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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this Gangland Wire episode, host Gary Jenkins sits down with RJ Roger, Host of No Excuses with Michael DiLeonardo podcast, to delve into his fascinating book, The Don: 36 Rules of the Bosses. In this book, RJ outlines 36 leadership rules derived from effective leaders’ behaviors in organized crime and corporate America. These rules, rooted in extensive historical research on the five New York mafia families, highlight universal power dynamics in all hierarchical structures, offering actionable insights for anyone striving to succeed—whether as a business executive or an everyday worker.

RJ challenges the romanticized portrayal of mob life, focusing instead on the stark realities of leadership within the mafia. Together, Gary and RJ draw parallels between the underworld and legitimate organizations. For example, RJ discusses the principle of “using skilled men to your benefit,” a lesson that applies across industries—including Gary’s experience in law enforcement. Both mafia bosses, police commanders, and corporate leaders face the challenge of navigating human dynamics, where the rules of engagement can make or break their success.

Throughout the conversation, RJ shares captivating stories of mob bosses and their relationships with underlings, shedding light on the nuances of leadership. The discussion touches on the importance of appearances, with RJ explaining how a leader’s presentation can shape perception and loyalty among followers. He emphasizes the delicate balance of being approachable and authoritative to maintain command—an insight that resonates across fields.

Please tune in to this thought-provoking episode to uncover the leadership lessons from the mafia that can inspire and guide us in our endeavors.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee”

To go to the store or make a donation, click here

To rent Ballto Theft: Burglary Murder Coverup, click here 

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

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

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

To subscribe on iTunes, click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
Donate to the podcast. Click here!
Transcript
Speaker1:
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. I’m back here with another guest, an author and a fellow mob podcaster, RJ Roger. Welcome, RJ.

Speaker0:
[0:17] Thank you for having me, Gary. And I mean that this is not just camera stuff. I always wanted to have a discussion with you. I remember reaching out to you on Twitter once over before I even started working with Michael. And I just, as a respecter of what you do, because you have an elegant, classy podcast and in what we do, it ain’t the norm. So I’m a major respecter.

Speaker1:
[0:41] Well thank you thank you i i kind of back i didn’t understand that twitter thing back there but i have some vague memory that i don’t know anyhow well finally we meet and we just had a nice little discussion about mutual mutual woes in the podcast industry and personal uh personal things to get to know each other a little bit and guys uh i assure you rj knows what he’s talking about and he’s a true gentleman and he has a great podcast you know uh you know i’m the one i have to take credit for this, RJ. I’m the one that got Mikey scars or Michael D. Leonardo on the air the very first time by happenstance and luck in a way I find out, but then I knew it was, it was just a lucky just somehow he just felt a certain way one day and he said, yeah, I’ll come on your podcast. And now RJ has Mikey scars or Michael D. Leonardo on his podcast regularly. So you want to check that podcast out. Uh, tell us just a little bit about your podcast, RJ, so guys can find it

Speaker0:
[1:40] But you are right i always get i always take the credit i brought michael scars out of the shadows yeah and i got that line from um coast of notion news that was like his headline he said rj roger brings michael de leonardo from the shadows and but the truth is you were the first guy to have to do a discussion with him i just so you took the

Speaker0:
[2:03] the ball up the field and i took it over the you.

Speaker1:
[2:06] Took it over the goal line

Speaker0:
[2:07] Um so as far as the show with michael and i i was a original was doing a solo mob podcast and i made a production i made a show on michael and it made its way to him through his son he liked it he reached out to me we became friends so that’s a fast forward very fast way of how we met and for the first several months We were just friends. I met him in person. I flew out to see him. We spent some time together. And we were kind of… Talking about some different things. And eventually we came together and made an agreement on working together. Took him a while to want to come out and do like a long form show. But, but again, it wasn’t our relationships, not a business relate. It wasn’t a business relationship. We were friends that started a show. We wasn’t business guys that became friends. We were friends first and then started the show. So we’re at, we’re on YouTube.

Speaker0:
[3:07] You can search Mikey Scars Find our show Our YouTube show We’re primarily on Patreon now Same name, Mikey Scars We do 8 shows a month on Patreon And it’s been We’ve done a lot of really good stuff We talk about a lot of things in his life And he goes back In my opinion, the last live and made, Major Five family figure that’s out there His name goes back to Sicily over 100 years He has a long, long history He’s three, four generations deep inside of Cosa Nostra. So it’s been fun to talk with a guy who has so much understanding of the life in a more nuanced way.

Speaker1:
[3:47] Yeah, he really does. And he’s articulate enough that he can really, as you say, a nuanced way, he can tell the story. And so, you know, now you’ve done this book here, The Don, 36 Rules of the Boss.

Speaker1:
[4:03] R.J. Roger. Now, is this your first book? I’m not sure. I can’t remember.

Speaker0:
[4:08] Yes, it’s my first official book. That’s a major release book, traditional published book, first one.

Speaker1:
[4:16] Didn’t you tell me that you also used some stuff from Michael in your book to help explain some of these rules of the boss? Because he’s got firsthand knowledge of that. That’s not like just reading it from somebody else who got it from somebody else. He’s got firsthand knowledge of working with a boss.

Speaker0:
[4:35] Now, the first, the 30, so what I had done, I wrote the 36 rules before I even met Michael, years and years before I met Michael. That was really, I had this theory on 36 rules of a mafia don, of a boss, just a boss, not a captain or underboss. I looked at, you know, the history of the American mob bosses in the five families. And I’ve researched their whole life, like the social behavior study, essentially. And I didn’t look at the mafia for what they claim to be. We’re honored society. We only kill our own. We don’t deal in drugs. We don’t touch a boss. You’re untouchable. You can’t kill without permission. All the stuff that they claim to be, that’s not these 36 rules because a lot of that is.

Speaker0:
[5:22] Fluff. It’s not real. So I looked at their actual behaviors. Like what did they actually do? How did they actually treat people? Were they truly an honored society? So I looked at their history and what I found is 36 common things that you could find among the leaders of the five families. So I wrote that theory. That theory that I completed was what I was taking around. Michael didn’t, I didn’t even know Michael yet, that theory. And then when I met my agent and producer, he said, you know, we need to do more storytelling and give more examples so readers can understand how these rules are applied. So we began to re-edit the book and re-craft the book. And that’s what you have here. And some of Michael’s quotes and a couple of things he said, I used in some of the historical narratives that I put in the book. But largely, I met Michael late down the line. I was done with the book, really. I put a couple of quotes and things in, but I met Michael when the book was already completed. Even this version of it.

Speaker1:
[6:26] You know, I’m looking at some of these rules, like use a skilled man to your benefit. It’s kind of like as a sergeant in the police department, I had a tax squad or had an intelligence unit. I would try to find skilled people to bring them in and then use them to my benefit, if you will, because I’m the sergeant, I’m the boss here. I get the credit and then my captain gets the credit, too, because you have this really skilled guy. So a lot of these rules are just what somebody in business would use, it appears to be.

Speaker0:
[6:56] Well, I’m glad you said that because I’m not so into the mafia. I like to read about the subject a little bit and watch the movies, but I wouldn’t have spent 12 years of my life working on a mob book necessarily

Speaker0:
[7:11] that has no moral value or something that’s not beneficial to people. A regular working Joe, a guy like yourself, a guy that’s a police officer or a guy who’s working in some kind of legitimate business. So the concept behind the whole thing is exactly what you said. People all people are not gangsters but gangsters are people and there’s a particular way in a capitalistic society a society that respects capitalism and has a hierarchy structure of you start at a entry level and through your your service you rise up within it and you.

Speaker0:
[7:54] In that type of model, the rules are kind of all the same. So in the mafia, you start as an associate and you have to prove yourself and become more skilled to rise up to the head of it. And that’s the same thing if you’re coming out of college and you get an entry level job and through service, you rise up and you prove yourself to be worthy of maybe being the CEO one day or the president one day. And a lot of what you find, that process, it’s the same. It doesn’t matter who’s rising in. You can be an illegitimate enterprise or something that’s illegit. Either way, the rules are kind of similar. So if you look at this book in a figurative manner, you’ll find, you know, that we’re all kind of operating in a similar way. I believe you can test these rules against Donald Trump or an American politician, against a CEO of a Wall Street firm, against somebody in the high academia who’s running Oxford or Harvard or something that’s really big and profitable. You’ll find these rules. You can find them in how and how very achieved and accomplished and ambitious people rise.

Speaker1:
[9:19] Interesting. You know, and talking about the kind of the early days of the mafia, I have I know I know on Facebook one time I had a guy comment, a local Italian guy who’s kind of connected. He made a comment when he saw my picture with some other guys. He said, well, there’s a guy in this picture that writes bad things about Italians. And so I was talking with T.J. English not too long ago. I interviewed him and we were talking about this. And he’s examined Irish when they first came over and paddywhacked and Cubans in three books now. And we’re talking about immigrants when they come to the United States. You know, they want the American dream. that’s what they they come here wanting the american dream some of them uh you know original black handers came here as brought their uh gangsterism and their their criminal behavior with them but most guys just came wanting the american dream and when you first get here in america you’re you’re held out you’re you’re pushed out of any early jobs you know the irish time the italians got here the irish already had the police and the fire and the government jobs sewed up and a lot of businesses. And so you got bright young guys,

Speaker1:
[10:30] That are looking, you know, to live the American dream and their prohibition came along and it’s illegal, but there was a way for them to achieve the American dream. And so that’s why it is, it really is the mafia organization that started with young immigrants trying to achieve the American dream. Would you agree with that?

Speaker0:
[10:49] Oh, 100%. That’s why I don’t have these harsh opinions on immigrants that we see that’s being really pushed by the media, Because I do understand that most people who come over to this country, it’s not the guy that you arrested for doing a crime. He’s not reflective of the mass amount of people who come here. A lot of them are just trying to have an opportunity for a better education, a better social standing, you know, a way to buy a little piece of land, a piece of property or something, put the kids in a good school, get an education. That’s what most people come here for. So even if you look at even with the mafia, you know, I think Joe Bonanno, one of Joe Bonanno’s kids said this on Chris Wallace that, you know, by even all FBI standards, there was never more than like 3,000 made members in America at any given time ever. When you have millions of people come over from Italy, you know, and if you really think about how many were in the criminal element, it’s like not even 1%. So you can’t, but all the Italians, when they came over, they faced unending scrutiny. They were accused of taking American jobs, being dirty.

Speaker0:
[12:02] Being gangsters, being, you know, they were diseased. And they were all these things that they put all these words on a whole group of people that really most of the people that came over just wanted opportunities for their kids and a better job and a better way to live.

Speaker1:
[12:23] Really. And so as they organize and they move into this business of prohibition, basically, and they have to really organize, you know, from the top down in order to make it work, you know, they have, you know, they develop these business rules that you talk about in here. I was looking at this one, Mixed with the Soldiers.

Speaker1:
[12:43] Now, that’s one that Paul Castellano forgot to do, and it cost him his life at the end. Is that a good example for that, Mixed with the Soldiers?

Speaker0:
[12:54] And if you look at the legitimate world, if you’re working in policing, so let’s say you’re a captain, the police captain or the commissioner or something. If he’s on the floor coming down he knows your name hey mr jenkins how you doing it’s good to see you today while he’s making his coffee he goes hey how how are things going out on this you know is anything i can do more for you you okay no i’m okay thank you but it’s good to see you and thank you for taking that time to speak with me but if you have a lot of grievances as a policeman and you have, you never see your boss to voice them to, but every time you do see your boss, he just has something bad to say like, Gary, you forgot to load your clip or something. I don’t know. Um, you know, it gets to a point that this other guy is making his way, this new guy, you’ve been seeing this new guy coming up and he always comes up to you and he’s bringing you solutions to your problems and he’s helping you and he’s on the scene with you.

Speaker0:
[14:01] You will start to unify the large group. Remember, the boss is only one person. The captain’s just one person. The commissioner’s just one person. These seats are occupied by one, but desired by many. So when you don’t mix with the soldiers, you end up like what happened to Frank Costello, what happened to Paul Costolano. When you put yourself far distance from what you’re leading, you will cause the people who are following you to think he doesn’t care about us and they’ll turn. So what I have found is the bosses that held on to their families versus the bosses that maybe lost their family or were usurped.

Speaker0:
[14:46] You can find the difference was those bosses were there, hands on. John Gotti was very good at that. He was at the rave at night. The associates, the soldiers could kiss him. They could see him. Carlo Gambino had a home right there where everybody was at. You know, he purposely stayed there. But then Paul goes in this big mansion and just distanced himself from everybody. And Costello was doing the same thing. He was just wanting to be around legitimate people. And that’s what made Costello, that’s what made Vito Genovese so attractive. It was, he was here with us. I’d rather follow the guy who’s here proving he he respects us than being following an order from a guy who looks down on us. And it’ll be the same thing you’ll find in the leader of a political party. You know, if you’re the head of a political party, but you don’t even know the members or anything that you’re leading, they will turn and elect somebody else out.

Speaker0:
[15:44] They will vote you out when you seem distant from the people who you’re leading. So you got to mix with them to keep their loyalty.

Speaker1:
[15:51] I think we don’t need to look any further than the most recent election to see how that plays out for sure.

Speaker0:
[15:58] When you see, if you take Donald Trump, for example, when you see Donald Trump show up when the political, when the media is really beaten down on the Republican Party, let’s say, for not passing a certain thing or not doing something. And they’re taking a lot of abuse, the Republicans in Congress, let’s say. And then Trump shows up on Capitol Hill and stands in front of all of them and takes a picture and poses the picture. They like that because they’re saying, we’re not alone in this. Trump came and he stood here with us and said, guys, we’re going to stand together on this and we’re going to get through it. It makes them unify behind him or anybody. But when your leader just leaves you out to rot, you start saying, forget about this guy. You start wanting somebody else.

Speaker1:
[16:54] Yeah, interesting. Look at some of these others. Let’s talk about breaking the rules, breaking the rules in a way that makes people muddy. Would that be? Give us some examples of breaking the rules. Can you think of any?

Speaker0:
[17:08] Well, that’s the funny thing is that the people who follow the rules, they’re more linear type of people. They just, the rule is this. I follow the rule. Life is a little easier if you can just follow the rules. You don’t have to.

Speaker1:
[17:21] It is.

Speaker0:
[17:23] But following the rules remember rules are put in place to protect the person who is in power, but the guy that got into power he did not get there by following the rules rules are purposely in place to limit you and protect the guy who set them so you will never make it to boss if you think that your boss is not allowed to be killed because the rule is you can’t kill a boss. But most of the time, the boss killed his boss. That’s how he became a boss. So he broke the rule to make the rules, you know? So I find that, The people in life that challenge the rules are willing to go around the rules, circumvent the rules.

Speaker0:
[18:12] Those are the people who set everything that the general public is following. You don’t get there by following the rules. So John Gotti broke the rules. He’s the popular example. I use John Gotti because everyone knows his name, but the purpose of the book was more studied with the older guys. But a lot of the guys, Lucky Luciano broke the rules. He killed multiple bosses, right? He killed Mazzaria. He killed Maranzano. And he came in and he broke rules to become what he became.

Speaker1:
[18:47] He brought the Jews there. He brought Jewish people in too.

Speaker0:
[18:50] I mean, he- There you go. And that wasn’t common back then. Yeah. That’s where the use the skilled man to your benefit comes from. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel. These were Jewish. Bugsy Siegel was very good with a pistol. He could kill very good. I need him on my team. Mario Lansky, well read. Understand he understood finance. He understood markets. He understood Frank Costello was very good with wooing politicians, with courting politicians, getting them on the side. Lucky put all these people around him and used what they were very good at to his benefit. But Lucky was in drugs. He really was in drugs. and the mafia was not supposed to be in drugs. But a lot of bosses were in drugs. They were always into drugs, right? But they would tell certain people in the family, you can’t deal with drugs or you die. So the rules are for, it’s a particular type of a personality is all I can say. A boss has a different mindset than a captain or a capo regime. A capo is a capo because he doesn’t have that ability to…

Speaker0:
[20:02] Be a boss. If he was, he wouldn’t be like, I can’t do that because my boss told me no. Bosses don’t think like that. I always say, I don’t mean to belabor the point, but Neil Delacroach, he wasn’t a boss. No matter what everybody says, he was too loyal. He was too loyal to the rules to be the boss because anybody else would have, Neil Delacroach should have just clipped Paul and took over the family, broke the rule, took over the family, like all the bosses historically have done in the Gambino family. John did it. John had the boss capability. Clearly, Neil didn’t, because if Neil did, he would have went in and been the boss. But he followed the rules.

Speaker1:
[20:45] Yeah, well, when old man Gambino died and, you know, he said, my nephew here is going to be the boss, Neil just says, okay, you know, I have found nothing where he ever expressed any dissatisfaction with. He just, okay, the boss is the boss. I mean, the famous line when he’s talking to, what is it, Ruggiano, you know, the boss is the boss is the boss. I mean, you’re right. I never thought about it quite like what you’re saying, but that is really interesting insight you had,

Speaker0:
[21:16] RJ. That makes him a very great underboss.

Speaker0:
[21:21] You want that a boss, he looks for new qualities in his underboss. He wants a guy who loves and respects the culture and the society and the rules because he doesn’t have to worry about, remember, a boss’s greatest fear at night is what is my underboss thinking? Because remember, to be a boss, you were first an underboss or very close to that, right? So a boss knows how everybody in the family is thinking. He knows what the associates think. Man, I got to get on record with somebody and prove myself. He knows what the soldier’s thinking after he’s made. Oh, one day I really want to be a captain. He knows what the captains are thinking. I’m so close to the top, I can almost taste it. So the boss knows how everyone’s thinking. But the captains, the soldiers, the underboss, the consulier, all of them, none of them know how a boss is thinking. Even if they think they do, you don’t know what a boss is thinking until you’re the boss because now you’re in a cul-de-sac. There’s no way out. Boss is the top place you go. And it’s very scary to be at the top because you got everybody in your family who wants what you got.

Speaker0:
[22:38] But Neil, like I said, is a great, he’s a perfect underboss. He’s not going to usurp you. He’s not going to kill you. he’s not going to let the captains galvanize against you. We heard him on tape. He was trying to talk John Gotti and, Quack off the ledge. That’s why you guys don’t understand Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra means that the boss is your boss. You understand?

Speaker1:
[23:04] I’m going to tell you, if you two ever bothered me again, I can’t in the rest of my life. I ain’t giving them credit. I can’t. They might tackle him. She would have to cut the line on them, say. Now he’s a boy. You have to put the money in college in there. You see, that’s why I’m so confusing for you. You know what I’m saying? I’m going to be honest right to you. I lost you a million for a boy since you’re a boy.

Speaker0:
[23:27] He was trying to, you guys have to respect this man. That’s your boss. He’s your God.

Speaker1:
[23:35] Yeah. I didn’t realize he was talking to a rebel guy that will break the rules. He thought everybody was like him, didn’t he?

Speaker0:
[23:46] There you go.

Speaker1:
[23:48] You know, I see this one dress dapper. And I tell you why I’ve said something about this is I have an FBI agent friend, Bill Owsley, who was a case agent on the straw man case and was the most famous agent in Kansas city, probably a certain era FBI is probably one of the most famous agents in the United States with the, uh, cause he was a case agent over the, uh, uncovering all the skimming from Las Vegas. And, and he made a comment one day. He said, you know, he said, these guys, these modern mobsters, he said, you know, they used to wear, you know, expensive, you know, tailored suits really dress nice. He said, And now what he got, they got guys running around in track suits.

Speaker1:
[24:29] He said, no wonder the mafia is going down. So dress dapper and John Gotti did do that. I’ll say that using, keeping on the John Gotti tracks. And it’s such a great example, but he did dress dapper and all those older guys did for sure.

Speaker0:
[24:44] You know, people in general are very weak in what they, from what they see. Our eyes lie to us all the time. And very achieved people understand that the human is very easy to seduce. The human brain is very easy to seduce. You know, that’s why I read about this before, but blind people typically have more…

Speaker0:
[25:13] Like a stronger intuition and things like that than people who can see because they’re forced to be able to read your sincerity and things like that, a handshake and things. They’re better because they don’t have the luxury of the eye. So young children are very perceptive before or a baby, a newborn that doesn’t even understand words yet.

Speaker0:
[25:44] When your child is laughing and playful, and then somebody just walks in and the kid goes and looks at them and starts crying and gets very, everything changes because they’re sensing a certain energy and things like that. So dressing the way we appear is an easy way to trick a person. Very easy. You come, when you come looking shabby, looking down, that’s not an inspiring look. We love to see a person come in looking very astute and strong and powerful and acclaimed. And it almost makes you want to follow that man because you want to be like him. You want the whole room to stop and look at you. You want people to follow you. So now you need more than just your appearance, but the way you appear really does draw people in. And if you want to be a boss, you’re going to have to look like one also. You have to present yourself as one also. So you’re not inspired by a man that you see in tattered clothes.

Speaker0:
[26:54] You ain’t inspired by a man that comes in looking like he works on the back of a dump truck. And I don’t mean nothing disparaging towards anyone that does these professions. I’m just saying we are inspired to follow what looks achieved.

Speaker1:
[27:10] Yeah. Yeah. I know when, when I was a sergeant in plain clothes, I always tried to dress just a little bit better than the best desk detective that I had under me.

Speaker0:
[27:22] And that’s, and that’s how I’ve always been as a professional. Like, I never, I will go into, I talk about in that section of the book, you can be, the boss can have a meeting in a pissy alleyway. It reeks of urine. But he still arrives for the alleyway Bensonhurst meeting, chauffeured in a suit. He walks in that alley. And even though the guys he’s meeting with have on denim and or a track suit, do you know who walks away feeling ashamed? The boss doesn’t walk away feeling like, man, I came overdressed. The guys in the track suit said, fuck, we should have had a suit on. And I always invoke that as a professional, personally. I always came… One step ahead of dressed appeared better than anybody else. This interview, I had on a black hoodie when I came here.

Speaker1:
[28:21] I keep dress shirts in my office. I quickly changed a dress shirt and put my hat on before I walked in here.

Speaker0:
[28:28] Well, there we go. So you’re respecting the art of dress dapper. So I’m not wearing this shirt all day today. I keep collared shirts in my office. And I came in here with, I mean, you might think, oh, he probably has on some nice dress pants. But if you really look, I got on some blue sneakers.

Speaker1:
[28:48] I’m not even showing you my pants.

Speaker0:
[28:50] And I got on some cargo pants with a buckle. But what you see me in is I know I should appear with a nice collar shirt and look presentable for the guy who’s watching. And that’s how we should be in general. You should appear in your best if you

Speaker0:
[29:09] want to be respected as your best.

Speaker1:
[29:11] Really i tell you what guys out there i’m speaking to y’all out there you know just get this book just for tips on how to conduct your own life if you want to have success in your own life in your own work whatever you do there’s you just follow a lot of these tips now you don’t want to kill the boss i think we have a a chapter here called kill the boss but and we’ve talked about that a little bit but no hold on yeah when you’re killing politically i’ve seen that happen well that’s

Speaker0:
[29:39] What i’m talking about so you’ll see um if you look at the presidential campaign trump had to quote unquote kill the boss he had to present a case on this biden guy is not for you.

Speaker1:
[29:54] Yeah i

Speaker0:
[29:56] Gotta take he’s not physically gonna shoot him but he has to take him out of power that’s the theory behind kill the boss, Take you out of power. If you’re in middle management, your boss is the boss. And you want his job. You want to be the vice president of sales and marketing. Right now, you’re an outside sales guy. You want his job. You’re going to have to maybe politic a little bit and do little things. And his boss is the president of the company. Maybe you’re doing little things going to the guy above him, trying to get him eliminated. You know, he’s not showing up to meetings. I don’t want my name to be involved in this. Like you start doing little back. I’m sure you see it in your line of profession.

Speaker1:
[30:42] You saw people.

Speaker0:
[30:44] There you go. So you see people politicking to take what you got. So kill the boss in a figurative way is just saying. You are going to have the rule is don’t talk against Gary. Gary’s the boss. Don’t walk around because Gary’s going to fire you. If he finds out John Gotti is going to kill you. If he finds out that you’re talking subversive as Sammy claimed Louie, Louie, Louie was, right? Yeah. So, Hey, he’s talking subversive. He’s talking a little talking subversive about me. Yeah. I mean, you know, and then the boss. Who’s you and your line of work. If you find out that you got people underneath you who are. Talking subversive, trying to come for what you got, they’re end running you, they’re creating lies about you. You’re going to say, write them up, sit them down, call HR. We got to get this figured out. And in your head though, you’re just taking a professional approach to killing him. You want to get him out of the company. He can’t work for me. I don’t want him under me. I can’t trust him. But what that guy was trying to do was take you out because he wants what you got. And you see that a lot in the legitimate world where people politic on the side against their boss. They talk against their boss, but laugh in his face and, hey, Mr. Jenkins, would you like a cup of coffee? How many sugars do you want in it?

Speaker0:
[32:10] And they brought the coffee back perfect. And you drank it and said, wow, that boy makes a great cup of coffee, two creamers, one pack of sugar perfectly mixed, but you didn’t know he spit in it.

Speaker1:
[32:21] Yeah yeah oh yeah i’ll tell you what happened to me this is a guy that used to work for me as my last job in the intelligence unit where i retired and i didn’t retire out of it because this guy he had i wouldn’t let him do something he wanted to do and he had retired and he was still around and so he one day plays golf with the colonel over intelligence unit that’s like two steps above me and, but he plays golf with him and he denigrates the shit out of me and, and trying to get his buddy who wants to be the Sergeant in there. And I find out later that all of a sudden the Colonel sends word down, you know, Hey, I want Jenkins out of there, you know, and this is who I want in that, you know, in a military paramilitary organization, that’s, what’s going to happen is I’m out back to dog watch and central or Metro patrol, uh, on the streets, uh, driving a district car. I was still a sergeant, but you know, I had to go from having my own personal take-home car to going to work at dog watch at a, uh, uh, inner city station. So it’s, uh, I know how it happens, man. It happens. They just didn’t kill me like they do in the mob.

Speaker0:
[33:30] And would you agree that, how long were you in a position of leadership professionally? I’m just curious. Like, how many consistently?

Speaker1:
[33:37] I guess 84 to 96. So 10, 12 years.

Speaker0:
[33:43] All right. Now, so you know, and I’m sure you’ve talked to people who were doing it even longer than you. And I’m sure what you have learned is when you can sit there for 12 straight years, you start seeing it all. You start learning. And have you, did you become, when you first came in, were you like, let’s galvanize everybody, be friends, be family, everyone worked together as colleagues. And then in time you learn that everybody, did you become less trusting as you moved along? More suspicious of people?

Speaker1:
[34:16] I don’t think I was that trusting from day one. I understood the game. I understood the game that I can’t, they’re not my friends. I’ll be fair to everybody, but they’re not my friends. And I made a great effort to not drink with them after work or do anything personal with anybody that worked for me. I was, you know, I was there at work. I made calls with them and I was friendly at work unless, you know, we had some kind of a problem. And then I was just professional, but I had never made that mistake of thinking that they were my friends because I knew they weren’t.

Speaker0:
[34:49] How old were you when you got to that position?

Speaker1:
[34:52] Oh, I was, how old was I? 26. I must’ve been 38, 38 or 39. I said, that’s about 40 years old. I wasn’t, if I’d have been 26, 27 years old, I would have thought they were my friends. I really.

Speaker0:
[35:04] There you go. So you got that time taught you being a little older and seeing more or, yeah, that’s why, you know, a boss can’t be a boss at a very, very young age. And it really isn’t, you just need some grooming. Like the book can only, books can only take you to an intellectual place, but it doesn’t take you to a practical place. So I was a lifelong reader, not lifelong, but I really got into books a lot when I was.

Speaker0:
[35:30] 19 or so. And I read nonstop. And when I got out of college, I realized, man, I have a lot of, you start to learn how the book is only as practical. It’s only as good as your practical abilities and dealing in the actual profession. And you can read all about people until you’re dealing with them. That’s the real training. 25 years old, 26 years old. I just don’t think you have enough dealings with people to understand how they are. So a 26, 27-year-old, they can read 100 books, but you really don’t understand how a guy can look you in the eyes and lie right to your face when you’re 20. But when you’re 39, you’ve seen it. You’ve had guys you trusted who have betrayed you. You’ve had your heart broken. You’ve had some financial problems you’ve seen bad contracts written you’ve seen how the system kind of starts to work and right around that time 35 to 40 is when it’s probably you’re probably had enough experiences depending on how you were living for your first 10 15 years in the work uh the workforce you can understand how people are because you probably would i agree with you 26 27 25 you would say Hey guys, let’s all go out for a beer afterward. But 39, 40, you understand people take kindness for weakness in this world. They really do.

Speaker1:
[36:57] Yeah, they do. There’s no doubt about it. Used to use that on the street every once in a while when I was a young street policeman. It had to be nice to somebody. And I’d say, but I went down and remember my friend, do not take my kindness for weakness. So it’s a, that’s a pretty good thing to have. I see something here in Pooh’s

Speaker1:
[37:15] harsh rules. Can you talk about imposing harsh rules? Now, we know in the mob, you know, you might get killed, but you don’t have any hierarchy of rules, any, you know, written reprimands or anything like that. So talk about that a little bit, RJ.

Speaker0:
[37:31] You know, when you see that the mafia was able to survive as long as it did, I don’t know that any criminal organization has lasted as long as the mafia. We just talk about America, which this book is only based on the creation of the five families only. No other family, just the five in New York So every rule comes out of the heads of the five families But when you see how long they have lasted.

Speaker0:
[37:54] No other organization could do it. The rules in the mafia are very different. There’s not two penalties, three, four. You die if you break this rule. You break rules, you get killed for them. It’s such a harsh penalty that it really keeps people on guard to a certain extent. Um you learn that i say in the book that the bullet keeps a soldier honest the bullet burns leaves a gruesome scar the soldier only learns through the burn of the bullet he doesn’t learn through rhetoric i write that in the book generally speaking soldiers the soldier is the low rank position of the mafia.

Speaker0:
[38:41] These are those 25 year olds, those 23 year olds that think they can play you. I can get Gary to drink the coffee, but they don’t know that Gary took the cup of coffee and tossed it in the sink soon as he walked away. Cause Gary knows you spit in that damn coffee. I know you people, you know, the soldier is that guy who thinks he’s, he’s like that kid at home that doesn’t know that dad knows I took the extra cookie, but you counted the sleeve of cookies before you left and you know he took you know so the soldier in life is that guy that if you you can’t give him a lot of leash you got to keep him got to be tight and strong with these people these as you get up in life you learn you have to be straight with people.

Speaker0:
[39:32] As a captain, you know, talk straight to the boss. As an underboss, you know, talk straight. Don’t try to bullshit him. Don’t do any of that.

Speaker0:
[39:42] Bosses usually struggle the most when dealing with an associate or a soldier. And in life, high people in the company struggle with dealing with the bullshit at the bottom. That’s where the hierarchy comes from. You put people in place that can deal with these jackasses because you have lost your patience for dealing with them, you know? So, but you need harsh rules to keep people in line. If you don’t have a harsh rule, people get all out of line. They do whatever they want. Humans naturally want to break rules. Kids will run all over the house unless, and when mom’s home and then when dad comes home, they stop. Why? They’re the same child because dad’s going to whip my ass and mom won’t. And it’s the same in life. When you got that boss who you know ain’t going to do anything, the boss that ain’t going to kill you, when you got the manager that’s never going to write you up, that’s never going to sit you down, and you know they’re a little intimidated by you, they just walk all over you. But a new guy comes in and it’s a whole different respect given to them. You’re respected for the rules that you set.

Speaker1:
[40:54] Yeah, really. That’s, uh, I had, I had, when I first got promoted to sergeant, I had a guy and who, who, who never should have been a policeman. And so I started out trying to work him like he was street guy. I was trying to run a little surveillance on him and catch him dirty. And then I thought, no, let’s just make him adhere to the rules and, and all the standards real closely. So I backed off from that. And then I watched his productivity and watch his time on calls. And then I’d call him in. I put him on a monthly evaluation program. Oh, he hated it. He hated it. Every month he and I’d sit down together. And, and I, the best I can say is I, I kept him from probably hurting somebody out there because it was the kind of guy when he, if he showed up at a scene and there weren’t any sergeants there and it was any kind of mix up at all, somebody, somebody got hurt and it was, he was in the center of it, but nobody would ever talk about him. And so he actually ended up quitting after about six months and by just riding him and holding his feet to the fire, every time any little rule break came along, I’d make him write it up and we’d sit down and we’d then increase the penalty each time. So you got to sit on people. You got to sit on people.

Speaker0:
[42:09] And you know the worst type of leader, or let’s say boss, it’s the boss that thinks his soldiers love him. It’s the when you because there’s telling the weakness about you you have some inner need to be approved of or liked or respected i mean um it’s some it’s a weakness in you because everybody hates the boss because they want the envious of the boss your soldiers always blame the boss for everything that’s gone wrong in their life you always just look up people very rarely look inward. We look outward. That’s the problem with having eyesight is we can always find something to blame. So when a soldier doesn’t have any money, he can’t feed his family, he’s late on the rent, he blames the guy who he’s following, who’s giving him direction.

Speaker0:
[43:04] Why aren’t you paying me more? He has a million reasons to blame you for every inadequacy in his life. Being a boss is a thankless position. If everything’s going good, well, it’s supposed to go good. You’re the boss. You know, if everything’s going bad, what the hell does this boss do all day? So it’s like, you’re never thanked for the position that you’re in. It’s a very thankless job. So a boss has to be able to thank himself and know what his value is. I keep people safe. They don’t see it. I kept that bad cop off the street because I knew he was going to hurt people. But no one sees that you did that. That’s just expected of you to be able to do that.

Speaker0:
[43:45] So yeah, it’s a really, but the boss that needs approval is.

Speaker0:
[43:52] Will trip over himself. He will be tricked and misled and by the people who he’s leading because he thinks they like him. He thinks that they approve of, of him, but they don’t, they don’t like him. They’re very nice to his face, but they gain say behind his back. They, they talk against them in his ear. He’s a stupid, this he’s every problem that exists is your fault in their mind.

Speaker1:
[44:23] Blame everything on they yeah they won’t let me do this they won’t they won’t let me do that every time i use the word they i catch myself like oh who’s they

Speaker0:
[44:34] Ultimately what you know what a boss of a really great boss when i say boss i just mean a person who has you know authority over their life and they’re living their life by their standard and they have met the, they have risen to boss for the purpose of this book is applied to who, to what your personal greatest desire is. So if you’re six years old and your desire is to become a principal of a school or you’re 10 years old and you decide or fifth, whatever, and you decide, I want to be a principal one day and run a, or run a school, or I want to be a school teacher.

Speaker0:
[45:11] And you rise to that place. That’s your personal boss. You made it to where you want it to go. You wanted to be a boss. I mean, to you, the greatest success for you was to be a school teacher. You made it there. And there’s a process that you’ll have to go through to get there. Going through school, passing your tests, passing the boards, getting, you know, passing your interview. And you did it. You’re the boss for yourself. You made it to where you wanted to get to. If your personal thing was to be a police sergeant or a captain, and there’s a process. There’s a process to becoming a mafia don, a mafia boss. If you were, Michael Scars said that his goal since he was seven years old was to become a captain of the Gambino family.

Speaker0:
[45:56] He didn’t want to be a boss. He wanted to be captain of the Gambino family. He knew since he was seven years old. He used to say it to himself all the time. I’m going to be the captain one day. When he got promoted to captain for himself, he rose to boss. These 36 rules apply to Michael getting to captain. You can apply these 36 rules to get yourself to be a school teacher, to become a sergeant in the police department. Where do you want to go? There’s a process. And if you get there, for me, I wanted to do this. I wanted to become a Manhattan published author and do a real book and have it in stores around the country. I don’t really have much more that I feel like I have to do. I wanted to do this, but I don’t need to. This is my version of my boss. This is Don RJ, you know? So yeah. Don Roger.

Speaker1:
[46:52] Well, yeah, it’s interesting. You know, when I was a kid, I just wanted to be a cowboy and have a horse and a rifle and a six shooter and go out and save people. and I became a policeman. They gave me a Plymouth Fury and a shotgun and a Smith & Wesson 38. So I achieved mine back then. Everything since then has just been gravy. So this has been great. I mean, guys, you got to get this book. If you care about your own personal success, you know, get this book. If you like the mob, you know, get this book, but you can apply all those rules to your own life. I can see that right now. I know I look as I read this and talk with R.J. About it, you know, they worked in my life and they’ll work in your life, too, to live your life like it’s suggested in this book.

Speaker0:
[47:41] Let me ask you, did you ever, like when you, let’s say, I’m just going to grab one at random, speak the language of a soldier. So when you were in your highest position in police and policing, what’s what, you said you were a sergeant?

Speaker1:
[47:55] Sergeant, yeah.

Speaker0:
[47:57] So do you speak, is there a different, when you speak with the cop on the beat, you understand, I’m guessing, because you might have been, you’ve been, to be a sergeant, you’ve been where the guy is at who you’re leading. You understand there’s a different conversation from you and your boss than it is you and him. Do you adjust a bit when you’re speaking to the people that you’re leading? To understand where.

Speaker1:
[48:25] It would depend on the boss i i will you know with with guys on the street that were working for me especially that worked directly for me that would see you know every morning every night when they’d go out and come back in or then maybe make calls with or do some be part of a surveillance team or something with uh why uh you know i was i was more uh more of a peer, but yet, uh, I was the peer among peers with them. And with the captain, it would depend on the personality of my captain. You know, I had one guy for a long time that was, was more like my friend, but I was never a guy that would take advantage of that. And, and, and so we spoke more peer to peer, but if I had somebody, I didn’t know very well, then it was much more formal. And I was all, and I watched what I said to him. I was real careful about what I said to him. And then if like I went back to patrol and I didn’t know anybody that worked for me for a long until I figured out the guys and who I could talk to more frankly and, and who I had to stay totally detached from and professional with. And I would talk differently with them, but it’s a, it’s a constant adjustment. And I’ll bet, I bet all these in the mob world, I bet it’s a constant adjustment depending on people.

Speaker0:
[49:38] Exactly. And that’s so in the mob world, that’s what Paul started to not do. He spoke, he was reading the Wall Street Journal. He was talking about, he talked like a banker. He’s reading. But you got these guys that dropped out of school in fourth grade, fifth grade, and they’ve been on the streets doing hard knock crimes and their cargo hijacking and selling drugs. And you’re coming down saying, you’re talking in a way they can’t understand. They don’t understand this stuff you’re talking about. Michael always says Paul wanted everybody to own a butcher shop. He wanted everybody to be a businessman. He was speaking in a way that the blue collars, the everyday guys could not understand. They didn’t want to follow a guy like that. What are you talking about a butcher shop, Paul? Let me stop the market. We could put some money in this. What are you talking about? Paul didn’t adjust himself enough to the street dogs, the street animals like John Gotti. And the Bergenhunt and Fish crew, people like that, they didn’t understand. What’s this guy talking about? What are you talking about? We’re going to, this union thing that we could get 500 million. What are you talking about? Paul should have adjusted his speak better when I’m talking to this guy versus talking to that guy.

Speaker0:
[50:55] And you have to know who your audience is in life, in general. And no matter what profession you’re in, you have to, I can promise you, the way trump i keep bringing up trump because he’s just a popular example but the way he talks to the american people where he speaks right at your yeah you know who he’ll speak in a way that i know because because again as a kid he walked around on the construction site picking up nails for his father his father was sent him to pick up rent from low-income people you know in queens and stuff so he was he was around people as a young he was a rich kid but around poor people and work in people a lot when he was younger. So my thoughts are maybe he developed a little understanding on how people talk on a construction site. How does the guy, he heard the guy say, hey, after work, let’s go get a six pack and let’s have a few beers. And he knows what the everyday blue collar guy was doing after work and things like that. But I can promise you the way he talks sometimes where I think it’s a little, whoa, I can’t believe you’re saying this stuff as a president. But why do so many people resonate? I don’t like that kind of conduct, personally. I believe in decorum. You carry yourself as a gentleman. Always. So I don’t agree with the way Trump represents himself. But millions of people like it. He’s speaking to the soldier. He’s speaking the language of a soldier.

Speaker0:
[52:22] I can promise you, though, in my suspicion, when he’s sitting down with world leaders.

Speaker1:
[52:28] He’s not talking like that.

Speaker0:
[52:31] He’s not. He’s adjusting himself.

Speaker1:
[52:34] Yeah. When he’s talking to his friends at the country club down there and playing golf with those guys and that kind of thing. He’s, he’s a different person. We all have to adjust depending on who we’re with. If we want to be successful in life, that’s for sure.

Speaker0:
[52:47] Yeah.

Speaker1:
[52:48] All right. Anything else you want to, any other one of these topics?

Speaker1:
[52:52] There’s a lot more of them, guys. Any other topics you’d like to go over, RJ?

Speaker0:
[52:58] No, anything you, I mean, and just in general, if you want to learn, it’s a twofold book. in many ways. If you want to learn about the psychology of a mafia boss, the social strategies, the social behaviors of a gangster, of a mob boss, great book for you to read because you’re going to, so if you just love mob history or mob psychology, which I don’t think anyone’s ever wrote about the mob psychology, the psychology of a mafia boss. You got it. It’ll be a book that you’ll find some interest in. But if you want to read it in a more allegorical or a more figurative way, where you have some fun and like, oh, in a way, this relates to me. It’s a fun book to read for a guy who’s, you know, like a lot of people read Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince. And in The Prince, Machiavelli says, essentially.

Speaker0:
[53:51] You know, after your boss has trained you, I mean, after your, you know your master has trained you to be a you know great swordsman or have taught you how to be a great on the battlefield or something and you have no more for him to gain, you just behead him cut his head off and take everything he got because you can’t gain nothing else for uh from him it’s the same as kill the boss you know after your boss has mentored and guided you and gave you everything now now he’s just in your way and you’ll it’s just so in a way the way people read Machiavelli in business schools, the way you read like these Sun Tzu, The Art of War. These are war strategies, but you can apply them in a figurative way in your life and in business. So you can read the book in that same kind of concept. You can read the book in a business way, in a personal development way, and you’ll find interesting. So anybody can read it, really. It’s a book for anybody to read. Yeah.

Speaker1:
[54:49] Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And what I always used was it better to have people fear you than love you. That’s a Machiavelli. That’ll work everywhere in management circles, as we’ve discussed many times. All right. RJ Roger. I really appreciate you coming on the show and guys, I’ll have a link to, uh, to his, uh, YouTube channel and Michael, Michael scars, Michael D. Leonardo. You know, you need to call him Michael. You don’t call him Mike, call him Michael.

Speaker0:
[55:18] He doesn’t like the name Mikey scars. And, uh, there’s nobody that ever has no one ever called him that to his face.

Speaker1:
[55:24] Oh, really? I’ll be darned.

Speaker0:
[55:26] No, no.

Speaker1:
[55:27] You can, you can say it in general, but not call him that. Interesting. Uh and and a link to the book uh and uh i don’t know i i it’s really good to have you on there and finally meet you rj i’ve watched your show several times and uh not not a lot i’ll have to admit because i only got so much time no

Speaker0:
[55:48] I’m the i’m the same way it’s very few i really don’t watch mob content at all to be honest i.

Speaker1:
[55:53] I don’t watch either just to see what people are doing

Speaker0:
[55:57] It’s not of no interest to me to watch it i don’t watch and it’s not a attack on anybody but I really don’t watch any of the shows. I just, I will sometimes watch a certain guest or I’ve been studying this stuff my whole life. So it’s not that interesting for me to watch it. So I read like Malcolm Gladwell and theory books and Robert Greene and I read like Jordan Peterson and stuff. And I watched Rogan and Lex Friedman and stuff. Like I don’t, I don’t, I have no, I read nothing anymore really about deep historical studies from writers that you probably never even heard of i just read not long ago michael kreitschley’s book um and it was just like historical book on the the creation of the mob and um in america and it was a fantastic book but it’s not something anyone would even read it’s like a textbook yeah it’s like it’s like a textbook it probably sold 200 copies but i have no interest in it either to like to read about it um because i just spent my whole life doing it so interesting Seed.

Speaker1:
[57:02] All right. Thanks a lot, RJ, for coming on. And guys, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD, go to that VA website if you’ve been in the service. And if you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, which goes hand in hand with PTSD, why our friend, Mr. Ruggiano said that Angelo Ruggiano has a hotline number on his YouTube channel, and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor i think he still is i’m not sure he is is he still one okay good well i try to find him down there in florida and take your treatment with him then come back and come on the show and tell us all about it no i know i know you won’t do that but uh it would be interesting to have him as your drug and alcohol counselor and and don’t forget i’ve got some stuff out there for sale on my website and on the amazon just go to amazon and search gary jenkins and mafia and you’ll find I got two, three, I got one mob book and two books about Civil War things. And then I’ve got three documentary films about Kansas City Mafia that you can rent for like a buck ninety nine.

Speaker1:
[58:07] So thanks a lot, guys. And I really appreciate you listening to us. And RJ, I thoroughly thank you for coming on. This has been a fun show.

Speaker0:
[58:14] Thank you, brother. I really appreciate the invite. And it’s very nice to be able to finally sit with someone such as yourself. So thank you.

In this bonus episode, retired police intelligence unit detective Gary Jenkins looks into a fascinating New York Times article from March 21, 1976, that sheds light on a pivotal moment in the Mafia’s history—reopening their membership rosters after nearly two decades. This marked a significant turning point for the five Mafia families, where they were again allowed to induct new members into their ranks. I discuss how this decision was made cautiously, with each family permitted to initiate only ten new members, ensuring that those chosen were proven loyal and financially savvy operatives who could withstand the challenges of Mafia life.

As I analyze the shifts in power dynamics and the emergence of new figures, I point to key players such as Carmine Galante, whose ambitions peaked when he returned to the scene following a lengthy prison sentence. I provide insights into how the old guard of Mafia leadership began to decline, making way for fresh ambition and new strategies, particularly in narcotics. The interplay of rivalry, loyalty, and the ever-present financial machinations within the families illustrates the complexity of Mafia politics as they sought to adapt and thrive amid evolving criminal enterprises.
Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

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

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

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, glad to be back here in Studio Gangland Wire. I’ve got a little bonus episode, I think. I don’t know how long it’s going to be, but not too long. Steve Popkin, the fan of the podcast, sent me a link to a New York Times article. Actually, it was out of the New York Times archives. They have an archive that you can access. It was dated March 21st, 1976, and the title was Five Mafia Families Opened Rosters to New Members. Well, this is back when they opened the books, finally. We hear a lot about that. The books were closed. The books were opened. They opened the books in 1976. There’s a lot of guys who were made right after that.

[0:43] It’s hard to figure out who they all are. It’ll take a lot of time, but you all know who was made in 1976, 1977, during those years would have been right after the books were opened back up. They had to get the commission to approve of that, and there was five families

[1:02] on the commission at the time. I assume Chicago probably was, but since it was a New York deal, they probably just kept it within New York mob bosses to vote on whether they would open up the books again. Now, in this article, I bet when they read this, some of these guys read this article, they were about to shit because here’s their business right down on the street. And I know they read those articles. I’ve got a wiretap where Nick Savella is reading an article or actually Tuffy DeLuna is reading an article to him where the, I believe it was the Wall Street Journal, was saying that Iupa was moving out west and moving into Las Vegas. And Nick Civella says, oh, boy.

[1:49] And anyhow, so, you know, I know they read this stuff and they pay attention to it. And to see this out on Front Street like this, I don’t know. Anyhow, the article said that each family had been given permission to initiate 10 new members.

[2:04] And they were instructed that they had to get these, take these guys from proven moneymakers within their own family, people that they knew. because, you know, they know that they can be infiltrated. So they want to make sure that people that didn’t have any legal problems faced them at that time. Now, you know, you’re going to get some legal problems eventually. So you just have to, you know, people whose family members you know or maybe you’re an extended relative of your own, if you’re a maid guy or you’re a boss, you want somebody that’s proven their loyalty. Somebody’s gone to the joint and kept their mouth shut before. I mean, a guy that goes in, does a tray or five years or whatever. Somebody does 10 years. I know a guy here in Kansas City, my friend, Steve St. John, he did 10 years. Now, he wasn’t involved in a mafia crime, but he didn’t talk. And he’s the kind of guy that, you know, people will look out to, you know, to hold up to this higher standard, to higher and high esteem in that world. And, you know, he does not commit any more crimes. Would he be a guy that you would want to commit a crime with? Bright guy, and he didn’t talk, and he could have. Believe me, he knew stuff, and he could have talked, and he wouldn’t do it. The books were closed in 1957 after Joe Valacci started testifying in 1962.

[3:27] He talked about the different—he described the ceremony for the first time, the whole pricking of the finger, burning of the hand, the loyalty oath, which has been reported by other people that have come in angelo uh leonardo reported it i found that one he really did it in detail and they even taped one in boston area in the patriarchy family here in the last several years so they shut down the books they were so scared of infiltration and.

[3:57] Finally, the heads of the fine families met and they opened them up, given these kind of certain restrictions, if you will. Each guy can get 10 people, select proven moneymakers and that kind of thing. They still take the oath of silence.

[4:15] And there’s no doubt that it was going to be tightly controlled by these mob families. As the FBI at the time said, they reported in this article says they’ve been holding initiation ceremonies in New York for the past month. My boss reads that. He said, come on, what’s up with this? This agent said that these ceremonies have been held in the homes of underbosses and selected family captains, not in the homes of the bosses because they think they have too much surveillance on them. Apparently, he said, the initiation ceremony they were using at that time was still really close to what Bellacci had described. The guns, knives laying there, the oaths of silence, the whole thing. And some of them that were initiated at the time, and I’d be curious, you know, get a hold of me or comment on the Facebook or on the YouTube. Who all was made during this time? This report indicates a guy named John Russo, who was a driver and a bodyguard for Frank Thierry, who was supposedly the boss of the Vito Genovese family at the time. He would have been kind of a new boss. It’s another thing. There were some new bosses at the time. I think that’s one reason they got this through. Benaro Magano. He was the guy known as Benny eggs. I’ve heard of him. He’s a very successful bookmaker and loan shark Salvatore franchise. He was, uh, He ran all the gambling operations for Sonny Franchise, who was a captain in the Colombo family.

[5:38] Kind of the article surmised, and probably they got this from an agent, this kind of shows the decline of Carlo Gambino, his lessening of his influence in some of the newer mob, like I said, some of the newer mob bosses were coming in at the time.

[5:55] It also kind of showed the emergence of Carmine Galante. He had come back out of jail and he had like assumed he was going to be the boss of the Bonanno family uh just spent 15 years in jail kept his mouth shut you know he felt like he was owed and he was owed and of course we had time Rusty Rustelli was inside at the time and and he was supposedly the heir apparent I believe but he really led the fight to open the books now if you remember he was trying to bring in the zips he was bringing these Sicilians to pump up his family and get into narcotics. He knew those guys, you know, first of all, they didn’t really speak the language. And if he brought them over, they would be so loyal to him that he could trust them to be loyal to him. And he wanted to be able to make those guys, you know, at the time they had a pretty new boss, the Lucchese family and Tony Duck, Tony Ducks, Anthony Corralo was a new boss. He came from Queens, the Queens faction of that family, Carmine Persico. So he was in jail at the time, prison for a period of time during this time. But he had just come through the Columbo Wars and taken over. And, you know, he orchestrated the hit on Joey Gallo and finally ended that whole mess there. And everybody got out the mattresses and went back home, I guess. Now, he was in prison. He had appointed his brother, Alphonse, to run the family.

[7:17] Galante’s argument, according to the article, was all the mafia families were declining. And the old guys were getting older that’s what happened here in kansas city when everything went to shit on them after the skim trials but they were all like 80 years old all the main guys except for a couple were 80 years old gotta get some new blood in we gotta get some money makers in we got people get into new rackets of course what he was thinking about was getting into narcotics being made is you you guys are all students of this and most of you know probably more about it than i do And there’s like real deal made guys out there, people who have been or people in witness protection. I hear from different people that obviously are a lot better, more connected than what you might believe. They wouldn’t pay attention to a podcast like this. But, you know, they call themselves a good fellas, you know, the book title, good fellas. And they have the right. One thing you get is a good fella. You have the right to a sit down. If there’s no disagreement, you can have a sit down with another boss or maybe a boss of another family or some respected consigliere or somebody who would settle this dispute.

[8:30] Now, if a dispute was with a non-member, somebody that’s close enough that can get this sit down, he has to be represented by somebody who’s made. And he really doesn’t have a very good chance of getting the decision in his favor.

[8:43] Made members do not trust people outside the family and particularly gangsters, probably more than gangsters, other gangsters than anything. Old P, old Mustache Pete’s like Pete, Carlo Gambino, not a Mustache Pete. I’m just kidding about that. But the older guys realized that this special relationship was really important. And if you were to induct somebody who was an informant already, it really makes all the families vulnerable. Because then they get in on the whole structure and can testify firsthand, which eventually they got people to do. But at the time they hadn’t testified firsthand you know as to the structure and who does what there had been a few initiations during the last 20 years when they were closed but only when they were absolutely necessary one of them i mentioned uh the persicos well and the colombo wars so there’s all kinds of colombo wars so many people were wounded and in prison and hiding and and And they needed a boss during that time, and they made Alphonse Persico was made just to lead the Colombo family in that war, particularly against the Gallo guys, Gallo boys, Joy.

[10:02] And Albert, Kid Twist, and the whole Gallo family, the Gallo brothers. During this meeting, that newspaper report said that Stefano Magadino had died and other ally who was a member of the commission, Joseph Zarelli, was the boss in Detroit, and those two didn’t even come. So it turns out, I guess I was wrong when I said it to start, that only New York guys are there, but they would have had the biggest stick in that. It was in deference to Gambino that they limited this to 10 people per family. Once they get 50 new members of the five families get 10 each.

[10:44] Then they can maybe kind of ease up for a while or at least not make anybody for a while. But if this starts working out, they may want to make some more. Again, Valachi described this, gun and knife are placed on a table in front of him. And he said in front of him, and that’s what Angelo Leonardo told him. Said that this represents that you live by the gun and the knife and you die by the gun and knife. You don’t live by the gun, live by the sword, die by the sword. That came from somewhere. Then you got to make a cup of your hand and put the paper in it, set it on fire. Said this is the way I will burn if I betray any of the secrets of this Cosa Nostra.

[11:25] And then they’re assigned kind of a godfather to, you know, a mentor, a sponsor during recovery.

[11:34] Assign somebody to watch over for you and kind of introduce you in and and it’s usually the guy that sponsored your membership in the first place now have you ever heard i did a story on this from the book peter diapolis who was pete to greek he was a bodyguard at joseph gallo he was sitting there the night that gallo got killed and uh because he and and his woman had been out with joy gallo and his wife and kid i think and celebrating his birthday he claimed that the Joy Gallo told him that the burning paper custom wasn’t anymore. He just said that the new member just swears an oath of silence. You know, it won’t burn like the saint’s card. So I don’t know. Pete the Greek said that the godfather of the sponsor is really important in new members’ life. He said, because until a new guy establishes his own trust, his own relationships, he has to go through his sponsor and all dealings with any family bosses.

[12:29] Peter Greek claims that when a mob member makes his first big score, the first one after becoming a member, he’s got to take it to his sponsor and lay it out and then let the sponsor divide it up and then cut him back a little bit. And he said the sponsor would usually cut out a third for the boss and a fifth for himself and give the rest back. The more money a new member brings in, the stronger his position is. I mean, money talks and bullshit walks. He also said in in regards to the sit-downs i mentioned a big money maker rarely loses a decision in a sit-down way you know like i said money talks and bullshit walks if he’s bringing bringing in a lot of money the boss ain’t gonna make him unhappy he said he he gave for example matthew ainello matty the horse who had all the horn and all that stuff down around 42nd street, and was a huge moneymaker. And he said, really, nobody liked the guy. Nobody had any respect for him, but he’s strong because he has so much money and he earns so much money.

[13:35] He said, money is power in the mafia, just like everywhere else, like I said. So there’s a little story about when they opened up the books, and I’d be curious to hear who was made during that time.

[13:47] It’s kind of hard to figure that out but i got this whole huge big cadre of people out there that like i said no more than i do know so much especially about the new york families that in the comments below may well make a list of all the people were made right after the books were opened back up it seemed like uh gas pipe castle was i remember reading something about that but anyhow so thanks a lot guys uh don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles and i uh if you have a problem PTSD, be sure and go to that VA website and get that hotline, drugs or alcohol, get hold of Anthony Ruggiano. He’s down in Florida, former Gambino guy who’s not in witness protection because he’s using his own name, drug and alcohol counselor down there. I see this 1-800-BETS-OFF. If you got a gambling problem, there’s that wait at 1-800-BETS-OFF.

[14:40] I’d like to do some public service announcement before I sell something. If you would like to read the inside story about how we got on to the skim from Las Vegas and read the transcripts and listen to some of the audio from that investigation, well, get my book, Leaving Vegas, and get the Kindle version because I have links to the actual audios in that. I’m working on another book. I’m going to start doing some short books, I believe. I’ll see how this first one goes of podcast episodes. I’ll just take the transcripts and convert them into more of a story and then go back and rewrite that so it’s a little more readable and throw it out there in a Kindle book.

[15:25] It’s a little more work than I thought, but I’m getting there. So it’s kind of what I’m up to. What are you all up to? Let me know join the gangland wire podcast facebook group or join the subscribe to the podcast of course subscribe to the youtube channel and make some comments there and keep coming back and keep coming back so thanks a lot guys.

In this last interview with our good friend and contributor, Camillus “Cam” Robinson, Gary and Cam discuss the infamous government informant Vincent “Vinnie” Teresa. Cam died recently and I will feel this loss for a long time. His gentle nature and prodigious work effort was always a great benfit to the podcast and to everybody around him. Rest in Peace to my friend and collaborator in this crazy world of mafia history. Camillus was a great historian and an excellent writer. Check out his book by clicking on the title, Chicago Swan Song: A Mob Wife’s Story. Lisa Swan became the wife of Frank Calabrese, Jr., a collector for his father, the notorious and brutal Frank “Frankie the Breeze” Calabrese, a high-ranking member of the infamous Chinatown Crew. It’s all here. The money, the violence, the drugs, the greed, and the murders that surrounded her, as well as her deep passion to break free from a lifestyle that could change with the flash of a single bullet. Swan’s firsthand, intimate look inside the insular and secretive Chicago Outfit details her life inside the Calabrese Clan, one of the First Families of the Chicago Mob. She describes, with clarity and occasional humor, her discovery of the dark side of the Mafia and her battle to save herself, her children, and eventually her husband from the gritty realities of the Mob.

In this episode, we learn that Vinnie Teresa was an early mobster in the FBI’s vaunted Top Echelon Informant program. In the end, Vinne Teresa was caught in an act of perjury when he tried to implicate Meyer Lansky in a criminal conspiracy.

 
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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

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To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective and now podcaster, documentary filmmaker. And I am here with my good friend and periodic co-host, if you will, Amulus, Camillus Robinson. Cam, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Gary, I always have a blast. I mean, you and I, you got me started in this and anytime I can come on, we just love to. We have a good time getting together, don’t we? Yeah, we do. So oh you know a little aside i was just researching some old stuff on chicago or newspaper clip and i saw there was a grand jury about gambling in gary indiana see cam used to live up by gary indiana and we did a show about the gary indiana family that’s right.

[0:49] Ran by chicago of course hell chicago ran everything some people even say they ran kansas city they didn’t really but they had a lot of influence down here kansas city next savella did not do much if he thought iupa wouldn’t approve he wouldn’t do it he he got iupa’s approval on any major things outside of kansas city for sure they had a swung a big stick didn’t they absolutely savella wasn’t the kind of guy who answered to people but i think he was smart enough to know who were the big fish in the pond yeah he was smart anyhow we’re going to talk about Vinnie Teresa. Vinnie Teresa is one of the earliest mob books I ever read. I’ll never forget, Kim. I was in a library in the junior college. I must have been taking a class and I was just poking around. I found this book about the mafia. I wasn’t into organized crime at the time. I started reading this book about this Vinnie Teresa and all the stuff that he talked about, which is pretty controversial. That first one was My Life in the Mafia in 1973, which he wrote with another guy. Do you remember that book? I know you’ve referred to his testimony in his books.

[1:56] Absolutely. I learned a lot about what you can pick up from a lot of what Vinnie Teresa is just the inner workings and the day-to-day sort of scumbaggery that these guys, the scams and the cons and the, and ripping people off and how they lean on people. It really, it being so early, people didn’t have a friend reference except the Godfather. And yeah, that book really, really opened my eyes to a lot of things.

[2:21] Interesting. You know, his, his second book, he documents his life during his time in witness protection. And that was in 1975. Then later on, 1978, he wrote actually a fictional novel called wise guys. And I don’t, I don’t, I’ve never read it. I’ve never heard anybody talk about it. So I don’t know what that’s about. Um, My mother told me when his stuff first came out, people didn’t believe it could possibly be true. It was like we just said, it being so early, people just didn’t have a frame of reference on what the mob was and certainly nobody coming in from the cold. And she said, I remember people talking, oh, he can’t, none of that can be true, can it? Can that be really how these guys operate? Now, he was, his grandfather came from Sicily, who was a mafia member in Sicily and bootlegger during Prohibition. So he comes by it, honestly, being in the mob, shall we say.

[3:18] I gave him a lot of gravitas with some of the old foot in the door. You know, every one of these guys we’ve ever done anything about their whole life, that would start out, you know, they get caught by burglar doing burglaries and robbing stuff as teenagers. And he got expelled from school for violence against the teachers and all that kind of stuff. He was in, according to what I read, he was an inveterate gambler, he was a degenerate gambler. Total degenerate. Early age. He goes in the Navy for, everybody had to go in the service back then. I’m talking like right after World War II, if you were of a certain age, even all the way up till, I don’t know, 1970s till the end of Vietnam. Everybody did two years. If you didn’t go to college and get married and have a kid, you went in. And he went in the Navy, but that didn’t last very long. Bad conduct discharge. So. Roly poly fellow too. So I can’t imagine him doing his PT too effectively. I don’t imagine he was real gung ho on doing those pull-ups and running the obstacle course. Let alone all this just runs. Yeah.

[4:31] So of course he gets married and as they all do and start getting jobs and he gets caught stealing from his employers i mean it’s a usual deal but you know he’s got mob connections so with the patriarchy family so now he you know guy a good thief like this what’s he gonna do they’re gonna see him and they’re gonna pick him up and he’ll start getting involved with them Remember much about his early days with Patriarcha family? You know, I know that, you know, as I said, because of his family connections that entered him in with a Patriarcha, the guy, one of the guys who predated Patriarcha, Joe Lombardo was sort of like the old man, sort of like the, some of the older guys who would be around Kansas City that, that Civella would go and, and, and pay his respects to and seek their counsel. Joe Lombardo was that kind of guy in Rhode Island that patriarch would always go and seek his counsel and sit with him as an equal in a way. And because Teresa had those, he worked for Joe Lombardo in some limited capacities early on as a youth, sort of cartage theft and trucks and different things. But he really, because he had that pedigree, that was what really gave him, he got to skip a couple of steps when it came to getting in with the big names. And he was a sharp guy, really was a good earner, just like you said, he just degenerate gambler.

[5:55] Yeah, it’s an interesting life. These guys, they’ve got this history and this background. They take a man, he starts making connections with him. He was kind of a white collar crime guy from early on because he was a big gambler. Gamblers are always going to be white collar crime guys. One of his early things he did was insurance jobs, getting a business building, doing an insurance gig. From then on, he starts making money for people and it’s a no brainer from then on. And he even gets involved with taking gambling junkets to Las Vegas. Back in those days, you had to go to Las Vegas. And so they’d come up with junkets. We had one in Kansas City. That’s what they use as a cover to bring the skim money back out of the Tropicana. The gambling junket by a guy named Carl Caruso. Well, he started running gambling junkets from the New England area to go to Las Vegas. And even I also went to England down the Caribbean where they’d gamble at casinos.

[6:48] Teresa went to Haiti and he, per his account, had some stuff. Ties to Duvalier and the leadership of Haiti. I think the idea of Junkets is kind of not known today what exactly that was and what kind of, it was basically like a mafia travel agent, you know, and you would book a tour and the hotels would give kickbacks and they would give a percentage and the money lost. And there were different ways to make money, but you’d get a bunch of guys together and fly them out into the Caribbean or fly them to Cuba or flying to Haiti or flying to Las Vegas. And it was just a gambler series of gamblers seeking the mob as a travel agent and then get it knowing that they would then have a good time because they’re going out there with the mob who run Vegas anyway. And there was a minimum you had to.

[7:34] Gamble with so much money. I don’t know the exact details of it, but you had to gamble. I think here it was, man, this is back in the middle seventies. It was like $2,500. I think at the minimum, you had to be gambling with $2,500. And you know, most guys will end up losing a couple of grand, 20, maybe lose the whole thing. It’ll be one that’ll win of course, but most of them will lose most of their money. And you know, if you were high enough better back in the old days, people kind of long for those old days of the casino business where you would get comp rooms and free meals you didn’t pay for anything you know if you were a good enough customer you didn’t even have to pay for the junket the newer guys would pay for the junket pay for the airfare and everything and so it’s you know it was just a constant every week this guy would in kansas would advertise in the paper and he probably did there too and he’d fill out a plane about every week and go out to Vegas for about three days and then come back. And I bet he was doing exactly the same thing there.

[8:37] He was earning a lot of money for him with the gambling and he was doing some loan sharking. Some people, you know, they claim that he even became one of the more powerful members of the patriarchal family and earned millions and millions of dollars for him back in the day and selling stolen securities, which a big deal back then. And you don’t ever hear that anymore, but they had these barrier bonds and he would be a guy that could make connections with bankers and maybe up into canada or over in switzerland because he was going international and would take these stolen securities and sell them to somebody else or get big loans on them and then they didn’t care because they weren’t going to pay the loan back and he was a true thinking man’s criminal he really wasn’t he hit per his account because this was free.

[9:22] You know, whatever went into the witness protection. Vinny Teresa says that he never committed a murder and he wouldn’t have committed, he wouldn’t have copped one because he wasn’t charged with one. And I think that things were still getting balanced out as far as how immunity worked out. If you look at some of the wiretaps, there is a conversation between Patriarca and one of his other bosses. I can’t remember if it was Henry Tolomeo or Jerry in Boston.

[9:47] But they say, And Jerry Angelo. Angelo, yeah. Angelo, yeah. Thank you, sir. Thank you. And everybody knows I struggle with these vows, even though it’s my own people. So he gave him, they say, give that job to big. And then the FBI transcribed it as Big Benny.

[10:02] Well, there’s no Big Benny that I could ever find in the Rhode Island or Boston family. But what it looks to me, I’ve always suspected in my paranoid thinking mind that the FBI, By knowing that they had this guy and that he probably had committed murders, they sort of altered the transcripts a bit to read from give that job to Big Vinny to give that job to Big Benny. And then so when people would review, they’re like, oh, look, nobody ever gave a murder to Vinny Teresa. They never talked about it. But there is talk of a guy named Big Benny committing a murder on behalf of Raymond Patriarcha. I always found that little tidbit kind of interesting. you know did they alter the record so they could say they didn’t help a murderer or was there some big benny that nobody’s aware of except for uh patriarch himself that is interesting i could see that happening because if he’s going to testify for you if he’s a murderer then you got to take a look at that murder and he also has to admit to it and he obviously didn’t admit to it when they brought him in and they do not want to attribute it to him because it’s going to decrease his credibility that’s the thing with frank culotta when they all that chicago outfit they just worked like hell to to try to take away any credibility that frank culotta ever had in order to keep to keep him from being a credible witness so that’s a yeah that’s an interesting uh uh thought process sir cam you may have something.

[11:26] Well, if you look behind the curtain a little bit, you’ll pick up things that maybe it’s something, maybe it’s not. But you’ve seen plenty of little details like that throughout your years doing this, Gary. And it’s like, is that what really happened or is this what was in the record and sort of to a little slight of hand trick? You know, the FBI records are replete with things like that. And it’s interesting to try and draw comparisons with what went on and what the FBI was trying to put out.

[11:50] Yeah, I like the ones. I’ve seen two of them here recently. uh, Jimmy ice pick in Donino and in Chicago and, uh, John Curley, Montana, the one in Cleveland, they, they listed them as informants and documents, but they never really were informants. There’s nothing else to back it up. A guy goes out and talks to him a couple of times, comes back in and said, Hey, you know, I got him. I got him. So they put him in as an informant, maybe even give him a number and you never talk to him again, or he’ll never talk to you again. But that agent can say yeah yeah i got i got that guy man we we flipped him give me the gold star another thing i noticed and looking at benny the fat man he was in lewisburg for a while for this yeah transporting conspiracy and stuff stolen securities and transporting stolen securities and and of course he was on mafia row he would have gotten to know gaudy and hoffa and carmine galante there’s a lot of big time guys there and that is 1969.

[12:56] A lot of guys make those connections with other cities where you can get somebody you can call, you can trust out of the penitentiary because they, you know, they get grouped together, get housed together in the same general area. And so then when you get back out, you’re looking for somebody, a connection to do something in, you know, in Kansas City, you know, you were in prison with Tuffy Luna and Jimmy Duarte. And so you get hold of them, say, hey, here’s what I got going. And, you know, who can you, can you direct me or help me here with this? So that’s.

[13:28] He talks about being in prison with Lilo Galante and he talks about connections he made, certainly not in prison, but just in Miami and just going down to Miami where all the gangsters lived with playing dice with a cardo and the cruel pranks they would play on the hotel staff who then couldn’t fight back because it was the mob. But he talks about gambling with Ricardo and laughing and throwing $100 on the table and saying, you go ahead and roll, Joe. One of the interesting things to me is that he was absolutely Lewis Berg and he got to know Nego Galante and talked about how powerful a guy he was and he could take it all over. He also got in really tight with Velocci. That’s later. We’ll get into that in a second, but he got very close with Joe Velocci. He was in that special Velocci unit. And he talked about he and his wife and cooking dinner for Veloci and Veloci cooking with them and the whole sort of a merry scene of these ex-killers and gangsters and drug dealers and just the two of them getting so close. And Veloci is just a fragile old man at this time and very frail. And I believe he said that he shed a few tears when Veloci died.

[14:36] Interesting. Well, that is really interesting. I didn’t know they ever took them together like that. And my research showed me that he probably began cooperating with the government as early as maybe 1958 or 59. And they gave him a CI number in 1961 or 62. So he was talking to him for quite a while.

[15:04] As we’ve said, a lot of the smarter guys at that time really did have, whether it was Chicago or whether it was in Cleveland or Kansas City, anywhere, a lot of the sharper guys would shark their competition by giving just trickling a little bit of information about what their competition was doing and protecting their own rackets. That was kind of Danny Green’s deal. We know that Bulger didn’t participate to the extent that he’s been credited by John Connolly in later years. We know that he did help out a little bit with Jerry Angelo in taking out the competition. And that was a tool that the FBI made themselves available to me. They sort of offered these guys inadvertently that we will slim your competition and increase your earning power. Just give us a little bit of information.

[15:50] And when you look at the sort of the veil of dishonesty these guys operate behind, that’s just not a tool in their belt to talk to law enforcement and say, well, this guy over here, you might want to show up at the corner of 7th and Grace. And see what’s going on there i just found out his number was assigned in 1962 and that was around the time that that wiretap or bug was put in patrick’s office that i there’s a whole bunch of transcripts out there i i don’t remember how you find them i’ve seen them and i haven’t looked for a while yeah the fbi the patriarchy papers patriarchy papers he and his name is his number is mentioned in her BS, a 12 CTE, which means TE is top echelon and BS is Boston. So, you know, he was flipped around that time and probably helped out with explaining a lot of that.

[16:44] And maybe where to plant the mic in the coin-o-matic there on Atwell Avenue in order to best record Patriarca. You know, it’s a strange coincidence that Vinnie Teresa gets a CI number in 62. Later on in 62, they plant that mic in the coin-o-matic there in Atwell Avenue and start recording what was going on with Raymond Patriarca. It just, you kind of got to wonder, as close as he says in the book and as high a rank as he achieved for not being a made man per Teresa, the timing of that microphone and Teresa’s participation are very suspect.

[17:21] Yeah and velacci was testifying by that time one thing i read said it was probably quite likely the fbi was grooming fat benny to come on behind joe velacci once they’d used him up they knew eventually you know they’d be able to have him and he was a good storyteller and he would be pretty photogenic for the you know congress or whoever they wanted to trot him out in front of to to start telling great stories about the mob so yeah, and i think a lot of ways teresa would have been a much better than valachi who was kind of a street guttural guy and he was mostly muscle and he would repeat the things that they would sort of tell him but teresa as you just commented on was a charismatic guy and a good storyteller that book came out in 73 and you read that book and he seems like a guy you’d kind of want to laugh around with. And, you know, he’s awful. But the way he laughs about the stories and the cons that he ran, there is… I hate to say it. There’s kind of an endearing quality about it. I think he would have been a much better long-term witness than Vlatchi was capable.

[18:33] Yeah. One of the stories I dug up was what might’ve been what brought him in, or he was maybe kind of doing it. He was part of a pistol whipping of an owner of what they called the state spa in Somerville, Massachusetts. and two other guys were arrested and robbed a guy of $2,800.

[18:52] And the third guy was probably Vinnie Teresa, but he was never even charged. So this is 1958. And, you know, the Bureau back then would have covered up crimes. It’s really, you got to be really careful today. I know that even up until the 70s and 80s when I started getting involved, you got to be really careful. But back then they would have covered up a crime in a second. He offers a lot of good insights. Speaking of FBI and crimes, and I know that there are different takes on Paul, the FBI agent who was charged with rigging evidence. I know you did a really good show on that with a few alternate takes on it. But the Willie Marfio murder and the guy’s name was Red, who testified against Patriarcha and said that he wanted killings and he’s really just a low street level guy. But Teresa offers a good timeline of what happened when Talameo and Patrick went into prison and what all led up. And then later on, Peter Lamone and a lot of the circumstances with Joe the Animal and what led up to Patrick’s imprisonment, what was going on in the street when he was in, how Patrick was continuing to run things, and how Barbarossa kind of flipped everything on his head. And a lot of the interactions with Joe the Animal Barbarossa and what he wanted and where he was and who he was afraid of, even though he was the chief psychopath.

[20:16] There’s a lot of insight into that whole drama and how Etriarch was kind of set up to take a fall for a murder from a guy who he never would have even known who he was. He testified against him. But there’s a lot of insight into the intrigues of what happens when the boss goes to jail in that book.

[20:36] And Benny, talking about being a storyteller, I guess at one time he even told the FBI that Patriarca had been approached by the CIA trying to kill Castro. Now, somehow he heard about that other story going on, and he spun that into making him have this high-level information about Patriarca and this crazy stuff like that. Well, all the time he was out being involved with these stolen securities behind the Bureau’s back in the late 60s. He was involved in millions of dollars in stolen securities. He describes himself in the book as being the number three guy in the patriarchal family behind patriarching Tana Leo. And that would have put him ahead of Jerry Angelo. And he and Jerry Angelo hated each other. He said Angelo was out to get him, and he just was minding his own business and didn’t know what accepted. A lot of guys didn’t like Jerry Angelo because he made his money gambling, and he sort of bought his way in when Patriarch came after him. But as we know, Angelo was a sharp guy. He just, you know, he was a moneymaker. He would have come to the mob one way or the other, but there was a little bit of animosity between Teresa and Angelo. And Angelo is sort of downplayed, even though the wiretaps from that time show us that Patriarcha held Angelo in pretty high regard.

[22:00] So it is interesting. If you want to know, besides just seeing the day-to-day cons that a guy puts out, a lot of the drama and the intrigue and the day-to-day happenings of the Patriarcha family are pretty well documented in that book in a way that they haven’t been elsewhere. Yeah.

[22:18] Interesting. I read something where the quote is, he could blend truth with fiction in a way that just was, I didn’t remember those guys. They were storytellers and they could throw a little bit of truth in there and then go off into some fiction. It’ll leave your head spinning. And he was one of those guys. Great con man, beautiful con man. And you and I have experienced these guys through the years. You get a good con man who really knows the deal and knows how to tell the stories to get the money. And there is an art to it.

[22:58] I’m just reading about his. When he went in, witness protection. Government spent over $10,000 to relocate his wife and her kids. He was up at Lewisburg at the time. He got his sentence reduced from 20 years to five. With immediate parole, as long as he testifies, wife is getting $700 a month. So he was somebody asking about his girlfriend. If she was also in witness protection, if she got money and he said, nah, she’s got to go to work now. The poor kid. If I recall correctly, he talks about going on vacation. He’s got his wife at one end of the street and his girlfriend down at the other. And he’s gotten forth and back and forth. And you’ve seen him. He looks like a kickball of a big kickball of a man. And he seemed to have no problem with the ladies. And I guess that speaks to the life, you know? Well, there’s no accounting for taste sometimes, I guess. Yeah, he did seem to love the ladies. No, she’ll have to get a job, poor kid. Yeah. In that world, you know, it’s a little different world what we live in.

[24:18] I guess he talked about beating cases because he was paying off judges. So he gave up judges during those years. When he first came in, he talked about the Lamontina brothers been trafficking heroin in Boston for a long time. But he didn’t really give up enough to do anything about him. it might’ve been bogus. Yeah. It was incredible. The control that Patriarcha had of things in that, in his little fiefdom up there between Boston and especially Rhode Island, it doesn’t get as much notification. You just don’t hear about it as much because that’s a smaller family. And I’ve talked to guys who specifically follow that family and just the insights they can offer into just how much control of the municipal, I mean, you know, Patriarcha getting a pardon by the governor when he was, you know, just a young kid, I think Teresa did give up a couple of judges. I mean, it was really, they just had that place locked down. Yeah.

[25:19] And they claim he or he claimed he don’t earned as much as six million dollars in stolen security stocks, bonds and credit cards and loans and different white collar scams. And he was just, you know, he was like gold for the FBI is extremely successful Bobster that now was talking for them. But he did stuff like he testified that a guy caught in his name, he called Butchie McCulley, who I don’t know if it’s a real guy or not. Supposedly this guy had a mob hit squad and worked for carlo gambino and was kind of like the mafia police would go around and do enforcement actions at different places and he did know a guy named bushy and they were involved in stolen bonds together so i tell you the other one i thought was really interesting he’s really creative is he claims that he once gave a cadillac car to a guy named Papa Doc Duvalier, who was the boss, the prime minister, the dictator, whatever, and I guess it was to expand gambling down into Haiti. I’m not sure, but that’s, that’s, that’s exactly right. He was, you know, he went straight to the top. He tried to make those connections in Haiti because there was such a, and he’s been so torn apart by world politics and that, but that was a place they wanted to replace Cuba with you know and it just was what they weren’t able to really dig in as much as they wanted to but you know.

[26:49] For a guy who was making – and I have no doubt Teresa was making a ton of money. When you look at the kinds of scams he was running, he was ahead of his time in a way as far as the white-collar stuff like you said. He’d never had two nickels to rub together. He just – that gambling, he just – that’s one thing he talks about in his book is he can never put together any cash. He had local community people, and what he would do is he would say, hey, I’m a loan shark. If you want to give me some of your money, I’ll put it out on the street, and we’ll put a number on it, and I’ll give you a percentage. She was like playing stock market with loan sharking and people would give him the money and they’d come back to him and say, Hey, what, and doctors and lawyers. And, and he’d say, what money? What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get the hell away from me. They just rip them off. Yep. That’s what you get when you go into business with the mob and they play by their rule. Forget about it. They’re nothing but take your money. I’ve had guys say, oh, you ought to make a deal with Michael D and Mikey Scars or Sammy the bull. I said, you know, I’m not going into business with those guys. They got their own rules. I played by society.

[27:53] I’m going into business with them. I know better than that. You’ve spent your career learning better than that. I mean, but going into business with somebody like Fat Vinny, you know, and I’ve seen that. I’ve seen it happen. You know, they play on your greed. He’s a con man. You know, that’s how a con man does. Yeah. He spreads out this feast that, oh, if you just like put up a little money, you’re going I’ll be able to participate in this feast on down the road. And, you know, they say, Ooh, wow. I can make a lot of money for, you know, no effort, just give him some money and he’ll take care of everything else. And, you know, then they come back to get their proceeds, their money back. And it ain’t there. That’s right. That’s what you’re going to do.

[28:35] He turned me in, you know, it just wasn’t done. That’s right. It’s like Joe Lombardo told Morris Shanker when he was threatening to kill him. He said, you know, what are you going to do? You’re going to put one guy in jail, me, you know, one guy, you know, there’s others out there. So, you know, they do not want to do business with the Bob. Let’s just take that as a warning guys out there. Don’t do business with the mob. I think y’all know that except for those mobsters who are out there listed too. There’s a few of them. So gangland wire, public service announcement. There you go. Now that’s one of these last cases. I think the Bureau, they really, they really overstepped their bounds on this last one with Lansky. You know, that story about the Lansky case where he said he could testify that would put $150,000 in Lansky’s hand. And that way they could get him for income tax evasion. And this was during those years when he was brought back from Israel. He tried to immigrate to Israel using the return law. And the Bureau burned him over there and they kicked him back out and they brought him back and then arrested him, indicted him on this income tax charge based on Fat Benny’s word that he had once given him $150,000, which you wouldn’t be able to explain.

[30:04] And then Lansky, they think maybe Lansky will cop a plea or something, and he won’t. And I know the prosecutor, I read something about the prosecutor. Prosecutor was really surprised. He said, you know, this guy wasn’t like a mobster at all. He was, you know, very articulate and charming. You’d think he was an executive of a big American corporation. And as he said, you know, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel. Bigger than U.S. Steel. And that was understating. Yeah, really. Significantly larger. But yeah, that famous quote. But yeah, trying to go after Lansky never really worked out for them in the end of that world. It just couldn’t prove it. Lansky had a good memory. He kept records, and he knew what he had done and where he was when he’d done it. Well, Benny Teresa had committed to a time when he put this money in his hand and a place. So Lansky doesn’t get on the stand to deny anything. He put his wife on the stand. Her name was Teddy. He called her Teddy. And she had receipts from a hotel that shown that they had been in Boston at exactly the same time when Vinny had testified that he had given him money in Miami. And as we all know, if a witness gets caught in a lie, everything else is just gone. No matter what else you got, everything is suspect after that. So he gets acquitted.

[31:31] Yeah, that was a big, you kind of got to wonder if that was when Lansky was at the end of his life and shortly after he was trying to repatriate Israel, how much of that was Teresa coming up with the money and how much was that him just MBSing and the FBI’s that are here, we want you to, and specifically bringing him out and say, so what do you know about Meyer Lansky? You really want to get Meyer Lansky. You got to know some about Meyer Lansky, right? And sort of having conversations like that, it stirred Teresa to say, oh yeah, I know Meyer Lansky. I think he loved the spotlight so much. He would have said and done anything to stay in the spotlight. I don’t think he really cared anything about law enforcement. He didn’t really have to do anything probably by then, but he had to be in there. I like being in that spotlight. I think you’re exactly right. And he loves telling tales. The feds moved him. I don’t know where he was during those years, but in 1978, they moved him to Tacoma, Washington.

[32:28] And he’d been importing exotic birds without a permit and not taking the proper precautions and everything. He had a bunch of birds die and somebody started working a case on that. They found out about it, started making the headlines. He got exposed in Tacoma because of this bird deal. And they wanted to move to Omaha and he refused. I think maybe Henry Hill spent a little time in Omaha and hated it, but he refused to go to Omaha. Now, he claims that the Bureau then put more pressure on Custom to make a case on him, which they eventually will on these birds. It was odd, these guys, Henry Hill and Vinnie Teresa and all, who just couldn’t keep their nose clean. They didn’t know, you know, witnesses. They’re just, they’re going to, criminals are going to criminal. And they go into the witness and the FBI paying them. And they’re still just coming up with these scams and they get exposed from town to town to town.

[33:25] We’ve had three that I know of right here in Kansas City. When they get here, they immediately, one of them just muscled a guy out of a business he had. And the other guy was out selling dope and trying to assert himself as a new mobster in town. And when all that came, he was just selling smaller amounts of marijuana. And that came out. We were trying to make a case on him. He just left town. They hit him. And the other guy, that really never came out. That victim, I just found out about him and it never came out. He just walked away from the business. And the other guy got in with a corrupt sheriff’s department over in the Kansas side and started a gambling game. And so, you know, they don’t, you know, Tiger don’t change his stripes. Come on.

[34:09] It’s like they have divining rods and sort of back and forth. And instead of looking for water, it’s like, oh, scam, you know, con, you know, they can just zero right in. I couldn’t find a corrupt sheriff’s department if I tried. I wouldn’t know where to look. I don’t know how to muscle some guy out of his business. But these guys, it’s just they’re in town for two days. And it’s like in my blue heaven. That’s how it worked. And that’s exactly like this deal with his Wyandotte County deputy sheriff that they are actually his dad was a sheriff. He wasn’t actually a sheriff. Everybody thought he was. And this Joey Cantaloupe moved to town. And next thing you know, he’s running a big, like a casino with long before casinos were legal, running a whole casino at a county park with using uniformed deputies to guard him.

[34:57] Crazy. Might as well go big. He’s relocated witnesses. And this guy, he was stealing hand over fist. His son was dealing in cocaine. And his son actually killed somebody during this time. He claimed he was just trying to earn money for his legal fees, but he got somebody to threaten the prosecutors on his son’s case. He did some insurance fraud. He and his other son stole some office furniture and equipment from a dentist who then filed a much bigger than normal claim for loss, $250,000 claim for loss. He was involved in this drug smuggling, this cocaine smuggling from Bolivia at the time, too. The dentist turned state’s evidence on him, so making a case on him on that. 10 years, again, at an elderly age for the mail fraud and some cocaine trafficking.

[35:50] There’s something so brazen about some of these guys that a lot of the listeners, thankfully, just get a kick out of this sort of total disregard and this antisocial part, just to the nth degree, just the ludicrous situations these guys end up getting into. Yeah and by the way after he goes to jail on that they end up putting together this whole case on smuggling endangered birds from asia and selling them to somebody back in pennsylvania with and all the rest of his sons the daughters and daughter-in-law and sons and a guy from indonesia were indicted for conspiring to smuggle a million dollars worth of rare birds and animals in the united states crazy how in the hell do you how do you get into smuggling rare birds how the hell does that get set up on your plate i don’t know and he did all that in witness protection so i don’t know well i’m glad they do that it gives us an endless fodder for the gristmill of mob entertainment. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.

[37:10] All right. Well, he’ll die of natural causes shortly after that. The end of Benny Teresa, one of the early stars of the FBI top echelon witness protection program. And wit sec, as they call it.

[37:33] It was the early days, and that program has certainly done some mixed results through the years. It is funny hearing about some of the early hits and misses of it back in the day, guys like Cantalupo and Vinnie Teresa. Henry Hill. A guy, the guy that was here was Peter Savino, who was a white-collar crime guy. He was the one that really put the Windows case, the famous Windows case, really for the five families. Everybody shared on that. He worked for Galate, you know, the Chin. He worked for the gigante gigante peter peter sabino i’m pretty sure that was his name i ended up talking to one of his daughters here recently but it’s uh you know it’s a different life and they’re all over the united states today i don’t know it would be a great book, to put together of all these different crimes as they’ve committed and witness protection but it’d be so hard to find the information because it’s so secret even they’re protected yeah.

[38:36] That’s right you have to get a hell of a foyer yeah and even then you probably have to end up suing them to get records because i know how they are about that stuff they’ll just take a guy and wipe him clean you won’t be able to find anything about him and be like he almost like he never existed except for when he tells if he testified and they even like you’re not gonna find much on that either i think they get that kept out of the court files that are accessible.

[39:06] All right, Cam. So I think we’re probably pretty well done, Benny Teresa. It’s one that people should really look up if you want to see how the history of mob literature kind of came to be. You know, every guy and their brother writes a book nowadays, but Benny Teresa was the first. He was still sort of during the heyday of the mob just after Appalachian. And, you know, it’s a hell of a glimpse into what was going on, especially if you’re into the patriarchal family. We have a lot of insights that that book offers some true, some a little less than, but it offers a lot of great information. I got my copy on eBay years ago. They pop up. It’s definitely worth finding.

[39:45] I’ll have to get one one of these days. I’ll look that up. There may be, I don’t know how big of printing they had. Some of these books that they quit printing, went out of print a long time ago and to find them on eBay, they want a lot of money for them. Oh, well, you tell them, you know, I buy all those old books and all the Saturday evening posts. Articles and stuff and i’ve done some that’s right life magazine you know i’ve definitely paid a pretty penny for some of them newspapers and life magazine in particular and the post too they really used to cover the mob and cover all those cases and then yes some really good information out there oh beautiful beautiful coverage the chicago tribune is great too, oh yeah how often i’ve gotten whole stories out of a chicago tribune article that uh that kid up in chicago the chicago outfit news and comments or something like that i can’t remember the exact name of his facebook but i’ve gotten whole stories out of some of those articles that he’s printed or posts on his facebook page and they’re good those guys and those are reporters in chicago really covered the outfit up there.

[40:54] All right, Cam, so tell us about your book. I’ve got Chicago Swan Song with a mob wife story of Lisa Swan, the ex-wife of Frank Calabrese Jr. We talk about what it was like for the family, and she sort of protected her children in that world. How when they split up, the community turned on her. She grew up in Gale Wood, an Italian enclave in Chicago, and things that she observed growing up. She wasn’t in the know, but she sort of experienced what it was like if you’re a father or you’re a grandfather or somebody who’s a mobster. This really takes you behind the table at Thanksgiving dinner, and you see what it was like. And then the realizations have come when the family secrets trial came out, the things that she realized that a man she had stood up to through the years was actually Frank Calabrese Sr. who had killed 19 people, including a woman. So I think that it was important for me to tell a family and to tell a woman’s story from within. And I really, it turned out well, we’ve had a lot a positive perception of it. And I highly recommend it. It’s just different perspectives than what you get on typical mob stories.

[41:57] Yeah. And Cam, all guys, I’ll have a link to that book or you can get that on Amazon in the show notes. You know, I did my own book recently. You can see back over my shoulder here, the Windy City Mafia Chicago outfit. And that’s just a series of short stories. None of them are related that I’ve done stories on. So I just go back and look at my notes and transcript of my shows and for that particular story, and then rewrite it into a real easy to read short series of Chicago outfit stories. It’s ones I thought were interesting and weren’t real well known sometimes. And I’m going to do one on New York and I’ll do one on the Midwest families. I’ll probably keep doing this over the next year or two, just to keep having something coming out. I think it’s fun. I find it interesting to do. I think that’s a great idea. It sounds like something And it’s just kind of an easy sort of quick read. Nobody’s got the facts like you do, Gary. So I think that’s a great opportunity for somebody to really delve deep into some of the lesser known stories. Quick read. I think you could read it in one night. Certainly, if you’re a good reader, you could read it in two settings. And then go on. As I get a few out there, then you go on to the next one. The next one, you know. Some of us are attention spans aren’t as long as they used to be because of this damn internet. That’s right.

[43:14] I think a lot of guys out there will nod their heads and heads in agreement right now. Yeah. I don’t want attention span. I want to sit there and scroll YouTube shorts and believe me, I’m guilty. I’ve done it myself. That’s right. That’s right.

[43:37] All right, camp. Thanks a lot for helping me with this story. And don’t forget guys. I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem, another public service announcement, if you’ve got a problem with gambling, there’s one 800 bets off. We got a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. Got a problem with drugs or alcohol at the Gambino, Anthony Ruggiano of the Gambino family. I mentioned he was a member, but he wasn’t supposedly he was, he was a prospect. I think the motorcycle gang is called a prospect. I think it was a proposed member. His dad was a member. He’s a legacy member. He would have got in if he had lasted long enough. That’s right. Anyhow, he’s got a hotline on his YouTube channel and used to do drug and alcohol counseling. He may not have to work for a living anymore. He may just be an entertainer. That’s what I’m trying to do. I just want to be an entertainer instead of working for a living. I’ll have links to my movies and my documentary films that I’ve done. And the two books that I’ve done, one’s about Las Vegas and the Kansas City connection, getting the skim. And that was about Chicago. So thanks a lot, Cam, for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. All right. Great.

In this episode, Gary sits down with former FBI agent Mike Campi, a key figure in the investigation that led to the downfall of Vincent “Chin” Gigante and the Genovese crime family. Mike takes us inside the complex world of organized crime, explaining how Gigante, infamous for his feigned insanity, managed to evade law enforcement for years while secretly running the family’s operations from the shadows.

Mike shares the critical role of informants like Cookie D’Urso, whose cooperation provided the FBI with essential insights that brought them closer to Gigante. Together, we explore the meticulous surveillance and wiretapping methods used in the investigation, uncovering the challenges of gathering evidence against individuals skilled at evading law enforcement.

The conversation covers the evolution of the case from labor racketeering to a full-scale investigation into the Genovese family’s activities. Mike recounts the internal tensions and bureaucratic obstacles within the FBI and local law enforcement during this high-stakes operation.

We also dive into the theme of loyalty and betrayal within the mob. Mike tells stories of brutal retributions, betrayal, and hypocrisy in mob culture, where ambition and greed often overtake family loyalty. He highlights how figures like Cookie D’Urso and George Barone went from mob insiders to crucial witnesses, with their testimonies and recorded conversations playing a decisive role in bringing Gigante to justice—ultimately resulting in Gigante’s admission in court that he had faked insanity for years.

The episode wraps up with Mike’s reflections on the current state of organized crime, exploring how some tactics have evolved, yet the underlying nature of organized crime remains largely unchanged. This episode offers a gripping look into the strategy, patience, and grit it takes to tackle organized crime from the inside out.

Click here to get Mike’s book, Mafia Takedown: The Incredible True Story of the FBI Agent Who Devastated the New York Mob
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Transcript
0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers. Welcome back here in the studio of Gangland

[0:03] Wires. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police detective from the intelligence unit. And I have a FBI agent today named Mike Camp. And Mike Campy was a case agent of a huge investigation on a Genovese family. This is the case that they turned a guy named Cookie Durso. And that guy ended up talking about Vincent the Chin Gigante. And in the end, that squad that Mike was attached to figured out how to get enough information to get Vincent Gigante to admit in open court that he had been put on an act all those years. You know, if you’re not familiar with their story of Vincent the Chin Gigante, he was a boss of the Genovese family and he had put on an act and he was crazy. Wandered around Little Italy and Greenwich Village, wherever he lived,

[0:50] somewhere there in Manhattan, in a bath robe and talking to himself and all that. And he did it for years and years and really avoided a lot of a lot of heat when he was actually the boss of the genovese family and they put uh fat tony salerno out as the boss and everybody thought he was a boss and and so this is a guy that really ends up exposing that and he does this huge long investigation on the entire family so just sit back and listen to mike campy so uh we’re gonna talk about vincent the chin gigante today when When I was investigating, when my squad changed from labor racketeering.

[1:27] Eventually became a focus on.

[1:30] The Genovese organized crime family. Rather than being assigned, I wanted to open my own investigation. And we have control files that have historic information from cooperating witnesses and informants that stores the… So I went back and I reviewed the files from volume one up to the last volume

[1:51] to focus on who I wanted to open investigation on. And I opened on… The reason I opened the investigation on nicky the blonde frustaci was because he was well liked by many people both chin gigante because nicky was involved in boxing as was chin yeah but also uptown with fat tony salerno and nicky’s neighborhood was over by historic where lucky luciano over on first avenue on the east side with 11th street and so he was my focus and originally.

[2:26] But I had him, according to information, being placed by chin with Jimmy Ida, who was the acting consigliere, eventually became official consigliere. So the surveillance and all other topics, you know, tapped into Jimmy Ida being a focus with Nikki DeBlanc and others. And so it took a bunch of years because we had a bunch of problems with the title three reinstallations. They got caught a number of times, both PD and the FBI. But at some point right now, Jimmy Ida is doing life in prison as a result of that investigation because of his role as the consigliere in coordinating murders of various individuals.

[3:14] Sanctioned murders from the Genovese family. And I thought focusing on Jimmy Ida and Nikki the Blonde, because Chin was pretending to be crazy for all those years, that the likelihood of somebody maybe wanting to cooperate because they’re taking a hit for a guy who’s wearing a bathrobe, living the life, you know, as bizarre as it seems.

[3:38] I thought that that was a good possibility of getting cooperation. And that investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction pleas of the acting administration for the Genovese family to include Laborio Belomo, Barney Belomo, who’s the current boss.

[3:56] He was the acting boss. Mickey D’Amino Generoso, who was the underboss, old timer, never gone. I don’t think he ever went to prison, but for this case, and Jimmy Ida and a whole bunch of other people. But that said, we didn’t get the cooperation, but the investigation facilitated the cooperation of Mike, future cooperation of Mike Durso actually reaching out in coordination with his defense attorney to meet with me to facilitate his cooperation. And, This was all supposed to be just a six-month investigation. This was in 1998, June of 98. And we were trying to get to December to arrest the people that shot him in the head, killed his cousin, his best friend, at their social club. And these guys were involved. The one guy, Carmine Pizza, Carmine Pulido, I had involved with previous bank robberies. And so the whole thing was going to address that type of criminal conduct. But because of the recordings we made right from Jump Street, you can clearly see that Durso had a unique reputation with his mentors. He was proposed for induction. He couldn’t retaliate and kill the people that shot him in the head.

[5:25] Because, you know, there was so many different people cooperating between Al D’Arco, Sammy the Bull Gravano. They were like, you’d have to kill five of them. If you don’t kill five of them, somebody may cooperate. So this all, though, facilitated with recordings about Chin, his role in continuing to…

[5:47] Manage and be the boss of the Genovese family, even when he was in prison. I mean, we made recordings with Tommy Cafaro, who was Vincent Fish Cafaro’s son, and this uptown crew of guys that were with Barney Belomo, who was also in prison. And these recordings were just so specific and detailed over a three-year period that it caused other problems for the Genovese family, to include a historic figure, George Barone, cooperating. And George Barone was somebody that went back to Vito Genovese days.

[6:25] That he was the guy that the Genovese family utilized to really facilitate the

[6:32] control of the ILA, the Longshoremen’s Union, on a national level. And that’s during the process of when it went from manually loading ships to the containerization process. So it was just and they wanted durso towards the end when we took the case down to basically kill george barone and and that’s the part i the things i like to point out in the book about the hypocrisy of that life you know to where your criminal family is supposed to come before your blood family yeah and i’ll say you know numerous murders that are to me clear examples of the hypocrisy. You know, you’re joining a group of guys with a lot of egos and, you know, they’re treacherous and even they may say that they love you. It doesn’t really have any meaning because they’re the guy that’s going to shoot you in the head. So the whole thing with George Perón, which is a perfect example of how, The blood family in Chin Gigantes, it appears to have maybe come before the crime family. George Barone was owed a modest amount of money, 70 grand, I think it was, or a little under 70 grand. He made millions.

[7:50] This one individual owed George this money before George went to prison was a guy who was affiliated as an associate of the Genovese family. Chin was a capo at the time, I believe. when George was going to prison asked if George would facilitate a relationship between his son Andrew and this individual Bert Guido. And George did that. Bert at the time owed him about 68 grand. But Bert became a multi-multi-millionaire. And instead of when George came out giving him the money that was owed, Chin was now the boss.

[8:28] Andrew wasn’t even made, but they didn’t want to insult chin by having george paid the money that he’s owed because andrew is now the guy that is overseeing burke guido and they viewed it as an insult i’m looking at that as like if i was in that crew i would have given him the money out of my own pocket he absolutely provided falsetti kefaro and others with positions that generated huge money for them and you don’t want to pay george back money owed from a guy who’s a multi-millionaire because it would be insulting to the son of the boss it made no sense to me it was so juvenile but that’s an example of the hypocrisy of that life yeah and i thought the recordings were so phenomenal that i mean it was like okay.

[9:18] Let’s keep going. And the only reason we took it down was because of not only George’s murder, but that there was the five families in New York, and these are recordings, were talking about going and killing.

[9:32] Taking the five killers from each family, 25 total, and using them to kill the Albanian gang members in the various boroughs with fully automatic weapons. And that’s when it was like, okay, this is getting a little airy here. And, uh, they wanted to get the Albanians in a comfort zone. And it just was like, you know, and the bureaucracy, if you can imagine, I was bumping heads with some guys, bosses that it was like, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s put together our rest teams and take it down now.

[10:10] So you were picking up on your, I guess, first of all, is there any, any stories about making those installations that’s always kind of interesting to me and on doing those installations yeah i mean it’s difficult sometimes but i mean i remember one time the communication i guess it was misinterpreted because they tried to install it on a night that was particularly busy and it I was thinking the window of time, and I remember I had to just step away because you can tell the attempt didn’t go well because the social club was Little Italy. It was frequented by members of all five organized crime families, very active. And then all of a sudden, it wasn’t, you didn’t have the frequency of the same crew. A matter of fact, one of the funny stories when Durso cooperated, he was an individual that caught them breaking into the club once. They were inside the club doing the installation. It was probably like three or so in the morning. He was going up Mulberry Street. He saw the light on. So he just thought it was this guy. His street name was Tits Koro that was in there with a girl. So he pulls over goes to knock on the window and he could see the shadows running around.

[11:34] And he sees looks looks at the curb and again there’s nobody in mulberry street at that time of night he looks and sees a guy sitting in a car and he goes up to the guy i think and it’s law enforcement says you know what are you doing he goes oh i’m waiting for a friend he asked him who’s the friend because he knew everybody in the neighborhood a guy could come up with a name probably had an accent and it was like he immediately called to say that uh he thought he didn’t know who if it’s the pd or the fbi but he said they’re putting a bug in jiggly social club and so when we finally got the bug in one of the comical things the first recording that i heard.

[12:17] Was the two guys that just came in saying they thought the NYPD broke in last night to install a bug.

[12:24] And they proceeded in a recorded conversation to say, we know it’s not the FBI because I read that book about Paul Castellano. And those guys that they’re so sophisticated defeating Locke, it only takes 30 seconds. And my squad was a joint task force. So we got a kick out of listening to them. And you know it just amazing that they continue to talk yeah it was wild i was listening to a, wiretap here where they were discussing on the wiretap on the phones they were discussing the codes they were going to use for when one of them came in las vegas to kansas city and and they had to have a code yeah and they couldn’t get the code straight and by the end one of them said oh just just tell me like it is anyway.

[13:17] Well, that’s one of the things when we, uh, so when we did a few raids, you know, to facilitate conversations and stuff. Yeah. Tickle wire. Yeah. Tell him, tell the guys, tell the guys a little bit about that. Uh, your discussions about tickling the wire. That’s people will find that really fascinating. I think. And explain what tickle the wire means. Well, It’s like when I’m looking in and I’m doing surveillance and I’m watching my whoever it is I’m focused on and I see him walk with a new guy. You don’t know who it is. You want to identify that person because to me every day it’s crime related. And so once you identify people, the nature of their business, you’re going to be able to determine.

[14:02] All right, what are they doing? And in a tickle the wire scenario, there could be any number of things from a subpoena, an interview.

[14:11] I mean, there’s things where you go out and interview somebody like a fugitive. You know that the fugitive is affiliated with somebody and you got somebody remote and you just go up to him and ask him, hey, when was the last time you saw this fugitive? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never saw the guy in my mouth. He’s going to go to the mentor to tell him they’re looking for such and such who’s out in the street. And you’ll hear it with that warning call. I mean, that’s how Michael Coppola, I believe who was a fugitive for 10 years, we ended up catching him because we believed he was attached to a murder. This guy, uh, Larry Ritchie, who was in trial, all of a sudden it disappeared from trial and months later was found in the trunk of a car behind the diner. Well, that facilitated Michael Coppola’s arrest because it was like his murder being affiliated with Michael Coppola was like, okay, where’s, how did they get to Coppola? Because Coppola would have had to be involved with the sanctioning of the murder. And that’s what caught him going out and talking to somebody and tickling the wire, listening to how they talk, follow it down.

[15:24] And then boom, you get your guy or your evidence. Yeah, it’s because every day, every, every day is a conversation of crime. Conversations.

[15:35] Yeah, that’s why I think Joe Patone talked about that. They’re long, boring days sitting around the social club talking about these different scores that they might want to make this score and that score. And so it’s just the conversations are basically if they aren’t about family or some gossip about anybody, it’s about crime and doing some kind of a crime. It’s always so coded, it’s hard to figure out many times, but it’s going to be about a crime. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s to me, when I look at things like now the FBI, like some guys that I’ve been out now, you know, I left, uh, FBI in 2007, went to the corporate world and then, but I still had guys calling me, you know, for years about, you know, various things, but yet the FBI is not focused on it as though it doesn’t exist. And these guys who call me, they’re like, it’s back in the 60s, Mike. They’re meeting.

[16:37] The simplicity of headquarters not understanding historically the unions that they control, the industries that they control. It’s to me like the NFL. You get your football player, your quarterback hurt. You’re not playing down 10 against 11. You’re going to replace him with somebody that’s not as good. It may take a while, but they’re not stepping away from that money. And as I understand, they increased, you know, they made a lot of guys and they’re back in business. And it’s, you know, to me, it’s like, okay, what point do you then refocus? Really? If anybody thinks that they stepped away from dealing stolen property, trailer loads and truck loads of stolen property and jewelry and things like that, with that long history and all the contacts they have out in the community with these. Like a guy owns a you know individual owns a little grocery store well you know he he’s going to be you know a great retail outlet and then you got on the other hand you got these boosters and drug addicts out here that are stealing stuff like crazy so you know they’re going to make their money out they ain’t going to quit doing that those all those kinds of crime and gambling they’re not going to quit that even with all the legalized gambling they’re still going to have a sports book out there and they’re still going to have a loan shark and and they get a slap on the hand, you know.

[17:58] That’s the thing that, you know, you need, I think if you really want to correct removing the most treacherous people, and again, a lot of them have podcasts now, which cracked me up. Yeah, I’m sorry, that is a cracker. But to discourage that type of the criminal conduct involving, they’re not as, I don’t think you see the murders that you used to see in the past. That got smart. If somebody’s violating, that body may just disappear, which, you know, similar to Patty Ryan’s, never showed up when they got killed. But that said, you know, you do say you got a three-year investigation or something, and then they give a guy, you know, a three-year hit. Let him plead. You charge him with multiple crimes and the prosecutor gets it on his resume.

[18:48] In the Midwest, I think it’s a little different because you can have career prosecutors, but in the big city, New York, you know, they’re only going to be a prosecutor for three to seven years maybe and go into private industry to become a partner. And those bullets regarding the titles are, I guess, rewards for your success. But to me, maybe we should go to trial a little more.

[19:16] If you’re charging somebody with a murder, let’s prove the murder. Give them life in prison.

[19:21] Yeah. Prosecutors are pretty quick to do a plea. I’ll tell you what, I’ve practiced law and having a trial, full trial, that’s a hell of a lot of work, man. I can understand. You want to do it you want to make a deal yeah you’re overnight yeah you’re yeah you got to get in before before the judge to prep for the next witness and you stay after at night prepping for the yeah it’s a long day but on murders i think thing yeah so speaking of murders now you started off genovese family is you know really been feared they got this long history of being And one of the more fearsome families because of Vito Genovese. I mean, that guy was, he was a terror.

[20:05] And so you’ve got to persuade somebody to turn. And they’re not at the time. This is kind of, was this before everybody in the Bonanno family started falling like crazy? This is, I believe it was. And you got this guy, George Barone. Was that one of your first guys you got to turn?

[20:25] So george barone after durso cooperated and again part of the part of it was to include durso’s role, in participating in the murder george barone so before the case came down this is like almost three years into it durso accompanied patty falsetti to give george barone a partial payment of the money he was trying to get.

[20:52] And it was at a strip mall and I was in the parking lot, videotaping it. You could see Barone was a passenger in a vehicle and, or no, he was the driver, that had a Cuban. Now, George relocated to Florida and organized the Cubans down at the ports there. And these Cubans were part of his protection, ready to go to war against the Genovese family. So he gave him a portion of the money, and I believe it was Patty Falsetti, so Durso can see what George looked like for when they organized and coordinated the next payment in the city. Now, again, George being around Vito Genovese and participated in a bunch of murders. He was supposed to kill Frank Sinatra, too, back in the day. And so George was a great guy. George, when he cooperated, he realized the hypocrisy of the life, that all he’s done for them and they can’t pay him money that he’s owed by a guy who’s not in the life. He just found it ridiculous. And me and George hit it off because George, when we arrested him, because we arrested him and charged him with extortion, we allowed him to make bail. And this was when the first big indictment came down. I was there in Florida for profits.

[22:10] George didn’t know he was Italian until he was eight years old. He grew up on the west side of Manhattan, the Chelsea section, which was a big Irish community. And we sort of hit it off because my mother’s from Ireland. My father’s Italian. And I just shared with him a funny story of being a half-breed. And the next day, he said, I want to meet him again, meaning me. And the next day is when he signed his cooperation agreement. And he talked about the various murders he was used in as part of his cooperation. You got to get all the crimes. And he would describe how he would be negotiating shipping, you know, contracts, union contracts with shipping executives, you know, in the day and then be tasked with flying to Florida to kill somebody. He was a World War II vet, Navy. He was on four invasions, including Iwo Jima. I mean, he was just a very bright

[23:10] guy that knew the treachery of the life. He didn’t really care if he was made or wasn’t made. His mentor was a guy named Johnny Earl, who he described as the toughest guy.

[23:25] Johnny Earl subsequently, a few years later, was killed. And Vito released George to Fat Tony Salerno, who was a soldier at the time, not even the capo or the acting boss. This is back in the 50s. So George provided some critical information because he was with Vito Genovese when the Frank Costello shooting in Albert Anastasia, and that’s in the book. And what he described was how…

[23:59] You know, Albert Anastasia basically whacked his boss and consigliere, Vincent Mangano and Phil Mangano, and Albert was the underboss, and now all of a sudden he’s the official boss. That was 1951. That’s another example of the hypocrisy. So he said in 57, Frank Costello and Vito were bumping heads because they were both acting bosses at various times. And Costello got along very well with that. Albert Anastasia. And so Anastasia meets with Frank Costello and Michael Miranda, who is the consigliere for the Genovese at that family, to get Miranda to agree to their conspiracy to whack Vito. And Miranda, I guess being a very talented guy, says, well, let me sit and think about this for the next day or two. Immediately goes to Vito to tell him that they were planning to murder him. Vito asked, was anybody there else that observed the meeting? It was at a restaurant in Brooklyn. And guess who was there was Sonny Francis.

[25:09] So they call Sonny Francis. He corroborates the meeting and they arrange the shooting of Frank Costello.

[25:17] Frank Costello, after being shot and not killed by Chin, and apparently Tommy Ryan Eberle was the driver and the capo of the crew at that time uh he corroborates the conspiracy and so they basically he he tells them he won’t let albert know that his shooting was related to the conspiracy and you know a few weeks later anastasia’s killed and that facilitates then the, the Appalachian meeting to install Carlo Gambino as the boss to describe this violation of Omerta and to get caught by the New York state police with the Appalachian meeting. So a lot there, but George Verone was with Vito Genovese when that was going on. So so you got it you got really a first person account of those historic events and a little bit different now this book i’ll tell you guys you got to get this book mafia takedown you got to get it so tell us a little bit about cookie durso he was he was pretty important and and then tell us about how you got them in the court and then you got the chin hit the court so let’s Let’s go down that path. Okay. So, so Mike…

[26:44] Was a tough kid. He’d bench over 400 pounds. Young. He previously, as a young kid, he grew up in the Williamsburg Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Again, historic area where Sonny Francis and other gangsters were. He worked at Joe Zito’s restaurant. Joe Zito had a restaurant in Little Italy originally called Ruggiero’s. Gieros. And Joe Zito was indicted in the Windows case, the infamous Windows case where they had the families basically getting kickbacks from window installations in the low-rise apartment buildings and all that, low-income apartment buildings. So Zito was supposedly, Zito was acquitted at trial and he was offered the position of capo. He turned it down and said, give it to Ross, Ross Ganji. And Joe Zito stayed up in the Bronx with his brother that had like a out of key because he kept thinking as a result of being acquitted, he’d be a focus of law enforcement, the FBI, if he was a capo. Pretty wise. Zito. Pretty smart. Yeah.

[28:02] Zito provided. So, yeah, Dursa was under Zito, but since Zito was uptown, Sammy Meatballs Apparel, who was Little Italy, was the guy that mentored and who Mike was doing business with. So Mike originally borrowed money from Sammy to put on the street. He gambled. And again, he was making huge money as a loan shark, big money. And he and Tino had, as one of their clients and customers, Carmine Pizza Pulido, who was a degenerate gambler. And when I was on the wire, you’d see Pulido, Carmine Pulido with Allie Shades Malangon’s crew. Allie Shades Malangon was a very, at that time, powerful capo, had a tight relationship with Barney Belomo. and he was the conduit in the corrupt carding industry for the Genovese family. So Polito, on Monday nights, especially during football season, the social club had gambling going on, the football going on. Allie Shades would leave the club and go south on Mulberry Street to have dinner with his crew. Polito would accompany some of these guys, There’s baby Carmine Russo, Chinatown. Um…

[29:27] Uh, Jerry Goudagno. It all got down together as a crew. Polito, and I, you know, it was just, I’d have this on videotape. I’d have it on the surveillance logs because I was just sitting out there on Mulberry Street. And Polito wanted to get released from Durso and Tino to Ali Shade’s crew. And Ross Ganji was the capo that oversaw Sammy Apparo. They didn’t want to release him because he was such a great client he was a degenerate gambler he owed the money yeah and and so that process of not releasing him to this group was a thing that was i guess a bad taste and palito would gamble at the social club in brooklyn with durso and others and what palito did was he facilitated the murder using so the people sitting at the table at the card table included a kid named Rookie and a kid named Jingal. They were two cousins of Pulido’s. You also had a Mario Fortunato who had a bakery with the Fortunato Bakery in Brooklyn. And apparently Fortunato wanted Durso killed too because he.

[30:47] Carrying grudges, Fortunato apparently would abuse, when Mike was a young kid, Mike’s father, Durso’s father, at social clubs. He’d fart on him and stuff like that. So, as Durso got bigger, more confident, he slapped Fortunato.

[31:07] And Fortunato then carried this grudge over the years because he realized that Durso’s the real thing. And since the incident where he’s not allowing Pulido to leave and go to the other crew they designed a scheme to kill him to kill Tino first or to shoot Mike in the head first the gun was too close to his head so the round went right down his neck and then they shot and killed Tino and left not knowing that Durso came to shortly thereafter they thought he was dead and so.

[31:44] Sammy goes to the hospital, tells Durso, you know, they speak with him. They find out what happened. What happened was this kid, Bruno, who was also a neighborhood kid, Anthony Bruno, he comes in and Mike apparently assaulted him before he was sort of a junkie from the neighborhood and he agreed to shoot Durso in the back of the head. Polito and others have guns on him. And so he’d asked, I think, for, he comes up, Cherisulo, rookie, opens the social club door to let Bruno in, they’re all playing cards, and Bruno then shoots Durso in the back of his head as…

[32:28] Polito and others shoot, uh, Tina Lombardi. Then they all flee. And the funny thing is they find out after they said, I wasn’t there. I went home. Fortunato tells Sammy Meatballs and Joe Zito that he doesn’t know that Durso got shot, who shot him. He went home and he goes, Durso’s not dead. And that look of cotton. So after that, this whole scheme of how does Ali Shades and Ross Ganji, I mean, Ross, supposedly they want to retaliate, let Durso retaliate. And Ali Shades apparently has more power with Barney Belomo and the others, and they diffuse it and saying, put it on hold, just wait. And so the book has details of how Durso didn’t listen to that initially. He had a buddy that shot Pulido in the head at his pizzeria and he too didn’t get killed. He went to the hospital. And I used to joke that the reason that Polito didn’t get killed is he’s Calabrese and they’re known to have hard heads.

[33:31] Hard head meaning stubborn, but there’s a lot there in the book about the retaliation. And it’s, you know, I could understand the administration saying you have to kill five people in the likelihood. So put it on hold for a while. But we made recordings with guys that were saying, just go kill him. Because once Polito went to prison on a bank robbery, we had an overlap with a bank robbery investigation. He made friends with the Lucchese family, and they wanted to release him to the Lucchese. And Durso, we made these recordings. No, he’s here with us. And he He was winning that dispute that he couldn’t be released. And at that point we were making recordings saying, why don’t you just go kill him? And even though the, even though that the administration was saying you can’t, others were saying in powerful positions, just let’s go do it.

[34:26] So we obviously couldn’t let that happen. But Polito now is a capital in the Genovese family.

[34:34] And, uh, it’s crazy times. and the guys that we’re talking on recording about having Durso kill them are in the crew so that that really puts you guys in a ticklish position too you you don’t want to uh expose the wire but you can’t just sit back and let somebody get killed it’s uh it’s a really tickly situation it’s a good way to turn somebody sometimes you’re going to take a risk you’ll take them take that little bit of tape and say here they’re getting ready to kill you listen to this and see if you can’t turn them. It’s a way that you can turn somebody, but you’re really in a tickly situation.

[35:13] We had another situation where they wanted Dursa to kill a kid who was bipolar, and he was the godson of Sammy Meatballs, and he was threatening the mother. We were able to defuse that because it was—and the kid’s brother had a gun where I took the gun from him. I mean, we made recordings, but we had agents on the squad go out to the kid who was bipolar because he was off his meds and he was supposed to go back in and get on the meds. At some point, we worked with a local law enforcement who arrested the kid, took him off the street because he was a mess.

[35:55] And Durso obviously said, I don’t know where this kid is. They didn’t know that he was arrested. And it basically diffused the situation. but it was, I mean, there’s so many different things from a treacherous standpoint. It’s like walking between the raindrops, trying to ensure that you can continue your investigation and ensure that, you know, other things aren’t happening. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It’s a, people don’t understand that you got to be on the inside to understand that they, they think of TV, they think of TV, FBI agents, TV cops that will, you know, just maybe let somebody get killed or maybe even help somebody kill somebody in order to to further their investigation but it isn’t like that you’ll end up having to sacrifice the whole investigation just to keep it prevent somebody from getting killed no i tell you there’s a lot of there could be some comedies if it was tv.

[36:48] Yeah yeah a lot of great stories in this book guys you just you’ve heard of some of them here and there’s a lot more in there you really want an inside look at the genovese family and what eventually will take down the chin that when he’s putting on this act all these years tell us a little bit now was cookie durso was he like the the smoking gun that that really caused the chin to cop a plea what it was or like one incident or was it a series of incidents that caused him to actually come in and admit in court out in an open court that he’d been putting on an act So it was Durso was making recordings again with powerful people from the crew, Barney Belomo’s crew. Barney was in prison and they were, it included the dispute between George Barone and Andrew Giganti. And so I’m sitting there, you know, listening to making all these recordings and we’re doing stuff. And I realized, you know, we had nine 11 hit and we had to put things on pause to address this terrorism thing for a while. And Durso was still out there. And, uh.

[38:01] You know, one of the things I thought is, let’s get the prison calls for Chin. Because, you know, to me, he’s now in prison. It’s been years. We pull six months of prison calls, which is comical, because he’s talking like a normal guy. And he avoided trial forever. And we have, again, the dispute between Andrew Giganti with George Peron. So we have the evidence to arrest Andrew. But when I listen to, we listen to these tapes of the prison calls, they’re so specific that he called on 9-11. We have the recording of him calling his son, Vinny Esposito, in Manhattan to ask, is everything okay?

[38:48] Vinny Esposito doesn’t even know, or the mother, Olympia, that the planes crashed

[38:54] into the World Trade Center. They have no idea what’s going on and it’s chin in texas prison who’s telling him to put on the tv and so i when we took the arrest down with andrew giganti and others superseding arrest i arrested andrew giganti and you knew you know chin would do what he could to save his family so they worked out a plea agreement we charged chin with the obstruction of justice should have probably charged the money from a forfeiture standpoint of the cost of prolonging this for so many years but that was more a prosecutor’s decision yeah and and uh but it was comical watching you know him having the jury box of.

[39:43] The plea the day of the plea was filled with press and they were expecting a big conversational type of back and forth but chin just acknowledged that he faked it the whole time yeah uh when you look at rita the daughter she has a book out and she talks about you know the impact that he pretending he was crazy all those years had on the family you know you feel bad for the children in that life because nobody wants to hang out with them because of the father and all but at the end of the day uh the gigante family made a lot of money.

[40:20] I talk about that in the book. He posted that must have been 13 family members that had jobs in the ports, which paid as much as $400,000. They were paid 24 hours a day, seven days a week, never had to leave their house. Amazing. Yeah.

[40:38] You talk about a good provider, man. How much does a bathrobe cost? How much? Yeah, really. I mean, he was a hell of a provider. One last question, I think. I don’t know. You may not know this. There’s like a discussion out there about this among different Bob fans, kind of maybe on Facebook, that there was supposedly a conversation between John Gotti and the chin. And Gotti’s bragging basically about how he made his son, John Gotti Jr. He inducted him in as a made guy. And the story is that Gigante had never had allowed Andrew to be made.

[41:17] And so Gigante supposedly replies, well, I’m sorry for him or something along those lines. Do you know anything about that? I believe that conversation was had, and it was really, I think, an example of Chin’s sophistication. Why would I want to make my son and have law enforcement focused on him as a made member when there’s nobody out there that can corroborate him being made other than my son being my son? And he still has the power and money. So that made sense. And it really, when you look at things, it sort of protected him. When you look at like Carmine Persico, he got life in prison 120 years. And his son, little alley boy Persico, got life in prison for the murder, you know, the conspiracy to murder Billy Cotullo, who was the acting, you know, boss for the family. and they feared that he’d become official. So I think from a Chin standpoint, it was bright to do things the way he did to protect it. I mean, it reminded me, I think the brightest guy ever for the Genovese family as a boss was this guy, Jerry Katina.

[42:35] I mean, he was sort of beneath the radar. He made millions, and he stepped away and went to Florida, to live to be, I think, 99 years old, you know, as a multimillionaire. And he made huge money, and it was the type of thing he was low key. And he was a Jersey guy. But he was back in the days of Lucky Luciano. And I don’t think the FBI, we ever carried him officially as a boss. Yes, you had him in the administrative role, but it was George Barone when I went through with him, you know historically the bosses and stuff when he said jerry katina i said jerry was an official boss and he looks surprised mikey you didn’t know that i said no i i you know and he was surprised uh but he was an official boss for a period of time and then he was held in contempt and stepped away from it and i sort of think that’s extremely bright.

[43:33] Type of move, uh, for a sophisticated guy that’s got the money. I don’t need the aggravation. And you know, there’s a lot of envy for some of the other guys. Cause they look at you and think, well, you’re not as tough as I am. And that’s when you got that death sentence coming. Yeah, really? Yeah. There’s always envy. Yeah.

[43:54] There’s all in that life. There’s always envy. That’s for sure. That’s, that’s why you want to be careful and not show that you’re making too much money i i know a situation in kansas city where the guy started bragging about how he was making 10 grand a month from his joint and and you know and some other investments he had around his joints of parking and that leases and everything he had and man they started moving in on him because you know think heck he’s got all that money we’re gonna get some of it so you just keep your mouth shut act play dumb yeah you can even get an independent contract to come out whack kid for the money the three words you gotta run away from is i love you most of the words say.

[44:39] And don’t go meeting your best friend for dinner if you think you’re you’re uh uh something’s going on at all do not meet your best friend for dinner somewhere or go out at night in a car with them or anything like that it’s crazy how they do things the hypocrisy the hypocrisy of it all is it really brought him down in the end uh you know like michael de leonardo he goes to jail he’s going to come back out and he’s got all this investments in different you know loan sharking and that uh strip clubs and and they’re taking goddy jr’s taking the money and and he’s not taking care of de leonardo’s family and you know what’s a guy to do that that’s you know that’s that same thing with dominic saccali the banana with vinnie i mean the thought of it is just i I mean, and there’s so many recordings. One of the things I think that…

[45:32] And I point out in the book, is you’ll have somebody like a boss pay everybody’s defense attorneys. It comes across as though that’s a gesture of kindness. But the money given to the soldier to give to the attorney, the attorney reports to the boss to see if he lowballed him. But the other thing is, if the guy is considering cooperating, the attorney will tell the boss, which will identify him as a rat. And it’s the type of thing where, you know, even the consideration, it shows the weakness, which means you’re like the walking dead because the attorney represents the boss, the individual who coordinates with the mob attorney, you know, how to do things. And a lot of times they don’t want these recordings played in court because I don’t think they want their members and associates to realize the treachery and hypocrisy of the life they’ll approve a plea they don’t want him to go to trial yeah and that may have caused like somebody like larry ritchie that end up getting trunked during the trial that he was killed because they didn’t want him to go to trial i want him to take a plea yeah uh last last case we had here in kansas city they everybody took a plea immediately it wasn’t there was gambling sports gambling and there’s hardly any sentences attached to it, but everybody took a plea immediately.

[47:01] Yeah. The recordings though, can be embarrassing. That’s what I’m thinking. Even though it’s gambling, they talk about each other in a way that is, they have these egos and it’s not like he’s your brother. For some reason, he may have insulted you with a joke or something and you found it offensive. And so those are the things they just want to suppress. And some of you have you fbi agents will find it quite humorous that you’ll leave a little bit extra in that you didn’t really need to but but you leave it in there so they play it in court i know how you guys are.

[47:38] Actually, it’s the attorneys make the decision of what gets played. We transcribe it. I’d have more. It was really up to you. You’d have even more in there, wouldn’t you?

[47:49] All right. Mike Campy. This book is Mafia Takedown. The true, incredible true story of an FBI agent who devastated the New York mob. And that was Mike Campy. And guys, this is a really good book. I’ll have links to it down in the show notes. And Mike, I really appreciate you coming on the show. and we’re finally getting this done. That’s an inside joke, folks. We did this before, but things got changed around. So we’re going to finally get it done now. I’ll tell you the funny thing that delayed the release was I didn’t realize the publisher also did Melania Trump’s book. And they said, can we push your book back? I said, is she coming to the party? Oh, yeah. That’s right. No, she’s not.

[48:32] It’s done. Well, you’re running in high cotton. and they’re running with Melania Trump. I don’t think so. All right, Mike. It was really great talking to you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Garrett. All right, guys. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, go see our friend Anthony Ruggiano, a former Gambino prospect, our proposed member son of a maid guy in the Gambino family he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida and if you have a problem with gambling uh 1-800-BETS-OFF you know we just got sports gambling here in in Missouri a lot of gambling everywhere and and you heard you heard Mike Campy talk about these degenerate gamblers that then end up getting killed or they they end up getting you know what some other family wants them and then the other family doesn’t want them to leave because they’re such a cash cow. Well, guys, if you’re a degenerate gambler, you want to get out of that, you know, go to that 1-800-BETS-OFF and quit paying those loan shark loans. All right. Thanks a lot, guys.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police Intelligence Detective, is joined by Frank DiMatteo, a man deeply rooted in the Brooklyn mob scene, and his co-author, Michael Benson, a seasoned true crime writer. Frank brings a unique perspective, shaped by his years growing up under the mentorship of mob legends like the Gallo brothers. Together, we dive into the evolution of organized crime in New York, focusing on the rivalry between the Irish and Italian communities as they vied for control of Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. Frank recounts his early days in the mob, from running simple errands to taking on more significant operational roles. We discuss their latest book,  Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero.
This is a look at the iconic neighborhood, treating Red Hook as a character in the story. The book highlights longstanding rivalries, including how the Irish initially ruled the docks until Italian immigrants arrived and tipped the scales—ultimately leading Frank to conclude that the Irish “lost because they drank too much.”
As we unpack Red Hook’s rich criminal history, Frank and Michael reveal how this area became a breeding ground for notorious figures like Al Capone and Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Through personal anecdotes and broader historical insights, they paint a vivid picture of life in a community that served as both a battleground and home for the mob. Join us as we explore Frank and Michael’s fascinating work, shedding light on the intricate layers of mob life and the neighborhoods that shaped these stories. This episode offers an unfiltered look at the history of organized crime in Brooklyn, revealing the tension between power, loyalty, and survival in a world in the shadows.
To get this book, click here for Red Hook: Brooklyn Mafia Ground Zero.

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Transcript
[0:00] Welcome, wiretappers out there. I’m glad to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, Gary Jenkins. Gangland Wire is the show, and I know a lot of you guys already knew who I am, but I get some new people every once in a while, so I have a great show for you today. One of these guys, Frank DiMatteo, grew up in the New York families in Brooklyn and around the Joey Gallo gang. He’s got several books out, and Michael Benson is his co-author on this, and Michael Benson, prolific author. And between them, they’ve got books about the mob. I’ve got most of them already. I’ve got The Cigar. We’ve got The Buffy Hitman about Carmine DeBasse. He’s one of the killers of Joy Gallo. A more recent one by Michael Benson and somebody else about moguls in Hollywood. And there’ll be some mob connections. Oops, didn’t have the mob connections to Hollywood. So I want to get Michael on to sometime in the future to talk about that book and Hollywood and the mob, which we know a lot about in Kansas City because we’re so close to Chicago and Chicago are the guys out there in Hollywood and extorted the shit out of them. Anyhow, so welcome guys. Tell us a little bit. Maybe we start with Frank. Frank has this kind of colorful

[1:16] mob history and the way he was raised. Frank, tell the guys a little bit about yourself.

[1:22] Well i was born in my father you know got involved in this life about 1960 i grew up under the under the watch eye of larry gallo joey gallo and alba gallo my godfather is bobby bon Giovanni which is bobby darrow hit guy for the gallo family and my uncle’s joe chapani which was originally with Luciano and Costello and Adonis. These are the mentors and these are the guys that I knew and followed and listened to and picked up everything I had to pick up until I was old enough to move around with them. And when I was old enough to move around with them, I became the driver. I just grew from being a driver for my father and these guys to be more active in the life. Yeah. And I stood there with my life until about 20 years ago. We walked away after it was a big pinch with the last crew we were with. Everybody got arrested. We got some subpoenas. We wound up walking away. And I wound up making a magazine and then now writing with Michael.

[2:33] The magazine is called Mob Can’t Depot. Well, I am a freelance writer. I went to college to learn to be a writer. I was also born in 1956, probably one of the reasons Frank and I get along so well. I started out as a sports writer, wasn’t terribly good at it. I was a pretty good boxing writer. Turns out I was a much better fan than I was a writer when it came to sports. I switched to true crime. I wrote a bunch of books about psycho killers and innocent victims and became a little bit of a TV star doing evil twins and evil kin on the ID network. The market for true crime books softened largely because there were a lot of TV shows, whole networks dedicated to the subject. Books didn’t sell as well. Our editor, Gary Goldstein, found a book that Frank had written called Lion in the Basement. Frank wrote it all by his lonesome. It’s a little bit like a clockwork orange. It’s not quite written in English. It’s written in Frank.

[3:31] So Gary’s idea was to have me take a whack at it and add some new material. I talked to his mom and other people. We put some new things in there and fixed up the English, made the spelling uniform. The result was President Street Boys. And that started a whole thing. We did a bunch of mob bosses. We did a hitman. And then Frank had the idea of, hey, let’s do a book where the hero is the neighborhood instead of one particular mobster.

[3:59] So we start this book, Red Hook, back when the Europeans first arrived. It starts with the slaughter of the Lenape Indians by the Dutch. So, I mean, from the very beginning, the red in Red Hook is for blood.

[4:12] So that’s how Red Hook got its name. I think it has to do with the color of the soil, but it could have been named after the blood that was spilled there. Yeah. I just interviewed an Atlanta-based FBI agent about a case that he did on the Gambino Connected Club called the Gold Club in Atlanta. Michael DiLeonardo took a case, and the owner, Steve Kaplan, had a warehouse in Red Hook. He said, they told me it was in Red Hook. I said, where is Red Hook? I’ve never heard of Red Hook. It couldn’t be more out of the way.

[4:46] It’s one of the reasons it is the way it is because that’s where the docks are. So it’s always been mobbed up, but it’s also geographically isolated more now than ever with the Gowanus Canal, the Atlantic Ocean, the now the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. It’s a hard place to get in and out of. Interesting. And that’s what I noticed in the book, that Red Hook is the protagonist of this story. It is a character in this story. And you take the readers on a really colorful tour of Red Hook and white hand and black hand gangs, as you said, from the Indians and the white hand, black hand gangs. And those wars between the Irish and the Italians clear up the gas pipe, Casso and got his pal Shorty Masioco, Masioco. I can never get that name pronounced right. But anyhow, you bring them in. You know what? It evokes in me, one of the first mob movies I ever saw when I didn’t realize it was a mob movie was on the waterfront. I think that’s probably where that was set. I would imagine. And that was, that’s what it evokes in me. So yeah.

[5:52] Let’s, maybe we start talking about a little bit about this battle between the Irish and white hand gangs and the black hand gangs and Al Capone is what I’ve always say. I say a lot when I, especially when I give talks, I’ll give talks here in Kansas City about the mafia, this phenomenal. I’ll explain to people, the Irish and the Germans got here first, but then the Italians came along later. The Irish already have the good jobs. They’ve got the police jobs and the government jobs. The Italians come in and the already established Irish are going to keep them forced out. The Italians have to fight for everything they can get as an immigrant group. It just so happens that they brought this tradition of the mafia from Sicily with them. And that was a way to organize and help their own people get a foothold in this new country. You have to start businesses. You can’t get a job. You can’t get a farmer’s job because the Irish got that sewed up. They’re not going to let you in. You can’t get a cop’s job. You can’t get those kinds of jobs. Let’s start talking about that history in Red Hook. It really played out in that area.

[6:54] The Irish, like you said, were here first. They had older jobs. Red Hook was a ghetto. It wasn’t a good neighborhood. It was always a rough neighborhood.

[7:04] They ran everything, the docs, the stores, the cops, the lawyers, judges. They ran the whole thing. We never complained, but it was bad times. And we had to organize. And some guys that came over from Sicily knew what to do, started putting everybody together. They had to go against the Irish to eat. And they got stronger and stronger in the neighborhood because the blood of Red Hook is the docks. That’s it. That’s the docks. And then stores and restaurants and food markets to feed everybody. But the money was the docks.

[7:39] And we just got stronger and stronger. I mean, I always say the Irish lost because they drank too much. You know what I mean? They just drank too much. At the time, you know, they were comfortable and they were set in their ways. You know, we were on a mission. It was a little different at the time. Between killing themselves, we didn’t have to kill half them because they killed themselves. So it was pretty easy. And we just eventually took over the neighborhood and created that Longshoremen Association that we ran for the next 80 years and slowly moved the Irish off the docks. Pretty much, they moved themselves off the docks from killing each other. We took over, you know, and then we changed the neighborhood into an Italian-based neighborhood with all the Italian flavors to what it is today. You know, it was already Italian already. We had a small, very small Irish community, very small, big Spanish community, and an Arab community.

[8:39] Surrounding us. Now, Red Hook is on the other side of the tunnel because they split it. That whole neighborhood was Red Hook. Then they split it when they built a tunnel and a highway. The other side of Red Hook, Deep Red Hook, became more of a jungle,

[8:54] even in my days, growing up. You would go there. It was a drug haven, and we had some bars on that side. Then they’d build the projects, and that really destroyed the neighborhood. But on our side, it was more stores and it was bustling a lot more. And the Italian influence really, you could see that on that side with stores and food markets, restaurants and neighborhoods that stuck together. And that’s what I seen as a kid. And that’s how we took it over. We took it out of necessity just to survive because we were starving at the time. Men had a choice. They could either work on the docks or they could be a gangster with a shot at glory. There was no glory on the docks. You just broke your back and died.

[9:37] Um my grandfather was a longshoreman emily’s father was a longshoreman um tough life they were hard there you could see they were beat up by the time they were old they worked hard my grandfather’s legs were shot his hands were crippled emily’s father’s too they they fought for those jobs what about if you had to eat but again you had a choice either you do that or you go on the street and rob and and that’s what happened i think one of my favorite characters from the white hand section of the book is a woman named Anna Lonergan. We first meet her testifying on behalf of her mother at a murder trial in which the victim was her father. Mom gets off because dad beat mom until she eventually turned down and killed him. But Anna goes on to marry Wild Bill Lovett and he gets whacked. Then she loses her brother Peg Leg Lonergan. He gets whacked. So she remarries a guy named Maddie Martin. You got to wonder, is he standing they’re saying, I do what he thinks is going to happen to him. Two years later, he gets murdered. So she lost a dad, a brother, and two husbands. People stopped looking at her. She was the ghost of murders yet to come. When the second husband dies, this gives you an idea of the boys from the press

[10:49] back in those days and how soft hearted they were. She comes walking into the morgue to identify the body and they go, so you should be pretty used to this by now, huh?

[10:59] These are all white hand guys. These are all Irish white hand guys. The white hand gang. And it’s a game of King of the Hill. You get to be King of the Hill and the guy below you whacks you and you fall off and then he takes your place for a couple of months. It made the job much easier for the Italians that the Irish hierarchy were self-destructive. One of the more interesting characters is Al Capone. This is where he started his criminal career. One story I read was about him coming back from Chicago.

[11:28] Frankie Yale brought him back to kill one of these white hand gang members it was anna’s brother peg leg oh he’s the one that killed peg leg great nickname down scarface kills peg leg i can see the headline now it was coney island but he was in brooklyn and he got the scars it all came right out of red hook al capone came up there under the tutelage of frankie yale and those guys johnny torio was from there and they moved to chicago and create that whole thing in chicago it’s really the cradle of the modern american and Mafia, it seems to me, in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Al Capone was married in Red Hook.

[12:08] What do you remember about Machine Gun Jack McGurn, which was not his real name? He came from Red Hook. He was one of the killers in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, I believe. I recently did a story about Al Capone played golf a lot with Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a guy named Fred Killer Burke, great nickname, but, but machine gun, Jack McGurn started out in red, uh, Do you keep the machine gun in his golf bag? You know, the guy that was just wearing this was a caddy. And he did say that Al Capone had a gun in his golf bag because it went off accidentally and grazed Al Capone’s leg while they were playing golf. You know, McGarren came from Union Street, Al, for Van Brunton, Columbia. You know, he’s a Brooklyn boy. He came from the other side, but he’s a Brooklyn boy that wound up in Chicago. And he was Italian. and not a, he took on this name as a fighter. A lot of Italian guys did that back then. Yeah. Vincent Gavardi. Okay. That’s his name, Vincent Gavardi.

[13:12] Some old man, I call him grandpa, but he used to always mention Vincent. And we had no idea what he was talking about. We called him Vincent. We called him McGurn. And he wound up being a driver for Capone many years ago. And he was telling us about Capone. used to wear a shirt, never wear it again. He took a lot of the shirts. He wound up being involved in a murder there, and he beat it, and he wound up coming to New York. He came from Italy to Houston, to Chicago, to New York. And he used to tell us about Vincent all the time, about real tough guy. And we had no idea what he was talking about until many, many years later. And he was always talking about Jack McGurn, that he was with McGurn a lot at one point in Chicago, but met him in Brooklyn.

[14:00] Went to Chicago with him and he said he was a very bad dude, McGurn. Loyal as they come, but a killer, very talented, was a golfer, he was a boxer, a loyal guy. He had nothing but good things to say about him. And I never knew he was talking about Vincent Givaldi. We always thought, and it wound up being him. It was amazing, the guy telling stories about him and then finding out who he was. You know, firsthand, we… Knew that the Pops was in Chicago and did drive Capone. So we knew all this

[14:33] stuff. It was interesting. And then writing about McGregor a little bit, it was interesting. Also, going up into the 50s and those juvenile gangs, that’s where Carmine started out with the juvenile gangs. Many of these guys, Sammy the Bull, the Rapper Street, something, I can’t remember the name of it, but a lot of these guys and Gotti, they started out with these juvenile gangs. And so you get into that a lot and tell some of the roots of that and some of the colorful names of those juvenile gangs in Persico. Can you talk about that a little bit? What do you remember that you guys researched about those? Well, I know that Carmine Persico was the leader of the Garfield Boys.

[15:12] And there’s an argument that both West Side Story and The Godfather contain scenes based on Carmine Persico’s life because he was in the rumble. Happened to be in Prospect Park over by the boathouse, not in the playground. The rumble, just like in West Side Story, was over a girl. There was going to be fists. Somebody pulled a knife. Then somebody pulled a gun. Kid got shot in the belly. Next thing you know, they’re all running. The gun ends up getting thrown into the Gowanus Canal. Luckily for them, it sunk because at that time, Gowanus Canal wasn’t quite liquid. The gasoline petroleum jelly company dumped so much into the Gowanus that you could actually bounce things off of it. That scene later became the Romeo and Juliet finale for West Side Story. The loss of innocence when the kids of New York stopped using their fists and started pulling guns. It made rumbling a lot riskier. Really? And the other scene is the attempted murder of Larry Gallo, which is featured Carmine the snake. I’m sorry, is it in The Godfather or The Godfather Part 2? That was in The Godfather, I think. where the cop walks in, what are you doing open on a Sunday? One of the Godfather’s people, and he throws something over his neck and starts strangling him and fighting with him. The cop sticks his head in, yeah.

[16:36] That really happened. Cop got shot when the guys tried to run away. And Larry had a scar on his neck for the rest of his life. He didn’t supposed to go by himself. And he wound up, he was very comfortable with Carmine and the snake. And that’s why he went on his own, because it was still on the same side at the time.

[16:58] And that’s why he wound up almost getting killed. Is that the reason why your dad was brought in as a bodyguard? Was that the incident that started? Right around that time, they found my father in a wagon wheel in the city. He was working for, bouncing for Tony Bender. The Gallo brothers went to Tony Bender because Tony Bender was very sympathetic to their cause. So they want to break away from Joe Pafaci. They were getting schooled by Bender. My father wanted to be a bouncer there. The story goes that they were there one day. My father wound up knocking out this guy and wound up being Emile Griffith. Larry and Joey says, we need a guy like that in Brooklyn. And they went to ask Bender if they can bring him over to Brooklyn. That’s how my father got to Brooklyn with the Gallo brothers from Tony Bender. Imagine decking Emil Griffith. It’s some punch.

[17:48] He was right. It’s not a story. Many guys used to say to Ricky, man, you broke his face. And I was a little kid. They always said something about Ricky doing that. So it wasn’t just a story we made up. When other people talk about it, you know it’s true. And amil griffith was a perceived killer because he famously killed benny kidd perett on friday night fights national television oh really i didn’t remember that it was into friday night fights i remember watching that when i was a little kid with my dad he’d be yelling right i’ll be damned right more than likely i sure do yeah sure yeah it was good interesting so tony bender now he was genovese guy but he ends up disappearing if i remember right.

[18:41] Yes, Tony Bender was a Genovese captain. There’s a lot of talk why, different stories, why he got killed. They’re saying because they were selling buns. I don’t believe in none of that stuff. That’s just my opinion, that Albert on the stage got killed for that, and Bender got killed for that. My belief is that Vito was making a move, and Vito took him out, Genovese. Because Bender was strong, very strong, and these guys are very paranoid. And my belief is that they took them out because of that but they make the story up with the button stuff it’s interesting you know selling buttons i’ve noticed that the mob somebody gets killed and all of a sudden there’s these stories that denigrate them that just come out oh he was gay oh he was this he was that and so they need to denigrate somebody by floating those stories as interesting phenomenon they wait till they can’t defend themselves who tells a story a guy that likes you tell the story or a guy that don’t like you telling stories. It’s all BS anyway, especially when half the people tell the stories weren’t there or not even close to somebody was there. It’s a treacherous life, life inside the mafia for sure.

[19:54] So talking about Versico, that kind of brings up the war with Gallows and Joe Colombo. Your dad was really close to the Gallows and you were all in and around them. I mentioned before I did this, I read this book that Pete the great Diopolis did. And so you actually knew him. You had some memory of him. I said, he seemed like a nice guy. And Frank says, well, I don’t know if he’s a nice guy. But, you know, we got to talk about the gallows here. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Well, I knew Pete well. I stood on the block with Pete for two, three years, so I know Pete. It was a breakaway. The Gallows did not want to be with Joe Pofacci.

[20:33] a group of maybe 40 guys wanted to break away. He had some other family that was sympathetic to their cause because Joe Pofacci was not a good boss. He made guys around him who were family or people around him who were really close. But everybody else was hurting. And then they got tired of him. He was charging him dues every month. And the guy was a multi-millionaire, didn’t need to dine, but he would squeeze up a nickel. People got fed up, especially when you’re in the street and you’re breaking your ass and doing bad things. And you want to bring money home and you’ve got families. This guy’s squeezing every nickel out. So some guys were sympathetic to the Gallicors. You know, they wound up killing Frankie Schatz. And they were supposed to get a piece of the book. It was a big book, Making a Business Down Red Hook. They didn’t get it because Pafaci gave it to someone else. They got screwed everywhere they could. So they reached out to other families and tried to get some support. First, the support was to grab Pafaci and Thomas to change his ways and to be more generous, to go against them. They were just trying to get support, but it didn’t happen. And they wound up breaking away and going to war. And they kidnapped some guys. You know, they had the idea of kidnapping some guys and try to get to a table to make amends. But that didn’t work. Larry and Joey had a big argument over it. Joey wanted to kill a couple of guys and send their bodies back. Larry, the diplomat, said that it wouldn’t help.

[22:02] That you should just negotiate it. Paffacci makes a deal to get them released that they’re going to sit down at a table and they wouldn’t get what they think was theirs.

[22:12] And he reneged on that and just put a hit on all the Gallup boys. Meanwhile, Joe Paffacci, in the middle of it, he was afraid of the Gallup. That’s my opinion. When it went down, he ran to Florida when everybody was getting kidnapped because he was one of the guys supposed to get kidnapped.

[22:28] But he took off right away because they smelled something going on. He checked himself in a hospital, and I think it was in Florida. When they released all the prisoners, they just went back and forth until he dropped dead of cancer. Joe Colombo took over, and his underboss, Zotto, took over. They were still feuding back and forth, and a lot of bodies were coming up. Then Joe Colombo took over because Magalito died of a heart attack, and they made peace. Joey Gallo wound up going to jail and never recognized Columbo as a boss. So I think from 63 on, it was pretty quiet until Joey got out of jail again. And when Joey got out of jail, he went right back to arguing with the Columbo’s now, with Paffacci’s now the Columbo’s. And that’s how 1970, it all broke out again. 70, 71, broke out again, the argument. Joey couldn’t get along. Joey wanted to be boss.

[23:28] That was his and mine. They say he was nuts. He was a smart, nutty guy, but he was a real tough guy, had no fear. And he was one sided. That’s it. He didn’t believe that Colombo should have. And that’s why they went back to war again. The main drag up through Red Hook. The block where the galos hung out was very remote. It was against the docks and then to the expressway, which is built in a big ditch. Not the sort of place where anybody’s just passing through. If you ended up on the block, that was your destination.

[24:04] The stores, buildings, and apartments were all family for years and years and years. I think that Gallos had, between Columbia and Van Brunt, owned three themselves, and their mother owned one, and another crew member had another building, and Armando had another building. I mean, we then got Joulos. They had, you know, when I got there, there was only like 20 houses left on the block or 15 houses. There was a lot of, you know, knocked down buildings already. But probably owned, if there was 20, we owned 15 of them. So it was really a private block as far as owning everything. It was pretty much private down there. You’re only going down there if you’re visiting a family member or a longshoreman in or having lunch. A lot of longshoremans went down there because they were two, three places. So that’s how the stores originally opened up because they would serve lunch to longshoremans.

[24:56] A funny story. you in the late 70s, my very first apartment after college was at Henry and Sackett. I lived above Mark’s Pharmacy with my girlfriend at the time, who’s still my wife. And we were told on the QT, don’t go on the other side of the expressway. It was rough on that end. It was really rough in those days. It was Spanish and Italian. A lot of Spanish down there at the time. A lot of the stuff coming in because it’s isolated on that side this way. Uh, you had a, a lot of the red hook projects and all that stuff came in that way, cause that was the way to get in and out. So it was a little rough down there, but no one bothered us because everybody know who we were, but you know, other people had problems, you know, and then we policed the area as good as we could. It was rough down there. Talk about the sniper fire.

[25:47] When they shot, I think it was 74. After Joey got killed, it was a lull. They wanted to break up. They didn’t want Albert to be the boss of the crew. So they put my father up to be the boss of the crew. My father says, it’s Gallo’s name. It’s his family, a crew.

[26:07] So about seven, eight guys broke away, really tight guys that went through the war in this first war. But after Joey got killed, they were still there. But then they want to break away. So about seven guys broke away and they went back to Colombo. And they started feuding over who owned the numbers, who owned the clubs, you know, bookmaking. Because everything was entwined so deep over those years. These guys started shooting each other. On the corner of Union Street and Columbia is, you know, facing our block. So we had a Frankfort guy in the corner of Columbia and Van Brunt that we used to eat Frankforts on the corner all day. Punchy Ileano, Frank Ileano, was on the corner, and they wound up shooting him from a rooftop on the corner of Union Street. He lived. About a month later, Louis the Syrian, Nubella, was on the same corner, getting a hot dog. Cypress shot him, and he lived, though. Not that the shooting did them any good. No, because both guys lived. The shooter got away. In between that, the Gallo crew tried to kill two of the guys twice, and they wound up living too. But they got some other guys in between. I think they got Tarzan and the Blue Beetle. I think they killed them in between. And…

[27:31] Then it quieted down for a while because the gallows wound up talking the chin and breaking away from the Colombo family and going with the Gennarisi family. In between a year, everything was nice and quiet. Sniper again, but this time on the block across the street from Aurora’s club, shoots another gallow member, Stephen Borrello. It makes a stink that you can’t do that. So they call in Chiraz, which is Jerry Baciano, and Mooney. They called the guys in, and Mooney ran away, but Chiraz came in, and they told him that you got to stop, and everything will be okay. They just called him one day on Bond Street, and they wound up killing him, Chiraz. And they sent a message to Smoke, Mooney, that it’s over with now, They didn’t come back in because Mooney ran. And when Mooney came in, they killed him too. So they killed both of them for that shooting. And after that, it was all over. Everybody else just disappeared. And those seven, eight guys, they went, well, who went with Bananos? Who went with the Colombos? Who went with the Gambinos?

[28:47] And it was really over then. After the Mooney killing, all that Gallo stuff was completely finished.

[28:56] And i was 76 during those years i read him he actually was a guy testified against a real bad killer in chicago harry aleman and a guy ran with him testified that aleman used to sit around the social club and they’d have these headlines like the gallo murder and other real flamboyant killings on the streets aleman used to say well they know how to do it in new york that’s the way I want to do it next time just run in a restaurant and make a big splash and he did a couple of those so, that’s why they made that movie the guy in the conchus straight it was more guys wounded than killed a lot of guys were killed but a lot more guys got shot and died, they went after Carmine twice and twice and they missed Carmine it was crazy times in the mob world there was some.

[29:51] I have a question from the movies. Does every little corner store and bodega have numbers and maybe take some sports bets? Is everybody lined up in a neighborhood like that? Downtown, where I’m from, I’m not your mom and pop place. They would make like Romeo’s and they make sandwiches and coffee. But if you had a bookmaker that would sit there, everybody would know to go there and see Sonny or Mike the Owl and put their bets in. A lot of those people, legitimate people, they were hardworking Italians there for two, three generations already that ran these grocery stores and food markets and Italian restaurants. They weren’t all criminals and gangsters. There was a lot of very legitimate, hardworking Italians at the time. But all the people knew that there was some kind of bookmaker be right there to take their bets. Yeah. Okay. He was always sitting right underneath the TV set. That’s right. That’s how you could find them.

[30:50] Interesting. So I don’t know. You got any other stories that you really liked out of this book? Something that you guys really liked, either one of you? I mean, the whole book is interesting, man. I mean, it goes for… It is. It is. It’s a whole mixture of colorful characters and situations out of this one little neighborhood. Frank likes to say that it’s like the Old West and that they were like cowboys. And one of the things I found that made that seem even more true were the feral dogs for more than a hundred years there were wild packs of dogs in Red Hook, they moved like rats, they skittered when they ran and they could fit through tiny spaces, and they’d look suspicious and guilty all the time and scary, well you know a couple of times they would tree a guy, they’d have to climb the tree and they’d be at the bottom of the tree, bark at him and it wasn’t until they built Ikea.

[31:43] Which is the big furniture store that they finally came in and rounded up all the wild dogs and disposed of them in some humane way. For hundreds of years, there are reports that, you know, you don’t go down to the end of Conover Street because you’re liable to get coyote-like animals coming at you. But they weren’t coyotes. They were dogs that had never known the touch of man. And it went on for decades and decades. Great. Red Hook was only known in the 70s to the 90s to buy drugs. That was the only reason to go down Red Hook. There was no restaurants. It was two bars in the whole neighborhood and the boys ran them. But everybody went to Red Hook to buy drugs. That was it. Two places in the city, 125th Street in Lexington and Red Hook. That’s where you got your heroin. I knew the big pot bill is there. They had storefronts and everything, and that was a place to go. You had to go to the hook. But that’s what it was known for. No one went to the hook. You couldn’t get a decent person and go on the other side of that highway in the 70s and 80s.

[32:50] That’s kind of the ultimate gentrification of a neighborhood put in Ikea. It’s like, oh, my God. It’s gone now. All the color is gone now. Yeah, Red Hook’s probably nicer now than it ever was. And there’s still some sections that are sketchy. Well, they threw money into it and tried to rebuild it. I think because it is isolated, that hurt them. They were thinking that if they threw the money in and put the restaurants and rebuild, because there’s a lot of nice homes down there and warehouses you can convert and stuff like that. But it’s still so isolated that you’re just preying on what you have down there. And I think that’s what hurt it. They’re running cruise ships out of there now. I happened to take a cruise that started and ended in Red Hook, and it was almost impossible to get home. I was maybe six, seven miles from my home when I got off the ship. It took hours because getting 5,000 people out of one exit and one entrance to a neighborhood took forever. No car service down there. There’s no cabs down there. You couldn’t get it. There was never a yellow can down there. Hard to get in now.

[34:02] Interesting. Well, public transportation, I guess they got left out of the public transportation network in New York city. Mainly you can get anywhere on public transportation in New York city.

[34:13] I think you had one bus to Columbia Street, up in Columbia. That was it. There was a lot of blocks there in Red Hook on that side. So you had a little hike to get to that bus and get off that bus to where you live. The nearest train was the F train. They built the tracks so high over the neighborhood that it’s about a six-flight walk up to the tracks. That’s the highest elevated train station in the country?

[34:37] You could get a nosebleed trying to catch the F train there. Another wall between the rest of the world and red hook and they were right on the border of the split huh it’s really interesting neighborhood well guys the book is red hook Brooklyn mafia ground zero get that i’ll have links in the show notes to buy that book and actually i have links to both frank and michael’s author page on amazon because they’ve got a lot more books out there that i know all you guys would be interested in several of them and we’re going to do more shows with both of you guys, I really appreciate y’all coming on the show. It’s been most enlightening. I really like that Chicago Red Hook connection. I didn’t exactly understand that before I started looking at your book and then talking with you guys.

[35:24] It lets you know how this thing developed and ends up in Kansas City and Cleveland and Milwaukee. Every one of these Midwest families came out of that, except that little influence out of New Orleans, but primarily right out of Red Hook and those areas down there on the docks.

[35:44] Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So look out for motorcycles when you’re out on the street. If you have a problem with PTSD, if you’ve been in the service, make sure you go to the VA website and get that hotline number. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, our friend, former Gambino prospect or proposed member, Anthony Ruggiano is a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida, and he has a hotline on his website. I appreciate everybody tuning in and I really appreciate Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson coming on the show. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you, Gary. Bye, Gary.

In this episode, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective Gary jenkins welcomes John Oller, a former lawyer turned nonfiction author focusing on American history, biography, and true crime. John has authored a compelling true-crime book titled Gangster Hunters, shedding light on the often-overlooked FBI agents who pursued infamous criminals such as John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. While these gangsters are well-known in pop culture, the agents who risked their lives to bring them down—aside from figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis—remain largely unsung.
John takes us through his meticulous research process, which involved interviewing descendants of these agents and combing through FBI files. He paints a vivid picture of the early days of the FBI, where many agents, expecting desk jobs, found themselves facing off against heavily armed gangsters. We explore pivotal historical events, including the capture of Alvin Karpis, Hoover’s drive to portray himself as a hands-on lawman, and notorious shootouts involving Babyface Nelson and Ma Barker.
The conversation also delves into the reality of the gangster era, revealing how criminals often had superior firepower compared to law enforcement and how the FBI eventually adapted by recruiting sharpshooters, including ex-Texas Rangers, to handle these dangerous adversaries.
Please tune in for a deep dive into the world of early FBI agents and the harrowing challenges they faced in the fight against America’s most dangerous criminals.

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Transcript
[0:00]Well, Hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there back here in the studio of gangland wire. This is retired Kansas city police intelligence unit, Sergeant Gary Jenkins with another show. We’re going back into the thirties today. You know, you leave deal with these seventies gangsters a lot and, and, uh, sixties gangsters, uh, mafia, but this is going to go back to the thirties and the days of the bank robbers, the Midwest bank robbers. I mean, they, they caught out at got a wide swath across this country and we have a book by john aller gangster hunters and here it is and you’ll you’ll find links in the show notes to where you can find that book he does a great job of telling many of the unknown stories and the known stories in great detail of the famous bank robbers dillinger and uh pretty boy floyd and and uh the ma barker gang and and machine gun Kelly and all those great nicknames. So welcome, John. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for having me.
[1:02]John, how did you get into this? Tell us a little bit about your history. I was a lawyer for many years, and then I retired from active practice to pursue a writing career or writing avocation, I would call it. And I’ve concentrated on nonfiction, American history, biography and true crime I’ve done, this is my third true crime book which I find a genre that interests me what I found out is that while all the bank robbers Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and Babyface Nelson, etc Bonnie and Clyde in particular have been written about many times over and movies made of them and everybody’s heard of them very few people have heard know anything about the um kind of anonymous fbi agents who chased and captured and in some cases killed them of course everybody knows j edgar hoover yeah um but hoover by design kept his agents anonymous because he wanted all the glory of the fbi to flow Well, to him, love. I have read about that. I understand that Melvin Purvis actually was almost forced out of the service because J. Edgar Hoover was so jealous that he was getting all those headlines up in Chicago.
[2:31]Yeah, Melvin Purvis is probably the only FBI agent, field agent from that era who people might recognize the name. Of course, he’s been played in a number of movies, most recently in the Johnny Depp movie, Public Enemies. Johnny Depp played Dillinger and Christian Bale played Melvin Purvis, although it wasn’t a very historically accurate portrayal. Well, I mean, Christian Bale is this kind of handsome, big guy. And Melvin Purvis was this little, thin, wispy guy, 5’7″, 130 pounds.
[3:11]So other than Purvis, probably most of the guys, FBI guys in my book, other than Purvis and Hoover, the general public has never heard of. And so that attracted me to telling their story. And what I did is I tracked down a bunch of living relatives of these FBI agents, children, grandchildren, nephews, grandnephews, et cetera. And surprisingly, a surprising number were still living. So I would interview them and, you know, they had family stories and in some cases, photos of guys that had never been published before. And there’s a number of those in the book. And then I used a lot of raw FBI files to do the research because there are voluminous FBI files on all these cases.
[4:08]And it takes a long time to sift through them. They’re very lengthy reports, single-spaced, 20 pages or more. So I had to read all those. But that’s how I went about it. Yeah, I see. Here’s one. Johnny Madala, what do you call a briefcase agent? A briefcase agent, that’s like an agent that just has a briefcase, not a gun particularly. I know those early guys, they didn’t carry guns.
[4:38]That’s kind of a theme of the book is a lot of these early FBI agents entered the bureau, you know, thinking that they were going to have desk jobs. It was kind of a white collar job. You know, they would maybe investigate antitrust violations and bank fraud and that kind of thing. Perceived to be sort of a cushy job which paid relatively well during the depression and a lot of these guys were lawyers and they couldn’t really get jobs as lawyers so they went into government service and and then all of a sudden this war on crime broke out in 1933 these guys were pressed into service and you know they instead of a briefcase now they had a tommy gun in their hands, which they had never shot. A lot of these guys had never fired a weapon in their life and never been fired at by anyone. Now, some were, particularly the guys from the South, were a little more gun sappy than the Southwest. But the younger guys, they did not sign up for For this tour of duty. But yet they got thrown into it. And they were fairly inexperienced. In the beginning. And they didn’t have a lot of technological.
[5:59]Wherewithal. They didn’t have two-way radios. They didn’t have cell phones. Obviously. They didn’t have night vision goggles. It was just their own wits. And bravado. That they had to develop. To take on these gangsters. Who were much more heavily armed, had faster cars.
[6:22]Elaborately planned getaways, which were much better planned than the FBI raids. So all of the deck was stacked in favor of the gangsters in the beginning. Yeah, really. Tell me something. Did you stumble across this story? I seem to remember this, that at least one of these guys, I think it was…
[6:44]Who was arrested down in New Orleans? Was that- Alvin Karpis. Alvin Karpis. Did J. Edgar Hoover tell them to wait until he got there so he could be part of the arrest team or something? There’s some story I remember about that. Yes, yes. He had been embarrassed in Congress because he testified at a hearing. He was seeking more money for the FBI. And one of the senators who didn’t like the FBI, there were a lot of people who were who thought that the FBI was kind of this national police force and they didn’t like that. And so anyway, so this Senator was grilling Hoover and he asked him, you know, have you ever personally made an arrest? And Hoover had to admit, he had to admit, no, I mean, Hoover was a desk man, his entire life. He spent his 24 seven at his desk in Washington.
[7:38]And he was embarrassed by that. And so he came out of the meeting and he told his people, because he knew they were closing in on alvin karpis yeah um and i think he knew at some point that that karpis was going to be arrested in new orleans and he said i want to be there for that, so he flew to new orleans and um he was in on the arrest he didn’t personally make the arrest although he kind of um allowed the press to portray him as the guy who arrested um so it was it was sort of at by that time alan karpus was public enemy number one that was a term they used back then for the the most wanted and all the other public enemies number one had been killed or i guess killed uh before that karpus was the last one standing and so hoover was, christened Public Hero No. 1. So Public Hero No. 1 arrested Public Enemy No. 1. That was kind of the legend.
[8:43]They did not expect to take Karpis alive because every other… Public enemy number one, Dillinger, baby face Nelson, pretty boy Floyd had, you know, died in a shootout. They figured Karpis would be the same. So when they arrested him almost by accident, they didn’t. He came out of his hotel or his rooming house. Nobody had any handcuffs. They hadn’t brought any handcuffs along because they didn’t expect to take him alive. And so one of the agents, a guy named Buck Buchanan, took off his necktie and handed it to one of the other agents. And they used the necktie to tie Karpis’ hands. And Hoover actually asked the agent to send him that necktie for his exhibit room in Washington, which he did, although it’s been lost to history over the years. It disappeared. But anyway, that was a little tidbit of the Karpis arrest.
[9:47]Interesting. Now you talk about how they didn’t even have as good of plans. The story of the Battle of Little Bohemia, I’ve done that not too long ago, so we don’t need to really belabor it. But that was such a good example of they just jumped in their cars and headed north and they got in a plane and headed north and got up there and then borrowed another guy’s car and drove out to that lodge and then shot up all the wrong people at the start. Right, right. I mean, there was no plan.
[10:20]Well, the problem was that they got there that night. You’ve probably covered this but i’ll just briefly touch on it they got there that night and they knew that dillinger and his gang were holed up in the little bohemia hotel lodge yeah and um they were planning to raid it the next morning but then they got word filtered out to him through a an informant that no dillinger had changed his plans and he was leaving that night So they either had to strike then or miss him. So they decided to go ahead with the thing and it was too dark. And so there was confusion in the darkness and they ended up killing an innocent civilian by accident. And one of the agents got killed by baby face Nelson. And it was a fiasco. And after that, a lot of people thought that Hoover would lose, lose his job.
[11:22]And per Melvin Purvis, um, who was in charge of the operation, they thought that he would lose and should lose his job. It had been botched so badly. So that was a very tenuous time for the FBI. And, um, uh, Instead, what happened, there was a public uproar and Congress passed some laws to strengthen the FBI and made things illegal that had not been illegal before, such as killing a federal officer, which was not a federal crime back then.
[11:54]They stumbled and bumbled around quite a bit in those early days. Yeah. One thing I will say, they extracted a price. They made Babyface Nelson pay for killing that agent up there. Oh, yes. There’s a little bohemian out there, and that’s a story in itself. Now, you cover that from the FBI’s angle particularly.
[12:14]Can you tell us about that, killing the baby-faced Nelson? That was in Barrington, Illinois, which is a little south of, a couple hours south of a resort in Wisconsin named Lake Como. A couple of agents were staking out a hotel in Lake Como where they had been where they were told Babyface Nelson was going to show up anytime.
[12:39]And he did show up. They didn’t recognize him at first. And they thought about taking a shot at him. They decided not to because they weren’t really sure that it was him. But anyway, he got away from the hotel. They did get his license plate number and he was with another one of his gang members and with his wife, Helen Gillis. And so the word got back to Chicago, the Chicago office, that they had spotted Baby Phelous Nelson and had his license plate number. So a couple agents went out in a car searching for him and the license plate number. They did see the car. They started to follow him. He turned around, started following them. And um and then another car um came by and there was a gun battle and one two of the fbi agents were killed by baby face nelson in that gun battle in barrington illinois but baby face nelson was also killed or mortally wounded in the same same battle so um he he holds the the distinction baby face nelson of having killed more fbi agents than any other person in history it’s three one at liberal bohemia and two in this battle at uh great barrington he was a.
[14:07]Basically a psychopath i mean he was a cold-blooded killer and he hated cops yeah you know i i think back to those times and these guys all uh the criminals were carrying uh they were raiding these uh armories these uh national armed armies and they were getting these bars and that you buy these colt monitor uh sub thompson submachines gun basically although Colt made their own version of it, you could buy them at a drug store. I mean, at a hardware store. Guns were really available to these guys, and the FBI had just started carrying guns. Yes, yes. The BAR was the favorite of Clyde Barrow. He preferred it to the Thompson submachine gun because a BAR could cut through an armored car.
[15:03]It was just much more powerful. And Clyde, he cut his down. It was a big, the BAR is a Browning automatic rifle. It’s a big thing. Clyde sawed his off so that he could hold it on his shoulder by a strap. And then the Colt Monitor, which was kind of also a shortened version of the BAR, became the first FBI fighting rifle. A couple of years later, Hoover wasn’t interested in it at first, and then he saw what it could accomplish, so he bought a bunch of them. There’s only about 120 ever manufactured, and if you can find one today, they’re worth over $100,000. Wow, that’s a collector’s item. Wow. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway.
[15:53]Interesting yeah the gun the gun that’s a whole story in itself i just i was browsing around i found a whole website that’s just dedicated to the guns of these 30s gangsters and and yeah you know the the colt the 1911 colt 45 and and some of the different guns that that they used back then they were popular with them and believe me the local cops especially were totally outgunned by these guys oh yeah i mean they had they had they had old six shooters you know yeah and um uh baby face nelson had what they called a baby machine gun it was it was basically a um uh a pistol which fired automatic and he got it custom made by a gun dealer down in texas who serviced a lot of these um uh criminals and uh that’s the gun he used to kill the the uh agent at the bohemia oh really did you have a picture did you have a picture of that in your book yes yes i remember i was looking over those pictures yeah i’ll make sure i get that picture up boy that’s interesting, yeah i have a picture of the colt monitor which is a version of the bar and the thompson machine submachine gun and the and the baby machine gun uh that babyface nelson favored.
[17:14]As well as pictures of some of the getaway cars. The gangsters had these pretty fast getaway cars. There was one called the Essex Terraplane, which Dillinger liked. And Clyde Barrow had a big Ford V8, powerful Ford V8. Now, I say these were big, powerful. In fact, the gangster cars back then, while they were faster than the law enforcement cars, they’d be blown off the road by a Toyota family, Toyota Corolla today, which could go 120 probably. Probably these gangster cars really couldn’t go more than 80. And if you were on the roads back then, the dirt roads, you know, you were risking being run off, being run off the road if you went more than 45 or 50. So they looked very pretty and they still do the antiques, but they really weren’t that vast other than relative to the law enforcement vehicles.
[18:20]You know you know another famous story uh why don’t we talk about this a little bit and it’s partly because at least when i was young there was a movie an old movie that played about the ma barker gang and there’s this famous film clip where she’s like got this machine gun she’s screaming out the wind and she’s fighting tooth and nail and shooting with back and forth these fbi agents which these guys all battled with the agents nobody hardly anybody gave up only machine Sheen Gun Kelly, as far as I can tell, gave up. I don’t think anybody else gave up. I think that’s right. Karpis gave up, but that’s only because he was surrounded.
[18:59]But Ma Barker, she’s an interesting case because Hoover manufactured this myth about her that she was the criminal mastermind of the Barker-Karpis gang. She had four sons. They were all criminals. two of them uh doc barker and fred barker were the main barker gang uh guys and they teamed up with alvin karpus um to form the barker karpus gang but hoover said she was a diabolical you know um funeral mastermind that wasn’t true another gangster said that she couldn’t plan a breakfast um uh she was basically this woman from the ozarks uh who listened to hillbilly music and uh i guess you call it hill country music is the more euphemistic term but um um and she liked to play bingo and listen to amos and andy on the radio which is a popular old show um but.
[20:01]She did know that her sons were criminals, and she helped them out. She helped them get parole, and she willingly accepted their money to buy fur coats and the like and jewelry. So, but anyway, she finally gets holed up, H-O-L-E-D, holed up in this house with her son, Fred, in Florida, near Ocala, Florida. And the FBI tracked her down there, tracked her and her son. Uh son they surrounded the place and and ordered her to come out and fred barker her son you know with their hands up um they didn’t come out ordered them again they still didn’t come out and then all of a sudden these machine gun fires started coming out of an upper window at the FBI agents. And it turned out that machine gun fire and rifle fire started coming from multiple windows in this house. And so it couldn’t have all been coming from one person because it was simultaneous shooting.
[21:22]And I believe, and I think most historians agree, agree that she was doing some of the shooting with a machine gun. Now, I don’t think she was particularly adept with a machine gun. I’m not sure she’d ever fired one before, but she decided she was going to go down with her son in a blaze of glory. And there’s a photo that was taken by an FBI agent after she was killed and then her son was killed in an upstairs bedroom. And it shows Shows her with a machine gun at her side, next to her hands. And I have that photo in the book as well. So it’s not been seen. It’s a fairly rare photograph. I got it from the son of one of the FBI agents. So she wasn’t a criminal mastermind, but she wasn’t this innocent old lady either. He was somewhere in between.
[22:24]And, um, I, you know, I think you have to go back and realize that these guys, most of these guys had been, um, were murderers and they knew that if they got caught and put on trial back then, the death penalty was pretty automatic for murder. And, um, so they had nothing to lose. They were gonna, they were not gonna be taken alive if they could help it. So, um, the, the majority of them, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie, obviously, uh, John Dillinger, uh.
[23:00]Babyface nelson um and pretty boy floyd were all killed in action and um all of them had been killers and you know they were not they were not going back to jail and they were not going to face the electric chair interesting well these fbi agents says uh did they did the fbi start start recruiting some a different type of person i’ve solved one thing where it looked like that they at least tried to select some ex-policemen some guys that were real street savvy compared to those yes they did that they had they did particularly after the fiasco at little bohemia they brought in some um guys who had been either texas rangers or cops in you know oklahoma or or texas who were good with guns and um they weren’t intellectuals they were not you know law school trained or accountants yeah uh so but but you know their forte was shooting and so they brought some of these guys in um and in fact it was one of them a guy named charles winstead uh who was the man who killed who shot john dillinger in chicago outside the biograph theater.
[24:20]Um and a couple other ones um uh doc white he was a he was an ex uh texas ranger if you if you’re familiar if you saw the movie the osage about the osage murder uh murders in um.
[24:39]Uh oklahoma killers killers of the killers of the flower moon the martin scorsese movie one of the one the lead uh fbi guy in that movie was a guy named tom white who was an ex texas ranger he’s played by actor jesse pleemans in the movie his younger brother was doc white and doc white was in on some of the later gunfights including the one that uh in which mama barker died um so yes so they brought in some of those guys and they certainly helped um in the final stages of the capture and kill killing of the most vicious of the criminals interesting they must have flown them around the country whenever they thought they were getting some of the the bad guys surrounded or pinned down they must have flown these special guys in like bring in the SWAT team or the HHR, I think they call it now. Yeah. Yeah.
[25:40]Yeah. Yeah. But that’s another thing. Back then, there were bulletproof vests, which the agents sometimes wore, but as often or not, they decided, you know, they were too bulky. And so they wouldn’t even wear them into action. And at least a couple of the guys who were killed probably would have survived if they’d had their bulletproof vests on, but they just didn’t use them. Now, the criminals used them when they could.
[26:10]And John Dillinger was saved once when a Chicago cop shot him. Not a Chicago, an East Chicago, East Chicago, Indiana cop during a bank robbery.
[26:23]Shot Dillinger at point blank range, but it bounced off his bulletproof vest. And, um, so Dillinger lived another several months until he was gunned down, um, by, Without a bulletproof vest outside the movie theater in Chicago. Yeah. I don’t usually wear your, uh, boat proof vest out on a date, I guess.
[26:51]Yeah. I never did. I remember when we first got them, uh, and everybody got it, they were a pain. They were hot in the summer. They were bulky. They were hot. And these were a lot lighter and smaller than the, those ones back in the thirties. But yes a lot of guys didn’t wear them for a long time once you start wearing them you’d go into work at night one night i remember going in and i forgot it at home i usually would carry it in because it was real hot i’d carry it in then put it on just before i went out and well i just felt naked all night long it was uh yeah yeah feeling the comfort with that bulletproof vest yeah and And of course they didn’t, it didn’t protect your face. So, but yeah, at least you had a chance. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you’re facing one of those Bars and that, uh, 30 odd six round with, with, with military ammo, with, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, full jacketed, uh, ammo would just go right, cut right through like a knife through butter, man. Yeah. It would not help at all. Yep. Yep.
[27:57]Um anyway so that was ma barker and uh she uh um i think shelly winters played i think you’re right i think you’re right iconic image of her battling it out with agents yeah yeah so it’s you know it’s it there’s a kernel of truth in in that yeah movies in which she she did go down firing a machine gun. Now, you know, she didn’t, none of the FBI agents were killed or were even hit in that final battle in Florida. Anyway, so that’s, that’s her. So your book, you deal a lot with the FBI agents. Is there anything else you want to tell us about the FBI agents that, you know, were especially tasked to go after these Midwest bank robbers? Because they were bad. They were the baddest of the bad at that point in time.
[28:50]Yeah. Um, I think, I think over time, even the young lawyers and accountants got better at what they did. You know, they, after a while they sort of got the raids down, they got a protocol, they knew how to do it. And I think what they learned over time was that the only way you were going to get these guys was to outnumber them greatly. I mean, they had 20 law enforcement, FBI and police surrounding the Biograph Theater that Dillinger was killed in. There were at least six or seven guys who gunned down Pretty Boy Floyd in a field in Ohio and, Um, a body and Clyde were ambushed by a whole posse. So what they, what they realize is that in a one-on-one or two-on-two battle, they were going to have the short end of the stick versus the criminals who were just better shots and more experienced and ruthless.
[30:04]Um, you know, that sometimes the FBI guys would, would, would hold their fire in one One case because one of the gun malls, Babyface Nelson’s wife was in the way, so they didn’t shoot. And the criminals, they had no such inhibitions.
[30:25]I should mention that a lot of the book talks about the so-called gun malls. And some of them were pretty interesting. You know, the not just Bonnie Parker, but, you know, Dillinger’s girls and Babyface Nelson’s wife and Pretty Boy Floyd’s girls. And some of them were prostitutes. Some of them were just looking for a good time, you know, kind of a joyride kind of thing. Remember, this was the Depression and it was a pretty bleak time. Time, some of these women, you know, they might be a waitress in a little soup kitchen or diner and, uh, they didn’t make any money. And, and so this guy would come along and he’d flash his jewels and he’d flash his wad of money. And, and they said, Hey, you know, that sounds like a pretty good gig just, you know, um, and, and they would, they would basically scout ahead. They would rent the apartments that were the hideouts they would cook the meals you know and none of them ended up.
[31:38]Killed um i don’t believe other than bonnie parker and she was more than a just a sidekick she was actually uh um you know she she actually shot at people so um that’s i talk about that in the but is this it’s kind of a debate through history did bonnie parker actually ever shoot at a law enforcement agent um and the answer is the answer is yes um at least on a couple on that that’s killing the two state troopers that were on motorcycles on i believe it’s dove road down yeah uh just outside of dallas north of fort worth i believe they had a witness that saw her walk up to one of those troopers that was down and and fire a gun into him is that true yeah that good that’s that’s sort of a disputed um story um but what’s not disputed at least from From the FBI’s files and from another, one of the cops who was kidnapped, kidnapped and taken across state lines and finally let out, is that she did pull a gun a couple times on law enforcement agents.
[32:53]And interesting, Bonnie and Clyde were not… They were not nearly the big time bank robbers that these other guys, they were, you know, they knocked over gas stations and little grocery stores, you know, for twenty five dollars or forty dollars. But they attained a level of fame and infamy. A lot of it due to those photos that were found. They found some film in one of the places that they had vacated. And of course, they published those throughout the country in the newspapers. That was the famous one with Bonnie smoking a cigar and guns and holding guns against each other. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there was an interesting story that Bonnie, um, uh, when she, when they let go one of their hostages, a cop, um, uh, he said, you know, the newsmen are going to want to interview. Um, what should I tell him? and you know she could have said tell him i didn’t kill that guy back there tell him i didn’t pull a gun did it no what she said tell him i don’t smoke cigars.
[34:05]She was she was outraged by that because it was just a playful she didn’t actually smoke she did smoke cigarettes but she didn’t yeah she just posed with a cigar and she was you know enraged that she was viewed as a cigar smoker our egos are fragile egos uh yes yes yeah they were kind of the uh the john gottys of uh of the bank robbers they got all the publicity the rest of the guys didn’t get much and dylan dillinger was not averse to publicity if you remember those pictures he posed for there at the uh jail at crown point jail with the the lady sheriff there and everything. He was not opposed to publicity.
[34:48]Oh, yeah, he had his arm around the prosecutor and vice versa. And he was joking with the reporters. And when Hoover saw that photograph, he went ballistic. He thought it was completely inappropriate that these two, that this prosecutor and sheriff, local sheriff, were, you know, chumming around with a killer like John Dillinger. Um uh you know interestingly with both with bonnie and clyde and with john dillinger originally hoover didn’t was not interested in getting involved in chasing those guys he wanted to leave it to the locals but what happened is dillinger’s fame especially after he broke out of that jail with a allegedly with a wooden gun um and bonnie and clyde after they They had killed a number of law enforcement officers there that they became so famous and infamous that Hoover decided, well, if his little agency, which was not that well known and not, and kind of lightly regarded time, if they were going to be perceived as a top notch criminal fighting unit, they had to get involved in going after John Dillinger and, and, and Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah. And the FBI was actually involved heavily in the search for Bonnie and Clyde. They were not there at the final ambush because the guy was.
[36:18]Off on off on some other case and there’s some suspicion that that hoover sent him on a wild goose chase so that he couldn’t reap the glory of of the ambush of bonnie because he he was having an affair with the wife with the wife of the district attorney in louisiana and that got back to hoover and hoover thought you know he was going to fire this guy and so he didn’t want to get the glory of Bonnie and Clyde. So Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger, got all the publicity, even though the FBI was intimately involved in helping set up that ambush.
[37:01]Interesting. There’s a lot of little stories like that in this book, guys. I’ll tell you what, you need to get this. Gangster Hunter, John Aller, right? Did I get that right? Aller? Yes, yes. All right, John Aller, Gangster Hunter. John, I really appreciate you coming on and telling us these stories and telling guys what’s in this book. And I’ve been looking through it. It’s great. We’ll use some of those pictures. And you guys, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’ll see some of the pictures. They’re interesting pictures that he’s got in his book. It’s almost worth it just for some of the photos and see like that baby machine gun. I’d never heard of that or seen that before. And these are pictures that you got from relatives of the FBI agents, so they’ve never really seen the light of day before, correct? Correct. John, I really appreciate you coming on the show, and I really appreciate you writing this book. It’s going to be a real addition to anybody’s true crime library, and certainly to mine. That’s one advantage of doing this podcast is you can see the books in the background, and that’s just a tenth of what I got. And I give a bunch of them away every once in a while to a friend of mine. So I get a lot of books doing this and they’re great books. And this is a particularly good one on John. You got any last words of wisdom for us? No, I think, I think, um.
[38:20]I hope that some of these guys get their final, finally get their due in recognition. You know, they’re not going to become household names, but I think they’re deserving of being remembered by history for really being, you know, brave for doing this stuff when they were not really trained or qualified to do it. Yeah, really. But they did it, but they did the job nonetheless.
[38:47]Yeah, yeah. And they got their men. men in the end they got their men you know when uh one last story by me i used to work with the fbi a lot when i was in intelligence they’d always send their guys their their intelligence their mafia investigators over to work with us to get a feel for the city and what was going on you know who was who and where things were so we’d always take them down to union station and show them the bullet holes in the wall and say this is where the first fbi agent got killed so remember that’s true That’s true. That’s true. And that’s a big episode in my book, too. I know you’ve covered it in another episode of your podcast, but there’s a historical debate, which I don’t think is much of a debate anymore, as to who were the criminals at Union Station in Kansas City. And it’s positive that Vern Miller was one of them there’s some question over who the others were but I think it’s pretty clear that Babyface Nelson Pretty Boy Floyd was there and his sidekick Adam Ricchetti they convicted Adam Ricchetti on pretty slim evidence but.
[40:10]You know, they wanted heads after that Union Station massacre. Somebody wanted a head. Somebody had to pay. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think Ricchetti was he was not guilty of the crime that he was convicted of and executed for. I do believe he was there, whether he fired any shots or whether he was just as a lookout or getaway car driver or or some people say he was too drunk to take the drunk sober enough. But I think where, where Floyd was, Richetti was, Richetti was always at Floyd’s side. And I can’t, I can’t believe Floyd would have gone there without Richetti.
[40:52]No. And, and Richetti’s fingerprints were on a beer bottle at Floyd’s house. Floyd been staying in. So those little clues, forensic clues like that would leave me believe that, that that’s, as you said, that’s exactly. And and ricchetti had a he had no alibi you know they asked him afterwards uh you know where did you go after that he couldn’t remember um he couldn’t remember where he went and why it was just it was it was consciousness of guilt anyway all right um okay john aller gangster hunters great book john i really appreciate you coming on the show okay thank you enjoyed it well guys You know, I like to ride motorcycles, so don’t forget, watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website.
[41:43]And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, go to Anthony Ruggiano’s website or go and find his hotline number or find him down in Florida.
[41:53]And if you have a problem with gambling, that’s that way in 800 bets off. So that’s all the, uh, public service announcements I have, uh, you know, don’t forget to like and subscribe. And check this book out uh gangster hunters and don’t forget to give me a review if you think about it if you’re on apple podcast and i’ve got some stuff for sale and we take donations on my website gangland wire and i got a couple movies out there brothers against brothers uh savella sparrow war and gangland wire on amazon you can rent them for a dollar 99 and and tell your your friends about us and keep coming back and listens every week because we get a lot of good stories on here so thanks guys.

 

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with renowned true crime author T. J. English for an insightful conversation on organized crime, focusing on English’s latest book, The Last Kilo. English, well-known for his work on the Irish mob and the Cuban drug trade, dives into the complex world of cocaine trafficking in the 1980s, examining the rise of Cuban and Mexican cartels and the historical forces that shaped the cocaine industry.

T. J. English begins by sharing his journey into crime journalism, explaining his unique perspective on crime writing as a means to explore broader social themes, from the pursuit of the American Dream to the stories of marginalized communities in America. He explains how organized crime can act as a lens for understanding cultural assimilation and survival strategies across generations, pointing out that many immigrant communities, such as the Irish and Italians, were historically pushed toward illegal activities as a means of survival.

The discussion then turns to the Cuban drug trade in America, especially during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. English highlights key players like Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta, who used political connections and resources to pioneer cocaine distribution networks. The conversation explores how Los Muchachos, a Cuban drug trafficking group, established a stronghold in the U.S. by strategically lowering prices and expanding cocaine’s reach, setting the stage for explosive demand.

Throughout the episode, English contrasts Los Muchachos’ tactics with those of other criminal organizations, particularly noting their reliance on loyalty and community ties over violence. This approach, forged through the shared experiences of exile, helped them maintain unity and discipline in their operations.

Jenkins and English also discuss the evolution of the cocaine market, from its glamorous early days to the more violent era marked by the rise of crack cocaine in the late 1980s, which reshaped public perceptions and spurred aggressive law enforcement responses. T. J. English explains how these shifts pressured Los Muchachos to adapt, prompting alliances with Mexican cartels to continue thriving in an ever-changing landscape.

Tune in to this episode for an in-depth look at the history, culture, and operations behind the Cuban drug trade, and how organized crime continues to reflect the broader social dynamics at play in America.
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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. It’s good to be back here

[0:02] in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective, a later sergeant. Now, I’ve got this podcast going, Gangland Wire, and we have another guy that I was just talking to TJ a little bit. I picked up a book called The West years ago before I even thought about doing a podcast or any of this entertainment business, and I was entranced by that book, The Westies. It’s about the Irish mob in Manhattan in New York City. Now they ended up working with the Gambinos and that’s a page turner. He’s got a new one out here that I’ve been going through it. I just got it the other day and it is a page turner too. So it’s TJ English. Welcome, TJ. My pleasure. Great to be here. All right. So you are the man when it comes to reporting on the mob. There’s a few of you guys. You know, Nicholas Pelleggi has got Las Vegas sewed up and Anthony DiStefano, he’s got New York sewed up. But I tell you what, when it comes to Cuba, especially with your trilogy, your Cuban trilogy, you’ve got that sewed up. You are the man in that. And you’re the man as far as the Irish mob is concerned to me. So I really am excited about doing this interview with you and meeting you. You want, you know, TJ, you won more book awards and been on the New York Times bestseller list. that I can’t even count them all. I don’t know how many there are.

[1:29] You know, let’s talk just a little bit about, I guess, where you came from, how you got into this. How did you get into this true crime writing and what is it that attracts you?

[1:40] Well, you know, I started as a journalist, and for me as a journalist, crime was kind of the ultimate calling. It was what requires the greatest skills from a journalist. It’s a subject that nobody wants you to write about, especially the people who are engaged in criminal activity in particular.

[2:03] And it would seem to be a subject that’s impossible to get at. And that, of course, was the challenge, is the challenge that most any journalist should find alluring on one level or another. I always did. And it requires entering into worlds that I don’t know personally. I’m not a criminal. I’ve never lived a criminal life. I’ve never made what I would call a poor life choice to choose crime as a way of life. I’ve never done that. But I’m fascinated by it, and I’m fascinated to hear from people in that world about why they made those choices. So I started to follow that path early in my journalism career. I guess what led me to the writing of the books, and if I do have a distinctive quality as a crime writer, it’s my desire to take criminal stories and place them in a historical and cultural context that actually elevates the stories, makes them about something more than just the nuts and bolts of that particular story. And this is why I’ve chosen ethnic stories of the Irish and Cubans. I wrote a book about a Vietnamese gang. I’ve written about.

[3:23] Organized crime in America from many different ethnic points of view. And to me, it’s so fascinating because ultimately all of these stories are about one thing, the pursuit of the American dream, the pursuit of the American dream by individual people or by groups of people, the belief that you can carve out a path for yourself in the United States. If you have to do that on the so-called wrong side of the law, then so be it. It’s an avenue of success. And so I find it to be an inexhaustible topic. Once I learned that I could write contemporary versions of this, modern stories, but I could also go back in history and write historical, books, like a book I wrote called Havana Nocturne, which was about the era of the mob in Cuba in the 1950s. I wrote a book called Paddywhack, which was a big sweeping history of the Irish-American underworld in America. Once I learned that you could do contemporary and historical versions of this subject matter, I realized that there was really no end to the possibilities of examining this subject from all these different perspectives.

[4:42] Yeah interesting i’m glad the way you your view of this genre if you will because i like i always if i do a talk and it talks are in kansas city about the mafia in kansas city and of course it’s all italian last names and i always remind people that you know when italians first got here like any immigrant when they first get to this country they’re squeezed out they are not welcomed into to the economy and the jobs, you know, but when the Irish got here, the English didn’t really want them here, you know, Irish, no Irish need apply and that kind of thing. When the Italians got here, you know, they were darker, they spoke another language and the Irish had all the good jobs sewed up, you know, all the government, the police and the fireman’s jobs and the decent businesses. And so they kept the Italians forced, really squeezed out. And, you know, when they, when people come up from south of the border today, people complain about that, but you You’ve got these bright young guys that are looking to live the American dream. And they’re, you know, because of language barriers, many times they not, they’re not accepted in and it’s hard for them to get a foothold. So you’re a bright guy.

[5:52] You’re bold and you can’t get a foothold anywhere else, you can get a foothold in crime. So I really like hearing that somebody’s taking that into consideration. It’s much more than that. Oh, no, listen, it’s part of the American process. It’s part of the American process of assimilation. And it is as American as apple pie.

[6:13] Virtually every ethnic group in the United States has gone through some version of this. We think of traditional organized crime as Italian and Irish and Jewish, perhaps, simply because those were the ethnic groups that controlled the criminal underworld at the time of prohibition in the 1920s, the legal boost, which was the biggest criminal racket to ever take place in the United States, in America, up to narcotics. And so now Now it’s Cubans and Colombians and Mexicans involved in that criminal business. But it’s the same process. It’s eerie in its similarities. It’s led me to the conclusion that there’s something very American about it, that it is part of the American process. And so people oftentimes will ask me, don’t you get tired of writing about organized crime? And that’s an easy answer. No, because organized crime to me is an inexhaustible topic. It can be, it’s like a prism you hold up to the light and you can look at it from many different angles. There’s so many different angles. I feel that I’m just writing about American culture and American society from a particular point of view, from the point of view of the gutter, perhaps.

[7:32] But to me, it’s as relevant and a lot more interesting than writing about sports or politics or entertainment. Yeah.

[7:41] You know, and speaking of politics now, this most recent book and your last one, The Corporation, all revolves around the political problems between the United States and Cuba and Castro. And you really bring that into this last trilogy. You know, you start with the mob in Cuba and then the communists take over. Castro takes over and people, refugees from Castro, then come in, in your book, the corporation, you deal with that. And that was Bolida and gambling and some narcotics. But now you get into the big money. It’s just like prohibition, just like alcohol. Cocaine became the way for somebody to really make it big. You’re retelling the story, the real story behind the movie Scarface. It seems to me like in this last kilo. So this third-year trilogy about organized crime along our southern borders, and it includes Mexicans, too, I noticed in this last Kilo episode.

[8:43] And it’s fascinating. It’s really fascinating. You know, I noticed you use a lot of the usual sources, you know, cops and police reports and reporters and newspaper articles and all that. But you also were able to talk to our hero of this story, Willie Falcone. And I believe it was Sal, all of a sudden I’ve lost his last name. Sal Magluta.

[9:06] Yeah, did you talk to him too? No, he’s buried away in prison. Okay, but you talked to Willie Falcone and really got how that business worked. Yes, well, not only that, Willie Falcone led me to, the organization was called Los Muchachos, and they basically invented this distribution system of cocaine in the United States, starting in the late 70s and throughout the 80s. And Willie Falcone and Salma Gluta were the leaders of that organization. Willie led me to a lot of others within the organization who had done long prison sentences 12, 15, 20 years. In Willie’s case, it was 27 years behind bars. So most of these men had paid their dues to society and come out on the other side.

[10:00] And because Willie gave me his seal of approval, they were willing to talk to me. You know, I try to do this with all the books that I write, and I get some criticism for this from some people who don’t like it or don’t understand it, and that is, look, I, We can go out and talk to cops and people in law enforcement. And I do that. And I tell their story within the story of the criminal organization. But to me, as a writer and a journalist and an author, the more valuable thing is to try to get the point of view that we don’t know and we don’t hear from very often. And that’s the people who lived it on the criminal side.

[10:41] And so I try to find them and talk to them. I get accused sometimes of glorifying or being overly empathetic and perhaps getting played by the gangsters as sources. I don’t get played. I verify everything I receive. I don’t sit down with a Willie Falcone and interview him and then just put it right down on the page unexamined. I do my due diligence, but I treat criminals as human beings. I start from the basic fact that we’re all human beings. Clearly, they made choices that were misguided choices. In some cases in the criminal world, yes, you find sociopaths and psychopaths, but you also find people like Willie Falcone, who I talked to many, many people about Willie Falcone, and not one person had a bad word to say about Willie Falcone.

[11:35] He had a code. He was a decent human being. He just happened to apply it to this field of endeavor that was criminal activity and was against the law and he paid dearly for it in the end, but a fascinating guy, an interesting guy, and I was lucky that he, he felt that he could trust me and talk to me and lead me to other sources who helped me flesh out this incredible story.

[12:02] You know, and Willie Falcone was the right guy in the right time and in the right place to, and he had some forethought and some, he was prescient, if you will, about the future because cocaine at that point in time, when he first got going was, it was like this little recreational drug that everybody liked. And the movie stars could get it. Just a few people could get it, and he saw that opportunity, and he leaped onto it, it appears to me. Remember, what did he talk about getting started in this business before it was so widespread? He was an early, early adopter.

[12:43] Well, he stumbled into it, really. I mean, we got to get into this. It has to do with the politics of the Cuban Revolution and the desire of certain factions within the United States, the CIA in particular, who were part and parcel involved with Cuban exiles in an effort to eliminate Fidel Castro and take back Cuba. And so Willie Falcone comes over as a 19 or 20-year-old kid. I mean, he was 11 when he first came over, but by the time he’s 18 and 19, he’s working construction, And because of his family history of having been kicked out of Cuba, basically by the Castro government, he’s devoting himself to the anti-Castro movement. So he’s showing up at rallies and all the things that young male Cuban exiles would have done in South Florida during this period of the 1960s, we’re talking about. And some leaders of that movement came to Willy Falcone because they recognized his dedication.

[13:47] He was showing up at all the meetings. He and a number of his friends that were also around his age. And some of the older members of that movement came to him and said, hey, would you be willing to help us with a certain operation? Well, that operation was to smuggle weapons to the Contras in Central America, in Nicaragua, because it was believed that, well, if we can’t kill Fidel Castro, because CIA and, And Cuban exiles had been trying to kill Castro for years. That’s all come out in the wash. That’s not conspiracy theory stuff. That’s finally been, those records were released by the CIA that there was a program called Operation Mongoose where they were attempting to assassinate Fidel. And they were failing on a pretty regular basis. And then they decided, well, if we can’t kill Fidel, we can stop the spread of Castroism. The Castro philosophy, there was a great concern in the United States that communism could spread into Central America. And so that was seen as the battlefront.

[14:57] For the war, a dirty covert war of the United States versus communism. It would take place in Central America. So the CIA was arming the Contras, a secret counter group to the Sandinistas and the revolution that was brewing in Nicaragua that had an eerie resemblance to what had taken place in Cuba. And so they come to these young kids and they say, we have a plan of selling cocaine. We can get cocaine from Central America. We can bring it into the United States through pilots who are CIA connected and therefore they won’t be searched or investigated. They can come in as part of a covert operation. We need someone to sell the cocaine. We need someone to open up a market for this thing and create a new market for cocaine. Now we’re talking about 1977.

[15:54] And as you so rightly said, by then cocaine was pretty much just an elite activity for people who had the money to buy it. The idea was to bring in enough cocaine that we could lower the price and make it accessible to people in nightclubs, working class people, to people that wouldn’t have been able to afford cocaine. And so there you have it, the beginnings of the cocaine smuggling business. I’m not the first person to write about this, of course. It has been written about. But I think Falcone gives names. He gives details about the beginnings of this process of bringing cocaine in the United States to sell it and how that was sanctioned by people within the CIA. So it’s pretty fascinating to me, and it’s history that everyone should be aware of. That is the origins of the cocaine business in the United States, all tangled up in politics.

[16:52] Really. And you bring forth the point here that they had this relationship with people who were connected to the CIA and connected to governmental agencies.

[17:03] And so then they realized that they need to corrupt more people. And I remember when the cocaine cowboys and all that kind of got going, we were hearing up here that there was so much bribery and so much graft and so much money flowing around. I mean, when you’ve got millions and millions of dollars, you hand a guy a hundred thousand dollars, you can buy a lot of goodwill. You hand a guy a million dollars and you could buy a whole small police, you know, small county police department or a small city police department. And that was going on. So that’s, you know, and really prohibition that totally corrupted most law enforcement in the United States in the 30s. And now the cocaine wars or the cocaine distribution is starting to corrupt law enforcement all over the United States, but particularly in South Florida. You tell a great story about the mutiny hotel and the sheriff that Willie was buying off down there. Could you elaborate on that mutiny hotel and the sheriff? Yeah. Well, one of the things that they did early on, Los Machachas, is they created their own landing strip in central Florida.

[18:11] And they realized that to do that, they would need to buy off local law enforcement. And it wasn’t difficult because we’re talking about access to money that people working in small town law enforcement could never have dreamed of making in their lifetime, much less all in one or two payments over the course of a month or two months or whatever. So yes, they found a sheriff in the county where they were wanting to open up this landing strip and they bought him off. Actually, he was a deputy sheriff. He was the son of the sheriff at the time, but the actual sheriff.

[18:49] In a totally unrelated crime got murdered and so the son took over as sheriff and now they had the sheriff and this guy was not only in their pocket he was gleefully in their pocket he was dedicated to showing them all the things he could do for them and went at it enthusiastically and created a possibility for them to do that but you know i have to say one of the things as the business business started to boom. It started to boom right away in the late 70s and on into the 80s, because what the Los Muchachos organization discovered was if they could bring the price down to something that was affordable, that it was an incredibly popular drug in the social scene, in nightclubs, everywhere.

[19:41] And within a few years, cocaine became so popular in the United States, It went well beyond the nightclubs. It was being used by professionals, lawyers, doctors, maybe even people in law enforcement, anyone who could get their hands on it. It was kind of the ultimate party drug. And so it boomed. Like the numbers are just phenomenal how quickly it started to grow. It was growing faster than Los Muchachos, Falcón and Los Muchachos, could bring it in to the country. They couldn’t get it fast enough. The demand was above and beyond anything they could meet. So they had to create a system that brought the cocaine to the people. Part of the system was boats, was airplanes. That landing strip in Florida was essential until it was discovered, and they shifted their operation in a different direction. But through all of this, who reminisce about those years, and they’ll tell you, you know, it was kind of ominous. You started to get the feeling that everyone was on the take because judges were on the take. People at all levels of federal and local law enforcement were on the take. It was kind of like invasion of the body snatchers. You were slowly realizing that, that everyone in the system had been corrupted to one degree or another. So it was a daunting and terrifying task, I think, for some people in law enforcement to come to terms with it.

[21:11] Yeah, I noticed you talk about, oh, let’s go back. You described the Mutiny Club or the Mutiny Hotel.

[21:18] Tell the guys about that. Right out of Miami Vice, this place. Everyone wants to hear about the Mutiny. Yeah, the Mutiny. Well, the Mutiny was a hotel and nightclub in Coconut Grove in a very beautiful setting right on the water. And it quickly became kind of the Rick’s Cafe from Casablanca of Miami at a time when Miami was probably the most fascinating criminal universe on the planet. It was at that time in the 60s, 70s, where Cuban exiles and Contras and Narcos and the celebrity world are all sort of crossing paths at the mutiny. The mutiny became the desired place to be. Of course, Willie Falcone and his crew had the best table in the house.

[22:11] And Willie would tell me stories of when they would get word that a big shipment had come in. There was a song they would play. I’m forgetting the song now. But there was a song, like a disco song, in the club. And everyone in the club knew that that song meant that a huge shipment of coke had just landed in South Florida. And the place would go crazy, and people would start coming up to Willie and asking him, hey, is it going to be a good price? Same price as last time. Is it good quality and all that? He said when he was in the mutiny at those moments, he felt like he was at the center of the universe when that would happen. And so there was law enforcement people passing through there. A lot of very well-known local detectives would come into the mutiny. And it was just kind of the cultural center of the cocaine scene as it was exploding in the late 70s and early 80s.

[23:10] Yeah. It was all fun and games for a while. And what’s happened, I noticed in your book, and that happens happened here is people started robbing the drug dealers. And these guys that robbed drug dealers, these are the baddest of the bad. And you even had cops down there were kidnapping drug dealers or their family members. Cause you get, you know, you can make that a hundred thousand or $500,000 score really easily. So that, that kind of the violence started creeping in to this business at that time.

[23:41] I asked Falcone about that a lot because one of the things I noticed about the story of Los Muchachos as I started to get into it was there was little or no violence in the telling of their story. I’m like, Willie, this makes me suspicious. What do you mean? I said, didn’t you guys use violence to discipline your own people, for instance? He’s like, no, we weren’t. We were obviously we were a criminal organization, but we weren’t a criminal organization like that. He said we were a family.

[24:13] We were all Cuban exiles. We all were guys whose parents had been forced out of Cuba. And we’d arrived here at the ages of 10, 11, 12 and had to adapt. We became a tight family. We became a tight community, probably tighter than most people, most ethnic groups are, because it was sort of us against the world. We were reinventing ourselves as Cubans in the United States.

[24:41] And, you know, in South Florida, Cubans hardly really even thought of themselves as Americans. They thought of themselves as Cubans in exile in America, quite a different thing. And so the end result of that was an organization that was airtight, airtight. Nobody talked. Nobody snitched. You couldn’t penetrate that organization. Even the law enforcement people would tell you this. You couldn’t penetrate that organization. Willie’s thing was like, no, we didn’t discipline our people with violence. If somebody did something wrong and got caught doing something wrong, we simply cut them out of our business. And the worst punishment you could do was cut somebody out of our business because we had so much control over the distribution aspect of cocaine. If we cut you out of it, you were shit out of luck, so to speak. And so that was a powerful weapon that they had. So that was fascinating. The other thing was, and Falcone explained this to me, was they were at the level of distribution. They were bringing cocaine from Colombia and later Mexico into the United States and selling it off.

[25:54] So they weren’t at the street level, which you were just talking about, the competition and rivalries at the street level. Drugs killing each other over territory and things like that.

[26:08] Falcone’s group wasn’t doing that. So they were in kind of a privileged position in the cocaine business where they were sort of not affected by all that violence. They were separate from it. They were above it and didn’t have to deal with it much. It was kind of an interesting thing because the violence eventually created a lot of problems for them because it was bringing a lot of heat to the business and of course they had the added problem of pablo escobar who is their main source and pablo escobar of course not only was willing to use violence he waged war against all of colombian society using violence and so it was a violent business. And the muchachos had to deal with an answer for the violence, even though they themselves weren’t really engaged in the violence.

[27:02] And I noticed in your book, and a lot of the guys out here have watched Narcos, the whole story of the arc of Mexican drug business going from marijuana into cocaine. And then they started, they were transporting four people out of colombian and your book i noticed gets into several of the guys felix gallardo and oh the guy that flew the airplanes the masters of the master of the skies your book gets into that so tell the guys just a little bit about how the los machachos then ended up with the the mexican cartels yes well they started with escobar and uh the medellin cartel and they also did business with.

[27:48] The Cali cartel. And they were doing this at the same time without those organizations knowing that they were double dipping, so to speak. And this was part of the secret of their success and why they were making billions. Willie will scoff if you ever bring up a name like Griselda, who’s so well known now in the business. His feeling of that is she was small potatoes compared to what they were doing. In fact, most of the names we know of people in the cocaine business who are small potatoes compared to the dollars, the money that Los Muchachos was generating. They started with the Colombians and they were doing just fine with the Colombians.

[28:29] Business was booming in the 80s. But then the DEA came in and sort of declared war on drugs, starting with Reagan and then Bush. They started investing billions and billions of dollars into the war on drugs. In the mid-80s, they had some successes and shut down the Caribbean as the primary route of smuggling. They made some inroads into those Colombians smuggling kilos through the Caribbean islands into South Florida.

[29:03] So the Los Muchachos had to improvise and come up with a whole new scheme starting about 1985-86. They created an avenue of importation through Mexico. And so they shifted and they were now doing business with all these big Mexican cartels, some of whom you just mentioned, who were the big names at the time. It was really fascinating to me because I got to go from the history of cocaine in Colombia and the Colombian cartels and what cocaine meant to that culture. And now we’re dealing with Mexico and the Mexican cartel. This is like a separate universe.

[29:43] It was like, oh, I’m in the midst of the Latino narcotics universe from Colombia, Mexico, to the Cubans in South Florida. This is when I started to refer to it as the narcosphere because we’re not talking about a specific region or country. We’re talking about a universe of crime that spans boundaries and jurisdictions. It’s its own world. This is one of the things that law enforcement had to bend their mind around, too. You couldn’t pin this all on one country or one region. You had to bend your mind around the fact that this was international economics and that it was playing out on a level that was above and beyond individual law enforcement jurisdictions. It was a challenge. So anyway, Los Muchachos were smart enough to have shifted their mode of transportation through Mexico into Southern California.

[30:45] And then they created distribution networks using semi-trucks that ventured out with the kilos of cocaine from Southern California to Chicago, to New York, to the West Coast, and back to Florida, which they always joked about how nobody would have guessed that they were smuggling cocaine in the United States into Southern California and shipping it to Miami, not the other way around. Yeah. When that took place, that was like a second golden age. That was the late 80s. That was the second golden age cocaine where, I mean, it must have been frustrating in law enforcement where you’re spending millions of dollars and busting your butt. And all of a sudden, after doing this for a decade, they’ve created whole new avenues of importation and the business is booming twice as big as it was before. And so they were pioneering an illicit trafficking business. These were all guys with very little formal education. They were exiles who came here with nothing.

[31:48] And, you know, I was fascinated by the psychology of it. What was it that was driving these guys, other than just money, but what was it that was driving the will to success? Because that’s what it was. And it was a very uniquely Cuban process connected to the humiliation that their parents’ generation went through when they were exiled from Cuba. And many of their parents were professionals, doctors and lawyers that were kicked out of the country and came to the United States and all of a sudden

[32:19] had nothing, had absolutely nothing. And so I think the children of that generation were determined that they were going to create something in America that, quote unquote, would make their parents proud by succeeding in a way in America that no one could have imagined. And that was a big part of the psychology of what was driving them, I think.

[32:42] Yeah, I got a question here. Did he talk or did you interview him much about how, I mean, how do they… How do they set up this distribution network throughout the United States? You know, they get to the border. They’re big in Florida. They just, because of their start in Florida, get to know people who were the big time, the kingpins in New York, kingpins in New Jersey, Atlanta.

[33:12] Dallas, Fort Worth, that kind of thing. They get to know them, and then they just dealt with them only. And they had their own networks that dealt with another sub-network. It’s so compartmentalized. It’s just always been amazing to me how that works. Obviously, they didn’t have a mafia structure. Right. Mafia was everywhere.

[33:33] Well, the mafia could, you could plug into other, the mafia was a fraternity and a network spread all over the United States where you could go to different cities and you could do, you could plug into the mafia family there and you could do business. to both your advantages. Maybe if you heard about some shipping scam that you could get in on that was taking place in Kansas City and you were from New Jersey, you’d come into town, you’d meet the boss of the Kansas City mob and you’d say, hey, we have this thing we want to do. We’ll give you a piece of it. Now, sometimes that didn’t always go well and there were wars over who got a piece of what. But generally speaking, it was a network of like-minded criminals that you could plug into to do business all around the United States. The Cubans did not have that. But what they did have was Cubans were everywhere. Cuban exiles were in a lot of places. You mentioned New Jersey. Union City, New Jersey has the second highest concentration of Cuban exiles anywhere in the United States. So there are a lot of Cubans in New Jersey and New York area immediately that plugged into, that they were able to utilize.

[34:51] They were all anti-Castro. They all had that like-minded philosophy about how they had been wronged by the Cuban revolution and how they wanted to make that right. And that became a bonding mechanism for them. And it was a bonding mechanism they could use to tap into Cubans all around the United States. And if they didn’t exist, Los Machachos was smart enough to send them there and establish a foothold there. Southern California, they had their eyes on Los Angeles almost from the beginning. And so they had some emissaries that they sent out there and said, you’re going to live in LA for a while. We’re going to put you up in a really nice place. We’re going to buy you a car. You’re going to try to find some local job and you’re going to learn the lay of the land and that you’re going to be our contact there. They used foresight um and and they did that in in san francisco they did that in a few different places they basically branched out and franchised the way you would franchise any sort of business that you were trying to make exist on a national level um and so they did that very successfully and everywhere they did that they had that mentality that i was talking about before of like total loyalty and dedication to each other as Cuban exiles. That was the glue that held that all together.

[36:17] So I guess they get in these bigger cities and then they would, if they didn’t already, a Cuban population there, they would know who the local kingpins were. Yes, they do that. You move into a city, you don’t know anybody. How did that work? Did he talk about that? Well, they would just simply, no, they didn’t connect with local kingpins unless they were Cuban. And they just ignored local kingpins. They came in and started up their own operation. Wow. And they undercut the local market.

[36:50] They undercut the local market by charging less, way less per kilo than that market had ever seen before. They single-handedly created a cocaine boom in Los Angeles, Southern California, that was unlike anything anyone had seen. And they did that simply by selling the kilo price way below what the market had previously established. And so they just took over by offering a superior product at a lower price and they had this airtight distribution system of going right to the source in Colombia and making a deal with Pablo Escobar directly and bringing it in themselves it was a a controlled operation from start to finish. They weren’t selling it off to other factions. They had so few customers because they were selling in huge amounts of bulk. They’d just sell it off to some guy who controlled all of, let’s say, the Bay Area. Now, that guy might take that coke and sell it off to people below him, but that wasn’t Los Muchachos’ business. They were merely importers and distributors at the highest level. Where it went from there was not their concern.

[38:13] Well, interesting. I’ll tell you what, folks, this book is a hell of a stroll through the world of cocaine in the 1980s, which as TJ said, they were selling it cheap. I know from the start of my career to the end of it, 76 and in the intelligence unit up to when I retired in 96, the price of cocaine was actually cheaper than when I first started. It was just, it was crazy. And there was more and more and more of it. And then, you know, crack hit and that was Katie barred the door. They had, I don’t know how much money. I mean, it was just, it was a crazy time. Let’s talk about that a little bit, the crack phenomenon, because it’s pretty fascinating. Let’s say late 80s, mid and late 80s when crack cocaine explodes on the scene. Up until that point the cuban narcos that were distributing cocaine i mean yes there was violence out on the street among colombian cartels and whatnot but as i mentioned los muchachos weren’t really affected by that and within their social world they were kind of seen as they were kind of put on a pedestal they were the bringers of good times i mean all all this fun everyone was having at the nightclubs and using cocaine to spice up their life and add excitement to their life.

[39:36] The guys, people like Los Muchachos were sort of seen in a benign way. But then along comes crack, which, you know, they had nothing to do with. Crack was something that was created at the street level. It was a phenomenon where someone discovered how you could boil down the components of cocaine and extract the part of cocaine that really made you high, that you could crystallize it into a rock and that you’d smoke it in a pipe and you’d get an instantaneous hit that was 10 times greater than you might get from snorting cocaine. And this was a phenomenon and it brought with it a lot of immediate and sudden and uncontrollable social decay, crackheads and violence associated with it and a kind of fevered.

[40:27] Activity that had not existed up to that point in the cocaine business. And all of a sudden, Cubans, let’s say in Florida or New Jersey, as I mentioned, started to feel like this is a dirty business. We have blood on our hands. This is not fun and games anymore. The crack era made it clear that this was not fun and games anymore. All of a sudden it turned ugly and a lot of public opinion shifted against cocaine and against people like Los Muchachos, the dealers themselves. And even within the Cuban community, the mood changed. The view changed. It wasn’t a benign activity anymore. People were dying from it. It was ugly. It was awful. It changed everything. It shifted the focus. And Falcone himself told me they were embarrassed by, they were ashamed by crack.

[41:24] And what it represented. It was not anything they had anticipated. And in fact, Falcone and Magluta started to think about getting out of the business at that point.

[41:33] They decided amongst themselves, this is ugly. It’s an ugly business. It’s going to bring, among other things, bad karma our way. Let’s get out of the business. And what they learned is by then, by late 80s, They had a multi-billion dollar business that employed thousands of people spread all over the United States. You can’t just shut that pipeline off overnight. You shut off that pipeline overnight and the consequences will be profound. There’ll be killings. There’ll be maneuvering for control to pick up the business. There’ll be a lot of ugliness. So obviously, if you’re going to get out of the business, you have to phase out. You have to phase out. And they kept telling themselves they were in the process of phasing out. But of course, they kept increasing the size of their shipments over and over again. Once you get in that deep, apparently phasing out is not an easy thing to do. But the business you’ve created makes it very difficult to do that.

[42:43] Really yeah it’s uh that’s that’s really interesting that that they saw what the cocaine was doing and and at least acknowledge it i never figured they’d ever even acknowledge it at that level but they did see it and they did at least acknowledge it uh yes they did they did with crack crack was different you know crack was.

[43:06] I think they should have also acknowledged that law enforcement was going to ramp up their efforts, and they already had been. And so that you can only last so long. I used to follow guys around that were, you know, thought they were big time criminals. I think if you only knew the forces that were arrayed against you right now, you cannot stand up against this. So they cannot stand up against it in the end. And somebody is going to start breaking. And so I have to assume, if I remember right, this David Borov was one of their, was he a former DEA agent or a CIA pilot or something? Well, he was. Somebody like that breaks, and then they just start unraveling it. Yeah. Well, they put a lot of faith in the power of corruption. They were big believers in the in the power of corruption because you know they’d started in the business in partnership with the cia yeah and and and and they knew that people like george bush former director of the cia who became president was privy to what they were doing or had been doing They knew that people at the highest levels of the U.S.

[44:25] Government had to have known how this business had started. And so they always felt like what we know makes us untouchable.

[44:35] They can’t screw with us. We know too much. And this was the philosophy of the Cuban, the fallout from the Cuban revolution and this whole thing of the intelligence community going into business with anti-Casso exile. It was a dirty, it was a dirty alliance that they formed. And it was based on covert operations, stuff that the American people were never supposed to know about. And so this was at the root of what they were doing. And I think they always just kind of believed when the shit hits the fan, we’re untouchable. You know what I mean? We were partners with the U.S. government. In fact, when the Iran-Contra scandal happened in the 80s, and they started to investigate a little bit, not much, But they started to investigate a little bit this possibility that the financing of the Contras had taken place through the selling of cocaine and that perhaps the CIA and even other factions of the U.S. Government were part and parcel of it.

[45:48] Willie said at that point he was on the lam. He’d been indicted and he was on the lam. And he was watching the Iran-Contra hearings. And he was saying, this is our story. Willie was watching the Iran-Contra hearings and he knew way more than what was being revealed at the Iran-Contra hearings. He knew the truth behind all that that hadn’t come out yet and he watched it thinking, will it ever come out? And it didn’t come out, not really. John Kerry had a report in the wake of the Iran-Contra hearings that was about as close as the U.S. Government ever got to acknowledging the sale of cocaine in exchange for money to buy arms for the conference. He did spell it out a bit, but nobody paid any attention to that report. It got very little coverage or attention. So the Cubans felt they were touched by the hand of God in a way, that they were in a privileged position. you know, and they put a lot of faith in that. We’ll, we’ll buy our, we can buy our way out of anything. And they kind of believe that about law enforcement in general.

[47:03] Well, well, in the end, uh, they didn’t, it didn’t quite make it out. They made it out, you know, reasonably intact. And one Sal’s still in the penitentiary, but Willie’s out here having a merry old time. Did he ever go back to racing power, power boats down in Florida? No he’s too old that’s a young man he’s getting a young man job you get this book you’ll you may have even seen that I’ve seen some blog pieces or videos about uh the Los Muchachos and and how they were uh Willie and his partner Sal were big time big time in the press in the public view all the time uh power in the powerboat racing down in Florida oh yeah they were they were champions I mean uh, Powerboat racing in Miami, in South Florida, is as big as football is in Kansas City and Green Bay. Really?

[47:58] It’s the biggest thing there is. And so their involvement in that kind of put them in a position in the community that was on a very exalted level. I mean, there were always rumors and chatter about them being in the cocaine business and that the powerboat steam was just a cover for the cocaine business. And that’s not entirely true. I mean, it was a cover for the cocaine business. And they did use the boats for moving cocaine from the islands, Caribbean islands, onto the coast of South Florida. But they were devoted and legitimately dedicated to powerbowl racing. And it was Willie and Sal and Willie’s brother, Gustavo, Tabby Falcone, who was also brilliant. And they were just great at it. They were young guys with unlimited resources. They weren’t just champion powerbowl racers. They owned a boat-making company. So they created boats. They created the engines that were used in the boats. It became a great source of laundering their money from the cocaine business back into the powerboat business. And it was fun and good times for about a decade there in Miami where these guys were on top of the world.

[49:22] Wow. Crazy, crazy, crazy. It’s a, it’s a heck of a story, guys. You got to get this book, the last kilo was the, and you might want to get the first two, the trilogy he has about the, about organized crime down in the longest Southern border, really all the way over to Mexico, but particularly in Florida and down into Cuba. And you can see for yourself, all those stories about funding the cocaine business was funding the Contras and all that stuff that’s been in the headlines for a long time. So I really appreciate you coming on the show, TJ.

[49:59] It’s been a pleasure for me to interview you. Hey, the pleasure is mine. Great to meet you. Keep doing what you do. It’s valuable. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good to talk to you. All right. Take care. So guys, don’t forget, like ride motorcycles. If you’ve got a motorcycle and you’re out there, watch out for cars. No, I’m just kidding. If you’re in a car out there, watch out for motorcycles. And if you have a problem with PTSD, go to the VA and get that website hotline number. And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, go to Anthony Ruggiano, go to his website, get that hotline number, get some help from him. And if you have a problem with gambling, there’s that 1-800-BETS-OFF or something like that. We’re just getting online sports gambling in Missouri. I believe the election is coming up this November. And I just about assure you that we’re going to have the app be able to bet on the apps. And, you know, that gambling, a lot of people can handle it. Some people can’t handle it. And if you can’t handle it and it’s causing your problems, why they’ve got a hotline number for that. You know, don’t forget, I have that new book out there, the Windy City Mafia.

[51:16] Chicago outfit. I have, uh, my movies, gangland wire and brothers against brothers and ballot theft, burglary, murder, and cover up are all on Amazon prime. You know, that windy city mafia, you know, buy that book, give me a review. That’ll help me sell more books. That’s a good way to support the podcast. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, just get you a dollar 99 Kindle book and, and give me a review, be a verified purchaser. And you can, uh, you can help the podcast. I get a little piece of the action and you know all every little piece of the action helps i like having that money coming in while i’m sleeping it’s like a mobster huh anyhow thanks a lot guys i really appreciate y’all tuning in.

In this episode, we dive deep into a gripping story from the dark world of organized crime, centering on the infamous Bonanno crime family. Our narrative follows Larry Santoro, an unsuspecting cabinet maker who, finds himself entangled Frank Gangi and Billy bright, members of Tommy “Karate” Pitera’s brutal drug gang. Known for his ruthless enforcement and violent reputation, Pitera represents the deadly allure and hazards of the criminal underworld that ordinary people can stumble into, facing devastating consequences.

The plot thickens as Santoro is drawn into a botched robbery scheme alongside Pitera asociates Frank Gangi and Billy Bright. Their inexperience with residential break-ins quickly turns their plans for fast cash into a chaotic encounter. Breaking into a Russian jeweler’s home, they find themselves face-to-face with an elderly woman, struggling to keep control. The tension is palpable, showing how the criminal life can spiral out of control, especially for those unprepared for its high stakes and brutal outcomes.

As we unfold the story, we reveal connections between the Bonanno and Genovese crime families, as Frank Gangi attempts to profit from the heist by selling the stolen jewelry to mob contacts, including a Genovese captain. A pivotal moment arises when the stolen jewelry catches the attention of Joe Butch Corrao, a Gambino family capo who’s determined to reclaim a pair of prized diamond earrings. This leads to a tense sit-down meeting where we witness the mob’s complex hierarchy and decision-making dynamics. As different factions vie for control and respect, this meeting underscores the razor-thin balance required to survive in this world, where even the smallest oversight can unravel alliances.

The episode culminates with a series of betrayals and tragic outcomes, as Frank Gangi ultimately turns against Tommy Karate, seeking refuge in witness protection while others face severe repercussions. Join us as we explore the themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the steep price of a life in crime, through the brutal world of Tommy Karate Pitera and his deadly network of associates.
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Transcript
[0:00] Hey guys, welcome all you wiretappers out there. I’m back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. As you can see, this is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit officer, now turned podcaster and author, actually. So don’t forget, I have this new book about the Chicago outfit, Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. Help me beat the algorithms of Amazon. Go out there and buy that book. Give me reviews on it. That way for $1.99, even if you don’t have a Kindle for $1.99.

[0:31] I get part of that. I get a little piece of that, but also it gets Amazon to put it out to more people. And so the more people that buy it, the more money I make, the more money I

[0:42] make, the better I like it. So anyhow, help me out if you can, guys. I have a New York story today. I go all over the United States from Kansas City and worked a mob here for many years. This is a New York story I happened to run into I thought was really interesting and really kind of telling for about how some of these guys work and they do different crimes and and kind of the I love the intricacies of of how guys work not just that they went out and killed 20 people or they dealt drugs and you go on or they did some kind of a score how do they do that so back in the 80s i believe that larry santoro was a cabinet maker and larry Santoro knew some guys in Tommy karate patera’s drug gang Tommy karate was a feared murder uh he was an enforcer he was he killed people out the ass he cut up their bodies he was a banana guy so he could deal drugs He had a huge drug gang. I did a whole show on, uh, Tommy karate. So go back and look at my, uh, old shows and find that Tommy karate show kind of overview of him.

[1:55] Anyhow, he, he knew guys in that crew. One of them was Frank Ganji. He was probably closest to Tommy karate. Frank Ganji had, uh, he had problems in the end. Uh, Billy Bright, uh, who will get killed in the penitentiary in the end. And a guy named Manny Maya or Maya, I don’t know much more about him other than he was a defendant in the drug conspiracy trial. The one time of karate went down, DEA worked a big case on him. I mean, karate, he will go on to commit many, many murders. And he brought this Frank Ganji in with him and to help do some of these murders. And Ganji, uh, was, is not the kind of guy you want to do murders with. They’re not the kind of guy you want to know your business. Karate, Tommy Karate, he really jacked up by taking this guy into his confidence. He should have known. He should have known after doing a few things with him that this guy is weak in the end. Tommy Karate was in the Bonanno family. He’s a made guy. He was in a faction of the Bonanno family. And there was a big split in the Bonanno family. And the three capos.

[2:59] Sonny Red and Delicato, Dominic Trinchera, and Philip Jack Leone, all ended up being murdered in that infamous basement tribal murder planned out by Joe Messino, which I talked about in the Joe Messino story. And Dominic, Sonny Black, Napolitano also was part of the planning of that and the implementation of it. They were trying to just protect themselves as well as their, uh, the boss of the Bonanno family, Rusty Ristelli, who was in, uh, prison at the time. And, and Joe Massino had gone to the commission and, and told them that he was getting information that these three capos were trying to, uh, we’re going to make a move on them and take over the family and boot Rusty Ristelli out. And Castellano supposedly reportedly told Joe Massino that, you know, you do what you got to do to defend yourself. And this is what Joe Massino did. And Joe Massino, of course, went on to be the boss and went on to then be the first mob boss in New York to ever turn.

[4:00] So go back in that Joe Massino story I did. It’s a great story. A lot of people really liked it because it had a lot of different experts and some former made guys as well as FBI agents that were Joey Massino. You know, Tommy Karate is working on Anthony Spiro, who put him under Frank Leno, who was a survivor of the three Capo murders, who ran out before they could take him down. And then he came back and all was forgiven. One of Tommy Karate’s most famous murders probably was the most famous was Willie Boy Johnson, which was kind of shows this inner family.

[4:34] And this story is about kind of inner family relationships and inner family cooperation. One of his more famous murderers was Wilford Willie boy. Johnson shot him down as he walked to his car. Johnson had been a really, he wasn’t a made guy. I think it was Indian. He’s been a real close associate of John Gotti. John Gotti liked this guy. He really liked this guy and been a Gambino associate and, They’d been, they’d done stuff together since they were kids.

[5:01] Willie boy had also been a top echelon and former the FBI for a long time. You don’t slide them little tidbits, not really anything that you’ll, you’re going to make a case on directly where he’d have to testify. And he’d been doing it for several years. I don’t know why, you know, whatever, what people do things for different motives. You know, I, you never know what a guy’s motive is, but it done that. But they’re, they’re the first trial of, of Gotti, which you got to not guilty you on there’s a prosecutor a lady named diane jackaloni and she wanted willy boy to testify and she had you know his control agent went to him they did not want to have him testify because that was going to out him that would take out their future source of information inside right next to gotti they didn’t think they really needed him to get the conviction uh jackaloni thought they did.

[5:52] And she ended up exposing him, fronting him out during the trial.

[5:56] And so that’s why Tommy Crotty ended up killing him at the request of the Gambinos and John Gotti. Now, these four guys I mentioned before, Larry Santoro, who was a cabinetmaker who set it up, and Manny Maya, who then connected Billy Bright and Frank Ganji to this little scheme, they robbed a Russian jeweler who mainly worked out of his house santoro again i think i said he was a cabinet maker and he was involved in a home remodel in the russian jeweler’s house this was in the canarsie section of brooklyn kind of a solidly upper middle class section uh in brooklyn and and their name was blumenkrant it’s more of a german name but uh russian germans i don’t know blumenkrant and they not only sold a lot of legitimate really high-end pieces but they also dealt with stolen jewelry which you know when you’re when you’re a fence yourself a lot of fences get robbed by their customers when they know they’ve got something big because you know the fence is meant less likely to cooperate with the police if you do get caught if you get caught you may have to give this stuff back depending on.

[7:04] Who’s connected to the fence but they didn’t really know this guy uh they probably knew he maybe dealt with some hot stuff but a lot of people knew that they didn’t know he was a connected guy They should have done their homework a little better. But these guys, they were not really experienced B&E or breaking and entering guys. They were not experienced home invasion guys. They were helping Tommy Karate kill people and helping him sell drugs and collect money and transport drugs and all that. They wanted the easy money. And Frank Gansey himself, he was a bad alcoholic. And during this time, he was needing more money, more money, more money because his cocaine addiction was really getting next to him. And he was spending a ton of money. His alcoholism was going out of control. And he was blowing money out the butt. And so, you know, this here, he gets a lot of, he can make a lot of quick money off of this deal.

[7:55] And not have to share it with Tommy Karate or any other buddy, any other guys in the mob. You know, lots of times they find out you work with a mob guy and they find out you made a score. They want to wet their beak, as they used to say. They want a taste of the action. He got Billy Bright, who had been in the penitentiary with and gotten to know there and was good friends with. And what’s interesting, what I learned about Billy Bright is he was a born-again Christian out of the prison. You know, he probably had gone to services in prison and probably had a little group, a safe little group to meet with in prison. But Billy Bright, he had no compunction about robbery, murder, or drug dealing. Took a look at this setup, met with this larceness cabinetmaker, Larry Santoro.

[8:39] They didn’t look very close, but, you know, they looked at it and they said, yeah, we can do that.

[8:43] They thought, from what they saw, that the jeweler’s wife would be home alone.

[8:49] And there would be a safe with a lot of jewelry. Really high-end jewelry in it day of the robbery they billy bright was holding a cash or a big stash of guns for tommy karate patera so he borrowed a couple of guns out of that stash and they stuck them in their belts and drove the neighborhood and parked down the street maybe a block or so away and then walked down the street like they knew what they were doing and and they cut through a backyard and went into the blumenkranz home through the back door and the back door and they found it was unlocked walk in and they don’t find they think the just the wife is going to be there and all they find is an elderly grandmother who doesn’t really speak english very well all she could do is start screaming in russian and pointing in her handbag at the same time landing larry santoro’s cousin another cabinet maker still in there working so they got to handcuff him and trying to calm the grandma down and she keeps pointing at her handbag and finally they get it and open it up and hand it to her and she takes some heart medicine out and starts gulping down pills so you know it’s kind of a out of control scene at first and finally get her calmed down they start you know searching around through the house they’re not finding the safe they’re not finding anything finally in a finished basement they just a find a bag that’s got a lot of high-end looking gold jewelry with diamonds and other stones in it and and i think maybe a couple of high-end watches, but anyhow.

[10:15] They find what they think is going to be a nice score. And it turned out it was a nice score. These guys, as I think I said this a minute ago, they don’t, they’re not experienced B and E guys. They don’t have a fence that they regularly work with that they is already set. Maybe they even already discussed the score with them and say, tell them about what they’re going to get and have the guy all lined up. They start asking, they have started asking around.

[10:41] And, and seeing who will buy this stuff. Well, Frank Gansey takes his share and he sells it to a Genovese captain and the owner of what’s, uh, uh, called the wrong number lounge guy’s name. They called him Sally dogs, Salvatore Lombardi. And he also takes another part of his share to a fourth Avenue jewelry store called Bianco’s jewelry’s Bianco jewelry’s jewelry store. And more than likely those guys are connected to, uh, you know, and Sally dogs, he, he was a mob drug dealer himself. even though he was in the Genovese family. Bananos were famous for selling the drugs and seemed to have the ability to sell drugs, but we know Gambinos were too, and this guy was at Genovese Capital. He was too. He took his first hit for manufacturing, selling Quaaludes.

[11:28] He went to prison for a long time. I think he maybe died in prison after they caught him on a wiretap, trafficking heroin, trying to buy a large bunch of heroin. So now you know that guy knows that they got this big score and he knows what the pieces are like and what they are i’m not sure about uh billy bright what he did with his but do know about this one new york is a huge vast city as you guy anybody’s been to new york knows but the mafia world and in kansas city or chicago or whatever that’s a small world that’s like a small town and people in small towns they talk you know they frequently uh associate in uh different bars they They talk to each other as, you know, one’s a Genovese guy. If they’re not at some war, one of a Genovese guy will meet with a banana guy that they, you know, they like. They like to drink with. They like to gamble with in the gambling social clubs and gambling joints. You know, they’ll do all kinds of stuff together.

[12:24] The stories of big scorers get around. You know, these guys, you know, crime is their business. You know, like policemen, that’s our business. So you hear about somebody that did something big time deal. Well, you want to know more about it. You start asking around. Well, somebody does a big score. They start hearing about it. Sally Bugs was not Sally Bugs, uh, uh, Sally dogs. You know, he told people, Hey man, I just, you know, I got some really nice pieces. I got a hell of a deal on this here. Look at this. You want to buy one of these? Or, you know, I, I, the word gets around that this guy has this and what they didn’t know at this time.

[13:00] A capo in the gambino family six foot four inch joe butch corral was really good friends with this russian guy not only that his joe butch’s wife had left a very expensive pair of diamond earrings with the russians and he wanted those earrings back but he not only wanted the earrings back this guy’s a mob guy right he wants a piece of that that uh caper he wants a piece of the action i mean come on man and they’re they’re buying it now at 250 000 now you know that didn’t mean shit you know you may the the jeweler probably uh told the police it was an insurance company it was 250 000 worth you know in fact you know you might be 10 or 15 000 you might get on the streets off of this stuff but he wants a piece of this 250 000 these guys you know they they want to know who did something where the swag is can i make money off of it uh can i maybe he’s robbed the thieves. Where is it now? Joe Butch, you know, he’s, you know, he’s all over this.

[14:02] Capos heard it. Lieutenants heard it. Soldiers heard it. It was everywhere. So Tommy Karate hears about it too. And he figures out that, you know, it was his guys that did it, but they didn’t tell him about it. They didn’t ask his permission, which you’re supposed to deal a score like that. You should ask Tommy Karate’s permission and then shared a piece of the, the swag with him. Well, then he finds out about this story. Joe Butch Correo and, and being he’s a Gambino and Tommy karate has long done stuff back and forth with the Gambinos and, and John Gotti in particular. So they have, you know, as I told you early on, yeah, he killed, uh, uh, Willie boy Johnson for John Gotti. So he, he likes to stay in with the Gambinos and, and getting points with them. So, you know, he goes and he goes to Gambinos and said, okay, here’s the deal. These guys did this. I, they didn’t ask my permission, uh, but I am responsible for them and their actions. We need to have a sit down. So they have a sit down over it. And Frank Gansey had a cousin who was a Genovese capo. So he, he said, so he’s made guy. So he can sit down with Joe Butch and Tommy Karate. The three made guys have a sit down to decide what to do about these associates that got a little, you know, out of their lane, if you will, kind of went off the tracks for a little bit.

[15:20] Joe butch he’s putting on an act and he’s a joe butch is a big guy and he and he’s a tough guy he he’s not in a capo they used to describe him as a war capo he he’s a bad man i had a friend that was in a penitentiary with him uh steve saint john used to walk the track with him and at one time and he agrees he said he said this is a kind of a soft-spoken gentleman guy but but he could tell he said this is this is a bad guy who who do what he needs to do ross ganji the general to be this guy explains you know this is my cousin and you know we’ll get your diamond earrings back i’m pretty sure i’m not sure about half the score and and talks about his cousin he said you know now there’s nothing i can do with this guy he’s his own man and i can’t order him to really do anything and he’s been a problem and he really uh what he does he tells those other two guys and And that’s not Patera obviously knew it because he’d done a lot of crime with Ganji before. He’d done murders with Ganji, had Ganji’s help for murders. But he tells Joe Butch in this meeting that, you know, he’s a drunk. He drinks too much. He does too many drugs. I can’t do anything with him. And, you know, if you think about that, when he says that, he’s kind of given his permission, indirectly his permission. You know, you do what you got to do with this guy because we can’t do anything with him.

[16:40] Patera did speak up for him. He said, you know, I’ll be responsible here. I’ll get what I can and give it to you, Joe Butch. And, you know, by the end, Joe Butch was happy.

[16:52] He accepted that. And, you know, they broke up and went their separate ways.

[16:56] You know, what was kind of interesting is this meeting, the cops were following, the DEA was following a lot of these guys because they were working on Tommy Karate Paterin. They followed him where this meeting was. They were always curious about what this meeting was. And they found it was really a mafia hotspot. And it was, you know, like you find a hotspot like that that nobody knew about before. Then you, you like throw guys on there and you write license plates down for the next, you know, several months and get, take pictures. If you can, uh, they’re, they’re like, uh, I mean, that’s like gold, man, gold mine, find a spot that they’re using. They don’t think anybody knows about, but Tara, Tommy karate will regret saving Frank Ganji. Cause in the end.

[17:36] Frank gansey nephew genovese capo will testify against tommy karate patera billy bright will not testify he’ll go to the penitentiary and he’ll end up getting killed in prison supposedly because he’s involved in the killing of a guy named ryder whose cut whose brother uh was uh a drug dealer in the Gene Gotti, Angelo Ruggiano heroin conspiracy. And so he knew Billy Bright was involved with that murder with Tommy Karate. They can’t do anything with Tommy Karate, but he did have Billy Bright killed in prison. It’s my understanding that Frank Gangi will go into witness protection. He’ll confess to all the murders he was involved with with Patera and all the drug dealing.

[18:25] And uh and what happened i i said this in my tommy uh karate patera show but i remind you what happened with frank gansey he was a bad alcoholic he was feeling guilty and remorseful about because they were cutting up bodies tommy karate had like a hot tub or something and and uh he’d have gansey come over and and strip naked and help him cut up bodies and then take them at this uh cemetery they They had a wooded area up in Gravesend and Brooklyn and buried the bodies with the heads separately and cut them up so he could put them in bags and things like that. He was like a real Roy DeMeo kind of guy, a Gemini method kind of a guy. Ganji is, I think he’s arrested for DUI. He’s in a cell just for the DUI, nothing else. He’s feeling guilty and remorseful, and he tells the jailer, hey, call the FBI. Get an FBI agent down there. Tell him who I am. He’ll want to talk to me. And so he turned him. That’s the story of Frank Ganji, Billy Bright, Larry Santoro,

[19:29] a guy named Manny Maya, who I never did figure out whatever happened to him. He went to jail with all the crew that were in the drug conspiracy with Tommy Parade.

[19:41] Get my tongue in front of my eye teeth. I can’t see what I’m saying. Here’s a snippet from an interview that Frank Ganji did while he was in witness protection. Actually, he went and witnessed protection for a while. He didn’t like it. Came back out. He’s died since. And he gave an interview to a guy out in Las Vegas who has the Joy Ciccone show. It’s on his YouTube channel, so you might get that if you want to listen to the whole interview with Frank Ganji. I just snagged a little bit of it just so you could see, you know, kind of what he had to say and what his voice sounded like.

[20:13] I got caught. And I had to do a two- to four-year sentence. in New York. And meanwhile, pot business blew up. Philly, without the street, that was supposed to be part of the business. Right, right. Without the street making nothing. $1,000, $1,000 with the man. But when I got out, you know, he made me a partner of the business. But meanwhile, the business was in the red now. A friend of ours, a very close friend of ours, had brought me a profit of $350,000 worth of pot. So Billy comes visit me in prison one day, and he says, Frankie, he says, listen, you know, I think officers are going to try to kill me to take the officers over. We got to kill him. Two weeks left to go on my prison sentence. I called Billy I said, Billy, just wait until I come home Don’t do nothing until I come home I go on a storm show two weeks You know.

[21:07] Billy took the limousine up With my girlfriend to pick me up from prison They’ll hand me like a $5,000 Lot, you know, from my pocket You know, and then I was making Thousands of dollars a day, Billy, I just got out of jail Billy kept talking about killing off I really wasn’t into killing somebody Right now, I just got out of jail So thanks a lot guys, I really appreciate y’all tuning in the show don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles and don’t forget that if you got a problem with ptsd and you were in the service go to the va website and get that hotline number and if you have problems with drugs or alcohol be sure and go to uh angelo reggiano’s youtube channel and look for that hotline number he’s a drug and alcohol counselor uh as well as an entertainer a mob entertainer uh he’s down in florida i believe and if you have a problem with gambling, you know, that 1-800-BETS-OFF is a good place to go.

[22:01] And, you know, I got a lot of stuff to sell. I sold my newest book at the start of the show. I’ve still got my two mob movies, Gangland Wire, which is about the Kansas City end of the casino movie. You’ll see how that all got started and what was going on here and how they uncovered all that money coming out of Las Vegas. It started at the TROP, and then from there, they figured out it was a lot more money is coming out of the TROP, the Stardust going to Chicago and Kansas city was getting the trap money. So, you know, it’s a, it’s kind of a complicated story, but I tried to simplify it in my documentary gangland wire. And also at the same time in Kansas city, we had a mob war going on the Savella Spiro war. And so I have brothers against brothers, which tells the inside look, gives you an inside look at that mob war here in Kansas city. And I have a book too about called leaving Vegas, how FBI wiretaps ended mob domination of Las Vegas casinos, man. It’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Uh, so I also got that book out there that it also tells that story. And if you get the, um, uh, Kindle version, you can click on links in there and here are the actual wiretaps.

[23:11] So I think that’s all I got to sell guys. And I really appreciate you listening in and all your kind comments on my ganglandwire podcast, Facebook group. You have to be either invited or you had to find it and then ask to join and answer the questions to answer that you’ll agree to the rules. We’ve got too many scammers in that thing and had to really clamp down on it. It’s a big group. There’s a lot of good discussions, a lot of great pictures in there. And my YouTube channel, I got all kinds of comments in there. Keep making those comments, answer questions. I read every one of them. I like those comments. I like answering the questions and interacting with you guys. So thanks a lot, guys.

 

In this episode, Gary Jenkins interviews Kansas City-based screenwriter and author John Sanders, who brings compelling insights into the life of Owney Madden—a notorious figure in organized crime. As a former Kansas City police detective, I’ve always been fascinated by mob history, and John’s unique perspective, intertwined with personal family stories, provides a captivating look into Madden’s life.
We trace Madden’s journey from his early days with the Gophers gang in New York City to his days as a respected citizen in Hot Springs, Arkansas. John shares gripping tales of Madden’s resilience, including surviving multiple gunshots, which underscore the brutal realities of the gangster lifestyle. Madden’s transformation from street thug to savvy businessman during Prohibition paints a picture of a man whose rise to power was fueled by sharp business instincts and connections with major players like Frank Costello.
Our conversation explores Madden’s partnerships with colorful characters, including Big Frenchy DeMange, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky, as he navigated the cutthroat world of organized crime. From his ownership of the famed Cotton Club to his brewery, Madden’s ventures reveal the strategic moves that solidified his influence in 1920s New York.
We also discuss Madden’s eventual downfall and the power struggles that led to dramatic events, such as Mad Dog Coll’s kidnapping of Big Frenchy. This episode ultimately sealed Coll’s fate. These stories shed light on the treacherous nature of mob alliances, where loyalty is fleeting and betrayals are often fatal.
Finally, John delves into Madden’s later years in Hot Springs, where he became a respected figure in the community. His transition from notorious gangster to local businessman highlights redemption themes and human behavior’s complexities. Alongside John’s family anecdotes, we discuss Hot Springs as a place of historical intrigue—a resort town with a darker past as a haven for mobsters.
Tune in to this fascinating conversation on Owney Madden’s life and legacy as we unravel the cultural and historical threads that make his story unforgettable.
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Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. It’s good to be back here

[0:03] in the studio of Gangland Wire. You know, this is Gary Jenkins, your host and producer of Gangland Wire podcast. I am a former retired, not former, retired Kansas City police detective and sergeant. I was in the intelligence unit for 13 years, 14 maybe altogether.

[0:21] And, you know, after I left, I got into making documentary films and i made three documentary films you can find on amazon just search for my name and mafia you’ll find all kinds of stuff about me and what i’ve done so we won’t belabor that but i let’s get on to the show i have a man that i recently met a kansas city man is john sanders he’s a kansas city based screenwriter and author welcome john thanks carrie i appreciate it all right well john got hold of me and he just wanted to meet and talk about the mob because he had this big interest in it so we met the coffee shop here close to me and had a had a nice long conversation and and he was telling me in particular he’s been working on something about only madden and i hadn’t done anything on only madden or if i did it was a long time ago and the early beginnings of the irish mob in new york and i thought what an idea for a show so john graciously agreed

[1:16] to come on the show and and share his uh knowledge uh the story of Oni Madden. So, uh, John, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started talking about Oni.

[1:27] Okay. Well, I was, uh, the son of a guy who was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and anybody who knows anything about Oni Madden knows that he became the main man in Hot Springs, Arkansas. And I would, was grown up with stories about how he would, uh, see Oni sitting in the front of the Southern Club where he would dispense wisdom and give out cash and help and take care of people. He was a very generous guy all throughout and through most of his life.

[1:59] I recently started working on a screenplay about Oni’s life, thinking about my dad’s stories. And I found him to be just a fascinating, fascinating character and one that I could really get connected to because you could see through the course of his life how he started out as a thug and a killer and learned and became much more sophisticated than what he did, highly respected in the mob world. And I just, I enjoyed that aspect of his growth where a lot of gangsters don’t get that opportunity to do anything.

[2:43] Oney was an English-born gangster, came to the United States with his mother after being born in Leeds. His parents were Irish, so that got him some cred in Hell’s Kitchen when they landed in Hell’s Kitchen. And by the age of 14, he was running with the Gophers, which is one of the main gangs in New York.

[3:08] They called themselves the Goofers for some reason, but we’ll call them the Gophers for now. They, of course, had their share of opponents in the streets, and one of those was the Hudson Dusters. They were their main opponent. They would have run-ins with them and battles. And at one point, Oney, who by this time had been running the Gophers, had followed his estranged wife to a Hudson Duster dance hall. He just wanted to keep an eye on her. So he’s sitting up in the balcony watching, and he turns around, and all of a sudden there’s 11 Hudson dusters standing behind him, and they all pull out guns, and they all shoot him. He ended up with 11 bullets in him. They thought, you know, everyone thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. He was, they asked who did it, and he said, I did it to myself. You know, we’ll take care of it.

[4:00] Amazingly, they got him to the hospital. They were going to stop at the morgue, but he pulled through, who pulled, I believe it was, six bullets out of him, and they had to leave five behind, and those things would bug him the rest of his life. He had all sorts of problems with that. But he survived, and in a matter of a couple of weeks, six of the dusters who had shot him were dead. He was back running the streets. But while he was down, one of his guys, a guy named Patsy Doyle, who was kind of a psychopathic guy who was in the Gophers, wanted to take over. He was telling everybody that Oney was done for. He wanted to take us to the spot.

[4:39] Well, Oney wasn’t much for that kind of disloyalty, so Fatsy was found beat up pretty good with a pipe, a lead pipe that was wrapped in newspaper, and that was Oney’s tool of choice when it comes to beating people up. He survived, but he started doing stupid things like snitching on Oney and telling the cops what he was up to, and so that he had to be taken out. And unfortunately, people that lured Patsy to his demise in a cafe pinned it on Oni. They apparently were coerced by the prosecutors. The guys that actually did the shooting went to prison for he was convicted on manslaughter and sent up the Sing Sing for 10 to 20 years. I remember on that setup at that cafe, did a woman, somebody that Oni knew a woman, then lure him to that cafe? Interestingly enough, all of Oney’s trouble seemed to hang around the women. I mean, the guys that he shot were hitting on his girlfriends.

[5:47] And Freda Hopper, who was on again, off again, one of Oney’s girlfriends, Nancy Boyle was absolutely infatuated. And that was the only reason he came, because he wanted to see Freda. And unfortunately, Freda got forced into saying that he was involved and he ended up in prison. It was in prison where he really, he really blossomed, I guess you could say.

[6:17] He decided that, you know, even though he claimed that he had nothing to do with that Patsy Doyle murder, he decided, well, you know, I’ve done enough things. So this is probably justice, even though I didn’t do this one. And so he decided to be the best he could be in prison. He became friends with Warden Laws, who would, I mean, he was a celebrity in prison. He was able to calm down gangs that were having problems in prison. He was very much appreciated by Warden Laws. And when new inmates would come in, he’d call Oli over to see the guys getting off the bus. He said, what do you think? What do you think about that guy? And Arnie would give him the straight scoop. He’s a smart guy, but, you know, he’s this mess and that. He spent seven and a half years in prison. And during that time, he was having a lot of problems with his stomach. For some reason, just glommed on to the prison surgeon, a guy named Dr. Steele, to the point where after he got out of prison, whenever he had any problems with his stomach, he wouldn’t trust regular doctors. He’d go up to Sing Sing and have that doctor work on him. And he was just held in high regard and got out after seven and a half years or so. So he comes out.

[7:36] Was that a reduction? Seemed like he would have got more than seven years for murder. Well, he was on parole. And it was supposed to be a 10 to 20, but he got out seven and a half years on the behavior. Because the lawyer, the warden really appreciated him. Yeah. Okay. All right. I was curious.

[7:54] So, yeah, he should have gotten out. He should have had at least 10 years. He gets out in 1923 and everything’s prohibition has just kicked in and the dusters are, the gophers are gone. And so he needs to figure out a way to make some money, but try to do it in a smart way and not with a gun.

[8:15] After that stint in prison, he would never carry a gun. Shortly after he gets out, he picks up with Frank Costello, who is a major rum runner and just getting started in bringing in shipments from whiskey from Canada or Scotland, rum from Jamaica or Caribbean. They became very, very close friends for the rest of their lives. And during that time, he also met up with a guy who became his closest business associate. And that guy was named Big Frenchie Demange. And they were an odd couple because at this point.

[8:59] Oney was a very classy British guy with a beautiful accent and very precise, always dressed to the nines. And here’s Frenchie, who was this thug, who was loyal and did whatever, you know, Oney wanted him to do. And interestingly enough, had Ben, he didn’t care. It was, he trusted this guy. And he got them all dressed up and made them look presentable. And he became partners in all of his home running, his brewery that he had in Manhattan, all his nightclubs, including the Cotton Club.

[9:40] And so he was very much a part of Oloni’s life. And fun story about the big Frenchie. He was a bit of a Claude. When the Atlantic City Crime Conference came together, Oloni was going to be honored at the end of it. And they wanted big Frenchie to do, and they were going to give him a beautiful gold watch. And that was, let’s explain that Atlantic city crime conference. That’s when the, uh, I can’t remember the boss down in, in, in Atlantic city, the whole and boardwalk, the document, Nucky Johnson, Nucky Johnson. He had lucky Luciano and Costello and even Al Capone and all these beer barons or mobsters who were in bootlegging to come and line up, get it organized throughout the United States so they would do business rather than fight each other. Is that right?

[10:35] Absolutely. That was with the early stages for the crime commission. Right, okay. And an interesting story about that is, you know, Pone came thinking he was in cat’s pajamas, and this was not too long after the St. Valentine’s Massacre, and they all angry with him for for making so much noise and they told him you have to go to jail just to take some heat off you know on a lesser crime he wasn’t happy about it but he did it but remind me and that is it that when he went to jail like in pennsylvania for like a year some kind of a phony baloney gun charge or something it was just yeah weapons charge he He was carrying a gun. And, you know, I think he only spent a couple of months in prison or jail. Okay. All right. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I just tried to get in my mind. No problem.

[11:28] But back to the big Frenchie, he was a good-hearted guy. And, you know, he was as tight as you could be with Ony. And so when they wanted to, at the end of the conference, make a presentation to Ony, thanking him for his great organization, what a great guy he was. And so they had big friends. So he calls them up. He’s not used to give them presentations. So he says, okay, you got to watch. He said, yeah, give it to me. And he hands him his watch. I’m sure it was a very nice one. And Big Frenchie drops it on the ground and stomps off. He said, what did you do that for? He said, well, you got a new one. Here, take this one. Now, that’s a story that came from Barney Raditzky, the old New York detective who told that same story at the Keefabrick hearings back in the 50s.

[12:25] Yeah he was he was a very interesting guy things were going great in the 20s for only he i mean my goodness just months after getting out of prison he and uh frenchie and rothstein go in together to buy the cotton club which well they created the cotton club it was a different club uh prior to that and uh they ended up having quite a few clubs and speak pieces again this is pro vision the cotton club was his flagship that was the the one that he really loved and you could tell when he loved a certain something a certain building or something because you know we should put a pigeon coupe on top because he was a he just loved messing with pigeons he learned that from his dad yeah so the 20s were going he was making money hand over fist He and Costello had a fleet of ships bringing in those.

[13:19] He had his own brewery in Manhattan, the Phoenix Brewery, which had been making mere beer. He bought it, started making Madden’s Fiend, but number one, which was at the time, the premier beer that you could get during the edition. Before that, it was just this pillared water that you could get from Dutch Schultz. So he became very famous for Adams, number one, because of his close ties to Tammany Hall, Jimmy Hines, the police, and all the money he paid out. His story was protected by the police to the point where even if the feds showed up trying to break in, the local cops would stop him and turn him back and say, you’re not getting in here. You’re getting a business in. He had a lot of power, had a lot of influence in New York, and he was rolling along just fine until Mad Dogfold decided to target him. Now, Mad Dog, he was a wild Irish thug who had originally been a gopher and then went to work for Dutch Schultz as a hitman and guarding liquor shipments and things like that.

[14:38] And Cole decided, he got a little too big for his bridges and decided he wanted to go 50-50 partners with Schultz. And Schultz wasn’t having it. And so he decided to split off with some of Schultz’s guys and started killing some of Schultz’s guys that didn’t go with him. Shot up the front of the Helmar Social trying to get Jerry Rayo, Schultz’s gambling guy. He didn’t get Rayo, but he killed a little kid who was standing in front selling lemonade.

[15:07] And in fact, Rayo would throw pennies out on the front of his social club so that the kids would come and collect them and nobody would think about shooting it up. Well mad dog would and that’s how he got his name he gets out you know they show up he pulls out his tommy gun and tears the place up and kills a little kid he was he was uh definitely a scourge in new york he you know everyone wanted him gone and then he started doing something he wanted to make a little more money for kidnapping the purple gang in detroit were doing some of that making some money. So he thought he’d give it a try. And he decided that the guys with the money at that time during the Depression were the crooks. So he decided, hey, Oney’s probably a softer target than Dutch. So he went after and actually kidnapped Big Frenchy. Called Oney up and said, I got Big Frenchy and it’s going to cost you 50 grand to see him again. Tony tried to negotiate, but he said not. I’m coming over. He actually walked into his office at the Cotton Court.

[16:18] Oney had the money, and this was a very unwise move. Big Frenchie got released. Mad Dog decided that was a pretty easy score, so he calls Oney up and says, okay, I’m going to make you a deal. You give me $100,000, and I won’t kidnap him. Oney just hung up on him, and he was kicked off. Calls a meeting of the guys.

[16:40] Luciano was there, Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, because he was the target of Cole as well. And they basically said, OK, Cole’s got to go. They just couldn’t find him. It took a while to find him. He was in hiding. And in the meantime, Oney decides to take a vacation. And Dutch had been telling him about this great place down in Arkansas called Hot Springs, where gangsters can, you know, do whatever they want. Everyone, you know, nobody’s shooting up anybody. It’s got gambling that nobody cares about. They got a racetrack. They got hot springs where you can soak during the day and then gamble and listen to major entertainment at night. And so he decides to go down there and Dutch tells him, make sure you meet the cute girl at the gift shop across from the Arlington Hotel. Tell he goes in there and that’s where he meets agnes demby who is to be his the love of his life she was in a had a little gift shop and uh struggling mightily during the depression he walks in and spends a thousand dollars on gifts and invites her out to dinner and she says no but changes her mind shortly thereafter and they spent the next two weeks together fell very much in love When he went back to New York, he gave her a ticket, a train ticket to come up and visit when things looked like they were, you know, calm.

[18:07] So he gets up there. Nobody’s seen or heard of Mad Dog. So he thought, okay, he brings up Agnes. Well, unfortunately, Mad Dog hears that Agnes is in town and that Oni’s got a new girlfriend. Says something to basically threaten his girlfriend. That just made Oni’s blood boil. They decided, he and Dutch decided, okay, let’s put an end in this. So this is according to his biographer, Graham Nowen, in the book, Arkansas Godfather, describes how the whole hit happened. He was hiding out in a hotel, and he had a bodyguard that they were able to get to. And they paid the bodyguard 50 grand to set him up. The bodyguard comes and says, oh, he wants to talk to you, wants to settle this thing. So he set up a phone conversation in a drugstore that Cole was comfortable in. Bodyguard leads him over there, and he goes into the phone booth waiting for the call. The call comes just as a sedan pulls up, and one of Schultz’s hitmen walk in.

[19:22] The bodyguard walks out. he tells everybody to be quiet while he’s on the phone with us he tells me, Mad Dog gets his final reward and, you know, right through the glass somebody in the phone booth. All that glass was torn out, but he didn’t chip any of the wood around him. I mean, this guy was a great guy to really handle his Tommy gun. Especially with a Tommy gun, because those things, I don’t know if you’ve ever shot an automatic, but if you hold it down for any length of time, they just start rising on. You have to really know what you’re doing. and you have to practice with it to hold it steady. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Judge Schultz’s guys have plenty of practice. Apparently so.

[20:08] So that was the demise of Mad Dog. After all this, everyone, of course, was looking at Oni. The parole board was looking at him. And this Judge Seabird, who was trying to crack down all the corruption in New York, wanted to send him back on parole violation. He was still on parole at this point in 31. He sicked his investigators on owning, and they were interrogating him and said, so where are you working? So I work at this laundry. As it turned out, he was a part owner of the laundry. He knew the owner that ran the laundry, but he hadn’t gotten his story straight, unfortunately. The judge sends the investigators over. Minutes happen, only walks out. And asked him, you know this guy? Oh, yeah, oh, he’s a great guy. Does he work there? No. No, he didn’t work there. Well, that was enough. Lying to the parole board was enough to send him back to Sing Sing. They had the, you know, he had a good attorney and he had Cole. And he was supposed to go back that day. But he was, you know, just a bizarre legal maneuver. He was able to get out on bail for parole violation, which is just not done. There’s no bail.

[21:33] And oddly enough, while he’s out waiting for this final decision, he gets a call from Charles Lindbergh. And Lindbergh, this was right after his baby had been kidnapped. And he comes to Oni Madden asking for help to find out if it was one of these, like, the Purple Gang. They thought Fleischer might have been the one to nab the kid. And he did what he could and met with him several times. But he wasn’t able to help him out other than no one who was. So Oni ends up going to prison again, sing-sing. But he hated all the media attention, all that stuff. He didn’t want his picture in any paper, whatever. So rather than turn himself in at the courthouse, he gets himself driven up to Sphinx and walks up to the front door. Nobody’s expecting him. And the guard on the other side of this iron braid says, who the hell are you? He didn’t know who he was. He said, I’m Oni Madden. I think the warden is holding a cell for me.

[22:47] He said, yeah, get the hell out of here. And it just so happened that the warden’s secretary was walking by and Oni saw him and called out to him. And so they finally let him in. And he was there for a good year, spent time, you know, staying in touch with Agnes. And uh by the end of his year uh term he uh got out and he along with some of the other guys in new york including meyer lansky basically orchestrated his.

[23:25] Retirement i guess you can say he left new york and promising never to come back that was the rule you can go you can get out of here but you can never come back, he snuck in a table a couple times but that was the deal down to Hot Springs where Lansky had been able to set up, the uh his basic control of the of the local gamblers that ran casinos and he bought into the southern club and the belvedere built the bay burners the big nightclub that ended up getting blown up one night when there were some problems with the political group but only just was the was a very beloved figure in hot spring he you know at this point he was just a calm quiet gentleman, who spoke beautiful English and treated everyone with respect. People would tell stories about coming up to him and saying, gosh, this happened. My kid’s sick or we need money for the pool in the black area of town. And he’d pony up the money. He had so much money, he didn’t know what to do with it. But he still kept it coming in. He was running the race wire, the local race wire in Hot Springs.

[24:50] But he ended up dying in 65 of emphysema, which was right about the time that the whole illegal gambling in Hot Springs,

[25:02] the governor just said, okay, I’m not going to take any more of your bribes. We’re going to have to close you guys down. So that was roughly the time that things got changing, but they still cherished their mob roots back in the Hot Springs. You know when i got back there in uh well i guess it was 2004 with my dad uh to sit to you know see his hometown again went to see the arlington where they have the capone suites and uh yeah uh he would tell me stories about his parents you know sewing for the gangsters and uh well it was an end of an era and um.

[25:48] It was a very interesting time and i think only was just a really really beloved character i mean when he when he died that this funeral it was a pretty nasty storm there about 250 people outside, a bunch of limousines pull up and a bunch of guys who have flown in from uh chicago and new york and l.a and uh vegas they all came to to pay their respects to somebody that they held them in very likely you know that’s one thing i find interesting about the the mafia or the organized crime in this country is you have these interconnections nationwide and if somebody is beloved or somebody has made somebody a lot of people a lot of money and not really hurt a lot of people been a gentleman throughout his whole you know criminal life if you will they’d like they’ll show up at funerals i mean that was the greatest place for us to go to a mob funeral and write down tags and gets photos because these guys all show up it’s amazing.

[26:54] Yeah you’re talking about you know hot springs is not that far from kansas city and a little side story oh by the way guys i have a hot springs mob tour i did with ron rossin who is a new orleans expert met me up there and he’s kind of he’s an expert on the different locations in hot springs And I have that, uh, uh, tour up on my YouTube page. So if you want to go see some of these spots that, that John’s been talking about, the vapors, the, the Belvedere, uh, um, oh, what was the other one? Southern club and only Madden’s house is still there. Just was sold recently. I noticed. And, and so we, we walked all up around it and, and there are a lot of other spots down there in hot spring. So it’s, uh, it’s a really interesting, interesting place.

[27:42] And they’ve kept so much of it intact, all the old bathhouses, which were actually not privately owned. They were owned by the federal government. And that was in a very small national park right there. And they built them right inside. You know, that’s a good point. I never really thought about that, this den of wickedness, if you will. And then the federal government had owned that mountain and the hot springs right there. And still, it’s a national park. And another thing about hot springs is most of the major league baseball teams had spring training down there. So they’ve got some, a bunch of signs around town about who had been in town and where they had stayed and a place where Babe Ruth used to, it would hit home runs out of this little park into a alligator farm, which is still going. There’s an alligator farm down there, guys, which is still going. I will never forget that alligator farm. I went there when I was four years old. Okay. Went again and took my daughter, you know, when we went back to, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah. Uh, it’s still there. It’s just amazing. And they had that little merman.

[28:52] Yes. They still have the merman. I was just there last year. I know it’s crazy. And like you, when I, the only trip we ever took, when I was a little kid, we drove down through the South and then came back home and we went to that alligator farm and I was about six years old and it’s scared to live in the Jesus out of me. All those alligators piled on top of alligators and those pins and it’s exactly the same as it was then it’s crazy oh yeah and that’s been going on since before uh only got there you know in the early 30s yeah that’s that was a thing a little side story about the uh spring training there was a field real close and they could hit a ball out of the park and go into the alligator farm uh, major one of the, not major league baseball, but one of the team team’s owners started fighting the players for hitting a ball on the alligator farm because they lost the ball and they wanted to be reimbursed for the ball.

[29:50] So it’s, uh, it’s a pretty historic place for a variety of reasons and really off most people’s radar. It’s really, really interesting. It is. And I, uh, I plan on I’m going down there again real soon. Just a little more time down there. Plus they still have, they still have horse races and they have a casino. You can, you can go back down and gamble. You know, when I was, uh, when I was about 18 years old, about the time they closed down in 19, yeah, 1965, I had this older guy I hung around with and he was a huge gambler, huge dice player with, you know, other guys in this small town. I was, I I’d lose $10 and I’d be like freaking out. But he would go for, you know, hundreds of dollars back in 65. And he kept telling me, he said, Gary, we got to go down to hot springs. They got a real casino down there.

[30:40] We never did make it. I wish I had it now. But the papers lasted clear up till 65. And I think governor, was it Winthrop Rockefeller closed all the gaming down, just cracked down on it. Yep. Finally, he locked it all down. You know, now interesting as you were talking about, you know, the gambling and all only was a, was a really interesting guy in that he rarely drank during, you know, during prohibition. He didn’t, he didn’t do any of that and he didn’t gamble. So even though he ran, you know, alcohol and gambling operations, he stayed away from that. He just wasn’t going to get sucked into that. Agnes helped to settle him down as women had a tendency to do. Yeah, because I believe she was her father, the mayor or something. She was kind of connected to society in Huntsbury. Yeah, he was the postmaster. Postmaster, yeah. Yeah, he was the postmaster, which in a small town was an elected position and held some sway.

[31:45] And that helped him work into Hot Springs society, getting tight with Mayor McLaughlin and the other power brokers that he had to pay off to keep things moving smoothly. Yeah, he fit in very well there. He was a celebrity in the hot screens. The Arkansas godfather, huh?

[32:11] Yeah. Final note here, obviously, all the gangsters would come and visit him. And when he was in prison, they’d come and visit Agnes because, you know, show respect. And it was in 1936 when Lucky Luciano was running from Dewey, who was trying to put, you know, try to grab him and put him in prison. He goes down to Hot Springs where he knows that, you know, cops are going to let him do what he wants to do. They actually arrest him, but he’s out, you know, on $500 bond. And Dewey just throws a fit and calls the governor and has the state police come down and pick him up and send him back to New York where he ended up going to prison. Particularly corrupt chief of police all during those years. It was kind of well known. I can’t remember his name now, but.

[33:06] Oh, yeah. I mean, he’s smooth and just keep running. Yeah. And he, he’s the kind of a police, you know, chief that would stroll down the street with Lucky Luciano, just, you know, chatting and talking about whatever.

[33:21] The gamblers were a source of their income, but they wanted to keep them coming. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it was a different time, a different place, wasn’t it? You know, one last note about that. When I was down there, I got to think, well, Bill Clinton, former president Clinton, He was raised in hot springs. So he was raised in this kind of aura of criminality. Well, you might say something about his character. I don’t know. I’m either Democrat Republican here, just about him as a person.

[33:57] Yeah. Well, you know, it’s, uh, it’s interesting, but you know, one thing about hot springs is just, and I probably have a lot in all the major cities, especially during Prohibition, where the gangsters were getting them what they wanted, what they’ve always been able to have, and only, you know, approached it like, you know, this is the perfect crime to do where most people don’t think it’s a crime. You know, the victimless crimes. And so then after Prohibition, it was gambling in Hot Springs. And, again, the victimless crime, and nobody, you know, looked at him differently for doing it. And he stayed away from violence pretty much the rest of his life, except for probably the final incident with Mad Dog Cole.

[34:45] He had it coming. He did society a favor with that one.

[34:50] Everybody was happy. Everybody was happy. Interesting. All right. John Sanders. Well, thanks a lot, John. I really appreciate you coming on the show and, and, you know, keep a good luck with your screenplay. Let me know if we need to get something going with that way. We’ll, we’ll talk again, anything else I can do in the future. If you work on any other mob stories, I can help you out. Why be sure and give me a call. Thanks so much. It’s been fun. Hey guys, don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website.

[35:24] If you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, you know, our friend, uh, Ruggiano, Mr. Ruggiano from, uh, from the Gambino family has a, uh, hotline number on his website. I believe he’s a drug and alcohol counselor. And let’s see, he seems to be doing pretty good with his, uh, YouTube page. So he may not be still doing working the square, square John job. He may just be entertaining with his mafia knowledge now, but anyhow, just that’s a place to go. And, and for gambling, you know, there’s one 800 bets off. We’re just about to get sports gambling here in Missouri and we’ve got it all around us. And, and so, you know, these, these problems, that’s one reason the mob made so much money because there’s addiction related to it. And addicts will spend every spent they got in order to pursue their addiction until they, you know, they go into retreatment or they die or go into recovery and they die. So that’s, that’s just how it is. And, and guys, don’t forget, I’ve got books and movies on my website. Go take a look at my most recent book I took from some of my early podcast shows about Chicago from Al Capone to Harry Aleman to Frank Calabrese Jr.

[36:34] And all in between the Chicago PD intelligence unit got about seven or eight different stories. And it’s called Windy City Mafia, the Chicago Outfit. It’s on Amazon right now or it’s on my website or just get hold of me through the website and our email. Tell me ganglandwire at gmail.com and we’ll work you out of copies.

[36:56] Autographed copies. So thanks a lot, guys. And John Sanders, thank you so much for coming on the show and enlightening us about Oni Madden.

[37:03] Thank you for having me. It’s been a fun place. Okay. All right, John. Thank you. We’re out of here. I appreciate you coming on the show. I’ll let you know when I get this together. It’ll probably be a month. Maybe I don’t know. I’ll make sure you know when it’s going up and send you a link. Sounds great. Okay.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode of Gangland Wire Crime Stories, retired police detective Gary Jenkins speaks with former FBI agent Mark Sewell, who delves into his investigation of the notorious Gold Club in Atlanta and its ties to organized crime. Mark shares his journey from the Marine Corps to the FBI, detailing how his training prepared him to tackle organized crime. The discussion highlights the world of strip clubs as a major revenue source for criminals, drawing parallels to his early police work in Kansas City. At the heart of the conversation is the Gold Club, owned by Steve Kaplan, who turned it into a hotspot during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, attracting celebrities and high-profile figures. Mark describes the criminal activities that took place, from credit card fraud to connections with the Gambino crime family. Mark reveals the challenges of infiltrating the club and gathering evidence, including working with strippers as informants and tracking financial transactions. He also discusses key figures in the Gambino family, such as Mikey Scars DiLeonardo and Steve Kaplan's partnerships with corrupt police officers and mob players. Click here to buy Mark's book Investigating America's Most Notorious Strip Club: The FBI, the Gold Club, and the Mafia Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire 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 To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast. Donate to the podcast. Click here! Transcript 0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective and later Sergeant. I've got this podcast, Gangland Wire, and we look into the mob. Today, I have a great story, a real mafia story. You know, and we saw this in Kansas City. These guys love these strip clubs because there's a lot of money to be made out of strip clubs. And maybe some of you have heard of the gold club down in Atlanta. When I first got Mark's book, our guest, you know, I thought I remembered that there was all these Patrick Ewing and all these big-time basketball players going there. And it was a hell of a scandal, but I didn't remember much about it, but Mark Sewell. Welcome Mark. I really appreciate you coming on the show. [0:46] Well, Gary, you're, you're very welcome. I've been a fan of your podcast and your media work for a while too so i'm glad to do this thanks for having me well good and i told you before like you know we had the same thing in kansas city and these bobsters they love strip clubs there's a lot to to make out of a strip club besides the money besides a skim besides blackmail on people possibly and and all kinds of things can be made for the mob out of a strip club and and you dive right into the middle of it. Now, Mark, your first office was down in Atlanta, but before that, tell us a little bit about your history and what led you to join the FBI. Sure. Shortly after high school, Gary, I joined the Marine Corps out of the Houston, Texas area, 1987. And I stayed in the Marine Corps until 1997. During that time, I was able to earn a commission. [1:45] So when I left the Marine Corps, I was a young captain in the Marine Corps. And I was stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, or Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. But I recruited into the FBI out of the Honolulu office there. And that recruiter, FBI recruiter,