Gary interviews Mary Spicuzza, an investigative reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who discusses her personal connection to the Milwaukee organized crime landscape through her cousin, Augie Palmisano. Augie was killed in a car bombing in 1978, an event that had a significant impact on Mary’s family, yet was rarely spoken of. Growing up, Mary’s father instilled in her a cautionary respect for organized crime, advising her to avoid falling in with the “wrong crowd.” However, this left her with limited understanding of Augie’s life and tragic death until she delved into extensive investigative research.

Mary chronicles her journey into uncovering the mystery surrounding Augie’s murder, citing familial silence and societal stigma against discussing such topics. With Augie being part of the Milwaukee crime family, the Balistrieri Family, his history revealed a world filled with complexity, where he was not just a victim but also an active participant in gambling. Mary emphasizes that Augie ran a bar and was deeply involved in the gambling scene, but he was also a caring figure in his community, known for his generous acts and connections with local residents. This narrative complicates the typical portrayal of organized crime figures and invites listeners to see them as multifaceted individuals rather than solely as criminals.

The conversation touches on the broader context of organized crime in the 1970s, detailing how crime families in cities like Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland interlinked in schemes, particularly the infamous Las Vegas skim operation. Prominent figures like Frank Balistrieri, known as a ruthless mob boss in Milwaukee, are discussed, highlighting the violent measures he allegedly employed to assert his dominance. This included extortion and bombings, methods that claimed lives and instilled fear within the community. Augie’s murder was surrounded by speculation; many believed it was due to a refusal to pay tribute or cuts to Balistrieri, who was known for his violent reputation.

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Transcript

[0:42] Thank you so much for having me. Now, Mary, tell me how I should really pronounce Spicuzza. Well, if you’re in Sicily, my family’s from Termini Moresi, and I’ve gone back to visit a few times, and they will say, if they see my name or my passport, they’ll say, ah, Maria Caterina Spicuzza. There we go. There we go. So I don’t expect you to say that, but it’s always lovely this time of year if you want to go and you can practice.

[1:08] Yeah, I’ve been wanting to go. I’ll get there eventually. I’m sure I want to see the volcanoes is one of the things I want to see.

[1:15] So Mary is an investigative reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and she also has her own personal connection to the Milwaukee crime family, the Ballesteri family, her cousin, and she has done a whole investigative piece on that, a big long article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which is online, by the way. I’ll have a link to that article down below. And she started her own podcast talking about this journey that she had in trying to uncover the murder of my cousin Augie, and that’s the name of the podcast, guys, My Cousin Augie. So look down in the show notes for that, uh, that link. So Mary, welcome. And, uh, you know, I, this is just, uh, it’s gotta be compelling as heck because you were, you know, you knew Augie and you know, all these guys and you’re,

[2:01] you were warned by people not to get into this. So start telling us about how you got into this.

[2:07] Yeah. So this was something that, um, uh, My family did not talk about and like pretty aggressively didn’t talk about. So my dad was very, my dad and cousin Augie, Augie or August, Augustino, Palmisano, they were born and they were both born around the same time. I believe they grew up together as cousins. But at a certain point, well, Augie was killed when I was a very little girl. He was killed in 1978. And my dad would not talk about it. And he would only say things like, don’t fall in with the wrong crowd. You know what happened to Cousin Augie. Don’t gamble. You don’t want to end up like Cousin Augie.

[2:51] Don’t talk back to the wrong person. You know what happened to Cousin Augie. And it was like, Dad, and I was a baby of five. And we’re all like, Dad, we don’t know what happened to Cousin Auggie because you won’t tell us. We just know it was something really, obviously really bad happened to him. But I went years before I realized what had happened to Cousin Auggie. And what had happened was that he was leaving for work one morning and went

[3:15] down to his parking garage and tried to start his car and was immediately killed. There was a car bomb, and it blew up.

[3:24] He was burned very badly and killed instantly. Luckily for the city and for others, nobody was in the parking garage at the time. And because it was like an enclosed concrete big parking garage, the damage was contained to just empty cars and the building itself. But it could have been. I talked to some retired police officers who talked about with that kind of explosion and the amount of sticks of dynamite that were used in the booster that it could have damaged several city blocks and killed a lot more people if it had gone off in the open. Yeah. And he was known, your mob boss up there, Frank Balistrieri, was known as the bad bomber. He liked to use bombs. Yes, he did like to use bombs. It was interesting because I wonder if how much of that was like a nickname in real time or like a nickname after the fact as people, because I heard like some people called him like Mr. B for Mr. Balistrieri or Mr. Big or Mr. Slick. fancy pants was one that yeah and i know some of the kansas city uh organized crime leaders kind of mocked him and called him fancy pants because they didn’t necessarily like him um but i do think yeah he is somebody i don’t think we know um i know there are rumors that he was behind a bombing or two in las vegas including the failed um if the failed car bombing that someone survived because of the car, like the makeup of the car.

[4:53] So I think, but yeah, Augie was killed. Obviously no one was ever convicted in the murder. Frank Balastrieri was convicted of other things. So we can’t say definitively who ordered it and who placed the bomb, but I think we have a pretty good idea of what happens. So tell us a little bit about your cousin Augie. He didn’t just appear one morning and have a bomb placed in his car. There’s some backstory here. So tell us a little bit about Augie. Yeah. So I learned a lot of this backstory as I was reporting because I knew so little about him from us not talking about him. But from what I was told. And what I was able to report. I did request all the FBI files on Augie. He was a gambler. I don’t want to portray him. And even some of our family members were like, we don’t want to portray him as this saint or angel.

[5:43] He was a gambler. He was a bar owner. A lot of gambling was going on in his tavern, some horse racing, some sports gambling, some money was changing hands, we will say. And this was in a neighborhood that’s known as the Third Ward in Milwaukee. Now it’s kind of this posh neighborhood where there’s boutiques and places for like boozy brunches and anthropology and plant stores.

[6:13] But it was not that neighborhood back then. This was where a lot of the Milwaukee Sicilians. When they came to Milwaukee, a lot of us, myself included, our grandparents when they got here, or great grandparents, grandparents in my case, Milwaukee, the third ward was a pretty, very working class, very like pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Lots of people did what my family did was sell fruit, sell bananas, selling places where you could work, even if you didn’t know English and you didn’t have like a high school education because a lot of people just didn’t have that privilege. But it was a rougher neighborhood back then. And Augie’s was kind of, it had, it was kind of, it was changing when Augie was killed. And I don’t know what he would think if he was able to, you know, come back or my grandparents come back and see it now because it’s such a different world. But back then there was a lot of people working round the clock in the produce business and they’d want to go and have a drink and some food and maybe do a little gambling afterwards.

[7:12] But, you know, I think I was raised to think that Augie was like a bad guy. And I think that the way people would talk about organized crime victims back then is like, they had it coming. And, you know, and I think now I’m like, wow, he was in some ways, I feel like, I should be more like Augie, not in the gambling, but there were all these stories of his generosity where if somebody got sick and couldn’t do their produce route, he would pick it up for them and just give them the money so they wouldn’t lose their livelihoods or sponsor all these softball leagues or bowling leagues. The generosity and the looking out for community. Certainly, I think people’s notions of gambling have changed. So a lot of the police officers and the FBI agents I talked to back then who were like, yeah, we tried to build cases on gambling. Now it’s practically legal. But back then we’d bust him for, you know, sports gambling or pony racing. And, you know, they kind of the idea was you get the little fish to try to get the big fish.

[8:16] But there was also a lot more to Augie’s backstory that I was not aware of. Like he, there was bad blood from between the Balistrieri family and the Palmezanos going back to his older brother fell in love with the Balistrieri. And when his family found out that he wanted to marry a Balistrieri, I think the phrase was like, what are you crazy? And they really tried to talk him out of it and didn’t want him marrying into the Balistrieri family, which I’m sure the Balistrieris did not appreciate. But it’s my understanding that when he basically married into the Balistrieri family and was told, you’re now a member of the Balistrieri family, you can’t be part of the Palmozano family anymore, which apparently broke his mother’s heart. As any, I cannot imagine, I guess he went to his mother and said, I can’t love you anymore. I can’t come to Sunday pasta dinners anymore, which if you’re, I mean, I think probably not even not being Sicilian, but like, I can’t imagine my, if my father had said that to his mother, like, I feel like it would have been world war three. He was like, he was his mama’s, he was the youngest of 13 and very, you know, so, um.

[9:27] I think that there was bad blood going back to that time. And apparently his son, this lost, they kind of disowned him and said like, okay, if you’d want to be part of our family, you’re not part of our family. And so when Augie’s nephew, who was also Frank Ballestieri’s nephew, went and asked him for a job at his bar, and apparently Augie gave him a job, which Frank Ballestieri did not like. And apparently there’s some wiretap transcript or I’m sorry, not wiretap transcript. A witness overheard Augie arguing with Balistrieri. And apparently it was about a shared relative and this, you know, Augie giving him a job. And apparently Frank Balistrieri said, I will like chop you up and write your name in blood.

[10:14] And it’s so I think beyond Augie gambling, running gambling and apparently refusing to give Frank a cut of his profits. Which, as you know, I’m, yes.

[10:26] So I think that, you know, it’s hard to say like, what was the last straw? But I think this bad blood was building for a while. But I do think there were rumors that Augie Ballast, or I’m sorry, there were rumors that Augie was an informant or that Ballast jury said he was an informant. However, a lot of people said like, you know, FBI agents I talked to, federal prosecutors I talked to said like, police officers said, we have no information or we don’t have anything to suggest that Augie was an informant. But sometimes Frank would say someone was an informant because he wanted permission from Chicago to kill them. And he couldn’t say, this person hired my nephew or this person hurt my feelings. But the informant was something that would get him the approval to car bomb somebody in a really public way in downtown Milwaukee, um, in a way that saying he hurt my ego would not.

[11:24] So I’ve looked, yeah. I’ve noticed that. And I saw it a couple of times in Kansas city. And I’ve noticed that in some other cases that many times they’ll start, these rumors will start being floating out there, uh, denigrating a guy, this, this last one guy had a guy that disappeared. And so I’m asking around here just lately. It was like 30 years ago he said oh he was gay you know oh he was uh he was going to testify and none of it was true but what they do is as you just pointed out they start denigrating the person accusing them of things that would be uh the antithesis of that in that lifestyle to denigrate them that makes it easier when something does happen to them they just say oh that guy was you know was this or that or the other. And so it’s an interesting thing. It happens, I think, throughout the entire, United States and mob families like that, because as you’ve described, everybody’s so close. They live close together. They’re interrelated in some manner. Everybody’s a cuz. You know, that’s why everybody calls everybody cuz, because everybody is a cuz. Yes. I’ve got so many cousins. I wouldn’t even, I mean, when you’re the, when my dad’s the youngest of 13 and, you know, a lot of his brothers had kids and their brothers and sisters had kids and And it is, yeah, it is amazing how many cousins you have in that kind of situation.

[12:47] And if you’re not their cousin or true cousin, sometimes you’re the cuz. Anyhow. Yes. Yeah. Or a lot of them went to grew up together. They came out of the third ward. They went to the same high school. They, you know, Ballester, he went to a more prestigious school, I would say. He went to Marquette and then dropped out of Marquette Law School, which Augie did not, you know, but went to the same public high school. So a lot of them went back years. Now, so those pictures over your shoulder there. Yeah. Is that that’s Augie? Yeah, this is Augie. So we I was kind of there were so many stacks of documents that I was going through. Like we’re talking thousands of pages of police reports and Augie’s homicide

[13:32] file and other homicide files and FBI reports that I started. Sometimes I tend to over-report, which I always think is better than under-reporting, but I thought this board would kind of help me just keep everything in focus of, I put Augie up. He was a handsome guy, I think, but this was, he was kind of in the center of, this was all unsolved homicide victims that they would, people would refer to them as the murders often of people who were believed to have been organized.

[14:04] Murdered by organized crime. Many of them were believed to have been ordered by Frank Balistrieri, but again, he was never convicted of murder. He was convicted of gambling and that sort of thing, extortion, but not murder. And then here is Frank Balistrieri, who’s deceased. John Alioto, who was his father-in-law that he kind of took over the family business from.

[14:28] There’s actually some really interesting wiretap recordings that one of my colleagues, someone who was an investigative reporter before me, actually got to listen to, which is phenomenal. But she hired somebody to translate. They were arguing in Sicilian and going back between Sicilian and English. But John Aliotto, his father-in-law, was actually begging him to kill fewer people and be less bloodthirsty and, and, um, have some mercy on people. And because he was killing other Sicilians, um, you know, and it was, I think he thought like, cool it with the killing and, and Balistrieri’s answer was, no, I want to kill more people. And at one point he said like, gosh, if only I could have a funeral home or a, you know, a cemetery, so I could bury more people. Um, and then his sons, um his sons who have both passed away uh john passed away last year um he did not want to be interviewed for the story i did reach out to him i wanted wanted to be fair and give him the chance to talk um you know anytime we we try to do that anytime we’re mentioning somebody’s name that you want to give them the opportunity and then we had a row of i don’t know if you can see these folks but um, Some of the suspected hitmen who we believed are kind of the top suspect of the bomber was this man.

[15:48] George Nick, Nick Montos, who was a kind of prolific, involved in kind of organized crime, burglaries, that sort of thing. So, but again, since no one. Enforcer type. He was kind of an enforcer type. He looks pretty tough. He was. Yeah, he was pretty tough. I think he first was arrested maybe at age 14. And I think he was from Florida. And he was a safecracker, a burglar, and kind of a go-to guy for Chicago organized crime. He was seen in Milwaukee right around the time of an attempted car bombing of Augie’s best friend who survived because the bomb didn’t go off. But it was somebody who, Vince Maniaci, who his brother, Augie Maniaci, had been killed and gunned down in an alley. And Vince, shortly before Augie was killed, Vince was driving and had trouble starting his car and then was trying to figure out why it wouldn’t go more than like 15, 20 miles an hour and pulled into his mechanic shop and they opened the hood and saw the mechanic said, I think it’s a bomb because it was like very similar, apparently in structure to the bomb that killed Augie, but a bunch of sticks of dynamite with a booster close to the engine on like the driver’s side.

[17:06] So unclear whether that was designed to kill him or designed to be a warning but certainly could have killed him and a lot of people if it had gone off if you see now now are most of these bombs did you find in the reports did they report that most of them in their opinion were made by the same person in the same manner that was the that was the general uh quite a few folks including a couple of FBI agents now retired, felt strongly that they were built by the same person built based on how similar they were and just the method of, you know, planted overnight, stick the dynamite with a booster, the alligator clips. Obviously, maybe somebody learned from the same teacher. So it could have been, they could have franchised out. But I think a lot of

[17:52] people felt like it was Nick George Montos or Nick Montos who was the bomb builder. But again, And I don’t want to convict anybody of who was not convicted. But that seemed to be the general sense was the same person. And they had a strong feeling of who it was. Now, Augie and these other two fellows were they were all killed within a short period of time. So was there there must have been some kind of was it over maybe not paying the tribute or what did you what did you learn about that? They somehow they were kind of connected. That’s what my policeman’s mind says. These three murders were connected.

[18:27] That, yeah. So I think there were, Frank Ballast, there was a trail of unsolved murders that that extended earlier. And there was an attempted bombing of a restaurant as far back as like the 19, I want to say 55. It was the 50s, who was this Fazio family owned this restaurant that apparently, and there was apparently tension because Frank Ballestieri wanted to buy a restaurant or a bar that they had bought. And so he was a top suspect in that bombing where nobody was killed, but there were severe damage and definitely shook people up. And somebody, one of the older Fazios died of a heart attack shortly afterwards, the senior member of the family. So I think there was a sense that he was not shy about using force and using bombings and murdering people. However, all of Augie and Vince Maniaci, the attempted car bombing of Vince, the fatal car bombing of Augie, and the shooting death of Augie Maniachi, those were all in the 70s, 75 to 78. And I think at the time, there were a few things going on. There was Frank had taken over from his father-in-law, brushed off his concerns about being too violent.

[19:44] By a lot of accounts, Frank was a pretty ruthless person who wanted power and was not afraid to, uh, exercise force or to, to get it. Um, uh, so I don’t think from, from people I interviewed, a lot of people said like, you know, he was not the most popular mob boss, which might sound funny, but there were some like John, you didn’t hear of that kind of brute force being

[20:09] used on the regular from somebody like John Alioto. So I think a lot of people felt like he didn’t earn his, he didn’t earn his place that he kind of got it through marrying the boss’s daughter and that they didn’t necessarily respect him. And they called him fancy pants behind his back as somebody who was kind of a more.

[20:29] He was not like a, I mean, he went to Marquette Law School, which a lot of people in organized crime did not, he didn’t finish his law degree, but just, you know, that he was seen as somebody who was more kind of an elite, I guess. And that people didn’t necessarily feel like he had earned his place and that some people were maybe, not paying a cut or that they felt like he wasn’t giving them, they weren’t giving him the proper respect, I guess. So I think he maybe, from some of the folks that I interviewed, felt like he was trying to put people in their place. And I think Augie was somebody who does not sound from everything I’ve heard that he was not exactly the.

[21:14] Kowtow to somebody in power type of person, that he was more of the like, this is my money, I earned it, I’m keeping it. And from what I’ve heard and what I’ve read and been told that Frank Bell’s jury, it wasn’t just like gambling businesses that he wanted to cut off. It was if you, he was very into the vending machines. So he would often go and show up at a restaurant, whether they wanted a vending machine or not, he was going to try to put it in there and shake them down and try to get cuts of their profits, legal and illegal businesses, from what I was told by folks like Joe Pistone. So if he had somebody who was making a lot of money and a very successful as a bar owner, Augie had a produce company. He also had his gambling side hustle.

[21:59] I think with that kind of money changing hands, he sees somebody who’s successful who’s not giving him a cut. And I think it might’ve been from some of the folks I talked to, it was, well, I want to make an example out of him and show who’s boss and remind people who’s boss. And there was some interesting stuff in the police reports of FBI surveillance on Balistrieri, where shortly after Augie was killed, he went to another family and said, like, about that bar, I want to buy from you. And they, from what the police report said, they basically sold him what he wanted to buy. And then for the first time in their life, took a trip to Italy to get away, which kind of makes you wonder if it was the message was received and it was like, give Frank Balistrieri what he wants and try to, you know, be careful when you start your car or be careful where you go. Wow.

[22:53] Interesting. You know, another interesting thing I find from my viewpoint, those same years in Kansas City, we had a mob war and we had killings and bombings. And in Cleveland, that was during the time when Danny Green and Kill the Irishman story, if you know that at all, they had a mob war going on with killings and bombings and stuff in Cleveland during those years. I often thought it was kind of like as the baby boomers started growing up and the old guys that came, you know, were like their dads,

[23:28] like baby boomers were moving in and the dads were wanting to kill them off. Keep them out. So I don’t know, but.

[23:35] Wow, that’s so interesting that you say that. And in this case, like John Frankie was saying, he did this really interesting presentation when I talked to him and he was very gracious with his time. But he was saying that at one point he said he asked the FBI to get him a list of all of the like made members in Milwaukee. And he looked at it and he said it was a remarkably small crew and a remarkably old crew. And that Frank was not. And that part of, he kind of thought part of why maybe Frank welcomed Joe Pistone and Ty Cobb, who was undercover as Tony Conti. And um you know ty not as much as joe pistone he really wanted like really was recruiting donnie brasco to join his crew and come to milwaukee um but john was like i wonder i think he wanted to show off these like young guys because his crew was so old and i think some of the old timers were kind of like who is this punk kid frank balestri who does he think he is you know, ordering me around and telling me what to do. And so like when, when Augie Maniaci was murdered, I mean, he’s somebody who was older.

[24:46] He was an older gentleman, you know, he was like starting his car to go to work. And I, I don’t want to misspeak, but like, he was not a young guy. So yeah, but it is, it’s interesting that he, that I think in some ways, Frank was not getting the respect from the older guys who might’ve been worked their way up from the streets and started with lots of more, you know, TVs falling off trucks or meat, you know, meat, you know.

[25:12] Like very petty crime. We’re talking, this was not like, these were not big time, you know, criminal masterminds. They were not skimming from Vegas casinos. They were, you know, hijacking a meat truck or something. Interesting. Yeah. As, as Balistrier was. And at that time he was, you know, he started in that skim. Did he, did he like let other people know, or did he keep that really close to his vest. I know in Kansas City they kept that really close to their vest, but he did share it here with some of the other old timers.

[25:45] Yeah, it was so interesting. I don’t know if you’ve talked to the retired agent who was Gary Magnuson, who was here in Milwaukee and then Vegas. So it was really interesting talking to Gary because he kind of recounted some of what was in the book Casino about Frank was really trying to keep it close to his vest, where he knew somebody on the Teamsters pension fund here and introduced Alan Glick. And he had that kind of sweetheart deal that for his kids to essentially get ownership of this, they could claim ownership of this casino for like very, very little money. And that, so they had this deal worked out. And apparently that was in a safe hidden at the Shorecrest Hotel, which is not too far from where I’m sitting here now. Unfortunately I wish I could take you on a driving tour still there not owned by the balisteries anymore um but um I think he kept it initially very very close to his vest and apparently that got him in trouble you probably know more about this but got him in trouble with some of the Kansas City folks when they started asking Alan Glick and called him in and um I think there was a quote um it was either in Gary’s book or in Casino where they said like they talked to Alan Glick and said something like, drive up to Milwaukee and get that fancy pants here. I don’t care if he’s in his pajamas. Bring him here. We have some questions for him.

[27:12] I think he kept it maybe less close to his vest after that just because I don’t think he had much of a… I didn’t get the sense it was necessarily out of generosity and team spirit that he was deciding to share, but more wanting to not get killed by the Kansas City folks. Yeah. I think so. But you probably know more about that than I do. Yeah, that’s a whole other story. And I wouldn’t do that some other time, but that is a whole other story. But I’m really interested in…

[27:42] And you mentioned Joe Pistone and wanting to bring in new people. I know you interviewed Joe and that other agent who was undercover in Milwaukee at the time under the name of Tony Conte. Is that correct? And he had a, did he have a, trying to start a vending business, which anywhere you see vending machines back in those days. And to me today, if you see video poker machines or something, you got somewhere there’s going to be some mob involvement. I don’t know where, but, but vending machines was huge back then.

[28:13] And this guy was moving in. So you got into that in your research. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So back then, I think that back then the, you know, Joe Pistone had been so successful as Donnie Brasco infiltrating organized crime. So they started sending him to different cities around the country. And there was a agent in Milwaukee here, Ty Cobb, Gail Tyrus Cobb, I think he went by Ty.

[28:45] Although then he started going by Tony Conti. That was his undercover. But from all accounts, and especially from talking with Joe, he was having a lot of trouble. He was not having the success that Joe had infiltrating. He set up, I think he called it Best Vending Company. He set it up on the east side, not too far from the Shorecrest Hotel, where that was like Ballast Jury headquarters. So he was basically kind of thrown in in their face, you know, like I’m here and I’m trying to open. And then, but he was just not having a lot of luck or getting a lot of reaction. I think unbeknownst to them, Frank Ballast Jury had guys following him and he was thinking of killing him. But to his, as far as he knew, he wasn’t getting any kind of.

[29:31] Interaction. They were probably just following him and trying to decide when to kill him. But so then they bring in, they’re like, you know, talk to Joe about it. Like, how about you come here? So Joe starts kind of from what he described, kind of, you know, laying breadcrumbs out for Lefty saying, hey, Left, I got this friend in Milwaukee. He’s going into the vending machine business. And then, you know, I guess it was over. They were at some restaurant or something. And apparently Lefty throws down or drops his fork and is like, where’d you say he was? Milwaukee. And then the reaction, I always think of us as Milwaukee is so Wisconsin nice, but that was apparently not the reputation. His response is like, Milwaukee, what is he, crazy? They’re crazy out there. They’re not just like New York where they’ll beat you up. In Milwaukee, they’ll kill you. They’ll blow you up. If he’s a friend of yours, tell him to get out of that city. Which again is, you know… I knew so little about organized crime growing up because I was basically told, just stay away from it and stay away from those people, stay away from those establishments.

[30:40] You know, we were not going to Snugs, which was the balustrier-owned place in the short crest, or having anything to do with anything like that. My dad was a school teacher and a wrestling coach. And I joke that he was about as like, buy the book as you can. Like he was kind of like one step away from a cop to us where it was like, you do not, you know, like you are, you know, you pay your traffic to if you get you pay your bill on the day it’s, you know, day you get it kind of guy. So he was not messing around with any of that kind of stuff. But but at that time, unbeknownst to Ty, he was being watched. He was being followed. Then Joe comes in and Balistrieri, before he knows that he’s Donnie Brasco, who’s friends with Lefty, he had his guys apparently following both of them, thinking he was going to kill, probably kill both of them or have his guys kill both of them. So Lefty and apparently the Chicago folks and some folks from Rockford organized this meeting at Snuggs where it was going to be Donnie Brasco, Joe Pistone.

[31:52] Tony Conti, Ty Cobb, Balistrieri, and then some of the Rockford guys and Lefty to try to work out a deal of where basically the Balistrieris would get a cut of best vending.

[32:04] And Tony Conti would get to stay alive. Seems to be the terms of it. I don’t think they were buying in, really. You know what I mean? I think on paper they were buying in, but it was more like, we won’t kill you and you’re going to give us a cut of your profit.

[32:18] I think we call that extortion. Yes, extortion. Correct. Yes, that would be what they were charged with eventually. But, you know, they decided that it was too dangerous for Tony to wear a wire into that meeting because he’s in a balustrary stronghold surrounded by people. People who were, you know, had probably killed people or ordered people to be killed or some of a mix of both. Donnie got called away. Joe got called away because his wife was in like a terrible accident and he had gone back to visit her. And he was not there for that initial meeting, but he heard about it from Ty. And then he did have another follow-up meeting at Snugs.

[33:05] And I hopefully I’m getting all the details right. He laid this out really well in Donnie Brasco and when we talked to him. But essentially, you know, the story goes that Ty gets there as Tony and Frank gets introduced to him and he kind of reaches out his hand and then he goes, he’s like Tony Conti and like kind of his hand recoils and he’s like, we were going to hit you. We thought you were the G. And he’s like laughing about how he was going to kill him unbeknownst to you. He was actually the G or the government agent, but, um, but he’s a friend of lefties at this point as according to everybody. So he’s cracking up. Cause he was like, he had guys following him and he’s like, oh yeah, you’ve got that office. You’ve got your apartment in like, he knew the car he was driving. He knew where his office was. He knew where he was living. Um, I guess lucky, luckily Tony and, uh, Donnie tie and Joe had been staying at a hotel while Joe was in town.

[34:03] So that might have, I mean, I think Joe being there and Joe facilitating that meeting very likely saved Tony’s life. And I think Lefty making it happen saved probably Joe and Ty’s lives because I think that they were pretty close to getting killed. And at one point, like, uh, they were so close to, they were looking for him. They were going to kill him. And I think Frank took a trip to Florida. So he would be out of town for like a few days when the hit was going to happen. Um, but yeah, so he kind of went into business with these government agents, not knowing obviously that they were government agents and really took Joe, especially under his wing and, And before icing them out, before icing out Ty, and I think it’s widely believed that he found out from somebody that he had a source maybe in Milwaukee Police Department.

[34:58] That’s not to say that there weren’t some very good police officers at Milwaukee Police Department at that time, but there were certainly some on Ballesteri’s payroll, as judging by some of the FBI files where it’s all redacted, unfortunately, so we couldn’t see who it was. But he had somebody he would pay for information from police reports, somebody he would pay to get license applications so he would know before anybody else. So it’s unclear whether there was a leak at MPD at the time or if they just found out from somebody or somebody recognized him. But, yeah, I think they are very lucky that they were not killed and that they, you know, went on to obviously Ty’s operation fell apart after he got iced out by Ballester. But Joe said to this day, he does not know why or how, if the Balistrieres believed he was a federal agent, why that wasn’t conveyed to Rockford or Chicago or New York. And he said that’s kind of like a mystery to this day.

[35:59] Interesting. Probably Balistrier, when he learned he was probably embarrassed and didn’t want anybody to know that he was taken advantage of. Yeah. I mean, that’s what Joe was like. Well, it could have blown back really badly on him if they found out that he had given kind of big, you know, huge access. And he actually offered Joe as Donnie a job running like gambling for him, I think, in 1978, fall of 78, I want to say, or maybe 79. But yeah, so he really like threw open the doors and welcomed them, especially Joe with open arms. So maybe he didn’t want to have to report that back. Yeah. Yeah, really. I didn’t know that is interesting. Could be embarrassing or also probably embarrassing. Yeah. Or I’m sure he wanted to save his, his hide too. You know, I guess it could go badly for him if they find out like he’s opened, opened up the operation so much to undercover agents. Right. Chicago would take him out just like Joe Messino took out Sonny Black, Napolitano. For introducing him in, being so stupid as to introducing him in, that’s part of the game. That’s one of the rules there. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s why they were kind of thinking that Lefty was in trouble at one point, too, but I think he was in custody by the time. He got lucky. Yeah, he got lucky.

[37:25] Interesting little side story there. I have a guy here in Kansas City that was in Springfield Penitentiary with Lefty. Oh, okay. And Joe Pistone once said he’d hate to be in a cell with Lefty Ruggiero because he’s so demanding and such a one-way dude. So I got a hold of Joe and I got him to give me some soundbites on that. And then I interspersed it with talking to my guy here in Kansas City, talking about being in the cell with Lefty Ruggiero or actually being in prison and joking around with him and doing stuff with him. And my friend said the same way, he said, he just is a taker. He wants everything all the time. He’s wanting more and more and more.

[38:06] Yeah, it was interesting. Both Joe and John Franke mentioned the hours and hours and hours of tapes they were all listening to, either from ones that Joe or Ty had recorded or ones that were on the wiretaps. And they did share one with me of, it was basically like Joe in the car with Ty driving around where Lefty is convinced that Lake Michigan is so big it must be the ocean. And he’s going on and on about like, no, that’s not a lake. That’s the ocean. Did you see the size of that ship?

[38:40] And, you know, I think Lake Michigan is very impressive. It’s a great lake, but it is not an ocean. Um, but they said that like, it was, it was a part of the challenge of listening to the tapes was that lefty would just talk and talk and talk and talk in these circles and, but like to not underestimate him because he was very street smart and would, um, he was not a dumb guy when it came to, you know, he was, he was street smart. He was very savvy. He was good at making sure he got money, but he would just talk and talk and talk and talk. And so some of it was like they said, like it was just hours and hours and hours of listening to like lefty rambling on and on about all kinds of things. But I’m sure if they’re, you know, the FBI trying to listen to something that’s more like incriminating, it was probably kind of torturous for them, honestly. It would be. It would be. I’ve listened to a few tapes like that, and they can be torturous after a little bit. You mentioned Rockford. What is Rockford? Is that Rockford, Illinois?

[39:39] Tell me about the geography and how Chicago, Rockford, and Milwaukee, how did that work? From a kind of mafia institutional standpoint, a table of organization. How did that work? Yeah, it’s interesting because Rockford is not as known as Chicago, obviously, but apparently they did have a thriving organized crime family there.

[40:03] It seems like in this case, they were kind of intermediaries, which is interesting because they’re really close to the, they’re not far from the Wisconsin border. So maybe they were kind of like the Switzerland or something. I don’t know, but they were mediators in the middle on multiple things. But apparently it sounds like they kind of were played kind of the like introducing making connections in the case of lefty Ruggiero and Donnie Brasco kind of meeting. It was almost like networking or something. That’s what Joe called it, like networking and that, you know, let us introduce you to this family up here and kind of like trying to facilitate connections. So, but they were, I mean, I think that they were certainly, I did not know that Rockford had this thriving family that was well known, but I’ve talked to others who were like, oh yeah, Rockford, they had this family. So I think for people who probably know more about organized crime than I ever did growing up. That was probably a very known family. But for me, because my dad specifically raised me to know virtually nothing about organized crime to the point where he always presented it as like, it’s a slippery slope and you just want to stay away. So I didn’t see the godfather until I was maybe 30 years old.

[41:28] I think I didn’t, yeah, I was very afraid of, It gave me nightmares and really spooked me. I had a nightmare that I was like a mafia hitman and it was kind of like, you had to kill or be killed all the time. And it seemed like a stressful, miserable existence. So I knew so little growing up that I had no idea there was even a family in Brockford, but apparently they are very well known. So that’s probably very disrespectful to them to not know that. But apparently they’re quite successful. I don’t know much about their status now. So maybe you’ll hear from this. I may have to look in a little further in Rockford. Maybe I did something one time, just touched on Rockford. I can’t remember. I’ve done so much. But anyhow, really interesting. Mary Spicuzza. Spicuzza. Spicuzza, yeah. Great, great story. It’s going to be a great podcast, or it is a great podcast, guys. You’ve got to get out. You really go down deep into the Milwaukee crime family. And as you can tell, she knows her stuff and, and she really has done her research and talked to all the people directly involved. And she was directly involved herself through her family. And, and so we like that firsthand accounts and it’s, it sounds like a wonderful podcast. I’m going to have to, I’m going to have to squeeze you in all the other podcasts I listened to.

[42:46] Thank you. I haven’t done it. Thank you. I know there are a lot of them. I’m still learning when it comes to organized crime and podcasts. Um, but it was, I did feel like I could almost, I feel like I could spend seven

[42:59] years researching this and get like a PhD in the Milwaukee organized crime family. I knew so little and there was so much. And like, even from, um, I have a, this is funny. This is just one of my fact checking binders where each chapter by chapter for the story, I have a podcast fact checking too, but, um, just cause I don’t want to get sued and I I don’t want to, you know, defame anybody or get anything wrong. It was just a lot of learning. And then can I say this? And how do I know this? And I tried to be really careful not to convict somebody of a crime they had not been convicted of because, you know, Frank Balastrari was never convicted of murder, although he was suspected of ordering many. Um, he was here, he was convicted. Um, and then he went to Kansas city, obviously for the, the skim, um, the skim trial, which I’m sure you’re far more familiar with than I am. It was a real challenge.

[43:55] And I think part of my struggle was I wanted to be honest that my, uh, cousin was a gambler. He was not a saint. He did not have a halo. Uh, at the same time, I didn’t want to revert to victim blaming and say like, well, he had it coming. Cause from everything I’ve seen, It’s like just, um, having a successful business and not kowtowing to somebody that should not be a crime punishable by car bombing death.

[44:20] Um, in my mind, um, and I have not seen anything of him ever murdering anybody or anything like that, you know, it was, so it was kind of a relief for me to say like, oh, I grew up thinking my cousin was like, or fearing that my cousin was like a pretty bad guy. And by all these stories of him, um.

[44:38] One person called me the day the story ran and said they wanted to talk to me. And I was like, oh, God, I’m going to hear he beat somebody up or killed somebody or something terrible. And instead, they were saying their dad died unexpectedly before Christmas. They were Greek Orthodox in a period of mourning. And Augie unexpectedly showed up at their door with this fancy, expensive flocked Christmas tree and told his mother every boy needs to have a Christmas tree. And I was like, oh my gosh, it’s such a relief to hear stories about what a kind, generous person he was. So to say he was not an angel, he was a gambler. There’s hundreds of pages of FBI surveillance of them watching him and all of his gambling activities. It was pretty wild. At one point they were watching, I think they’re called, you know, they don’t use this term now because it’s offensive, but they were saying there was like a suspicious midget outside his bar who had horse papers. And I was like, just because like a little person was outside your bar, that’s suspicious. But I think there was at the time I, and then I asked somebody and they’re like, Oh yeah, that was, that was so-and-so he was actually, uh, like running, he was like a runner or like running gambling stuff. So I guess he was actually suspicious or, or involved in gambling too. But, um, they, they had this raid at one point on Superbowl Sunday here where they knew that they were gambling on the game. And, um.

[46:07] They went in and apparently like just all these FBI agents and they found, you know, all of this gambling paraphernalia and cash. And somebody said they walked in and their agents were just counting cash on the pool table. They also found dynamite in the basement. But, yeah, it was like a whole like coordinated raid. And it’s amazing to think now of all the people I know who gamble on Super Bowl Sunday. I don’t because my dad always told me not to gamble. but, uh, it’s just a different world, I guess. A whole different world now. It’s, uh, between marijuana and sports gambling, it’s just, uh, and casinos too, but especially sports gambling, it’s just so ubiquitous and the marijuana is the same way. It’s just so many people went to jail so many times, but I have to explain to you from a law enforcement standpoint, that’s an easy way to get into the mob because they got to get on the phone and they talk to all these different people. And it’s, you know, there’s a case you can make on people. And so then you make

[47:06] that case on that guy and then you put pressure on him to then learn about this and learn about that. So that’s, that’s how it works, you know? Yeah.

[47:15] Yeah. And definitely, I think that idea of like starting with the little fish to try to get to the big fish and then get on wiretap or, um, so yes, I think what got Augie onto the front page for gambling, um, and he was working on like a general motors plant. And I think his first, I want to say his first big bust was, uh, he was, um, working at General Motors and collecting spats. Yeah. It was the bookie. Yeah. Yeah. Bookie. Um, yes. Yeah. It was funny. I was talking to somebody who was like, oh yeah, I worked at Augie’s bar. And then I worked at this other bar and I was like, oh, were you bartending? And they’re like, no, I was making book. And I was like, oh, okay.

[47:56] That makes sense. But, um, yeah. Now boy corporations are doing it. Right. Right. Silly me. I thought he was bartending, but I think a lot of those bars back in the day had some side hustles going of bookmaking. Swag, stolen property, stuff that stole off, fell off a truck. And it’s all part of it. Yes. Yeah. Stuff that. Yeah. I was talking to some people who grew up in the third ward and they were saying like, yeah, we never asked uncle so-and-so how he got that. You know, if we asked how he got a TV, it just always whenever we got like nice appliances or a color TV, it was always something fell off a track. Yeah. I was in a restaurant recently whose guy, his mother was in there, and she was about 85 or 90 years old. They were retiring, and a lot of other people from the neighborhood came in. This was a family that was well-known. His dad was involved in politics and was not connected at all, but everybody knew everybody. The mom was in there, and she starts talking to this other old guy, and she starts talking about that time. That and then she dropped a mob name brought a fur coat to her and how cheap it was so.

[49:14] That is some it’s just part of it that is something that vince money actually got in trouble for was he apparently was he fenced like four stolen mink coats and then i got a after the story ran i got a message from uh we got like a facebook note from somebody i worked with gosh 20 years ago at a paper down in Florida um and he had I forgot that he had family from Milwaukee he’s Italian and of course like his I think his dad or his grandpa he had a relative who had like bought um bought a fur coat from Vince and had to go testify and I was like what a small walkie world we call it small walkie and it’s like of course to me I’ve known for 20 years just happened to have this connection to like buying a fenced mink coat from a friend of Auggie’s.

[50:04] But yeah, it was, it was, I think one of the really comforting things for me was hearing these stories about Auggie, because I think, I think I grew up fearing he was a really bad guy, which by all accounts, he was not, you know, besides the gambling, he was not like this hardened criminal. And I think just hearing of his generosity and kind of care for the community and the looking out for each other back in the old neighborhood. Neighborhood. I think with gentrification and people dispersing, you find people like that still, but I don’t know. And I think some of my cousins, I still have, some of the Palmizanos very much have that trait still of being just so caring and so kind and so thoughtful and looking out for each other. But I’m trying to be more like that in my life because everybody’s not in the same old neighborhood anymore that they used to be when my dad, you know, when my grandparents came here.

[51:08] But I also think that like trying to capture who he was and who he wasn’t has been very meaningful. So even though I don’t have somebody and I didn’t like nobody’s in handcuffs being charged with his murder, I think just kind of setting the record straight on who he was and who he wasn’t has been very meaningful for me and my family. I think a lot of people thought of him as like the guy who got blown up in a parking garage and who probably had it coming or something like that, you know? And I think, um, it was very, it was just really, um, meaningful for me to find

[51:42] out more about who he actually was. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. That’s what I’ve learned as I’ve done this podcast and really got into it is, is everybody has family and everybody’s not one-dimensional and and a lot of people were it’s just part of the the culture really because people that come from another country who speak a different language who were a little bit darker complected than the irish and the english that were already over here and had all the jobs sold up then you know you got to figure out a way you got to figure out how to make your way and and the language barriers to start and then you get businesses small businesses and And with those guys come these young, bright guys that don’t have any opportunity.

[52:23] The english and the irish they got all the the police and you know fire jobs and and uh other kinds of jobs sewed up and they don’t they don’t not gonna let you in right away and so you know now you got you know crime prohibition started you know there’s all this money to be made and and just yeah and uh the gambling and on into the future so that’s uh i mean it’s just part of the american everybody just wants a piece of the american dream and yeah and there was a huge fire before the Sicilians moved into the third ward and Italians, I shouldn’t say just Sicilians, but there was a huge fire.

[52:58] And then the, the, like, um, people who had lived there before who kind of, they’d started moving out, but then the fire really kind of forced their hand. It was actually the Irish immigrants who arrived before them, who were kind of the poor group before the Italians and Sicilians. And, uh, so yeah, not to, not to discount the Irish side of the family who I think I had a Irish family member who opened bars and my grandpa Spacusa and the Palmezanos who sold fruit.

[53:27] It’s funny. I’m like, wow, I feel very cliche with the bars and the fruit, but they really, you know, they kind of, the Irish had come and they were kind of the poor immigrants before, but then they had worked their way up and left. And then this fire came and then And the Italians and Sicilians moved others too, but primarily them in the third ward. And they, yeah, I mean, talk about hardworking, like the stories you hear of my grandpa or Augie’s father or Augie himself of working like around the clock and like being up before dawn. And Augie’s work schedule was, he would often close the bar or his son or a bartender would close the bar. That was like 2 a.m. then he would often go to like pitches which was this place that a lot of people would go and get like a breakfast or kind of uh eat briefly and he would try to stay awake especially on fridays because it was busy days he tried to stay awake so he could check the produce when it got delivered that’s like 4 4 30 then uh he’d go catch a few hours of sleep then go back to the bar like produce business at like, I think it was 9am, typically, to start his day with like getting the produce rats out, then open the bar because they were open, you know, some people would go and get a drink before work or after they were getting off their all night shift. So it was like a nonstop operation. And this, I mean, I’m like, when did he sleep? And somebody told me we would often like nap in.

[54:56] In the booths at his bar, um, in like a lull kind of the afternoon doldrums. But yeah, I, I mean, I just am in awe of like the amount of work that people put in. Um, I feel like I work hard, but I was, I’m not working like around the clock like that. I would be, um, and my grandpa was, you know, up before dawn often pushing a fruit cart and then worked his way up to get a horse. I think was Dick the horse and then, you know, a horse and wagon, then a truck. And a lot of Augie’s father was the same way. You know what I mean? Like everybody had their horse and they just worked their way up. And like the long hours, it’s pretty amazing. And I think, I think there are a lot of Sicilian families, Italian families that have similar stories to that. Not always in fruit, but many in fruit, but also bars, restaurant, bakeries. It’s, it’s pretty phenomenal. Yeah. I tried to capture a little bit of that, too, of just kind of the backstory, I guess, of how people came here and how they lived. Yeah. Interesting. Well, that’s I like those backstories. Well, Mary Spicuzza and my cousin Augie kind of a play on my cousin Vinny.

[56:07] I’ve never I’ve actually never seen my cousin Vinny, but I just I was I called my cousin Augie and people were like, oh, like my cousin Vinny. And I’m like, I have to watch that. But it was partly just because that was always what he was like. It was always just don’t fall in with your own crowd. And it was always just Cousin Auggie. Like, I don’t even think I knew his last name for a long time. So it was just this kind of figure hovering over of, you know, something that some we didn’t know what happened to him. But something tragic happened to him for some some reason we didn’t know. And it was like the mystery. But all we knew was something bad happened to Cousin

[56:44] Auggie. and this kind of nefarious figure was behind it. Kind of a cautionary tale in this Bakuza and the Palmasana family. Yes, but thank you for the reminder. And I do need to watch my cousin Vinny because I’ve heard it’s good. And I’ve watched a few mafia things now.

[57:03] Just I have to get over the fear and maybe not watch it too late at night because it tends to give me nightmares. Okay. All right. Got to get your recommendations. I’ll give them to you. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a great show. Thank you so much for your time. So guys, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website and get that hotline number. And, you know, hand in hand with PTSD is problems with drugs and alcohol or gambling to addiction. And our friend, Angelo Ruggiano, he has a hotline number on his YouTube or his website. I can’t remember. I’ve got a picture of it here on YouTube. And he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. So you can have a counselor in your rehabilitation from addiction who was a former family member of the Gambino family. So wouldn’t that be cool? Let me know if you ever do that. And I got books and movies out there. Just Google my name on Amazon and Gary Jenkins Mafia and books. And I’ve got a new one that just came out about stories about the New York crime family called Big Apple Mafia, stories from the five families. And I’ve got the Chicago Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. And other than that, you know, thanks a lot, guys. And Mary, thanks so much for coming out. Thanks for having me.

Gary welcomes back Michael Benson, an author known for his insightful explorations of organized crime and Hollywood history. Benson has collaborated with Frank DiMatteo on several mob-related books, including The Cigar: Carmine Galante and Mafia Hitman, illustrating the intricate ties between criminal enterprises and key figures’ personal stories. In Hollywood Moguls: The Lives and Times of Hollywood Film Pioneers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck, Michael documents stories of corruption and mob infiltration and reveals that Craig Reeves, Superman, was murdered and did not commit suicide.

As the conversation unfolds, the host and Benson delve into the Skank brothers’ encounters with organized crime. They recount how notorious Chicago Outfit extortionists sought to muscle in on the movie theaters by taking over the projectionists’ union. The brothers cleverly turned this threat into an opportunity, negotiating a deal that ultimately benefited both sides while ensuring their continued financial success. This anecdote exemplifies the intertwining of crime and commerce during the era, showcasing how the Skank brothers operated in a morally gray space to maintain power.

Benson narrates incidents from Hollywood’s scandalous past, explicitly focusing on Fatty Arbuckle, one of the Skank brothers’ most prominent stars, whose career unraveled due to a notorious scandal in the 1920s. Arbuckle’s involvement in a tragic incident highlighted the dark side of celebrity culture and the lengths to which the Skank brothers went to protect their financial interests, including paying for Arbuckle’s trials. Through Arbuckle’s story, the conversation touches on the reputational risks that could derail even the most profitable careers and the measures Hollywood took to manage public relations crises.

Click here to buy Michael’s book: Hollywood Moguls

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[0:06] the flannel shirt I’m wearing. And I see my guest, Michael Benson, is wearing some more cold weather clothes, too. So anyhow, Michael Benson is our guest today. I’ve had him on before. He has written several mob books with Frank DiMatteo. I just actually just really read with, in detail, really read through this story of Carmine Galante’s cigars. It’s really, really a good book. It was kind of interesting to really sit and go through a book, you know, line by line rather than just, you know, going through it real fast is really good. Well-written. And then we got Mafia Hitman by Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson. That’s, that’s the story of the guy that really killed Joey Gallo. Not the Irishman. So you got a couple more, I believe. We love Scorsese, but he prefers stories that aren’t quite true. And he tells them really well. Yeah. But it’s not history. Yeah. And Frank had a kind of a front row seat to a lot of these. You’re a co-author.

[1:05] He is the authority. Yes. He is. He truly is. He’s a good guy too. The first book he wrote about his own father and a lot about that. It’s got to be. Well, you know, the deal that he wrote a book called Lion in the Basement. About Joey Gallo and the lion in the basement on President Street. And Gary Goldstein at Kensington Books read it and said, this is a diamond in the rough. And that’s how I got involved with Frank. He came to me and said, can you turn this into a book that people in Kansas City will read? And I think he actually said Kansas City. He said, Mr. and Mrs. Kansas City will read.

[1:39] And I said, sure. And it turned out, Frank, I got along and the rest is history. We’re writing mafia history like it’s never been written before. Yeah, no, I agree. I totally agree. So we’re going to do some more shows on this with you guys. So anyhow, moguls, the life and times of Hollywood film pioneers, Nicholas and Joseph Schnick. Is that how you pronounce that?

[1:59] Wow. That’s the worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard. That’s what I’m famous for. You realize that nobody gets it right, but that was special. Oh, no, it’s skank. Skank, huh? Yes. I don’t know how you get that out of S-C-H-E-N-C-K, but skank. It’s Russian. And their descendants pronounce it shank, which is a little easier on the ear. Yeah. But I think one of the reasons that the Skank brothers weren’t better known is because Americans reacted just that way to the sound of their name. They were referred to as the Skunk Brothers by their enemy. Oh, it’s easier to make fun of somebody. They hid behind other people’s logos. They ran Lowe’s Inc. Marcus Lowe was long passed away. And they ran 20th Century Fox. Fox no longer had anything to do with it. It was the Skank Brothers. Interesting. So how’d you get into this? Well, my friend Craig Singer, who was a film director, Good Night to Die, 645, The Dark Ride, about a haunted amusement park, came to me and said that he had worked with the great nephew of the Skank brothers. And they were wondering why nobody had ever written a biography of them, considering they were the most powerful brothers in show business history. And Craig said, who? Who?

[3:18] And eventually we found out that there were some reasons why they had almost slipped off of having a legacy, despite, uh, Nick being the eighth richest man in America at one point, the only Jewish man in the top 10, uh, his brother, Joe, not far behind. They ran three out of the five major studios in Hollywood, um, and tremendously powerful, but Nick in particular didn’t like publicity, paid a publicist to keep his name out of the newspapers. His family was trained not to talk about him. They don’t talk about grandpa. They don’t talk about daddy. And so they almost lost their legacy, but Craig and I stepped up. We went back in time, searched the archives, found everything else to know about these men. They had fascinating lives. And we don’t have to worry about them being forgotten anymore. Nick and Joe Skank, three times as powerful as the Warner Brothers. And if they had named the company after themselves, they would be just as famous. Interesting. I was wondering why I heard of Louis B. Mayer and David O. Selznick and names like that are like household words, but these guys, I had not heard those names. Nick is Louis B. Mayer’s boss.

[4:31] And sometimes you’ll hear in old movies, you’ll hear it referred to like the studio bosses. We have to check with New York. Yeah. And that means the money people who were in their Gatsby mansions on Long Island, they’re actually calling the shots. Interesting. That is really a deep dive into the early foundations and look at the movie industry. And you touch on the mob in the movie industry. Assorted and crime-ridden, yes. Oh, it was. I mean, there’s so many great crime stories in there. It’s hard to believe. I mean, there’s a lot of good just actual history, but there’s a lot of great crime stories in there, too. You would have to agree with that. Joe and Nick faced a lot of big enemies. I mean, as we’ll talk about, the mafia tried to take a bite out of them. The U.S. Government did not like the fact that this was a major industry being run by a handful of un-Christian men.

[5:24] And in the long run, the thing that got them was television. You know, they stayed really, really powerful until TV invaded the living room. And they were old men by this time. And I think that younger skanks would have seen TV as an opportunity. They saw it as competition and they lost. But before that, they took on the Chicago outfit and in a weird way, created a system where everybody made money, which I think is the forte of really, really rich men. What happened was there were these two low lives in Chicago named George Brown and Willie Bia.

[6:05] And they were extortionists. They ran a protection. And they went up and down Fulton Avenue and they said to everybody with a shop or a restaurant or a bar, they said, you pay us and nothing bad will happen to your place. If you don’t pay, you know, who knows? You can get a firebombing or something. And they decided that they were going to take on movie theaters.

[6:28] And they had some minimal success. They got payments out of Benny Balaban, who’s a Chicago magnate of theaters. So they decided to hit up on the Skank brothers. And, uh, well, actually what happened was they, they, they, first they had, they got the money from, from Balaban and went to a casino and started spending it very fast. And frank nitty watched this and said where a couple little lives like that get all that cash so he calls them in they think they’re gonna get whacked but he says look you’re thinking small you’re small time what you got to do is you got to think big and the do not threaten a fire bombing or or even a brick through the window in order to pull off a really classy extortion scheme You have to make it always appear as if no crime is being committed.

[7:20] So what they did was they took over the projectionist union. All the projectionists who showed the movies at all the theaters had a union. And the mob saw it as politically weak, went in, bullied their way in, and took over. And they come to the Skank brothers and say, you have to pay us or else the projectionists go on strike. Nick and what are you going to, who’s going to show your movies then? Smart guy. Well, Joe and Nick put their heads together. At this point, Joe’s living in Hollywood and Nick’s on Long Island. They talk three times a day on the phone and they come up with a scheme and they say, okay, we’re going to pay you. And we’re going to talk all the other moguls in Hollywood into paying you, but, You have to promise us that union is never, ever going to ask for a raise.

[8:16] So what happened was the Skank brothers made money on the deal in raises they didn’t have to pay to the projectionist union. Mafia made their little cut. And it all came out in 1941 when Joe Skank went down for tax evasion. He never used the word tax in his life without adding BS immediately after. Yeah.

[8:39] That’s still true today. Yeah, it’s typical of the, probably typical of. We probably all said that. Yeah, they probably still do. I have a question here. You’re talking about that we’re out in Hollywood with studio heads, extorting them for projectionists. Now, back then did the studios, and now, like AMC owns a lot of theaters. Other little companies own theaters. A local company here owns several theaters in Kansas City. The studios owned the theaters where all the major pictures were shown throughout the whole United States, correct? Marcus Lowe, during the vaudeville era, built palace theaters across America for his acts that would go from town to town. And when movies started, they turned into movie houses. And when he passed away, Nick Skank took charge of Lowe’s Inc. And he was in charge of MGM, which made the movies, and the Lowe’s theaters, which showed the movies, and took the tickets. He was in charge of the whole, the whole thing. And his brother, Joe was the owner of 20th Century Fox. He had Daryl F. Zanuck running the studio for him, much like Nick had Louis B. Mayer running MGM for him, but they owned everything and they owned stock in each other’s companies. It was a little bit incestuous in that way. So yeah, it was.

[10:00] The money stayed with the skanks the whole way. The expenditures were paying the talent and paying for the operation and upkeep of the theaters, which was relatively cheap considering about 30 million, 40 million people were going to the movies every week. There was no TV. It’s what you did. That’s how you got your news. And the projectionists got screwed. Working guys got screwed. Everybody makes money. I’m not counting the projectionists who got screwed. Yes. Yeah. Well, that’s, you know, I was a projectionist for four years and I don’t know how it was back in the 1930s, but it wasn’t a job I planned on using to raise a family.

[10:38] I was 21 at the time. And basically I wanted to buy a six pack of beer on Friday.

[10:47] These guys they they’re then this you know the changing of hollywood they go from the times when there was a lot of real sexual innuendo conduct on screen and then there’s a big crackdown on that right and when you can’t show that and then you have they had one particular scandal a sex scandal by one of their big stars a guy named fatty arbuckle and i think most everybody my age has heard of Fatty Arbuckle or a little older, heard of Fatty Arbuckle or some big scandal, but I never knew exactly what it was. He worked for Skanks, right? He was Joe’s biggest star during the silent movie era. He was a large man, as his name Fatty would imply, 300 pounds or so. But like a Jackie Gleason or a John Candy, the joke was never the things he couldn’t do because he was fat. It was the things he could do even though he was fat. You know, he was very acrobatic in his physical comedy. And…

[11:44] Was a guy who could party and over the Labor Day weekend in 1921, very early, goes to a party in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. There’s a lot of starlets in there. A woman named Virginia Rape, R-A-P-P-E, kind of an unfortunate spelling considering how she ended up dying. She’s a 30-year-old woman. She’s been a bit player in Hollywood. She’s probably best known as the cover girl on the sheet music for beautiful lady or the, some, some song that was a big hit at the time.

[12:21] She’s a nobody. And she is in the hotel room alone with Fatty Arbuckle. Other people are partying outside, but the door’s locked. When Arbuckle emerges after the pounding on the door, he’s obviously very, very drunk. He’s wearing Virginia’s hat at a weird angle. and she is lying in the, in the room with a broken bed, dying. And she goes to the hospital. They find out she has a ruptured bladder.

[12:51] So the immediate assumption is that, uh, that there’s a horrible sexual attack has taken place here. This is inflamed by the Hearst newspapers that when they report, uh, anything about the Fatty Arbuckle case, always would put an uncaptioned photo of a long necked beer bottle, which apparently was what Fatty was supposed to have used to violate the poor woman. It gets complicated from that point because the witnesses, Virginia’s friends, turned out to be extortionists in their own right and had held up rich men in the past for sexual improprieties. So the tendency was to not fully believe them. Joe Skank crosses the country because he’s still living in Bayside Queens in 1921, goes out to California, talks to Fatty Arbuckle. Roscoe says, it was an accident, Joe. Which implies that it was something happened. There was an incident that involved her being injured. Joe pays for all three of Arbuckle’s trials. He is convicted at the first trial, but that’s overturned by the judge because of jury impropriety. Second trial is a hung jury. Third one, he is acquitted, and the jury makes a public statement about the horrible dishonor that’s been done to this poor man because there’s absolutely no evidence connecting him with any crime. A little bit overboard.

[14:13] And by this time, of course, Joe Skank’s money is fully behind Arbuckle. Trouble is, Arbuckle has been acquitted. He now wants to go back to work. And Joe has to tell him that, okay, you’re innocent in the eyes of the law, but you have been rendered forever unfunny by all of this scandal. Nobody’s ever going to laugh at you, the situations we used to put you in with, with, you know, skinny women and dancing around and doing pratfalls, you know, because it’s all going to remind them of that thing that happened. They’re going to go see your movies for the wrong reasons. And our buckles life falls apart at that point. I’ve heard talk that, you know, he was making a comeback near the time of his death, but not really. He was doing roadside nightclub acts with song and dance girls, completely deaf to what people were saying about him behind his back.

[15:07] So yeah. And, uh, and it cost Joe a lot of money and he ended up, uh, taking our Buckles house as payment. And he and his wife lived there for a long time. Uh, but he put a system in place after that involving a guy we’ll talk about named Eddie Mannix, uh, called the fixer system. And from then on, if anything happened in Hollywood, there was going to, uh, reflect badly on the studio system, on any of the stars who all had squeaky clean reputations, Eddie Mannix, who was a skank henchman, would go in and work the crime scene to be confusing. And then the police would show up, which is why, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever read a book called Hollywood Babylon, but every murder in Hollywood is completely bizarre and makes no sense whatsoever. You know, they make a little more sense than the John Bonet case, but not really. There’s always, well, gee, it had to have been murdered, but no, it couldn’t have been murdered. And like Thelma Todd, even George Reeves, the TV Superman. Yeah. He committed suicide, but he committed suicide right after ticking off Eddie Mannix.

[16:24] Eddie Mannix, he was kind of, he’s like a story in himself, it sounds like. But he is. Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Hail Caesar by the Coen brothers. Eddie Mannix is the hero of that movie. He starts out as a juvenile delinquent who’s stealing stuff from Palisades Amusement Park, which is owned by the skanks. Nick catches him. Instead of calling the cops, he says, you work for me now. The old saying, it’s better to have them steal for you than from you. Yes. And Eddie turns into the amusement park bouncer. He’s in charge of security. He’s also pretty good with the books. He can do two sets of books in his head. stuff that people that don’t believe in tax BS enjoy. And years later, when Nick becomes the head of Lowe’s Inc., he sends Eddie Mannix to MGM. Eddie Mannix is a rough kind of guy. You know, completely sociopathic. Sends him to MGM to keep an eye on Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalbert, make sure they do whatever Nick says. Plus be a spy, read every telegram that goes in and out. And if anything untoward happens, get in there and fix it. So Eddie Maddox becomes this hugely powerful man in Hollywood. He’s a thug.

[17:42] His first wife dies in a horrible accident. I don’t know if it’s Mulholland Drive, but it’s one of the, she, she goes off the side of the road and down the cliff, like you’ve seen in a thousand movies after being sideswiped by another car. Ah, this allows, this, this allows Eddie to marry, uh, the million dollar legs, uh, girl from the Ziegfeld Follies. Her first name is Tony, T-O-N-I. And she becomes the, uh, the, the, the second wife after years of being the mistress. mistress, and they grow old together. They have an arrangement.

[18:16] Eddie has an affair going with the maid, who is a young, beautiful woman. And Tony has an affair going with George Reeves, who is TV Superman on the Adventures of Superman. George Reeves commits suicide. The common theory is that Eddie was a jealous husband. But that wasn’t the case. It was not the case. They had an arrangement. They used to all go on vacation together. The maid and George was sitting in the back of the plane. Playing Tony and Eddie would sit in the front and then they do whatever they did on their vacation and come back. What happened was George Reeves broke up with Tony Mannix and started in with another woman in the house on Benedict drive that Tony had bought George with Eddie’s money. So she goes to Eddie, he’s cheating on me in your house. Eddie says, I’ll take care of it. And we know he did because one thing, Tony Mannix confesses on her deathbed. She’s afraid of going to hell. Eddie and I did it. We did it.

[19:14] Yeah. And Eddie himself, of course, you know, used to wink when ever anybody suggested such things. He was, he never denied.

[19:26] I’ll tell you what, Michael, you have given me a great story as I meet my different friends center of my age about the death of Superman because everybody at a certain age, you know, will go back and forth about how did Superman commit suicide, you know, and all that. Now I’ve got the real story and she confessed on her deathbed. That’s a great story. Thank you. Yeah. And that comes from Beverly Hills Publicity.

[19:53] Ed Lotzey, who apparently was, you know, Tony, Ed Lotzey was there when Tony made a deathbed confession that she and Eddie did it. He did it. I’ll be darned. And Eddie knew how to mess up a crime scene pretty well. Well, you know, there was a party going on downstairs and the, what the witnesses said was so bizarre that you had to believe that it couldn’t possibly be the truth. Like one woman says according to the story you know she says in a moment you’re going to hear a gun and then seconds later gun went off upstairs and it was george reeves committing suicide and they found him naked with the gun between his legs the bullet went through his temple and ended up in the ceiling so i don’t know maybe lying down um and there are two bullet holes also in the bedroom them that went forever unexplained. They just threw a throw rug over them. They were in the floor.

[20:53] Huh. Interesting. That’s really interesting. Yeah. Um, the other case that, uh, the skanks or Joe in particular was, was involved in was the death of Thelma Todd. I don’t know. She was nicknamed Hot Toddy. She was a comedian, kind of a, a Lucille Ball type from the early thirties. She made movies with the Marx brothers. Um, she with Zazu Pitts and Thelma Todd made a bunch of shorts together or, you know, one being a kind of a tomboy, the other one being a beautiful blonde. And this was the beautiful blonde. And she was also the mistress of the very married Roland West, who was one of Joe Skank’s best friends. And Roland West invented the haunted house movie with the.

[21:41] Bookcase that turns around and leads to a secret passageway and the paintings that have the eyes cut out for real eyeballs. Oh my God. He was the first guy with that. And he got it from Joe’s mansion in Hollywood, Owlwood. And Joe got it from his backyard neighbor, Bugsy Siegel, who put in all of those things in case he was raided by the cops. He could sneak down into a secret passageway. Joe used his secret passageway for starlets rather than for escaping the police. And he, he was a mentor of your early Marilyn Monroe and she was still normal. Oh, really? So she came up in that system under her when she was young. Yeah, and she became a star for 20th Century Fox for Joe. And Joe was her first mentor. But he had, he liked her the best out of all the starlets he had visiting him and moved her into a bungalow in the back, but then he was worried about Confidential Magazine, which had paparazzi, the very first paparazzi for a scandal sheet magazine. So he built a tunnel from his house to the back bungalow so Marilyn could come in to his casting room behind the bookcase without being seen from the outside.

[22:54] The old casting couch. Thelma Todd ends up being dead in her car, died of carbon monoxide. Coroner conveniently didn’t seem to notice that she’d been beat up and that her face was all bloody. Yeah. And Roland West was one of the primary suspects. But crime scene was confused and the coroner said it was suicide. And those studios, they must have dominated the police and the politics and everybody because they had so much money. They were like the drug cartels can do today. That’s right. The police served the studios. Yeah.

[23:33] I mean, corruption in LA, I mean, it really was the old West. They’re making these movies about what it was like in the old West because they knew, I mean, that the sheriff of LA County, you know, was nicknamed two guns. And we’re talking about the, you know, during prohibition. So it’s. Yeah. And even today, everybody wants to be in the movies and they want to have some, some connection to the movies. Right. And it went, and you know, the, the criticisms that Hollywood was, was played with sexual excesses were largely true. And it occurred to me while we’re working on mobiles that Hollywood was a very strange social experiment. I think it’s the first time in human history where you have a colony of really, really good looking people. Everybody. And with, you know, lots of labor, very few jobs. I think it was Joe Skank once said, getting starlets for a mogul’s like, you know, drawing deer to a salt lick. Yeah.

[24:34] Slightly unpleasant analogy, but a good one. Yeah. And I think Marilyn Monroe herself once called Hollywood a, an overcrowded brothel.

[24:47] So, so it was largely true. And that, that was why untoward things kept happening. And William Desmond Taylor was murdered during a Fatty Arbuckle trial. Uh, maybe he was killed by a starlet who was trying to outrage. Maybe he was killed by the starlet’s mother because he had outraged her. Outrage was the word for rape at the time.

[25:10] Interesting. Well, I’ll tell you what, this is a heck of a book and it’s got a lot of great stories. It’s kind of punctured the balloon, the veneer, if you will, of Hollywood. And, you know, even today, now you just recently had Kevin Spacey and different stars. Harvey Weinstein’s case. Harvey Weinstein, he’s still in jail. Can you believe that? That dude was like the king of Hollywood and he’s been in jail for, I don’t know, seven or eight years now. I mean, one of the things I do in the book, I think, is I put shades of gray in the Me Too movement because Joe Skank had a casting couch, but he was not a rapist. We know from Maureen O’Sullivan, who was a virgin and was afraid of him. He patted her hand and said, everybody tries to bother you. You tell me and let her go. She didn’t get the fur coat. You had to go into the casting room to get the fur coat. But he wasn’t threatening anybody with, you know, you’ll never work in this business unless you do what I want you to do right now. It never ain’t there. They were like sweet little dates he had with these women. He would feed them and then light some candles and take them to bed. Maybe it would happen. Maybe it didn’t have to happen is what you’re saying. It didn’t have to happen. And the women it did happen with always liked him afterwards. Like he was a favorite. And he really did call him Uncle Joe, like the cliche.

[26:33] Well, I’ve learned that when you get down to actual history, it’s always shades of gray. It’s never black and white. That’s right. That’s right. And this is a lot, there’s a lot of shades of gray. Yeah, I have issues with me too. My daughter once said that Joe Namath should be on the Me Too movement list. And I said, what? Everybody left. Because of the thing with Susie when he was drunk? No, there was no victim. Yeah.

[26:59] We don’t want to go too far down that path. But obviously Harvey Weinstein’s a real creep and is probably deserving what he gets. Yeah. Everything I read, and of course, I say what I read, but he was actually adjudicated in a court of law, which goes a long ways for me. I mean, there’s all the rules at place in a court of law to get to the truth. So it’s a deal. But this early Hollywood, there’s just so much history, the history of our country, you know, is encapsulated out there in Hollywood. You know, the moguls, the making the money, the creating monopolies and then breaking them up. And it just, you know, it’s really It really has the roaring 20s it has the depression it’s got World War II with the morale boosting oh, we didn’t even mention Nazis I mean, the Nazis tried to take over Hollywood and the skanks helped finance a spy system that infiltrates the German American Bund and gets them out of that, so that’s a chapter in the book so if you like Nazi stories, that’s.

[28:04] We all love Nazi stories. They bit off more than they chew when they took on the skanks. Yeah. Well, you know, Mayor Lansky, he, in New York, he organized a bunch of Jewish guys to attack these German-American supporters, the German-American people. I wrote that book, Gary. Oh, you did? Oh. Gangsters versus Nazis by Michael Benson. Oh, you did. Okay. I don’t know if I actually read it. Well, I always wanted to do that. We need to do that one. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. If Mayor Lansky and the Skank brothers ever got together, they would, they would get along so well. And, you know, because they just wouldn’t say, well, you’re filmmakers and I’m a gangster. They would all be, we’re Jewish men who came to this country and we did good. Interesting. Well, Michael Benson and Craig Singer wrote this book, guys. Moguls, the life and times of Hollywood film pioneers, Nicholas and Joseph Skank. Skank. Got that right? Very good, Gary. Appreciate it. I’m a quick learner, man.

[29:08] Especially when it’s easy to pronounce. You just figure out the right way to pronounce it. It doesn’t look like skank. Well, yeah, thank you so much, Gary,

[29:13] for giving me an opportunity to talk about them. We really do enjoy letting the world know who the skanks are because they deserve it. I think so. Like I said, it reflects social movements in the United States. It really helps us make more sense of our own history. I think it’s all reflected via bar movies. It’s the best U S history I ever had a part in. I believe it. All right. Michael Benson. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good one. You too. Okay. I’m going to do another little stick. So thanks a lot for coming on. I’ll get in touch with you about some of these other books. I just have gotten into you guys and, and I had appreciate it. All right. Have a good one. Bye.

[29:58] Well, hey, guys, that was a heck of an interview, and he’s a really interesting guy and a great writer. I’ll tell you what, this guy is really a good writer, and he does those other books, True Crime, about the mob in New York with Frank DiMatteo, whose dad was a mob guy with the Gallo brothers. So we’re going to do some more of that. I did one recently, and this story had a little bit of mob stuff in it, had a lot of really interesting Hollywood history that I’ve heard about but didn’t know that much about. We learned a real story guys we were in the real story about the death of superman george reeves which i thought was fascinating because i’ve been discussing that with friends ever since we were kids i guess whenever he died i was probably in early teens so don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street and if you have a problem with ptsd be sure and go to the va website

[30:51] and get that hotline number and if you got a problem with drugs or alcohol. Angelo Ruggiano is down in Florida. He’s a drug and alcohol counselor, and he has a hotline, I believe, on his website. And if you have a problem with gambling, there’s 1-800-BETS-OFF.

[31:06] And I have stuff for sale, and I’ve always got stuff for sale. I just finished my second book from the podcast stories. The first one is out there now. Actually, the second one’s out there now by the time this gets released. The first one is the Windy City Mafia, the Chicago Outfit, the second one, Stories from the Five Families, the New York Big Apple Mafia, the Stories from the Five Families. And so they’re both out there on Amazon. They’re both out there as Kindles and paperbacks. And I even made a hardback out of the Chicago book.

[31:40] And I’m now trying to work on my life story. It’s really difficult to do. So many of the things that might be interesting, I don’t really want to tell anybody. I don’t want my kids to read it. And so I don’t know. We’ll see. And I got movies and stuff. So just go to Amazon and run my name or go to my website, Gangland Wire. If you’re on YouTube, be sure and like and subscribe, but also be sure and share it on your YouTube channels. Thanks a lot, guys.

In this episode, Gary takes a deep dive into the ruthless life of Mad Sam DeStefano, one of the most brutal enforcers in organized crime history. A notorious loan shark tied to the Chicago Outfit, DeStefano’s reputation for violence and torture made him a feared figure—even among his fellow mobsters.

Born in 1909 in Illinois, DeStefano’s criminal career began early, leading him from street gangs to the infamous 42 Gang and eventually into the Outfit ranks. His path to power was paved with violence, intimidation, and a sadistic pleasure in collecting debts through extreme methods. From his days as a political fixer to his reign as a feared loan shark, we uncover the chilling techniques he used to maintain control, including stories of his soundproof torture chamber and psychological manipulation of victims.

We also explore his relationship with Tony Spilotro, the mentee who would eventually play a role in his demise. As DeStefano’s erratic behavior and grotesque acts pushed him further into instability, his allies turned into enemies, sealing his fate in a brutal execution.

Join me as we revisit the twisted legacy of Mad Sam DeStefano, a man who thrived on fear but ultimately fell victim to the same violent world he helped create.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

[0:48] Nobody knows exactly how he went out, but one thing’s for sure, it wasn’t voluntary. The canary could sing, but he couldn’t fly, right? Exactly. So, guys, I know you all know me, but I’m retired intelligence unit detective Gary Jenkins, Kansas City Police Department. Got this show, Gangland Wire, and we deal with the mafia almost every week. So this story is blood and the bads, the mafia, two killer cops, and a scandal that shocked the nation. I know you know some of y’all will know this story about Steve Caraappa and Lou Eppilito I want to tell you what Joe Pistone who everybody knows is Donnie Brasco, said about this book “Cannell pulls back the veil to refill law enforcement’s most lurid chapter an entwined tale of decorated detectives on the mafia payroll a true account of police depravity unearthed with intensive reporting. And it really was. I mean, these two guys, Michael, they were unbelievable. They were depraved, depravity. I think that’s a really good word to say. They were like mafia people that went undercover on the cops, I would say, wouldn’t you?

[2:04] Yeah, I mean, the story essentially is that these two decorated detectives in the NYPD were on the mafia payroll and on the Lucchese crime family payroll in the late 80s and mostly the early 90s. And Louis Eppolito, who was really kind of the main guy, was born into a mafia family. His father was a Gambino Capo known as Fat the Gangster. And his uncle was a Gambino Capo known as Jimmy the Clam. And so Louis Eppolito was born into a prominent mafia family, but he rebelled against his family and joined the NYPD. And he became a detective, mostly working in South Brooklyn. Slowly but gradually, his family drew him back into the family business. And his patron in the mafia was an underboss known as Gas Pipe Casso. And so Louis Eppolito and his friend and partner, a man named Stephen Caracapa, were feeding Gas Pipe Casso sensitive police information. Who was under surveillance? Whose phones were tapped?

[3:30] Most importantly, who was an informant? Who was a rat? And so…

[3:40] What did Gas Pipe Casso do when he found out who the rats in his ranks were? Well, he hired Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa to facilitate the murder or assassination of the rats. And in at least one case, Eppolito and Caracappa pulled the trigger themselves. So they were bad guys. You know, among the detectives that I interviewed and that I got to know and got to be friends with in the course of interviewing this book, many of them said that they considered this to be the worst case of police corruption in the history of New York. And, I mean, I don’t know if I would make that claim myself. I’m not sure that I’m qualified to make that claim. But certainly this is among the worst cases of corruption in the country’s history.

[4:34] There’s no doubt about it. I saw that documentary about the 7-5 about all the corruption of more street policemen against people who were dealing narcotics on the street level. And that was pretty widespread corruption among a whole precinct. But these guys, they were targeted and against the higher echelon informants. How were they able to find out names of informants and things like that? Now, where did they work? You have to be, you have to work certain places in the police department to be aware of a lot of this information. You’re just Joe Blow street cop out there doesn’t know a lot of what’s going on. Where did they work that gave them access to this kind of information?

[5:16] Well, for the most part, the way they found out was that Stephen Caracappa, Louis Eppolito’s partner, worked in what was called the Major Case Squad. So the Major Case Squad, of course, was working on the most prominent cases and made a real effort to work on organized crime cases. And Caracappa, he had worked it out so that in the Major Case Squad, he was a kind of point man for all of the paperwork. People would report to him. They would call him every morning. They would file their updates and information to him. He would compile them, and then he would send them along to the higher-ups. So Caracapa was uniquely positioned to know exactly what was going on, to know what everybody was working on. And not only that, but he had access to FBI and DEA information. So whenever this information crossed his desk, he would send it along to the Lucchese crime family. And for the most part, this information was accurate. In one tragic case, he passed information along to Gas Pipe Casa, the underboss.

[6:32] And Casa ordered the shooting of a young man named Nicky Guido. The shooting occurred in Brooklyn on Christmas morning. Nicky, who was 26 years old, came outside with his uncle to show his uncle his new car, and he was shot to death there. The problem was that it was the wrong Nicky Guido. It was a case of mistaken identity. The Nicky Guido that Gas Pipe Casa was seeking, same name, also lived in Brooklyn, but lived in an adjacent neighborhood. So that was a rare case of the information being faulty. Years later, when Casso was interviewed about this on 60 Minutes, he said, these things happen. He brushed it off. He dismissed it.

[7:22] Wow. That’s, you know, those, that’s Karakapa being, getting himself in a position where all the paperwork went through him so he could see everything was going on. A few years later, Gotti’s people will develop an informant in the intelligence unit. He was actually an injured detective, a guy named Bill Peist. And that’s all he did was handle the paperwork and he had all this information. So he was really valuable to them for a period of time. So that’s really interesting because you’ve got to be in the right place to get any kind of decent information. Right.

[7:54] Go ahead. Go ahead. You know, I’m just going to say it’s worth remembering that all of this is taking place at a time when Rudy Giuliani and other prosecutors were using the RICO laws to bust the mob. The mob bosses were desperate. They were desperate for information. They were desperate to find out who was under investigation. The days when they could more or less do what they wanted in New York were coming to a close, and Giuliani was rounding people up. These two cops working for the Lucchese-Quine family were kind of a lifeline for the mob. Gas Pipe Caso referred to them as his crystal ball, and that’s really what they were. They were like a crystal ball. I wonder, did it become known among other mob guys that they had this source of, or Caso had this source of information? Did they like, I was coming bug gas pipe about, hey, find out about this, find out about that?

[8:53] Yeah, I mean, people knew that gas pipe had a crystal ball, but they only knew this people as the crystal ball. What happened was that Casso never, strange as it may sound, Casso only knew the identity of these two cops late in the game. And the reason for that is that these cops were brought to him by a drug dealer, a kind of exalted high-level drug dealer named Burt Kaplan. And Burt Kaplan had arranged many financial schemes with the mob. And Burt Kaplan acted as an intermediary between the mob and the two cops. And he kept everybody’s identity secret. He was the only one who really knew who everybody was in this kind of chain of information. And the reason that he did that, of course, was he wanted everything to be secret in case somebody, somebody became an informant. He didn’t want anybody to be able to inform on anybody else. He wanted to keep things safely compartmentalized.

[10:06] Interesting i think there’s a couple cases where i know there’s one case where they delivered a guy to casso to kill and by picking him up on the street and put him in their trunk can you tell us about that case and i think in the end that’s the one that that brings him down.

[10:24] Yeah i mean what happened was that and it relates to the story about nicky guido that i just told you. The real Nicky Guido, not the one that was shot, the real Nicky Guido and a young man named Jimmy Heidel pulled up in front of a strip mall in Brooklyn, and they had been assigned the job of assassinating Gas Pipe Caso. Well, they shot at Caso, who was eating an ice cream cone in his car. They hit him. They injured him. Caso runs into a restaurant and runs downstairs and hides in basically like a meat locker or refrigerator. And he eventually gets away. So he devotes the next couple of years to trying to track down the people who assassinated. Jimmy Heidel, of course, was at the top of the list. He sent the two cops, Epolito and Caracapa, to look for Jimmy Heidel. They went to his family home in Staten Island and they went to his family home.

[11:45] Jimmy Heidel’s mother comes out of the house and confronts them. They flash their police badges. They say it’s police business. Of course it isn’t. And they drive to Brooklyn, and they pick up Jimmy Heidel in Brooklyn. Now, they were very happy to kill Jimmy Heidel, but that’s not what Casso wanted. Casso said, I want you to just abduct him. I want you to bring him to me. And so they drove to a Toys R Us parking lot right by the Bell Parkway along the edge of southern Brooklyn. And they delivered Jimmy Heidel to Casso. Casso took Jimmy Heidel to the basement of a friend’s house. And I mean, I think the only word you can use is tortured him. He tortured him and shot him, shot his, you know, his four limbs and demanded to know who else was involved in the attempted assassination at that strip mall. Casso gave it all up. I’m sorry, Jimmy Heidel gave it all up. He begged for one thing. He said, when I die, throw my body in the street. And that’s because he wanted his mother to be able to get the life insurance money. He didn’t think his mother could get the life insurance money without the body.

[13:09] Casso never dumped the body in the street. In fact, that body has never been found. There are some theories about it lying underneath a mall development, but the body has never been found.

[13:25] Crazy, crazy, crazy.

[13:30] Now, trying to remember, these guys went about their day-to-day business all the time. And Eppolito, he had these close family members in the Gambino family, but yet they end up working, getting introduced to Caso Lucchese by a drug dealer. I wonder, how did that work? Did his Gambino relatives not know about his double life or?

[13:55] Well, what happened was that Burt Kaplan was a degenerate gambler. His criminal life on the outskirts of the mafia involved crimes, originally started as crimes that could be used to pay off his gambling debts. He could never be a part of the mafia, inducted as a made man because he was Jewish, but he made deals with the mafia and he acted a little bit the way Arnold Rothstein acted in the 1930s. He was sort of a money man and a facilitator and a schemer. And he went to jail in the 80s and his best friend in jail and his companion was a man named Frankie Santora. And Frankie Santora happened to be Louis Eppolito’s cousin. And so when Burt Kaplan and Frank Santora got out of jail, Santora said, my cousin is a policeman.

[15:02] He’s an NYPD detective, but he’ll help you out. If you need help, he’ll do what you need. At the time, Kaplan didn’t like the idea. He didn’t like the idea of being in some kind of arrangement with a cop. But not long after Kaplan got out of jail, he had hired a diamond dealer to sell a stolen treasury bond in London. And when that diamond dealer, whose name was Israel Greenwald, flew back into JFK Airport in New York, Customs grabbed him, the FBI questioned him.

[15:50] And so now Burt Kaplan was worried that Israel Greenwald would become an informant. What was he going to do about Israel Greenwald? Well, Bert Kaplan, of course, thought about his jailhouse friend Frankie Santora and Santora’s cousin. And so he contacted Santora and said, is your cousin, the policeman, still willing to do some work for me? And so Israel Greenwald was driving home from the Diamond District here in New York one day. He was pulled over by a police car. There was Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa.

[16:34] And they said, you are implicated in a hit and run. You’re going to come with us. He did go with them. And he ended up buried underneath a parking garage in Brooklyn. Now, this part of the story had nothing to do with, gaspite Casso. But now Bert Kaplan had a relationship with these two dirty cops. And so Bert Kaplan eventually brought them to gaspite Casso and said, these detectives can be very helpful to us. He must have been in bed with Casso on a lot of different things that he would give up that kind of a valuable source to him.

[17:19] Right. Casso originally went to the Lucchese crime family for loans because of his gambling problem. And he got into real trouble with the Lucchese loan sharks. It just so happened that Bert Kaplan’s father-in-law was a retired cop and he knew the Lucchese members. You know, it was all very cozy in those days in Brooklyn, and incestuous. So the father-in-law takes Bert Kaplan to the 19th Hole Bar, which was a Lucchese hangout. And they go in and they make an arrangement for a favorable arrangement for Kaplan to pay off his debts. Kaplan eventually went from being a customer to being a co-conspirator. And he helped the mob and Gas Pipe Caso in particular with all sorts of illegal schemes. Well, it’s funny how it works sometimes. Those guys are so intertwined with each other. And there’s always another scheme where you can use people and use people for this, use people for that. They’re always looking for that guy they can use and somebody that’s hurting in some manner or they can manipulate them and get control over them.

[18:44] Right. I mean, absolutely the case. I mean, in this case, Bert Kaplan was desperate to pay off his debts, but really over the long run, he was sort of running the mafia rather than the way around because he was such a master manipulator and such a schemer that they really relied on him for his abilities. Who else? Was there anybody else that they gave up or anything that you Do you remember particularly that these guys gave up? That was a store. I mean, they gave up a lot of people. I will, you know, before we started here, we mentioned, very briefly mentioned Otto Heidel.

[19:23] There’s just a fascinating story about a bank robbing crew in New York at the time.

[19:33] It seems like they were straight out of Ocean’s Eleven, straight out of that George Clooney movie. Oh, yeah, the bypass crew. I read that in your book, The Bypass Gang. That looked really interesting. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, The Bypass Gang. They would wait for a holiday weekend so that they have plenty of time.

[19:51] Yeah. They would drill into a bank or a jewelry store or a luxury goods store, and they would make a weekend out of it. They would bring in food, and it was almost sort of like a holiday weekend for them, and they would take their time. And they were very sophisticated about disarming the alarm systems. And they were segmented into different types of crews. One was responsible for disarming the alarms. One was responsible for the physical job of breaking into the bank or luxury goods store. And then one was responsible for monitoring the police scanners. And they employed a man named Otto Heidel, not really a gangster. I mean, not a hardcore criminal, but he was part of this crew. And he was arrested one day for the FBI caught him stealing some material. And he had a beautiful wife who looked like Marilyn Monroe. And he was terrified that if he went to jail that she would not be faithful. And so for years, Otto Heidel remained a member of the bypass gang, but he worked as an informant for the FBI.

[21:10] And when Stephen Caracappa caught on to this, he passed Otto Heidel’s name along to Gas Pipe Caso. Now, Otto Heidel one day was.

[21:28] Coming back from playing racquetball or something in a, in Marine Park in South Brooklyn. And he came back to his car and there was a flat tire, which I’ve come to understand was a, was a common mafia ploy when they were going to assassinate somebody. They couldn’t get away if their tire was flat. And Otto Heidel, I think must’ve known that because he’d lay down on the street to replace the flat tire. He placed his pistol by his side, but it didn’t help. He was shot there. He managed to get up and run up a street. The shooters, the assassins followed him up this one-way street, driving against the traffic and finished him off. But Otto Heidel was really just one of many.

[22:21] Boy, boy, boy. So Tommy Dage, you got to know Tommy Dage pretty well, and I’ve heard of him before. He was a pretty active investigator and well-known detective in New York City. Now, if I remember right, he’s the one that maybe uncovered this whole situation, the first guy that got onto this. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I mean, it’s just what I’ll say about this is that Gas Pipe Caso, who we’ve been talking about, spent a lot of years using Eppolito and Caracappa to kill informants. And then Gas Pipe Caso himself became an informant. He had been hiding out in a girlfriend’s house in New Jersey.

[23:13] The FBI tracked him down there largely because he was using one of the early model cell phones, and they tracked him down that way. And he became an informant. And the prosecutors thought, okay, now we have the insider. Now we have an insider. Well, first of all, I should say he told them all about Eppolito and Caracappa.

[23:39] So the prosecutors thought, now we have the insider who can testify against Eppolito and Caracappa. The problem was that Casa was kind of a loose cannon, and he started to badmouth some of the other informants, including Sammy the Bull Gravano.

[24:01] Who had testified in other cases. At that point, he became kind of radioactive. Yeah. Because the prosecutors thought, we can’t put this guy in the stand. Because if he starts shooting his mouth off, it’s going to cause a problem for these other cases. Yeah. And so they just sent him to Supermax. They ended his cooperation agreement, and they send him off to Supermax. And that was the last that anybody heard of gas pipe cast out. So what does that mean for Eppolito and Caracappa? The feds just really let them walk because they figured better not to endanger the other prosecutions, including the prosecution of John Gotti, than to pursue Eppolito and Caracappa. Eppolito and Caracappa. Let me explain something here to my guys out there now. And this happened in Chicago, particularly with Frank Culotta. When you get an informity and a good storyteller, and he’s going to be testifying against these other mob guys and the higher echelon mob guys, you have to be able to take him in his word. So then what they do is they start trying to denigrate that guy and try to make him out a liar. And so when the Lucchese guy, you know, when Gaspar Casso.

[25:20] Starts telling some lies here and there, and the defense attorneys find out about it, then they’ll be, they’ll like start bringing all that up. And is bad-mouthing Sammy the Bull? Well, they don’t want Sammy the Bull to be bad-mouthed any more than he is because that’ll destroy his testimony. And they’ll, you know, they’ll bring Caso in and say, hey, what about, you know, this time Gervano lied or that time Gervano lied or this time this guy lied. And so the feds are one more murderer, set of murders, let go to protect Sammy the Bull Gravano, really, because his testimony was so valuable to him. So it’s kind of interesting. Exactly. The minute Gas Pipe Caso was going to call Sammy the Bull Gravano a liar on the stand, you can be sure that Sammy the Bull Gravano’s lawyers would ask for a retrial. So Gas Pipe Caso, I know this is complicated, but Gas Pipe Caso goes to Supermax. And the case looks like Eppolito and Caracappa are going to get away with all this. I tell you what, that’s Kafkaesque, isn’t it? Just stick him down at Superbac. He can’t tell anybody anything in order to protect this other case. That’s amazing because the prosecutors knew what Eppolito and Caracappa had done. Yeah. But they made a kind of deal with themselves, which is that they weren’t going to pursue them. Now, what happened next? Deal with the devil. Deal with the devil. Exactly.

[26:43] So what happened next was that Tommy Dades, a New York City detective, had decided to retire after 9-11. He worked in the intelligence division in the NYPD, and he had been working on mob cases for a long time. And after 9-11, the emphasis shifted to anti-terrorism. He had worked for more than 20 years, and he figured it was time to retire. And he was winding things down.

[27:14] And then one day, he gets a call from a woman named Betty Heidel. So Betty is the mother of Jimmy Heidel, the man that we discussed earlier, who Eppolito and Kara Kappa uptrended. Abducted and delivered to Gas Pipe Caso. Betty Heidel had seen the cops at Bledon Caracappa when she came out of her house that day, when they were looking for her son. Louie Eppolito had published a memoir. And that was a bad idea. And so Betty Heidel happened to see Eppolito promoting the book on the Sally Jesse Raphael show, the daytime talk show. And she recognized Louie Eppolito and she went out and bought the book. And there in the book is a photo of Eppolito and Cara Capa with their names in the caption. So now Betty Heidel knows the names of the man who abducted her son. So what is she going to do with that information? She called Tommy Dades. Tommy Dades.

[28:32] Had come to her house when her other son was killed, was murdered. Now, Tommy Dades is a special guy. Tommy Dades was raised by a single mother in Brooklyn. And throughout his career, he had a very special relationship with the mothers in the cases, the mothers of the victims and the mothers of the perpetrators. And I think he developed this relationship or friendship with them out of a really sincere desire to help them. He explained to them how the judicial system worked, and he sometimes sent them Christmas cards and sometimes helped them out with various things, drove them places.

[29:19] Betty Heidel trusted him, and so she called him and told him that she now knew who had abducted her son, Jimmy Heidel. Now, Tommy took this case to Michael Vecchione, a prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA’s office, and they developed this case. Tommy locked himself up in a room in the Brooklyn DA’s office and did an enormous amount of research. He went through all the phone logs and all the search logs from the major case squad where Stephen Caracappa had operated. And they began to work with the FBI and with the federal prosecutors.

[30:09] And eventually, this became a federal case. The expectation was that the Brooklyn DA’s office would prosecute the homicide part of the Eppolito and Karakapa case, and the feds would prosecute a RICO case. But it didn’t work out that way. The whole case ended up going to the feds. It’s a point of some bitterness. Eppolito and Karakapa were tried and convicted. And, Without giving too much away here, I will say that that conviction was thrown out by the judge on a technicality. And so it looked as if they were going to get away with it again. The conviction was eventually reinstated and they did go to prison. Wow. There’s a lot more stories in this book, guys. There’s a lot more stories in this book. It’s just a trip through the seamy underbelly of New York City in the 1970s. And these guys are famous. Eppolito was in two or three movies, most notably, I guess, The Goodfellas. And they retired and thought they had it made when Tommy Dates dropped the hammer on them. They thought that they’d gotten away with it all for reasons that we discussed. They went to Las Vegas. Eppolito went to Las Vegas first.

[31:35] Caracappa moved into a house directly across the street from him in a subdivision. So why did Caracappa live directly across the street? I think the answer is that he wanted to keep an eye on Caracappa. Caracappa was kind of a loudmouth, a bully, a guy who boasted a lot. I think Caracappa was nervous that Eppolito was going to get them into trouble. And of course, he did by publishing that book. So, Tommy Dades was working on this case. He made contact with a DEA agent in Las Vegas who put Eppolito and Caracappa under surveillance. Mm-hmm.

[32:22] They sent an accountant who had been indicted. They turned him into an informant, and the accountant had many meals with Eppolito and Caracappa wearing a recording device. Oh, really. As you mentioned, at this point, Eppolito thought of himself as an actor and a movie maker. He had had bit parts in movies, including Goodfellas, as you mentioned, but he wanted to produce, he wanted to direct, he wanted to write screenplays.

[33:00] The accountant acted as if he were going to help Eppolito find backers, find funding for these movies.

[33:13] At one point, the accountant asked them about buying drugs. And Eppolito helped the accountant track down some drugs. And that was the precipitating event that led to their arrest. Get that one thing, you could make an arrest for it and like drugs and go in and serve a search warrant on the house. And hopefully you can dig up some more corroborating information, evidence in those search warrants. So interesting, I tell you what. And this has got to go down in history, as Tommy Dates said, you know, the most corrupt two policemen in the entire history of the New York City Police Department. And that is saying something, isn’t it? Well, before all of this came to light, and when Gas Pipe Casso was telling the feds about these two corrupt cops, that they had fed sensitive police information to the mob, that they were implicated in a dozen murders, and they were implicated in a dozen murders.

[34:21] That information leaked to the press. It was on the cover of the Daily News.

[34:28] Tommy Dades went to a Dunkin’ Donuts one morning before work to get some coffee. And there was the newspaper.

[34:40] And Tommy tells me that he just couldn’t believe it. I mean, there were a lot of corrupt cops. There was a lot of corruption. People knew that Eppolito and Caracappa might be kind of dirty. But to work for the mob and to actually kill for the mob, it didn’t even seem believable. I can imagine. That’s just, it is, it’s still unbelievable today, even with all the evidence that’s been unearthed about these guys and everybody that’s talked to them. I think, I think Kaplan even ended up turning on everybody too, didn’t he? Well one of the real ironies of the story is yes caplan who was so obsessed with keeping things secret caplan who’s told the authorities over and over again that he would never be an informant he would he threatened to kill himself to over medicate himself to commit suicide in jail he was not going to become an informant, but he eventually did. And he was the one who really put Eppolito and Caracappa in jail. Without his testimony, the feds really would not have had a case. They lost Gaspipe Caso as the insider, so they used Bert Kaplan as the insider instead.

[35:59] Interesting. Well, Michael Connell, this has been great having you on and having you on again and telling the inside story on this particular show. I’m going to tell you guys a little bit about Michael Connell. He’s got the book that he was on my show before, A Brotherhood Betrayed, The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder Incorporated, which is a story of Abe Rellis, Incendiary, The Psychiatrist, The Mad Bomber, and The Invention of Criminal Profiling, the limit life and death on the 1961 grand prix circuit and i am pay mandarin of modernism now you kind of you go from modern art to the bob bob in the 30s even yeah i’m all over the place you’re all over the place what that means is you’re a great researcher too and you develop relationships with people that know these inside facts and that can write it down that’s the key to being a good writer, isn’t it? Yeah.

[37:00] So anything else you want to share with us? No, I just, it’s a great, it’s a great pleasure to be on here with you. And thank you, Gary, for your, for your interest. It’s a, it’s always a pleasure, a great pleasure to talk to you. You’re so knowledgeable about all of this and I appreciate it. All right. Thanks for coming on, Michael. So guys, don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website and hand in hand with PTSD, you know, our friend Angelo Ruggiano, former Gambino prospect, I think a proposed member is, he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida, believe it or not. And he has a website, a YouTube page, and he has a hotline on that. So if you got a problem with that, go see Angelo Ruggiano. And if you have a problem with gambling, there’s one 800 bets off, I know. And don’t forget, I’ve got some books of my own out there on my website or just go to Google or run Amazon Gary Jenkins. You’ll find everything I’ve got, a couple of documentaries, a couple of three documentaries actually to rent for only $1.99, cheap at twice the price. So thanks a lot, Michael. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

[38:16] Thanks, Gary. Fun to be here.

In this episode of Gangland Wire Crime Stories, I dive into the intricate world of the Boston Mafia, focusing on the notorious Gennaro Angiulo family and their operations. As a retired Kansas City police intelligence detective, my fascination with organized crime has led me to some of the most compelling stories in law enforcement history. Today, I’m joined by Ian Cross, an expert on Boston’s underworld, for a deep dive into the city’s mob landscape, the power struggles between the Italian and Irish factions, and the innovative tactics used to dismantle these criminal empires.

We start with a behind-the-scenes look at the FBI’s surveillance methods—how agents installed covert microphones, maintained secrecy, and penetrated the Mafia’s inner circles. I share a striking Kansas City case where a courtroom revelation exposed a long-hidden bugging technique, shedding light on the FBI’s relentless efforts. Ian provides his expertise on Boston’s organized crime scene, detailing how law enforcement’s meticulous strategies put pressure on the Angiulo family’s gambling empire.

Ian also introduces us to The Big Dig, his previous podcast exploring Boston’s controversial tunnel project and its ties to corruption and organized crime. This leads us to the heart of today’s episode—Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo, the underboss who controlled the city’s illegal gambling operations from the North End. We discuss his rise to power, his strategic avoidance of violence, and the FBI’s elaborate efforts to bring him down through surveillance and legal maneuvers.

As we unpack the Angiulo family’s criminal enterprise, Ian shares gripping details of the FBI’s wiretaps—how agents captured Jerry’s conversations, exposing the inner workings of Boston’s Mafia. We also explore the broader impact of these investigations, including the tensions within the organization and the shifting landscape of organized crime in the city.

Ian previews his upcoming podcast, Scratch and Win, which explores the Mafia’s transition from controlling underground gambling to the rise of state-run lotteries. It’s fascinating how organized crime adapts to new realities while continuing to operate in the shadows. Join us for this in-depth discussion on one of Boston’s most influential Mafia families and the law enforcement strategies that ultimately took them down. Don’t forget to subscribe for more true crime stories from organized crime.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with Ted Pryor, a man whose life story is a rollercoaster of discipline, danger, and redemption. Ted’s journey begins in law enforcement, where his martial arts expertise earned him respect among police departments. But a fateful decision led him down a very different path—one that plunged him into the high-stakes world of South Florida smuggling.

Ted recounts how a family member introduced him to the trade, starting with a seemingly simple marijuana operation. Before long, he found himself entangled in a dangerous underworld, rubbing shoulders with major players in Miami’s drug scene. As a bodyguard for a notorious trafficker, he balanced his life as a kickboxing champion with the risks of organized crime, struggling to reconcile these two identities.

The stakes escalated when law enforcement finally caught up with him. Ted shares the harrowing details of a dramatic police chase and his courtroom battle to reclaim his future. His firsthand insights into the legal system, the pressures of incarceration, and the turning points that led him to change his life make for a compelling narrative.

Ted has now dedicated himself to a new mission—helping at-risk youth break free from the cycle of crime. Through his foundation, he provides educational opportunities for underprivileged children, believing early intervention is key to keeping them off the streets. His story of transformation, resilience, and giving back is inspiring.

Ted’s book, Three Times World Champ, chronicles his extraordinary life, with all proceeds supporting his charitable efforts. Tune in to hear how one man went from the depths of the drug trade to becoming a champion for change.

Buy the book click here Three Times World Champ

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

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

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[0:48] Thank you, Gary. Thanks for having me on. Now, guys, Ted’s written a book. You know, I get a lot of authors on there. Saves me doing the research, Ted. I have to admit, it saves me doing a lot of research. You guys know your stuff. The name of the book is Three Times World Champ, the death-defying true story of a kickboxer turned drug smuggler turned business icon. And believe me, guys, that is J. Ted Pryor. What a hell of a story from the middleweight kickboxing champion of the world to world champion marijuana smuggler down in South Florida and right in the heart of drug smuggling territory, which is, you know, really carved out a niche down there. But later on, businessman and a chef. And I just don’t know, Ted, start telling us about yourself, kind of how you got going and where you’re at.

[1:37] Gary, it’s interesting that you were in law enforcement and you retired as a detective. And, you know, I was in law enforcement my whole life as a young kid. I used to be, I used to be, when I was training, I became a black belt and started training to become a world champion kickboxer. And I used to train all the police departments in West Palm Beach.

[1:58] And I was a tactical commander, teach them how to search and seizure, teach them how to cuff a guy, put him in a till cold without killing somebody. So I was very influential with the police departments in all of South Florida. And then I started teaching the DEA, FBI, Secret Service through a guy named Joe Hess, who was the heavyweight champion of the world.

[2:18] So I was in law enforcement most of my young life, I would say from 17 to my mid-20s.

[2:26] And as I was doing that, I got into the pot smuggling business.

[2:33] I noticed one thing in your book, you became Elvis Presley’s bodyguard for a period of time. Yeah, I did. And I got that through Joe Hess as well. Interesting story. I was working at the police academy. I mean, I was number five in the world kickboxing champion in my division, which was a super middleweight championship.

[2:50] Elvis Presley, Shelton Parker was a martial artist. And Elvis Presley did a little bit of martial arts when he went to the service. And not that he was good at it, but he just loved the martial arts and karate. And he liked the aspect of it. He became an honorary black belt. Shelton Parker was a big martial arts guy. And Elvis said he wanted the best. He wanted the world champion. So he reached out to Joe Hess. And I just won the world title as well. And he wanted us to bodyguard him so we had the privilege of bodyguard him for his last year of his life and it was fantastic because you know i was like 20 years old and i was the last of the defense me and joe for the women to get to him and it’d be a stage and i’ll tell you tell you a funny story is we’re at a concert and mostly women gorgeous women and we’d have about 20 guys in the front anybody that got past those guys had to come up to me and joe and we would put our arms around their waist and lay them down. And, you know, this one particular time, this girl had Elvis’s scarf and put it around my neck and started choking me as I was bringing her down to the floor. It was, you know, she was beautiful. I laid her down and she left the scarf on my neck. And I still have it to this day. And Elvis goes, how’d you get that scarf? I go, one of your fans tried to choke me. He goes, well, you earned it, keep it.

[4:09] But it was a You know, we did it for about a year, and then we got a phone call one day that he passed, and it was kind of bad. But, you know, it was a great experience, and he was a great guy. And he was in his, you know, later years. He was very overweight, and, you know, he didn’t even like to be touched because he was perspiring so much. But overall, it was a great experience, and, you know, it was one of the most fabulous times of my life. I can only imagine traveling with the— All the beautiful 20-year-old women. And he had all the beautiful young girls and what they call his mafia.

[4:44] Mafia, exactly. Elvis’ mafia, all his buddies, his entourage. He’d have a hell of an entourage traveling with him. And he bought everything for everybody. Hell, I understand he would go into a town. If he liked some cops, he might buy some cop a brand new car because he loved cops. Yep. It was nuts. Very generous guy. And he gave so much faith and so much trust in his manager. As we all know, he pretty much took all of his money and gambled it all away. And he was just a generous, beautiful person. So, Ted, how did you end up in the drug dealing business? I see. Well. I’m reading through this, and I see you started out at a young age. As many guys do, somebody said, hey, man, you want to make a run, make some really good money for just a little short run? Too good to be true. Yeah. So as I was training, I was working at a correctional counselor and guys coming out of state prison. I was called the CC1. And basically, they’d come out of prison. I’d find them jobs. And it was a work release camp. And it was getting them to basically get themselves back in and not just throw them on the street and have them go back to crime.

[5:52] They had got a job. So I was a counselor. And now that was a counselor, my mom was like 47 years old and she had cancer, pancreatic cancer. And my brother and my sisters, they all smoked pot. I never did. When I found my brother’s pot, I’d throw it and flush it down the toilet because I was like a mini law enforcement guy at that point, guy in my life.

[6:12] And my mom would get really sick with the chemo and stuff. And the only thing that would help her, and I’d stop hearing her moan and cry all the time, is when my sister and my brother gave her a joint and she’d smoke it and it took the chemo pain away from her. So one day, my brother-in-law said to me, he goes, hey, Ted, you’d like to make $5,000. I go, well, yeah. I go, I make $7,000 a year in the law enforcement. He goes, well, you make $5,000. That isn’t 1977, 78. And everybody knew what Florida was becoming. And he goes, you’re just going to drive this car from Hollywood to Naples across Alligator Alley. He goes, in fact, take your girlfriend with you. So her name was Tanita. I put her in the car, took the car to the other side of Alligator Alley and came back with another car. And I had like 500 pounds of pot. I didn’t know what it was in there. I kind of figured, but I dropped it off, came back with maybe $50,000, $60,000. And I got $5,000 a month. So that’s how it started.

[7:15] And I did that probably once or twice a month. Next thing I know is I have a safety deposit box stashed with $50,000 or $60,000. Now I’m 20 years old. That’s like $5 million to me today, right? And I’m like, I’m thinking I’m the cock of the block. I’m rich with $50,000. And so I’m working at the workplace center, and I’m getting ready to fight for the world title. And I win the world title. And, you know, well, let me back up. Before I won the world title, I started buying boats, and I started running pot myself, me and my brother. And we bring in a couple thousand pounds at a clip. And that’s how I got started into the business.

[7:58] Well, I get all marijuana marijuana. Yeah. And I guess I’m always interested in the more, the details of how these things work, how, you know, I see your brother-in-law got you to haul that one load and he probably told whoever he’s working with, you know, Hey, this guy’s Tad, Tad’s okay. You know, he could trust him. He did this. He did it perfect, did it well. And so then you get introduced to another guy who, who wants to offer you a little more opportunity. Is that kind of how it worked yeah this next guy who was this next guy the next guy was named little ray thompson and he was the king thing of the cartel of miami and fort lauderdale area and this guy would bring in you know 10 000 pounds of pop and he’d have five 58 foot hatteras but he he knew i was getting ready to fight for the world title and he didn’t want to ruin my reputation he goes i want you to be my bodyguard. And I says, okay, I’ll be your bodyguard. So I was his bodyguard and he wouldn’t let me get involved with anything.

[8:58] Nothing to do with the pot business at all. And I knew all the people that he didn’t think that I knew and I would do it on the side. He would know it. And I’d do my little runs and I’d make my little money. And he thought I was keeping me clean. And then one day, uh, you know, he was like one of the biggest pots mongers

[9:15] in the, in the country at that point in time. One day he called me up and he says, Ted, he goes, that you know i’m giving you an opportunity i go what’s that he goes i need you to drive this van out of the boatyard he owned his boatyard called amity boatyard and there’s about 35 000 pounds of pot there he goes i need you to take a van and drive it to a certain location it’s 1500 pounds and you’ll make 20 000 bucks i says okay i’ll do that so i get in the van and my brother-in-law is the security guy he gives me a wave go ahead and go i go pull out of the garage of the marina and this Camaro comes flying behind me and I’m going oh boy it’s not good and I make a right I make a left I make a right and this guy’s on my bumper and I’ll never forget it was on Davy Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale changed my life it was 1981 June and I pulled over and all of a sudden I said ah something’s going on all of a sudden the blue lights come on cops come over pull me over.

[10:12] And these guys were just rookies and they just joined just came out of the police academy that I train these guys, you know, and they open the van and they go, it’s Ted Pryor. He can’t get against the man. They can watch him out. He’s dangerous. He can kill you with his hands and feet. And they got a gun on my head. I go, guys, I’m okay. You got the wrong guy. No, we got you, Ted. We got you. Don’t move. And they cuffed me and they put me in the back of the car. And, you know, they’re just, they’re all in shock. There’s like 20 cops at this time. And every one of these guys went through the academy at some point in time in the last five years. And, you know, they were kind of devastated. This is Joe Hess’s boy. You know, he was our commander and tactical commander. He trained all of us. He went bad. So they bring me to the police station.

[11:02] And, you know, this is right out of like Dragnet or, you know, the show’s good guy, bad guy. In your case, Miami Vice. Yeah, right. Miami Vice, right. So they got me in the interrogation room and they have my feet shackled, you know, with Ziploc. And then they have me tied behind the chair with a Ziploc. And there’s another guy, it’s a Sergeant, Peter, I remember him. And he’s hitting this phone book and he’s going, Ted, I hate to do this to you. And I go, listen, I know what you’re going to do with that phone book. There’s going to be a problem. And I stood up with my hands tied behind a chair with the chair on my back. And I said, if you think you’re going to hit me with that phone book, we’re all going to be grappling here and someone’s going to get hurt. I had no idea how I was going to defend myself. And I was shackled. And I talked to them. They knew how good I was that they said, Ted, sit down. We’re not going to hurt you.

[11:56] And I says, OK, put that book down first. You put that phone book down because

[12:00] that phone book is going to go across my head because it didn’t show any marks when they hit you. You know, because they don’t have any battery and stuff. so you know and they said what were you gonna do like that and i go i have no idea i said but we’re all gonna be grappling and get hurt somehow yeah but that was that was the first encounters i had with you know my friends and you know it was kind of ups and downs moments because i was in law enforcement yeah and here i here i become you know i’m a guy smuggling pot and it was kind of uncomfortable and you know obviously i didn’t have my job anymore at the police academy but you know a lot of guys still stuck by me, believe it or not.

[12:40] And now everybody thinks I got a real soft sentence because I knew a lot of people, possibly true, but not with the judges. And, you know, I had a lot of references that I was a good guy and made a mistake. And so, you know, it was a usual experience, but, you know, terrible for my family. And for me, I was, I wouldn’t come out of the house for about a month because I was embarrassed, you know? I can imagine. Yeah.

[13:05] I guess you had enough money to hire a pretty good lawyer too, and that always helps. And then with your connection background, first-time offender, young guy, been working with the police department. Hey, it’s pretty easy to sell that story. He made a mistake. He needs a second chance, right? Yeah, exactly. It was an interesting ride. And when I got arrested by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, There’s a thing called motion suppressing evidence. I’m sure you know what that is, but most of the viewers wouldn’t know it. But basically, when you read the story, you’ll see that they have to have probable cause to be able to pull you over. And actually, the judge I had was Stan Kaplan, who was a, they called him the hanging judge. He was really tough. He was in a wheelchair most of his life.

[13:47] But he followed the law as it was written in the law, and it didn’t vary off of it. And basically if you made a clean bust you know you’re going to get the maximum sentence well the bus when they busted me with the van they actually lied and they said the bumper was dragging on the van and that was your probable cause and basically in court i had a great lawyer like you said and we’ve proven when we got the van out of out of the compound from the police we loaded up with 1500 pounds of uh of weights and the they said the bumper was dragging on the ground and it didn’t move a quarter of an inch yeah and when we got the judge for the motion to suppress the evidence what happens is the judge says well you said the bumper was dragging on the ground the prosecutor says yes sir the police officers say yes sir and he says well how can this be the same band with the same amount of weight and it didn’t move a quarter of an inch he goes so you guys were lying because it’s impossible that you pulled him over and now you’re lying to try to bring this man in front of me he goes this.

[14:51] Is i’m throwing this out because you guys lied and you tampered with evidence and the probable cause you know you should have told us the truth but you’re lying so he threw it out yeah and what what they probably had was an informant that they were trying to protect they had they had an informant that they were trying to protect and they should have used that informant and i would have gotten the full maximum term which would have been 15 years at that point in time so judge kaplan threw it out and then he knew my background of becoming a professional fighter i was getting ready for the world title fight i didn’t win the world title at that point that was 81 so i was free.

[15:30] To go. And I fought, became a world champion. I was in the newspapers all the time, Fort Lauderdale News. I was on a TV show called PM Magazine, which is very popular in the eighties. And Judge Kaplan seen me turn my whole life around. And then all of a sudden knock on the door, the feds come in and they want me to cooperate. And I said, no, I’m not going to cooperate because I think I’m, I’m, you know, I think I’m God now because I, I won. Right. And didn’t realize about, you know, double jeopardy. And it wasn’t, they just gave me a different charge. They called, you know, they hit me with conspiracy to import marijuana. I was looking at five to 15 years and the federal government, you know, they, they charged me with conspiracy. And then what happened was Nancy Reagan and Reagan just got into office and she just says, say no to drugs. And I was the largest seizure of the United States history, 1981, 32,000 pounds. After they busted me, They went back to the boathouse and they got a warrant and they got 32,000 pounds. It’s the largest seizure in United States history. And they got one guy and it’s me. And I got off. So those feds put the pressure on him because Nancy said, just say no.

[16:38] And they got it overturned. I got to go back in front of Judge Kaplan. And he says, you know, Ted, he goes, I think you’ve done an incredible job with your life. Turn it around. 1982, you become a world champion. You’re in the movies. You’re flying all over the world. He goes, I made the right call. He goes, but I got overturned by the appellate court in the state here. And it had something to do with the federal government. And I made the right call. I made it in the law. And he goes, other people have other agendas. He goes, and I got a sentence here. So he gave me the minimum sentences, which was a year. And he gave me a year. And he said.

[17:13] In the courtroom, John Sayles, he used to be Julie Rudiani’s right-hand guy. He actually was one of the lawyers that got Nixon out of the White House. So he was with a federal prosecutor. He was a very, very influential guy. And the judge said, I’m going to give you a year and a day in state court or 18 months in penitentiary. So John Sayles says, we’ll take the 18 months. And I said, excuse me, Your Honor, can I talk to my lawyer outside? Because I don’t think he knows Matt. He goes, sure, Ted. So I go outside. I go, John. 18 months is a lot longer than a year and a day. He goes, well, the judge doesn’t know. If you go to state court, you get a day off for every day you do. He goes, I’ll have you out back in your work release place in nine months. I says, okay. So I go in, I tell the judge, I’ll take the 18 months. So sure enough, three months I was on work release. And where I go is right back to the place that I actually started, you know, helping convicts coming out of state prison. And my dear friend who I started with is now the chief.

[18:11] And his name is Barry Arringer. and he’s the chief of police he comes in he goes head you messed up your life look at you you’re a convict i go jerry i go barry i don’t need to hear this from you i know what i did wrong i go i’m i’m just want to get my time and get over it get and he goes look i know you’re too stupid to get a job because you bring you can have you know your volkswagen car come here and you can go do what you want he goes i’m gonna give you a beeper five o’clock you make sure you’re back here by five o’clock every day and don’t you screw me, Ted. I go, Barry, have I ever screwed you before? He goes, no. He goes, but you went bad and I’m giving you a chance to go ahead and just be back and, you know, not five o’clock. Well, during I was in the penitentiary at this point in time.

[18:59] You know, I was still working in the business. My brother had a boat and he was continuously running marijuana runs. And, you know, I never ratted him out. And a lot of my other friends, I didn’t rat him out. I just kept it to myself. So as I’m on work release, I get a call from a friend of mine, Dennis McGuire, and he was very close with Governor Graham. And basically he says, I need you to come meet me at my restaurant called Crackers in North Miami. So I said, sure, I’ll come meet you. So I come meet him. he walks in with a briefcase and my brother told me that we did a run and he comes in with the Miami Herald. He goes, you want the good news or the bad news? I have a beeper on my side. I want a work release.

[19:40] I says, give me the bad news. He throws the Miami Herald on the counter. He goes, Ted Pryor, champion, indicted with 30 other people, biggest marijuana drug smuggling ring in the country. And all of a sudden my beeper goes off and he goes, what’s that? I go, that’s my beeper. He goes, who’s beeping? Yeah. I go, that’s Barry Aaron’s. It’s the chief where I’m at at the workplace. He goes, you’re one crazy effed up dude. He goes, here’s your briefcase. He goes, you want to count it? There’s a million bucks in there. I go, no, I trust you. You never screwed me before. So my beeper’s going off because I’m out of here. So he leaves and I got a million dollars in a briefcase and my beeper’s going off. It goes off once, goes off twice.

[20:21] So I go to a pay, you know, back then they didn’t have cell phones. So they have like a little rodeo phone, you know little pay phone so i go in the back put a quarter in and i call up barry and he goes ted the fbi the secret service dea he goes the treasury department the whole effing government’s here where the hell are you i go barry i go you tell them that you just talked to me i’ll be back in three hours he goes three hours my ass i go i got a little bit of an accounting problem i’ll be right back i made the next call i made was to my brother i said get me some pvc pipe meet me at the townhouse because we got to bury some money and i i did that i went back to the work release center and five of my friends that i smuggled with are there with me and they sent us to this really really tough prison which was called bell glades it was a state prison and it was tough it was like you know i think i was like maybe there was 10 white guys in the whole whole penitentiary and everybody else were either cuban refugees and all you know really like murderers and it was really a tough, tough experience. But three months in there, But that was just one of the stories that I wanted to tell you about while I was, between my friends that gave me a little bit of lead way and I came back and thank God he didn’t get in trouble.

[21:42] Yeah. They put you guys in that prison in order to try to soften you up a little bit, try to get somebody to break. I know that. Exactly right. Yeah. And when they put me in that Bell Glade one, Gary, it was, you know, I got there and the first month I was a recreation ref, a recreation guy.

[21:59] And, you know, and it was a big, huge, you know, guard tower, maximum security. And through my connections, I got a job at the recreation department.

[22:10] And Mercury Morris, football player in the Miami Dolphins. So he was there with me and we would run every day. And there was a guy named germany who was a big big badass black guy and he was a boxer, and there’s a white guy there named joe and joe was a mafia guy and he goes ted i bet on you you’re gonna go in the ring you’re gonna fight the german and i go listen man i just want to do my time and get out of here he goes no it doesn’t work that easy he goes you little white boy running around there he goes all the black guys they want you to be their bitch and i go i’ll handle that myself he goes no you won’t he goes you gotta you you gotta work for me here and i go he goes i pulled the strings and he was a mafia guy and he knew the guy ray thompson i worked for and he goes i know little ray he told me that you’d do this for me he goes i’m the kingpin here you gotta do it and i said i’m not doing anything the day before he wanted me to you know he kept pressing me to do it i kept telling him no i just want to do my time and then all of a sudden right in front of me a guy gets shanked kills him because he cut in line guy’s dead i’m like holy shit and i’m like turning white then i get to the mess hall and i see him i’m sitting next to joe sorrentino his name was and he’s sitting there he has a big beautiful steak you know like something you’d eat in a steakhouse right mashed potatoes eating really good my food i look at my food and i see my potatoes my potatoes are moving and i’m going what the hell is this i look at that it’s maggots.

[23:39] And I’m going, I’m not eating this shit. I’m not eating this shit. And he goes, you want to eat meat like me? I go, yeah, I’d like to eat like you. He goes, get in that ring because you’ll eat just like me and you’ll be a king.

[23:51] And I said, set up the fight because I was starving at this point. I have a bite of your steak now. He goes, I’ll give you a bite of my steak. So he gave me half of the steak, but now I had to fight the Germans. And so he says, two days, you’re in the match. So he made a big betting match. Yeah. So big black guy against a little white guy. And I wound up fighting him. It’s in the book, three or four rounds. I knocked him out of the ring, knocked him out on conscience. All of a sudden, about 10 black guys came running in, grabbing me. And Joe’s screaming, German. German gets up. He goes, don’t you touch that white boy. Anybody touch that white boy? Your ass is mine. He says. He goes over. He puts my hand up. He goes, this white boy, he won fair and square. He’s a badass. And so I started training him. And he told all the guys, because 90% of it was a black, you know, it was like the Black Panthers. They were really tough, badass guys.

[24:45] And the experience was like, I was the white hope there. And then, you know, what happened was the government found out that I had it really easy going there. And that’s why they couldn’t break me. I’m sitting in my bunk the first night the first my first experience I was in a double bunk and and this place is so dangerous they have the guard in a wicker and I’m sure you know the wicker but the the viewers don’t it’s a cage where actually the guard is in the cage he’s actually the prisoner and we have a dorm with bunk beds with 300 guys that are murderers and the average guy doing time here is you know 30 years to life and here I’m doing a nine-month sentence and they’re trying to break me. First thing I see, you know, I’m sitting on my top bunk. I’m like 20 years old. I hear this moaning and groaning. I’m seeing this guy do these horrific things to this other guy. I’m like, oh God. And I’m getting little tears on my eyes. And I say, I can’t let anybody see this. 10 seconds later, a guy comes running by.

[25:44] My bunk on fire he stole some pot from some guy they put lighter fluid on him threw a match on him and you can smell the flesh and this is my first night in this prison right oh my and they finally they spray the guy he’s dead on the floor choco you can smell it it was awful so then after i fought the german they put me on the chain gang and they wake me up at four o’clock in the morning take me out to the sugar cane fields and i’m in a bus we’re all shackled about 30 guys shackled handcuffed to shackles, just enough to be able to swing your blade. Because I’m with guys that are doing, they’re all like murderers and they’re like rapists and they’re really, really bad guys. And here I’m, marijuana. I have a nine-month sentence and these guys are there for life and the feds are trying to break me. Well, they broke me. I was swinging that little blade in the sugar cane, 10 o’clock, you go underneath the school bus, you get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, drink some water. It was awful. I did this for about, I called John Sales every day at the payphone. John, you got to get me out of here. If you don’t get me out of here, he goes, I’m not going to make it, man. He goes, they’re trying to kill me. He goes, Ted, you know what you got to do? You got to tell them your side of the story, just your side of the story. I go, John, I’m not doing that. Just tell him what you did. He goes, you just got to tell him what you had to do for Ray.

[27:04] About two weeks went by and I just said, John, make the call. Get me the hell out of here by Friday He goes I don’t know if I can get you out by Friday But I think I can get you out by Monday So he got me out and then the feds took me to federal Penitentiary in Miami.

[27:19] But that was the toughest time of my life in prison. That was a real, you know, hey, William, go shut the door, please. It’s cold. Sorry about that, Gary. So, you know, that was the toughest time of my life in state prison. And then I had a whole new challenge with the federal prison system after I got indicted by the feds. Well, you guys have to read the book to find out about the federal system.

[27:42] But there’s good stories in there about that. So I tell you one story I do want to hear. And that’s the story of Jimmy Biggs down in Jamaica. This is a hell of a story, guys. I tell you what, dude, you have been to hell and back. And I don’t know how you did it and survived to be talking today. But tell them about Jimmy Biggs down in Jamaica.

[28:04] Yeah, I’ll tell you about Jimmy Biggs. Let me tell you one real quick story about one of the famous guys that I went to prison with in England Air Force Base. I was sitting on my bottom bunk and this old guy comes in about 72 years old and it’s Aldo Gucci. I don’t know who Aldo Gucci is. I’m saying, who the hell is Aldo Gucci? Well, you know, he’s a famous designer and they got him for tax evasion. And so I said, Hey pop, I go, you know, I’ll go up top. You stay on my bottom bunk because you can’t get up here. And then I found who Aldo Gucci was and I protected him. And Aldo Gucci was such a nice man. When we both got parole together, I was walking on Worth Avenue with my wife, Danita, and he was working in his Aldo Gucci store in Worth Avenue, which is one of the most glamorous places in the world. And I walk in there with my wife and he says, Ted, this guy took care of me. He goes, anything you want, you take. So I said, now you don’t have to do that. But my wife walked out of there with purses and shoes. I’m embarrassed to say it was like a down payment for a house. She must have had like $40,000 of purses. And he says, take it all. Don’t charge him anything. And it was just one quick story before I try to tell you that story. Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Thanks for sharing that one. That’s a good one.

[29:18] Dump. Dump. Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you about the Jamaica story. So my friend, Patrick Bill, he was a young guy who was my partner. And we were doing these runs and we had these boats. They were hidden holes and we’d hide like 3,000 pounds of marijuana into a hidden hole, which the dogs couldn’t smell it. No one could see it. Only the captain knew where it was. But long story short, before I got involved with him, one of his captains was getting a load back to Jamaica and it actually sank. And it caught on fire and sank. and Patrick said to me, he goes, you know, the boat sank. Jimmy Biggs wants his money. I owe him 300 grand. I go, Patrick, you got the money, pay him. He goes, no, I’m going to go over and negotiate a deal and get another boatload and pay for the first one and the second one. I go, Patrick, it don’t work that way. I go, listen, man, you’ve got to just pay him. You have the money. You blew it, just pay him and then get your next load and make up for it. He goes, no, I’m going to go over. He goes, will you go with me? I goes, Patrick, it’s not a good idea. I said, all right, listen, man, I feel bad for you. I better go with you because I don’t think this is going to be good. I said, I’ll go with you. So we jump on the Learjet, and him and I fly over to Jamaica. Now, Jimmy Biggs is the second guy in command underneath the prime minister. He works for the Jamaican Defense Force. He was a general. So we land in this Learjet.

[30:40] And all of a sudden, I see these jeeps come up with machine guns on them. And I go, Patrick, this is not a welcome. This is not good, brother. He goes, no, no, it’s fine. I go, it’s not fine, man. I go, I go up to the cabin, to the pilot. I go, keep going. He goes, I can’t. They got me boxed in. He goes, I go, oh man, this is not good, Patrick.

[31:01] So all of a sudden, it’ll be fine. I go, no, you’re out of your mind. It’s not going to be fine. These are guns pointing at this plane. They’re saying we don’t want to go. We’re captured. He goes, no, you’ve got it all wrong. They opened up the door. I was right. They cuffed us and they took us to Jimmy Biggs’ place, which is a little stash house among his million dollar compound that he had you know millions of dollars compound and they take us there and we’re in this little room and they’re they’re they’re guy his guys are there and jimmy biggs there he says i want my money where’s my money patrick says i can get you your money i want to come here and negotiate and get another boat the boat’s here you can check on it it’s this logic too you know i have another boat ready for a load to take it in and i’ll give you your money because no man doesn’t work that way i need my money you get sent in here now and so i said you know we can get the money but we don’t have it we have to call somebody to get it he’s i’m not going i’m not you’re not calling anybody and these guys that are watching us now they’re really high and they have these machine guns and we’re in this little room and first break of the day we got we they took our our zip lines and they let them put it in front of us. So we had our zip lines like this in front of us. No, I had no shackles on our, on our legs. They didn’t know who I was.

[32:16] And Patrick and I are there and there’s three guys, Jimmy Biggs leaves, and they have machine guns and they’re really high. And I look at Patrick, I go on the count of three, I go, I have this pen, ballpoint pen. I take the pen off of it and I had just a point when I say on three, I’m going to lift the table up and I’m going to stick this pen in one of those guys’ throats and get the guns and we’re going to get out of here. Well, he’s so scared because there’s three of them. Now, they were so high that I think a five-year-old could have beat them up. So it was pretty easy for me because I knew my angle. I said, you just sit here and just make sure no one comes in that door.

[32:53] He goes, he’s got a pen. He’s got a pen. All of a sudden, they came over. They sent the pen in my hand, and they hit me on the back, you know, in front of my head with an M16, and it kicking me. And my eye was shut and bleeding and stuff. And I was not happy with Patrick. And, you know, that goes right up there with saying, hey, he’s got a pillow, right? He’s got a pen in his hand. I said, because Patrick was scared that we were going to get killed. Make a long story short, I’d get that shit beat out of me. And then a couple days later, Jimmy Biggs came in. And I said, Jimmy, I said, look, if you want the money, I can get my brother and my friend Scott to bring the money here. But you’re going to have to let them come here, let them come in to the country and go to a Marriott, something that’s universal that the United States owns so they have security. He goes, I don’t know. I go, it’s the only way you’re going to get to $300,000. You want us or you want the money? He said, I want the money. I said, let me make the call. So he lets me make the call. I call my brother. I says, listen. And they’re on the other line. I go, get $300,000, get Scott. And we’re captured here. Jimmy Biggs, you can fly into the hotel. They’ll take you to us, bring the money, get us free.

[34:03] I hang up. It’s in motion. So now Scott and my brother flying in on the Learjet. And they give him comp launch. bring him right to the Marriott. Scott was an enforcer. He had a couple of guns. He smuggled along with the money, came into the Marriott hotel. And now I got to convince Jimmy Biggs that I got to get the money and bring it to him. And he’s got to release Patrick when I bring the money to him. So I go, Jimmy, now these guys are here. You got to let me go get the money. He goes, no, man. No. He goes, we go get the money. I go, no, it doesn’t work that way. We are not going to be captured. And then you kill us and you have the money too. I’m not going to kill you, man. I go, I’m not trusting you. You got us handcuffed here for, you know, four days. I go, that’s not happening. The only way you’re going to get your money is I got to get it. When I come back, Patrick comes with me. He goes, okay, you can do it. He goes, you guys go with him. I go, no, no, I want my own car. You guys can follow me, but you’re not coming with me. So I convinced him to do that. So we get to the Marriott Hotel in Jamaica.

[35:05] And I get there and Scott, my brother there, so on a piece of napkin, I’m showing him the ground, showing him where everything’s at. They have big sugar cane fields, and I said, it’s a big compound. And I’m telling Scott, we’re drawing him up on that, And we come up with a plan that we’re going to go to the house. My brother is going to have the 300 grand in the car, which we did. Scott and I are going to be in the back of the car. And we got close to the compound. We jump out of the car and we run to the house while my brother drives up the driveway. And we told him to give us like five minutes because we had to run about a half an acre to get to the back door.

[35:41] And I told him, beep your horn, beep your horn. and then when you get close and they open the front door i just keep driving back and forth thinking that you’re scared so that they think you’re scared and gives us time to get into the house so my brother gets here a little bit early the last thing scott says to me he goes whenever you do don’t shoot now i go i’m not gonna shoot i go you’re the one i’m worried about shooting i go shoot he goes the defense force is gonna be all over this is jimmy jimmy’s you know this is this territory so i hear this car bb i go shit we’re late so we’re running to the back door and all of a sudden we see this other guy tony his name is he’s a jamaican dude he comes out the back door and scott bing takes a shot at him i go what are you doing so we keep going and all of a sudden i reach the back door and i hit the guy and knock him down i could i tie him up he’s done and i hear my brother going back and forth i hear another guy saying come on in come on in so my brother just stops in the driveway and me and Scott get into the, to the house and we’re start clearing the whole house. I got somebody, I got the guy around his head. He got a gun to his head and I’m looking for Patrick and Patrick’s not there. And I’m like, where’s Patrick? So Jimmy Biggs wife’s there and Jimmy Biggs there. And I go, Jimmy, where’s my friend? He’s not here, man. I go, what do you mean he’s not here? So I clear the whole house, his wife’s there.

[37:04] And I said, okay you gotta get take my brother to him with your wife and go get patrick and we’re getting out of here the 300 grand is in the trunk of the car he goes show me the money i go you’re not in a good position right now i go i got a gun to your head you don’t know what that means he goes yeah it was the same thing you did to me now it’s the other way you’re not in charge now i am so as we know we don’t know what’s going on there’s a big a kilo of cocaine on your dining room table it’s Probably about 20 straws in there. And I’m like going, what’s that, Jimmy? He goes, well, and all of a sudden I hear a knock on the door.

[37:38] So Scott’s there. Scott’s a fugitive now for the feds. And he’s looking at 10 to light. He’s still in prison, by the way. But so he’s drinking a little bit to search, you know, just calm himself down a little bit. And all of a sudden, I open up the front door. There’s a guy and a girl. I put him on the floor. We zip line him. In 20 minutes, we have 20 people laying on the floor. He’s throwing a party. He’s throwing a party. And I go, how many more people are coming, Jimmy? And, you know, we’re hearing knocks. So we’re just thinking that the defense force is going to come, right?

[38:11] So he goes, there’s only 20 people. So Scott is grabbing the cocaine and he’s throwing, goes, here, you guys, you want some cocaine here? He throws more on top of these guys and he’s throwing cocaine all over the floor. I’m going, Scott, knock it off. And he’s drinking vodka street and he’s throwing the Coke on him. I’m going, Scott, knock it off. I go, it’s not funny. And all of a sudden you start seeing three of these guys with zip lines on and they’re crawling and they’re snorting their stuff off the floor. And I’m laughing. I’m going, boy, these guys are desperate guys. And Scott goes, yeah, you came here for a party. Here, have some more. And I’m saying, Scott, knock it off, knock it off. So finally, I get Jimmy Biggs’ wife and my brother. I go, go get Patrick. And I go, bring him back here right away. And he says, and if you don’t get back here, I says, Jimmy, your husband’s dead and I don’t think you’re going to do well yet. She goes and gets my brother and come back in about 10 minutes, maybe five, come back. And we take Jimmy Beggs, keep everybody handcuffed, zip tied. And we have to get off the island now. So we radio to Eddie. We called him Captain Crunch. He’s our captain. We had a 36-foot fishing boat down there. And that was our escape. So we called him to get close to where we were because the mansion was right on the water. We were about a mile off of the shore. So when…

[39:34] We radioed him in. He came in. We have the boat waiting for us. Now we got to get off the compound. And when you go off the compound, there’s security. Because Jimmy Biggs is the head of the defense force. He’s protected.

[39:47] So I got Jimmy Biggs is in the back seat. Scott’s on the right. I’m on the left. My brother’s driving. His wife’s in the middle. And Patrick is on the passenger side. And Scott has his .38. And he’s got the gun inside of Jimmy’s side. And he goes, you move.

[40:03] I’m gonna blow your your your guts away and i go hey scott can you do me a favor he goes what did you put that in his belly instead of his ribs so it doesn’t go right through him and hit me he goes oh yeah good idea yeah so he puts it in his belly has a coat over it and we got to go through the defense force as in jimmy you don’t say the right thing i go you go first your wife goes second we better get past this guard gate so he goes hey jimmy jimmy goes we’re good you’re okay yeah we lives is true we get through i tell my brother that you know just floor it and go right into the bay because like a little clip about probably about you know 10 feet high my brother floors it we get the car goes into the bay the doors fly open the roof comes there was the dumbest thing i told him to do you know the car landed onto a sandbar right and the trunk’s open and i go to my brother i think jimmy biggs and they go leave him here i don’t know he’s coming with us We got to get the international waters. Thank God I was smart enough to take them. So I’m taking him with me. I got him cuffed in front and, and he’s able to paddle out. So I got him by the neck and I said, I’m a brother go, Tony, get the money. And he’s going like this swimming. I go, stand up. You idiot. I got this three feet of water in a sandbar. Get that money. He started laughing. He grabbed the money. I grabbed Jimmy Biggs and we swim out to the boat.

[41:20] We get Jimmy Biggs on the boat and we have them ziplined in the front, ziplined in the top. And I got them on the top of the bow and we’re flying out. And I says, Eddie, you got to get into international waters. I go, cause if we don’t, we’re done. Sure enough, we’re about a mile from international waters. And all of a sudden you see two, two cutters and your Jamaican, your Jamaican task force. And they go, you know, like those big machine guns across your bow. The defense force, hold your water. So we stop, you know, we just stop a mile from international waters.

[41:58] In other words, I bring Jimmy Biggs on top of the bow and I put the gun to his head. And Eddie tells him, he goes, the next time you shoot on this boat, he’s done. Then you hear, this is the United States Coast Guard. A helicopter comes flying over. And it says, if you fire on that U.S. vessel again, we will blow you out of the water. And there’s a Coast Guard cutter in the international waters. And this thing’s got, you know, cannons on it, all kinds of crap. And they said, repeat, you shoot on that U.S. vessel one more time and we will blow you out of the water. You let that boat come into international waters. It’s a U.S. Vessel. Now, there’s no smuggler in the world that wants to start at any point in time. But this was a blessing because all we had was money on the boat, right? Right. So, with that, we started going inching across, and I brought Jimmy Biggs to the back of the boat, and I clipped off his stuff, and I kicked him off the back of the boat, and he swam in the defense force, got Jimmy Biggs, and we got to the Coast Guard. We threw the guns overboard. We kept the cash on the boat. I have no idea why.

[43:05] And it was probably a good thing. So, when we got to International Waters, we didn’t know this, but the Coast Guard, if they’re International Waters, they can’t bring you to the United States. They got to bring you to the closest country that they’re in when you’re international warriors. And that was the Cayman Islands. So when they brought us into the Cayman Islands, I says, we’re, we’re good. They go, what do you mean we’re good? What are you kidding? I says, cause yeah, we’re going to let them take the boat, let them take the cash and we got our freedom. Well, it worked. We got over there and they said, you know, what are you doing? I says, yeah, we had some cash in the boat. You can have the boat. You can have, you know, you can have the boat and the cash and the Caymans gave us the boat and gave it to them. And we were free. We got back to the United States, But obviously, you had to co-scred, they had all of our names, and they were watching us very closely. So that was an interesting story, and one that I luckily got away with alive.

[43:54] One of many, guys. I’ll tell you what, guys. This book, Ted Pryor. Got lots of good stories. It’s got lots of great stories, guys. You need to get this book. I didn’t read it word for word, but I read through it looking for stuff, and I found several stories just like that. That was probably the most dramatic maybe of all of them, but that was a good one. That was a really good one. Ted, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Is there anything else you’d like to tell people?

[44:24] No, I just want to let you know that the book is three-time world champ. My life now, for the last 35 years, has always been children in my life. When I used to have my karate schools, I taught kids from a very young age. And I’ve always compelled. I got into, when I got out of prison, I had some car washes. And then I got into child care.

[44:44] And I’ve been in child care for 35 years. We’re the seventh largest child care provider in the country, Children of America. My son runs the company for the last six years now, doing a fantastic job. We started the Prior Foundation, and the Prior Foundation is for children that are left behind like I was left behind. I barely got out of high school, couldn’t spell college, and so I was that kid left behind. So anything, proceeds, whether it’s a movie, whether it’s a miniseries, buying the book, all the proceeds go to the Prior Family Foundation, and all that money goes into unprivileged children, children left behind like I was. We help children we pay for their tuition we give them free tuition the family foundation all the money goes back to the kids but the kids that can’t afford to come to our schools we want them to have the same privilege as the kids the parents do have the money to be able to give them good educations so and we’re in like 15 states right now we’ve got about 70 locations all the proceeds go to children and their families that that need help and that don’t have the privilege of being able to put their child into a a good preschool to get them

[45:49] a good education a good head start Yeah, that’s immensely important. I understand that whole Head Start program the government did. They found that for kids to succeed later on in life, that early education before they actually go in the first grade is huge. And, you know, three meals every day. I’m sure your school does that. Make sure everybody’s fit and rested and learning. And so that’s a great program, Ted.

[46:14] Yeah. If you go on the back of the book, there’s a QR code. That’s the family foundation. My daughter’s on there. She’ll explain a little bit. There’s also things in there about Children of America. So it’s a great organization and it’s all about the children. And I don’t want children to have to do what I had to do earlier on in life. I want them to get a good education so they stay away from the bad problems that I did. Yeah, you’re not the only one that’s entered into a life of crime because they didn’t have any opportunity. I mean, when you’re young, you’re strong, you’re bright, you’re smart, but you don’t have the education, you don’t have the opportunities just to handle it to you. You don’t have anybody’s shoulders to stand on. Crime and organized crime is

[46:52] really a way to go and a way to use your talents and make money. So it’s a good, you can’t even think what I call it, a good program, if you will. And I’ll have links to it, guys, at the end of my show notes, and I’ll have a link to Ted’s website. And then you can get his book there if you want to and learn more about the program.

[47:10] Yeah, I appreciate your time, Gary. It’s been a real fun talking to you about this. And I just want everybody to know that, you know, all the proceeds go to the children. That’s what it’s all about. And changing one child’s life. I know I’ve changed thousands of them and I’m very proud of that. And I’m thankful to this day to God. I’m very blessed to have the lives that I have and be able to give back and take a negative and make it into a positive. And a lot of federal government prosecutors and Secret Service guys and guys that know me, you know, some of them said that I’d never make it. And now they’re all calling me, texting me, saying, we are so proud of you. And I’m glad that they actually gave me an opportunity to be able to change my life and make it into a positive instead of a negative. All right. Great, Ted. Thanks a lot. Thanks for being here and sharing your stories and sharing that beautiful background behind you guys. I want you to notice what’s behind Ted. And in the book, the house is in there too, Gary. It’s one of the most important things is I had to do a lie detector test. You probably don’t know this, but I had to do a lie tech test to get this house. It was the first house I bought when I won the world title 40 years ago, and I was able to keep it. They wanted to take it, but I was able to keep it. Guys, I know about this. I know about that seizure. Back in those days, law enforcement would pick people just because they had a lot of assets and try to make a case on them in order to get those assets.

[48:37] Yeah, that’s for sure. You were lucky to hang on to that house. It’s the only thing I got out of it. Everything else they took. I can promise you that came from money that wasn’t earned through the drug business. Well, this is my world title fight. I used to run up here five miles from the ground, and that was my world title fight. And I was able to prove that I made the money to buy this house. It was $180,000 back then.

[48:59] But some of it was mixed with the drug smuggling money. But when you read the book, there’s a part there about the federal government wanting to attach it and not give it to me. And you’re going to love that story in the book, too. All right, great. Well, guys, you know, if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service particularly, go to the VA website and get that hotline number. And with PTSD, many times you have problems with drugs and alcohol or compulsive gambling. So, you know, our friend Angelo Ruggiano, who was a former Gambino proposed memories, dad was a made guy, is a drug and alcohol counselor. And he has a hotline number on his website. and there’s 1-800-BETS-OFF if you have that problem. So those problems affect a lot of people, myself included, and there is help out there. So don’t forget that I have a book or two out there for sale on Amazon and just go to Amazon and search Gary Jenkins and Mafia and you’ll find everything that I’ve got out there for sale. I’ve got two documentaries that you can rent for $1.99 and learn about my career and about the Kansas City Mafia family. And I think that’s all I got to sell, Ted. And we sold some stuff for Ted and sold some stuff for me. And Ted, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Well, I’m going to buy a bunch of your books.

[50:18] I didn’t know you were in law enforcement. And it’s an honor. My heart’s with you guys because I was a law enforcement agent. And I wouldn’t say I went bad. I would say that I thought that I was helping my mother, but it was really pure greed. But law enforcement is very, very important in this country. And I still have a lot of good friends that stuck with me and God bless you guys like you keep us safe every day all right thank you Ted.

In this episode, retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins talks with Eric Dezenhall, an author and former Reagan’s White House aide, about his new book, Wiseguys and the White House. Eric shares his unique perspective on the fascinating and often overlooked intersection of organized crime and American politics. His curiosity on the subject began with a seemingly casual remark from a colleague about mafia influence in his hometown of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. As a young aide in the Reagan administration, that moment set him on a path to explore how deeply organized crime has intertwined itself with the fabric of American society and government.

Throughout the conversation, Eric discusses how perceptions of mobsters have shifted over the decades. In the early 20th century, gangsters were often seen as vital community figures. They provided services like gambling and liquor during Prohibition—illegal but in high demand—and were viewed as filling a societal need. By the 1970s, however, that image began to unravel. Organized crime became a symbol of decay, corruption, and violence, far removed from the Robin Hood-like aura it once carried.

Eric brings to life the stories of legendary mob figures like Meyer Lansky, detailing Lansky’s surprising role during World War II. Lansky, alongside other organized crime figures, worked with the U.S. Navy to prevent Nazi sabotage along the East Coast. Eric explains how this alliance complicates the narrative of mobsters as purely criminal; during wartime, they were sometimes perceived as patriotic contributors to the national effort. Their involvement underscores the ambiguity surrounding these figures, who operated in both legitimate and illegal spheres.

As the conversation moves into modern times, Eric discusses how organized crime continues to influence political and business landscapes. He points to figures like Donald Trump, who openly acknowledged the realities of navigating a business world shaped by organized crime in cities like New York. Eric also examines how presidents such as Reagan, Nixon, JFK, and Joe Biden managed relationships with organized crime—relationships that, while morally complex, often played a role in advancing their careers and shaping American politics in lasting ways.

This episode offers a compelling look at the intersection of crime, politics, and history through Eric Dezenhall’s sharp insights and years of research. By sharing stories of infamous mobsters and pivotal historical moments, Eric reveals a side of organized crime that is often forgotten: its influence on the nation’s leadership and its occasional alignment with patriotic causes. It’s a conversation that challenges our assumptions, blending history, politics, and crime into a nuanced and captivating narrative.

Ger Eric’s books. See other books by clicking here.

  Transcript

[1:03] it’s ever been in my entire 79 years. It’s just crazy. But first of all, Eric, tell the guys a little bit about your past writing. You have a whole bunch of books. And so tell the guys a little bit about your story through the last 10, 15 years.

[1:18] Well, I’ve written 12 books. This is my 12th.

[1:22] My fiction tends to deal with organized crime. My nonfiction deals also with organized crime. My last book actually was with Gus Russo called Best of Enemies, and it was the true story of two spies, a CIA guy and a KGB guy, who were assigned to flip each other, but they ended up becoming best friends and bringing down the worst traitor in American history, the FBI’s Robert Hansen. I had done a historical novel. I’ve known some of Meyer Lansky’s family much of my life and had access to a lot of his records. And I did a historical novel called The Devil Himself about his role with Luciano during World War II. and I fictionalized it, even though it is a factual story. I used the basis of fact to tell the story of Lansky because of so much of what I learned about what he emotionally wanted out of the World War II project, as well as the Navy commander. I mean, I’m not really a creature of the mob, even though I grew up around it. I’m more of a creature of Washington, where I’ve lived for 40 years. And what was interesting to me about the World War II story was not just the mob, but the naval officer who took the risk of working with the mob. And it’s one of those things where classic Washington story, you take a risk, you’re told to win, and when you win.

[2:49] Then everybody goes, oh my God, this guy worked with mobsters, which they knew, and then what happened to his career, which was devastating.

[2:57] So I’ve been very interested in the myths and realities of World War II. And the new book, Wise Guys in the White House, this has been cooking for about 40 years. I was a young aide in Reagan’s White House. Yeah.

[3:11] I tell the story at the beginning of the book where on one of my first days i told my boss she said where do you live where you’re from and i said i’m from cherry hill new jersey there was a big mob war at the time uh when angelo bruno had been killed in march of 1980 and my boss said uh oh cherry hill that’s that’s big mafia and i said well yeah the gambinos lived there they were my neighbors and uh but muhammad ali lived there too and she and one of the people said well you know the mob killed JFK. And I said, what are you talking about? Oh, they run the country. I said, we’re 20 feet from the Oval Office. Where are you? Do you know these guys? Where are you getting this? And it’s stuck with me for 40 years. And finally, enough files came out, enough people were willing to talk that I thought I had a book in the history of the presidency in organized crime, what really did happen, what didn’t happen, what people think happened that didn’t happen. And the bottom line is there have been extensive dealings going back to the FDR administration with organized crime. But it’s not like the president at three in the morning is inviting mobsters

[4:25] into the Oval Office and then they’re tiptoeing out. It’s much more attenuated, but it’s very, very real.

[4:33] Yeah, it’s it’s much more sophisticated or or like so many different cutouts. The president never talks to, you know, Carlo Gambino or John Gotti or any of these guys. But these guys talk to their local politician who then has a connection to the larger party, maybe on a state level. And then on a state level, then they end up maybe up with the with the attorney general or something. I think the Chicago, uh, the, the, uh, Chicago film, uh, scandal where the, the Chicago outfit guys, Paul Reek and some of them got out of prison early out of Leavenworth early with Harry Truman’s help. Right. With, with his, his, uh, uh, uh, attorney general, Tom Clark’s help. And Truman had to know that that was going on, but Truman was owed his career to Pendergast. So it, in, in a, you know, indirect way. So it’s, you know, that’s, that’s just how it works.

[5:31] That’s right. And we, you know, with Harry Truman, I mean, a lot of people, everybody knows that he came from a political machine, but they don’t know that it was a mafia controlled machine, not just a political machine, the Lazio family. And you hear you had a person who was selected by a mafia machine who ended up becoming president of the United States. And of course, dropped the bomb on Japan. Did the mob have anything to do with that? No. But it’s amazing to think that history turned on a president that was, in fact, selected with the help of organized crime. And Truman, interestingly, is not unlike Trump in the sense that he admitted that to a large degree, his dealings with the mob. And I think one of the things we’ll talk about is the extent to which some people, everything was about the appearance of respectability. Nobody cared if they did business with the mob. They cared about it coming out. And Truman was oddly candid over his career about it. He wasn’t completely candid. And I think one of the things we’ll get to is what’s been interesting about Donald Trump, as only Trump can do, he will come out and openly admit on national TV repeatedly to having dealt with organized crime. And then somebody will say, well, did you deal with organized crime? And he’ll say, no, I would never do that. But that’s Trump.

[6:57] And that’s kind of built into his stock price. Yeah, that’s for sure. Yeah, that I think another thing, Eric, I’d like to get your comment on this. It seems like the 30s, 40s, and 50s on up to the 60s, it finally started changing in the 70s.

[7:16] Politicians, local politicians, and even society as a whole did not look upon the mafia as this evil thing. They looked at them more as part of the culture, part of society. You know, the fact that, you know, they provided gambling, you know, liquor during prohibition and gambling when all the states, all the country people want to to deny people a chance to gamble. The city people wanted to gamble and a lot of country people did, too. But they always were part of it. And as opposed something happened, I don’t know exactly when in the 70s, about the time I came along and went in the intelligence unit. It’s like all of a sudden they’re this evil thing that we have to totally eradicate. Before, it was not like that. You see it like that?

[8:06] Well, I think that there’s a lot of truth to it. I mean, look, gangsters have always been gangsters and the idea that they were members of the community. I mean, if I hear one more time that they kept their neighborhood safe. Well, yeah, they kept their immediate neighborhoods. They kept their immediate neighborhood safe, but they also pumped drugs into the community. I mean, I remember one of the stories I heard as people in my family got older, one of my grandfather’s business partners in the liquor business was someone who I didn’t know until I was in my 20s, had been the Don of the Philadelphia, South Jersey area. And he had been one of the people, I don’t use his real name in the book, but he had been one of the people arrested at Appalachian. And one of the things my dad told me long after everybody was gone is how mortified they were at being arrested and being identified as gangsters. Because a lot of these guys didn’t see themselves that way. This man who we called Uncle Vince was actually in the car with Vito Genovese at Appalachian. And, you know, you think in the movies, it’s, yeah, you can arrest me, but I’ll be out by dinner.

[9:17] The stories that I heard was there was such shame and embarrassment because Uncle Vince saw himself as a member of the community. He was a gambler, but they were not into drugs. And a lot of it that I get to in the book, a lot of these guys very much saw themselves as Americans. What was interesting to me about Meyer Lansky is his biggest motive for getting involved with the World War II program was personally the thing that meant the most to him was being a real American. I had his certificate of naturalization, and Meyer worked very hard to become

[9:56] naturalized and try to convince Luciano to do it. But Luciano thought it was stupid. But with Lansky, I mean, he went to volunteer to serve in the army. Given what was happening to Jews in World War II, he was turned down because of his age, because of his height. He was 5’4″, soaking wet. But a lot of these guys, it was very much about being an American. Even Albert Anastasia served in the army. What began to happen…

[10:26] Later, I think that part of the problem is the newer generations, you had narcotics, and you didn’t have that ethic of we at least have to appear respectable. We have to appear to be members of the community. And look, this is assimilation. I came across as saying what the son seeks to forget, the grandson seeks to remember. And there are people in my family saying, why do you have to rehash this stuff that happened before you were born?

[11:03] You know, it’s so long ago. You were so far removed from it. And the fact is, is I am very far removed from it. But I became fascinated by what the people before me did. And it never occurred to me that anybody would ever accuse me of it. But all the people I know in my family and our neighbors wanted is they wanted their kids to go to Ivy League schools. I mean, the idea that one of my uncles or grandparents would sit me down and say, you know, Eric, I really want you to get a good education so you can become a really good extortionist.

[11:37] And, you know, one of the things people say about Meyer is, oh, do you think that they made him an honorary member? It never would have occurred to him. What he was looking for was to become Walter Annenberg. well, Mo Annenberg, Lou Wasserman. He wanted to become a very big, legitimate businessman. The idea, at least with the Jews, that he would become the boss of all bosses, he viewed gangland activity as a means to an end. And one of the themes of wise guys in the White House is the obsession that all of the players had with respectability. And the more you could fake respectability…

[12:16] The more power you got. And interestingly, the people who ended up with the success and the power in this country were the people who used the mobsters, not the mobsters themselves. And in the end, one of the things I concluded is the politicians and the businessmen got the better end of the deal than the mob. Because the mob guys at the end of the day, I mean, Meyer’s partner, Jimmy Alo, used to say, we were still burying tin cans in the backyard. Everybody said we were controlling legitimate businesses. We wanted to, but we couldn’t pull it off. Yeah. Interesting. You know what? TJ English, I just interviewed him and he said, he’s wonderful. He is. He said, these guys just wanted the American dream. That’s all they wanted

[12:58] was to live the American dream as they assimilated into American society. And so that’s what you’re saying here, that they wanted legitimacy and they put on the appearance of legitimacy and getting involved with politics will give you some appearance of legitimacy and also give you a certain power to you can help out your fellow man you could get jobs for people uh you know on the police department and the fire department you know.

[13:23] Different city jobs or account state jobs and so that’s that’s what they wanted so let’s let’s talk about tell us one of your your early stories here out of the book, Well, one of the things I start with is Americans have always done business. American politicians have always done business with thugs going back to the political machines. But one of the first stories I tell isn’t a mafia story. It’s how when Andrew Jackson was dealing with the War of 1812 and he ran into trouble with the British in New Orleans, he tapped the pirate Jean Lafitte to go and harass the British. And what Lafitte wanted of the deal is he wanted leniency from prosecution.

[14:11] Even he wanted to be respectable. So I talk about that’s a pattern. But really the first story that I deal with is World War II. And there’s a lot of mythology around what happened. I mean there are two extreme schools of thought. Both of them are wrong. One of them is that you hear the story that the mafia helped save the country in World War II. You left Lucky Luciano stormed the shores of Sicily, waving a banner, and the mafia came. That never happened. But the other school of thought is that it was all a scam, that the mob did nothing.

[14:45] It’s really somewhere in the middle. The fact is, is what you had is there was sabotage. The Nazis were sinking tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, of tons, rather, of materiel in the Atlantic, including in the Hudson River. Roosevelt hadn’t declared war. He couldn’t declare war. Nobody wanted the war. And things were disappearing. The theory was a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, this ship blew up at the port of New York, the Normandy, a French ship that was being converted into an American troop ship. and it blew up. It sank. And the theory at the time was that it was Nazi sabotage. It probably wasn’t, almost certainly wasn’t. But it was, you know, a month after Pearl Harbor. Who knew? The Navy goes to the docks. They say, we need your help. And they told them to go to hell. You know, the kinds of guys who you’re dealing with tough Italians and Irishmen, you go in with a uniform and say, we work for the government. They’re not going to cooperate with you. And one theory was, were they loyal to Mussolini? They really weren’t. But the fact is, is they didn’t want to cooperate with the government.

[15:56] They ended up approaching a Genovese, what is now a Genovese family, a Luciano member, a guy named Joseph Lanza. And he said, well, you know, we could help you on the docks, but you need Luciano to help you. And if you want to get to Luciano, you got to go to, you got to talk to Meyer Lansky because Meyer Lansky was famously patriotic as a Jewish man. He was very concerned about what was happening in World War II, even in Eastern Europe. And Lansky was approached by a commander, Hoffenden, of the Navy with the help, by the way, irony of ironies, of prosecutors in New York. were the ones who made the connection.

[16:43] Prosecutors that came from the Tammany Hall machine, which was dominated by Luciano and Frank Costello. So it was the prosecutors who brought in the mob. And Lansky listened and he said, look, I’ve tried to, I mean, the Navy knew that Lansky had been naturalized. They knew that he was tutored privately in American history. I mean, Meyer Lansky in the evenings, he wasn’t going out gambling with the guys or having an affairs. he was hiring Tudor. I mean, I have the notes and I see the notes that he made. I mean, there’s one of his notes in his, you know, you need to better understand Benjamin Graham, who was Warren Buffett’s hero. You must look up Thucydides.

[17:26] A lot of interest in history. And he was turned down to be in the army. And he went up to Luciano, who he hadn’t seen in seven years. Luciano was in prison up at the Canadian border, upstate New York, where he had been away on a 30 to 50 year vacation for pandering, Luciano said, look, I’m happy to help.

[17:51] I don’t like the, I don’t love the idea of working with the government. And frankly, if they deport me, how will it look that I helped in the war effort against Italy where I’d end up being deported? And Meyer said, I’ve got a plan. You know, we want something in return. This is not out of the goodness of our hearts. I mean, some of it is patriotism, but some of it is, the idea was to spring Luciano and get leniency in sentencing. So what ended up happening is word was put out by Luciano that he wants the people on the waterfront to cooperate. It’s not seen as ratting. And a lot of what Lansky and his people did, it was really two things. Number one, they reported on suspicious behavior on the waterfront.

[18:42] Unbelievably, one of the people who Franklin Roosevelt designated as his New York area sabotage czar was his best friend, a man named Vincent Astor of the Astor family fortune. So here you had an Astor who was his best friend and who helped him when he had polio recuperate was the guy in charge of working with the Navy and making sure that the New York area ports were safe. Do we know that Vincent Astor personally met with mobsters and then went back and told Roosevelt? We don’t know. But then again, those type of files wouldn’t be kept. It is almost certain that Roosevelt was aware of this. Also, Walter Winchell, the most powerful columnist in America, was Roosevelt’s top guy on propaganda.

[19:36] Who was Walter Winchell’s neighbor in the Majestic House in New York City? His neighbor down the hall, Meyer Lansky. And he used to tell Meyer Lansky where the Nazi rallies. I mean, it’s hard to believe in this day and age, but there was a major pro-German, pro-Nazi presence of all places, New York City. And Winchell would say, these people are meeting at this particular location. And Lansky would send his crew and beat the living crap out of them. And so you had both this process of reporting on activities around the docks, but also boats going around with both gangsters and Navy people around the New York area, spotting submarines and reporting it. One of the things that happened was that eight Nazi saboteurs came ashore on Long Island and in Jacksonville, Florida.

[20:33] And J. Edgar Hoover ended up with all the credit for catching them. And he deserved most of the credit because one of the guys turned himself in. But what also happened was the unions, the waiters’ unions in hotels, were listening to…

[20:50] And reporting to Lansky and Joseph Lanza if there were suspicious people, which ended up leading to the capture of some of the New York Nazis who ended up coming ashore. Other ones really did just turn themselves in. But you have this ongoing historical tug of war where you have Lansky saying, I got them and turned them in. And you have J. Edgar Hoover saying, no, it was crack investigations that did it. Who are you going to believe? I think that there’s truth to both of it. I read a book about that when I was a kid. And I saw nothing about the mafia and these guys. It was all the intrepid agents of the FBI. I was in trance with that kind of stuff, of course, as a 12, 13-year-old boy. I was, too. I was, too. And by the way, I mean, there is reason to believe that Lansky exaggerated some of his role. But so did J. Edgar Hoover. Yeah. But we’re never going to know because all of the records weren’t kept. But the bottom line is the mob did play a big role. And then later, when Patton was planning the invasion of Sicily, they needed contacts in Sicily. And Lansky brought them into the headquarters for, by the way, what was called the Ferret Squad or Operation Underworld, was none other than the Hotel Astor, controlled by the Astor family and who was Roosevelt’s best friend, Astor.

[22:17] So Lansky brought in all these Sicilians who would say, no, the beaches are soft here. Don’t go here. Go here. And when you get to this particular place, see Vincenzo.

[22:27] The Italian naval intelligence officers, American intelligence officers, were the liaisons when they got to Sicily and were very, very helpful in the

[22:39] taking of the island when the invasion happened. So that’s really the World War II story. From what I could see from what you said, Eric, how the cutouts, you know, the president didn’t get a call from Mayor Lansky, the cutout that his friend.

[22:53] Jacob Asser or the Astor family, somebody he designated then was a liaison and somebody else was a liaison. And then they got this Navy commander to do really the down and dirty work right on the streets. So the government works about like the mob sometimes, don’t they? Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, we’ll get to the story of Lyndon Johnson. When Lyndon Johnson had passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the three civil rights workers disappeared right after that, and also another civil rights leader, a man named Vernon Dahmer, was killed by the Klan. And what ended up happening in the movie, in the movie Mississippi Burning.

[23:40] An FBI agent tortured a Klansman, held a razor to his privates and said, you know, give up the location of the bodies. What really happened is they sent, as LBJ said to Hoover, and this is on tape, I don’t care what you have to do. Do what you got to do. And Hoover’s going, well, I don’t really care about civil rights, but I have the president breathing down my neck. And they had just turned a man named Greg Scarpa as an informant of the Colombo family, an absolute psychopathic killer. And they sent Scarpa down, and Scarpa played a role, some role in finding the three civil rights workers, but he really played a larger role in finding the killers of the civil rights worker Vernon Dahmer a couple years later. So the point here is not that Lyndon Johnson sat down with Carlo Gambino or Joe Colombo. Of course he did. What he did is he said to J. Edgar Hoover, do what you got to do. And Hoover said, I have to produce because I have a lousy – I mean, Hoover didn’t care about civil rights, but he had to do something. And what did he do? He went to the mob. So that really tells you the kind of attenuated, staggering layers with which it works. But the bottom line was the mob was very active in World War II,

[24:59] and they were very active in other programs as well with presidents. Got something about Ronald Reagan and Lou Washerman. I’d not heard this story before. Tell us about that.

[25:10] Well, you know, my friends, I was a kid. I was 22 years old in Reagan’s White House and not all my friends. I tell you that because I don’t want to make it sound like I was some important person. I was there. And so my old bosses are not thrilled that I did a Reagan chapter, but how could I not? Reagan, his career mentor was Lew Wasserman, who was the powerhouse behind MCA. We know it more as Universal today. And Reagan’s career was going nowhere. And Lew Wasserman saved him. He saved him by getting him the contract to host GE Theater, which was a big TV show at the time. And it saved Reagan’s career. It gave him experience going around the country and talking about issues. And it took Reagan from kind of a no-account movie star into America’s living rooms where he was talking to them every week and introducing movies and other things.

[26:10] Lou Wasserman’s career, I mean, the MCA was built on the back of Mob Muscle because it was founded by his then boss, Jules Stein, in Chicago. And they had deals to book bands. And so what it was is, yeah, we’ll help you book bans in our locations, but you got to give us a cut. So this goes back to the beginning of MCA. Lou Wasserman’s best friend was Sidney Korshak, a name I know you know, the attorney for the Chicago outfit and the primary link between the mob and labor and legitimate business and government. And so Lou Wasserman, the way he got things done and assured there would be labor peace was he built Sidney Korshak into the cost of doing business. And one of the questions that always comes up is, was the Chicago outfit shaking Wasserman down? Well, that’s not how Wasserman saw it. Wasserman saw it as he was paying for a service. You know, if you’re trying to shoot TV shows and movies and some, it’s worth a lot of money to make sure a strike doesn’t happen. That’s what Korshack brought to it. And so the Chicago outfit was compensated in that way. What does that have to do with Reagan?

[27:27] Well, Reagan was, and Lou Wasserman were very close. Reagan wasn’t close to Sidney Korshack, but they knew each other. And one of the things that Reagan, that Lou Wasserman got out of the deal is there was a time when you couldn’t both be in the movie business and the TV production business. And Reagan gave Wasserman, when he was head of the Screen Actors Guild, a waiver to allow him to compete in multiple worlds. Yeah.

[28:00] This is something that while there’s no proof that the mob per se ordered this, here you have a future president of the United States, very close to someone for whom everyday dealings with organized crime was a very big part of it. Later, during Reagan’s presidency, interestingly, it turned out that there were Gambino family members working inside of MCA, but the prosecutorial attention toward them wasn’t as intense as Reagan’s prosecution of other mobsters. It would be incorrect to say, oh, Reagan didn’t prosecute the mob. He prosecuted the mob in a very big way. That’s when the commission trial was. But Korshack’s people out in L.A. And to some extent in Chicago, the teeth were not sunk as hard into them. And so, you know, if you talk to some of the prosecutors, as I did, they will tell you that word came on down high from the Reagan administration. You don’t want Korshack. You don’t want that crowd.

[29:13] And it was really quite interesting. I mean, my friend Dan Moldea has written very effectively about this. And one of the things that I heard from some of the people who were willing to talk to me years later is, you know, Reagan was protective of his friends. Nobody ever had to give an official order or threaten somebody. But I think that it was understood at high levels of the Justice Department that we really don’t want to make trouble for Reagan’s friends.

[29:42] And while I wouldn’t say Reagan made no trouble to the Chicago Corshack world, they definitely got off way light. And the former prosecutors feel very betrayed by it and were horrified by that. And it all comes back to the Wasserman-Reagan connection. I mean, Wasserman saved Reagan. Going back to Chicago, there’s all these stories about the outfit and JFK, and we don’t want to go into the murder,

[30:16] the assassination of JFK, I think. But the whole thing about his Joe Kennedy and Sam Giancana getting the votes for Joe Kennedy, and then Joe Kennedy is supposed to be some quid pro quo. So I know you touched on that. Yeah, let’s talk about that. But, oh, I talk about it a lot because I think that one of the things you always hear is the Kennedys and the mob.

[30:41] Like the Kennedys are one unit. They were not one unit. Joe, Jack, and Bobby were three very different units. Yeah. So when you hear the mob and the Kennedys, a lot of the reporting on this is really kind of histrionic and overly Oliver Stone for my taste. But here’s what I do believe happened. What I do believe happened is that Joe Kennedy knew that his son would need labor support. Joe Kennedy, most likely through an intermediary, went to Jimmy Blue Eyes, Vincent Alo, Meyer Lansky’s partner. And I’ve known Jimmy’s family for many, many years.

[31:22] And Jimmy said to Joe Kennedy, and by the way, I’m grossly oversimplifying this for the sake of storytelling. telling. But Jimmy said, look, I don’t want to get involved with elections.

[31:35] We’ve gotten burned with that before. Contrary to popular opinion, Meyer and Jimmy Alo were very, very skeptical of doing business with national politicians. And so was the Chicago outfit, by the way. Giancana’s decision to help Kennedy out was not universally loved. And so Alo said, talk to Sinatra. So Joe Kennedy talks to Sinatra. Sinatra makes some kind of introduction to Giancana. And the deal was very simple. We’ll help your son. We’ll help him get some votes. But we hope.

[32:13] And he’s been a pain in the ass to us in these prosecutions. I mean, JFK was, you know, a part of the committee that was prosecuting, looking into the mob in the Senate. Bobby, we certainly know about. And even though there is no evidence that anybody ever said that Giancana said, we will only do this if you do that, it doesn’t need to be said. Joe Kennedy knew what was implied. And here’s where I think history gets a little confusing. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Kennedy did receive the help from Labor, Illinois, West Virginia, and other places. But the idea that this necessarily turned the election, I think there’s a lot of doubt there. I mean, JFK probably would have gotten Illinois anyway. And so the point is not whether or not the mob won the 60 election for JFK. It’s that they were asked for help and they received the help. Now, there was a big fight between Joe Kennedy around that time and his son Bobby, who he said, you can’t keep going after these guys, Hammer and Tom. And Bobby Kennedy, he was a purist.

[33:34] He wanted to go after them. And there’s a quote that I used in the book where one of the Kennedy family’s top aides said Jack’s hair would have turned white if he had any idea what his father, the extent of what his father was up to. So here you have a situation where Joe Kennedy unquestionably looked for the labor support, but there’s no evidence that Bobby and Jack did anything other than benefit from it. And one of the things I talk about in the book is one of the great things about being a rich kid is you don’t have to know. And did they know? They knew. But did they know?

[34:14] No, not in a provable way. And that distance actually matters. I mean, you could say, well, you know, that doesn’t make them any more pure. Well, maybe not. But it does protect you to some degree to have that level of insulation. And then we get to the challenge of Fidel Castro, where one of the things you hear people talking about is, you know, LBJ famously said, my God, the Kennedys were running a murder incorporated in the Caribbean. Well, let’s look at the facts. The fact is, is the campaign to kill Castro did not start with the Kennedys. It started under Eisenhower. And there is a big question mark as to how much Eisenhower knew. One of the point people who did know was none other than Richard Nixon. He didn’t know everything, but he knew that the effort was afoot.

[35:12] So the mafia, Johnny Roselli, Giancana, Santo Traficante, they were activated under the Eisenhower administration, not the Kennedy administration. When the Kennedys took over, Bobby, for someone who’s gone down in history is so peace-loving, was absolutely adamant that Castro was killed. But he preferred that Cuban exiles would do it. And somebody ended up telling him, J. Edgar Hoover being one of them, that the mafia was being used. Bobby was not happy.

[35:51] And the idea that Bobby was enthusiastic about using the mob,

[35:55] not true. But basically, the CIA said, all right, so this is how it is, Bobby. You want Castro dead, but you want us to use the nicest people to do it.

[36:07] Is this where we are? And so, you know, among the quotes I use in the book were people around Kennedy who said he knew, but he wasn’t thrilled about it. And so, again, we have the scenario of they were aware of mob involvement. They benefited from it. But did they know the details? Probably not. Yeah, I think people don’t really understand sometimes the power of a wink and a nod and say, okay. Well, you know, it’s funny because, I mean, I won’t get into current politics, but I mean, in any big way. But my investigative reporter friends were obsessed with the idea of Russian collusion with Trump. And I said to them, look, I’m not going to take a position pro-Trump or anti-Trump, But I will take the position that you are assuming that collusion means Putin snuck into Trump Tower and passed over a briefcase. No, in all likelihood, it was Putin said, boy, I hate Hillary.

[37:09] This Trump guy wants to do business in my country. Let’s throw a little his way, and maybe he’ll throw something back our way.

[37:17] That doesn’t require breaking the law. Now, was a law broken? Not that Mueller could find. But it gets to the point I think you’re making, which is critical, which is it doesn’t require there to be intense conspiracies. And this is what made Watergate so interesting, because you had the president who was actively involved in the cover-up. And that’s not what you do. I know. He didn’t understand the power of a wink and a nod to his underlies. You just look at him and say, you know what? You just got to do what you got to do. See you later. Take care of this for me. Well, that’s right. And here you have, and I talk about in the book, Nixon on tape going, we need you to break into the Brookings Institute. We need to do it on a thievery basis. It’s on tape.

[38:09] Which uh speaking of nixon what about that did he take a million dollars to let jimmy hoff out, well you know probably i i think that the bigger issue than nixon the nixon campaign taking the money and by the way you know it’s not clear whether it would have been nixon taking it or the Nixon campaign taking it. But the thing that they really wanted was there’s this process that began during the Kennedy era of turning labor from Democrats to Republicans because the argument has always been, why would labor go to Republicans, you know, given that Republicans are pro-business? Well, one thing that happened is Bobby Kennedy went after Jimmy Hoffa.

[38:57] And that was an opportunity. And one of the things that a friend of mine who was very senior to me in the White House said is we knew, Reagan knew, They couldn’t win over labor on economics, but they could win over labor on culture.

[39:13] And that the Reagan people began to notice that, first of all, they couldn’t stand Carter. The labor people couldn’t relate to him at all. But showing up to Reagan rallies, you’d have guys, labor people in cowboy hats and sidearms. And culturally, they liked the Republicans more. And a lot of what Nixon was looking for was labor support. And I think that the deal was Fitzsimmons had taken over when Hoffa went to jail. The mob was very happy with Fitzsimmons, especially when Hoffa started making noises. This is my union. I’m going to come back. I’m going to blow the whistle on all you guys. Not good.

[39:54] And the deal Nixon taught was not a pardon, but for Hoffa’s sentence to be commuted, provided that he didn’t run for office for a certain amount of time. And he ended up with Fitzsimmons in power. Fitzsimmons threw Teamsters’ support behind Nixon. Nixon got what he wanted. The problem, of course, is this set in motion, Hoffa’s desire to return to power, which is not something that the mob wanted. And if he had been willing to retire, he would have lived to a ripe old age. He wasn’t willing to retire. But in terms of the wise guys and the White House theme, no question, Nixon did a lot of work with the unions. They were controlled by the mob, and he benefited from it. He also benefited from deals in South Florida with some mobbed-up characters, some land deals. I mean, Nixon, you know, it’s funny.

[40:55] Nixon, you always hear that he was paranoid. Yeah, he was paranoid, but these people really were out to get him. And he didn’t help himself by always having his hand out for money and getting involved in some deals that he shouldn’t have, including with some banks that were heavily mob-connected. Yeah, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not out to get you, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. And the mistake Nixon made was not being paranoid. It’s that the actions that he took, um, he could have said, look, these people are out to get me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Let me just go and win the election, which of course he did in a landslide, which is why it’s so tragic. He didn’t have to do any of that stuff.

[41:40] Great. Eric, this has been wonderful. This is a, I tell you guys, you got to get this book. You want to crack beyond some of the myths that you see on Facebook and from your friends sometimes you want to become the definitive expert on some of these things, get this book, Wise Guys in the White House, Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made. Let me tell you, let me read you one little thing here. Ronald Kessler, who is a New York Times bestselling author, said, Wise Guys in the White House is an eye-opening, authoritative, remarkably detailed expose of the interplay between organized crime and our presidents. Shockingly revealing how close we have come to mob rule. So there’s a lot in this book, guys. You got to get it. And Eric, I really appreciate you coming on the show. And you’ve enlightened me. I’ll get around to reading this book now for sure after talking to you. I just hadn’t had time. Well, Gary, my final point, just something to cause people to lose their minds is, no, the mob didn’t kill JFK. So that’s my concluding remark. Okay. All right. and guys we didn’t even get into the Biden and the Trump White Houses so you got that to look forward to when you get that book as a little teaser for you right.

[42:52] Exactly there’s a lot on trump and the thing to know about trump is he was oddly honest all the way across about having done business with the mob that’s what’s so hilarious well you can’t do construction in manhattan without doing business with the concrete club right the window well that’s that is why trump built trump tower with concrete not steel there you go guys uh i really appreciate y’all listening and uh i hope you get this book and don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there in your cars and if you have a problem with ptsd and you’ve been in this service go to the va website and get that hotline number and if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol which is hand in hand with ptsd why uh anthony ruggiano a former gambino prospect a possible member is a drug and alcohol counselor down in florida and i’ll go figure that but he is i had him on the show once he’s a really nice guy and he has a hotline on his website and uh 1-800 bets off i think for gambling problems and and that’s enough uh social uh promotion today i guess it’s not promotion but uh uh dealing with those kinds of issues which you know we all have to a greater or lesser extent i think at least i have in my past don’t forget to look at my find my books they’re on amazon just go to amazon and search Gary Jenkins and Mafia, and you’ll find more than you ever wanted to know about me. So thanks a lot, guys.

[44:19] Thank you, Eric. Thank you.

In this bonus episode, Gary Jenkins tells about how the FBI recruited the man known as “The Grim Reaper” or the “Killing machine.” It might surprise some that they recruited Greg Scarpa Sr. before Joe Valachi gave his public testimony. From the time of Scarpa’s earliest arrests by the FBI, he sang like a bird. Additionally, Gary tells about Scarpa Jr. and Senior joining in murdering a mobster girlfriend or “Goomar” named Mari Bari. Colombo boss Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico feared she would reveal his whereabouts when he was on the lam from the FBI.  Scarpa’s people will call this “the murder he is going to hell for.”

Additionally, Gary Jenkins asks for your help with his new and captivating book inspired by his podcast episodes. Big Apple Mafia: Stories From the Five Families delves into New York City’s organized crime scene, beginning with legendary Mafia detective Joe Petrosino and key moments from his remarkable career. As with his first book, Windy City Mafia: Stories From the Chicago Outfit, Gary handpicks some of his favorite stories, crafting a compelling ten-chapter collection. Readers will explore tales of Lt. Petrosino and the Black Hand, Frank Costello—The Gentleman Gangster, the notorious Crazy Joey Gallo, the ruthless Tommy “Karate” Pitera, and Gary’s personal favorite, John Gotti’s Mole, and five more. Written in his signature direct and engaging style, this book is a must-read for true crime enthusiasts.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

[0:04] Unit Detective in the past. I have been at it again. I have written my second book based on my podcast episodes. My second book is called Big Apple Mafia, Stories from the Five Families. Now, I’m going to tell many mob stories from a podcast.

[0:20] Big Apple Mafia is going to be a little bit longer than Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. It’s got 160 pages. So my best stories, I really love a lot of these stories. like the one about Gotti’s mole, the New York City policeman who was feeding him information all the time in that investigation, how they uncovered that guy. And really everything from the overview in the early days, Abe Rellis, the canary that could sing but couldn’t fly, and all those old stories. So this new book is only $2.99 as a Kindle. And remember, the reason I’m doing this is for Amazon to put that book out on other people. When you go to Amazon, then if you’re a mob book reader, then we want this book to be put in front of all those mob book readers, whether they’re podcast listeners or not, of course. And if you want to help me with that, I kind of game the algorithms. It seems to work a little bit. They monitor the purchases or the pages read and the reviews, so give me a review also. So, and this helped out immensely with my Chicago book. So once again, I’m asking you for basically a small $2.99 donation and you’ll get the book in return, the Kindle book, or it’s a little more for the, I can’t remember how much it is for the, for the, uh.

[1:40] Paperback and, and so anyhow, don’t forget to give me a review and as reward for listening to this little sales pitch, here’s a great story about Greg Scarpa senior, AKA the grim reaper, or as I’ve learned, the name he really preferred was a killing machine or just km this guy was a real piece of work man i mean he was a real piece of piece of work he was he played chess while everybody else was playing checkers it seems to me like so listen to my story and don’t forget go to amazon and click on you know search gary jenkins, mafia books and you’ll find my books and buy that 299 kindle book and give me a review on it it’s called uh not windy city mafia one of my it’s called big apple mafia stories from the five families so listen up guys you know he’s got the usual thing as a young thug he ended up doing truck hijackings and the mob guys saw that and that’s where you fence your property if you do a truck hijacking large amounts of property.

[2:42] In 1960, FBI agents arrested him for hijacking. And another one hijacking, when they arrested him, they served a search warrant on his house and they found several cases of liquor taken from a more recent hijacking. Well, it was during that time in August of 1960 that the FBI opened their first informant file on him. And, you know, think about this, this is three years before Valachi does his testimony. He got that three years before Bellacci talks. I mean, Bellacci has come in by now, but this is three years before he actually gives his public testimony and people know about him. Greg Scarpa Sr., who’s going to get into the Profaci, then Colombo family, is talking to the FBI. And they dismiss the charges on the first hijacker. And then they drop him shortly after that because his brother was involved with this and and he won’t talk about his brother which is pretty common you know that’s that’s a bit much to ask of a guy but you know i noticed in the book i was reading about this is a really good book about this uh the greg scarper and his whole life that the charges were never refiled.

[3:52] The book says agents kept dropping by a social club where he frequented and and all the time and they tried to talk to him all the time. And so much that guys started to talk. And he finally, they said he begged the agents, you know, you got to stop this. Guys are starting to talk. Oh, that book, by the way, is Deal with the Devil. There it is. It’s thick too. It’s a big, thick book. Peter Lance. I think it’s really good now. Now there’s another book about him that mentions him a lot by this FBI agent, Len DiVecchio.

[4:23] And DiVecchio was one of his.

[4:26] Two guys that we know that ran him as an informant and i tell you what he i in my opinion from what i’ve read they were playing he was playing those guys all along well he did work for him i mean he did do work but he he was using it to uh to get himself promoted in the mob and and earn more money and and all that and and in 1962 they actually early on they gave him top echelon informant status, which is a pretty big deal. And what they said, there was a Profaci-Gallo war going on at that time, and they said he could furnish information on that. They really wanted to know about that. That other liquor hijacking case was dismissed during that time. In early 1962, there was an FBI report in which an unidentified agent describes Scarpa as a reliable and emotionally stable person, and that he has never furnished any false information. And the subsequent memos that they started writing early on his information was much better and more detailed and more about crimes than anything joe velacci ever talked about joe velacci got in there and talked to old history and and he explained a lot that that they didn’t know you know like the the capos and the bosses and and the families and how they were separate and and how they they They worked together and all those kinds of things. The induction ceremony, Scarpa was reported on current events.

[5:55] Bureau at that time calls him a capital regime. Now, he’s a little bit young for that. I think they wanted to boost him up a little bit and make him look like he’s more important. But they did say, and this turns out to be true, he was really close to the profetiae.

[6:08] Family concierge, Charles LoCicero. They also claimed that Scarpa Sr. Was a bookmaker and a gambler and nothing else, no kind of truck hijackings or murders or loom sharking or anything like that. He was just a bookmaker and a gambler, clean money. And they said that he agreed that he would advance in the Profaci family if they asked him to. So he was like, right there, he tells them, I’ll do this. I mean, I’ll go on in the family and try to get in to a higher position and into more mafia activities, but if you want me to, I mean, just think about this guy. He was good. He was always asking for money to cover old debts, and he wanted a regular stipend. Now, I did learn that they paid him $125 a month, but they often gave him large amounts, like there was $3,000 in one case, and this is 1962-63, and that was for some old debt that he owed, supposedly. But he was constantly asking for money. But he did report on all the inner workings and the plots and the relationships within the Profaci organization. Nothing, not that actionable intelligence yet that you could go set up a surveillance and then catch somebody in the act. And it kind of looked like to me reading that book and they had a bunch of the, what they called air tales or the reports that they were sending about.

[7:31] Scarfa, that he was really dropping information to try to manipulate agents into getting more money and never really putting himself in a position where he’d have to testify or even be exposed at all they wouldn’t have to go act on it and believe me the j edgar hoover was really really happy with this real good inside information uh you know like there’s a mob murderer he’ll come in and say well here’s what i hear nothing you can act on but i heard that this guy did it and this is why you know get that kind of stuff otherwise you’re just sitting on the outside twiddling your thumbs going I don’t know I don’t really know what’s going on and Bureau didn’t like that no law enforcement organization as you go up in ranks they never don’t want you to say that you don’t know they want you to come up with something, So they could then tell their friends or tell their boss that here’s what my

[8:20] guys learned. That’s just how it works. Following those different FBI reports in that book, Deal with the Devil, you can see that he was always thinking ahead and always preparing kind of the way for his own rise as would justify anything that he did in this Profaci and then later Colombo family.

[8:40] And the early one he was ratting out is a guy named Charles LoCicero or Charlie the Siege. I never could figure out what that Sidge was supposed to mean. I don’t think, I couldn’t find it in the book if it said that, but anybody knows, let me know. I’m curious. He told them how Los Cicero was really important, but he’s a guy that often got crossways with Profaci.

[9:02] And that way he was always like, you know, Los Cicero is a really important guy, but yet he’s in trouble. Because I think on down the road, we’ll see why. He said Los Cicero was one of the top gangsters in Brooklyn during these years, the early 60s. One story he told about Los Cicero was that he had assisted a gangster named Ralph Whitey Tropiano, who was up in New Haven, Connecticut, and he had some problems with some outlawed gangsters up there that were encroaching on his territory. And I checked on this Whitey Tropiano, the Tropiano in St. Louis, but he was a really valuable mobster, and here’s where he became valuable to the families is, A few years before, there was an old man, older mobster, and it was, I think he maybe even was a boss, Willie Moretti. And he was getting old, and he was going senile from untreated syphilis, and everybody was afraid he was going to talk. And Lo Cicero and a couple other guys, Lo Cicero was the most important one, set him up and killed him on the street. So one way, he starts out really denigrating Lo Cicero and showing that how, you know, Somebody might be angry at him and kill him off, or he might be out. He said he’s really tight, tight-fisted.

[10:19] He’d squeeze a nickel to see the buffalo shit, if you ever heard that expression. He gave one example in which Los Cicero’s son, Michael, was getting married. The old man said, I’ll pay for the wedding, but all the cash envelopes that are going to be given to you at this wedding, it was one of those huge weddings, got to be given to me. And then I might get the money repaid to me for putting on the wedding. Well, he got all that money and he gave his son $500, which was, believe me, he got paid a premium for putting on that wedding from those envelopes that all those gangsters brought in for the lucky young couple. This is 1963 by 66. Scarpa is claiming that Los Cicero is down and out as far as his mob activity is concerned. He rats out Los Cicero’s grandson and his couple of his sons, be this kid’s uncles, about a negotiable stocks ripoff. That used to be a big deal. They had negotiable bonds and stocks that you could steal. And they had ways to get rid of those with crooked stockbrokers. Or you take them and get a big loan in a bank and they hold them for collateral. You get money that way. And so anyhow, it was back then before computers, that was a pretty good way to make a lot of money. And it appeared to me, they never did say exactly, but it looked like Scarpa was going to fence those stocks. And then this Richard Los Cicero.

[11:48] Uh, his, his kind of his mentor, the first man that brought him in the family is murdered 1967 and never could tell what was the happening. These stock certificates, other than it looks like, uh, Scarpa ended up with him because he was supposed to fence them. Um, and it was during some of these years, there’s the agent named Tony Milano was his control and Milano wrote a book called brick agent. And in this Brick Agent book, Volano uses a fake name to identify his top echelon informant, Greg Scarper, throughout that whole book. You might want to get that book, Brick Agent.

[12:25] And I tell you what, Edgar Hoover, during this time, he just loved those reports. I mean, they would, like, tailor those reports with Scarper’s information and send them to Edgar Hoover, and he just loved that. You know, Edgar Hoover always loved knowing the dirt on somebody or knowing what other people didn’t know, as we all do, really. Villano retires in 1975. He stopped giving the FBI any good information, and they put him on the shelf until this Len DiVecchio dug him up and started another long-term relationship with him. And what’s interesting is Scarpa will refuse to meet with any other agents or have any other agents present when he meets with these control agents. And during this unprotected time, he did catch a little bookmaking case. The grandson of Charlie Los Cicero was killed after his uncle’s, Los Cicero’s sons, went to jail for their stolen stock certificate job. And then the old man, Charlie Los Cicero, is murdered. And this really paves the way for Scarpa not only to get in good with the FBI and denigrates the guy and he serves up the son.

[13:39] Michael, because of the wedding night, the old man scammed him, he tried to make it look like Michael did the killing.

[13:47] So this guy is a piece of work. It was common knowledge during this time that 1964, the FBI sent Greg Scarper Sr. To Philadelphia, Mississippi on a civil rights case. If you remember the three civil rights workers, two white and one black down in Philadelphia were murdered by the Klan and they buried their bodies in a pond dam that was under construction and burnt their car. And from the Mississippi Burning movie, that’s pretty much true. He kidnapped the Klan leader, threatens to cut his balls off until a guy reveals where the bodies are. And that’s all they really ain’t told him. We just want to know where the bodies are. And then a couple of years later, it’d be 1966.

[14:29] They send him back down. He did such a good job there sending back down to jackson mississippi there’s some clan guys had had attacked a man named brennan dahmer’s home one night when he had done he had been providing a place for voter registration at his home so they attacked this guy’s home and started shooting into it his family ran out the back door and end up and and he was trying to hold him off so his family could get away and they fire bombed it and he ended up killing this bernard dahmer and so he used he was brought back down there they pointed out the clan later who they thought was probably at least there that night forced him to confess and that’s how we know you know all this had happened i don’t know exactly what happened but this guy was he was brutal he was vicious and he would do anything to get ahead and like i said he was playing chess while everybody else was doing checkers so here’s a one one more little kind of more modern story joe clumbo was shot in 1971 you You know, remember Alphonse Alleyboy Persico was really on the rise during that time.

[15:34] And he’s going to end up taking over the Profaci family. And now, Allie Boy was quite a dandy. He looked and lived like a movie producer, a record executive or something. He had a white Rolls Royce, and he dressed in $1,000 white suits. So he was quite the dandy. So after he rises to boss the Colombo family, one day, it’s 1984, Allie Boy sees a beautiful Italian

[15:57] girl standing on a Brooklyn street corner. And he stops and flirts. And she’s hip to the game. She’s not going to just fall for any, you know, line of bull, but she kind of likes this guy.

[16:09] And he ends up getting a date with her, finds out she’s a former Miss New Jersey. Her name is Mary Mary, M-A-R-I-B-A-R-I. They go on a whirlwind relationship. She becomes his Gomar. She fell madly in love with him, really. And she’s never going to leave his wife. And he took her on trips out of town to Las Vegas, typical places, Las Vegas, Hawaii, and Florida. And bought her furs, of course, and expensive jewelry. He had a pet name for her, was Peach, and she got a tattoo of a peach on her butt. And he took her everywhere. I mean, it was like, you know, this was just Alley Boy’s girlfriend. This was Alley Boy’s girl. Greg Carpenter, in this time, he is managing Persico’s money on the street, collecting the big, giving out beatings whenever it’s necessary, doing the loan sharking things, the heavy work. And the feds are closing in on Alley Boy, and there’s a warrant’s been issued, and he learned about it, and he went on the lam.

[16:58] He did not want to go to the penitentiary. Some of his other underlings went to Mary’s home and demanded all the expensive jewelry that he’d given her back, which is pretty cold, man. And she didn’t have a job. She’s just been living this kept woman kind of life for the last couple of years. And, you know, they get worried about her. They hear some things about her. Allie Boy hears that she’s dating somebody and it’s somebody in law enforcement. And he’s hiding out up in Connecticut and she knows where he is. And so he’s definitely afraid that she’s going to give him up. One evening, September, she got all dolled up. Because a guy named Carmine Sessa, who had a club that was in Bay Ridge. I don’t remember the name of it. Occasions, I think, was the name of it. It was in Bay Ridge. And he’d offer this bartending job, and he sends a guy. He said, okay, I’ll send somebody for you. Come on over and check it out, see what you got to do here, and see if you want to work here. Some guy named Tony Muscles, they called him, just one of the young little hangers-on mob guys. So he picks her up, brings her in, and when she gets there, She walks in, she sees Greg Scarpa Jr. And Sr., as well as several other men there. And we know this because Greg Jr.

[18:11] Later on tells about this. Greg Sr. never talked about it, of course, because, you know, this was something that he didn’t tell anybody about at the time. The FBI, no matter how lenient they were, they could not approve of this if the organization knew it. However, if the agent knew it and he kept his mouth shut, which is totally bad, totally wrong, you just don’t do that kind of stuff. But what Greg Jr.

[18:38] Said, and I think somebody else turned eventually and testified to this or told about it. Greg Jr. walked up and greeted her, and she thought, oh, this is all good. All my friends here, all the Persico family, and I never did become Persico family, I don’t think. But all his underlings were there. So she moved in, you know, to get the kiss on the cheek. He grabs her and pulls her down, push her down on the ground. And Greg Scarpen has a gun and he pulls it and pumps a bunch of bullets under her body. And, you know, they take her body out and just unceremoniously dispose of it under an elevated train. So it’s found pretty quick. Now, there’s another person that tells this story. Linda Shuro, who is Greg Sr.’s longtime girlfriend. Him tommy dades i believe is a new york city detective he gives some information that he’s learned about this lindy vecchio anyhow they put a the feds put a case on this fbi agent lindy vecchio and he testified or she testified lindy shiro testified in court against de vecchio.

[19:42] That one day de vecchio came over to their house and told scarpa senior that hey man you got a problem with this mary berry and you know gives the the nod and he knows what he knows what that means uh de vecchio of course will deny that vehemently in an interesting twist of events de vecchio writes a book and in the very beginning he tells about mary berry and the murder of mary berry and he he fictionalizes and he talks about like he knew what she was thinking and feeling and when she went into there and, who all was involved and but it’s all fiction because he you know he can’t cop to that because this was you know when he was he was running the guy and you know he couldn’t have known about at the time let alone told him that she he had a problem with mary barry you know the the cops she had told her relative where she was going the night before she was killed to this club when it was going to this club the club cops show up the next day and and they really don’t uh Sessa, his name is Sessa, he kind of stonewalls them, and they leave, and then later that day, he cleans the club from floor to ceiling. Gangsters will be telling stories about this murder, kind of talking out of school. What happened is say, you know, they’ll probably go to hell for that one.

[21:09] Greg Sr., I mean, he’s talking about it, he’s bragging to people about how one of his shots blew her ear off, and he thought that was kind of funny. Greg Jr. Verified all this, and he also verified that his father told him that his FBI

[21:22] friend, who he called Dee, told him that Mary was going to be a problem. So there’s like two people said that Mary told, said DeBecchio told him Mary was going to be a problem. During Scarfa’s trial, Scarfa Senior’s trial, Linda Shero got trapped in a lie, and it made it, and so her testimony was pretty well, you know, kaput after that. and DeBecchio gets a not guilty. Another person that testified in that trial was Scarpa Underling Larry Mazza, who’s out here, around here now, doing podcasts and stuff, I believe. And he testifies that Scarpa told him these same details about the murder. You know, what’s interesting, that same year, the FBI agents found Alley Boy hiding up in West Hartford, Connecticut. Now, she may have told him where to look and they just hadn’t gotten around to look at it. I don’t know. I know I couldn’t find anything else about who this man was that she was dating if he was law enforcement or not. That’s a little story about Greg Scarpa Sr., the killing machine. I always call him the, what is it, they call him the Grim Reaper. But I think he liked, what I read, he liked the KM or the killing machine.

[22:30] I’ve got other stories I’ll probably go through and do some more stories. It’s so interesting. I wanted to look a little more into this relationship with Dubecchio. It’s just one that captured my attention right off the bat, and i wanted to do this podcast for you guys to try to sell my book uh big alpha mafia stories from the five families and and you know just for 2.99 it’ll be a great help for the podcast and you’ll get the book so thanks a lot guys i really appreciate y’all tuning in don’t forget to like and share and give me your uh make some comments at the bottom ask me questions or something i think i brought up something i asked about in here if you know any more about this if i got anything wrong way let me know in the comments keep coming back thanks guys.

Retired KCPD Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins takes listeners inside the Federal Prison Hospital at Springfield and the final days of John Gotti’s life. Former inmate Mark Black wrote Black Truth: The Last Days of Gotti. He takes us back to his early days in the prison system, recounting his initial charge and transfer to the Springfield Federal Medical Center. There, he forged profound relationships with high-profile mafia members, gaining rare insights into their lives, codes, and the unspoken rules governing their world. Among these encounters, his time with Greg DePalma and John Gotti of the Gambino family stands out. Mark shares vivid stories of their mutual respect and the deep conversations that revealed Greg’s storied past, including connections to infamous figures like Tony Ducks and Fat Tony. Through these aging mobsters, Mark paints a fascinating picture of how street reputations followed them into prison, where they exchanged tales of past glories and upheld the mafia’s sacred code of honor.

The episode also explores Mark’s interactions with John Gotti, offering a unique glimpse into the infamous mob boss’s life behind bars. Mark delivered meals and kites (messages) for Gotti as a prison orderly. He tells about the stark contrast between Gotti’s outward bravado and the signs of stress and resignation from solitary confinement. Mark Black became Gotti’s “eyes and ears” in the prison outside his solitary confinement.

Tensions rise as Mark delves into the story of a proposed hit on Nicky LaSorsa. He recounts the volatile dynamics of trust and betrayal, particularly involving a convicted drug kingpin, Jose Reyes, who sought to manipulate alliances and set up John Gotti Jr. and Greg DePalma for an early release from several life sentences. Mark’s role as an intermediary in these dangerous scenarios highlights the precarious balance between loyalty and treachery that defines the mafia lifestyle. Through these gripping accounts, Mark offers listeners an insider’s view of the unyielding nature of mob loyalty and the ever-present risks of living by its code.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire

To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here

To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. 

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos.

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

[0:51] Well, I was charged with drugs and firearms violation, and I got seven years in state and then the feds. And then when I got done with my state sentence, I went to the feds and did some time at El Reno in Oklahoma City. And then when I was timing out, they decided to send me to Springfield Federal Medical Center to work to take care of the sick inmates.

[1:17] Yeah, they have a bunch of those guys. I’ve seen pictures of old Tony Ducks Carollo and fat Tony Slerno. And there’s these old guys are just sitting there in their wheelchairs and they can’t really get around. They can’t do anything. So, so you were the guy that helped them out. Yeah. Well, Greg Palma, that’s who I knew at first. And that, that was what happened the first day, you know, I was an orderly on his unit. He asked me to push him to Catholic mass. And so I pushed him to Catholic mass and he asked me to, push him to the back and there was an old man sitting back there also in a wheelchair, and they talked through the whole mass uh the catholic mass the whole time and it was kind of disrespectful but you know everybody just let him do it and then when he got out he told me that that was tony ducks corella that he was talking to and that they had been really good friends and he said that they uh tony had had some problems with john at one time but all was forgiven and they were friends uh and then i’d see him i’d see him with uh tony at mass every once in a while but tony was on another unit so so you got to know greg de palma pretty well as my if i remember right.

[2:29] Yeah. When I got on the unit, I was on his unit for quite a while, like almost a year and a half. And one of the ways that we got to be friends is that I was a gopher for the guard there. And I had a schedule down and he wanted and I would take smoke breaks in the bathroom. You weren’t supposed to do that. But Greg DePalma asked me if he could ride in the car.

[2:53] So we started doing smoke breaks in the bathroom on his unit. And uh when that when i knew the guard wasn’t available and we got to know each other like that and he started you know after about a couple of months he started telling me stories about uh about himself so he’s this is a guy that is born and bred in the new york city mafia and you know he rose to a pretty high level and he lived that life so how did that translate inside the penitentiary system did he have you know where he had guys other guys that were there that gave him a certain respect did you see that you know if you think about the well one of the things you know when i first met greg you know i was an orderly there and he said that i could put my my belongings in his room that nobody would steal him and he was one of the guys would leave his cigarettes laying out on his bed which showed that like he had like a lot of respect and people kind of feared him in there but not he didn’t really you know i was when i first got there i started playing chess with this guy named Curtis and he was a pimp. And he also knew Greg from the outside, but he told me that Greg really didn’t speak to anybody besides I was the first guy that he had ever really spoke to, um, uh, and hung around with besides his mafia friends.

[4:12] And so Greg, he was pretty secretive, uh, until, until I met him and he didn’t really talk to hardly anybody. Did he bring the, he brought the kind of the mafia code into the penitentiary. Could you see that?

[4:26] How did that play itself out?

[4:30] Well, you know, one of the reasons I wrote this book was because, uh, um, you know, I didn’t really think about too much when I first got out, I was trying to rebuild my life. But one of the things that when I was looking up the stuff he had told me, he told me that he dated Elizabeth Taylor, which I didn’t believe. Um, you know, he had talked, he’d talk about, uh, his time at the West Chester premier theater that he ran. Um one time he came down the uh the hallway waving a newspaper rag that had frank sinatra you know him uh i guess big paulie and some of the other friends and he was telling me that that was his baby and then he and he and he told me that kind of stuff like that and then one of the things when i started looking this up i found this uh interview by jack falcone and he was a fbi agent that had infiltrated Greg’s crew. And, you know, he made him to look like a kind of a bumbling, comical character, which just didn’t sit right with me.

[5:29] Greg, it was kind of like, you know, Tony Montana in the movies where he said, all I’ve got is my word and my balls, and I don’t bust them for anybody. And that was Greg De Palma. And he lived that life fully. He was fully committed to the mafia and this thing of theirs. And he was loyal to a fault. I mean, all these guys that I hung out with, they, they were, they were fully committed to, uh, this, uh, this thing of theirs is that’s what they called it. Did they seem to express any regret for getting all this time? No, they didn’t actually. They, they saw that that was part of the part of doing business. One of the, you know, some of the regrets that, um, that Greg had, I heard that, uh, Sam Cagnini told me when he, you know, like I said, I played chess in the orderlies.

[6:17] Common area. And I got to know Sam Cagnetti through Greg because he wanted to play me chess. But Sam told me that Greg’s wife was always busting his balls over his son, but he didn’t really elaborate. The only thing that he really regretted was that, I guess, Sammy Gravano, with who ratted him out, he said that really broke his heart, John’s heart. And he said that, you know, that he would have taken a bullet for Sammy and he called him a cocksucker. I mean, everybody, anybody that he didn’t like you was a cocksucker.

[6:50] And he said that, you know, that Sammy just didn’t rat John out. He rated, he ratted a whole bunch of people out, which I didn’t really know anything about that. When I first went, I didn’t know anything about, I didn’t even know who Greg DePalma was. I’d heard about John Gotti from the newspapers and, and all that, but I didn’t know anything about the Gambino crime family. I didn’t know who Greg De Palma was and, uh, or, or, uh, uh, uh, Sam Cagnini, who Greg introduced me to because Sam played chess too. And he was a very secretive guy. He never came out of his room. The only time he came out of his room was to cook his own meals in the, at the microwave. And he wore these big yellow pajamas. He was like about a 300 pound dude. And he said that he was a police officer at one point too.

[7:40] And, uh, he said he could read people pretty, pretty well. And that when Greg DePalma was talking about killing Nikki, He, he told me, he said, I used to be a cop. And he said, I said, you know, I could read people pretty good. And he said, unless you’re full of shit or just stupid. He said, uh, I know that, you know, that something’s going on with Greg.

[7:59] And so just cut the crap. And so, uh, Sam Cagnetti was just a kind of a no bullshit guy. He, he actually reminded me of the guy that plays, uh, the penguin and the Batman or the penguin story. That got the Colin Farrell plays. I mean, it was kind of that kind of rough, no nonsense, straight shooter. And I like Sam. I like Sam a lot. Now, I understand he was out of the Traficante family down in Florida. So these guys, wherever they’re from, they’re mafia. Then they get together. They know each other. Yeah, they knew each other from a long, they knew each other. And like I said, Curtis was this pimp that I used to play chess with. And he told me that, you know, like that’s all Greg didn’t even hang out with anybody. But, you know, like I said, when I started hanging out with Sam, we started playing chess. He he asked me if I could get him some ingredients for spaghetti dinner. And since I worked with the orderlies, I had connections with the orderlies that worked in the kitchen. And so I got him to meet. He had a whole list of ingredients that he wanted. And I, I got those ingredients for him and, uh, he started making spaghetti dinners, uh, you know, once, uh, uh, about twice a month.

[9:14] And then, uh, through my other connections, uh, uh, you know, throughout the prison, we got some prison wine to kind of drink with it. And that’s how I got to know Sam. And so we started, you know, communicating quite a bit after that. Yeah, it’s interesting. That’s, that’s the scene right out of the Goodfellas where they’re, uh, the Ray Liotta character, Henry Hill runs around like you runs around and gets a different ingredients and brings them back. And then, uh, big Polly, uh, Paul Vario, the character, I can’t remember. I think they called him big cup Holly in the movie. And he’s like slicing the garlic really thin and, and making this big, fancy Italian meal with some wine and everything. So it, it, well, this was, this was prison wine.

[9:58] I mean, it wasn’t like outside wine. I mean, I think these guys, I never really saw how they made it, but one of the guys that I was buying it from, he said they were, they were putting it inside the walls of the prison you know so they so the guards couldn’t find it and uh sam like i never really saw him make make it but like what he’d do i i would uh go down i would give uh an orderly his list and then i was one of the orderlies that would go down and bring a food carrier up to the uh the unit and then i would hand out trays to to the inmates and i and he stuffed it inside this food carrier and so sam would be sitting on his bed and i just grabbed this big old bag and just throw it at him as we went by and the guard was kind of in front of me and Sam would catch it like a football and then uh later that night he’d have everything ready it was just me and Greg and uh Sam uh that uh uh ate the spaghetti dinner like I said what twice every month till I left.

[11:00] Really? Now, if I remember writing your book and from what you’ve, uh, your notes that, uh, Sam would share a few mafia stories with you, can you relate any of them that, that Sam would share for the guys? Yeah. Um, some of the stamp stories that he told me, um, he told me that he was a cop. And like I said, I told him that he told me that he could read people pretty good unless I’m deaf, dumb and full of shit. He knew that I knew what was going on. And he was another guy that did like did not like sam sammy gravano he said he was uh uh you know that uh john was uh gonna wear it to the end with his chin up and that he was proud that he’d never read it out and he said not like that sammy fucking kind gravano so sam didn’t like him either he also told me that how he got caught uh was that he used to buy different houses that were next to each other and he would build a tunnel from the house to house. And he said, it was kind of like a whack-a-mole. The cops would come in to bust him, and he’d put a tunnel underneath the washing machine. And he would have guys build a tunnel to the next house. And so when the cops came in, he’d just get in the tunnel and go over to the next house and watch them going through the house, trying to find him. And they never found him. He said that the last time the tunnel wasn’t built, they came in to get him and he said that he opened up with his thompson 45 and uh they fired in tear gas.

[12:26] And that was the end of his story and he said now i said.

[12:35] Quite a storyteller yeah what what were his crimes could you tell what what his kind of main no he never he never talked about he never talked about his problems you know one time he he’d always like kid me every once in a while. Like I said, he was kind of no nonsense guy. And one time we were playing chess or something. I forgot what’s happening. He asked me if I’d ever killed anybody. I, you know, I was kind of shocked. I said, no, I’ve never killed anybody. And he told me about some guy and I’m not even really sure who it was. I mean, but it was somebody that he had shot in a telephone booth, but he never really talked about his crimes or really the Trompeau family. He was a pretty.

[13:14] He was a pretty secretive guy. I mean, and every once in a while, he’d kind of let loose with a couple of stories. But, I mean, nothing that I think that would hurt his family. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. So I have to ask you this.

[13:29] My friend who was down there, they made jailhouse nachos. Did you ever make jailhouse nachos? Yeah, but Sam and them didn’t ever eat that. They always ate Italian food. But when I first came into Springfield, they processed you through, put you in a little jail cell. And I was in this guy, his name was Rick Randall. And you were talking about Leavenworth. He told me they were moving all the military inmates out of Leavenworth throughout the system. And he was a special forces operator. He was in there for actually, he told me that he was in New York City.

[14:05] Some guy tried to, he was with his wife and his kid. Some guy tried to hijack him in this in in new york city and he took the gun away from him after the guy put it to his wife’s head and just shot him executed him out in front of the car and he got 20 years i guess the military frowns on that when you’re when you go into the the prison system the mafia is just one gang of like very a minute many i mean they’re not even the most dangerous So, I mean, the ABs, the Aryan Brotherhoods are dangerous, but I got to be friends with some of the Mexican cartel, and they would make those nachos. And they would also make these fantastic tamales that I would buy, and I would share them with Rick. But they would take a bag of Fritos and crunch them up and get some meat down from the kitchen, and then they’d roll up these tamales. And that was really a big thing on the unit, too. But Sam and Greg, they never ate that kind of stuff.

[15:06] Yeah. Interesting. So now talk, let’s talk about John Gotti. You’ve mentioned him a couple of times. You knew when he can’t tell the guys, you know, how did you know that Gotti came and, and did, did you work with him? Was he in solid? He was in solid before, I believe, but they was in solitary. Tell us about John’s last. I didn’t really know about too much about what had happened to him. But you know, like I said, my friend Curtis, he had his ear to, he had like a lot of people like singing to him, I guess, you know, telling him what was going on, but he told me John called, uh, some black guy, a nigger where he came from and he got punched in the face.

[15:44] And, uh, and then, uh, Greg told me, uh, he just said one day when we were taking smoke break, he goes, Hey, my friend, uh, John is God, he’s getting ready to come to, uh, Springfield. And he said, I want you to help, help him out while he’s here. And since I was an orderly, I was one of the only people that could get back into solitary confinement. But when they brought in Gatti, I was just mopping the floors. And all of a sudden, the guard said, everybody in the room and all the orderlies face the wall and don’t look at the prisoner that’s coming in. And I’d never seen that happen before. I mean, the whole time I’d been in prison, I’d never had anybody tell me to face the wall and not, you know, just all the orderlies just, you know, face the wall. And here comes this guy. You can hear him coming off the off the elevator and he was in chains and I heard him say as he’s going down the hallway oh so this is my new fucking home.

[16:42] And then they put him in solitary confinement and solitary confinement there’s like a it’s kind of roped off it’s got a line and if you cross it’s got a big sign that says any inmate that passes this line will be put in the hole and you know your commissary will be taken away and blah blah blah and then pass that line there’s a.

[17:02] Uh a big steel bars that go all the way across the the uh the hallway and then once you go inside that there’s two iron doors with bean holes in them that are embedded in the concrete and this is uh the uh the solitary confinement that they put john in but when i first met john gaudy i was delivering uh his meal to him and uh actually Greg had wanted me just to give him a kite and I’m not sure if you know what that is but it’s kind of a little messaging system it looks like it’s a little looks like a little paper football people write messages on it and it’s the only way that John can communicate to the outside and people to him is by an orderly giving him these kites and so So Greg wanted me to give him a kite. And when I went in there to deliver his meal, the first time I saw John, he was like in this 6x12x9 cell. He was painted this drab yellow. The bed was bolted to the floor. He had like a combination aluminum sink and toilet and a little mirror on top of that. And it looked like he had his family pictures around the mirror. And then he had like a little 4×4 window that like was dusty and had bars and steel grate over that where he could look out into the yard.

[18:29] And you could tell by his, my first impression of John is like you could tell that he was like, He was stressed out. You could see it etched in his face. And I kind of sensed, you know, a sadness and the realization of his acceptance to this, for, to his grim fate that he had been given to. Cause like I said, but he, but he still kept an upper lip.

[18:54] And when the guard went to check across the hall to look into this other cell, I threw the, I put his food tray down on the, on the bed, pulled that kite out, threw it on the bed and he didn’t even hesitate. He just like pushed it off to the side and he kind of got that cocky, you know, confident grin that you see in the newspaper. And he, and he extended his hand and he said, uh, my name’s John Gotti, a pleasure to meet you. And, uh, I told him my name was Mark Black and I, and I wish we were meeting under different circumstances. And like I said, when we left the guard, uh, said, uh, Hey, that was John Gotti back there. And, and I said, that’s what everybody keeps telling me and the guard said god damn work travels fast around here so that was that was the first time i bet it so that you continued to have did you continue to take kites to him periodically from uh greg i don’t guess you ever opened one of those up and looked at it did you no i never did that uh well one time i’ll tell you one time i greg uh later Later on, you know, just before I’m leaving, John’s sending kites out to Sam wanted to send a kite to Greg or to Gotti, too. One time when he opened it up, it was just a bunch of betting slips because I don’t know if you know this, but these guys bet on football games and everything else in there. And Greg said that Gotti would bet on a cockroach race if he could.

[20:19] And that’s what he was sending betting slips to Greg so he could make bets for him.

[20:25] And, and then he sent me, uh, he, he sent me a couple of kites too. When I don’t, I used to send the kites, but he had like a little trash can, because I had to have to go in there and clean up his room and I’d pick up the trash. And then on the bottom, he’d leave kites to Greg. Um, and then to me, and he just, you know, told me he really appreciated what, you know, I was doing for him. He actually told me, he said, when I got out, he was going to take care of me, but I, I didn’t accept the phone number that Greg was going to give me when I left because I I just wanted to go home at that point. And these guys were too hot. Even Sammy said, that guy is hotter than a Thompson 40 machine gun. And he said, you just need to put all this behind you and go home.

[21:10] And this guy named Jose Race, who was trying to get John Jr. To do this Meet His Hitman. Sam told me, he said, unless you’re willing to cross certain lines that… He said, no, he told me, he said, Jose is willing to cross certain lines that

[21:24] you’re not even capable of. So you just need to go home now. But like I said, we’re kind of skipping around a little bit. So you mentioned John Jr. Remember when John Jr. Came down to visit his dad? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I was getting ready to go visit my own parents. And just before I did, I was on the unit handing out meals and I handed the meal to John and he was already dressed up. And when you go out to meet your visitors, you get your best khakis on and you have someone press them. John said that his son was coming down from New York to see him. He really loved his son. I mean, he thought his son was just the whole world. He said that he even told me one time that his son was the only person that understood this thing of theirs. And I said, well, I’m getting ready to go see my parents today. And he said, well, tell them John Gotti said hi. So we’re sitting out there in the visiting room and, and, uh, my, I told my dad, John Gotti said, hi, my mom, and he starts talking about mafia movies and stuff. And, uh.

[22:26] The Godfather, you know, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and all of a sudden, you know, I see John jr. Come in. He was like, uh, uh, he had all the confidence in the world. He looked like a mafia guy. He was all dressed in black. He had like a little gold chain on. He looked like somebody that would give you a, uh, uh, you know, keep his word or give you a fist, whichever one, you know, was needed at that particular time.

[22:51] And John, he couldn’t come out to the, where everybody else would, uh, the, the, uh, the main visiting room, uh, he could, and then the main visiting room, you can actually sit with your, your people and like, give them a hug when you first see them. And John didn’t get that. He had to see, uh, John Jr. had to see him behind a glass. Um, I found out later and they had to talk through a glass. John Jr. came out about, about 15 minutes or later, uh, he was completely broken. I mean, he was holding his hand up, you know, trying to, you know, shield as anybody from seeing him crying. And I mean, uh, it just, it just devastated him just to see his father like that so you had let’s talk about uh you mentioned a guy named jose there was a there was a lot of drama that was around this guy we’ll kind of go back to where yeah where you were and there’s a lot more guys there’s a lot more about gotti and everything we don’t we can’t give away everything out of his book so but there’s a lot more about his relationship with john gotti in there but let’s talk about this jose and there’s a power play and this curtis dude what tell us about that That was

[23:57] that got a little bit dangerous. It sounded to me like a little bit tense. No, it was, it was very dangerous. And then, like I said, there was a cut.

[24:04] Curtis was feeding me information about this guy. And also he got into a beef with Rick Randall’s one of his friends. When the orderlies that I worked with was one guy was a guy named slim and he was a gangbanger and he knew stoop dog. And another guy was a guy named called the crazy Cajun. And he was another military inmate. I was playing a game, uh, a chess with, uh, Curtis and, This guy just rolls up in a wheelchair and he’s got his hair slicked back. His khakis were pressed. I mean, usually, like I said, nobody even does that until they go out on a visit.

[24:36] He had his fingers manicure. You could tell that somebody was taking care of this guy and he just demanded a chess game.

[24:44] And he just said, I, he goes, I want, I want, I’m next. He goes, I want a chess game. And Curtis, who I’d never seen, you know, any fear in his face at all. Uh i got really really scared and he just stood up turned over his queen and and and walked off the unit and i and oh he and oh yeah this guy said his name was jay at first he introduced himself as jay i beat him in chess and i could all i could tell that he was like a very sore loser he wanted another and i told and i told him no i got things to do on on the unit and i i don’t maybe we can play later now he was he was a cartel guy right who was he why was he No. Well, Curtis told me, I really didn’t know. Like I said, I didn’t know any of these figures at all, except what I found out in prison. Later on, Curtis told me that he used to work for a guy named Chocolate in New York. they sold heroin. And when Chocola went to prison, he took over the operation. And he had a pit man or a guy that worked for him named Freddy Krueger. And he was like his assassin. I guess he paid him like $1,000 a day. And he’d just light up whoever Jose told him to light up. He said that This guy was so brazen that he went after a fellow gang member on a bridge to.

[26:07] In full traffic, uh, with an ache, this guy got up on the hood of a car with an AK 47 and opened up on a taxi, uh, with an AK 47 to kill this rival drug, drug dealer that Jose didn’t like.

[26:22] And then he told me that his real name was Jose race. And that he was, uh, and then after, uh, and then he was bringing about $240,000 a day to start selling cocaine. And, uh, he said that, he was killing so many people that Curtis told me he killed one of his friends and killed two of his girls that was working for him. Curtis told me that he thought that Greg knew Jose from the outside because he was buying cocaine from it. And I’m not really sure if this is how you mentioned the guy’s name, but he said that, well, when Gotti was under Della Croce. Yeah. Della Croce. Is that his name? Della Croce. Right. Della Croce. Well, he said that when he was, when he was, when he was underneath him, he was, he thought that he was buying cocaine from Jose. Um, and they were selling it. And then when he said that once, uh, big, uh, once, uh, Della Croce died, they actually passed Della Croce over for big Polly. Nobody liked big Polly. Cause they, they, they, he didn’t pay his dues or something like that. Greg had told me one time that when, uh, they decided to go after big Polly, that everybody got on board and nobody looked back. This guy right here, this Jose Race, Curtis told me that he was in there for seven murders. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. And he was doing two life sentences.

[27:43] And he had like this, he was always wheeling around trying to get close to Greg. And he was always reading books like Machiavelli. He’s always like had a Sun Tzu, The Art of War. He’s always reading that. He started trying to get around Greg all the time. Uh, but Greg would really wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And then one day, and I’ll just go ahead and get into this. But one day where, uh, Curtis came and got me, he said, Hey, De Palma’s on the war path. He said, look out. And so I, I’m, I’m standing in there taking, and I looked in Greg’s room and

[28:18] he’s like cussing to himself. And I, I said, Hey, Hey, Greg, I’m getting ready to, um, take a smoke. You want to, you want to go? And he just kind of waved me on. And when he came in there, he started talking about this guy named Nicky. How dare him not pay him his money? And who does the fuck does he think he is? You know, if he thinks he can rip me off while I’m in prison, you know, that fucking cocksucker, I’m going to show him a thing or two. I mean, you know, one thing about Greg and even Sam said that he that was one of his big faults. He had a big mouth. Later on, after we got through smoking a cigarette, I had left my lighter in there.

[28:52] And I went back to get it and Jose was sitting in there and he wanted to always know about Greg, you know, what he couldn’t understand why I was Greg and Sam were hanging out with me and not him. And all of a sudden you could hear Greg down the hallway on the phone. And he was going, you motherfucking son of a bitch. He said, I’m the one who made you, you, you can’t do this. He said, you’re going to pay me my fucking money or I’ll have you fucking whacked. And I mean, just, and all of a sudden Jose wheeled around and said, oh man, I got to see this.

[29:24] And, uh, and I walked down there too. And Greg is just like, I mean, I mean, just out of control. I mean, you know, cussing at this, uh, this Nikki guy and telling him that, you know, he’s going to have him whacked and you know, that, uh, if you think I’m in prison and you’re not going to pay me my money and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, and even the guard came out, he was so loud that the guard came out and said, Hey, DePalma, he said, uh, uh, you’re going to have a heart attack. He said, you do know these phones are tapped, right? And, uh, and then he wheeled and he just kind of looked at him and just fumed off down, just slammed the phone down and fumed off down the hallway to his room. There’s Jose race, you know, sitting there looking at him. This guy, he, he didn’t know a lot of the people who he was talking about. And I didn’t know if I was talking to him, I was just interviewing him. So I go back and check after we get done with the interview. And I find out that Greg De Palma did want a Bronx car dealer whack named Nicky LaSorsa because, first of all, LaSorsa was collecting $2,500 a week from somebody else. And then he was supposed to pay it to De Palma and then he quit paying it. In the meantime, Greg De Palma’s son, Craig De Palma, had testified about Mikey Scars Di Leonardo in the Atlanta Gold Club racketeering case.

[30:42] And so people were like, you know, they were like distancing themselves from the De Palmas. And so they’re going to get Junior Gotti. They’re going to try to rope Junior Gotti into this deal later on down at the prison. It’s a heck of a story. So keep listening.

[30:55] And this Jose Reyes, he’s a, I couldn’t find any pictures of him or the guy, his hit man. They call him Freddy Krueger. His name was Francisco Medina. They caught a bunch of cases of really bad, bad people. But Jose Reyes is going to get involved in this thing.

[31:13] And then Reyes is going to turn around and rat him out. So this is one heck of a story. Thanks, guys. Just keep listening. I was just fascinated by this guy’s story because he’s like this guy that, you know, Joe Blow that just is pulled into this world. And he doesn’t even know any of these people. And he transitioned it somehow. I don’t know how they got out alive.

[31:34] And if you keep listening, you’ll find out that he became really important to John Gotti. By the end when i when i went down to play sam a game of chess i was walking down the hallway and i heard greg yell out i want that fucking cocksucker dead you hear me and then in a and then in this calm voice jose saying uh listen i’m down for this but you guys need to get john jr involved to meet my guy to to have nicky guy assassinated he said if i if john jr can’t meet my my guy i don’t think i can get this to happen and greg said well i think i can i can get that that to happen and that won’t be a problem and then you know and greg was just saying who the fuck does he think he is and and uh and then he said and then sam came up and he said are you sure your guys uh uh can take care of this thank you god and okay i remember he’s a gentleman i think my record speaks itself from that day on he said he said he said as personal favor uh to you uh Mr. De Palma, he said, I’ll make sure my guy torched Nicky before we blow off his low-life wig. And Greg De Palma actually said, no torture. We’ve got rules.

[32:47] And he said, you can kill him, but you can’t. He said, yeah, he said, he goes, no torture. Nicky may owe me money, but he’s not a fucking rat like Gravano. He said, we do have fucking rules. You know, I was just looking that up. that that’s probably Nikki LaSorsa who, uh, who Greg did make. And one of the things he had gotten De Palma’s table at Rao’s, a really nice restaurant in East Harlem. And it said that when De Palma heard his regular table had been violated, he was recorded on a prison telephone saying, I hope it ain’t Nicky. I’m going to stomp him. When I left, he was so jealous of me and everything I did. He was a nobody. And I brought him around. I gave him his name. So I bet that’s who it was. And he ends up getting charged in a murder plot against La Sorsa in the end. Oh, yeah.

[33:37] Jose told Greg, he said, don’t torture him. You can kill him, but you can’t torture him. He said, we’ve got rules. He goes, well, suit yourself. He goes, but I’d sure like to be there when he gets whacked. And Sam laughed and he goes, they all look the same. They just walked in after you caught them fucking their wife. And he said, with their best friend. He said, believe me, I’ve had the privilege of seeing both. Uh so that was sam’s sam’s uh thing on that but um man that’s cold that is cold that was a lot of dropping you were a party to or a witness to other man whatever happened with uh reyes.

[34:18] Jose reyes oh did you just when you left was he still there yeah he was still there when i left him and greg had become like really good friends and actually greg kind of like started distancing himself from me became pretty buddy-buddy with Jose Reyes because there’s like this scene that I’ll go ahead and tell you. I don’t know if you can use it or not, but Greg and him became really buddy-buddy. And just before I left, I sent the kite to John Gotti and I told him that I did not trust Jose Reyes. And because I had heard he wanted John Jr. to be involved with this. And I told John about it in a, in a, in a, in a kite. And he told me that he wanted all the information that I had on this guy. You know, um, I will say this, um, John told me, you know, that he needed me to be his, his, uh, eyes and ears on the, on the unit that he thought that they were going to fuck him over and his son one last time. And I told John, you know, what, what I was seeing on the outside, Greg went out to, uh, to talk to John to get an okay for this hit. Cause Jose race said, look, you got to get John Gotti involved. You got to get his son involved. And I told, and I wrote a kite to John and I said, look, this guy is not trustworthy.

[35:36] He’s trying to get your son involved in this, in this hit on Nikki. And Greg basically shot Greg down on, on all of this. John, John shot Greg down on it.

[35:48] Yeah. You know, like I said, you know, I didn’t really even know who these guys were when I when I went into prison. John, John told me, he said, look, I want you to give me all the information that you got out there. He said, I can’t. You’ve got to be my eyes out there on the unit. He said, I can’t see what’s going on. So you’ve got to, like, tell me what’s going on. And I told him, I said, they, this Jose race is trying to get John jr. To meet with one of, uh, Jose race, his friends on the outside to hit Nikki. And, um, um, and he wants John jr. Involved. And, um, and I said, I don’t trust him. You know, this is what I put him in a little kite. And I even asked Greg one time, because I didn’t know, I said, who’s in charge here. You or John. And he said, you know, that John was in charge and that he mentioned something about Big Pauly. And he said that once John made his decision to move on Big Pauly, that everybody had thrown on John’s side.

[36:49] And he said he’d never looked back. He said, John’s got the last word. He went up to Greg’s window. See, here’s another thing, too. The only way that Greg could talk to John Gotti was there’s like a, uh, outside, there’s a running track and some, some, uh, some tables, picnic tables that you can sit on out there. And then where John Gotti was called the hole and those units kind of like jut out into that area. And so Greg DePalma could go underneath John’s window and talk to him. And he was trying to get John to, uh, uh, to okay, a hit on, uh, on this Nikki character. So did, uh, did John finally act on your, your warning, I guess, if I should say, uh, call it that and not order Greg did not allow his son to get involved with this. I will go ahead and say this too. And I don’t know how much you’re going to like, you know, I’ll let you go ahead and cut it out. But one of the things that he, he was using, uh, Greg got mad about was that, that he was going to use Jose’s, this hit on, uh, Nikki, but also kind of move against the Albanians who I guess were.

[38:04] Sitting at John’s table at some restaurant or something like that. He was going to try to talk John into if we could get, uh, Jose to, to whack Nikki, that, that we can, we can start moving on these Albanians after this. Greg was really pissed off because he thought John was just letting all these people walk all over them. And, um, and he told Greg that he wasn’t going to let his son meet with, uh, any of Jose’s friends. And that Curtis was telling me that like, you know, the feds will, you know, work with the scum of the earth in order to take these guys down. This guy has these four or five life sentences. He’s looking at, you know, life, no doubt about it, but he, he obviously has a lot of money hidden away on the outside.

[38:49] And, and now he’s wanting to make sure that Gotti and Gotti’s son are involved and he’s gonna send somebody to do a hit but i’m really not for greg palma but really at for gotti because gotti he’s bringing the gottis into it that’s the kind of currency that you can trade to walk from two or three live sentences if you can deliver up john gotti’s son especially at this point in time yeah you were right on that i i have no doubt in my mind that dude was trying to set him up to buy himself uh getting out of the penitentiary yeah Yeah, yeah, Jose, you know, was doing like two life, I think two life sentences. And, you know, and he had to get Greg, he was trying to get Greg to get Gotti to get his son involved to okay this hit. And then he actually said, Curtis, who I played chess with, there was a guy that was cleaning a cell next to Gotti’s cell. When Greg went up to Gotti to try to talk him into this, and he was trying to use this hit on Nicky as a stepping stone to take care of some of these Albanians that I guess were moving in on John’s territory. I didn’t really know that much about, you know, the Albanians and all that kind of stuff, and Greg never really talked to me about that, but his friend that was cleaning out the cell said he was trying to get John, to get John Jr. to make.

[40:18] This hitman that was a friend of Jose to take out Nikki and that this would be, and he was trying to talk him into, this would be a stepping stone to take out the Albanians too. Yeah. It’s a pretty bold move to, to join with some Hispanic hit men, Hispanic drug dealers in order to take out. I think, I think the Albanians are like an Eastern block. Yeah. Oh yeah.

[40:43] Group. Yeah. Group. I mean, I think they’re kind of Russian. Yeah. And they’re strong. They’re strong in New York City. I’ve read about them that they really have made a lot of inroads into what normally had been the Italian mafia’s territory. So he was right on that. But it’s just such a, you know, I think it’s very dangerous to try.

[41:01] I think you can move in with some Hispanic drug dealers to do something like this. I think it was ill-advised at the best. I think Gotti was right, correct, and not getting his son involved in that. Well, I told them, oh, here’s another thing too, that I, you know, and this is one of, like I said, I, all this, my stuff, all my stuff is kind of in chronological order, but Curtis, and this is like a very important part of this. And this is why Gotti shut him down, because when I was talking to Gotti, Curtis had told me that Jose Race in the physical therapy room, and it was a physical therapy, because you had a lot of sick inmates there, and they do physical therapy. And Curtis told me that one of his homies was in there cleaning out the back. Uh, the back, uh, closet and he had headphones on and he didn’t hear the guards come in there and tell everybody to get out. He said, when he did come out, he said, Jose race was sitting there with two guys in suits. I told John, I didn’t really know what it meant, but he said, Hey, look, don’t leave me, leave me hanging.

[42:10] You know, don’t let me stand here with my deck, hanging out. You tell me everything you fucking got right now. Tell me that I’m trying to save my son. This is very important. He said, don’t let me, don’t let me down on this. And he said, I swear to God, when you get out, I’m going to let Greg give you a number. And I, I, I take, I take care of the people who’ve helped me out. And he was very adamant about trying to save his son. So I went ahead and told him that, uh, I wrote him a kite. Jose Rex had been seen talking with two guys in suits. The guards had run everybody out of the, uh, physical therapy. And one of his Curtis’s homies were, uh, uh, back there and had his headphones on and didn’t hear it. He’s listening to his music. And when he came back out there and they looked shocked, he said that, uh, Jose race kind of looked up and, and oh my God. And the, and the guy, the guys in suits called the guards and moved him out. And then when I told John Gotti that, um, he knew that they were trying to set his son up. Yeah. Yeah. But Greg wouldn’t hear anything about it. Yeah. Greg, Greg, Greg wouldn’t, uh, you know, I, I try to tell Greg, you know, this, He didn’t want to listen to it. He wanted Nicky dead. I mean, he was so adamant about killing this guy that he was beyond reason. So in the end, Greg ends up kind of mad at you. Yeah. Like I said, when I sent John that last kite, I can actually tell you what I wrote to him. I wrote a kite to John, and I detailed everything that I observed.

[43:36] Jose was mad for John pulling the plug on John Jr., the mysterious men that were seen with Jose in physical therapy. And anyway, Jose’s hostility was just kept on amping up on me every day. He was trying to like run me out of the. Out of the scene with Greg and Sam. But Gotti, when I gave him that kite to tell him that Jose had been seen with these guys in suits and physical therapy, before I left his room, he said, Mark, I know you’re leaving in a couple of days, but I feel I’m running out of time.

[44:13] And I cut him off and I pointed to the trash can. I said, there’s a kite in there. You need to read it. And once he read that, um, he, uh, he gestured, uh, when, before he read it, before I left, he looked up on the mirror and there was a picture of John Jr. Up on that mirror with all his family around the mirror I was talking about. And he said, that boy’s my heart. He said, he’s one of the only kids who ever really understood what this life was about and what it meant to me. And I’m starting to think these cocksuckers might be used that love to stab me in the back. And I looked at the waste paper basket one more time and I said hey there’s the kite in there you need to read that and then I went and then I then I picked up his tray cleaned up his room a little bit picked up his trash and all that Greg shot him down uh Gotti shot him down when Greg talked to him like I was telling you about a while ago and Greg even said uh he said uh you know all this personal feelings aside I just want you to fucking know Nicky’s not the only one spitting in my face he’s spitting in everybody’s face he’s making us look weak and he explained all this but But I, you know, I, I would always ask him, so who’s in charge? You or John? Where’s our, where’s our loyal loyalty like? And I told him about, uh, Curtis telling me that his friend saw Nikki with these two or not, or Jose race with these two guys seat and suits. And he, and Greg just cut me off and he goes, he goes, what the fuck are you talking about? May and Mike. I go, this might, this might be a setup. He goes, he goes.

[45:41] He goes, if I flinched every time those words were mentioned, I’d never get anything done. And he said, and that can’t be true about Jose. He wouldn’t even listen to any reason. He wanted Nicky dead. He said, I don’t want to hear another word about it. You understand me? And I could sense like I was being cut off and he wasn’t going to listen to anything about it. And I apologized. And I said, and Greg just went, forget about it. You know, he said, I know you talked to John, but I know, you know, that you guys, you know, have something going on. He said, but just, you know, he said, but after he talked to John, after he was at the window and John shot him down and he told him that he wasn’t going to let his son meet Jose race’s, uh, hit man. And I was sitting out there watching him talk to John, and I was sitting out on a little picnic bench, and I saw Greg talking to John. And you could tell he was like a man with a hat in his hand trying to get this hat done on Nicky. When he rolled back up to me, I said, well, how’d it go? And he goes, well, you fucked me again.

[46:46] And I apologized to him, and I said, you know, I’m sorry. And he, Greg held up his hand. He says, it’s okay. John’s the boss. And you’re right. You did what he asked him. We’re proud of you. Yeah. And, uh, and then he said before, and to show you that there’s no hard feelings, I’m going to give you a phone number. John wants me to give you a phone number, uh, when you get out and, uh, I want you to call this phone number. And, and I, I told him that I did artwork and stuff like that. And he said that he knew some big galleries in New York city and he was going to set me up and all this. But, uh, uh, but everybody told me not to take that phone number. Yeah. And even Greg, when, when he, Greg tried to give me the phone number, I go, I think I just want to go home and I want to be done with all this. And he goes, what are you a fucking snitch? I go, come on, Greg. And he goes, Oh, I’m sorry, dude. He said, I, I overreacted. He said, I said, I know you’re doing what you think is right. But he said, he said, but that Nikki fuck still got to go.

[47:50] So well in the end i see in your notes here that at the end the prosecutor’s star witness on a, case against sammy and and greg de palma about killing nikki la sorso was jose ray is who ends up getting out for his yeah helping this so yeah he got he i didn’t even know that he got before yeah and actually before we had this interview i kind of looked up uh jose race just to kind of get an idea where, everything was and I’m not even really sure if this is him but I think he got busted again for cocaine oh another thing too.

[48:27] Gigante I think the guy’s name was Gigante but Sammy told me that That, uh, they had told Jose race that, uh, Gigante was going to set him up with some stuff when he got out, like a house and some money and all this stuff. And to come to find out Gigante had been dead for years. And so they were going to fuck Jose race too, because Sam wasn’t really sure who he goes, you know, until I can figure out what the fuck is going on here. He goes, uh, he goes, you just need to go the fuck home. Uh, and he goes in and we’re playing games with Jose race too. And so I guess, you know, when I actually, I read about it, about the court case a little bit after they had gotten out. And, um, I guess the jury found story that I’m telling you so unbelievable that they didn’t correct. They didn’t convict Greg or Sam, Sam and Sam, uh, ended up getting out, I guess, spending in his last days with his family. Greg, of course, got caught up with Jack Falcone, busted Greg, and that was where Greg spent the last of his days in prison and died in prison.

[49:42] Interesting. All right, guys. Black Truth, The Last Days of Gotti with Mark Black. This has been Mark Black with us. Mark, this has been a fun interview, great stories. I mean, you’ve got some great stories out the penitentiary there i mean it’s just unbelievable you know i’ll just tell you, what Greg told me when I, when I left, uh, when I, when I left Greg, you know, he’s, he told me that he was sorry that he’d got such hot headed on me. And then of course, you know, he’s going to follow John to the end. He said, once they whacked big Polly, uh, he threw all his chips in with John and he never looked back. And he said, and John’s the boss and whatever he says goes. And he said,

[50:24] and he said, we’re proud of you. And he said, and to show that, you know, there’s no hard feelings. John wanted me to give you a number. And I said, I don’t want to take it. Cause what are you a fucking snitch? And I is Jose rates because Jose race was always trying to make me out as a snitch. And I, and I, and I said, no, I just want to go home and be through with this.

[50:43] And then his parting words was stay out of places like these, but he didn’t take his own advice. All right, Mark, I really appreciate you coming on the show guys. Be sure and get this book it’s it’s a really interesting insiders look at what that life is like for mobsters in the penitentiary i mean and you can see their their little shenanigans and their games continue on whether they’re in or out you know it doesn’t make any difference and make it didn’t make any difference and and it’s talk about you know deception betrayal you know demanding trust of people but yet you know it’s okay if you betray somebody here as long as it’s for me and it’s just uh it’s just a crazy crazy life isn’t it mark yeah one of the things that curtis told me he said the guy that he and curtis knew god he or uh greg de palma uh outside and i’ll just go ahead and tell you a little story about that before we go uh uh i asked greg about curtis and he said yeah he said uh, He said, I bought a $10,000 mink coat off one of his friends, one of his crackhead buddies for 50 bucks. He goes, where the hell can you get a deal like that in New York City? He said, I gave it to my wife. Boy, was she happy.

[52:00] But yeah, it was all about the life. But I really like Greg. I mean, Greg was like a really good guy. And I really respected him. When you’re in prison, there’s a lot of guys who will rat you out in a second to get their freedom. That was Jose Race that was doing that. These guys, Sammy and Fat Tony, or Tony Carolla, and Gotti, and Greg DePalma, they never snitched out on any of their friends. Not intentionally. I mean, Greg had a big mouth, and that’s kind of what got him in trouble. And then he had a big ego. And like I said, he said, I want that motherfucker dead. Do you hear me? I want him dead.

[52:48] And that kind of like pushed him over the edge in order to let his guard down. But I’ll tell you that Greg had a big mouth. I mean, he just did. And he’d tell me stories about him hanging out with Sinatra and Dean Martin. And he had quite a life. He had quite the colorful life out there. And he was a good guy. And I respected me and I looked at him as a friend. Well, guys, that was a great show, wasn’t it? Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street, even though it’s starting to get winter, I’m not riding it so much now. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you have been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website and get the hotline number. If you have a problem with drugs and alcohol or gambling, any kind of addiction.

[53:33] You know, our friend, Anthony Ruggiano, who was a Gambino prospect, if you will, a proposed member, supposedly, has gone out of that life, and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida now, and he has a hotline on his website. I think it’s reformedmonsters.com or something like that. But anyhow, find my book. You know, I wrote that book about the Windy City Mafia stories from the Chicago outfit, and I’m working on one about New York City mob guys. It’s a bunch of chapters of short stories taken from my podcast. They’re easy to read and a quick overview of the entire Chicago outfit and a quick overview of the entire five families and the structure. And then with a whole bunch of stories behind it that are, you lay it down, you can read one chapter, lay it down, read another one, one chapter, maybe only two or three pages long, but you can really get well-versed in the mafia and those two cities. I have a movie or two out there, Gangland Wire and Brothers Against Brothers. It’s on Amazon. Just go to Amazon and research or search for Gary Jenkins Mafia, and you’ll find everything I’ve got in my books and movies and everything. So thanks a lot, guys. And Mark Black, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Oh, I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.

In this episode, retired intelligence unit detective Gary Jenkins examines the life of Bobby Boriello, a key figure in the Gambino crime family and closely associated with John Gotti. I explore Boriello’s beginnings in South Brooklyn and his ascent as an enforcer for the Gallo gang, detailing his numerous criminal activities and connections that allowed him to evade serious consequences.

This show covers his involvement in significant events, such as the assassination of Paul Castellano and the tensions with the Genovese family. I reflect on the violent and tumultuous nature of his life, culminating in his murder in 1991, which highlights the inherent dangers of organized crime. As Borrello’s story unfolds, I delve into the themes of loyalty, betrayal, and power dynamics within the Mafia, offering personal insights and humor.

This will be the last episode until February. The next episode will host Mark Black, who tells about his life in the Federal prison hospital in Springfield and his care of John Gotti as he battled cancer and other mobster’s plots.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

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[0:00] A little story about Bobby Boriello, who was a Gambino soldier and a big moneymaker

[0:05] for the Gotti family and the Gambino family. You want to call it the Gotti family or the Gambino family? It never did become the Gotti family, did it? Much to John Gotti’s chagrin, I’m sure. Anyhow, this is going to be the last one for the month of January. I’m going to take some time off. I’m going to take a little vacation. And I’ve been working pretty hard at doing my books. And I’ve done a couple of books, a New York book and the Chicago book. And I’m getting set for the next year, doing some other things this next year. So I’ll get back to putting one out at least every week at the last of January. I know the one I’ve already got it set that we’re going to come back into like, I think the last Monday or Sunday in January is going to be a guy named Mark Black, who was in the penitentiary in Springfield, the hospital, federal hospital down there. With John Gotti and some other guys. And he got all embroiled in some.

[1:02] Some mafia drama, carrying messages from one person to the other. And, and so anyhow, it’s a really interesting story. It’ll be a great one to come back to. So I hope you guys all had a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I’m not very good at wishing people all that kind of stuff before I forget about it. I just put out podcasts. That’s all I do. You know, me, I’m just a plain guys. Guys, come on back in February. Hey, all you wiretappers out there. Glad to be back here in the studio. Glad to have you in the studio with me. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective and now podcasters. Most of y’all know. If you don’t, why keep listening. You’ll learn who I am

[1:43] and what I’m about. I have a lot of fun doing this. Going back to New York today, guys, going to Bobby Borrello.

[1:50] Bobby Boriello was a gaudy guy, if you remember right. He probably is one of the trigger men on the Castellano hit. Now, going way on back, he grew up in South Brooklyn, and he grew up in a neighborhood that was dominated by several mob families, Gambino, Genovese, and the Columbo crime families. He was surrounded by mobsters from, you know, from the time he was a little kid. His younger brother, Stevie, was close to Crazy Joe Gallo and Albert Gallo and Frank Ileano. Um steve played a role in getting gallows crew uh really ensconced in south brooklyn and and their rackets down there and he brought bobby in and he was really he was a big kid and he got a reputation pretty quick as an enforcer within the gallow gang but he moved on beyond that Now, between 1967, 1972.

[2:49] His rap sheet grew considerably. He was arrested six times from weapons possession to assault, larceny, gambling, the usual stuff, you know. No matter what, he didn’t go to jail, and his criminal career advanced. Didn’t go to jail. Bobby Boriello didn’t go to jail because he became important to different mafia guys, and they got those political connections. By the 1980s, he will become a made man in the Gambino family.

[3:18] And what’s interesting is Mikey Scars DiLeonardo will talk about being inducted by Sammy the Bull Gravano with Junior Gotti, and because John Gotti did not want it to look bad, did not want him, he to make his own son, he didn’t think it looked good, Bobby Borrello will be inducted in that same ceremony with Mikey Scars and Junior Gotti. He really will have strong ties with all these guys, John Gotti, Sammy the Bull, Nicholas and Jojo Carrozzo. Borrello will be seen with Gotti quite a little bit. They were like friends. They’ll spend weekends on Long Island gambling and partying and going to performances and just, you know, general social things as well as the business. Bobby Borrello conducted most of his business as he got, you know, after he became a made guy at the one over a golf club. It was in Carroll Gardens in New York. It was a social club. It was operated by a paraplegic gangster named Joe Pitts. It’s Joe Pitts Corneliaro. This dude was involved in loan sharking and gambling. He’ll eventually be killed. These guys, there’s constant danger surrounding them. Constantly, they’re in danger. During his early years in the Gambino family, and even before, he was suspected of being involved in more than one murder. That gives him a hell of a reputation out there.

[4:44] Uh, other criminal activities are extorted, the usual extortion, loan sharking and drug trafficking. And, you know, he really had a good solid status within the Gambino family. He could take care of business. He could make money. He could do what needed to be done. And, you know, the Gambino’s under Gotti, they didn’t mind dealing.

[5:02] They didn’t mind taking that drug money. You know, he was also part of junior Gotti’s crew when John Gotti promoted his son to Capo and Sammy, the bull wanted that done for some reason this crew had some guys jackie cavallo charlie cornelia tommy twits cassia polly and dominic fat dom borghese he was involved you know all over new york city and particularly south brooklyn worked with anthony toto anastasio and some other guys like that you know he was involved with the eventually become involved with the trucking construction loan sharking because that’s what gambinos do they were in trucking construction and loan sharking as well as gambling and hijacking and all the usual things late 1980s he got into the world of strip clubs like i noticed in kansas city they did the same thing later on they started getting into strip clubs there’s a guy named steve kaplan who was paying tribute to him and junior gotti for different strip clubs all up down the east coast so he really and And, and, and Michael.

[6:09] Mikey scars was involved in that one down in, uh, extorting money from that one down in, uh, uh, Atlanta, Georgia.

[6:16] So these guys, you know, really reached out with their strip clubs as he rose up in the ranks, his most powerful ally was junior Gotti.

[6:24] And, and he was actually junior Gotti named him a boss over some other guys and his crew and December, 1990, after John Gotti senior was indicted, he created a five man ruling panel over the Gambino family and Junior is part of that. Bobby Borelli, you know, is operating alongside of him and operating his rackets out of his Brooklyn Social Club. John Gotti.

[6:48] Ordered Borelli to eliminate a guy named Louis De Bono, who was a Gambino soldier who had gotten a really lucrative contract to install fireproofing foam in the Twin Towers. After De Bono’s death, Borelli takes care of Louis De Bono. Sammy Gravano, Sammy the Bull, takes over that business and kind of a lot of tensions in the family over that. Borelli tried to kill a Genovese crime family associate named Preston Geritano in Brooklyn on the street. The hit failed. It led to like a kind of a negotiation between the Genovese and Canvino crime families, which they do that. And in the end, Gertano was allowed to live, but he can’t try to get revenge against Borrello, Bobby Borrello. Bobby Borrello’s luck will run out April 13th, 1991.

[7:43] Killed him right in front of his house in Bensonhurst. Now, go figure that one. And that’s not really, but guess who did it? It wasn’t a Gambino that had this done. It was a Lucchese, a big Frank Lasterino, chimed twice in the head and five times in the body.

[7:59] Anthony Casso, Gas 5 Casso, ordered this. He had gotten the information from his NYPD officers, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracoppa, about where to find him. They had done a little surveillance on him, knew where he lived. Just getting into his 1991 Lincoln town car, wife Susan, their two children were inside the house, unaware that their husband and father had been killed just outside. You know, when he was killed, he was under investigation by multiple federal agencies and the Kings County District Attorney’s Office for this cocaine trafficking conspiracy and for his suspected role in the murder of Paul Castellano. A guy named Dominic LaFaro had identified Bobby Borrello as one of the shooters, And he also claimed that Bobby Brello was, uh, one of the Gambino’s family’s most, most, most accomplished hit men. So this guy was a bad dude. It was a career, lifelong career mobster came up under Joey Gallo, uh, which, you know, that makes sense and, and live the life. He lived life. I wonder if he’d be running a podcast today, if he’d gone in and then came back out, I didn’t seem like guys trying to podcast, but you ever thought Sammy, the boat would run a podcast.

[9:15] After Bobby Borrello dies, his brother, Steve Borrello, has been a gangster all along with the Gambino family, and he’s managing loan sharking and gambling extortion rackets in Brooklyn and Staten Island. And he’s still, to this day, he’s out there doing the deal. So Bobby Borrello, he had a life in the mafia that was, you know, really typical of a guy that came up in the family,

[9:43] stayed in the family, whatever family he was around and died in the family. You know you live by the sword you die by the sword this is a place a life where loyalty is important power is important and betrayal intertwines in around all this loyalty and power so you just never know what’s coming next and and very few escape either they spend the rest of their life in the penitentiary they go into witness protection or they get killed hardly anybody goes on the shelf as they say so that’s the story of bobby borrello a gambino soldier who uh who was a moneymaker and an important guy that john got his rise to become the boss of the gambino family.

[10:31] Thanks a lot guys and you know i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there and if you have a problem with ptsd be sure and go to the va website if you’ve been in the military and get that hotline number and if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol you can get a hotline number off of anthony uh rugiano’s website another gambino guy.

[10:52] Uh he’s in not witness protection but he’s he’s out of the game now and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in florida you maybe go down there to florida and be in his treatment center however however that works let me know if that ever happens uh don’t forget that i i’ve got a book leaving vegas about the wiretaps that we ran in las vegas and in kansas city to uncover the skim uh i have a couple movies about kansas city mob activities gangland wire and and brothers against brothers the sabello spiro war you can rent them on amazon and keep coming back and don’t forget to like and subscribe and tell your friends about us and get on my youtube channel or my facebook page i got a lot of people on it we have a lot of interesting discussions right now i’m building a on youtube in the community tab i’m learning all kinds of stuff here in the community tab we’re we’re now building our second fantasy family we built one between new york and chicago who would be the boss the underboss of consigliere it’s just a fun thing that we do and now i’m doing the uh midwood three midwest families cleveland kansas city and milwaukee who should be out of those three who would be the best boss who would be the best consigliere who would be the best uh underboss who would be a good capo come on back guys and and we’ll have some more fun with the Mafia.