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.
Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

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

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

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

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

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

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
Donate to the podcast. Click here!

Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers 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.

Click the title to buy the book

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.

Subscribe to get new gangster stories every week.

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

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

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

To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here

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

To subscribe on iTunes click here. Please give me a review and help others find the podcast.
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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, 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.

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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 well just go work in the police department where I can be outside and not stuck in a room with four walls for the rest of my life. So I went into the academy July 1st of 2002. I graduated, I think, January 1st of 2003 or 2nd, somewhere around there. And then when I graduated the academy, I went into transit in the subways in District 20, which is like Queens North and somewhat into Queens South, a little bit of Brooklyn. Uh, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t my cup of tea. I had a lot of fun down there. A lot of good guys, um, was in the blackout of, uh, I think it was 2003 blackout where like the whole Northeast lost power and we had to go into the subways and rescue people off of the trains and stuff.

[2:55]There were some fun times down there, but it wasn’t the type of police work that I was really interested in. I was watching the RMPs, the police cars going flying by with lights and sirens and stuff, and I’m just sitting there watching turnstiles, and I’m like, that’s the kind of stuff I want to be involved in. So I put in transfer requests and ended up going to the 105th precinct, which is in Queens, right on the border of Queens and Nassau. Really big precinct, runs from like the Grand Central Parkway down to JFK Airport.

[3:27]And I went there, I went on patrol, which, you know, is the lowest part of the bar. I did 4 to 12, which was 3 in the afternoon to 1130 at night, which was my favorite tour to work. Work uh so work with a lot of fun guys on that tour you know busted chops got my chops busted uh and then i went to um i did a response order for a little while we basically only responded to in-progress jobs that kind of cover the gap in between tour changes uh then i went into a conditions unit which addresses quality of life issues like you know the guys who pee and the guys who drink with an open container because that was illegal at the time uh and then from From there, I went to SNHU, which is street narcotics enforcement, which is like dealing with low level street level drug rings. Then I went into anti-crime and then I did field intelligence at the precinct level for a few years. And then the NYPD started a new unit for animal cruelty to investigate animal cruelty. So I went there, which was a brand new unit, got that started, you know, did the training for it for, you know, the cops in the police department. Department, did a couple investigations. And then I realized that wasn’t for me.

[4:36]So I requested to go back. So I went back to the 105th precinct and I ended up going right back into the FIO spot, which was great because it was like my favorite spot. And the girl that had replaced me was getting promoted. So it worked out. And I stayed there for the rest of my career. And all in all, it was a blast. It was a blast. Had a really good time. So you’re using some, uh, some terminology. Some of these guys might not know RMP is radio motor patrol. That’s a police car with a radio in it, right? That’s a March police car. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Talking to a fellow cop. I forget. Yeah. Sorry. Right. Yeah. And the next one was, you just said it, it was, uh, RIO or something. IO. What was that? Oh, FIO field. FIO is field intelligence officer. Oh, okay. Field intelligence officer. So, you know, I looked at some of your stories and, you know, I tell you what, especially dealing with emotionally disturbed people is one of the more difficult things that any cops has to do. I’ve got my own stories. I mean, there’s nothing like having to wrestle a naked man in the middle of the night in the middle of an intersection and it’s hotter than hell. You know, there’s nothing like that. They’re super slippery.

[5:55]They’re slippery as hell. Yeah. I know you got some stories and especially many times they’ll have a knife. I remember looking at a window and there’s this crazed woman with a big butcher knife just raised up looking out at me. It’s like, oh man. And, you know, we just walked away because we didn’t have really, she wouldn’t answer the door and we just had a call that, you know, there was some problem inside, you know, we just walked away from that one. So I know you got some stories about that. Yeah. You know, the knives are always a lot of fun. They make this situation very interesting when you get involved with somebody who’s emotionally disturbed. We had a lot of that. It’s actually, I think, a bigger problem than most people realize. I think the interesting part of the of the EDP or emotionally disturbed person is that you never really know when the switch is going to happen and they’re going to go from being completely compliant to like completely nuts and violent. So what you refer to with the knife, one of the stories that’s in my book.

[6:55]When I was on patrol, we had a call for a neighbor had called about her neighbor who was an EDP and had pulled a knife on her. So, you know, my partner and I get there and whenever you’re dealing with an emotionally disturbed person, you always have backup coming. There’s always another car coming. And in the NYPD, we never worked alone. We always had a partner with us in the car. So I knew there were at least two other cops coming. So we get there and the woman’s like, you know, this guy pulled a knife on me. He’s a little crazy. He went running back inside the house. He’s in there somewhere with a knife. So, okay. You know, all right, whatever. So I’m walking up the driveway and I’m looking into the windows to see if I can see him as I’m walking up, and to glued or taped to every single window pane were cloves of garlic.

[7:41]So I’m like, okay, so either, you know, this guy is a legit Italian and he just likes hanging garlic from all of his windows or, you know, he’s got some kind of Dracula complex and, you know, he’s got to protect himself from the outside world. So I said, okay, here we go. So the back door was open where he had run into. So, you know, you go to the door and you kind of stick your head in, you’re looking around and I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. So I yell out police and my PD and my partner and I walk in there and it leads to like a little kitchen area. So I look around. He’s not in the kitchen. So I was relieved about that because you never really want to deal with anybody in the kitchen because, you know, the implements of destruction that are in that room are numerous. And, you know, I don’t, you know, I don’t I don’t want to deal with a knife. And, you know, I got a gun, but I don’t really want to have to use it if I don’t really need to. So I was very happy to see that he wasn’t in the kitchen. So I moved through the living room and, you know, it is eerily quiet in this house. I don’t hear a TV. There’s no radio. There’s no sounds. I’m yelling NYPD, police, but I don’t really want to give away my position too, too much. So I get to the bottom of the stairs and I look up and at the top of the stairs, you can see like the hallway, which was very narrow with the railing.

[8:51]And I mean, the stairway was very narrow as it was. And I’m like, well, he’s got to be up of there. So I got to go carefully. So I take a couple of steps up and I’m looking, waiting. And, you know, I have my hand on my gun just in case, because I don’t know where this knife is. And I’m yelling NYPD and I hear nothing. So I keep going up a couple more steps. And all of a sudden he just pops out and there he is at the top of the stairs with the knife in his hand. So, you know, obviously I draw down on him and I’m like, all right, put the knife down, put it down, calm down. I’m not here to hurt you. You know, let’s just put the knife down. Let’s talk, you know just doing the whole the verbal judo of working on compliance instead of force so out of the corner of my eye i can see the other sector had arrived my backup and then my partner was there so i had like three other cops and they’re all big dudes you know so i’m not really too worried about it but i’m just looking at this guy and i’m like he’s got the high ground he’s got a knife this guy is just going to take a flying leap and stab me in my skull and that’s going to be lights up for me. This is not going to end well for me. I am at a tactical disadvantage. How am I going to handle this? So I’m just like, I’m drawing down on him and I’m just, you know, put the knife down. Don’t do it. Just put the knife down. I don’t want to hurt you.

[10:05]And he’s just not doing it. And he’s looking at me and you can see in his eyes, he’s a little off. He’s not all there. You can see he’s calculating his head. And I’m like, well, I’m not backing down, but going up is going to be a tricky move. So we’re kind of frozen in place for, it was probably a minute, but it felt like, you know, 10 or 11 years because it just, everything kind of slows down when you’re in those situations. It feels like forever. So all of a sudden he just, he goes running down the hall.

[10:32]So I take off up the stairs after him and I go running down the hallway and I see he doesn’t have the knife in his hand. So, you know, as I’m running down the hallway, I put my gun back away. I can hear my, the three guys that are my backup up the stairs. I can hear them stomping up the steps right behind me. So I go to grab him in the room and I, I go to put his, his arm behind his back and what an arm bar position. And I go to take him out. So I did this like leg sweep practice thing. I’m like, I got this leg sweep thing, you know, like me, my new karate moves. So I go to do the leg sweep and I hit the side of his ankle and he just stands there. He doesn’t move, doesn’t go down, like total failure of my maneuver. And I’m like, you got to be kidding me. And I was so mad. So meanwhile, my partners, I guess they didn’t know that the knife wasn’t in that hand. I don’t think they could have seen because my body kind of took up the whole hallway. way.

[11:24]So they see me try and like kick them down to the ground and I’m unsuccessful in my endeavors. So one of the guys, just his inertia just grabs the guy and just pummels them and they both go flying into the wall. And I’m just like sitting there like, man, I just, I was so excited to use my move and it should have worked and it just fell flat. And that was it. So we ended up, the knife was in the room. He had dropped it right next to him. So I didn’t notice it when I was running into the room. But so we got him cuffed up and, you know, he apologized for pulling the knife on me or whatever in a moment of clarity that he had for about two seconds. You know, so I call an ambulance for, you know, an EDP or whatever, and I have to escort him to the hospital because he was violent. So I get into the ambulance with him and he’s, you know, he’s giving the ambulance guy his information, like name and date of birth and all that stuff. And he’s like, yeah, so, you know, I’m the sun god Ra. Yeah.

[12:17]And I’m like, really? Okay. Tell me about that. What does being the sun god Ra entail? So, you know, he’s like talking about all this stuff or whatever. And I’m like, what’s up with the garlic? You know, like, I don’t understand that. And he’s just, so he just, I kind of like interrupted him at one point in his story and he did not appreciate the interruption. So I’m like, okay, you just, you just keep on rattling away. You’re handcuffed on the bed. You’re nice and safe. So, you know, I just sat back and kind of just listened to him for the ride. But at least in that scenario, for an emotionally disturbed person, you kind of like you kind of knew what you were getting yourself into because, you know, he was already violent and he knew it was going to be a problem. There was there was another time where we were actually my partner and I were completely fooled by this one chick. We had been called there by her family and they’re like, she’s crazy. She’s nuts. She needs to go to the hospital. And they’re showing me this key. Ask her what the key is for.

[13:08]So I’m talking to this girl and she’s like you and I. why she’s just normal every day, knows what year it is, knows the president talking about normal stuff. She’s on her phone. She’s like, you know, they’re just crazy. They don’t like me, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, you know, she’s not exhibiting any signs of mental disturbance or, you know, something’s wrong with her. And I’m not really in the habit of like violating people’s fourth amendment rights and just, you know, putting them in a 72 hour mandatory lockup because the family isn’t for it. You know, like I can’t, you know, I don’t know what the situation is here. I don’t know what the problem is. She has an apartment. There’s a nice couch. It’s clean. There’s a coffee table, a TV. It looks relatively normal. I don’t see anything wrong with anything she’s saying. We can’t do anything. So the family was pissed at us. But, you know, I mean, what are you going to do? So we left.

[13:58]So a few hours later, we get a call for the same location for like loud music. The neighbor’s complaining that the apartment’s playing really loud music. So I’m I’m like, you know, I tell Central, the radio dispatcher, I’m like, okay, show me going back over there. You know, we had an EDP at that location earlier because our Central’s change every half hour, hour or so. So it wasn’t the same Central as it had been earlier that evening. So I go back over there and the door’s like ajar. So I walk in and there she is sitting on the couch and the music is just blaring and she lowers the music and my partner starts talking to her. And I’m thinking like maybe somebody’s in here and she’s kind of like hesitant to talk to us and is she being held against her will or somebody’s here that she doesn’t want or something so I’m like let me go look in the rest of the apartment just see if make sure nobody’s like you know hiding around a corner so I go into the kitchen no tables no toaster on the counter there’s just it’s nothing I go into the next room which I think would have been a dining room and there’s nothing there there’s no dining room table there’s no rug there’s no it looks like somebody Somebody had moved out and took all the furniture. And then I look at the window and where the window clasp is to lock the window, there was tinfoil.

[15:08]On all of the windows. And I’m like, okay, here we go. So, you know, I look around the next corner into the bedroom, no furniture. The only room that was furnished was the living room that we had happened to be in earlier in the day. So I said, okay, you know, tinfoil is a good sign of somebody who’s like a paranoid schizophrenic that they think people are listening and the tinfoil kind of blocks the signal from permeating their home. So I go into the room and I, you know, my partner doesn’t know this, right? Because she’s been talking to her the whole time. So to alert my partner without saying it outright, I said, you know, I mean, I’ll say I think in the book I use the name Jane. I don’t remember what her real name was. And, you know, I wouldn’t say it anyway. But I said, you know, Jane, what’s up with the with the tinfoil on your windows, dude? What’s going on with that? And she’s like, you know, so now my partner knows like something’s up. So she goes, well, there’s a mailman that sits in the back parking lot and he tries to listen to my conversation. So I put the foil on the windows to block him from listening. I said, okay, here we go. We got a little problem here. So I’m like, you know, your mom was talking to me earlier about a key or something. I’m like, what’s that key for? And she’s like, oh, it’s for the White House. She’s like, George Bush gave it to me. It’s for the White House. It opens the White House door. I’m like, okay. So I’m like, all right. So my partner keeps distracting her. So I kind of like turn away and I get on the radio and I’m like, you know, I need an ambulance to my location. I am an emotionally disturbed person here. Okay.

[16:32]EMS gets there, and I didn’t have any further coming. I told the other sectors, like, we’re good here. I figured my partner and I can handle her if she does try and resist, but she was relatively calm. She’s trying to do a fashion show. She’s putting on a jacket, and she’s walking back and forth and saying, look how gorgeous I am. I’m like, yeah, you look great, but those heels look like they hurt. Why don’t you just sit down and calm down a little bit and just take a rest off those six-inch heels you have that are going to be thrown into my eyeball in about two seconds.

[17:02]So EMS gets there and she goes into full blown, I’m not going with them. They’re not authorized. I don’t know who they are. You know, I have to go see the president and all this other stuff. So we tried to work with her. And as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s very hard sometimes to negotiate with emotionally stirred people. It’s you try and do your verbal judo. And I’m very big on let’s talk our way out of this instead of fighting our way out of this because it just makes everything so much easier. year. So he just wasn’t, she just wasn’t going. And I said, okay, now we have to handcuff her because she has to go to the hospital. She’s, she’s crazy. She needs meds to, you know, not to put it very nicely, but that’s just the fact of the matter. So we ended up wrestling with her a little bit. We get her into the handcuffs. So we’re in the ambulance and the EMS guy is asking her information on the way to the hospital. And she’s like, I’m not telling you anything. I’m not giving you any information. So the EMS guy looks at me and he’s like rolling his eyes. So I said, I lean over to her and I kind of like whisper and I’m like, listen, I work for the Secret Service. We are going to the White House, but we have to verify your identification. You’re being recorded right now. Give him your information. He is authorized to obtain it.

[18:12]She looks at me and she like opens her eyes and I’m like, yeah. So she turns to him and gives him the name, the address, the date of birth, you know, Social Security number, all kinds of irrelevant information to validate that, you know, she is the person who needs to go and speak to the president. I think it was Bush. I think President Bush was the president at the time. So I’m like, okay, at least she’s compliant. So now I’m thinking ahead to like the psych ward in the hospital, right? So it’s like the two double doors that are locked. You have to be buzzed in. Then you walk down like this long white hallway into like the little triage area where you sit with the nurse and they go over, you know, whatever the situation is and log them into the procedure to the hospital. So I’m like, you know, I don’t want any problems there because I’m thinking this chick needs help. And if they see that she is resisting in any form, they’re going to strap her down to the gurney. And I don’t, I, you know, I felt bad enough that she was in handcuffs. So I said, you know what, let me, let me prep her for this. So I lean over and I’m like, listen, this is where we’re going to go. We’re going to go into the hospital, but it’s actually a front for an underground tunnel that leads to the White House. And you’re going to go there and you’re going to be filmed. And if any of you, if, if you act out at all, it’s going to be recorded and you’re going to be denied access to talk to the president.

[19:23]She’s like, okay, okay. And she’s on board with this. So some people think about this and they’re like, yo, you are messed up for like going along with this chick’s mental disturbance and you’re just validating her mental instability. And for a point, yeah, okay, you have a point. But at the same time, if I don’t play into this, she’s going to get violent and it’s not going to end well for her. And it makes everybody’s lives easier. So we get to the hospital and I’m like, okay, here we go these are the doors remember you’re being monitored behave yourself be quiet just walk calmly so i had taken the handcuffs off of her before we got out of the ambulance so i’m like i think i think i have her now right because we had been talking and explaining and i was telling her about you know my secret service experience and all this other stuff i was just making up, so we get into the nurse’s office and meanwhile the ems guys looking at me like, these chicks are both crazy like i got two edps on this bus not just one which is you know like Like, whatever, man, it’s the mean to the end. So we get to the nurse’s station and we go in there and we sit down and the nurse is like, okay, you know, and I leaned over and I said, listen, this nurse is an assistant to the Secret Service. She has to vet you, give her your information. She’s authorized and whatever. So, you know, she gives her the information. The nurse is looking at me and that’s all she deals with is EDPs. So she’s like kind of keeping her mouth shut and she gets it and she’s going along with it. So they’re like, okay, you got to take your jacket off and everything. And she’s like, I don’t want my jacket because they give her the hospital gown.

[20:48]And I was like, no, you’re not allowed to wear long sleeves because we had an incident where somebody hit a knife up the sleeve and tried to stab the president. So we have to make sure that you don’t have long sleeves on. And she’s like, OK. So she takes the jacket off. And then they’re like, you know, we need your stockings because stockings can be used to like hang yourself. So they had to take have her take them off.

[21:08]So she’s like, no, I’m not taking my stockings off. And so I lean over to her and I say, listen, as the Secret Service was doing multiple investigations, we found out that there was a way to put metal filament into stockings that would act as recording devices. And we’re not we don’t want your conversation with the president to be recorded because it’s highly confidential. So now I hear my partner and the two EMS guys who have decided to hang around for the show laughing hysterically in the hallway. way. And I’m like, shut up. Like, I got this chick. Like, let’s just go. So, you know, they’re like, where is this chick? Where is she coming up with this stuff? But my EDP looked at me and she’s like, oh, I didn’t know that. I’m like, yeah, we just discovered that, too. It’s a pretty clever invention, but it’s a problem. And this is, you know, you’re having a highly classified meeting with President Bush. OK, OK. Takes off the stockings, give them to the nurse. So I’m like sitting there and I’m like, you know, the nurse is going to start admitting me because how am I even like, where is this coming up from in my head? I don’t even know. But I’m like, they’re going to admit me into the psych ward too, because they’re like, you must be crazy for like getting along with this intense psychosis here. So in any case, she went voluntarily and, you know, I guess she got the meds that she needed. But I think it was a few months later, I think I get a phone call from on the desk. So the desk phone only rings if it’s like a major person.

[22:30]So I answer to the phone and it’s like, you know, secret service agent, whatever. So I’m thinking in my head, it’s one of the guys pranking me, right? Like this is just some BS nonsense and I’m getting my chops busted. But the job was so far away. It was like months prior.

[22:45]And I’m like, that’s not really, you know, like the, the bull busting usually happens like immediately. It’s like a, the immediate gratification that you get from the child busting. So I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t think this, I think this might be legit. And the guy’s telling me he’s secret service agent. He’s got a, uh, a girl there and she was trying to get into the white house and she, you know, she’s saying my name and that I authorized the trip to the white house. And I’m like, oh my goodness. I’m like, I’m like, yeah. I said, does, does she have a key? And he’s like, yeah, she has one key on her. And I’m like, yeah, that’s my girl. That’s yeah. She’s just emotionally disturbed. She’s not trying to kill the president or anything. She’s not like a real threat. So I guess they psyched her down there. And then I think it was like a year later when I got to work, I was told somebody’s waiting for me. So I go over to where the civilians wait to talk to the cops. And there she is. And she thanked me. She’s on meds. And she understood that she was having visions or whatever was going on in her life and that she was on meds now. And she straightened herself out and she like wanted to thank me. And I was like, you know, you’re welcome. No problem. I’m glad that you got yourself healed. But that was a, that was an interesting time. And I think it was, you know, I think it kind of got out like, you know, Mons, which was the name that the guys called me at work. It was my maiden name.

[24:00]Mons is a little nuts. She gets along with the EDPs. So if you have an EDP job, send her over because the crazy recognizes the crazy and they, you know, they’ll, they’ll get along. And I’m like, yeah, man, whatever. whatever, you know, nobody got hurt. That’s the name of the game. So yeah.

[24:18]Speaking of crazy and crazy jobs, you talked about you were a street narcotics unit. I, I never really worked street narcotics, but that’s a crazy deal. Larry hit those streets and make those street buys and everything. But how was that? I enjoyed it. We had a team, it was five guys and the sergeant. So it was, you know, we were a very tight unit. We worked very close. And back then marijuana was legal. That was illegal in New York city. It’s legal now, but it was illegal. And I mean, for anybody who, I get a lot of people who are like, why are you locking people up for weed? It’s just a social thing, whatever. But from the experiences that I had, weed is always tied to some type of criminal act, whether it be gun possession, bigger, more, more powerful drugs that are, you know, felony drugs like heroin and crack and Coke. And it’s always tied to criminal activity. It’s not the innocent, you know, like hippie love and peace drug that people try and make it out to be. So the object of the game then was to get the drug dealers off of the streets to, you know, clean up the streets. We don’t want to see open deals and we don’t want to see open use. So I had a job one time, you know, and we would drive around in like unmarked van and an unmarked car.

[25:36]And we would, we would drive around and kind of just look and see what we found. And then sometimes we would target dealers and, you know, try and pick off the buyers and stuff. So one time it was like, you know, I worked six at night to two in the morning then. And so we’re driving around and we see this car. It was like a summer night. All the windows are down. And I mean, there was the cloud of smoke that was coming out of this car from the weed was like unbelievable. It was like, you know, it looked like somebody was barbecuing there. There was so much smoke.

[26:04]So and it’s clearly weed you could smell it as soon as you pull up so we we get there and, it’s like okay you know uh what what do we got going on guys how’s everything going you know just just verbally talking them down what’s up you guys are smoking weed no big deal you know like we’re just we’re just gonna you know it is it’s a desk appearance ticket we’re just gonna have to bring in you know cut you loose no big deal just we need you to step out of the car so So we always grab the driver first tactically because then at least the car can’t move. Right. Get the keys. Yeah. Like you got, you got to get the guy who can like run you over out of the car first. So, so we always remove the driver first. So we, we go to open the car door for him and he just grabs onto the door frame and he’s, it’s a tug of war for opening the door. So my partner’s in front of me and he’s trying to open the door and he’s a pretty strong dude. And I’m trying to like squeeze my hand in there so that, you know, I can just push the frame open and my boss is reaching over us trying to fight. And we’re in a tug of war for this stupid door. Cause he doesn’t want to open it. And I’m like, in my head, I’m thinking this is it’s weed. Like, it’s not like a felony. You’re not going to be going to jail. This is ridiculous. You’re going to go to the precinct and be released in a couple of hours. And that’s it. And he’s fighting. And the three of the girls in the car are just sitting there and they’re just like, you know, just smoking away as like, you know, cause it’s like, and in my head, it’s like, yeah, go ahead. I mean, you’re, we already got you for it. So whatever.

[27:27]So, um, so there’s like razors in the door handle. So he starts reaching for the razor. So my partner’s like, yo, he’s got bleeds. So now it’s like getting a little hairy. Cause I’m like, he’s going to start like slashing us. And that always gets messy with blood everywhere.

[27:40]

Stories of Emotionally Disturbed Persons

[27:41]So instead of doing that, when my partner yelled at, he got bleeds, he starts yelling.

[27:49]And sure enough, from across the street, out comes Mama in, you know, her pink fluffy slippers and her bathrobe and her hair curlers with the shower cap on. And she just runs across the street. Why are you beating up on my boy? Why are you beating on him? The police is violating.

[28:04]You know, and going through the whole normal tirade of, you know, how we’re violating people’s, you know, civil rights and all sort of nonsense. And I’m like, toots, he’s smoking weed. Like, calm down, back off, whatever. So we ended up, you know, getting them out of the car and he was still wrestling around with us. So I sat there and I said, bro, if you had just gone along and just put your hands up and been handcuffed, you would have been released from the precinct and you would have had the girls with you and you would have continued on your night and, you know, bought more weed and smoke some more. I’m like, but instead you decide to fight with us. You go grabbing bleeds. You know, you fought with us after we were trying to cuff you. Now you’re going to go for like resisting, which is like, now you got to go to the booking. So you like screwed yourself and you’re calling for mommy big mistake dude girls are not they’re not coming back you know and it’s like what are you doing so it was fun you know like the the pickup callers were always interesting like that and uh we we set up a couple of times on we had a a spot where it was a very organized drug deal where they had like hats for the guys who were actually having the weed and the steerer would take the money and he was a block away and he would text the seller so that if you went to go buy, you’d go and give your money to this guy. He would text the dealer, okay, he’s good for a dime or he’s good for, you know, a half ounce or whatever.

[29:23]And then you would walk over to the dealer and he would just give you the weed. So, and you know, sometimes they kept the stash for themselves or sometimes they kept it stashed like, you know, in a car on top of the tire or, you know, in the phone booth because they used to have the paid phone booths or whatever. So So sometimes he had it near him, but it was smart because then, you know, you’re either going to lose the weed or the money, usually never both, you know, in their minds. So we, we set up and it was, it was a summertime and we needed somebody to go on the roof of the supermarket to kind of call out the shots and see what was going on. And I’m like, all right, I’ll go up there. I’m going to get nice tan. It’s going to be, you know, nice and peaceful up there, you know, not realizing the roof was going to be 120 degrees in the sun and I was going to be just baking up there. I kind of forgot about those details that are kind of important. But so, you know, I’m up there and I’m calling out the shots and, you know, you kind of like, okay, this guy’s going to buy, this is what he’s wearing and you wait for him to kind of walk way off the set before my guys go and grab him. Cause you want to give the dealer a heads up, but in order to prove that he’s dealing, we have to have the products that he sold to show that he’s actually dealing weed and not like oregano or something. So we did that a couple of times and we had a couple of buyers. And so I’m like, okay, we’re good to take down the dealer. So my boss gives the go ahead for the takedown. So I’m watching from the roof.

[30:43]And I see my guys pull up and they go, you know, up to the dealer and the dealer sees them. And I’m like, oh, I saw the twitch. He’s going to run. He’s going. And sure enough, boom, he takes off, runs across the street, hops a fence and I lose them because there’s trees and stuff. So I’m, you know, I’m calling out like he’s in the yards, you know, go block over. He might be running through the yard. A little while later, my, my guys on my team come out with him and he’s limping a little bit or whatever, but nothing crazy. So I go back to the precinct and my boss is like, yeah, your, your boy is a, cause it was my arrest.

[31:13]So he’s like, he’s, he’s refusing medical attention. And I’m like, okay, whatever. I go into the cells and it was a guy that I had known, you know, he’s a well-known drug dealer. I’m like, what’s up, bro? And I see him standing there and I see the bone pushing against the skin of his leg. And I’m like, yo, your, your leg is broken, dude. You gotta go to the hospital. And he’s like, no miss. I’m okay. Just send me right through the bookings. and I was like, wow, this guy is like, he doesn’t care. He’s just going to deal with a broken leg. Like how much pain this guy must’ve been in. I told him, dude, you’re not going to make it through EMS and central booking. Cause once you bring the perps to central booking, which is where they hold them until their arraigns, they have to see EMS. And if EMS says they’re sick or something’s wrong with them, they go to the hospital, but they don’t like doing that because they know it delays. It pushes them back in line. They don’t get back into the line for arraignment until they get back from the hospital. So he didn’t want to go to the hospital. I said, listen, bro, you got to go to the hospital. I’ll bang out your paperwork. I’ll get your fingerprinted or whatever, but you got to go. And…

[32:15]I gave him, I gave him a lot of credit for that. I, he, he didn’t lie and say the cops beat him up. He, he hopped the fence and landed on a motorcycle and broke his own leg.

[32:23]So instead of being like, yo, cops beat me up. Look, they broke my leg. I’m suing for a hundred million.

[32:29]He was like, I, I, I hopped the fence. I landed on a motorcycle. It happens. And, uh, you know, he took it and he was even taking the pain. So I saw him after that. He always walked with like a cane or a limb, but I appreciated and gave him respect because at least he wasn’t a total scumbag you know really it is what it is yeah working the streets like that uh those street dealers and and into that thing man i tell you what it there’s action action action constant you know chasing people and trying to duke on them trying to catch them dirty and they’re trying to keep you from catching them dirty it’s it just there’s some wild ass stories we were we were working crack dealers and there’s like one on every other third corner so my guys just got the van you remind me the guy’s got the van and and we’d like somebody sit back and watch or somebody actually one of the narcs would go by and make it by of a rock 25 rock and then he radio and then we’d radio the guys in the van and in order not alert everybody else the van would start driving by kind of slowly and there was somebody two guys inside the sliding door and they’d pull pull up next to this guy. And he’s like, you know, thinking he’s going to make another sale. They’d open that door, reach out and snatch him, pull him in, slam the door and take off again. So we kept that going for about two hours. They didn’t, they, their, their dealers just kept disappearing.

[33:55]That’s almost like kidnapping right there. They don’t know what’s going on. It’s like, hold on a second. I am not dealing crack, man. Those dealers are going missing dancing like crazy over there. So you talked about, uh, working intelligence at the street level. So I, and I know that a lot of, when I was a young policeman, we had nothing like this at all. You know, you were just each individual beat cop, if you will, that you were, I was responsible to find out who was who in my district. Some people did that and some people didn’t because you had to get out of your car and go meet people and talk to people in order to find out, you know, who was, who was doing the crime and who was just, you know, styling and profiling, hanging on the street corners. And so So what was that like for New York? You had like an organized setup to do that. Yeah, it was, it kind of, the program kind of grew on its own and was really highly successful. So when I first went into the unit, it was me and my boss. It was just the two of us. So we were responsible for basically any time a prisoner came into the precinct, we would debrief them. You know, the detective squad would have their job of like, you know, if they, you know, confessions or if they knew anything about other stuff. But we were always interested in who’s got guns, who’s selling drugs. And, you know, if they know anything about the shootings or homicides or anything like that.

[35:19]So we would work jointly with the squad a lot of the time, but it was mostly the goal was to to sign up informants. So if, you know, they were willing to work, which a lot of people actually are, which was very helpful because sometimes the only way you’re going to get into some of these groups is with an informant. And it’s just the fact of the matter. And it’s like, you know, I would tell people, like, I don’t live in your neighborhood, but I’m sitting here trying to make your neighborhood safer so that, you know, your grandma can walk to the grocery store and not be robbed. And, you know, like, I know you know stuff.

[35:54]Information helps. You don’t know what can help us. Let us know. And, you know, so I would sign these guys up and we would work with them and create cases and do, you know, controlled buys of narcotics or gun sites and gun buys and stuff and ends up with search warrants. That was the goal, get a search warrant and get the guns and get the drugs and lock up the guy and build a good enough case where they would, you know, get jail time for their crimes. So it was a lot of fun because it was like you were kind of hiding in plain sight. You know, we had like a rental car and we’d go out and like even sometimes the cops that I worked with wouldn’t even see us set up on stuff. You know, we’d like we’d be watching or like our informant would be going somewhere to go do a buy. And like always happens, there’s just like a 911 call at the same location for something totally different. And you’re sitting there like, not right now, not right now. And I’m like, oh, gosh, this is going to – we got to like pull him – all right, pull the informant back.

[36:53]We got to wait for the cops to go because I don’t want the cops to lock up my informant when they just did a drug buy or something, you know. It’s like – so those things always happen. But it was a lot of fun. It was just me and my boss. We would go out there. We would do what we had to do. And we got a lot of guns and a lot of drugs off the street. It was a really successful program. And we worked with other FIOs or field intelligence officers from.

[37:16]Surrounding precincts and throughout the entire city so it was a it was a very it was very successful now did you have a liaison with the uh narcotics people that as you maybe develop somebody and then you could kind of work on up the chain did you get into that much or, atf or whoever you know you really had somebody who’s dealing a lot of guns did you liaison with other units like that yeah um i mean working as a cop which i’m sure you know you kind of you know when you’re on patrol you work with these guys and everybody kind of graduates to other units eventually some people stay on patrol because you know patrol’s awesome it’s a lot of fun and it works for people with steady hours and stuff yeah um but a lot of the time these guys would go into other units so i ended up working and it’s good because you have a rapport with these people already in these other units so we worked with uh narcotics a lot with guys that i worked with on patrol they went to narcotics so we worked with them jointly on cases uh we worked with the ATF and like the organized crime division of the NYPD on a bunch of cases on, you know, people selling guns and stuff.

[38:24]It was, it was good because it was, you know, you collaborated with these other units and you learn new tricks of the trade. Sometimes you taught them new tricks of the trade. And I mean, even there was one time we had some information that there was like some methamphetamine coming in from overseas.

[38:42]So we contacted JFK and we’re like, listen, we got a tip. This is what’s up. So they’re like, all right, come on down. And, you know, we’ll set up on this guy and we’ll grab when he comes off the plane. So NYPD doesn’t really have technical jurisdiction in that area. We kind of have to rely on the port authority police to go do their thing and like Homeland Security guys. So we go down there and it’s nice because you’re kind of like, it’s not you in charge, right? You’re just sitting back, you gave them the information, you know, you’re kind of, you’re, you’re doing surveillance is basically your only job. Keep an eye on this guy and make sure you don’t lose them. And of course our luck is a national geographic was doing some TV show, like, you know, uh, caught abroad or, um, smuggle smuggling abroad or something like that. There was a TV show. So we get there and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Like, I don’t want this on TV, but I guess it had been a slow week for them. And like the, the National Geographic guys were like, this is great. We got to get this on film and put it on TV. And my boss and I are like, this is, you know, we try and avoid the TV cameras. Like, you know, we don’t want our guy to get killed here.

[39:45]So, uh, you know, that, that threw a definite wrench in the operation, but the, it was going to be put on TV, like so far down the road that it wouldn’t have mattered or whatever. So we ended up, you know, grabbing that guy and he had like, I don’t know, 4,500 pills on him or something. And, you know, that was, that was fun. So you do work with other units and I guess because we all have, especially back then, we all had the same goal. So it wasn’t like.

[40:12]It wasn’t like we were working to get the accolades we weren’t working to get the medals and the recognition and anything if anything we didn’t want the recognition i don’t want my name on you know the the chief of department’s desk for any reason good or bad i want to be unknown, um but so you didn’t you didn’t work for things to get the awards and the medals and you know the promotions or whatever you kind of just did it because it was the right thing to do and who knows how many lives this is going to save and stopping people from od’ing and stuff.

[40:42]Especially when Fentanyl came out, you know, it was like, we gotta, we gotta really step this up and get this stuff off the streets because it’s going to kill a lot of people. So it was, it was a blast. I mean, even sometimes not to, I’m like going on and on here, but it’s just bringing up memories of like one time we were, we were going to pick up an informant, my boss and I to go do a buy. So I’m driving and we have a rental car we use like rental cars so it has no light package it’s got no no police nothing it just looks like a normal rental car I’m in a fishbowl rental car yeah that’s what I come a slick car so we always called a slick car we’d buy for our unit and the other undercover units they just buy use rental cars and each to each two guys had a rental or had a car assigned to them so yeah yeah maybe have a radio and a handy talk that was it yeah Yeah, that’s all you had was your radio that you brought with you. Like the car had no equipment, you know, it wasn’t, that’s, but it worked because nobody, nobody saw you, even though the windows weren’t even tinted. They just, it looks like a regular car. So, you know, I’m driving down the street and I come to like a four way stop and I look to my left and I just see this car flying.

[41:51]And I’m like, he’s not going to stop at that stop sign. And I’m looking at him and the driver, you know, most people drive in a like, like this, this guy is like up looking around, you know, like I can almost see the whites of his eyes. His eyes are so big and he’s flying and he blows right through the stop sign. And I said to my boss, I go, cause you know, he was on the phone checking his emails and stuff. I said, yo bro, he something’s up. He just did something. I don’t know what it is, but he did something wrong. And as I’m saying that my radio comes over the, the sector comes over the radio and they’re They’re like, yeah, we have a GLA, a stolen car. And he starts, you know, going over with the information.

[42:32]So I come over and I’m like, you know, FIO to the sector direct. I go, you got the plate on that car? And now, you know, I turn and I’m following him, right? And he gives the plate and I’m right behind the car. I’m like, yep, that’s him. So I put it over, then I’m following this car. That’s now a fresh steal, right? They just stole the car. So this guy doesn’t make me, but there weren’t a lot of cars on the road. So I’m kind of trying to follow. He had slowed down now that he was like further away from the scene. So I’m trying to follow him at like a half a block away, not letting him know that I’m following him. But I know eventually he’s going to make me because there’s no other cars on the road at this time. I’m like, you got to be kidding me. So he makes a couple of turns and then I’m like, all right, he’s made me. I said to my boss, I go, he’s going to bail. So I’m driving as I’m putting over, you know, westbound on this, eastbound on this, northbound on this, waiting for like, where are my sectors so that they can pull this guy over? You know, it’s like they’re trying to catch up to where I am. So he turns a corner. He guns it, turns another corner. And I see the cars stopped on the side of the road, driver door open, perps in the wind. I just see the tail of him go running through somebody’s backyard. So I slam on the brakes.

[43:40]I leave my car like sort of in the middle of the street next to the perp’s car. There’s nobody else in the car. So my boss goes running into the backyard. But I’m like, I’m not hopping all those fences. And I can hear because it was wintertime.

[43:56]

Navigating the Streets: Drug Enforcement

[43:53]I can hear him breaking branches as he’s going through the yard. So I’m like, I’m going to just head him off. So I go running in front of the houses as I’m hearing him hopping fences. I’m breaking the branches. And I’m putting over the addresses that the house that he’s behind or whatever. And he just he keeps going. I mean, these guys, you know, they’re gazelles. When they’re going, they are gone. They have the speed of cheetahs. I never caught anybody in my life. Never caught anybody in my life.

[44:21]Unless they break a bone. Yeah. It’s like, you’re just not going to catch them. You know, and of course I’m not prepared for like a foot pursuit. You know, I was going out on a bike. I’m lucky I had a vest on because usually I wouldn’t even, you know, I’d have it in the back of the car. But I just, for some reason, I think because it was cold, I just put an extra layer on. But so luckily I had that. But I was like, you know, I’m in like boots. I’m not in like running sneakers. You know, I’m like, this is just, I’m not set up for this.

[44:45]So I’m running down the block. I get to the end of the block and I hear him hop the last fence and I don’t hear anything now, but I hear the rest of the guys, the sirens and stuff are going to where my car I had left at a block previous. So I go over the radio. I set up a perimeter so that we have the whole block surrounded. Okay. And I kind of just turn the radio very low and I like kind of crouch down because I’m like, I know he’s in this yard. Right. So he hops the fence and I come out from the bushes and I just draw down on him. And I’m like, do not effing move. Stay right there. Get on the ground right now. And he just looks at me and I’m looking at him and I’m like, get on the ground, get on the ground. And he’s like, no. And he turns around and he hops the fence. And I’m like, son of a gun, man. You gotta be kidding me. I had him. I should have just tackled him. But, you know, I mean, I don’t know. Whatever. Hindsight 2020. I’m thinking he might have a weapon. You know, I’m by myself over here. Nobody knows where I’m at. And I’m a girl. I’m not as strong as he is. It’s just not, you know, you can do whatever moves you want, but it’s not hard to be overpowered. So I’m like, so he goes hopping back. So I put over the radio like he’s coming back to you guys because now I can hear, you know, my guys coming this way from the branches breaking. And then my boss comes over and he’s like, we got him. You know, I got him. I got him in the backyard. yard, you know, whatever. And I’m like, no, man, I sent him back to you. I had him like.

[46:08]So I was all aggravated about that. But then I get back to my car and my door that I had left open when I got into this foot pursuit was pushed the wrong way. So now it was like parallel to the front of the car, the motor, like it just totally got pushed. And I’m like, who hit my door? So one of the other cops comes over to me and he’s like, yo, bro, I’m sorry I hit your door. And I’m like, Like, this road is literally four car lengths wide. You had like an entire lane to go around my car, but you had to hit my door. I’m like, this is a rental car. It’s not like a peasy vehicle. Like, now we’re going to have to pay to fix it. Now I have to go to accident retraining, which is two days off the street. I’m like, you got to be kidding me right now. So yeah, I go to accident retraining and I’m like, yeah, I’m here because somebody else hit my car because I left my door open in hot pursuit. But this is my situation. No fun. But, and then I didn’t even take the collar because one of the other guys was like, you know, do you mind if I take this? And back then we weren’t, you know, I didn’t need to make arrests then. And I had so many already. I’m like, yeah, dude, you know, knock yourself out. You can have it. So I didn’t even, I didn’t even get the collar. I said, which is an arrest. It was like a lose all the way around. Yeah. Well, one thing about working intelligence, like you said, you just want to stay in the background, pull some string, get some shit done and move on to The next thing it keeps the report right now.

[47:32]Yeah, I don’t want to have to be responsible. I mean, not to, I feel like I’m rambling on with stories here, but every time you talk, it reminds me like I, we had a job because I did warrants, right? So I would do my own self-initiated search warrants, but then if patrol needed a search warrant for something, I would also assist them with it, especially because we had a lot of new guys and I would like to help them out. You know, like when I was a rookie, all the old timers helped me out. So I felt it was my responsibility to do the same with the new guys. So my boss and I are driving around doing recon for a bunch of cases that we had. And we hear like, you know, barricaded EDP with a gun in a house, right? Like hostage crisis, whatever. So I’m thinking to myself, well, they’re going to get him out. If he’s got a gun, they’re going to need a warrant. So let’s just go over there because they’re going to need us anyway. Anyway, so we take a ride over there. By the time we get there, the cops have the street totally taped off on both sides. You know, there’s crowds at either corner.

[48:26]The ESU tack truck, the big black one, you know, like the heavy duty like army tank one is in the middle of the street. You know, I can see the guys tacking up and I’m like, this is great. I don’t have to do a thing. I’m just going to hang back here behind the police lines and just kind of like watch because, you know, my job was going to be after all of the excitement kind of ended. So I’m sitting over there and my boss goes and sees a cop that he knows from another unit. So he goes over and talks to him. So I go over to like a bunch of civilians that are on the corner and I’m like, hey, guys, what’s going on? And, you know, I’m in plain clothes. We worked in, you know, jeans and a T-shirt was our uniform of the day. So they can see I’m a cop, though, because, you know, I have my vest on and my shield is, you know, on my on my belt and stuff. So I’m like, all right, what’s going on? And they’re like, well, you know, uh, our dad is, uh, is in the house and, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, he’s, he’s got a gun and all this other stuff. And I’m like, your dad, I’m like, all right. I’m like, is anybody on the phone with your dad right now? Like, is your dad talking to anybody? And they’re like, no. And I’m like, oh, okay.

[49:28]Somebody, somebody missed a step here. I don’t know what happened, but I got here late. But so I said, can you do me a favor and call up your old man and let’s get him on the horn here. They call him up and he answers. And I’m like, hello, sir. You know, this is Detective Bartoldus from the NYPD. I hear you’re having a bad day. What’s going on in there? So now I’m like kind of involved, right? So as he’s talking to me, I said to the family, where is his house? Where’s your house? So they point. And I assume they point to this house across the street. So I said, OK. So I go underneath the police tape and I start walking. And my boss is like, Mons, where are you going? And I’m like, I got the guy on the phone. I’m going to go over there. And he just like rolls his eyes and starts laughing at me because he’s like, you can’t even, this is something you don’t even need to get involved in. And you’re still somehow involved. So I go walking down the block and, you know, I’m talking to him or whatever. And I’m like, well, you know, I go, I hate talking to you on the phone. Like, I like to talk to people face to face. Do you want to like come out here and just come and talk to me and, you know, whatever, like, I want to try and help you out here. This seems like a problem we can solve together. And he’s like, you know, all right, you know, I’ll try and come out. So now I’m, I’m halfway way down the block and I’m standing in front of where the ESU, you know, army tank truck is and I’m facing what I think is his house.

[50:41]And I hear my boss yelling, Mons, Mons. And I look at my boss and I’m like, I got it. We’re good. You know, I’m giving a thumbs up. I got it. And then I hear my name being called at the other end of the block. And I see my anti-crime guys at the end of the block. They’re like, Mons, Mons. And I’m like, yo, I’m good. I’m like, I got it. What’s up? You know, I’m like oblivious. I’m still talking to this guy on the phone.

[51:01]And then I hear somebody behind me yelling, Mons, Mons, look out. And I turn around and it’s my buddy who was now in ESU at the door of the barricaded EDP with the gun, which I had my back to the entire time. So here I am walking into this really serious scene, talking to the guy. And I had my back to the target location where like, I was a perfect target at this guy. I want to take a shot at me. And everybody’s yelling at me to tell me like, take cover. And I’m just like, yo, I’m good. I got this. We’re good. And they’re like, are you nuts? And I’m like, yes, I am. You know this about me already, but it’s okay. So, you know, the ESU captain like pops his head up from behind the truck and he’s He’s like, detective, come over here. You’re not safe where you’re standing. And I’m like, yeah, I see that now. Sorry about that. So I ended up talking to the guy. I said, listen, come on out. Let’s, you know, let’s talk this out or whatever. So I got him to come out and, you know, we got him in. And he was just, you know, he was an older gentleman. And I guess him and his wife just didn’t have a good day. And, you know, he just, he was at the end of his rope. So we were able to get out of that situation, you know, without any problems. But boy, did I take some serious shot busting on that one. I can’t even imagine what that would be. You’re supposed to be the intel guy. You’re the intel guy. You don’t know what house you’re supposed to be watching. I don’t know, man. Oh, yeah. Well, as they say, all’s well that ends well. Yeah.

[52:26]But that’s why being a cop is awesome. You never know what’s going to happen. You never know what the day is going to bring.

[52:32]

Understanding Anti-Crime Operations

[52:32]One last question. You mentioned anti-crime. And I’ve seen that term used in books and heard that term, but I never really knew exactly what that meant. What is an anti-crime squad at the NYPD?

[52:46]Um, it’s the goal is to prevent crime before it happens. So you go out in unmarked cars and plain clothes and you just kind of drive around and watch people and try and get the jump on people, grab the guns, stop the robberies from happening. Or if it’s already happened, you know, go find the part and, uh, and grab them. Okay. These are the guys that maybe go out, act as decoys, maybe like act like you’re drunk and falling down. You got a billfolder laying beside you. And then you got a little surveillance team watching for somebody to come up and try to take your money. Yeah. I mean, we, you have to get special permission to do that. We, I mean, I did, we did prostitution operations. So I would dress up as like a prostitute and do that kind of a thing. But in anti-crime, we didn’t really, we didn’t really have decoys set up. We didn’t kind of like put the bait out there and wait for somebody to jump

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. Gary remembered a few more Cork stories so watch this to hear about Cork’s sex life and his gun buying gone wrong.
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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police detective in the intelligence unit. You know, we just did Cork Civella, Carl Civella, and I left a couple of stories out that were I thought were pretty good. And plus, I was involved in one and some members of the unit were involved in the other. So anyhow, let me tell you those stories is a little bonus for episode. And, you know, I could have gone back and tried to insert these in, but that’s kind of a pain. So I just did another little short podcast here. You know, back in 1981, we had a couple of guys, Harold Nichols and Randy Collins were out driving around, you know, doing their thing, you know, looking for mob guys, going to the city market, going to the trap, the social club and some of the other usual haunts. Maybe if they had a business that, you know, they hung out at and then maybe you’d pick up on them and you’d follow them to see where they went. You know, if you find them going to a spot that you never heard of before, you know, that’s how we caught, got those phones on a Tuffy DeLuna calling Las Vegas is following Tuffyand finally get him going in this hotel.
[1:05]Then you catch him going there again and somebody runs inside and you see him on the phone. Like, bam, you got it. That’s how it works guys. And so these guys were out cruising around, not thinking about anything, not doing anything. They were downtown. I remember they were downtown Kansas city, a lot of traffic back then. And 1981 or 80, I believe, yes, 1980, it was in the spring. And so they saw Quark Civella with a woman by the name of Rita Armillio. And they were, I don’t know, looking for a parking spot. And they thought, well, you know, let’s just pull over and, you know, see where they go. And they finally settled in a parking spot. and they both went into a store that sold guns and and so they documented that and and at the time cork and another guy named paul barcelona they kind of about the same age they were contemporaries they were friends and they both had a big head of white hair although barcelona’s i think was real and corks was a wig he had this huge big head of white hair gray gray white hair but it was a wig and he was a dapper. Have you ever seen that picture of him in that checkered sport coat and that white wig? He’s a very, very dapper dude.
[2:24]So he and Rita go in there and they run up and kind of peek in the window and they’re looking at handguns and so they don’t want to burn the deal. They just back off and then they follow them and they follow them over to Rita’s apartment and they both go inside.
[2:40]So, you know, you write that up, send it over to the Bureau. Bureau goes to the U.S. Attorney, and the U.S. Attorney said, okay, we’ll put them in front of a grand jury. So they get Ms. Armillio. Of course, they know Cork’s not going to say anything. They get Ms. Armillio to come, and she testifies that she wasn’t there that day. Says, no, he wasn’t with me. me i he he there was another guy named Paul Varselona that was with me you know i did go into that store you know we did look at guns i did buy one because they you know found the records by then that she bought a 38 caliber handgun but she said i did not ask mr Civella to get go with me to get that weapon i know that he’s not supposed to be anywhere near guns or around guns and i i know he’s got better sense he would not have gone if i’d asked him to and you know i just wanted that gun then they call Civella and he says no they call Varcelona and he says no cork says i wasn’t there cork actually wouldn’t refuse to testify and in in the end then they charged her with perjury for saying that Paul Varselona was there because they got the policemen nichols and collins to testify without a doubt without a doubt in their their mind that was Cork Civella and not Paul Varselona.
[4:06]Bam, perjury. So they charged her with perjury and they ended up giving her like, I don’t know, like six months and two year probation, some kind of a fine for impeding and hampering a grand jury investigation of whether Cork Civella unlawfully possessed a firearm.
[4:24]
Cork’s Encounter with the Law
[4:24]So that’s one little story about Cork. And here’s another one that would involve me, actually. Again, I was out like those guys, only it was nighttime. I was out cruising. I was out cruising around by myself, and I happened to see Cork. And he had this, at the time, it was a Salmon Lincoln Continental, a Mark. You know, he loved those Marks. He had ones with like the, looked like a spare tire in the trunk. And he got a he had a salmon one colored one then and he got a lime green one after that i think i mentioned that last week or in the other podcast the other show and yeah i see cork and he’s over in the north what we call the north side uh just outside of the north end or little Italy and he’s headed east on independence avenue so i just follow him behind him there’s no other cars on the street but you know i haven’t been following him for a long time and so i just drift along behind Behind him, I can see him a couple of blocks up in front, and he pulls into this joint called the Country and Western Playhouse. It’s owned by a mob guy named Sal Manzo, and it’s a real well-known mafia hangout. But it was a big club, Country and Western Playhouse. They had country and western music. They had a band, and they always, when they had a band, they had dancing, and they, you know, it was hopping. It was rocking and rolling. And so I let him go on in and, you know, I kind of sit outside a little bit, check the parking lot, see who all’s inside, if I recognize any cars.
[5:52]And finally I park and I go in, sit down at the bar and order a drink and kind of let, you know, you turn around and look around and people up on the dance floor. And I see a large party over in the corner.
[6:06]Kind of a special little secluded corner. And there’s Cork sitting in the middle of really a bunch of young people. I didn’t know any of them. There’s one young gal that was sitting next to him and he was like chatting up pretty good. And then she was actually, she was probably, he was probably 60, 65 at the time. And, uh, uh, you know, much younger than I am now, but he seemed like an old man to me because I was probably in my thirties, early thirties. And, and this girl was probably probably in her middle twenties. She was attractive and they were chatting up and then pretty soon they get up on the dance floor and they dance. This old guy kind of shuffles around a little bit. It was kind of humorous to watch. And then there’s a guy sitting next to me and I feel his eyes. He’s just staring at me. Finally, I turn, how you doing, dude? You know, what’s going on? What’s up? You know, what’s going on? You know, some pleasantry. And he’s a boy. He said, I’m glad you started talking. I said, what do you mean? I thought you’re a guy that cut me. So I’m like trying to watch court and make sure he He doesn’t head out. And if anybody else comes over and meet with him and talk to this guy and calm him down. And he said, I said, no, man, I don’t have a knife. I don’t carry a knife. It wasn’t me. Yeah, I know. After I heard you talking. So we start chatting and this is some grizzled old dude that I said, what do you do for a living? I said, I hunt night crawlers or like big ass worms that people use as fish bait.
[7:27]And he looked like he hunted night crawlers for a living. and thank God that he realized that I wasn’t the guy that cut him because that sucker might have cut me. And, you know, during those days, you know, like a deal like that, he usually would not take a gun everywhere I went, going to a bar like that. You know, don’t take a gun. There’s no use in it. I’m not going to do anything. Nobody’s going to, you know, either just a normal bar room brawl or something, you know, they might do something there, but you don’t need a gun for that, especially back then. I guess today you would. But I keep watching Cork and chatting this guy up and pretty soon he and this girl is, it’s getting kind of closer around one o’clock and closing time was one 30 and they get up to leave. And, and so I make my amends with this guy. So I do, I got to go. It’s been nice talking to you.
[8:15]He was like my best friend by the end of that night, follow Cork out, follow the girl leaves, Cork leaves. He follows her and she pulls up in the apartment just a few blocks away, way really they both go inside and you know i can see a light come on and so i can go find out who you know what apartment number it is and later on and then find a and and get to tag off her car so i can figure out who this is and i don’t even remember who she was now but it’s just you know another little night in the life of cork Civella and there’s actually there’s one more we were watching i’ve told this story i told it in my movie brothers against brothers and i’ve told it But before, I won’t belabor you with too much, but they had this war going on between the Speros and the Civellas.
[9:03]
The War Between the Speros and Civellas
[9:04]And Carl Spero had been wounded and made into a paraplegic, probably by a toughie, with a shotgun at a shootout or a shooting that happened at the Virginia Tavern at Admiral in Virginia. So we are now, myself, Harold Nichols, and I think Bobby Arnold was there. And so we’re watching Carl Spero. Our job is to watch him and make sure nobody kills him.
[9:32]And we did that for quite a while so he’s at the virginia tavern he just sitting in there by himself he’s got his cadillac out and back with his license plate that has s-p-e-r-o spiro on he like he was right in their face all the time sitting in there by himself uh in the middle of the afternoon hardly nobody you know a few people came and went so we’re just sitting back watching smoking and joking and and we see joe ragusa drive by then he disappears and we find out later that he went to a phone and he called cork and he tells cork he says cork he said uh he’s there all by himself you know nobody around and cork says you know what did you see any agents around he said no i didn’t see any agents at all was a g around no there’s no g you know i looked all around which he really didn’t he just drove by a couple of times but he didn’t drive up by us he didn’t easily seen us going ganged up in a parking lot cork says you know if you don’t see them they’re probably there then you know back off but he didn’t back off they went and got toughy and and another guy who couldn’t we couldn’t see who it was and they came up and they proud drove around and around as we moved in you can’t really like just let that go you can’t just sit back and wait there run in and shoot somebody and then run back out maybe kind of have to try to interrupt it in some manner it’s a dicey situation so we drive in closer and they spot us and they take off at a high rate of speed actually followed me for a little bit and took off.
[11:01]At a high rate of speed when they got up next to me and glanced over and they.
[11:05]Saw me and they you know i’m in this this kind of down the hills neighborhood.
[11:08]And you know i mean you know i’m a 30 something white guy reasonably fit and all that i mean i just probably had cop written all over me we never like got all raggedy and had long hair and beards for the most part.
[11:22]
Closing Thoughts and Resources
[11:23]Anyhow, so that’s a few more stories about corks of L. I forgot to put in there. So thanks a lot, guys. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
[11:31]Don’t forget to, if you’ve got a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, get that hotline number off the VA website. And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, if you’re in the service, go to the VA. But if not, check out Angelo Ruggiano, a former Gambino guy.
[11:48]He has a website and he has a hotline number on that i believe at least he used to and i like to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there and if you get on my facebook, gangland wire podcast and and we’ll make a lot of comments have a lot of interesting pictures and interesting uh interactions and the same way with my youtube channel get on that and and we and really read the comments a lot of them are a lot of fun a lot of times people get in little arguments but i never let that go too far homie don’t play that we do not go down those paths of people fighting with each other you know this is this is just for fun and if you have a different opinion about the mafia you know take it take it to the streets man or if you want to fight about it call each other names otherwise you can just simply state your position somebody else will state theirs for a fact i had one pretty interesting this last week a whole long thing about the jfk assassination at chucky nicoletti based on a comment on that show that i put on that i really thought was interesting a lot several interesting, comments on that one so there’s a good one to look at so we’re always here and provide you with mafia entertainment and keep coming back guys thanks a lot.

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, Gary recounts the criminal life of Carl “Cork Civella,” a key player in Kansas City’s mob scene. From humble immigrant beginnings with his brother Nick to street boss of the KC Family, he is subservient only to his brother Nick. Gary highlights Cork’s unpredictable nature, significant street presence, loyalty to Nick as an enforcer, and reckless behavior that led to notorious incidents. This narrative provides insight into Kansas City’s unique mafia culture and sets the stage for future discussions on Kansas City’s influential organized crime figures.
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Transcript
[0:00]Hey, all you wiretappers out there. I’m back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, sergeant at the end. I want to tell you about Carl Cork Civella. I get a lot of guys commenting, hey, they want to know more about Kansas City. And I’ve done a little bit, and I’ve got some old stuff on Nick Civella, but it’s like several years old, and it’s not even on YouTube, I don’t think. And I don’t even know if you can find it on the audio app. I need to go get that out and re-edit it and put it up. But I’ve never really
[0:37]
The Civella Brothers’ Origins
[0:35]done Cork. And Cork is an interesting guy. Carl Cork Civella, born in 1910.
[0:41]Their father, he and Nick Civella, who is older brother, will become the mob bosses of Kansas City. And Nick will be more the major domo, if you will, the main mob boss. But Cork was right in there with him, as you’re going to find out. Now it’s Cork as i was told not corking he he’s named cork because he pops off i’ll give you a pretty good example of that he sometimes acts without thinking they were the sons of a Sicilian immigrant in Kansas City as you might well imagine they grew up in what we call the north end or Little Italy now this area is anchored by the holy rosary catholic church at 9 11 Missouri street uh it’s like these big church and the holy rosary church has always brought immigrants in and helped them learn English and get jobs they still do that to this day uh the don bosco center uh when the Vietnamese first started coming over after the war uh they came to the holy rosary church and the Don Bosco center where they learned English and they started moving in to little Italy i mean I mean, they were Catholic for the most part, and they took over a lot of Little Italy as this area changed. And, you know, the area looks like kind of like New York to me. It doesn’t look like anything else in Kansas City. It has this real big city look to it.
[2:06]These boys, Nick and Carl Civella, and they took the same path as a lot of immigrant children and a lot of the mob bosses and mob people I’ve talked about in every city in the United States. Their father actually was a pushcart peddler, I believe, and small businesses. Because mainly newly arrived immigrants that didn’t speak English couldn’t really get jobs in the United States. So they had to figure out, you know, start a restaurant or a push card, sell fruit on the street, whatever they could do, had to start their own business for the most part. And so their father had a small business and the boys took the same path as a lot of immigrant children. And like I said, all these mob guys I’ve talked about before, they left school early and they formed a small gang. Bang uh one of the things they got into was narcotics it got into narcotics too but first they got into tire theft that was a big thing they were tire thieves and and there was a several mob guys that had outlets out there so they could steal the tires go out into the suburbs if you will over into downtown uh and steal tires and bring them back and sell them through these uh black hand at the time associated outlets their father supposedly was victimized by the black hand which will maybe explain why this little gang led by Nick and Cork got into robbing some mafia-protected gangs.
[3:35]Cork did take a bust. He took a pinch and an arrest, and I don’t think he got a conviction for possession of heroin in the 1930s. You know, the mob was, was getting heroin out of, uh, Cuba to, uh, Tampa up to Kansas city. And we had a regular trade going.
[3:58]
From Tire Theft to Armed Robbery
[3:54]They kind of got out of it later on in life, but, but he did take a pinch for that. Now the Sabella gang will graduate from tire theft to armed robbery. And that’s when they started getting in trouble, you know, a lucrative place to rob that isn’t going to complain much. You don’t have to worry about the cops or gambling games. There’s gambling games all around. Now, some of them protected, some of them aren’t. And that’s where they first got in trouble was robbing some protected gambling games because Nick was always his own guy. He was never going to buckle down, buckle under to the old Mustache Pete’s.
[4:30]They tried to actually recruit his gang to do stuff for them. But again, he was his own guy. He always was. He was smarter than the average bear in this world. and he always remained smarter than the average bear in this world. Finally, in 1940, somebody gunned down a Civella gang member named Jake Maroon.
[4:52]Now, years later, his son or grandson, Bobby Maroon, will become the caretaker of the trap or the social club. But gunned down, Jake Maroon in an alley right behind the Northview Social Club or the trap at Fifth and Troops, which is in Little Italy. Nick will flee to Chicago at the time. Corky will just lay low. Corky, I shouldn’t call him Corky. You might get mad at me. Cork will just lay low. Somehow, a peace deal got brokered. Nick was able to come back, and they were able to come back to Little Italy, but everybody didn’t really agree to this peace deal. I think there was a guy named Big Jim Ballesteri who didn’t agree to it. I believe he was the one. We go through the war. As most mob histories are really incomplete during the war because a lot of guys took off and went to war, were drafted, and everything was really in disarray during the war. After the war, January 1946, a guy who was a long-time member of the Civella gang named Joe Buggy Ange was gunned down down in Little Italy at, I believe, 8th and Lydia, just east of Little Italy a little bit. A few days later, just a few days later, eight days later, I believe, Nick Civella and a Jackson County deputy sheriff named Cuccia.
[6:12]We’re sitting in Nick Zabella’s car in the parking lot of a liquor store just a few blocks south of Little Italy at 15th Street. Little Italy really stops about 7th Street. And two gunmen pull up in a car. They jump out. One’s got a shotgun. One’s got an actual machine gun. And they start filling that car full of lead. Well, Nick is sitting in the passenger seat, and the deputy sheriff has got in the driver’s seat for whatever reason. They kill the deputy. Nick rolls out and takes off running, and he goes back to Chicago. You know, during these times, he really established good connections in Chicago. They seem to like him up there. They say Cherry Nose Joey was kind of his mentor. Others will say when he comes back from Chicago this next time and Chicago actually brokers the deal. The story goes that Tony Accardo talked to the new boss in Kansas City in the late 40s, Tony Gizzo, and paved the way for Nick to come back. We know he came back in 1948 because he was arrested for gambling. Pretty soon, it’s noticed that Nick is now Tony Gizzo’s driver.
[7:22]
Nick’s Rise in the Mob
[7:18]So whatever, you know, however this worked out, nobody knows for sure. He comes back a reasonably important guy because he’s now the driver for the boss.
[7:29]And it’s really Tony Gizzo will die in 1953. They’ll have the murder of the two Charlies. Charlie Bonagio was kind of the boss. He was a politician slash boss. Gizzo was more of a gambler and a boss. He dies in 1953. Banaggio’s gone, and it’s believed that probably that’s when Nick Civella, a pretty young guy, started moving on in. By 1957, Nick Civella, and there’s an old Prohibition era Sicilian mobster named Joe Filardo.
[8:02]Who never really wanted to be the boss, but had been kind of on the ruling council, if you will, of Tano Lococo and Joe Filardo and a couple others who lived on into older age. Anyhow, Joe Filardo and Nick Civella are on a train on their way to the the Appalachian convention in upstate New York at Barbara’s place and the police catch them and supposedly nick’s belly said what are you doing he said well we’re looking for girls some people think that Florida was taking nick to the Appalachian meeting to introduce him as a new boss of kansas city i know there’s another guy he’s kind of an expert on this Bill Owsley is a retired FBI agent who was boss of the one squad for a long time and was the main agent that worked on the mob in Kansas City for his whole career, basically. He has a story that maybe Sam Giancana knew Nick Civella from his days in Chicago.
[9:00]Giancana wanted some more influence for Out West, and he was going to propose that Nick Civella get a seat on the commission along with Chicago. Now, I don’t know. A lot of people would argue with that. And a lot of people like to say that Chicago’s, you know, they would never share anything like that. But I don’t know. You never know. He’s smart. He expands his family’s, his crime family’s influence in the politics. He meets uh Roy Lee Williams who’s a local teamster boss and then who will go on to be you know he eventually will just before he dies become the international president uh he meets him on a jackson county committee to decide on who runs for office and who doesn’t so nick his brother cork we’re talking about court cork stays at his side but as an enforcer cork is not the kind of guy that you can put on this kind of a commission. He’s not that guy. He’s the guy you want for the street. He never really took on the official role of underboss or consigliere. He was always referred to as a brother.
[10:06]Eventually he’ll be known. You could call him the street boss, I would say, because he always spoke for Nick and he carried out Nick’s directions and people, when he spoke, they thought they were speaking for Nick. He was speaking for Nick. And some of these early things is we had a couple of mob soldiers named Felix Farina and Tiger Cardarella. They were charged with the attempted murder of a government witness in 1960.
[10:35]
Cork’s Role as Street Boss
[10:32]They needed an alibi. So Cork’s the guy that goes out on the streets. See, Nick was never the guy that went out and talked to people directly that weren’t, you know, like made guys or right next to him. He goes to the, he hits the streets. He finds a gambler that owes money, and he tells him he’ll forgive $5,000 in gambling debts for the guy if he’ll give the two hitmen an alibi, and he does that. Another thing he did, and this was 1960 and 1959, the mob-dominated Teamsters, Local 774, made a move to take over the Kansas City Fire Department and take away the firemen from the International Association of Firefighters. The IAFF union president was a real feisty battalion captain named Stanton Gladden, and he resisted. You know, but politics was all infused in the fire department, especially back then. Politically appointed fire chief offered a promotion to Stanton Gladden if he would.
[11:36]Support moving the IAFF out and the team sure saying, well, he was the president of the IAFF and he was not going to do that. He tried to get another lower ranking fireman and offered him a promotion to help with this. And Stanton Gladden learned about this and he exposed it to the media and it’s all in the newspapers. Now Cork has given the job to intercede. He offers Stanton and gladden the job of fire chief and he said the current chief will become known as the director of the fire department ef gladden will drop his resistance to the teamsters move gladden again refuses and over the next few months a mob controlled politician will offer gladden another promotion within the fire department if he’ll back off a little bit he won’t do it and finally somebody put a bomb in his car and he was severely injured uh out of that bomb but the teamsters never took over the IAFF or the Kansas City Fire Department. You know, another thing tells you a little bit about Cork. In 1960, we had a grand jury in Kansas City, and Nick and Cork were both waiting in the hallway, and there’s a lot of newsmen down at the other end of the hallway, and somebody snapped a photo, and Nick berated him. You know, hey, leave us alone. You know, we’re just businessmen. Cork threatened him.
[12:52]He actually threatened him, and then he exposed himself. He shook his dick at him. and got arrested for indecent exposure. That was Cork. Explosive and impulsive at the same time. During this time, the official underboss was Thomas Highway Simone. He died in 1968. And again, like I said, Cork was not named the underboss. He was always the same as Nick, but on the street. He was the street boss.
[13:17]He always spoke for him on the street. See, Nick Civella was not a street guy who was out in the joints. I never saw him out in a joint. You hardly ever saw him out in just a few places. Cork was out every night in the joints. He was running around to different businesses. He was down at the city market every day at DeFeo’s or hung around that particular area where people could find him. I know a guy whose father-in-law was a bondsman and politically connected in Kansas City, Kansas. And he told me that his father-in-law came over about once a week, about at least once a week, just to see Cork and talk to him. I asked him, I said, do you think Cork ran everything, you know, street stuff in KCK? And he said, yeah, he probably did. Not so much in Missouri, but in KCK, he definitely did. Because there was other members but the uh the willy Cammisano had a lot of uh stolen properties uh fencing outlets going and and different had a crew going here that were really good burglars and thieves he had to have his action i think kck was strictly for court and we’ll see a little more evidence of that later on nick.
[14:28]He might make a sporadic visit to the market, but didn’t hang around down. There was not a regular place. He did go to his lawyer’s office regularly and he used that space and he discussed business with Tuffy and made and received telephone calls out of the lawyer’s office. You know, I noticed he, I don’t remember seeing court down there and I don’t remember any of the wiretaps or the bugs mentioned in the Cork was there. And there was mainly, this was during the Las Vegas casino time. So a Cork was not, he was kind of involved in that, but, but not. Near as much as Tuffy and Nick were the ones that were really involved in the Las Vegas casino business and skimming from casinos and making those decisions
[15:11]
Cork’s Impulsive Nature
[15:07]and dealing with the people in Las Vegas and in Chicago, too. Cork did maintain close ties with corrupt politicians and law enforcement and KCK, like I said. He will attempt to organize and control several Kansas side strip clubs.
[15:22]There’s one guy named Vance Anderson had a pretty successful club over there called the Red Apple. And one time Cork had a couple, he had these two career criminals, Mike Ruffalo and Gene Shepard working for him. He told them to take a stick of dynamite and put it under Anderson’s Cadillac and detonate it out in the parking lot of the Red Apple. And later on, he went over to see Anderson. He said, you know, you got some problems, these young guys, you know, I can, I can protect, I can help you out here, you know, but you know, you got to bring me in here. And he wanted a piece of the clubs when he wanted. it you know and what’s interesting i noticed that over the next year or so anderson started making some moves to to partner up and buy other kansas side strip clubs so you know none of that ever really came out you know kind of an unusual situation with cork out of that he’s at the red apple he started dating a young stripper and she would i remember her she was beautiful she and he was like you know he was old at the time he was probably in his 60s you know i’m like 78, but he seemed old. He had this white wig he wore all the time, and he was a real dapper dresser, if you’ve seen any of the pictures on the internet.
[16:26]And he always drove a Lincoln Continental. He had a salmon-colored one for a long time, and he traded it for a kind of lime green Lincoln Continental. He didn’t have the black or the white or the gray. He had salmon-colored, and then he had green, lime green. Anyhow, he dated this Antoinette Lanfranca, who worked at the Red Apple. Some people say she was a manager over there some people say she was a stripper i i don’t know i remember over there and i remember following around a little bit whenever because she eventually she started dating another mobster named carl spiro who will become in a full-fledged war with him carl spiro and his brothers and car cork and nick Civella and tuffy de luna and the Civella family So go figure it out. Another thing about Cork, he had moved in on a gambler named Al Brandemeyer, which was interesting. I ran into this guy. He said his name was Brandemeyer recently. And I said, what’s your name?
[17:24]Father your grandfather uh have a meat market oh yeah yeah you know i said well what was the deal oh he was a big gambler and and you know a lot of stories about grandpa al but he didn’t really tell me too much but he had a you know like fresh meat distributors they got you know bought meat on the hook and had it butchered and they butchered it in there and supplied restaurants and and other their small stores and things like that and it pretty soon uh he lost a lot of money in gambling and he was he was a bookie too with him uh it became the brandemeyer meat company became the b and c mint company or the brandemeyer and Civella meat company Corky was a salesman he’d make the rounds of the restaurants as kind of a cover job and you know i know he was once overheard on a bug they tried to get a bug on him he was complaining about the business and he told other salesmen get out to all the goombas joints and he named off a couple of periphery uh guys who were italian and uh he said they’ll buy from us another story about cork as he was talking there was a new newly developed entertainment district called the river key it was right next to city market that’s a whole nother story on that get my movie gangland wire you’ll get that whole story but there’s a young restaurant owner named david bonadonna or freddie bonadonna his His dad was David Bonadonna, who was probably a made guy, a professional criminal.
[18:50]A low-ranking soldier in a crew for one of the other made guys, Willie Comisano. Cork was in Freddie’s joint. He put a new joint in this River Key area, this newly developed entertainment district. And Corky was running down, ragging on him, saying, you’re stupid. You had a good joint down on the boulevard. He had a nice place down in Southwest Boulevard. You’re stupid to move down here.
[19:19]And, you know, Freddie says, well, you know, whatever. Well, within a year, that place is immensely successful. The River Key was hopping. It was the place to be. And this young guy, Freddie Bonadonna, sees Cork comes in to sell him some more meat because he’s got a restaurant. And he said well cork he says you know we’re doing okay he said uh i don’t think you really knew what you were talking about of course yeah how much you making freddie probably a mistake he said oh about 10 grand a month now he wasn’t making that 10 grand a month but he said oh about 10 grand a month he wasn’t making that kind of money but so value believed it and he wanted in on the action but he couldn’t really move in on freddie because freddie’s father david was with With another guy named Willie Camisano, that will go spin off into another deal.
[20:07]
Cork’s Business Ventures
[20:08]Camisano wants a piece of Freddie’s action, and he ends up killing David. Like I said, that’s a whole other story about the River Key and the Camisanos. I have to do Willie Camisano one of these days. Cork had another plan. Here’s a longtime mobster named Paul Scola, Pauly the Pig. The Scolas all had the moniker of the pig. The first one was Sammy Scola or Sammy Hogg, and he was killed in the I did the story about the murder of Anton Ferris when the sheriff of Jackson County interrupted this hit that was going down and arrested Mad Dog. Charlie Mad Dog Gargata right in the act of killing this guy. And Sammy Scola, Pauly’s grandpa, was driving a car and the sheriff shot and killed him right away. As soon as he pulled up, he jumped out and he shot the dude sitting, he was a wheel man, shot him sitting behind the car. I know his great grandson. He is still not happy about the cops shooting the great grandpa, Sammy Hogg. Anyhow, Pauly, Thank you. Start coming in to Freddy’s and buddying up to Freddy and said, you know, I want to start a restaurant down here.
[21:25]And they both kind of had, Freddy has thinking about expanding. He had his eyes set on a place about the end of the block. He was like third in Delaware and down at fourth in Delaware. Freddy kind of had his eyes set on this other place because he could put another joint down there. And this guy knew it was open and he was wanting to put it down there. He’s hanging out down there. And Freddy’s dad, this is before he got killed. He encourages Freddy to help Scola. you know hey help this guy out paulie ends up getting that lease first and and he opens up a restaurant bar and he copies directly bonadonna’s menu and takes several key employees and pretty goes oh i see what that was all about now Cork Civella becomes a regular down to Scola’s place which means you know Scola’s with cork uh and several other bobs are like guy named johnny green amaro who was cork neighbor up in the neighborhood and nick Civella’s neighbor who was hanging out he was a main guy and a professional criminal and in his own right the name of the joint delaware daddies uh you know a little story about delaware daddies and this is like i said this i tell the story because this has to be cork’s joint it turns into a strip club of course you know and then cork likes those strip clubs you know so he can make money out of them river keys lost its popularity the the families aren’t coming down the young couples the regular Regular people aren’t coming down and there’s some strip clubs opening up. So he turns it into a strip club and, and he, he gets his used car manager.
[22:52]I think the, I won’t say what the guy’s name is because I’m not real sure.
[22:56]Anyhow, he’s a used car guy and he becomes the manager and he gets a local biker gang who he knew from his old used car gig where he used to be a salesman at. He gets a local biker gang to provide the strippers. I remember going in there and they’re all gagged up over the corner and galley get up and strip. And then she’d go back and sit down with the stripper. This is before they did the lap dances and all that. And these girls started stripping down to nothing. And this was totally verboten or forbidden at the time. Word gets around and a line forms and we hear about it. So I got the job. I get to go down there and I stand in line and it’s about 15 minutes down the line. And, you know, the manager’s there, and he’s talking to everybody, and he’s not taking even a dollar a coverage charge. He’d take it even a buck each. He would have made $1,000 a night, I think, because people were coming and going all night long. What he did was each person he came through, he asked, are you with law enforcement?
[23:58]
The Rise of Strip Clubs
[23:54]Like, you know, what the, well, WTF, you know. No, I work for the city. Well, what do you do? I’m in pollution control. Oh, okay. So go on then. They did strip totally. They even had a couple that would simulate sex late at night. Oh, it was wild. It was crazy. I remember this one night, this guy in the crowd, they’re all hooting and hollering, pushing up around the stage, watching these people.
[24:19]Act like they’re getting it on this one guy says man you didn’t even get it hard this dude they’re getting done he’s putting his clothes on he said man he said you get up here see what you can do that guy shut up then rated to join a few days later arrested this manager and several strippers and you know for some reason they never even reopened they just let it go after that they kind of reopened but then and this never took off again they didn’t have the same panache i guess and it didn’t last very much longer i think they’d made their money well this is during the middle 1970s nick has gone back to prison from an old gambling conviction he’s also gotten sick with cancer so he’s not really you know he’s still running things and you can hear him in the prison, they’ve got some wiretaps some bugs he’s still like sending messages out next going out or courts going up there and kind of you know running things by him and and we see court regularly at the trap of this city market and uh you know to the casual observer cork is now the boss but nick is still the boss trust me nick is still the boss well al brandemeier and bnc meat companies they’ve changed the mohawk meat company to take the Civella day by there so people won’t get nervous about doing business with them now we go into some whole another deal this really gets wild in kansas in the city to my put a bomb on the back door of the trap or the social club, just to send a message.
[25:43]There’s a guy named Carl Spero. His oldest brother has been killed, probably by the Civellas. They had to approve it. They had to approve of Nick Spero getting killed. Carl’s been in the penitentiary. See my brother, my movie, Brothers Against Brothers, for more on that. Carl Spero sends a guy named Leonard Crago, who was a bad, bad, bad man, to rob the Mohawk Meat Company and intimidate Al Brandenbaier, which he does. He puts him in the trunk of his car and he fires several rounds in there and says, tell Elnick Civella to A-Rab’s back in town. He was the A-Rab. And everybody knew by now who the A-Rab was. He was with the Spiros. Shortly after that, somebody kidnaps a Spiro associate named Johnny Brocato. He’s tortured and his body’s found. The contents of his stomach are still frozen. Meat market frozen. You know, I don’t know. Civella family member named Johnny Green Amaro. I mentioned him before, was hanging out down there at the Delaware Daddy’s. He’s gunned down his home, which is only a block from Cork and Nick’s house. It was a slap in the face of the Civellas. It was just getting wild.
[26:49]A young thief who was a friend of Carl Spiro’s and a friend of Fetty Bonadonna’s, he’s bragging that he’s the one that did it, and they kill Sonny Bowen a few days later. End up killing his partner, a guy that’s kind of his regular fall partner, rap partner, rides with him all the time, Gary T. Parker. They suspect Freddie’s been part of it because his father’s been killed because Freddy wouldn’t agree with some other things. Like I said, you need to watch that Gangland Wire movie and it’ll tell you a lot more about that. Freddy takes off to witness protection. Cork kind of tries to draw Carl Spiro in and pacify him, but he’s still out for blood.
[27:32]Another thing Cork did during this time, he oversaw a scam of government money. I bet Nick put this together and then he’s in penitentiary when this really is going down. There was a government program called CETA. I don’t remember what it stood for, but it’s supposed to help people get jobs. We had a bunch of CETA employees with the police department. They hired a bunch of parking control officers. They always civilianized the parking control people, write parking tickets and hire CETA employees for that because the government gave us money to hire them and some other civilian jobs. So Cork Civella set up something called the Columbus Park, which is what the Little Italy area is formerly called. The Columbus Park Safety and Energy Project. And they basically did nothing. And he got this guy, the Gene Shepard, to kind of set it up and hire all his friends and relatives. And they basically did nothing. He hired people as security consultants, clerks, secretaries, school counselors. And of course, Cork got a kickback from everything.
[28:34]Was during this time the fbi put their microphone in the bill of caprina pick up cork and toughy linda talking about las vegas and and one thing this court tells toughy tells cork and kind of gives you something about his nixon penitentiary and tells you about courts you know his influence here he he says cork you got to give the guy an answer right now we got to go find the phone so they go and find a phone and then we start following toughy and find their secret phone and put Taps on in. Really opens up that whole casino skimming investigation.
[29:08]
Cork’s Influence on the Streets
[29:09]But in the meantime, Tuffy is working with Nick really in a way on his own, but Nick’s gotten back out of the penitentiary about this time and working with him on the casino skimming and Cork’s still running everything on the streets. He’s the street boss. He’s taped reporting to Nick about the ongoing Spiro problem. Him he tells nick that he has a friend that’s all carl spiro coming up the villa capri which is kind of the Civella hangout bar late at night she saw carl spiro coming up there peeking in the window see who was in there he says well we’ve got we’ve got to do something and Cork’s complaining we got guys that aren’t doing anything you know they got to get off their butts and go do something You know, they’re just sitting around doing nothing. And next of all, you know, we’ve got some guys and named some old guys. And, and they talk about hitting Spero at the red apple strip club, which I mentioned before Anderson’s place. Cause he knows he goes over there. Cause Carl Spero has since taken up with Antoinette Lang, Franka, who was Cork’s old girlfriend.
[30:16]Small town here small town folks he said you know he said we got to be cautious nick counsels him to be cautious there’s cops everywhere he almost got caught one time we never could figure out what that was cork agrees and he speculates the difference some different guys that might be able to get next to carl spiro names off some guys one of them was like an ex-cop that i do i remember him early on he didn’t last very long there’s an informant that surfaced court tells Nick, I got guys out looking for him. And then they go back to Carl Spero and Carl’s living out in the country. And Cork says, you know, one of our guys, Willie Cammisano Jr., he’s a big hunter and he’s a good shot. He said, get a telescope rifle and shoot Spiro at his home, which is out in the country. And so they’re talking about, you know, sneaking up on the house. And Nick says, oh, you know, none of our guys, they can’t run across country like that. And so, but Cork is the guy that’s going to be out putting this together. St. Valentine’s Day, 1979, we raid all Cork and Nick and Tuffy’s houses and take down the casino case. There’s a couple more attempts to kill Carl Spiro during this time. And the third one finally is successful in 1984.
[31:37]
The Legacy of Cork Civella
[31:32]Cork is convicted of racketeering in a casino case and he is, he will die in prison. Cork was a bully. I had a source, a guy I know that’s been in that life, around that life, his whole life, and grew up over in Little Italy. And he told me a story about Cork. He said in the 1960s, he was at a mob joint, Melcher, Mel’s Pompeii Room out on Main. He was at Mel’s Pompeii Room. He had a date. Cork comes in, sits down at the table without any invitation. He starts flirting with a girl like the guy wasn’t even there. The guys he’s kind of a little guy of course cork ain’t the biggest guy in the world as far as you know fisticuffs and cork says hey hold up man she’s with me cork gave him a look and he said don’t you know who i am guy said yeah i know but get the fuck out of here and cork just laughed and kind of went to the bar cork was an impulsive blowhard no doubt about it but he was totally trusted by his brother and he was feared and respected on the streets if you’re gonna do business on the streets you know you had some respect and some fear of next about our cork Civella he always listened to his older brother nick though always listened to him as he would calm him down and he never went against him he always took him into consideration if he had to make a decision.
[32:52]So that’s kind of the long, he got a 10 to 30 year sentence in 1984 and he dies down in Texas in the federal prison down there. He had a kid, he’s had one child, Anthony or Tony Ripe, who will go on to be the boss after Nick dies and Cork goes to prison and Tony Ripe gets back out. Tony Ripe has a bunch of kids. A lot of people in town will say they know Nick Civella’s grandson. Well, it’s not. It’s his grandnephew. Nick Civella did not have children. Cork had one child, Anthony. He married Tuffy Luna’s sister, and then he had several children, and none of them really followed the family plan in the mob.
[33:37]So, guys, that’s the story of Carl Cork Civella. I hope all you guys have been asking about Kansas City stories. Well, there’s another one. I’ll make you happy, and I’ve got more. I just have to get back to them. There’s so many stories, you know, and so many stories in so little time, I guess.
[33:53]Just talked to a guy on the phone this morning talking about Joe Petrosino, but he wants to talk about the very first mob movie about the Black Hand in 1910, I believe, which was inspired by a case that Joe Petrosino worked on the Black Hand and the influence of the Mafia in movies over the years. So I thought that would be an interesting topic. So I look forward to that. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. motorcycles watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there if you have a problem ptsd and you’ve been in the service go to the va website get that hotline number if you have a problem drugs or alcohol go see anthony rugiano he’s a gambino man and uh now in uh in that witness protection he’s out here living on his own i don’t know what the story is with that i had him on my show once but i don’t think i asked him anyway he seemed to be operating okay and he’s a drug and alcohol called counselor he has a hotline i believe on his website or his youtube channel don’t forget to like and subscribe don’t forget to tell your friends about the show and maybe share it on your social media you know more people we get the better i like it and you know i got some books and and a movie at least i got one book i’m working on another one uh i got a couple movies.
[35:10]Uh out there that are for rent for like a buck 99 gangland wire brothers against brothers the sabella spiro war and my book about the skimming from las vegas and don’t forget if you get the kindle version i have the actual wiretaps link to the book you can listen to so i guess that’s all i got to sell other than myself and and i really appreciate all the comments you make on my youtube and my gangland wire podcast page and i’ve gotten to know a lot of you through that And I really like doing this, and let’s just keep doing it for as long as we can. Thanks, guys.

In this episode, we explore the intriguing life of Wayne Newton, “Mr. Las Vegas,” and his unexpected ties to organized crime. I share discoveries into a strange relationship between a Gambino family associate and this Las Vegas entertainer. I reveal Newton’s connections with mobster Guido Penosi amid his performances at the Copacabana Club. The narrative delves into how Newton’s rise to fame attracted the attention of the Gambino family, leading to offers of “protection” and entangling him in a web of crime, investigations, and betrayal. As the story unfolds, I reflect on the complexity of Wayne Newton’s legacy, inviting listeners to engage with our community as we continue to explore the captivating intersections of celebrity and organized crime. Wayne Newton was a dynamic showman in Las Vegas for many years, and his innocence led him to get into a business relationship with a mobster. He even allowed his mob connections to become involved with another Las Vegas entertainer, singer Lola Falana.

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Transcript
[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio. This is like a little extra, as you’ll notice, you got this soon. We’re experimenting with trying to get my new logo, this part of this logo here on the top of the email that comes out if you’re a subscriber to Gangland Wire website, which if you’re not, you need to be a subscriber.
[0:19]Although I say you get a free book or a link to get a free book that I knocked out here a few years ago, and I need to change that book up a little bit. It a lot of people have gotten it be that as it may i’ve got to put out the keep experimenting putting out blog shots or blog pieces or a podcast and and i think we’ve got it fixed now so when this comes out if you go to the if you’re subscriber and you go to the email you’ll see a different picture you’ll see my new logo always had that old logo that i had for several years that had the wave sign and the green wave sign and the red gangland wire and i paid a guy to come up with this new logo. And, and, you know, and then I never could figure out how to get it up. Finally, my wife finally sat down. I convinced her to go into the back end and figure it out. And it took her about three hours to figure it out. You’d think it’d be easier than that, but it wasn’t. So I thought I’d do a little separate podcast here for you, just for fun. A story that I had always wondered about when I was younger was Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton. I I don’t know if you know who Wayne Newton is. Most of you probably do. I saw his show once. I was out in Las Vegas and saw his show. He was getting older then. He’s probably, shoot, he’s older than me.
[1:33]But he’s had a lot of work done, and he obviously was wearing a girdle or something. He looked pretty slim and trim for his age and what I know about him. But he put on a hell of a show in Vegas. I mean, he is the consummate showman. I always had heard that Wayne Newton somehow was hooked up to the mob, but yet not really, or the mob, you know, being a Las Vegas entertainer like that, you got to have, you got to somehow get along with the mob back in the 70s and 80s. Now, since then, you don’t have to. I started researching, and I found that he once got himself hooked up with a New York mobster, not a Chicago guy. You would have thought it would have been Tony Splatro. This is a New York mobster named Guido Penosi. There’s not a lot known about Guido’s earlier years, other than he was convicted of murder as a juvenile.
[2:25]1971, Guido Penosi was convicted of tax evasion for not paying income taxes for several years during the 60s. But and he was a cousin to a capo in the Gambino family family named Frank Piccolo. I don’t know who Frank Piccolo was, and he didn’t really come into modern times. He was a cousin to this Capo in the Gambino family. During the 1960s, Guido Panossi had met Wayne Newton when Newton was performing at the Copacabana Club in New York City, which was well-known to be mob-connected. I think it was originally owned by Frank Costello. I think that was a club that they used in Goodfellas where they came back, you know, they let them in in front of everybody and gave them a special table up front. Kind of his, you know, this is living the high life of a mobster in New York City. You know, they were friends. They were really good friends. They say that, well, this was from court records, actually, when I researched it. Wayne Newton’s office calendar had Guido Penosi’s birthday marked on it. You know, I mean, I don’t keep anybody’s birthday marked on my calendar. And one time, Newton spent almost a whole month with Penosi down in Florida.
[3:32]Penosi intended the wedding of Newton’s brother. He’s got a brother named Jerry Newton, which I’d never heard of. One time, Wayne Newton flew to Los Angeles in 1976. He flew to Los Angeles with a whole band and performed for Penosi’s son free of charge. So let’s just say they were close friends. Wayne Newton always claimed he didn’t know anything about Penosi’s mafia connections. Infections a newsman once asked Wayne Newton about his friend he said the only thing i can tell you i met him at the Copacabana several years ago i thought he was just a fan he stayed in how we’ve stayed in contact i liked the guy guido penosi’s cousin is a guy named frank lewis piccolo or piccolo i’m not sure how you pronounce that uh we’ll say piccolo he was a he was a capo in the Gambino crime family but up in the Bridgeport Connecticut faction piccolo was a big guy stood stood six foot tall, weighed 200 pounds, had black curly hair, like, you know, always wanted to be six foot two and weighed 250 pounds, had a full head of black curly hair.
[4:32]As most of us do, his whole family lived up in Bridgeport. He was connected to the Gambinos in, faxing up in Bridgeport. In 1980, this Frank Piccolo tried to blackmail money from Wayne Newton. Newton had been trying to disengage himself from a financial investment in a Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada tabloid newspaper, and that had some partners in it. And the partners were threatening Las Vegas police. He went to the cops out there and then they couldn’t stop these threats, whatever they were. I couldn’t really find out much more about it. It’s not that important. Anyhow, I just was being threatened.
[5:06]And he turned to Guido Penosi his old buddy, who then Penosi, you know, how these mob guys do. Well, here’s a guy that can help you. So Penosi referred Wayne Newton to Gambino guy from Bridgeport, Connecticut, named Piccolo. And he then came out to Las Vegas and used his influence and stopped these threats right in their tracks.
[5:27]Well, as usual with any mob guy, if you’re going to take something like that from a mob guy, you know, as a godfather said, you know, maybe someday you can do me a service. So, you know, of course, someday, you know, Wayne Newton can do Mr. Piccolo a service. And eventually he came back around to a business advisor, Wayne Newton, and he wanted him to purchase life insurance for a singer named Lola Falana from a particular insurance agent, which meant that Piccolo was getting a little piece of this action, whatever it was. Because Piccolo also told some associates in New York he was going to become a silent partner with Wayne Newton and they were going to purchase the Aladdin Hotel and Casino which became the Planet Hollywood Hotel and casino FBI got in on this and they ended up bugging Wayne newton and they got him on some conversations with these guys and and on june the 12th 1981 piccolo and Penosi were were indicted in Connecticut on conspiring to extort money and other valuable rights from Wayne Newton and this Lola Falana. Lola Falana was a famous singer back in the day, kind of Wayne Newton’s ilk. Now, Frank Piccolo will die before he actually goes to trial. And that September 19th, 1981, somebody shot and killed Frank Piccolo in a telephone booth in Bridgeport, Connecticut, right down the street.
[6:55]Now, later on, it will come out that Gambino boss, Paul Castellano, had him killed. He had been trying to encroach on the Genovese’s crime families, control of rackets in Connecticut.
[7:09]And Genovese and the Gambino family already had some really lucrative contracts. And if you know these construction rackets in New York City, they were together like the Windows case and some different cases like that and the Concrete Club and all that. And so when Piccolo was trying to horn in on some Genovese family business in Connecticut, Paul Castellano just gave him up and ordered his murder. So that’s a little story about Wayne Newton, famous singer in Las Vegas, a consummate showman. Never forget when he came out, it was like Elvis Presley’s show. And I never actually saw it in person, but I’ve seen clips of it. But has this special, you know, uh, dramatic music. And then he kind of appears to coming down some like escalator, like came down the gold escalator, if you will. But he came down the, uh, the escalator, uh, was transported down. It was like bigger than life. And, and he did put on a show.
[8:10]
Wayne Newton and the Mob
[8:07]He really put on a heck of a show. He worked his butt off. So that’s the story of Wayne Newton, Las Vegas, and his connections to the mob. And, and this is just a little special episode that I can put out to see if If you, if you got an email, if you’re a subscriber and you get the email, then there’s, you might notice that new logo of a back of a guy sitting, uh, like he’s listening to a wiretap or something, uh, instead of the old waveform and just gangland wire. So let me know.
[8:36]I appreciate everything you guys do for me and everything. All you guys had listened in and you guys had like, and share it. And I’ll tell you what that Joe Massino, when I did last month or a couple of three weeks ago. I need to spend that much work on them more often because, boy, it really did gangbuster. A lot of guys really liked that and obviously liked and shared it. So it went through the roof as far as likes and subscribes and all that and views or whatever, however you do that.
[9:05]
Support and Community Updates
[9:05]And so keep supporting me. I really appreciate it. And I’ll keep putting out this mob content and we’ll continue to have fun with all this. Don’t forget. I like to ride motorcycles and don’t like working on my website’s back end. That shit is hard, man. I hate doing that. Thank God. Thank you, Janice Colt, for taking care of me on that and for not charging me any money, but it keeps coming back. I like to ride motorcycles, and I know if you have a problem with PTSD, if you’ve been in service. As you know, go to that VA website. If you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, get hold of our friend, uh, former Gambino. And I see maybe he wasn’t really a made guy. He was, he was a prospect as they say in the motorcycle gang. Uh, he was a proposed member of Gambino family. Uh, it was a legacy. His dad was a made guy, Pat Andy.
[9:54]And he has a website that, uh, he does his show on and he has a hotline number and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor for a regular living. I don’t know if he’s still doing that, if he’s making enough money off his appearances and his website or his YouTube channel yet. He doesn’t have to keep working. I don’t know.
[10:13]If I didn’t have my pension coming in, I’d be working. Go in my Gangland Wire podcast group and like that and join that. We have a lot of great conversations and I got my YouTube channel and I got stuff for sale out there. If you want to go into my website and go on the the, uh, donate page. You don’t have to donate, but I got some of my stuff for sale. And I, you can also got always have links in the show notes to my,
[10:42]
Upcoming Books and Projects
[10:38]uh, uh, movies that are for rent on amazon.com. I’m working on coming up with a series of books. I’ve got the first one pretty well done on the Chicago outfit. I’ve just taken selected stories from old podcast, download the transcripts, ran that through chat GPT kind of makes sense out of it. And then rewrote of that into stories and so each chapter is a different story that i thought was interesting from my podcast and so we look for those coming out of me i’ll probably gonna do another special one trying to get people to really go and buy a whole bunch of them at one time they’ll be inexpensive they’re gonna be short books with separate chapters and it’ll be pretty inexpensive and so i’ll do one on new york probably next i gotta do one on kansas city and so i’m just to always coming up with something to, to sell or to entertain and educate people. It’s, you know, that’s what it’s all about is entertaining people in an edge or educating people in entertaining matters. So 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, we dive into the captivating tales of Gary Clemente’s father, Peter C. Clemente, who was a significant figure in the FBI’s Top Hoodlum Squad. Peter’s career spanned from 1950 to 1976, and he played a vital role in various high-profile cases within the Mafia. One notable event was the Appalachian Mob Conclave, where top mob leaders were detained, leading to the inception of the Top Hoodlum Program initiated by J. Edgar Hoover. Peter Clemente’s proactive approach led him to have a face-to-face encounter with Carlo Gambino, a powerful Mafia boss. Gambino was surprised by Peter’s bold move and their interaction provided valuable insights into Gambino’s demeanor and voice, essential for future investigations. Another riveting story recounts Agent Clemente’s extensive wiretapping operation on Carlo Gambino while he stayed at a motel in Miami Beach. The meticulous operation involved eavesdropping on Gambino’s conversations with his associates, shedding light on the inner workings of the Mafia. Furthermore, the episode touches on Peter’s involvement in debriefing Joe Valachi, a crucial informant who revealed significant information about the Mafia’s structure. Despite initial reluctance due to mistrust, Valachi eventually cooperated with an Irish-speaking agent, facilitating the gathering of invaluable intelligence. 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] Introduction [0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there and back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, as you can see, this is retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Sergeant and Detective Gary Jenkins. We have a great story today. The son of an FBI agent who was one of the early first agents that was assigned to the FBI’s top hoodlum squad and worked on Carlo Gambino and talked to Joe Vellacci and some really great stories. He’s going to have a book coming out called Untold Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. Welcome, Gary Clemente. Good to see you, Gary. Another Gary. Yeah, really. You know, there was a lot of us named Gary in the early 1950s. Did you notice that? I think so. I think we were all named after Gary Cooper. That was why. I asked my mother once. She said, I don’t know. We just couldn’t think of anything else. But I think that’s what it was because nobody names their kid Gary now. There you go. There you go. I’m Italian myself, and Gary’s not a common Italian name. I know. I know. I was surprised when I saw your first name. [1:09]Anyhow, Gary, it’s a pleasure to meet you, and I look forward to this interview. I read a little bit about you. I don’t remember how I found out about you on Facebook or I don’t know. I’ve got so many feelers out there for people that have books or have knowledge about the mob that I forget where it came from. But anyhow, I got a hold of you and you graciously agreed to come on the podcast in order to tell the guys about your book and about your father’s experiences. And I looked them up and and he was an early guy in the top hoodlum squad, wasn’t he? He sure was, Gary. He started off in the Bureau in 1950, and his career spanned from 1950 to 19. Just an interesting side note, at that time, there was a little bit of discrimination in the world at that time with Italians.