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.

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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

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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, came over to the Marine Corps base and took seven officers out of my battalion in about a one-year period. Period because we all had security clearances because we were intelligence battalion. Yeah. And so we, she knew we could pass the FBI’s background investigation because we already had these top secret clearances and so forth. So I joined the Marine Corps out of Hawaii in 1997.

[2:27] Excuse me. I joined the FBI. I was in the Marine Corps. So I joined the FBI in 1997. I go to the Academy in Quantico, which I’m already familiar with Quantico because as you know, the Marine Corps has, that’s their place actually. The FBI is a tenant on the Marine Corps base. So I was very familiar with the Quantico landscape and I get there in 1997. I complete new agent training and I get assigned to Atlanta, Georgia as my first office. I have to assume that the basic training of an FBI agent was a little bit different than the basic training of a Marine Corps.

[3:04] Yeah, you know, you make a good point because as a Marine, you go there wondering, is this going to be anything like what I’ve experienced in the past, right? Because when I went to OCS, Officer Candidate School, that’s kind of like a boot camp for officers. And you know that’s that’s a that’s a screaming event and a stress event and that kind of thing but i tell everybody that the fbi academy is what i call a gentleman’s course compared to the marine corps so i was uh pleasantly surprised and relieved yeah i bet you get a little bit older you can’t you you ain’t playing that homie don’t play that anymore having people screaming yell at you trying to make you look like an idiot and demeaning you and breaking you down all the way so they can build you back up. You know, I know that drill. Anyhow, so, you know, you get out of the Quantico Academy and your first office is Atlanta, Georgia. I assume you didn’t get to go back to Hawaii or you hired in at Atlanta.

[4:02] I didn’t want to go back to Hawaii, to be honest, because it’s just so doggone expensive out there. And, you know, there’s a chance when you go out there as an FBI agent that you could be there a long time. The Marine Corps is going to move you every three years, But you could go out there potentially in today’s FBI and you could spend your whole career out there. So the idea of spending a decade in Hawaii with that cost of living, we loved it, but we were ready to move on. So Atlanta, cost of living in Atlanta was a lot better. Yeah, I can only imagine. Atlanta is probably going to be more like Kansas City, although it’s probably more expensive than Kansas City. But it’s going to be more like the Midwest than Hawaii for sure. And then, of course, you know, FBI agents, guys, you may or may not know this. Agents that get assigned to san francisco and new york and i’m not sure if there’s another one or not but they have to get a little extra stipend because it’s the cost of living is so expensive and it’s true so it’s you know it’s a problem living in those huge big cities like that besides all the traffic and stuff of course that’s where the action is i assume washington dc gets an extra stipend too i would think and that and that is the the payoff you you mentioned it yeah working in New York, living in New York can really be a hassle, but if you’re looking for quality FBI type of work.

[5:20] Then there’s no place better than New York, right? So it’s a give and take sometimes. The great thing about Atlanta was there was great work because Atlanta is the ninth largest city in America. That’s home to a number of Fortune 500 companies, but yet the cost of living is a lot less. Yeah, you don’t have the old school Italian mafias, you know, ensconced in Atlanta, but there’s plenty of organized crime in Atlanta to work on in there. That’s right. And, you know, and I was surprised when I learned that I was going

[5:51] to be assigned to the Organized Crime Squad. I just knew a little bit about organized crime having grown up in Texas.

[5:59] And really all I knew was what I read in the newspapers or saw on television. And then I find out I’m going to be assigned to an Organized Crime Squad. And then specifically, I’m going to be assigned to the LCN part of the Organized Crime Squad. And I always made the joke. I had to go out and research what is the LCN because I really didn’t know a lot about it. I knew one name, John Gotti. That’s all I knew. That’s because he was in the headlines during that era.

[6:27] That’s all I knew. I was drinking from the proverbial fire hose. I had a lot to learn. Yeah, you did. You found out that their tentacles reach out to Atlanta and a whole lot of other places in the United States, any place there’s a large city and there’s opportunities for advice and ways to make money. These guys, they’ve got their, they got their fingers in it somewhere. And especially a place like Atlanta, because there’s a lot of money to be made in Atlanta. But one of your early case, you were, I guess, let’s go back your first off office. And then your first, your break-in officer, he was assigned to be your mentor, was a man named Simmons, John Simmons. Tell us about working with John Simmons. I had read in your book that that was a real positive, great experience for you.

[7:16] It was. John is what we call a Hoover agent, as you well know. Yes, I know what. John came in the FBI when J. Edgar Hoover was still the director. And when I joined in 97, there were still a handful of Hoover agents left in the Bureau, but not many. And they just did things different. They operated different. They talked different. They had a different attitude. It just was a whole different way of life. I went through in my career, I went through FBI directors, but you have to remember, J. Edgar Hoover was a director for 49 years in the FBI. So he was the FBI. So John was a Hoover agent and John had broke into the FBI work in organized crime as well and had really worked his entire career by the time I get assigned to work with him in 1997. At that point, he had 27 years already in the FBI.

[8:13] And the vast majority of that was working organized crime, was working the LCN.

[8:19] Starting when he was assigned as a new agent out of the academy, he went down to Tampa really quickly for about a year and then they ship him up to New York and he gets assigned to this brand new organized crime squad that the FBI had just kind of started. James Calstrom was on that squad, for example, some of the noteworthy names in the FBI, and they were working this case. This guy named Joe Pistone had a case going on. And so that’s how John broke in with the FBI is helping work the Donnie Brasco case. And John was in New York for 10 years. And then he went down to Miami and worked Wise Guys down there for about eight years and then came up to Atlanta for his, around his 20th year in the FBI, he gets up to Atlanta and work an organized crime there. And then this Gold Club case gets brought to his attention.

[9:16] And John realizes, and the new supervisor, Kenny Power of the squad, realizes we’re going to need some help on this case because it’s big. One guy can’t do this and so me right out of the academy i get assigned to the squad and i get assigned to john to help him on this case eventually we built it out to four agents working it exclusively but it started with john interesting yeah he’s he went all the way back and i’ve got a friend here in kansas city doug fensel who was on the gambino squad during that time and doug actually was one of the guys that went to sunny black and said hey joe pistone is is not donnie Roscoe and he’s not an informant. He is an FBI agent. So I talked to Doug, I’ll probably see him in the next week or so. We need to set up another breakfast with a mutual friend of ours.

[10:03] So that’s, those are pretty exciting people to come down to Atlanta. Some of the Gambino guys and you got John Simmons there who, who knows the Gambino family. And so how did you, you look at the gold club and you see, you find this guy named Steve Kaplan and Steve Kaplan, I kind of had an investigation works guys is you find this guy who’s who’s run the thing and you say well where did he come from who is this guy let’s go find out about him and start sending out leads right and and so how did that work from there just check did john simmons know him and know that history he had with the gambinos or how did that work can you describe that yeah i can sure steve kaplan bought the gold club in 1994 as a wise business investment to get ready for the 1996 summer Olympics, which were coming to Atlanta.

[10:54] You know, Atlanta was going to have millions of males that are young and, and sports fans, you know, come down into the city and what are they going to do in their off hours? There was money to be made. Strip clubs knew it. And so that’s where you wanted to be. If you wanted to make some money during the Olympics, that was one of the many money-making opportunities. So Steve bought that club in 94 after successively running a number of nightclubs, legitimate nightclubs, discos back in the 80s, nightclubs in New York and then down in Miami. This was his first adult business that he got into.

[11:33] In Atlanta or a gentleman’s club, as you call it, because it was high end. You know, it wasn’t a shady place. It was a very high end place. And he bought it in 94.

[11:43] And as soon as he bought it, New York picked up the telephone, the FBI agents there and called John, his connections, you know, John still had connections all over the FBI. And they said, Hey, John, we just want you to know that one of our leading associates up here in New York just bought a club down in your area. and you might want to look into it. And that’s how John first came about the case and Steve Kaplan. And then to answer your question also, then you start figuring out, well, who is Steve Kaplan? And of course, New York already knew who he was. So they give us his dossier, if you will, and start telling us a little bit about who Steve Kaplan is. But there’s still a lot to learn. And you know, the FBI only knows so much about a guy. We didn’t have any turncoats, if you will, or sources directly tied to Steve Kaplan yet. So we didn’t know everything about him. Once we made the case and some of his closest friends cooperated against him, we learned even more about his mob connections. But he was tied at the highest levels, Gary. I mean, he was ultimately to jump way ahead. He was in John Gotti Jr.’s crew and John Gotti Jr. Doesn’t take guys on that aren’t making money, right? So that’s who he was. And that’s how we found out about him was New York gave us that big heads up, and then we just started working the streets.

[13:02] Interesting. And we had a little conversation just before we started recording about, we’re going to talk about Michael D. Leonardo or Mikey Scars in a little bit because he was involved, but.

[13:12] Mark and I were comparing, I was telling him about interviewing Mikey’s cars and he was telling me about when he was made and Mark said, yeah, that was like the rookie class that made it big in, in the FBI. I mean, in the, uh, organized crime, the Gambino crime family. And what’s interesting is Steve Kaplan was connected to all of them almost throughout his thing. And so tell us about that, that the making ceremony was John Gotti Sr. Didn’t want to make his own son. So he had Sammy the Bull do the ceremony and John Gotti Jr. And Mikey Di Leonardo and Bobby Borrello and another guy whose name we can’t seem to remember were all made in that class. And so tell us about Kaplan’s connection. I know he was, it was connected to Bobby Borrello, but he seemed to go from one guy to the other for a while.

[14:06] Yeah, that class you’re talking about, that induction ceremony was Christmas Eve of 1988, if I’m not mistaken. And Bull Gravano, yeah, he did lead that ceremony, if you will. When Steve first came to the Gambino’s attention is when he owned a nightclub in New York in the mid-1980s. And, you know, kind of like the old joke goes, the Gambino’s made him an offer he couldn’t resist. Right. So he he gets he gets into bed with the Gambino’s and he’s first assigned

[14:37] to the crew of a guy named Frank Marano, a.k.a. Frankie Blair from the mid 1980s. But their relationship does not work.

[14:47] Well, and Steve was making enough money at that time, even in the early 80s for the Gambinos that he had already caught their attention. And what we were told later is that Steve was able to go to John Gotti Sr.

[15:03] And tell and ask or or make a make an issue that, hey, I don’t like this guy, Frankie Blair. I don’t I don’t like him. He’s not good for business. Give give me somebody else to work with. And so the story is, is that John Gotti Sr. Reassigned him to a guy named Shorty Muscusio, Anthony Shorty Muscusio, who was a close friend of John Gotti Sr. And so the theory is that he reassigned Steve Kaplan to Shorty Muscusio and says, hey, Shorty, take care of my guy here. He’s got some problems with Frankie Blair. Let’s treat him right because he’s making good money for us. And so Shorty takes over and Shorty was a famous mobster in his own right. He had his photo taken one time in 1987 during one of the John Gotti senior acquittals at the state level where he, when John Gotti came out of the courtroom, the first person to greet him was Shorty Muscusio with a handshake and then escort him into a Lincoln town car that was waiting on the curb and then get him out of there. And that photo went nationwide and that was Shorty, Shorty Muscusio. And that’s who Steve Kaplan ended up with. That was his second handler, if you will. And, but Shorty.

[16:19] Got sideways with Steve Kaplan’s business partner at a club called Bedrocks in about 1987-ish. And one night, about one or two in the morning, there was an altercation between Steve Kaplan’s partner, a guy named Dave Fisher, and Shorty Muscusio. And the story is, we believe, is that Shorty went into the only bathroom that there was down in the basement to use the bathroom. And when he came out, Dave ambushed him from behind and shot him in the back of the head and killed him.

[16:55] And Dave claimed to the NYPD that it was self-defense, that Shorty was beating him up that morning, Shorty and his crew. Shorty had a guy named Dino Bassiano was in his crew at that time. And Dino later testified in our Gold Club trial up in Atlanta. And he told us this story that they roughed him up a little bit. And when he had a chance, he shot Shorty coming out of the bathroom. And you would think that, okay, you shoot a made guy in the Gambino’s, you’re going to pay for it with your life, right? But because John Gotti Sr. was on trial in 87 and 88 and 89 with these state cases, Sr. Put out the word that don’t touch Dave Fisher. We’ll deal with him later because if we touch him, that’s going to bring more heat on me. That’s going to bring more attention to the fact that we’re shaking bedrocks down to begin with and so on and so on. So just leave him alone. You know, we’ll deal with him later. So with Shorty killed, dead now, Steve Kaplan gets assigned to Bobby Borrello, who you mentioned earlier, in 88.

[18:03] 87, 88 timeframe. And Bobby’s a rising star in the Gambino’s as well. He’s in that class that you just mentioned. He had just been made, but he’s now been assigned to be John Gotti senior’s driver and his bodyguard. He held that position there. And so because he, Bobby Borrello was close to John Gotti, that ultimately caused him his life. And I’ll tell you why is because still the other four families had not forgiven John Gotti Sr. For whacking Paul Castellano without permission. So they still held that vendetta against John Gotti. And when it was time to pay that Piper, if you will, their thought was, who am I going to take from the Gambinos that’s going to hurt John Gotti Sr. The most for what he did when he took out Paul Castellano? So they took out his driver. They took out Bobby Borrello. So Bobby was killed coming out of his house and trying to get in his car one morning. And Bobby was Steve Kaplan’s handler. So now Steve’s last two handlers have been whacked, Shorty Muscusio and Bobby Borrello. So then Bobby gets, excuse me, Steve Kaplan gets assigned to John Gotti Jr.

[19:19] All right. So now we’re in the early 90s and he gets assigned to John Gotti Jr. And as we, as you and I talked about earlier in warmups, you don’t end up in John Gotti Jr.’s crew unless you’re a significant moneymaker. Yeah. And that, and of course we knew that Steve was a big moneymaker.

[19:38] All the way back, even in that time frame. And when John Gotti Sr. Goes away, gets convicted by the FBI led case at his in his federal trial in 92.

[19:50] He goes to prison and now the Gambinos need an acting street boss because because the old man is still the boss in prison, but they need an acting street boss. So they bump up the kid and he becomes the acting street boss. And when he becomes the acting street boss, Steve Kaplan can no longer be in his crew because street boss doesn’t run a crew, right? So now Steve Kaplan gets handed over to the third person in that induction’s crew of 1988, and that’s Michael DiLeonardo, known on the streets as Mikey Scars. And he stayed with Mikey Scars from that 92, 93 era, all the way through buying the Gold Club in 94, up to our trial in 2001. And we took both of them to trial together as a team, along with a number of other employees from the Gold Club. So that’s who Steve Kaplan was and is. He started with the mob in the mid 80s and he ran with the at the highest levels.

[20:51] And he knew that he was at the highest levels and he often used that to his advantage. He threw names around, you know, I’m with John, you know, and not many people can call anybody John and the other guy know what you’re talking about. And we have Steve on tape there at scores in New York City when that club was being shut down and the FBI was taping those conversations. We have Steve saying, I’m, Hey, I’m with John. I’ll take care of this, you know, that type of thing. So Steve ran at the highest levels.

[21:25] Interesting. So now you’re, you’re down here at Atlanta and you, you know, I, first thing the bureau is going to do, I think is see, well, we got any informants that are already going in and out of this club, frequented it. Do you start running some surveillances on it? Start trying to find out who’s working there. Can you turn anybody? You need somebody on the inside. You need to find out, you know, the hierarchy inside and, and maybe what start learning, what kind of scams are going down. So tell the guys how you proceeded with this investigation. I mean, you know, you get the paperwork and, and all that kind of stuff, but then you got to hit the streets and, and find out who’s what in the investigation, you know, hours of surveillance, writing down the license numbers out front. I’ve been there doing all that and then going inside and having some drinks and, and just to see who, how people relate to each other. Talk about how that investigation then started going.

[22:17] Yeah, that’s a good question. And we didn’t have a really good strategy to begin with, because like you said, there were a lot of ways to go at it. We didn’t know which one was going to be the most productive. So in the beginning, we we kind of tried them all, if you will, and see where we could gain some traction. But where we gained the most traction was the following two that I’ll tell you

[22:41] about was, hey, look, what’s the number one occupation in a strip club? It’s going to be dancers. It’s going to be strippers. Right.

[22:51] So we made a decision that if we could get the strippers to talk to us, if we could get the dancers to talk to us. And tell us what was going on in the club, that would probably be about as good as information as we could get about the internal workings of the club and the scams that might be going on in the club. So we made an effort to do that. And I’ll tell you more about those in a minute. And then the second thing that kind of fell into our lap was there on a fairly regular basis, there were upper middle-class businessmen that were calling the FBI in Atlanta through the, you know, the 1-800 number, if you will, and saying, hey, I went to this club last night in Atlanta and my credit card got ripped. I walked out of there with what I thought was a $5,000 tab. And then American Express called me the next morning and said, no, it’s 25. So we started getting these calls on a regular basis. And we would go out and interview these fellas. And, you know, of course, they’re, they’re really good witnesses. They’re educated college types, businessmen, and they can tell a good story. And we knew if we ever went to trial some way, way down the future, they’d make good witnesses because they have good backgrounds. You know, they’re not criminals, right? That kind of thing. So they’re easy to believe.

[24:12] And they told us some pretty good stories about how they think their credit cards got manipulated and part of the story. And then while they’re telling those stories, we’re learning a little bit about how the club works as well, how the girls are manipulating the credit card. So the customers tell us this story, hey, my credit card got ripped, and here’s how I think it happened. So that’s on one hand, Gary. And then we’re talking to the dancers that we’re able to flip on the other hand, and they’re telling us how the credit cards are getting ripped and we’re marrying the two together. Now we’re getting the dancer’s version and we’re getting the customer’s version and they were very similar and they told the same story. And so we knew that we were on to something when it came to credit cards.

[24:59] And then a lot of those girls also told us about the cash and how it was handled in the club. And we knew there was tax fraud going on. Steve Kaplan wasn’t paying all of his taxes that he should be paying. He’s dealing a lot in cash. Remember, in the late 90s, America’s still dealing a lot in cash. It’s not a credit card exclusive community yet. Yeah. So there was still a lot of cash going on. So we knew we had some tax violations going on there. And what we eventually came to the decision was, what we need to do is get inside the club, conduct a search warrant, grab as many records as we can, figure out what’s going on from looking at those records. And then because there’s so many people in this club that are associated with it from a customer perspective, from an employee perspective, the prosecutor, the AUSA, Art Leach, had made a decision that we’re going to throw all of these people, which turned out to be hundreds, into a grand jury and investigate and conduct a grand jury investigation, which you’re very familiar with.

[26:06] So that’s a long answer to your question, but it really kind of focused on the financial crimes. We discovered other crimes as well when we got into it, prostitution, paying off police officers, obstruction, obstruction all the way back to that murder of Frankie or Anthony Muscusio that I told you about. We charged Steve Kaplan with obstruction because there was one witness to that murder, and Steve took him down to Florida and hid him out so he couldn’t talk to the NYPD. But because of the power of RICO, we could go back and charge Steve with that obstruction even though it didn’t happen in Atlanta. It happened in New York, but it’s all part of the Gambino enterprise.

[26:45] So when we got into the investigation, we started finding these things. But really, it was in the beginning and ultimately at the end. It really was a financial investigation. It boiled down to the money, boiled down to the cash. And we brought the IRS in to help us. And a guy named Bill Selinsky led that charge and they were super happy. Uh effective and we’re glad we did so you didn’t you didn’t have some young fbi agents you could put in there and give them a whole bunch of cash and they could get lap dances and have a party every night hey man i used to have guys that’s all they wanted to do yeah we’re gonna work the strip club boss you know we just need about a hundred bucks and you know we’ll have a merry old time you couldn’t do that well look we we certainly went in the club and we went in you know in a in an undercover capacity, but we were low key and we weren’t spending money. We were just flies on the wall, go in, observe, try and put faces with names, see the layout of the club, see what we could see from just a common perspective. We, you know, we had heard about names and we wanted to put faces with those names and, and so on and so on. But, you know, Gary, as you know, I know what you’re saying because that’s what young agents and young police officers think.

[27:57] But what they don’t know is that one day you’re going to be on a witness stand and a defense and a defense attorney is going to eat your lunch because they’re going to play those tapes that you made to the jury. They’re going to see and hear about you getting lap dances. They’re going to see and hear about you having sexy conversations with these dancers and so forth and they’re going to embarrass you is what they’re going to do in front of the jury so even though we talked about things like that And we certainly went into the club. We stayed away from being customers in that sense. And, you know, trying to engage the girls in prostitution or drug sales or anything like that, because it wasn’t worth it. We knew we could make this case other ways that wouldn’t embarrass us on the witness stand. Yeah. They were smart. You were smart doing that. Cause it’s real. It’s real. That goes back to, that goes back to John Simmons and some of these other guys that I’m, you know, that I was working with, you know, you, you, John Acavelli came up from New York. He had transferred from Atlanta to New York, and John had been on that Gambino squad that convicted the old man in 1992.

[29:02] In fact, he knew Mikey Scars previously because he, John Acavelli, another agent that I worked with, was working the union that Mikey Scars was shaking down, one of the construction unions. So he knew Mikey Scars really well. So that type of experience helped tell young agents like me and the other guys, look, we don’t need to go in this club and start acting like we’re wanting to get laid up in the gold rooms and things like that. That’s not the way to do this.

[29:32] So describe the inside of that club. You mentioned the gold room and these are like a VIP room. They have these different rooms that they’ll go back and you get a private dance with, which costs you a little more money. And so kind of describe how this was laid out. I know it was extremely high-end stuff in there. It was. The gold club was enormous to the tune of somewhere around 15,000 square feet. Wow. So, yeah, it was really big. It had two levels. The upper level lined two walls, and the upper level was the gold rooms, or what’s famously known in the strip club business as the VIP rooms. But they called them the gold rooms. And keep in mind that in Atlanta and in Georgia, but specifically in Atlanta, you can have full alcohol and full nudity, which is a rarity in the strip club business. Yeah. At the time, I don’t know what it is now, but at the time that we were

[30:26] doing this case, only two other states allowed that type of strip club business to go on. And that was Florida and Texas. You know, even up in New York or Las Vegas or out in California, the girls had to wear pasties or you couldn’t sell our art alcohol at the bar. You could only sell beer. It was a give or take. So.

[30:47] You now have, you know, full alcohol, full nudity, and you have these VIP rooms upstairs. And so Steve Kaplan knew that he had a magic formula where I can just charge these guys outrageous amounts of money and they’ll pay it. So they can see this girl get naked in a room upstairs by themselves, whether sex happens or not, they’re going to pay for it because who wouldn’t, right? If you got the money, they’re going to spend it up in these rooms. So Steve charged crazy amounts of money for these gold rooms, starting at a minimum in $1999 when we did the search in 1999, $200 an hour at a minimum.

[31:28] Depending upon the size of the room, it could go up to five hundred dollars an hour to buy a room. You also had to buy a bottle of champagne. The minimum bottle of champagne went for two hundred dollars minimum.

[31:41] And then you had to buy the girl. You had to pay for her hourly wage as well. And that was negotiated with the girl. And that was generally in the one to two hundred dollars an hour range, too. So to get into the least of the attractive gold rooms upstairs with the least amount of time, with the least attractive girl, if you will, was $600 just to get in the door right there. Okay. And that was a bare minimum. So you were going to spend probably at least $1,000 when you walked into a gold room. And all seven of those gold rooms were full all the time, cycling through them, cycling through them, cycling through them every night. It was not uncommon for Steve to make $40,000 to $50,000 on a weekend night. And most of that was coming from gold room businessmen churning those credit cards over or paying cash, either one. So that’s what the gold rooms were. And then, of course, when the celebrities came into town, specifically the athletes, they were the most noteworthy there at the gold club. But there were other, there were movie stars and the like as well. But when the athletes came into town, that was exclusively where they went, was up into the gold rooms and the private rooms and et cetera. So the gold rooms were the, were notorious there at the club, but they were big, big money makers for Steve Kaplan.

[33:00] Interesting. Yeah. When those athletes, they come in with their entourage. Yeah. There’s, there’s a song out there by a singer songwriter talks about this guy said he’s the guy that carries a boombox for Mike Tyson. And he says, hey, Mike, let’s go to the strip club because he knows, you know, Mike will take him to the strip club and, you know, everything will pay for everything. They just start throwing money around and those athletes do that kind of stuff. And movie stars will do. Well, you know, it’s interesting what you’re describing. And here’s what I learned working in Atlanta because I worked strip clubs for almost 10 years. What you’re describing is really a ethnic race difference type of strip clubs. The black strip clubs in atlanta and strip clubs are very segregated for the most part there’s white strip clubs and there’s black strip clubs and then there’s a few that are like the gold club, that are interracial but those are the high-end clubs yeah and but typically are you still with me gary yeah something’s going on here let’s just let’s just stop just a minute and.

[34:09] Start again. All right. Try it again. Start back over about where you were going into the, okay. Okay. You’re good. Yeah. So this Mike Tyson story that you’re telling, that’s very typical in the black strip clubs of America and even in Atlanta where the, the celebrities, the athletes, et cetera, will come in and bring a big entourage and throw money around. That’s not what happened in Steve Claflin’s club. Oh really? Because, because Yeah, he came up with a formula that figured, hey, I can make more money doing it different. And here’s the way it was.

[34:42] His formula was simple. And he learned this through an athlete named Larry Johnson, who played for the Charlotte Hornets and then went to the New York Knicks. But Larry had played college basketball at Nevada, Las Vegas. They won a national championship. He was a very famous athlete, did commercials for Nike called the Grandmama commercials. If you remember those back in the nineties, Larry Johnson came to the club one night, just shortly after Steve Kaplan bought it. And he begged Steve Kaplan to let Steve take a girl home with him, let Larry take a girl home with him. And Steve wouldn’t do it. Steve had just bought the club and Steve was trying to run it kind of a, I don’t want to get in trouble with the cops type of thing. And the easiest way to get in trouble with the cops to start running prostitution. So, so Steve said, no, I’m not letting you bring the, I’m not letting you take the girl home. And someone else that was there at that conversation told us this story later. But then Steve had a change of heart after Larry left. He said, you know what? This is my hook, and here’s the way I’m going to do it. These athletes want to come to this club and hook up with these beautiful women. I’m going to allow them to do it, but I’m not going to allow just the average guy to do it. Here’s the way it’s going to work.

[35:57] The athlete will come, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, the list goes on and on. And I will give them a free gold room and I’ll give them, I’ll pay for the girls to go up there and entertain them. And what’s going to happen is there, those athletes are going to draw in the average Joe, if you will, the, the guy that wants to go to the club to say, Hey, I was at the club last night and guess who was there? Madonna was there. I was at the club last night and guess who was there? George Clooney was there. That’s going He’s going to tell his buddies, and they’re going to tell their buddies, and they’re going to tell their buddies. And now you’ve got hundreds of just average Joes walking through the door because they think they might get to see Dennis Rodman or Patrick Ewing or Madonna or whatever it may be. So Steve came up with this formula that I’m going to allow these celebrities to come up. They don’t have to spend any money. They don’t have to throw money around like Mike Tyson. I’m going to pay for it all because I’m going to make my money back by having four and five hundred guys show up wanting to hang out with a NBA player, that type of thing. Smart. And it was smart. It was very, it worked. Yeah. It was, we, our sources were telling us that it’s, it’s known throughout the city of Atlanta. If you want to hang out and see the jet set and the celebrities of Atlanta, go to the Gold Club.

[37:17] Interesting. So it worked. It gave it a certain legitimacy among polite society, if you will, that guys, people wouldn’t maybe not normally go there would feel okay. It was okay to go there. They wouldn’t feel afraid or threatened or anything where they might, you know, one of these lowered in strip clubs, you know, they might want to go in, but they’re afraid to, but the score, it was old club.

[37:38] You’re right. The lights were bright. There was no dark rooms. There were no shady, you know, things happening. Like in most strip clubs, there weren’t drug deals happening in the corners. This was a very light, bright business with disco balls and loud music. And his philosophy when he first bought the club, Steve Kaplan, was to turn it into a Studio 54 type of atmosphere. And that’s exactly what it was like. But at the same time, he’s paying police officers. He’s ripping people’s credit cards. He’s allowing the athletes to engage in prostitution. And he’s skimming money and taxes and not paying what he should be. So there were plenty of other crimes going on as well. Plus, he was supporting the Gambino family or a big chunk of the Gambino family.

[38:24] We had video. So later in the investigation, before we conducted the search warrant, I was able to put a camera on the front door. The local bank director of security was a retired FBI agent. And we went to him and asked him to use one of his cameras. And he said, sure. We turned this back then. The cameras were four feet long, right? So we turned this long four foot long camera. It looks like a, it looks like a rocket and we turn it and we put it on the front door. We’re shooting probably about a hundred yards away and we put it on the front door and we start seeing everybody that’s coming through and so forth. And it was the who’s who of, you know, Atlanta, you know, seven foot tall basketball players, politicians, police officers in uniform, police officers out of uniform, you name it, just a high-end businessman who owned the local car dealerships or owned the local fast food establishments and those type of things. And that.

[39:26] That that camera proved to be extremely beneficial. Later, the club discovered it because how can you not discover a four foot camera, you know, staring at you across the street? And we have great video of them standing out there in the parking lot, pointing at the camera, even bring one of their police officer friends over. And he points at the camera and they’re all sitting there staring at the camera,

[39:47] trying to figure out what’s going on and so forth. But I wanted to make a point about the camera. You said something a little earlier. What was it you just said to me earlier about the legitimacy you said something else that made me think about cameras gary refresh my memory oh i just talked about the previous question the club was on the surface was legitimate it was a safe place for people to go that in that there weren’t things bad things happened there yeah so yeah yeah i guess that’s what it was yeah i guess that’s what it was is that i was i was going to go to the cameras with that and we had you know we had the parking lot covered with the cameras and then with surveillance and you know you would bring your car up and you would hand it off to the to the one of those guys that park your car the valets.

[40:33] Yeah yeah steve kaplan was such a businessman that he got a percentage of the valet even though he he farmed the valet out to another company yeah he got a percentage of that of course he got a he got a percentage of everybody that walked through the door they paid a fee to get into the club. You pay outrageous amounts of money for the alcohol. You pay outrageous amounts of money to go up in the gold rooms. If you want to take your credit card and turn it into cash so you have something to stick into the girls’ garter belts or pay them in cash, he paid outrageous interest on that. Everything that was able to be turned into a moneymaker at that club was to the utmost steve made nine million dollars at the club legitimately in 1999 making it the most profitable strip club in america 1999 really now did he have like a a crow we call a crow company set up where when the guy’s credit card bill came back it wasn’t to the gold club or scores or some club sound did he have like a real that’s right where john sounded that’s what they usually do So how did he do that? Well, it was called MSB Sports. And what that stood for, no, it was just MSB Inc. I take that back, MSB Inc. And what that stood for was Mona’s Sports Bar.

[42:00] And Mona was Steve Kaplan’s wife. That was her name. So it was Mona’s Sports Bar, MSB Inc. So you’re right. So when you get home as a businessman and your wife goes through the credit cards receipt, She doesn’t see scores or gold gloves. She sees MSB. You’re right. That’s exactly right. Yeah. You know what you’re talking about, Gary. Cumber and Rango. I know I’ve been there. I’ve investigated a few of these things. We had an escort service that I worked real hard on that a mob guy really owned. And that’s what they did. They early in the credit card days. And so they started taking credit cards over the phone, but they had another company name set up so it wouldn’t come back as the escort service.

[42:44] So you mentioned police officers several times. Nope. Gary, I’m sorry. I remember the point I was going to make earlier. Yeah. You talked about, yeah, Steve Kaplan doing all these things. And then you said something like to the effect, then of course, Steve was paying the Gambinos a bunch of money as well. And you’re right. And here’s where I was going with the camera. Is it on that camera on? So the club was not open on Sundays. It was closed on Sundays only. It was open six days a week. It was open about 18 hours a day. They had to close at 4 a.m. and they could open up again at 11 or 6, or excuse me, 11 or 10 the next morning. So it was only closed about six hours a day.

[43:25] But on Sunday mornings, after the week’s worth of money had been made, we called a number of times one of Steve’s closest associates wheeling a suitcase on wheels out of that club at about, I don’t know, let’s say like eight or nine in the morning after the proceeds had been counted out and et cetera. And we let in wheeling that suitcase out and then going and get on a Delta line airline and then taking that money. That’s what was in that suitcase. We’re taking that cash back to New York. And that was, that was a big part of the skim that Steve was kicking to the Gambinos is that mostly about once a week on a Sunday morning, they would pack a suitcase full of money. Now, remember this is pre nine 11. So airline security is completely different for those listening who don’t, who are thinking, how do you get a suitcase with, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in cash on Delta airline?

[44:21] Well, one security was different, but two, Steve Kaplan had corrupted two employees at Delta airlines that allowed him to do this easier to carry this money onto the plane without any undue interference, if you will. So Steve had all his employees.

[44:38] Avenues covered. Yeah, he did. And I tell you, that guy really did. Now you mentioned police officers. That’s a subject near and dear to my heart. And, and so Atlanta’s best I know, they didn’t have what you would call institutional corruption for years and years and years, like some of the big Eastern cities.

[44:57] And so as a, as a department, it doesn’t have the reputation of, of being corrupt from one end to the other, but you know, we’re always going to have individuals. We had them here in Kansas. You’re always going to have individuals. So how did this work with them? But guys, guys that are bent that way, they’ll start showing up at these places. They’ll go in for a drink or whatever, and they’ll make sure that the manager or somebody knows they’re a cop. And then a sharp guy from New York, like Kaplan is any guy that runs one of these kinds of joints knows that, you know, start, you know, comping them drinks and, and start trying to, to, to get them on their side and see how far they can go with it. Is that kind of how it worked there and how extensive was it?

[45:40] Well, you know, I did other cases on other strip clubs and, and I made cases on police officers that pled guilty to corruption. And that’s the way it happened in those other cases, but nothing Steve Kaplan did was normal. Gary, he, he had his own way of doing business. And let me tell you how he corrupted these police officers. The two that we charged and took to trial, Steve Kaplan doesn’t need you unless he can use you, and he knows he can use you. So just like I said earlier, when Steve knew he needed to get money on a Delta airline airplane to fly to New York, he needed a connection within Delta Airlines. You know, from your experience, Gary, what’s the biggest headache for a strip club owner? It’s going to be inspections and permits, right? The vice unit is going to come and make sure all the girls have their permits. They’re all licensed, that you’re following all the rules, the alcohol, et cetera, et cetera. So Steve got him a guy inside the permit unit.

[46:44] A guy named Reginald Burney, who, how they met, we never found out, but he was in that permit unit and he would call Steve and he would warn Steve

[46:55] that, hey, there’s going to be an inspection tonight, be prepared. And in return, he was given pretty much carte blanche in the club. We had testimony at trial that he slept with at least one of the girls, both in the club and would take her home after hours, which was a violation of the rules that he’s supposed to be enforcing as a permits guy. A lot of people may not know this, but.

[47:22] At least then, an employee of a strip club could not leave a strip club with a customer, could not change clothes, get dressed, go to the locker room, get dressed, and walk out of the club with a customer. Because, obviously, it’s prostitution. It will lead to prostitution. So, permits would inspect those type of things. They’d set up vice traps and et cetera. But, yeah, here, Reginald Burney, we had testimony at trial that he’s doing this exact same thing. The other officer that we charged. And at trial, Gary, we had to cut the trial in half because we had 17 defendants. So only eight were on trial the first time. And then we were going to try the nine other in the next trial. So it was eight and nine is the way we cut it up. The second police officer was in the second trial. And his connection to the club was, he was a very senior man in the department. He knew everybody. He knew the city of Atlanta, not like the back of his hand, but more importantly, his wife had worked at the club. She had been a dancer back before Steve had bought the club, and then when Steve bought the club, she became what’s known as the house mom. She ran the locker room for the girls, made sure the scheduling was right, made sure they all had their permits. You know, the managers don’t really get involved with the administrative duties of the girls. A house mom handles all of that.

[48:47] This police officer named Jack Redlinger, his wife was one of the house moms there at the club. There were other house moms as well. She was one of them. So Jack would come to the club to pick up his wife, bring her home, take her home, do that kind of thing. And he became friends with Steve Kaplan. And Jack had this reputation already that was shady. Quite frankly, we had other police officers tell us, oh, everybody knew Jack was shady. And then one thing led to another and Jack became the guy that Steve could call for anything that he needed. I need advice. I need you to come look at that camera that’s pointing at me across the street. That was Jack Redlinger pointing at the camera in uniform. I need you to do an unauthorized escort for my bus full of basketball players on my celebrity golf tournament. Jack would do that for him. Jack would do anything that needed to be done. And what we ended up charging him with was there was a rape allegation that happened at the club in the limousine involving one of the managers, Steve’s close friends, and one of the.

[49:55] Well, Jack obstructed that rape investigation we charged. Jack got in touch with the sex crimes investigator and really talked poorly about the girl. You can’t believe her. She’s a liar. She sleeps around. Don’t listen to her. You know, these type of things. Then he instructed, we had testimony at trial that he instructed the limo driver of that limousine where the rape happened to destroy evidence, get rid of the logbook that shows who’s in the limousine, to lie about his testimony to the sex crimes investigator, things like that. So we charged Jack with that rape obstruction as well. But that’s how Steve got in with those police officers. Who can help him? It wasn’t just dumb luck of a guy coming to the bar like you’re talking about. That’s what other guys, that’s what other strip clubs did. Steve didn’t do it that way. Steve was very strategic about who he wanted to be his partners in crime.

[50:51] Interesting. That’s why he’s a good moneymaker. You know, now let’s get back to Michael DeLeonardo, Mikey Scars. Now, did he come down there or did he just was, he was up in New York. He lived up in New York. Did he just, you know, help get that money and distribute it on the other end? Or did he come down to have a presence at the club very much or how did that work yeah yeah good question so when steve owned his club in miami called club boca it was a very high-end legitimate disco type of nightclub and john gaudy jr would come down to that club and hang out i had a girl tell me one time that she took pictures in the club and she didn’t know who she was taking pictures of and and somebody came and took the camera from her and crushed it and threw it it It was a disposable camera, right? Oh, yeah. Crushed it and threw it away. And and she later learned, oh, that’s John Gotti Jr. over there that I’m taking pictures of and so forth. But but Junior did not like strip clubs. We were told that by multiple witnesses that he never came down to Atlanta to see Steve’s moneymaker in Atlanta. But Mikey’s scars did come down to answer your question. And we never had testimony and we never have reason to believe that Mikey came down because he wanted to, you know, have sex with the girls or anything like that. It was to come down.

[52:07] Remember, Mike’s Mikey’s the ultimate professional, right? He’s your stereotypical wise guy that you would see portrayed in the Don Corleone movies, right? Yes. Coat and tie, polished shoes, legit.

[52:21] So Mike would come down to the club for a couple of reasons. One, I want to see the moneymaker. I want to see how this is happening. I want to make sure that the money that Steve Kaplan is paying to us, I have a real good gut feeling that this is the proper amount based on what I’m seeing come through this club. And, and at the same time, look, this guy’s fabulously wealthy, Steve Kaplan. So if he wants to take me to Atlanta Falcons football game, fine. If he wants to put me up in a gold room just to talk with a girl all night for good company and give me free champagne and that type of thing, I’m all for that too. So scars did come down. I caught him on the video that we were talking about earlier, that camera on the front door, getting in and out of the limo, going to the Atlanta Falcons football game, those type of things. But it wasn’t because he was there to have sex with the girls, quite frankly. He was there to see the moneymaker, make sure the Gambinos were being told the truth about the money that Steve Kaplan was making and so forth, and then take advantage of the spoils at the same time to a certain extent. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I talked to him at length and he didn’t seem like a partier kind of guy. He was more of a serious businessman mobster. He was a mobster, no doubt about it, but he was not a, I didn’t get that vibe from him at all, a party kind of a guy. So let’s say. I would agree with. We never had testimony to the contrary. Yeah.

[53:49] So, you know, this is, we’re kind of coming down to the end here. The girls, let me ask a couple of questions about how the girls work. Now, the girls, if I remember right here, they mainly, they can make a couple of thousand, maybe $2,500 a night. They’d only work a couple of nights a week and make four or five grand sometimes are really good ones. And they were in high demand of other strip clubs and kind of the circuits. There’s kind of a circuit of the higher end strip clubs that these girls would work. And so they got their tips and they had to tip out other employees but did did kaplan seem like the strip club owners here they didn’t take any of the girls money they basically allowed them to work there and then they generate a lot of money how did that work with the girls there wasn’t anybody that didn’t walk into that club whether you’re a customer or employee that didn’t have to pay steve kaplan and ever steve got his money out of everybody here’s the way the girls paid out at the end of the night. First of all, they had to pay to show up to work. So it was called a dance fee. And each girl had to pay, I believe it was $50 a night just to get out on the dance floor in their stilettos and their bikini. $50 right there. So unless they make $50, they’re in the hole. So that’s Steve gets 50. And on some nights they would run almost 100 girls through that club. So do the math. Yeah. 100 times 50. Right. Steve made five thousand dollars just on the girls just to show up for work.

[55:14] And then the way the girls made their money was the primary way they made their money is we call it the funny money in the strip club business or the monopoly money. And Steve had his monopoly money. It was called gold bucks. It’s where a customer could come in and put $10,000 on his credit card. And I would give him $10,000 in fake funny money. And then he could take, and it was in a hundred dollar denominations. And then he could take that funny money and he could give it to the girls at the end of the night as their tips, as their money, as their dance fees. And now the girl would have, like you said earlier, $2,000 in funny money, But how is she going to turn that into U.S. Money, U.S. dollars? She would have to take it to Steve Kaplan at the end of the night or to the club management and do what they call a cash out. And she would take her $2,000, give it to Steve Kaplan, and Steve would get 20% of that to turn it into U.S. currency.

[56:09] But keep this in mind also, Gary, that when that customer put that $10,000 tab on his credit card, Steve got 20% of that too. He charged him an extra 20%. So Steve got 20% from the customer for that 10,000. And then he got 20% of that 2000 that the girl got just in that one transaction right there. So Steve was getting 20% of every dollar that was being spent between a customer and the dancer on a credit card transaction. No, strike that 40% on every credit card transaction that was happening up there in those gold, in those gold rooms. And again, I’m telling you, those guys were spending crazy money up there. It wasn’t uncommon.

[56:51] The customers were okay with spending $5,000 and $10,000 a night. That was not uncommon. Yeah. Yeah. Not uncommon. I know a guy here in Kansas City reasonably well and –, He’d do that. He’s a, he’s a real big bucks lawyer and he’d do that. He’d, he’d spend five grand and just a blink of an eye at a strip club. I was like, dude.

[57:13] Multiply that by 30 or 40 guys a night, seven, six nights a week. Yeah. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. That’s a, that’s been a heck of investigation. So eventually you’re going to have to take this down. Yeah. You’ve been, you started with a grand jury investigation, bringing people in. Know they know the jig is up and they know something’s going on and so you’re slowly but surely gathering all these different statements from people and serving search warrants and then records cepedas and and putting on it had to be a huge huge paper case that you guys put it was after after all the fun of doing the surveillances and following people around and figured out who was who now you got to do that so that how many agents did you end up having working on this.

[57:58] Well we had four fbi guys we had four fbi full-time we had two irs full-time and we had two support employees from the fbi that were assigned to us to assist with records checks and things and that so we had eight working full-time off the top of my head and then we of course we’d have part-timers as well but when we did those searches of course it was all hands on deck you know we had the night that we did the search we did three searches we did one in new York and two in Atlanta. We searched Steve Kaplan’s house in Atlanta. We searched the gold club at 4 AM and we searched his corporate warehouse in New York. And we probably used a hundred plus agents to conduct those searches and do all the, and then at the same time, while we were doing those searches, we had another hundred agents out handing out subpoenas for the grand jury, knocking on doors for the employees that had, that were not at the club or that

[58:52] we had already missed because they had went home before 4 a.m. Or something to that effect. So the night of the searches, it was an all hands on deck, a couple hundred agents running around the city of Atlanta and New York supporting this effort.

[59:05] And we run that grand jury investigation for six months. We have three indictments. We supersede it twice. The original indictment had 97 pages in the indictment. That’s how I think it was. The last indictment was about 120 pages. And that was the one that It finally included Mikey Scars, Michael D. Leonardo. He was not in the original indictment. But as we started flipping people and we started getting more cooperation, we were able to put more and more things together. And then we get ready for trial in April, May of 2001. It took two years to get from the search in 99 to the trial in 2001. And we go to trial with 17 defendants, eight in the first trial.

[59:51] Did people start making deals at the end did they end up going ahead and copping please we had a number of folks that, that did do what you just said, they, they cooperated. The way we worked the grand jury was this, Gary, is that, look, there’s a good chance that as an employee of that club, you committed a crime. You either slept, you either engaged in prostitution, you ripped somebody’s credit card, or you committed a tax fraud, some form or fashion, but we don’t care because you’re low level and you’re not our target. Our target is Steve Kaplan. So come into the grand jury, get your immunity letter, tell us the truth, and you’ll be fine. And 99% of the employees, mostly girls, did just that. But we brought a lot of guys in as well. We brought a lot of mobsters in. We brought a lot of male employees in, managers. And they did the same thing. Look, I don’t want to get in trouble. I’ll tell you the truth. And they took our deal. But there was a handful of employees that were very loyal to Steve that said, no, I’m lying. Steve never did anything. There was never any sex. There was never any drugs. There was never any credit card fraud. Steve was not in the mob. There’s no police officers. Whatever story they wanted to tell, they were just very loyal to Steve.

[1:01:10] And because of that, we had no choice but to charge them for the crimes that we felt like were significant enough in the club to warrant prosecution. So we had 17 defendants. But we did have probably, I would say, in that close-knit circle, we had probably half a dozen cooperators that flipped once the grand jury and the search warrant became public. One of them was Steve’s closest right-hand man, quite frankly, a guy named Thomas Siganano, who had been in, what’s D.B. Leonardo’s first name there, the guy that got whacked in the Gambinos that Gravano killed. Called him D.B. D.B., yeah. Remember D.B.? D.B.’s crew. Yeah. Yeah, he had been in DB’s crew back in the mid 80s and hooked up with Steve Kaplan and was helping him up in Atlanta and had been in the limo when Steve was driving around with John Gotti Jr. and Mikey Scars. And, you know, he he he got his own attorney and his own attorney turned out to be Ed McDonald. You may not know who Ed McDonald is, but let me tell you and your audience who Ed McDonald is. If you watch Goodfellas and there’s one prosecutor portrayed in the movie Goodfellas, that’s the guy that prosecutes Henry Hill and then talks Henry into cooperating and talks his wife into cooperating. Well, that guy that’s playing that character of the prosecutor, that’s the real prosecutor. His name is Ed McDonnell.

[1:02:31] Ed played himself in the movie. Ed is the guy that prosecuted Henry Hill, flipped Henry Hill, et cetera. Well, Ed retires from the government, becomes a defense attorney. And then our guy in Atlanta calls Ed up and says, hey, I got this big problem in Atlanta. Can you help me? Ed calls down to Atlanta and says, hey, my guy wants to cooperate. And so we were able to get a very high level cooperator through the help of Ed McDonald. We got one of the girls who we originally charged her because she wouldn’t tell the truth. And she was in Steve’s circle. She was sleeping with all the athletes. She was one of Steve’s girls, as we called them, Steve’s girls that would sleep with the athletes sleep. She wouldn’t cooperate either. So we had to charge her, but she eventually changed her tune and she cooperated. And so that, and another couple of managers that we charged that eventually cooperated as well. We had about half a dozen really close inner circle type of cooperators. Wow. So now is this what Michael D. Leonardo, what Mikey scars was in prison for when he ended up? No, I don’t know. he didn’t exactly flip, but no, no, let me, let me tell you what happened. No, let me tell you what happened. So we’re into trial, Gary, four months into trial. The government is still presenting their case. We’re on, we’re on direct for four months. At this point, we’d already put 50 witnesses in front of the jury.

[1:03:55] Finally, at the four month point, 15 of the 17 defendants plead guilty. They strike a deal. Okay. you got us. This is turning out bad. We agreed to plead guilty. Steve Kaplan agrees to go to prison and give up the club to the government.

[1:04:12] Two of the defendants say, no, I’m not cooperating. I’m taking my case to the jury. One of those was that police officer from the permit unit who decided I’m going to take my chance with the jury. And the other one was Mikey Scars. We charged Mikey with the obstruction of scores and we charged Steve Kaplan with the obstruction of scores. The same scores obstruction that John Gotti Jr. Had pled guilty to previously and that Craig De Palma and his son, Greg De Palma, had pled guilty to. The only people that did not plead guilty to the scores of extortion was Steve Kaplan and Michael D.

[1:04:49] Leonardo, because New York didn’t have enough evidence to convict them or they didn’t think they did. So they gave him a pass, but we charged him down in Atlanta because we were able to flip some more witnesses and so on and so on. And so our prosecutor felt like, OK, I think I can make this case down in Atlanta. Turns out it was a 50 50 type of thing. We lost one of our key informants at trial. He refused to testify. He testified in the grand jury, but he would not testify at trial. So the judge gave him an obstruction charge and gave him 18 additional months to his prison sentence. But ultimately at the end of the day, Michael D. Leonardo gets acquitted. And so does that police officer. The two that took their case to the jury got acquitted.

[1:05:34] Michael walks out of Atlanta, a free man. Six months later, New York pinches him on those murders in New York that they had him on previously. And they’re waiting for our case to be adjudicated before they pinched him in New York. But remember, as soon as our case is over with, 9-11 happens. So the wheels of justice all get delayed. All right. So my guess is the minute Mikey Scars walked out of the Atlanta courtroom, a free man, And New York was probably ready to put the handcuffs on him the minute he got off the plane, so to say.

[1:06:12] But in September, because remember, they pled guilty in August. Mikey gets acquitted in August. He gets acquitted in August. Everybody else pleads guilty in August. 9-11 happens 30 days later. Yeah. So New York did not pinch him immediately. They waited about three to six months into the year 2002. And then they pinch him on the murders that they had him for. He agrees to cooperate in those murders. Okay. And then as part of, and as part of his allocution that he has to give, he, he admits, yeah, you know, I was shaking, I was shaking the gold club in Atlanta down. He described when he testified in the John Gotti Jr. Trial, the three John Gotti Jr. Trials that happened in the mid two thousands, he called Steve Kaplan, the biggest cash cow for the Gambino family. We wanted to keep him happy. I was his guy. My job, Mikey scars, his job was to keep Steve Kaplan alive and keep him happy. So he could keep making money for the Gambino’s. Great.

[1:07:11] So that’s how, that’s how stars got pinched. Yeah. All right. I’ll tell you what, Mark, there’s many more stories in this book guys. So, uh, here, here’s the book and you got to get this book. It’s a, it’s a walk on the wild side, if you will. and the back end of an investigation into what could be going on in every city in the United States, even today. There’s still a lot of strip clubs out there and there’s still a lot of money that’s being made. Most cities and mobs kind of on the down low, but anywhere there’s what I call the gray area businesses, which strip club is, you know, it’s legal on one hand, but it’s a gray area. There’s always room for the mob to move in and make money. There’s always scams going on inside of those so mark i really appreciate you coming on the show and what do you got coming up in the future anything you just promoting this book you somebody you’re opting it for a movie yet it looks like this would make a hell of a movie yeah we well it’s you know i get asked that question on the podcast that i’m on and then and i give this answer and it’s because that’s a good.

[1:08:22] Not stereotypical, what’s the word I’m looking for? Anecdotal question to ask, is this going to get turned into a movie? And the answer is that we’re heading that way. We’re having some great discussions with some folks in Hollywood, if you will, for both a docu-series and a movie. And we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hopefully we’ll be able to do a video version of this as well. Yeah. Mark, this story’s got it all. It’s got it all. And there’s enough in there to make a series out of it. So it’s, it is one heck of a story. So what about you? You’re retired and are you just like rested on your laurels now? Oh no, I don’t have enough laurels to rest on. So, so, so I’m doing two things. I’m primarily, I’m still working for the FBI as a contract employee. I teach at a school that the FBI runs up in the Quantico area. Me and a bunch of old retired guys teach up there on a part-time basis. It’s not a full-time gig. It’s just a part-time gig, but plenty to keep me busy and keep me wired in with the young guys. And then I’m, I’m writing another book about another case that I worked. And you know, this, this book is keeping me busy chatting with guys like you and doing the movie things and so forth. So right now I’m staying, I’m staying real busy either through the book and the cases that I’ve worked or just teaching with the FBI. Yeah, cool. All right.

[1:09:41] You, you paid your dues and you got it made. You can, you can play a little more golf now and work part time and work on your book. That’s kind of what I do. I work on different things and play a little more golf. I play golf two, two, three times a week now. Okay. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah.

[1:09:58] Anyhow. So guys, this has been great. I tell you what, Mark, I really appreciate you coming on. So don’t forget guys, get this book. It is investigating America’s most notorious strip club, the FBI, the gold club and the mafia. You will not regret getting this book. I promise you that. So don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, all you drivers out there. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD, if you’ve ever been in the service, the VA has a hotline number on their website and hand in hand with PTSD, many times are problems with drugs, problems with drugs and alcohol. And, you know, a guest we had on and a former again proposed member, Anthony Ruggiano is now a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida. And he also has a hotline on his website. So, you know, if you want to go into treatment, go find the Ruggiano and let me know how that went, if you would, I’d really like to hear that story.

[1:10:56] And don’t forget, I have a book out there that I just did, Windy City Mafia. So look on Amazon, get that. I have two documentaries on Amazon. They’re only $1.99 rental, Gangland Wire, which really tells the Kansas City end of the story behind the skimming from Las Vegas that Casino Made So Famous. The movie Casino. It’s really the backstory behind Casino. And I have this one, Brothers Against Brothers, the Savella Spiro War, which tells about a mob war that was going on all the time.

[1:11:26] The FBI was really focused on the investigation of skimming from Las Vegas. We also had a mob war going on in Kansas City, which the intelligence unit here was right in the middle of. So I got those things out there. And once again, Mark, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks a lot. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate you doing that as well. Thank you.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins engages former FBI agent Fred Graessle, who shares insights from his thirty-year career with the Bureau. They discuss Graessle’s early experiences in Cleveland during a tumultuous period of organized crime, focusing on significant cases such as the violent conflicts involving Italian and Irish mobs.

Fred tells the famous story about the stolen informant list how it contained the name of John Curley Montana, and how this information forced Jimmy the Weasel Fratianno in as a cooperating witness.

Fred recounts the chilling details of John Curly Montana’s involvement with the kidnapping and murder of businessman Henry Podborny, illustrating the complexities of criminal conspiracies and the challenges of law enforcement. The episode also highlights the importance of informants, the rigorous investigative work required, and the collaboration among law enforcement in tackling organized crime, offering listeners a fascinating glimpse into federal investigations.
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Transcript
Welcome to Gangland Wire
[0:03]Gangland Wire. I am retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit, Detective Gary Jenkins. I even got promoted to sergeant before I left and went back to the intelligence unit for a period of time. Now I’ve turned podcasters, y’all know. And I have one of my many great expert former FBI agents. You know, we’ve had a lot of them on here today. It’s Fred Grassley. Fred, welcome. Thank you very much, Gary. Now, Fred, did I get your last name pronounced right? It’s Graessle. But anything close to that will work. Call me anything but late for dinner, right? I’m notorious for butchered names, as these guys know. Anyhow, Fred, Fred and I had a meeting not too long ago for lunch, and he had gotten hold of me. He’s retired out of the Cleveland office or Northwest Indiana office. I can’t remember which office you retired out of. Northwest Indiana. Northwest Indiana. And he moved to Kansas City, retired to Kansas City as a company. So I’m going to let Fred tell you a little bit about his background and his career in the FBI and a little bit of post-FBI, because I think that’s got to be interesting. So, Fred, tell us about yourself.
[1:21]Sure. I went to Indiana University and got a degree in accounting specifically to qualify myself to be an FBI agent. That was something I wanted to do ever since I was a small child. I graduated in 1973, went into public accounting for a couple of years, passed the CPA exam, and applied with the Bureau and got in pretty quickly in August of 1975 and was a special agent. For 30 years during that point in time. I spent my first 10 years.
[1:56]For you guys that don’t know, that was the route, one of the three routes into the FBI back in those days. Back at that time. They’ve added language skills since then, I think. But to be a lawyer or an accountant or a former law enforcement with two or three, four years of experience was the route to go in the FBI. So that’s correct.
[2:18]Anyhow, go ahead, Fred. I’m sorry to interrupt you. I spent my first 10 years in Cleveland, and that’s where this story is going to take place. But I spent the last 20 years in Northwest Indiana, first in Gary, Indiana, and then we moved out of Gary into Merrillville, Indiana. Northwest Indiana being one of the most violent and corrupt areas in the country. I got there in 1985. In the 1990s, Gary was the murder capital of the United States for four of the 10 years of the 90s. They were always in the top five. It’s just a very, very violent location. Perfect place for an FBI agent to work. Lots of great, great work in that area. And then I retired in 2005. I started my own forensic CPA firm as soon as I retired. And I started the firm initially in Indiana. I joined one of my clients for about a six-year stint. I was the vice president of franchise relations of a company by the name of Direct Buy. It was a consumer buying club throughout North America. And I also acquired the Kansas City territory for direct buy, which is what brought me out to direct buy or brought me out to Kansas City in the first place. And so my family and I moved out here. I kept flying back and forth to Northwest Indiana for the corporate headquarters, but we operated the club here for about
[3:41]
Fred Graessle’s FBI Journey
[3:38]six years and then ended up selling the club. I reopened my forensic CPA firm and I’ve been representing clients ever since.
[3:47]Most of my clients, in fact, all of my clients end up are victims of crimes in one form or another.
[3:55]All right. So any of you guys that have a company and you think you might be a victim of a financial cryboy, here’s a contact for you. Just get hold of me. If you can’t figure out him, I’ll have his contact information. So anyhow, Fred, you got hold of me and you told me this great, great story. And it starts with, really, it starts back in Buffalo, New York with the early guys or mafia members that came over from Sicily with John Curley, Montana.
[4:24]Who was a made member of the Buffalo family. So let’s, we’re going to get into that, uh, and then into his son who was in, in Cleveland and connected to the Cleveland outfit of the Cleveland family, and then into a big time crime where they kidnapped and murdered a businessman trying to get, I don’t know, as much as a $500,000 maybe from him, if I remember right. So John Curley, Montana comes to Buffalo from Sicily. And what do you remember about that’s the father that’s the father the man we’re going to be talking about tell us about him well he was born in sicily and came to the united states ultimately rose to the underboss of the buffalo crime family his son john became john curly montana moved to the cleveland area and became a made member of the of the cleveland la cosa nostra family. He was headed up by John Licavoli and actually had been reputed, alleged to have been a contract killer also with the Los Angeles mob.
[5:35]The informants had indicated that he had been out there as many as six times to commit hits on behalf of the Los Angeles mob. Fred, do you think that was because of, was that been because of his connection with Jimmy Fratianno, who was connected to both families, or did you know anything about that, how he, I think there was a, as I understood it, there was a pretty strong connection between the Los Angeles family and the Cleveland family. And that was linked strongly because of James Fratianno, Jimmy Fratianno, who had family in Cleveland. And he would repeat it. He would travel back and forth to visit family. And many times when he was there, he would visit with Licavoli, with the Cleveland crime family, and they’d talk things over. And so there, I think there was a connection there definitely with. Yeah. It’s always interesting how these guys are connected from city to city. And I know people here in Kansas city and they talk to me about their connection in another city, or they know somebody who has a connection in another city. Lots of times those relationships are created in penitentiaries. You’re in a cell with somebody or in a wing with somebody for a period of time from another family, a geographic area. And then you get out and you, you trust each other and you know each other. So it’s always fascinating to me how these guys know each other throughout the whole United States. So, you know, one last thing about Curly, Montana, your guys…
[7:03]Dad is is he was like in buffalo he he was like mr politician he was above the board businessman i think he had a lock on the taxi business in in buffalo until appalachian came out and and he got caught at the meeting and and he died out after that everybody knew he was exposed and before that they thought he was just you know mr businessman mr you know good john joe q john John Q. Citizen. So interesting thing about the Montana family. I’m sure he passed some of that along to his son as best he could. Anyhow, so let’s go back to Cleveland and his son, John Montana, and this case.
[7:46]
The Mafia’s Connection to Cleveland
[7:46]So let’s start. How’d you get into this, I guess? Go ahead.
[7:52]Leading up to this, you know, I’m a brand new agent. I get into Cleveland. I just happened to be there right at the start of some gang wars that of a gang war that was taking place between the Italian mob and the Irish mob at that point. And in 1970, I got there in December of 75. In early 1977, John Nardi, who was a defector from the Licavoli family, was blown up with a car bomb planted next to his car, 16 sticks of dynamite. And allegedly, Curley, Montana, put that bomb together. And that was used for that killing. About five months later, in October of 1977, Danny Green was similarly blown up. A Chevy Nova was pulled in next to his car when he was at a dental office or a dental appointment. And when he gets back out to his car, the bomb in that Chevy Nova was detonated. And allegedly, that bomb was put together by Curley. I don’t believe… The indications are that Curley actually detonated the bomb. The source information that came in was that he was an individual that had something to do with putting it together.
[9:10]After the Danny Green bombing, Curley Montana was interviewed by an agent on the Organized Crime Squad. And, of course, denied having any knowledge about the Danny Green bombing or anything like that. But offered to be available if the FBI had any other questions to feel free to give him a call and he’d be more than happy to talk to him. Well, the agent that talked to him then opened him up as a top echelon informant in the Cleveland informant files because he agreed to cooperate and make himself available. So in our records at the Cleveland office, Curley, Montana was was a, was listed as an informant. Then we get into the selling of the list. If you want me to swing into that. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk about that list. Yeah. Guys, you may or may not remember there was a famous situation that came up that Fratianno really brought Fratianno into the witness protection and becoming a cooperating witness. And that’s this list of top echelon informants from the Cleveland office that was sold and Fratianno freaked out. So tell us about that. Fred was right there on the seat, if you will, when this happened. Tell us about that and the people that were involved.
[10:26]Yeah. In February of 9th, the primary informant clerk, Geraldine Rabinowitz, and her husband, Raymond, were interested in getting a down payment for a home. Raymond worked at a Lincoln dealership on the east side of Cleveland. And coincidentally, the Chevy Nova that blew up next to Danny Green’s car came, came from the used car lot of that Lincoln, of that Lincoln dealership. What a coincidence. Oh yeah. What a, what a, what a coincidence. So the, her husband working at that unit was, was told that they’d buy individuals that they’d give them $16,000.
[11:06]If her, if his wife would bring them a list of all the informants for the Cleveland division. So she hand wrote all of the informants out on some paper and gets it out of the FBI office and they get the $16,000. On that list were four top echelon informants. And two of them were named informants and two of them were numbered informants. So the two named ones included another guy, not relevant to this story, and Curly, Montana. And then there were two additional numbered ones.
[11:42]And Rabinowitz informed the mob that she would try to do everything she can to find out who those numbered informants were. And so is back in town and he’s talking with Licavoli and Licavoli tells him, yeah, we got this broad in the FBI office that’s getting this information out of there. And she’s got a list of informants and includes these two named guys, including Curly Montana and two numbered guys. And she’s going to get us the identity of the two numbered guys.
[12:16]Well, Fratianno was concerned that he was one of those two numbered informants on that list.
[12:23]
The Infamous Informant List
[12:24]And that if Licavoli finds out, if she finds out and it is him, and Licavoli finds out, Licavoli might very well take care of Fratianno at that point. So Fratianno contacts retired FBI agent Larry Lawrence. I guess Larry must have been the agent that worked him for a while, and tells him that there’s a breach in the Cleveland office. And so Lawrence really just almost hangs up the phone and calls the Cleveland office and talks to the SAC and tells him, you’ve got a breach there. You’ve got the informant list has been compromised. And we eventually got the actual handwritten copy of the list back through a search warrant. But I can tell you all agents in the division had to personally contact every one of their informants that were on that list. And I had six that were on that list that I had to contact. And I can tell you I had six very unhappy informants with that process. But Geraldine Rabinowitz and her husband admitted what they had done. And I think by late March had pled guilty and both started serving time for that process.
[13:39]Wow. I tell you what, I would have hated to have done what you had to do and all the rest of you guys had to do. How embarrassing too. I mean, it’s just like, oh my God, it’s so embarrassing. Plus those top echelon informants. I know that the Bureau agents, even though the guy’s dead, if he’s never really been exposed in court, they refuse to acknowledge he was a top echelon informant. And I ran into that with a friend of mine here in Kansas city. And I know that guy was top echelon from something else. And I, I told Bill about it. He said, and he just looked at me like, what do you want from me? He was not, I know he knew it, but he was not going to ever confirm or deny. He was just, well, this, this is now because of the, the, the theft of the list. Yeah, I know. It’s just that became, became an issue on that. I think what guys don’t realize is the reputation of the bureau to keep those names quiet. Even after they’re dead, if they can, if you can’t do that, then other people will refuse or not will hesitate to come in because their family members are then subject to, you know, murder or at least being shunned by other family members because they all live in this little closed community anyhow. So it’s it’s huge. May monitor or maintaining the secrecy of these names. It’s just I can’t even maybe can’t even emphasize enough. And I doubt if you can’t either, Fred, how important it is to keep these names quiet.
[15:06]Anyhow, so. But that made Curly, Montana was a very important name for us in Cleveland. So that brings us into January of 1981, just a few years later, just a couple of years later after that, which is when the Henry Podborny matter came to light. I guess one question I would have here is then what happened with Montana after this list? I mean, Licavoli knew that he was on the list. Did he somehow convince them that he hadn’t really done anything or did other events conspire to keep him safe? Well, Fratianno supposedly had a conversation with Licavoli and convinced him that that list couldn’t be legitimate if it had Curly Montana. List because of all that, that he believed Curley would never front the family and he never did. But, but, but I think there was, there was some indication Licavoli was concerned that, that, that, uh, the FBI had set him up by giving that list and putting Curley Montana’s name on the list. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for that. All right. Let’s move along to the Henry Podborny case. That was a fascinating case.
[16:23]
The Henry Podborny Case Begins
[16:24]Yep. So on January 30th of 1980, an informant contacts is being worked by the Organized Crime Squad.
[16:35]Informant contacts the agent that he’s working with and says, look, I just got approached by a guy by the name of Jim McLean. And McLean wanted, he gave me a check for $600 for cash that he wants, that’s drawn on the West Point Pallet Company in Berwyn, Illinois. And he wants me, the source, to find a friendly banker that’ll help him cash the check and help loot the company and take all the rest of the money out of the company. And McLean tells the source, you got to hurry because Podborny’s been iced and we got to get this done as quickly as possible. So Podborny owned this company, the pallet company. Right. It’s a company that he signs the checks and it’s the West Point Pallet Company. And McLean tells the source that this is Podborny’s company. Okay. McLean tells him, I’ve got the checkbook that’s got all the checks. And he says, and I’ve got his driver’s license and he’s, and he tells him I even look like, so I just need a friendly banker that’ll help me cash these checks. And we want to loot the company and get, get everything out of there. So the source immediately runs and contacts the organized crime agent that he’s working with. And that agent comes over to, I’m on the white collar squad, comes into the white collar supervisor’s office.
[18:04]And tells him the story. And then all of a sudden I get called into the supervisor’s office and I’m, I’m told that I’m going to be given this case.
[18:12]And so I’m sitting there. I literally, I have, I have a check in my hand. It’s a $600 check. The Bureau would never take a $600 check on, they never opened up a case on $600, but for the statement that Henry Podborny had been iced. So I get the case and I start working it. I have a partner by the name of Gary Hall, Excellent agent. And he was with me the whole way on this case. And so we started to get ready to get going. I contacted the Chicago office, which covers Berwyn, Illinois. And I had a friend of mine, Jack McCoy, went out literally in a quick undercover capacity going out to look for Henry Podborne at the West Point Pallet Company. Just said he was a friend of his and needed to talk to him. And the guy had one employee at the, at the, at the company and the employee said, well, you know, Henry left yesterday, which is January 29th. Supposedly he’s been separated from his wife, Dimple Pogborny of all names, but he’d been separated from Dimple and he was really distraught and Dimple contacted him and told him, come to Cleveland and I’ll reconcile the marriage. And so he immediately dropped everything, got a flight to Cleveland and left on the 29th. And the employee has not heard from Henry since that point.
[19:41]So now we have, at least at that point in time, we’ve confirmed that Henry Podborne, he has the company, he’s at least not accounted for at that point in time, and that he caught a flight the day before to get to Cleveland. We do some background on Jim McLean. McLean’s a, what we call an organized crime associate. He’s not a made member or whatever, but he’s occasionally used by their members to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish. and we start checking around. We check with some of the morgues and other hospitals to try and determine whether there’s somebody that supposedly fit Henry Podborny’s description had been turned in and nothing had shown up in that area. So we arranged to meet with the informant later that night and had him confirm with McLean on the phone that McLean still had the checkbook and they had the driver’s license and still wanted a friendly banker.
[20:40]We, on the other hand, at that point, had also contacted Society National Bank. I think it’s now Regions Bank, but back then it was Society National Bank. And we talked to the head of security and asked if we could meet with them, that we had a situation. And we wanted to bring in this Jim McLean guy and bring in the checkbook and the driver’s license of Henry Podborning. And that we wanted to catch him with that in the act because if something has happened to Henry Podborny, that would give us an extremely strong position with Jim McClain. And Society National Bank… Immediately agreed to work with us on this case. And they made available one of their branches on the west side of town.
[21:30]And we arranged to have the source tell McClain to be there at 5.15 the next day and that the banker would be waiting for him. In the meantime, at 5 o’clock, the bank dismissed all their employees. That was the closing time for the bank at that time. And we replaced all the employees with FBI agents, and I was going to be the friendly banker that McLean was going to meet with, or that we were hoping would meet with, and bring in the checkbook and the driver’s license. So we wait until 5.15 shows up, no McLean. 5.30, no McLean. 6 o’clock, no McLean. So we finally make the decision. We’ve got to go find McLean immediately and arrest him, hopefully getting the checkbook and the driver’s license. And then we can find out what happened to Jim McLean.
[22:25]And so we head out to Jim McLean’s house. It’s out in the country. He’s got a little bit of a driveway, but we’ve got some good trees and good coverage. So we were stationed at the home. It was pitch black when we got out there.
[22:40]We were pretty well concealed and we’re sitting there for a while and then eventually some headlights pull into the driveway and that was Jim McLean so at this point in time you know that.
[22:55]Henry Podborny is iced or on ice. You don’t really know if he’s dead or alive, but somehow he’s in, he’s in danger or he’s already dead. You don’t know. And McLean will know. And so you got to make a decision at this point in time. Do you carry on through and work McLean undercover a little bit, or you just go ahead and pop him and try to find out if maybe you can save Podborny. You don’t know, right? Is that what we’re at? Well, yeah, our decision to move was based on the premise that even though the indication was that he had been killed, there was some possibility that he might be being killed someplace. And we certainly didn’t feel that we had a lot of time to try to finesse that type of information out. So when McLean arrives home, we literally are right behind him. As he goes through the door, we’re right behind him, and we’re right there in the kitchen area, and he’s carrying a little satchel with him, and in that satchel turned up was the checkbook and the driver’s license. So now we have McLean with the driver’s license and the checkbook in his possession.
[24:14]Prior to all those events, we had gone to the United States Attorney’s Office and we had an assistant United States Attorney. We drew up an arrest warrant for McLean based on that fraudulent check that he had given the source earlier.
[24:31]So we were ready to go. We have, we have the arrest warrant. We get through there. We get, we get McLean in his house. He’s got the, the, the checkbook and the, and the driver’s license. I give McLean his rights and I tell him, I’m very concerned about what happened to Henry Podborny. And he looks at him and he said, so am I. I think they killed him. He said, I want to help. I want to cooperate, but I got to have, I got to have a lawyer before I say anything else. And, um, So we had to take him at that point. We called the prosecutor, and this was like at 10 o’clock or 10.30 at night.
[25:13]And we told, it was Nancy Schuster was the prosecutor. We told her, we got to get McLean in to see a judge first thing in the morning, and he’s got to have a public defender waiting there. And she said, no problem, we’ll be ready by 8 o’clock. So by eight o’clock the next morning, we picked him up out of the Cuyahoga County Jail, brought him back over to the federal courthouse. And there was a federal public defender waiting for him. And a judge was there for us to meet him in chambers and closed door session. And McLean pled guilty at that point in time to the check fraud and agreed to cooperate with us moving forward.
[25:55]Wow. That was fast. I mean, you guys were moving. That’s the faster I’ve ever seen the FBI move. Man, you guys, that’s like a tech unit local PD squad might work. I have never seen you guys work that fast. I got to tell you, we were really hustling. You were. So McLean’s agreement required him, obviously, to be honest with us, but also we only gave it to him because he assured us that he was not involved in the actual murder of, of Henry Podmorny. And so if, if, if that changed, then, then that agreement was going to be out the window, but we didn’t want to, we just didn’t want to pass off, give him a free pass for, for a murder situation. Yeah. He had to, he had to not have been involved in the murder.
[26:42]So we immediately start debriefing him and, and we probably spend about four or five hours going over the details, mentions that effectively Dimple and a daughter and son from a former marriage, both live in the Cleveland area, agreed that they should initially kidnap Henry Podborny and then cleat out his accounts. And that was later changed when the stepson, Gary Gabbard, who was a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle group and another Hells Angel by the name of Lee Juarez were present during the discussions. And they both said, look, dead men tell no tales. You know, we don’t need to kidnap him. We just need to get him, kill him and go clean out his accounts. And so that became the plan.
[27:36]The money that Henry Pogborny supposedly had was a result of a loan shark, not because of the West Point Pallet Company, but because he was allegedly engaged in a loan sharking operation with a U.S. Congressman in the Illinois area. And they had potentially millions out on the street, and they had a lot of money hidden in the house, money hidden in the warehouse, and money in safe deposit boxes in various banks.
[28:05]Dimple his estranged wife kept pressing him and pressing him for money and one of the reasons she left was because he wasn’t going to henry apparently wasn’t going to dip into the loan sharking money and so she just left and said i’m i’m done with you i’m through with you well they wanted to get their hands on that money and they knew that that money wasn’t going to be turned over in a divorce by any means nobody’s going to say well we have a loan sharking business, So here’s your half of the money. They needed Henry out of the way so that they could get in and search where they thought they had money available. And so that was the plan. Pod Borny flies into town.
[28:46]
The Plot Thickens
[28:47]And according to McLean, he was picked up at the airport by Robert O’Neill, who was a black male, just a thug in the Cleveland area, and taken back to O’Neill. O’Neill had a vacant bar that had gone out of business, but he still basically operated out of the bar. And he was taken back to O’Neill’s bar. And O’Neill and his sidekick, Lloyd Allen, were supposedly the ones present when Pod Borny was killed.
[29:20]But Pod Borny gets taken to the abandoned tavern. And O’Neill tells him that Dimple was inside the side door of the tavern just to go on in. And that’s what he did. And then nobody saw Henry Podwornie after that.
[29:36]McLean tells us that O’Neill brought out the checkbook and the driver’s license and gave it to her. And then they immediately drove and met with McLean, where McLean got the copy of the check. And that’s why he had the check and the checkbook the very same day.
[29:56]So that’s about the extent of what McLean told us. No mention of Curly, Montana at this time. Nothing like that came up. So this was absent Curly, certainly at that point in time. So our next step at that point is to get McLean to talk to Gale to find out what happened, actually happened to Henry Podmorny. And where is Henry Podmorny located? And so we’ve got several consensual recordings in which McLean is talking to Gale. Gale and Dimple and the brother Gary are now back in Berwyn. They left the day after Podborny showed up to get there to supposedly search and try and find the money that they thought was hidden back there. And in the first conversation that John McLean has with Lola Gale Toney, the daughter-in-law, Lola tells him that the money’s gone. We got here and the money is gone. It was supposedly buried under the floorboards in the attic, and those floorboards were torn up. There’s no money there. There’s no money in the safe, and they don’t know what happened. Lola makes an interesting statement, though, to McLean during this call. She says the letter showed up.
[31:23]And that’s all. And McLean just changed the topic, changed the subject at that point. And so later on, we asked McLean, what does she mean the letter showed up? And McLean just really passed it off as, I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s talking about. And then changed the subject back to trying to figure out where Henry Podborni was.
[31:44]So we try our our key now is is that she’s not revealing where henry is and and in in multiple attempts of talking to her she says that robert o’neill will not tell her what he did with him, and so now we’ve got we’re in a really tight spot at this point because if there is even the slightest chance that, that Henry’s alive. We’ve got to get her back from Cleveland or from Illinois. And, and we’ve got to find out where, where Henry is located. So we come up with a plan that McLean tells her if, if Podborny had an insurance policy, they can collect on that policy if his body’s found, but if they never find his body, he’s, they’re never going to, they’re going to, It’s going to be at least seven years or so before they can collect.
[32:34]
Lola’s Betrayal
[32:34]And so Lola says, well, let me check and find out. And we get a call back shortly, or McLean calls her back shortly later. And she goes, yeah, he did. He had a couple of policies. And so I’m going to catch a flight to Cleveland the next day, and we’re going to go to O’Neill and find out what he did with Henry.
[32:55]So the next day she flies in to Cleveland Hopkins airport and we’re sitting there, we’re surveilling. She literally brushes up against me. I’m on a phone outside the disembarkation area, but she literally walks right by me, goes out and she gets into a car with McLean. And the first thing they, they did was they pulled over and to a phone booth and she was, she was to call Robert O’Neill at that point. I remember there aren’t, there aren’t cell phones at that, at that point in time. So she had to go to a phone booth. She gets back in the car with, with McLean. And of course we’ve got the car fully wired and it’s transmitting everything that they’re talking about.
[33:40]And she says, Robert won’t tell me what, what happened with him. He doesn’t trust me. He wants to know why I’m asking, asking about Henry at this point. And I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know where he is. So we make the point at that time that we’re going to affect an arrest on, on, on Lola. And we, we pose a, or we, we, we fake an arrest of McLean at the same time. So she doesn’t know that he’s, that he’s cooperating. And, and we take her back. We joined up with the Cleveland Homicide Unit at this time just because we knew we had a homicide on our hands. We also had other federal crimes too. So we take her back and we take her into the Homicide Unit. And Lola Galtoni absolutely flips over and cooperates immediately and identifies all aspects of the school. Hey, Fred, now remind us who Lola Gayle Tony is. What was her relationship? That’s the daughter-in-law. That’s the stepdaughter of Henry Podborny. Of Henry Podborny, okay.
[34:49]Yes. And she was the, uh, she’s the daughter of, of Dimple Podborny from a, from an earlier marriage. Okay. All right. All right. So go ahead. Yeah. So, yeah. So Lola admits the whole thing. She talks about her brother, Gary being there and the, and Lee Juarez, both Hell’s Angels being there when the, when the plan was, when it was discussed. And then it, it, it became apparent that they needed somebody to help them clean out the bank accounts. And since she had worked with Jim McLean in the past and knew that he was a con man and knew about banking. She gives him a call right away. And she says that in the planning aspect of it, they’ve got a problem with the house and the warehouse in Berwyn, Illinois, because Henry Podborny had Dobermans that he kept in those locations. And they were concerned about how to deal with the Dobermans. And so McLean, she says that McLean says, I’ll take care of that. I got somebody that knows how to do it. And he brings in another guy.
[35:50]And the guy says, listen, you’re going to do this. You need to have an alibi set up so that it looks like Henry’s still alive and he’s somewhere else in the country. So he says, get me a letter that Henry has sent to Dimple and make sure there’s no date on it. And I’ll see to it that it gets mailed from Buffalo, New York, and that’ll make it look like he misses Dimple, he’s looking for, and he wants to get back with the marriage. He also told them to take an advertisement out in the Chicago Tribune that says something like, Henry, all is forgiven, please come home. And that will make it look like Dimple was trying to make sure that he would come home. And so we got that, we found that advertisement and, and then Dimple, and then Lola tells us when she’s admitting to everything, she says, and the letter came from Buffalo that was, that was being sent by the guy. And I said, what guy are you talking about? And she says, it’s McLean’s friend, Curly Montana.
[37:01]Now that’s the first time we’d heard of Curly Montana with, with having anything to do with this case. And she gives us all this information. And so we decided at that point, since she’s now in custody, we’ve got to get these other guys in custody also for the same thing. So the Cleveland Homicide Unit got warrants for Robert O’Neill and Lloyd Allen for a kidnapping murder. Of course, we had the warrant for Lola. Dimple had admitted herself to a hospital in Berwyn, and so they got a warrant for her. And so she was arrested at the hospital, and guards were put on her room there. And of course, the brother, Gary Gabbard, was arrested and Lee Juarez was arrested. At this point in time, you still don’t have a body, though, or an actual witness who saw him murdered, correct? We don’t have, even Lola can’t say, I saw him killed. I saw him murdered. All she could say was that Robert said he killed him. Okay. And that he and Lloyd had done it. So now we have, at this point, we have six people in custody for kidnapping murder for an individual, and we have no body, we have no murder weapon, we have no witness that saw the murder, anything like this.
[38:27]And and lola was the only one that was what was the initially the only one cooperating until lee war as the the hell’s angel that wasn’t the family member lee war as says look if you guys will cut me a deal i’ll i’ll tell you what i know and so that the homicide unit got a deal cut with him right away and he says yep he said we were there we were with dimple we talked about the kidnapping.
[38:57]And, and of course he says, Gary’s Gabbard, the brother, the stepson is the one that said dead men tell no tales. So we’ve got to get that. We got to kill him instead of just, just kidnap him. And so with his, with his cooperation now, we thought, well, okay, we don’t have a body, but we’ve got, we got two people that were a part of the planning that to, to kidnap him and kill and kill him that are talking. We thought we were in pretty good, in pretty good shape until Lola says at the end of the day, after she’s cooperated and signed a statement, she says, you know, I decided I’m not going to cooperate. I’m just going to go to trial. You guys are going to have to take me to trial. That doesn’t mean we can’t use her information because she gave a voluntary
[39:45]
The Turning Point
[39:41]signed statement, but we’re going to have to take her to trial on the case. And the only cooperating witnesses at that point that knew anything about this where Jim McClain and Lee Warris.
[39:54]Well, we finally get a chance that after everything kind of calms down after all of these arrests, we’re now starting to put this case together to figure out how we’re going to go to trial without a body and murder weapon and such. But we finally get a chance to get McClain off to the side and tell him, tell us about Curly, Montana, McClain. And McLean says I didn’t tell you about him because I knew Curly Montana was not under arrest.
[40:28]And that if he knew I was snitching on him, he would kill me and my wife. And so that’s why I didn’t tell you anything about it. No, we had a real decision to make at that point. You know, what do you do with McLean at that point? He’s obviously held back critical information, but now he’s finally coming through with it. But only after we get Lola Gale, Tony tells us about Curly, Montana. him.
[40:55]So the decision is made is that he’s, he’s got to, he’s got to record a conversation with Curley and he’s got to, he’s got to try to do whatever he can to incriminate Curley on, on this case. And I got to tell you something, Jim McClain was, was, was very, very nervous with doing this because he feared Curley tremendously. But on April 6th, 1981, he has, has, he has the recording. we have a recorded conversation with Jim McClain and Curly Montana. And I’ve got a couple of excerpts here. If you don’t mind, I’ll just read them real quick as to what Curly says. They’re talking about the letter. McClain kept saying, I’m worried about that damn letter. And McClain says, they can’t prove we ever had the fucking letter. They got to prove it. We ain’t got to admit it. If we admit it, it’s possible, possible. They could indict us for the conspiracy, but you don’t admit it. It’s her word against ours. It’s her word against ours. And you say you didn’t have no letter. I’ll say we didn’t have nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And they ain’t going to do nothing if we would both, but if we both admit it, possibly they would indict us on the conspiracy for shooting him. You understand?
[42:14]That’s the first time I heard that Henry Podborne has been shot. Yeah. Now that begs a question. That begs a question. What did McLean know? Right. So, and then he goes on and says, Jimmy, you go out there and say, you’re not involved in the disappearance. You’re not involved in the hit. You don’t know nothing. Neither do I. So fuck them. If you say we did the letter, well, we sent the letter. we could really become involved in the conspiracy part of killing him. And then the best line was right at the end of the conversation when Curley says, but you know, it’s only her word and ours. They can’t do a fucking thing about it. Remember that. And that was on the transcript. And that was one of the last things the jury heard before they went back to deliberate. Right. Now that letter, that letter was designed to make it look like he was still alive.
[43:12]And in a right. Because the general, the general information was, was, was Penry was going to be killed and the body was going to be disposed of and nobody was ever going to find that body. And so if they just have an alibi letter several weeks later, that makes it look like he’s alive in Buffalo. That’s going to be an alibi defense in this matter. Interesting so yeah so what do you guys do next you got them charged and then cleveland’s got some homicide charges on some of these guys right so how how does that going to work now i mean this you got two different jurisdictions you got the feds and the locals right which historically have maybe not worked so well together especially in cleveland so how do you go from here you got a lot of of tutorial decisions to make it seems to be like.
[44:04]We do. And coincidentally, you know, the two groups worked well together. And I got to tell you, you couldn’t have two more diverse groups than the White Collar Crime Squad and the Cleveland Bump. I know. I know. I’ve been there. These guys, I got to tell you, they’re great. They’re the consummate professionals in what they do. They deal with the scourge of the earth every day. And while they worked with the FBI before, I can tell you they never worked with the White Collar Crime Squad until this case came out. So we’re in a spot here now where we’re starting to corroborate everything that McLean has said, everything that Lola Galtoni has told us. And we’re starting to build a pretty solid case. And of course, there is no Henry Podborny that’s still out there walking around. So we put together a case that’s pretty decent.
[45:02]We’re all a little bit nervous that we’re going to trial without the body. But then on April 24th, I’m out driving in my bureau car. I get a radio message that I need to return to the office as quickly as possible. I do. And I walk in and they’ve got a phone set up with a recorder on it and everything’s all set. And I’m told that by the supervisor that an anonymous caller called in and wanted to talk to the case agent on the on the pod borning matter. and that he knows where the body is, but he’ll only talk to the case agent, which is me. So 20 minutes later, right on cue, the phone rings again, and it’s the anonymous caller.
[45:47]And he tells me on the phone, he says, man, he says, I know where that body is that you’re looking for, that Henry Podvorny, and I know it’s him. And I said, how do you know? And he goes, I’m just telling you, I know where the body is. And I want $10,000 to tell you where the body is. So now we have, I’m getting extorted for $10,000 to tell him, to be told where the body is on the case. So i eventually tell him look i can come i can come up with a hundred dollars and i promise you i’ll do everything i can to get the rest will you do will you work with that now and the guy goes sure meet me at and then he gives me the address where to meet him so we we all had we all rush out at that time i get to the it’s a filling station i i see him in his car he gets into my car and i said okay where do we go and he’s and he points right down a one of the road one of the main streets there on the east side of Cleveland. We go about half a mile and he says, stop. And we stop and there’s a big vacant lot and it’s in between two relatively six, seven story apartment buildings, really in dilapidated condition. But in the middle, in between the two was a vacant lot with a big pile of trash out in the middle of the lot.
[47:08]And the guy says he’s at the bottom of that bought that hill of trash out there in that lot. So while I stay in the car with him, the rest of the other agents and homicide people head out to the pile of trash. And then one of them comes running over and says, it’s Henry. Oh, man. So now all of a sudden it’s like, that’s pretty good. There you go. I said, well, how did you determine? And he had no ID on him, but on the inside pocket of his pants was a laundry mark that said H-Pod. So at that point in time, we were very confident we had Henry Podboarding. Now, the guy that points him out says, he points to one of the two apartment buildings. He says, the guy that works maintenance in that building told me that the body was out there. And his name is Wilbur Higgins. And he said, Wilbur told me that he was asked by Robert O’Neill to move that body and to get it moved. Otherwise, Robert O’Neill’s life was over with.
[48:19]And he was going to move the body that night. And so this guy got the idea, well, maybe I can make $10,000 by calling up the FBI. So anyway, we obviously we start the recovery of the body. The body is wrapped in a pool table cover. And we go over and we talk to Wilbur Higgins. But when we made the arrest of Robert O’Neill and Lloyd Allen, And we searched that dilapidated tavern that he had. And the one thing we all noticed was that there was a pool table there, but the cover had been ripped off of it. But nobody, I mean, that didn’t mean anything to us, other than the fact that it was cut out. But we found no evidence of Henry Podborny in that facility at that time.
[49:09]But now we have a body wrapped in a pool table cover. So now we take that pool table cover back to the tavern, and it’s the cover. So now we have a location connected with it. We interview Wilbur Higgins. Higgins tells us that he received a call from Robert O’Neill, that he was a friend of Robert O’Neill’s and Lloyd Allen, and that Robert O’Neill says, look, man, we dropped that body in that lot. And it was back on January 29th. and I need you to move that body. Man, my life’s on the line. If you don’t move it, something bad’s going to happen to me. Because this is now April 24th. That body was put out there on January 29th. So the temperature went from freezing to almost 60, 70 degrees, back again and then up again, and that body was starting to smell. And Robert O’Neill knew that somebody was going to find that body eventually.
[50:09]That’s why he asked, he called Wilbur Higgins and it told him to come down to the jail, which we confirmed from the visitation records that he comes down and he tells him, you got to move that body. And so that was the night he was going to move the body. We just happened to get the, get a guy that wanted to make 10,000 bucks to give us a call. But now we have the body. Yeah. So I guess my question, my question here is, first of all, did you pay him the $10,000? No. I guess I did. I did not. I did not. And yeah, there were some other situations where he agreed not to take any more. Okay. All right. Go ahead. Carry on. Yeah. So now the coroner got the name of Sam Gerber, a name that some people that are familiar with the series and the movie, The Fugitive, Sam Shepard’s murder case in Bay Village, Ohio. Um, Sam Gerber was the coroner on that particular case and had received some prominence in that thing. Well, Sam, Sam Gerber is still the coroner in Cuyahoga County at the time of this, this murder. The initial cause of death was pronounced as a blunt force trauma to the back of the head.
[51:27]And so that night, literally we got that ruling that night when we found the body. So we, at that point in time, we now had a cause of death and we have a location, which is the, the, the, uh, O’Neill’s bar. And we’re a lot farther way down the line until the next morning, Sam Gerber calls me up and says, Fred, you got to get down here right away. So I get down there and he says, hold out your hand. So I hold out my hand and he drops a 38 shell casing in my hand. He said, I just took that out of Podborny’s brain. He said, the cause of death has changed now to gunshot wound to the head. So now I said, well, you know, Dr. Gerber, I said, that’s the second time I heard that Henry Podborny had been shot. First time, obviously, was when Curly, Montana said. So now we have the cause of death now, the gunshot wound. But Gerber says, you got to go back to that tavern. And he said, you got to look up on the ceiling.
[52:32]Because most likely Todd Borny would have been down on the ground after they clubbed him and they shot him in the back of the head right where they had clubbed him. And that’s why it wasn’t noticeable initially. And he said, when that blood hit the back of the head, he said, that blood is going to splatter up on the ceiling and the upper wall. And nobody’s going to automatically see that, but they’re going to be tiny splotches of blood up there. So now we go back to the tavern again. This time we go with stepladders and we go in and we go up above right when you first walk in the side door. And we find 159 blood on the ceiling and the upper part of the wall.
[53:19]And, of course, it was Henry’s. And we literally took the ceiling down and the wall down. And during trial, we actually reconstructed that for the jury so that they could see exactly where the blood was. So now we had an exact location. We have the cause of death.
[53:38]
The Body is Discovered
[53:39]We have the body. And so we’re in infinitely better shape.
[53:43]All of the defense originally filed for a speedy trial act. I mean, they were, you know, there’s a, the state didn’t have a federal, but they, but they, they requested a speedy trial to set their, set their cases because at that time they knew we didn’t know, we didn’t have the body. And, and my guess is they’re thinking is let’s get this thing to trial with, and there won’t be a body. Well, all of a sudden now about a week and a half before the first trial, we have the body and they want to go, they want to delay. They want to delay their pieces on this thing. But the judge said, we’re going to trial. Your Honor, Your Honor, I need a continuance. I need a continuance, Your Honor. So interestingly enough, before we found the body, Dimple had two attorneys, one of them in Cleveland and one from Chicago. The Chicago attorney was a guy by the name of John Coghland, and the Cleveland attorney was Jerry Milano. Both expensive attorneys. So I’m wondering where she got the money to pay them. But at any rate, before we found the body, we were told by her defense attorneys that, hey, we have a defense. We have an alibi letter. And you guys, we got it all wrong. Henry Pyeborn, he’s still alive. And that’s their affirmative defense on this thing. Yeah. So now we know they have an alibi letter that’s not going to do them any good.
[55:09]So Nancy Schuster pulls what I would say is a genius move. We indict Curly Montana for mail fraud. Now that’s not, we know he’s going to get charged in the, in the kidnapping and the murder down the line, but let’s get our hands on that letter. We’ll indict him federally for mail fraud. And, and she gave me a subpoena to serve on the defense attorneys to turn over the letter that they’d said they had as an alibi letter, which they now, that’s now evidence in another case. and now it’s been subpoenaed and they have to turn it over. And the day after I served that subpoena on Jerry Milano, he walks up to me and throws the letter and it’s in a sandwich bag and says, there, Merry Christmas. And it turns out that’s the letter. It’s mailed from Buffalo, New York. And that was critical on the Curly, Montana case. Yeah, I can imagine.
[56:05]Made made every bit of that wire that consensual recordings you guys made made every bit of that like i mean it put him right in the middle of it just sucked it just nailed him right right in the whole thing was there any conjecture that he seemed to know that he’d been shot was there any conjecture that maybe he was a guy waiting inside the tavern that actually did the coup de grade was he there or was it just these hell’s angels guys we don’t know we don’t know the The evidence somewhat indicated that it was Robert O’Neill and Lloyd Allen who did it. But your point is very valid. We never found out who the shooter was. And that very, very simply could have been Curly, Montana. And I’ll tell you something that lends at least a little bit of credence to that. Is that when Lola Gayle Toney tells Jim McLean on the phone that the money’s gone, that the floorboards are up or torn up in the attic.
[57:02]Their first thought was that John Montana, Carly Montana, went up to home in Berlin knowing that the rest of the group back in Cleveland were occupied with getting rid of Henry. He may have beaten them up there to the ash, torn up floorboards, because he had been told where the money was hidden. And remember, he was going to take care of the dogs. He also offered to go up there and watch the house to see if it’s being surveilled by law enforcement, just in case somebody was looking for Henry Podborny. So he knew where the money was. It’s very likely that he got up there and got the money before everybody else did. Wow.
[57:48]That’s a hell of a case, man. That was one heck of a case, I got to tell you. And of course, it became… And once we found out that the Curly, Montana was involved in it, it’s like, you know, this is a real plus on this case. You know, we worked it obviously just as hard, but that was a nice finish for Curly, Montana. Yeah, you get a lot more help, a lot more prosecutorial resources, a lot more attention paid to it once you drop that mob guy’s name in there. There’s no doubt about it. So in the end now, who took convictions in state court for the actual murder? Did you have some convictions of actual murder? And then in federal court, what were your convictions? So explain to the guys kind of the difference in the two tracks and what happened there. Right. While they could have been charged with a kidnapping case, since they were charged in state court for kidnapping, I mean, there was no reason to, you know, they weren’t going to get a second charge on that one. But we did convict Curley, Montana, for mail fraud relating to that letter sent from Buffalo.
[58:59]And we convicted Jim McClain, pled guilty. And Lee Juarez eventually was convicted, I believe, federally on this, where he was an accessory in the planning stage. Lola Giltoni, convicted of a kidnapping murder. Dimple, kidnapping murder. Robert O’Neill, Lloyd Allen, both kidnapping murder. Gary Gabbard, kidnapping murder. And ultimately, the county, after I had left Cleveland, I left to go to Northwest Indiana. They indicted Curley and convicted him in state court. In state court, too. Wow.
[59:39]
Convictions and Legal Outcomes
[59:36]I guess most of the convictions ended up in state court, it sounds like. But you got the job done. That was a hell of a job, you guys. That was fine. I mean, we could have had two different settings. I think the state court was the far more appropriate venue for kidnapping murders. Yeah, yeah. The laws are much better for that state court.
[1:00:00]But all those times that Curley had allegedly been involved in hits and involved in other killings, they just couldn’t get anything on him for that one. But we just got lucky. And the white-collar squad and the organized crime squad worked very closely together in Cleveland. There was an organized crime unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office there. And we worked. The white-collar statutes were used oftentimes to charge organized individuals. Yeah. So we had a very good working relationship. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting from a procedural standpoint. A lot of guys don’t know what white collar crime. You work with them. See, they want to take years to make a case and local homicide prosecutors. They want to do it now. They want to do it this month, this week and organized crime guys. They want to develop informants so they could get the bigger guy and the bigger guy and the bigger guy. So you have these three diverse units that have different kind of mandates, almost, if you will, different ways of working. And you all put it together. That’s amazing.
[1:01:07]Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And and that was, you know, initially we thought that that would that would create a real conflict on the thing. But I got to tell you, we worked we worked together closely. The county prosecutors, Carmen Marino and John Coghlan, not John Coghlan, I think it was his name in a second here, were, I mean, they were absolutely fantastic. And we were happy with the speed. Even when we didn’t have the body.
[1:01:32]You know, we felt we had such a strong team and the circumstantial evidence was really great. But, you know, without that body, you run the risk of having somebody. And in fact, the, the, the attorneys that represented Lola later told us that if we hadn’t found the body, they were just going to call one witness on their side and they were going to call Henry Podborning. And, and they, they knew that everybody would look at the back of the courtroom to see who comes in the door. And they were going to argue that that’s a reasonable doubt that she should have to. And it could work with a jury that could work. You can, you’re guaranteed almost a mistrial on a deal like that. You’re going to get at least one juror. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Interesting. Interesting. That’s another question I had, and all of a sudden I forgot what it was. Kind of a complicated case, but Fred, you really kind of distilled it down to the, and told it in such a way that, that we could follow along. And a lot of times these cases are complicated. And when you got organized crime and white collar crime and street criminals and, and all working together on something. And, you know, thank God they, they, they all started running their mouths and not wanting to do their own stuff. You know, this, if there’s a lesson to be learned is do everything yourself. No, not exactly.
[1:02:53]But, you know, a lot of a lot of violent organized crime acts or just straight straight murder acts, you know, there’s a there’s one of the underlying themes for a lot of that is, is that they’re after money or they’re after valuables of some sort. And that oftentimes follows the white collar statutes when it when it comes to, you know, fraud and stealing the money and that type of thing. So the two oftentimes do overlap.
[1:03:20]Yeah, really. You can also, I think oftentimes the organized crime prosecutor doing a RICO case will use some white collar crimes and what you guys have done to get one of the predicate acts that then say, oh, and this guy ordered it. So that’s, they always have to work hand in glove and you guys work well together. I’ll say that. Anything else you want to say about this case? It’s just been fascinating. You’ve got, you’re working on a screenplay, I know, and there’s not a book out there yet, guys, but he’s working on it. Yeah, I still got some pieces to put together, but, you know, there were a couple of real interesting points when we were looking for the body and thought we had located. Lee Juarez called us up a couple, oh, about a week or so after he was arrested and says, you know, I think if he’s being held someplace, we didn’t believe he was alive at that point by any means, but he said they may have put him in an abandoned hotel. Hotel, I believe it was Solon, Ohio. And he gave us the location of that. And that was one of these real little stripped down little hotels off the side of the road.
[1:04:28]And so we get this information late at night and myself and Gary Hall, agent that worked this with me, both decide, well, let’s go out and check this hotel out. Now there’s fresh snow on the ground at this point. And we get to the hotel and we pull into the parking lot and there’s obviously car tracks, you know, that have pulled into the parking lot. And there were a series of footprints, a trail of footprints going to unit number eight. In that hotel and back and forth, back and forth. And so Gary and I get out and, you know, we decide, Hey, we potentially have exigent circumstances or we need to, we need to find out what’s happening. Now I’d love to tell you that we just busted that door down, but it was actually a block. So we just opened it up. No drama.
[1:05:21]I’m not exactly sure that Gary and I combined could have broken that door. But anyway, the door was open. And there was nothing in there. But at midnight, we thought, well, you know, slight possibility this guy was part of the planning. He tells us he thinks that this might be a location. So that was one of the events when we’re trying to look up the body. Another location we looked at, we ended up bringing in a helicopter with the FLIR monitoring camera system. And they pointed out two locations on the property we were searching that were
[1:05:55]
Closing Thoughts and Reflections
[1:05:53]large enough to be a human body. Turned out they were deer uh that had been that had been buried there but so we had we were we were actively looking looking for the bottom for the body just without success until the very end yeah well yeah there’s there’s always those dead ends at any big investigation and you didn’t tell us all of them i know there’s always these different dead ends that you have to you go down but you’ve got to go down them and and they take a lot of time many times and but you gotta go down them because you just don’t know yep you sure do sure do all right red grassley it’s a it’s a great story i really appreciate you coming on and sharing this with the guys my guys that listen to the podcast and and i know they’re gonna they’re gonna be just like i was the whole time they’re gonna be engrossed in this one it’s a heck of a story.
[1:06:47]Well, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to explain it in his podcast. All right, Fred, we’re going to have to have lunch again one of these days. It’s great to make your acquaintance right here in Kansas City. Guys, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. Guys, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. And if you are out there in your car, make sure you watch out for motorcycles. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. And hand-in-hand with PTSD is the problem with drugs and alcohol. Well, you know, Anthony Ruggiano, a former Gambino, I guess he was a prospect, if you will, a proposed member. Witness Protection came back out. He’s now running a drug and alcohol center, or he’s a counselor down in Florida, and he has a hotline on his number. And, you know, I’ve got some books out there, and I’ve got my new book. You can see back over my shoulder, Windy City Mafia, that I did from some of the early interesting stories that I did in the podcast. I just went to several different episodes and created a written chapter, if you will. Each chapter is different. Got some Al Capone, got some Harry Aileman, got some Frank Calabrese Jr.
[1:07:59]
Got some, I don’t remember what else. Anyhow, just get that book. It’s on Amazon. And I’ve got that other book about the skimming from Las Vegas, leaving Vegas, how the FBI wiretaps in and mob domination of Las Vegas casinos. And I got my two documentary films, gangland wire and brothers against brothers, the Sabella Spiro war for just a dollar 99 rental. So thanks a lot guys. And, and thanks again, Fred, I really appreciate you coming on and telling us this story. Thanks. Take

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, I investigate the life of Norman DuPont, the notorious manager of the Ravenite Social Club, a key mob hangout. From my background as a former Kansas City Police detective, I share insights gained from footage of the club’s patrons and recount a violent confrontation at the Feast of San Gennaro with New York City cops, an incident that marked Norman DuPont’s descent into organized crime.
Exploring the club’s evolution under figures like Carlo Gambino and John Gotti, I detail the FBI’s struggles to infiltrate this secretive world. Club manager Norman DuPont’s life ended in a chilling act of murder, showcasing the brutal code of the mob.
I draw parallels to similar social clubs in Kansas City, reflecting on the culture of loyalty and secrecy that endures. #johngotti #gambinocrimefamily #normandupont #garyjenkins #ganglandwire #ravenitesocialclub
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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police intelligence unit detective, and now podcaster and former filmmaker and author. I mean, I’ve just done it all here in my retirement. I’m just kidding. You know, I don’t take myself that seriously. I want to tell you a kind of a short story today about the manager of the Ravenite Social Club, Norman DuPont. I recently was looking at some video and i snagged some video to put up youtube shorts of people going in and out of the ravenite and so i i didn’t hear this one guy was so i threw it out you know to the fans on youtube and they said oh that’s norman dupont and and what you could tell he was like the guy running errands he was running in and out opening the door going next door and getting supplies and bringing them back to a little corner store there and bringing them back to the club. So Norman DuPont. And I thought, well, who is this guy? I started researching him. You can’t find out a whole lot about him. It’s kind of an interesting story later in his life. One of the first things I found out about him was he was kind of crazy.
[1:12]In 1990, it’s not too long before he committed a crime that sent him away for a long time. he was working at the Feast of San Gennaro down in Little Italy at Mulberry and Spring Street. And there was a child of an off-duty New York City police officer named Anthony Pinzone, and she complained that a concession game was not working properly. And a couple of off-duty cops went over to the booth and started making a complaint. And the booth attendant called out. All of a sudden, some other guys showed up and some other off-duty cops were in the area, showed up, and they have a.
[1:54]Have a big brawl and and the cops ended up getting the worst end of it these guys beat him with like sticks and iron bars or something and they all get they got went to the hospital retreated and released one of them was uh kept for a while he had a fractured skull so one of the persons arrested was the ravenite manager norman dupont they charged him a second degree of salt all uh it’s just like crazy crazy crazy now this uh he was manager at the ravenite and ravenite was an italian american heritage club which is we all know was the headquarters of goddy late you know it’s like after he ascended to the the throne if you will it’s a 247 mulberry street used as a mob mob hangout and became a storefront later on became a shoe store and a men’s clothing most recently but what’s the history of it this thing goes clear back to 1926 it was the alto knights social club which was an old street gang during prohibition used it and that’s what they call themselves the alto knights it was a hangout for lucky luciano and and others of that prohibition area mafia uh this name was taken from the order of saint james of alto passio uh 1957 carlo gambino.
[3:17]Gambino took over the family and became named the Gambino family, as we know now.
[3:26]He renamed the club the Ravenite in honor of his favorite poem. Now, who would have thought that Carlo Gambino would have a favorite poem?
[3:34]Go figure that one. He liked Edgar Allan Poe, and of course, the Raven was his favorite poem. And so we call it the Ravenite. Now, he hung out there, and he was the boss there, and people would come and see him there. But eventually, you know, Carlo Gambino was a guy. He was careful. He was always careful. And he quit going down there when he discovered the cops had a big interest in surveillance of that club and the FBI. You know, by this time, you know, if you’ve listened to my podcast with Gary Clemente telling about his father, Peter Clemente, Peter Clemente was in the first one of the first guys in a top hoodlum squad. One of the first italian guys in the top hoodlum squad and gambino was his his guy so he was probably down there watching gambino himself so gambino he he leaves that he understands now he didn’t pass that god he didn’t learn that lesson from him as we know the management of club then and the the head duck of the club then goes to anello della croce of course he’s the underboss for Gambino and he uses it until he dies. Gotti will come in and take it over as his club, leave the Bergen Fish and Hunt Club after he does away with Paul Castellano.
[4:53]
The Ravenite’s Surveillance Struggles
[4:53]The uh the club is is a there’s a it’s a constant battle between the fbi and the mafia to get bugs and wiretaps in places now you can always tap a phone out on the pole but you can you need to get a bug inside because people are really careful and then eventually they’ll become even more careful about talking inside anywhere and they do the walking talks but the fbi if you watch this most Most recent, Get Gotti on Netflix. I think it’s in the second episode, they tell about all the ways they tried to get bugs into the Rabonite. It was hard. They got a key bait, so they could go in and out at will, and it seemed like nobody was paying any attention to it. They were going in and out, and they kept putting in bugs, and nothing was working, nothing was working. And even when they did kind of work, they weren’t getting anything because as they find out, eventually, eventually they find out that Gotti was going out the back door of the club up some inside stairs into another apartment building. Some elderly Italian lady giving her a little bit of money and she’d leave and he’d have his meetings up there. They got the bug up there and the rest is history. Really, it really brought them down that that wiretapper, that bug up there really brought them down, you know, surveillance of it.
[6:13]Kind of helped the FBI when Gotti made everybody come in on Wednesdays, I believe. He also, another thing that’s not known is labor union guys who were connected to the Gambinos or wanted something from Gotti, was doing business with Gotti, was doing business with the mob. They would show up a lot and do those walking talks out front. So it helped the FBI determine who the labor union people that were corrupt.
[6:36]Melvin DuPont, he wanted to be a gangster so bad, I guess, because he eventually will make his bones. Now he’s, you know, he’s involved with this fight, but that ain’t a deal. There was a guy named Joy Fabozzi who had a car service company there in Manhattan and he owed money to Melvin DuPont or Melvin DuPont had, had, had verified him and vouched for him or something. The guy wasn’t paying DuPont. I believe he got drunk. He goes to the car service, and there’s a dispatcher there named Harmon Fuchs, and DuPont shoots and kills him just as a message to his boss. There’s a couple of low-rent scumbags, Tony Nose Perscietti and Guy Zappula, who are either with him or know about this, and they end up testifying against him, and he gets like 25 to life or something. Now, while he’s in prison, he has a teenage son who is drowned in an upstate boating accident there in New York. And the prison people will not, the management will not let him go out and go to the funeral. But he does get an agreement with his family that they’ll bury the kid. They bring the kid down into West Virginia so at least he’ll be buried close to his father’s in Glenville, West Virginia, the Gilmer Federal Prison.
[7:59]
Tragic Fate of Melvin DuPont
[7:59]And that’s kind of an interesting story.
[8:05]Another thing about these social clubs, I know, you know, they had several managers. And we look at our social club here in Kansas City, they’re always a target of the FBI and the intelligence people.
[8:20]And they’re really careful in and around them. But here we had one called The Trap. Everybody just called it The Trap. It really was a Northview social club. They even used to have a sign out front. When I was young, they had a sign out front. And you know i’d see these guys hang around out front they’d be inside to be playing cards they had the espresso machine and and the whole nine yards and and they’d have people they have games going on texas hold them and play gin and and different kinds of gambling games they know there’s always gambling on it of course and and in the back room there was a smaller room that’s where they’d have the bigger games and that’s where these guys would bring some big fat fish that they could fleece that this some of these business guys they’d want to you know have the the cachet of playing cards with the mob so they’d bring them into the back room and and of course fleece they’d pay for that little trip into the back room of the uh trap or the northview social club we always had a manager here too back when i first went in the unit it was a guy named turk harris he was italian i don’t know what his if his father was not italian or whatever his last Last name was Harris, but he was Italian. He used to tell everybody that he was like the head of the mafia in Kansas City. And he lived up above it. So he’s really hard to get into that thing. Anyhow, you could get it done, but it was hard to do.
[9:40]I know an FBI agent who was in the basement running some wire one night about four o’clock in the morning. And as he started out, there was some mob guy had been up in one of these upstairs apartments visiting a girl. And he was walking out the same time the FBI agent was walking out. The FBI agent just happened to hear him coming out the front door as he started to open the front door of the trap. and he pulls the front door shut and just looks out the window and sees this Willie Camisano Jr. Walking out and getting his car driving away.
[10:12]And then Bobby Maroon took it over after Turk Harris. I never knew what happened to Turk Harris. I don’t think he died.
[10:24]
The Trap: A Kansas City Social Club
[10:18]I think, I don’t know. He was kind of a loud mouth. I think people didn’t like him in the end. And a guy named Bobby Maroon took it over. He had been, I think, a joint at a West 12th Street bar, bar kind of a b-girl bar and he’d had that for quite a while and they trust him and and he helped run the gambling games there he actually ended up starting another game down the street uh upstairs above a pharmacy but he ran it until i think it finally closed down bobby maroon got old and died everybody started going to prison there in the 80s late 70s early 80s and and it just closed down it’s still sitting there today uh vacant i know a guy that went in there tried to buy it they They wanted like $100,000 for this just like run-down old storefront.
[11:06]It actually had a little restaurant adjoining it, but they wanted $100,000 for it. And this guy wanted to turn it into an Italian restaurant, and it’s down in our little Italy. So I don’t know. Somebody ought to do that with the Ravenite, get a hold of it, and turn it into a little bar and restaurant.
[11:26]
Conclusion and Future Projects
[11:22]I think it would go just a cachet of being able to go into the old Ravenite. But anyhow, so that’s the story of Norman DuPont and the Ravenite Social Club.
[11:32]Thanks a lot guys and don’t forget i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there if you have a problem ptsd go to the va website and get that hotline number and along with ptsd is drugs and alcohol you got that problem you don’t have to be in the uh, the you don’t have to be a veteran you can go see anthony rugiano he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in florida and he has a hotline on his uh website or his youtube page or something i don’t know he’s got one anyhow and and don’t forget to like and subscribe and tell your friends about us and you know hey i’ve got books and movies out there and movies to rent my documentaries you can rent and i got a book for sale in amazon i’m working on a couple other books i think i’m going to start trying to like take several podcasts and then make a short book of several chapters And each chapter will be whatever the podcast was that I did a particular week. What I’ve got so far is a bunch of Chicago stories. And so I’m working on that and I’ll do some New York stories and I’ll do some Midwest stories. I may do one with just Kansas City stories and some of my own experiences. I must start putting out a few short books as if I don’t have enough to do. But anyhow. So thanks a lot, guys. And keep coming back.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, I describe details about the horrific demise of mobsters Tony and Michael Spilotro, as told in open court by the recently deceased Chicago Outfit member Nick Calabrese. Michael Spilotro thought he was gping to a meeting of the Chicago Outfit bosses so they could “make” him a member or get “whistled in.” Michael Spilotro was wrong; I think he and his brother, Tony, knew that. Nick Calabrese was the Chicago Outfit killer who told the story of who and how the Spilotro brothers were murdered.

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I also introduce my latest book (click the title to buy), “Windy City Mafia: The Chicago Outfit,” which features gripping tales from my podcast about the rise of organized crime in Chicago. Overall, the episode offers a chilling glimpse into the realities of mob life while encouraging listeners to engage further with organized crime narratives through my book.

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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police intelligence sergeant, detective sergeant later on back here in the studio of gangland wire with this episode. I’m you got to bear with me, guys. I’m going to do a little selling at the very start. I usually sell anything I got to sell at the end or asking for promote or for support or whatever.
[0:22]But at the start, we’re going to do a little promotion. I have a book that I just did and I’m going to give you, I’m going to reward you. I’m going to give you a story, an interesting story, but to start, I have a book here that I’ve done. Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. You can see it back over my shoulder there. Like any good day ever seen any author being interviewed on a podcast on a, on YouTube, you’ll see they had the book propped up over their shoulder. So anyhow, I’ve done this book and what I did. So, stories from Gangland Wire. So I took a bunch of my different Chicago stories and I just take my show notes and the transcript and then distill that down into a short story. So it’s a variety of different chapters. Each one is different. Let’s see, I did an overview, The Rise of the Chicago Outfit, kind of an overview of that. Then I’ve got seven chapters, which I’ve got Scarface on the golf course, which I thought was a really funny story and a good one. The Trial of Al Capone, that’s a first-person account that I found, and I put some other things together and did a show on that. The rise of Tony Accardo, Joe Batters, the murder of Estelle Carey, which was a particularly horrific murder.
[1:40]I found a story about the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit serving a search warrant on an outfit gambling house, and they found a bunch of bookmaking records. Kind of near and dear to my own heart, I was part of the intelligence unit. We never served any search warrants. We set up some other people for vice to go serve the search warrants. Had an interview with Frank Calabrese Jr. And so I went back through that and pulled out a lot of the salient details about the Calabrese family. And finally, I did the executioner, Fear in the Chicago Outfit. What a catchy title for that chapter. And that’s really the story of Harry Aleman, which is, I mean, that guy was, he was a piece of work, wasn’t he?
[2:24]Anyhow, but the story I’m going to tell you today, oh, and that book will be on Amazon, both the Kindle and the hardcover version. And if you guys will go out right away and, you know, for, I think, $1.99, you can get that Kindle version. Even if you don’t have Kindle, hit that $1.99. If I can get a whole bunch of people to buy this thing the first 10 days or two weeks or so, Amazon will see that and they’ll say, oh, man. And so they’ll push it up in their algorithms and it’ll show it to a lot of other people who have bought books, true crime books about the outfit or any mob books. Because there’s a huge fan base out there that buy all kinds of mob books. And a lot of you guys are a lot of you guys that listen are those guys that buy those mob books. And I bought many, many myself. Now I get a lot of them sent to me, which is kind of nice. And I interview these authors while they send me their books. So I get all the latest books and I pass them along to one of my big supporters, Eric, Eric Tyler. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me in the past. I help him make my movie and and other things that you’ve done financially and emotionally and physically support the podcast and my work. Well, I get him those books.
[3:48]
Eyewitness Account of a Mob Murder
[3:43]And so, you know, that’s what it is. That’s my and and help me out if you can. I would really appreciate it. So today I’m going to tell you the story out of the words of an eyewitness of the murder of the two Spilotro brothers, Anthony or Tony Spilotro and his brother, Michael. You know, they were big out in Las Vegas and they got in trouble out there. And, you know, it’s really I think it’s interesting. It’s an insider’s account of a mob murder. You know they had had brought a lot of attention especially tony had brought a lot of attention onto the outfit out in las vegas and during the same time you know we’d started this here in kansas city uh listening to this guy named joe agosto talk about Spilotro talk about frank rosenthal talk about the skim coming back to kansas city from the stardust or from the Tropicana, and also talking about the Stardust and the fact Skim was coming out of that and going to Chicago.
[4:48]And so first two full days on a witness stand, there’s a guy named Nick Calabrese. Nick Calabrese’s brother was Frank Calabrese Sr. And he ran the 26th Street crew, which was a crew of killers. And of course, I interviewed Frank Calabrese Jr. About that life with his uncle Nick nick and his dad frank sometimes it’s like i talk to these guys like frank jr and he talks about his that was just his uncle nick when he was a little kid his dad was just you know dad.
[5:21]Uh, like some of these, uh, kids here in Kansas city, I talked to them once in a while and, you know, their grandpa or their great uncle was just Cork Civella. I mean, it was just grandpa, you know, to us, it was Cork Civella, a real killer to them. It was just grandpa. So I always find that really kind of fascinating. You know, Nick Calabrese kind of starts out right on the, off the bat. He said, uh, prosecutor asked him about what happened. And he said, well, he said, I tackled Spilotro’s brother, Michael, around the legs. And I heard Tony in the back ask if he could say a prayer.
[5:58]What happened next? The prosecutor said, you know, he said, I couldn’t, I didn’t hear anything anymore. You know, I, you know, you go into the action, everything else closes down. I’ve been there on that. You go into some kind of action, your hearing closes down. You don’t need your hearing more than likely. And you start taking the action. You’re looking for any kind of a danger to you. The article I read said that he just spoke in a monotone, calmly, and just like, matter of fact, well, you know, we did this and we did that. Nick Calabrese had been a longtime hitman along with his brother Frank and his 26th Street crew. In the months before the Spilotros were killed, he had been part of a team of mob killers, some of these other guys who we’ll name later on, that went out to Las Vegas trying to catch and kill Tony and Mike Spilotro out there. They were going to use explosives, and they even had a silencer-equipped Uzi, they said, followed him around, followed him to Goodman’s office and downtown, and back there where his home is, it’s on a cul-de-sac. I tell you what, I’ve been there, it’s in my, uh, Las Vegas mob tour on YouTube.
[7:08]It would be a hard one. It would be impossible to sit on. You can follow him in, but you couldn’t stay down in there. There’d be no way. Somebody would be calling the police on you. I mean, there’s just nobody moving in and out of that neighborhood. And everybody parks their cars in the garage. Nobody parks on the street. So it’s impossible to sit on that house. So the outfit acting on Joey Iupa’s orders said, let’s get them to come back to Chicago. So they came up with a ruse and said, Michael is going to be promoted. He’s going to be whistled in. He’s going to be a made guy and they’re going to promote Tony to be a capo. Now, Calabrese testified that one of his fellow hitman, John Farracotta, said that Tony Spilotro supposedly was targeted because he had an affair with the wife of what they called a Chicago bookmaker, which has to be Frank Rosenthal. Which is kind of a no-no, but I don’t buy that you would do all this because he had an affair with Jerry. Supposedly, they put out the story that he was moving drugs with a motorcycle gang out there. You know, big no-no, don’t move drugs. I don’t really believe that.
[8:21]I’m not sure why. If we want to speculate, I would say that Tony Spilotro had just gotten too big for his britches out there and brought a lot of heat. I mean, a lot of heat, and it really wasn’t particularly him, although part of it was because of him, but that heat all started in Kansas City, and it started on FBI wiretaps, and it spun off to Chicago because Lefty Rosenthal was doing all this crazy stuff out there and bringing all kinds of attention to himself, which brings law enforcement attention to him. Tony Splatro was also bringing a lot of law enforcement attention when he started this hole in the wall gang, which brought the Chicago, the Metro intelligence unit to actually combine with the FBI for the first time ever and a little task force and work on the hole in the wall gang, which then turned Frank Cullotta. So it’s, it was just a variety of things. It probably wasn’t either one of these two things.
[9:20]Calabrese talked about when he first was told that he was going to be part of this hit on Mike and Tony Spilotro, he told his brother, his older brother, Frank Singer, and Frank Singer said, well, why didn’t they ask me? I want to be there like a little kid. You know, why come? I’m not chosen for this team. Crazy. He ends up, he’s not there. I’m not sure exactly why. But 83 or so, I think the the skim trials that started and Iupa and Jackie Cerrone and Angela LaPietra are going to prison as well as, you know, Tuffy DeLuna and Nick’s Nick Civella had died. Cork Civella, Frank Balistrieri, John Scalise, Mashie Rockman, and Cleveland are all mob bosses. The whole skim thing was done and all that money that they’d been getting every month. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars between the trop and then all the four casinos that Alan Glick owned out there. The Stardust, the Hacienda, the Fremont, and God, I never remember the name of the other day. I had four casinos. They were skimming them out of that. That was going to Chicago. Chicago was divided up with Cleveland.
[10:38]Milwaukee and Kansas city Kansas city had the Trop covered 40 grand a month we recovered 80 grand when we took them off uh with the uh guy that was bringing the skim back and a regular guy named Caruso and had a junket that was going in and out of Kansas city to uh las Vegas so he you know had cover uh and he took 80 grand off of him that was two months skim so 40 grand a month out of the trop and and over a hundred thousand dollars maybe even a couple hundred depending on the month out of those other four casinos so it was a lot of money and and i think he felt like and we needed somebody to blame i would say and Spilotro you know he had drawn all this heat with the hole in the wall gang and Frank Cullotta was testifying by then but anyhow it was reported did later on that Aiuppa when he ordered the brother’s murder he said you know I’ve had enough of this and there’s.
[11:39]Been several people that have are bringing us down here and I don’t care how you do it just get him I want him done I want this done I want him out that’s when they they sent Nick Calabrese and some other some of these other guys out to Las Vegas kill him with explosives and the automatic weapons that didn’t work came back that’s when they scheme they hatched up this scheme to lure him to a meeting in a house in bensonville it’s a suburb up in Chicago with this promise of mob promotion for tony and and you make Michael get “whistled in” and break a lot of call he said you know he was asking about that and and he said you know they i don’t know if they call it made he said we just always called it being whistled in and that makes sense how let’s click over. Tony and his brother get together. They’re back in Chicago. Tony’s always maintained a house in Chicago, and Michael lived there mostly and had a wife and family there. So June the 14th, 1983 or 86, June the 14th, 1986, they get together.
[12:46]Michael left. He told his wife that, you know, I’m going to this meeting. I’m not sure this doesn’t look good, but I don’t know. His wife will later testify that he said if he wasn’t back by nine o’clock, it was no good. it. Michael Spilotro’s daughter also will testify that Michael told her he loved her at least 10 times before leaving on that fatal day, or should it be fateful day, fateful, fatal day. Both Tony Spilotro and Michael removed all their valuables and all their personal identification before they left. Now, I don’t know if that’s normal when you’re going to go to a meeting where you’re going to be made. I don’t particularly think it is. I don’t know. I I wouldn’t have showed up at that meeting. They said Tony Spilotro had a gun hidden on him, but he didn’t get a chance to get to it, apparently. Nick Calabrese will tell the court when he’s testifying that he was told to wait at a shopping center on 22nd Street, just west of Illinois Highway 83 in DuPage County, and somebody will pick him up.
[13:51]Waiting with him were John Ferricotta and another capo, Jimmy LaPietra, Angelo LaPietra’s son. Son i think and now the leader of the 26th street crew jimmy marcello who will be the really the next boss or as it probably was the boss at the time with Aiuppa in jail or on his way he picked him up in what calabrese called a fancy blue van one of these big uh navigator kind of vans early in the afternoon is a saturday afternoon they drove up to this bensonville subdivision uh went to irving park road and where all the homes looked alike all had uh you know these partial brick walls and then uh wood the rest of it bay windows in the front garage doing on two garages most of them have two car garages drove in the garage door was already up when they got there they just drove right in shut the garage door so nobody really might not even notice that blue van then what they do is they put the bodies in that blue van and back out and take off when He said when it got there, there was John Bananas DiFronzo, who will become the boss later on, Sam Wings Carlisi, who will have a short period of time at the boss, and Joe Ferriola is a longtime capo over in Chinatown and the 26th Street crew and has moved on up.
[15:09]He was the one who brought Harry Aleman in and schooled him and used him, and he was really the guy. If you wanted somebody killed, then you went to Joe Ferriola and he could get Harry Elman and some of the members of the Wild Buds to do that. There were this this Chicago outfit of the 70s and 80s that we’re talking about. This is the end of that really peak peak of the outfit. The final last straw, except I guess there’s still something going. And Calabrese will remark that Calabrese, that Wings Carlisi said he really got a good tan and.
[15:49]And then made some passing remark about when Nick Calabrese and John Farrakata were down in Phoenix recently.
[15:59]
The Execution of the Spilotro Brothers
[15:56]And he’s Ferracotta had spent a lot of money when he was down there. Well, Calabrese will say that Ferracotta runs in the bathroom. And when he comes out, he’s pale. He said, Calabrese testified. He said, I figure he thinks this is slow parties for him. And it wasn’t, he wasn’t marked for murder yet. He’d be killed about three months later because he’s the one that bots the, uh, Uh, Spoletro’s burial didn’t bury him deep enough and left before they really got buried really good. I think they got scared off. They thought somebody was coming. They all ran off at one dude, uh, taco. He had, uh, his wife, she ends up testifying against him. He has to call her to come and get him. About 30 minutes later, the Spoletro’s get walking upstairs and Nick Calabrese says, you know, I remember hearing somebody talking, saying, hello, there’s a few guys upstairs. Some of them were downstairs. Most of them were upstairs because they wanted to then push these guys downstairs when he went down the basement. It’s one time he really showed a little bit of tension and a little bit of emotion on the stand. They report that he exhaled audibly like, I’m wound up because I’m tense. I’m focusing, totally focusing on what I’m going to do. Look around at the rest of the courtroom.
[17:11]Marcello had no reaction and just, you know, deadpan. He was sitting there and this is in the family secrets trial. Actually, I think I forgot to mention that. Most of you guys probably know that. First one down the stairs, Nick says, was Michael Spilotro. Then he stepped forward at Green and said, how you doing, Mike? Because I knew him, you know, and you say, oh, yeah, how you doing? And would step towards him. About that time, this dude named Marino and several others jumped on him. So Calabrese said, I dove and grabbed his legs.
[17:44]He said, I noticed there was Louie the Mooch Eboli who was there and he threw a rope around his neck was strangling. And he said he remembered only one thing before he kind of, you know, as far as his hearing went blank, he said, I heard Tony Spilotro say, can I say a prayer? And, and all the rest of the waiting men, men just bum rust. These brothers just swarmed them.
[18:04]There’s nothing you could do when you got the weight of seven or eight men, even though you’re a tough guy yourself, you can’t do it. These guys are just as tough and many of them were bigger, swarmed them and kicked them and beat them and hit them with only with their fists.
[18:20]A lot of people said it was with some blunt instruments like, you know, axe handles or whatever, baseball bats or whatever kind of, you know, Hollywood thing you want to think of. But the coroner will say this blunt force trauma was from fists and feet and not from any instrument. And also there’s a rumor that they were found with dirt in their lungs that they were buried alive but the autopsy will show that their lungs are filled with blood from the beating so if they died from not being able to get air it was from all the blood that filled up their lungs from the internal damage that they were did as they beat them lotto brothers are dead you know and and they hope that their bodies will never be found as i said they didn’t bury them deep enough some farmer found them and kind of a uh you know it’s sad commentary on their end but the these long-time catholic tony splatter even wanted to pray at the end the Chicago archdiocese ruled that they cannot be given a catholic funeral at saint Bernardine in forest park because of their organized crime connections so they had a private service and a cemetery chapel it was located at the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillsdale, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It’s on June the 27th.
[19:36]Really not that long after they were killed and they were buried in the family plot up there. They had a wake at Salerno’s Galewood Chapel on North Harlem Avenue. And three of the killers, Joe Ferriola, Marino. God, I can’t remember his last first name. Let me know what his first name is. Marino. I should have looked it up. And Rocky InFelice all showed up at the wake.
[20:04]
Reflection on the Spilotro Murders
[20:01]So I once attended a mob associates funeral. And this guy one guy showed up and i thought uh-oh uh-oh one made guy showed up at this funeral who would have been the kind of guy that would would probably maybe orchestrated this thing he didn’t do it himself but i bet he he orchestrated it uh i have to tell that story someday i did so much on jimmy Duardi, i don’t remember i’ve got an old podcast on jimmy Duardi one of our a made guy who was a real old-time mobster but anyhow so that’s the story of the murder of the splatter brothers tony and Michael and who did it and what went down right from the mouth of a man who did it nick calabrese uncle to frank calabrese jr.
[20:50]Who i have a story about in my book so don’t forget my book windy city mafia the chicago outfit stories from gangland wire podcast. I’m gonna do more of these i’ll look up some more chicago stories that i think interesting and haven’t been told and retold a jillion times and i’m gonna do one on new york and i’m gonna do one on kansas city and so i’m just gonna kind of keep doing these all along as i have time to uh to do them it’s just kind of kind of fun for me too, and gives me another, uh, another stream of income. So if you guys will go whole bunch of you go buy this book, why, uh, it will help immensely. So thanks a lot, guys. Uh, don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles and you know, all the rest of it. You got problems with drugs or alcohol or PTSD.
[21:33]There’s, there’s help available. If you’re a veteran, go to the VA and Anthony Ruggiano, former Gambino, uh, proposed member. I’ve been told not really a made guy. Um, they got, they got help for you out there. I’ve got other books, some other book, the Amazon site, and that’s the one about the skimming from Las Vegas from the Kansas City viewpoint and all the wiretaps that they used. You get the Kindle version. You can click on the transcripts that are used inside the book and hear the actual wiretaps. And I’ve got the two movies that are out there for I think is a dollar ninety nine rental gangland wire, which tells about the starting of the skim investigation and the whole big to do that really got the FBI into it. And then brothers against brothers, the Savella Sparrow war, which was about right on the heels of the start of the skimming investigation and all the wiretaps. Then this little war between some upstart young Turks, last name of Sparrow, broke out. And we all pulled out of that, let the FBI, all they did then was sit on the wiretaps. And we all went into in the middle of this war, really. So we about got caught up a couple of times right in the middle of it. So anyhow, thanks a lot, guys.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, Gary interviews former NYPD officer Marique Bartoldus, who shares her 20-year journey in law enforcement. Marique’s book is Twenty and Out: A Compilation of Chaos experienced while serving 20 years in the New York City Police Department. Marique shares exciting life stories on the gritty streets with the NYPD in this well-written book. We discuss her experiences across various divisions, including patrol and SNU or Street Narcotics Unit, and the crazy work of an anit-crime cop in New York City. She explains and highlights the unpredictable realities of street police work. Marique shares gripping stories of high-stress encounters, the importance of quick thinking, and the camaraderie among officers. We also explore the impact of evolving crime trends, including fentanyl, and the personal toll of a career dedicated to community safety. Click here to get a copy of the book. Support the Podcast Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwireClick 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 out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a show today with a officer from the New York Police Department. We’re going to tell some New York Police Department stories. You guys know that I spent 25 years on the Kansas City Police Department. Well, Marique Bartolda spent 20 years on the New York City Police Department. She’s got some great stories. So welcome, Marique. Hey, how’s it going? Thanks so much for having me. Great. I’m really glad to have you on. I think I’m looking forward to our mutual friend, Vic Ferrari says that you have some good stories. And so we’re going to hear some good stories today. I’m sure of that. Now the book guys, the book guys is 20 and out. It’s a compilation of chaos experience while serving 20 years in New York city police department. Here’s a review. I must say that the author was descriptive enough to set the scene of each story. I love that she She explained everything, which made you feel like you were right there with her. I couldn’t put it down and love that each chapter was a job she went to or encountered. Great job, Marique. So that’s, you know, a great review. And you got like all five star reviews, I believe. And so, guys, you can get that on Amazon. I’ll have a link to it in my show notes. So, Marique, tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, your education. And where did you work with the PD before we get into some stories? [1:22]So I grew up on Long Island in Malvern, which is right on the border of Queens and Nassau County. I went to New Paltz College. And while I was up there, I realized that I wanted to be a cop in New York City. So I left New Paltz, which is in upstate New York. I came back home and I went to school at John Jay College in Manhattan for criminal justice. I took a lot of law classes and I started going on the law track. I was really thinking maybe I wanted to be a lawyer. And I had taken the test for the New York City Police Department and they called me and I said, you know what? I don’t know about case law. [1:58]Reading it is fun to, you know, get an A in class or, you know, whatever. But to do this like as a chore for the next 30 years might get a little boring. So I said, you know what? I’m kind of an adrenaline junkie and And I might as...