corrupt, corrupt as hell. There’s no doubt about it in his mind. And so he puts it back again, back on Volano. It’s partly because I think he was Italian, but I think they were all Italian. And Volano was known to be a straight shooter, and he worked in the organized crime squad. Volano still doesn’t really act on this hearsay. He just keeps his eyes open and keeps watching Joe Stabile for any other clues. [17:11] Well, it wasn’t long after that, Volano worked a case in which a Columbo member named Salome, our same guy, is named in a general kind of gambling and racketeering indictment, along with other Colombo family members. Shortly after, Stabile came to Volano and tried to convince him that he was just developing this Colombo guy, Salome, as an informant. He ought to let him off. And I’ve seen this before, where they say, hey, this is my informant. Hey, let him go. [17:39] And we’re always a little bit suspicious of that. Volano got back with that original agent that brought him this story. And the guy told Volano, he said, you got to do something. He’s still putting it on Volano. You got to do something. You know, Stabile was originally with the Colombo squad. It was with you guys. He knows the names of a lot of informants, and he was probably going to start selling those names one of these days. And so Vellano then kind of stepped it up, and he got his supervisor involved because all these rumors, stories, his suspicions. Supervisor instructed Stabile to use this arrest of the Salome as leverage to extract more information from him. He said, we don’t really have a very strong case on him anyhow. Well, Stabile, you know, he’s kind of set up Stabile, and there was never any information that came back Stabile’s approaching Salome who you know they’re just playing dumb that they don’t know they really have a relationship and, But again, they don’t really want to create waves. The supervisor didn’t want to create waves, and the Bureau was fine with that, mainly because at this time, the Bureau was in flux. Hoover died. The old Patrick Gray was the acting director. There was all the Watergate stuff going on, and nobody wanted to make any waves like a dirty agent. I mean, talk about dirty. They do not need any more bad headlines. Volano and his supervisor, after being rebuffed and hearing all these rumors, they confronted Stabile himself, and he denied everything. [19:01] Then they approached a corrupt New York PD sergeant who was involved in that earlier payoff in which they claimed Stabile got this $15,000 in the largest share of a payoff to fix a gambling case for a Colombo guy. And he admitted knowing Stabile and claimed that he and Stabile were members of an investment club with a small group of cops. And Stabile was just trying to get in the Italian food business. And, you know, I know him and, you know, we have him on any things together, but, you know, he’s not going to admit that they’re taking any money from the mob. Vellano went to an informant who dealt in swag with many mafia figures and he asked him, he said, you know, we’re hearing that there’s an FBI agent who is corrupt, who’s dirty. The informant trusts Vellano, but he doesn’t trust him that much. So he said, well, he said, I, you know, I might give you some clues. He said, he’s a former NYPD cop, and he’s Italian. So Vellano blurts out, is it Joe Stabile? And the informant says, bingo. [20:02] All right, you know, how much more do you need? The informant then told him about a time that Stabile approached him and claimed that he knew the exact date and time of his death. And he mentioned the name of his clumble friend, Salome, and that Salome could [20:16] help prevent this murder if the informant would do the right thing. Well, everybody in the game knows when a corrupt cop back east says… Do the right thing, they’re asking for a bribe. Villano then confronts Stabile again. He denies everything. They, you know, they interview his Colombo contact, Salome, and he denies everything. By this time, our former Kansas City police chief, Clarence Kelly, is a director. And he’s, you know, he’s Mr. [20:43] Square jawed, you know, do the right thing all the time. And I don’t mean by taking a bribe, but he, I mean, with Clarence Kelly, he was, but he did, he was kind of easy on people. He was a little too easy on people. He had a big heart, didn’t want to ever hurt anybody’s feelings, and anybody that was at least acting like they were trying to do what was supposed to be done. He’s a director by now, and he really wanted to kick the whole thing under the rug, his brand-new director. He does not need this, and he doesn’t mind kicking some stuff under the rug. Vlano started hearing that a lot of the supervisor dismissing this whole thing as an Italian vendetta between a couple of Italian agents. Later on, Villano left the bureau. The U.S. attorney indicts the bill for taking the payoff in that very allegation that we just talked about where the sergeant came in and he supposedly Villano got $15,000, a much larger amount of money than what the police officers were getting. [21:37] They ended up making a deal. He takes a hit, like a five-year sentence, and dismisses most of the charges, and he has to pay a fine and that kind of a thing. [21:50] It was really about almost like money laundering, a really minor case. It was a felony, and like I said, he did get five years, but nothing like what he had given up on. if they’d really been able to make a case on him. He’d have gone away for a long time like John Connolly did. You know, and what later came out after that, you know, whenever somebody… Takes a hit and it hits the papers other stuff start coming out well there’s an informant under uh colombo capital named wild bill kudlow uh he came forward with a story and he said he had often heard mention of joe stubbs or joe the fed as a colombo source inside the fbi he said he even once saw a guy write down the name joe stabile when the guy was writing down a name of their federal contact to get in touch with him to learn some information he also claimed that joe the fed was connected to greg scarpa now uh villano he didn’t know anything about that uh the informant said joe the fed had been transferred to boston and would be handled by whitey tropiano which is true uh that all happened and stabile was transferred to boston the informant said that while bill claimed joe the fed was being paid a grand to five grand a month depending on what kind of information he gave him one time the informant said he’s part of a hijack team and they’d been provided with a list of car truck descriptions and license plates and said that these were. [23:11] FBI vehicles, the ones they use for surveillance. The Bureau of Work tried to make a connection on this, but never did. But they ended up in some 302s or some of their reports that I was able to find. So that’s the story of Joe Stabile, a former Kansas City FBI agent, moved to New York City, becomes an informant for the Colombo family, [23:34] makes a little money out of it. And I often wonder whatever happened to him. My buddy, I bet he did his time, did a little bit of time and got out and probably had some kind of a business and lived out his life more than likely. The guy was a hustler and he was a pretty savvy guy, just like Owsley said and the other agents around him. And he was a savvy guy and he knew the streets. So, you know, it’s kind of hard to get somebody that is really savvy and knows the streets and then make a brush up against mobsters all the time. And there’s a lot of money to be made there. You know, they’re always ready. They’re always ready, man. I know I had an informant you just mentioned about. Well, that’s a nice coat you got. Oh, he said, yeah, I got several more at home. You want one? You need a watch? Oh, you know, is there anything I can do for you, officer? Oh, you know, one hand washes the other. I mean, they’re a constant. A friend of mine was eating, and one of our local mob guys was in there. He was eating out with his family, and he had seen it. They kind of knew each other from back when the cop was on the streets. And they chatted a little bit and as the mobster went out he stopped off and paid the and told the uh. [24:41] And waitress caught her and said, hey, he said, and he gave her some money and said, here, I’ll take care of that guy’s bill. So when they got ready to leave, well, he had already paid for his family’s dinner. I mean, it’s just a, it’s a constant thing. I’m trying to, to see if they can’t get, get next to you and, and, and get some kind of a handle on you. So that’s, uh, that’s the story of agent Villano, agent Joe Stabile. And thanks to Bill Ouseley and Kansas City Police Department. Don’t forget about his books out there, open city and mobsters in our midst. And my good friend, Doug Fencl, who was the guy who went to Sonny Black and said, hey, Joe Pistone, Sonny Brasco is Joe Pistone, and he’s really an FBI agent. He’s not an informant, and you guys need to lay off of him big time. Joe was going to have to come out from undercover, and I think what precipitated that was he had gotten the contract to kill Bruno Indelicato, who was the son of Sonny Redd. [25:40] And I think he was supposed to be at that meeting where the three captains were killed, but he didn’t go. Joe got the contract, and they decided it was time that he should probably come out. It was getting too dangerous for him. They wanted to try to roll somebody, and Joe thought the best candidate would be Sonny Black, who he thought was a pretty reasonable guy. They were trying to figure out who they wanted to go talk to him, and they decided on me because Sonny Black had told Joe before that I had talked to him on several occasions, and he said, for an FBI agent, he’s a pretty stand-up guy, so… [26:23] They decided I’d be the guy. We had a conference before we did it. And at that conference, we took pictures. It was me and Joe. It was the case agent down in Florida. Joe was also down in Florida and had cases down there. And then I think it was the case agent in New York, maybe. But there was three of us. And they wanted to get him alone. And, of course, he always had his people under me, the captain. So he had people always with him. So we would go out early in the morning and sit in the car. It was summer and hot. And we’d sit in the car, and the surveillance team would be on Sonny’s apartment, and there was always people around. So we were there for about three days before. In the morning, they determined that nobody was there except Sonny. [27:11] So then we went, and I banged on the door at the bottom of the steps. And he said, who is it? And I told him it was me. [27:20] And he’s very cordially says come on up so myself and the two other agents went up and he said have a seat and we sat at his uh like a little living room table so we all sat there he didn’t seem anxious or nervous or anything you just what do you guys want and i said do you know uh donnie brasco and i can’t remember if he acknowledged he knew him or not you know he was a he was a tough guy and he knew how to play the game. I said, well, Donnie Brasco is really Joe Pistone. He’s an FBI agent. He was like, it was nothing. I mean, he’s like, oh, okay. And just like I said anything, I thought he was going to jump up and down, fall on the floor, but he just took it like I was telling him today’s Sunday. We got done, and if I recall, I didn’t have to tell him the picture because he didn’t say anything that I don’t know who he is or anything like that. So I thought that he probably acknowledged the fact tacitly that he knew who he was. We were leaving, and I gave him my card, and I said, Sonny, I said, you know better than anybody what this is going to mean. And he didn’t say anything, and I gave him the card, and the two agents before me walked down the steps, and I was leaving the door, and he goes, Doug. [28:45] I said, yeah, and he says, you know better than anybody. I can’t do this. And then tried to turn Sonny Black, and Sonny Black told Doug, he said, I did a story on this. So I told Doug, he said, you know, he said, you know what that means? I can’t do that. You know, it wasn’t shortly after that, Joe Messino had him killed. So thanks a lot, guys. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website and they’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem. If you got that problem or gambling, if not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. You just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go. And I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in, and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 13 October 2025

This is a bonus episode that contains a sample from the new, exciting podcast Chinatown Sting. The Chinatown Sting is a gripping investigative show about a group of mothers who took down Manhattan Chinatown’s drug kingpin, Machine Gun Johnny. Lidia Jean unravels an entire network of women who were roped into Johnny’s criminal underworld and found themselves playing the ultimate high-stakes game. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Listen to a preview of The Chinatown Sting now and find it wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season, ad-free, with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on The Chinatown Sting Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Transcribed - Published: 8 October 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, a former KCPD Intelligence Detective, is joined by Lydia Jean Kott (LJ), a producer at Pushkin Industries, the company founded by Malcolm Gladwell. LJ brings us inside the making of Chinatown Sting, a gripping new podcast that uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Chinese organized crime, China White heroin, and characters like Machinegun Johnny in New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s. LJ explains how her interest in the case was sparked by a personal connection—her boyfriend’s mother was a federal prosecutor involved in the original sting. That legendary case centered on heroin smuggled from Hong Kong into Chinatown, hidden in packages and distributed through a network of mahjong-playing mothers. What began with a flagged parcel at the post office unraveled into a high-stakes undercover investigation. We explore how law enforcement managed to penetrate this tight-knit immigrant community, the risks taken by prosecutors like Beryl Howell, and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in the middle—including a woman forced to choose between betraying a friend or saving herself. LJ also delves into the history of Chinatowns in America, where family associations and Tongs—formed initially as mutual aid societies—became intertwined with the vice industry. She connects this legacy to gangs like the Flying Dragons and their ties back to organized crime in Hong Kong.   Our discussion is not just about drugs, gangs, and federal stings—it’s about storytelling, community, and the pursuit of survival. LJ shares how she and her co-reporter pieced the story together over the course of years of interviews and archival research, giving voice to people often overlooked in the larger mob narrative.   If you’re fascinated by organized crime, hidden histories, or the way law enforcement takes on international networks, Chinatown Sting is a podcast you won’t want to miss. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.   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.  xx Gary Jenkins : [00:00:00] Hey, welcome all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective turned podcaster. Gary Jenkins : I did a few other things in between, but this is the love of my life here, guys. And I was just talking with our guests that I don’t do this for the money, but I do it for fun and, and it is a lot of fun and, and I can tell my guests today. Does it to earn a living, but she does it a lot for fun. She really is into it. Gary Jenkins : So it’s Lydia Jean Kott, or we call her lj. Welcome. Lj, L.J. : thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of the show and it’s an honor to get to be on it and to get to talk to you. Gary Jenkins : Well, cool. Thank you for that compliment. I really appreciate that. Kind of makes it worthwhile keeping coming back. I get those nice comments on my YouTube channel quite a little bit. Gary Jenkins : That kinda keeps me coming back when I get down a little bit. Anyhow first of all, you’re. You’re with something called Pushkin, P-U-S-H-K-I-N, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company. I think he started it and had [00:01:00] the first podcast early in the days. Mm-hmm. You know, I’m like one of the earliest I am the earliest Mafia podcast. Gary Jenkins : I think that ever first one had ever started, I believe long before. When did you start? Oh, . 2015, I believe. L.J. : Okay. Yeah. Early, early podcast days, Gary Jenkins : early podcast. I listened to Serial and I thought, man, I think I could do that and tell police stories. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Gary Jenkins : So tell the guys a little bit about. Gary Jenkins : Pushkin and how this podcast industry works. We talked about this a little bit before, and I’m always kind of curious myself. You know, I’m, I’m what they call A GDI that’s a goddamn independent. If you don’t know what a GDI is, ask my son if he’s gonna join a fraternity. He said, yeah, A GDI. So I’m a GDI. Gary Jenkins : But LJ is with a company and, but she’s been all in all areas and aspects of the business. So tell the guys a little bit about. What we talked about, how this podcasting business works. L.J. : . So [00:02:00] Pushkin is a podcasting company in New York City and we do a whole, we produce a whole bunch of different podcasts. L.J. : So we produce a podcast called Against the Rules, which is hosted by Michael Lewis, who wrote my Ball story. Yeah, that’s Gary Jenkins : a great one. But guys Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, who’s a guy that wrote Moneyball. This is a great one. Go ahead. L.J. : So yeah, so that’s the you know, that’s the podcast that I work on, so I’m a producer on that show. L.J. : And Happiness Lab and Revisionist History. So we make a bunch of shows and we have, you know, people can come to Pushkin with ideas for shows, and then there’s producers on staff, people like myself who then would help you make the show. You know, sometimes ideas originate within the company. So I actually, as a producer, pitched this idea to the higher ups at Pushkin, and then it became a show. Gary Jenkins : And this one here, this one here, to clarify, guys, this one here, Chinatown Sting is the name of it. We’re gonna talk about. Chinese organized crime for a change rather than the Italian organized crime or some drug organization what we call a peckerwood. Peckerwood is non [00:03:00] Italian, by the way. Lj Gary Jenkins : yeah. I never Gary Jenkins: heard that. Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s kinda local. It’s little bit like saying hillbilly or a redneck drug association. But anyhow we use it as non Italian in Kansas City. Anyhow, she’s gonna talk about some Chinese organized crime. So it’s I’m really fascinated. I really wanna learn about this. I had just. Gary Jenkins : I was just thinking I need to do a story about Chinese organized crime and, and I was finding a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not a lot. So, and then this opportunity came along and, and you know, I’m, I’m kind of promoting a competing podcast, if you will, but if you guys are like me, I listen to so many different podcasts that, you know, we’re not in competition with each other. Gary Jenkins : A, a rising ship lifts all a rising tide lifts all boats anyhow, right. L.J. : Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to both the Gangland Wire and the Chinatown sting. You can, you can. Complimentary podcast. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. They are, they are in many ways, a little. I they complimentary L.J. : actually. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. A little different aspect of organized crime. Gary Jenkins : So LJ tell us about, you know, how’d you [00:04:00] first get interested in this story? Like I said, I was harping a hard time finding much about Chinese organized crime. So tell us how you got into it. L.J. : So I, there isn’t, especially when I started working on this, which was like three years ago, there wasn’t very much about Chinese organized crime at all. L.J. : But I, this is a little bit of a reveal of the podcast, but I got interested in it because my boyfriend’s mom, actually, her name is Beryl Howell, . L.J. : But her career got started as a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in New York City, in the eastern District. And her first big case started with this undercover sting that happened. In Brooklyn, because that’s where the eastern Eastern District of New York is. And this case is kind of legendary in my boyfriend’s family. L.J. : And I’ve known her actually, you know, for a really long time. So I’d always heard about this case and how this was the case that, you know, it helped, et cetera. It was her first big case. She was just a baby prosecutor at the time, et cetera, off in her career. It made a [00:05:00] huge impression on her. It was kind of like family lore. L.J. : And as a journalist, I’ve always been like. I wanna get to the bottom of it. Like I wanna find out, I’ve heard about her side of the story of this case, but I wanna find out about the people who, you know, who else was involved and kind of paint a full picture of this case. So it took me about, I think three or four years and I found a co reporter who speaks Cantonese. L.J. : Her name is Sh Wang. And we worked on it together. And we’ve been telling the story of this case. And what was really helpful is that we barrel my boyfriend’s mom. Has this, she gave me this suitcase that was full of thousands of pages of court documents that she had saved. So it’s all public record, but since this is from the 1980s yeah, you know, it can be, you can only read the documents in the courthouse actually, or you have to pay like a dollar in actual quarters to get it home. Gary Jenkins: Yes, L.J. : I had the advantage of having this suitcase where I could look through and it also had, you know, her notes and things that she underlined. So that was really helpful. So I spent, you know, we started by. [00:06:00] Reading those documents and then trying to find the people who are in the documents. Gary Jenkins : Wow. Gary Jenkins : That’s so tell us about searching for some of these people that are in their documents. That’s really hard to do because you’re, you’re looking into a closed society, a totally closed society to outsiders for the most part, except for the cops. I’m sure you, it was easy to find some of the agents or cops. Gary Jenkins : How did you start, when you start with the cops, how, how did that work? Was it a task force that you could find some supervisors and then they could turn you on to guys that would talk to you? L.J. : Yeah, I mean, maybe it would be helpful, so to start with the, you know, like what the case was, the story? So yeah, basically, yeah. L.J. : The Chinatown Sting was, what happened was there was this mail parcel that was flagged that was coming from Hong Kong to New York City, and the Customs official opened it and realized that there was. This really high grade heroin inside, it was like millions of dollars. Yeah. And they did, I’m sure you know all about this and undercover drop off, basically. L.J. : Mm-hmm. So there was actually three [00:07:00] packages that were all exactly the same and they were going to, were going to Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn and they had, you know. Undercover Co. They had like a undercover like postal officer. Gary Jenkins: Oh yeah. L.J. : Agents like all do this like undercover draw, you know, delivery of the package to find out who was going to, and they like wired it so that way when it opened, they would be alerted. L.J. : Mm-hmm. And the package two didn’t get picked up. Who knows why not. But the third package went to this woman’s house in Brooklyn and this woman opened it and, the drugs were like hidden amongst like stuffed animals. So she opened the package, she took out the stuffed animals and all the DEA agents came and arrested her. L.J. : . She’s put Cantonese they figured she wasn’t the one who was organizing this like multimillion dollar drug scheme. Yeah. So they wanted to know like who she was, like, you know, working for, she told them that it was a friend then they kind of pieced together that it was basically a whole group of these [00:08:00] moms who played Mahjong together in Chinatown. L.J. : Ah, which do you uhhuh, you know about Mahjong? Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s like a, a Domino’s like dominoes, American Dominoes. I think L.J. : it’s kind like Domino’s. Exactly. So there are these like Mahjong parlors in Chinatown where you can like, do a little bit of gambling but really hang out. Mm-hmm. And there was all these women who knew each other from these Mahjong parlors, and they were all, it was like one friend would bring in, another friend would bring in another friend, and they were accepting these packages of multimillion dollars worth of heroin. L.J. : This, , federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell, who was, how I got into this story. She ended up in this situation where she had all of these young moms in custody who were accepting these packages of heroin, and she wanted to know who was at the top of the scheme. So she needed to convince them to flip, but who they were flipping on would be their L.J. : really good friends. Mm-hmm. And the story center is on this one woman who was pulled into this scheme by her best friend. And this best friend happened to be the [00:09:00] recruiter of this whole scheme, and she had to decide whether or not to betray her friend. And the stakes were really high because at the time in Manhattan Chinatown, it was really controlled by gangs. L.J. : So if you spoke out against the gangs, you were really risking your life. So if she decided to to speak up, she would, you know, not only lose her best friend, but probably have to like leave behind her community. So it was. On the other hand, she was facing 10 years in prison. She had a baby. So it was a really tough decision. L.J. : Mm-hmm. But Beryl, you know, wanted to get to the person at the top. Who she knew actually this guy named Machine Gun Johnny, that was his nickname. Gary Jenkins : Machine Gun Johnny. L.J. : Yeah. Johnny in? Yeah. Gary Jenkins : Oh yeah. I, I think there’s a YouTube thing about him. So I remember that name when I was looking around. Yeah, so Machine gun, Johnny there Things great name. L.J. : Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s funny because in like law enforcement called him Machine Gun Johnny. But in Chinatown, he was known as Onion Head actually, because his hair stood up like an onion. So he had like less of a [00:10:00] scary nickname in his community. Gary Jenkins : So that in that community, it’s such a closed community Of course. Gary Jenkins : And, and you’ve got one to flip. The prosecutor has one to flip on one and another one to flip. And you get this, they, they get this name of machine gun Johnny or Onion Head, Johnny. And, and it’s really difficult because everybody speaks a foreign language, first of all, that most Americans don’t. And most people in law enforcement, there’s very few Chinese in law enforcement. Gary Jenkins : Very few. Yeah. And, and it’s just not an a, a, a there’s no appeal for Chinese people to, to go into law enforcement. It doesn’t seem to me like now these organizations, now, was this just his organization or was he part of a bigger organization? L.J. : Yeah. So he was the head the way, I don’t know like how much you wanna get into how this organized crime worked in Chinatown at the time, but it is really, it’s fascinating. L.J. : So he was the head of a gang called the Flying Dragons. So the way it worked. [00:11:00] Basically, if you don’t mind, we can go back to the very beginning, which is when Chinatowns were formed, you know, in the 18 hundreds. Gary Jenkins : I am interested in that and how that breaks down. You hear of these to societies and you hear Yeah, L.J. : exactly. Gary Jenkins : Those kinds of things. Then street gangs and, and is it all like a pyramid scheme up to somebody at the top and even maybe hooked back to China, mainland China itself. So tell us about that. What, what did you learn about that? L.J. : What happened was, in the 18 hundreds Chinese immigrants came to the US ’cause the Gold Rush, they helped with the railroads. L.J. : Then the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, and that was a time of a lot of like anti-Chinese hate. Chinese immigrants who were on the west coast came to the East coast because they got pushed out a lot of times violently from the west coast. They formed Chinatowns, including Manhattan’s Chinatown. L.J. : Which is actually right next to Little Italy. Another, yeah, it is Gary Jenkins: in the Lower L.J. : East side. And they formed these associations, like family associations. They’re kinda like mutual aid societies where they would help each other find jobs, give each other [00:12:00] loans. You know, like US society was really racist at the time, and this was a place where they, the community could, they could support each other. L.J. : And there was one type of an association called the Tong, which did a lot, the tongs. Did a lot of good work that helped the community. You know, you would get your pick up, your mail from the tongs but they also were in charge of the illicit of the vice industries. Mm-hmm. The brothels, the gambling parlors, et cetera. L.J. : So that’s , the background history. Mm-hmm. And then in the 1960s when the Chinese exclusion Act was finally fully repealed 1965, immigration really opened up. And then Chinatown. Went from being this like really small neighborhood that at the time was. L.J. : Before then, it was mostly just men to a family bustling neighborhood. And there were all these teens who were coming, the tongs were oh, we have a really good idea. We wanna be respected community associations, which we are. So why don’t we have the teenagers do the dirty work for us. L.J. : We still wanna be running the brothels and the gambling parlors and doing that stuff, but we [00:13:00] also wanna seem clean. Yeah. So they, the tongs outsourced, they used the teens as as muscle, so these teenage gangs formed. Each tong, like the hip sing tong, which this story is about, was also covertly associated with the gang. L.J. : Which was the Flying Dragons gang, and it was like so crazy ’cause it’s like on the same street. So like if you look at Pell Street, which is a really small street in Chinatown, on one side you have the Hip Sing Tong Association, which has. Just like golden pagoda, like, you know, people’s grandparents go there to like take out lo, you know, get loans or whatever, just like a respected normal place. L.J. : Right across the street there’s a gambling parlor that’s run by the flying dragons, which is where they get their money, which is like a seedy, smoky, very shaky space really. And these teen and these kids, these teenagers they weren’t only running the gambling parlors, they were also extorting all the small businesses. L.J. : So in the 1980s in Chinatown. Most small businesses had a little plaque, like, you [00:14:00] know how you have your liquor license? Mm-hmm. You also would have like the plaque that says like, what tong you’re associated with. So they wouldn’t get extorted through twice. The tongs to your question, they also often had links to like triads in Hong Kong. L.J. : ‘Cause these gangs that I’m talking about, and these tongs all tend to, they came from Hong Kong. So that’s the, so Johnny Hin and Johnny, our guy, he was the head of the Flying Dragons gang, which was linked to this to this Tong the Hip Sing Tong, which was one of the most powerful tongs in Chinatown. L.J. : It was run by this elderly guy with a cane and named Uncle Benny, who was very smiley, but he was kinda like the godfather of Chinatown that the head of it all. So that’s kind of the, yeah. Interesting. It’s a bit like the black hand, I guess. You’re exploiting your own community. L.J. : ’cause it all was very stayed within Chinatown. Gary Jenkins : Oh, all this. What about the dope though? Now, now did the tongue, they wanna stay clean from a lot of stuff and, but they wanna be able to use these [00:15:00] young guys of flying dragons. Now the Flying Dragons are getting into bringing heroin in, which kinda like the mafia, they really didn’t want their guys involved in heroin because there was such a societal dis disapproval of heroin. Gary Jenkins : And it was, it affected their own kids sometimes. So, did the, to, did they support this heroin or was that an independent operation on the part of the Flying Dragons? L.J. : Yeah, so that is such a good question. So. Honestly, it’s not exactly clear to me what had happened. Basically what I know happened is there was, the original leader of the Flying Dragons was this guy called the Scientist, Michael Chen, and he was a very strict leader and did not let any members of the flying dragons get involved in the drug trade. L.J. : He was like, that is too dangerous, we’re not doing that. And he ended up getting murdered and then Johnny took over. Gary Jenkins: And L.J. : then that was the turning point, and I think you might find it interesting is this was around the time of the pizza connection [00:16:00] trials. Gary Jenkins : Ah, yeah. Which I know L.J. : you did. Like a four part series. L.J. : I did, Gary Jenkins : yeah. A four part. I really went into that pizza connection. I yeah, that was an interesting story. Gary Jenkins : And they were bringing heroin in. The mid east Turkey and cocaine, but a lot of heroin. So these guys where were, and their heroin was coming in from China, I suppose it was China White, or from the Golden Triangle down in Southeast Asia. Gary Jenkins : I would assume. L.J. : That’s exactly right. It was, so what happened was that when Johnny came to power, two years later, the Pizza Connection trials happened. So then the Italians weren’t really bringing in as much heroin as they were before. Gary Jenkins: And L.J. : then Johnny, so there was like a bit of a vacuum I think the vacuum was just like too tempting to resist. L.J. : Mm-hmm. The Tong leaders. They didn’t stop him from bringing in the drugs. When he took over the gang. Also, I think another thing to remember is at this point, these teenagers are older, right? Like, yeah. Now they’re like 18, 19, like they have bills to pay. L.J. : They’re no longer, like the money that they were getting from extorting, the shopkeepers wasn’t enough. I think [00:17:00] the temptation was too great. And also the old leader was so strict and I think people were a little bit done with that it was all street battles over , control over, like who could extort what store? L.J. : It was just like a very violent street violence based culture underneath the old guy and the former gangsters who I talked to said that under Johnny, he was like, I don’t care about that sort of stuff. I just wanna be rich. And then he started flying to Hong Kong all the time. Building connections with people in Hong Kong who were connected to the triads, who were getting the drugs as exactly as you said from the Golden Triangle. L.J. : And it was pretty easy to bring in heroin from Hong Kong to the United States. At that time, Gary Jenkins: hmming L.J. : and Johnny became, the fifth biggest heroin importer in the city. Wow. So he became, very, very successful. Gary Jenkins : So he, he was, distributed Chinatown. Normally in Chinatown, they were only preying on their own people. Gary Jenkins : They’re only extorting money from their own people within the group. ’cause they do, nobody was gonna [00:18:00] talk. Exactly. Now you’ve got this drugs, you, you know, if you’re gonna make a lot of money, you’re gonna have to go outside of Chinatown. You’re gonna have to go out in, to the Peckerwood world and the Italian world and the other ethnic neighborhoods. Gary Jenkins : , Did he make connections with other drug gangs and other groups? L.J. : Yes, he did. And I talked to other, a former, a gang member who was in the Flying Dragons, and he said, yeah, he, they had connections to the Puerto Rican, and I’ve heard he did have some connections to the Italian gang. L.J. : So, ’cause these kids now, , they spoke English and they had been,, living in the States for a while. So they were able to make connections with, with other gangs and it started to move. Their business ventures started to move outside of Manhattan’s Chinatown, which is also, you know, why the Fed started to pay attention to what was going on in Chinatown. L.J. : , Because up to this point, honestly, they didn’t really care. They’re just kind of like Chinatown can do Chinatown. But it was around the time, it’s, it Chinatown, Gary Jenkins : Jake, it’s Chinatown. L.J. : But if it’s gonna be hurting people outside of Chinatown especially, ’cause , as you know, this [00:19:00] was like the eighties war on drugs. L.J. : Yeah. And then these congressional hearings started to happen and , federal agents were noticing that. The percentage the, the heroin was starting to come in, , it was beginning to be what they call China White. Exactly. Yeah. It seemed like it was coming through from Asian organized crime. L.J. : So there was a mandate from Washington that was like we need to be doing something about this problem of the gangs in Chinatown. , They couldn’t ignore it any longer. Gary Jenkins : Hmm. So I guess they did the usual things, went out and started trying to make small buys and, and from narcotics units with the New York PD narcotics units and they bought China white from somebody. Gary Jenkins : Then they, found that person’s trying to develop, turn some people. Is that how that worked? L.J. : I’m sure that was happening, but yeah, the story that I’m following it kind of a bit, fell into this. So, you know, my boyfriend’s mom was a prosecutor. Yeah. And I think she had only been at the job for six months and then she found out about these. L.J. : Boxes of heroin. This, and she gave the [00:20:00] authorization for this under this undercover sting. And then that she started to try and figure out how she could get to the person at the top. She worked on that case basically almost her entire time at the Eastern District of New York. L.J. : Wow. Like it was full of twists and turns and nothing was going as planned. There was, , a, global manhunt. These cases, as you know, are these mafia cases are really, really hard to build. And it’s kind of Gary Jenkins: Yeah, they are. L.J. : I was talked to one I prosecutor and she was , people don’t even really wanna do them anymore because it’s so, such painstaking work. ‘Cause you have to flip one person after another person, it’s like a slow, crescendo and requires just so much legwork, et cetera. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. Now, now you say like Chinatown Sting, the name of it though. By a sting, we always think of as somebody then. Passes themself off as a, a buyer, for example. You bring your stolen goods or your heroin to me, and then I pop you. Is that was, was there like a final thing that they, they did it in the. Gary Jenkins : [00:21:00] Podcast is to talk about a final thing where they, they did a sting on machine gun. Johnny, I’m assuming at the end we’re gonna get machine gun Johnny and the cops are gonna win. The good guys are gonna win. I mean, I know You gotta, you gotta listen to, you gotta listen to the I know. I know. Gary Jenkins : I’ll listen to it. It’s not quite out yet guys, but it probably will be the time I release this. L.J. : It’s out. It’s out, it’s out tomorrow. Gary Jenkins : Oh, okay. All right. It will be the time I release this or whenever this, L.J. : I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know when this comes out, but by the time this comes out, it should be out. L.J. : Okay. And this sting refers to the, this moment that set the whole thing off. So the undercover delivery of the packages is what you mean by the, by the sting. But that’s interesting that a sting is usually a, what you described. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. That’s what, that’s what we think of. That’s what I think of as a sting. Gary Jenkins : We had we’ve had several stings for buying stolen property here in Kansas City. Gary Jenkins : that’s just a fascinating that she found all these ladies and how they were connected at the Mahjong parlor. Gary Jenkins : So then they have an episode about how all that worked. Is that kinda how it’s laid [00:22:00] down in your podcast? L.J. : Oh yeah. So to go back to your original question, so the way that me and my co shuu went about doing this story is we had the list of all the women from the Mahjong parlors, we had their names. L.J. : Mm-hmm. And then we just like went door to door and just like looked, researched, any of the possible addresses, and we had no. Reason to think that they would wanna talk to us. And we just, it was literally just like knocking on doors in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Chinatown in flushing in Sunset Park. That was months. And then finally we just knocked on the right door and found the right woman she let us in. And then she said that she. None of these women had ever talked to a reporter before. But she said, yes, I wanna tell my story of what the impact that this case had on me and what happened. L.J. : And she’s kind of our main character. So we tell the story of why she decided to accept the packages of heroin why, how she made her decision of what to do after she was [00:23:00] caught. And then the how the relationship that developed between her and my boyfriend’s mom and how she thinks about everything that happened today. Gary Jenkins : Hmm. Well, prosecutors historically prosecutors don’t get quite that personally involved in these cases. This prosecutor has really really got into this story. L.J. : Yeah. I think, well, I think that these women really made an impression on her L.J. : I think the case, the case made a big impression on her because she and this woman were about the same age at the time. L.J. : Mm-hmm. And. Actually while working on this case, she had a baby too. Like this woman was like a young mom. And my boyfriend’s mom was pregnant at the, at this case, spanned four or five years. So she basically built her family while she was working on this case as well. So I think she. Was really interested in how these women were like navigating some of the same pressures as she was starting a family, trying to figure out like how to be a good mom. L.J. : While also they were navigating very different pressures, which was, you know, [00:24:00] the dangerous world of the gangs. Also the very confusing legal system and trying to like make their way in the United States. Gary Jenkins : Now were they able to link anything back to Southeast Asia or mainland China that able to draw any of those people into it? L.J. : Unfortunately, unfortunately, no. I think that wish, I think it’s hard. I know that they wish they had, but I think that is quite hard. It. Gary Jenkins : It’s quite hard. Especially over, I mean, those L.J. : people got got away Gary Jenkins : for sure. It’s a little different going into New Mexico or South America, Columbia or something. But going into China, man, that’s a whole nother ballgame there. L.J. : Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and this was interesting ’cause this was happening, the case started when Hong Kong. Was under British control. Oh, yeah. So it was a few years, it was a few years before the handoff. And that’s kind of an interesting thing in and of itself because like at the, you know, when, I don’t know if you know about this, but when Hong Kong was under British Control, the, they basically had the exact same [00:25:00] legal system as like the British legal system, right? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. But L.J. : I talked to this one lawyer who was saying that, there’s a lot of like British and like Australian and New Zealand lawyers from New Zealand who were in Hong Kong and one of these lawyers who is now in London, he told me that they call lawyers who went to Hong Kong filth failed in London, try Hong Kong because it’s lawyers who like had, you know. L.J. : Messed up in various ways. Had gone through divorces, had criminal records, had drinking problems, had gambling problems. They tended to leave London and then go to Hong Kong. So there’s a lot of, a lot of mob lawyers, a lot of kind of like. Outlaw lawyers in Hong Kong. . Gary Jenkins : They’re not there now. They’re not there now, that’s for sure. No, no. Everything changed. L.J. : No, this was, everything changed, but this was back in the before. This was back in the 1980s. So I think that was another complication of the case because of when Johnny realized that there was a case being built against him, he just got on a plane and went to Hong Kong. L.J. : Mm-hmm. Gary Jenkins : Wow. [00:26:00] So and, and during this whole investigation, was there one and I mentioned this early one, like task force in which the prosecutor was kinda like the lead on the, the, for the task force made up of, you know, your customs and, and IRS and DEA and, and people like that. Is that how that worked? Gary Jenkins : And maybe local narcotics people. L.J. : Yeah, so there was, she worked closely with a customs agent and a DEA agent. There was a task force, I believe it was called Group 41. Mm-hmm. That was specifically created to go after Asian organized crime. And the history of the task force is really interesting, and I think if you get someone who was on it who could talk about it, it would be really cool. L.J. : Mm-hmm. I heard about how it was kind of like viewed as like. The cool thing was to go after like the Italian mobsters. Yeah, yeah. , That’s where the task force everyone wanted to be in, but then it act, you know, the Asian organized crime was bringing in more drugs. L.J. : Mm-hmm. So this kind of like ragtag group that like no one took seriously [00:27:00] actually for a period of time became like. This really important, one of the most important task forces. So their story is is pretty fascinating. They, this was since this case started, I think at the time that this case started, since it was such a long case the task force wasn’t involved in it. L.J. : So they didn’t come in until like a little bit later on this case and that they were working on like a bunch of other cases and they were, that task force made a really big difference. I think in Chinatown. They took down a lot of gangsters. Gary Jenkins : Sounds like a pretty cool case. I wouldn’t mind getting hold of of somebody from that task force. Gary Jenkins : I’ll have to start looking around to see if I can find anybody to approach. Yeah. Has anybody written a book on it? Has anybody written a book on it? L.J. : I don’t think there’s been a book about the task force, but you know what, it’s interesting because I think for a long time the you know, Chinatown. L.J. : Former gangsters. You know how like the Italians, there’s all these like former gangsters and former Mafia member, there’s all these books, there’s all these movies. Yes. You know, they have podcasts. I know. [00:28:00] My biggest Gary Jenkins : competition, they’re my, they’re, they’re, they’re against me again. Still they’re against me. L.J. : Well, but often you have them on your show. Gary Jenkins : Yes. That some of ’em I do. L.J. : Yeah. So, but when I started working on this podcast, there was, you know. Basically no former gangsters who were in the Chinatown gangs who were Yeah. Who like spoke about their experiences. Like there was really nothing out there. As I was working on this series, that started to change and now it’s kind of like we’re in a moment, I think, where, I don’t know why, whether it’s been like enough time has passed or whatever or maybe there is this one guy who is a former gangster who was kind of like. L.J. : If we don’t start talking about our experiences, it’ll be like, it’ll never happen. It’ll actually be this whole history disappeared. Mm-hmm. So he started doing these interviews and he was able to convince other former gangsters to talk. And he wrote a book his name is Mike Moy. And he convinced this other former gangster named [00:29:00] Peter Tin to write a book. L.J. : So now I think. These former gangsters are starting to come out and I’ve been able to interview one cowboy and he was kind of like, yeah, always talk about the Italian mafia, but like we were a very strong mafia as well, and we just, ’cause we were more like subtle about it, doesn’t mean we should be forgotten. L.J. : Interesting. So for that reason, so you have Gary Jenkins : some of those interviews on the podcast, right? L.J. : I have some of those and I have some of those interviews on the podcast. Gary Jenkins : Cool. All right. L.J. : It was really interesting , these former gangsters who wrote books, they had a book reading in Chinatown where they read from their books and people who live in, you know, it was a lot of their family and friends, but it was still really interesting to see this thing that hadn’t really been talked about. L.J. : Publicly before was, you know, and these gangsters who used to be so feared in Chinatown were now like in the public library above like, you know, by where the children’s books are, like talking about their stories and people were asking them questions like, why did you extort the shopkeepers? Why did you do this? Gary Jenkins: Yeah. L.J. : So that was pretty, pretty [00:30:00] fascinating. Gary Jenkins : Yeah, that’s such an interesting little segment of history. The, of the immigrant story really start the Italians Jewish people of the, all the minorities that came here. Irish probably some German, but. All those minorities that came here, they start off the, the young guys who are criminals who don’t have much opportunity in the larger society. Gary Jenkins : Start off by extorting money from the shopkeepers and the people have to create a shop. They can’t get a job. So they start a store of some kind, a, a little grocery store, a restaurant or big, and you can use family members to get it going. And then these other gangsters of their own ilk then extort some money from ’em for them to be able to survive. Gary Jenkins : And they’re all just wanting to be a part of the American pie. That’s all they want is to be you know, be successful, to be an American. L.J. : Yeah, no, exactly. I think TJ English on your podcast was saying that it’s the most American story of Yeah. Immigrants [00:31:00] come and then they can’t, you know, and until they can’t, you know, opportunities aren’t open to them towards, to make the American dream come true and then being a gangster is a way to be able to make that happen. L.J. : And then, yeah, once immigrant groups get, are accepted. You know, the gangsters don’t need to be gangsters anymore. And I think, you know, now these Chinatown gangsters who I interviewed, they work in construction and they own restaurants like their kids are, one of their kids is like a police officer, you know? Gary Jenkins : Interesting, interesting. Well. Lydia, Jean Cott, lj, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This is, I mean, I’m excited looking forward to this podcast and I’m gonna reach out and see if I can snag one of these guys and get even to give me an interview and, and do a show with him. Kind of hear the down and dirty part of it too. L.J. : Oh, they would love to talk to you and I hope that your listeners listen to the Chinatown Sting. Gary Jenkins : All right. They will. It’s a Chinatown sting. It’s on the Pushkin network, and Pushkin has a whole bunch of other [00:32:00] shows out there, so don’t get too lost in it, but I highly recommend the one with Michael Lewis. Gary Jenkins : And Ari lost the name of it. What’s the name of it that you work on Against the rules? Against the Rules? I highly recommend that. I really like that guy. Thanks a lot, lj. L.J. : Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Gary Jenkins : Okay let me ask you a question here. You said, Mike, what was you, you said his last name, but I didn’t quite pick it up. Gary Jenkins : What was it? L.J. : Oh, you should look up Mike Moy. MOY. Gary Jenkins : Oh, okay. MOY and and Peter Chang. C-H-A-N-G. L.J. : Yeah. Mike will connect you with everyone. He’s kind of like the hub of like the Chinatown gang stories. Gary Jenkins: Okay. And he’s a L.J. : good interview. And if you look at Chinatown gang stories, they have a YouTube channel. Yeah. L.J. : These, those would all be good guys for you to get. I think you guys would have a good, Gary Jenkins : okay. Lj, thanks a lot. I will I’ll go ahead and I’ve got a couple others already done, but since you guys are getting started up, probably within the next two to three weeks, and I will send links when I get [00:33:00] this out to whoever I need. Gary Jenkins : Okay, cool. I’ve got, I got two or three people. I guess. I have your, your email and some of those I think there’s three different people on that where I deal with those companies. I never know who I’m dealing with until I sit down here with you. It’s always kind of hard to figure out. Yeah. L.J. : It was so fun talking to you. L.J. : And it was fun learning. My mom’s from Kansas City, so it was when I told you, oh, really? I was like, I had no idea that organized crime was such a thing in Kansas City. And she was like, of course. It’s so, it was funny say that she, Gary Jenkins : she came from Kansas City. L.J. : Yeah, she grew up in Kansas City. Yeah. Oh, really? L.J. : And she was saying that that’s why there’s so many, there’s so much concrete, because the mafia used to control that concrete. Gary Jenkins : Well, the the, actually he was Irish, the Irish politician Tom Pendergast. Who, who worked. Had a glove with the mafia in the political arena especially. He had a concrete company called Ready Mix Concrete, and they, they poured a lot of concrete in the 1930s. L.J. : Yeah, that’s what she was saying. That’s, that was the, the origin of all that concrete. Yeah, that, which again. Gary Jenkins : Irish immigrants and Italian [00:34:00] immigrants and they’re just trying to get a piece of the American pie. L.J. : Exactly. Exactly. It’s the same story over and over again. It’s almost like maybe we should just be more accepting of immigrants, really. L.J. : Our problems would be solved. Gary Jenkins : I know. I know. I don’t know have crime. Oh, well, okay, lj, anything I can ever do for you here in Kansas City, why don’t hesitate to get a hold of me. L.J. : Okay. And if you’re ever in New York, let me know. It was a pleasure talking to you. L.J. : Okay, pleasure talking to you. Speaker: Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with ptsd, TSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure to go to the VA website and they’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you got that problem or gambling. Speaker: If not, you can go to Anthony Ruano. He is a counselor down in Florida. He’s, uh, got a hotline on his, his website. You got a problem with, uh, gambling. Most states will have, if you have gambling, you most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around [00:35:00] for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. Speaker: I got my books, I got my movies that are all on Amazon. Just go and, uh, I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon, uh, sales page and you can figure out what to do. Uh, I really appreciate y’all tuning in and, uh, we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 6 October 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Dan O’Sullivan from the new podcast The Outfit to discuss the incredible story of Ken Eto, known in Outfit circles as “Tokyo Joe.” Ken Eto was unique: the only Japanese American member of the Chicago Outfit, and the only man to survive being shot three times in the head. Eto was the Outfit’s gambling kingpin on Chicago’s North Side, controlling operations along Rush Street, policy wheels in Black neighborhoods, Chinese games in Chinatown, and the Puerto Rican “bolita” numbers racket. His empire generated millions of dollars each year, placing him among the highest-ranking members of the Outfit. But success had its price. In 1980, the FBI caught Eto in a sting, and his Outfit bosses grew nervous—especially since he had ties to a cocaine deal with the Genovese family. Invited to dinner by a mobster who had never broken bread with him before, Eto knew it was a setup. Two gunmen shot him three times in the head. Miraculously, he lived, and his survival changed the history of the Outfit. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.   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 [00:00:00] Hey, y’all, you wire tapers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City. Missouri Police Intelligence unit detective with his own podcast. Now, believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for quite a while. Guys, if a lot of you guys have been following me for five, six years, you know, guys, you know, I was one of the first guys that did this podcast this kind of a podcast. And so I have with us today, one of the, maybe the most recent iteration of a Mafia podcast. I have Dan O’Sullivan welcome, Dan. Thank you, Gary. And I like you staking your territory, you know, like that I’m I’m a Johnny. Come lately. It’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m a og. You’re the og. Exactly. I’m og. Yeah, right. I mean, I’m an associate. You’re the godfather here, you know? And there you go. We gotta get the pecking order down. This is how. As was said to me by a historian, you know, the mob makes discipline in the military look like nothing, you know, so, yeah. However it [00:01:00] works, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. That discipline is, and there’s no appeal either, right? Yeah. So anyhow Dan and I, I think you’re gonna have a partner in that. You’re gonna have a podcast called The Outfit. Is that the name of it? That’s right. The outfit got, which is, go ahead. You got it exactly right, Gary. Yeah. We me and my co-host, Alana Hope Levinson our new podcast, the outfits launching August 14th and just every week we’re doing a different mob story that kind of explains something about, you know, America and, and you know, so whether it’s how the milk wars in Chicago led to us having expiration dates on milk cartons, that’s a crazy story to, you know. Who we’re gonna talk about a little bit the history of Japanese Americans in the US or. Americans in Russia during the nineties and seeing that transition of democracy and the mob there. So we just we’re having a lot of fun doing that. But it’s great to be on your [00:02:00] show. I, I’ve loved your show for years, so really an honor to be here. Well, thank you so much. You know, I when I do a program here in the city, I usually started off with a comparison of, I want you people to remember all Italians are not criminals. Yeah. And, and what happened during. The turn of the century is really, has happened here recently. Mm-hmm. What happened was, all these people from a really poor country, Southern Italy and Sicily, came to the United States. They just wanted a piece of the pie. Right. They just wanted to, to have a, a way to get by. They wanted to earn, you know, earn a living and, and get a meal, and they weren’t able to do that. They come here. At that time, the Irish and the English and the Germans, we had all the good jobs, right? We had all the police jobs, the fire jobs, they were squeezed out. They really could hardly get that kind of a job. And so they had push carts and, and you know, spaghetti joints as they used to call ’em restaurants, you could always do that. But they brought this thing from the old country called the Mafia, [00:03:00] and you’ve got all these young men who are bright and, and. Aggressive and, and you know, and then prohibition comes along and they take it. Yeah, they take it and they run with it. And, and you know, the same way today you got all these Hispanics come up and you got this narcotics thing, and, and they’re, you know, they don’t, you know, we’re keeping ’em squeezed out for the most part. They don’t speak the language and look a little different, so you’re kind of squeezed out. So it is not comparing, not exactly apples and oranges, but there’s a lot of similarities there on newly arrived immigrant populations. And they’re not all criminals. It’s such a good point that this repetition just, you know, I mean, look, I’m a journalist. I’ve covered the mob. I’ve written about it and, and tried to get really educated on it. Just you see this cycle over and over again. You know, like you said, my last name’s O Sullivan, the Irish. By the time the Italians and Jews started coming more. Numbers to the us. Well look at Chicago. The Irish first off had been gangsters too, but they had just clammed up the ladder a little bit where they [00:04:00] controlled the political machinery. They controlled police, fire departments, these civil service jobs. So what was left, you know, by the time these guys came along, it was more just the same way, the more criminal thing. And you know, if you look at the stats today, I believe, I believe immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans. Yeah, true. So, you know, because most of them are coming here to work, you know? Yeah, I know. So yeah, it’s, it repeats itself. It’s absolutely true. Yeah. It wasn’t, I think it was Mark Twain said, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it rhymes. That’s a, that guy the pride of Missouri, right? I mean, or is it Missouri Pride of Missouri? Gotta quote him. Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, Dan, so let’s talk about you know, some of the things you’ve done in your career. You’ve done a variety of things in the news and, and media. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve done in your past. Yeah, so I, I, we were talking earlier, I started out as a sports writer actually, which is, I, I was always interested in the mob for reasons I’ll, I’ll maybe get into, but doing sports [00:05:00] writing, I realized you kind of brush up against organized crime just in the course of doing that, you know? Yeah. So I wrote a piece, God, over 10 years ago now about. Labor exploitation and pro wrestling and you know, that that was run a bit and still to a degree is, is run a bit along underworld lines, you know with these sorts of shady syndicates all over the country. And, and over time that changed with the WWF and WE but still very dangerous for the guys involved. Obviously Hulk Hogan just passed away and, you know, kind of. And embodied it shifting from like a carnival thing to big business. But so I remember an outgrowth of that was the former boss of the WWE e Vince McMahon, it’s not well remembered, was prosecuted by the federal government. For trafficking steroids. And they, it really was prosecuted like a mob case where they got a doctor to flip who was [00:06:00] supplying the, you know, whatever he wanted and shipping it across the country. So. I got into this bizarre story of a stabbing of an NBA player and the, the police subsequently breaking another. This was in New York, subsequently breaking another NBA player’s leg with a baton. So I just started to drift towards crime. And then a few years ago, I wrote a story for Chicago Magazine. That was the history of the life of Kento, who I, I thought was just a, yeah. Fascinating figure, and I couldn’t believe no one had done a deep dive on him. So I, I did that and and here I am today, now doing, now doing a lesser version of your podcast. Well, I’m sure it’ll be good. You’re gonna have high production values. I can see that already better than I had, especially when I first started. They’re a little bit better now, but they’re still not really. Good high production values. Well let, before we get into Ken Etto, let’s talk about you. You mentioned you had a personal connection to the mob, your father, and something happened when Yeah. Where’d you grow [00:07:00] up and, yeah, because you’re not from Chicago, that’s not a Chicago accent, I know that. No, that’s right. And yeah, so I grew up on Long Island in New York originally, which, you know, I was born in 1987, so I was just at the time that the mob was starting to get into trouble on Long Island because. At the time, I, I was a kid there. They were still very much in control, but the commission trial had happened. These, I grew up with all the, the John Gotti trials and, and obviously Long Island was very important, particularly to the Lucchese family for garbage and, and sanitation. And so my father was a telephone lineman for telephone splicer, excuse me. He would get irate if I said lineman. He was a splicer for the phone company for first Belan and then Verizon Ninex. But, so he had this very interesting thing of he would go out to these neighborhoods on Long Island that were. Mob neighborhoods where they all lived, like bedroom communities for the mob. And the first thing you notice [00:08:00] about them is all of the streets, they’re all these cul-de-sacs. And they have names like Anthony Lane or Julia La. They’re named for their kids, you know? Yeah. And when he drives his truck at the opening of the cul-de-sac, you know. It sets off a camera in the house so they know that he is there, you know? Mm-hmm. But anyway, so he’s working in these neighborhoods and, and one day is up on the, up on the line, and two gentlemen come out and haul him down. Yeah. And say, where’s your, you know, where’s your id? ’cause they thought he was FBI. Yeah. And, you know, he had to say to these two entrepreneurs I’m not. And but then shortly thereafter, you know, to fit in the theme with the podcast. He opened up a box at the top of the pole and saw a device he’d never seen before. Ah, yeah. And it had a little label on it like. Got any questions, call this number. So he just closed it and went on his way, you know? So that was the [00:09:00] environment I grew up in where, you know, it was, it was around you like, you know, there was a gangster, he was a front guy for them on the sanitation where everything he owned had a shamrock painted in front of it, you know, so just, it was around you, you know, and I thought. What the hell are these guys up to? You know? Yeah. It was pretty ubiquitous in, in New York City and and that area, it was just, it was unbelievable. It seemed like the control that they had over everything. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was just unbelievable. But anyhow, so let’s say you did a, a deep dive on Ken Ito. Yeah, my friend Ken Ito just a bit. Let me let me share a picture here of there’s our friend Ken Edo. Or Edo. Yeah, that’s us. What you learned about him? Well, as you can see here, he has some head pain and the reason for that he is, he has the rare disti, he has the rare distinction, not only of being the only Japanese member, Japanese American member of the Chicago outfit.[00:10:00] But the only one I’m aware of who was shot three times in the head and survived. And so. I mean, if you’re interested, obviously check out the story and we, we cover it in the second episode of my podcast. But Ken Etto was a, a gambling kingpin with the outfit on the north side along the Rush Street corridor, the nightlife section. And he was really, the outfit’s emissary to minority gamble. So he had a lot of interests in the mostly black policy wheels on the south side. In the Chinese gambling setup along the Chinatown 26th Street Corridor. But then his biggest moneymaker was bda, which was a, basically a numbers game, but was very popular with the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, which is very large. And you know, so the numbers would be drawn in San Juan. The bets have be placed all across the city. He, and he’s the overseer of all this. And it was bringing [00:11:00] in millions of dollars a year, you know this was big money. And you know, it was described to me by a prosecutor who, who worked on, on Edo that he, you know, was as high in the outfit as a, as a non Italian could go. And the outfit was kind of interesting in that they actually had a fair amount of non Italians and upper Yeah. Upper level management. I’m, I’m, I’m, as you well know of course, but, but obviously, you know, they’re usually, they’re Greek, they’re poles, they’re Yeah. You know Jewish. Ja Jewish, yeah. Right, exactly. And, and, not Japanese American. This is a one of a kind guy, so, yeah. You know, so he, he would go around the country setting, setting up gambling operations and but in 1980, the FBI pinned him a little bit, they got a snitch in his, in his belita operation, and were able to place him in a motel room where he was doing the count for that week’s take. Mm-hmm. So he was gonna go away for a year or two, but and he was gonna go, he, you know, it was no problem to him. [00:12:00] But his bosses were nervous. He had been funneling his money into a cocaine trafficking deal outta New York with the Genevese family, so they might have been fearful about that coming to light. And so they set him up to be killed which he knew was coming. He knew when they invited him to dinner with the north side crew chief that they were gonna execute him ’cause he’d never been invited to dinner with this guy, even though he is worked for him for 20 years. And so the two hit men shot him three times in the head and ran. But it was a 22 that either had defective ammo or. We still don’t know exactly. So it was like the bullet went in the head, went under the skin and glanced off the skull. So none of them cracked the skull. So he played dead, woke up and said, oh my God, what do I do now? And that was funny story. He went to a pharmacy, got them to call [00:13:00] 9 1 1 2 cops pulled up and he made the rookie ride with him in the ambulance to the hospital. ’cause he was worried they’d come back to finish him off. Yeah. And after I published my story, that rookie cop reached out to me. Oh, did he? Oh, really? It was the coolest thing. And and and emailed me and said, you know, I just. Was in my first year, and here this guy is, he also, he also mentioned he couldn’t hear me because he, he was deafened by that. So so yeah, but I, I, I know that you, he was subsequently turned as he, as he you know had no other choice really, but I believe pops up. I realized in the course of writing the story in, in. Maybe to me the most amazing, some of the most amazing mob trials in US history. The straw man trials. Yeah. Did you work on those or were you in Yeah, see, the straw man cases were wiretaps. Which involved Chicago Outfit and Milwaukee and, and Cleveland and [00:14:00] Kansas City skimming money from Las Vegas. And so my personal part in it was a lot of surveillance down here in Kansas City from this end of it and mm-hmm. And then, you know, as they were making the cases more at the, the higher levels of the criminal justice system, reading those wire taps and, and, and all that, like, if, if Tuffy would then all of a sudden give up one bank of phones and wanna go to another, then we’d get the call and we’d go. You know, we’d, we’d be part of a big team that would get on him again and find those other phones. Mm-hmm. And believe me, it was a huge effort. Both the, both twice that we had to do that. You know, like two planes and it one in the air all the time, and then one ready to go, like 25 agents and officers on the ground. It was. It was amazing. We had special code words, ’cause that was before you had digital radios because you didn’t want anybody to overhear what you were doing. And Yeah. And it was you know, it was, it was a heck of an effort on the bureau’s part. And they just, they put together a heck of a case and, and then they started bringing, I think they brought Jimmy [00:15:00] Ano from, yeah. California, la Yeah, la. ’cause he had been involved in some of the teamsters were doing, you know, they, they used Teamsters money to, to buy into the, you know, finance those casinos. Then the casino owner had to kick back money. That was, that was how it worked. They didn’t really own the casinos, they just helped finance ’em. And then the guy kicked back money and if he didn’t kick back, you know, he would, he would’ve been a dead man. Or as it turned out, you know, that, it’s really interesting, I think. Alan Glick, who got the biggest loan from him, $62 million. He comes back and testifies and, and a friend of mine who was an original case agent on it, bill Ousley, on the Strawman caper, he’s retired, so they, he glick is not in witness protection. He doesn’t have any official. Protection. So he hires Bill Ley to drive him back and forth to the courthouse from his hotel and kind of do a little security around him during that time when he was in town. It was not a bad idea. Yeah, [00:16:00] really? Yeah. Yeah. But Ken Edo, he testifies and, and here’s what understand that, that you run into this, that, that he used. Lemme pull up another picture here. . They used this picture, yeah. For him. Did you run into that? The, the, they call it the last supper? Yeah. Yeah. That photo. I mean, that’s just a historic photo. I forget who had it in their house. That the FBI rated it. Yeah, I, I do too. I, I forget, but whoever it was the other gentleman who were still alive in that photo were, let’s just say not happy with him because you know, what we have here is the hi upper hierarchy of the Chicago outfit. You know, Aupa Turk Tolo. There’s a cardo up front. There’s Joey Lombardo in the back, and, and it’s just all the, oh, and Vincent Solano, yeah. Is sitting third from left. That was Ken Otto’s boss who ordered him hit. So you have here just the creme de la creme of the [00:17:00] outfit at a time before I think they’re, everyone in the photo is now dead, but, but yeah, there you have it. Right? I mean, all the claims that Acardo was totally retired, you know, out the window with that photo, right? Yeah. So, and, and Joey Lombardo’s standing, you know, which is always funny to me that he wasn’t quite at the table yet, you know? Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Or some supposition. He’s only one wearing a suit. There’s some supposition that this was after his making ceremony. I don’t know, but that there’s some supposition because he’s got the suit on, nobody else does. That’s interesting too. And, and Chicago often was slightly down on, on having the ceremonies be elaborate. Yeah. So, yeah. I think Lombardo just wearing a suit to, I forget which restaurant it is. It’s somewhere on the northwest side, but just wearing a suit to that place might’ve been enough and say, all right, you’re good now. You know? Yeah. They don’t, they don’t really do it like New York with the burning of the saint and all this stuff. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] But Lombardo captured on those. I, I love, I remember one of the movies he did, the documentaries has some of the Lombardo wiretaps, which I think are like the best recordings of, of like, of him talking to that attorney in St. Louis. Yeah, more shinker. That’s it. And I, I think that’s some of the best insight you can get into how these guys operate. You know, those wiretaps, those those threats that they make are so subtle. Yeah. That, you know, things like, well, you know, you don’t wanna go along with this. You say you’re 72, well, you know, you wanna get to 73. You know, like, you know Right. The Allen doesn’t wanna do anything, but you know, the people that got a piece of Allen, they might wanna, they, they can do things, you know? Right. Real indirect, like that. And so it’s, it’s amazing. You know, another thing he, you know, they use this picture, then he could point out this guy. They didn’t make him into the mob. Right. Into an organization for Rico. And Yeah. So he can [00:19:00] point ’em out and say, this guy is this guy and this guy is this guy. And you mentioned about the belita. Well, he, he talked about Aupa and he said that APA sent him in the early sixties to St. Louis to set up mm-hmm. A oli operation and teach them how to do it. So it’s he just buried them with his testimony as to who they were. Oh, that’s it. And you know, the FBI files anto. It’s amazing. They, they talk I the number of places, to your point about how difficult the surveillance is, they’re following him. He was setting up gambling operations in Hawaii, in the Dominican Republic, in Florida, in new, or like, it was just all over the country. And and I think his greatest. Utility in the straw man trial was being able to say that IU ppa, at least on the Chicago side, was, was at that point administering the Vegas skim with, with the cooperation of the VEA family. So so that just put ’em away. I mean, that, that finished him, you know. He buried him. I bet [00:20:00] there, sorry. Of course, that those two guys that, that killed him was it Ja, Jasper Campe and Gattuso, I think was his name, John Gatso. He ended up dead pretty quick, if I remember right. That’s right. I mean, so that was, you know, I knew the story was interesting, but the thing that really amazed me was the aftermath of it was astounding in that immediately after Edo. Was shot, survived, and was turned in the hospital by the federal prosecutor Jeremy Margolis. Part of the way that they turned Edo was saying, listen, we have to get to the two gunmen who tried to hit you because they’re gonna get hit next. You know that, you know? Yeah. To, to sever. The ties and also to punish them for screwing up so badly. So Edo gave up the names. Campisi was older, he was the, the soldier. He was a juice Sloan man. Gattuso was kind of a associate and there was speculation that doing this would get him [00:21:00] made. He had married into a mob family. His wife was the daughter of a mobster, but he was. Really consigned to just running restaurants and in particular shaking down gay bars and bathhouses in Chicago on the north side. And so they, they, they threw ’em in the MCC in the South Loop and gave them huge bail and, I think I was the first to report this, that something that happened while they’re trying to turn one or both of these guys is they found that Campisi had hired another inmate to Shank Gattuso In prison. Yeah. Or in jail. With a, with a piece of like an air conditioner or something. And they tried to use that to convince Gattuso. Like, because obviously if Campisi kills Gattuso, he can say to the guys, I dealt with it, you don’t have to kill me. Right? Yeah. And it didn’t work. Campisi thought he’d got a pass. Gattuso just, he was so enmeshed in the world that he didn’t have the strength to do it. And, so then the big [00:22:00] twist was they somehow made bond these massive bonds. ’cause the outfit wanted them on the street and then hit ’em. And then it, I think, you know, I’ve seen the, the photos of, of them being pried out of the trunk. This was the summer of 1983 in Chicago, and they were about twice the size they were when they went in. Oh. So it was a nasty, you know. It was not a quick death, you know? Yeah. So, so that was the punishment there. Those Chicago guys, they like to torture. It seems like I had that Frank Calabrese Jr. On here one time. I said, what’s up with you guys? Yeah, you’re always wanting to torture people and then kill ’em. Why don’t you just kill ’em? He just drunk. He didn’t know. I don’t know. So unfortunately, it’s not like he can ask his dad. Right? But no, not now. Even know if his dad was alive, he couldn’t ask him. They’re not speaking right. You know, one of those riffs. I mean, but that’s a perfect example, right? The, the calibrate they, I mean. You know, interestingly [00:23:00] not guys who were on the radar for that until the Family Secrets trial. Yeah. I mean, they were Jews, they were juice loan guys and tough guys, but I think they were not considered, it was not thought that they were such prolific hitmen, you know? And you know, in my reading on it investigation, I’m not sure everything that, that Nick Calabrese said was, was a hundred percent I. His account of the Spilotro killings I wonder about, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, but you know, was it really seven top outfit guys killing the, you know, I don’t know, but yeah. We’ll never know for sure, I guess, you know, so that’s, that’s I guess, the best account we have. But perfect example, the, the trunk music, you know, the, you know, nasty ways to go, leaving him in a trunk, you know, that that was a Chicago specialty. Yeah, it was. We, we’ve had a few here in Kansas City, left at the trunk, but also had quite a few blown up. They don’t, they didn’t seem to do bombs much in Chicago Nuts. Since the Capone days, but that [00:24:00] is true, isn’t it? That Kansas City was, why, why do you think that was? If, if anything, I mean, in in general, the US mafia, I think tends to shy away from that, the bombs. Yeah. They, they do. And, and here’s why. Because of collateral damage, you’ve gotta be able to control the detonation. And, and that’s why I always think maybe Kansas City had something to do with the Lty Rosenthal out in, in Las Vegas because of the bomb. Oh, interesting. Right. We, we had a guy here in Kansas City, I don’t know who he was, we never figured out who he was, but he said about three, they, they’ve got two of ’em. They didn’t go off. Mm-hmm. One of ’em was discovered and the other one was. Wasn’t, you know, there was a wire that wasn’t quite right and they were by the same guy and then another one did. They all used like about 25 sticks of dynamite Way too much. But they were set Yeah. In places that probably nobody else was gonna get hurt, although they could have. Mm-hmm. They really could have. They were taking a big risk. ’cause that’s, you know, that’s. You killed some little [00:25:00] kid walking by with a bomb. Right? Oh, man. Right. Lose all your support from even the, the, the neighbors and stuff that they’ll, they’ll be talking about you then when, when you do that. But that’s that’s the deal. We, we had a few left in the car, but they just shot ’em and left them in the car, you know, I mean, or anything. We, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, you know, it’s, it’s. This is, this has worked for years, right? Yeah. Yeah. So who, who else are you gonna talk about on there? What you got on, on, on tap? I got some notes here about Gus, Alex, and Oh sure. Some of them you’re gonna talk about those guys. The, the non Italian members, which I, as you mentioned earlier, I think is really interesting about the outfit. That, that is such a good point that, you know, the outfit from the beginning was sort of, I, I mean there’s always been collaboration, particularly with Jewish mobsters in, in most of the mafia families. But but yeah, I always thought the outfit was really distinct and those are two guys I definitely would like to talk about because they both have interesting stories. You know, Gus, Alex being a [00:26:00] Greek, you know, son of a restaurant owner, like you mentioned, right. Restaurants being this important nexus for Yeah. For how these guys meet and associate, you know, Tony Spilotro, same deal. You know how he met a lot of his crew Right. Hanging out at, at restaurants and so Gus, Alex, you know, son of a Greek diner owner where every, all the guys came in the Greek diner. Yeah. And that was how he got hooked up. And then, you know, he was the most important. Downtown connection guy, as they said, administering the bribes to the politicians in the first ward. And I mean they had control of, at at least one city alderman and multiple west side districts and a congressman well into the eighties. So that is quite an achievement, you know? Yeah. And that was really, really down to Gus, Alex’s administration. And you know, I think it speaks to the fact that these guys. I think more so than New York, they just saw if you can make money for us, we don’t care. You know, if you’re of use to us, we don’t care. I [00:27:00] mean, yeah, Harry Aleman, who I know you’ve talked about, was half Mexican and he, you know, he was essentially a made man. I don’t think he quite was, but he essentially was. And you know, who else Lenny. Patrick, I mean, Lenny. Patrick, another fascinating one of. Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago had this whole Jewish crew that just ran it as their fiefdom and and, you know, Dave Yaris and these very scary loan sharks and, and and, but Lenny Patrick was turned as well. So that was a big, big achievement. So yeah, so talking about those guys, I mean, I, we just did an episode on a guy that I, I wonder if you ever brushed up against, which is. William Hanhardt, the chief of Detectives. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I read, not personally, but yeah, he was got a little bit before my time, but mm-hmm. I did the story on him. That guy. Oh my God. I’m curious what, what your thoughts are, because we got into this discussion of, you know, policemen and I’m curious what your thoughts are on him [00:28:00] as a, as a police officer in particular. You know, and, and guys, what’s interesting if you don’t know William Hanhardt, he was a Chicago cop who had risen. And he was the chief of detectives. Yeah, actually he was. Mm-hmm. By the end, which, which, whether, you know, police hierarchy or not, that’s big. You the chief of detectives, a big city department. That is big. That’s, that’s better than being a chief for some people. Yeah. And, and, and during his rise he had to, he was a hero policeman as young. He got in shootouts and Yeah. With people and, and killed him. And, and you know, who knows? And, but he, once they had a policeman that was, hillsdale policeman or a suburban policeman that was killed and kidnapped and killed, I believe, after a car check by a couple of, well, a couple of amans understudies that, yeah, that he knew. So Hanhardt then, you know, he was gonna solve that and he solved it, you know, lty split because he just went to his mob guys and they knew, and, and mm-hmm. You know, he solved that in, in no time. So he was [00:29:00] that kind of a guy. But yet on the other hand. By the end, when it came out, he had a crew working for him of jewelry thieves and it was really slick. Some of those things they were doing like jewelry salesman convention, they all keep their, their jewels, their, their samples in the hotel lock boxes, and then they’d do something to. So they get the clerk out of there and they go in and hit all those lock boxes. Yeah. And he did several slick things like that. And, and nobody knew. I mean, they always, everybody was always a little bit suspicious of him, might think, but on one hand. On another hand, you know, he had the kids and everybody, you know. Was part of the community, an important part of the community, and it’s I just almost, it’s like he was a dual personality. I think only in Chicago maybe could that happen. I don’t, I’m sorry, Chicago, but No, you’re absolutely right. Come on, train of corruption that has ran through, you know, it’s like part of the charm of Chicago. I always say you can’t have a big city unless you got a little corruption. And, and [00:30:00] Chicago’s a really big city, so you got a lot more corruption and, and somehow this guy. But did his whole career like that and, you know, must, it must have made a lot of money. I just, I don’t know. I mean, you get to a certain level, you get on the police department, you can about get away with anything, to be honest. If you get, if you’re well liked, you get to a certain level, you can just about get away with anything. So that had to be how he was. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right. And, and he, he came this close to being the superintendent of, of the entire police department. You know, so he really and, and really the only thing that derailed him, which I found amazing, was, and he’s chief of Detectives at this time. He was subpoenaed to testify. In Tony Spiro’s murder trial in Las Vegas for the defense. Oh, yeah. And he, he testifies for the defense knocking down their main witness Frank Colada as unreliable, which, look, I, he sort of was, you know, but in this case, Spilotro was guilty and [00:31:00] you’d think a chief of detectives is gonna say, oh yeah, he’s believable. And so then he retired not long after that. And, and but as you said, you know. It’s funny, when we were working on this episode, I was doing the research and looking back and the, the federal prosecutors said, you know, the, the heist of this jewelry ring started in 1984 at the earliest. But I went back and I found all these jewel heists using the exact same mo you described of. You know, getting in for the hour, the jewelry salesman was out of his hotel room. Getting it out. Yeah. Or, or, or getting a skeleton key made of the safety deposit boxes in the hotel and getting out. And the cop, who’s always quoted in the story is Sergeant William Hanhardt, Lieutenant William Hanhardt. And we’re talking from this, from the 1960s, so, wow. You know, it makes, makes you wonder, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, as you said, chief of Detectives, it’s, it’s, and he made a, I forgot he made a cameo in the [00:32:00] Kento story. I remember speaking to. Elaine Smith, who I think you might have interviewed, right? I interviewed her, she’s FBI agent that she was this really interesting story. She was on vacation when they shot Edo, and then he wanted to talk and they called her and she said, said I dropped everything and flew right back. Right? Great lady. And, and and she became Cato’s handler. And but I remember she, she told me the time I talked to her that Hanhardt started calling around that night. About the Edo shooting. Ah, yeah. Just subtly asking, so where’s he, you know, where’s his hospital room? Where’s he being Yeah. Kept right now. Yeah. And so, but, but before you knew it, Kento was on a naval base to recuperate, you know. Oh, really? Yeah. So, you know, just another dark. Sinister aspect to Hanhardt, you know? Yeah. Really, I tell you, there’s nothing like having the chief of detectives on the hook for you if you’re gonna run some organized crime. But I [00:33:00] mean, as you said, Chicago doesn’t, I mean, you know, Capone had the mayor back in the day, so you know, it’s we’re we, we stand on the shoulders of giants, I guess, you know? Yeah. Really. Yeah. Yeah. It’s I, I, you know, and, but yet there’s a lot of good Chicago policemen out there. You know, there are, yeah. More, many, more than there are this bad seed. So, you know who, who knows? Probably the majority of ’em. I did this one story about I think it was their intelligence unit actually that did it. Yeah. They found a mob gambling game and they, they like. I could just, I could read in the article about it and, you know, they did exactly what we’d do. You know, they watched it for a while and they see mob guys show up and so they watch it a little while longer and they, they get somebody that can tell ’em, yeah, that’s a gambling game in there. And they wait till a couple of the, the outfit guys are there and then they. Swoop in with a search warrant. Yeah. And take everybody down and, and they got a whole bunch of bookmaking records and loan shark records as usual. So, yeah. So, you [00:34:00] know, they’re it’s not totally corrupt, it’s just, you know, there were, they had their moments. No, and it’s an important point, you know, I mean, there was something that was interesting was seeing. A, an interesting thing and I think 19 78, 19 79 play out where Hanhardt got promoted to deputy superintendent. Then a new chief comes in De Leoni, who was a very honest cop. I think he’d been a ho chief of homicide, and the first thing he does is move hanhardt out to traffic. Yeah, yeah. Saying. I like the, he doesn’t say it explicitly saying, yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. You know, but then very, and he moves an honest guy, Duffy in to, to be the, the chief had, I think the deputy superintendent. But but then an interesting thing happened, which is the outfit’s, political connections, got those guys out later in the year and got hand hard his job back. So, you know, a constant struggle. But yes, o obviously those guys were honest and the way we know [00:35:00] that is they lost their jobs, you know? Yeah. Unfortunately, you know. Yeah. That’s what, that’s what we call sidelining somebody. You sideline them. Oh, he was terrible. I mean, this poor guy, Duffy, he was like, he was, oh, he moved up to running a the overnight shift on a station on the north, you know, just Yeah. Siberia, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been there once. Oh yeah. So I went to dog watch Metro Patrol once. Lot of dogs to watch. Oh man. Yeah. Well that, that means you must have been doing something right. You know? Well, I must have. I must have. Oh, well. I just put it down to some commander wanted his own boy in there in my job, and, and it didn’t gimme time to go find a new spot to land in, so everybody thought I was about to get indicted. Right. You’re right. It’s like, is that what it looks like? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I just made it in the background. That’s when I decided I’m gonna go to law school and [00:36:00] quit and leave after 25 years. Yeah. That’s so, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, there you go. Right. That’s the way to look at it. You got your pension and your, I got my pension. Went to law school, practiced law for 20 years, and here I am. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the father of the MOB podcast now too. Another, there you go. String to your bow. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, it’s, it’s so is there much of a Kansas City, I mean the, the organized crime element in Chicago? To my understanding, as much as it exists now, there is still some, it’s mostly in the suburbs. Is there, is there much in Kansas City left at this point? Yeah. Not really. There’s, yeah, three, there’s three or four guys. All with you know, some of the, the, the familiar names, you know Ella? Mm-hmm. Kainos God, I think maybe, yeah. Kaino and kind of familiar names are still out there. They still, you know, they, you know, people will be able to see ’em at a restaurant or something, you know, having [00:37:00] breakfast together, but, you know, mainly they’re old guys and Right. You know, like as old cops would get together for coffee or whatever, and you just don’t hear, I, I, I know they. Like this one has got, you know, he’s got investments in you, his buy here, pay here, car dealerships. That’s, mm-hmm. That’s something that, you know, it is. I, I, I went after those as a lawyer and, and you know, it’s like, you know, I just could consistently get clients and make money off these, buy here, pay here, car dealerships, uhhuh, that’s what they do. And, you know, it’s, it’s like loan shark, it’s legalized loan shark, you know? Right. Payday, payday loans, title loans. They’re doing that kind of thing now. And you know, like. Having oh like a, a, a big produce stand and just other businesses Yeah. That that are kind of your, your normal kind of, some of ’em are kind of gray area businesses, like the the loan pri subprime loan people. It, it’s so amazing, isn’t it? The, the. So many of the rackets are semi-legal now in, in some sense. Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. [00:38:00] Like, I’m just thinking about that as they’re building one of the printing plants for one of the downtown newspapers is becoming a casino. Right, right. In the West Loop. And it’s like, I didn’t realize that. Wow. You know, so that, I think it’s a Bally’s casino’s gonna be right there. Yeah. Across the, from the loop. So, yeah. Y you know, I mean, it’s, it’s the mafia dream, but they’re not the ones, I don’t think. In charge of it anymore? No, no. I did, I did some work for the Missouri Gaming Commission. We’ve got one, two, we got three or four in Kansas City, and the deal was in Missouri. They got two in Kansas. The three in Missouri had to be within a thousand feet of an applicable stream. It started out they had to be a boat on the, on, on the river. Oh, right, right. The river. It’s too dangerous. So we’d move ’em off. But I did work after I started practicing laws. For ’em. And they run a tight ship, man, nothing is gonna get by them. Yeah. Nothing is gonna get, they’re really rigid and, and they enforce those rules [00:39:00] rigorously. Yeah. And if they catch a casino dirty, I mean, they just accidentally let a little kid run down the floor one time. And, and I was doing this kind of a, like a hearing thing, and I, so I recommended like a. $10,000 fine. Went to the board and they gave him a $50,000 fine. Just bec and it was obviously an accident. We had the, the footage. Yeah. There’s obviously this little kid goes running by the stand that keeps pe, you know, checks people in, ran down the stairs and, and as soon as he got down the bottom of the stairs. These guards can swooping on this kid and took him off, but they still, they find him $50,000 just for something like that. So they’re really rigorous. And the kid was put on the black book. Right? He can’t ever, I really can’t ever go to a casino. Can’t ever go to a casino again. Right. I, I mean, I don’t know how I feel to be honest about the, the legalized gambling. If you watch. I’ve, I’ve watched a lot of Kansas City chief games these past few years and it’s just commercial after commercial is for the sports betting, you know, sports [00:40:00] betting. I know it’s, it’s crazy. These apps and everything and you know, it leads to addiction. I can promise you that there’s a lot addicts, ’cause they just got that action going all the time. All the time. Just constant action, you know, on every game, every play. Just constant action. And, and we’re about to get that sports book. We had the main sports bookie here in Kansas City. A guy named Pete Simone just died of old age. And, and I had, I had seen him at this one restaurant that he liked to hang out at. He knew one of the people that owned it, and he was there all the time. And you’d see him meet with different people kinda having these, you know, little quiet conversations. And one of ’em was a, was a guy that, that fell for sports booking. I don’t know, one of the last ones that. Rounds before they legalized it. Yeah. ‘Cause the FBI doesn’t investigate it anymore and he was in this tight conversation, so I think there’s still a sports book, something. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, with the apps or at the casino, you don’t, you can’t ex exactly extend credit unless it’s with a credit card and. [00:41:00] And plus it’s, you know, it’s, it’s more, it’s there at your local bar or you’re with your friend, or you jump on the phone and do it. It’s much more convenient. I think that’s, that’s really interesting too, that like, you know, I’m in California and there was a thought that. Legalizing marijuana would take out a lot of the illegal business, and I’m sure it has. Yeah. But less than people thought. You know? I mean, because you’re still going to wanna dodge the taxes. You still wanna. Dodge all the money that you have to, to pay to do it legally and you don’t have access to. I think it’s starting to change where you don’t have access to credit cards and bank accounts always. So, you know, California’s a big problem with marijuana being grown and national forests and, and yeah. You know, so, and it’s really bad for the environment, so, you know, but I, I, I think you’re right about the gambling being the same way potentially, but me. With a wider pool of customers, which is an [00:42:00] unforeseen development. Yeah. You know? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That merri, I understand that. In, in California even, they set up a store that looks just like a dispensary. Yeah. And yet it just doesn’t have the license. And so they’re, they’re, it’s like whack-a-mole. You run around, knock one down and go, there’ll be another one going up. We have some interesting ones here. You know, like we have the, the, for whatever reason. The shadiest thing here are mattress stores that pop up. They’re in business for a little bit, and then they’re not in business anymore. I’ve done a little digging to try to figure out what’s going on with these, but there is some sort of front yeah. Of, of just putting up money and then moving on to the next one. So if it’s, if it’s that or something else, I, I’m not sure, but yeah, you’re absolutely right. The, the vape stores, the, the dispensary is legal or not. It, it, it is a thing and it just goes to show that. The hustle never ends really. You know, it never ends. I don’t know if the mob’s involved in that or not. I’ve not [00:43:00] seen any evidence of it, but I’m kind of a little bit, you know, away from that. And nobody is investigating the mob anymore. Right. I don’t know if you really realize that there’s no one squad here in Kansas City. Mm-hmm. Organized crime squad. I don’t know about Chicago. They may still have a few agents assigned. I’m sure they do in New York, but all the rest of the cities, the midsize cities where we had a family, I bet there’s not above. Squad that’s assigned to that. I’d be willing to bet. New York is the only one that still has that. I don’t know that for certain, but given Chicago, it’s really a bunch of old men in the Western suburbs at this point, with one exception of. I find this very interesting. I remember John Bender, who you probably know yeah. Mm-hmm. Talked to me once and sort of tipped me off about this. There is one crew of somewhat younger guys of sort of affiliated with the outfit who were robbing stash houses on the west and south sides of Chicago. [00:44:00] Dressed as Chicago police, and that was kind of a throwback, you know, that’s kind of a vintage, yeah. Kind of crime. But it’s interesting too that they’re going after, you know, Chicago is, I mean, to your point. Historically. Now the, the biggest crime organization in Chicago, besides some of the street gangs, would be the Sinaloa cartel. Yeah. And they’ve never set foot there. You know, it, it’s, it’s just kind of amazing. But you know, I, I kind of felt Chapo Guzman should have been tried in Chicago, but you know, that was his headquarters. But, that’s Chicago, it’s Chip on its shoulder versus New York. It’s an old story, you know? So really is, is there somebody, is there a decent book on that or, or anybody that’s done anything on the Chapo El Chapo in Chicago and on up into the United States? I was thinking about doing a story about the cartels. There was a great book about. Yeah. Here it was by no, a guy named Noah Horowitz. I can send that to you. Okay. [00:45:00] Do that please. He wrote a really good bio about him and I remember there was another one that was fantastic about Chapo Guzman, the, the, the cops breaking his cell phone system because he was, I mean, again, to talk about wiretapping. Chapo Guzman had his own cell phone network built for him by these tech wizards. It was really quite an amazing technological achievement, and there was a great book I, I’d have to look up about how they broke that. And it’s really more like breaking another country’s codes or signals. It’s really quite amazing. So that is the level of s the level of sophistication. But yeah, I, I, it’s El Chapo the untold, untold story. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Interesting. Alright, well got anything else you wanna say there? Dan Sullivan, Gary, it’s been, boy that’s me. You know, I. They came here [00:46:00] too late to be a, an Irish hoodlum, but you know, you know, they came in the fifties, it was over, you know? Yeah. It was pretty well over a little bit in New York, the west east, but but it’s pretty well over by then. That’s a good story. Yeah, I know. That was sort of the last gasp though, and I, I guess Whitey Bulger in Boston, but yeah. But no, I, I, I, it’s such a pleasure to be here. I’ve enjoyed your podcasts and your movie so much over the years, so I. Please. I would love to, to come back anytime and, and if you’re interested at all, at any of this, you know. Yeah. Our podcast is coming out August 14th. Everywhere podcasts are available, the outfit and still trying to figure out why exactly the Chicago mob named its. Self, the outfit, but one of those things. Good question. Yeah, I like that they’ve got the, the combination in Detroit or the partnership, I think, and, and we, we used to call ourselves the click. Yeah. But it didn’t really move on up into the sixties and seventies. I, I talked to an old mobster who was talking about trying to get a [00:47:00] loan to open a, he said it’d been the first Taco Bell in Kansas City said I would’ve made a fortune. And he said I couldn’t get any money. And I went to the clique. I said, what do you mean the clique? He said, you know, the mob guys? He said, but they wouldn’t have any money either. And so since then, I’ve seen it in some old reports called it the clique, but that, you know, more into modern times, they, I don’t know, they didn’t really call themselves anything. It didn’t seem like FBI started calling ’em the outfit. But I, I think it’s sort of this thing like in Sicily, Cosa Nostra, just like. A very vague way of describing this thing, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, like in New England it was just the office, you know, as bland as could be, you know? So. Oh yeah, that’s right. It was the office. Yeah, I remember that. That was patriarch and them. Interesting. Another great story. But anyway, that’s us. That’s the outfit. So thank you so much for having us. I know Sullivan, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure, Gary. Anytime.

Transcribed - Published: 29 September 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins sits down with journalist and author Rich Gazarik to explore a little-known corner of mob history—one that ties the Pittsburgh Mafia to Fidel Castro, stolen guns, and even the Kennedy assassination. Rich’s latest book, Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia, shines a spotlight on Sam Mannarino, a Pittsburgh mob captain under boss John LaRocca, who hatched a wild plan in the early 1960s: supply Fidel Castro with hundreds of stolen weapons in hopes of carving out a piece of Cuba’s casino action. The scheme included an audacious plot to rip off 300 rifles from a National Guard armory in Ohio—an operation that quickly unraveled into chaos. From there, the conversation broadens into the Pittsburgh mob’s stranglehold on its city, including political corruption, bribery, and intimidation that reached into the mayor’s office and the police department. Rich recounts how Mannarino and his crew maintained a façade of respectability while ruling through violence and fear, leaving a lasting mark on Pittsburgh’s civic life. Drawing on decades of investigative journalism and declassified JFK assassination files, Rich also connects the dots between the Pittsburgh Mafia and broader mob influence in the 1960s. We discuss how figures like Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante emerged in congressional investigations, feeding speculation that the Mafia’s reach extended into Dallas on November 22, 1963. This episode uncovers a forgotten piece of organized crime history where local corruption, mob ambition, and Cold War politics collided. If you want to understand how Pittsburgh’s underworld tied into national events, you won’t want to miss this deep dive with Rich Gazarik. And get his book Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia here. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, this is Gary Jenkins, [0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I’m here in the studio of Gangland Wire, and I have a story that is kind of topical right now because there’s a movie being made about November 1963. And this isn’t exactly about Kennedy assassination, but it’s all around the Kennedy assassination. And it’s about mob guys having connections down in Cuba and with Castro and out of Pittsburgh of all places. Now, go figure that. You know, I always think of Tropicante down in Tampa, and you’ve got Marcello down in New Orleans. You’ve got Ardo up in Chicago, and you always think of them, Giancana, having those connections. Well, there was a Pittsburgh guy named Sam Mannarino who had extensive connections down in Cuba. So welcome, Rich Gazarek. [0:51] Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Good to have you. Rich, tell the guys the name of your book. I don’t have to. I’d have to lean over here and read it. It’s a little bit long. So tell the guys the name of your book and a little bit about what it’s about. It’s called Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia. And it was a faction of the Pittsburgh Mafia. [1:11] John LaRocco was the godfather of the Pittsburgh Mom. Sam Mannarino was one of his captains. And Mannarino and his brother Kelly had a casino in Cuba, San Suu Kyi, outside of Havana. And they didn’t do very well with it and they eventually sold it. And at the time, Fulgincia Batista was getting a little bit greedy and he was on the outs with some of the mobsters because he wanted a bigger cut. And Sam Mannarino was wondering, what if I helped Castro in his revolution? Do you think he would. [1:51] Benefit? And do you think he would be gracious and maybe reward me with some influence in the gambling industry? And he had a longtime gambler friend who was managing by the name of Norman Rothman. And Rothman said, hey, I think we should go with Castro. Let’s put our chips on Castro. But Sam wasn’t a very right guy. And what he didn’t realize is that Fidel Castro hated the mob as much as he hated Fulgencio Batista, and there was no chance. [2:21] But nevertheless, he wanted to try to ingratiate himself with him. So he came up with this harebrained scheme to provide Castro with guns. Mannarino went around looking for a crew to steal some weapons, so they centered on a National Guard armory in Canton, Ohio. And one night after the armory closed through the day, Somebody simply walked in, opened the door, and walked out with over 300 guns. No force break-in, no evidence of any kind of destruction. They simply must have had a key or an inside man. Put them in a van, drove off, never saw them again. They brought the guns to Kensington, Pennsylvania, which is a mob town just north of Pittsburgh. And they stored in Sam Mannarino’s son-in-law’s beer distributor. [3:19] And then they drove, now I’ll explain to you a little geography here. I was raised in that area and I was 10 years old when this happened, but I wasn’t far from New Kensington. The Allegheny River separates Allegheny County from Westmoreland County. So I lived on the Allegheny County side and I spent my misspent youth in New Kensington in pool halls and gowls. Half-hour’s costs. So let me ask you a question a little bit about this now. John LaRocca, he was like the godfather of this entire area, really, even down in West Virginia. He was into eastern Ohio, all of western Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia. Yeah, but he was not involved. I just want to make it clear. He was not involved in this. This was one of Sam’s, one of his many harebrained schemes, and he was on his own. Sam and Kelly Montarino, they ran this New Kensington area, which I hear you describe was a little bit like East St. Louis or Kansas. You got the main big city, but then you got the seedy side of town. That’s what I hear you describe, like Cicero to Chicago. Right, exactly. And it was big. I mean, New Kensington in its heyday had gambling casinos throughout the town, houses of prostitution. But one of the things that was interesting was It’s. [4:42] Alcoa was headquartered in New Kensington for a number of decades now. Yeah. And as long as Alcoa prospered, the mafia prospered. They made a ton of money because they had bookies on the shop floor at Alcoa every day up until noon collecting bets. So they were both intertwined a lot. And that’s part of the theme of the book is that the interconnection between the mafia and Alcoa. Because when Alcoa eventually left in the early 70s, the mob died. It just stopped, became the town. The FBI wasn’t even that interested in it anymore. And they had spent a lot of time investigating the Manorinos. So they get this group together and they steal the guns. And then they brought them over across the river, Allegheny River, into Allegheny County. And it’s funny because I lived close when I was a boy. It was 10. I lived close to that airport. I remember reading the papers. It was big news to get this thing to come in. And they make all these arrests, all set for San Mannarino. They got all these people. In the woods was the state police, customs, and border patrol agents. [5:56] They were waiting for the guns to come. So the guns come. They’re loaded on the plane. And just as they’re about to move in on them, the plane takes off. [6:06] Now, it was overweight. didn’t have a full tank of gas. So what they did was the pilot decided he was going to scoot down to Morgantown, West Virginia to refuel. [6:17] Border Patrol called the West Virginia State Police and they were waiting for the plane. And then the Border Patrol commandeered the plane and flew down and helped make the arrest. So everybody thought, well, this is it. It’s done. But it turns out there was a lot more to it. Sam wanted to continue to buy weapons for Castro, but he needed a way to finance it. [6:44] So he turned to his mafia brothers in Canada. They went up to Brockville, Ontario, and got a crew, and they broke into a bank and stole over $12 million. [6:58] Now, part of that haul was over $2 million in bearer bonds. And they thought, you know, we can use this as collateral. So Sam sent one of his colleagues to Switzerland, and he goes to this bank and said, we want to borrow some money, and we’re going to use these bonds as collateral. Well, the bankers got a little suspicious. They looked at the bonds, and the edges of the paper were singed from fire from when these guys broke into the vault and used settling torches to get the boxes open. So, they called the Swiss police, the Swiss police called the Interpol, Interpol called the Mounties in Canada, and the Mounties called the FBI. And we have this international intrigue going on with Mannarino’s people meeting [7:52] Castro’s agents in Italy to pass the bonds to him. Of course, at the end, Sam and all his colleagues got arrested in the United States for possession of those bonds. They didn’t get arrested for breaking into it because they weren’t in Canada at the time, but they did get arrested for possessing those stolen securities. [8:12] So they went to trial in Chicago, and Sam’s luck held out, and all but one guy was acquitted, and he walked on it. By that time, John LaRocca was fed up, and so was Kelly, his brother, who fed up with the publicity that Sam was generating, and it kind of retired and put him on the shelf, so to speak. And Sam started talking to the FBI Having these long conversations. [8:39] And at one point When I was going through these FBI records I started looking at the end of the reports They always mention who the informants are Not necessarily by name But they mention this guy and they give a number. [8:53] And then they say what his experience is. Well, one of the things they forgot to redact was Kelly Sam Mannarino’s name. He was a registered FBI informant. Now, just as a footnote, whether he knew it or not, I don’t know. Or if these FBI agents did that just to get good with their boss. [9:13] But, yeah, he’s listed in the files as a snitch. and i’ve seen that before up in chicago where they list the guy as an informant giving some small information but he then he lives his whole life not being an informant but then when he dies and somebody it comes out that this report that he was an informant and so i i say what agents do sometimes is they talk to a guy get some tidbits just bullshit you know conversation and then list him as informant because that’s a coup that’s a feather in their hat if they got it it’s for informant so go ahead well i had interviewed that one of the agents his name was tom of course size the third and i remember i called cold called him when i was working on a series back in the mid 90s at the newspaper and he was really nervous because i i know that they did a black bad job on the manorinas they broke in one night and yeah yes and you know he got really really nervous and kind to read us and talk, but I got some stuff out of him. At that time, though, I did not know that he had listed Sam as an informant. If I’d have known at the time, because those documents weren’t released then, I would have asked him. They’d been interested to see what he said. [10:26] Because Sam did give them a lot of information. He was careful never to implicate his brother or his son, but he told them a lot about murders and bombings that were done and things like that. And he even told the FBI at one point, you know, he says, I did a lot of hits in my day, and I really kind of liked it. He’s a character. Great family. Only a guy like that would then think that he could. Could somehow ingratiate himself with Fidel Castro in order to, you know, become the gambling czar. I think his, I’m reading about your book here, I think his idea was he would become the new gambling czar. He would be Castro’s gambling czar who would oversee all the gambling, and all the mob bosses would have to come to him. He’d be the new Meyer Lansky. Yeah. [11:19] But Stan just was not what you would call a student of foreign affairs. It was a long season. Really? People implicated in this. This should never have been involved. Yeah, really. And I remember at the time that they did a whole magazine spread. I believe in Life Magazine. Some reporter got down there and went up in the mountains and took these pictures. And Castro at the time was seen as a freedom fighter. It was not seen as what we see him as today. And I’m sure that Mannarino saw that. and saw him as a freedom fighter that he could then help. [11:58] Sam knew nothing about revolution. Sam knew nothing about the economic situation in Cuba. He didn’t realize that the Batista government and his cronies were just siphoning all this money from the poor. They had a terrible—at one point, they had a pretty good economy. They had a pretty good standard of living, but the mob and Batista bled them dry. And he got these people involved that were all professional gamblers or connections to the mob, and they just wanted to continue to suck money out of Havana and out of Cuba as a whole. Sam Mannarino ran his casino, San Sushi. He wasn’t very good at it. He was not a good businessman. And eventually, he ended up selling it to Santo Traficante Jr. In a deal that was brokered by Meyer Lansky. Because at the time, Lance Traficante was buying up. He had like four or five different casinos that he was running. So they added the Sanssouci to his. And Sanssouci was a nice place. I mean, it was a very elegant casino. Manor unions couldn’t make it go. You know, they were used to the underground illegal type casinos like they had in New Kensington. And they just couldn’t make a go of it. [13:13] Interesting. Now, a lot of these documents that you used to create your book came from the document release on the JFK assassination files. Is that correct? That’s correct. And we were just talking about this before a little bit about the House Select Committee was totally different from the Warren Commission on investigating this thing. And the House Select Committee had a different idea than the Warren Commission on this. Talk about that a little bit. What’d you learn about that? Well, there’s a book called A Cruel and Shocking Act that came out a few years ago, and it’s an inside story of the Warren Commission told from the point of view of the attorneys who work for the Warren Commission. And what’s shocking is that the FBI covered up so much, and Justice Earl Warren was not aggressive enough, and Gerald Ford was not aggressive enough in trying to get important information into the report. For example, they let Jackie Kennedy off. They didn’t want to bother her. They didn’t get a lot out of Bobby Kennedy Jr. For whatever reason, maybe fear he didn’t want to talk. [14:35] And they had the problems with Oswald in Mexico. So there was a lot of things there that the commission was just not aggressive about. And they didn’t do enough to try to look at the mob connections. [14:49] One of the things that surprised me was when I was looking at the initial documents, the commission wanted to talk to a number of mobsters, but they wanted to talk to Kelly and Sam Annarino. And what surprised me was the commission had interviewed a man named Alberto Ardura, who was a Castro aide who had broke with Castro, defected, and moved to Florida. They Ordura told them he heard Safficanto Traficante say we killed the wrong Kennedy DeCarlos acted rashly meaning Carlos Marcello and. [15:29] They wanted to know if the Manorinas, he had ever heard the Manorinas say that because of their connections to Cuba. So it didn’t turn out to anything, but it was still the fact that here’s these two mafiosi in this small industrial town in western Pennsylvania being connected to the Kennedy assassination, albeit very arm’s length. Yeah, that Frank Regano, the lawyer for Traficante, in his book, he alleges that Traficante made a revelation to him that led him to believe that Traficante had something to do with that and Marcello had something to do with it. So in a manner, and the Warren Commission didn’t go down that path, but the House Select Commission did. We were just talking about this. They believed, I believe this is in your book, the House Select Committee believed Marcelo, Traficante, and Hoffa had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate the president. Oh, this was written by Ronald Goufarb, who was, Goufarb worked for Kennedy in the Organized Crime Division at Department of Justice. And he’s a pretty well-known name in investigating this assassination, if I remember right. Right. [16:40] Well, Marcelo, when you talk about had the motive, he hated Bobby Kennedy. You know, Marcelo was born in French Algiers, no, French Morocco, but he had a forged birth certificate that claimed he was born in Guatemala. And so Kennedy says, oh, you’re born in Guatemala? We’re sending you back to Guatemala. So Kennedy had him deported, but he got back into the country and he hated Bobby Kennedy. So you have Travagante, you have Marcello, you have the means, you have possible motives. So, yeah, it’s very possible. And that’s what the Hustle Committee looked into very, very deeply. Yeah. [17:17] And their files are all part of the JFK files that are out there. They’re so voluminous. I looked at some of them myself. I had a person that I know whose dad was in the Teamsters, and her dad’s name was mentioned in the JFK files. He got home and said, could you believe this? Oh, yeah. Some of the stuff that I saw in there was amazing. Some of the people that showed up, I would have had no idea. I mean, one of the guys that showed up, which is very surprising, was Art Rooney Sr., the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. [17:51] He was a snitch. He was a government snitch. He was big into the mob, big into gambling. Yeah. He always played down his role, but I’m going to tell you, he was a very, very big time gambler. Not just on the horses, too, either. Sports gambling, a huge no-no. Oh, huge, huge no-no for somebody like that, man. I found a report. He told the FBI that he says, sometimes I’m shocked about the amount of gambling I’m interested in. And he was referring to horses. But I’ll tell you, there was a story that there was this hotel in Pittsburgh, a Fort Pitt hotel. And a couple mobsters had a wire room there. And police in Yonkers, New York called the Pittsburgh police and said, hey, you got this major international racewire gambling syndicate operating in this hotel room in Pittsburgh. You guys, we thought you’d like to have the tip. It was two years before the police moved and only because it was found out. And it was in the same hotel where Art Rooney had his offices. Yeah. And the house detective was a Pittsburgh police officer who had a room on the same floor. He knew all these guys, but yet they were able to operate. The mob was allowed to operate. Well, that’s… Gambling was in Western Pennsylvania. [19:13] That’s how you do it at certain levels. when you got enough money to corrupt people. That’s how you do it. It was like that in Kansas City in the 30s and 40s. And in early 50s, it kind of started changing by the 60s. And time I came on in the 70s, that was pretty well all gone. We had a couple of holdouts from the old days, but it was pretty well all gone. But most police departments were, you know, they were in bed with the mob to a greater or lesser extent. Not the entire department, But some of the right ones were, at least that’s the way it was here. [19:45] I just, I don’t know. They’re so powerful because they got into politics. And I’m sure that John LaRocca was heavily involved in politics in Pittsburgh area. Oh, yeah. There was, I found reports, and this is not in this book. It may be in a subsequent book. Mayor David Lawrence of Pittsburgh, who later became governor, his police department during his tenure as mayor. was terrible. There were constant, constant allegations of bribery and corruption, which later proved to be true. But Lawrence always kept arm’s length from it. But he had backdoor connections to John Araca. He had people who did his bidding. And those names are in the FBI report. So his reputation really is tarnished by that. I mean, because for people who who aren’t familiar with Pittsburgh history. David Lawrence was one of the motivators of the Pittsburgh Renaissance in the early 50s. And he’s been credited with that for decades and moving Pittsburgh from a shop in Beertown to a gleaming metropolis with computers, research, and medical research. But he had a very sinister little background himself. [21:06] Not only him, but his predecessors as well. Yeah. Well, it’s, I always say it wouldn’t be a, if you didn’t have a little corruption, it wouldn’t be a big city. So that’s, that’s what he said. He actually said something that he’s unwilling [21:19] to tolerate a certain amount of corruption. Right. To make us a big city to move. It’s a big city. Got to put up a little bit of corruption. And you know, that speaking of those cities, like all those, you talk about Alcoa aluminum, when they went down, all those Rust Belt cities, Youngstown and Cleveland, Cincinnati, as that. [21:40] Those factories, you know, lost out and, and went down and lost business and started closing up, then the mob, they didn’t have that source of income from all those union guys that had these big paychecks. And, and I didn’t really realize that Pittsburgh was, was a loom. I always say kind of was a steel town, but also New Kensington was aluminum town. Yeah. And it’s funny because when Alcoa closed, Mannarino, Kelly had told an FBI agent, they talked all the time, which surprised me, all these informal conversations they had with Kelly. He says, yeah, New Kensington’s a dead city. No gambling here at all. And there wasn’t. Why bet on a horse? I mean, there’s just no money to spend. Why bet on a number? And he didn’t exactly provide unemployment insurance for his workers. And you had all these guys that worked in the casinos. They were now unemployed. They had to find a real job. [22:38] Huh interesting so tell us something else out of your book that you you found particularly fascinating i guess well it was this whole thing about the the gun smuggling you know i had done like i said i had done a series in the mid 90s called mob rule about those fbi files i didn’t have all the records because they were released later on but and i had done a story earlier much minor story about the gun smuggling. And it’s always been the premise that this was the first flight out of that airport when they got caught in Morgantown. My records indicate that is the second flight. Actually, the same plane came in a month earlier, winded, and flew out somewhere, probably. They surmised to went to South Florida, and from there, they’re not sure. But what was surprising was the amount of gun smuggling that was going on. Castro’s agents were buying guns out of sporting goods stores all over the East Coast, getting them down to Florida. And there was a whole fleet of planes flying under the radar by mercenary pilots. And one of the pilots was a guy named Stuart Suter, who was caught in Morgantown. He was flying for the Manorinas. [23:58] And there was so many stories. I mean, one of the planes involved loaded with machine guns and ammunition crashed in Guantanamo Bay. [24:09] And that’s how they found out about the new Kensington connection. One of the documents in that crashed plane, which the Navy salvaged, was a list of these tail numbers. And one of the tail numbers was the plane used in the smuggling. And it was on a wanted list, and it had made a number of smuggling trips. so, There was a lot of money made by rogue pilots and mercenary pilots that were flying in and out of Cuba, which I thought would be very dangerous, but apparently it wasn’t all that dangerous. They were able to get into the country very easily, drop their loads, and get out. Yeah, I guess that was before the big cocaine clampdown on southern Florida. You couldn’t do that today, but before that. Even the drug smugglers, the early cocaine days, they found it really simple and easy because there’s, you know, have all the different coastlines in Florida and, you know, it could fly a little bit inland to a rural airport. And then all the ways you could drop boats, bring things in and go out of Florida. So it was probably relatively easy before the modern drug people, the modern DEA and border patrol and Coast Guard and all that got into the narcotics business. Well, the other thing, Gary, that really surprised me was how deeply influential the Manor arenas were in local government. [25:35] They controlled the mayor. They controlled the police department. They controlled city council. They controlled the school board. They decided whether or not your taxes would increase or not. There was one instance where city council said it was going to increase the business privilege tax. So some representatives from the chamber of commerce went to see kelly. [25:59] Kelly called the mayor yeah i’m seeing another mayor’s announcing there’s not going to be a tax increase i mean it was it was amazing he had they had the man arenas had people so frightened, that the fbi early on was trying didn’t have photographs of the man arenas. [26:18] So they went to this business across the street from where the Manorinos had this scrapyard. And they asked the owner, he says, look, you’ve got an office on the second floor. Could we use it to stake out the Manorinos? And the guy got very nervous. And first he said yes, then he changed his mind and said no. And then first thing he did was he went to the Manorinos and told them that the FBI wanted to get their photographs. So that’s the kind of fear they inspired him. Sam had a source at Bell Telephone. [26:51] And so, of course, he kept the list of everybody who called the Pittsburgh office of the FBI or the Internal Revenue Service. Oh, my God. And they would pay. They were looking for one guy. They were going to smash him if they could have killed him because he had been making calls to the Pittsburgh authorities. So that’s how deeply they were embedded, and that’s how scared people were because they were—he said, well, yeah. And when I was doing the story back in the 90s, people would say, you know, Rich, you’re wrong about the manner of dessert. They’re not that bad. They’re low-key. They’re not violent. And I said, bullshit. I’m calling games on that one. They had a guy, a bookie in Wheeling, West Virginia. And he was taking bets at Waterford. And the owner of the track got in trouble with the IRS over taxes, so the government seized it. [27:44] They sold it to a consortium in Detroit where two of the members were whose parents, whose fathers were mob royalty. Yeah. Told this book, you’re cutting $30,000 out of our take on horse bets each week. Stop it. Well, he wouldn’t do it. So Sam calls this guy, his name was Nick Miller, says, Nick, come on up to New Kensington. We’ve got to talk about some business. We’ve got some business we want to talk to. I said, okay. So he goes up, goes into the house, cordial conversation. They go downstairs to Sam’s family room. Two guys grab him, hold him in a chair, and Kelly and Sam strangle him to death. Take his body, dump it in his car, and take it to Pittsburgh and let it sit there for a couple weeks until flies and the smells start massing. And, yeah, they did things like this. I mean, they were killers. It just didn’t come out at the time. So all that stuff about them being benevolent godfathers is BS. It’s not true. They were extremely violent. Very violent. [28:48] And they had that town wired. Man, they did have that town wired. Literally wired. They wired council meetings. They wired city council meetings so they could hear what was being said. The FBI would come in the city, and these two agents that were there all the time would stay at this local hotel. Yeah. They owned the mob, but ran the motel hotel. They had their rooms wired so they could hear what the agents were talking about. That’s how deep and suspicious these guys were. It was amazing. [29:21] Crazy, crazy, crazy. And guys, I’ll have a link down below to find this book. It’s a fascinating look at this time in Pittsburgh history and national history, international history, if you will, as you heard it. You know, this guy was stealing barrel bonds in Canada, taking them to Switzerland and dealing with Castro’s agents in Italy and Florida and other mob families. So it’s quite a book. So go back over and tell us a little bit about yourself, Rich. I was a journalist on a newspaper for 42 years before I retired. And I’ve written, this is my seventh book. I’ve written two biographies. I’ve written a book on Prohibition in Pittsburgh. I wrote a history of corruption in Pittsburgh. And I wrote a history of jazz in Pittsburgh. And I wrote a story about a serial killer. He was known as the Phantom Turnpike Killer who would drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike killing sleeping truck drivers. And so they caught him and convicted him, and he went in the electric chair. But he was a very famous guy. It was in the 50s, and it was the Greensburg, Pennsylvania’s version of the O.J. Simpson trial. It was a very big trial at the time. It attracted a lot of national attention. Interesting. And I spent about a number of years on the newspaper as an investigative reporter. [30:45] I’ve written about organized crime. I’ve written about public and governmental corruption. I’ve written about corporate corruption. And I just did a lot of them. I covered the courts for 10 years, and I covered more murders than I wanted to ever be involved in. But, yeah, it’s been an interesting life. I enjoyed it. Great. I’ll have a link, actually, to Rich’s Amazon author page. So you go to that, and you’ll find all of these books. I bet a lot of people are interested in two or three of those other books. And this book is Gun Smuggling, Castro’s Cuba, and the Pittsburgh Mafia, published by the History Press. So, Rich, I really appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about it. Gary, I appreciate you extending the invitation. It’s very, very pleasant to do this interview. All right, great.

Transcribed - Published: 22 September 2025

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jonathan Dyer to explore one of the most complex and dangerous figures in Mafia history—Greg Scarpa, the Colombo family enforcer known as The Grim Reaper. Dyer, whose career spans military intelligence, law, and education, brings deep insight into Scarpa’s remarkable—and chilling—dual role as both a ruthless mob killer and a prized FBI top echelon informant. Together, Gary and Jonathan unpack the moral ambiguities, betrayals, and calculated violence that defined Scarpa’s career in the turbulent world of organized crime. Listeners will hear: How Scarpa balanced loyalty to the mob with his covert cooperation with the FBI.   The structured, almost corporate way his crew operated—and how he enforced discipline with fear and bloodshed. The darker corners of his personal life, including family ties, marriages, and the impact of his choices on his children. The violent episodes, such as the murder of Mary Bari, underscore his brutality and the Mafia’s code of protection. From Cold War–era law enforcement collusion to the inner workings of New York’s underworld, this episode reveals how Scarpa manipulated both sides of the law to maintain power. Jonathan Dyer’s latest book, Greg Scarpa: Legendary Evil, offers the foundation for a conversation that will leave you questioning where law enforcement ends and organized crime begins. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of [0:03] Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, an entire Kansas City, Missouri police detective. Worked at the Organized Crime Unit or the Intelligence Unit for many years. And now I’ve got a podcast and we’re all about the organized crime. As you guys know, all you regular guys and for new people, it’s all about organized crime, particularly the Italian mafia in the United States. Now, I have an author here today, Jonathan Dyer. And Jonathan, I really am excited about having you on here because you have a different take about a much cussed and discussed subject or person, Gregory the Grim Reaper Scarpa. So welcome, Jonathan. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background. Where’d you come from other than Marshall? We found out we have similar backgrounds, Marshall, Missouri, rural Missouri, farm life and Kansas City. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself. Well, in 1981, Gary, I joined the Army and spent about a year and a half in Monterey Defense Language Institute learning Russian. [1:10] After that, I went to Goodfellow Air Force Base for some cryptologic training. And then after that, I went to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade for some more training and then shipped overseas to Berlin for three years trying to keep tabs on the Soviet Army during the Cold War. After the Army, I entered law school at UC Davis in California. And after law school, I practiced law for about 10 years as a civil litigator. And then in 1999, I switched careers and became a teacher and taught government and U.S. History and criminal law and retired during the pandemic. And now I live in central Texas. Interesting. [1:52] This is off the subject a little bit, but I’ve always been curious about that language school. FBI agents go to that and military people go to it. I have tried to learn Spanish. You know, I’m a pretty good tourist. I’ve tried to learn French most recently. I haven’t been there yet after I’ve worked on it with Duolingo, the new app to help you learn a language. But it’s so hard to learn a foreign language. It is so hard. Do they have some tricks or techniques? I mean, did you really learn to converse in Russian or were you just like, you know, able to order a pizza or something? Well, the basic course in the Russian, at least back in the early 1980s, was 47 weeks long. And Gary, they’ve been at it for a while. So I think they have a pretty good plan. And it’s intense. You’re in a classroom six hours a day, and then you have about two or three hours of homework at night. So you’re not just like I would do now, just kind of dabbling in it a little bit, looking at the sticks. And then after that first year, and it’s going to sound like I’m patting myself on the back here, but I don’t mean to do that. If you do well, you can take another six months right away. And at the end of that year and a half, I was certainly conversant in Russian. I was reading Russian. It was a good deal of fluency. [3:16] But I haven’t really worked on it since then. So, frankly, it’s mostly disappeared. But I think it’s back in there somewhere. And if I needed to call up on it, I think I could bring it up. It would be if you went into a conversation with somebody who was a Russian speaker only, I guarantee, uh, you would slip back into it pretty shortly if you went to Russia. Now, was that full immersion? Did you like, we’re not allowed to speak English any other time and didn’t, you weren’t with any other English speakers or were they that rigorous? [3:45] No, it wasn’t. I mean, particularly in the beginning, there’s no way to exist or survive without being able to speak English. And there was the classroom work in that second six months that I talked about was entirely in Russian, except for the military portion of it. We had some military senior NCOs who were also our instructors and they would flip back and forth between English and Russian. But our teachers in general were native Russian speakers. And again, during that last six months of the year and a half of training, it was, at least in the classroom, exclusively in Russian. Yeah. Wow. In order to pick up the nuances, if you’re doing an overhear or looking at documents or whatever, in order to pick up the nuances of the country, if you will, that’s another thing. You really have to know the language well. [4:48] Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I’ve heard that indicates fluency is if you understand the sense of humor of a foreign language. And I think I got to that point. Oh, we’re good. And certainly the Russian sense of humor is different from the American sense of humor, but, um, again, um, not really doing much with it since my discharge from the army. Uh, even that I think is probably, uh. [5:14] Difficult to access at this point to be fine. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I just, uh, sorry to digress guys, but I just always found this fascinating learning a foreign language. I’ve always found that fascinating as hell. I went to Mexico and I spent two weeks living with a family down there. And that was the, that’s why I asked that question. That was a rule. You were not supposed to speak English and they were not supposed to speak English with you. Although we, we had to cheat a little bit, but it was true. It’s hard boy, but that full immersion, uh, that, That’ll really amp up your ability to speak. Yeah, there’s a very steep learning curve, and that’ll do it. Jonathan Dyer is the author of 12 books, including six on Cold War espionage, a thriller series, The Nick Temple Files, which sounds interesting as hell. So, guys, I’ll have a link to his author page on Amazon in order to find some of these other books that he’s written. And it sounds like you’ve got a little inside track on the espionage thriller genre for what you did for a living, kind of like Ian Fleming and his James Bond series. Right. [6:22] But what we’re here today to talk about is organized crime in the mafia. Jonathan wrote a book called Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil. Now, a lot of you guys know Greg Scarpa. Greg Scarpa. There’s our man himself, the many faces of mafia killer. And I guess my first question would be, he’s been covered quite a little bit. And I was reading your book and you really have some interesting takes on this guy. But what got you interested in Greg Scarpa? Well, a writing partner and I were working on some scripts for a possible streaming series. And it was about the Brooklyn Mafia during the late 1970s and into the 1980s. And of course, Scarpa was the main character in that whole drama. And so my writing partner suggested I write a Scarpa biography. And at first I said, no, thanks. I’ve written fiction and I hadn’t written a book-length piece of nonfiction. You know, in graduate school, law school, you write nonfiction, but nothing like this. And he kept pushing, gently but pushing, and finally I relented and said, okay, I’ll do it, and started researching it. And that’s how I got to writing a biography of Scarlett. [7:46] What did you find about Scarpa that, you know, why would his story be of interest in 2025? [7:55] Yeah, I think the duality of Scarpa’s nature, the fact that he was both a mafia good fellow and at times a capo and also an FBI informant is just absolutely fascinating. You know, the stories about law enforcement and the mafia sometimes are very, they’re intertwined as law enforcement attempts to get a handle on the mafia. And sometimes there’s a closeness between them that is fascinating. And that’s certainly the case with Scarpa and his 25 out of 30 years being a top echelon criminal informant to the FBI. So I think that’s fascinating for people. And his personal life is fascinating, too. Yeah, it is. It is really fascinating. And there’s been so much that’s come out about him. It’s amazing. You know, another thing I found really interesting is I noticed that you looked at this book, Brick Agent, Tony Villano, who was an FBI agent, who was Scarpa’s, maybe it was very first handler. I’m not too sure. He goes pretty far back as a young man, slipping little tidbits to the FBI. So tell me about that. [9:18] What do you remember about how you covered that and his different Villano’s view of Scarpa? Yeah. [9:26] Yeah, I think there was a real challenge there, Gary, because Villano’s book, as I recall, came out in 77. And my guess was, and I put this in the book, is that his use of aliases for Scarpa was an attempt to try to protect Scarpa, continue to protect him after Villano was no longer in the FBI. And I think that as a result of that, some of the items that he has attributed to Scarpa, I think, are overblown for dramatic purposes. So trying to sort that out. [9:59] And that was, Daria, obviously what a lot of this book ended up being, trying to sort out what is out there about Scarpa, what’s real, what’s not, what’s legend at this point. And that was certainly the case with, uh, Volano’s book, particularly when Volano was referencing what Scarpa did in Mississippi. Yeah. I noticed that it was like, yeah, he really used two different names for two different situations down in Mississippi. And, and a lot of it didn’t really align with what we’ve learned since then, what, uh, Delvecchio, DiVecchio reported in his book. So, which is a whole nother story, which we’ll get to in a little bit. But it was really interesting. Yeah, you’re right. There are three main Mississippi stories that have been attributed to Scarpe and his efforts for the FBI. And as readers of the book will find out, my conclusion was there really is no good evidence that he was involved in solving Medgar Evers’ murder. And there’s reasonably good evidence that he was involved in locating the bodies of the three civil rights workers. and also in 1966 of helping solve the Vernon Dahmer murder. Interesting. Yeah, he had a way of interrogating people when he went down there. [11:20] Enhanced interrogation, I think we call it now. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Oh, my God. It was way ahead of his time. Way ahead of his time. [11:32] You got a sense of humor, too, Jonathan. That’s a good one. [11:37] And I tell you, when you work with these guys, you better have a sense of humor because some of us are a black sense of humor because some of the things they do are so horrid. And this guy was. He was a stone killer. He didn’t have an ounce of empathy that I could see in his body when it came to work. But his family was a whole different deal, wasn’t it? Yeah, you know, his family is plural, right? I mean, he was married to Connie Forrest, Conchetta Faraci, but anglicized to Connie Forrest. And they had four children, the oldest of which was Gregory, who followed his father into the life. And while he was still married to Connie, he was shacking up, as we say, with Linda Shiro, who he met when Linda was a teenager. And while he was still married to Connie and shacking up with Linda, he got married again to Lily Deshauny, an Israeli beauty queen contestant, and also apparently a purveyor of diamonds. So he was technically a bigamist. And what is kind of interesting is in the FBI documents, he drops a little note about how he thinks Joe Colombo is a bigamist. And this was something that Scarpo himself was guilty of. He’s often projecting in those interviews. [13:02] It’s really interesting. You know, his personal life, there’s one story about the molestation of his daughter, Linda. And I didn’t really remember this. I had not heard this before. But tell us about that. Yeah, Linda was on her way to high school. She was about 16 years old. And normally she rode with her brother, her little brother, Joey. And, um, but Joey was not feeling well that day. So the limo driver who would take them to work every, or excuse me, to school every day, um, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, decided he was going to try to molest Linda. And so instead of driving to the school, he drove to a place in the woods near the school, started to molest her. Linda was obviously shocked, but to her credit, she kept her head and said, hey, we don’t have to do it like this. Let’s meet up later. And he fell for that. And he took her to school. She called her mom, said, you got to pick me up um i just got molested and uh you know molestation is bad enough as it is but molesting greg scarpa’s daughter that is about as dumb as it gets right yeah and so eventually know who it was that uh did did he know who that was or was he just some limo driver they called on the phone and hired a car service. [14:25] Yeah, I think that he was part of a car service. And I think that he was generally the driver. She didn’t indicate that, hey, you’re a new driver. Who are you? [14:36] But he was part of a car service. And so she would have been comfortable seeing him. In fact, when he picked her up and she told him that Joey wasn’t coming along, he said, well, why don’t you sit up front with me? She didn’t think anything of it. And so, anyway, Scarpa’s crew gave him what Larry Mazza referred to as just a savage beating. And then eventually, his name was Jose Guzman. Eventually, he was killed. [15:04] Well, that’s a guy. He did care about his family. He did protect his family. I mean, you could say care about it in a certain way, in a certain mafia don. Yeah. The king of his little world way and, you know, what he said goes. And he certainly, I guess, in that world, you know, he brought his son, Greg Jr., right into the life. It was just amazing. You know, I think, Gary, without getting too deep in terms of psychological analysis, I think that his family and his families were also trophies for Scarpa. And so if you violated something with respect to his families, I think that deep down, Scarpa felt it reflected poorly on him. And so his family just became, at least in my view, another trophy, another thing to say, look, look what I’ve done here. But, you know, that’s me guessing. But, yeah, Greg Scarpa Jr., um, followed his father into the life. And fairly early on when he was about 16, he started being groomed for that. [16:17] Well, you know, that is interesting that they, that they reflected on him, uh, his family and, and, and, uh, story that, uh, Vincent, the chin gigante was talking with John Gotti. I think this, maybe it was even on a wire or a bug or something. And he’s talking about Gotti was bragging about how he made, he had his son made. [16:38] And Gigante said something to the effect of, you know, well, that’s too bad. You know, it’s like, you know, that’s, you know, but to Gotti, that was a big deal. You know, hey, I’m my son, he’s made, you know, and he really, best I could tell, he just like made him, you know, he wouldn’t, didn’t earn anything. He didn’t work his way up. He just made him. And, but that’s how it reflected on him. They want this, I guess they want to want to be this mob dynasty and everybody wants to have a dynasty, I guess. [17:05] Yeah, you know, I came to the conclusion that Greg Jr. really never had a chance. You know, you probably remember the story if you read it in the book that he came home from a fight in high school and had a pretty good-sized lump on his head. And his dad said, you know, what happened? And Greg told him he got in a fight. The guy got a lick in, fair and square. Greg Jr. was pretty good with his fists. He did some Golden Gloves boxing and was a fair fighter. And his father said, well, you go back there tomorrow and you put that kid in the hospital or don’t come home. And Greg Jr. tried to talk him out of it and say, look, dad, it wasn’t a big deal. The cops came, they broke it up. It was a fair fight. But his father insisted. And of course, Greg did it. His father meant everything to him, as he has said. And he got expelled. And so at the age of 16, Now, what do you do? Yeah. And fast forward from that to the Mary Berry murder. I mean, in that thing, they had this woman who’s basically an innocent woman. I mean, maybe she would have, she didn’t know enough, really enough to snitch on anybody, I don’t think. But she knew a little bit or something. And she was, you know, Persico wanted her gone. And Greg Sharper Jr. was one of the first ones to grab her and make sure that she was taken down. while his, I guess it was his dad killed her. It was just, I mean, talk about cold-blooded. [18:30] Yeah, just a horrible, horrible story. And my view is that Mary Barry had no idea where Alley Boy Persico was. And Persico’s family didn’t even know where Alley Boy was, except maybe somewhere in Connecticut. As you know, they had this sort of underground railroad thing going on for lobsters on the lam. I did find an interesting bit from a U.S. Marshal who asked the FBI if he could speak to Mary Barry. And the FBI’s response was, we have a relationship with her. And so from that, I think it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Scarpa may have found out about that relationship. And Scarpa wasn’t so much going to revenge on someone for being a rat. I think he was more worried that she might be able to tell the FBI or someone through her that might get out that Scarborough was an informant. And, yeah, the killing of Mary Barry is just an awful, awful moment. And, Gary, even as Peter Lance pointed out, and then I… [19:42] Quoted, the guys around Scarpa said, we’re going to hell for this one. So even they felt that this was really beyond the rabbit-proof fence. What about this story where he supposedly used 666 as a calling card? What’s the deal behind that? Did you get money? Yeah, I think that was back when people had pagers. And so we’re a couple of generations beyond that. But he would use 666 six as a way of saying mission accomplished. So if there was something that he was supposed to be doing, particularly with a hit, then he would page out to people, whoever’s on the other end of these things, six, six, six. And a bit of really dark humor there about being the devil. As Peter Lance referred to him in his book, Deal with the Devil, talking about Linda Vecchio, And even Larry Maza’s grandmother referred to him as the devil and sort of a federal judge referred to him as the devil. And apparently Scarpa wasn’t all that unhappy with that moniker. [20:56] I think I read someplace, maybe it was Peter Lance’s book about how he really liked to be called the Grim. Was it the Grim Reaper? He had another name like that for himself that he’d rather be called i don’t remember what it was now yeah everybody the mad hatter the mad hatter yeah i mean he was just i guess he thought he was anastasia the the lore of albert anastasia lives on through gregory scarpa he had a sense of history at least yeah and he certainly had a clear idea of self-promotion within those ranks He knew it didn’t hurt his cause at all to be feared by the people around him. Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen people do that. They can do that pretty slick and real obtuse ways. So you could never really say, well, is that what you mean? What do you mean by that? But generate that fear out there. You know, he survived a long time as an informant and was a valuable member. I think it’s because he was able to live such a double life. I don’t know. What would be your take on that after studying this guy’s life? How did he pull that off? [22:09] Well, you know, it’s interesting, Gary, because there were some people that suspected that he was talking to law enforcement. And Carlo Gambino in 1972, and this is in the FBI files, said to his men, his crews in the Gambino family, stay away from Scarpa, he’s got a big mouth. And that was 1972. I think that one of the ways he was able to either hide the fact that he was an informant or downplay the whole thing is because he was so vicious. And I think people would rightly question, would the FBI continue to be in bed with this guy while he’s committing murders? And the answer, unfortunately, was yes. And I think that the way he carried himself and the things that he did made a lot of people just think, there’s no way. And also, as I point out in the story about Donny Soma, people that accused Greg of being a rat weren’t around long. They were, yeah. And so it was a dangerous thing to do. And, um, people, uh, around SCARP and around others would warn people that if you’re going down that road, it’s not a safe road to go down. And so, um, I, I think that the. [23:31] The possibility of really a very quick execution can focus the mind. And I think that’s what Scarlett, through his actions, that helped him remain an informant for all those years. Yeah. And, you know, and the FBI, that’s a good point that people in life just like they couldn’t believe that somebody that was that much of a killer could also be on the payroll or, you know, be with the FBI. I have a friend here in Kansas City who got transferred back from New York. And my last stint in intelligence was in 92. And he worked organized crime in Kansas City. but he was with the Columbo squad and he knew Devecchio. He said he was a nice guy. He said, but, you know, he said he did. I’d hear him get on the phone and he would, you know, he kind of talked like a mobster when he would talk to these guys. So, you know, and I understand that you kind of, you want to go to their level. I’ve done that myself. You kind of go to their level and don’t let anything that they may be doing away from you shock you because then they won’t trust you anymore. You need them to trust you. So what do you think about that, the FBI? Did that change the way, has that started coming out, the way that they dealt with informants? [24:55] What’s your opinion on that? Well, I think there was an evolution there. You know, from 1962 when the FBI knew virtually nothing about organized crime and about the Italian mafia and how it operated. [25:10] Through into the 70s and the 1980s when, I mean, the stories of the control that organized crime had over New York were just phenomenal. And the amount of control they had over everything, garbage, construction, you name it. And so I think the FBI who was charged with fighting this, this criminal threat, um, I think that they found themselves in a tough position and at times they had to say, yeah, yeah, I know these are the rules and that looks great on paper, but, um, these are dangerous people. And sometimes we’re going to have to, um, go a little deeper. And, uh, and I also think there’s a, a, an aspect of particularly with Linda Vecchio and he admits this in his book that he actually likes Scarpa. You know, he worked with him for a long time. He liked the guy. DeVecchio says, I’ve warned him many times about a line he shouldn’t cross, but he’s also quite frank about, hey, you got to admire the guy. I consider Greg Scarpa my friend. And that’s a dangerous position to be in when you’re trying to, at the same time, control the life that Scarpa lives in. [26:30] Well, interesting. Yeah. This agent told me that, uh, that oftentimes DeVecchio, he was single and DeVecchio would ask him for a key, if he could have a key and he wanted to use his apartment during the day. He said, he said, now in retrospect, I figured he would probably meet in Scarpa over there in my apartment because it’d be a safe off the street place to meet. Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, although DeVecchio did, and there are a couple of stories where DeVecchio actually went to Scarpa’s house in Brooklyn, particularly during the Third Colombo War, and had discussions with him. So, you know, this, you know, Peter Lance’s book covers the DeVecchio relationship really thoroughly. And that wasn’t really one of the goals that I had here. But, of course, DeVecchio plays a big role in half of the book as he was his handler from 1980 on. And the trial that DeVecchio went through in 2007 until it was dismissed mid-trial, and those items, as far as the detail goes, those really weren’t subjects of this book, but they are certainly subjects for people to be wondering about and figuring out how that all turned out. [27:45] Yeah, and that whole relationship with Linda Shiro and Larry Mazza and, And we got Larry Mazza out there. Here he is. He was his protege for all those years. Now he’s out here doing podcasts. And I don’t know what all he’s doing exactly. I’ve been told, oh, you need to get that Larry Mazza on. I’ve never, I don’t know. I don’t go out of my way to find mob guys for some reason. But I’ll take them if they come. But that’s a fascinating relationship. Yeah, very, very unusual. And there’s a moment when Mazza thinks that Scarf is going to kill him. Because he’s found out about this relationship he’s having with Scarpa’s Goumar, Linda Shiro. And the way Scarpa handles that in terms of, we’ve got to keep this secret between ourselves, otherwise we’re both going to be killed. It’s just such a master piece of manipulation to bring Mazza not only closer to him, but really make Mazza dependent upon him for his continued life. [28:50] And this is something else I’ve brought up in a number of different contexts, and that is that Scarpa, who barely finished high school, managed to manipulate a whole building full of college-educated people, very smart and very wise people. He manipulated them for years. And I think it goes to some of Scarpa’s, what is not book smarts, but innate intelligence. Right. Street smarts, just native intelligence. And I’ve worked with guys like this and know guys like this on the streets that they just, like I said, they can barely read a sentence when it comes to reading a book. But they’ve got that native intelligence, that survival instinct, and able to put things together. And Scarpa must have been a master at that. He must have really, really been able to see plots and see connections much beyond what the normal person could see. [29:53] Yeah, another good example of that is Carmine Persico. At the end of his trial, the judge said, You’re one of the smartest people that’s ever come into this courtroom. It’s just such a shame that this is the path he went down. But a federal judge complimenting Carmine Persco like that tells you something. He must have been impressed. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I, I told a guy that once I said, you know, why don’t you give all this car theft stuff up and, and go do some kind of legitimate business. You’re really bright and you could do it. He said, ah, that wouldn’t be fun in that. They, they like that action. I think is in my opinion, he’s like the action. [30:32] And Scarpa, he was such a cold-blooded killer. What are the kind of businesses that he had? Did he have like a whole book of loan shark money out there on the street? Yeah, he was into what all the fairly standard mafia organized crime book of business. You know, loan sharking, running numbers, gambling, you know, setting up games, having gambling games, hijacking trucks, particularly hijacking goods from Kennedy Airport, armed robbery. And Scarpa and his crew and some of the people that were in his orbit were very skilled at burglarizing banks, particularly Joe Brewster. And that was a very lucrative business for them, burglarizing banks back in the day when a little alarm was about all that was protecting that bank. Yeah. So the whole book, Gary, absolutely. [31:36] I guess being a maid guy, I wonder how many associates he had underneath him that were then, you know, he set up a deal or he’d help fence stuff and all that kind of thing. He must have had 20 or 30 people underneath him that were out doing scams every day or doing some kind of crime. Yeah, that’s something that I think, I know you understand it, but I think a lot of people don’t understand that Scarpa for many of those years was a good fellow. And so his crew were associates, because if any member of his crew got his button, they’d be assigned to a capo. And this is actually why Scarpa became a capo during the Third Colombo War, because when Larry Maz and Jimmy Del Masto got their buttons, they would have had to assign them to another capo. But the Scarpa del Masto Maza team was such a good killing machine, they said, okay, we’re going to make Scarpa a capo and then assign you guys to him. But anyway, these associates, and the numbers can vary, but there are far more associates that are working for the mafia, at least during the time we’re talking about, than there were Goodfellas members. [32:57] So yeah, they did have several people out on the street doing all those sorts of things that we just talked about. I’m trying to remember, do you have a social club that was kind of like his, where his crew all met? I can’t remember now. [33:12] Yeah, yeah, the Wimpy Boys Social Club. Oh, that’s right, okay. What an ironic name, right? It used to be at Jim’s, but these social clubs were all over Brooklyn. And, I mean, you know, Carmine Sessa’s social club where Mary Barry was killed, Sessions. But anyway, these clubs were all over Brooklyn, and Scarpa had an office in the back of the Wimpy Boys Social Club. And this is another interesting thing, and I point out right away in the book that Scarpa insisted that his men come to work on time, dress nicely every day, you know, like a CEO. And he ran a kind of a tight ship. And Larry Mazza one day showed up and he’d just been at the beach and he showed up in swim trunks and Scarpa told him to go home and change. And that was the last time Larry did that. But, um, and, and Larry referred to Scarpa as somewhat of a CEO, you know, a guy who’s running a business and not in a way that most CEOs do, but in the way that was, um, familiar to him and his world. Yeah. And, and that’s, uh, it was probably more rigor than some of the rigors than some of the others, but even here in Kansas city, you know, our boss had, had certain rules, you know, you, you’d kind of dress the same Sansa belt slacks and a leather coat and polo shirts. They all look the same and no facial hair. [34:37] So, uh, and, and they were pretty regular going down to the social club. So it’s, uh, so I just interested about the mafia and, and, uh, the structure and, and how businesslike the really good ones were the ones that made money. They were really businesslike. [34:55] Yeah, and I think that was part of the problem for the, you know, J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s. He said there was no such thing as the mafia in the United States. And then when Scarpy became an informant in 1962, he was just spilling his guts on the organization of the mafia. And I think they were just stunned by how organized, how many rules there were, that this was not just, you know, the gang that couldn’t shoot straight or just some guys with Brooklyn accents beaten on people. people. This was a highly organized, very deep, very lucrative organization. [35:32] And pretty sophisticated. I mean, with the union racketeering and those kinds of things and extortion from the businessmen, especially New York City. I mean, Kansas City, we had the Teamsters and the skimming from Las Vegas, but in New York City, they had the concrete club and all that business ever building and went up in Manhattan at one time. The mob got a big piece of it in some manner oh yeah yeah you couldn’t you couldn’t build in manhattan without dealing with what you just called the concrete club which was the uh euphemism that came for these guys they just they had a stranglehold on that and if you wanted to build something you had to deal with these guys and uh you know giuliani came along and broke a lot of that up by um put putting the heads of the families um using rico um and putting these guys away um but uh for a while there as i was saying earlier these guys were just running new york city the five families yeah well he um i counted i think eight maybe nine different times when he told his handler that carmine persco was was uh responsible for a murder and uh yeah and this is one of the reasons gary that i i come out, um when people talk about that third colombo war they talk about the vicarina side and then the personal loyalists. And I don’t see Scarpa as a personal loyalist. I see him as a Scarpa loyalist. [36:55] And he provided information to the FBI that led to the arrest of Joe Colombo Jr. and Joe Colombo Sr. [37:04] And even though he was part of this inner circle of Joe Colombo Sr., he gave the FBI enough information to arrest Joe Colombo. So, yeah, I think Scarpa was instrumental in at least the investigations that Giuliani and the Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s Office was conducting. And I found in a Senate report a. [37:33] A quotation that pretty much said that Scarpa was responsible for giving singular information that led to, I think it was over 60 wiretap authorizations and then re-upping those wiretap authorizations. And that language, they didn’t put Scarpa’s name in the report, but that language in the report is almost identical to the language that appears in the FBI documents. So that led me to conclude, they’re talking about Scarpa there. And that was both Five Star and Stark was those two big investigations. Wow. Well, I was wrong about that. But he was always getting rid of competition and that kind of a thing is what I think of with Greg Scarpa. Yeah. Yeah. He did not. [38:28] Like competition. And, you know, especially once the drug money started becoming really big in the 1980s, it became dangerous to find yourself in competition with Greg Scarpett Jr. And with Greg Scarpett and the drug dealing in various places in New York. Yeah. I tell you, that guy, he operated under his own set of rules, didn’t he? He did not operate under other people’s sets of rules, didn’t appear to be like. Yeah, yeah, he did. But these were rules that weren’t exclusively his. You know, he was operating under the mafia’s rules. And for them, it was this idea of territory was really important. This idea of who’s going to get the cash, the money that flows from these kind of activities. And as you know, Gary, for a long time, the mafia was taking the position that you can’t be involved in drugs. Can’t be involved in drugs narcotics can’t be involved in prostitution uh but the money was so lucrative um starting in the late 1970s um that that eventually those warnings just fell on deaf ears okay yeah don’t ask don’t tell wasn’t after a while the money got big enough. [39:52] Yeah it’s you know it’s uh um one of those things uh that the um these absolute rules of the mafia um scarper broke every one of them he you know he the number one being loyalty on penalty of death and um he was pretty early in his career he’d been a button man for about 10 years when he broke that oath. And of course, just about everything else he did, every oath he ever took, he broke. And that includes whatever these rules were in the mafia were very convenient for him when he wanted to use them and he ignored them when he didn’t. Yeah, interesting. Well, Jonathan Dyer, this has been great. The name of the book is, let’s put that book back up there, is, I said, uh, I said, sometimes I, uh, my mind goes blank. Jonathan, you wouldn’t know anything about that. Would you? There we go. [40:54] Many, uh, Legendary Evil, The Many Faces of a Mafia Killer. Jonathan, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Gary, thanks for having me. It’s been fun talking to you and talking a little bit about Kansas City and Missouri, too. All right. Thanks a lot, Jonathan. All right. Thank you, sir. Bye-bye. Bye. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon, just going. I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.  

Transcribed - Published: 15 September 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with Keith Grounsell, a veteran lawman whose career spanned patrol, specialized units, and high-stakes undercover work with the DEA. Keith takes us inside the hidden world of narcotics investigations, sharing stories that reveal both the danger and the human toll of living a double life. We talk about how Keith’s upbringing as the son of a Marine pushed him toward public service, and how his path eventually led him into the shadowy world of drug traffickers. He recalls the adrenaline of undercover drug deals, the razor’s-edge risks, and the constant challenge of protecting his cover while keeping his integrity as a cop intact. Keith also reflects on the strain this life put on his family and the psychological pressure of staying in character for months at a time. His advice to new officers is candid and practical—emphasizing the need for physical fitness, community ties, and strong mental health to survive the demands of the job. Our conversation widens to the broader impact of drug trafficking on crime and communities, and the need for law enforcement to adapt to ever-changing threats. Keith also shares his writing journey, a four-book series titled Narc’s Tale, which chronicles his undercover assignments and the lessons he carried forward. This episode offers both gripping stories from the field and a rare inside look at the toll—and the nobility—of narcotics enforcement. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 0:04 Welcome to Gangland Wire 1:07 Becoming a Police Officer 3:33 Life as an Undercover Agent 6:08 Tales from the Trenches 8:41 The Depths of Undercover Work 12:39 Surviving Dangerous Encounters 16:29 The Art of Blending In 21:06 The Challenges of Undercover Props 25:58 Navigating the Drug Underworld 28:14 Building Trust in Dangerous Situations 33:58 The High Stakes of Undercover Operations 36:58 Major Drug Busts in Kansas 42:08 Lessons from the Cartel 45:27 Advice for Young Law Enforcement 48:29 Writing and Reflection in Law Enforcement [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio at Gangland [0:02] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I am a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective, as most of you know, because I’ve got a lot of regular listeners. And those that don’t know, that’s who I am. And I have another copper here with me today. I’ve got Keith Grounsel. Keith, welcome. Hey, Gary. Thanks for having me on the show. I’ll tell you what, Keith. I love talking to and interviewing, but then our conversations before and after talking to these other coppers that have worked around the country. It’s always fun. We talk the same language, I’ve noticed. And that’s around the world, too. I haven’t worked internationally. We’re a universal group of people that always collaborate together and get along in different environments. Yeah. And then we start telling stories and it really gets good. [0:49] That’s right. But we can’t record all those stories. So we don’t want to record some. We don’t want to record. All right, Keith. Now you became a cop, you know, where are you from originally? [1:04] And then what, what, what made you think that you wanted to be a police officer? Me, I wanted to be a cowboy. [1:10] And so that was a close job to being a cowboy. So how about you? Yes. It’s kind of funny. My dad was a United States Marine, 22 years. So I was raised by a career Marine. I was actually born in Beaufort, South Carolina at Parris Island at the Beaufort Naval Hospital there. And so I always knew I wanted to do some sort of service. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. I either wanted to go in the military, in the United States Marines, or do something else. And then I saw law enforcement probably around middle school when I really got interested in law enforcement and ended up going to college on a soccer scholarship, majored in sociology and criminal justice and got a job in law enforcement just in my local town right there and just fell in love with it and kind of found a knack in my career for going after drug traffickers. That was kind of my thing. More local level, not traffickers as a rookie cop, more just local bust and some occasional dealers and users and things like that. I really found it was giving me a natural high chasing them. It’s like hunting humans. And I was like, man, this is what I want to do right here. So I emphasized that and I studied my tail off. I learned a lot about drug dealers, drug trafficking, drug users. And I led the department for a couple of two of the last three years in the first department in drug arrest. [2:29] So I went from there and transferred to a much larger agency, one of the top largest agencies in the state of South Carolina in Greenville, South Carolina. And it was pretty much day one orientation. They yanked me out of orientation. I take me to the captain’s office, say, from now on, you’re not allowed to associate with police officers. Now, granted, I’ve been a cop three years at this time. [2:51] And you need to work in the vice narcotics unit. You’re going to report it this time. This is your sergeant. This is who your supervisor is and just go with them. And I had some older gentlemen in there that kind of took me under his wing and a female that worked undercover and another undercover. And they taught me the ropes, man. It was trial by fire. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I made a lot of mistakes to tell you the truth. And thank God, didn’t get indicted, didn’t get in any big trouble and left there after a year, went to the sheriff’s office, much larger agency, did three years undercover there. Then I wanted to reach that pinnacle in my career, I felt, in drug enforcement. [3:30] And I worked really hard and was hired on as a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and did that. Man, I spent about a total of six years deep undercover. And that’s taxing on a family is taxing on you as an individual. And I had an opportunity to, I tried to actually. [3:49] Transfer from out where I was in Kansas with the DEA back to South Carolina, where I had a support system for my family and I couldn’t get a transfer. So I had an opportunity to do some Department of State contracting and I left the DEA and went to Afghanistan for a few years. That’s where I got into contracting. I did that for a few years, got injured in Afghanistan, came back, worked my way back up, became a chief investigator, became a chief of police, I quickly learned the political realm and fighting corruption as a chief is very tough in a small town. [4:23] I lost my job early on getting in for 14 months, came back, indicted the mayor for public corruption. He got convicted in a three day trial of two or three crimes against moral turpitude and invited invited the head of investigations for a rape and murder cover up. And he pled guilty in that and then indicted the chief of police before me for extortion and his charges were dismissed on technicality. So I went through a gamut of different things and I came back, lasted about four years total and two more years after that. And we went from number 28, number one, safest city in the entire state. We went after the drug traffickers. I trained my whole entire department in drug enforcement and community policing. And it drastically helped the community and made it a safer place. But politics rared its ugly head again and the people that weren’t indicted, they brought some people in to run to oust me as a chief and I had to go and that’s why I got back into contracting. I went to Haiti for two years I went to West Africa for a couple years. I went to India Jordan, different places like that doing contract work and then I came back became a chief again. I was glutton for that punishment. [5:33] I probably shouldn’t have done it a second time to be honest with you because I feel like i ran into the same thing i i helped the city drop 100 safety rankings in about a year period things were going really good until i uncovered some some corruption uh involving some police officers and went to deal with it and they dealt with me and it was time to go so so since that’s been about a year now now about to get go back overseas so my career has been you know a crazy career, to say the least, and I feel like I’ve lived 10 lives. [6:08] So you had a four-book series called Narc’s Tale. I do. So tell us, tell us, you know, some of your stories as an undercover. I can’t think. Absolutely. Garden City, Kansas with DEA or, or maybe you have something like, well, your early cases there when you were. Oh, absolutely. There had to be some stuff that, that, that your hair back on the back of your head standing out and, and your shit your neck for a little bit. Give it, give us some of those stories out of your book. So I felt like I was kind of blessed as a, as an undercover, especially a deep undercover. Not many deep undercovers have worked at the city level, then the county level, then the federal level. So I got to experience all of it. And I will say this as a tribute really to the local narcs. Some of the most dangerous stuff that I ever did was dealing with a drug addict who was selling drugs. I mean, somebody like that that is high will shoot you in the face just to get enough money to buy a crap rock. So when I was working undercover at the street level, I ended up buying from two cop killers. and I didn’t even know they were cop killers in drug hand-to-hand $20 transactions. They had already served their time and because there were hardly any witnesses, they testified against somebody else and they got a lesser charge and they served like a five to eight year sentence. They got out of prison. They’re back out on the street and I’m dealing with them now hand-to-hand as an undercover. They ended up getting 20 plus years for my charges. But you know, they kill a cop, they get five to eight years. [7:33] So for me, I felt a little bit of, you know, you know, it made me feel good taking down people like that. But unbeknownst to me and those deals, man, it could have been me. One of them pulled a gun one time on me and I didn’t know he was a cop killer, you know. And so it’s very dangerous at the local level. Now, as you get higher up in the hierarchy and you start buying kilos or you start running or transporting for cartels. [7:59] It’s a business and they’re not as quick to necessarily pop you and shoot you and kill you on the spot because they do have some level of a hierarchy, but they will torment you. They will maybe kill a family member or they’ll kidnap a family member. So those are the things that you thought about, especially me as an undercover. I was like, man, if I mess up at this level, it’s not just me, it’s my family. And that’s what made it a little bit more mentally growing and tough for me when I went to the higher level. But all undercover period is dangerous. [8:37] I’d say one-tenth of one percent of all law enforcement actually work deep undercover. You mentioned that term, deep cover. So explain to the guys what that means. Give us some concrete examples. How did you do that? Did you get your own apartment? Did you live that life? Absolutely. So you have like uniformed police officers, then you have plainclothes police officers, like guys who do occasional surveillance, which is an undercover op. You know, you’re undercover operative. You’re you’re blending into an environment. Then you have occasional wham, bam. Thank you, ma’am. Go out, do some undercover deals. Now, you keep an identity when you’re at work. But when you’re deep undercover, you assume an identity that’s not your own. Everything from your address to your cell phone to your name is different than your actual name. And you have an undercover identity that is established with an actual driver’s license that if the police ran it, it’ll come back to a person. And you have established a criminal history in it. It’s a very detailed thing because actually as an undercover, I’ve run into corrupt cops. [9:45] And when there are corrupt cops out there, you don’t want them to know that you’re a police officer. And sometimes you know i remember the first time i was dealing with a cartel i was i was posing as a freelance truck driver my self-monitor cover partner with the dea and in western kansas we’re going to transport a small test load of a couple kilos of cocaine from kansas i-70 to the east coast first thing they did was what my driver’s license they wanted to run my license who’s going to run that license on 30 he’s gonna run that license so we gave him a license we were able to trace back to ncit who ran it what mobidata terminal we were able to charge that cop later on you know in this overall conspiracy with the cartel but they were on point they wanted to check all my dot stickers my manifest for my truck i mean they were there on top of everything that’s more experience than us so you had to study your role as an undercover and that’s what made it mentally grueling when you’re doing long-term undercover. Don’t pose as something you’re not. Like me, I never posed as an outlaw motorcycle guy or anything like that or a mafia guy. I’m not an Italian guy. I’m not that type of guy. I would never try and fake something. [11:02] It has to be something that your persona can infiltrate and you feel real comfortable in that environment. You got to be able to kind of get along with everybody. I’m not a big guy, you know but i’m acting crazy when i was undercover so people knew like this is a wiry guy like this guy you know he’s he’s pretty smart but he he’s liable to flip out on me at any moment so i had to do that i had an undercover partner that was six six 320 pounds when we’re sitting in we’re sitting in a bar and outlaw motorcycle gang rides through and they slide him a business card and say let us know when you want to hang out look at if they look at me like who is this guy you know they pass it on to my buddy oh for me i knew that i just didn’t have that size and that mean factor but i had the intelligence i was i was a quick thinker um but i i had to create this persona not to be messed with you know so they knew i always carried it at minimal of two guns on me and i made it openly known i remember i was in a meth house one time i was buying off of a guy that i got introduced to and i went over there by myself and i go in He’s probably got 30 guns all on all his couches, on his tables, and every single one of them is loaded. [12:15] And he’s like, man, I love these guns. And he’s racking the rifles and the shotguns. And he’s putting one in the chamber and removing the magazine. And he still got one in the chamber. And I’m seeing all these things. And he’s paranoid. He’s going to the blinds, looking out at the blinds, saying, did you see? Does somebody follow you here? And he’s very paranoid because he’s high and under the influence. [12:37] And he’s like, man, you got guns? And I’m like, yeah, I got guns. So I’m in a situation as an undercover. You never give up your guns. So what I did is I went down the line slowly over time as we’re sitting there talking and I unloaded all his guns. He didn’t know it because I was checking them all out. I was leaving every damn last one of them unloaded or making sure there at least wasn’t one in the chamber. The safety was on or something. So he didn’t have a quick reaction. We can grab a gun and shoot me or anything. So we’re sitting in there talking. And I remember I always have two guns. I actually had three guns on me at that time. So I took out one of my backup guns, unloaded it completely, and handed it to him. It’s an unorthodox thing to do. But if I wasn’t to show him one of my guns after he showed me 30 of his, ding, ding, ding, this guy’s a cop. [13:23] Paranoia’s already at this level right here. All but knows to me, the guy had an active meth lab in one of the bedrooms. And I found that out later on. He walks me back there and wants to show me his triple neck beaker or something that he had just got on line on eBay. And it was just a bad situation i was able to make a buy and get the hell out of there and i actually ran over his mailbox on the way out because he came out with a gun and it was kind of funny so we just took off but yeah so you run into all sorts of scenarios you got to be able to overcome and adapt being a military brat having moved every four years i always had to make new friends always had to infiltrate different environments and i believe that actually did something to me growing up, which enabled me to go into any environment, even international policing, and as a chief of police or undercover in any environment, I could get along with about anybody. And that helped me out a lot. So give me an example of, did you always have somebody to introduce you in or could you get, you could go into a bar, a particular place and just start creating relationships and work it for like a cold call as a salesman would say. Yeah, absolutely. So both. [14:35] So when I first went undercover, I was young and they wanted me to go into what were big, the all night dance parties called raves, the big ecstasy crowd. And they were multi-million dollar industries they would go in and have all this techno music and tens of thousands of kids would come to this environment they would do drum testing on the spot you could buy any drug you want they were selling as ecstasy but it wasn’t always ecstasy so in that environment i had to learn what it was like to be under the influence of that drug not by using but by studying and then acting like i was high so i fit in and blended into that environment. [15:16] And then making friends and being able to buy off of them. The hardest part about that was not necessarily doing the buy because I kind of sat back and watched and would have them blow sticks and dance and fit into the environment that I was in. When I saw a dealer, it was pretty obvious, but I wouldn’t just go up to him and approach him and ask. I would kind of watch the body language, how previous transactions took place. Then I would approach him, make the deal, and I wouldn’t immediately leave after I did the deal. [15:44] You know, I’ll do the deal, pretend like I chewed up the XC pill or swallowed it, crumbled it up, put it in my pocket inside of a napkin or something like that. And I generally had a surveillance team somewhere in the club if it was that environment where we could get them in. But we were unowned. They have metal detectors. [16:01] I mean, inside these specific nightclubs that have full, not just wands, but they have metal detection systems. So it went all the way to your feet. So if I go in a club and I see a guy with a wand, I’ll sneak a .22 pistol North American arms in my boot. And I’ll have at least a contact gun where I can shoot him in the neck if something happened. Or I carry a pre-9-11 knife that’s a plastic knife or something like that. [16:26] But in those environments, it was all cold doing the deals. Now, as I became more and more established and, for example, in my unit trucked me as a long-term undercover, cover they would say hey i got an informant that was approached for example i had an informant that was approached to kill somebody and they say hey keith we got this guy that says so-and-so has to kill somebody tonight and he kind of blew him off but he thinks they’re serious so can you go in with this guy and see if this is a real deal you know potential solicitation for murder and So don’t pop off, or you’ll have somebody that gets busted with a little bit of cocaine, and they’re a menaceous man. I’ll give you an example. We busted a guy who was a doctor, a doctor, making a hefty $200,000 plus salary. He’s an anesthesiologist. And when I bucked at him, instantaneously, he’s like, I got to work. [17:24] You know, he has too much to lose. So he flipped and he calls up and we, and we do a nice deal from, it was the smogest board of every type of drug because he had money and he called and the guy shows up and we bust him and then we flip him and he introduces me to somebody else and we go from there. I didn’t like doing those as a long-term undercover. Cause if you, if you’re involved in a lot of buy bust, you’re going to get burned really quickly. So I, I generally stayed towards, like we did a operation when I was with the sheriff. ourselves called Operation Straight Shooter. We ended up arresting 115 drug dealers on over 270 felony wars in a 14-month undercover operation. And it was myself and my undercover partner were the only two undercovers. [18:07] Now, granted, we weren’t the only two guys at work, but you have to have case agents, surveillance agents, you have to have supervisors. So it took the whole team. 15 people in our unit were all involved when we did this huge 14-month undercover operation, and we did everything from street level heroin to 50 pounds of marijuana to buying kilos it just it varied according to what popped off could we get introduced so i generally would do a buy with somebody have somebody introduce me try and keep it like low level a little bit to where we can let the money walk like there’s buy bus where you buy in your bus and then there’s buy walks where you buy and you walk away and everybody walks away no handcuffs i generally like to let everybody buy wall so you have to keep the threshold of drugs a little lower because it’s that much money. [18:58] We didn’t have that much money to say now hey guys i’ll sell you two kilos i’m like. [19:04] Two keys right now but i’ll just take that one ounce it’s like what what are you talking about so i can tell you though from experience that when you lower the amount they don’t think you’re a cop for sure. So most cops are going for the big bust. So when you’re long-term undercover and you’re lowering it down, testing the waters or you call off a drug deal. Like you’re in the middle of a drug deal and you see their counter surveillance. They don’t know you see it. You tell them, man, I saw some heat down the road. There’s a 5-0 down the road. There’s police down the road. Man, we ain’t doing this shit. And you back out, tell them to be careful. Next time you do the deal, they’ll be, man, I appreciate that. So it develops a trust amongst them. You have to act like one of them without crossing that line. And that’s a very difficult line. Yeah, here’s another thing. guy worked with worked for me actually used to be he was a really big time narc and he came in the intelligence unit and he said we’re going to do something he said we need to do drug dealer time he said what do i said what do you mean he said we got to be late man ain’t no drug on time. [20:10] Drug dealer you know what i was i was just talking to somebody about that very thing earlier today so i was working undercover to bus corrupt police officers for the department of corrections in of South Carolina. We had a corrections officer that was extorting the wife of an inmate and asking, making her do some certain things or else he was going to take it out on her husband who was an inmate. And she came forward to the state. The state contacted me, asked me to go undercover and to deal with this guy and actually sell him drugs. So when I went to sell him drugs, he showed up early. I mean, he’s an officer. He showed up early. Told my team. They’re like, he’s here. I’m like, well, I’m a truck deal. I got to be late. So they’re all like, why are you going to be late? That’s what you have to do. It’s on corporate. So you have to be late. You have to change locations. You have to do all the [21:02] things the drug dealers do in order to appear as one of them. You know, for me, undercover props were a big thing. If I was posing as a heroin addict. [21:12] I took a red pen. I would draw a line. I’d get black mascara. I’d spread it out like that and make it look like track marks on my hands. Or I would put burn marks on my hands with that second skin, like create chalices in a crack pipe or anything like that. And I had all the fake paraphernalia. I made my own cocaine that was made of lidocaine. And actually, you sniff it, your nasal cavity goes numb. I had wacky weed, which is fake marijuana with no THC content. So I had everything, all the props. So if you were around me, I got kicked out of a nightclub one time for smoking weed, but I wasn’t really smoking weed. And we paid the bouncer a hundred bucks to get back in. Then he ended up selling us cocaine. So you just, you don’t know. So you always have to plan for every single situation from having to use drugs. Are you going to get out of that situation? To what are you going to do if somebody pulls a gun on you or you’re a farmer? I mean, it’s because I’ve been in those situations. You know, where I remember the first time I brought a little Asian guy. He was my informant. I brought him in this nightclub because he knew a bunch of the drug dealers and we had just busted him. And he’s like, man, I can introduce you to everybody because he has seen me in the club before. And they said, this guy knows everybody. He gave him a list, phone numbers, addresses, cars, the whole nine yards. So I bring him in the club. We do a couple of deals while we’re in line. We ain’t even got in the club. We’ve already bought from two different dealers. We’re inside the club. We do another buy. [22:42] He says, I got, I said, I got to use the bathroom and he didn’t have to go. So I separated for a second from him and I walked out, went to the bathroom. As I come back out, I look, look around, he’s not there. So I kind of like, all right, maybe he may go over here to the bar. Where is he at? I looked around the club, couldn’t find him. I was kind of getting a little bit panicky because I’m responsible. Ultimately, he’s my informant. So I’m still responsible for him no matter what. And he’s not on a body wire. [23:06] So I know he’s wearing a wire. And if somebody finds that wire, he can be killed on the spot. So I remember it was an old bowling alley that actually, yeah, it had like a bowling lane. And then it had a ramp going up the door. And I remember seeing the light from silhouette of two guys that were right there. And I saw my informant. [23:28] And as I walked closer, I could see something shiny, an object in the guy’s hand. And then as I got really close, I could tell he had a pistol. And he was robbing my informant the one guy was holding him at gunpoint and the other guy was rummaging through his pockets well it was pretty close to where he kept his body wire at that time and i’m like oh shit you know this is one of those moments where okay i don’t i don’t even i don’t even know how this guy got a gun in number one because they had the metal detection system he probably paid the bouncer to get in so i i was in this situation do i stab him do i what do i do so I don’t know why I wasn’t trained this way but I just I saw an opportunity his jaw was exposed and I just boom man it was a deadly force situation I hit him and thank god it was enough it knocked him down I turned I punched the other guy and I grabbed the informant and we went running out somehow well imagine what your surveillance team doing they’re in the parking lot and we’re flying out the door and running like yes and I’m dragging the informant and he’s kind of like what hell just happened. And we get inside the car and my phone is going off. And back then we had Nexttales. So it’s going off. [24:37] Ringing and stuff. And I say, I’m okay. We just got jacked. Don’t go in. [24:42] So, we sit out in the parking lot. Things calmed down. We had tinted windows on the car. We were fine. We laid back in the seats. My team was out there. But sure enough, the guys come out. The one guy is kind of holding the other guy. He’s kind of still like stumbling and stuff. They stumble to their car. They get in their car. They drive home. When they drive home, of course, we follow. Not us. My surveillance team follows them. Right. So, they follow them about three or four miles down the road. They stop them. They ended up getting consent to search. He had cocaine. He had the gun. He picked the gun up. But he did drop the gun. I know he dropped the gun. I’m pretty certain. And he picked the gun up. So we never charged him with the robbery. We let them charge him with that traffic stop. They have probable cause, independent, for the traffic stop. And it just looked like a bus. Well, down the road, we could have gone back and got him. But actually, one of them guys flipped, and he became an informant, too. So there’s no loyalty in the drug game, even at the, like the organized crime level to, to the cartels, people snitch on the line. I had a undercover and again, we, we didn’t really work this much drugs or undercover [25:55] intelligence, but we had this one deal. I was a Sergeant. So one of the undercovers were buying some small levels of cocaine in this mafia guy’s bar. Right. So trying to get to him, we knew he was, he was doing some dealing. [26:08] And my female undercover made a buy from the female of this group of people that were selling inside the joint. And they did it in the bathroom and the lady who sold Renee, the drugs said, well, you know, let’s shoot up right here. And Renee said, oh no, or no. She said, let’s, let’s, let’s do a line right here. And Renee said, no, no, I’m going to go out in the car. She said, I like to shoot it. And, and, and the whole tenor just changed. It was just over. Oh yeah. It was just over because she went do it in front of her. I’d sure that you, did you get in some of those situations where they pin you down and they wanted you to do it right in front of them? I had quite a few of them, and I learned, and I’ll tell you one story of one that was pretty hairy for me. I’m in a nightclub, cold. I don’t know anybody in this club. I walk in there, and I’m just trying to spot out who I’m going to target, who’s going to be the drug dealer in that club. It’s pretty easy to spot them. They’re wearing all the gold chains and the bling and the rings and stuff like that, and they’re flashing money all over the club and it’s a concert going on. I was like, all right, that’s the group. Well, it’s a group of guys and they have a group of girls. [27:24] So as a guy coming in, I don’t ever want to approach the girl. Because if I approach the girl and that’s one of the guy’s girlfriends, I just screwed myself for the whole deal. So I approached the guys, normally just small talking. I saw an opportunity. I got close to them and wasn’t really engaging in much conversation with them, just occasional stuff. and we were watching the concert. Well, I saw out of the corner of my eye two of the guys that were with them getting into a fight with another group of guys. And I saw, oh, that group of guys getting more guys and he’s. [27:56] Two guys are by themselves, and they didn’t see it. So I told them, I was like, hey, man, your buddy’s about to get jumped. Let’s go. And I acted like I was going to be with them in the fight. But I also saw the bouncers already spotted it, and they were pointing at it, [28:10] and they were already converging on it. So they didn’t know I saw all that. So I was like, all right, I got your back. So we started pushing through the crowd to get there to go fight these guys. Well, I was there. Thank God the bouncers were there. And there were some big bouncers there for a lot of guys. And they separated it really fast, quickly. Everybody apart two guys got escorted out because they started acting crazy and they took them down so we went back started drinking beer they bought me a beer so we hit it off from there there’s i man appreciate you having our back i was like yeah i’m just you know out here partying and i heard one of the guys talk about some cocaine he bought a white lady so i used the same technology when i heard it i asked the other guy i said man i’m just trying to get something to you have any other white lady i couldn’t get to my supplier today man because i drove in from out of town blah blah blah made up the story he’s like he kind of looked around like all right this guy’s cold just asking me for cocaine so you have to be cautious in how you do that and he goes just hold on a second so he was kind of feeling me out and then all of a sudden the guy i was talking to right there. [29:10] Actually recognized me from way back in middle school one of the guys and he but he didn’t know i was cop yeah he’s like man he started talking about some break dancing competition back in middle school like a long time ago in the nightclubs that we were in it’s kind of funny and we started hitting it off so all of a sudden he sees that conversation and we’re getting like plunks talking and stuff high-fiving and laughing and cheering and all of a sudden yeah i got some he goes but follow me so we get up to walk out it’s me the head guy one of the leaders of the gang and two other guys and these they’re in a gang this is a gang that’s there they run an ecstasy up and down the East Coast in cocaine. [29:53] So we walk outside while I’m by myself. And I got three of them, and I don’t know these guys. So as I’m walking down the stairs, I see a guy that went to high school with me. He’s like, Key, what’s up, man? You still Paul Mason? I was like, oh, crap, man. And there’s a lot of music going on. Yeah, thank God. So I’m like, so two guys were ahead. The guy, Timmy, that was in the back that knew me, told Dad. And he, like, stopped for a second. I was like, man, I got fired. I tried made up the story. I failed a drug test. They said, I beat some dude’s ass. I’m looking at charges and the guy’s eyes are like, looking at me like, holy crap. And I kind of gave my brother a hook and walked off into my old friend from high school standing there like, so as we’re walking out and I’m like, oh shit, this guy just heard that I was a police officer right here. I’m about to walk out with these guys. So I get on my phone really quick and I call up my surveillance team on the next till I act like I was on the phone. I was like, hey, Bobby. I said, I’m coming out of the club right now. Now, this guy, Timmy’s ahead of me, okay? Keep this in mind. I said, when I come out, we’re going to walk across the street. I need you to pull up on us and almost hit us with your car and then take off. He’s like, what, what, what, what? I was like, I don’t have time to explain. Just trust me on this one. We’re going to walk straight across the street. Almost hit us. We’ll be out in about two seconds. He was just sitting right down the road waiting for if we traveled anywhere, or tripped anywhere. [31:19] So as we walk out, just like I expected, these dudes just go across traffic. They don’t give a damn. They think they own everything. And my buddy comes in this Camaro, comes flying up and skids and almost sucks. So I pull up my shirt. I was like, what’s up, man? I grabbed my pistol. [31:34] And he’s a Hispanic guy, you know? So he starts shouting something in Spanish. And I say something to him. And then he takes off and goes around. Then he stops. So I raise up my shirt again. I never pull my gun. I raise my shirt again and grab my pistol. Well, they see I got a gun, the guys that I’m targeting. So my honey takes off and he’s gone. So I was like, well, I’m kidding. The two guys are still a little bit ahead the guy’s like man he goes you must got a lot of repent up anger from all them years upon he said man he said he cool with me he’s giving me five we walk out so we walk to the car they get in the front seat two guys stimmy stands outside i get in the back seat and they pull out an ounce of cocaine he actually had it on him pulls out an ounce of cocaine and they’re sniffing lines man they got the long pinky nails i had the long pinky now myself they had all that so i was like oh crap here i am i’m in this environment the door doesn’t work the guy’s standing outside the door i got two guys in the front seat sniffing cocaine they’re about to hand me some coke so i pull out a dollar bill and i folded in half long ways and i handed it to him like hey bump not milk a bump a half a gram just give me a line so they put it in there and he’s talking about the quality of it and i pull it back and i dip my finger in it and get it wet and get a little cocaine on it. And I crumple that dollar bill and I keep my pinky out. They’re not watching me. They’re getting snorting too. And I go… [32:55] And I knew it, and I acted like I have sinus problems. I was like, my nasal cavity is going numb. And I put that dollar bill in my pocket, and I touched that cocaine on the tip of my nose. So about the time, they’re both cleaning up their noses because they’re about to step out of the car, looking in the mirror. I’m like, man, do I got something on my nose? Do I got something on my nose? And they both turn around and are like, yeah, you’re right there, man. And they both saw the white cocaine on my nose. And from that point forward, they never asked me to use again. They knew I used. so in long story short we end up i end up working my way up a hierarchy in this organization we took out like 30 guys in this organization it was it was a pretty big gang and at the very end when they got busted i hadn’t talked to them in a while when they got busted the one guy wrote a letter that said if he’s a cop he’s a dirty cop because he used cocaine with me and he said i know i gave him the cocaine well little did he know he wrote that he distributed cocaine to me There’s a report that said exactly what he said. So he ended up having to plead guilty because he truly believed I used cocaine. [33:59] And so, so you run into those scenarios and you, you gotta be street savvy. Like training, like I train that, I teach at an undercover school and I have my own school, but I teach those techniques, but I was never taught that. The fact that that, I had never been to undercover school. I didn’t go to undercover school until I’ve been undercover for almost two full years. [34:22] And when I went to undercover school, when I came out of undercover school, I had some older guys that showed me the ropes and showed me stuff. I bought my first multi-kilo deal. I did my first murder for hire. I did my first automatic weapons purchase all within a month of coming out of undercover school. And it wasn’t because I just didn’t have the ambition to do it. It’s because I didn’t know how to do it, but I didn’t know how to approach that opportunity when I heard something. Every opportunity in law enforcement is an undercover opportunity. There’s nothing. Every person busted is an undercover opportunity. I think we seize to, as leaders in law enforcement, we don’t look at it that way. We devote less than 3% of our staff to a problem that 95% of all crimes link to. [35:04] So if we’re doing that as leaders, we’re family. So when I was chief, I devoted more staff, more in our clinics, and the numbers shown. Number one safety city in the entire state in two years with one agency. Dropped 100 safety rankings in less than a year at another agency. Two times as a chief of police. It works. It’s not rocket science because I’m not the most intelligent guy. I have street savvy. I understand. If you bust a guy who’s burglarizing houses, he’s burglarizing houses because he has a drug habit. And he’s trying to get money or the domestic violence incident over here because he’s high or a drunk or the violent shootout in this parking lot was a drunk deal going bad. If you take out that 5% of the population, you’re trying to poop. You’re trying to rob trash can’t leave. And people fail to see that in leadership roles today because they’re uncomfortable going after the high level stuff because it’s controversial. [35:59] And people are like, oh, you should legalize marijuana. Now you should legalize LSD. Now you should legalize ecstasy there’s a whole bunch of crap out there for that but reality is drugs and violence go hand in hand and we know that and if you deal with that you can make it safe but i have to ask about working with the dea and especially out there in western kansas out now man i mean how does a guy give us an example of a case how does a guy operate out there and you you got connected with cartels to i mean that’s that’s the game yeah is a big time cartels bringing, And you know, you could buy nickel bags. You wanted to be guys that go out here and do buy bust all day long. And, and, you know, you can, you can keep a whole police department doing by bus, but how do you work your way up into that? Where you’re a truck driver that a cartel guy will then trust. [36:51] Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. So I’ll give you an example of one of my first big [36:56] cases that I worked when I went to Kansas. So Darren DEA Academy Specialized Basic Agent Training Academy, that you have a flag night where you go to the flag of the state where you’re getting assigned and you get to meet everybody at the FBI National Academy under that state. That night, I met so many people. I thought there were three or four. I leveled people, some Kansas Highway Patrol guys like that. And one of the Kansas Highway Patrol guys that I met was an interdiction, previous interdiction guy that was now high up, high ranking guy. [37:31] So we got some intel, some informants. It wasn’t really substantiated. It’s kind of big, some of it. And it got better and better as we got it from two different sources. So we passed this information. I contact him. The guy that I met on Flag Night, Kansas Highway Patrol, I tell him, he tells one of the troops out there, and he’s like, hey, we got these two vehicles that are supposed to be coming through here, and I don’t know what the vehicles look like, Arizona license plates, hidden compartments, transforming the load. That’s all we really had. This guy was, I’ll be honest with you, he’s probably one of the last interdiction guys I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve worked with some really, really good ones. He sat in that center medium and just watched undercarriages for hours as they went by. And he spotted two cars that went by that had dropped undercarriages, and he jumped in behind them. And we gave him like a 24-hour period, you know, where as much likely they were coming. But, I mean, it took skills and knowledge and experience to see that because I would not have seen it. I’m an experienced narcotics agent, but he’s an experienced interdiction agent. He saw that, and as he rolled up, he took a dash cam, pointed it, and started narrating. [38:42] This vehicle license plate has a hidden compartment here. You can see the fresh paint in the wheel well. He pulls past them and sees, oh, he goes, this is a license plate, one number off from the previous plate from Arizona. Hand them plates, one number apart. He goes, hidden compartment, same style. Calls it, backs up. Oh, goes and points to the guy, turns on his lights, stops him based upon the hidden compartment. This is how good this guy is. Stops him based upon the hidden compartment, flags to him to follow him, So it was calls for backup, but it’s 15, 20 minutes away in Kansas, in western Kansas. As the other guy’s car stops, he pulls both of them over and maneuvers the car behind him. [39:22] Long story short, both of them have hydraulic hidden compartments where you’ve got to put the radio on a station. You’ve got to hit the, up on the window and do a blinker and it pops the hydraulic. [39:33] And it opened it up. And we had guys who had to figure this out. So anyways, one of the loads was 32 kilos of cocaine. The other load was 15 kilos of China white heroin. Wow. Like it was the largest domestic bust of a heroin besides border patrol. That’s that calendar year. It measured 87% pure. The average heroin on the street is 3% pure. Yeah. So we took that. Obviously I’m a, I’m a route heading that way. We go to interview these people. Okay. They don’t talk. They’re like, you ain’t giving me so search warrants. go back through the car, find some more stuff, no money, just all loans of drugs. Well, on the kilos for the heroin, it said one slash of 850, two of 850. Then it said three of 600, four of 800, that it came off of all these loads. So that was the equivalent of like 2,200 kilos of China White heroin, $2 billion street value. [40:38] A billion, not a million. So $100,000 a wholesale kilo, you break it down to 3%, you can make millions off of that. It was a massive bust. So long story short, this is how complicated these things get. So we got search warrants, got into the phones, started doing it, tried to talk to them. They didn’t. Within six hours, the cartel had a lawyer contacting us and asking their bond. Well, we had a hold on them because it was a federal charge. So when we had a hearing, they got a bond, and it was over a million dollars each. [41:10] A bonding company contacts us it’s paid within an hour we trace it back later on to that attorney who’s a cartel attorney within 24 hours they’re both decapitated and their heads are chopped and thrown on the courthouse steps in a city of mexico i’m not going to mention because it’ll tell you the cartel’s name and they’re thrown on the courthouse steps then they had another person that was allegedly involved he was shot and killed like the next day everybody who was linked they kill them these people never received their payment they never informed they never snitched they didn’t tell us anything but the cartel just killed them just because and then during this time period the same cartel which is the most powerful cartel in the united states okay or in the world at the time sent a video to the dea of them executing dozens of people and they said you keep coming after me you’re next tell them the dea so this is a level that i was dealing with It motivated the shit out of me. [42:08] Like I wanted, I wanted these guys and that’s what I wanted to do. So I, I worked at the first ever federal wiretap in Western Kansas history. They had done state wiretaps. They’d never done a federal. We locked it down the cartel. We went up on two different, we went to LA and Phoenix. We had wiretaps and it branched out to 26 states, two countries. And we ended up in guiding. We had 90. We couldn’t indict. We could pick the top 30 and they were linked to the high ranking generals in the cartel. And I was able to infiltrate undercover into two different cells. And I could only get to the lieutenant level because I’m a green go in those cells. And for me, that was what motivated. So I saw Kansas, man. It was unbelievable because when I first went undercover and I’m buying a pound of crystal meth, it was 18,000 on the East Coast. And it wasn’t even as pure. In Kansas, it was 6,000, almost 100% pure. And I’m like, man, this is the hub for the whole entire United States. It’s I-70, East Coast, West Coast, Chicago, Detroit, you name it. You can hit everything through Kansas. Kansas is strategically located. People just fail to recognize coming up through Mexico, coming up, you’ve got I-70. That’s it. You cover the whole United States. [43:21] And interdiction, guys, that’s why some of the very best interdiction guys I’ve ever seen are in Kansas. They had seen loads bigger than anything I had ever seen. And that case branched out, man. We did all sorts of stuff. before. I traded, I convinced the cartel that I could get untraceable cell phones. [43:39] I just made it up on the phone because we were trying to get this guy. He literally, while we’re surveilling this guy, he’s a high level guy in a cartel. He threw a phone out and they hit our surveillance call. Like if he heard a click on his phone, he was paranoid. He had track phones. He went through eight phones in a short period of time and we couldn’t go up on a wire on him. So I got introduced to him by a guy we busted that actually set up the smuggling of all their drugs and tires and 18-wheelers. He’d balance them out and do all that. So he introduced me, and I told him I could get untraceable cell phones. I contacted the head of one of the three largest cell phone companies. It took a while to get a hold of them. Told him what I was doing. I’m a special agent with DEA. I’m working deep undercover in the cartels. I need to get untraceable demo phones that have never hit the market. They need to have unlimited minutes worldwide. And he’s like, yeah, they tell me more. He got excited when he was talking to me. And I was like, but I can’t tell you more. I’ll tell you afterwards. He sent me a bunch of phones. He sent me like 25 SIM cards to change them out. I meet with the cartel. I get a pound of crystal meth per phone. And every single 30 days, I bring another undercover in. We would dump their phones in front of them into our law enforcement laptop database, tell them that we’re erasing the memory so nobody can trace it. We take their SIM card out, put it in a mason drawer with acid in it for appeal, and let it dissolve. You know what I’m going to tell you? It’s untraceable. [45:06] Meanwhile, we’re downloading all their stuff into a law enforcement database, and we’re up on wiretaps on their phone. And I was trading out phones for thousands of dollars. And it just ended up being a crazy, you know, opportunity and experience for me working with the DEA, taking it to a different level. And those are the things that I saw at that high, high level. [45:27] Yeah, interesting, interesting. Well, Keith Grounsel, I tell you what, one last thing before we get down here. You’ve been a chief and you’ve been at all levels of law enforcement. What kind of advice you got for these young guys coming up that get into these situations and you see so many crazy things on the job and then you go home to your family? I mean, you know, you can’t tell them about it. You know, they don’t care. They don’t want to know. I know my wife never wanted to know it. My kids never wanted to know. I tried to tell my son he was, we were pretty palsy and he didn’t want to know. So what kind of advice you got for these young coppers out there listening to this podcast? [46:03] Have an outlet, you know, have something, you know, first for me, healthy mind, body, and spirit. So for me, you know, I had faith. That was my thing. Whatever you believe me and have that, you have to have that first and foremost, because there are things that you will never understand that you’ll see and you’ll encounter. And if you try and understand them, it’ll just mess you up. Have friends outside of law enforcement that can keep you somewhat grounded to the atrocities that we see on a day-to-day basis. And that’s hard. but as a cop especially when i was undercover i didn’t have any friends i became a recluse and all my friends slowly became you know over time and then number three workout because that isn’t that is your outlet you know doing that as a stress relief plus it prepares you for the fight you got you got to be fit for duty i’m not talking you don’t have to be jacked up the bodybuilder or anything. I’m just saying, do something every day, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, every single day, seven days a week, I work out. I’m probably going 600 consecutive days where I haven’t missed a workout. Even if I’m on a day where I know I can’t get to the gym, I’ll do 50 squats standing there in front of my mirror before I get in the shower. [47:16] It’s a mental thing that I know I’m doing this. It’s a pattern. It’s a lifestyle. and that’s kept me healthy. You know, I’m 50 years old. I feel like I can outwork almost anybody and I pride myself in that. And I know other people say the same thing, but I mean, I work very, very hard and these opportunities are fun to me because I’ve been healthy, I’ve been able and I had a good support system. So work-life balance, if you can have it with your family, try and have it. [47:43] It’s hard because we love this career. It becomes who we are. And no matter what we say, it is us. So try and have that work-life balance as best as possible and take that time with your spouse, with your children and not telling them the details. [48:00] But as they get older, you can tell them more, you know, especially when they’re, when they’re little, they don’t, they don’t understand. And they really don’t want to know everything or write a book and ask them to read it if they want to know. So that was another path right now. So, so that was an outlet for me mentally. When I was working deep on undercover, I kept undercover notes for my, for myself. I know obviously you can, they can be discoverable and all that, but I kept these notes. [48:30] And of what I was feeling and stuff like that and what I was going through, it ended up being, I was just going to write one book for my kids and give this book to my kids to explain why daddy was gone. And one time I was gone for like six months, I didn’t come home. So when you’re gone all the time, it wasn’t gone because I wanted to be away from you. I was gone because I wanted to disassociate. So the cartel, they didn’t know I had a family. I wore a wedding band my whole life career, practically, because I didn’t want anybody to know I had a family. And that was hard. You have to disassociate, but you still love your family. But when your family wants to go out, you’re recluse because you’re deep undercover in that area. And if you run into somebody, your family has to know to keep walking. You have to have all these plans, you know, like my kids. If this guy approaches me, and I’ve had it happen to me two times. Guys I put in prison for over a decade got out of prison and I ran into them. [49:26] And, you know, telling your kids, hey, man, this is a guy daddy put in prison. He’s a bad dude. Here’s my keys. If I don’t come out there in 10 minutes, just stay in the car until somebody comes to get you. And going and confronting that guy, not in an aggressive nature. I’ll be honest with you. The three times it happened to me, neither one of them were aggressive. Yeah. They were my, they called me, you know, by my nickname, Deuce. Says like what’s up deuce gave me gave me a hug to say you saved my life man yeah i’d be dead if it wasn’t for you because i was robbing people and i was i was going to get axed sooner or later, that’s that’s impacting you know and then you realize that you’re like how are you doing with your life and you communicate with me you run into a more and more to smaller the town that you’re in but you’re treating people fair when you arrest them and don’t take it personal. [50:15] People won’t take the arrest personal. It’ll be business, especially a real hardened criminal. It’s business. It’s the price of doing business getting busted sometimes. So try and people treat everybody with respect or the way you want to be treated. I promise you that will come back to you sooner or later. Oh, yeah, no doubt about it. I’ve seen guys that what they do is they can’t just be normal. Yeah. Even if they’re a uniform cop and they’re stopping somebody where they can’t be normal and they end up being kind of condescending or demeaning to people in really small ways when there’s no need to do that. You get into working as a detective and you’re dealing with people you’re trying to get information out of, you know, just treat them as normal people, you know, give them a certain amount of respect. You know, you can call them mysterious. It doesn’t cost you anything and say, yes, sir. Thank you. And please. And, you know, how you doing? You know, you understand you got a family and get kind of personal and doesn’t cost you anything. And I tell you, it’ll pay you off. It’ll pay you off. Use of mind for yourself and for your job too. Yeah. And that’s why I liked working undercover because even as a plane plane detective, when you are out of that uniform, that barrier, you know, goes away. [51:33] So I had many murderers confessed. I had a guy demonstrated to me in a transaction. He’s trying to build a street cred. That’s how he stabbed the dude. I thought he was just talking junk. Going to find out it was a full-blown confession on audio. He told me everything, where he did it, how it occurred. And sure enough, there was an unsolved homicide at that location. And it was just like, man, what are the chances? It’s just because people trust you more when you act like one of them. And don’t forget where you come from. Yeah, really. All right. Keith Grouncell. Well, the book is in Narchdown. There’s four books, right? Yeah, there’s four books. The first book is about my life growing up and some things that happened to me that made me get into law enforcement and almost not get into law enforcement, getting in trouble with the law and things like that. And then about going into my first deep undercover assignment after being a street police officer for three years at a different agency. So it. [52:27] Bison Narcotics, the first book. Second and third book is County Bison Narcotics. And then the fourth book is the feds, the DEA. And then it ends with some of my international policing missions and some of the violence that I encountered with the Haitian SWAT team to, I was over a 5,000-man SWAT team in Afghanistan as well. We did poppy eradication. Everything had a drug nexus. And I always try and tie that into the books. And then I wrote later on, I wrote my leadership book, Leadership Under Fire. And that’s the trials and tribulations I went through as a two-time chief fighting corruption. [53:01] And it talks about things that you can do as a leader to be a better leader. And here’s some things where I was successful. And here’s where I got stabbed in the back. And it’s because of me doing this first. It just goes through a whole array of things that can help you as a leader. And that’s been my hot seller is Leadership Under Fire. And then I wrote the book Shattered Chains here. That is a book about human trafficking. It’s got over 150 citations in it from different sources. I did a lot of human trafficking investigations as well, undercover purchasing kids 25 years ago before anybody knew about human trafficking and sex trafficking. It was not even talked about and I was buying kids, you know, so doing that from a long term, from a whole career. And then the book up there, that’s my deep cover book. That’s only for law enforcement. That’s what I teach, my manual for my undercover school. So I don’t sell that outside of the law enforcement group because it’s 500 pages of how to infiltrate everything and how to overcome every scenario from having a gun pointed at you to using drugs to infiltrating. [54:11] Any organization how to infiltrate manufacturing rings how to do just just a whole gamut of props undercover how to set up your identity i don’t want that getting in the wrong hands i understand that’s one of those things all right so that’s important to me but yeah no i i just enjoy writing so that’s that i’m helping three officers right now i’m helping three guys right now that are writing books and i and i do forwards for them and help them out because it’s just it’s a passion I believe as law enforcement, we need to be viewed not just for our muscle and what we do, taking it to the criminals, but really we’re intellectual. We’re very intelligent people and we see a lot of things. And I think we need to be recognized for the intellect that we actually have. We don’t get recognized for that. We’re always looked at as brutes. In reality, we got some really intelligent people in law enforcement that could have done anything. [55:01] They could have been doctors, lawyers, anything. You know, whatever they want to do, they could have done, but they chose to be public servants. And that’s what I like to help other authors in law enforcement. All right. Cool. All right. Keith Grounsel. Thanks so much. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been a lot of fun. Absolutely. Appreciate you, Gary. Thank you. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. and they’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem. If you got that problem or gambling, if not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go and I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.

Transcribed - Published: 8 September 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with veteran Chicago journalist Chuck Goudie, whose decades of reporting have made him one of Chicago’s most respected voices on organized crime. A fan of the show asked for more Chicago stories—and this conversation delivers. We dive into the legacy of the Spilotro family, sparked by the recent passing of John Spilotro, brother of the infamous Las Vegas mob figure Tony Spilotro. Chuck shares his reflections on how the Outfit has evolved, from its heyday of dominance in gambling, loansharking, and union racketeering to its much smaller—yet still persistent—presence today. Together, we revisit the Outfit’s historic ties to the Teamsters, the Strawman trials, and the legendary names like Anthony Accardo who shaped Chicago’s mob identity. Chuck solves a mystery and provides the name of the man who killed Sam Giancana. Chuck also offers personal insights into how mob families navigated the push and pull of blood ties, with some members rising into notoriety while others tried to lead straight lives under the shadow of organized crime. Our conversation shifts to Chuck’s recent investigative work on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, exploring the long-standing theories and mob connections that keep the story alive decades later. This episode blends history, reflection, and storytelling—offering both an inside look at Chicago’s Outfit and a reminder of why these stories still captivate us today. 1:02 The Legacy of John Drummond 4:11 Current Status of the Outfit 7:28 The Last of the Spilotro Family 10:02 Family Dynamics of the Spilotros 13:18 Frank Calabrese’s Las Vegas Fame 13:25 Giancana’s Murder Investigation and who did it 18:18 Surveillance in the Giancana Case 22:03 The Straw Man Trials 25:40 Ken Eto’s Gangland Story 27:52 Investigating Jimmy Hoffa’s Disappearance 31:03 Closing Thoughts with Chuck Goudie Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the [0:02] studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective here in Kansas City. And, you know, guys, I have, I was talking with a fan not too long ago from Chicago, I think on the, maybe the Facebook group, and he said, you need to do more Chicago stories. And I had to admit, I hadn’t done that many Chicago stories. I got caught up in New York a lot, It seemed like, and anyhow, we’re back to Chicago and another guy’s mentioned to another guy and we were talking and, and somebody said, I don’t remember who, maybe that original fan said you need to get Chuck Goudie on there. He’s been doing a lot of reporting on the outfit over the years. And I didn’t really know who Chuck was. So I started searching. He did a recent story about the death of the last spilotro brother, John spilotro. So I thought, man, this is, this is it. This is what I got to do. So welcome, Chuck Goudie from Chicago. Well, it’s quite an introduction. Some might call it a eulogy, but thankfully that’s not what he does. [1:02] Really? Now, I think I told you earlier, you know, last time I interviewed a Chicago newsman, it was John Bulldog Drummond. Bulldog Drummond, I tell you what, he was the dean of Chicago newsmen, television newsmen, when it came to reporting on the mob. There’s no doubt about it. And so I really welcome you, Chuck. You’re kind of the new modern John Drummond. Thanks, Gary, for that. I’m happy to be mentioned in the same sentence or thought with John Drummond. I had the good fortune of working kind of side by side with him, different networks in the 1980s and into the 90s when he was still at it. And he certainly did. He set the stage for mob coverage in Chicago. The outfit, as it’s known here, and John is still up and at him. And the times that I’ve spoken to him recently, we talk about the fact that on TV news in Chicago, I’m kind of the last person standing to keep track of these things. And so it’s a heavy case of documents, as we say, to carry around these days. But there’s still interest in it in Chicago. with not only the history of it, but where things stand in 2025. [2:20] Yeah, I’ve noticed that on the Facebook groups, and they’re real heavily participated in might be the right word, because a lot of comments, a lot of people know, a lot of family members of mob guys that seem like are participating. It’s true. [2:37] So you got to be careful what you say if you live up there. Kind of like that here in Kansas City. I kind of have to be careful. We got all these family members around. [2:45] That is true. Well, I’m always careful. And I do hear from people when I report on the deaths of old timers or even new guys who are trying to run the show these days. People do pay attention to it. That’s for sure. Yeah, they still got something going. What would you say, just to encapsulate what the outfit is today in Chicago? [3:09] Well, there is a little bit of a range as to what the outfit status is these days, depending on who you talk to. The FBI still contends that the outfit is operating, that there are people who are still in positions of power, and that the street crews are still in place as they were even 50 years ago. Everybody seems to agree that it doesn’t have the numbers that it once did. And I think that that should be evident. Some people think there may be only 10 or 15 day-to-day active members of the Chicago mob these days. But I think most people agree that it’s in the dozens, but certainly no more than 100. And the rackets are the same, similar kinds of things. but not the amount of money trading hands these days. But they still run in the same circles. [4:07] It’s still the same rackets that we saw decades ago in Chicago. Loan sharking, prostitution, a healthy, illegal gambling business that the outfit oversees, even as gambling largely is legal here and other places these days. Some union racketeering underway still. Um, so the same kinds of things, maybe just not as potent as it once was. Interesting. [4:36] So speaking of the union racketeering now, let’s go back into history a little bit. You were in Kansas City during the straw man trials when that’s what really, to me, it was the peak of the outfit’s national influence at that point in time. Because they owned the Teamsters and the Teamsters Pension Fund and can make all those loans. So that was quite a time, wasn’t it? Those days of straw man in Kansas City was the heyday, certainly in terms of dollars changing hands and the interconnection between the Kansas City mob, Chicago outfit, Cleveland, to some degree, New York and some organized crime families in the Northeast. And then Las Vegas, obviously, was the linchpin of it all, at least when it came to straw man. Yeah. And that’s when really Tony spilotro, his name rose to the top. It wasn’t before I have a, I listened to a wiretap where Joe Augusto was in Las Vegas is reading a newspaper to Tuffy DeLuna about, uh, that there were, somebody was writing out there and said, uh, spilotro and Aiuppa moving West. And Nick Civella in the background says, oh, God. [5:54] Well, as you know, there’s a body of thought that Tony spilotro basically engineered his own demise by the way he operated in public. And if he had just kept quiet and not been as public about it, he probably would still be around today. So we’re into the spilotro family. Yeah. The demise of the spilotro family. That’s John spilotro. I’d never heard of him. Tell the guy, and I don’t think most people have, tell us about him a little bit. I had never heard of John spilotro either. I probably saw him on a list of spilotro family members years ago, but he wasn’t a major player. He certainly kept the quietest of all the Spalatros, certainly far more than his brother Tony did. [6:39] John spilotro lived in Vegas, Uh, apparently went out there with, uh, with the other brothers who landed in Vegas in the late seventies, early eighties. And, uh, and John spilotro kept quiet, although he was thought to be involved in, in a number of the rackets that the spilotro is most notably Tony got involved in, in the early days out there, the hole in the wall gang and other things that we’re familiar with. And so when I heard that John spilotro had died, I thought it was worth a TV news story, certainly here in Chicago. That’s a notorious family, infamous, if you will. And it was interesting to us, and I was to viewers, that this was the last of [7:25] the spilotro crime family, as we put it. And so that was the story that we did a few weeks ago after hearing John had died. Now, I believe that he ran the gold rush, which was a notorious pawn shop and jewelry place and was a notorious fence for stolen goods from all over the southwest part of the United States. So he had to know something, didn’t he? [7:52] Absolutely. And I don’t think anybody disputes that. But back then, you knew that it was Tony who was in charge of the family business and the outfit business in Las Vegas. And so he kind of fell in the line and knew his place, I think. I talked to his son shortly after he died, who was an attorney, a very well-considered, well-regarded attorney in Las Vegas, talked about his father’s death. He knows exactly what happened over the years. [8:26] It’s not a high point, especially for somebody who went to law school, is now a practicing member of the bar and knows how these things work. But it was still his father. And so he and I spoke kind of candidly for a few minutes about this. And it’s always an interesting story to me. And it’s one that I have told over the years. You have members of quote-unquote organized crime families, many of whom were known to the feds, did penitentiary time, were vigorously pursued and prosecuted by the authorities. Nobody more so than the splatros over the years, some of them in any case. But this young man, now a grown adult and a practicing attorney, he grew up surrounded by that, but the sins of his father were not and are not his sins. So it’s always something that’s fascinated me that you have members, honest and upstanding members of the Board of Trade, attorneys, doctors, dentists practicing in all sorts of different professional areas of life who may have had their tuition paid by organized crime money, but that wasn’t their fault either. And they are upstanding members of society, perhaps because of what they saw. [9:51] Really? Yeah. That’s the Lattro family. They, they are, uh, they, they just say, they say it all from what you said. [9:58] You know, Tony was, uh, was nothing but a stone mobster. That’s all he ever was. He got a brother who’s a dentist. He’s always been a dentist, real well known, well respected, well liked dentist in Chicago. He’s got michael who was an actor but yet must have dipped his toe into the mob stuff but not like tony did and then you’ve got john who was uh you know he was just around it seemed like he must be in the family dynamics he must have been the lost child or something the mascot but not the black sheep because he he certainly didn’t go clean his life so it’s a it’s a really interesting family and and it’s uh it’s one that uh i would imagine if your name’s spilatro most any place in the united states almost if you would you say it somebody’s gonna say oh or unique into that guy in las vegas well the casino movie certainly uh helped prop up that legacy for sure yeah and and they didn’t use the name spilatro but that character that joe petzi there’s no doubt in anybody’s mind, but that was Tony Splattro. He nailed him. [11:09] And then, you know, since then, then that Frank Cullotta who worked with them became such a personality and was all over the internet and really kept all that going for quite a while. And so it’s a hell of a story. Still loving to interview a lot. [11:26] A few times in Las Vegas, we would go out there and do TV with you and i just have this vision of frank collada being escorted down a hotel hallway to our interview and he would have these these security guards that he hired on each side of holding onto his millboat walking him into the room uh he wasn’t witness protection at that point as we all know but he surely liked playing that part yes he did he did and then you end up having a mob tour out there go figure frank calabrese jr he had a mob tour in chicago and he’s out in las vegas as the resident mobster now so he he does a really incredible job with that with that mob presentation i don’t know if you’ve ever seen it but he he i mean he’s the busiest man in show business in vegas these days he does four or five of these things a day yeah and by the end of the day, he’s, he’s exhausted and he does it, he does it five days a week at the mob museum. And then in between, I was just talking to Jeff Schumacher, who’s a program director out there. And he said in between, he like goes around and greets people and talks to them. And I’ve talked to more than one person that’s come back. So, oh yeah, I ran into him. I talked to him and nice guy. Yeah. [12:46] We were just out there, um, a couple of months ago interviewing him and Schumacher for, um, a story that we worked up on the 50th anniversary of Sam Giancana’s murder. Oh, yeah. And so, um, had, that’s where I, I just saw the, the, the, uh, Frank Calabrese senior or junior rather, uh, presentation and, and people eat it up. That’s for sure. Yeah. And he’s, he’s so personal. He’s, I know him myself, talked to him several times, interviewed him once. [13:16] And he’s a, he’s really seemed like he just a nice guy. And I think he was just somebody that just caught up in family dynamics that [13:23] didn’t have a choice in what happened in his life. So, so you mentioned Giancana. If I remember right, you’ve got a pretty good Giancana story yourself. Set out rather here at NBC Chicago to just do a 50th anniversary piece in the month of May. The anniversary happened obviously in June, but we put it on the air in May, set out to do a story about the Giancana killing and what we know 50 years later. And as it turned out along the way, we had former federal prosecutors and FBI agents and documents that showed it really is not an unsolved case. [14:03] It’s still an open case legally because the person who pulled the trigger is dead. But we did a story that pointed the finger in the eyes of the feds straight at Tony Accardo. And that he was the guy who was allowed into Giancana’s basement apartment that night. And that Tony Accardo personally pulled the trigger on Sam Giancana and then left. And that the feds are satisfied that that case was closed in their own minds with Accardo being the trigger man. The reaction to it in some mob watcher circles here in Chicago, interesting. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ve seen those. I have seen those reactions. Now, who was his… [14:53] His driver that came back that night was blasey was he butch blasey that’s who i had always suspected oh and that’s that’s certainly what the what the word had been with with really no proof um yeah there is proof of the Accardo uh of the Accardo well okay and that’s what one of the things that we put into our reporting is that um you know the the caro home is located um you know a straight shot across a couple of suburbs from where Giancana lived. And the FBI had Accardo under surveillance at the time. And Accardo left shortly before the Giancana murder happened and returned hours afterward. And that’s one of the pieces of evidence that these federal prosecutors is cited. It’s interesting because people in Chicago know of Operation Family Secrets. It was the last big mob murder prosecution here 20 years ago or so. The Fed solved almost 20 gangland hits as part of that prosecution. What we found out is that the Giancotta murder was one of the unstated murders that they also saw. [16:11] They made a tactical decision in the prosecutor’s office not to throw everything at the jury. And that Giancana’s murder was one of those that they held back on because they didn’t have any defendants connected to it, so they weren’t just going to put it out there for publicity. Yeah, and muddy up the works on their trial. Those federal prosecutors do not like to muddy up the works. I mean, they, they did solve 18 murders and even that was, that was a heavy lift for the jury to sort through all of that in a multi-defendant case. Plus the publicity of something like the Giancana murder would just, it would just go wild. It would have gone crazy in the middle of all that. That’s wild. Well, Anthony Accardo, I’ll be darned. And there’s good solid evidence that he did that. Part of it would be that he was under surveillance and he was missing and then he came back. They must have had like a fixed surveillance on him. They weren’t trying to follow him. They did have a fixed surveillance on his house and it was a couple of miles away. You know, this was at a time when the when the feds and Chicago police spent a lot more money on 24 hour surveillance than they would today. [17:26] In cases like this, it was more commonplace than not for local intelligence units and the FBI to put people under surveillance if they knew that they were running some organized crime racket. Yeah. And if they knew there was something might happen to that, that, you know, you get some intelligence that some tip to something might happen while you really lock down on them, which brings up the point. And this is a much disputed point. And I’ve gotten arguments with the guys, you know, arguments, not really arguments, but discussions about, well, wasn’t there surveillance on Sam Giancana and everybody claimed that there was, and they were mysteriously pulled off. And, and my claim is, you know, maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t, but if you ever sat on a house where nothing happens, all night long, you might drift off. You might run and get something to eat. You might go buy a pack of smoke. You might go get some coffee and then come back by, or you might just, [18:17] you know, maybe even go to sleep. So I don’t know. What do you learn about that? It was, uh, it was a Chicago police detail, um, that was assigned to the Gene Kanna, uh, surveillance. [18:31] And I don’t know that it was as much, they were pulled off by somebody as it was, uh, It was 1030 at night. They had been sitting on the house all day. They saw people coming in, including one of Giancana’s daughters, bringing the infamous sausage and escarole over that Sam was cooking just as he was shot. But it may well have been that those people who the surveillance team saw go in, they left at 1030 or 1045 that night. And so the surveillance team called it a night, figuring that nothing else was going to happen. [19:10] And from where they were sitting, it’s not real clear whether they would have seen. [19:16] Uh, Tony Accardo go down the stairs from the driveway into the basement or not. So who knows whether they, they were still there at the time or not. Um, they may have been around the corner having a beer. Yeah. And that happens folks. That happens. I had a young detective that left early and, and the guy, she was watching at a bar. He came out and he was mad at the cleaners next door. And he, he had a Molotov cocktail and he threw it in the cleaner’s windows. And you know we were supposed to be there we were supposed to be there and she just got bored and it took off early which everybody’s done at one time or another i have to admit i have to, and we had a homeless guy down the street that saw let’s go down that’s how we know so it happens folks it happens oh but you know the you know the cops and robbers shows on tv yeah they portray surveillance, you pull up, you wait for 15 seconds and whatever he was supposed to be looking for happened. Well, that doesn’t happen in real life. It does not happen like that. Trust me. It does not happen. I’ve been on too many of them. [20:24] So, you know, I guess I have, I have one comment about that and kind of my knowledge, knowledge of the mob and reading, look, look at a lot of wiretaps out of Kansas city here that like When Iupa was going to meet with Nick Savella up in Chicago, they were going to meet at Nick Savella’s nephew’s place. A guy named George Schiavola lived north side up there somewhere, kind of close to Wrigley Field, actually. [20:50] And he was on the phone, and he told him to prepare a table with some antipasto and a lambrusco, I think, certain kind of wine, and get this all set. And these guys, when they’re going to have some kind of a sit-down, They often do have some kind of food like this. It’s like part and parcel of it. When they had a meeting that they brought lots of these guys from Las Vegas, uh, Joe Agosto and, and, uh, uh, the Peckerwood, uh, uh, uh, Carl, Carl, uh, Carl Thomas, when he brought Carl Thomas and Joe Agosto here, why they had one of their wives cooks, but getting meatballs and had it sitting down in this room. And they kept saying, well, Carl, you want some, you want some spaghetti? Meatballs are really good. And he kept saying, no, no, man, I got to meet a guy in San Francisco later tonight. So they’re expecting me out there. And so it’s common for them to have some kind of a meeting to have some food prepared for that so that he was expecting somebody to have come that would be some kind of a mob meeting i would say if you look at the weight that some of these outfit characters walked around with it’s easy to understand how pasta is at every meeting. [22:04] Really now when you went to strongman trials i’m curious were you did you happen to be in Were you in the courtroom very much? I was in the courtroom every day. Um, that was back in the days when TV news had unlimited budgets and we could go someplace and spend a month working on, on a story, a trial like that. So I was there every day. Did you happen to see Ken Eto testify? I did. I thought that was interesting. I found a, uh, yeah, the picture there, you see the picture there? Yeah. Yeah. that picture they understand they had that picture they showed that to ken ito and then he pointed out how he knew iupa and he knew uh uh joey lombardo and uh jackie serone and what he knew about him in order to uh were you there that day yeah then solano um yeah that. [22:57] That was quite a day. The Eto story, I mean, there aren’t many Chicago outfit stories that can rival the Ken Eto story and how he survived gangland hits. Oh, man, I know. It hit him in the head several times, didn’t it? And I’ve got his affidavit here, actually. And he says things like how Joey Iupa was a territorial boss for the organized crime family or outfit in Chicago. He had control of Cicero. He said I even asked him to go to St. Louis back in the 60s and teach somebody how to run policy. I was talking to a St. Louis guy here not too long ago. They said, oh, my God, I never knew that before. So, I mean, he really laid it down. The straw man case with iupa showing up every day in a taxi cab and getting out of the cab and having the taxi driver get his walker out of the trunk and iupo would slowly make his way up those front steps um and i mean i think it might have been before they had a ramp even uh at the federal probably was yeah and it was great for the tv cameras because iupa moved so slowly that we ended up every day with three or four minutes of video of him. [24:21] Seems like he took a swipe at you guys, wasn’t it, and what little bit of video I saw online. [24:28] He was an ornery guy. That is for certain. [24:33] Yeah, I tell you what. Oh, Ken Eto, he really, they used him, folks, and you remember, Chuck, they used him to say, yeah, there’s a mafia, and here’s how it works, is what they used him for. Boy, can you imagine being on that task force back then, and you find out that Ken Eto has survived a gangland assassination attempt, and his head’s bandaged up, and he wants to talk to agents. Oh, man. I interviewed that agent, Elaine Smith, who had been, she was one of the agents that kept going and knocking on his door. You know, how agents do, they like go out and knock on their door periodically. And so he said, Hey, I want to talk to Elaine Smith. They called her on vacation. She flew back immediately. He was huge. He was huge. [25:25] Well, Ken Eto died before he could parlay his story into a windfall for his family. There was an attempt to try to make something of that from a book to Hollywood screenplays. [25:40] And unfortunately for Eto and his family, he died before that could all be put together. Yeah, I started looking for him when I was doing podcasts. He hadn’t died not too long ago down in Georgia or somewhere. He really slowed down in Georgia, I believe. He had a heck of a story. I thought, boy, that’d be a good interview to get. You’re good. [26:02] But, yeah, he was, I mean, for those of you that don’t know out there, Ken Ito was a Japanese-American. He did a little bit of time in the camps during World War II and ended up in Chicago and really ended up, describe his position, I’d say, in the outfit as far as their gambling rackets were concerned, Chuck. Well, I think he was considered to be the street boss, Rush Street, mostly near Northside gambling rackets. And he was this fairly quiet, unassuming Asian man. [26:37] But when he showed up at your doorstep, he let it be known who he was representing. And he was well-connected and trusted by the outfit. And so when he ended up surviving that hit, there was some trepidation in the higher ranks of the Chicago mob because they knew that Ken Ito knew a lot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. As it says here, he’s talking about who Joey Lombardo’s connected to. He said he was just below Cerrone and Iupa in organizational hierarchy. He had performed hits and murders for the organization. You know, he used those kind of words that juries really like to hear in order. He became a made man and that kind of thing. So it was devastating as far as making them into a mafia family. He says, I also knew Angelo LaPietra, known to me as being a vicious and sadistic killer. You know, they had a way with words on that, didn’t they? [27:44] Angelo LaPietro was not known as the hook for no reason. He had quite a reputation in outfit circles. [27:53] So, Chuck, what are you working on today? Just wrapped up the Jimmy Hoffa coverage. 1975 was a big year in Gangland, Chicago and America. Of course, it was less than a month or so or the next month after Sam Giancana was killed, the Jimmy Hoffa vanished. And so I went to Detroit, spent a few days and did a couple of interviews with a former FBI head of the task force on Jimmy Hoffa. Also interviewed a couple of reformed Detroit mob figures about what happened to Hoffa. [28:34] And while it’s not quite as strong as the Giancana evidence, there’s certainly a lot of thinking that the feds know and knew exactly what happened to Hoffa, but everybody involved in it is long dead. And so that case is never going to result in a prosecution either. Yes. Tell me. I believe that people do know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. We know who perpetuated it and how it was done. Yeah, Scott, my friend Scott Bernstein in Detroit has done a thing on this, and he’s got that taco, the last of the taco family, I think, in Detroit that he’s working with. I assume you interviewed him, didn’t you? Novi Taco, or as they pronounce it there, Toco, which I had to be corrected on because in Chicago, we had a guy named Albert Caesar Taco, spelled this way, T-O-C-C-O, but in Detroit, I guess the family has long pronounced it Toco. Okay. All right. I’ve gotten in trouble. I pronounced it Taco because I got in huge trouble one time on the internet because they, well, you don’t know how to pronounce anything. Yeah. Everybody’s got an opinion, right? I mean, you know what they say. [29:51] Yeah, that’s an interesting story that kind of makes more sense to me. I mean, Dan Moldea, who wrote the book, The Hoffa Wars, and he’s so 100% sure about taking the body back east. I always struggled with that one, taking the body back east. Yeah, but he certainly is convinced, as are some other people, that the body is still in that landfill in New Jersey. Yeah. Oh yeah. No doubt about it. But I think this new evidence that he’s probably was, uh, what was he incinerated or something up in, in, uh, Detroit. There was a gangland Detroit mafia-run sanitation company at the time that the belief is among many federal lawmen from back then that off his body, shortly after he was grabbed from the restaurant parking lot, he was killed and then taken to this disposal plant. And there was nothing left of them in very short order, that there was no cross-country trip and burial in a landfill. But Dan and others, they’re passionate about their beliefs that the body’s still there on the ground. Yes, they are. [31:04] All right, Chuck Goudie from Chicago. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Chuck. This has been fun. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Anytime. You know, the mob here may be smaller, but there are still stories that come up. So always don’t hesitate to call. Okay, I will. Thanks a lot, Chuck. All right, take care. [31:25] Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you’ve got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. know. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go and I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 1 September 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into the life of James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke. Prompted by listener Paul Blackwood of Edinburgh, Gary explores Burke’s world beyond the headlines of the Lufthansa heist. From his turbulent childhood in foster homes and orphanages to his rise as a feared and respected mobster in the Lucchese family, Burke’s story is one of violence, loyalty, and paranoia. Gary traces Burke’s early years of crime, his ties with Henry Hill and Paul Vario, and the meticulous planning of the Lufthansa heist that netted millions—and left a trail of blood in its aftermath. The episode also covers Burke’s role in gambling and drug rackets, his eventual downfall in the Boston College point-shaving scandal, and his complicated legacy in mob history. Was Jimmy the Gent a loyal operator, or a ruthless killer who trusted no one? Tune in for a gripping exploration of one of organized crime’s most enigmatic figures. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 0:06 Introduction to Jimmy Burke 1:12 The Rise of Jimmy the Gent 6:19 Jimmy’s Early Life and Influences 10:25 Family Ties and Notorious Names 14:41 Criminal Ventures Begin 17:51 The Notorious Lufthansa Heist 23:57 The Boston College Scandal 30:49 Conclusion and Legacy [0:00] I had a listener named Paul Blackwood from Edinburgh, Scotland, [0:04] email me with some great compliments about the show. So thank you, Paul. Hope you’re listening to this.  I will try to remember to send you an email just before I release this one. However, Paul suggested that I do a story that focuses more specifically on Jimmy Burke, also known as Jimmy the Gent. And I looked around, and I agreed with Paul. Burke is mentioned on many podcasts because we all want to discuss the famous Lufthansa. I want to talk about Henry Hill, some of the other mob people in the Lucchese family, but it seems like I wasn’t really finding a show that was just focused on Burke. So, James, Jimmy the Gent, Burke and where he came from and where he went. [0:43] Oh, and don’t forget to hit me up on Venmo, buy me a cup of coffee once in a while, or maybe go donate on the podcast. I appreciate it. It helps pay the bills and keep me going. Now, Burke may be one of the most famous mob associates of all times, I would say. Oh, there’s some in Chicago. They had a lot of associates in Chicago. But because of, of course, Henry Hill and Robert De Niro playing him, [1:07] why, he probably would be the most famous mob guy who is not a made man. If Henry Hill had not gone into witness protection, if Henry Hill had not done that book with Nicholas Pelleggi, Wise Guys, or if the famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese hadn’t taken Wise Guys and Pellegi’s book and got Pellegi to help write a script and titled it Goodfellas. And when Robert De Niro took the part of Jimmy the Gent, his place in history was assured, I’ll tell you that, especially in mob history. In my humble opinion, this book and film were arguably the best depictions of day-to-day mob life ever that I’ve ever seen. I thought it was amazing. He did a heck of a job at the casino. [1:55] And to see the egos of these guys, once they turn, are just amazing. When Lefty Rosenthal heard Robert De Niro was going to play him, he told Pelleggio, oh yeah, I’ll work with you, I’ll work on this. And I’m not sure what brought Henry Hill around, but I got a feeling it was probably the same thing. He found out Ray Liotta was going to play his part in a movie. Really, when these guys like Pelleggio start writing a book about this, They got the huge budget and they pay these guys, you know, no telling how much money, six figures and up. Heck, they paid Frank Galatis $5,000. Just sit down and talk to them the first time for 30, 40 minutes. So when you actually start telling a person’s life story and on the big screen and in the book, why it’s worth a lot of money, it’s life changing money. I got a feeling. Now, the screenwriters in the film Goodfellas changed the name of Jimmy Burke to Jimmy Conway. there was some kickback from the family and they were wanting a piece of the action so they just changed the name. [2:54] Now, some people have claimed that, of course, this movie came out while Burke was still alive. He was in the penitentiary, and they said that he was so happy to have Robert De Niro play him that he phoned De Niro from the prison to give him a few pointers. And De Niro is pretty well known for this. He reaches out to these guys and meets them and spends a lot of time with them trying to get a feel for their character and what it would be like to be them for a while. Nicholas Pelleggi, they say, denies this, that De Niro and Burke have never spoken. But he said there were men around the set who knew Burke, and Henry Hill would have been one of them, and knew him really well and gave De Niro pointers. I kind of like the story that De Niro got a hold of Burke in a penitentiary and talked to him. [3:40] Burke was played by Donald Sutherland in another film called The Big Heist. See, everybody wants to talk about Lufthansa. I don’t know how many books there’s been written on that, several. It was a heck of a robbery. We’ll get into that a little bit later. But let’s take a look to see where Jimmy Burke came from. He was born in the Bronx, New York, so he never strayed too far from his birthplace. Like a guy, like if I’d have stayed up in Plattsburgh, Missouri, I’d have never got out of Clinton County. He was the illegitimate son to a woman named Jane Conway, who was a prostitute. He was actually an immigrant from Dublin, Ireland, so he was a real Irishman. He was the son of an immigrant directly from Ireland. The name of his father was never known. You know, the mother may not even known who the father was. At the age of two, the social services in New York City took little Jimmy Conway and put him in the first of many homes and also be in some orphan homes or whatever they, I don’t know if they call them orphan homes anymore. They call them group living situations more than likely. But a large part of his early years was spent in an orphan home ran by the Roman Catholic Church, ran by nuns. They’d say that after she gave him up at age two, he never saw her again. [4:50] Now, as with many of these throwaway kids, he was in a lot of different places, the institutions, but a lot of different foster homes. You know, these people take in kids, and some of them are good, some of them aren’t so good. They’re just doing it for the money, and some of them take them in for sexual reasons. And so he would suffer physical and sexual abuse in some of these different places. He had a pivotal event that really shaped his life at age 13. He got in an argument with a foster father while driving in a car that the man turned around to smack Burke in the back seat. And we’ve all been there, you know, don’t make me reach back there and whack you. When this guy did this, he crashed the car and he died. The deceased man’s widow blamed Burke and gave him regular beatings until he was actually taken back into social services and placed with another family. The next one, sometime after that, I don’t know if it was the one directly after that, but sometime after that, a family named Burke, which is where he ended up with this name, Burke, took him in as a foster child. And they had a, he would say later that it was a clean, comfortable and safe environment. And he loved those people. He lived out his teenage years on Rockaway Beach, close to Ocean Promenade. You guys that live in New York City and know that, you’ll know exactly where that is. And he never really strayed too far from there either, kind of across the bay just a little bit. He said Burke would never forget their kindness, and for the rest of his life, he would visit these foster parents on special occasions. And when he started making some money, he started leaving large amounts of cash [6:16] and unmarked envelopes for them periodically. [6:19] The Burke family had adopted him, so he took the family name and kept it. Some say that he buried part of the 1978 Lufthansa heist, some of the loot that was never found at the Burke house on their property. [6:32] The majority of the take from that caper has never, ever been found. One of the mysteries of that, kind of like the, not the Lindbergh money, the money from, we had a kidnapping like the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder here in Kansas City. And they paid $600,000 and they only got about half of it back. And half of it ended up with the St. Louis policeman who was working with the St. Louis mob. And some of the money ended up in Chicago later on, but they never found about $300,000 of that $600,000. Jimmy Burke got older, getting up in his upper teens and 20s in 1920. [7:07] He, of course, his trouble with the law became more serious. Age of 18, actually, in 1949, he got five years in penitentiary for forgery, and he was already working for a Colombo family member named Dominic Remo Sarsani. They had a counterfeit check ring going. I remember working some of these guys. Somebody would steal a check from a business. Somebody would get what we used to call a check protector, And then they would, on that business account, or maybe they would take one check from that business account or get a picture of it and make up a bunch of others. They might even have been totally fake checks or they might have been stolen checks and it would be just a counterfeit signature. Anyhow, when they start, they’d have a whole crew of people and run around and pass these trying to get $500 or $1,000 bucks a whack off each one of them. He got popped with a $3,000 check at the Ozone Park Bank. And after he was arrested I guess the cops knew that this was connected to this Colombo mobster named Remo and they wanted him to talk but he refused to talk and they’d offered him everything you know you take a kid like that at 18 years old and say you know you can walk on this deal dude and he refused and Remo found out about it and he knew that they offered him a free walk on that and. [8:21] And he was eternally grateful. And actually, when he went into the penitentiary, Remo arranged for his protection with other mob members there and get him introduced into that. He started calling Jimmy Burke, Jimmy the Irish Guinea at the time. Now, if you don’t know what a guinea is, then I feel sorry for you. You got to know what a guinea is. If you don’t know, email me or comment on my Facebook. Say, what is a guinea? As an adult, when Jimmy Burke left the penitentiary, He was really trusted, and he was known as a guy who could get the job done. He was getting big by then. He came out, and he worked as a bricklayer for a while for the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craft Workers. He got some tattoos, of course, you know, and that probably already had some jailhouse tattoos out of the penitentiary. He developed large muscular arms, and he was a bad dude. And he was also kind of a leader. He was known as a natural leader. [9:15] But on one hand, he was a stone-cold killer, but mostly he was polite and charming. A really good thief is like that. Everyone I ever met that was really a good thief was a polite, charming dude that had the capability to kill somebody. Henry Hill would describe him as a guy that looked like a real fighter with large hands and a broken nose. He’d always say that if a fight broke out, Burke would be all over people in a second. He would be in there, he’d grab somebody’s tie and slam their face down in the bar before the guy even knew they were in a fight. He had kind of a reputation for being wild. He’d whack you, but he was polite on the other hand, so he wouldn’t have that Irish charm more than likely. During this time, he started building up a small crew of trusted thieves, and Henry Hill was one of them. I’m not sure exactly where they met. Probably in the penitentiary. During the 1960s, Jimmy Burke married a woman named Mickey. And then one of the more well-known stories that illustrate Burke’s temperament was about a former boyfriend of Mickey had been bothering her. She complained to Jimmy and on the day that they were married in 1962, [10:21] the police found this man’s body cut up in a whole bunch of different pieces. They would go on to have two boys. Now, you got to listen to this. You got to hear the names of these boys. Frank James Burke and Jesse James Burke named them after two of the most famous bank robbers, train robbers. [10:40] In the United States at one time, anyhow I don’t know, they like rank right up there with Robin Hood as being famous thieves they also had a daughter named Catherine who would go on to marry a Bonanno family member named Anthony Indelicato, who was the son of Sonny Reddindelicato, And during the commission trial, the prosecutor would charge this Anthony Indelicato with the murder of Carmine Galente. So Jimmy Burke’s daughter married one of the guys that killed the Carmine, the cigar Galente, the dude they found in that kind of a garden in the back of that, God, what’s the name of that Italian restaurant in Brooklyn with the cigar still in his mouth? One of those local newspaper guys climbed up in a tree and got a really gross graphic shot of Carmine Galente laying there with the cigar. in his mouth. He met Catherine Burke when he was in the penitentiary, and she was visiting another inmate. By the 1970s, a Lucchese family member named Paul Vario, who was a Paul Sorvino character in the Goodfellas movie, he had taken notice of Jimmy Burke and his crew. By this time, he had Henry Hill, who was Ray Liotta, Tommy DeSimone was a Joe Pecci character, and a guy named Angelo Seppe. They used a bar that Jimmy Burke had owned by then called Robert’s Lounge in South Ozone Park in the Queens. So see, he never really went very far from Rockaway Beach. It’s all kind of in the same area down there. [12:05] This joint was a hangout for them as well as other small-time mobsters, tipsters, people that come up with tips on loads of expensive, a load of calculators going out and it’s going to be in a truck and maybe a drug dealer is known to have a lot of money or some other mark. Bookmakers, loan sharks, and other assorted criminals. Burke was the quintessential mobster because by this time he’s up in his 30s and he’s running a loan shark operation, a bookmaking operation. There’s a high stakes poker game going down the basement of that bar, which of course he gets a piece of that. Everybody kicks in for having a game down there. Plus if he’s got a high stakes game going down there, why he’ll have somebody in that game that’s a real card mechanic and they can get a big whale in there. Somebody we’d call a whale. Like there’s these guys out there that are maybe on some small chain of grocery stores or have been successful with fast food restaurants or something like that. And they got a lot of money. They like to gamble. They like to hang out with these mob guys. [13:08] It seems like they don’t mind if they get cheated as long as they can be accepted into that world. We had one here in Kansas City that had about three grocery stores. Had another guy that had a big Chevrolet dealership. I mean, those guys got a lot of money. [13:22] Now, Jimmy Burke knew how to make money, and he was a real earner for Vario. I mean, Paul Vario would have been his kind of boss, his sponsor, if you will, that he always would kick up to Vario. Whenever he had some kind of action, he would kick up. Burke also owned a dress factory in South Ozone Park in the Queens called Moo Moo Vedas. This business helped him launder cash. When he had a lot of cash from some other illegitimate enterprise, he could run it through the dress factory accounts. And this ability to launder cash himself became really more important when he and Henry Hill got in the narcotics business because we all know there’s a ton of money going through the narcotics business. For some of these drug dealers, it’s like doing something with the cash is the hardest thing about the whole business. In 1972, Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill were arrested for beating up a guy named Gaspar Ceseo. This was a Tampa Bay Area gambler who owed a large gambling debt to a friend of theirs, a union boss named Casey Rosado. They were charged with extortion and convicted and got 10 years in the penitentiary and neither talked or was even tempted to talk at that point in time. Both got paroled out after about six years in the joint, so they paid their dues one more time and kept their mouth shut, which gives them even higher status with the mob. [14:41] Of course, they went right back to their running grounds, There are stomping grounds, South Ozone Park in East New York and Carnese and Howard Beach area. [14:51] This South Ozone Park borders right on New York City’s JFK Airport. And the other two areas are adjacent to that. They all border this Jamaica Bay, which is right across the street from Rockaway Beach or across the bay from Rockaway Beach. And so this is a really small world that Jimmy Burke, he was kind of like the big duck in this world. I got a feeling outside of being the mob people in that world, he was a big deal down in there. But it was like he lived in a small town. He never really got very far out of there. He did get out to Boston. We’re going to talk about that in a little bit. Their main thing, his crew was robbing trucks delivering goods over the years. And they had informants inside the JFK freight yards and other freight hauling businesses in the area and got to know the truck drivers. I think Henry Hill reported that whenever they stopped a truck driver and actually hijacked the truck at gunpoint, Jimmy Burke always gave the dude a $50 tip. Even though they weren’t really part of the robbery, probably if they’d been part of the robbery and set it up, they probably would have wanted a little more money than $50. But he’d always give them a $50 tip and act real gentlemanly to them. And that’s how he got the nickname Jimmy the Gents, is my understanding is, which has stuck a lot better than being the Irish Guinea. That didn’t seem to stick. [16:08] This was during the time when Burke and Henry Hill got in the drug business. The Lucchese family, who were their sponsors, Paul Vario was in the Lucchese family, and he sponsored them, and they really banned their members from narcotics trafficking, because, as the usual, because all the government attention on that and draconian sentencing, well, as we used to say, you take a guy 30, 40 years old and give him 50 years in penitentiary and he’s a coke dealer, not like a real hard case many times. He’ll rat out his own mother looking at life, basically, in the penitentiary and being entered into a world that he doesn’t really know. I mean, coke dealers are kind of like white-collar crime people. They’ve never really been in with that down and dirty for the most part. Now, Jimmy the Gent and Henry Hill had, and they could deal with the penitentiary, and they proved they could. But Henry Hill will also prove out that concern was a legitimate concern that the mob had because when he faced this huge, long sentencing for cocaine trafficking, we all know what happened with Henry Hill. Now, the famous Lufthansa heist, we’ve got to talk about that, and we’re going to talk about Jimmy the Gent, happened on December the 11th, 1978. It’s the most famous crime ever in some ways. [17:19] The Casey family, through Paul Vario, granted him permission to do this because this was actually on Bonanno family territory, shall we say. They claimed the rights to all criminal activity inside the airport. And they also obtained permission from the Gambino family, and they wanted a cut of it, too. So they weren’t taking any chances on stepping on anybody’s toes. I guess they all kind of wanted some rights to anything that came out of JFK. [17:47] And there was a lot of stuff that came out of JFK over the years. So they did the robbery, and we kind of know that they had some inside help, and they went in there with the guns and they knew the rounds of the guards and the response time and it was really well planned, well set up, had a large crew. Jimmy Burke even took his son along as a crash driver. If somebody started chasing him, he was out there with a vehicle that would run, wouldn’t have an accident if they had to or try to slow down the cops with the crash car. At the end, after the robbery, Paul Barrio sent his son Peter to pick up his end of the take, which in a god it’s my understanding it could have been as much as two to three million dollars because the total take was five to six million dollars. [18:31] There’s a man with the Bonanno family a capo named Vinny Asaro and he was owed money from the robbery also and I don’t know if he got his or not for sure. Kind of most famously after the robbery went down what we really all know about is Jimmy Burke became more and more paranoid and he kind of wanted to cut people out of their share but one person he didn’t murder was his eldest son Frank James Burke, He’d been on it with it and got a piece of it just for sitting out there in a crash car. [18:59] And as you know, the film depicts Henry Hill not even going on this robbery, and his book didn’t ever claim to go on it. Now, Jimmy Burke’s son, Frank James Burke, will be murdered a few years later in May in 1987. Cops responded to a shooting in Brooklyn, and they found Frank James Burke’s body with multiple gunshot wounds. [19:18] They said shortly after this, a drug dealer named Toito Ortiz got arrested and convicted of this murder. I guess if I remember right, he had some cocaine and he’d cut it way down so it really wasn’t anything left to it. He was just trying to hustle this other, probably Puerto Rican drug dealer and thought he could get away with it. I guess he got, he found out you better be careful. You mess with the bull, you get the horn sometimes. I don’t know this Ortiz guy or Otiz or anything about him, but I got a feeling he wasn’t anybody to mess with. Palvario was never charged with the Lufthansa heist, but he ends up in the penitentiary for another racketeering charge. [19:55] Three people in that deal, Henry Hill and two JFK airport employees, go into witness protection. That was at Lewis Werner and Peter Grunewald. It sounded like it was a German boon group working there. Anyhow, like I said, I’m not going to really go into the details of the heist other than they had the inside information. They took as much as $5 million in cash and jewelry. Some of the other people that got killed was one of the more famous ones, And he was killed, like, by Tommy DeSimone or the Petchy character just seven days after the heist because he screwed up. This Parnell Stacks Edwards is a black dude. He was supposed to get rid of the van in New Jersey’s scrapyard. But he got high instead and just dumped it off somewhere. This Martin Krugman was part of planning on this. And he kept harassing Burke for his money. That was depicted in the movie. And this happened back in December, January the 6th, 1979, less than a month after the heist. [20:50] Tommy DeSimone kills him. Body was never found. DeSimone will get killed himself. He was identified by one of the guards for some reason because of his well-polished shoes. You know, he was a dude that polished, was a shoeshine boy when he was a kid, and that famous murderer of, what’s his name, Billy Batts, a famous murderer that was in the movie where they killed a dude in the joint because Tommy DeSimone, he was teasing him about how he used to be a shoeshine boy. [21:17] And they killed a dude just for that. That was a hell of an acting job, Betsy did. That deal where he acts like he’s mad at Ray Liotta at Henry Hill where he said, well, you know, you think I’m funny? How funny how? And you could just see Liotta did a heck of a job of acting too. You just see Liotta’s face change. And we all know that feeling. We’re having fun. All of a sudden, we realize somebody’s mad at us. And all of a sudden, you get this little look of fear and questioning like, wait a minute, what’s going on here? and they’ll go across your face and then they’ll see it and then they’ll get it back. I had a guy in the police department do that to me one time. He really got me. He was a great big dude. [21:55] He walked up behind me and he was like he was madder now. And he looked out at me and he just had this like rage on his face. He said, Gary, I’m going, and like I said, he was a big dude and he was one bad dude. And I know he saw the look of fear on my face. I was sitting down and he was standing up also. And then he starts laughing because he knew he got me so that was a good one the next one was lewis caforo he’s the one that bought the pink cadillac right afterwards with the with some of the loot that he’s got his hands on and he was found dead in his cadillac later that year in march with his wife i depicted that in the movie joe manry was one of the guys that went in carrying guns, and he brought some heat down by talking about this, and it got back to Burke, so he was found dead in his car along with a friend of his. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and probably they figured he knew all about it, and he may have talked too. You know, actually, I think he went on the thing. He would think he was another one of the robbers, so the mistress of Paul Vario, Teresa Ferrara. [23:03] Actually, I didn’t have any role in it, but she went missing and they found her body several months later during this time so i don’t know if it’s associated with it or not exactly paolo licastri who was a gambino soldier and he was one of the kind of observers one of the crew they speculate that burke just didn’t want to give him the gambino share the loot so he ended up being found dead. [23:31] Angelo Seppi, who was one of the original Burke crew members, he was identified as one of the robbers, bought a bunch of stuff after the robbery. The Gambinos killed him a few years later. He never got charged with it and probably was unrelated to the robbery. 1982, Jimmy Burke will be convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to 12 years in prison. [23:54] Now, this conviction was not for the Lufthansa heist. It was for his involvement in the 1978-79 Boston College basketball point shaving scandal. Henry Hill was part of that scam, and he testified against Burke. He also testified against Burke about a 1979 murder of a drug dealer named Richard Eaton. And Burke will end up, because of Henry Hill, he’ll end up getting about 20 years in the penitentiary. And when he’s much older, it’s going to be hard to do 20 years because it’d be crimes of violence. [24:27] But that Boston point shaving scandal, I thought, well, I’ve heard of that. I don’t really know anything about it. I guess it’s in Henry Hill’s books. I looked it up. This was a scheme back in Boston, where Boston College is. It was conceived by a guy named Rocco Perla and his brother Anthony, who were bookies and gamblers. They lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They recruited a high school friend of theirs named Rick Kuhn who was entering his senior year at Boston College and then was a great basketball player. The name of their team is the Eagles. Kuhn, after they approached Kuhn, he agreed to try to hold a score within the point spread or go outside the point spread, it’s easier to hold it within the published point spread on certain games. So, for example, then the first time if Boston College was an eight-point favorite, they’d give him $25 if the Boston College Eagles won by less than eight points and they put all their money down on the other team. Always get that mixed up. So I’m not going to keep trying to go into what that means. You guys that are gamblers understand the point system. Somebody gives you points and what you got to do to win and lose, I’ll leave that for you to figure out. You know better than I do. [25:42] Once Rocco and Tony Perla got this deal set up with Kuhn and felt like they had an edge, they set up a betting syndicate to get a lot more money to go down. And that’s where they ended up getting directed to Henry Hill somehow. But they did. They were trying to connect with the mob. And he was a guy that they got sent to because he was with the Lucchese family. He took him to Burke because Henry Hill isn’t going to do something like this on his own. And Burke’s got kind of got the money and access to more money. And so Jimmy Burke agreed to front the money to pay off the players each week and he would set up a string of bookies to take this different action from different people and got people that would keep their mouths shut because once people got onto this, it’s going to start screwing up the point spread and everybody’s going to try to figure it out and want a piece of this action. [26:32] Henry Hill and Burke, a guy who had to get the approval of the KZ family campo, Paul Vario, so there’s some other people that know about it that are greedy and want to make more money and more money. Vario and Burke told Henry Hill that he was going to be the point of contact with the Boston gamblers and the players up there, the Perla brothers, Rocco and Anthony Perla, so he had to fly out to Boston many times. When they were debriefing Henry Hill, they were looking at his record, but they’re looking at what he’d been doing over the past several months, and they saw that he had been to Boston a bunch of times, and that’s when he started laying this out for them. They didn’t even know about it. Nobody knew about it. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, nobody had ever known about it. And the first game was Providence against Boston College, and the Boston won by 19 points, but the line was 6 points. So Henry Hill, I guess Jimmy Burke was kind of fit to be tied over that, and he told Henry Hill to tell his dude in Coon he couldn’t play basketball with broken hands. The next game they tried was Boston College playing Harvard. Boston was favored by 12 points, and they won by a 3-point margin. So… [27:41] Jimmy Burke’s happy again. They all won money, got their money back, and then some. So next one was against UCLA. At that time, especially, it was a huge basketball powerhouse, and Boston was an underdog by 15 points, so they lost by 22 points, and the syndicate won again. After that one loss, that first one, they got Rick Coon and said, you got to recruit somebody else, and he got into a guy named Ernie Cobb, who’s a leading scorer on the team, but never really was proven if Cobb agreed to participate. [28:13] Later on that season, players let him down again. They lost a lot of money on a game. Hill would later say that Burke was so mad he kicked out the screen of his television set and wanted Hill to go do something to these players, but he just never got around to it, and they just got out of the scheme. They realized it wasn’t any kind of a foolproof deal, and I always wondered about that. I know you hear about that every once in the wild. People are always trying to do it, but it’s hard to do to totally fix an athletic event like that. There’s a podcast out there with a referee named Tim Monahy or something like that. He was an NBA referee. [28:51] In that podcast, I interviewed him a lot and a lot of other people that are around that world and FBI agents that worked that case on him. He got caught helping the mob shave points. But referees, as he explained with referees, you know, you can call fouls or not call fouls. You can maybe call a really bad call and get the coach or the guy that you want thrown out of the game, possibly. The referees can really control a game. This guy said that the FBI agent they interviewed in that podcast, he said that the mob loves basketball because there’s a lot fewer people that you got to get some kind of an edge with to know about. Maybe you just got intelligence information on them that somebody’s girlfriend left them or somebody gets drunk every night before a game or certain nights before a game or referees have, you know, they get something on a referee and the referee, they can’t really save points. [29:50] It’s referees. There’s only three referees and there’s only 10 players. So it’s not so many people as football. And football and basketball are the only things that’s really a whole lot of action on. Baseball would really be hard to manipulate, I’d think, although we do have the Black Sox scandal. There’s so many people involved that it would be hard to do. Well, after Henry Hill broke down on that scheme, of course, he had to make a deal that he wouldn’t be prosecuted for it. But also, one of the main reasons he did it, this guy didn’t do anything unless he got real something out of it. Because if he just hadn’t said anything about it, it would never come to light, more than likely. He had a state narcotics charge in Massachusetts, so he told the agents that you got to get that dropped too, and they did. [30:31] Jimmy Burke got 12 years on that particular case. They did a RICO thing on it, and they got one of the Boston bookies that they were using and one of the players, and I don’t think it was Rick Kuhn. He had recruited another player or two before it was over, and they collaborated. Henry Hill’s testimony. So that’s kind of the deal on Jimmy the Jim Burke. [30:50] We all know he died of cancer a few years ago. is no longer to be feared, and he doesn’t really leave a bunch of brothers and people out there that were loyal to him. Well, that sucker was loyal to the mob. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you got that problem or gambling. If not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go and I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.

Transcribed - Published: 27 August 2025

Retired Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins interviews author Robert Webster, president of the Kenton County Historical Society, about his book, The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy. Webster revisits one of America’s deadliest nightclub fires, unearthing the possible mafia ties, cover-ups, and shocking safety failures that shaped this haunting night. Robert Webster outlines the rise of the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, noting its glamorous past hosting Las Vegas–worthy shows—and its lasting link with organized crime in Northern Kentucky. The 1977 Fire and Its Devastation On May 28, 1977, the club was engulfed in flames, ultimately claiming 165 lives—making it one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history. Safety Failures and Code Violations Webster discusses staggering oversights: overcrowding far beyond legal capacity, lack of marked or accessible exits, absence of sprinklers or alarms, unsafe wiring, poor construction, and inadequate regulatory enforcement—true firetrap conditions. Unraveling the “Untold” Story What truly sets Webster’s work apart is his examination of the controversial claim that mafia operatives may have deliberately set the fire in retaliation for the owner’s refusal to cooperate—a theory supported by previously unreleased documents, crew testimonies, and survivor accounts. Investigative and Legal Aftermath The episode highlights the State’s formal review of the arson allegations, which concluded they lacked “proof,” being largely speculative. Meanwhile, Webster’s book earned him a 2013 Kentucky History Award for its contribution to the record. Click here to get this fascinating account of this devastating fire in The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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 Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] well hey, all you wire tapper’s. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a, a little bit different sort of a story. It’s it’s part mob and, and part fire protection and a huge fire that was you know, it really hit the headlines all over the United States back in the seventies. It’s Bob Webster, Bob really appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate the invitation. Looking forward to it now, Bob, you got, you got a pretty good accent. You, you got about as good an accent as I do. We’re a little bit different speaking, aren’t we? Little bit a little bit different. My New York fans and my Chicago fans I bet. And my Southern fans you know, you got that, we got that kind of Midwest twang, I guess, if you will. Exactly. Kentucky and I’m from Missouri and you know, Bob, my, my first relatives came, of course, from Virginia first, then to Kentucky, and then onto Missouri. It’s the, okay. It was the immigrant path back there in the 18 hundreds, and I got a ton of them that some of ’em are still down there actually from they came here in the [00:01:00] 1860s, just before the Civil War. They came to Missouri, but okay, but deep roots there in Kentucky. Oh, guys, the, the book is inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club, the untold story behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy, and it happened in May 28th, 1977 as the Supper Club right along the Ohio River. And Bob is from that area and he does a lot of local history down there. And Bob, you’ve got other books out there, correct? I do, I’m working on number eight right now. Beverly Hills is certainly the most popular, but I’ve written books on other local history topics. I also have sort of a textbook out that’s covers the, just a generalization of of history of Northern Kentucky came out about four years ago and just finished a historical fiction book. I, a lot of my, counterparts kind of teased me for writing a partly fiction book, but it’s based on a true story. So I can get by with it, but certainly almost everything that I write is nonfiction, just the facts. Yeah. And this is totally [00:02:00] nonfiction, correct? Oh, absolutely. I looked at it well, researched, searched, and everything’s documented. There’s end notes for every chapter. It’s, yeah, I could tell. So yeah, and I understand that right in historical fiction because. Can, you can make it more of an entertaining read, and you can tie things together that nobody knows, with a little literary or poetic license, if you will. And it does make it a little more entertaining to read sometimes. Yeah. Broaden out your audience somewhat, which we’re always trying to broaden our audience, aren’t we? Yeah. Like I said, it’s based on a true story here locally, one of the neighboring counties, it’s interesting that I’ve had several people contact me and say, I, I know what you’re really talking about. I know this, I know the real story you’re talking about. We don’t wanna be sued. They know the truth part of everything, now, what is that historical fiction about? Is it a Kentucky crime? It’s actually a murder mystery based on my own family. You know, I mentioned off camera that my first book was a family history [00:03:00] project, about 700 pages. So it was well in depth, but, you start researching things and almost every family runs into something that they were, not aware of. I ran into a murder. The more I read in the newspaper, I’m like, this doesn’t sound like it really happened this way. This, this something else must be going on. So I did some research and said, this would make a really interesting book. I’d have to change some names and some facts and things. But it’s called Ellison Station and it’s based on a little town in Grant County. And it’s gone over real well. Oh, well. Great, great. Well, let’s get back to the book at hand and back to the Mafia. ’cause the mafia had a big part in getting this started or organized crime. Out of I believe it was Cleveland, or was it Cincinnati? Oh, the yeah, the actually Newport, Kentucky right on the, we’re right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay. They have some. Gambling and illegal activity that dates all the way back before [00:04:00] 1800. But the Volted Act with illegal alcohol peach, mit, Jimmy Brink, buck Brady, some of the well-known names here locally started the bootlegging operation. But, that’s when the mafia really moved into the area. Originally from Detroit, they were part of the little Jewish Navy. But Frank Milano I, I pronounce it mo Delete, D-A-L-I-T-Z. Came down and, and he formed what they called the Cleveland four. So it was Mo and Sam Tucker and Morris Kleinman and Lou Rothko. And the early 1930s, mid 1930s, they moved in, pretty much, took over Newport took over part of Cincinnati, some of the other areas as well. But they really took over northern Kentucky, and the police and everyone down in Frankfort didn’t seem to pay any attention to what was going on way up here in northern Kentucky. They just consider us part of Cincinnati, I suppose. But they moved in and basically torched a lot of [00:05:00] the owners of the clubs back then with the same philosophy either. Sell us your club and we’ll keep you on as a manager and pay you a little bit of a, a stippen or we’re you’re gonna be outta business. And most of ’em most of the club owners took heed and, and sold their clubs. But there were a couple of people Glen Schmidt or Peach mit who owned the Glen Hotel in Newport said, no, he’s not gonna be bought out. They burned him out too. Mm-hmm. But he moved out of town just a few miles to what, what is now Southgate, Kentucky. And he reopened what was the king castle. It was it had been vacant for a few years, but he figured he, he’d let the mob have Newport and he was gonna open up his club there in Southgate. But on February 3rd, 1936, the mob burned his place down again. And it would’ve gone unnoticed like all the other fires that had been going on for the last four or five [00:06:00] years. But there was a little 5-year-old girl who was the niece of the caretaker of the property, and she was killed in that fire. So there was an investigation and several of the mobsters went to jail Masterson, who was probably the mastermind, we think. Got away scot free. But bottom line is he was able to rebuild the club there. He renamed it the Beverly Hills Club, then it became the Beverly Hills Country Club. Mm-hmm. This is before the summer club era. But the mob didn’t give up. They they moved in started harassing customers. They robbed the payroll a couple of times. They also performed what was called ding Doning. I don’t know if. If you’ve heard of that. But they would send four or five of their henchmen into the lobby of this Glen hotel, and they would just urinate on the floor. They would do that every day. And he finally said, okay, I give up. And he sold the place to the mob. So by 1940 [00:07:00] 1938 to 1942, there were over 30. Illegal gambling casinos in northern Kentucky, all operated by the Cleveland syndicate. Yeah, that’s mo d was, he, he was quite a mover and shaker. It’s kind of interesting. He ends up being a a sterling citizen giving back to charity and everything out in Las Vegas. But yeah, those four guys you mentioned, those four Jewish guys, that Jewish cabal, if you will. Maybe not the best word, but, but cartel that started that they’re gonna end up starting Las Vegas basically, but they absolutely right here in this Beverly Hills Country Club, if I remember right. Yeah, they absolutely. Is that what you would call carpet joint back then? Is that what you call a carpet joint back then? Yeah, we had two of those, but that was the first of what, what we called the carpet joints. Yeah. Okay. All the other places in Newport were sawdust floors. You could get buzzed in by the bartender to go into a back room or an upstairs parlor or downstairs. It was not wide open. But the Beverly [00:08:00] Hills Club was the first one that, I mean, you could just walk right in the door. Everyone knew it was there, everyone knew it was illegal. There were two state governors that were there for opening night for the illegal gambling casino. But, chandeliers. I mean, it was, it was the place to be back then. And I mean, we’re talking high notch entertainment. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Marilyn Monroe, the Andrews sisters. I mean, those were people that were frequent stars on the showroom floor there back in the back in the day. Yeah. Right. If you do a little research on Mo, you find out that he takes all of his illegal money that he got from Northern Kentucky and. And went out there and, and you’re right. Became you know, the, the great citizen donating money to, I think he opened a hospital and, and whatever else. I don’t know. Yeah. But I mean, he, you know, they built a shrine for him out there, I suppose. Yeah. He’s a, he’s a hell of a story just to himself, and I’ve never really looked, looked into that story in great depth, but I [00:09:00] should do that. He’s a hell of a story himself. But back to the Beverly Hills Club and, and now, who was a clientele, were they coming mainly out of. Cleveland, I guess, but also Chicago and Kansas City and all, all around the Midwest. A little bit like hot Springs. It reminds me of Hot Springs. Yeah, mostly not really good entertainment. Were, were right around this area. They did bring quite a bit down from Cleveland and Indianapolis. We’re about an hour and a half away from there. Columbus Lexington, Kentucky. So the Cincinnati area, it was a strong hub. They had a very successful airport by that time, so people could fly in. But most of the clientele were right in the greater Cincinnati area. Okay. But interesting. I mean, it was the only place like this in the, the whole, well, you would have to go to Chicago or New York to see anything like this. By the fifties, they had a little bit of stuff like this going on in hot springs, a little higher class entertainment. But this was the big one from what I’ve read about it, it was best place and it was [00:10:00] just other reasoning for that as well. Some of the, most of the clubs down in the city of Newport were kind of shady. Based on my research you couldn’t win at, at any of the games if you were lucky enough. They were all fixed. Really, if you were lucky, lucky enough to win some money, soon as you got outside, you’d get roughed up and robbed by, you know, one of the, one of the henchmen of the club. Of course, you couldn’t go to the police. They were being paid off. But at the Beverly Hills Club the games were not fixed. You could actually win some money. The food was, was top-notch. The, like I said, the entertainment, you didn’t have this kind of entertainment down in Newport. So it was a different clientele. It was coat and tie and fancy dresses or you weren’t, were not gonna get in. Mm. Interesting. Yeah, I know Sam Connor tried to start something called the Vene Villa, I believe was the name of it. That was just exactly what you’re describing. Then he had a big Quonset hu out back for the gambling. So this is a kind of a common thing around the United States is Yeah, having that club with high-end dining [00:11:00] and gambling somewhere connected to it, and the mob guys all got into it. I had an expert on here once that said. These guys that that started Vegas Delits and those other three guys you’ve mentioned which I never remember their names, but other people who went out to run the casinos at Vegas when it first got started, they all. Earned their chops or they learned the game and how to run the gaming business and this kind of a club like this. And that was the next step out Up was absolutely out in Las Vegas. So this was really the beginning of Las Vegas as we come to know it. Yeah, it was absolutely something like this. Interesting. So now we go on up into the fifties and sixties when Mo de sold out, I believe. And he, yeah, he sold out and, by the old late fifties we had some, some old we’ll call ’em groups of do-gooders that wanted to move in and, and get all the prostitution and the gambling and, and everything out of Newport. Yeah. We [00:12:00] locally here, call it the Ratterman fiasco. There was a, George Derman was well known in the area played football. Decided he was gonna run for office in Newport and he vowed that he could not be bribed by the, the mafia. And I mean, he would’ve, he certainly was going to win. But Charles Lester, who was the mob’s attorney, and Tito Zi, who was I guess wanted to take over when Mo and everyone was, was outta here, he wanted to be the next big kingpin. Called Ratterman with the plan. They, they said, oh, we’re, we’re gonna come clean. We wanna meet with you and have dinner, and we’ll talk about how we can, we can straighten this stuff out and get all the, this, this crime and corruption out of Newport. And, and I guess he, maybe he fell for it, but of course he showed up and they had drugged his drink. And he wakes up in bed with one of the known prostitute call girls or showgirls from one of the clubs. And of course, the police just happened to be there with cameras. Yeah. So he’s all over the morning paper all over. [00:13:00] Yeah. Over the country. You know, he said, he had been drugged. And of course the simple drug test proved that. So the, the mob didn’t work out very well. Several people were arrested, including police officers and judges. Most of those were acquitted. There wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough evidence to convict them, but, but several of the mobsters went. It went to prison for that. But that really turned around Newport. I think at that time a lot of people thought that the gambling left completely and then some of the other corruption, but of course it didn’t. The New York syndicate the Dedo family moved into the area as well. They were specializing at that time in the adult theaters and peep shows and things of that nature. Newport was overrun with those. I mean, there were several in town that you could visit there. The Cinemax would’ve been the most popular, the longest living one. But that’s sort of where the turnaround came. And 1969 Richard Schilling [00:14:00] Sr. Purchased the old Beverly Hills Club for 400,000. He had already owned. The lookout house which was another high end show place restaurant. No gambling at that time when he bought it, but he was very successful in that and decided to buy the Beverly Hills. He renamed it the Beverly Hills Sub Club two, $2 million in renovations. Mm-hmm. But the mob still didn’t give up. They, propositioned him the same way as it’s always been. You know, we’re gonna buy the club. We’ll keep you on as manager. He said, no. In June 21st, 1970 it burned the ground. The renovations hadn’t been done yet. It’s funny, the, the electric had been turned off during this renovation time. But the local authorities although they called it arson the state police said that the fire was the cause was undeterminable. Well, they found large gasoline cans in the rubble. Yeah. There were four separate fires in separate, in separate areas of the [00:15:00] club. But the state police Yeah, said they couldn’t figure that out. So he was basically threatened to not open the club again, but he did. It became known as the showplace of the nation. But in the seventies the, the mob was still here. I researched 45 different car bombings. There were 60 unsolved murders, 40 arson or suspicious fires in nightclubs. They were still here and they were still doing the same thing that they had always been doing, and that is running these successful clubs and taking all the profits. Interesting. That brings us up to May 28th, 1977. Wow. So May 28th, 1977, the club’s still going, and it’s a big show that night. Who was the headliner that night? That was John Davidson. Ah blue-eyed, blonde-haired singer. All the women wanted to go see. Yeah. He, he was the headliner. He had been there the night before. He was there for two nights. But he packed the place. [00:16:00] So they were, they were still getting in. They continued to get in national entertainment in little Oh, absolutely. Northern Kentucky, you know, out in the boonies like that, usually don’t get that kind of entertainment. We’re lucky to get it here in Kansas City anymore, it seemed like. Yeah, they I, I don’t have a list in my head right now, but yeah, they. Certainly top notch the, the comedians that you would see on tv, the singers Uhhuh movie stars. John Davison at that time was the, not only good singer, he was host of a, a couple of different TV shows. Oh yeah. He was that’s incredible. I think was the name of the, the, the one show that he was hosting. Mm-hmm. But yeah, they were packing ’em in every, every weekend for sure. But, what happened? What happened that night at that time? Go ahead. What happened that night then? Well, the we know now that there were, were rumors before the night that something might happen. But that particular morning one of the bus boys showed up and, and found people working [00:17:00] on ladders. In one of the, the showrooms, the smallest showroom called the Zebra Room. He was supposed to be setting up tables and chairs in there. He asked them what they were doing. They said they were working on the air conditioning, so he went and set up chairs in some other room. But came back and they were still working on that. They basically yelled at him and he, but he finally got in there, was able to set some things up for a small wedding reception that would be going on there. There were gonna be about 2,500 people in the building that night, including staff. There were several things going on. There was a dinner party for some doctors and their wives in one area bar mitzvah in another area. There were four different weddings going on that night. The AAA from Dayton, Ohio had come down. There was a senior citizens group from Aston, Kentucky and Huntington, West Virginia, which is about four hours, three, three or four hours away. They brought two Greyhound buses full of people, the place was packed for sure. Yeah. And about oh, I guess it was about 10 minutes till nine that [00:18:00] evening people started complaining that the, the building was hot and they. Didn’t see smoke, didn’t see fire until about nine o’clock when two of the waitresses walked into that zebra room, which was now vacant. That little wedding party had already finished up and left. They saw smoke lingering at the ceiling and immediately told the owners and the fire department was called, and they started evacuating the building right away. What is upsetting is, the later research, there were 12 different people that drove up the driveway that night before, anywhere from six 30 to nine, and saw smoke coming out of the roof of the building and didn’t say anything to anybody. They just thought it was from the, from a chimney or from the kitchen or what have you. But they saw smoke you know, two hours beforehand and no one told the, the club staff or any, anyone obviously would’ve changed things completely. But really fire finally broke outta that room about nine [00:19:00] 15. And it was absolutely a disaster, that’s for sure. What had it been going there above like a drop ceiling or up between the floors up in there and really, you know, spread out above everything. Yeah. What we know now is that the, the fire started in the basement and it was. Traveled up through a void space all the way through the first floor into the ceiling of the second floor. Okay. And started burning down into the walls. So yeah, it started we think shortly after 6:00 PM So it wasn’t until nine a little after nine, that the fire and smoke actually made the, made it itself visible to the club staff and patrons. It had been burning for about three hours inside the walls and ceilings. Wow. So when it burst loose, it burst fast, huh? Oh, it didn’t take long. There were two different retired firefighters that were on the scene there just as guests. And they could [00:20:00] tell how quickly the fire spread through parts of that building that it obviously had been burning for quite some time. When it, it, it. I found that extra oxygen that it needed to mm-hmm. To really take off. And the main room was full, I assume, at this point in time. Yeah. The cabaret room was built to hold a thousand. We think that there was 1051 people in the room. So it was crowded by legal aspects. It wasn’t grossly overcrowded. That’s what is in the history books, that it was grossly overcrowded. Yeah. But it certainly was crowded. There were tables and chairs set up in some of the aisles. It was certainly hard to move around in there. But there was say a busboy that was notified pretty quickly that there was a small fire on the other side of the building. And he decided, he tells me, seems like it took several minutes, but it only took about a minute for him to decide, Hey, do I, do I get up on this stage? [00:21:00] Make an announcement. I’m gonna get fired if there’s not really a fire. He didn’t see a fire, he didn’t see smoke or anything. So, you know, there’s a room full of people that just ordered their drinks. That’s where the, the club makes all their money is with the alcohol. If he clears out this room, yeah, this 16-year-old bus boy is going to get fired. \ But after just, you know, a minute, he, he decides, well, that that’s what I’m gonna do. So he gets on the stage and he says, ladies and gentlemen, I can have your attention. There’s a small fire on the other side of the building. We want you to leave immediately. There’s an exit there. And he points to the left, an exit there to the right. You can also exit through the doors that you came through. And then he jumps from the stage. On stage was the comedy duo of Teeter and McDonald. They ventriloquist comedians. And unfortunately, about one third of the people thought he was part of the show. Oh, for whatever reason, they paid no attention to him whatsoever. They, later told authorities.[00:22:00] Yeah. The, another third of the people didn’t pay any attention to him at all. They had just sat down, they just ordered their drinks, they’re talking with their friends and family. They had no idea that he even jumped up on the stage. Only about one third of that 1000 people immediately gathered their belongings and started exiting the room. Of course they made it out without any complication whatsoever. Mm-hmm. So the fact that 169 people were killed out of that 1000 in that room, and of course there were over a thousand other people in the building. It’s pretty remarkable. But, but still there a lot of lives lost just because they didn’t heed that morning. What, what, what was the total loss of life in that 1 69? Oh, that was, that was the total loss was a 1 69. Okay. And yeah, now you’re, you’ll read in various places that the number 1 65, but that’s inaccurate. It was decided very early after the fire that unborn fetuses would be. Counted in the death toll. I see. The [00:23:00] memorial that we have now here in northern Kentucky has a stone for all the victims. And it, it’s 1 69 is what it should be accurately. Ah, interesting. So what was the aftermath of that? The big investigation was there? Well, did heads roll or what happened that day? Yeah, the aftermath was, was quite interesting. If you were living in this area at that time you were pretty upset at the owners because the, it was, it was determined very quickly that several of the doors had been changed and locked that there was at least a 20 minute delay in notifying the, the authorities about the fire. There was no sprinkler system. The investigation within the first six months determined first of all, that there was, there’s no sprinkler system that was required by law at that point in time. It was not grandfathered into the, the previous construction. The associated press was actually notified at two minutes before nine, and we know that the fire department was called at at [00:24:00] four minutes before nine, so there was no delay in notifying the authorities. The only door that was chained and locked was one that had been remodeled. You couldn’t find it from the inside anyway, and to get to that door, you would’ve had to walk through the fire to get the door so no one died as a result of locked exit doors or anything like that. So it’s interesting, I think that if someone would’ve told a reporter outside that they heard a bomb go off, they would’ve just preprinted that too. They would, there doesn’t seem to be any. True research and determining what to print in the newspaper. At one point it, it said that there were over five times the number of people in the cabaret room that was, should have been in there. Well, we’ve had architects tell us that you, you couldn’t fit 5,000 people in that room if you took out all the chairs and tables. But that’s what they, they printed. It was so, so overcrowded. So, there was a grand jury investigation that was put in because they were actually considering charging having murder [00:25:00] charges, going against the owner for all that he did not do to prevent this. And I think most of the public here was dumbfounded when they determined that there was no lack of communication with the authorities. There was no delay, there was no overcrowding that the, the club staff did a remarkable job getting most of the people out in a timely manner so that, that kind of failed. But, it haunted some of the employees that saw some of the suspicious activity. I only brought up one thing right. As far as those workers Dave Brock was the, the busboy. He went to the owners about six months after the fire and he said, has anyone ever talked to those workers that were in the zebra room? And Mr. Shin said, what? What do you mean? And Dave told ’em, but they, well, they told me they were working on the air conditioning and. Mr. Shilling said, Dave, they, they’ve burned us down. There’s no air conditioning units in the ze room. It’s just duct work. There’s nothing that they would’ve been working on. We got our hands on the [00:26:00] records. There were, there was no maintenance work that was scheduled for that week at all. So that’s, they were, you know, should not two, two minutes. That should not have been there. Yeah. We also heard from another waitress that came early Saturday morning that, that same Saturday morning and she thought it was strange that the, there were four or five people doing detailed cleaning. They were wiping and cleaning the walls of the long hallway that goes from the front of the room from the front of the building down to the cabaret room, the main showroom. She said they don’t usually do detailed cleaning on a Saturday morning. They would do that on a, on a weekday morning. Well, we now know that they were likely wiping some type of et cetera on those walls because one of the firefighters that was there just as a patron was in that hallway when the fire broke out of the small zebra room. He told authorities at that time, there’s no way that that fire raced down that hallway the way it [00:27:00] did unless it had been accelerated. He was a 20 year fire captain. He knew what he was talking about. They didn’t investigate that whatsoever. The club receptionist told authorities that that very morning there was an explosion down in the basement. The same workers that had been there all week long saying that they were working on the electric and the air conditioning. Again, there was no work scheduled according to the owners that week. We now believe that the fire was set. We have certain evidence that shows that the basement. Although the governor and the immediate investigation said that the basement wasn’t damaged or touched by fire, we have photographs of fire, patterns in the basement. We can see where there was an explosion in one of the air conditioning units that we feel had been set with timers. The fire marshals division, by the way. The governor of Kentucky at that time sent them back to Frankfurt, said that they were not needed. I’ll repeat that. The fire [00:28:00] marshals division that came up to investigate the governor sent them back to Frankfurt and said that the state police would handle the investigation. Before they were sent back to Frankfurt, they in their report said that the basement would be their, their main area of focus. Mm-hmm. They had already found timers in the rubble. But some were set on am and some were set on pm it’s our belief that the fire was set and it was supposed to start at six o’clock Sunday morning. Yeah. That’s how they always do it. Every bar fire we’ve ever had. Four o’clock, five o’clock Sunday morning. Same here Newport I mentioned earlier that the, the dozens of, of club fires that we had in Newport, they were always Yeah. Sunday. So that’s interesting. That’s that’s what we think. In my investigation, we even determined. In my opinion, the two people that actually set the fire I named them in the book they were not very good at what they did. Obviously the a m [00:29:00] pm timers. Mm-hmm. But several months after the Beverly Hills fire, they were hired to torch a warehouse in Covington for the insurance money for the owner. And they set the fire and went outside. Stood around to, to watch and watch and watch, and nothing happened. So one of ’em went over and opened the front door and the place exploded. And they found their bodies down the street. But they just were not very good at what they did. Man. Talk about We don’t think license. We thought there was, there’s, there’s no way that the the mob intended to kill 169 people. They, we, we feel it was, it was most likely set to go off Sunday morning. Interesting. Well, I’ll tell you what, Bob Webster, this has been great. That’s a heck of a story, guys. There’s a lot more juicy details in that book. I highly recommend you get it. Inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club, the untold story behind Kentucky’s worst tragedy happened in May 28th, 1977, practically on the banks of the Ohio River in an area that is long noted for [00:30:00] lawlessness all along that Ohio River on the Southern Bank. It’s a long been noted for lawlessness and mob activity and, and all other kinds of criminal activity. So Bob, I really appreciate you coming on the show and telling the guys all about your book. Absolutely. Now, Bob, you got a website, don’t you? What’s your website? Website is very, very simple. My name is Bob and I’m an author. The website is bob the author.com. Alright, great guys. I’ll have a link to that website down below. You can see all about Bob and a lot more about the fire and his research and other books that he’s got.

Transcribed - Published: 25 August 2025

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with writer and mob historian Stone Wallace—a man whose path has crossed acting, broadcasting, boxing, and a lifelong fascination with organized crime. The focus of today’s conversation is Stone Wallace’s latest book, Hollywood and the Chicago Boys, which uncovers how the Chicago Outfit quietly moved in on Hollywood in the 1930s. With Prohibition fading, figures like Frank Nitti and Tony Accardo shifted their sights to new rackets in film unions, projection booths, and studio lots. Stone Wallace’s obsession with the mob began at age seven with a library book on the 1920s. It lit a fire that would eventually lead Wallace to explore the violent glamour of the underworld in both fiction and nonfiction. Stone Wallace shares how he created the fictional studio boss Sam Bast, modeled after several real-life moguls, and how mob-connected actors like George Raft blurred the lines between movie star and made man. From behind-the-scenes extortion to real-life gangland enforcers like Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, this episode connects the dots between celluloid dreams and street-level muscle. Stone Wallace’s Amazon author page. 🔍 Highlights: Why Frank Nitti saw Hollywood as the Outfit’s next goldmine The real mob ties of actor George Raft The creation of Sam Bast, a fictional composite of Hollywood studio heads Extortion in the projectionist booths and labor unions Mobster myths vs. brutal realities—how fiction reflects fact 📚 Featured Book: Hollywood and the Chicago Boys by Stone Wallace — a hardboiled blend of true crime and noir fiction 🎬 Notable Names Discussed: Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, George Raft, Jack McGurn, Sam Giancana 💬 Quote of the Episode: “Hollywood wasn’t just glitz and cameras. It was a new racket—and the Outfit wanted in.” 0:02 Introduction to the Underworld 1:25 Early Fascination with the Mob 2:29 Hollywood and the Chicago Boys 5:34 The Allure of George Raft 7:22 Researching the Mob’s Hollywood Infiltration 12:05 The Role of Unions in the Mob 14:51 Tony Accardo: The Complex Character 17:05 The Impact of the Mob on Society 23:04 Writing Westerns and a Modern Sheriff 25:43 Upcoming Films and Future Projects Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 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. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, worked a mob in Kansas City for, I don’t know, 14, 15 years. And now in retirement, I am still investigating the mob. So, you know, I interviewed different authors who’ve written mob books, and I’ve got one on the line right now, Stone Wallace. Stone Wallace, he’s been an actor, a broadcast announcer, a boxer, a celebrity interviewer himself. I’ve interviewed a couple of celebrities No big ones But a creative writing guy Media instructor Written advertising. [0:38] For different companies And he really started out writing westerns If I remember right Oh yeah He wrote stories If you ever read Louis L’Amour Which I did when I was young He wrote those kinds of stories But later he got into the mob So Stonewallis, welcome Thank you very much, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be here speaking with you on your broadcast. Well, it’s great to have you on. Tell the guys a little bit about your life, anything you would want them to know about you. Well, I suppose the most important thing would be that I’ve always had an interest in the underworld, and it started at a very young age. I was about seven years old or so when I was visiting my aunt, [1:21] and she had a library book there about the 1920s. And I was sitting there, I kind of flipped through the pages and I came to the section about the underworld, especially the Chicago underworld. [1:33] And I don’t know what it was, but something pretty much clicked at that point. And I just found it incredibly fascinating. And it just kind of stayed with me. And to this day, it has never actually left me. I’ve been fascinated by the mob, especially the Chicago underworld. And I’ve done a lot of research into it. In fact, when I was in grade three, our teacher asked us to write a little short essay about, you know, an important historical figure. And I chose Al Capone, which raised a few eyebrows at that time. But that’s how I went. And it just pretty much grew from there. And I became a fan of the old TV series, The Untouchables, and was fortunate later on in life to interview Robert Stack. And it just grew from there. It’s never gone away. I’ve always been just totally fascinated by historical mobsters. Well, interesting. And your book that we’re going to talk about that has just [2:27] come out is Hollywood and the Chicago Boys. I know a little bit about that story. These guys, they went out and they extorted the heck out of those film studios out there. They made a lot of money through the unions and then… After the unions, of course, the union extortion can then lead into extorting the employers. That’s what they did. And they, you know, they knew how to do that in Chicago. But first, you wrote a book about George Raft, the man who would be Bogart. Now, George Raft is, I mean, he had his own real mafia background. [3:03] So tell us a little bit about George Raft. Well, I became interested in George Raft back in 1972 when I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle in Chicago. [3:12] And they were playing a couple of George Raft movies. We never got them here in Winnipeg. They didn’t really play those kind of films here too much. But they played each Don I Die, and I forget the other picture, but each Don I Die in particular really just captivated me. I know who James Cagney was and I always admired him. But there was something about George Raft in this film, the strength and the presence that he had, that I just became instantly fascinated with him and began researching his life and his career and finding out he was a very interesting fellow. He did have underworld connections. In fact, that helped bring him to Hollywood back in the 1930s through working with Oney Madden, the bootlegger. But James Cagney, I think, summed it up best about George Raft. He said, George Raft was of the underworld, but he wasn’t in the underworld. I believe he was in the fringes because he did help Oney Madden deliver liquor during Prohibition, but he was never actually, you know, a tough guy gangster type, although that’s what he became famous for in movies, and plus his friendships with people like Oney Madden, and particularly Bugsy Siegel. Yeah, that would have happened out there in Hollywood, for sure, because Siegel had a lot of connections out there before his life was ended in Hollywood, and I read something about where Madden is the one that really suggested that he try his luck in the movies and bankrolled him a little bit until he got a break, which is important. [4:35] So that’s the heck of a story on George Rappings. The real gangster who became a movie star. These guys all want to become movie stars. We’ve got one in Kansas City, kind of like to become a movie star, but he did it. Well, Bugsy Siegel, Bugsy Siegel as well, apparently had aspirations to get into film work, according to George Raft. [4:55] He bought motion picture equipment and apparently had George make some footage of him doing various roles. I’d love to see those films. I don’t know if they even exist anymore, But he had aspirations to be a film star, I guess, based on his friendship with George. Well, if you can act, I can act too. But unfortunately, or fortunately, that never came to be. Yeah, I think we all think, well, that acting looks so easy. Anybody could do it. But believe me, nobody can do it except the people who are blessed with that talent, in my opinion. [5:30] Well, George Raft, don’t forget, basically, he was always criticized for his acting. They said he was very wooden. He didn’t show a lot of emotion, but he basically played himself. I mean, you look at someone like Humphrey Bogart, he could vary his characterizations from playing a tough guy in the Petrified Forest to doing Treasure of Sierra Madre, the Maltese Falcon, the African Queen. George Raft’s films basically had him playing the same character, whether it was a gangster or a hero or a working man. The George Raft personality always seemed to come through in those roles. [6:04] Interesting. Interesting. So talking about Hollywood, let’s start talking about Hollywood and Chicago boys. How’d you get in? How’d you do your research? I know this is actually a historical fiction, but it’s based on real people and real facts. So tell us about doing the research on this and what you learned. Well, again, my interest in Chicago and Hollywood, I love old movies and stuff like that, and of course with my interest in your draft. I wanted to write a book that was like a fact fiction dealing with the Chicago mob moving into attempting to take over the Hollywood unions after Capone went away because Prohibition came to an end, and that was their most lucrative source of income. So, you know, Frank Nitti and Cardo and Paul Rica, they wanted to look into new areas to expand their rackets and started off with the theater owners in Chicago, but they decided to go beyond that, go right to the source. So in my book, what they do is they send down Willie Bioff to talk to the production head of a studio. [7:09] It’s fact but fiction what happens there, because I wanted to make it, you know, a fun book to read. There have been so many books written about the Hollywood unions and the Chicago mob and everything. [7:20] So I thought, well, let’s do this like a Roman eclipsed. So the facts are there. The people are there for the most part. Some are fictionalized. I use a lot of the real names, of course. I mean, I have Tony Iacardo, Rika, of course. Ellie and Ness fits into the story, which, of course, in real life he didn’t at that point. But I thought it would be kind of fun to add him into the mix. [7:39] Then I have a character named Billy Shore, if you’ve read the book. And he’s based on comedian Joe E. Lewis. Oh, really? Yeah, he was roughed up by Machine Gun McGurray’s mob when he wouldn’t stay with the club he was at and wanted to move on to further his career, and he was warned if he did that, he wouldn’t live to open. And he did survive, but he was pretty badly brutalized by the hoods. Yeah, it seemed like they cut his throat or something, didn’t they? They damaged his voice in some way. Oh, yeah, they cut his throat. They apparently mutilated his tongue. Well, he started off as a singer, and of course, that was the end of his singing career. He became a comedian. And in my book, what I do is I changed him into a producer. He goes to Hollywood to get away from McGurn’s wrath, and he and his manager… Because he was given some money by Capone, his retribution for what McGurn did to him. He uses that money to invest in a film. And then we move into the whole situation with his film career. And then when McGurn is sent to Hollywood, which of course never happened, but it’s in the book, and he wants to be the front man for setting up the mob’s infiltration into the studios. And so he’s using his old connection with the Billy Shore character and kind of builds from there. [8:58] Interesting, interesting. What about the Hollywood moguls? How did you deal with them? They were, I mean, for a while they were happy just to, you know, they figured there’s cost of doing business to keep these mob guys satisfied and keep the union guys coming in. How did you deal with them? Well, I basically amalgamate them into one character. You know, instead of having them all over the place, like, you know, have Louis B. Mayer being one, Jack Warner being another, Harry Cohen being another. I just put them all into this one character there. I believe his name is Sam Bast. So he’s just the amalgamation of all of them. And so Willie Biaf is the one who deals with him directly. Otherwise, it would kind of get too scattered. So it’s kind of all developed into the one person there. And his dealings with Biaf and discovering that, you know, it’s really a mob infiltration scheme and how he deals with them without going into too much detail and giving the plot away. I don’t want to give too much away here. Not too much away, no. [10:00] I’m kind of curious about the whole thing. Did you deal with the unions at all, the projectionist union? Because they were well known. That’s how they got started in Chicago was infiltrating the projectionist union. Back then, the studios, the national company owned all the theaters throughout the United States. It wasn’t a bunch of little individual guys, mainly, that owned the big cities and the big theaters were owned by the studios. So then they needed the projectionists to go to work. So how did you deal with the union aspect? Well, I have one character. That’s how you say before they move into the Hollywood situation, they deal with one union representative of the Projectors Unionists. I’m sorry. And that’s how they start off. And he’s kind of a hard-edged guy himself, and he’s dealing with the mob at that point before they decide to move to California and go on a bigger scale. But he becomes a major character in the book as well. And actually, it’s him that kind of leads to Frank Nitti’s downfall through circumstances that are kind of unusual. But again, don’t want to say too much as to what happens there. [11:14] I have one character there and he’s a tough Irishman who stands up to the mob when McGurn comes to lay down the law as far as they’re concerned, Now, Tony Accardo, or Joe Batters, in real life, he was able to stay above and away from all this and made it through all this. He was more like a young hitter, had a crew or something, when you’re talking about back in the 30s. What part is he going to play in this? Accardo is an immensely popular guy. Oh, he’s a major character in the book. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And talks about how his ascension in the mob there kind of coincides with McGurn kind of losing favor in the mob, [12:03] which actually happened in real life in the 30s. Don’t forget that Ocardo was Machine Gun McGurn’s protege, in essence. Oh, that’s right, isn’t it? Yeah, he brought him into the Chicago mob with Capone. So, yeah, he’s an interesting guy. I’ve always found Ocardo fascinating because if you’ve ever read the book by Bill Romer, a genuine godfather. [12:25] The man really had two sides. He could be as vicious as they come, but Romer always said, I had a grudging respect for him because he could be a good person too. So I always thought a person like that would be very interesting to write about. So I put him into my book as a character. I think I present him, it’s a fictional representation, but I think I present him very fairly on both sides. From both sides, yeah. I get accused of that. You only show one side of people. And, you know, I interviewed a guy, a guy named Carlo Morelli, who as a young man was in… A Cardo sphere, if you will. And his father was, and, and a Cardo needed somebody to take his daughter to be a prom date for his daughter. Uh, probably the guys didn’t really want to take her. And, and he called this kid in cause he’s knew the kid’s dad. And he said, Hey, I want you to take my daughter to the prom, you know, here’s some money. And, and, you know, I have somebody drive y’all. And so the guy told the story of him doing that. And, and I tell you what, Stone, I’ve interviewed a lot of people that had a lot of different stories. And this guy, he really did that, in my opinion. He really did that. He had too many good details. And then the girl took off that night and dumped him for a while and went off some other friends. He had to go back alone, and then she kind of came back with these other frequencies. [13:49] It’s hard to understand. So he did have that other side. And he told the kid, he said, you know, I understand. She’s kind of wild. [13:58] I think I’ve heard that story, actually. That’s right. And the poor kid was, oh, my God, I’ve got to tell, you know, you’re part of the law boss of Chicago that his daughter ran out. You know, oh, my gosh. I wouldn’t envy him. I’ll say that’s one girl, you know, you wouldn’t really want to date. And, you know, because on top of that, she was quite an independent soul from what I hear. No, she was. She was. She took off with a high school friend in a brand new car that he bought her for a graduation. And it just disappeared for about a week or two. And then finally called back for about a fee out in Arizona or something. Oh, he was mad. You know, I mean, this could happen to any parent, even, you know, Tony Ocardo. Yeah, but he’s the one parent you wouldn’t want to have to report that to, you know. [14:48] You know, I mean, we know what happened when people offended Ocardo. You know, look at the burglary at his house. I mean, oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. I think everybody listening probably or watching knows the story of his house, of burglary of his house. Man, a bunch of guys got killed after that. But I don’t know, five or six got killed right after that. I’ve done one story on it. So, guys, you know, look back and see if you can’t find that story. It’s a heck of a story. [15:17] Well, the bottom line is, I mean, after that happened, You’re probably living in the safest neighborhood in Chicago. No one’s going to be coming around there to do any business, that’s for sure. You know, like they say, these Italian neighborhoods, these old-school Italian neighborhoods are always really safe because they left out for everybody in the neighborhood. I just talked with a guy about our North Indian border. I don’t get laid in the 50s, 60s, and 70s up until the 80s. I mean, you can keep anything laying on the street. You’ll still be there the next day. Oh, yeah. And, you know, it’s maybe a little bit off topic, but it’s the same thing with Las Vegas, because I was working with Elvis Presley’s songwriter and actress Dolores Fuller on Autobiography some years back. And she would tell me quite often, she says, you know, when the mobs ran the casinos, this was the safest city in the US. But once the corporations took over, things changed pretty drastically. And so a lot of people, I think, felt at that time, you know, we’re glad we have the mob here, you know, taking care of taking care of business as such because people felt safer then. But the corporations took over and it wasn’t the same. And the good thing about the mob, if you will, being law enforcement, probably not such a good thing from my viewpoint. But that’s true. You know, they didn’t they didn’t worry about such niceties as probable cause or due process. That’s right. Roofed your hands or kicked the shit out of you. [16:46] That’s right, yep. But, you know, it worked. It worked. I mean, friendship was friendship. But, again, like you say, you know, you don’t cross them. You know, loyalty is very strong within the underworld. [16:59] And as long as you, you know, keep straight and follow the rules, you’re pretty okay. But, yeah, you make one misstep and that can be, you know, bang, bang. Really? You end up in the desert somewhere. [17:15] So I guess, you know, we’ve got this Hollywood and Chicago boys. It sounds like a really interesting book. And you’ve got a bunch of other interesting books. Tell the guys a little bit about them. If you can entice them. You’ve got this. We talked about we may do this whole show on this. [17:33] Desperados, Gangsters of the Dirty 30s. Is that about John Dillinger and those guys like that? Well, you know, that’s another book that I wanted to look into for some kind of different research. And the thing about that book is I found, I mean, I was never there, so I don’t know the facts, but I did a lot of research into different areas of that. And a lot of what was officially reported is questioned, is controversy. For instance, the Dillinger actually, actually Dillinger who was killed outside the biograph. Well, there’s a lot of information out there that kind of says, you know what? he might have gotten away and somebody else was used as a passy. That would have been Jimmy Lawrence who resembled Dillinger. [18:14] Because apparently after Dillinger was shot, his father said, that’s not Johnny, his own father. There were some differences. Apparently, he had an appendix scar that Dillinger didn’t have. He had a heart condition that Dillinger apparently didn’t have because he was quite athletic. These are the kind of things I wanted to put into that book. Ma Barker, for instance. Was Ma Barker really the mastermind of the Barker-Karpus gang? A criminal named Blackie Audette said, that’s ridiculous. She couldn’t even prepare breakfast, never mind putting together a bank robbery scheme. And then there’s the Alvin Karpis story. Was he actually personally arrested by J. Edgar Hoover, or did Hoover come out after he was already safely in cuffs to reap the glory? There’s a lot of stories there that are just fascinating. You know what happened there. I’ve been a policeman. I know what happened there. He wanted the glory. [19:06] He had him wait or whatever, or they had him, and he showed up about the same time, and they released a story and got a few photos. [19:17] Well, that’s the thing, because he was being criticized because his people were doing the work, and they said, well, Hoover himself has never made an arrest, so they set this whole thing up there. And once he was safely secured, Karpis, Hoover came out, and he was kind of recognized as the hero of the day there. So to the day he died, Elvin Karpis said, no, he said, that’s not true. In fact, his exact words were the story of Hoover the Hero is false. Yeah, I believe that one. I believe that one. [19:51] Like I say, I mean, you know, I wasn’t there at the time. So basically all you do is research and try to throw different, you know, okay, is this the official version? Is it believable or it could be? I mean, look at Pretty Boy Floyd. There’s another story about him that he might have been assassinated because he knew the truth about the Kansas City massacre, that he wasn’t involved in that. And I believe he wasn’t. Yeah, well. Well, I bet those agents thought he was, and there was no quarter spared, I got a feeling, because that FBI agent, the first FBI agent that ever was killed was killed in that. And I think they believed that pretty boy Floyd, if he wasn’t the trigger man on it, he was there, and that was all they needed, especially back in those days. Well, that was Raymond Caffrey, yeah, he was the FBI agent who was killed. But see, the thing is, Floyd was living well in Kansas City. That was a good hideout for a lot of criminals at that time. They were protected if they had the money. So the question is, why would he risk? And he was quite identifiable too. Why would he risk doing an act like that when he was protected and he had a pretty good life there? [21:03] So after he was shot apparently in the field there, they asked him if he was involved. He said, I had nothing to do with that. And apparently the original story is that he died. But then I’ve heard that after that, because he was denying it, that they actually put a bullet into him. So, again, true or not, I don’t know. But it’s interesting to speculate. Really? So one more about you. You did a post-World War II New York underworld book called Requiem for a Gangster. You want to tell us a little bit about that one? Well, that’s a total fiction book. A total fiction, okay. Yeah, it’s just a gangster story I wanted to write. It’s kind of based on various movies I’ve seen. I thought I’d take various aspects of films I enjoy and put them together into a story around this one guy who comes out of prison and wants to go straight, but he falls in with his boyhood pal who’s also released from prison, but he’s back into the gang, into the racket lifestyle. And the circumstances that bring the main character back into that sphere. [22:13] So it’s just like I say, just a fun read. Okay. All right. Interesting. Well, you’ve got a whole bunch of Western books where you guys are interested in Western books. I’ve got a good friend. I’m going to have to turn him on to you. He loves Westerns. I mean, this guy loves Westerns. So he’s retired now, and he’s reading, I think, a book a week right now. I have to turn him on to you. I appreciate that. I enjoyed writing Westerns. In fact, I would have probably kept up with them, but both of my Western publishers decided to cease publishing Western books because they said people weren’t buying cowboy novels. And that’s unfortunate because, you know, back in the 60s, that’s all you ever had were Westerns. You had the books, you had the TV series, movies, and they say nowadays, no, people just aren’t really buying Westerns. And that’s unfortunate because they’re a fun genre to write. [23:04] Yeah i bet they are i mean that’s i was i was born in brance where i became a policeman i mean instead of getting a horse and a 30 30 and a 45 hope they gave me a police car and a shotgun, well you’re a lot you’re yeah you’re a modern day lawman there you go, we’re we were just uh in the 70s when i came on all those young guys baby boomers we were just young cowboys out there riding the streets. [23:33] Well, a modern day sheriff, you can’t do better than that, that’s for sure. Really? Yeah, I was reading your background, I was very impressed, I thought, wow, you did a lot in your life too, you know. Oh, I’ve done a little bit, I guess, I get bored easily, I think, I’m always looking for another challenge. [23:51] Well, that’s the way to keep active and young. There you go. You can’t say there’s anything wrong with it. That’s for sure. Really. I haven’t started working on a screenplay. One of my stories was this guy that’s never sold a screenplay, but he’s worked on it. I don’t know. He’s got it done. He sent it off to somebody who he never heard anything back. But you know how that goes. You’ve probably done a screenplay or two in your life. It’s a tough world. No, I haven’t done that, but I still keep on hoping somebody might pick up one of my books for a movie. You know, I wish I could have run into one of the production people here who were filming the Travolta movie, and I would have loved to have maybe given them a book or something and say, well, here’s something you might want to consider for the future. Really? Oh, yeah. Guys, Stone is the one. He lives in Winnipeg, and he was telling me, I put it on my Facebook page the other day, that they’re filming this new Tony Accardo movie. And I think it’s going to be something about the murder of JFK, but I’m not sure. Johnny Roselli, John Travolta is going to play Johnny Roselli, we think, and Manny Patinkin, I can never know how to spell that, just to pronounce that name, is going to be Tony Accardo. And they’ve been actually filmed some shots up in Winnipeg. What else can you tell the guys about that? [25:06] You know, I really don’t know too much because I actually just found out about that recently. I heard that John Travolta was not coming to Winnipeg, but until a few days ago or maybe a week or so I didn’t even know what the movie was about so I just did some checking to say okay Travolta is the one that big what’s going on and it’s already he’s making this movie it’s a story about the mob’s possible involvement in the assassination of JFK and it looks like you’ve got all these real life characters who are going to be a part of this so yeah I don’t know too much more than that I wish I did but I’m going to certainly be in line to see that movie and I’m not sure if it’s going to [25:40] be a theatrical film or maybe it’ll go right to television and HBO or something. I don’t know. But I’m going to be watching out for it. All right. Don Wallace, it’s been a pleasure having you on. One last thing you would like to tell everybody. Uh, well, it’s just, it’s, it’s been my pleasure speaking with you. I can say I’m very impressed with what you’ve done. I admire your, uh, your background and, uh, and I love the fact that you’re doing a podcast that deals with a subject that I’m particularly fond of. And if anybody is interested in my book, it’s available on Amazon. Uh, it’s, and it’s, uh, uh, online and I believe Barnes and Nobles and the bookstores of that type. So if anybody’s interested in taking a look at it, uh, it’s, it’s available there. And I hope that anybody who does read it enjoys it and has fun with it. [26:28] All right, Stone. And guys, I’ll have links to the Amazon page for Hollywood and Chicago Boys by Stone Wallace. And you can click on his other link on that Amazon page. You can see the other books he’s written if you’re interested in Desperados, Gangsters of the Dirty 30s or Requiem for a Gangster. Or you want to see some Western, read a Western or two like my friend Bobby. So thanks a lot for coming on the show oh and one and one more thing if anybody’s interested you can check out my website oh you got a website oh you do I forgot I’m sorry I forgot no not a problem tell us about it yeah it’s www.com, www.stonewallis.net and it talks about the books I’ve written, some of the interviews I’ve done with some celebrities such as Lloyd Nolan, Robert Stack, Anthony Quinn. So it might be interesting if anybody wants to take a peek at that and see what some of my background is. And the other writing I do, I do a lot of freelance for various magazines. Pardon me, like I’m a regular contributor to the Jolson Journal and Nostalgia Digest. In fact, their summer issue just has my Dan Deerrier story. So if anybody’s interested in checking it out, it’s there. All right. That’s stonewallis.net. Now, guys, that’s .net, N-E-T, don’t do .com. That’s right. That’s right. Because I’ve made that mistake before. Well, there’s no website here. I’ve done this with somebody else. That’s a .net. [27:55] All right, Stone. Thanks so much for coming on. Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you, Gary. Thank you. All right. Good. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem. If you’ve got that problem or gambling, if not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go. And I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really apprec

Transcribed - Published: 18 August 2025