In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired intelligence detective Gary Jenkins welcomes a special guest—Don Tabak, a former LAPD homicide detective whose life story bridges the world of real crime and creative storytelling.

With decades on the force, Det. Don Tabak shares the emotional and technical complexities of working on some of Los Angeles’s most brutal homicide cases. He recounts haunting moments from the field, including a harrowing investigation involving a kidnapped woman who miraculously survived an attempted murder. Don walks us through the steps that led to justice—and the toll that work takes on those who pursue it.

After retiring from law enforcement, Don founded a private investigation firm that defends police officers and municipalities. However, his career took a surprising turn when a Hollywood producer approached him about adapting his real-life cases. That partnership gave rise to The Wiggle Room—an interactive crime-solving experience where audiences step into the role of investigator, uncover clues, and solve cases rooted in reality. It’s part thriller, part education, and all authentic.

The conversation also touches on Don’s take on the O.J. Simpson case, offering an insider’s look at how public pressure and procedural missteps shaped one of the most infamous trials in American history. He explains the razor-thin margin between justice and error, and why evidence integrity remains a detective’s most crucial tool.

Finally, Don Tebak unpacks the psychology behind effective interrogation, revealing how detectives walk the fine line between coaxing out the truth and understanding the emotional terrain of a suspect’s mind.

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Transcript

[0:40] Tell us what you’re doing when you’re retirement. Well, I opened up a private investigations business, Gary, when I left. And I primarily do police officer and municipality defense for critical incidents. So a lot of the things that happen across the country. After the fact, the lawsuit is filed, I’ll be brought in to re-interview witnesses, talk to the officers, and try to mitigate what’s going on with the lawsuit. And if the officer is in trouble with that as well, we’ll represent the officer to try to make sure that we hopefully can clear him of any wrongdoing. You also, now how’d you get involved with this media business, the TV business? I got contacted throughout my career because of LA and some of the cases that we’ve handled in the past. It’s media-friendly between law enforcement. So when I left about five years ago, A producer who had known a friend of mine had given this guy my name about, yeah, Don’s had some unusual cases and worked this and that and whatever. And he called and we put together a couple of things that he wanted to try to bring to Discovery or Netflix in regards to some of my murders that I handled.

[1:49] And however, they didn’t work out or what have you. So about a year ago, he came up with a concept called The Wiggle Room. And this is a very small audience like an old nightclub room in a hollywood or in a hotel here in hollywood and it’s basically like my part of this is to bring in me talk about a couple of my cases um it’s interactive there’s a live audience there and then at the end of the second half of this we’ll talk about one of my crime scenes and let the people have a shot at it and trying to figure out what happened and who did it and did they have enough probable cause of good this and that and really get them an idea on how frustrating it is sometimes working some of these murders.

[2:30] Interesting. So tell us about your police experience in this. Were you assigned to the LAPD homicide division or robbery homicide? How does that break down? Yes, sir. I started out as a young detective. I’ve worked a number of detective divisions. LAPD has 18 geographic divisions in the city of Los Angeles, and each one has a homicide unit. Although now it’s centralized. But I eventually worked my way up to starting my own homicide unit. It was an arson bombing homicide unit. We worked in the same area as robbery homicide. Worked a buttload of cases over the 12 years that I worked murders before I retired. And handled all kinds of different things. Got involved with some phenomenal cases. I thank God wasn’t here when OJ was being tried. It was my unit that did that. And just in the give and take of the murders in Los Angeles back in the day, there’s a lot of interesting cases that we talk about in this crime scene live. I bet. So was that out of a division station, the Hollenbeck station? No, sir. It was out of our detective headquarters division, DHD. They call it the same area that our RV homicide division is in. Okay. So that’s down at Parker Center? The specialized unit, yeah, it was. Yeah, downtown, the central. Okay. So you were the big boys compared to them. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s how we look at it, don’t we?

[3:54] That’s how we look at it. You know, that’s how it is. So I wasn’t too varsity. I was kind of like between JV and varsity. Okay, all right. We all want to make the varsity on the PD. A lot of people don’t understand that out there, the breakdown between different units, but we all want to make that first team. I’m a working B, Gary. Then some of those guys kind of like kick back on their laurels. The Hollywood detective. That’s where I started.

[4:20] Tell us about one of your early cases that you remember that was particularly interesting. One of the most grave cases I ever handled, Gary, was a young female that ended up living, but her backstory is pretty amazing.

[4:38] She was the executive assistant to Wang Corporation. And Wayne was one of the first commercial-produced computers, word processing computers. And she had dropped her boss off at LAX and was taking his Porsche 925 prototype car back to where their offices were. And while stopped at a light on Sepulveda and 71st, right down the street from the airport, she was rear-ended on a very soft collision from behind. And she got out of the car. She walked back. He exchanged information. And one of the suspects took a gun in her belly. He said, get in the car. They put her back in the car. And for the next two days, they brutally raped, beaten, sold her for rock cocaine. And two days after the fact, they took her to an alley in South Central Los Angeles, dragged her out of the car.

[5:33] One suspect punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. And my other suspect put two bullets in the back of her head with a 38 caliber, um, revolver. Wow. She waited. For a second until she heard the car leave, this woman got up and walked a block and a half to an a.m. p.m. Mini-mart and asked the clerk to call the police. And then she collapsed. She was saved by surgery. For the next literally 20 hours, we worked this case day and night. We ultimately found both suspects.

[6:09] And to hear this woman testify on a stand about what it was like having these two bullets shot in the back of her head is the most chilling, sad thing that I think I’ve had. To this day, I talked to her like it happened yesterday. She was an amazing woman. And the ironic part about this, Gary, is she wasn’t married at the time. And after everything had happened, and I only stayed in contact with, I probably handled 50 of my own murders and not 100 total. And you lose back in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. Man, this place, there was 1,200 murders in the city of Los Angeles by themselves. So you didn’t get to stay in contact with a lot of people. But I did with her for a couple of years. Then eventually I lost contact. Both the suspects were found guilty. Sentenced of 480 some odd years each in prison. Four years ago, Thanksgiving Eve, I got a call. And I’m sure you can attest to this or feel for this. It was a male, a young male. And he said, are you Don Tabak? And I said, yeah. And he goes, were you the detective that handled my mother, Carol Lepac’s shooting? And my hair, like right now, the hair on my head is standing up. I went, I did. Who are you? And he goes, my name’s Ryan Narai, and I am Carol’s son.

[7:25] And like, whoa, wait, what? So this was 33 years after this case had happened. She had passed away about a year before this, so three, four years ago. And Ryan wanted to find out exactly what had happened to his mother. She only articulated parts of what she called the event. And he wanted to find out. She became a conservationist up in Montana and divorced the husband. and it was just her and her son for a number of years. So Ryan came out to Los Angeles, a wonderful kid, looked almost exactly like his mom as I remember her. I took him to every spot that we found where she had been taken and then ultimately to the alley where she was shot. And it just, everybody that I’ve talked to, no one has had an experience like that where all these years later, this case came back tenfold to me because of her son. In September of 2024, he wrote an article that Esquire magazine published, and it said, the bullet in the back of my mother’s head. And it talks about my role into it, his role with his mother.

[8:36] Just an amazing case on how everything came together that we found so much to be able to convict these two animals of one which Gary just got out of prison last October. Wow. Floored me that they allowed him to get out. So I talk about that case because I was very, very close to it because of just the depravity and the torture that this woman went through. And then when they tell her, all right, we’re going to kick you out, we’re going to release you.

[9:06] And to humiliate her by punching her in the face and then killing, just shoot her, right? Don’t sit there and defame her and all. So it’s a case that’s close to me. And like I said, came back all these years later through her son. So it’s a pretty amazing story. It is. Now, a case like that. Now, she didn’t know who these guys were. No. Did you have witnesses quickly, get a license plate? How does that, does that somebody drop a dime? Did they start bragging their friends? These are some of the ways that this happens. How did that case start coming, unfolding? Well, we had to find where the whole incident took place by LAX. And we were able to talk to her. The responding officers were able to talk to her and she was able to get out before she passed out that she was hit from behind near LAX and that they had stolen her car, but they had hit her in a small Toyota Corolla, I think it was. They found the car. You know, the broadcast started going out. They found the vehicle.

[10:08] We interviewed her after surgery some hours after this and she was able to articulate that she thought she was in South Central Los Angeles and she thought, One of her suspects or one of the kidnappers was a gang member because he was talking about a role in 60s or a role in 20s. And that’s a very big Compton gang out of LAPD crash units, which was our gang units at the time, saturated. And I mean, they hit it hard trying to find, you know, somebody that knew something about this. And you know from yourself, sir, that you’re out there and you’re pounding ground. There’s a lot of pressure on these dope fiends and a lot of pressure on these gangs. They want to give up something so you can get the cops out of your way and move over to someone else. So we found where she was taken by good old-fashioned uniformed police work, by stopping suspects and basically letting them know that this isn’t going to be taken lightly. Wang himself was just absolutely pissed off about this happening to his secretary after he moved his headquarters to L.A., calling Darrell Gates, our chief at the time, demanding, you know, the entire department mobile. We almost did. We found a dope house at 85th Street and Wadsworth Avenue in South Central Los Angeles. And an individual by the name of Slim gave us information on the slide that said, yeah, I might have seen those two guys with a white chick here about eight o’clock last night or two nights ago. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[11:37] So that’s the first piece of it. And we got their nicknames, their street names. Yeah. We get called in, I guess it was 8, 12, 15 hours after the initial kidnapping. It’s just a matter of putting this, trying to get the timeline right, first of all. But it was all by a matter of LAPD patrol, LAPD crash, other homicide officers that were working Venice Division at the time where I was.

[12:03] I’m just getting out there for two and a half days, well, actually about a day and a half of actually hitting the street. We were able to, we were just behind finding each place that they went. You hit one place and they have stuff to say and you hit the other place and they have stuff to say. Yeah. So I’ll tell you something that was, this woman had a will to live, Gary, and that’s what it’s all about. She refuses to come. The torture that she went through, she was bound and destined to survive this. After everything was done in LA and hours before she was shot, she was taken to a hotel in Anaheim, California, near Disneyland. And she was shoved down in the hatch compartment of the car. Suspects are driving. She remembers looking up out of the window, and she saw the Matterhorn ride from Disneyland.

[12:54] And so she knew she was in Anaheim. And then she started counting to herself the number of minutes going by 60s. until the car stopped. And it was 13 minutes. When we talked to her and found about this, we went and we went to every hotel we could find within 13 minutes of the Matterhorn. And we found the hotel that she was taking. And she talked about a black and white tile on the floor of the bathroom. They allowed her to go to the bathroom. We found that room. We found the manager that at the time couldn’t identify the two male suspects. We took a photo lineup to him after we had captured him, couldn’t ID him. And in the trial, Gary, he ID’d these two guys sitting at the defense desk. Well, you know how that came across, right? The defense attorney. It must be them. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[13:44] The judge allowed it in. He allowed the IV in. Oh, yeah. I don’t know if it was stacked or it was just a good ID. But everything came together. Fingerprints, we got off their car. Okay. Fingerprints off of the car that they stole. Great eyewitness, well, not eyewitness, but great testimony for witnesses that were in the houses that they went to, the crack houses. We found an individual that they sold to him, her, for sex, for rock cocaine. He felt bad for her and was trying to get her out of there, but they interrupted him. So he wasn’t going to say anything because he was another gangster.

[14:24] But because of the gravity of this thing and knowing that he was going to go to prison with everybody we talked to, someone’s going to prison for the rest of their life on this thing. So eventually he identified our second guy. On the end of the second day, we’re driving down a street in L.A. My partner was somebody else. I was with my boss who was not the sharpest guy in the world. And I think I see my suspect number two sitting on a bus bench and he’s nodding like this. So get out of the car, walk around him. Prone him out, you know, at gunpoint. And as we were walking up to the bus stop, another individual walked away from it, passed me and says, that’s the man you’re looking for. Yeah. So it was, you know, again, as a cop, when you’re hearing that and you go, okay, we now know this is the guy. Yeah. It was a phenomenal case just because we were able to put so much together and help her as much as we did. Ironically, with the two bullets in her head, one exited out of her neck that was at the scene. The other one lodged between both spheres of her brain. They weren’t able to operate on her, but the only residual effect that she had was she slurred words a little bit and she walked with a little bit of a limp. And that was it. So it wasn’t her time to go. And she ended up living a great number of years and she ended up dying of cancer, unfortunately.

[15:49] But there is no more courageous woman than that woman. She’s a hero of mine. That’s a hell of a story. So that bullet was lies in her brain until she died. Yeah. I’ll be darned. I’ve never heard of that before. Wow. Did everything that worked out. And I’ve handled so many different murders, but there’s always those two. Like you know, your case that you handled, there’s always those one or two that will always be indelibly asked in your mind because of just how it played out. It just starts falling. Once it starts falling. Oh, yeah, exactly.

[16:19] It starts falling and it starts falling and it starts falling. When it, when it works like that, you know, it’s working, it’s working. Many times you start down a path, it’ll sound real good. And then all of a sudden it’s dead and you realize, oh man, oh man, I got to step back. You spent a number of hours on that lead. This is the lead and it blows up in your face.

[16:41] Yeah. And this had that, that element to it, but it was just after we got through that initial phasing of it that’s when everything started falling down like you just said yeah i see how you got them convicted you did you get the gun too did you find the gun no never found the gun but you had the cars you had their fingerprints you probably had this was before dna yeah but you had fingerprints it sounds like we did and some of those witnesses yeah that hotel guy ended up being huge for us and as bad as he and i thought he just didn’t want to get involved and yet you know he came to excuse me he came to court and uh testified and when he pointed those two guys out and of course the defense attorneys went with them with the full line but you didn’t identify him at that time but you’re identifying him this time and he just said that’s them there you know i don’t remember the pictures as well as i do about them sitting there yeah so yeah pretty amazing case and in his defense there is a difference in looking at somebody live than I’ve been looking at one of those pictures. I’ve been showed photo lineups like, I don’t know, man. I know I saw that guy. That was probably the guy I saw about 30 minutes ago, but I don’t know.

[17:52] Yeah, and like I said, the Esquire magazine piece that he wrote about it really articulated it from his view, from what she had talked about it over the years that she lived and was productive, and then before she passed away. Wow, that is a heck of a story, boy. It was a good one. We love it when a plan comes together, I know that. Yeah, you know the feeling. When you bring a case like that together, when the jury comes back and they’re out like eight seconds, it took them long enough to go out of the courtroom, come right back in, and convict them on every one of the 480 counts on each of them. You feel good about the hours that you were away from your family. And it won’t replace at that time what happened to her, but at least justice was served for her. And that’s our job as law enforcement guys, right? So now what would be a case that you would use in the wriggle room? What would be a case example of that that you would throw at people? Well, we start out because everybody knew about O.J. Simpson. And, you know, that’s our first thing we talk about. And what’s ironic is we premiered last weekend.

[19:08] And I have always had distractors about Simpson’s case. There’s a lot of people out there that thought he was not guilty. so of the 45 50 people that were in this room after the video montage played i said how many in here raise your hands if you think oj sipson is guilty and every freaking one of them raised their hand so i didn’t have that adverse guy to go ahead yeah but we talk about the mistakes that lapd made on that and and you know you talk about dna um back in the day and this is only we’re talking about 1991. We only have a couple of places to be able to book blood.

[19:44] And that was in our downtown Parker Center area. And then the Van Nuys and the San Fernando Valley area. But when you’re running with a murder for 16, 18, 20 hours, and it’s time to go get some sleep, the last thing you’re doing is going and booking that blood. And I’ve taken blood home a million times. Bloody clothing, and I put it in my refrigerator and preserved it as best I could. And then in the morning, I would take it and book it in. Well, that gave the defense. And you have to understand, too. And I don’t think a lot of these people understand. And Simpson paid $14 million for those seven attorneys to do the most tackler job probably in the history of law. Yeah. They did that. Oh, absolutely. And they took Barry Sheck, who was a phenomenal expert defense lawyer on DNA, and made those people understand that if they couldn’t find the one guy, even though it’s 450,000 to one, they wanted that one person in there because that means there’s doubt. It isn’t 450,000 to zero. It’s one. And he did a spectacular job at that point with that jury. Maybe not would have happened if it was in Santa Monica, but that jury bought in and they were brilliant. And they defeated the living shit out of, I’m sorry. They defeated Badly, our LA County DA who had no idea what they were up against, none of them.

[21:08] Yeah, I just watched, there’s a documentary on that. I just happened to watch that recently. The new ones? Yeah. With his agent? Netflix and, yeah, with his agent on there. His agent says, I think he did it. The last scene, he goes, well, Simpson told me, had she not come to the door with a knife, she’d be alive today. Where was this like 15 years ago or 20, whatever it was, fool? So, yeah, everybody wants to make a dime up this poor guy since he’s dead. Yeah, yeah.

[21:43] Yeah, that case was snake bit from day one, though. Oh, man. I mean, we don’t even go in all the different ways it was snake bit. It was what we call snake bit. Yes, sir. Every way, every way. Yeah, if everything was going to go wrong, it did go wrong. It did. Yeah, it did. No doubt about it. Well, he got his in the end, I guess. He spent some time. Didn’t they do him in Vegas? Vegas. And you know what’s ironic, Kerry, is that was all his stuff. The guy just wanted him. I know. I know. That was all his stuff. Yeah. It wasn’t like it was stolen. It was his stuff they stole from the guy. I guess he carried a gun along with it. Thought he might have to threaten somebody with a gun. What an idiot. Yeah. He goes back and takes back his own stuff and he does like 15 years for Rob. Oh my God. I would go get nine of nine of them, but. He did nine. Okay. Yeah. I knew he did a lot. I think that was a payback though for, you know. Oh yeah. LA. Yeah. I think so. Really interesting. So here’s this one case I’ve mentioned to you before about, uh, uh, we’ve got a similar kind of case where the, uh, a missing girl, young child was, has never been found again. So this was a four-year-old Jesse Gutierrez. So tell us about that. How’d you get involved in that? I see it said back in South Carolina anyhow.

[23:07] Yeah, I was, uh, I’d been retired for a number of years and I have a partner of mine that moved to Lexington, South Carolina. And he just came across something. And I don’t know how he came across it, but he said, called me and said, hey, take a look at this murder that’s for or kidnapping, presumed murder of a four-year-old. And it’s on Google. And I Googled her name. And Gary, by the time I’m done reading this article, Matt, I’m smashing stuff against the wall. Like I was incensed that Lexington County Sheriff’s back in 1986 treated this mother like an absolute piece of crap because she married a Hispanic man and there’s some very strong feelings about race back in Lexington, South Carolina, which, you know, I wasn’t quite aware of. And they did absolutely the de minimis as far as investigating this case when they had jailhouse informants that this guy copped to. They had a cigarette butt that was laying below the window. They had a fingerprint on the windowsill itself.

[24:15] If this case happened in Los Angeles, it’s over in two days. It was that easy of a case. Leading up to and including when my victim’s mother.

[24:26] Um kept bugging these guys please help me help me you know get my little girl back um the sheriff of the time and i’ll tell you the guy’s name was a guy named metz sheriff metz told her that she didn’t leave her fucking people his people alone he would never do anything on this case and he apparently kept his promise because there was nothing that was done this like i said this case was an was a quickie if they would have just done the right thing. So the detective that was assigned to this case in 1986 was a young cop on the sheriff’s department who I ended up meeting. I ended up going back there, Gary. First, I asked my partner to go there and door knock Deborah, her mother, Jesse’s mother. And he called me and says, Don, she’s righteous, man. She absolutely got crapped on by the sheriff’s department. So I’ve never done this before I could you know it’s not LA I don’t get it wasn’t me wasn’t anybody I knew yeah but I got so pissed off Gary that they just shit on crap on her yeah for that you know and this is in 1960 this is like 1986 yeah so I went there just to probably go tell her you know is this really true and I’m so sorry that you didn’t get treated fairly like that’s what You’re a citizen here, man. That’s what you deserve is a righteous police investigation.

[25:54] So I went and talked with her, and she filled me in a lot of things. She has this tape of Mets telling her to lay off her guys and quit bugging them. I went and talked to a victim witness coordinator, a number of people associated with the sheriff’s department at the time, and they just said they did things their own way. They called them the Lexington Mob. So you talk about, you know, your end. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they, you know, but they said when? So this case laid dormant, Gary. There’s a landfill that’s about a mile and a half from her house.

[26:31] The primary suspect in this case, a guy named McDowell. I forget his first name right now. There’s a heel in the white truck. And there was a white truck scene going to this landfill that’s about a mile and a half from Deborah’s house, about 3 o’clock in the morning, which is the approximate time they think that this little girl was taken. And a sheriff’s unit is following it into the landfill. At 4 a.m. He gets a radio call and pulls off of the truck. Like I said, McDowell owned a white truck. It’s in close proximity where Deborah lives. And I would bet everything that I was ever trained under that little girl was in that guy’s truck and he was taking her to dump her yeah so I get home and uh when I met with the detective um.

[27:31] Dave Pritchard and he’s a lieutenant now getting ready to retire from there, very squared away guy good guy and when I asked I go how did you not do anything and he says Don Don, I needed the job, meaning he was told not to do shit about this unless he was told to. So I get home from Lexington, and about a week later, I get a call from Pritchard, and he says, Don, FBI is opening the case again. And they want the cigarette butt, and they’re going to look at everything. And Gary, I’m telling you, sir, I don’t know if I poked the bear, but I didn’t talk to any police administration officials. I talked to various people. But something happened. And I don’t think it was because of us, maybe the timing was, but inside of about a year after everything was done, he got his warrant for McDowell for the murder, a nobody murder and kidnapping of Jessica Gutierrez. They served a high profile warrant in Wake Forest, North Carolina, just over the South Carolina border. They took this lovely individual into custody. Wouldn’t talk to him last February.

[28:43] March 8th. Well, somewhere in there, they convicted him of the murder and kidnapping of Jessica Gutierrez. We couldn’t get the body back. And there’s an interesting dynamic here, and I’ll pick your brain for this. Richard calls me and says, what would you do to try to get the kid back? How would you talk to him? Go ask him what he wants. You know, he’s 69 years old. He’s in horrible health. He’s going to die in prison. Maybe he wants to get out in a couple of years if he cooperates and gets the kid. I said, the problem being is he’s going to tell you what’s in the landfill. The problem being that landfill has been turned over thousands and thousands of times since 1986. Yeah. So he makes the plopper. Hey, she’s there. They go and they try to find her and come back and say, well, she’s not there. He goes, well, that’s not my problem. You can’t. I get out now. So my advice to him was to say, you know what? Don’t make him a deal. F him. Don’t. Let him rot. Because you’re never going to. He could say that I dumped her in an alleyway at 54th or wherever. Well, now there’s a strip mall there. Right? So he could be lying on his ass and just to get his deal going. So the best part of that was leave him there, let him die there.

[29:52] She has some closure, although she still wanted her remains of her child back. It ended up being just a super case. And I touched on just a few of the highlights on there, but there was so much, so much that they missed. So much that they could have. Like I said, if this is here, Gary, or in Kansas City, I’m sure you all solved that crime within a couple of days. There was that much evidence and that much identification of this animal that did this to this little girl. The reason we believe he did it, he was dating Debra for a while. She’d broken off to go with one of his friends. He had been at the trailer a number of times. He knew how close to her and the kids that she was. And that’s probably his motivation for doing that, was to get back at her. Tough case, but it was neat to see that they at least were able to bring him to justice and give him his just rewards. How’d they tie him to it other than the white pickup in the area? His fingerprint, was that his? Of course, he had been in the trailer, so he could say, oh, I’ve been in that trailer. Yep, correct. Cigarette butts outside.

[31:01] Yep. The DNA on the cigarette butt was they weren’t able to get anything off because it had laid dormant for so long in a plastic bag. The fingerprint was his. She had cleaned that windowsill in the trailer a zillion times. And she had cleaned it that week. It was dry out. There was no reason that any kind of moisture would have gotten on the sill. It wasn’t chipping with the pain. It was pretty non-porous area. So over his print to be there that later in, in, after they broke up would be pretty impossible. Okay. But again, then they have three jailhouse informants to die. One’s left. And he, the jailhouse informant says he copped out to me that he did something very bad to a little girl in Lexington, you know, a few months before or a few weeks before. So, again, they had a great case to begin with, with that. They just let it go. It’s a little bit different back then. Really? Well, I’m going to tell you about this one locally that maybe you can come back here and solve this one. You and I, man, we’ll go out there and do it.

[32:09] Baby Lisa’s name of the case, her father’s name was Jeremy and mother’s name was Deborah. And about late in the afternoon, dad’s gone to work. Mom’s last known, you know, that somebody else saw her. She’s sitting down the front porch with the neighbor and they’re drinking some beer. And then she goes on in and goes to bed. She claims that she checked on the baby about 6.40 and then about 10.40 that evening. But when he comes in about four in the morning, baby Lisa is gone. There’s a couple of cell phones in the house that are gone. There’s a screen that was taken off of a window.

[32:47] And they’re like, I don’t know. You know, this is like a little baby. This is not a little kid who just got up and wandered off. This is a little baby. And then there was a neighbor that said they saw, you know, the bushy-haired stranger somewhere in the neighborhood that night. So then where do you go from there? Of course, first thing you do is you bring the parents in and then you start sweating them, which became a debacle because then they went to the press and complained that the cops were accusing them and weren’t really following up other leads. And so, you know, those are the things that happens to a homicide detective in those kinds of cases. Yep. There’s so many pratfalls. You almost think that it’s geared for defeat on our side of it. And that you have to try to overcome these obstacles. That’s going to be hard. You know, it’s like we had talked right before we came on about John Bonet is, you know, there’s so many people who have copped out to that, that if the righteous guy ever walked into the Colorado authorities, they could not convict him. They’ve trampled everything. This one, it sure looks like the people that were there are the people that probably are involved in this. Yeah. I mean, my personal theory is mom was drinking that night and somehow maybe, maybe fell asleep with the baby in the bed and she was a big woman and maybe laid over on her or something or baby, maybe, maybe the baby just died of, uh.

[34:15] Uh, SIDS, you know, sudden in that syndrome, you know, but then dad came home and he panicked. I don’t know. I think my theory is that’s what happened. And then dad panicked and hid the baby and set up and took these cell phones and got rid of them and then called the police. That’s my theory. But, you know, that’s.

[34:37] Plausible. It’s plausible. It’s just, but it’s a total, total theory. You know, there’s the other theory that we came up with that people knew that they had this newborn baby and there’s this syndrome that women get, certain women will get that will pretend like they’re pregnant. And then when it’s time to have the baby, they’ll like go to a hospital. That’s one reason that hospitals for the newborns are, they have these rigid security precautions because people, there’s people that will do this. This has happened. And they’ll get this baby and taken home and then tell all their friends and neighbors, yeah, I had my baby. Here’s my, he just got home in the hospital. Here’s my baby. So that was another theory. And, and then of course the, the bushy haired stranger, some kind of a, I don’t know, like the Madeline McCann case over in Portugal, where that little girl was taken out of her room and is, you know, missing, still missing. So somebody, you know, took that baby and raised it or sold it or what, you know, there’s always that, you know, they sold the baby that that’s big you know and that there was a mark you know you’d have to go back into what their their strata was the baby sales thing now is like you had talked about where they they pretend they’re pregnant and then they go find a baby and all but the sales of a baby you know.

[35:51] And to russian to you know going back the other way that’s big and you know if you looked at it you know were they in debt were they yeah i mean that that’s a great case yeah it works that’s viable and the problem being is the older it gets the harder it gets yeah to solve are they still actively looking at this you know probably not although they did have this guy um he came up with some these cell phones were missing and they claimed and let’s see it started in 20 uh.

[36:23] 2011 and 2012, they claim that a debit card that they had stolen that night, too, had been fraudulently used on a website that provided false birth certificates. This is almost a whole year later. The parents reported this. And there is such a website out there, you know, but I don’t know how much more they dug up. I couldn’t find out.

[36:46] It’s a KC case? Yeah, Kansas City. You know, at the time there, there’s, uh, didn’t have these attorneys get involved in these cases, high profile cases. This guy named Joe Taco, Taco Pina, Taco Pina. I think he got into the Trump thing for a while. He’s this New York lawyer. That’s this, you know, bigger than life and louder than anybody with a great New York accent. He came to town and they, and he started representing them for free. And then they were trying to collect DNA samples from the parents. And then he just stopped everything. He stopped everything, any investigation of the parents, except through him. And so that all died out. So it’s a- Did they polygraph the parents? Do you know? You know, I don’t think they ever got to- No, wait a minute. I looked at, I just glanced at my notes here. They did. They polygraphed the mom and she failed the first one. And then she had a second one that was inconclusive. So you know how the polygraph goes. Yeah. And then again, it’s just a, it’s a tool. Yeah. I don’t put a lot of faith in them, but it gives you a direction to go. Yeah. It just depends on how well the polygraph person could convince that. Yeah. They did bring a cadaver dog into the house and around the house, and the dog hit on a scent of a dead body that it was inside the house at one time. Now, of course, again, that and a buck and a half will get you a cup of coffee maybe. Yeah.

[38:13] It used to be 10 cents. And it’s way past a buck and a quarter now. Yeah, that would be a neat case to look at. They did hire. There was a non-benefactor that hired a private investigator and had a $100,000 reward for the baby back, I don’t know, during that time. And they never came up with anything. I don’t know. It’s just a heck of a case. Yeah, and you have to think that there righteously was a baby. Yeah. They’re with a baby. They lived there. Yeah. Causes demise, whether through SIDS or natural means or, you know, at the hands of them. It just seems there are a lot of things to do immediately. Yeah. You know, may or may not have been done. Yeah. That’s what I’d be interested to see is how did the crime scene go? What did they do? Well, I mean, I think they eventually got around to processing. Of course, it was a missing person’s case for a while, but I think pretty quickly they got around to processing the crime scene. Yeah. which is why they were wanting DNA and those kinds of things from other people. But none of that seemed to pan out to show anything. Child cases. So, you know, I never had a child case victim in my 12, 13 years of working murders. You know, a couple of child abuse things in patrol. But it’s funny, when I’ve done this PI thing now, I’ve had two, both victims of murders.

[39:40] That, you know, I have two sons and who were little at the time that I was on this job. And if a hair there would have been harmed, I would have been out with somebody, right? Much less how they could kill, or maim or hurt their child i know it doesn’t equate to like you know you got to be from another planet and then again it’s our it’s our job as detectives out there to speak for that victim and you don’t stop until like you have nothing left to say yeah in there and i feel bad for the for the child because it just doesn’t seem the same with gutierrez they just never got the investigation that they deserve to the u.s citizen and whatever the biases are you got to put them aside. I mean, every one of my victims wasn’t the neatest person in the world. No. It was yesterday’s suspect was today or tomorrow’s victim. So tell me about another case you worked at. Oh, man, I’ll tell you something, too. To show you the time.

[40:43] We get called in and a mother and son, son was buying rock cocaine in the San Fernando Valley. And there was a problem with the sale and the son got shot and killed at the scene. We roll up, process the scene, we get some names and all this and the mother isn’t saying shit to us. She’s refusing to talk. So we go through the whole case. We’re a little bit weird about her and finally we get around to her because it’s her turn. Everybody we’ve talked to now, we’ve got her and the boy in the car. We have four suspects Or at least appear to be suspects We know who the shooter is But three of my witnesses says No, the mother was buying the dope And got into it with the seller, And the boy And the boy, tries to grab the gun because the guy goes to put the gun in like it was a ripoff and of course he gets blasted mother doesn’t the mother might have been on mars during this whole time i don’t know what happened i don’t know where we were i don’t that that that that that that that that three weeks into this case gary we end up finding a wit that we hadn’t known about that had sold dope to the mother repeatedly in the process of getting the suspect in custody.

[42:09] We polygraphed the mother who did so bad, like the ink was hitting the polygrapher on the, you know, the needles are just going everywhere. And she finally cops out that she didn’t want to go back to jail. She was on parole for possession, you know, for narcotics possession and didn’t want to go back to jail. So therefore, if she just said it was she blamed her kid for, you know, causing his own demise. And it just to to this day i still think like how do you put yourself you funded your kid who got killed for you buying dope right and it can only happen here in the city of los angeles like that that your child 19 year old kid take a mommy to buy some rock and something gets blasted and you know she doesn’t even have the audacity to feel bad and cop out about what happened so So she ended up getting, she was a real jewel. And again, it’s just things like that that come up about, you know, humanity’s just gone. We’ve lost. Back then we lost, but it’s worse now. Worse now, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then on the other two, the kind of the, not fun ones, but we had a gangster that stabbed his girlfriend.

[43:24] And I plodded myself, Gary, on my interview and interrogation techniques. I’m not supposed to use interrogation anymore. My interview techniques. This little gangster, they arrest him. And it didn’t take an FBI academy guy to be able to interview these people. And my thing was, hey, this is your only chance to tell me what happened. I got 19 witnesses that told me exactly what went on. This is it because after i leave you’re going to tell your attorney or he’s going to paint a rosy picture for you and the bottom line is your attorney goes home and goes to bed and you’re sitting in some joint right just if you don’t want to talk to me just say yeah i’ll talk to you, but just don’t lie to me god i’m in the middle of the night i’m tired which you know i always spoke the truth so this kid just says okay well you know we we got in a fight and um she took out a knife and was trying to cut me. And I said, well, how did, how did the knife end up in your hand? And then she got stabbed three times. He says, well, I got the knife away from her and we were going down a stairwell and she tripped and fell into me and stabbed herself. I said, I got that part. Okay. So that’s, that doesn’t, that’s, that was an accident, right? Put off the other two Well when we rolled over She fell in life again Okay that’s two.

[44:52] And then I said, you’re missing one. He goes, well, I don’t know how that went out.

[44:56] And I said, listen, it’s still sweat off on me. And I was dead serious, Gary. I said, you’re going to go into court and you’re going to tell a jury that same story and they’re going to laugh at you. You know, he gets all this proud shit like, maybe they’re going to laugh at me. I said, it makes no sense. And you’re going to say that. They’re going to go, what an idiot. So you attack their manlyhood and then you attack the character. And he goes like, really? I said, yes, they’re going to walk out of that jury booth, come right back into court and go guilty. What should I tell them? I said, I’d stick with the first one. And he goes, oh, man. He goes, then I’m going to, you know, I’m going to, it’s going to be hard for me to explain. I said, all right, then just tell me, how did all the thing go down? And he goes, and there’s everything. They’ve been arguing all day, and she had picked up some kind of a pan to hit him.

[45:47] And he’s walking towards her with the pan and he slaps her and the pan falls out and he said, I’m just so pissed off at her. He just stabbed her. I said, okay, that sounds so much better than the thing about fighting and she stabbed herself and he’s all proud that he told the truth on this thing. So, you know, there were comical moments on very sad moments, you know, in this world that we worked in. That interview slash interrogation that in a murder, especially murder is such a psychologically powerful crime. You can get P I noticed you can get people to talk about all kinds of stuff trying to deflect your attention away from what you want to talk about. Then as you get them closer, if you can get them started down that path of any kind of a little.

[46:36] Thing that might’ve happened. You just get them started down that path and they’ll kind of go down that path thinking that they can fool you here and they can tell you something to get you off their butt. And then you come back like, just like what you did, it’s classic. Then you come back and say, well, you know, that ain’t quite, you know, that doesn’t make sense here, you know?

[46:55] And you just, each step, they just go down that path a little further until they’ve relieved themselves of the burden. Oh, and that, you know, I had a, yeah, absolutely. And you’re so run out with that. I had a judge who, who refused to believe that suspects would admit to doing their crimes. I would tell her, everyone understands saying, well, you know, people want to tell you they do what, uh, and probably 90% of the suspects, whether it be from a domestic violence act or robbery. They want to rid themselves of some of the guilt. So they’ll give you that omission, give you a little piece of it, right? And then eventually you’ll see their body language, you know, they’re starting to give in and like, okay, I feel better about this now, right? You don’t want to lie because you’re going to be caught in the lie and you make it, you know, worse for them. The ones that are tough, Gary, when you walk them in, they go, I ain’t got shit to say to you. Yeah. And then they, you know, the word, but, you know, when they’re hemming and hawing and, you know, moving in their seat, and when you start giving them so much evidence against them, it’s overwhelming, right? The psyche doesn’t want to hear all the stuff you have on me. So, you know, and the first, like, they’ll tell you, you know, your OC cases, you know, you’ll get that small pond down here and, like, well, what can you do for me? Right. As soon as, as soon as that happened, you’re okay.

[48:22] Okay. Let me tell you. Right. And you, here’s what I’m gonna do for you. I’m going to keep you out of the gas chamber. And then like, well, shit, all I do is carry the money. Right. And now I’m going to the gas chamber. So yeah, you know what? It was so much fun being imaginative and, you know, getting these people to talk or roll over, just give me something. And, you know, there were others that didn’t say stop. I respected that. Then I can go home earlier and play with my kids. Yeah.

[48:50] So much fun, Gary, working this job. In a tragic time, that was the fun part to what kept it sane and kept you going from the game. Yeah. And if you could treat it as a game. I always treat it as a game. It’s not personal. Oh, God. It’s a game. We’re like grown-up boys playing cops and robbers. We just happen to have real guns. Isn’t that it? That’s exactly it. And, you know, as long as I came home safe every night and my kids were safe, you know, I was, and, you know, I understand people get pissed off and, and men get mad at their wives or wives get mad at their men or gangsters, you know, this other gangster.

[49:26] And you know what? It was, it, it was all just, um, basically a game, you know, it cats, uh, cops and mobbers, like you said, uh, if it was you, I’ll give you a real quick thing just today. I wanted to show you on what side of the fence we were on. I had a triple murder. That uh on an arson guy a dope deal goes wrong somehow gas comes out and the guy burns up the place and kills three people okay so i have three eyewitnesses that identify this guy i have uh um, The gasoline there, I have everything we need. We wrap up the crime scene. 18 hours later, we’re driving around the area. This was in Vermont and 82nd Street in Central Los Angeles. And there’s the guy walking that they described. Six foot five guy wearing a gray sweatshirt, gray pants, short haircut. And we stopped the guy. Yeah. 18 hours later, Gary, the guy reeks of gasoline and his hands are all singed, right? I think you got him. Might be the guy, right? Yeah. Might be him.

[50:40] And from the moment we arrested him, vehemently denied ever striking, you know, starting that fire, he goes, I was there at the dope deal, but this guy, Bluebird or Jaybird, He came out and he’s trying to rip me off and has a gallon of gasoline, throws it on me, right? And then lights the fire. It goes all through the hallways. And, you know, these were really cheap-ass, yeah, partons. So he books in the interim with three-eyed wits and evidence of gasoline on him, go to trial, and he’s convicted, and he’s sentenced to death. And, Gary, you know this. from the moment we arrested him until the moment they were leading him out the door to go up to San Quentin. He’s screaming, you promised me, you promised me. Donald, his name was Donald. Give me the guy, dude. I don’t give a shit who goes to jail, right? If all the evidence points to you, which it did, it’s you. Even if you say it’s not, I can’t change what they’ve said.

[51:46] He is in Chino, which is one of the holding facilities before he’s going up to San Quentin to the death house. This is about a year and a half later. I get a phone call from him, screaming, Tabak, you said he’s here, he’s here, Blaine Bluebird or whatever his name was, he’s here. So I said, all right, I’ll be down there. I’ll go talk to the guy. So you know how we all keep out polygraph keys on cases, right? It’s probably key on this one was a yellow Bic lighter, which even this guy that we convicted didn’t know about. So I go and talk to the guy. We promised him. And Gary, it is in 10 minutes, and he mentions the yellow Bic lighter. Oh. Oh, yeah. You just went? That’s exactly what I did. She went, oh, shit. Oh, shit. So I called the DA, and I go, you got to get down here, right? Yeah. I got our guy off. Here’s what happened. This dope dealer, he was an enemy dope dealer. When the thing, the fire set up, he got three of these girls who live there to identify him.

[52:53] Absolute bullshit. They were not there. But as I would, how am I going to tell them they’re not there? I have no reason to suspect anything about them. We got them to recant. He goes in, the other guy, he cops out to a second degree murder. And my guy walked out. he went for whatever the thing was five six seven years it wasn’t a lot back in the day the three girls got a couple years each for you know and it’s false testimony and then, the the victim who lived who was in that pugilistic position when you burn up the guy was burned like 80 of his body and lived he’s in olive branch mississippi, And we go to Olive Branch, Mississippi with their officers where this guy’s living. And as we walk up on the front porch, Gary, his hands are fused together. The guy is smoking a cigarette. You think the last thing this dude would ever get about is by fire, right? He ended up being one of the suspects as well. So we walked that guy. The guy got out of San Quentin off a death row. And it truly was. I didn’t care who you were. If the evidence pointed to you, you win, you know, and I’m sure there’s innocent people that are on death row. Yeah. You know, if it looks, it’s the duck theory, right? If it looks like a duck and it cracks like a duck, it ain’t a moose.

[54:17] And you guys out there, if you, if you didn’t pick up on that in, in a homicide investigation, especially a high profile case that’s in the news, you have some little piece of evidence that only the police know. You’d never let that out unless you have to have it at the final trial. Otherwise, you don’t let anybody know because you have, in a high-profile case, you have all these nutcases calling in, wanting to confess, or somebody wanting to drop a dime on somebody just to mess with them. And so when they don’t know about that little piece of evidence, that’s the thing that will be the decider here. I’ll tell you a quick little story of my own. We had a double homicide downtown. I was a junior detective out in the burglary unit in the station. They brought us down because it was two young guys working in a downtown store, got killed by the same gun that’s already killed another store clerk a week earlier. So this was a hot one. And I had this informant back in the neighborhoods, and he’s telling me, well, this kid is bragging that he’s the one that killed those two guys downtown. town. So I talked to the sergeant and he said, well, I don’t know. He said, what do you think? And I said, you know, the guy, the kids never lied to me.

[55:34] He said, well, bring him in. He said, wait a minute. First, he said, will your informant take a polygraph? I said, yeah, I think he would. So I call up my guy and he said, yeah, I’ll do it. So he takes a polygraph and he passes a polygraph. So no doubt in my mind that this kid is, you know, has heard somebody say, yeah, I did those two guys downtown, the radio shack. So we bring that kid in. He’s a goofy young kid, about 18, 19 years old and a half a bubble off a plum, as we say.

[56:03] And so my partner and I, we take him back in the back. And it’s funny, the older detectives didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with this. And I didn’t really tell them about it. You know, they would have taken it away from us. There’s no doubt. I thought there was some glory in it. And we take this kid back in the room, interrogation room, and start interrogating him. And he starts talking about, you know, he starts breaking down the real simple kind of a, well, yeah, yeah, I was downtown that day. Well, yeah. Wow. Well, and finally he said, I said, well, now, how’d you do it? He said, you know, I went pooh, pooh. Okay. So, I mean, he’s like, he’s confessed to me. Right. So I go out and I get one of the older detectives that I knew pretty well. I said, Kenny, come here a minute. Here’s what we got going.

[56:47] He said, let me talk to him. So he goes in, starts talking to the kid. Well, I hadn’t been to the crime scene. I probably hadn’t read the original, read the original report because they just called us in as cannon fodder to go run down, you know, bullshit leads out here.

[57:05] Kenny starts talking to him. He said, okay, tell me what happened here. And he said, well, you know, I went in, I had a gun, I robbed the store. And he said, well, where’d you get the money from? He said, well, the guy said, well, the guy just hit the cash register ding and opened up and I grabbed the money out and I killed them both. And Kenny said, ah, come on outside Jenkins. I said, okay. He said, he didn’t do it. I said, what do you mean he didn’t do it? He just told you did it. He said, they didn’t have a cash register. They had their money in the money drawer down below the, uh, the, uh, I learned the lesson that day, you know, you learn your lessons. I learned the lesson that day, find out about that crime scene and make them describe in detail what happened at that crime scene. Oh yeah. And even with this yellow Bic lighter, you know, we, we took them back and forth. We made sure they didn’t hear from somebody else, although we’ve got nobody else to know about it. But like you said, that’s something can blow up in your face and you know, all the, the basic great teachings that you have, like you, you kind of let one of them go. And then, like you said, that you’re, you’re the laughingstock of your detective room for a while. Yeah, really? Yeah. All right. Don Tabak. Don, tell us again about your show. How do people see that? It’s for you in the Los Angeles area, it’s called Crime Scene Live. It’s at the Lowe’s Hollywood Hotel at Highland Hollywood Boulevard. It’s Friday and Saturday nights starting at eight o’clock.

[58:31] It’s immersive. It’s interactive. We talk about a bunch of our cases. And then at the end, we’re going to give everybody one of my murders and see how they can solve it and see what they would have done different than I did. And we got a, it’s a beautiful room. It’s 20 stories above, uh, uh, Hollywood Boulevard. Got a nice bar in there. So it’s, uh, it’s a time to meet and greet and talk. And then afterwards kind of have a good time with everybody.

[58:56] Cool. Well, true crime is a pretty popular subject nowadays. Man, I’ll tell you something. I had no idea too, Gary. And the demographic that, that everybody goes on, it’s probably your show as well. Yeah. Women 18 to 40 are the main, it blew me away when I heard that. That’s it, except in the area of organized crime. Organized crime is men about 25 to 65 or 70. Is it really? 90%, 85% to 90% men on my YouTube channel. Oh, damn, I had no idea. See, I’m telling you, to get these stats out, man, it’s amazing. Yeah, well, they count who comes to your channel. So you get them pretty easily. I get them every day. So let me ask you, Saul, and being an OC guy for as long as you did, where’s Jimmy Hoffa?

[59:48] Well, I’ve got a guy that swears and be damned, although the FBI did finally go out and dig for him. And he’s in underneath the St. Louis, I mean, St. Louis, the New Jersey Skyway. It’s some kind of freeway back east in Brother Moscato’s old dump, buried. Two different reasonable people that say that. And personally, I can’t imagine you would load that guy up after you killed him in Detroit and drive him clear back to New Jersey to bury him. I don’t know. I just, I have trouble with that one.

[1:00:22] I’d be, I’d be burning that body up or crushing it or, you know, they got plenty of ways. A mob in Detroit’s got plenty of ways to make a body disappear.

[1:00:31] Um, organized crime in Kansas city, Kansas is large. They have a large presence there. Yeah. Actually it’s Missouri, Kansas city, Missouri, but people make that, uh, just fail to make that distinction. We have a Kansas city, Kansas, you know, it was pretty big at these during the seventies and eighties, you know, it was our boss had these, uh, fingers out into Las Vegas big time and he was connected with Chicago and Milwaukee and Cleveland. But since they, you know, we busted all that, the Bureau mainly did it, but we, we took all that down and all those guys went to jail for the, basically the rest of their lives. And it just went to nothing. You know, we’ve got a sports book and, uh, you know, a little bit of loan sharking and, and some, oh, oh yeah. I tell you what they got into rather than the loan sharkings, uh, payday loans and title loans and buy here, pay here car dealerships. There’s a lot of money in that. I mean, I mean, and you can chart. Charge the interest that you want for a lot of those things. It’s just, and use learn shark tactic because you have to deal with poor people and poor people. You just, you go out and threaten them. You maybe go out and whack them around a little bit and you’ll get your money. So that’s, uh, that’s, that’s one of the big things they’re into now. So there’s still a few guys around that are doing that kind of thing. Not many, maybe 10.

[1:01:50] In your era, when you wrapped up a guy, uh, a mob guy, would they roll over on who they knew what was going on? No. Okay. We had, you might have a low level guy that would slip the information. Okay. Just, you’d have to have a bunch of them to get any kind of a real picture or compare notes with other people that had their own sources. Bureau had a lot of little sources. They had a couple of real deep throats that, uh, you know, cause they could, they’ve got the real hammer. And I had a couple of three, you know, minor guys that could kind of tell you who’s who and, and kind of a little bit about what’s going on. So, but it’s always, it’s a piecemeal thing that you try to put together as a bigger picture until you can get a wiretap or a bug or something that you’re not going to really learn anything. And we don’t have a local wiretap law. And so we always worked with the FBI. We just ripped. We were their foot shoulders out here. Yeah, of course. We were.

[1:02:47] You were the brains behind it. They put their lovely suits and their little badges and did their thing. They send these guys into town from some other city and they’re just, a lot of them are just out of college or they’ve only lived in, you know, San Francisco or New York or, you know, or, or, you know, uh. Somewhere down the south mid-south or something and so they get sent to kansas city well you know they don’t know anybody they don’t know the streets they don’t know where they use and the organized crime squad they’d send them over to the intelligence unit and we had one particular guy that would take them under his wing and he’d go out and drive them all around show them all the spots and this guy’s this and this guy’s that and this is this guy and he always you’ll find him at the city market about 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning they’ll all be at the social club about two in the afternoon. Here they are.

[1:03:38] And then they’d go back and take their, get their cases. Oh, of course. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Yeah. You’ve got stories, obviously. Yeah.

[1:03:48] All right, Don, I really appreciate you coming on. Oh man. I so appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. I had a great time. All right. I did too. Good meeting you. I got, I got a lot more stories. We both do, but we don’t have so much time. Another show. We’ll do that. We’ll do that one. Okay. All right. All right. Be safe. Thank you. All right. Hey, guys, that was a fun show. I really like talking with that guy. You learned a lot of stuff that you didn’t know before, I think. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re a big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website. They’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem. If you’ve got that problem or gambling, if not, you can go to Anthony Ruggiano. He’s a counselor down in Florida. He’s got a hotline on his YouTube page or his Facebook, not Facebook, but his website. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, most states will have, if you have gambling, most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell. I got my books. I got my movies. They’re all on Amazon. Just go and I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon sales page and you can figure out what to do. I really appreciate y’all tuning in and we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks, guys.

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins welcomes back veteran crime journalist and mob historian Larry McShane to discuss his latest book, Little Vic and the Great Mafia War. Together, they dive deep into the violent and chaotic period known as the Third Colombo War—a brutal internal conflict that nearly tore the Colombo crime family apart.

Larry offers exclusive insights from his research, including rare interviews with Andrew Arena, one of the five sons of Victor “Little Vic” Orena, the acting boss at the center of the war. These firsthand accounts reveal the deeply personal toll the Mafia war inflicted on the Arena family and expose the raw emotions behind the headlines.

Gary and Larry revisit the key flashpoints of the conflict, including the botched assassination attempt on Orena. On June 20, 1991, A five-man hit team waited in a car outside the Long Island home of Victor Orena, the acting crime boss of the Colombo crime family. Orena recognized the vehicle—and managed to escape with his lifethe bloody street warfare that followed. We explore the complex dynamics between longtime boss Carmine Persico, rising star John Gotti, and powerful enforcer Greg Scarpa—whose shadowy relationship with the FBI cast a dark cloud over the entire war.

The conversation also tackles the shifting nature of mob alliances, how loyalty turned lethal, and how the RICO prosecutions of the early 1990s reshaped the Mafia’s grip on New York. As the war’s body count climbed, so too did its consequences—both for the Colombo family and the broader underworld.

Don’t miss this deep-dive into one of the most explosive chapters in Mafia history. And be sure to pick up Larry McShane’s Little Vic and the Great Mafia War for an even more detailed look at the treachery, violence, and fallout of the Colombo civil war.

Click here to get Larry’s book Little Vic and the Great Mafia War.

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.

[1:07] Legal things, what happened to the arenas and that sort of thing. But, yeah, it’s it’s a mob war book. What this is, is the title is Little Vic and the Great Mafia War. And, you know, these, these Columbo’s, I tell you what, this, they coined, they must’ve coined the phrase going to the mattresses because the entire community. Span of the colombo family both before joe died there was killed and and up until the end they’re always have to go to the mattresses people are always running around and cruise trying to kill each other and and this third one was was no different it’s uh it’s just crazy tell us a little bit about your process here how you started researching this not been a lot done about Vic Orena i don’t know what kind of resources you got on that you have to report cases but you talked to some of these kids too, I believe, which is really interesting. You got some inside knowledge there. Yeah, I’ll give you kind of the long version. I’d spoken to Andrew Orena, who’s one of Vic’s five sons, about doing something. He had approached me through a guy that we both knew. I thought it was a kind of story that isn’t told often, and especially with the idea of the son cooperating, I thought, this is kind of interesting. You know what I mean?

[2:20] So we shopped it around and, you know, we got no takers. The guy who helped me get the Chin book out, the guy from the publishing house, Kensington Publishing, was getting ready to retire. And he got a hold of me and he said, I’d like to do one more book with you before I retired. And I said, how about that Orena book that you sniffed me on? He said, well, send me the stuff. I’ll take another look. And he took another look and he said, yeah, let’s do it. It took a long while to get here. You know, I think, as you mentioned, the ability to have two of the Orena brothers, two of Vic’s sons, I think, make this a different kind of book. You know, there’s so much coverage of what happened back then in the early 90s because it was the last big mob war. And so I thought, you know, I thought and the publisher agreed that, you know, this is a story worth telling. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot from, you know, FBI agents telling, you know, this is what I remember. maybe even an informant or two out there. This is kind of what I remember, but they’re really hard to find. But court cases, there’s a lot out of the court cases, but you got the family, the view from inside the family, which I think is fascinating because these families, that Orena family, they stuck together. They truly were a old school Italian from Sicily mafia family. Yeah. John is the older brother who I spoke to. He was a made guy. He had a brother who was Vic Orena Jr. He was a made guy.

[3:47] And Andrew, who I mentioned first approached me.

[3:52] Um, was, was, was never a made guy cause his mom put the squash on it.

[3:57] He said, you know, two sons in, in the life where, so he was, um, I guess you could say he was sort of mob adjacent. He, he, uh, he was involved in a lot of stuff and he knew about a lot of stuff, but he never, he never became a made guy. So now this, uh, you know, he, he was in the Clembo family and, uh, the Persicos had, uh, famously taken over from after Joe Clembo was killed and, uh, get them kind of mixed up alley boy and uh carmine the snake really were you know hand in glove with each other uh alley boy was i believe he was uh he was the younger wasn’t he and so carmine took over clumbo family was in real flux at that point in time try everybody was kind of jockeying for a position i would imagine and and for a while it ran pretty smooth at the persicos carmine went to jail and And he named three people to run the family, if I remember right. And then, of course, another person called Little Alley Boy is going to move on up. It’s kind of that way in Kansas City. If Nick Savella goes to jail, his brother of court becomes the titular head. He becomes the guy that everybody goes to and assumes he’s the boss. He may not be exactly, and there may be other people doing a lot of things, but because of that name identification, why, uh, they’re going to do it. And, and then Orena, a little bit Orena was right in there with them at that point in time.

[5:22] So can you talk about that part of it a little bit? Well, when, uh, when Carmine Persco goes to jail, that’s in the mafia commission trial, which is a big trial here. This was the start of Rico prosecutions around this time. And he, he very famously represented himself as his own attorney and got some pretty good reviews as well. Unfortunately, he did not get the verdict that he’d hoped for, despite his efforts. And he had been convicted on an earlier case. So he went to prison in.

[5:51] 80 or he was convicted in 86 he had this prior conviction over him so he had 139 year sentence ahead of uh and and clearly you know he was not going to get out and return to running the family so they they bring in a middle manny type guy not not a guy with um i guess not a guy with a lot of juice and uh persco quickly turns on this guy he’s executed in a garage in new jersey you know typical thing he’s taking his friends back to his house and he never he never gets inside the house kind of thing you know yeah and so at this point uh the agreement is made among all sides that vicarina is going to become the uh acting boss which is interesting because Orena is more known as like a businessman and an earner you know he’s got his own crew he’s living at this point out in the suburbs of long island but he seems to be a choice that that everybody is in agreement with and things go smoothly kind of seamless once he takes over you know they have a lot of uh income flows coming in and out he’s got as i mentioned his two sons vic jr and johnny capos in the family everything seems to be rolling in the Orena in his direction and then one night in the summer of uh 1991 he’s coming back from dinner and he’s almost at his house and he looks Sovereign sees a car with four faces that he recognizes.

[7:15] Four of his fellow members of the family, and they’re waiting to kill him. Fortunately for him, he sees them before they see him. He slams on the gas, gets out of Dodge. That’s how the war kicks off, you know, with this attempted hit on Vicarina. It rather than taking him out proves to be, you know, a total failure. Yeah, if you set out to kill somebody, you better get it done. And if they learned about it, you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, the war is on. I mean, you know, they know once, once that thing starts down the path, once that bullet starts down that barrel that you’re going to kill somebody there, there’s no calling it back. So it’s, it’s from then on it’s kill or be killed. Wasn’t it was Greg Scarpa. Was, was that one of the guys he recognized in there?

[8:01] No, it was not. Scarpa was, Scarpa was not one of the guys involved in that hit. And he’s going to get involved in a lot of this later on, which is a pretty interesting thing. The conflict with Scarpa and his FBI agent friend and what the Orena is, how they see that, what they have to say about that relationship and the trials that were going to happen later on. But now another thing, I think you mentioned something about John Gotti was pretty close with Orena and they had some business together. Yeah, it was…

[8:39] I mean it was good for for gotti because it gave him another guy on the commission, okay who would back you know what he wanted to do and so yeah the two of them were were on the same side of things sammy gravano who was the underboss at that point i had a chance to speak with him uh while i was working on the book you know and he said that vic was like a well-regarded guy and uh you know there didn’t seem to be any reason for any problems with the selection of vic he’s a guy that made money uh not a flashy showy guy sort of sort of the anti-goddy you know what i mean uh he’s he’s living at home with his wife as i mentioned they have five sons you know and he’s just a guy who’s pretty well regarded you know what i mean he’s a money maker which is always valued you know across any of the families what was uh persico carmine persico was he afraid that that vic was then gonna take away something he thought was his and that’s being the boss of the Colombo family? Was that what precipitated this? I think that had something to do with it, but it’s an odd thing because by most accounts, little alley boy was going to be getting out of prison in a couple of years in 1995. It seemed set up, and I think it would have happened this way.

[10:00] That he would finish his time, he’d get out of jail, and he would immediately move to the top of the family. You know, the war lasts through 1993. So really, if they had just waited two years, but as you sort of referred to when we were talking earlier, that’s sort of the way that the Columbos did things. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, with the wars going back to the gallows. So, yeah. Yeah, that is true. One crew against the other. One crew feels like they’re out and are afraid somebody’s going to get something that they should have. And so as this heats up now, what kind of actions do Orena, his sons, take? I mean, if you take on a guy with two sons who are made guys and are capos, that’s pretty serious stuff because you’re taking on some real power, some people that are going to be hard to isolate. So what kind of actions did they start taking in their own defense? Well, the initial thing from their side, the Orena side of things, was they wanted to see if this was something that they could resolve. I use the old cliche, without going to the mattresses, you know what I mean? They wanted to resolve this. And so between the two sides, and I believe it was at the home of one of the Persico sons, the arenas were looking to broker a deal.

[11:28] And basically, the option was kind of, you know, we want somebody else in. It quickly became clear that everything was not going to go back to the way it was, even though, you know, Vic had been in during a relatively long time.

[11:46] Quiet stretch in the family um and uh you know he had a lot of supporters but they they just couldn’t come to a resolution which is a debate over a guy who’s going to be in prison for three or four more years yeah you know and to oust the guy who’s in there things just kind of fester for a while you know the the arenas are uh the arenas are wondering what’s going to happen next of course they’re all very upset that there was an attempt to murder their father near their home out in Long Island, Cedarhurst they lived. So I guess there’s just a very uncomfortable stretch until the arenas decide to strike back. So what was their first move back? They decide Billy Cattolo, who’s a high-ranking guy in the family, decides that if they’re going to go after somebody, they should start near the top. And so they target Greg Scarpa. Yeah, exactly. That’s how he comes into this. I remember now. Yeah. So they load into a van and they drive to Brooklyn and they lie in wait for Scarpa. He comes out of his house with his girlfriend, the girlfriend’s daughter, I should say, Linda Shiro, his girlfriend’s daughter, who’s carrying her infant son. These four guy shooters come out of their van. There’s another car that’s used to hopefully block traffic.

[13:09] And they open fire. Incredibly, in all the craziness, no one is shot. They jump in the car and they flee the scene. But at this point, this thing goes from zero to 200 or whatever analogy you’d like to make. Because now the Orena side has fired the first shots. As it emerges, Scarpa becomes the most active shooter throughout, the most aggressive guy throughout, begins to raise questions as time goes on about his relationship with Lynn DeVecchio.

[13:44] Who’s working the case for the FBI out of Brooklyn. So the FBI, their deep throat informant, their most valuable informant they probably maybe have ever had, but one of their more valuable informants is right in the middle of this Colombo active shooting war now. Now, I guess later on, as they have these trials, they’re going to accuse DiBecchio of fomenting even more violence and assisting Scarpa because Scarpa, he needs to win. Also, I have one other question before we get too far into Scarpa. He had a pretty decent drug business going, I believe, in the end. And then, and little Vic Orena was pretty, took a pretty strong stance against anybody in the family doing drugs. Did that have anything to do with it? Did the kids talk about that at all? No, not really. You know, there was so much.

[14:43] I mean, to me, this war was more personal than, you know, financial or, you know, this was who was going to run the family, who was going to control the family. You know, the Arenas found themselves locked in this war against the Persicos, who were yin to their yang. Johnny Orena and one of the Persicos ran a trucking company together. So they weren’t just involved in illegal money-making things. They ran businesses and they worked together side by side. And so, yeah, the initial hit, I think, is really a shocker. Months later, it’s like, here’s the second hit. They’re going after Scarpa immediately. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[15:27] And so at that point, I think all bets are off. There’s not going to be any peace achieved at that point. I mean, you couldn’t tell at the time, I guess, but it would be two and a half years before everything finally settled down. And at that point, Vicarino was behind bars, and he’s still there today despite best efforts of his family to try and get him out. Yeah, I was reading that in your book, how bad his health was and how much he changed his life around now. But before we get onto that, let’s talk a little more about Scarpa. I mean, they tried to hit Scarpa with guns right with his stepdaughter and step-grandchild standing right there. I mean, that’s, to me, that’s such a huge no-no. I mean, you see those civilians walking out, you just move on and let’s try again. But they didn’t. They tried to hit him right there. That had to, you talk about it being personal, that had to really make it personal. Yeah, I agree with you that it’s sort of a weird thing that you don’t hear about, putting somebody’s family in the line of fire. You know, I think there was a notion on the on the Orena side of things that if you killed Scarpa.

[16:40] Maybe that would be a way, an avenue to figure out a way to end the war if you take out their top guy, right? Yeah, right. But instead you end up with an infuriated Scarpa, who nearly sees his grandchild and daughter killed in front of his eyes on a street in Brooklyn. Winding down, if I remember this Billy Cattolo, they then went back after him. He was kind of a wild guy. I think he had the moniker of Wild Bill. I believe they ended up going after him. Yeah, Wild Bill Cattolo. He was an Orena loyalist, although he managed to make his way out at the other end of the war untouched. He did. But he ends up getting killed at some point in time since then, I think. He does indeed get killed. According to his son, he thought he had been sort of welcomed back into the fold, let bygones be bygones, and he was murdered. That his son was involved in the case against Alley Boy Persico.

[17:41] Andrew Orena told me that he had a chat with Itolo about this, about going back into the family. And he told him, you know, don’t do it. Don’t go in there, just steer clear. And, you know, in response, he heard like, no, everything looks good this time. You know, they’re bringing me back in. And, you know, the Arenas had been out for some time. You know, this would have been in, I guess, the early 2000s. It was a bad decision, obviously, just a bad decision. And the Persco’s are not the forgiving kind, I guess, would be a fair way of putting it, you know. And this guy thought that he was going to get a pass. And I think for, you know, like Andrew Orena would say, you know, if you’re thinking you’re going to get a pass from these guys, you’re not really thinking clearly, you know. And he tried to talk him out of it, but unsuccessfully. So when little Vic goes to jail, he catches a case on a murder, I believe a murder case. Tommy O’Cara.

[18:39] He ran a restaurant out in Long Island. It was very popular with the mobsters out that way. You know, very mob-friendly place. Vickery and his sons used to eat there a lot. He also did some mob business, including sports gambling, that type of thing, take bets. And there was a raid on his place. When they get inside, Ossera, rather than having all his books for these different things set aside or held somewhere else, he has them in the restaurant. They’re very damning documents about his gambling business. So he finds himself in kind of a precarious spot now. He’s eventually kidnapped, killed, and buried. There’s some dispute over who did what. Andrew Orena said to me that they weren’t involved in this.

[19:29] John Gotti was involved as well. Sammy Gravano. I mean, it’s sort of an, I don’t want to say nondescript. We’re talking about somebody who was murdered. But this was not a guy whose name appearing in the paper would have turned any heads. Yeah. And yeah, so this is what happens. It ends up that they’re trying to say that this was a thing by the arenas. And again, John Gotti is kind of a mercurial guy too. He and Gravano discussed the hit, according to Gravano, and this guy is murdered and buried, and then he’s finally recovered a few years later. And then I guess they turned somebody, I think. Yeah, somebody flipped. I can’t remember who. I can’t remember his name now, but I don’t want to get too many names there. But somebody flipped and drug little Vic into it. And his kids, did they give you indication that he really, he wanted to take over the Colombo family and push the Persicos aside? Or was this all kind of a misunderstanding? Yeah, absolutely. They were afraid he was going to, and, you know, one thing leads to another. Well, I think, I know that they were really kind of proud that their father had gotten to the top of the food chain within the family, you know? What i mean they were definitely not proponents of the war you know they were hoping to resolve things and like we’ve touched on this a couple times i i think that they believed close ties with the persicos would allow them to sit down.

[20:55] And and have a discussion yeah about you know what what could we do you know what i mean this is this is not the way to do this we know your family you know our family um we can come to a reasonable agreement clearly that was not the case i mean it’s funny like one decision like that like you know we we don’t want peace okay you know three years later i think if i have the numbers right there were like 122 people arrested on both sides of the war wow um yeah it’s uh.

[21:25] I mean, dozens of people involved in shootings and that type of thing, all related to this kind of pointless fight, the last fight for control of a, I don’t want to say dying mafia, but a foundering mafia at that point. Veds are starting already. The RICO prosecutions, which are obviously a total game changer. Yeah, and the commission trials were during all this, so I mean, they put away the heads of all the families during this. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is when Irina got arrested, he was arrested at his girlfriend’s house out in the Long Island suburbs. It seems like some trials take forever to get going. He was prosecuted very quickly, convicted very quickly and sentenced to a very long prison term very quickly. That was a case where he was sort of the first domino to fall, and certainly at least the first big domino to fall. They brought in a really good prosecutor to handle the case. I mean, Andrew talks about how he was having a panic attack, waiting for the verdict to come in. Bang, their whole world collapses, you know what I mean? He says in the book that after the verdict, Vic Jr. Tells all the people in the family who were there, like, you know, we’re going to walk out with our heads held high. And that’s what they did. They didn’t come out moaning or decrying some crooked prosecution or anything.

[22:47] They walked out with their heads held high. I was on a wiretap once, and this guy, he was kind of a mob associate, and he was talking to a friend of his, and he was giving him advice because the guy was in trouble with some other people or something. And he was giving him advice, he said, and they were going to boot him out of a business or something. And so this Tommy Russo, he says, I’m going to tell you something. And he says, when they’re running you out of town, he says, go out like you’re leading a parade. So these guys, they’re being run out of town. They went out like they were leading a parade. Yeah.

[23:20] Well, I was going to say, I think their whole idea was, right, we’re not going to give these guys their pound of flesh. We’re going to walk out with our heads held high and just, you know, unfortunately for the arenas, that was just the beginning rather than the end of the prosecutions they would face. So, yeah, what happened to these other brothers? They all had cases that they could catch, and they all committed a lot of crimes. So what happened to them? There was a big case in which the two brothers were defendants along with some other guys. And this was a federal prosecution case.

[23:54] And it was linked to a number of things. One of them was a gas operation where they were squeezing money from legitimate businesses and taking a percentage of the cash that came in. So they wind up, them and some other five, six, at a federal trial in Brooklyn. As it turns out, this is kind of the trial that changes everything. Before the trial begins, the prosecutor has a meeting in chambers with the defense lawyers and the prosecutors, the chief prosecutor acknowledges a variety of different interactions between Linda Vecchio and Greg Scarpa. This is not a usual thing to happen, you know, and especially right before a trial is about to begin. And so now I think, you know, think, you know, Johnny Orena said that this gave everybody a big boost. Their argument was that Scarpel was getting information from Lynn DeVecchio about different things, a variety of different things. If I recall correctly, one of the things that was alleged was that DeVecchio had given information about where the Orena hideout was. When the trial starts, these guys are like, okay, we got really good lawyers. We got something to hang our hats on here. Prosecution was along the lines of, you know, at this point. Don’t don’t let this steer you away from what this trial is about kind of thing you know what i mean.

[25:24] There’s this whole weird thing that happens. Things are coming to a close, and the jury begins deliberations. Andrew Orena is very, he was telling me, he’s very nervous. They don’t know what’s going on. They’re waiting to see what happens. And the jury sends out a request for an FBI document. The document was never introduced at the trial, but the jurors, during their deliberations, figured out amongst themselves that this was something they thought they needed to see as part of the trial, you know? So the prosecutors turn over all the paperwork. It leans in their favor. The jurors go back to resume their deliberations. I mean, even now, I think, incredibly enough, they’re all acquitted. I mean, the judge in the case, Judge Corman, Federal Judge Corman, actually told the arenas before the deliberations continued that if the jury, I mean, yeah, that if the jury found the defendants guilty.

[26:29] He would vacate the convictions in order of mistrial based on this document that had been introduced. So if the jurors had gone the other way on this paperwork, the judge would have given them another shot.

[26:41] Johnny was telling me, I mean, these are things you don’t think about if you’re not in the mob, I guess. But johnny was saying they were taken back to the federal lockup him and his brother, when they went in they were like greeted with raucous cheers by the other inmates that you know here are two guys that actually beat the government you know what i mean really yeah that’s unusual that’s that’d be key it really is you know and uh yeah so bruce bruce cutler um, you know, who was Gotti’s attorney, came down to visit them at the prison after the verdict. And he basically, like I said to these, the two of them, like, you know, what you have just witnessed is something that will never be seen again and has never been seen before. That you guys beat this case is just, it’s astounding, you know? It is. And I guess the jury, it’s just enough to cause a reasonable doubt. I mean, that’s what a good defense lawyer is always trying to do, just bring something in to create any kind of reasonable doubt. And I guess the interactions between DeBecchio and Scarpa created that enough doubt and the other witnesses that they just couldn’t bring themselves to convict him. I would assume. What would be your take on that?

[28:04] Well, I mean, the whole thing is just so strange, like, you know, a jury sending out a note like, hey, where’s this document that we’ve never seen? You know what I mean? How did they know about that document? I did have that question. I’m glad you brought that up. How do you think they knew about that document even? I guess during the course of negotiations, it came up and they requested it.

[28:25] They deciphered during their, that this thing should exist. There should be a document like this that exists. I see. And so they send out a note saying, we’d like to look at this. And when they do, they come back with the other verdict. The Arenas, or I should say not all the Arenas, but Andrew Orena had some of the jurors over his house afterwards for like a little celebration. Yeah, yeah. And reading your book, I noticed that then when they’re trying to do appeals for their dad, they’re frantically trying to bring this relationship in and they cannot get that reintroduced to help with their dad’s case. Because it’s like this relationship between DiVecchio and Scarpa, that’s like a magic get-out-of-jail-free card, it seemed to me like for a while. Yeah, it was definitely, I guess, the number one choice of defendants trying to beat their cases. Really?

[29:18] Although in the end of that, right, DiVecchio beat his case too. Yeah, I was going to say, I wonder what DiVecchio has to say about this. He’s written a book. I need to get that book. And I’ve got another book here that really goes into that depth by this Peter Lance, Deal with the Devil. Yes, right, right. So it’s really got a lot. I’ve just kind of scratched the surface of it. I tried to get old of him, but he never did respond. I don’t think he does podcasts. I’ve never seen him on one. Well, now, hold on a second. I got a hold of him, and he got back to me. Yeah, DeVecchio. Which I was like, well, I’ll tell you the story. There’s a website you can visit if you’re working as a journalist.

[30:02] And retired FBI agents, you can reach them this way. Somebody at the FBI probably steered me that way.

[30:11] So I put up this thing. I get a message back from one guy who was involved in the arrest of Carmine Sessa and one of the Persco’s outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was like a huge arrest as the war was winding down.

[30:29] And this guy had some really good story to tell about how they’re staking out you know the steps of saint patrick’s cathedral and these four gangsters are planning what they’re going to do next and they swoop in and arrest them all i was like well you’re not going to do better than that you know what i mean it’s not yeah the next thing i know i get a message from linda vecchio which basically is kind of like saying i understand you’re looking for me and i’d be happy to talk Oh, well, cool. You did get a chance to get his take on all this. I guess there was an internal investigation, which dragged on for a couple of years, and he beat that. There were no charges, I should say. And then, you know, 2007, you know, the Brooklyn District Attorney just announces, you know, we’re going to charge him with four murders. Um and you know at this point de vecchio has been out of the spotlight for some time you know he’s living down in florida yeah you know and he writes in his book how uh he comes back to brooklyn and they have him in handcuffs in an office in the brooklyn da’s office you know and you know he’s charged with four murder cases uh one was uh the murder of mary barry yeah uh who was i think.

[31:48] Alphonse Persico’s girlfriend at the time? His girlfriend and he went into jail and he supposedly they sent some guys over and took all of her, you know, the jewelry he’d given her and they cut her out. He cut her off. Then it acted like they were going to give her a job because he was worried that she could talk about it. Right, exactly. And Scarpa and Scarpa’s son Scarpa killed her. There’s no doubt about it. Scarpa’s son was he testified that himself and of course scarpa bought his way out of that with uh his relationship with the bureau one of the murders he he got free of because of the vecchio but that linda shiro claims that the vecchio said you need to do something about barry and and maybe gave him an address with kind of a you know a wink and a nod kind of a thing right right right right, There was another friend of the younger Persico’s, Patrick Torco, who was killed because Scarpa thought he was going to rat on his son at some point.

[32:56] Uh lorenzo lampazzi i hope i’m pronouncing that correctly was a guy on the Orena side during the war he was charged with that murder as well and then there was another friend of uh serpico jr serpico god almighty persico jr yeah probably had slipped there yeah exactly and uh there was some concern he was going to become a born-again christian and then at that point if he finds god perhaps we’ll find and uh someone he can tell the whole story or two about what’s going on so he’s the uh he’s the fourth victim and and again d’avecchio is charged in those cases with you know working with uh persico and so when he goes to trial i mean look it was uh it was insane when the trial started you know what i mean it’s it’s out in brooklyn the courthouse is packed, yeah i mean here you have this guy who i think at one point was regarded as one of the fbi’s best agents he did instruction for incoming guys you know what i mean and they do the internal investigation, and he comes out at the other end of that with no charges. And so here’s the last big swing they’re going to take at this guy with Charles Hines, Joe Hines, and the Brooklyn prosecutors. And then the whole case fell apart in one day.

[34:12] That’s what I read about it. They somehow discredited a witness, and I can’t remember what it was now. Actually, I know the answer to this one. Oh, good. I know, but I forgot all of a sudden. Yeah. She testifies, among the people who are there are two reporters, Tom Robbins and Jerry Capici. They both worked, like me, at the Daily News at some point. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. And they had done interviews with her.

[34:45] Maybe like 10 years earlier yeah that was some time with scarf with scarper’s girlfriend linda shiro correct and uh they had done interviews with her for possible maybe a book project or something yeah uh and it all fell apart um but they they saved the tapes and so when she testifies they get in touch with each other and uh they find that they find the old tapes and uh what she says on the tapes is far different than the damning testimony that she gave under oath the day before, or I guess the same day. And so when they got to court the next day, the case was dismissed. The judge, if I recall correctly, told Linda Shearer, the next thing you should do is find yourself a defense attorney. And so their last big shot, Linda Vecchio, collapsed like the old house of cards in the course of 24 hours. I actually like this. This is a good little touch that I like.

[35:43] He went out to celebrate at Spark Steakhouse.

[35:50] So I guess they walked a walk past the old Castellano parking space, you know? Yeah. That guy, he had a sense of irony, maybe, a sense of history, a good sense of history, you know? Yeah well i mean look uh again i did not expect to hear from him uh he gave me oh yeah i’m surprised myself he answered all questions uh he was very insistent he had done nothing wrong much like you said it was a great surprise to me to hear from him but uh he was super cooperative he didn’t blow off any questions you know i learned a little bit about his uh earlier career which was interesting he was a very highly regarded agent um and i believe there were like three or four dozen, FBI agents who filled the courtroom on that first day of, uh, of opening statements and testimony. So there were guys that he worked with who, uh, who had his back and, and who backed him up. Well, it’s, like I said, you get in and working with these informants, the really good guys, the ones that there’s no stuff and are good criminals there. It’s, it’s a constant battle with them to, for the, who’s going to be in control and, And, you know, they can, they can then use you in the end.

[37:12] They’re going to use you or anybody else that can. I guess the secret is letting them think that they’re using you. Right. And actually you’re using them, right? That’s the secret. It takes a really skilled person to do that. I imagine it would. Yeah. Really skilled. I’ll tell you why. One quick little story. Here’s the kind of things these guys will do. I was, I met this guy at a strip club, right? So we go in there and meet another guy who, who was another policeman from another department who had actually introduced me to this guy. And, and he, he wasn’t really a mob informant, but he was a professional criminal and he knew everybody in that substrata, that professional criminal, you know, connected with the mob on one time and knew all the fences and, and he knew all these people, but he was always, you know, pulling at me. It is the kind of guy that even went to junior college and took law enforcement courses to find out what the police were doing. He had a stolen car operation himself. We’re sitting in a strip club, you know, having a merry old time. And he calls one of the girls over and he gives her some money and she leaves. And I’m watching. What the hell’s going on? She goes over and sits down and starts doing lap dances and talking with a guy with a snap-on tool uniform. And then my guy, he disappears.

[38:32] And I thought, oh, shit. As we saw, I remember seeing a snap-on tool truck when we pulled in the parking lot. And my guy goes out there and he comes back a little bit and he said, hey, he said, there wasn’t anything in that truck. I’m going, oh, my God. Oh, my God. You know, they do stuff like that to you, to try to pull you in a little bit. You know, you’d say something about, oh, it’s a nice watch you got there. You want one? I got two or three more just like it. So it’s a constant battle let me tell you, yeah larry this has been great this has really been fun and uh interesting story uh, Maybe not the last mob book that’s ever written, but I’ll tell you what, there’s been a plethora of it just in the last few years. Little Rick and the Great Mafia War. Guys, you better get this. It’s an interesting, easy read, and I promise you, you’ve got to learn about a little chunk of the New York or the Colombo War and the Colombo family and the later years of the mob before they really, you know, the 90s, when it just took a night. Nosedive, you’ve got to learn a lot of stuff that you didn’t know before. I sure did. Yeah, well, listen, thank you for having me. All right, Larry. I should leave with Len DiVecchio’s great line, which supposedly set off his coworkers. We’re going to win this thing.

[40:01] Was that the Columbo, the Persicos winning the Columbo War, or was that the FBI? Well, that was always the bone of contention. He insisted that he was saying that, you know, we, the FBI are going to win this war. And some of his colleagues went the other way. Yeah. And you’ll always have a couple of colleagues you work with that think the worst of you are going to go around and say bad things about you. That’s another problem when you’re doing this kind of thing. And you’re the stick and other guys are jealous. And so they’re going to somehow try to discredit you. So that’s another hazard of the business. All right. Larry McShane. Thanks a lot, Larry. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for reaching out. Take care, man. All right. See you. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, guys, that was a great story. It’s a really interesting little chapter in mob history in New York city. And I hope you get that book. Larry’s written. He’s a good guy. I really like talking to him. He’s, uh, he, he’s extremely helpful and he sent me a couple of three extra copies of the book. So I’ve got a couple of friends here that I’m going to be giving those two. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So if you are out there in a big SUV.

[41:14] Watch what you’re doing and watch your motorcycles. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, be sure and go to the website of the VA. That is, if you’ve been in the service, if not, there’s other places for help out there, but you got a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. And with that, you know, if you’ve got a problem with drugs or alcohol, go to Anthony Ruggiano’s website or his YouTube page, uh.

[41:40] I can’t remember the name of it all of a sudden. That’s okay. You can figure it out. Not get a hold of me. He’s got a hotline number. And if you’re on YouTube, you’ll see that hotline number right now. He’s got a hotline number, and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. So go see Anthony. He’ll straighten you out, get you in recovery. If you’ve got a problem with gambling, go to 1-800-BETS-OFF in Missouri. I don’t know what you have in other states, if that’s just a state-by-state thing or what. But there’s help for gambling. And you can have problems with gambling. Like starting off with bankruptcy and loan sharks coming after you and shit like that. So there’s help available for all those different things. Don’t forget, I have books and movies out there for sale.

[42:24] One last little sales pitch for myself. I’ve got, and also a pitch for a review. I’d like to get some reviews on that New York Mafia book I did, Big Apple Mafia and the Five Families or something like that. I just looked for my New York book, and I got the Chicago Outfit book, Windy City Mafia. And my book, you’ll see over my shoulder here, is the Leaving Vegas, how FBI wiretaps in and mob domination in Las Vegas casinos. And I’ve got my documentaries. I’ve got three great mob documentaries all streaming on Amazon for $1.99.

[43:02] And other than that you know you might want to check my uh gangland wire podcast group out uh if you can’t it’s a private group now we had to do that to get rid of the scammers and spammers and all that and then start went private and then ace people out so if you can’t quite figure it out well get hold of me and i’ll send you a link and don’t ever hesitate to ask me any questions you make comments on my youtube ask me questions you know i like to interact with people and maybe hear your stories and you can tell your stories on that too. So thanks a lot, guys.

In this special episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins takes a deep dive into the life, career, and controversy surrounding Pete Rose, the legendary Major League Baseball icon who recently passed away at 83. Known as “Charlie Hustle,” Rose’s name is forever etched in baseball history with franchise records in games played, hits, and runs scored—primarily during his storied tenure with the Cincinnati Reds.

Gary reflects on Rose’s gritty, high-energy playing style, recalling key moments like his controversial performance in the 1980 World Series, a memory that holds special weight for Kansas City fans. But Rose’s career wasn’t just about records and accolades—it was also marked by one of the most notorious scandals in sports history.

This episode tackles the darker side of Rose’s legacy: his gambling addiction. Gary explores how Rose’s betting habits led him into dangerous territory, including associations with mob-connected bookies, mounting debts, and investigations that eventually culminated in the damning Dowd Report. With evidence linking his bets directly to baseball games—including some he played in—Rose’s choices ultimately cost him his place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Listeners will hear a detailed breakdown of Rose’s gambling spiraled out of control, the organized crime figures behind his wagers, and the broader integrity implications for the sport. Gary shares his perspective on the ongoing debate: Should Pete Rose be reinstated, or does the scandal outweigh his accomplishments?

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.

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, there’s that little special extra for you guys. Because of the passing of Pete Rose, former MLB star, I want to talk about what happened to him. He died of natural causes last week at age 83. You know, this guy was a hell of a ballplayer. I’m sure most, I think everybody should know who he is, but if you don’t, I’m going to tell you a little bit about him. He mainly played with the Cincinnati Reds. He also played with the Phillies and maybe the Expos for a short period of time, but mainly the Phillies and the Reds. He set Cincinnati Reds franchise records like you couldn’t believe, and he became the face of the Reds. After he retired from baseball, he became the Reds’ manager for a period of time. We remember him pretty well in Kansas City because he played for the Phillies in 1980, and they beat us in the seventh game of the 80s series. He’s a Cincinnati native, and he was the all-time leader for the Cincinnati Reds in games played, 2,722, played appearances, 12,344.

[1:08] Runs scored, 1,741, hits, 3,358, singles, 2,490, doubles, 601, and walks, 1,210. I guess he wasn’t a big home run hitter, but anyhow, he was a hell of a player. Plus, defensively, he was magnificent. He was hustling all the time. And his whole career, he had 4,256 hits. Now, anybody that goes over 4,000 hits is a pretty big deal in baseball. He was a hustler like you couldn’t believe, both on the field and off the field. You know, once early in his career, he drew a lot of criticism for taking out a catcher in an all-star game when, you know, there’s nothing at stake there. But he is blasted home, and the ball beats him home, and he just takes out that catcher. He played with complete abandon, if you ever remember seeing him play.

[2:05] But he had an Achilles heel, and that’s why we’re here today. He was either a gambling addict, or at the very least, he wanted to gamble on sports so bad that he risked his entire career.

[2:17] Over several years as he placed bets on baseball and other sporting events. He liked basketball, too. But he placed these bets with mob-connected bookies, and either it was directly to a mob-connected bookie or it was to a guy who was like a picker would, but he was connected to the mob. Because if you’re going to bet with a sports bookie, trust me, you’re within one degree of the mafia.

[2:42] Because of his recent death, I want to take a look and see what evidence they had that caused Major League Baseball to react so strongly, because they banned him from ever participating in any league activities. He was already retired when this came out, and this ban has kept him from induction in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

[3:01] A lot of controversy about that. Now that he’s dead, I got a feeling they might put him in. But if he had not got caught up in the betting scandals and that hadn’t come out he would have gone in the hall of fame at the very earliest opportunity on the because of his skills on the field you know and i forgot i think i say i always think of him as being with the reds but i should remember that he played with the phillies in 1980 he played in the 70s and most of his career with the cincinnati reds but but he played with the phillies in 1980 he played against us beat the royals in the world series in 1980 i’d forgotten all about that i remember watching him he was he played with a passion that guy played at 150 000 miles an hour every play i don’t know you know i read somewhere about one of his wives or his wife was seen going to kmart wearing a you know like a ten thousand dollar fur coat driving a rolls royce so he was kind of uh kind of one of those kind of The guy is a guy from a humble background that made it big, but it’s hard for him to deal with that. I know a kid that played baseball up in about a little bit younger than my son, and I knew the family.

[4:13] And, you know, the dad worked at the Ford plant as a forklift driver, and they were from South Missouri, and they were just, they were nice people, and they were country people, and they lived real simply. And this kid went on to become a major league pitcher, and I think he’s gone now because they don’t last that long. But he was a big time. I won’t mention the names, but he was a big time pitcher, but he came from really humble backgrounds. So I had to imagine what effect that would have had on that family. I remember, like, you know, none of the kids went to college that I remember.

[4:45] The one brother is a little bit older, was more Scott’s age. He worked, he was an auto mechanic. I took my car to an auto shop up north there where I used to live, and he was working as the auto mechanic in there. So, you know, this kid goes on and becomes a multimillionaire in the end. Now, you know, you’ve got family with this really humble background, people that make working man’s wages, but yet you’ve got one family member who’s a multimillionaire. I wonder how that plays out. So I hope he took care of his family at Christmas time and I hope he set up his brother in his own repair shop if he wanted to do it. Back in the day, in the 70s, when he was this hotshot player, he was the king of baseball back then. He hooked up with a guy named Ronnie Peters out of Dayton, Ohio. And Ronnie Peters was actually controlled by the Chicago Outfit Gambling Organization. You know, a lot of these, you know, these Peckerwoods, Ronnie Peters, a guy like that, he’s pretty well got to be hooked up with a outfit in the Midwest like that with an outfit bookie.

[5:50] He’s got to kick bets up, but he’s got to kick money up. He’s got to have somebody to lay off to. He may need protection. But he was kicking up to a Chicago outfit mob crew leader named Dominic Basso. And Basso, he was in charge of all gambling operations in suburban DuPage County, Illinois, all of his life. But he also reached out into other places in the Midwest. You might wonder how they got on to Pete Rose. Not really going after Pete Rose, they were going after Dominic Basso. And they got his telephone.

[6:29] Back in the day, they had the mobile phones that you could put in your car. They weren’t really too mobile. They were pretty big. But they got on his mobile phone, got his mobile phone, and got some numbers, and started into it. And for some reason, I think Major League Baseball had already hired a thing called, a company called Business Risk International out of Oak Brook, Illinois. I think that’s a suburb of Chicago. And there’s a former FBI agent who met with one of the prosecutors, one of the DuPage County prosecutors, which that guy won’t confirm or deny. And he was able to inspect the Basso court file and all the evidence. In that evidence, they found a list of 130 bettors, all identified by co-names with amounts of money next to those numbers. And the prosecutor would say that those numbers, that amounts of money total more than $225,000, which is a lot of money for one person. It indicated to them he was more of a supervisor over other bookies.

[7:33] Which would then lend credence to the allegation that this Ronnie Peters out

[7:39] of Dayton, Ohio, was dealing with Dominic Basso out of Chicago. They ended up creating a report called the Dowd Report. The Dowd Report’s kind of the go-to document. If you want to look that up, folks, look up the DOWD Report. Talks about where Rose would even bet directly with Dominic Basso, phoning him and his Chicago residents to call in his bets. Now, he denied knowing Basso. His original bookie, Ronnie Peters out of Dayton, Ohio, he ended up getting shot. He survived it in 2002, but he got shot. I don’t know what he did exactly, but that happens to many of these guys. January of 1991, the Chicago Crime Commission public identified Dominic Basso in a report titled Organized Crime in Chicago, 1990. He was identified as working for mob chieftains Ernest Rocco Infelice, Donald Angelini, Dominic Cortina, and Salvatore De Laurentiis. When he ended up playing for the Phillies, that’s when he went to the Philadelphia mob guys. But let’s finish off with the Chicago connection because that’s really where they got him. He made calls, listed to Bassos.

[8:53] Home to other Basso-operated sports betting operations. He denied knowing Basso. Now, when he gets to Philly, he starts dealing with somebody else. When he first arrived in Philadelphia in 1979, he began betting through bookies connected to area mob figures Ralph Jr. Staino, Joseph Joypung Pungitore, and FBI and other street sources have confirmed that. During the 1980s, he got hooked up with a Staten Island, New York-based bookie named Richard Big Val Troy and began betting even larger amounts of money on different sports through him.

[9:35] Big Val Troy was linked to the Bonanno, Colombo, and Genovese crime families. By the mid-’80s, Pete Rose, according to this Dowd report, owed this Troy $200,000 in gambling debts. Troy was eventually busted in 2003 for illegal union activity, and it was connected with the organized crime family in New York. He was busted in the same investigation with three different mob guys of the Columbo and Genovese family. John Jackie Zambuca de Ross with the Columbos, Ernest Ernie Boy Muscalera, and Pasquale Scoop de Luca of the Genovese crime family.

[10:23] The Dowd report includes testimony from people that Rose bet as much as $2,000 on the Reds in every one of the 52 games over the two-month period of 1987, and he won 29 times. They also detail in that report baseball bets in 1985 and 1986. They never did accuse him of betting against his own team. It’s not really that he was…

[10:48] But how much he was betting, as much as it was as who he was betting with, that he put himself in danger and risk of exposure to these mobsters, which could then turn around and use it as blackmail. They had in a Dowd report, they have a taped conversation between a man named Bertolini, who was Rose’s partner in Hit King Market Incorporated. This is a company that represents autograph a member of baseball memorabilia shows. Now, Pete Rose is big in selling his autograph and baseball member a billion. That’s kind of how he made money after he got booted out of baseball. In this, his partner is a Mr. Jansen, and he will allege that he placed thousands of dollars in baseball bets for Rose. And in some of these taped conversations, Bertolini acknowledges Rose’s enormous indebtedness to New York bookmakers and said, he, Bertolini, is the only proof of Rose’s betting he would die before he told on Rose. When confronted with this tape, Rose said Bertolini was lying. This conversation was between Rose’s partner Bertolini and one of his bookies, a guy named Jansen. I don’t know how, I mean, Rose would have to say Bertolini was lying. When he said he knew that he was betting on baseball and he was the only proof of Rose’s betting. Otherwise, it just makes it true.

[12:15] Jansen alleged that he went to Rose’s attorney, a guy named Reuven Katz, in 1988, seeking payment of debts from Rose and told Katz that Rose had bet on baseball. So his little hidden secret was going to leak out sooner or later. Now, also in the Dowd Report, There’s copies of purported betting sheets.

[12:38] Obtained from Rose’s home, which contained baseball and basketball gambling activity with a win or a W or an L, a win or a lose next to each team. I did that once on a bookie. I got his trash and we had, he had all these betting sheets where he had been taking bets. I could decipher them and I could figure out how many bettors he had. I just had like code names, initials and in the mound, there’s 28 teams. And so they would play 14 games every week. So anytime, if you’re looking at something a bookie has, if there’s a list of numbers and there’s 14 numbers or how, you know, now there’s more, I believe, but there’s 14 numbers, then there’s, there’s 14 contests every weekend. You know, you’ve got the list that that’s like a giveaway. That’s something you could testify that, yeah, this is a list of the sporting events that weekend. Then you got to decipher the other numbers and what do those mean?

[13:29] And, you know, they’re pretty simple. Sometimes you put a W or L next to them. I’m not sure how this Dowd report came into possession of these sheets, but they got them, and they tied them to his home. It’s also included on these sheets were notations of April 10th, 11th, 1987, and next to those dates, it had the Cincinnati Reds, and they were designated with a W, and the Reds did beat San Diego on both those dates. Handwriting expert looked at those notes and testified that Rose was the author of the hand-printed and numerical entries on those sheets.

[14:03] I also had a statement of this Ronald Peters, who will leave by 2003, will get shot. Franklin, Ohio bookmaker Ronald Peters, and he testified that Rose won $27,000 in May of 1987 and $40,000 in June of 1987 on baseball bets, which include games on the Reds in which he was playing in that contest. Peter said that he refused to pay Rose all this money because Rose owed him from previous losses of $34,000. He actually filed a lawsuit on this. I probably filed for an injunction to lift the ban from baseball, more than likely, presented evidence, got a denial in lower court. They appealed it in the federal system, appealed it to the appellate court, and they denied any way to move it back to state court. So I’d say he was pretty well done, except for just the graciousness and the

[15:01] goodness of Major League Baseball, and they’re not giving in. Although if you noticed, he’s still trying to get reinstated in baseball, And if you notice during the World Series this last year, he has gotten a job as a commentator with one of the, I think, Fox News or somebody. But he’s in kind of a big-time job as a commentator. I’m not a big Pete Rose fan myself.

[15:26] 73 years old, still fighting to get reinstated. He’s written a book. He denied the accusations of his gambling on games that he actually participated in. But he did finally admit in this book that he bet on the Reds when he was managing them. He managed the Cincinnati Reds from 1984 to 1989. He’s got a book out, My Prison Without Bars, if you want to learn more about this. Now, guys, that was a short story about Pete Rose and his gambling activities. Now, any group of baseball fans will find both supporters and haters of Pete Rose. Me, I don’t particularly like him, probably because of the 1980 World Series.

[16:04] I don’t think that it’s much of a defense that he never bet against his own team. So, you know, I didn’t bet against my own team, so you can’t ever accuse me of throwing a game trying to win extra money. You know, I don’t know. I think that’s a pretty slim pig to hang your hat on.

[16:25] In my humble opinion, we’re trying to maintain a civilization here, guys. And just like the mafia or any law enforcement agency or political jurisdiction, we can only maintain a civilization if we have rules and everybody has to follow the rules. And if everybody that doesn’t follow the rules has to pay a penalty for the failure to follow the rules. Now, I understand some people get away with it for a long time, but mainly they don’t. And when they don’t, then the rest of society sees, hey, there’s a penalty to pay. And so I’m going to follow the rules. We’ve got to follow the rules. As Neil Delacroix said, you know, without the rules, we got nothing.

[17:06] But I do believe in mercy as long as justice has been served. In the case of Pete Rose, as much as we hated him here in Kansas City during that 80 World Series, I think it’s time to let up on his old dead body that lies moldering in the grave. And I think the message that was sent by MLB or Major League Baseball that kept him out of the Hall of Fame, kept him off the baseball field, kept him through his entire retirement, except for a few things here recently, last couple of three years, they wouldn’t allow him, you know, to be honored or anything in any stadium. And I think that is a message that has not been lost on other major league baseball players and other athletes in every sport. They let you know what this lets you know what proper behavior is and what it isn’t. And gambling on your sports that you’re playing is not proper behavior. In baseball, we have others like San Francisco giant Barry Bonds and Cardinal slugger Mark McGuire, who both got caught taking steroids when they broke major league home run records. So they get an asterisk, I believe, in the record book, and they probably will not allow them in the Hall of Fame until maybe after their death.

[18:24] So anyhow, you can always get in an argument, but other people think, oh, he never bet on his own team to lose. So, you know, who cares if he bets? Well, it’s like I said, in my opinion, my humble opinion, we’ve got to have rules. We’re going to have a civilization. And if you don’t follow the rules, then there’s a price to be paid. And for these guys and even their descendants, no matter what happens, their careers will always be stained by these scandals. Well, let me know what you think in the comments down below. We can probably get some real good discussions going on, pro and con on Pete Rose going into the Hall of Fame.

[19:00] If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, which I don’t think Pete did. He had a problem with gambling. There’s no doubt about it. You know, any addiction, if you have a problem with repeated use of activity of whatever you’re doing that’s causing you a problem, you just keep doing it over and over again, expecting different results, then it’s probably addiction. We won’t call him a gambling addict, but, you know. And if you do have that problem, if you go to the casino a lot and play those machines and you just, you can’t, you know, you need to know you need to stop, but you can’t seem to do it. You find yourself down there again. Why, you know, there’s help for you. There’s always, there’s 1-800-BETS-OFF-IN-MISSOURI and every state that has gambling. And on the betting apps, they’ve got some information about where you can get help for the gambling addiction.

[19:48] Because those are the guys that end up with loan sharks and those are the guys that end up getting beat up and losing jobs and losing businesses and that kind of thing. So, you know, it’s all up to you. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol only, you can go see Anthony Ruggiano down in Florida, former Gambino guy who’s now a drug and alcohol counselor. He has a hotline on his website or his YouTube page. If you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, Just be sure and go to the VA website and get that hotline. So thanks a lot, guys. You know, I always got stuff to sell. We don’t need to go down that path. Just check my name and Google my name or go to Amazon and see what I’ve got. You know, I tell you what I would like. I’d like to get some more reviews on my New York books. You’ve bought that book, a Kindle book or whatever. See if you can’t figure out how to get into Amazon and put a review or two on that book. So thanks a lot, guys.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, Gary and retired FBI agent and mafia historian Bill Ouseley discuss the creation of the Kansas City Narcotics Syndicate, which emerged during the prohibition era as local mobsters adapted to the loss of revenue from bootlegging. The conversation explores how the organization capitalized on international trade routes—from Turkey to Sicily, France, Canada, and the U.S.—that were central to drug trafficking operations, including the infamous French Connection. Bill provides insights into the efforts led by Harry Anslinger, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to combat these syndicates. Despite Anslinger’s tenacity, the Italian-Sicilian Mafia managed to turn narcotics into a lucrative enterprise. Kansas City played a significant role in this operation, with mob figures like Joe and Frank DeLuca orchestrating the drug trade as a formal, business-like entity. Tune in to learn about the federal crackdown, spearheaded by local narcotics agents, which ultimately disrupted this shadowy chapter of organized crime history.

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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.

So anyhow. Well, anyhow, that’s a, that was a little aside folks. Uh, we’re gonna talk about the Narcotic Syndicate in Kansas City as an example. We got you up to, you know, creating this, uh, uh. Organization to, to fight these narcotics organizations. And, and they were developed with international connections and, and trade routes from Turkey to Sicily to maybe France, uh, um, Canada to the United States.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with retired FBI agent and organized crime historian Bill Ouseley for a deep dive into the Mob’s transition from bootlegging during Prohibition to dominating the narcotics trade.

Ouseley, known for his books Open City and Mobsters in Our Midst, shares insights from his years investigating the Kansas City crime family and the Vegas skimming cases. The conversation traces how organized crime evolved after Prohibition, finding new profit in the rising black market for drugs. From the early days when narcotics were sold in pharmacies and corner stores to the complex, international networks run by the Mob, Ouseley explains how organized crime adapted and thrived.

Jenkins and Ouseley discuss the rise of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the societal shift in attitudes toward drug use, and how policy changes created a perfect storm for the Mob to exploit. Ouseley highlights how figures like Harry Anslinger pushed for punitive drug laws that unintentionally fueled organized crime, and how the government’s focus on punishment over treatment helped entrench addiction and criminal networks.

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.

3:20 The Rise of Narcotics in the Mob

5:22 Early Drug Regulation and Public Response

8:23 The 1800s: Opium and Society

12:08 Government Approaches to Drug Issues

13:54 The Impact of Prohibition on Narcotics

17:42 Consolidation of Narcotics Operations

24:17 Anslinger and the Federal Response

36:26 Kansas City’s Narcotics History Ahead

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, it’s Gary Jenkins,

[0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. Welcome to Gangland Wire. I have a friend of mine that I’m interviewing today. You might notice there’s not going to be any video with a bunch of images in there. It’s FBI agent Bill Ouseley. Bill, he was the case agent for all the skimming from Las Vegas cases from the Kansas City end. We worked with him over the years hand in glove in the intelligence unit. And he’s a good guy. He still lives in Kansas City. He’s written a couple of books, by the way. He’s got Open City, which is the history of the Kansas City mob, starting back in the Black Hand days and going all the way up till about the time he came here in the early 60s. Then he wrote a second book, which is really about his career and all the different cases he worked with additional information about the local Savella family, which would have been the Savella family by the time he got here in the, I think, 1964, maybe. I graduated from high school in 63.

[1:02] Today, we’re going to talk about the history of the mob and narcotics. You know, it’s all a much-discussed subject that whether they approve of them dealing in narcotics. You know, they do on the QT, they do in different ways. They invest money, maybe loan money and high rates of interest, if you will, to narcotics dealers or some of them, you know, deal directly. You know, the Bonanno family was famous for dealing directly with narcotics. Genovese went to jail for dealing in narcotics. So historically.

[1:34] Kansas City, I don’t believe Nick Savella really, he did not approve of it. He didn’t allow his guys to do it directly. There were some people that were indirectly involved in narcotics. Now, whether they kicked money up or whether they were using their own money or somebody else’s money to invest in these narcotics operations, we never really found out. Those books are, I’ll have links to them down below in the show notes. So you might want to get those if you want to know a lot more about the Kansas City crime family and his work here. And by the way, so many of those cases in that book that the second book, Mopters in Our Midst, I think I forgot to say the name of that, Mopters in Our Midst. A lot of those cases I’m reading the book when I first got, it’s like, well, I was there. I did that. I, you know, I, I stirred up this little bit of information and, and which the Bureau then takes and runs with, which is what we do. You know, we, we like, maybe they’ll come to us and they’ll hear about something and we’ll go out and, and run surveillances and get license plate numbers and bring them back. And it’ll help them make, make sense of what’s going on, whatever the investigation ends up being.

[2:44] Today, now listen up. We’re going to plumb the depth of Bill Ouseley’s knowledge about the earliest days of narcotics and the laws that were developed and society’s look at narcotics. To me, it may be a little bit dry for you, but I think it’s a really interesting conversation that I have with Bill. Thanks a lot, guys. With the end of Prohibition, they needed a new field.

[3:13] Narcotics was now starting to become a big deal. You know, it was not just the

[3:18] Chinese and the opium dens. So during Prohibition, the mob didn’t really pay much attention to it. They kind of kept their fingers in a little bit. Yeah, because Cork got arrested and this guy got arrested. And there were guys dabbling in it. But it wasn’t the moneymaker that it became. I see. Until the mob gets into it, then they get in. And that’s what the story is here. One of the earliest of these groups to put narcotics on a major business basis was Narcotics Syndicate here. The Kansas City Narcotics Syndicate. And the story of how they put it together. And then, of course… In 1930, finally, they came to the conclusion the laws were good, but they needed to be enforced. And in 1930, the Bureau of Narcotics was established.

[4:14] Anslinger came in. He was a tough guy. What interested me was not only the beginnings of so many of these Cosenostra families and how they started, and that’s what I covered in Open City, the history of the beginnings of the Kansas City family. But as I went through that, what was very interesting to me on a sociological basis was how the mob continually followed and prospered as regulation came in. The greatest of those examples, prohibition. They regulated liquor. Thousands and millions wanted liquor. Somebody had to provide it. And the mob was there or was created during that period. I could go through sports, horse racing, boxing, and all sorts of areas that the government or the state decided to come in and regulate that particular activity. And then somebody had to fulfill the black market need because the customers don’t just quit.

[5:19] You know, prohibition came in. If anything, it made more drunks. So anyway, one of the stories within the story is how this happened with the narcotics situation and that maybe it wouldn’t have been as big as it became if there had been more thought behind legislation, more enforcement.

[5:43] More dedication to eradicating the problem rather than just at the time suppressing it. You have to go back, and where are.

[5:53] We’re talking now about the Midwest and Kansas City. This has been duplicated in other areas. But keep in mind that my focus is on what happened in our area. Again, it’s mirrored around the country. But in the 1800s, there was drug use in the 1800s. It was recreational. It was doctors prescribing these elixirs and opium-based medicines. People’s problems. They were even treating addicts by just keeping them in supply. There was no regulation at that time, no government regulation. Most states didn’t bother with it. And at that time, they sort of blamed the problem as it developed on the Chinese.

[6:45] Most of the opium coming in was coming in from China. The Chinese had the opium smoking dens and what have you. And it was a major situation at that time. But as with all of these vices, the time came when the public became concerned. And just like they were concerned with liquor, that led to the prohibition. This happened with the drug use, which was unregulated. And the social workers and activists in the community started to raise the issue, and that led to the first regulation by the government of any substance, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1908. So regulation began then, in a sense. Soon, states started jumping in with laws and regulations and what have you. What we need to also focus on, because of how this developed, is who were the pool of drug users at that time?

[8:01] They were the street people, thieves, pimps, whores, the police characters. This was not your corporate board. This was not cocaine up on Madison Avenue. And many, many women were addicted.

[8:18] There was a product called Laudanum, which was an elixir, and it had opium in it. And they took it for various reasons. And if they couldn’t get it, their doctor would prescribe it for them. In fact, the doctors continued to be an enormous supply of opium at that time. So, you have to consider the character of the pool of users that was available. It wasn’t a big deal.

[8:47] But with regulation, as it always happens…

[8:51] The criminal element starts to come in because as you suppress one thing, that need has to be fulfilled. And when it’s things like alcohol or drugs or betting, sports betting, or wanting to go to the prize fights and it’s illegal, they’ll make it legal. I’m kind of curious about the, yeah, really, the 1800s, my dolly off for women with menstrual cramps. Yeah, well, they did a little dose in between. But now, like, I always think of these early days of narcotics and why it even started regulating it as a crime rather than some kind of a medical problem. Because that’s the that’s kind of the deal today. You know, wait a minute is maybe this we’re not doing so well regulating this as a crime. Maybe we should look at this as a medical problem. So back then, now, part I’d always thought was because, part of because what you said about it was criminals who already were wanting to take drugs and get high and maybe use that as a substitute for alcohol. Either one will make you high and only one of them, you know, it smells on your breath and you start stumbling around a lot worse than maybe if you’re taking some kind of opium or you’re smoking opium. It seemed like they just nod out. But anyhow, be that as it may, I just wonder why was that like the only way they had to look at it as a law enforcement criminal issue rather than, well, these women, they seem to be needing this stuff more and more.

[10:20] That seems to be a problem. Shouldn’t we do something medically?

[10:25] Well, I can’t address all of the reasonings that went behind it, but I think it’s inherent in how the government approaches things. Initially, they’re looking at taxing this product as a way of regulating it rather than enforcing it or, as you say, going at it from a different direction. It was pretty much the same with alcohol. Why not treat the drunks? No, they banned alcohol. So the government sort of doesn’t look from that standpoint. In fact, there was a huge argument when the next major legislation came in, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, there was a huge to-do about, well, are you people just looking to make money? You don’t care about this thing.

[11:21] You’re going about it as taxation. And they said, well, no, we’re not. You know, we’re going to ban something and lose revenue if you’re talking about taxation. But you can see there was this dichotomy in people feeling how it was being approached. But all I can say to it is from what I see in history, how the government approaches is these type of things, vice kinds of activity, gambling, drinking, boxing, horse racing, all at one time, all they tried to do is regulate it. They never looked at any other alternatives.

[12:03] And usually they never had sufficient enforcement to go with it. And that’s what caused a lot of the problem. I think probably Bill and.

[12:14] More than likely, it’s because a lot of people that are attracted to that may be kind of on the gray areas of life anyhow that are attracted to heavy drinking, to bars, to gambling and prostitution and things like that. And plus, there’s, of course, prostitution. There are certain biblical prohibitions of things like that, and probably narcotics use. I think of the early, in the 30s, narcotics use, you always thought of the jazz musicians and people that lived in that kind of netherworld, if you will, kind of exist in that, not in the Square John world and not in the total criminal world, but kind of in between in those kinds of worlds. Maybe that may be some reason why they looked at it more as a, let’s make this into more of a crime and more of a crime, and that’s a way to control it. Well, I think you have a good point there because.

[13:06] As I said, this pool was not a huge pool. I mean, there were a lot of narcotics users, but as I say, it wasn’t the social problem that it became where the middle class, the high class, the wealthy, the entertainment field, where, you know, drugs became as common as a Coors Light beer. At that time, they may have thought, you know, this is restricted to a certain element. And if we can get the doctors out of this, we can handle a lot of it. And at first, the doctors didn’t comply. But then they started cracking down on them. And of course, that shorted the supply also.

[13:50] So gradually, we’re leading to a black market.

[13:55] And I won’t jump ahead of myself, but we’ll get to the point where these entities that developed are going to take a rather modest need and they’re going to grow it into something that we see in the last 50 years or so.

[14:15] There’s a shortage out there of this product, and there seems to be getting more and more demand. And to find more of this product, which would be an opiate at that point in time, I’m not sure where marijuana figures into this. It may or may not. It comes later. It comes later. And so it’s an opiate, and we don’t really seem to grow opium poppies. That’s where they come from in the United States. So that’s when they start reaching out overseas. And this is a point in time when the Black Hand is setting up in your various Eastern to Middle West cities, which were criminal organizations with ties directly back to the Mediterranean area. And best I can tell, I know they grow a lot of poppies in Turkey and around in the Middle East. And they have these natural old ties, trade routes, if you will, from Sicily back into Turkey and Lebanon and around the Middle East. Is that kind of how, you know, is that, would that be the genesis then of the organization of this, you know, this product and getting, creating a supply and bringing the supply in? And then finding the customers? Well, as this situation we talked about, we’re talking about the turn of the century, the early 1900s.

[15:39] The Cosa Nostra doesn’t exist. The Black Hand is really not coordinated or organized. They’re establishing themselves, trying to get a foothold, but they’re pretty much relegated to the little Itlis of the city. They can get drugs from their friends in Italy and all that, but they’re not of the ilk yet to establish really big labs over there and transporting it. And this is still the embryo stage. Now, they’re supplying a little bit of drugs to this small pool of nerdo wells. It isn’t even a big population of users yet. And then before they can really maybe organize if they’re thinking about drugs.

[16:32] Prohibition comes along. Well, now they’re diverted in their interest to something way bigger than narcotics. Your pool of people who want to drink and all of the side lights that go with alcohol was enormous. It was an enormous potential. And the mob, pretty much around the country focused their attention on Prohibition. So in this early stage, historically, the Jews in New York and other places, some of the other ethnic groups that were, they did most of the narcotics. The Italian-Sicilian faction wasn’t fully developed yet. Our family didn’t develop until Prohibition when all of the black hand groups came together. And they’re pretty well focused on liquor, and it’s huge. It’s huge. In fact, the international lines of communication established through prohibition would be used later for drugs.

[17:43] So at this era, it’s not a big thing yet. They’re dabbling in it. Some of our characters who were attached to the family were arrested for narcotics. There weren’t big sentences. Most of them did maybe a year, if anything. And so there wasn’t any suppression of it, really. So in this early era, the narcotics…

[18:08] Trade, at least in this part of the world here and in many other areas, was relegated to, as I say, to Jewish criminal organizations, Irish criminal organization, and the Italians would come in later. So this is, you know, we’re going 1933, 34 is kind of the prohibition is winded down. When did it end? I can’t remember.

[18:32] 1933. Let’s see. It went from 20 to 33. 33, okay, that’s what I thought. So, you know, it’s winding down. That’s got to be a huge loss of money because, I mean, they could turn their speakeasies into legitimate clubs. I understand that. But you can’t make near as much money off of a barrel of beer or a carton, a case of whiskey as you could before. And I always thought of them moving more into gambling at that time, maybe even a little bit of the continuing with some organized prostitution because it was more susceptible. Prostitution is not susceptible to organization today, but back then it was more susceptible to organization. And I always thought of that, but they moved into narcotics and particularly what would be an example of how that would work here in Kansas City. Because it would be representative in Kansas City as in every other Chicago and New York and probably Tampa and all the cities that had a major family would have worked the same way. Well, yeah, because when the drug business was put on a corporate level where they were going to not only deal with this small pool, but they were going to expand it.

[19:55] You know, just as they did in Prohibition. If there were 12 bars on Main Street, they put in 40. When they get into something, it isn’t just to supply some demand, take over where someone else left off.

[20:11] The Cosa Nostra is like Walmart. They are going to promote their products. As you said, that gambling was one of the things that they saw on the horizon. They knew the wind was, it was in the wind that prohibition was going to be ending. It had done its deal. The people didn’t want it anymore. And so they were aware of this. In fact, they were supposed to have had a major meeting in Atlantic City in the 30s to determine where are we going to go from here. And so gambling was one of the areas. is they said, okay. And then we saw the plush clubs, the carpet joints, the bookie operations, the racetracks that they got into. They went in full blast. But there’s always enough people to go into other directions. And one of the other directions they saw as a moneymaker and has had great potential was the narcotics industry. So with the, and let me back up just a minute here before we get into that era. One of the main historical events of that era was in 1930.

[21:29] They established the Bureau of Narcotics. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established, and it was to enforce the Harrison Act from 1914.

[21:43] As I say, it had not been enforced to any great degree. That was typical of the government.

[21:51] They didn’t correlate law with enforcement. The regulation created a black market. The drug situation wasn’t changing that much, but it was still small in relatively to prohibition. The narcotics agents were.

[22:13] Prior to that, the Harrison Act was updated, and they banned all importation of heroin. And no use at all, no medical use. It just, you couldn’t bring it in, but it was coming in. So Henry Enslinger, the first director, he dispatched his people to Europe to find the sources of this drug and how it was getting here. And what’s important about that, their early investigations abroad provided the intelligence of this blossoming criminal organization that would later become Cosa Nostra. They were the first and only NARC bureau in the federal government to cry out that this syndicate exists here, okay? By 1932, Cosa Nostra had consolidated. So we had that situation of at least one federal agency was seeing the writing on the wall. Nobody followed suit.

[23:21] One of the things that happened, Anslinger, when he took over, he was a very, very forceful director. He took this seriously. They were the first to start using, I mean, on a broad scale against a narcotics organization informants, undercover people, all of that kind of stuff, which was not very well used in that era. But he was the one who said, anyone that has heroin, you know, is guilty. So I think that’s where we came to the user being included. He wanted it that strong. This is Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Treasury Department intends to pursue a relentless warfare against the despicable, dope-bettling vulture who preys on the weakness of his fellow man.

[24:17] And he was also the one who lobbied and resulted in the first Marijuana Act, which was like 1938 or so. And because he saw all drugs as evil and had to be addressed. So the protocol of what’s heroin, what’s this, how they do it, pretty much was something I don’t know how exactly they labelized all these drugs, but they didn’t want any of them. It’s probably as Harry Anslinger decided this is heroin and this is marijuana and this is illegal. Well, you know, they had been exempting many of the medical facilities, even some of the major producers that supplied the hospital. They had made exceptions for some of these people. In fact, you know, they made the exception for the doctors back then, but they had restricted them. And, of course, with his money to be involved, the doctors continued to put out prescripts like we have today. You know, it was similar to the opioid situation today where…

[25:34] You know, pharmacies are in a town of 200 are filling 6,000 prescriptions for an opiate. And drug, the major drug people today are sending 100,000 units to a city of 10,000. You know, and they say, well, we don’t know anything about. It was the same thing here. The doctors, don’t you do that? Well, of course, so-and-so gets a prescription. Well, finally, they really started monitoring them, you know, with the drug people. They came in and they had to have records and what have you, and they sent doctors to jail. And that’s the best deterrent for a doctor. I guess it’s a little bit like during Prohibition, you could go to a doctor or a pharmacist and get medical whiskey. You can get a bottle of whiskey that was prescribed for you. Yeah, well, they could do— Yeah, if it’s only a teaspoon full with some lemon and honey.

[26:30] It’s a connect the dots kind of thing. We do this, they do that. We have to approach that and then they do this. And so many times that could have been prevented if the ramifications and fallout of my legislation, when I propose this, the fallout should be considered. You know, during our time, Gary, you may remember, Kansas promoted a bingo law. Oh, yeah, sure.

[27:05] And it had to go through a VFW or that type of club. They had to apply for the license. Well, there was no regulation to go with it. They had maybe one guy for the entire state or something. So the mob went in and created a group that was, I can’t think of the word now. It was like a straw group. It was like a nonprofit straw group when they did that and then set up a bingo game. And you looked at the board of directors of that nonprofit that was supposed to be taking that money and doing some kind of good with it. And it was all these different mob wives and in-laws and stuff like that. So, you know, this has been a historical problem with legislation. Maybe sometimes there’s nothing you could do. But I think a good example for our community here is when Missouri legalized the casinos.

[28:04] They used all of the intelligence and information and documentation from the Vegas cases that were broken, from the intelligence from they hired the right commission. My former boss, Bill Quinn, was put on the commission, and I knew he’d be honest that a day is long. And they have not had a big problem. No, not at all. So they did the right thing. Legislation combined with a consideration of the fallout and the unintended consequences. And you realize that when there’s a lot of money to be made, that you need to really vet the people who are in control of these things. And they didn’t really do that very well in the 30s. Politicians were a little bit shady already. And so they just did not do that at all.

[28:56] That’s what Dan Slinger and the Bureau of Narcotics said about doing. They were going to try to cut off the trade routes to find out where it was going, how it was going, who was involved. Of course, by this time, as they get into the 40s and all, they’re starting to put together the French connection, how the labs were in Marseille, they were hiding the drugs in various packages or whatever, you know, cars and boxes and pottery and whatever you could think of. And then later, the Sicilian Mafia, as they increased, they had their labs, they had their trade routes. So that’s what they were trying to develop. And the legitimate people who to get their drugs would have to go through a more legitimate process. These would have to be vetted places that are not labs in some basement. You know, these were accepted and regulated providers of opium. So there had to be some of those.

[30:09] And if you have an exception, and we don’t grow poppies here or make heroin, although I guess you could. I don’t know that about it. But there was a process for that. The problem was, as the drug addiction and the drug organizations grew, that became the problem. Not some guy trying to give a prescription for laudanum.

[30:36] And so the real problem that the Federal Narcotics Bureau had to address was the huge amounts coming in to very large, sophisticated criminal organizations. It probably started out just like it still has developed today in South America. You have a really poor community in Turkey, rural community where people barely live from hand to mouth. Anyhow, you’ve got these little farmers out raising these poppy fields, and a lot of them are being sold to the legitimate people. But they probably found out they could make a little extra money on the side, and you’re going to have criminal organizations all around the Mediterranean anyhow. So they, you know, organize some of these farmers and create, you know, poppy fields that aren’t on the book, shall we say. And then they figure out these other lines of transport, you know, on end to where you can get it refined. And then on where there’s a market over in the United States. And it’s exactly what’s happened in Colombia and Peru and Mexico and all over the Western Hemisphere. And I guess it really started back then, it appears to me like. Well, that’s a good point to bring up. First of all, you’re talking about foreign entities. You know, Turkey and wherever those countries are that have huge poppy industry, that’s big money for not only the government.

[32:05] That’s their, like you say, that’s their livelihood. The government isn’t going to suppress the poppy growers. Our State Department is, they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. I mean, they want to go to Turkey and say, we’re going to cut off all your money if one poppy seeds or any of this gets into our country. They’re not going to do that, you know, because the, well, political.

[32:31] We need their support. We need to put a missile base there. whatever it is. So these people have a free hand in growing poppies. Not much you can do about that. Once the syndicate says, we are going to put heroin on a major basis, then they go and make the contacts.

[32:52] They make contacts with that guy in Columbia, this farmer out here, and they make a contract. We’ll take all of the poppy that you can grow, and we’re going to give you more than you’re going to get. And then they create the illegal labs. The poppy seeds are transported to Sicily, to the French people, or whoever is establishing these illicit processing plants. The heroin is then produced there. It’s very difficult to suppress something like heroin from its origin in the poppy fields. And it sounds like this really started back in the early 1900s and just has grown and developed a little bit more. The more there is a demand, the more their supply is going to continue to grow because those turkeys poppy farmers aren’t going to grow a bunch of poppies that they don’t have someplace to sell. And so it’s just slowly but surely grown over the years. It goes back to what I mentioned is once the decision was made that.

[34:02] Drugs will be our major, one of the major things. We are going to expand to make money.

[34:10] Okay. Once, and of course, being that the Italian Sicilian people, mobs, had open connections to the old country, that helped. But once they decided drugs is going to be on our agenda, then the rest of the system started to come to play. They sent their people over. They made contacts. They made contacts with the people who could get the poppies, or they went and did it themselves. But generally, they relied on their compadres, other illicit drug operations, whether they be French or Turkish or what. The connections were made and the lines were open and that increased the whole system. So it goes back to what I said earlier. When the mom gets into something, it isn’t just to take care of a few people or to pick up where somebody may have left off. Their idea is to expand it into a business where we’re going to make new customers.

[35:24] We’re going to promote this. And what they did in the big cities was. The mob guys went into the ethnic neighborhoods, the black neighborhoods, the Hispanic neighborhoods, whatever, or any neighborhoods, the poor neighborhood, and they were like hawking drugs. They made it cheap to begin with. They hooked people, you know, but they promoted this. And so the entire system grew as the mob, mainly to Cosa Nostra, as they outlived all the other organizations. But as they grew and promoted this operation, that whole system of growing, transporting, laboratories, importation, that became a corporate entity.

[36:18] They had, you know, salesmen. They had whatever you need.

[36:22] And we’ll see that in a minute if we get to the Kansas City syndicate. Next time, we’re going to look at Kansas City narcotics and the Kansas City crime family and what they did in the narcotics trade. They were heavily involved back in the 30s. By the 60s, 70s, it doesn’t seem like they were so much. And no maid guys were for sure. But the brother of Nick Civella, Cork Civella, got caught with heroin back in 1935-36. Bill will tell us about that. Don’t forget, if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, if you’ve been in the service, you can go to the VA. If not, go to Anthony Ruggiano down in Florida. He is a former proposed member of the Gambino crime family now.

[37:10] He’s now never went into witness protection. I don’t think he testified against anybody. I can’t remember. I interviewed him. I should. But he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down there, and he’s got a hotline on his website, and maybe you can even go into treatment where he is. If you have a problem with gambling, 1-800-BETS-OFF in Missouri, every state that has gambling is going to have some kind of way to find some kind of help. If you have a problem with gambling, you know, gambling addiction is, that’s what the mob lived off of was degenerate gamblers that had an addiction to gambling, get that loan shark money out there and man you know you’re on the hook you’re their slave for the rest of your life so just keep that in mind and you start making all these bets and then you’re losing money and these prop bets on the uh the uh apps and all that and you know it’s just not for me and i’ve got good friends that that do that but you know it’s just uh if you do have a problem with it you know i’m just saying that there is a way out so thanks a lot guys uh don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles i forgot to say that you guys out there in your big old wif 150s watch out for us next episode we’re going to talk about the kansas city crime family and heroin thanks guys.

In this compelling episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Kurt Calabrese, son of infamous Chicago Outfit enforcer Frank Calabrese Sr. Kurt opens up about what it was like growing up in the shadow of one of the most feared men in organized crime and living through the seismic fallout of the Family Secrets Trial.

Kurt shares a deeply personal account of his childhood in Elmwood Park, an Italian-American neighborhood where the surface was peaceful but the undercurrent ran dark. He recalls days spent playing sports and evenings surrounded by neighbors who seemed like family—but behind the closed doors of their three-flat home, fear and control ruled.

As the episode unfolds, Kurt discusses the moment he began to understand the truth about their father’s real occupation. Taught to lie and protect the family’s image, they told classmates their dad was an engineer—masking a far more dangerous truth. The psychological burden of carrying this secret is a recurring theme in Kurt’s story.

Kurt paints a vivid picture of mob family dynamics, the juxtaposition of family life and violence, and the emotional toll of being raised by a man, he both feared and revered. He reveals the lasting impact of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father and how it contributed to his own diagnosis of complex PTSD.

Listeners will hear firsthand what living through the Family Secrets Trial was like, a landmark case that exposed the Chicago Outfit’s inner workings. Kurt Calabrese speaks candidly about the threats he and his family faced, the betrayal from his brother Frank Jr.’s cooperation with the FBI, and his complicated relationship with the truth, loyalty, and justice.

We also learn about Kurt’s marriage to Angela LaPietra—the granddaughter of another mob figure—and the intense family conflict that followed. From physical altercations with his father to the ripple effects on his children, Kurt doesn’t hold back. Click here for Kurt’s website.

Finally, Kurt introduces his podcast, Underbelly: Killing Kurt, where he digs deeper into his story to expose the unseen scars left by a life entangled in organized crime.

This episode is an emotional and eye-opening exploration of how mob life impacts not just communities but also the families at its core. Kurt Calabrese is not just telling his story—he’s reclaiming it.

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.

[0:03] in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a story today and an interview, as you can see. My interviewee is Kurt Calabrese. Now, Kurt Calabrese is from Chicago and he grew up in a Chicago outfit family. Now, a lot of you guys know, if you’re real mob aficionados, you know about the Family Secrets Trial. And his father, Kurt’s father, was Frank Calabrese Sr., his brother, Frank Calabrese Jr., who we had on the show several years ago. One of my earliest interviews, actually. And then his uncle, Nick Calabrese, ended up going to Witness Protection Program. And so that’s why they called it the Family Secrets Trial, because it was all centered around the Calabrese family. So I really look forward to talking to Kurt. And Kurt, welcome.

[0:53] Thank you, Gary. Thank you for having me. So, Kurt, we talked a little bit before the show. And, you know, what I found kind of fascinating in a way was partly not the

[1:04] mafia stuff particularly, but your childhood. You all grew up in this three-story or three, what’d you call it? A three-flat? Flat, yeah. Three-flat house where your father, mother, grandparents, your brother, you, your uncle, Nick, all lived in this same house.

[1:27] Now, tell us a little bit about what that was like. And you might talk about the neighborhood, too. So, you know, tell us a little bit about what that was like. Well, the house that we lived in, actually, my father had built. It’s a three flat. It’s three apartments. And he had a family room, a very big family room built onto the house also with a garage and a room in it. Very unique building that he had built. But he had it built for family. So we grew up there. We lived there almost our whole lives. And I was in a community called Elmwood Park. Which is a suburb right outside Chicago, in fact, right on the border of Chicago. A very quiet neighborhood, very, I’m not going to say ethnic, but a lot of Italian grew up there. A lot of different nationalities, but probably predominantly Italian. It was a very nice neighborhood to grow up in. Everybody knew each other, very closely knit neighborhood. One of those neighborhoods where you didn’t have to lock your doors. A lot of things went on in that neighborhood. It was a very closely knit neighborhood, and I enjoyed it. I loved growing up where I grew up because I had a lot of friends that I grew up with, and there was a lot to do.

[2:47] Outside of the house, we had a pretty normal childhood as far as playing baseball and hanging out with our friends and going to school and played football and basketball. A lot of sports inside our home was a little bit different than it was in other people’s homes, which I didn’t realize until I wasn’t a kid anymore when I realized that what went on in our house didn’t go on in other homes. Interesting. Now, I’ve noticed that in Kansas City, our little Italy section and other cities, I see people talking about their neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods.

[3:22] Back at one time, they were really safe. Nobody was going around breaking in houses, let alone robbing people on the streets. They were really safe because people took care of each other. They were out on the streets. They weren’t hiding back in their homes all the time. They were out on the streets. Said, there’s a stranger that came through there. You know, everybody had their eye on it. Believe me, I know it was a policeman working an Italian neighborhood, a Peckerwood policeman. You know, we call non-Italians or Peckerwoods down here. I don’t know if you call non-Italians Peckerwoods up there, but they call us Peckerwoods. You see a Peckerwood driving through there, you give him the eye, like, who is that guy? Was it like that in your neighborhood? Yes, it was. It was, you knew, like I said, everybody kind of knew each other. And if somebody came into that neighborhood and didn’t belong there or was doing something they shouldn’t be doing, it was, you knew right away. You were, there were people out on the street all the time. And I mean, it was one of a few Italian neighborhoods. I mean, there were probably five or six very strong Italian neighborhoods in the Chicago and Chicagoland area that were, you know, predominantly Italian and Elwood Park being one of them. And not to mention that, uh, you know, there was a lot of mob guys that lived in our neighborhood So that, you know, that was something that made people feel safe back then in those neighborhoods, you know, and people still talk about that because, uh, you know, you don’t really have neighborhoods like that anymore, unfortunately.

[4:45] Yeah. I have to ask in Kansas city, there was this deal started in Italian neighborhood. If you tied a red ribbon around your, uh, steering column, nobody would break into that car. Did you have anything like that? That warned people off? There was a mob car, Bob connected car. No, not really. I mean, you know, growing up a lot of, a lot of.

[5:06] Guys I grew up with and people in the neighborhood had, uh, horns hanging from their mirrors, uh, you know, the Italian horn, uh, which warded off evil and, you know, the evil eye. So, I mean, that, that was something that maybe could be considered similar, but a lot of, a lot of people that were Italian just had those hanging from their mirrors. So nothing like, like that, that I can remember. That was probably before my time. I saw one when I was a young police, but I saw when this guy got killed in his car, You know, I was overlooking at the car just out of curiosity. I was a street policeman still. There was a red ribbon around the steering column. So I thought,

[5:42] well, you know, that rumor is true. So growing up, your father and your Uncle Nicky are involved in this outfit business, shall we say. When did you first start to realize that there was something a little bit different? I know on The Sopranos, they did a whole show about the kids starting to realize that their dad was a little bit different than the other dads. When did you first notice that? It was grammar school, probably mid-grammar school. I started to, there were, you know, there was people talking and, you know, there was a story that was put in a newspaper. I think it was about sixth grade maybe. And it was on the front page of the newspaper was a picture of a house. And it was a story about, you know, organized crime, about the outfit. It was funny because that day.

[6:31] We didn’t get the newspaper a lot in our house, but that day, particular day, there was no newspapers around the area. So it was, you know, we weren’t supposed to see that, but, um, and we didn’t, I didn’t see it personally. It was pointed out to me by some friends. So I guess it would be easier to say that my friends kind of caught on quicker than I did. You know, what was going on? Again, that was going on, but what, that our lives were different, that my father was different, that what he did was different, you know, because as kids, we were told. You know, he was a engineer that he was, uh, he was in the carpet business that, you know, things to, to say to people if we were ever asked. So, you know, the way we were raised with an iron fist, you know, we followed whatever we were told to say. And so that’s, you know, that’s how we explained it when I get school, when your teacher would ask, what does your father do? Or your friends would ask, what does your father do? You know, those were the answers that we were given to give people. It seems like I remember your brother, Frank, saying that he was an engineer and, and like, you know, he would tell that at school and they would say like a, like a train engineer and say, no, like just an engineer. Like he didn’t really even know what that meant other than he was an engineer. Right. That’s where it ended. It was, he was an engineer. We couldn’t explain it because we didn’t know.

[7:51] So, you know, it was, you know, just an engineer. And when people ask, just an engineer, that’s what he was. And for most people in your community, that would probably be enough. They would say, okay, let’s move on. It was for people. The teachers wanted more, but friends and parents, that was enough for them. That was enough. You know, another thing I have noticed with mob families, and I find this fascinating that you have, on one hand, now I worked a lot of criminals as a policeman, but with mob guys, you have this family. You have children at home, you have Christmases, you have Easter,

[8:31] you have the normal holidays, you give presents. But I’ve talked to some mob kids and they talked about all the, what they didn’t realize at the time was all the swag that they would get in there and all the new stuff and boxes and some of the presents that would show up at Christmas time. Do you remember that? Was he bringing a lot of swag in for you guys as presents and to do things with? Yeah, not as much for the holidays, for Christmas and stuff, but there was always something in our house. There was always, like one time he came home with a box of hockey sticks. There was like 25 professional hockey sticks. They were, you know, and we didn’t think anything of it. I mean, we used them. Yeah. It was stuff like that. There was stuff that he would bring home in quantity.

[9:18] And, you know, again, we just, it was kind of, It wasn’t odd. It was kind of normal, but it was, if you go back to think of it now on, you tell people now, I mean, that’s, you know, evidently this stuff was falling off the back of a truck somewhere. Yeah.

[9:34] Yeah. It fell off a truck. The great euphemism for having some stolen property. Oh, it just fell off a truck. Oh, okay. I’ll take some.

[9:43] And what’s different about us, Gary, is we weren’t, we never asked. We were so, the discipline in our house was you really couldn’t ask somebody, hey, dad, where’d you get these? Or, hey, dad, how did you get these? It was just, you just, you know, you just lived. You didn’t ask questions about anything, especially if it was something that he was giving you. It wasn’t like, you know, hey, where’d you get this? Or, you know, where did this come from? It was just happy to have it, you know, which I think is different, was different in our home than it was in a lot of other guys’ homes that were part of that life. because, you know, my father wasn’t, you really couldn’t ask him anything. You really couldn’t, couldn’t really have a conversation with him about anything. Cause he just, you know, you couldn’t ask questions. You couldn’t, you just had to accept whatever was given you or whatever was

[10:32] told to you as an answer and you live with it. You deal with it. So that gets around to the, you know, next logical question is I believe he had a pretty violent temper. How did he express that in the home? Was it, I mean, out in the streets, he might kill somebody. He did kill several people in the home. He’s not going to kill anybody, but did you see a lot of evidence of that violent temper or did he keep it under control at home? No, he, he was very violent in our house. He, he was, especially with me, he was very, very hands-on. He was very abusive. He was very, you know, he, he bullied me.

[11:08] He, he wanted you to fear him and he, he enjoyed that fear. when he knew that you feared him. And I literally shook around my dad. I literally shook. I mean, that’s how he was with me. He was, you know, I mean, the beatings and the, you know, the abuse and the, you know, both physical and verbal, you know, that, that’s how he was with me, especially. And, and I don’t, you know, I can’t really answer why, you know, people have asked me, Hey, why was your dad like that with you? You know, I mean, he brought it home with them. It was in our house. And, you know, again, at an early age, he, you know, he involved us in his life, you know, gradually at the beginning. But I mean, you know, and I, me personally, didn’t want anything to do with that life.

[11:54] And reason being is I didn’t want anything to do with my dad. I mean, he was my dad and I loved him and I respected him. And I, and I, you know, I was there with, for him, for anything he ever needed all the way till the end. But I did not want to be part of anything he was part of because he just was the hardest person in the world to get along with. And he was he was abusive. And, you know, and again, you know, the why would you want to be around a world with someone who, you know, who’s that way? You know, I mean, he could have been a postman or, you know, or whatever.

[12:27] And I and if he was that way, I make me not want to be around them. And that’s, you know, he used the term sad sack when he referred to me in code. And the reason being is because if you looked at me, I had that look on my face my whole life. I just did not want to be around him. I feared him and I shook around him and he made me shake. And again, for nothing, just for, that’s just the way he was. And people, and once I saw people on the street act that way around him, you know, and a lot of things started to make sense to me. Yeah. You probably knew you had to walk on eggshells is what I hear you’re saying around him.

[13:09] And that continually abuse, that continual fear, even though he wasn’t going off at the present time, you never knew what was going to set him off. Right. And I guess one of your defenses was to just look down and be kind of downtrodden because you knew that was a way maybe to keep him from going off on you.

[13:30] Yeah, I would hope that it would, whatever, but it didn’t. I mean, when I, whenever I put my head down or I had that look on my face, he would, he would point it out and he would, he almost made fun of it. You know, that’s how, that’s how the sad sack came up. I mean, it was like a joke, you know, look, look at him. He’s, you know, it was always looks like a mope or always looks like, you know, the look on his face is like, he’s not happy. Well, I wasn’t happy. I mean, it was, I didn’t have a good poker face. So, and, and, and Gary, what you got to understand is this didn’t happen occasionally. This was every day. This was part of my life every day. This wasn’t an occasional him getting mad or him an occasional, you know, going, you know, going off on me. This, this way he was in walking on eggshells was every day. And it was, and that’s what I, what, what I want people to try to understand. And that’s what I talk about in, you know, in, in my, uh, in the podcast is, is, you know, this was every day. This wasn’t a portion of my life. This wasn’t, uh, this was every day. And, and, you know, it’s had, it’s, it has its effect on me. It’s had its effect. I mean, it’s still, still till this day. I mean, it’s never going to go away.

[14:37] I believe it. Matter of fact, we’ve been a little bit remiss.

[14:40] We should have brought this up earlier. Kurt is now part of a ongoing, I don’t know, eight, eight, eight, eight series of podcasts called underbelly killing Kurt, which is part of a larger podcast, a professional ran by a company, if you will, a podcast. And so they’re in the middle of that right now. You’ve got a couple more episodes, I think, come out, and then you’re going to do some wrap up. He even mentioned it, guys, to give you a little teaser on this podcast, you got to start listening to it. It’s good. I’ve listened to some of them myself. And at the end, Kurt said he gave me a little teaser. They might release some audio of his Uncle Nicky Calabrese at the end. Now, we don’t know for sure, and he’s not committing to me, but that’s a little teaser. You might get a little of the actual voice of Nicky, his Uncle Nicky Calabrese. Because if you remember, a lot of you guys are real aficionados, but after the skimming from Las Vegas trials took out, Angelo LaPietra, Iupa.

[15:44] Jackie Cerrone took out these high echelon guys. The next one was a family secrets trial in which his Uncle Mickey testified and his brother Frank testified and took down his dad’s crew for all these murders and also took down, I believe, Jimmy Marcello for the Spalatro brothers, which was kind of the next boss. I mean, it really, between those two prosecutions, just about decimated the Chicago outfit. Wouldn’t you agree, Kirk? Oh, yes. Yes, definitely.

[16:16] Had to be a really tense time. I guess your dad was in jail during the trial. But you’re talking about your dad. Now, when he realized that maybe there was something going on, you know, he saw surveillance on himself or he knew people were asking, FBI agents were asking questions in places that they shouldn’t be, that, you know, people that really might know something to hurt him. Did he get even more tense then? Was there a lot more anger? What was his life? I always wondered, does it ever bother him that we, as law enforcement, are after him? Does it ever bother him at all? They never acted like it.

[16:55] You know what he was he taught us at a young age to always be respectful to to everyone including law enforcement um never never give anybody a reason to you know to have a problem with you uh so he you know he was he was always the same way he was with people especially strangers especially people he didn’t know and he was very even keel he was you know he didn’t get excited I did when, when stuff was going on and, and a lot of stuff was going on at that time. Um, yeah, he, he was very, uh, you know, he, he, he was very edgy. He was very easy to, to get mad. I mean, but, but again, to me, that was everyday life. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t different to me, but people, you know, outside of his family, you know, noticed it, recognized it. And, um, you know, I, I, I don’t know. I think you’re probably aware of, I mean, during the family secrets trial, you know, my family was threatened. You know, I, I, my life was threatened. There was a, there was a fake bomb put on my porch at my home, uh, on the day of the jury selection for that case. There was, uh, rats put on my doorstep previously to that, um, two white rats with nooses around their necks.

[18:12] Um, so I, my life was a lot different than the stories you’re going to read in the family secrets books. And, you know, that’s one of the reasons why I did this podcast, because I wanted to be able to explain to people what I went through, what my family went through because of my father, because of the life that he chose for himself and for us. You know, and that’s where I think that’s a little bit more unique for people, because I actually dealt with that stuff. I mean, it didn’t happen to anyone else. It happened to me and I didn’t cooperate. Yeah. I refused to cooperate. I refused to talk. That’s one of the reasons why, you know, I’m speaking my piece now and doing the podcast. And when and the name of it, Killing Kurt, I mean, this story is killing me. It’s it’s it’s taken its toll on me, you know, especially since I came home from prison. You know, I did two years in prison. I made a deal, cut a deal and pled out so that my family could get their deals. The government hinged my deal, their deals on my deal. My father, my uncle, and my brother had negotiated pleas, but they wouldn’t accept them unless I agreed to plead out too.

[19:23] And unfortunately, had I had my day in court and I was able to get severed from the case, I think I would have won my case because I wasn’t charged with the same things that they were charged with. Even though I was part of that life and I wasn’t charged with any of this stuff because there was no evidence to charge me.

[19:42] To me, it’s unique and it’s different than a lot of stuff people have done. And my story is different and it just needed to be told. It is killing me and it’s had its effect on me. And I suffer from complex PTSD because of the life I’ve lived, according to the doctors, and it’s getting worse. And there is something for me being able to tell my story. It, it, it may not give me closure that I hoped it would give me, but it does give me some peace for people to understand what I’ve lived and why I am the way I am because of how I lived.

[20:20] Interesting. Yeah. And, and I think a lot of people don’t understand in, in these tight communities like, the outfit community family, the extended family bears. If somebody that’s, that’s why we’ve never had anybody go into witness protection and really testify here in Kansas city, because it’s so hard on the extended family. And, and it’s such a small community that you can’t go anywhere without running into somebody else. Now, Chicago is a little bit bigger, but you still lived in a really small community. So you go to some, some friend’s wedding or some friends, you know, go to church or, or just your restaurant that you would normally go to. There’s some of these mob guys, and now they’re painting you with the brush of being a rat. Is that what you experienced? That’s exactly what I’ve experienced. And it’s, you know, I, when, when all this happened, uh, you know, people automatically think that you’re part of what’s going on. And if you don’t come out and say, Hey, I had nothing to do with this, or I have nothing to do with this person. Um, then, then they start to understand it. And when proof, when, when everything comes out, they can see it. But I never did that, Gary. I never went out and said, Hey, I got nothing to do with my brother. I have nothing to do with my uncle. You know, I don’t agree with what they did and I wouldn’t do it, but I never, I never, you know, I never threw him under the bus or said, Hey, I, you know, I don’t, I’ve got nothing to do with them.

[21:48] Unfortunately, I had to start being more honest about what Frank Jr. Has done because unfortunately he has a tendency of, of lying and telling stories that aren’t true or accurate just to supplement his, his, his story or what he’s created. And it’s, it’s, you know, unfortunately my brother’s dead to me. It has to be that way because, yeah. And I’m not proud to say that or happy to say that because I was as close to my brother as I was to anybody in my life. When I asked him to stop lying and just tell the truth of how what really went on… He wouldn’t do it. You know, there were things that he put me in the middle of, you know, when he decided to cooperate, you know, I didn’t judge him and I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t agree with what he did, but I didn’t judge him. But he, you know, he, he packed up and he ran away and left me and our whole family there to deal with the mess that he created. And, and he didn’t seem to care about the people that he hurt by doing what he did. And I don’t mean the outfit. I’m talking about family members on both sides

[22:52] of my family, on my mother’s side. You know, he, he hurt a lot of people with things that he talked about that really had nothing to do with the mob, had nothing to do with the outfit. It was more family stuff. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s offensive because.

[23:06] You know, people come up to me and say, well, why did Junior talk about, why did he bring me into the book? Why did he talk about me? I can’t answer that question. But at some point I had to say, listen, this had nothing to do with me. I had nothing to do with this. I wanted nothing to do with this. I remained loyal to myself because I never believed in doing that. I never believed in cooperating or telling on people or, you know, I just, I don’t know. And all the way till the end. I mean, I claimed my father’s body when nobody would go out there to claim it just because, you know, for my own selfish reasons. But I needed to see this man dead. I needed to know that he was actually dead because he haunted me. I mean, he, you know, in some ways he still does, but I can’t, you know, I can’t fix that. And it’s never going to get fixed overnight, but it is what I live every day. And it’s different. What I live every day is different than what these other people live every day. It’s different from what Junior lives every day. And everybody’s got their, their issues and, and, and things that have happened. But I, you know, I needed to, to tell the truth. I needed to tell the story. I needed to tell it accurately because a lot of lies have been told and it’s offensive. and it’s killing me.

[24:19] I can only imagine the pressure that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office brought to bear on you as…

[24:27] They started taking down this whole family secrets thing. It got, it got the son, they got the brother and now they got, then you’re out there and you were close enough that you might know some, I bet that, I bet they grilled you. I bet they threatened you with everything. They did. Talk about that a little bit, what that was like. Well, they, they first threatened for first, according to my uncle, um, the deal that he made with them was for them to leave me alone.

[24:57] And he even went as far as telling them when they went to see him, um, that they were going to see his nephew next. And he said to them, which it’s how it’s my uncle. It’s my relationship with my uncle. I’m proud of how, what my uncle thought of me, but he kind of, he kind of, it kind of hurt me because it, it made a problem for me. He told the FBI, don’t go see Kurt. Cause Kurt won’t talk to you. So they didn’t want to hear that. They didn’t like that. I’m sure it made them even have a bigger problem with me. But they told my lawyer, we want to talk to Kurt. And my lawyer told him straight out, Kurt won’t talk to you. And they said, well, we’ve got immunity already for him. If we subpoena him, we already have the immunity. And if he doesn’t testify, we’re going to lock him up. And my lawyer told him, go right ahead. He’s not going to talk to you. And he told him straight out, if you lock this kid up, this kid wants nothing to do with this life anymore. He wants nothing to do with his father. He wants nothing to do with what’s going on here. He just wants to be left alone. If you go ahead and subpoena him, we will go to the newspaper and we will let them know that, you know, this kid went and did his time. I did my time. I came home. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted nothing to do with either side. And they kind of backed off But then my father subpoenaed me.

[26:25] My father had the nerve to actually subpoena me and put me on a stand. I mean, he pointed me out during the family secrets trial. And I was sitting in a watching like everyone else. He pointed me out. He subpoenaed me right outside the courtroom.

[26:41] And it was a mind game that my father played with me. He did that to me my whole life. Same with the threat, the threatening letters I got, the threats. They all came from him. They were all his way. I don’t know why, but they were all his way of, of playing a mind game with me, either trying to scare me or scare me more than I was already scared. But he, you know, he played those games with me and the government, you know, I ended up when the, when my father was going to sentencing, I was, uh, government got ahold of my lawyer and said, listen, uh, they had already locked him down and it was called the Sam’s measure. Uh, they locked him down like a terrorist. And at that point, they can decide who you can see and who you can’t see, who can visit you, who you can talk to. And so the government got ahold of my lawyer and said, listen, if Kurt ever wants to talk to his father again or say anything to his dad, he’s going to have to do it at the sentencing. Well, I didn’t, you know, Gary, I didn’t really get why they wanted me at the sentencing. I thought about it. I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing. I wrote something out. I thought about it. I didn’t decide till the morning of the sentencing that I was going to actually speak. And that’s because I didn’t want anybody to know I was going to do it. I didn’t want it to be a circus and courtroom.

[27:58] So I decided the last minute to go in there. Well, they put me in the, in the road with the victims families and the FBI saw me sitting in the room. They, they had known now that I was going to speak and I didn’t understand exactly why they wanted me there until I started speaking. And the only person who can get my father to lose it was me. For some reason, whatever the reason is with me, he just lost it. And so when I got up to speak, which I had second thoughts about doing, and I, again, I didn’t realize why they wanted me in the courtroom. But once I started to speak, my father lost it. And I, I, I figured out that at that point, the government wanted, wanted my father to lose it in court and wanted the judge to see it. And he wanted the, the, uh.

[28:50] The jury to see it. And sure enough, they got to see it. And that’s when I realized why they invited me into the court that day was for them, for the judge to see my father actually lose his temper. Like they kept claiming he did his whole life and he claimed he didn’t. Well, he lost it when I started to speak. So they got what they wanted out of it. I didn’t even get a chance to finish my statement because he cut me off. So, you know, it was my way of saying, yeah, normally I would never have done something that way. I didn’t want to do that, but I, I, I wanted to be able to say what I needed to say. I didn’t want to do it in front of anyone. I wanted to do with him alone, but I wasn’t, I was told I was never going to get that opportunity. So I chose to do that. Um, it’s something that I, I probably shouldn’t have done. I wouldn’t have done it. You know, if I had thought about it, I probably wouldn’t have done it, but I got to say some of the things that I wanted to say and get them off my chest. And I just, I, you know, he wasn’t very happy and And he, you know,

[29:49] he basically tried to come after me, come at me in the courtroom. Now, you said you did a couple of years. Now, what did he suck you into something that wasn’t for not refusing to testify? Did he pull you into something that make dirty you up a little bit where they can make a case on you? Well, there were two. Our original case that we went away to prison for.

[30:11] That’s what I went away for. I, I, my charges originally were conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the IRS and some mail fraud counts. But they, when I pled out, I pled out to conspiracy to defraud the IRS. And, um, that, that was a charge I should have never gotten because there was nothing there on a case that, that had me guilty of anything there. Uh, but it was, you know, it was there when they come to you with a plea, you plead out to what they tell you. Cause I offered to plead out the perjury.

[30:45] Cause I, I lied during, uh, depositions, uh, in our first case about money that belonged to my dad and, and properties. And, you know, I, I claimed that was all my stuff and, you know, I perjured myself, but I, but you know, when I got charged, if he had, had that case went to trial, uh, I would have never gotten charged. Uh, I, I most likely would have beat him in court because that’s how weak their evidence was against me. But they wanted me, you know, there was a time, Gary, in our first case where, uh, when we got arrested, you know, they, they pulled my father in a room and my brother and I were sitting in a room across the hallway with the door open. It was all staged. And my dad was in a room across the hall and they told my dad point blank, if you agree to take responsibility for what’s happened here, not plea, not, not rat on anybody or not telling anybody, just take responsibility. Billy, we’ll let your kids walk out the door right now. And my father said to them, I’m not worried. Both of my kids are men.

[31:49] So at that point, I thought I was, I thought I finally earned my father’s respect when he said that to me. I was, you know, I was so messed up mentally at that point that I thought that was a huge compliment my father gave me, but he had the opportunity to get us out of the case. And I think the government expected him to accept that and the case would have ended right there, but he didn’t, he would not, he would not do it. He didn’t even think about it. He didn’t even take a second to think about it. He just basically said that I’m, I’m not worried. Both my, my boys are men. And so, you know, that’s the kind of person my father was. My father was about himself. My father was, listen, my father was very good at what he did. Okay. Very good at what he did. He was just a horrible father. He was, he was on the street. He was respected. He was feared. You know, he was very good at what he did. And even the government didn’t know what he was doing until my uncle cooperated. They had no idea that my father and uncle were both part of all those murders. They had no idea, which, you know, is their job to find that out.

[32:55] You know, they had no idea. In fact, in fact, so much, Gary, that they didn’t believe my uncle. When he first started cooperating, they didn’t believe him. Really? The point where he got frustrated and he said, okay, fine. He said, I’m done. Let me out. Let me get, get me out of the room. Cause they were like, no, no, we got information that that’s somebody else. He said. You know, the stuff he gave them and he was so, my uncle was so particular and his mind was so sharp that he remembered things that nobody would have remembered. So he was so accurate when he described things, that’s when they started realizing these guys were part of, you know, very serious part of what was going on. Really?

[33:33] Those little details from a crime scene that were never made public. Like, see, when a guy comes to you and he can give you those little details, you look back at the crime scene photos or the, you know, the description of the crime scene and you say, oh, man, this guy knows. And he was able to do that, it sounds like. Yes. Oh, yeah. And to point to, like I said, it confused them because who has a mind like that could remember all that stuff to detail like that. But that’s how my uncle’s mind was. I mean, he was, you know, and again, my uncle was a stand-up guy. Uh, you know, I, I had my, had junior not did what he did, my uncle would have never cooperated. I mean, he would have died in prison. He had no, you know, no, no ideas or thoughts to do that. And it broke his heart. Man, you know, people don’t realize what it did to my uncle. I mean, he, you know, he, he couldn’t live with himself with, with how, what he did. Now he was a loyal, loyal soldier, my uncle. And, you know, unfortunately, my father didn’t do the right thing with him either. He didn’t do the right thing with anybody. My father, he didn’t, he treated everybody that way. It seemed to me like everybody was disposable in his world. Everybody’s disposable in order to protect him. No matter what you’re disposable.

[34:55] And we all did protect him. I mean, we, we were willing, we were all willing. There was a time when my father was going to leave. In fact, it’s in the, it’s in the podcast. There was a time when my father was going to run, run away and go in hiding. Um, because of, uh, uh, Joe Bonanno did that years ago. Yeah. I remember he, yeah. Where he claimed that they were going to kill him. So he was afraid of his life. Well, my father was going to do that. And I was working with him to, to try to do that. And uh you know he got mad because when he said he was going to do it and he was going to disappear he wanted us to be upset that he was going to leave and we were all saying go you’re like all right go let me help you right we did we were helping him and he said you know what’s going to happen is when i disappear they’re going to arrest you guys immediately and we said fine fine just to let him go just to get rid of him just to let him you know because we we had no life the three of us had no lives our lives were his life and that’s you know that’s what people need to understand about this story is you know that’s how he was and i mean the controlling you know he he controlled you he controlled me to the point like i said i was i was a you know the fear of god from him you know for for reasons and i’m not talking about you know listen i as a kid i got in trouble.

[36:19] I did things, you know, I came home late and I, you know, and I got grounded and I got hit.

[36:24] And, and, and, you know, when I did stuff like that, I expected that, you know, but when, when, when I’m, what I’m talking about, the abuse and the bullying was every day was about nothing, was about nothing. You didn’t have to do anything to be treated that way. You know, that’s, that’s just the way he, you know, he was with me and, you know, it’s taken its toll. Now I have to ask a little bit, uh, later in your life, you married into a outfit family. You married Angela LaPietra’s daughter, correct? Granddaughter. Granddaughter. Yeah. So how was that? I mean, how, you know, that had to be kind of interesting.

[37:04] Well, it, it put it this way. It was, nobody wanted that. Nobody wanted her and I to be married. Nobody wanted her and I to be together. Um, it started off as a, as us dating. Uh, I used to, how we, how we started dating and, and I mean, we were raised as cousins. That’s how close our families were. So we were raised, you know, as Italian cousins, you’re not really blood related, but that’s your cousin. Cause, cause. Right. And, and what’s weird is a lot of people find very unique is, is my father. how that started was my father wanted me, and I was probably about 16, 17 years old. And my father decided every Sunday morning, I was going to go to the bakery and pick up bread and drop it off at Angelo’s house and other people’s houses too, but Angelo’s house was one of them. And so I started to do that every Sunday morning and they would invite me in and I would go in and I would have cup, you know, coffee with them and bread. And so that’s how that all started we became friendlier that way and then we started dating and but um they they didn’t really want us together uh her her mother didn’t particularly like me and I think part of the reason she didn’t like me was because I was part of that world my father had me being part of that world so um I think that was part of the reason why she didn’t love me um.

[38:31] So it was, it put a lot of pressure on, on, on, and then we decided to get married and we went to city hall and got married because my father told me to stay away from her. Uh, she was told to stay away from me, but not in the same way I was told.

[38:46] Uh, but we decided to go to city hall and get married and, uh, nobody wanted that. And Angela was in prison at the time for the skimming case. And so he wasn’t even on the street. so it was he didn’t even know what was going on because he was being lied to but he was trying to control me from prison through my father telling me uh stay have your son stay away from my granddaughter um and you know my dad kept telling me well you know once angelo comes home it’ll all get straightened out and then if you guys want to be together well you know that was a long time he was going to be away still for a long time he’s gonna be we decided to do that and um you know my father beat the shit out of me the night he found out that i went and did that and i had to go in hiding for for like three days and the only person i was in contact with was my uncle and uh you know it was just one of many stories that i talk about like i said in the in the podcast um and and you know it was just it’s stuff that you can’t even imagine.

[39:51] Gary, you can’t dream this stuff up. And it’s, it’s sad because now, you know, my kids, you know, are aware of everything that went on and, and, um, you know, and it’s just, it put a lot of, it, it, it had a lot to do with us getting divorced. I mean, we ended up getting divorced after 20 years and, you know, and again, it was, it was rough on, on everybody was rough on my ex-wife.

[40:13] It was rough on my kids. It was rough on my mother. You know, it was rough on, on, you know, everybody’s lives because everybody was involved.

[40:22] Yeah, really. I have to ask if, did you have big, when you were a kid and younger, did you have big family dinners on Sunday, every Sunday, everybody had to be there? Yes. Yes. We, we had bread. And again, I used to go pick up the bread, bring the bread home. We’d have, you know, we’d eat. My ma was a phenomenal cook, um, which, you know, my mother wasn’t Italian. My mother was Irish and, um, we We have, you know, uh, relations on that side who were considered associates of organized crime. We, you know, I had it between my family, my mother’s family, and then the family I married into, you know, I was kind of surrounded with this.

[41:02] Totally surrounded by it. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. We used to, on Sundays, my, my mother was a phenomenal cook and, and, um, and I, uh, my mother was, was the best. I mean, I, I just lost her two years ago, but she was, I was lucky enough to have the best mother in the world. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best father, but I did have the best mother.

[41:26] Did she sometimes try to run interference for you a little as best she could? I know it’d be hard in that, you know, male dominated patriarchal society that you live in anyhow. Did she sometimes try to run a little interference for you? She did all the time, Gary. But what I have some regrets in my life and that I’m not probably ever going to be able to fix. But, you know, I watched my mother. I watched my father treat my mother horribly.

[41:53] And um and i i have regrets that i didn’t do anything about it as a kid and then as growing up because uh she didn’t deserve she she was a wonderful person my mother and she was there for everyone and you know he treated he treated her the same way he treated everybody else and it was just horrible and i just wish that i would have done something about it when i could have because i i she didn’t deserve to live like that nobody did nobody deserved to live like that it was not a, not a good life for anybody. Um, but I, you know, I, I have regrets that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let go of cause it was, it’s personal. Yeah. She didn’t deserve it. Yeah. Yeah.

[42:34] And my mother was loyal to my father all the way to the end.

[42:40] Yeah. I mean, even they were divorced and the FBI came to the house and wanted to show my mom pictures of my father with his girlfriend and the house that they built and my mother slammed the door in her face you know and and that’s to me that takes that’s quite a person to be able to do that you know when you’re you know when you’re upset and you’re going through you know you’re grieving and you know and you know and again I’m not you know my father and it goes to show you you know there’s there’s so much more to this story Gary that hasn’t even been told yet but you know my my father was able to get a, annulment from my mother through the church while he was in prison on trial for murder. And they, and the church didn’t even notify my mother until it already went through, you know, and that’s, that’s the kind of guy my dad was. I mean, you know, for whatever reasons he had, and it was, I mean, he thought he was going to be able to put my mother on the stand and testify against junior. But I mean, how do you get, you know, how do you get an annulment while you’re in prison for murder?

[43:48] Yeah exactly that you were married to all these years you’ve got kids with and that that kind of hurt my mother that that was kind of the last straw with my mother but i mean he wanted to do this in order to try to discredit junior to get her on the stand i know they do that a lot when you get a really frank culotta when he started testifying they they had a parade of people that would discredit him as being a liar so they could discredit the witnesses. Wow, that’s typical. But he was told that they’re not, you know, you can get your marriage annulled, but that’s through the government. The church. They’re not going to recognize her and allow her to get up on the stand and testify. They’re not going to do it. But he had his own mind, his own way of thinking. He thought he was his own lawyer at that time, and he knew what was right and what he was going to do. And he didn’t care about the last thing he cared about was hurting anybody’s feelings. That was the last thing he cared about.

[44:48] So I have to ask kind of the last things here about his Cody finish. Did you know them very well? Did they come around? Was it like Joe Lombardo, you know, lumpy? Was he like uncle Joey to you or, or anything like that? Did he come around? What kind of a guy was he?

[45:03] You know what? I, he didn’t come around. Uh, we didn’t know him really much other than bumping into him. Um, I remember meeting him when I was a kid at, uh, at Dr. Pat’s Palatro, who was a dentist at his office. And I met him there and I used to bump into him. And, you know, in fact, he was Joe’s in a club that I used to, a friend of mine had a club on grand Avenue and I used to stop at the club occasionally. And the night before the indictments, he was at the club. He slept at the club because they couldn’t find him. Yeah. He disappeared. They weren’t able to find him. But I was with him in the club that afternoon. I was playing cards with him that afternoon. But, um, yeah, we didn’t, um, Jimmy Marcello, we would see occasionally. Um, we knew his family pretty well. Um, and, and we would see him. And again, Gary, I, I, I never had any problem with any of these guys. I liked them. They were all very, very nice to me, you know, just, you know, and again, I’m, I’m just saying as how they were with me, you know, and, and all the people in that world, they were all, you know, they were all nice. They were all very, you know, when I would see them, you know, hug me and kiss me. And, you know, if it was in a restaurant, they’d want to buy me a drink or buy me dinner. And, you know, and, you know, and then when all this happened, you know, a lot of people kind of looked at me differently because of, you know, what my family did. And, you know, and I know there’s hard feelings there because of, you know.

[46:29] Because a lot of people went away. A lot of people got hurt because of it. Yeah, they did. That, uh, that cop or former cop, Twan Doyle, was he a policeman during that time earlier? Did you know him as a policeman or was he always an ex-policeman? No, he, well, when we were younger, he, we knew him because he was around my dad a lot years and years ago. And then, uh, in fact, I was with my father. We were at a wedding and we bumped into him and that started up the friendship again. So he started coming around again, but, uh, he was, yeah, he way back, he was a policeman. Then he, I don’t remember when he wasn’t a policeman anymore, but we didn’t see him that much until the wedding. And then after the wedding, he started coming around again by my dad, hanging out with my dad a little bit. Yeah. It seemed like he was more involved with gambling and running a sports book or something. If I, what I read about him was right. Yeah. He, yeah. And I mean, they started visiting my dad when he was away and they kind of tied these guys into the case and, you know, with the bloody glove and, you know, right. So they, you know, again, you know, I got to look at my dad’s AG, you know, why would you involve these guys? Why would you, you know, but it was all about my dad, you know, he didn’t care who he hurt or who got hurt because of him.

[47:49] One last quick thing, explain to the guys out there about the bloody glove. I can, I can, if you don’t remember all of it, I can fill in a little bit maybe, but the bloody glove that is like oj’s bloody glove man this bloody glove was the nail in the coffin it seemed to be like can you explain about that and then we’ll we’ll let you go kurt, Yeah, there was a glove left at the murder of John Feccherata that my uncle dropped.

[48:17] My uncle was the one who killed him and how it was all done and set up. He chased him down. He had to chase him down. He got shot in the car trying to kill Feccherata. He got shot. He shot himself in his arm, and he chased him down at a bingo hall, in front of a bingo hall, and shot him, and one of the gloves fell from out of his pocket. And, uh, and the government had the glove. They just never had the DNA. They just never knew, you know, that it was my uncle that did it. Uh, and then when junior decided to cooperate, he opened up that can of worms with, with the, with the glove. And, and that was the, the, the nail in the coffin for my uncle because they had his DNA. They had the, you know, the bloody glove and they had the, they, they took x-rays of his arm. They saw the, you know, where he got shot with the bullet. it. So that was, you know, at that point it was, uh, and again, it wasn’t just that, that got my uncle to cooperate. It was, there were other things, but it was, yeah, they, at that point, they, they knew everything and, you know, and again, it, it all came through Frank Jr. Didn’t come through my uncle. It came through Frank Jr. And, you know, I, I kind of wish Frank Jr. Would be a little bit more honest about everything that he did with that and how he started that whole case instead of basically there’s times when he’s blamed my uncle and said, you know, He didn’t put these people away. My uncle put all these guys away. Well, that’s not what happened.

[49:40] The name of the podcast, guys, is Underbelly Killing Kurt. Be sure and check it out. I’ll have links in the show notes and on the YouTube down below. And Kurt Calabrese, do you have any final words here for my guys out there?

[49:56] Just I hope people can understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.

[50:01] I hope they get a chance to listen to the podcast. it’s through entropy media it’s on apple it’s on uh spotify anywhere you can listen to podcasts it’s on and i just hope people can understand that i’m not looking for any sympathy or any any pity because of what my life was i just want people to know this is what i live this is what i live every day and we’ll watch interviews i do i hope okay thanks kurt calabrese thanks a lot for coming on, Kirk. Thank you very much for having me, Gary.

[50:31] Hey guys, that was really interesting. I thought I really liked that guy. He’s, uh, you know, he had a tough way to go growing up. You know, we all have fathers who can be a bit strict. I was a little bit strict and, and brought an edge of violence home from my work. I didn’t really, uh, flail on the kids and, and didn’t really yell at them, but I just had that edge of violence. And when you work with a violent, area in your life you’re going to bring that edge of violence home wherever you go with you another thing kurt told me we didn’t mention during that he has a website that has a bunch of different articles and different things he’s written so if you want to learn more about kurt calabrese it’s kurtcalabrese.com and and so check that out and i’ll have a link to that in the show notes down below so uh once again you know that i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the streets, driving your big F-150s. If you have a problem with PTSD, like Kurt does, Kurt’s not been in the service, but he’s getting help somewhere else. I’ve been in the service. The VA website has a hotline and hand in hand with PTSD many times is a problem with drugs or alcohol.

[51:42] And Anthony Ruggiano has a hotline on his website and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in florida you have a problem with gambling addiction always goes hand in hand with ptsd also but you can have a problem with these new apps a lot of people are having problems with uh with addiction uh to to gambling so there’s uh help out there for you somewhere i know in missouri it’s 1-800 bets off i don’t know what it is in your different states i think each different state that has gambling has a different website or a different hotline number I have my books and movies out there.

[52:18] Don’t forget about them. I have a Chicago book, which has a lot of the stories from the podcast going all the way back to the early days. And I just selected different stories from the podcast. It’s called Windy Cities, the Chicago Outfit. I have one about New York families. It’s called Big Apple Mafia, the five families. That has a lot of stories from the oldest to the newest. I took from my podcast. my book, Leaving Vegas, which you can see back over my shoulder here, right over there, right over there, uh, Leaving Vegas. That’s tells kind of the inside story of the skimming investigation from the Kansas city side. I don’t know if I have anything else to sell, you know, just Google me. You can find me. I’m all over the internet and keep coming back guys. I really appreciate y’all turning in. If you have any suggestions or, you know, get on my YouTube, my YouTube has a huge following anymore. It’s getting bigger than the audio podcast. Well, not quite, but it’s, it’s getting pretty big. Uh, tell your friends about it, like, and subscribe the YouTube channel so you can get notified that there’s a new show up, which I put up pretty much one every week and sometimes one during the middle of the week. Although I’ve been a little bit, uh, lax on that here in the last few months while I was writing that last book, I’ll get back into it again pretty soon as soon as I can. Uh, so thanks a lot guys.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins interviews the prolific chronicler of the American Mafia, Jeffrey Sussman. Listeners will learn about Morris levy and the mafia’s influence on the roots of the world’s most important cultural influences, American Rock and Roll.

Two of the most important men who influenced the rise of rock and roll were Morris Levy and Alan Freed. Levy had close ties with the Genovese crime family. Levy was the notorious head of the record label Roulette Records. Reportedly, Morris Levy used illicit money from the family to fund his businesses, with several members of the mob said to be present at his meetings. At the time, Freed and other corrupt Disc Jockeys corrupted the entire industry with their “pay for play” of records, which became known as “Payola.” Morris Levy terrorized young performers into giving up thier royalities.

Meyer Lansky, AKA the “mob’s accountant,” was one of the most successful mafiosos in history and had many investments in jukeboxes. Reportedly, he “controlled every Wurlitzer jukebox in the New York area”. So too, did the Chicago Outfit (who rose to power under Al Capone) have many dealings with Lansky and his jukeboxes. A mob history book, The Outfit, argues that the Wurlitzer Corporation accused Lansky and his Chicago associates of disrupting the distribution of Wurlitzer jukeboxes.

The Outfit is also said to have worked closely with Jules Stein, head of the Music Corporation of America. Apparently, Stein, the mob, MCA, and Meyer Lansky had all worked at least in some form with the mob fixer Sidney Korshak, a prominent mafia name in Los Angeles.

Click here to get Backbeat Gansters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Rock Music by Jeffrey Sussman.

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 episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins interviews Chris Franzblau, author of The Last Mob Lawyer. Franzblau represented Meyer Lansky in his deportation hearing, he represented Genovese labor racketeers like Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and Jerry Catena. He knew Jimmy Hoffa very well. Chris shares his remarkable career as a defense attorney for prominent figures in organized crime, offering a firsthand look at the legal battles that have shaped mob history in his book, The Last Mob Lawyer: True Stories from the Man Who Defended Some of the Biggest Names in Organized Crime.

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

[0:00] So, hey, welcome all you Wire Tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have The Last Mob Lawyer. Now, you know, we did a series on mob lawyers, Bruce Cutler and, what’s his name, Jerry Nagel and a bunch of those guys. Well, I have Chris Franzblau. Now, he has written a book called The Last Mob Lawyer. And I really, I started looking at his stuff and the promos that his editor put out. And he really has had an interesting career. You know, he did some stuff with Mayor Lansky and around the Hoffa case. And he’s got a lot of really interesting stories. So welcome, Chris. I’m really happy to have you on the show.

[0:44] Thank you. Good morning. Chris, tell the guys a little bit about, you know, your law school experience and your early practice of law, how you developed into becoming a defense lawyer. You don’t just jump out and start defending big-time criminals. We know that. So where’d you go to law school? Well, I went to law school at Duke University in North Carolina.

[1:08] Kind of a good Southern school almost, huh? After you got out of law school, then I believe you went in the service. I believe we talked a little bit earlier. You went in the service. So tell the guys about, and you went in as a, in the JAG Corps, the Judge Advocate General. Is that what you went in as a lawyer in the Navy? Not quite. I went in, I went to this very extensive training to become a Naval officer before there was a JAG unit in the Navy. Okay. And then during that period of time, though, they sent me to what’s called, after we finished that hectic program, and the Navy sent me to a very top secret cryptography school.

[1:53] So that I could have those kind of duties if I were assigned to that. And then they sent me to Navy Justice School because I’d been a lawyer so that I could also do court-martial work in the Navy.

[2:07] Then when I got out of Newport, that was all training in Newport. And then I was assigned to an admiral down in Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was part of the command of the Pensacola Admiral in Florida. The Last Mob Lawyer, you’re going to get out of the Navy, you’re going to go into private practice, I believe. Now, this book, guys, I want to read you something about this book. Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, said, The Last Mob Lawyer, true stories from the man who defended some of the biggest names in organized crime. It’s a book that pulls back the curtain on mob life in a way only an insider could.

[2:51] Chris Franzblau’s extraordinary legal career offers a fascinating glimpse into the dangers, the characters, and the often bizarre legal wrangling that defines the mob heyday. The Last Mob Lawyer is an essential read for anyone interested in the darker side of American history. So it sounds like a really good read and a fascinating read for a mob fan of which my guys out there that are listening, my regular listeners, especially, they are mob fans. They want to know all the intimate behind the scenes details. And I know you’ve got some being the lawyer and you’re the first actual mob lawyer I’ve talked to. I only talked to a guy who was a lawyer who studied mob lawyers. So you’re the first one I’ve talked to. Guys, listen to Chris tell a little bit about how he got into defending the mob or defending and organized crime guys. Again, you just don’t drop out of, Law school, the Navy, and defending mob guys. How did that come about, Chris?

[3:50] Ironically, before I got out of the Navy, just shortly before, which was in the late 50s and early 60s, that’s when the federal government was starting to unwind this organization they call La Cosa Nostra and organized crime and the mob.

[4:10] That’s the way they had denoted these investigations. It started with Kefauffer and McClellan, and then there was that famous meeting in Appalachia. But I wasn’t even here then because I was still in the Navy. So I got out of the Navy, and then I wound up as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

[4:32] And that was the beginning of the prosecutions of organized crime, basically by Robert Kennedy, who was the attorney general when John Kennedy was president. And I was in the U.S. attorney’s office doing investigations, criminal investigations. So I’d done some criminal work in the court marshals in the Navy, so it was a natural for me to go to the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey. So when I got out, as luck would have it, a couple of the well-known criminal defense lawyers died. There weren’t too many people doing that kind of work. And as luck would have it, coincidentally, when I was a young man, a boy, a teenager, I knew some people who were later identified as organized crime figures, mostly, for example, Jerry Catena or the guy they called the boot, Boiardo, the boot. And because they played golf at the same country club, and I was a pretty…

[5:39] Skillful golfer at that time, as was the admiral in Pensacola. So that all worked out very well. So they knew me as to what would have it. And I came out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office as organized crime was developing. Then what happened was very early on, because I’d done this federal work, I represented a labor leader named Riggie, who later went to prison and his father in that one union, and the father was being deported, and I tried that case, and we beat the deportation back then at different times. And then I got to meet Sam the Plumber, the famous Sam the Plumber, Sam DeCalvacante. And that opened up a Pandora’s box because in that, But I uncovered the fact that J. Edgar Hoover had done these very secret investigations, wiretapping and so forth, in Sam the Plumber’s office without a search warrant. And then when I asked for the discovery, they had to, after a year and a half of trying not to have to produce that discovery.

[6:50] Then they had to divulge it, and they’d divulge it to the newspapers, and it uncovered this huge amount of organized crime, the interrelationships, and so forth. And that kind of put me on the map, and I was very young at that time. I was in my early 30s, probably. You know, Chris, that really almost put… The mafia on the national map, almost as much as Appalachian and some of these other things, because those tapes were dynamite. And they released the transcripts of some of those tapes of Richie the Boot talking so candidly about the mafia and everything. They were dynamite. So you’re the guy that really caused those to be released. That’s really interesting. Yes. At that time, you know, Giuliano was the U.S. Attorney in New York. and after the Appalachia meeting, all the later people who are identified in organized crime were in Appalachia and then there were indictments in New York and that’s when I started to represent Catena and then it went to the New Jersey State Investigation Commission and he wouldn’t answer questions. He took the Fifth Amendment and we took that to the United States Supreme Court and lost And he did almost five years in civil contempt because he wouldn’t answer questions.

[8:16] And then we finally got him out. I did before the New Jersey Supreme Court. That was the first case of its kind based on cruel and unusual punishment. So finally, I was able to get him extricated after doing almost five years. He was almost 75 years old. Wow. Yeah. See, we’ve got a picture here of a young S.E.M. Chris Fransblau with Geraldo Catina as they arrive in Trenton for an appearance before the Supreme Court. So that’s look pretty young in that picture.

[8:53] Well, he was one of the guys up at Appalachia. Yeah, he was. And then he had to be represented in New York when Giuliani was the U.S. attorney there. And then we had some issues over there, which was interesting over there because when he had to appear at the grand jury, they assembled a lot of the people from Appalachia who were all in the waiting room for the long grand jury at the same time. Catena was called in, and he came out to consult with me. And as he was consulting with me, another attorney had a scuffle right at our feet. The fight began right then, and the other lawyer tackled got away with a suitcase that seemed to have an aerial outside and got away. It seemed like it was an FBI officer who was trying to overhear the conversations outside that grand jury room. That resulted in my making an issue out of it. Then Catena got his subpoena

[10:00] to testify, was withdrawn. Wow. That was exciting. That was. That was. That FBI, they were aggressive back then, and I guess there was really no exact law.

[10:13] Against technical surveillance, wiretapping, or hidden microphones. You couldn’t use it in court, but until, what, 1968, I think, at that Omnibus Crime Control Act is when they actually created a law which had a path to get a hidden microphone or a wiretap. But before that, there was just no path, but you just couldn’t use it. But it was just embarrassing. I mean, it happened in Kansas City, too, and all major cities. Well, it happened in Atlanta, too. Yeah. Which was also interesting when it came out that they had wiretapped some conversations between Martin Luther King and Cassius Clay. And that came out as a result. It all came out at the same time. So that was an embarrassment to J. Edgar Hoover and to Robert Kennedy. Yeah.

[11:07] You know, it was one thing to do this to members of the mafia, but there’s another thing to do this to actual political figures, which is what they were. So that was really a black eye for the FBI as a whole and J. Edgar Hoover in particular. So I guess you talk about Jimmy Hoffa and Tony Pro Provenzano, who Tony Provenzano was from New Jersey. Is that, you know, from this New Jersey connections here with Gyp DiCarlo and Richie the Boot and those guys? Is that how you got in with Tony Pro Provenzano? Well, Tony Provenzano had been indicted and convicted of some labor racketeering.

[11:53] I didn’t represent him at that time, but there were some issues as to whether the previous lawyer for the union was responsible for taking some of the bribes that had taken place in that conviction. So the union decided to get rid of that lawyer. His name was Jacob Friedland, who was a state senator in New Jersey. There was a very infamous, wonderful, brilliant lawyer, former attorney general in New Jersey named David Wilentz, who was the prosecutor of the famous kidnapping case, a Limburg case, which was an international case. And he knew me. And so when the lawyers who were representing Tony Pro needed to get a new lawyer to replace Jacob Friedland, they were from New York. They contacted David T. Wilentz, and he recommended that.

[12:54] They needed a lawyer to keep that union clean and the pension funds clean. And so all of a sudden, I was called upon based upon his recommendation. And I began almost overnight to represent several of the major teamster unions and a state council of teamsters throughout the state and several bigger pension funds. And so that’s that’s how i got to represent tony pro that’s a long story but yeah no but it’s interesting how those i like those details how those things work now i have a question i guess maybe personally for you chris i want your opinion on this and and maybe as a way of an explanation for guys a lot of people think that because you’re a lawyer and you defend the teamsters or tony Provenzano or Jerry Catena or some of these other big time monsters that somehow you’re part of the mob, that somehow you have this guilty knowledge of what’s going on. And I know Oscar Goodman is off. He really never was. But I know a lot of FBI agents and people involved in investigation of the mob, you know, will say, oh, no, he was part of it. And a lot of lawyers. Now, can you explain the kind of professional relationship that a lawyer has with a mobster that he doesn’t become part of the crime itself?

[14:22] Number one is that when I was a young man, a teenager, I had known Catena before he was alleged to be a member of organized crime or Boiardo or the others.

[14:36] And Zwillman, they lived out here. My father knew some of them. And I was in a position where I didn’t have to worry about that. I was a young guy, but I was independent.

[14:49] I came out of the Navy. I got promoted. I came out. I was a lieutenant commander. I went in as an ensign, retired out of the Navy, and I came out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And so, fortunately, I won a little case that had some notoriety before these things happened, but there weren’t that many people that came out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Organized Crime was just starting. All of a sudden, I had a little federal case, and I won that case where the guy was going to be deported. And there weren’t that many lawyers at that time.

[15:28] There were only five lawyers in the prosecutor’s office at that time. Now there’s probably 60 or 70. So It was a small community and people knew my father and I grew up in that community. But I could be independent in that sense. Okay.

[15:45] But in a couple of cases, people come to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don’t have to… You can easily set a boundary. I’m a lawyer myself and former policeman, and I had some criminal cases, and it’s easy to set a boundary that here’s what I do for you. I just represent you in court, and when we get done, you go on your way, you pay me or you pay me up front because I’m not taking a chance that he’s going to walk away with whatever he gets and not pay me, of course. And so you set a boundary. And that’s what people really don’t understand is when you walk into those cases that you set a boundary immediately with these guys. You had to keep a certain distance too, not to get too familiar or whatever.

[16:35] And that’s good. You know, there’s certain formalities and that separates the men from the boys. There you go. That’s a good way to put it. Now, historically, we know that Frank Sinatra was hand in glove with a lot of mob guys. So tell us about that. Well, on a particular occasion, remember Sinatra grew up in Hoboken. The original Provenzano Union was there. So before all that, they knew each other.

[16:59] And as time went on, one time I was out, Tony Pro, we were at some negotiations in Nevada and Sinatra was performing at the Sands, and he said to me, would you like to meet Frank Sinatra?

[17:16] Well, Sinatra didn’t mean that much to me. I said, yeah, sure. So we went to the stage door to see Sinatra. He knocks on the door. He knew Sinatra quite well, obviously. Knocks on the door, and Sinatra’s right-hand guy, I forget his name as we’re speaking, comes to the door and, Tony says, tell Mr. Sinatra that Tony Pro is here. So he said, oh, just wait a minute. He shut the door. He comes back and he said, I’m sorry, Mr. Provencino, but Mr. Sinatra can’t see you.

[17:48] Tony Pro was so mad. He kicked the door and so forth and so on. But of course, Sinatra had his own problems because he couldn’t be seen out there with a member of organized crime, which Tony Proe had classified for. I tried to explain that to him because then he would be ineligible to perform the license under the Nevada State Gambling Commission. Yeah.

[18:20] Also talk about Tony Pro and his connection to Hoffa. What can you tell us about that? Well, they had a most interesting relationship from my observation.

[18:32] Hoffa was probably one of the most independent people I ever knew, you know, with no sense of humor. Oh, really? Tony Pro was a very entertaining guy. I mean, I’ve seen him. He could be the most charming and the most difficult person, depending on the circumstances. But his personality seemed to really appeal to Hoffa. And in many respects, he was very independent because Hoffa was very demanding. But he was almost on a level. And Hoffa, I got the impression that Hoffa was very dependent because Tony was a very personable person. and he knew everybody, every place we ever went.

[19:21] I mean, he could be a charming type rogue. Interesting. But I never had any problems. He and I always got along very, very well.

[19:34] What do you remember about the famous quarrel between Hoffa, the famous quarrel between Hoffa and Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano? Yeah, I recall that. That was out in Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. That was interesting. What happened was when Hoffa went to prison, he didn’t lose his pensions. He had a very substantial pension when he left the unions.

[20:02] But when Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano was put on the sidelines because he was no longer able to be a member of labor unions or be an officer of any labor unions, he forfeited his pension. Oh, wow. And he always believed when Fitzsimmons took over the Teamsters unions that Hoffa could influence Fitzsimmons for Tony Pro to get his pension benefits, that they shouldn’t be forfeited. Why should Hoffa have gotten his? But Hoffa was convicted of a crime that didn’t require his forfeiture with Tony Pro, which under the Taft-Hartley Act and everything was different. Tony Pro never got through his head that it couldn’t be done, and Hoffa made a couple of remarks, you know, and Tony Pro lost his head, and he went after Hoffa in the meeting. It was no big deal. It was, you know, that was very unpleasant.

[21:05] Yeah, okay. I understand now that Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano’s conviction was for crimes in connection with union activity, while Jimmy Hoffa’s conviction was for jury tampering that didn’t have anything to do with union activity. That’s why he got to keep his pension, and Tony Pro didn’t. I understand now.

[21:25] I’d see why Tony Pro was mad, but, you know. He had a hot temper. So speaking of all that relationship, this hitman that worked for him, did you know him, Sally Buggs, Brigulio?

[21:38] Yes, I know him quite well. So tell us about your relationship with him and tell us, you know, your opinion of him, what you remember about Sally Buggs. Kind of purportedly the man that killed Jimmy hoffa possibly well he was always a target.

[21:54] Uh he was a target of that and uh as was tony pro as cold as ice and uh he he went his own way and he was a very independent guy and a nasty kind of guy too i really never got along that well i was never that friendly with him uh very frankly he was really like a bodyguard or chauffeur, but he was a business agent at Local 560, and he was on the board of trustees of the union. And I had a big argument with him at the Teamsters Pension Fund, and there’s still a guy who was there who witnessed it, who’s still alive. I spoke to him just the other day, named Bob Archibald, who was one of the trucking company appointees to the board of trustees. Reason, Brigugliao wanted to have the board, the pension fund give a mortgage that became a big issue to some people from Detroit.

[23:00] And he outlined it, you know, because the pension funds often made investments. We had investment advisors. It was a huge, big pension fund, and I was the attorney, but I was selected to keep everything on the up and up. So I said I would not approve. I recommended against it and so forth. They said, look, you’re here for legal advice, not what to do or not to do. And he threatened me, and we never got along too well after that. Wow, well, that’s… Bob Archibald, who was still alive, was there.

[23:43] Most of the other guys are gone. Bob Archibald just turned 101 a couple months ago. Interesting. That was bold of you to not approve a mortgage, a pension loan that Sally Buggs wanted approved. That was pretty bold of people who’ve been killed for less, I think. Well, they went and they did the mortgage, though. That was the problem. Well, they got it done, okay. And they put the mortgage on, and some other lawyers handled it. I wouldn’t do it. Yeah, wouldn’t judge it. And the guys who got it were later indicted because the deal fell through. They were tried by a federal judge named Alistair Hastings. Alistair Hastings then was, after that trial, was impeached by the United States Senate, and they took his judgeship away for allegedly taking bribes. So then after he lost his judgeship, he ran Fort Lauderdale to become the U.S. House of Representatives representative, and he got elected, and he served in the House of Representatives for 30 years. Believe it or not. Believe it or not. Only in America, as they say. Yeah.

[24:58] What seemed to have happened was when Hoffa got out, he was pardoned by Nixon. He got the pardon, but he was supposed to be pardoned a year earlier. Hoffa, because as we said before, did not forfeit his right to go back to become a union official. So he was still eligible. So he was supposed to get a year sooner. He was thought to get out at Christmas. In those days, if I can remember.

[25:30] Pardons were really only granted by a president just before Christmas. In that year, he was promised or thought he was going to get the pardon. And the last minute it got canceled and he went nuts. So finally it got put back on the next year. But when they got it the next year and he got the pardon, it had been the former international lawyer for the union was a good friend of mine who I later during some of these days got to meet a friend of a guy named Edward Bennett Williams. Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of him. He was the finest, greatest lawyer I always looked up to. What happened was he had resigned. He had some differences, and he resigned, and a new lawyer took over. And when the pardon was drawn and given to Hoffa, they put in the pardon that he could not become a union official anymore. And that was not Hopper’s understanding of what the deal was. So when he got out, he wanted to go back to the union, and he wanted to get the pardon revised. So he was threatening everybody.

[26:42] So he was threatening people that if he didn’t get back to union office and didn’t get the pardon revised, feeling that people could influence the president or whatever, that he would give evidence against others or whatever. But I never knew anything further until I was heard about his disappearance. And now, I had this coincidental experience just last year when I knew that they were looking for Hoffa all over the place.

[27:17] The FBI could never dig up. They must have gotten lots of tips of where Hoffa was buried. And they dug up two or three places in New Jersey right under the Pulaski Skyway. Yeah, I read about that. Two or three different times. And one day, I was out playing golf with some friends of mine. I was introduced to someone there who I’d never met before. And he was just new, you know, meet so-and-so. When he heard my name, he said, you know, I’ve always wanted to meet you. There’s a story I want to tell you. And he proceeded to tell me exactly where Hoffa was buried. Oh, really? And why and how he was there to see it and what he described. And there’s some stuff in the book about it. All right. Well, that’s a pretty good teaser by that book. Based upon what he told me. And he told me that at the time that it happened during the FBI investigation and they were digging up, he said he called and reported it to the New York Times, but he never heard anything or anything.

[28:29] And all these years had gone by. He’s now in his middle 70s, this guy who I met at Mount Ridge Country Club. But what he described, I absolutely believe that that’s exactly where Hoffa is buried, within a couple hundred yards of where the FBI had apparently gotten some tips of where he was buried. Back in New Jersey, those New Jersey tips. New Jersey, under the Pulaski Skyway, not far from the Pulaski Skyway. Yeah, I interviewed that guy that came up with that theory, and he had some pretty convincing arguments that the people, as he related the people that told the stories about where he was and how he ended up back east, that it was a pretty convincing argument enough that the Bureau didn’t spend a bunch of money to go out there. This guy told me he saw it. He saw it.

[29:22] He’s still alive. Well, I tell you what, if you can dig that body up, you can get a lot of hits on the internet. I know that. That would be a big deal. That would be huge to dig up Jimmy Hoffa’s body. It’s taking on mythical proportions, as you know. So, you know, there’s Tony Provisano and he was taking a lot of money personally out and these guys were really raiding the Teamsters Pension Fund in a way.

[29:51] What did you see? Do you have one kind of one last question? How would you comment on the efficacy of the loans that the Teamsters Pension Fund made? I get a lot of questions about that. Did they really, did the mob really hurt the pension fund or did they let some people would say, oh yeah, all those loans, they got paid back or were there a lot of defaults? Did you, do you have any comment on that? I can tell you this. I probably, I can only tell you I was the only pension funds that I were, where we were here in New Jersey that I was counseled to. Okay. The only suspicion I ever had was that one I just described to you a little while ago. We had the best investment advisors and the pension funds were extremely successful in their investments. We had the biggest investment advisors on Wall Street. It was very, very, very carefully monitored.

[30:48] Okay. So the New Jersey pension fund was different from the one in Chicago. I think the one in Chicago must have been huge. It was. We had a big fund here for a size at that time, but the pension fund here was as clean as a whistle.

[31:09] Okay. All right. Interesting to know. All right. Chris Franzblau, named the book as The Last Mob Lawyer, True Stories from the Man Who Defended Some of the Biggest Names in Organized Crime. Chris, it’s a fascinating book. I got the PDF and I’ve, I’ve read some bits and pieces as much as I could. I got to get back into it now. Cause you, you’ve kind of stirred me up where I want to, I want to learn more out of what you, uh, out of your experiences. So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Anytime. Well, that was pretty interesting guys. Uh, a guy, he’s, uh, he’s seen a lot of history, man, a lot of history. So don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles. If you, uh, are out there in your car and your big 10,000 pound SUV, Watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there because you can squash us like a bug.

[31:58] If you have a problem with PTSD, be sure and go to the VA website if you have been a vet. And if you haven’t been a vet, well, I figure out some other place to go get some help because there’s help available. And PTSD affects a lot of people. And hand in glove with PTSD is problems with drugs and alcohol. You know, they always, you know, get treated for one. You probably got the other. Uh, our friend, Anthony Ruggiano from the Gambino crime family is a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. And he has a hotline on his, uh, YouTube channel or his website. One of the two or both of them, maybe I can’t remember. And if you have a problem with gambling, there’s one 800 bets off, at least here in Missouri, you know, getting ready to do the apps for, for gambling. And there’s a lot more, more and more gambling is out there and more and more opportunities, you know, uh, I don’t really care for it myself. I lose $20 at a casino and I like, oh shit, get me out of here.

[32:54] But you know, it’s everybody isn’t like that. Everybody has a different appetite for that kind of risk with their money. And so if, if you feel like it’s causing any trouble, why try to get some help for that. Don’t forget, I’ve got books and movies out there. I’ll have a link to the last mob lawyer down there at the show notes. I will have links to my books and my, uh, documentaries that you can stream for just, I think a buck 99 on Amazon, or I’ve got them on my website. I figured out a way you can stream them off my website and I get the whole dollar 99 instead of only 95 cents of it or whatever it is. Uh, and the books the same way I got them on my website or you can get them on Amazon, which is a lot easier. And you get the Kindle books, which is a lot cheaper if you like Kindles. And so help me out with those books, uh, every, every time. And, and give me a review on those books. I didn’t get many reviews on my New York book. I didn’t really kind of push people on that. I did push them a little bit to buy it, but I didn’t remind them to give me a review. And I’ve got, I don’t have, I’ve sold more books than the Chicago books, but I’ve got less reviews. So it helps for me to get reviews on those books. Why you help out the podcast because you sell more books and then I get more money. And, you know, I’m more, more enthused about doing the podcast and, and this is, you know, you got to watch a few ads, but other than that, it’s, it’s all free content here. So thanks a lot, guys.

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

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[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am here with Anthony Arillotta.

[0:07] As you guys, if you are on Facebook at all or on YouTube, you may know this name. He has been quite prolific, and he’s got a great book out there, and he’s got a hell of a story to tell. And he’s a really – I just told Anthony, I said, you know, you’re a great interview because you know your stuff. And, Anthony, you really do. Welcome, Anthony. Oh, thank you, Gary. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to this. Now, the book is South End Syndicate, How I Took Over the Genovese Springfield Crew.

[0:37] And so, you know, I want to read just a little bit about one thing. I’m really impressed with this particular promos for your book, little blurbs that you get other authors to write in your book. T.J. English, who is New York Times bestselling author of The Westies and several others. And I just interviewed him recently, a prince of a fella. And this guy’s word means something to me. And T.J. Writes, the last days of the Roman Empire if you were populated by snitches, gamblers, mobsters, lowlifes, and homicidal maniacs. In other words, this book is entertaining as hell, chronicling one small parochial, though notorious, faction of the American mafia in Springfield, Massachusetts. Ariadna tells the story of the whole damn thing. South End Syndicate is a worthy addition to any organized crime bookshelf. So Anthony, that’s, that’s quite a compliment from a guy like TJ English. Wouldn’t you agree? Oh, I agree. Definitely. That was a really good write-up that he gave. And, uh, you know, he knows his, uh, he knows the, um, uh, the genre. So he does, he, he knows how to write it and, and he knows it, you know, he really knows it. He really does. Yeah. And he said, he, um, you know, his re you know, he can detect. The true, the true to the faith. Yeah. It’s got a good bullshit detector. I could tell that when I interviewed him. Yeah, that’s, yeah, that was really impressive.

[2:02] Anyhow, so let’s get down to talking about the book. You know, right now you’re not in witness protection or anything. You did testify, but you’re not in witness protection. So that’s, I’ve noticed there’s a lot of guys like that out there that are living on the streets so much for the old get you no matter what. But in the end, you wrote this book about your life, but you also talked a little

[2:26] bit about the old days, I believe. You know, I talked, let’s talk about the old days in Springfield, Matt, just a little bit before we get into that. You know, I interviewed this, I think it was Gina Cunningham. Her grandmother was Pasqualina Albano, and she had a heck of it. And that’s a heck of a story. There’s a lot of inner fighting and all that going on. And that was when Springfield got connected to the Genovese family in New York. Could you explain to the guys kind of how that first worked, how they, the, the Springfield became basically a crew or not a, maybe not a crew, but a, its own entity, but yet we’re connected to the Genovese family. Yeah. So like you have drugs today, you had alcohol back then.

[3:10] Organized crime really wasn’t established at that time where they had traditional mafia of families back in the early 1900s, but you still had Italian immigrants. And with that came a way that the Italians lived and brought their traditional ways over to America. And so they got involved in bootlegging, protection rackets, some of the same rackets that continued on throughout the years. Springfield was heavily populated with a large Italian immigrant city. It was flooded, a lot of, you know, you know, from Calabria, Naples, Sicilians, all, you know, throughout Italy. It just flooded into Western Mass to Springfield. And so back in those days, there was a lot of gang activity, like you would call today. It was the same thing, gang activity, The only was, you know, instead of Latinos and blacks and, you know, whatever other Chinese, it was, you know, a lot of Italian, Jewish and Irish gangsters, you would call them. And so Springfield was heavily populated with that. They started to create some known figures back then. And just through the hustling and the bootlegging created an organized crime presence throughout Western Mass in Springfield. How they got involved later on.

[4:39] With the New York connections where, you know, New York is heavily populated and then it’s only two hours away from Springfield. So there was some big heavyweights and a lot of people are related. This one particular guy, the Miranda family, they were like heavyweights in the Genovese family. And so I believe Philomena ended up marrying one of the Mirandas. One of her husbands was a Miranda and he was, you know, I, I believe it was, uh, Mike ended up being on the, uh, later on and like maybe in the fifties, but he was like on, uh, uh, you know, one of the panel administration for the, uh, Genovese crime family. And he had relatives in here. He was related to the Fioris.

[5:29] And so, um, you know, it’s just like, you know, they had a satellite crew where they, you know, big no Sam Kane. He was from Calabria. He was, uh, you know, was in New York, but then came to, uh, Springfield. And so, you know, you got these active organized crime criminals and that’s when the mafia started to get organized, you know, in the thirties and starting to get structure and territories, they started getting the territories down. So there’s no, you know, they could stop the violence and the murders and, and, and have like territory split out so everyone could earn peacefully and big no sam kafari ended up being one of the uh you know well you’re going back to like you know philomena she was actually a woman i think they shot her like 30 times and um there was a few murders uh the guy the one of the bosses uh siniscauchi he was murdered biori i believe was murdered there was a lot of brutal murders back in the early 1900s here. And so when Sam came in, he kind of solidified his presence. And then the structure came out where there was mafia induction ceremonies.

[6:39] And Sam ended up blasting from the thirties all the way up into 1984 when he passed away, never spending one night in prison, never going to prison. He was just, he was a legendary mafia boss that, you know, you could put up there with Carlo Gambino, Tony Accardo. There was a, But he was a very notorious, he was at the Appalachian meet in 1957 when all the mobsters got rounded up.

[7:03] And he was there as a representative. So…

[7:08] Yeah, and that’s how Springfield pretty much formed its base with the Genovese side through. I know the Mirandas had a big role in it because of blood ties.

[7:19] Yeah, I think that Mike Miranda was, when Vito Genovese went into the penitentiary, he appointed a three-person commission to keep running the Genovese family. And he was one of those three people. And then he had these relatives out here at Western Mass. So just a natural kind of a connection, it sounds to me like pretty, pretty interesting stuff. How that, you know, how that developed, you know, you mentioned about comparing this to blacks or Latinos today and the gangs, you know, anytime you have a large cohort of people, newly arrived immigrants.

[7:53] And so Italians get here. What I’ve noticed in Kansas City, the Italians got here. Well, the Irish had been here for quite a while, and they had all the police and fire and, you know, Trice Holland jobs, you know, the lower end jobs sewed up and the unions. And they had all that sewed up and a lot of politics already sewed up. So the Italians get here and they’re like they’re kept out. You know, they’re not going to allow them to come in anymore than they can. So then you’ve got all these young, bright guys, Prohibition comes along and hey, here’s a way we can help our people and help ourselves and, and get a piece of the American pie. Everybody just wants a piece of the American pie and that’s what they wanted at the time. So it’s, uh, you know, and it’s, you know, still going on today, I would say it has greater or lesser extent. So Springfield had the Italian section back then, you know, was the South end of Springfield. But prior to that, like when my grandfather was here, the North End had Italians, the South End, six corners of Springfield was heavily populated with Irish and Italian. That’s where I grew up at first was six corners Springfield.

[9:01] And throughout the city and throughout the suburbs of cities, there was many Italian restaurants that. But instead of just being all stuck down in the South End, just like it is today, you could go anywhere throughout Springfield in the suburbs and eat authentic Italian meals from people that come right from Italy. To this day, they still have their families heavily involved in the restaurant

[9:26] business. So I grew up in Springfield. The South End was, when I was growing up, was basically the Italian section still. All my friends lived down there. I lived down there for a period of time. And, you know, as you get older.

[9:39] People move out. They want to get a better life. They want more peace and quiet. They move into a quieter neighborhood. And, you know, and so with that, the next immigrants that are coming in, uh, Spanish, you know, started moving in. So the more clients are moving out and the next thing, you know, little, but it’s still remained Italian businesses down there. And where we hung around growing up my whole life. And it was great. It was, uh, the, like I said, the presence back then, we had hundreds of guys lined up on corners all the way down main street you know you had the youngest guys like would be us then you had a little bit older across the street then you had a little bit older a few blocks down a little bit older another and then you had like we call them the grease balls from italy all down because we had a lot of italian social clubs italians come over the wife don’t want to get away from their wives go out play a little cards have an espresso and they had we had three italian clubs down the south end and it was you know we had restaurants pastry shops coffee shops everything you could think of. And it was really nice growing up. And it was just a nice, the camaraderie of being Italian growing up with that, because it doesn’t exist anymore here. And it really doesn’t exist anymore throughout the country. You know, you go down, Boston to me has the best Italian neighborhood in America.

[11:00] And the only reason that is still existing, all them, they moved out too, But Boston remains expensive to live there So all the tenements above Mostly college kids They’re paying $4,000 or $5,000 a month for rent.

[11:15] More for one bedroom apartment. So you don’t have any crime, criminal activity there and all the rest. And it’s loaded still with Italian restaurants and coffee shops, one after another. So it’s still got that Italian neighborhood feel to it. And especially the streets are so narrow. Springfield lost all that. You know, we still have some of the places where you can go buy your cold cuts and shop sausage and, you know, coffee shops and things like that. but it’s nowhere near what it was back when I was growing up. And it was just a really good, really good growing up in Springfield. We had a little gang of us, you know, we had a big gang of us actually. And we were, my generation was, you know, right around four or five years younger than me. It was kind of like the last generation that grew up down the South then where we were as hanging around on corners. My father was 100% a hard, probably one of the hardest working men I know. And I’m not just saying it because he’s my father. Anybody from here will tell you. And he was a sweetheart of a guy. And everybody will tell you that.

[12:23] He was a hardworking man. His only thing that he liked to do, and it’s not illegal, but he liked to bet on the sporting games. And he was pretty good at it. A lot of people would come and ask him for their picks. And he was actually good at picking the games. And that was his only thing he liked to do. Work. He was a sports fanatic And played golf and work And he worked seven days a week Hard work, hard work, hard work But being Italian He was a kid.

[12:51] The mobsters would frequent his store and they were always around. I had family members also that were involved in the mafia, but not my father. Growing up, you grow up in this environment as a young man and you’re looking for opportunities and jobs.

[13:08] And so how did you start getting, becoming involved at what pulled you into that life? So I was always a wild kid growing up, getting in trouble at school, fighting all the time. I never had to worry about money because my father, like I said, had a, uh, was a hardworking man. He had the biggest, one of the biggest businesses in Springfield. He was into the fruit and produce and the wine grape business. He was the biggest wine grape distributor in all of mass. So I never, I lived at home. I didn’t have to worry about food on the table, paying any bills, which, you know, I believe is bad for a kid not doing that, you know, because it puts you in a complacent mindset and you don’t got that hustle instinct. Whereas another kid grows up poor, he’s out shining shoes at eight years old. He’s trying to help, you know, he wants to, what the other kids have. So I never had to do that. I just got involved because I love the action. I was a, I also was a huge gambler. It started off with me gambling and, you know, betting on sporting events at a young age, you know, like I was in the second grade at high school, you know, betting 25 cents a game, you know, with the little kid then. And it just, you know, went crazy.

[14:20] And, and then, you know, in my teens, I always getting in trouble and mafia had a huge presence and, you know, you know, John Gotti had just killed Castellano. You know, I’m at my, I’m only like 16 years old. You know, the mafia was, you know, big time news back then. I mean, it was nationwide and worldwide news. And to be involved with the mafia meant something. So everybody it’s like, oh, I know, you know, if you knew the boss, if people like Like Sam Kapari. Oh, I’m friends with Sam. Oh, I’m friends with Sam. I’m better friends with them. They wanted to be around the mafia. If they knew the mafia hung around at this restaurant, they all wanted to go to that restaurant. That’s what it was like. So.

[14:57] I just started being, you know, a wild kid gambling. And of course, the mobsters knew me because they know everybody in our area, especially the ones that are a little bit crazy and wild. And I just started getting involved more. I ended up getting a shooting case back in 1990, and I got a five-year sentence. That is when I came, you know, and I dabbled a little bit in some drugs prior to that, selling drugs. I never used drugs, but selling drugs, I just was small time prior to that. I went to state prison in 1990 for a shooting case. I got a five-year sentence with a mandatory one year. When I came out of that prison sentence after the year, that’s when I was pretty much a.

[15:44] I knew where I was headed. The streets were for me. That’s when I got approached by Al Bruno. He was a cousin on my mother’s side. He was a maid member of the mafia. He approached me. There was another maid guy that wanted me to be with him, but Al Bruno was the one that came to me first. He put me on record with him, meaning that I was now associated with the Springfield faction of the Genovese crime family. That was in 1991.

[16:10] And I just started hustling the streets with him. And that’s how I started getting involved with the mafia activity. But I was also involved with my own criminal activity. I was a large marijuana distributor. And that was where I made 90% of my money back then, was in the marijuana industry. I mean, I don’t want to say 90%, but the bulk of my money was, and the mafia had nothing to do with that. So I was a large marijuana distributor. I was in the cocaine business. I don’t consider it big, a few kilos a month. Um, I was in, but the marijuana business, I was the, one of the largest, if not the largest in Connecticut, Massachusetts, um, areas.

[16:54] And so the money, the money brought me in the money. Yeah. You know, I’m a crazy kid. Now I already got the violent reputation and now come with it. You know, at the end, we all want to make money and I’m not going to make it at my father’s business. Hard work, hard work. I mean, backbreaking work. So, and it’s his business. You know, it’s, you know, he’s got his, my mother and sisters and whatever his life to live. So I just started making it on the streets and I made a lot of it. So I did very well. Interesting. Now I’m always curious about how some of these things work. Now, did, uh, with the marijuana business and the drug business, that was all yours. Did you have to kick anything to anybody?

[17:36] And so that was just yours and they didn’t pay any attention to that. Now, now a big marijuana business like that, how did you, how, how’d you make those connections? How do you find somebody that will then bring you, you know, bales and bales of marijuana and truckloads of marijuana. How do you find that from the streets, from a guy that’s just, you know, selling dine bags or whatever for fun, for a little extra shop of spending money to get into those big bunches? I’m always curious about that. So it’s not like the mob doesn’t, you know, our area, they were very strictly, enforced, no drugs if you were around them. All right. So you could get killed for that. And the Genovese family, you know, there’s a lot of hypocrites, you know, because, you know, they sold heroin back in the day. And then they said there’s more selling drugs, but some of the guys still did and just don’t get caught and you don’t get killed and things like that. But when I went to that prison for the state prison for a year, you know, I was in a, a violent state prison, not County, not local, you know, and I was around guys that were doing life that could never get out. And so I made a lot of contacts with those people. Okay. So that’s when I pretty much learned how to really be an organized crime criminal rather than being some guy that’s just going out having fun, being a fly-by-nighter, just doesn’t make any money like most of the guys.

[18:56] It’s about business sense too, and I have that. So it would be the same thing as a salesman in any business. How does he acquire connections? He goes out and sells. He tries to get accounts, which is to sell his product too. And then he also tries to get a place where he can get a product to sell at a good price. And so that’s basically what it is. And then you get involved in that business. You know, I started dealing with guys out of Boston at first and, you know, I’m new to the business. So, you know, they’re charging me way overpriced at first, but then it got to the point where I got so big. I was selling to Boston to the guys that thought that they were selling to me. I started selling to them and that’s how I got big in Connecticut. And, and so I had connections like I can’t even, I had every ethnic group there was doing business with me, heavily involved with Jamaican gangs. And I’m talking to serious Jamaican guys, gangs that were cutting people up in pieces in New York. They’re bad. They’re bad.

[20:01] Business with the irish crazy irish in boston lunatics i was in prison with them just like us crazy stab you shoot you they’re armor car guys they’re bank guys um i was doing business with the spanish you know tons of spanish friends doing big business all the black gangs that i was uh heavily involved with you know and when i say involved like you network you work together.

[20:26] And you know if i got if it might be i might come to the to one crew and looking to sell to them and they’ll be like here look at this and next thing you know i’m buying from them and selling to them and then i might be buying from them and selling to them it’s all you know depending on the connections that you make i had multiple a lot of them and then the more you’re in it the more you’re learning the more you’re going the more you know you’re getting access to better connections you know we started doing business in Mexico with the cartels um going over the border and grabbing the marijuana there and then bringing it back from there it led to that, and you know Texas we were getting from California locally too like local I was I got you know all the Jamaicans would get you know two three hundred pounds they’d be bringing me you know their weed their marijuana was a little bit less, uh, more commercial grade, you know, and there’s different grades all the way from marijuana for 200 a pound or 6,000 a pound. It all depends on what the market is and where, you know, what your, your customers want. So it’s just, it’s just a business. I mean, it’s just a regular business. And it’s legal today. It’s not like legal today. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, crime is an unethical crime to commit. it’s legal today. It’s just, you know, Uncle Sam wants their money and you’re not paying them to.

[21:54] And, you know, and with that, with the street stuff is, you know, you get a lot. I fronted all my stuff. You know, I would front. I had times where I had four or five hundred thousand on the streets. People owe to me. Yeah. With good for I never got beat once. I never got nobody never not paid me. So. But what I’m saying is, is like, you know, you, you network, you, you, I get a front that I fronted to these people, you know, a guy selling 10 pounds a week, I’ll give him 50. Now I don’t have to see him for over a month, month and a half. And so, yeah, it’s a networking. It’s a legitimate business.

[22:30] Everyone smokes pot. You could go up to a cop. You could approach a cop. Hey, approach a lawyer. You smoke marijuana. I mean, no cop is looking to get you in trouble for buying an ounce of weed. I never sold ounces, but you know, like you could just go up to a cop. You know, they’re looking for the heroin guys, the guy selling crack. Remember in the 90s when crack came out? Oh, yeah. Crack guys. even the cocaine guys because they’ve started making crack with it they’re looking for the cocaine guys now you know so there are big sentences marijuana you get a slap on the wrist nothing it was like you know in massachusetts the law under 50 pounds was a misdemeanor and i got caught with and i was a misdemeanor so now you’re making a lot of money and and your Your friends,

[23:15] Al Bruno’s crew, see this, I’m sure, and you’re a mover, and you’re a guy with connections. So you become more valuable to them, to that family, I would imagine. Now, how did he utilize you as you moved into the family more? Bruno is the type—.

[23:35] Bruno’s a businessman just like me. He was great at it. Prior to him being a mobster, he was a salesman and he was great. So, I mean, if he never got into the mafia, he would have been a multimillionaire legitimately doing all kinds of stuff. And so how it worked with us is, you know, the money that we made here stayed here. Now, that does, you know, it’s not like you’re not giving up money. How it worked with with us the people that were somebodies that were in the mafia, it would be a partnership so like when i went partners when bruno brought me around i went partners with him in the sports book making there was like four of us so we all got 50 and bruno got 50 so if we won 10 000 bruno got five and we got five okay but a partnership it same thing with the loan shark and if we had a hundred thousand out and we were making four thousand a week bruno got two we got two okay that’s how it started back in the early 90s, then after was just me and bruno and i was his partner and i was getting 50 he was getting 50.

[24:44] And on all the businesses so it’s it’s not like now if he ever knew the amounts of money that i was bringing in like I could care less about oh we made we made a hundred thousand in the sports, and I’m gonna get 50 you would have to make a week like that for me to say was considerable amount of money because I was making money like that on the side doing everything I did not just the marijuana like I said I wasn’t in the coke business and I was making tens of thousands of month just off the coke robin hijacking trucks uh joker poker vending machines in other um states connecticut and all this was under bruno this is how crazy it was when he put me on record in 91, We were doing business with another loan shark who was a rogue gangster. He wasn’t affiliated with nobody, Albert Calvinis. In fact, they call him the boss at one time around here afterwards when I went away.

[25:50] And we were doing business with him, giving him two points. We owed him $400,000. This was in the early 90s. Bruno knew nothing about that. And so like I’m working with Bruno but I’m also got 400,000 out with this guy and I’m still a young kid I’m only 22 years old and so it’s um you know what Bruno what they liked about me with the real the gangsters really liked about me at first was I had you know I was a ballsy kid and I was violent I could you know inflict violence that’s what they really want because these guys were old school gangsters and and it come to the day they’re going to want you to pull the trigger these guys had that old school mentality you know especially bruno anthony de lavo you know these guys are going to be like hey i had a kill why should what you get in here without because then they resent you afterwards they don’t respect you when you don’t kill what happens is oh really yeah they look at you i’m like you never busted it you know this guy never did nothing you know they don’t even though you’re a made guy they don’t they don’t look at you like Like the other made guys that pulled the trigger four or five times and were involved in multiple hits, you know, so they knew I was violent. And I was also a very, you know, what you don’t see in the mafia is you don’t see guys that can commit murder, pull that trigger, be violent, and also make millions of dollars. Yeah. And that’s it.

[27:13] I was just going to comment about that. See, some people move in and move up because they’re a huge moneymaker. And some people are violent. Sure. And rarely, you know, are the killers and the ones you can depend on for that. But rarely did I’ve noticed that you can have both. Right. And so you could do both, which is interesting. That made you like a double whammy for Bruno. Man, especially a big moneymaker on top of all that. Sure. And it’s like, I think any group of men, you got to prove you’re tough. Whatever group of men it is, whether it’s a police unit or a football team, you got to prove that you’re tough.

[27:55] No different, right? You’re going to get tested, but it is. And even on the streets, there’s bullies that bully people, and then they bully the wrong person, and then they turn into the biggest coward you put up. And that’s pretty much what it is. Anybody can be a tough guy, you know, and bully guys because of maybe who their father was or who, you know, they got a lot of guys around him. But, you know, going to come a day, what happens if, you know, I gave somebody 50,000 worth of marijuana and the guy said, fuck you, I’m not going to pay you. Well, that guy is going to get shot. And that’s no, that’s how you build your, that’s how you build your reputation. I mean, there’s tough guys are a dime a dozen. There’s guys that didn’t fight, but pulling that trigger is a totally different level. Yeah, that’s for sure. You know, um, yeah, you know, some guys, you know, you got a guy that’s the smaller individual, you know, say he’s, you know, five feet four and you got a guy six feet tall that knows how to fight MMA style fighting. It’s not a fair match, but you take that five foot four guy and get put that pistol in his hand. Who’s going to win that?

[29:06] You know there’s an old saying uh big or small no matter the size i will equalize samuel colt so well you know what i used to always say too it’s like yeah i’m you know i might be five foot you know say your guy’s five foot four five foot five right yeah but you got a gun in your pocket now i’m what now i’m seven foot six you know now that now the tide has turned you know it’s not uh.

[29:32] Yeah so did you have like a making ceremony then where you eventually inducted and and you went through the whole ceremony and everything and had people stand around guarding the door and make sure nobody came in you had to wear a suit was that is that how that went down you had everything right but with me i was in my boxers your boxers yeah penitentiary or something i was in my boxers in a bathrobe. I came out with the knife on the table and all the guys around, like you said, and this and that. And, uh, the boss at the table would, uh, one of the high powered captains. And I was in a bathrobe and my boxes with the gun and the knife. Man, I thought you had to wear a suit to that ceremony. You know, back then in the days, you know, it was, it’s, you know, they called it the honored society was if you were Italian and you, that was a dream come true. Yeah you know to be inducted into the mafia anybody that was a wild kid growing up that’s what you wanted today you got to be a nut to every people want to get you know nothing out there to there’s nothing that you could say to to get your button that it’s going to prove to anything unless it’s a networking type business type of uh corporation type thing where you know made guys like a brotherhood like the the masons or the yeah you know um you know like a secret just group like that you know that they help each other out and things like that it was an honor.

[30:58] To, uh, to be inducted. You had to pull that trigger back then. You know, some guys escaped through, you know, without having to do it, but I would say, you know, all the way up the majority back then had to, you know, shoot to get, uh, inducted. Yeah. I believe that. So now you’re moving up and you’re moving up and, but there’s only so far to go in this crew here. It’s not like you’re in New York city where there’s several crews and You can go to Capo and then the next one up above and then the under boss, the consigliere and all those different ranks. You’re a young guy that’s immensely successful. You’re a racketeer and a gangster, it sounds like, as Sammy the Bull once talked about the difference in the two. And so now where do you go from here? You’re looking at Big Al’s, the boss. Do you aspire for that?

[31:49] Yeah, so you could still get those same positions here. We’re still, uh, we’re still a family, you know, like even the Genovese family in New York, you got a Manhattan faction, you got a Bronx, you know, faction, got a New Jersey faction, you got a Florida faction, you got a Massachusetts faction. So you still got the positions of a boss here. What we never did was you don’t need an under boss, you know, because you don’t have like 300 guys underneath you. So a boss here, it’s pretty much like, he’s like a captain running a crew. We had so many guys made guys and associates and throughout Western mass in Connecticut that they did an article in the Boston Herald and said, uh, in 2006, Michelle McPhee wrote from page of the newspaper and it’s on my Instagram. I posted it. She said there was more wise guys and made members of the mafia and associates throughout new England, Western mass Connecticut, you know.

[32:47] Than anywhere in the country per capita. You know, so meaning, you know, we, we don’t have 10 million people living here, but the amount of gangsters and organized crime associates that we had per amount, the, uh, the, the people that lived here, we had more compared to what they had in the Bronx and Brooklyn, the strongholds of like where the mafia is, you could still rise up. And I, you know, I started in 91, but I didn’t end up getting made until 03. And along the ways, I mean, I went and got killed. I was a proposed member. Then they wanted to kill me. And then I was proposed again. And then I, you know, so I was like throughout those, that time, not only did I have the illegal stuff, I was involved in like a dozen bar restaurants, nightclub. I had the biggest nightclub in Connecticut. So that, you know, that’s where I ended up. I had real estate. Developments that I had. So not just the illegal money, I had legitimate money that I was actually.

[33:52] Prospering very well in. Throughout those years, that’s what I was doing. In 96, Bruno, I got caught with the marijuana. Bruno wanted to kill me, wanted to chop my head off. He told my father he was going to leave me for dead on my front steps. And so I got shelved. Shelf means I got banished for a two-year period. They can’t banish me. I had the biggest crew. I was the biggest money maker. I had the biggest violent guys around me. And all I did was just, I just networked in other cities and made more connections. I was dealing with the top, I was dealing with captains in New York city and the other families, Boston, everywhere I was going dealing, Connecticut. And so I had, I just started building up reputations and networking and, and I didn’t get inducted until Oh three in that life. So I guess there came

[34:40] a time when you and, and Al Bruno bumped heads for real. We always, me and Al Bruno had like a father son relationship. You know, it was exactly what the way it was. You know, he used to talk, go to my father and say, why does your son always go against the grain? Why is he, he thought my father would be like, oh, he’s crazy. You know, things like that. He, he don’t want me hanging around one time with this kid, Emilio Fusco, who’s a made guy in our area in Springfield. And he says, I don’t want you hanging around with Emilio. I said, why not? I go, you talk with him. I go, because I don’t want you to hang around with him.

[35:16] I go out that night. Who am I with? The kid Emilio. He comes to my house the next day, Bruno, because we used to have to settle up and do the work once a week. He goes, you go out last night. It was Saturday. This is every Sunday. He would come over my house. He said, you go out last night. He goes, yeah. He goes, who are you with? You with the kid Emilio? Now he knew because everybody told him everything. Everyone reported back to him. He goes, you were with Amelia? I said, yeah. He goes, but why do you always define me? Why did I tell you not to hang around with him? Do you hang around him? So we had a relationship where we…

[35:46] You know, was like father and son, but I know that he really, um, he wanted to make me with him.

[35:53] Bruno’s problem was he, he wanted too much control. Like, you know, he would, he would, uh, investigate me worse than the IRS could, you know, like we’d be, he goes, how do you do it? He goes, you’re out to dinner every night. He goes, you got a wife, you got three kids. He goes, you don’t work.

[36:08] He goes, and you’re out. You smoke, you, you got cigar. You hear it. I go, Bruno, I go, when I go out, we all chop up the bill. He was like on me like that. And because the reason was because his son would always run back to him and tell him I’m in the drug business. And then he used to tell, if I find out Anthony’s in the drug business, I’m going to chop him in half. I’m going to cut him in half. So that’s what I was dealing with. It was like 50, 50. Could I have gotten killed? Absolutely. So we never had a falling out where we hated each other ever. It was just all little things like that. When I got caught with the marijuana, if he ever knew the millions and millions of dollars that I made and he never got a penny of it that he would stick to his stomach if he ever found it ever knew but I was just good at that I was just good at making money and being good about not you know flashy like his son was flashy I didn’t need a you know to walk around with a hundred thousand dollar watch and driving around with brand new Mercedes or anything you know I was but you know I’m about making the money so I had a me and Bruno never had a thing where I could say, I hate that guy. Like Emilio Fusco, I wanted to kill him. Every other guy I wanted to kill, I could tell you dozens of guys I wanted to kill, right? And they, you know, it was just, we hated, we had hatred. Emilio was a made guy. He came from Italy and they made him in like 96.

[37:27] And he tried to get me killed several times. And I swore, I said, I told him, I said, I’m going to kill this kid one day. We’re the same age, but me and Bruno never had a, like, I’ve never had feelings like that towards him. And he never, it was never like that. Like I said, it was like a father-son type relationship. I mean, I pled guilty to killing him, but not like, and that’s hard to believe.

[37:50] But it wasn’t like what’s reported and the way it went down. And that’s pretty much why I wrote the book. And that’s pretty much why I do podcasts and to tell people what really, I don’t try to say I’m innocent at all, you know, but it’s not what they think went down.

[38:11] The way it went down. Uh, interesting. That’s, that’s what I’m trying to say. I’m guilty and I’m not saying that, but it’s not the way, you know, it went down the way, like, you know, I, I wanted to take his position or, you know, you know, anything like that or the motive. And I could walk you through the whole thing and you’ve got common sense. You’re going to be like, yeah, you’re definitely involved in it, but you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Guys. That’s why you got to get this book. It’s a, it’s going to give you a real insight, inside look at how this thing that we study, we talk about, we’re interested in, and we want to know more about how it works.

[38:50] If you really want to find out how it works. Now, I’ve got one last question here for you. I got to know about Freddie and Ty Gease. I know you know them. You were close to them. They were in your crew, I believe.

[39:03] If they heard the way you just said their last name, they would probably want to do to you. They want to do me like they did the whitey, huh?

[39:13] It was funny. It was funny. It was funny because we were in trial and they were going to the trial. The judge, but he wasn’t calling them geese. He was calling them, he was calling them gay as. Gay as. It’s called E-A-S. So he was calling them gay as. How about G-A-S? G-A-S. That’s how you say it. All right. So, you know, the paranoid, schizophrenic tie got all upset because the way the judge was referring to his last name, you know, maybe, but he was paranoid over that, you know, ask me about them. That’s kind of like, I got an Italian FBI agent that came here back in the sixties and I’ve got, I know him really well. He’s retired now. We talk all the time and we both worked to mob in Kansas city. And he said, yeah, when I first came here, everybody was an Italian. Yeah.

[40:05] So, I catch myself saying that once in a while. Yeah. Old habits are hard to break. So, you know, what was the deal with them? I mean, these are a couple of bad dudes, a little bit I’ve read about them. And, of course, they hit the headlines big time. And that murder was brutal, man. I mean, it was brutal. Right. Well, listen, here’s the story with them. I used to call them the Beverly Hillbillies. You know, the Beverly Hillbillies? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, they originally, I think they were born in California. And they uh they migrated to uh i think worcester for a little bit and then uh um springfield west springfield they were um the family owned a jewelry store and they were nothing on the streets like i reason i call them hillbillies like i met ty in prison we were both young kids and we’re both in state prison our first time ever and he used to chew tobacco you know you would you know he was like a hillbilly i i you know i used to call him a hillbilly like we had plans when we got out Freddie, the brother, believe this or not, was a prison guard. Freddie was a prison guard. I’m in state prison. I meet his brother. And me and the brother were always in trouble getting into fights in there. And they warned us, next time you guys fuck around, we’re going to ship you to the max, which was Walpole, one of the most dangerous prisons in America. Sure enough, he ends up beating up the Spanish kid.

[41:23] And they shipped him out. And I was supposed to… And I was getting out in February of 91. He was getting out in March of 91. Well, he ends up beating up a guard. Yeah. So he doesn’t get out until 96. He did like four years straight in the hole, but they, you know, they were good kids. They weren’t killers. Then they weren’t, they were just, you know, type of kids that would fight all just like me. They weren’t my muscle. They were friends of mine that if we had an issue and I says, guys, come on, they would come with me just like if they They needed someone to come with them. They were very ballsy kids, just like us, just like me and guys I grew up with my whole life. We’re all ballsy kids growing up. And as the years went on, Ty ended up coming home. So then when I got out in 91, I started to hang around with Freddie was no longer a prison guard. And they knew nothing about making money on the streets.

[42:17] You know, their thing was, Freddie’s thing was, cause Ty was still a young kid. He don’t even know nothing on the streets was, you know, credit card fraud, things like that. You know, maybe, um, low level, low level selling a little Coke, you know, and to scam guys, nothing like that. When I started hanging around him, that’s when I started, you know, getting him involved when selling some marijuana, we were hijacking trucks. We started making money doing that. I did a little loan sharking with him. He used to come to me. I used to give him the money. He’d have guys that want to borrow 30,000. you know we gave it to this one of these guys one time and we are charging him high amounts of juice i think we’re getting like we’re charging him four points we’re getting like uh 1200 a week off the guy and he couldn’t pay anymore next thing you know we took over to the guy’s bar and then after that we partners in his bar in westfield and then we ended up becoming the partners with the guys rest a bar in um cape cod which was like doing five million a year and gross back in the 90s So that’s how I started making one with Freddie. And then these guys never killed anyone prior to that. They were tough kids. If I needed them to go around, I would, you know, bring them.

[43:24] Would end up, you know, and I could go on and on and on and on and on stories with them. But, you know, it gets reported that they were muscle for me. They were never muscle. They never did anything for me. If there was, if we had to go shoot someone, I would go shoot with them. If we had to go beat someone, which we beat several people up, I was right there by the Smashing people with clubs and bats and knives and everything Muscle to me is when you say to somebody Hey, go give that guy a beat and report back to me type of thing You know, I didn’t I didn’t build my crew like that You know, I get accused of having a biggest crew, I don’t call it a crew. I call it a network of my friends.

[44:01] I network and I consider you my friend. I have you at my house. You come to dinner. I sell you 100 pounds of marijuana a week. You don’t report. I’m not your boss. Next week, you might sell me the marijuana. So that’s how I considered them. And I considered them the same thing. Things just started getting very deep. The mafia, in the mafia world, in Springfield, New York started coming. And I mean, it’s, it’s a story, Gary, that I could go on and, and, and talk till tomorrow night to explain treachery that happened, you know, what they did, but it just started getting a lot more serious where, you know, the, the beating now we’re getting into, now we’re talking about murders and murder plots and murder conspiracies. And when, and then it started, we started committing murders and like, you know, they, they were with me. And, uh, on my first hit that I did for the Genovese family in New York was in New York city, them two brothers came with me. That’s how I got made into the, uh, the family.

[44:57] Um, we went out, we went and shot, uh, a union guy nine times on the streets of New York. And so the two brothers came with me to do that hit. And, you know, that’s a, that was like a ballsy move to do something like that. You know, we had to travel to two and a half hours to New York. We had to get there, wait there with silencers for the guy to come out of his house. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of risk involved in there. Meaning who knows if the guy’s got a gun and shoots back. I mean, not only when you’re going to jail, but maybe you get killed, right? They were good kids. Fast forward, they could be out here talking with me just like you are talking to me right now. And they chose a different path and that’s why they’re in prison. Freddie ends up killing Whitey Bulger in prison. It was reported that they stabbed. They didn’t stab him. What happened was.

[45:42] They, he hit him with a lock in a sock and Whitey was so old that the bruising of, you know, hitting a 90 year old man that’s in a wheelchair, the bruising that it was causing made his eyes bulge out of his head. You know, it, his whole face got so swollen that it looked like his eyes got gouged out, you know, and this is coming right from the, um, the, the, the guy in West Virginia that, you know, like one, uh, how you call it? The path, path, forensic pathologist. The forensic guy. Yeah. Like one of the guys that did the autopsy. Yeah. The guys that, you know, he, he would know exactly, you know, cause it was for it all. He hates, you know, rats. And that’s why he killed the guy. Listen, if he did, you know, hate rats, then why, how could he be a prison guard ever? You just don’t flip on a night’s, you know, the light. And one day you’re locking guys up in their cells and the next minute you’re killing them because, you know, it was nothing that, you know, they, they report that for, it was for notoriety purposes that that went down and everything. Interesting. Well, it was quite a shock. I remember when I first read the headlines. It’s like, oh my God.

[46:51] Yeah. It’s shocking. People call me up and I just had prison in 17 and this happened in 18. And I had got the first job ever I ever got in my life was selling cars. I never had a job in my life. I worked for my father. That was it. So I had a, you know, I got a job that was good. I started selling cars. I don’t know nothing about cars, nothing about engines, anything about that. Right. And so somebody tells me a calls me up and they said, Hey, Whitey Bolger just got killed. I said, so what? And they said, you know, who’s in the prison with that killed that he got killed. And I said, Freddie, I knew right away he did it because that’s the type of, if you knew Freddie, that’s a type of son that he would want to do for the notoriety of it. Now I’m, you know, worried because they were co-defendants of mine on one of the trials that we beat got found not guilty in 07. I’m at the work and it was national news, worldwide news. Because Whitey was like, you know, I think number two on the most wanted list behind Bin Laden, right? For a long time. Yes, he was. With that, I’m on the TV. They’re showing pictures of me because, you know, they’re going to link me with them. Like, who’s Freddie? Like, when you say who’s Freddie, all right, he killed Whitey. But if he didn’t kill Whitey, nobody would know who Freddie is. Right? Right. So now then, who is this guy? Oh, he worked for the Genovese family guys, and that’s how you’re going to refer to him. So when they say that, I was the boss, so they say it worked for me.

[48:13] You know what I’m saying? And he did work with you. He worked with me. Yeah, we did. Like I never considered him a subordinate or there were just guys that were in my crew that I had guys that were 10 times more killers than they, they only killed the only guys they ever shot and killed was when they were with me. They didn’t kill no one else or shoot anyone else. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like, you know, like, uh, were they tough kids? Absolutely. Do they got both? But we all had balls. We had a lot of guys like that back then. Yeah. It’s crazy world. Crazy world. You came up in guys. You got to get this book. There it is. There it is. Yeah. That’s in syndicate. How I took over the Genevieve Springfield crew. Anthony Arillotta.

[48:56] Anthony, this has been great. I really appreciate you being so candid with us and kind of telling us how it is. Guys like you, it’s, it’s been this big mystery for a long time and, and how all this works, especially for me. And I came up, I was a young policeman out here following these guys around and I never knew what was going on. I just knew that they went from here to here and they had this license plate and they met this person, they had this business and he went there. So it’s been a real revelation for me these last two years talking to you guys. I’m glad you’re talking. Now you’re going to have, you got a YouTube channel, correct? Yeah. So you probably got some amazing stories too, in your line of action. Well, not quite that amazing, but. Someone got to pull stories out of you one day.

[49:41] No, but yeah, so I got a, um, I got an Instagram is my name. Anthony or a lot. I’m on Facebook. I’m on all that stuff, social media, but I have a wine coming out. It’s called Pazzo P A Z Z O in Italian. That means crazy.

[49:57] It’s a good story. My father was in the wine grape business, so I’m proud that I’m involved in the wine business itself. It’ll be out for pre-orders next week, and then it’s launching in March, where it’s actually going to be able to be distributed. And yeah i have a mafia youtube channel called mafia money mayhem and the mafia okay and i’m gonna be starting that up back up because i have to sell i’m not in the selling business i’m i’m selling uh wine and uh books and so i gotta start you know you know a lot of people are interested in this mob genre i get so many messages a day when you’re coming back when you’re coming back when you come back. So, um, I am going to come back. I don’t, and I can, and I like talking about everything, not just mob stuff. So a lot of people out there, I guess DM people that are depressed, people that want to eat, live healthy people. How do you get through adversity? You know, like I love talking about all that stuff. I like, you know, I think like, that’s what I can, you know, help people like give back to people. So, you know, if I can help anybody get through something through the, you know, how I lived would be that. So yeah, going forward, uh, that’s what I got going on. No, I’m helping. I got my cousin and my nephew, my nephew’s MMA and my cousin in Worcester, Danny Dogemo, he’s fighting.

[51:18] My nephew’s fighting this week. My, uh, Danny Dogemo’s fighting, um, uh, February 15th. I’m helping out all those young kids in the Worcester area, young kids, good kids that will get them off the streets and get them into the box. And, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m sponsored them. I get them, you know, I helped them with their fighting and, you know, get them cause they have nobody and they’re going to end up going to prison. So this way, keep them on the right road.

[51:43] All right. Great. Anthony, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Hey, Gary, thanks for having me. Great job. Good talking to you. All right. Uh, guys, you know, 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, if you’ve been in this service, go to the VA website and they have a hotline on there. And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, Anthony Ruggiano, he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida, of all things. And he has a hotline on one of his website or his YouTube channel. I can never remember. This is not a paid promotion for him. I just want to give you some resources out there that I think would be entertaining too or fun for you. And if you have a problem with gambling, there’s plenty of resources out there for that so uh we all need help once in a while and and i’ll be the first one to admit it and my life has been a whole lot better since i asked for it back years ago so thanks a lot anthony arelotta and uh south end syndicate how i took over the genovese springfield crew and get that book guys thanks Anthony thank you.

In this bonus episode of Gangland Wire, I follow up on my interview with Mafia historian Anthony DeStefano to discuss New York City’s organized crime more. One of the most significant topics Anthony and I covered was the Alto Nights social club. This was not only the title, but also the central character in the recent Mafia film written by Goodfellas scribe Nicholas Pileggi, who starred Robert De Niro in dual roles.

Listeners will hear about notorious gangsters who frequented the Alto Knights, including Vito Genovese, Michael Miranda, and infamous enforcer Buster Ardito. Through historical anecdotes and law enforcement surveillance records, this episode paints a vivid picture of mob life—its power struggles, criminal enterprises, and the relentless pursuit by federal authorities.

Click the link on Anthony DeStefano’s name to see his mob books.

Subscribe to get gangster stories weekly

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

Transcript

[1:26] Knights with a sword and the raven, because he loved the Edgar Allan Poe poem so much, the one called the Raven, you know, the Raven, quote, the Raven nevermore. Now, it seems kind of weird that Gambino must have been a pretty erudite, sophisticated mob boss. If you read Edgar Allan Poe and poems, you know, I remember it because it’s just so immensely popular. It got to, you know, quote the Raven nevermore. It’s such a great line that, you know, you’ve heard of it. I don’t think I ever read the whole thing. It’s certainly not for fun, maybe in school. And Raven Nights was then slurred into Ravenite. And, you know, that makes sense. And that became Paul Castellano’s club. Uh neil della croce really don’t neil della croce took it from carlo gambino and and then castellano as he was promoted to boss not della croce uh he never went down there that was that was the the kick on him was he never wanted to get his hands dirty and come down to on the street level where all the guys hung out and and so that’s when gotti after he had castellano killed.

[2:34] He moved his crew from the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park and the Queens over to Manhattan, you know, the center of the world, Manhattan, New York, and took over the Ravenite, probably the most bugged or most attempted bug club ever. And this was about two blocks away from another club at 86 Kenmare, same general vicinity, real close to the old original New York City Police headquarters, or they called it the Broom Street Addicts or something like that. And the 86 Kenmare was a well-documented bookmaking center, and it was known as a Café Royale back in the day. Now, going back to 247 Mulberry Street, you know, it was, there’s another story that says it was Albert Anastasia’s club. This is a Ravenite, and it was called the Knights of the Alto Social Club. And he took it over from Joseph Profaci, who inherited it from Lucky Luciano in 1936. And so in order to, you know, the 247 Mulberry Street was always a Gambino Club, regardless of exactly how it got there. But Anastasia, Carlo Gambino took over that crime family after Anastasia was murdered. And, you know, I suppose he could have named it the Raven Knights Club. I don’t know. But then when Neil Delacroce dies, he gives it to his underboss, really, because he doesn’t like going down there anymore.

[4:02] 1985, Mr. Neil dies. John Gotti has had Paul Castellano murdered, and he’s now the boss of the Gambinos. And he moves over there, like I said before. But if you think historically, this was Albert Anastasia’s club, for sure.

[4:19] Gambino club, it’s just always been a Gambino club, not a Genovese club at all. And the Alto Nights in the movie Social Club is a Genovese club. Now, the other location is 86 Kinmar, K-E-N-M-A-R-E. That’s about two blocks away from the Ravenite.

[4:38] Still in the same area, Chinatown. You call that Little Italy, I’m not sure, in the Chinatown area. That’s where Anthony DeStefano claims the Alto Nights Social Club was after it was the Cafe Royale. There’s an old article that I found that shows some bookmaking going on and a guy named Willie, they said Willie Morati, who was a Genovese guy, was actually probably Willie Moretti was arrested there. So it goes back as a club Royale as a.

[5:10] Or Café Royale as a Genovese club, which then became the Alto Knights. Found a surveillance photo with the caption, Alto Knights Club, and that’s where these photos were taken. And that was, you know, many early members of the Genovese crime family, as well as Ben Ovidio Genovese and his underboss, Michael Miranda, were there. Another source, Scott Bernstein, reports from FBI surveillance logs in 1958. They documented that a Genovese soldier named Sally Byrne, called Sally Byrne, Salvatore Granello, said he was arriving at the Alto Night Social Club in the afternoon to meet with Genovese to discuss some recent jewelry heist and hijackings that Genovese was owed a piece of. And so, you know, he also talks about in 1955, the Genovese was photographed by the NYPD narcotics squad, going on walking talks with one of his Newark, New Jersey lieutenants, Little Pussy Russo, outside the Alto Night Social Club, which indicates it’s a different club. And this is in that area. And then it’s probably, it’s got to be where this Club Royale used to be because the Club Royale was at this 86 Kenmare. I found an article that said that. Never could find anything that said that address, that Kenmar address, but it’s a different location from the Ravenite.

[6:37] 1950s era newspaper, several photos taken in front of the Alto Knights Social Club. I may have said that before, showing Vito Genovese and a consigliere Michael Miranda standing there with some other photos of Genovese guys. You know, Michael Miranda, he was longtime consigliere, and he was actually part of the one. When Genovese went to jail after Costello and Luciano purportedly set him up to take a pension and actually ended up with a 15 year sentence for dealing narcotics and went to Atlanta. He set up a three-man ruling panel, which was Tommy Ryan Ibole, who was the acting boss, but Vito Genovese remained the boss, and then Jerry Catena and Michael Miranda. And they ran it, but Genovese relayed orders in the penitentiary. He did not like to give up control. Another photo in front of this alternate social club that shows some more long-term, well-known Genovese guys. A guy named John Ardito called him Buster Buster Ardito. He was a capital regime in the Genovese crime family under Mike Miranda.

[7:49] Caption said that he was a well-known narcotics peddler, and he was talking with Alphonse, good-looking Al Criscolo, who was also a well-known Genovese family soldier, and that Criscolo had been arrested once by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics when they, what the article said, smashed an international dope syndicate in 1945. I couldn’t find out much else about him. A lot about Buster Ardito. He lasted in the Genovese family, clear up to modern times, up in the 2000s. Came from Brooklyn. His legitimate cover job or a cover company, he was part owner of Butcher Shop at 590 East 156th Street in South Bronx. He was involved in narcotics. He took pops, took pinches for narcotics, extortion, loan sharking, gambling, the usual stuff. He was described as a button man in Michael Miranda’s crew. Ardito was once busted for slipping some medicine to a guy. A Genovese mobster was on trial in 1983, Gus Cercio.

[8:58] And all of a sudden he had a heart attack, or it looked like a heart attack. And the FBI found out later that he had, Ardito, Buster Ardito, had secretly given him some medication to simulate cardiac problems to delay the trial. He ended up actually taking a conviction for conspiracy to instruct justice for that. He only did a couple, three years on that one. But, you know, it’s, I’ll tell you what kind of guy he is. Back on up into 2003, the FBI had a whole bunch of electronic surveillance on him, recorded in several different places. He was eating, meeting people in different Bronx restaurants. And they discovered some of the devices and he moved to retail shops and medical offices. But the Bureau was on him. They actually ended up bugging his cell phone where they could turn it off and turn it on, And once they turned on their cell phone, then it would be the listening device. That’s pretty scary, ain’t it? I was like, have your cell phone turned on by

[9:59] somebody, and they listen and tape everything you’re saying within earshot of that cell phone. You know, as a result of that big-ass surveillance in 2000, they charged Ardito and several Genovese family members with labor racketeering, mainly a bakery confectionary and tobacco workers union and the International Union of Operating Engineers. He was out on bail for these racketeering charges, and he died of pancreatic cancer.

[10:27] You know, three other guys are photographed together in this set of photos from the 1950s in front. What was described as in front of or next to the Alto Night Social Club, although you can’t really see the club in the background. Lorenzo Brescia, Joseph Jostretz Stracki, and Joseph Toriki Brescia, or we’ll call him Chappie, which is what everybody called him. He came from Italy, from Italy, or Sicily, I believe. And he had been a soldier in Mike Miranda’s crew for a long time. He had been a suspect at one time in the Anastasia murder.

[11:03] He’d been a strong-armed man, a killer for the Genovese family. He was part of their union racketeering, been arrested for homicide, extortion, conspiracies, all those different kinds of things. He really was a close associate and in a crew by a guy named Peter DeFeo and was supposedly DeFeo’s top soldier. A number one man number one killer that don’t gross joe stretch or strachy he was a long time friend of mafia and former of joe velacci again he’s you know obviously he’s a genovese guy, uh according to blotchy strachy was president the assassination of joe the boss masseria in that coney island hit uh back in 1930 so this guy you know he he is a long time genovese guy Uh.

[11:54] Strocky was actually came up under Lucky Luciano back in those days. And as, as a blot, she did another guy toward a Ricky, I couldn’t find out anything about him. Uh, but he was listed as a soldier in a, in a, uh, organizational chart in the family, but really it was people going back to Cyril, the artichoke King.

[12:19] Uh, Terranova and trigger Mike Coppola. So, I mean, these were long time guys. And, uh, another newspaper article identified this cafe Royals and gambling location. And they gave the address there, 86 Kenmar street. And, you know, that, that newspaper article had a guy named Willie Morata, M O R A T T A is proprietor. But at the time there was really well-known Genevieve’s bookmaker named Willie Moretti.

[12:48] So I got a feeling that to me that puts it together. My humble opinion the Alto Nights Social Club is was at 86 kenmar not 247 mulberry 247 mulberry the raven knight was historically anastasia and then gambino club and the alto knights was historically and always a genovese club going back to cafe royale so a little extra one thanks a lot guys how you like my uh my little uh got my book as my backdrop here kind of cool i just figured that out uh how to do that i’ll probably do some more different kind of fun backdrops to get tired of seeing my, uh.

[13:29] Stupid little office and studio here. And don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re on the street. If you have a problem with PTSD and been in the service, go to the VA website, drugs or alcohol, get hold of Anthony Ruggiano. I’ll put links down there to my author page. I’ve got three books out there. One on Chicago, a windy city mafia, and one on New York to Big Apple Mafia or something like that by the crime families. You’ll find it if you go to the, if you hit that link and my book on the Las Vegas skimming investigation from the Kansas city standpoint. And I’ve got movies out there. I got three documentary movies about Kansas city mob activities. You can get, you can rent those on Amazon for, I don’t know, buck 99 or two 99. And I go, that’s all I got to sell. Well, I really appreciate you guys tuning in and being supportive. You know, my YouTube page, you’re so supportive. We’re over 20,000 subscribers now and get a lot of comments. I really like it when you give me comments. I usually comment back or try to answer questions or, you know, whatever, as long as it’s a rational, logical question or whatever. So thanks a lot, guys.