In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jay Baer to explore the hidden, human side of organized crime’s biggest names — Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John Gotti, and Paul Castellano.

Jay’s book, Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano, takes a unique look beyond the murders, rackets, and headlines to reveal how these mobsters actually lived — what they ate, how they dressed, their relationships with religion, and how they handled immense power and wealth.

Listeners will hear:

How Al Capone’s family sold his spaghetti sauce recipe to Ragu — their first commercial product.

Why Meyer Lansky, the most devout of the four, was denied the right to die in Israel by Prime Minister Golda Meir.

The lavish lifestyle and fatal missteps of Paul Castellano, the “Howard Hughes of the Mafia.”   The contrast between Gotti’s flamboyance and Lansky’s low profile — and how each approach shaped their downfall.

The staggering fortunes these men built — and how, in the end, they all lost it.

Jay also shares his own lifelong fascination with organized crime, his career outside writing, and his upcoming project, How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required, a look at mob values like loyalty, respect, and power through a modern lens.

Gary and Jay swap mob history from New York to Kansas City, including a discussion of the real story behind scenes from Casino and Kansas City’s own underworld power struggles.

ON AMAZON Wayne said

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Facts on the Mob

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021Format: Kindle

If your looking for a good fast interesting read on the Mafia, this is the book for you. Full of information on mob types that most have no clue about.

You can't lose with this book I believe.

🎧 Listen now to uncover the side of the mob you’ve never heard before.

📘 Get the book: Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Robert Baer on Amazon

00:00 – Intro: Gary Jenkins welcomes Jay Baer 01:00 – Why Jay wrote Mob Life and his lifelong fascination with gangsters

03:30 – From detailing cars to writing true crime books

05:30 – Gary and Jay’s early mob reading influences

07:00 – Researching Al Capone’s private life

08:00 – Capone’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe sold to Ragu

09:00 – John Gotti’s love for Cracker Barrel and biscuits & gravy

10:00 – Meyer Lansky’s religious life and denied burial in Israel

12:00 – Castellano’s wealth, arrogance, and fall 14:00 – Jay’s next book: How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required

15:00 – Loyalty and respect in the mob vs. business life

16:00 – How Castellano’s aloofness led to his murder

18:00 – The real Joe Watts story — the German who made millions

20:00 – Gary shares Kansas City mob stories and Casino connections

23:00 – The failed car bombing of underboss Tuffy DeLuna

25:00 – The Mob Museum and modern mob myths

26:00 – Jay shows his book Mob Life and shares fun mob trivia 28:00 – How much money mob bosses really made — and lost

30:00 – Why law enforcement didn’t chase mob money before the drug era

31:00 – Joe Massino’s $10 million cash and gold surrender

32:00 – Final thoughts: The mob’s empire always ends the same way

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

Transcript

Gary Jenkins: Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I'm a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective and I am now a mob historian and with the podcast and a few other things, some books and stuff out there.

Gary Jenkins: And I interview other mob authors as well as research stories. And today I have an author named Jay Bear. He has written a book about the mob, a really good, solid, historical, factually true book as kind of a basis for a novel he wants to write. So Jay, welcome.

Jay Baer: Oh, thank you. I'm, I'm happy to be here.

Jay Baer: This is really great. So I'm looking forward to this interview.

Gary Jenkins: All right, Jay. Well, you know, we, we like the mob here and we like the the facts about the mob. When I read about your book, that's, that's when I got hold of you. I thought, well, this is so interesting. It is Mob life, the private world of [00:01:00] Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano.

Gary Jenkins: And what did Al Capone wear? How much did it cost? Where did he buy it? You know, what, what kind of Italian, right? What kind of, what kind of food did Gotti like besides Italian and, and that kind of a thing. So I, that, that was really interesting, those esoteric little details that we don't really know usually.

Jay Baer: What I wanted to do is I wanted to tell a different story. Everybody writes books about their crimes and law enforcement's effort to put them away. We've heard all that. So this was like something I wanted to do for years. Let me just tell a different story. And I did, and the book is filled with, you know what?

Jay Baer: How much money they made, what they, how they dressed religious views really. Which there wasn't very much in religious views except for May Lansky. The rest of them were, even, even Paul Castellano, the the bishop did not wanna bury him in a Catholic, in, in a Catholic cemetery. And they fought him on it and they got him to do it.

Jay Baer: [00:02:00] But yeah, none of 'em had really any religious views except for, may Lansky.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Jay Baer: He went to synagogue on a regular basis. He belonged, he did a lot of stuff, you know, during the war to help you know, catch the Nazis.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Jay Baer: In fact, there's a book out there, an older book with called Luciano's Luck and it's about their, what they did and how they got involved in the, you know, world War ii.

Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Yeah, I had heard that. I've never really, I talked to one guy, an author that had a book really about the, more about the Navy guy that approached Luciano in prison and then worked with this guy named Sox Sox Lanza, who had the Fulton Street Fish market in, in trying to gather information about any possible Nazi saboteurs.

Gary Jenkins: But I've never really got into that. Mayor Lansky area. So Jay, tell us a little bit about where you come from. You're not, you're not a career author. Sometimes I have guys that that's all they ever done. They've been newspaper reporters and written books and stuff. Tell us a little [00:03:00] bit about yourself.

Jay Baer: Well, I'm from New York based, you know, originally you can probably tell with my voice, you know, forget about it and all that stuff. I knew you were from north of me. Where are you? Kansas, Missouri. Oh, okay. So. My father moved us down here to Florida, like, oh my God. 1972, and I've been here ever since. So, but I, I de, I started detailing cars when I was 28, and I've been doing that ever since and it's, you know, brought me, right now I'm kind of like, I only work in the mornings, you know, I'm almost 70, so I'm kind of like maybe semi-retired.

Jay Baer: Yeah. But I'm never gonna retire because, I gotta find something to do all the time. So I write, and right now, you know, I wrote this book, mob Life and I wrote a book before that called Angels of Death. It's about two girls who are on the run for murder and they become killers for hire and realize they're in love with each other.

Jay Baer: And I also wrote a nonfiction book about public speaking 'cause I [00:04:00] used to teach public speaking. I'm a distinguished Toastmaster. I did a lot of speaking over the years. I taught hundreds of people how to overcome their fear of speaking. So I wrote, I, I took my course and I put it into a book.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Jay Baer: It was only a very short book.

Jay Baer: 'cause you know, people don't need a lot. I don't think people need a lot of information to be successful, but I've always been interested in gangsters ever since I was a kid. You know, my, my friends were listening to The Beatles. I was reading books about. Capone and May Lansky. So there's something about them that always intrigued me, their power, the women, the way that they just controlled so much, you know, they're very powerful men.

Jay Baer: And it's just something I've kept, kept on for, oh my God, since 35 years. No, 55 years. Ever since I was a kid, 15 years old, I've been interested in gangsters. So, and I decided, hey, it's time to write about 'em. [00:05:00]

Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You know what just outta teens in my teens, I first read my first. True Crime book, which was in Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

Gary Jenkins: And man, that book, I was hooked then in that true crime. And so I was, I was in junior college right outta high school and, and I found green was it Greenfeld Jungle? By Ova DeMars. It was all about the mob in Las Vegas. It was. Thick, real dense book, but, but I bought into it, man, I, I love that book. I devoured that book.

Gary Jenkins: I, I read one by a guy named Ken, a New York City detective named I think it was Joe Erno or Tony Tony Erno, I can't remember his erno and read that. And he really. You know, made these gangsters come alive in that book back then. And I remember even, even back then, I thought, boy, that veto genovese, that was a bad, that's a bad dude.

Gary Jenkins: So they I understand. I got hooked on it early myself.

Jay Baer: Oh, that was a nonfiction book.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Right. Oh, okay.

Jay Baer: Yeah. You know, there's a,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Burt Gonzalez, a veteran officer from the Miami-Dade Police Department, for an unfiltered look inside one of the most violent and chaotic eras in American law enforcement history. Bert has published his story title The Real Greatest Show on Earth.

With decades of experience spanning multiple divisions, Burt recounts the transformation of Dade County’s police force—from Metro-Dade to Miami-Dade—and now back to an elected sheriff. He walks us through the gritty evolution of policing in South Florida, where the drug trade fueled daily violence and cartel wars left bodies in the streets. Burt shares firsthand stories from Miami’s cocaine-crazed years, including a shocking drug bust that netted 208 kilos of cocaine and over a million dollars in cash, offering a vivid glimpse into the unpredictable and dangerous life of a street cop.

Beyond the shootouts and seizures, we explore the human side of policing—the growing mental health crisis in Miami-Dade, the deadly unpredictability of domestic violence calls, and the emotional toll that constant exposure to trauma takes on officers. Burt emphasizes the importance of training, de-escalation, and support systems for those on the front lines.

The conversation also previews Burt’s upcoming show, Sergeant Maverick, a podcast where he’ll tackle everything from police work and politics to financial advice for first responders—and even the decline of customer service in America. Join us for this candid, eye-opening conversation as Burt Gonzalez pulls back the curtain on the realities, dangers, and hard-earned lessons of Miami policing during the height of America’s drug war.

Click here to get the book, The Real Greatest Show on Earth

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

Transcript

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, welcome to the studio of Gangland Wire. I'm back here, and I have a fellow copper from down in Miami-Dade County, Florida, Burt Gonzalez. And, you know, I worked all the jobs on the police department, mainly spent my time in intelligence, so that's why I focus on organized crime. But I worked all the rest of the jobs, almost all of them. I never was a wheel man. But other than that, I think I did everything. And Burt's done a lot of things, too. So welcome, Bert. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. And guys, you need to know, and we'll talk about this later, Bert has a book out there about his career and some great stories called The Real Greatest Show on Earth. And believe me, Bert, it is the real greatest show on Earth, isn't it? Well, that's why I named the book that.

[0:49] I was thinking about what is it that we do and what do we call it out there ourselves, in the street, in the homes of our citizens and everything. And really, it's a circus. So that's where I came up with that. True circus. All right, now tell the guys a little bit about your department that you spent your time in and how you ended up going on that department and a little bit about the history of it and what it was like as you went over the years. So go ahead. So I was with Miami-Dade Police, formerly known as Metro-Dade Police, when I joined in 1983. And in the areas where my family moved here from New York and I followed a year later, the area was unincorporated Dade County at the time. It wasn't called Miami-Dade County yet.

[1:40] And so the police of the jurisdiction was Metro Dade police. And our neighbor behind our house, Bob Johns, was a sergeant with Metro. So then all of my interactions, I've seen Metro everywhere. And then as I got to know Bob and I got to know more about the department,

[2:00] Metro Dade is the largest department in the Southeast United States. Now is Miami Dade. It still is. And it's the sheriff's office, even though we didn't call ourselves that. We just called ourselves Metro-Dade and now Miami-Dade Police. It is a sheriff's office as of a few weeks ago again. First time in 60 years we've elected a sheriff. And that involves all the politics about the county governing itself away from the capital, Tallahassee. And then the voters here a couple of years ago said, we want to have an elected sheriff again, as opposed to an appointed director by the mayor and the county commission. And you know, as well as I do, that if you have an appointed chief or an appointed director, the mayor has control over them. So the director is not answerable to the citizens or the chief of police isn't really answerable to the citizens. They're answerable to the mayor.

[3:04] And it caused a lot of problems. And finally, the citizens down here said, we want an elected sheriff again. In November, we elected a sheriff. One of my colleagues, Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who highly qualified, she was an assistant director with us. So now we're the sheriff's office again.

[3:22] So the more I learned of what department I wanted to apply to, it was going to be Metro-Dade and only Metro-Dade. I didn't think about the city of Miami, which is another, the second largest department in South Florida.

[3:37] But it was going to be Metro all the way. And there's going to be folks that may be here, listen to this, and going to say, well, that sounds pretty arrogant. Well, it is the best department down here for sure. And it is a leading agency around the country. And we're very proud of that reputation. So I joined Metro, like I said, in 83.

[4:00] And two years later my brother got out of the army and he came on as well and I gotta tell you at that time it was the height of the cocaine cowboy wars when we came on.

[4:13] This is what I was thinking, Miami Vice. You say Miami area in 1983. I'm thinking Miami Vice, maybe. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a kilo of cocaine anywhere. I mean, it was everywhere. And the district that I work, Southwest District, we had a lot of dopers that lived there. They built these big houses. And of course, oh, that's not a doper there. Of course not, right?

[4:41] Cameras outside. You know, and the thing about the cowboy wars at that time, besides the fact that cocaine was everywhere, we had a lot of dead bodies dropping all the time. And there was a time literally every day we were finding bodies all over the county, all our different districts. And the homicide rate was so high that our department had to create a specialized narcotics-focused homicide squad to handle it. So when you say Miami Vice, and also, I'm sure you've seen it and many of your viewers and our fellow colleagues, Scarface. Yeah. The movie Scarface. And that scene, I'm always reminded of that scene where Tony Montana and his crew are walking into the banks with duffel bags full of cash. Yeah. Well, I've got one story about that. And I was working, I worked mostly uniform in my career. I did a lot of training as well, but I also did plainclothes work.

[5:58] And we did a lot of street-level narcotics. So I was on this crime suppression team playing clothes, and we were getting hit with a lot of driveway robbers. We have an affluent area in the district I was working. And from the expensive department stores.

[6:19] Macy's, Bloomingdale, Neiman Marcus, the people would get followed home and get robbed in their driveway. And they're driving an expensive car, You know, so we got assigned to do surveillances and try to catch these bad guys. And, uh, like I wrote in the book, I always describe a bad guy as an asshole bad guy. Yeah. Cause that's what they are. Right. So what we were doing these surveillances and we hired extra officers, uh, to increase our numbers. Cause we were a small plainclothes squad. Mark, Sylvia and I, uh, went down this one street one night about eight o'clock at night. And it was dark, and as we drove by this one house, we see two guys looking in the picture window next to the front door. Look really suspicious. We drove down the street. We didn't see a car in the driveway. We came around. They were gone. Okay, we got something here. Go down, park in somebody's driveway. I got out, told the owner who we were. Can we park in your driveway? We're going to watch this house. We called the rest of the squad in. we surveilled for a while.

[7:30] No movement so we went to the house Mark and I went to the back of the house, and what we in the backs of a lot of Florida houses they have what's called the Florida room it's like a second living room that's in the back of the house next to the yard or the pool, generally screened in or something like that when the other guys went to the front door and knocked on the door and a relatively of a young woman came to the door and Joe on our squad who had the gift of gab, she, he started, uh, interviewing her and said, well, there's two guys that were just here and they're gone. And she goes, there's nobody here.

[8:13] So they relayed that to Mark and I, and we're staring at the two guys in the floor room with the kids in the, in the back of the house. Uh-oh. Okay. Right. So, you know, the, the plot thickens, right? Yes. Joe talked his way into the house and got the lady to sign a consent to search. We secured it. He did have a gift to gab, man. Big time. Big time. We secured the two.

[8:40] Asshole bad guys, because that's what they turned out to be. And we searched the house. In one of the rooms, we found Mac 11 machine guns. We found a table with a ledger book on it that was a code book that we sent to the DEA.

[8:59] We found suitcases with coffee grounds.

In this explosive episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into one of the most complex and mysterious figures of the Cold War era—Ricardo “Monkey” Morales, a Cuban exile whose life intersected with the CIA, the anti-Castro underground, Las Vegas mobsters, and even the JFK assassination.

Gary welcomes Rick Morales Jr., son of Monkey Morales, and author Sean Oliver, co-writer of the new book Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad. Together, they unravel the incredible life of a man who was at once a patriot, a spy, and a killer.

Rick recounts growing up in Miami’s Little Havana, where his father’s shadow loomed large—rumored to have ties to the JFK assassination and known for his secret missions across the world. From escaping Cuba as a disillusioned Castro loyalist to training as part of the CIA’s Operation 40 assassination unit, Monkey Morales lived a life that reads like a spy thriller.

Sean Oliver walks listeners through Monkey’s covert missions in Africa’s Congo, his deep ties to other operatives like Frank Sturgis and Barry Seal, and the secret wars that connected Cuban exiles, the CIA, and organized crime. The conversation also explores how Monkey became entangled with Lefty Rosenthal, the Chicago Outfit’s Las Vegas gambling mastermind, and how his bomb-making skills were used in mob turf wars across Florida.

The discussion culminates with Morales Jr.’s chilling memory of his father confessing he was in Dallas on the day President Kennedy was shot—and that he had seen Lee Harvey Oswald in a CIA training camp. Whether you believe Morales was a hero, a villain, or both, his story weaves through some of the darkest and most intriguing chapters of 20th-century American history.

📘 Get the book: Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad

🎙️ Highlights include:

• How Monkey Morales went from a Cuban intelligence officer to a CIA-trained operative

• The secretive Operation 40 and its links to the Bay of Pigs, the Congo, Watergate, and Dallas

• Morales’s work for the FBI and the CIA—and his dangerous double life in Miami

• His connection to mob figure Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and the Outfit’s Florida operations

• A firsthand account from Morales Jr. about his father’s claim to have seen Oswald in CIA training

• The moral code of Miami’s Cuban bombers—and how it vanished when Colombian cartels arrived

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] All right, well, hey, all you wire tappers out there. It's good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. Uh. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective turned podcaster now, and I have another story and we're gonna talk a little bit about the JFK murder and a connection to it, and a little bit about Lefty Rosenthal.

Speaker: And you guys know that I know a lot about ref lefty Rosenthal because he was calling back to Kansas City every once in a while to our mob guys and, and so, so I'm really anxious to talk about this story, but first, let me introduce my guest today and I'm really excited to have these guys on here.

Speaker: I have Rick Morales, Rick Morales, Jr, actually, and Sean Oliver. Welcome guys. Well, thanks Gary. Love the show. So, uh, you know, I, I looked at the two chapters you sent me and, and learned about the book and, and a little bit about your lives and especially yours, Rick, and it's, it's just fascinating as hell.

Speaker: Rick and I were talking a little bit before you [00:01:00] came on here. We, I didn't tape it or anything, Sean, and about I had, you know, I was a policeman and I had kids growing up and, and Rick, his dad wasn't a policeman, but his dad was, was in that. Kind of a violent, kind of a uh, occupation, if you will, about bringing that edge of violence home to your family.

Speaker: And there's no way to, you don't, you know, you know, let it loose on them, but you've been in some violent circumstance. All day long, or Rick's case, maybe his dad's case, maybe for the last several weeks. And then he comes home and, and so it's, it's just an interesting, uh, family dynamic I always think. But, let's start with you, Sean.

Speaker: Tell us a little bit about where you came from. I know you're an author and you've been into wrestling.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I'm from a planet called New Jersey. No, no. Strange. I think you've covered a lot of my residents in the past. I, neighbor, just a couple of weeks ago ago, I heard you doing Bobby Manna, who was very much a, a local of mine.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And my neighbor, Chuck Webner, who you may or may not know, not a mobster, [00:02:00] but I was a, I was a film and television actor for a long time. I, um, I directed television commercials. I, I was in entertainment and then I fell into covering professional wrestling. I wasn't a wrestler myself. I know the physique has you fooled.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had a pro wrestling production company, and then through that, kind of fell into that world. And so my first few books when I started writing were covering that world. And then, um, wrote some novels and then, uh, my first foray into true Crime, certainly not reading it, but writing it came when I met a man.

Speaker 2: Beside me known as, uh, Rick Morales Jr. When I found out who his father was. And I went on a hunt for someone alive who could talk to me about Ricardo Monkey Morales. And that's how I met Rick, I guess six years ago now, Rick. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Six years.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And we began [00:03:00] developing the story initially for television, um, as it's, uh, really lends itself to an episodic.

Speaker 2: It's, yeah, it's so vast to the story, but COVID hit production shut down. We, it was impossible for anyone to produce anything of this scope. So about two years ago, I said to Rick, we had been past our last. Pass was, uh, Rob Reiner, I guess. And I said, Rick, I, let's do this as a book. You know, I have an inn in the publishing world.

Speaker 2: I have, you know, multiple books out. Let's tell your dad, we gotta get the story out. So that's when we started doing this for publication.

Speaker: Interesting, interesting. And it is interesting story. We go from, uh, JFK assassination to Las Vegas, like I said, and, and a whole bunch of stuff down in South America. Rick, you gotta tell us about yourself.

Speaker: You know, Richard Morales. Yeah, Ricardo Mon Monkey Jr. I guess her dad was called Monkey Morales. So tell us a little bit about [00:04:00] your childhood. It had to be a little bit different than a lot of other childhood.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker: yeah. A little

Speaker 3: bit different than Sean's, I would say. Yeah. I was, uh, born in Miami. I got older brother, younger brother, and a sister.

Speaker 3: I was born in 63 in Miami the same year. JFK gets second vaccinated. So I was there, but I wasn't able to. To watch my dad do much 'cause I was only a couple of months old. So grew up in Miami. My dad and my mom left Cuba. My dad was a G two government agent for the Castro government when it took over.

Speaker 3: And then during the two years between 58, 59 or 59 and 60. Disillusioned as much as many were. He was trying to figure out which way the direction of the country was going, and eventually they, uh, tried to kill him. They, they put him on a hit list because his father was a judge for Batista's regime and [00:05:00] had, his father was a judge in the Batista regime, so they were eliminating anybody that had to do anything with the Batist regime.

Speaker 3: So eventually he escapes through the Brazilian embassy. He spends like 82 days there with a bunch of other people. And, uh, eventually they're taken out and he moves to Miami where he immediately goes to work for Cuban revolutionary groups. Because he's, he is got the abilities. He's a bomb maker. He is a master bomb maker.

Speaker 3: He is a sniper, so he's been trained in the government and all those things. So he joins Cuban power groups in Miami trying to fight. Against the castor regime and, and the power. And that's where he starts making his name for himself and then that leads to further jobs with government agencies. CIA what All this time we're kids.

Speaker 3: We're not aware in the early ages, like when I'm young, I'm not aware of what my father is [00:06:00] doing, but eventually there comes times when I see news stories on tv, they try to hide it from us, but they can't. We hear stories from friends. I would go to friend's house when I was young and they would one day be my friend, and then the next day they weren't allowed.

Speaker 3: And when I would ask them at school, what happened is, your dad's Monkey Morales, he was involved in the JF Kennedy assassination. That's what everybody in Little Havana was saying. And so they weren't allowed to come to my house anymore for fear of anything happening at my house that they would become, uh.

Speaker 3: Involved and heard or something. So I grew up with that stigma, you know, uh, as a child. Wow.

Speaker: Crazy. Well, like, do you guys, uh, Sean, did you did you get into investigating any of these pro anti-Castro groups down in Southern Miami? They were, it was Southern Florida. They were all kinds of little groups down there.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've got Cuban exiles coming here [00:07:00] landing in the waiting arms of the CIA who are able to train arm,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins welcomes author Gregory Macalino, whose book “Little Pussy and Long Branch: Perfect Together” offers a deep dive into New Jersey’s underworld and the life of one of its most notorious figures—Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo.

Gregory begins by sharing his own story, growing up in Monmouth County amid the Italian-American enclaves where whispers of mob activity were part of daily life. His firsthand familiarity with the gambling, politics, and personalities that shaped the Jersey Shore inspired him to explore Russo’s remarkable and brutal reign.

Gary and Gregory trace Little Pussy Russo’s rise from a small-time Newark street thief to a powerful player in the Genovese crime family, detailing how he infiltrated Long Branch’s political and law enforcement circles to control the town for over twenty years. Gregory explains Russo’s business acumen, his use of gambling and real estate ventures to mask criminal operations, and the dangerous rivalries that emerged with independent drug dealers who threatened his dominance.

Listeners will hear how Little Pussy Russo’s empire ultimately unraveled amid violence, betrayal, and federal pressure. Gregory recounts dramatic gangland episodes, family connections, and the eventual collapse of a criminal fiefdom that had once seemed untouchable.

The conversation also touches on how Russo’s world parallels modern portrayals of mob life—especially The Sopranos—revealing just how much real New Jersey mobsters influenced America’s favorite mafia fiction. As the discussion closes, Gregory reflects on the lasting cultural footprint of men like Russo and what their stories teach us about power, corruption, and community identity.

This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

Transcript

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. For those of you who don't know me, most of you do, I think, sometimes, a lot of repeat listeners out there, and I really appreciate all you guys that always come back and make comments on my YouTube channel and comment on my Gangland Wire podcast group page, and so I really appreciate all you. And for you guys that don't know me, I was with the Kansas City Police Department. I spent about 14 years in the intelligence unit. We worked the Sabella crime family here in Kansas city and a variety of other things like that, uh, retired and did a couple other things and find out my last retirement gig is I'm a podcaster. And then this has just been so much fun for me, guys. I really appreciate all your support. I'm getting to know all these authors all around the United States. There's not a place. If you're an intelligence, you like to have contacts where you can learn something or find out something or get something done. Well, there's not any city, I don't think, in the United States, I don't know somebody that's been on my podcast that I can call them up or email them and say, what about this or what about that?

 

[1:06] So it's really broadened my life and this made my life much richer. So anyhow, today, without further ado, we have Gregory Macalino. Gregory, welcome.

 

[1:17] Thank you. Great to be here, really, truly. Yeah, well, I really, as I told you when we were talking before, I really am pleased about getting you on the show and about your book that you wrote, Little Pussy and Long Branch, Perfect Together. This is about New Jersey and not just like New Jersey, just across the river, but down into New Jersey. And there's a lot of mafia activity that went on down there. And I've not really covered it very much, just a little bit. Years ago, Scott D.J. did a book. Uh, I can't remember the name of it now that got up into New Jersey. Uh, gang state, or I'm sorry, garden state gangland, garden state gangland. Yeah. And that was a God, that was, I was one of my early interviews. I sometime maybe in the first year, like five or six years ago. So.

 

[2:04] Gregory has put together a book about Anthony Little Pussy and Long Branch, which is part of the Genovese family. And he has really studied this, but he grew up here. So, Gregory, tell us about your life. And you grew up in this area in Monmouth County and Long Branch. And what did you see that then stirred you to eventually write this book about it? Well you know um being in lawn branch you will find out that there is a huge italian community and someone everybody knew everybody that knew someone that was connected and somehow and not like heavy hitters or anything like that but more like you know there was tons and tons of bookies there was numbers runners uh the local the local mob dudes used to hire high school kids that I went to high school with to be the runners.

 

[2:56] And so everybody knew somebody that was connected. And you couldn't help but know. And as you read the book, you will come to find out that Little Pussy completely infiltrated the whole municipality in terms of the local politicians, the city council.

 

[3:14] There's accusations of the police chief. There's also Monmouth County police higher-ups that he completely corrupted and he basically ran the town of long branch for 20 years and he was in headlines constantly making headlines for 20 years and you'll be amazed that there used to be a local newspaper it was over 100 years old it was called um the the daily register i'm sorry the daily record it was out of long branch it was over 100 years old it stopped i think it started in the 1880s and it stopped in like the late 1970s so or just around just about 100 years old and And if you went a month without a blaring headline about the mob in Long Branch, you'd be completely surprised. Because I went through micro-spice and tons of records from the old newspapers. And every other week, there was some big major headline about Anthony Pussy Russo and his little gang of guys and what was going down.

 

[4:14] And it was prevalent. It was just a constant. It's amazing. I believe it. I tell you a little side story. Uh, when my son was in high school, he had this friend from who actually spent all of his life up until they got to high school and his dad moved back here in Tom's river, New Jersey, which is kind of down in that area. And so my son, what they had, he loves sports and this kid loves sports. And he had, I looked down what he had. He had a parlay card. I said, where did you get that? He said, oh, he said, Eddie gets them. His dad gets them at work. He gets them from some guy that has one of those, uh, tow main wagons that comes around those coffee wagons and he gets them. And so we're making our picks. I said, what are you doing?

 

[5:02] And he said, well, you know, I don't know. Big Ed got them, gave them to Eddie's, you know, we're just making our picks. We like put five bucks down or I think like put, I think only put a dollar, a dollar down on our picks. I just said, oh my God. I tell you what, we didn't have anything like that growing up, but in Tom's River, New Jersey and Long Branch in New Jersey, that was pretty prevalent. I got to say, you probably saw stuff like that yourself when you were in high school and on up since then. Yeah. That's like, that's like 40 minutes South of Long Branch. Also, Eddie Murphy, Eddie will be so proud of me to do this show. And I have to, I got to get ahold of him as soon as I get off of here.

 

[5:42] And I'll probably give him this book after I get done with it. Cause he'll be really excited to read it. Anyhow, let's talk about Anthony big pussy Russo.

 

[5:54] And, and he was, he was little pussy. His brother was big pussy. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. I got a little pussy. I just, my, my, I was trying to do two things at once in my mind. So go ahead. You go ahead and start telling us about this guy. Okay. So Auntie Little Pussy is from the Newark area. They migrated up to Newark from Brazil, the family. They were from a lot of Italians. Half of the Italians went to America and half the other Italians went to South America. So his family went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, I believe, and then they migrated to Newark. And he was born 1916, I believe. He was one of 13 children. the father died early and so he was on the streets of newark and he had two older brothers one was called ralph and the other one was called john ralph and john started working for richie boyardo who was a big you know big time bootlegger in newark and this is before the mafia was formulated before you know there was five family all that this is during prohibition and and So Anthony was like the runt of the family, and he idolized his brother, John.

 

[7:05] Well, one thing led to another. They all started working for Richie Boyardo. The only reason Anthony Little Pussy rose to the heights he did is because of his brother, John. John was the opposite of him. Anthony was boisterous, a loudmouth. He loved to draw attention to himself and supposedly wasn't the sharpest tool in the box. But his brother was the total opposite of him. And he was a heavy hitter. He ended up going to jail in the 20s for a prohibition murder in the service of Richie the Boot. But because Richie at this point had influence, the 30-year stint that John got was reduced to only 10 years he got out. Meanwhile, the older brother, Ralph, was an incorrigible,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tim Richards, a former St. Louis intelligence officer and author of Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie. Tim brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge from his years investigating the mob and navigating the thin line between law enforcement and organized crime.

We dive deep into the history and dynamics of the St. Louis crime families and their ties—or lack thereof—to Kansas City and Chicago. Tim reveals how the St. Louis mob and the Syrian mob were into labor racketeering, ghost workers, and union control, profiting off federally funded projects.

Click here to buy Crooks Kill and Cops Lie and to see all of Tim’s books

• Listeners will hear gritty stories about:

• The interplay between Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago mob families.

• The “Syrian” mafia’s role in local unions, vengeance, and violence.

• St. Louis mob figures like Paul Leisure, Mike Trupiano, and Jesse Stoneking.

• An unforgettable encounter with Trupiano during a traffic stop.

• The challenges police faced without legal wiretaps, relying instead on FBI intelligence.

• The ripple effects of mob influence reach as far as Las Vegas gambling operations.

From bloody reprisals to uneasy alliances, Tim shares not just history but lived experience—vivid accounts of hit jobs, betrayals, and the complexities of policing organized crime. As he reflects on how law enforcement strategies and technology have evolved, Tim leaves us with a powerful reminder of the mob’s enduring mark on Midwestern history.

If you want an insider’s perspective on St. Louis mobsters and the Midwest underworld, you won’t want to miss this one.

Subscribe to get more stories every week.

This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

0:03 Welcome to Gangland Wire

1:02 Exploring Kansas City and St. Louis Mob Ties

4:19 The Influence of the Chicago Mafia

8:56 The Aladdin Hotel and Skimming Operations

11:41 A Deep Dive into Paul Leisure's Fate

15:12 The Old Italian Mafia and Its Tactics

23:09 Changes in Policing and Mafia Control

24:54 Personal Stories from the Streets

27:43 The Rise and Fall of Jesse Stoneking

33:05 Reflections on Organized Crime and Histor

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. I have another former intelligence unit detective, Tim Richards. Now, you know, and if you don't, I didn't introduce myself. I'm sorry, guys. Some of you all may be new listeners. I'm Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Got this podcast, Gangland Wire. We deal with the mob. And I worked a mob in Kansas City, and Tim Richards worked in it in St. Louis, just across the state. So welcome, Tim. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I'm really glad to have you. I was really glad to find this book. I've been working on a book myself. So I'm looking at your book, seeing how you did certain things and then going back to mine. And my story is a little bit different, I guess, but different, but the same. You know, we had very similar experiences, guys. When Tim and I first started talking on the phone, you know, it was like, oh, my God, that's like I was talking to another guy in the same unit, you know, because we had the same kind of experiences.

[0:59] Some of them we'll talk about, some of them we won't talk about on here. But we're going to talk about the mafia primarily. And Tim, what I always found interesting, even back then in the 70s, there seemed to be little to no relationship or connection between Kansas City and St. Louis crime families. Do you remember that like that? Yeah, I recall that. We knew that Nick Zabella was a powerful guy in the families. But we never really saw anything that he was insane. St louis the chicago mafia controlled st louis with some help from detroit the detroit mafia.

[1:37] They the chicago mafia came in here in the late 50s when they were rebuilding downtown st louis and they built the poplar street bridge which was called the tunnel project, they came through east st louis with a guy by the name of buster workman who controlled everything in East St. Louis, and they used ghost workers. It was a federal-funded bridge-building event, and they used ghost workers there, and these guys were getting rich. And in the meantime, they came over to St. Louis and infiltrated our two labor workers, 110 and 42. They also infiltrated 562, which is a five-fitters union, a very wealthy union, and they had them for decades. And they apparently Eventually controlled them 110 was controlled totally And 42 was controlled totally By the Chicago mob.

[2:34] 562 eventually went under It was controlled totally by the Chicago mob And The Chicago mob ran everything here, Allegedly Some dabbling by Detroit I don't know how they worked that out But Detroit had some function here But um, Yeah, Tim, you go in your Crook's Kill and Cops Lie book, guys, and I recommend you get this if you want an inside look at the St. Louis Police Intelligence Unit at Police Intelligence Everywhere, why this book will give it to you. And you have a second book before we get too far into this. Hold that one up. I couldn't find my copy. It's over across the room somewhere. This is actually the sequel to Crook's Kill, Cops Lie. Okay. It's just another St. Louis Intelligence book. The unit was referred to as Intel 210, which was the code name for the unit within the police department. And this is my second book pertaining to the St. Louis Organized Crime Advice. This goes deeply into the intelligence unit and what we actually did and the things that went on between cops and crooks and FBI agents. And we were whores for the FBI.

[3:48] We did all this shit. And the FBI would come over to our office and glean it all. But we didn't care. We enjoyed what we were doing. And we got to know these FBI guys, and we didn't mind helping them. The thing is that we couldn't get legal wiretaps. They could. And so we gave them information, whatever they needed. But anyway, both of my books pertain to that, intelligence and how the unit cops and the FBI and the other feds worked together trying to get these guys together.

[4:20] It's interesting. In St. Louis and Kansas City, from looking at your book, it was basically the same, different than in other cities, I think.

[4:30] We really worked closely with the FBI also. And like you said, we were their go boys. We went out and they said, hey, we got this going on. Why don't you go check this out? Well, see the FBI, they have these high level sources because they've got all this power and all this money to spread around. And, you know, they can kick a damn grand jury indictment aside if they want in order to put pressure on somebody. We couldn't do that. We didn't have any local wiretaps. We finally got a law. We ran one here and it was, I tell you what, you never want to do a wiretap unless you got a huge, huge, huge budget, which we never do. So, you know, it's the same way here. It's really interesting, you know, the talk about the labor racketeering in particular. You go into that pretty in depth because there's more than just Chicago and more than Italian mafias. And then you had the Syrian mob in St. Louis that got heavy into union racketeering. So it's just a really interesting mix down there, Tim.

[5:32] Well, the Syrian mob, it was named, it was actually Lebanese. Oh, that's right. The FBI named it the Syrian mob, and it stuck. The newspapers picked up on it. We picked up on it. It was referred to as the Syrian mob. But they were political people. They were all politicians and business people within St. Louis. And the Leisure, Paul Leisure, Anthony Leisure, Paul Leisure was a hitman for years for the Chicago mafia here in St. Louis. But Tony Giordano, they wanted to kill another Syrian guy by the name of Jimmy Michaels for control of a 110, local 110.

[6:11] Anthony Giordano told him to lay off of him because the Chicago mob told him, we don't want him killed. He had worked with them, for them, for years over in East St. Louis for Buster Workman. So Anthony Giordano told the Leisure to lay off of him. The reason they hated him so much is because some Michael's family killed a Leisure guy over in East St. Louis was back in the 50s shot him in a bar and got away with it and killed him and so there was there was a feud there between the two Syrian families the Lebanese families so the feud just festered and festered and festered and they wanted to kill jimmy michaels for two reasons revenge and control of local 110 jim uh anthony giordano died and that left jimmy michaels wide open so they blew him up in broad daylight with a car bomb on i-55 during rush hour and uh, But then this gang war broke out. Then the Michaels retaliated and blew up Paul Leisure in front of his mom. So I was at both of those scenes, certainly. They're in my book. My picture's in the book at the scene.

[7:21] But it was an interesting time there. And the politicians were scurrying because they'd been in bed with these people for the last 30 years. I bet, yeah. I mean, yeah, they were scurrying. And it was just really crazy. There was another Lebanese family by the name of Webby, Sarkis Webby Sr. Was a lawyer and a very influential guy. And he owned the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. And they were skimming the money there. Somehow,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins pulls back the curtain on one of the FBI’s most troubling scandals—the case of Joe Stabile, a corrupt FBI agent whose fall from grace revealed just how deep organized crime’s influence could run.

The story begins in November 1978, when Stabile pled guilty to corruption charges. But as Gary explains, that plea was only the tip of the iceberg. Behind it lay years of whispered rumors, shady deals, and quiet payoffs—stories that painted Stabile not as a straight-arrow G-man, but as a hustler working both sides of the law.

Drawing on conversations with retired FBI agents who once worked alongside Stabile, Gary explores the tangled web of mob connections and compromised investigations. Listeners will hear how mobsters slipped him bribes to make gambling cases disappear, and how his background as a New York City cop may have set the stage for the choices that pulled him deeper into the mob’s orbit.

The episode also highlights the work of honest agents, such as Tony Villano, who began piecing together the truth about Stabile’s corruption. Through case files, informant accounts, and law enforcement interviews, Gary demonstrates how the FBI struggled with a culture of silence that often protected its own—even when integrity was at stake.

As the story unfolds, the lines between right and wrong blur, exposing systemic cracks inside federal law enforcement during a time when the Bureau was shifting its focus and fighting for credibility.

Gary closes with reflections on the lasting impact of the Stabile case: what it meant for the FBI’s war on organized crime, and how Stabile himself may have continued to live in the shadows after his conviction—a man caught between two worlds, crime and law enforcement, never fully belonging to either.

This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

To rent 'Brothers against Brothers' or 'Gangland Wire,' the documentaries click here. 

To purchase one of my books, click here.

0:06 Introduction to Joe Stabile

1:19 The Corruption Unveiled

3:14 Breakfast with Retired Agents

5:59 The Connection to Organized Crime

9:06 Investigating Stabile's Allegations

14:18 The Gambler's Payoff

20:19 Confronting Stabile

21:39 The Aftermath of the Indictment

23:35 Stabile's New Life

25:39 Reflections on Undercover Operations

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence

[0:04] Unit detective back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I welcome each and every one of you. I've got a story that it's really interesting how I found out about this. That's part of the story. Let's go back. Here's what I'm talking about. A corrupt FBI agent named Joe Stabile. That's S-T-A-B-I-L-E. November 1978.

[0:26] It was a Monday and FBI agent Joe Stabile was pleading guilty in federal court to corruption charges. Now, you don't hear about this very much. I know a couple of three here in Kansas City over the years that got popped for doing something. A couple of them were involved in a stolen party or a stolen property ring. A couple of others were one of them was just running his mouth too much and he was drinking too much. I don't think they actually end up charging him anything, but he did run his run his mouth way too much. Joseph Beal only admitted in this guilty plea that he lied about some money transactions, but that's just a tip of the iceberg in this, folks.

[1:03] The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District was sitting in the spectators that day, and afterwards he would say, you know, this just shows the determination of the Department of Justice to root out misconduct wherever it may be found in federal law enforcement.

[1:16] Well, you know, that's a pretty strong statement after. So you'll find that they kicked this under the rug as long as they could. Absolutely as long as they could. The head of the organized crime task force there at the time said that there was a bunch of money that Stabile could not account for. He was writing some checks. He was taking some money in and then paying some money back out in a deal. And it was dirty and they had him, but they didn't have him that good. So they dismissed some other charges and charged him with perjury, and he denied receiving any illegal money. He had actually been involved with a New York City policeman and got a $15,000 payment for dismissing getting a case handled for the Clumbo family. But it really, in the end, he wasn't really convicted for that. It was a gambling deal involved. He was involved with New York City policemen.

[2:06] Now, during that time, there was another New York agent named Anthony Avilano, who had made several allegations of wrongdoing against Joe Stabile. They both worked in the Colombo squad early on when they first met. And really, this became, there was a lot of agents sticking up for Stabile, just like I found that with that H. Paul Rico. There were agents, and they never really found any agents. There were policemen who made a case on him for being involved in a murder, a contract killing. He was a Boston agent. But there was a couple of agents that I interviewed and wrote a book several years ago, and they swear that he didn't have anything to do with that. So that was part of that whole filthy Boston office where John Conley ended up getting popped out of. And anyhow, they tried to say this was a Sicilian feud between several agents that were of Italian-American extraction. Well, that's a good way to pass this off and denigrate people. But it really wasn't that. This guy, this guy was dirty.

[3:10] He ended up, he got about five years in the penitentiary and a fine. But let's go back and take a deeper look at this case. And here's how I got into it. I was having breakfast with a couple of local retired FBI agents. I mentioned this book, Brick Agent, and asked if they had ever read it or heard about it. And it's written by a former agent who was assigned to the OC squad in New York City in the 60s and 70s. His name was Tony Villano, and it's a pretty good book.

[3:39] It's hard to find. It's really hard to find, folks. So good luck if you go out and try to buy it. I'll put a link to, I think there's one that's like $35 or $36, maybe $40. I can't remember. I was able to find it online. If you work real hard, you can find it in the Internet Archive online and get a look at it. But it's hard to do. Now, Volano, I started looking at Volano partly in this book and got interested in him because he was actually the first agent to develop Greg Scarpa. And he worked with Scarpa for quite a while. And when Villano retired and really with no, you know, no smell of any kind of hinky panky going on, like what later happened with Scarpa. Uh, but when he retired, Scarpa refused to be introduced to another agent, carry on any kind of relationship with the FBI. Uh, several years later, this Linda Vecchio made a run on Scarpa and brought him back in as a top echelon informant. And then they did a lot of stuff with him. Now, now, uh.

[4:41] Villano is the guy that sent Scarpa down into Mississippi, and in his book, Brick Agent, he tells that story a couple of different ways with some slightly different twists on some of the things that have come out since. And he also names two different people as the informants that they sent down to the south to do these different undercover things on the Ku Klux Klan and try to find those bodies down there and the three civil rights workers down in Philadelphia and solve the murder of Medgar Evers. And there was another one, too. And he names, Villano names two different people trying to cover for Scarpa to make sure nobody can trace this back down to this one guy and it was Scarpa. So anyhow, that morning we were talking about Brick Agent Book and the name Joe Stabile came up because Bill Owsley has read the book. And he said that he worked with Joe Stabile when he was a pretty new agent here in Kansas City who was assigned to the OC squad in Kansas City. Now, Bill has two books on the Kansas City crime family, really great books. You want the whole overall picture of organized crime in Kansas City, his book Open City.

[5:53] And then concerning his career, the second book is Mobsters in Our Myths. And that really starts about the time he got here in the 60s. And he was a case agent on the straw man case or the guy that really started the whole thing that brought down the Midwest crime families from skimming from Las Vegas casinos. Bill Owsley was the original case agent on that. You know, it's funny, by the time they actually had their trials, he was retired. And an even funnier story, ironic maybe you might call this, he was retired and he was doing different jobs in retirement. He worked for the NFL, I think, and maybe the NFL.

[6:32] Major league baseball but he did some of those kinds of things and and alan glick came to town to testify now alan glick was a guy that got the 62 million dollar loan thanks to the bob and was kicking back through lefty rosenthal to put him in the context and and bill owsley he needed a bodyguard and a chauffeur so bill owsley took the job of bodyguarding and chauffeuring uh alan glick back and forth to the court when he came in to testify and you know uh you know so much for the mob's going to go out and kill you if you testify against them because they never did anything to this guy.

This is a bonus episode that contains a sample from the new, exciting podcast Chinatown Sting.

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

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, a former KCPD Intelligence Detective, is joined by Lydia Jean Kott (LJ), a producer at Pushkin Industries, the company founded by Malcolm Gladwell. LJ brings us inside the making of Chinatown Sting, a gripping new podcast that uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Chinese organized crime, China White heroin, and characters like Machinegun Johnny in New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s.

LJ explains how her interest in the case was sparked by a personal connection—her boyfriend’s mother was a federal prosecutor involved in the original sting. That legendary case centered on heroin smuggled from Hong Kong into Chinatown, hidden in packages and distributed through a network of mahjong-playing mothers. What began with a flagged parcel at the post office unraveled into a high-stakes undercover investigation.

We explore how law enforcement managed to penetrate this tight-knit immigrant community, the risks taken by prosecutors like Beryl Howell, and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in the middle—including a woman forced to choose between betraying a friend or saving herself.

LJ also delves into the history of Chinatowns in America, where family associations and Tongs—formed initially as mutual aid societies—became intertwined with the vice industry. She connects this legacy to gangs like the Flying Dragons and their ties back to organized crime in Hong Kong.   Our discussion is not just about drugs, gangs, and federal stings—it’s about storytelling, community, and the pursuit of survival.

LJ shares how she and her co-reporter pieced the story together over the course of years of interviews and archival research, giving voice to people often overlooked in the larger mob narrative.   If you’re fascinated by organized crime, hidden histories, or the way law enforcement takes on international networks, Chinatown Sting is a podcast you won’t want to miss.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

 

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

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

xx

Gary Jenkins : [00:00:00] Hey, welcome all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I'm a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective turned podcaster.

Gary Jenkins : I did a few other things in between, but this is the love of my life here, guys. And I was just talking with our guests that I don't do this for the money, but I do it for fun and, and it is a lot of fun and, and I can tell my guests today. Does it to earn a living, but she does it a lot for fun. She really is into it.

Gary Jenkins : So it's Lydia Jean Kott, or we call her lj. Welcome. Lj,

L.J. : thank you so much. I'm a huge fan of the show and it's an honor to get to be on it and to get to talk to you.

Gary Jenkins : Well, cool. Thank you for that compliment. I really appreciate that. Kind of makes it worthwhile keeping coming back. I get those nice comments on my YouTube channel quite a little bit.

Gary Jenkins : That kinda keeps me coming back when I get down a little bit. Anyhow first of all, you're. You're with something called Pushkin, P-U-S-H-K-I-N, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company. I think he started it and had [00:01:00] the first podcast early in the days. Mm-hmm. You know, I'm like one of the earliest I am the earliest Mafia podcast.

Gary Jenkins : I think that ever first one had ever started, I believe long before. When did you start? Oh, . 2015, I believe.

L.J. : Okay. Yeah. Early, early podcast days,

Gary Jenkins : early podcast. I listened to Serial and I thought, man, I think I could do that and tell police stories.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah.

Gary Jenkins : So tell the guys a little bit about.

Gary Jenkins : Pushkin and how this podcast industry works. We talked about this a little bit before, and I'm always kind of curious myself. You know, I'm, I'm what they call A GDI that's a goddamn independent. If you don't know what a GDI is, ask my son if he's gonna join a fraternity. He said, yeah, A GDI. So I'm a GDI.

Gary Jenkins : But LJ is with a company and, but she's been all in all areas and aspects of the business. So tell the guys a little bit about. What we talked about, how this podcasting business works.

L.J. : . So [00:02:00] Pushkin is a podcasting company in New York City and we do a whole, we produce a whole bunch of different podcasts.

L.J. : So we produce a podcast called Against the Rules, which is hosted by Michael Lewis, who wrote my Ball story. Yeah, that's

Gary Jenkins : a great one. But guys Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, who's a guy that wrote Moneyball. This is a great one. Go ahead.

L.J. : So yeah, so that's the you know, that's the podcast that I work on, so I'm a producer on that show.

L.J. : And Happiness Lab and Revisionist History. So we make a bunch of shows and we have, you know, people can come to Pushkin with ideas for shows, and then there's producers on staff, people like myself who then would help you make the show. You know, sometimes ideas originate within the company. So I actually, as a producer, pitched this idea to the higher ups at Pushkin, and then it became a show.

Gary Jenkins : And this one here, this one here, to clarify, guys, this one here, Chinatown Sting is the name of it. We're gonna talk about. Chinese organized crime for a change rather than the Italian organized crime or some drug organization what we call a peckerwood. Peckerwood is non [00:03:00] Italian, by the way. Lj

Gary Jenkins : yeah. I never

Gary Jenkins: heard that.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it's kinda local. It's little bit like saying hillbilly or a redneck drug association. But anyhow we use it as non Italian in Kansas City. Anyhow, she's gonna talk about some Chinese organized crime. So it's I'm really fascinated. I really wanna learn about this. I had just.

Gary Jenkins : I was just thinking I need to do a story about Chinese organized crime and, and I was finding a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not a lot. So, and then this opportunity came along and, and you know, I'm, I'm kind of promoting a competing podcast, if you will, but if you guys are like me, I listen to so many different podcasts that, you know, we're not in competition with each other.

Gary Jenkins : A, a rising ship lifts all a rising tide lifts all boats anyhow, right.

L.J. : Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to both the Gangland Wire and the Chinatown sting. You can, you can. Complimentary podcast.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah. They are, they are in many ways, a little. I they complimentary

L.J. : actually.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah. A little different aspect of organized crime.

Gary Jenkins : So LJ tell us about, you know, how'd you [00:04:00] first get interested in this story? Like I said, I was harping a hard time finding much about Chinese organized crime. So tell us how you got into it.

L.J. : So I, there isn't, especially when I started working on this, which was like three years ago, there wasn't very much about Chinese organized crime at all.

L.J. : But I, this is a little bit of a reveal of the podcast, but I got interested in it because my boyfriend's mom, actually, her name is Beryl Howell, .

L.J. : But her career got started as a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in New York City, in the eastern District. And her first big case started with this undercover sting that happened. In Brooklyn, because that's where the eastern Eastern District of New York is. And this case is kind of legendary in my boyfriend's family.

L.J. : And I've known her actually, you know, for a really long time. So I'd always heard about this case and how this was the case that, you know, it helped, et cetera. It was her first big case. She was just a baby prosecutor at the time, et cetera, off in her career. It made a [00:05:00] huge impression on her. It was kind of like family lore.

L.J. : And as a journalist, I've always been like. I wanna get to the bottom of it. Like I wanna find out, I've heard about her side of the story of this case, but I wanna find out about the people who, you know, who else was involved and kind of paint a full picture of this case. So it took me about, I think three or four years and I found a co reporter who speaks Cantonese.

L.J. : Her name is Sh Wang. And we worked on it together. And we've been telling the story of this case. And what was really helpful is that we barrel my boyfriend's mom. Has this, she gave me this suitcase that was full of thousands of pages of court documents that she had saved. So it's all public record, but since this is from the 1980s yeah, you know, it can be, you can only read the documents in the courthouse actually, or you have to pay like a dollar in actual quarters to get it home.

Gary Jenkins: Yes,

L.J. : I had the advantage of having this suitcase where I could look through and it also had, you know, her notes and things that she underlined. So that was really helpful. So I spent, you know, we started by. [00:06:00] Reading those documents and then trying to find the people who are in the documents.

Gary Jenkins : Wow.

Gary Jenkins : That's so tell us about searching for some of these people that are in their documents. That's really hard to do because you're, you're looking into a closed society, a totally closed society to outsiders for the most part, except for the cops. I'm sure you, it was easy to find some of the agents or cops.

Gary Jenkins : How did you start, when you start with the cops, how, how did that work? Was it a task force that you could find some supervisors and then they could turn you on to guys that would talk to you?

L.J. : Yeah, I mean, maybe it would be helpful,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Dan O’Sullivan from the new podcast The Outfit to discuss the incredible story of Ken Eto, known in Outfit circles as “Tokyo Joe.” Ken Eto was unique: the only Japanese American member of the Chicago Outfit, and the only man to survive being shot three times in the head. Eto was the Outfit’s gambling kingpin on Chicago’s North Side, controlling operations along Rush Street, policy wheels in Black neighborhoods, Chinese games in Chinatown, and the Puerto Rican “bolita” numbers racket. His empire generated millions of dollars each year, placing him among the highest-ranking members of the Outfit. But success had its price. In 1980, the FBI caught Eto in a sting, and his Outfit bosses grew nervous—especially since he had ties to a cocaine deal with the Genovese family. Invited to dinner by a mobster who had never broken bread with him before, Eto knew it was a setup. Two gunmen shot him three times in the head. Miraculously, he lived, and his survival changed the history of the Outfit.

Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

 

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

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

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

[00:00:00] Hey, y'all, you wire tapers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire.

This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City. Missouri Police Intelligence unit detective with his own podcast. Now, believe it or not, I've been doing this for quite a while. Guys, if a lot of you guys have been following me for five, six years, you know, guys, you know, I was one of the first guys that did this podcast this kind of a podcast.

And so I have with us today, one of the, maybe the most recent iteration of a Mafia podcast. I have Dan O'Sullivan welcome, Dan. Thank you, Gary. And I like you staking your territory, you know, like that I'm I'm a Johnny. Come lately. It's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm a og. You're the og. Exactly. I'm og.

Yeah, right. I mean, I'm an associate. You're the godfather here, you know? And there you go. We gotta get the pecking order down. This is how. As was said to me by a historian, you know, the mob makes discipline in the military look like nothing, you know, so, yeah. However it [00:01:00] works, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. That discipline is, and there's no appeal either, right?

Yeah. So anyhow Dan and I, I think you're gonna have a partner in that. You're gonna have a podcast called The Outfit. Is that the name of it? That's right. The outfit got, which is, go ahead. You got it exactly right, Gary. Yeah. We me and my co-host, Alana Hope Levinson our new podcast, the outfits launching August 14th and just every week we're doing a different mob story that kind of explains something about, you know, America and, and you know, so whether it's how the milk wars in Chicago led to us having expiration dates on milk cartons, that's a crazy story to, you know.

Who we're gonna talk about a little bit the history of Japanese Americans in the US or. Americans in Russia during the nineties and seeing that transition of democracy and the mob there. So we just we're having a lot of fun doing that. But it's great to be on your [00:02:00] show. I, I've loved your show for years, so really an honor to be here.

Well, thank you so much. You know, I when I do a program here in the city, I usually started off with a comparison of, I want you people to remember all Italians are not criminals. Yeah. And, and what happened during. The turn of the century is really, has happened here recently. Mm-hmm. What happened was, all these people from a really poor country, Southern Italy and Sicily, came to the United States.

They just wanted a piece of the pie. Right. They just wanted to, to have a, a way to get by. They wanted to earn, you know, earn a living and, and get a meal, and they weren't able to do that. They come here. At that time, the Irish and the English and the Germans, we had all the good jobs, right? We had all the police jobs, the fire jobs, they were squeezed out. They really could hardly get that kind of a job. And so they had push carts and, and you know, spaghetti joints as they used to call 'em restaurants, you could always do that.

But they brought this thing from the old country called the Mafia, [00:03:00] and you've got all these young men who are bright and, and. Aggressive and, and you know, and then prohibition comes along and they take it. Yeah, they take it and they run with it. And, and you know, the same way today you got all these Hispanics come up and you got this narcotics thing, and, and they're, you know, they don't, you know, we're keeping 'em squeezed out for the most part.

They don't speak the language and look a little different, so you're kind of squeezed out. So it is not comparing, not exactly apples and oranges, but there's a lot of similarities there on newly arrived immigrant populations. And they're not all criminals. It's such a good point that this repetition just, you know, I mean, look, I'm a journalist.

I've covered the mob. I've written about it and, and tried to get really educated on it. Just you see this cycle over and over again. You know, like you said, my last name's O Sullivan, the Irish. By the time the Italians and Jews started coming more. Numbers to the us. Well look at Chicago. The Irish first off had been gangsters too, but they had just clammed up the ladder a little bit where they [00:04:00] controlled the political machinery.

They controlled police, fire departments, these civil service jobs. So what was left, you know, by the time these guys came along, it was more just the same way, the more criminal thing. And you know, if you look at the stats today, I believe, I believe immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans.

Yeah, true. So, you know, because most of them are coming here to work, you know? Yeah, I know. So yeah, it's, it repeats itself. It's absolutely true. Yeah. It wasn't, I think it was Mark Twain said, history doesn't always repeat itself, but it rhymes. That's a, that guy the pride of Missouri, right? I mean, or is it Missouri Pride of Missouri?

Gotta quote him. Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, Dan, so let's talk about you know, some of the things you've done in your career. You've done a variety of things in the news and, and media. So tell us a little bit about what you've done in your past. Yeah, so I, I, we were talking earlier, I started out as a sports writer actually, which is, I, I was always interested in the mob for reasons I'll, I'll maybe get into, but doing sports [00:05:00] writing, I realized you kind of brush up against organized crime just in the course of doing that, you know?

Yeah. So I wrote a piece, God, over 10 years ago now about. Labor exploitation and pro wrestling and you know, that that was run a bit and still to a degree is, is run a bit along underworld lines, you know with these sorts of shady syndicates all over the country. And, and over time that changed with the WWF and WE but still very dangerous for the guys involved.

Obviously Hulk Hogan just passed away and, you know, kind of. And embodied it shifting from like a carnival thing to big business. But so I remember an outgrowth of that was the former boss of the WWE e Vince McMahon, it's not well remembered, was prosecuted by the federal government. For trafficking steroids.

And they, it really was prosecuted like a mob case where they got a doctor to flip who was [00:06:00] supplying the, you know, whatever he wanted and shipping it across the country. So. I got into this bizarre story of a stabbing of an NBA player and the, the police subsequently breaking another. This was in New York, subsequently breaking another NBA player's leg with a baton.

So I just started to drift towards crime. And then a few years ago, I wrote a story for Chicago Magazine. That was the history of the life of Kento, who I, I thought was just a, yeah. Fascinating figure, and I couldn't believe no one had done a deep dive on him. So I, I did that and and here I am today, now doing, now doing a lesser version of your podcast.

Well, I'm sure it'll be good. You're gonna have high production values. I can see that already better than I had, especially when I first started. They're a little bit better now, but they're still not really. Good high production values. Well let, before we get into Ken Etto, let's talk about you. You mentioned you had a personal connection to the mob, your father, and something happened when Yeah.

Where'd you grow [00:07:00] up and, yeah, because you're not from Chicago, that's not a Chicago accent, I know that. No, that's right. And yeah, so I grew up on Long Island in New York originally, which, you know, I was born in 1987, so I was just at the time that the mob was starting to get into trouble on Long Island because.

At the time, I, I was a kid there. They were still very much in control, but the commission trial had happened. These, I grew up with all the, the John Gotti trials and, and obviously Long Island was very important, particularly to the Lucchese family for garbage and, and sanitation. And so my father was a telephone lineman for telephone splicer, excuse me.

He would get irate if I said lineman. He was a splicer for the phone company for first Belan and then Verizon Ninex. But, so he had this very interesting thing of he would go out to these neighborhoods on Long Island that were.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins sits down with journalist and author Rich Gazarik to explore a little-known corner of mob history—one that ties the Pittsburgh Mafia to Fidel Castro, stolen guns, and even the Kennedy assassination.

Rich’s latest book, Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia, shines a spotlight on Sam Mannarino, a Pittsburgh mob captain under boss John LaRocca, who hatched a wild plan in the early 1960s: supply Fidel Castro with hundreds of stolen weapons in hopes of carving out a piece of Cuba’s casino action. The scheme included an audacious plot to rip off 300 rifles from a National Guard armory in Ohio—an operation that quickly unraveled into chaos.

From there, the conversation broadens into the Pittsburgh mob’s stranglehold on its city, including political corruption, bribery, and intimidation that reached into the mayor’s office and the police department. Rich recounts how Mannarino and his crew maintained a façade of respectability while ruling through violence and fear, leaving a lasting mark on Pittsburgh’s civic life.

Drawing on decades of investigative journalism and declassified JFK assassination files, Rich also connects the dots between the Pittsburgh Mafia and broader mob influence in the 1960s. We discuss how figures like Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante emerged in congressional investigations, feeding speculation that the Mafia’s reach extended into Dallas on November 22, 1963.

This episode uncovers a forgotten piece of organized crime history where local corruption, mob ambition, and Cold War politics collided. If you want to understand how Pittsburgh’s underworld tied into national events, you won’t want to miss this deep dive with Rich Gazarik. And get his book Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia here.

Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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

Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee"

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

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

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, this is Gary Jenkins,

[0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I'm here in the studio of Gangland Wire, and I have a story that is kind of topical right now because there's a movie being made about November 1963. And this isn't exactly about Kennedy assassination, but it's all around the Kennedy assassination. And it's about mob guys having connections down in Cuba and with Castro and out of Pittsburgh of all places. Now, go figure that. You know, I always think of Tropicante down in Tampa, and you've got Marcello down in New Orleans. You've got Ardo up in Chicago, and you always think of them, Giancana, having those connections. Well, there was a Pittsburgh guy named Sam Mannarino who had extensive connections down in Cuba. So welcome, Rich Gazarek.

[0:51] Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Good to have you. Rich, tell the guys the name of your book. I don't have to. I'd have to lean over here and read it. It's a little bit long. So tell the guys the name of your book and a little bit about what it's about. It's called Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia. And it was a faction of the Pittsburgh Mafia.

[1:11] John LaRocco was the godfather of the Pittsburgh Mom. Sam Mannarino was one of his captains. And Mannarino and his brother Kelly had a casino in Cuba, San Suu Kyi, outside of Havana. And they didn't do very well with it and they eventually sold it. And at the time, Fulgincia Batista was getting a little bit greedy and he was on the outs with some of the mobsters because he wanted a bigger cut. And Sam Mannarino was wondering, what if I helped Castro in his revolution? Do you think he would.

[1:51] Benefit? And do you think he would be gracious and maybe reward me with some influence in the gambling industry? And he had a longtime gambler friend who was managing by the name of Norman Rothman. And Rothman said, hey, I think we should go with Castro. Let's put our chips on Castro. But Sam wasn't a very right guy. And what he didn't realize is that Fidel Castro hated the mob as much as he hated Fulgencio Batista, and there was no chance.

[2:21] But nevertheless, he wanted to try to ingratiate himself with him. So he came up with this harebrained scheme to provide Castro with guns. Mannarino went around looking for a crew to steal some weapons, so they centered on a National Guard armory in Canton, Ohio. And one night after the armory closed through the day, Somebody simply walked in, opened the door, and walked out with over 300 guns. No force break-in, no evidence of any kind of destruction. They simply must have had a key or an inside man. Put them in a van, drove off, never saw them again. They brought the guns to Kensington, Pennsylvania, which is a mob town just north of Pittsburgh. And they stored in Sam Mannarino's son-in-law's beer distributor.

[3:19] And then they drove, now I'll explain to you a little geography here. I was raised in that area and I was 10 years old when this happened, but I wasn't far from New Kensington. The Allegheny River separates Allegheny County from Westmoreland County. So I lived on the Allegheny County side and I spent my misspent youth in New Kensington in pool halls and gowls. Half-hour's costs. So let me ask you a question a little bit about this now. John LaRocca, he was like the godfather of this entire area, really, even down in West Virginia. He was into eastern Ohio, all of western Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia. Yeah, but he was not involved. I just want to make it clear. He was not involved in this. This was one of Sam's, one of his many harebrained schemes, and he was on his own. Sam and Kelly Montarino, they ran this New Kensington area, which I hear you describe was a little bit like East St. Louis or Kansas. You got the main big city, but then you got the seedy side of town. That's what I hear you describe, like Cicero to Chicago. Right, exactly. And it was big. I mean, New Kensington in its heyday had gambling casinos throughout the town, houses of prostitution. But one of the things that was interesting was It's.

[4:42] Alcoa was headquartered in New Kensington for a number of decades now. Yeah. And as long as Alcoa prospered, the mafia prospered. They made a ton of money because they had bookies on the shop floor at Alcoa every day up until noon collecting bets. So they were both intertwined a lot. And that's part of the theme of the book is that the interconnection between the mafia and Alcoa. Because when Alcoa eventually left in the early 70s, the mob died. It just stopped, became the town. The FBI wasn't even that interested in it anymore. And they had spent a lot of time investigating the Manorinos. So they get this group together and they steal the guns. And then they brought them over across the river, Allegheny River, into Allegheny County. And it's funny because I lived close when I was a boy. It was 10. I lived close to that airport. I remember reading the papers. It was big news to get this thing to come in. And they make all these arrests, all set for San Mannarino. They got all these people. In the woods was the state police, customs, and border patrol agents.

[5:56] They were waiting for the guns to come. So the guns come. They're loaded on the plane. And just as they're about to move in on them, the plane takes off.

[6:06] Now, it was overweight. didn't have a full tank of gas. So what they did was the pilot decided he was going to scoot down to Morgantown, West Virginia to refuel.

[6:17] Border Patrol called the West Virginia State Police and they were waiting for the plane. And then the Border Patrol commandeered the plane and flew down and helped make the arrest. So everybody thought, well, this is it. It's done. But it turns out there was a lot more to it. Sam wanted to continue to buy weapons for Castro, but he needed a way to finance it.

[6:44] So he turned to his mafia brothers in Canada. They went up to Brockville, Ontario, and got a crew, and they broke into a bank and stole over $12 million.

[6:58] Now, part of that haul was over $2 million in bearer bonds. And they thought, you know, we can use this as collateral. So Sam sent one of his colleagues to Switzerland, and he goes to this bank and said, we want to borrow some money, and we're going to use these bonds as collateral. Well, the bankers got a little suspicious. They looked at the bonds, and the edges of the paper were singed from fire from when these guys broke into the vault and used settling torches to get the boxes open. So, they called the Swiss police, the Swiss police called the Interpol, Interpol called the Mounties in Canada, and the Mounties called the FBI. And we have this international intrigue going on with Mannarino's people meeting

[7:52] Castro's agents in Italy to pass the bonds to him. Of course, at the end, Sam and all his colleagues got arrested in the United States for possession of those bonds. They didn't get arrested for breaking into it because they weren't in Canada at the time, but they did get arrested for possessing those stolen securities.

[8:12] So they went to trial in Chicago, and Sam's luck held out, and all but one guy was acquitted, and he walked on it. By that time, John LaRocca was fed up, and so was Kelly, his brother, who fed up with the publicity that Sam was generating, and it kind of retired and put him on the shelf, so to speak. And Sam started talking to the FBI Having these long conversations.