Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins interviews noted true crime filmmaker and author Rick Porrello. You will remember Mr. Porrello from Kill the Irishman, the story of the Cleveland Celtic Warrior, Danny Greene. Rick has a new Book titled There’s More Bodies Out There: The True Story of a Mafia Associate and a Cop Who emerge as Suspected Serial Killers.   Rick was able to obtain a series of prison interviews with Richard Henkel, who started life as an armed robber, became known to the Pittsburgh Mafia as a man who could kill without remorse, and participated in a famous hostage-taking standoff in Pittsbhurg’s Western Prison. Along the way, Richard Henke befriended Gary Small when he was an Edgewood Borough police officer and brought him into his schemes.

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Transcript

Rick Porrello edited bodies

Thu, Jan 05, 2023 4:07PM • 24:06

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pittsburgh, youngstown, henkel, book, murder, mob, prison, cleveland, life insurance, story, kill, suspected, gary, writing, enforcers, mobsters, organized crime, hear, big, 70s

 

00:00

I first heard about Richard Henkel when I was writing my book super thief. And I learned that he was responsible for sending a bomb to a massage parlor to a prostitute who worked a massage parlor and sending it to her as a under the guise of a Christmas gift and blowing her up. He killed her, basically to keep her quiet over something else that had happened. And I was aghast and realize, Wow, this might be a story and a character that I want to look into.

 

00:31

Well, guys, I got a great show for you today. Rick Porello is going to be on here in a minute, a good friend of mine, ex cop, retired cop from back in Cleveland area, done a bunch of stuff you just heard kind of him talking to him a little bit of the low taste of what you’re gonna hear about from him. So let’s welcome Rick Porello.

 

00:50

And I was aghast and realize, Wow, this might be a story and a character that I want to look into.

 

00:57

Man, that guy was that guy was that cold Dude, why they?

 

01:00

He sure was I think he’s still he still is, you know, I’ve been in contact with him for over a year now about 10 months going into the completion of the book. And I first learned about Gary when I was writing my book, super thief, which goes back probably 15 years from working with Phil, Phil Christopher, the master burglar, the sub subject of my book, super thief. And he just kind of mentioned Richard Henkel in passing and, you know, said that he was involved in the murder for, for life insurance. And, you know, when you’re a writer, sometimes you hear you hear stories, or you’re a story or you hear about a certain character and sort of inserted plants a seed, you know, he kind of file that away. And that’s exactly what happened with with this character, Dick Henkel, Richard Henkel on file that away and years later, I started looking into him a little bit, I read a book actually a kind of a short story in a book called Pittsburgh characters. You know, he’s a Pittsburgh, he’s a pit he certainly is a Pittsburgh character. And it was written written by that particular short story was written by a journalist by the name of Paul Marciniak. And it basically tells the, the, you know, that the nuts and bolts of of, of Henkel story and just what a character I mean, he’s basically a mob that yeah, he’s, he’s a mob associate connected with the Pittsburgh mob, Youngstown, in a contract killer, or,