Title: Meet the Family – The Lucchese Family
Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023
Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/X9w3YHxILre
Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the riveting background and rich history of the Lucchese crime family, one of the infamous Five Families of the American Mafia. From its origins in the early 20th century to its prominence in organized crime during the mid-1900s, we explore the rise of this formidable syndicate and its notorious leaders. Through engaging narratives, we uncover the family's involvement in various illicit activities such as gambling, extortion, and drug trafficking, as well as its complex network of operations and alliances. With intriguing anecdotes and insightful interviews, we shed light on the inner workings of the Lucchese family and the impact it had on the criminal underworld. Join us as we unravel the untold stories of power, loyalty, and betrayal that shaped the legacy of this iconic crime organization. ‘
#LuccheseCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrimeChronicles #TrueCrimePodcast
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Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris.
Welcome back again as we take on five Mob Families and five episodes. I'm Steve, and as always, I'm joined by our very own mustache. Chris Mustache, how you doing? 10 on this, uh, lovely day. I'm doing pretty good myself, but, uh, I'm pretty excited to get into the, uh, Lucchese crime family. It's, uh, it's one of the lesser known crime families.
I think, uh, uh, everyone kind of talks about like the Gambinos and like the Colombos cuz they've done, but the Lucchese is one of those families. It's, they kind of flown underneath the radar, I think, and we're gonna see, they have a. Fascinating history. [00:01:00] Now, these episodes are meant to, uh, kind of ground us and provide a reference into the history of the mafia.
Uh, these are overview episodes of the Pivotal families that form the, the quote unquote golden age of the Italian Mafia in the United States. In future episodes, we will do deep dives into stories that involve all of these families and sometimes all of these families together and mafia organizations all over the United States and even into Canada.
We will dive even further into the past to a time. Before the five families even existed, but the five families will always be an important reference point, uh, and we highly encourage you to revisit these episodes and, you know, tell your friends about them so they can become friends of ours as well. So you mentioned we're talking about the Lucchese family today, so why don't you tell us about where did the Lucchese family come from and what was their [00:02:00] origin story?
Yeah, so like the early, early origin story of, uh, the Lucchese family is, it can actually get traced back to, it was a gang called the Theo Gang. And, uh, before like the Five Families and the commission came about, uh, New York and just organized crime in general. I wouldn't say it was really organized. It was, it was just like gangs, right.
And the Morello Gang was a, was a Sicilian, uh, mafia gang, right. And. Actually, in researching this episode, I actually learned about this war. Um, That they had with the Kimora, who are the, uh, neopolitan, uh, mafia. Uh, they're still around, obviously, right? Uh, but they had a war with the, this, the, this morale gang, which was the kind of represented the Sicilian, uh, OSA Nostra and New York and.
Yeah, they ended up winning this war. Guy Gaitano Rena, uh, was uh, was a member of [00:03:00] this morale gang, but, uh, he kind of stayed out of this, this conflict himself personally and just kind of focused on his gang that was based in East Harlem, in the Bronx. And so that's pretty much, I mean, that, that whole war with the, uh, the Kimora was really the.
I guess you'd, and that was way back in 1915, like the early part of the, uh, 20th century that's sort of maybe like the World War I before the Castle La Marse war that you could maybe equate to World War ii. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Really, cuz it really, it took the kamora out of the. New York really like, mean, the neopolitans are still there.
But the outcome of that war really was the Sicilian La Nostra, which has a different, uh, organizational structure, was gonna run New York really. And the, uh, the Comor, which is, it still has like an organizational structure. And one day we're, we'll get into. Kind of how all the different mafia in, uh, that [00:04:00] come out of, uh, Southern Italy.
But the Kamo is, it's much more like kind of loosely structured, whereas the, uh, luster is more top down heavy this whole war or after the cast Lamar war lead us into the cast, the kind of the next step of the, uh, the development because we don't really have a Luque family yet. Yeah, at this point it's more kind of like just a gang.
Uh, so right now he became like a pretty powerful boss during the prohibition era. And he was actually pretty, he was closely in line to, uh, Joe Ma. He was known as the boss. He, he was the most powerful, uh, mafia boss in New York at the time. Um, So when the Castle Lamari war broke out, uh, which was basically like, it was a war between different factions within the Sicilian Mafia, when it did break out, uh, Rena kind of tried to stay on the sidelines.
He didn't really. [00:05:00] I don't know. He didn't really want to get in involved per se, but I mean, he kind of played, I don't know. He tried to talk, you know, both sides of his mouth really. Uh, Joe, uh, Masseria finds out that, uh, he was maybe potentially switching sides. Uh, And you know, upon hearing this potential portrayal, he sends, uh, veto Geneva who, you know, we're going to get more familiar with, like as we go through this podcast and this history of the New York Mafia, uh, to kill.
Uh, Rena, uh, with the help of, uh, Tommy Galliano. Tommy Lucchese, which is what later the family's actually gonna be called, after they, uh, they, they killed Rena. They were, you know, they were his, uh, Rena's own kind of lieutenants, right? Thinking, oh, like we're gonna take over all the, uh, industries that Sabrina was in charge of.
But that's not what [00:06:00] happened. Joe Erio, who was not, uh, I wouldn't say he was like the brightest man in the face of the earth. Very ar very, comes across as very arrogant in my research. Ends up putting his own guy in charge of, uh, that gang and, uh, You know, Tommy and, uh, the two Tommy's are none too happy about it.
After this, the, you basically have a crime family with two bosses, which is a kind of a weird situation. Maybe tell us about this, uh, time of the two Tommy's. Yeah, so they ended up, how the time of the two Tommy's kind of actually happens is, you know, both Tommy's were the, the guy, um, His nickname, I'm trying to remember.
His nickname was Joseph plo. Benzo. He was known as, I believe, the Fat Pete. They lured him into one of the office buildings that they owned. They killed him and basically took over the the gang. And then Joe Masseria died soon after that. [00:07:00] Right. So they're the ones left in charge. Um, Yeah. Ba yes, it's, it's interesting cuz uh, from my research, at least with the New York families, I'm not sure, I haven't come across where two guys were of equally in charge.
They just kind of ran different aspects of the family. I, in my research of the Bono family, that's never happened. The Colombo family, the Gambino family or the Genovese family. Um, but at this, you know, it was too. You know, two guys kind of tied at the hip. Uh, were running this family and, um, they specialized in like the garment rackets, a lot of union work, carjackings, uh, and they both, uh, played different roles.
Were Tommy, uh, Galiano, um, Was the kind of the guy behind the scenes. He kept an extremely low profile, and we'll get into that in a little bit. And Tommy Luc was more of the face of the family. He was the guy on the streets, you know, kind [00:08:00] of directing traffic. He'd be like, think about it. If you work in a warehouse, you have like the manager that's in the office who's, you know, crunching the numbers, and then you have the manager that's.
They're both equal, but the one guy specializes in just being actually on the floor of the warehouse, making sure that the operations are going smoothly. It's, uh, it's a really weird situation and it also makes me think, uh, that, that the Lucchese family is really, they're living off of basically the crumbs that are falling off the plate of society.
That there was just so much wealth hanging around that it was easy for them to get involved with the garment industry that had so much money attached to it, and unions that had so much money going onto it. And, uh, hijacking car, uh, Trucks that, you know what? If a truck got hijacked, they would just write it off and it wasn't big a big deal because there was just so much money that was floating around.
You just made more money. Oh [00:09:00] yeah, for sure. Right. And um, yeah, exactly what you said. Like, and you know, a lot of the stuff like, uh, nowadays a little bit different cuz we have a lot of modern technology, but back then, like it was difficult to stop people from doing some of the stuff, you know, like just stealing cars and, you know, stealing trucks.
Um, you know, and like a lot of the times the drivers would be in on it, right? They'd grow up in these same neighborhoods with these guys. So a lot of the times they'd probably know. Some of the people that were, you know, stealing the trucks and they'd get a little payoff and you know, like, what happened?
Oh, they showed up in nowhere. They threatened to kill me, yada, yada yada. Yeah. And that goes the story. And they'd get a little bit of a kickback too. Right. And because of the technology and everything at the time, you know, companies themselves would have difficulties just even trying to stop this from happening.
Plus the cops are getting kickbacks too. I mean, some things change and, uh, you know, we don't see like carjackings like we. We're going back, going on back in the times that [00:10:00] we're talking about, but it still happens. Uh, how does the one, Tommy and exit the stage? And we move into a phase where one Tommy eventually becomes the overall boss during this entire time, the six, the family's, uh, you know, keeping a low profile.
Um, You know, running their successful industries. I mean, one of the reasons they kind of had to keep a low profile too was the Joe Bono and Joe Profaci and Stefano Macino kind of had a controlling wing of the commission. I, I believe in the previous episodes, they referred to as kind of like the conservative wing of the Mafia Commission.
So they tried to not ruffle too many. Uh, feathers there. Um, the guy pointed out Tommy Lucchese was kinda the face of the family. He, he attended the Havana Conference, which is one day we'll talk about that. It was a major mafia conference that went on in Cuba, and we're gonna down the road, we're gonna end up talking to a lot about Cuba in terms of the mafia and what went on there.[00:11:00]
Um, just a lot of major decisions were made there, but Galileo, uh, he ended up dying of. To be honest with you, we don't even really know if he died or if he retired. That's how little we know about this guy, really. And I, I actually did try to do like a, a fair amount of research and don't really know, like Tommy Lucchese at a Senate hearings said, you know, died in February 16th, the 1951, but, Who knows, he could have been, he's probably lying, you know, he could have just retired somewhere or died later.
Um, it just goes to show you just the, what a shadow we figure this guy was and the pains that he took to, uh, You know, stay out of the limelight. And, you know, by the end of it, Tommy's the, you know, there's only one Tommy left, so, and he's running the family, which is, it's interesting when you con contrast it to the other families where there was this seamless transfer of power and then the one Tommy [00:12:00] dies, the next Tommy takes over and there's no power struggle.
There's no civil war going on here. It's just a seamless, uh, Transition from one to another. And I believe they must have had conversations about long-term goals. Like how, how is this family in the long-term gonna stay successful? How, how in the long-term is this family gonna stay, uh, coherent. And they, they probably had, like they talked about long-term goals, they probably would go on for 25 years.
Where if you look at something, say the Bono family, In particular, like as soon as the head of the family was out of the picture, it was just chaos. And then it was, the chaos would lead to, you know, somebody taking it over, but then it, as soon as they were out of the picture, because of the chaos that was created previously, and it was just that vicious cycle that just kept on going and going and going.
And in, in the long, you can't create long-term goals. You can't, uh, create, uh, create a calm or coherent, uh, [00:13:00] work environment for. Everyone else around you. And it's, uh, chaos is interesting in the sense that it's, it's like a ball going down the hill. It just keeps on building momentum and momentum. I mean, you can use an example, say like the Roman Empire never was able to really master this transfer of power and.
It's probably one of the biggest faults of the empire, and because every time an emperor died, everyone be holding their breath. Oh, what's gonna happen? Whereas if you contrast it to the Lucchese family, well, it's just business as usual. Right. None of our goals have changed. Steve, here again, we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows.
Go to Parthenon podcast to learn more. And now here is a quick word from our sponsors.
And so many of these [00:14:00] families had factions and side factions and side factions, and I don't get the the gist that the Luca Lucchese family necessarily had all these factions inside of each other that really almost hated each other. Not as bad as, as other families. Like they had their, they had like, they had a New Jersey faction, they had a Bronx faction, a Queens faction, you know, and then they were all competing with each other trying to, you know, make more money than the other guys were.
Right. You know, this is just, I mean, that's how every kind of organization runs, right? Well, at least successful ones. Everyone's trying to one up each other, right? But they're doing it within like relatively calm, coherent, uh, environment, right? It's not chaos. Like say the Bonano family or somebody like Joe Pistone.
Uh, could just, you know, watch, walk in. And in five years they were talking about making him a mate, guy, you know, like just the impression, I get this, that would not happen in the Lucchese family. And I mean, and the people in charge, you know, did a [00:15:00] good job of just running the family in terms of making sure that the, the guys underneath them, the soldiers that, you know, the guys that are actually doing the grunt work are.
At least they felt like they weren't getting screwed over. Or if you say, oh, he's the Bono family again, if you contrast it to the Bono family, people were ready to turn on Carmine Lanci and a hat, right? Because they saw him as being greedy, uh, and petty and, and felt like they were getting screwed over.
And same thing with the Samely applies to Joe Bonnell and rightfully so. I mean, And then we can look at the Colombo family was the same thing. Joe Profaci hoarding all this wealth and not sharing it with the Gallo brothers and the rest of the, you know, people, the street guys. And you know, there's a lesson to be learned here.
If people feel like they're being taken care of, for the most part, they'll stay loyal. The second they don't feel like they're getting taken care of, they usually got a turn on you. Or at least if the system is fair, if it's, [00:16:00] you know, it's not just the boss hoarding all the cash and screwing over the guys who are earning it.
Well, and that's the thing, right? It's like, and it's also like a big part of, it's just the impression that the guys are getting, right? Like the Tommy Lucchese was, you know, obviously extremely wealthy man. Um, but he made, you know, he made sure that at least the, the guys on the ground who kind of kept him in power were.
Uh, at least taken care of. Now there's a big power grab as it always seems to happen. What's this power grab involving Tommy Lucchese? Yeah, there was a big, uh, kind of changing the guard power grab and I guess in the sense, right, like I had pointed out earlier, the Lucchese family in general was uh, kind of in a precarious, uh, situation where they didn't wanna rock the boat too much cuz they were one of the weak.
Er, uh, families. So Vito Geneve, and we'll get into, like I said, we're gonna get, we'll probably end up doing a, a series on him, right? Because he's [00:17:00] such a big, uh, pivotal character in the history of the American Mafia. Um, Tommy Lucchese was like, kind of an orchestrator and helping Vito Geneve and Carlo Gambino, uh, get, uh, into power really.
Uh, So Tommy Lucchese, uh, kind of helped Phil facilitate, uh, Vito Geneva's, uh, hiring, uh, Vincent Gigante, which is another guy that we're gonna do a big series on. He was referred to as The Chin. He's most probably famous for walking around New York, acting like a crazy person in a bathrobe, peeing himself, uh, for.
So cops wouldn't think he was a, was a mob boss and was pretty successful at doing it for quite some time. Uh, to carry out a hit on Frank Costello, who was kind of, there was no term the boss of bosses, but Frank Costello, if there was the boss of bosses, Frank Costello was the boss of bosses and, [00:18:00] um, But it didn't work.
It didn't end up killing him, uh, Vincent, you know, not, you know, that would be a crazy story to tell the grandkids if you think about it. It's like, oh yeah, I tried to kill a mob boss and didn't work, and I'm still here to talk about it. Uh, but it, it worked in the sense that Frank Costello's just like, you know what, man?
I don't want any part of this. I'm, I'm getting hold. Uh, I've made my money. You know what? I'll just retire and I'm not gonna talk. Right. Because they did try to get, uh, I think Frank kind of had a pretty good idea who, who was up to it and he just refused to talk. Uh, and then, uh, for Carlo Gambino, uh, it's, uh, there's a lot of different stories about what happened to Albert Anastasia, the.
You know, some people say like Joey Gallo had something to do with it, and I've heard like a lot of different other people, and I think maybe one day we'll, we'll do a deep dive. Exactly who killed Albert Anastasia. But Albert Anastasia was, uh, [00:19:00] not well liked by a lot of the other mafia families, and he was particularly, he was acting crazy too at this time.
Uh, at the end of the day, uh, Tommy Lucchese helped, uh, get rid of, uh, Albert Anastasia and Carlo Gambino took over the family and uh, that's where he gets his name and it still has his name now, the Gambino family. That's one of the pivotable pivotal time periods in the mafia is Frank Costello gets, they attempt to whack him.
He doesn't die, but he just basically bows out and says, I'm out. Anastasia takes over. He gets whacked. It causes all this turmoil. Uh, then we get to the next point, the major, uh, The Appalachian meeting, which it, this one will come up in every single episode we talk about. So it's, and again, this is another one that will deserve its own episode or several.
So what was the Lucchese role in the Appalachian meeting? And [00:20:00] just to set the stage, like, uh, I kind of alluded to, is that. We don't need to know a ton about the Appalachian meeting right now, but it's the, it's a major mafia meeting that happens in upstate New York that gets busted up and it causes a ton of chaos throughout the mafia.
How does the lu, uh, Casey family fit into that? Well, the app, yeah. This meeting was basically the brainchild of Vito Genovese where he, he wanted to bring all the bosses together and the high ranking mafia officials, and they would, uh, have a sit down, I guess, talk about business, right? And like it got busted up and it, um, Pretty much made the existence of the organized crime in the mafia in the United States.
Um, we couldn't really deny it anymore like it existed and, you know, it went on for a little while longer where people argue that just how powerful it is and exactly what is it, [00:21:00] you know exactly what it is, you know, what is it exactly, but, um, Basically this, uh, meeting, um, destroys veto, genovese's reputation and the eyes of the rest of the families.
And, you know, I, I did a little bit of research and, you know, some people theorize that like Tommy and Carlo, uh, Gambino basically set up Genovese on drug charges to get 'em thrown in. To get him thrown in jail. And that's actually what happened. Veto Genovese goes to jail, uh, for drug trafficking related charges, and he's kind of outta the picture.
Tommy Lucchese dies of cancer in July of 67, and you, uh, mentioned in the notes that he never spent a day of. A day in his 44 year career, basically in prison, which is absolutely mind boggling, especially when we start to look at the mobsters that come up later. I mean, they're constantly being pinched and they're in and out of the can where.[00:22:00]
Lucchese doesn't spend a day inside behind bars. That's pretty amazing. I, it's a combination of things, right? Like Todd, the Lucchese family took like pains to kind of create real relationships with, you know, different lawyers and uh, politicians, which I'm sure helped. Right. I'm sure there were problems.
We charges against him, but none of them, you know, actually made it to court really. Cause, you know, palms were greased or papers were lost. But it does go that like Tommy Lucia, like as an individual, took great pains to, uh, make sure that he didn't directly get involved in a lot of this type of stuff, or they would have a difficult time pinning a lot of this stuff on him, because I think he, he really understood that like it all stems from the head and then it goes down.
To the rest of the family. Right. So if he had got thrown in jail, and we'll talk about, uh, well we talked about in the Bonano family, you know, like bosses running families from jail and, and infamously we're gonna [00:23:00] talk about the Colombo family, uh, down the road about Yeah. Bosses just running the family from jail's.
Just, it's not good. It's, you know, causes all types of conflicts and. But it is, like you pointed out, remarkable, that if a guy who basically devoted his life to, you know, trafficking, drugs and racketeering, and money laundering and murder, didn't spend a day in jail for 44 years. Now, what's the next step after Lucchese dies at in 67, which in a way is kind of on the eve of the seventies and all the insanity that happens during the seventies.
Who takes over after him? So there's like a stop gap guy, like Tommy wanted, uh, was, uh, Anthony Corrao, who was, that's who he wanted to make boss. But he was, uh, I think he was in jail at the time. He was up on charges for, um, uh, Can't remember exactly. I think it was like something related to racketeering.
So the interim boss, [00:24:00] Carmine Chaunti was named, uh, the Interim Boss. There was an understanding as soon as uh, COR was done with his legal problems, he ended up, uh, taking over. Uh, tra Muti was, uh, He was only in power for a very short time. He was. He was an old man. He was. He was. He had like health problems, but he also got caught up in the French connection, which is, we'll probably end up doing, we're gonna do a series on that too, right?
Because that was a huge drug trafficking operation. We'll probably end up talking about the movie too, which is one of my favorite movies. Uh, Still, like, I even like the, I like the second one too, personally. A lot of people don't like the second one. I like the second one too. Um, I, in my research though of this, uh, I, I, it came across this crazy story where, so the heroin that was seized from the French connection, I assuming you guys know that the French connection was a, was a heroin trafficking operation, not just heroin.
They did other drugs too, but it was mainly heroin. [00:25:00] Um, So they seized, uh, a, a ton of this heroin and it was staying in the, uh, police department's like evidence locker, right? Uh, either the mop did it themselves or they paid some other criminals to actually go break into this evidence locker and try to steal like the heroin, and they stole about.
I think it was like around 70 million to a hundred million dollars worth of heroin from this police evidence locker. And the cops only found out when they started seeing bugs all around the precinct and they realized, oh, all those bags are just full of flour. There's no heroin in it. So it's just, it's real.
It just shows you like the, the, the, uh, The technical, like the, uh, the fingers that the, the mob had in all aspects of, um, New York society at the time, because obviously they didn't just like, you know, hold the police officers up, like the, the police officers let them get into this evidence locker to steal all this heroin.
Um, the fact that they thought they could get away [00:26:00] with it, I mean, I guess in a sense they did, cuz they, they, they did steal the 70 million of heroin back is, it's incredible. Just the, uh, The amount of power and the amount of reach that they had. Alright, so Tra Trai is really just a placeholder and, uh, tell us about Anthony Carlo and how uh, he takes over.
Yeah, Anthony Corrals, he is one of the more successful mob bosses in the history of, uh, the American Mafia. He, he came from a queens ion of the, uh, family, and he was specially well connected with, uh, more of like the labor racketeering aspect of the mafia. Um, he actually had a pretty close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union at one point, and.
You know, like just, uh, just a list of the kind of unions that he was involved in. It was like painters and decorators, the conduit workers union, the United Textile, uh, workers Union. [00:27:00] It's a little weird now, I guess from modern audiences, but like even restaurant. Like restaurant workers had unions, you know, um, they don't really exist anymore.
So there was pretty much like a union for pretty much like any industry you think of. There was a union involved in it, in the mob, usually had some, had their fingers in it. And the Anthony Corral kind of specialized in this, uh, this type of, uh, legal activity that the mob was usually involved in during this time.
Uh, and he's also involved with this other character who I know is one of your favorites, gas Pipe, Gaspipe, Caso. Tell us a little bit about how he, uh, gets involved. Oh yeah. So Anthony Corrao, he, uh, just to kind of lay it out a little bit, uh, like I said, he was running the, the family basically the same way that Tommy Luc was running it, you know, kind of keeping a low profile, you know, uh, nothing big, nothing flashy, uh, and even, and he took some [00:28:00] security measures himself, or he would drive around in this, this Jaguar using like, I guess at the time, like they had like phones in the Jaguar.
So he wouldn't like actually do sit downs. This is where he would do all his business. The F b I ended up getting a bug in this Jaguar and basically heard everything Anthony got caught up in the big mafia commission trial, which is, you know, we'll probably end up doing a series on that cuz that was a, like a massive endeavor.
But, you know, to make it really short, the idea was they were going to use the RICO statue to charge all the Maia families all at once. And you know, it was a. It was successful, right? Uh, Anthony realized that he was gonna be looking at Lifetime in prison. There was no way he was gonna get off any of these charges.
And, uh, basically turned to two guys, uh, Vic Muso and Anthony Gaspipe, uh, coso to uh, take over the Lucchese family, and I'm sure he probably regrets [00:29:00] doing this, considering, uh, it takes a 180 turn as soon as these guys get in charge. Yeah, so let's, I mean, this is crazy stuff. So let's get into this a little bit more.
Uh, Anthony Caso and Vic Muso. Oh yeah. So like the Lucchese family for the most part had the reputation as being kind of one of the more peaceful families as we laid out. And all the five families, little internal strife, virtually no civil war. Um, Virtually no violence on the streets, but as soon as, uh, Vic Muso and gas pipe start getting involved, it almost completely changes over.
It almost completely changes overnight. Now, I don't know this for sure, but I kind of think that Anthony Corr was, I don't think he was, W too excited to put these guys in charge. He must have had a pretty good idea that these guys were pretty insane. But I guess he kind of looked at the situations like, I guess I could run the family from prison, [00:30:00] but that's not good either.
Right? And maybe he just was done with it. He just didn't want anything to do with it and he just didn't see any better options. Um, that's my personal opinion, but yeah. You know, like kind of give you an example, like as soon as like, Uh, MUO and gas pipe take over. They, they immediately go after this, the New Jersey faction, which is like a big faction within the Lucchese family, and start saying like, oh, we want 50% of everything that you make, which is just insane.
Like, you know, even just a little bit of, but like they're, you know, you got taxed and you had to kick, kick, uh, but 50%, it's just insane. And like when they refused to do it, Uh, the, you know, gas piping muo, just like, okay, well we're just gonna kill you all. Wish they immediately just all start fleeing. This is just an example of the insanity, right?
Um, even [00:31:00] like car stuff, like car bombs is it's, I know it sounds a little weird, but like, like in the American Mafia, they were kind of like a big. No, no, like he just, he didn't do car bombs and Sicily, that's a totally different type of story, but over here it was really kind of frowned upon. And, um, and you know, I'm making a long story short, but when John Gotti killed Paul Castellano, um, without the commission's approval, There were members of the commission that were none too happy about this.
Vincent Gigante, uh, was none too happy about this, and to be honest, neither were Muo and Gas pipe. They actually tried to kill, uh, John Gotti at one point, but they, they failed. They ended up just killing his underboss, but they, you know, use car bombs doing this, which is just their logic. And Castle actually talks about this.
He's like, well, you know, The idea was if we used a carbo, the cops wouldn't think it was us. [00:32:00] Cause Mafia didn't use Carbos. I mean, I, I get it to a certain degree. I still, still seems a little crazy to me. But yeah, I, I, I kind of see his logic that, and that's another that. Paul Castellano murder is another one of those pivotal moments to always keep in your mind of that generation.
I heard this really interesting discussion and it was completely, uh, off the topic of the mafia, but um, The guy was talking about the difference between a gangster and a hoodlum. And a gangster is somebody who's, who plans. And you know, they're all criminals, gangsters, hoodlums, but gangsters plan, they think about their scams and their schemes and they try to keep trouble at its minimal, where the hoodlum is the loud mouth who's, you know, ready to burn down the world to make a couple extra sense.
And I see, you know, after all this, Study we've done of these. I feel like at [00:33:00] around this time of the seventies, the mafia starts transforming from gangsters into hoodlums. Yeah. And I think part of it, and is the stakes just kind of got L like once Ricoh kind of got involved and. You know, people started talking and like informants started to become like an everyday thing.
I know it sounds crazy, but back in not that long ago from, you know, the time we're talking about with Kaso, just people didn't talk, like Frank Costello was almost killed and we were just talking about, and he refused to talk and. But once the charges started be beginning higher and higher, especially stuff related to drug trafficking and something like the commission trial where all the bosses were charged at once in this massive trial, I, I think the, the stakes got higher and people started getting more and more paranoid about who was gonna talk next.
And, I mean, that was the exact. That was the whole point of, you know, doing tougher sentences. That was the whole point of doing something like a, like [00:34:00] Ricoh charges was to get these guys paranoid so they would start acting irrationally. I think gas pipe was just also just a stone cold cycle path too.
Right? Like I think without Ricoh or any of this, he would still be acting this way. Now let's move on a little bit more in the story as we move a, uh, see how, uh, things develop with gas pipe in a moose cell. Where does this go? Oh, okay. So they end up getting caught. And we're g when we talk about Vincent Ja, uh, Gigante, there was a window fitting scam where basically they ran like a rack.
They were, I, I believe like all the window, all the window fitting that was done in New York. They were getting a chunk of, and like a, like a mafia tax basically. Um, They end up getting caught up in this too, uh, with Vincent Gigante. So they, they go into hiding and they name, uh, Alphons. Uh, l Dco is like the acting boss.
Uh, they'll probably [00:35:00] regret this later, but let's, we'll get it to in a second. But yeah, he had been, uh, always. Part of the mob, really. Right. Uh, I, I, I think I've read something crazy. It was like he was associate of the mob for like 40 plus years or something, but was never made. And then like, you know, when he was like an old man, basically, he, he didn't ended up getting made.
Um, yeah. And so like even when them ruling afar, like they increasingly were. Just getting more and more crazy, like accusing people of being informants and like, ironically in the sense and like ordering heads and a couple of these hits were botched, uh, you know, basically turning like people that weren't informants, informants where they're like, oh, these guys are gonna like, they're gonna kill me.
I'm like, I'm just going to the cops like, and I'm just gonna talk. I don't wanna die. Um, Probably the most famous one of these like botch hits, was like Peter Fat Pete, uh, Choda, uh, [00:36:00] Chodo, I believe that's how you pronounce that last name. He was like a high ranking guy in this window fitting scam. And they.
Shot him, not them personally, but the hit, he got hit like 12 times and somehow didn't die. And I was, and I was reading that apparently, apparently it was because he, one of the reasons was because he was so fat, you know, that sounds cruel, but he was like over 500. He was like, oh, close to. I think he was like around four 50 when Wow.
He got shot. And so like the extra layer of fat actually helped him a bit in terms of slowing down the bullets from hitting his like internal organs. Uh, I guess in the, you know, you think like when you shoot like a gun, Into like, uh, I you're more familiar with like guns, but like, you know, when into that gel type stuff?
Yeah. And it can stop the bullet, like something like that. Right. Uh, so like as after he got shot [00:37:00] 12 times, he was just like, yeah, I'm not, Doing this anymore. And he, he turned informant and basically, you know, exposed the entire window fitting scam. You know, also like gas pipe tried to, you know, kill, um, go after his family, which is like a new, that's a new thing in the mafia that they just didn't do that in America.
They did. They left families out of it. You know, gas also tried to like burn down his grandmother's house. Like this dude was something else mad. I mean, you know, very, um, it's a very interesting character. Not interesting, a good way. Just a stone cold, crazy psychopath. Um, um, You know, and then they blame Alfonz l Diarco.
They're like, well, you failed in this hit. Like, you're, you're probably gonna turn it for me. We're, we're gonna take revenge on you. So they tried killing him. Uh, Alfonz, uh, catches it in time. Uh, he, he was going to go to a meeting and he saw a guy hide a [00:38:00] gun in a, in the bathroom. Right. You know, kind of like a, like the Godfather, you know.
He ran and he was the first actual boss, acting or otherwise, and then turned state witness. Um, you know, save his life. And I know I, I, I read a little bit of how he saw it and he's just like, this is just not what I grew up in. It changed, you know, how people going after people's families, car bombings, this type of craziness is, this is not the mafia I grew up when, I mean, I, I would argue that the mafia they grew up in was not very good at Saul, but they, it wasn't this kind a.
It was different, right? It wasn't this the best, I guess I can use like a pop culture. It wasn't this kind of like Scarface style craziness, you know? Like it was, it was a different type of craziness.
Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors is. [00:39:00] Let's wrap up today, and there's a, a definitely a bunch of stuff that will be, will dive much deeper into, but to really wrap up the Lucchese family, almost up to our current day, we have the. Crooked cops and just some, pretty much, it just the bottom completely falls out on the family.
Oh, yeah. So eventually gas pipe and muo were both caught. Uh, MUO was caught and it was in 1991, and then gas pipe was caught in 1990. It just, 1993. It kind of just shows you just how, you know, this is recent history really in terms of what we're talking about. Right. Uh, they both obviously were, you know, sent to prison.
Uh, it's interesting how they both kind of took two different approaches. Like a muo just refused to talk about anything. Right. Uh, and gas pipe. As soon as he went to jail, he was like, oh yeah, I'll start talking. Why not? [00:40:00] And one of the biggest bombshells that he, uh, he ends up talking about is the fact that he had two New York, uh, city police officers on his payroll.
Uh, these are the famous mafia cops, uh, Louis Eppolito and, uh, Steven Carpa. They basically, they spent their 44 year career working for BA exclusively the Lucchese family. Uh, You know, leaking evidence, stealing stuff from police lockers, but between the, that we know for sure. But between the years, uh, 1986 and.
1990, they base, they killed eight people. You know, we know that for sure. They probably killed more. I'm currently reading a, a book, uh, about them. Um, and you know, when we get along this, these two guys will probably be like a multi-part episode cuz it, it really is just such an insane story, these two police officers and just how this entire thing went down.
Um, [00:41:00] Even like police officers at the time noticed that there was this weird tension between like the Lucchese family, the Gambino family, and the Jenny VAs family, and they've basically pinpointed that this weird tension where people were kind of randomly going, missing once in a while where it was because of these two cops.
And that's just insane. And, and we'll, we'll definitely have to address that. And just the general deep, deep, deep corruption inside of the N Y P D and other police agencies and how they would have to reform themselves after this and re and how they'll ha they had to reform their images if their images ever really did get reformed after that.
Uh, so take us to the end and. Maybe, uh, talk about what are some other topics that you would really like to zoom in more out of this Lucchese family gas pipe. He, he goes to the jail and he says like, you know, he basically says like, I'll become an [00:42:00] informant. Kind of like Sammy the Bull did initially the, like, the Persecutors and the FBI was like, yeah, hey, like, you know, we got a mafia boss turning informant, right?
And then they start seeing the person that gas pipe is and they start. You know, he starts telling them the stories and they're just like, they slowly start realizing like, yeah, we can't have this guy come on the stand because it's, it's just gonna make us look bad. It's gonna make the government look bad.
It's gonna make the FBI look bad. Like this guy is absolutely insane. I think one of the things that kind of. Made them realize this. And that's the story that Gaspipe talks about where he, he claims that he buried alive. Some guy infl like a drug, some drug smuggler in Florida just, you know, buried him alive.
And he's laughing about it and they're like, Yeah, we, we, we can't do this. Like we can't, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, it's too like he's too, it's too evil. I mean, you have somebody like Simon, the [00:43:00] Bull Gravano, who's basically a, just a gigantic BS artist and he could sell any story, but you put somebody like gas pipe, casa up there, he's an honest to goodness psychopath.
You know, there's no tweaking his story. To make him look good on the stand. Yeah, I'd be, this is just kind of my personal opinion. I go like, somebody like gas pipe is, are they a serial killer? Are they like a soldier in the mafia Gas pipe is. Right on that line. I would say probably, probably a serial killer.
You know, even, uh, like eventually we'll talk about, we'll talk about Roy de Mayo, right? And he's like one of those guys that's like right on the line. But in gas pipe is, I don't know. He, the, just the impression that I get off of just reading him, he's, he's right on that, he's right on that line. Like, is he, I mean, if you were to call him Mr.
Serial, it'd be like, Yeah, I'm not [00:44:00] gonna argue with you too much about that. I'd be like having Hannibal Lecter on the stand or something, you know what I mean? Or like pissing the government off really is, you know, Sammy starts talking about, he was like, oh, I have an F B I agent that was on the payroll too, and they're just like, shut up about that.
You're not allowed to talk about that. And you know, to be honest with you, he was probably telling the truth about that too. And we'll never know who this guy was. Um, and. He also has talked about, you know how Sammy the bull, you know, bought drugs off him and he was a big drug trafficker because when Sammy turned and informant, that was like a big thing.
It was, well, like Sammy did what he wasn't involved in. He wasn't involved in the crack cocaine, he wasn't involved in the heroin. Um, I don't know why that was like a stickling point, but you know, that was all not. True obviously, because, you know, a couple years later he was caught up, you know, in the witness protection program, trafficking, like being a huge, uh, I believe it was ecstasy that he was trafficking.
Yeah. Plus, you know, whatever type [00:45:00] of other drugs he'd probably get his hands on. Um, the main drug was ecstasy. Um, so Castle wasn't lying about that. Uh, I guess in the sense they were trying to keep the, because there was a lot of people protesting at the time when Sammy Le Bull became an informant and ended up basically getting away, you know, with probably killing 30 people and getting off with nothing.
Not only just nothing, he was put in the witness protection program because I, he, he was the guy that gave the information that got John Gotti. You know, it just made the f b I look, it made the f b I look bad. It made the, the, you know, the, the government look bad is the fact that they were willing to work cuz they were so desperate to get Gotti, that they were willing to work with somebody like Sammy Lebo literally making a deal with the devil.
And this is probably one of the reasons why they never actually used Castle, right? Because they, they saw like, oh, we'll agree tied ourselves in a pretzel using the same the bowl and then we're just gonna be end up doing the same thing. With this guy. If not, I mean, I would argue that Caso [00:46:00] was worse than Gravano, but I mean, Gravano was not, was not much better either.
And really in the end, all these old guys die out. Kaso dies of Covid, uh, in 2020. All the other guys die in the late 20 teens. And that really leads us to the end of the story. There'll definitely be stories about what happens to these, what's the next generation, what's basically the, uh, post-modern mafia we could get into that.
It's really a. I'd love to hear what the audience has to say. What do you wanna learn? Because we touched upon a million different really interesting issues here. What do you wanna hear more about? You should, you know, definitely reach out to us if there's something in particular that you want to have us tackle more.
Oh yeah, for sure. Cuz this was just like these five, uh, episodes about the five major families is, it's basically just to kind of give you guys an overview [00:47:00] of the entire, you know, a big picture look of the entire mafia and just kind of the general narrative history of each one of these families. So, you know, if we say we start doing an episode about, about.
Uh, you know, Steven Car coppa and George Eppolito, you guys will already, if you've listened to this episode, you already have like a general history of the entire Lucchese crime family and you know who Gas Pipe is and who is Anthony Corrao, and an idea of what the mission, the commission trial was, because it can be a little.
Just speaking from personal experience, if you just kind of drop into one of these things, it can be a little confusing without kind of an overall narrative structure to the, uh, to the entire thing. And check us out on social media. You can find all of that in the show notes and tell a friend of yours to become a friend of ours, and we will talk to you next time.
Yeah. See you guys forget about it.
You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, [00:48:00] a history and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime a to zhi history page.com.
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