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Organized Crime and Punishment
Steve Guerra and Mustache Chris
Organized crime has been a part of human society for centuries, and Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast takes a deep dive into its roots, evolution, and impact on different cultures and countries. In Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast, we explore the rise of organized crime in various regions of the world. Throughout different seasons of the show, we will examine the different types of organized crime, from the American Mafia to modern-day cartels, and how they have adapted to changes in society and law enforcement. We also delve into the lives of notorious gangsters and their criminal empires, revealing the inner workings of these secretive organizations. We will explore the political, economic, and social factors that have fueled the growth of organized crime, as well as the efforts of governments and law enforcement agencies to combat it. Join us as we take a journey through the shadowy world of organized crime, exploring its history, impact, and ongoing influence on our societies today. Whether you're a history buff, true crime aficionado, or simply curious about this fascinating topic, Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast is sure to entertain and inform.
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The Kevlar Gangster: Jack 'Legs' Diamond and Murder Incorporated
July 5, 2023 - 44 min
Title: The Kevlar Gangster: Jack 'Legs' Diamond and Murder Incorporated Original Publication Date: 7/5/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/v9MXHPNM2rW Description: In this episode Steve and Mustache Chris delve into the captivating life of Jack "Legs" Diamond, one of the most notorious gangsters of the Prohibition era. From his humble beginnings to his rise to power, we explore Diamond's journey through the criminal underworld. Known for his involvement in bootlegging, gambling, and other illicit activities, Diamond quickly gained notoriety and influential connections. However, his rise to power was marred by violent gangland conflicts with rivals such as Dutch Schultz. Ultimately, we unravel the decline of Diamond's criminal activities and the mysteries surrounding his unsolved murder in 1931. Join us as we delve into the enigmatic life of Jack "Legs" Diamond and reflect on his enduring legacy as a symbol of the Prohibition era and the fascination with gangsters in American popular culture. #TrueCrimeStories #OrganizedCrime #MurderInc #Mobsters #CriminalUnderworld #Assassins #CrimeSyndicate #Hitmen #InfamousKillings #GanglandHistory #CrimeFamily #MafiaChronicles #ContractKillers #Crime You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris. We are very deep into the contract killing startup enterprise of the Mafia Murder, Inc. We have seen that Murder Inc. Wasn't just a add-on or a side project of the American Mafia and organized crime. It was central to the formation of the mafia itself. And we're building that story as we go along. We've met a lot of really quote unquote, interesting characters so far in the development of Murder Incorporated.[00:01:00] Today we're going to take some time to zoom into the life of one of the more fascinating stories and characters. Jack Legs, diamond Mustache. Chris, why should we take a closer look at Jack Diamond? Yeah. Researching the, like our deep dive into Murder Inc. I came across Jack Li's Diamond and um, The, uh, labor Sluggers Warrior was, uh, little Augie's bodyguard, or on and off bodyguard. And it was, honestly, it was his nickname that kind of caught my attention. Jack Legs Diamond, it's just such an odd nickname for him upstairs. So I just kind of went down a little rabbit hole and. Soon as I kind of got into his story, I'm like, this guy is, this guy is an insane story. Like, how about, how am I, no, sorry. How haven't I heard about him? Like, he's like trips around the world, you know? He was like dating the equivalent of movie stars at the time and like, He had multiple attempts on his life and he was able to survive most of [00:02:00] 'em, you know, uh, and just researching it, like kind of, Jack doesn't even really kind of, he doesn't even come across as like a real person in a lot of ways. He almost seems like a, kind of like a evil cartoon character, if that makes sense. Like you'll, I think you guys will agree once we start getting into his life story. Yeah, I really ag I agree with that, that there's so many people and sometimes somebody like Jack's legs diamond, he just rises to the top. Let's start off with it right in the beginning. Can you tell us, uh, a little bit about his background and early life? Jack Diamond was born on, uh, July 10th, 19, uh, sorry, 1897 to Sarah and John, uh, Moran. Sarah and John. Sarah and John would leave, uh, Ireland for Pennsylvania in, uh, uh, 1891 and a few years later, his brother, uh, Eddie was born. And like many, uh, Irish immigrants coming, uh, To America, the easy wasn't going for them at all. Right? It [00:03:00] not just the Irish, it was the, you know, Jewish immigrants and Italian immigrants that were coming over at the time. And to also add on top of it, Sarah suffered from, uh, debilitating arthritis and other health problems. And then by 19, uh, 13 and affection in her lungs, uh, Would actually kill her. And it was very common in those days cuz people just didn't understand, uh, just how bad, uh, living in the unsanitary conditions that, uh, they lived in. We touched on it a little bit in the, uh, murder Inc. Uh, I believe was Murder Inc. Part one, where we talked about the living conditions in Brownsville, which was particularly worse, but in much of the United States and the, especially the major cities, they, some were a little bit better, but most of 'em were, were really bad. Um, Yeah. And as soon as, uh, Sarah died, uh, John moved his whole family to, uh, Brooklyn. And, uh, this is kind of where Jack Legg's diamond, uh, criminal career, [00:04:00] uh, kicks off. Yeah. So I mean, I, I think we've seen this time and time again that. Some of these guys had really rough childhoods and Jack is certainly no exception. I think in time, in those times in general, we would say that almost the perfect childhood back then would be considered a rough outcome upbringing today. But, um, how did Jack fall into crime? Yeah, basically soon, almost as soon as he got to New York, he. Started getting into involved in criminal activities. He got involved with a, a famous Irish, uh, gang called the Hudson Dusters, which is a, i, some of these old like gang names are really cool. Like we did like the five families and they, they, I don't know, like the Gambino family and stuff, like that's a cool name, but some of these old Irish gang names or. Wow. Like they just, I don't know, know. A lot of them are just fond names. There was another gang we talked on, I think it was like Murder Inc. Part [00:05:00] three was the Ocean Hills Hooligans, which is, I don't know, some of these old timey gang names are fun. Uh, but the Hudson and Dusters, uh, yeah, they, they were no joke man. They had connections to Tammany Hall and like, and writing organized crime and like huge sections of New York. Um, eventually I think, we'll, We'll do like a whole thing on the Irish, it's wasn't the Irish Mafia, but people call it that. But Irish organized crime in New York and around the United States, cuz it is such a big subject. Um, yeah. Jack would find himself, uh, in jail for the first time in, uh, 1914. He was arrested for, uh, robbing a jewelry store. Um, but, uh, during, I guess he. Spent a couple years there cuz like during World War I, Jack found himself, uh, swept up in the patriotic, uh, fervor of, uh, of, uh, Of the times and he would join the army. But uh, I guess those feelings didn't last very long. [00:06:00] Cause he would be charged with the desertion in 1918 and would be sent to Leavenworth for five years, but only ended up serving, uh, two years of the sentence. I think that those criminal gangs, back then, it was really almost something. In between a social club, a sports team, like they were, they were almost like the, the minor leagues for criminals. Like you would have gangs that weren't necessarily all, you know, maybe they were into some light criminality. You might call it vandalism or something like that. But I think that the, the more powerful gangs and the real criminal organizations would kind of pick out what, uh, prospects from those gangs. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, and it's like even at this time it was like things are kind of getting more organized, but there it's still really not far removed. I guess the, I guess the most famous one we would be like Gangs, New York, where you had like a bunch of these kind of [00:07:00] small gangs and that there would be like the one powerful gang that kind of ran things, but they, it was like kind of very loosey goosey. So like we're still kind of in that, in between stage where things are. They're getting more organized and, uh, more top heavy, but we're not quite there yet. Or even, I mean, it's kind of a sillier example, but West Side Story, the Sharks and the Jets, it's the kids living in the neighborhood that they're maybe the same, you know, the Puerto Ricans and the Iris or in, you know, in our context, the Italians and the Jews and the Irish and the kids from the. A couple of blocks just to start to group together for maybe certain elements of self-protection, a little bit of identity, and there you go. And then some of the gangs that maybe are, like you said, are a little bit more organized, then they might get into shaking down or stealing or, uh, roughing up people. And that's how those things kind of evolve. [00:08:00] And how did legs evolve his criminal career? Yeah, when he got out, uh, he got out, uh, Jack would be released in 1921 and upon his release he would be hired by, uh, I guess Arnold Rothstein, uh, noticed him and he would be hired by, you know, Arnold Rothstein to be his, um, bodyguard. You know, I, I don't know if people are familiar with Arnold Rothstein, but Arnold Rothstein, we're gonna do, I guess we're gonna have to do a big series on him just cause from even me and you researching it, we didn't realize. Just how important Arnold Rothstein was to organize crime, um, until we started really seriously researching this subject. Uh, he in a lot of ways basically created what we would consider organized crime in New York. Um, in a lot of ways, um, I guess he would be most famous for, he, he. I dunno. People claim that he's the one that rigged the 19, uh, the 1919, uh, world [00:09:00] Series, the famous Black Sox scandal. I mean, I would say that he did do it. We can't say a hundred percent for sure, but I would say that yeah, Arnold Rothstein did rig it. Um, Jack would also work as a, he would also work as a hired muscle once in a while for a famous, uh, labor slugger named, uh, little Augie Jacob Origin, um, uh, who would, uh, end up getting killed by, you know, people that were familiar with Leke and, uh, Lei be Holter and Jacob Shapiro. And this is one of the times that, uh, Jack almost loses his life, where we're gonna get into that in a little bit. Um, Yeah. And, and, uh, people probably wonder, look, how did Jack get his nickname? I mean, the one theory is that he got his nickname from Legs cuz he was able to run away from uh, these hit, uh, these hits that people would try to pull on him. Uh, and another theory is that he was a good dancer. Which is, I always, that [00:10:00] is a funny image to me as this, you know, this gangster that gets his nickname legs cuz he is a good dancer. It's just not something you associate with organized crime. But, but that's one of the theories. Uh, I don't know, maybe he had really long legs. I don't know. Uh, we only got like a couple photos of these guys, right? Uh, I mean, you can look up a picture of Jack and, um, You can, you know, there's, there's photos of 'em, right? But there's not many. Um, Jack was also known, like during this time for living like a flamboyant lifestyle that like included heavy womanizing. I guess his most famous girlfriend was a dancer named, uh, Marion Roberts. Uh, Once he started dating her, he would, he showed her to, uh, you know, famous, uh, dance, uh, teachers in and around New York, cuz you know, Jack had the connections. He was, uh, tied up with Arnold Rothstein. Um, so we can kind of see here pretty early on that Jack kind of becomes like a, what [00:11:00] you would call celebrity gangster, which was a new kind of phenomenon at the time where you saw it with Al Capone and, and. A couple other mobsters. But, uh, yeah, Jack was kind of, he was a full-blown celebrity in a lot of ways. He was like dating, like the equivalent of movie stars at the time. Like these, uh, these dancers, these singers were, I would be kind of like, as, I wouldn't say it was as crazy as like, say he was dating Scarlett Johansson, but you know, something like that. Were. These were well known individuals at for the time, uh, and he was also a gangster that was killing people, as bizarre as that sounds, Steve, here we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast, and many other great shows. Go over to parthenon podcast.com to learn more. And here is a quick word [00:12:00] from our sponsors. As somebody who I, I think I'm as knowledgeable about the mafia as the next person and really interested in it, and I never really realized how deeply Arnold Rothstein was in the formation of what we know as the mafia. Like you said, I didn't think most people, if you know his name, you'll just associate it as the low level. Crook who worked on setting up the 1919 Black Sox, uh, world Series throwing scandal. But this guy was absolutely at the nexus of everything in the New York organized crime. During prohibition in that time period and he wasn't, bootlegging wasn't even like his main thing either. He was involved in a lot of other things, and it's just the fact that he died kind of early that [00:13:00] I think if he had lived a little bit longer, we could have seen a very different mafia come out. Yeah. And also he was also influential in bringing like the drug trafficking and organizes the drug trafficking come to the states. You know, even for people who probably know a little bit about Arnold Rossi, and that's probably a little shocking to 'em, but it's, that's the truth. You know, I learned that reading, uh, Rob Cohen's book, uh, tough Jews, and he talks about how in the Jewish community, they just don't even talk about it like that Arnold Rothstein was responsible for drug smuggling. It's just something that's. You just don't talk about it. That's a big part of that book is just how the Jewish community, uh, has dealt with the fact that, you know, very early in their history, they were heavily involved in organized crime. Um, it's a, it's a very interesting book act like, uh, just in terms of, there's a lot of like psychoanalysts, uh, analyzing in it, uh, um, just how a community was able to deal with, uh, [00:14:00] with that fact and, um, Just, it's well read. It's interesting history about the time period that we're talking about right now. No, we haven't in this whole series talked much about prohibition and that'll be a whole different, uh, series, but a lot of these guys made a lot of money in prohibition. What was legs involvement in prohibition? So, yeah, prohibition obviously was a made selling liquor illegal. Um, you could still sell it. I don't know. It's a long story. We're not gonna get into it. But, uh, Jack came up with a brilliant idea During prohibition, he would steal the alcohol from the people illegal selling it so, During prohibition, it was a common practice to dump the alcohol that was like in barrels, like right before you hit the New York Harbor, and then you would go collect it later in the dead of nights and just so you weren't obvious about it. Right. And Jack would pay like local kids, like a nickel for every [00:15:00] barrel that they were able to collect from these barrels that were being left in. Overnight. And then he would, uh, he would obviously sell the liquor at his own clubs, right? So Jack would open up the, the hot seat TZ Club that oversaw like most of the alcohol sales in the Manhattan region of, uh, New York. Uh, this club would bring Jack into conflict with other bootleggers. Obviously this is kind of where, like the bootlegger war starts is cuz there was just so much money to be made. So everyone was doing it all at once. And this inevitably, You know, brought conflict. This is where people argued that prohibition was an absolute failure in a lot of ways, cuz it, it brought like a crazy amount of gang violence where like all these different gangs and all these different bootleggers were fighting each other. Uh, yeah. They would bring, uh, our, our buddy Jack Lake's diamond into conflict with Dutch Schultz who is uh, we're gonna end up doing an episode on him cuz he's just a really important [00:16:00] uh, gangster. In general, but around this time period. But Dutch was also, um, insane. So, and, uh, So, yeah, in 19, uh, sorry. In July, uh, 1929, Jack and like a fellow gangster, Charles would, uh, they, they shot up, they shot like three drunken brawlers that were in their club, and, uh, two of them, uh, uh, two of them would die and one would, uh, one would survive, but barely, and to cover up any potential witnesses to the very public crime. Cause they did this while. Everyone's around. Uh, two waiters. One, one hat check guy, one bartender would end up going missing. They ended up finding one of the, one of the, uh, I believe it was the waitresses. Uh, she was shot dead, uh, in New Jersey. Uh, Jack obviously wasn't charged with any of the any. Anything for this, right? Because there was no independent collaborating evidence, but the city did force him [00:17:00] to, uh, close down his, uh, speakeasy, which is, why was it open in the first place? If they knew it was there, it should have been closed down, right? That's just the whole insanity of prohibition, and I guess we'll get into it, but it in a future series, is that it created criminality that wasn't there in the first place, and it, it created a, a, a situation where, You had tole illegally import the, the booze or illegally make it. And so they're, you're creating an unsafe situation there. And then you're creating a situation where the mafia goes and steals somebody's booze. They have no recourse. You can't go to the government, you can't go to the police, you can't go to the courts. So then you have to go to these organizations like. La Ostra that are just starting to like an infection, like just work their way into every system. And I think that [00:18:00] that's a, one of the things, I don't think that the, um, like I said, again, this'll be something that we get into a lot more and I'd love to hear what people, their ideas. I don't think that the prohibition made the mafia, but I think it was almost like steroids for the mafia. Yeah, I would generally agree with that. I mean, I mean, me and you have gone back and forth about prohibition. I think there were, I think there were some people that just saw what liquor did to families and did to people, and generally thought like, this is crazy. Like why are we allowing this to go on? Like, it just destroy people's lives. And I think there were people that were genuinely. Concerned about the welfare of their neighborhoods. At the same time, if the city's going like, oh, you're gonna have to close down your speakeasy. I'm like, why was it opened up in the first place? Like if you can't enforce the law, or I. The law's unenforceable or not willing to go to certain lengths to actually enforce the law. Like I don't, what are you doing really? [00:19:00] Um, just, that's my opinion, right? I mean, when we get into prohibition, I, I have some interesting takes on the whole thing. Probably that's not, um, I guess popular opinion, but, you know, we'll save that for another episode because like we said, it's, it's, it's a huge thing in a lot of ways. It created the mafia. Some people say it, it created the mafia. I, I don't know if I'd go that far, but it, it definitely helped. Uh, yeah. So after his club gets closed down, you, you think Jack would, you know, lay low for a bit, you know, like have some of the heat, uh, come off? No, he goes immediately starts kidnapping truck drivers and kidnapping a lot of people. And one of these truck drivers that he kidnapped was Grover Parks. Um, and they. Basically beat the crap out of him, you know, and tortured him because they, I dunno, they thought he had, the hard sider was on his truck and he denied it and, I couldn't never actually find out if there was [00:20:00] actually cider on the truck or not. Uh, but they ended up just letting him go and then he, Jack would end up getting charged for this. And there was a couple other kidnappings that he'd done. I just thought that was crazy. Like you beat a guy within an inch of his life and then you just let him go. Like, of course he's gonna go to the cops. The cops already have like, you know, uh, you know, like meat, uh, sorry, a heat seeking missile on you considering what you. Basically got away with three murder, uh, with two murders that they know of. I just thought that was so crazy. You think he would lay low? No, not Jack. He just starts kidnapping people and beating them up. He even after prohibition goes away, Jack doesn't calm down or go straight, if anything, I think he really ramps it up. But can, and in his next adventure, he goes on a grand tour of Nazi controlled Europe. Yeah. This has gotta be one of the crazier stories in, in Bob History that I've seen just cause it's. Not crazy in the [00:21:00] sense that he is gr it's just, it really is really ludicrous. Um, yeah. So I guess in one of the more bizarre stories about organized crime around this time period, Jack would go on a trip to Europe and I guess he, I guess they logic behind it. Maybe he was making some connections in Europe or he was just trying to get. Some of the heat off of him, because I guess he was like radioactive at this point. Uh, so Jack would, bo would board, uh, the ocean liner GaN land. And the, the, the police initially thought that Jack was trying to leave New York. Uh, so they checked two other ships and they just happened to be the wrong ones. So he got on this one and apparently while he was on, uh, This Ocean liner, he basically spent his entire time, you know, smoking cigars, smoking cigarettes, drinking, playing poker, and apparently made thousands of dollars. It was on this ship, there's like conflicting evidence where apparently the captain of the ship said, oh, he didn't make that much money, but I don't know, who knows? Let's just say he made [00:22:00] thousands of dollars, cuz it's more interesting. Uh, yeah, the n no N Y P D telegraphed, pretty much all of Europe saying like, if you see Jack detain him immediately, this guy's a ruthless criminal murderer. We want him back here. Um, and once Jack landed in England, he was informed that he was not going to be allowed to enter the country. And England's like, oh, I don't know, like, what are we gonna do with this guy? And then I, he said he wanted to go to Vichy France. I guess Vichy France is famous for, Springwater. Jack was clearly lying about why he wanted to go there. Um, So Angland ended up just sending him to Belgium and he ended up landing in a Antwerp where he was immediately detained. And then once he was detained, he in, uh, Belgium. Yeah. So he was sent to Akin Germany where he was, um, he was immediately arrested there too. And, Let's just pause there for a minute. Like, does this not sound like something out of a cart too? Like this guy [00:23:00] sneaks outta the United States, he goes to England, England's like, oh, whatever. You're going to Belgium. You claim you wanna go to France. We're gonna, you can go to Belgium. And then Belgium's like, well, you're not staying here and we're gonna send you to Germany. And, and then they're like, he goes to Germany and. Basically, Germany says like, okay, you know what? We're just gonna deport you back to the states, like we don't want you here. And he would think like, oh, this crazy story ends. No, it goes further. So he goes to the states, he ends up landing, he ends up going to Philadelphia, where he is immediately arrested. And the judge. Goes to him. He's like, okay, we know what, here's the deal. We'll drop all the charges. You just gotta get outta here in an hour. And Jack's, okay, fine, I'll get outta here in an hour. And he left and went back to New York like, like what a bizarre story. Like how many countries did he go through? Uh, I don't even know how, I don't even understand how he thought he would get away with it, but I've never heard anything like this. And all the [00:24:00] mob guys that we've read about have you. Well, there's a little hints in it, like with, uh, Vito Genovese going to Italy, but he had a place to go in Italy. I don't understand what legs was remotely trying to do, going to Nazi Germany. And the Nazis don't even want him. It kind of sounds like one of those, uh, adventure books from like the thirties and the forties where, uh, The person, like, it's almost like he's an undercover agent or something, but he's not, he is just a, you know, a pretty low level criminal. It, it's insane. Yeah. It's basically, it's just like going from one country to the next and each country just going like home, man. Like, we just don't wanna deal with this. We'll just pass along to the next guy, you know? Like, uh, that's a Monday problem or something, you know, it's the equivalent of that. We're going to leave Jack in Philadelphia for a minute to just talk about how many times this guy was [00:25:00] almost murdered and lived through it, like they call John Gotti, the Teflon Don. I think that Jack Diamond was made outta Kevlar. Yeah, we'll go through like the couple of times that, uh, well, a couple more than a couple of times that Jack was almost killed and just, uh, the, some of 'em are really crazy where, so the, from what I was able to research, the first attempt on Jack's life that, uh, I'm aware of, uh, There must have been like a couple other times before I just wasn't able to find it. Uh, it just kind of goes with the lifestyle being organized. Uh, criminal at this time period was in 1924. He was trying to rob a, a rival gang's liquor truck and was hit. By shotgun pellets and Jack would obviously survive. Uh, this, so no, from the least from what I read, no serious injuries, but that, you know, imagine that's the first attempt on your life. You're being shot by like a shotgun. It's not, [00:26:00] uh, It really is nuts, you know? And then the second time came in 1927. And we kind of touched on this a little bit before when we covered the Labor Slugger words. If you guys go back and maybe listen to that episode, uh, that's gonna be, that was Murder Inc. Part two. Uh, Jack's, Jack's brother was, uh, he was the guy that was little Augie's bodyguard for most of the time, but he, I guess he had the day off that day. And so Jack was covering from, in October 16th, uh, 1927, little Augie was shot dead by three men and Jack was hit. Uh, Twice, just like right below the heart apparently. And Jack was taken to the hospital. He was interrogated by police, but Jack refused to talk. And at one plea, at one point the police suspected that maybe he was in on the head. As crazy as that sounds, even though he was shot near the heart wasn't like he was shot in the arm or something. He would, you know, if he was shot in the arm or like non-life threatening. I [00:27:00] can maybe understand where the police were coming from, but not when you were shot, like, you know, uh, execution style in the chest. Um, but those suspicions were dropped, obviously. Um, yeah. Shot twice right below the heart, um, covering for your brother who was supposed to be working that day. Like that's, that's, that's wild, eh? Um, this is probably the crazier one. Like the third attempt was, uh, was on October 12th, 1930. Um, so. And you would think at this point that apparently Jack would just not leave his house in October, but just considering it seems three times and, uh, he must have just looked at the calendar and thought like, oh, October. Like, yeah, probably someone's gonna try to kill me, kill me this month. And uh, so yeah, Jack was at his hotel room, uh, and it would be broken into and he would be shot. Five times. Yes. You heard that like right. Five [00:28:00] times. Uh, while he was still in his PJs and Jack was somehow able to walk out of his room and when the police found him there, they just couldn't understand. Like, how did you, I. How did you get out of the room? And apparently Jack responded by saying like, I took two shots of whiskey. It gave me, gave me enough strength to, I just get this image of like the guy in the cartoon and that like drank something after he is been shot a couple times and it's just like kind of spilling out of him. That's the image I got cuz he is like in his PJs and he's been shot five times. Um, Jack would end up, obviously end up going to the hospital. He would recover and he would get out on December 30th, 1930. So I guess he didn't make it home for Christmas, but you think about it like he got shot twice right below the heart, got shot with a shotgun, and then this case, uh, five times or up to. I dunno, eight or nine times that he's been shot. Nobody's been able to kill him. So Jack finally ran outta [00:29:00] lives and he can't respond anymore. How does Jack ultimately get taken down? We all know, like some people are kind of born lucky. Everyone knows the type of person that just, things kind of go their way. But like eventually even for those people, like luck does run out. Uh, Jack was staying at a rooming home while he was on trial for kidnapping. Uh, that he would be acquitted of on, uh, December seven, uh, 17th, uh, 1931, and he was the, he went out with the friends and his mistress. They went out for dinner and the night of drinking to celebrate, you know, obviously him escaping the law once again, and the late hours of the evening. And Jack being hammered. He stumbled back to his rooming home where he passed out on his bed, and approximately an hour later, this is from what I was able to research. Uh, men broke into his apartment and one held jack down while the other person shot Jack. Uh, Point blank in [00:30:00] the back of the head three times. Pretty brutal. Like, like really ruthless execution, right? Concerning. He was like right in the face. Uh, or at least his face would've been blown out. But I mean, I. Given the amount of times that he was able to get away, I guess to a degree I can understand the, the overkill. Yeah. It's really, really crazy, crazy story. You know, uh, the, I don't know, it's obviously not the same rooming home, but like, uh, there's a picture of where. The rooming home was, and you can kind of see where exactly where he was killed and even, but even with, uh, Jack's death, like the story doesn't end there. Like it gets even crazier. I didn't even know anything about this until I started researching, uh, the subject. But like there's many different theories about, um, like who actually killed, uh, Jack Diamond and like some people say it was Dutch Schultz, which. It is believable. Dutch killed a lot of people, especially [00:31:00] like fellow bootleggers. Um, some say like it was like relatives of like, uh, another Irish gang that Jack kind of screwed over. But I found like the most interesting theory was it was the Albany Police Force themselves. Uh, Apparently Jack had been trying to move into Albany, uh, once his club got closed down and he was having like a lot of problems in, uh, his more traditional areas in New York. So he saw an opportunity here. But a, a gentleman named by Dan O'Connell, who apparently ran like the Democratic, uh, political machine at the time. He made a big point that there was gonna be no organized crime in Albany, at least, you know, stuff that he. The stuff that he was doing was fine, but there wasn't gonna be, uh, any other organized crime, um, anybody knows about, like these political machines, Republican or Democrat in New York. It was particularly bad with the Democratic party, uh, a lot of the way. It was, uh, [00:32:00] kind of hard to tell the difference between them and organized crime and apparently Dan O'Connell. That's what I read. Apparently put a hit out, uh, for, uh, on Jack Diamond and a gentleman by, uh, William Fitzpatrick, who was sergeant at the sergeant at the time. This is how the theory goes, where the guy, him and his partner went in there and they killed Jack. And because shortly after he ended up becoming the chief of police, and the theory goes, this is kind of his reward for getting rid of Jack Diamond. You know, and then 20 years later, William would be shot by one of his own detectives in his own office. I, I tried researching this cause that's wild, right? Like, like a detective shoots the chief of police in his own office. You think that you would know more about that? But I, I, I tried finding exactly what happened and I was having a difficult time doing it. Like, I'm gonna keep on digging and once I do, maybe [00:33:00] we'll do like a short about it or, You know, we'll explore it if I could act cuz it is. That is. Insane that a police detective shot the chief of police in his own office. I guess maybe the theory, my theory is maybe John saw all the type of corruption that was William was involved in and like didn't want any, like took something snapped because he ended up getting acquitted of the crime. Later on. So that's my theory is he saw the type of corruption and like the type of corruption was coming out. And I, it, it, that's a really bizarre story. Like to me, it, this whole police killed Jack Diamond seemed really believable in my opinion. And it's, there's a lot, there's a couple other people that really, truly believe this is what happened. Um, Maybe they didn't have anything to do with it. So maybe it was just Dutch salts. Maybe it was, uh, some other Irish [00:34:00] gangs. But this police theory, I think, has a lot of legs to it, not to be, uh, Cheesy. But, uh, there, there's a, there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that this, these are the people that, that killed eventually killed Jack. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I think you can see how I, I mean, I agree with you that that could carry some legs that, again, uh, excuse the, the pun, but how the, the organized crime kind of bleeds and what crime in general bleeds into the political machine, which bleeds into the police department and they all just kind of blend in together. And so you can see how these corrupt. Political machines are operating with corrupt police departments and you have the criminal element that's just [00:35:00] ripe for anything to basically happen. Yeah. And then, uh, Jack's widow Alice would end up getting killed in her Brooklyn apartment. She was only 33 years old. And I don't know, maybe, maybe it was the mob that killed her, cuz they. They were worried that she was gonna start ratting or who knows, maybe it was the police department and she got wind of what happened and we couldn't have her talking about, you know, it was the police that actually killed my husband. Um, maybe that's what happened, you know, either way just shows you kind of how ruthless it was at the time. Like people. You know, they have this image of like the mob, like, oh, we don't go after women. We don't go after children. It's like maybe at one point that was true. It depends on what time you're talking about the mob, because the time that we've been investigating around, around this time period, like Murder Inc. Time period, the early history of the mob, they don't seem to really care all that much. Uh, another possibility is that [00:36:00] somebody, maybe she had some of Jack's money or people, somebody perceived that she had his money and it was just. Oh, let's kill her and take the money. I mean, uh, again, it all that this is such a rough and tumble time in American history and such a violent time in history. Oh no, I just, you mentioned a rough and tumble time in American history. I'd recently watched, uh, been watching the movie Once Upon a Time in America and James Woods. Uh, character Maxey has a good line where, uh, They're arguing with, uh, it's a labor organizer and, uh, and, uh, James Woods's character says, well, the country's still growing. Uh, some diseases are better to have when you're young. And he responds like, you guys aren't like a disease. You're the plague. But you, in a lot of ways, it's like, it's like a country growing up. It's like a child, right? Like where, like this early version of organized crime, I guess you could be like, oh, this is like a case of the measles or what have you. Like you're better off [00:37:00] just to get it out of the way. I mean, we don't do that now, but you know, back in the day they used to have like chickenpox parties and stuff like that. And so you would just get it out of the way in a lot of ways. Like, yeah, like this early version of, uh, organized crime is, it's inevitable it's gonna happen. Happened for a country that's growing up. Also a country. We, we've really focused on this whole podcast about the crime part of it. Not so much about the punishment, but the, in the us the it, it grew up so fast during this time period of the late 19th century, in the early 20th century. A lot of systems never got put in place, and I think even a hundred years later, we're still sorting out the fallout of that, that there's systems got built up really quickly to deal with this plague of violence. And maybe they weren't the v the very best systems that to be put in place where other countries that were more established like. [00:38:00] Britain had a police department for a lot longer in London and in the towns, and they had a more of a theory of policing and other places had more of an idea of policing in the US It was really either, you know, we talked so much about the Old West and the the sheriff and, but uh, they were still trying to figure out policing in much more violent places like New York City and Chicago and these big cities. They're trying to figure out how are we going to have law and order, and we see that that's how, uh, American, the whole American idea of law enforcement comes out of this time period. Because really beforehand, there wasn't a huge need for law enforcement. It could be more ad hoc. Yeah. Really. I mean, this, at this time period, this is kind of where the FBI comes about, and Jagger Hoover kind of enters the picture and you get this idea of like [00:39:00] scientific policing. I, I recently, uh, last night I watched a little bit of this movie, uh, public Enemies, which is about. It's the Johnny Depp one with, uh, he plays like John Dillinger. Yeah. And that's like a big theme in the movie. It's like the early history of the FBI and like, uh, Jagger Hoover is like, you know, arguing to judges and senators and, but why we need an organization called the, like the fbi. I, it's crazy to think like, people just take it as for granted now, like the FBI's there, but not that long ago. Like, You know, people, I guess, I guess they would all be dead now, but you know, some people would still, they would've been really young, but had maybe just recently passed away where it, it was a legitimate argument where I. Do you need something called, like, do you need something like the F B I? Like it seems like it's rife for all different types of problems, um, and had to put forth a good argument for why you needed a Federal Bureau of investigation. Um, But like you were saying, [00:40:00] like it's growing pains, like you didn't really need this type of stuff until, you know, crime became more organized. Now let's wrap up the story today of Jack Diamond. Why do you think he was worth spending some extra time on, and what was his real connection to Murder Inc. Well, you know, like I pointed out earlier, like Jack was the bodyguard of Arnold Ross scene. He was the bodyguard of little Augie. He ran one of the most like successful bootlegging operations during prohibition. He was shot at least 10 times and finally killed in the conspiracy maybe involving a police department of Albany. Like how many gangsters can say they did all of that. Like, that's a, that's, that's insane. That's just a crazy story. Like, and I just thought people would really enjoy it, you know, like I. That's not even including the crazy trip to Europe that we talked about. It's like, you know, you know, kind of wrap 'em up and like, in conclusion, Jack, [00:41:00] I don't know, he's just one of the more, it has one of the more insane, fun gangster stories of all the ones I've, uh, investigated so far during this time period. And in, in relation to Murder Inc. Um, I mean, he was little augie's bodyguard. Right. And then we learned basically in a lot of ways, the labor, slugger war, that involved, uh, Leke and Jacob Shapiro, uh, in some ways kind of created Murder Inc. So it's all connected really. And I just thought this would be a fun sidetrack episode was, and, you know, kind of take a little break from Murder Inc. And, uh, Investigate this guy's story cuz as soon as I read it, I, I think I mentioned it on the episode, like we, we gotta do like a little kind of short episode about this guy cuz it really is a crazy, I, I don't loosely use the term fun, but it is a fun story. I mean, this guy was a ruthless killer and drug smuggler and bootlegger and murderer and womanizer. You know, [00:42:00] it's not a fun guy, but. It is a fun story and I think it is interesting to learn more about some of these side characters who they don't, they're maybe not gonna get put up on the marquee, but he really was an important part of this story of Murder Inc. And as we go back and get back into the stream of the narrative next time, keep people like this in mind because it, it took more than just. Meyer Lansky and Albert Anastasia and these people at, at Dutch Schultz, there was a lot of people involved. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, and I just, like I said, I just think the audience would just get a kick at over reading this guy's story. Like he was shot 10 times, like multiple times, like near the heart. He was like dating movie, the equivalent of movie stars at the time. Like, you know, it got kicked out of how many different countries in Europe for whatever odd reason he thought that was gonna work. And you know, he has such a. Maybe he was killed by the police. [00:43:00] Like it's just such a crazy story and is I just thought people would enjoy it. We'll just leave it there. Now, if you're enjoying what you're hearing and you wanna hear more like and subscribe, but also tell a friend about the show so that your friends can become friends of ours. Yeah, forget about it. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime A to z history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.[00:44:00]See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Turf Wars and Cold Blood: The Rise of Murder Incorporated
July 4, 2023 - 47 min
Original Publication Date: 7/5/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/0Mqs6rsMMYv Description: In today's episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the formation of one of the most notorious criminal organizations in American history, Murder Inc. We explore the key players involved, including Albert Anastasia, Abe Reles, and their deadly conflict with the Shapiro Gang. We discuss how Albert Anastasia and Abe Reles, along with other notorious gangsters of the era, came together to establish a criminal enterprise that specialized in contract killings, extortion, and other illicit activities. One of the most significant conflicts Murder Inc faced was the war with the Shapiro Gang, a rival criminal outfit. We explore the escalating violence between the two groups, the motivations behind the conflict, and the high-profile assassinations that characterized this bloody turf war. #truecrime #truecrimecommunity #truecrimepodcast #crime #murder #mafia #hitman #serialkiller You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris. Hey guys. Welcome back to Organized Crime and Punishment on today's episode, mustache, Chris and I are going to be diving even deeper into Murder, Inc. By exploring some of the key characters who are really the street level guys. The muscle you might say of the organization. In the previous episode, we explored Jacob Shapiro Le and Le Leke Holter, who made up sort of a higher under the management of Murder Inc. And their rise to [00:01:00] power and the labor, Slugger, wars, Abe Reiss, Harry Strauss, and many more are going to get explored in this episode, and we're going to see how basically three separate gangs. Came together as a marriage of convenience informed what was the most ruthless killing machine that organized crime ever produced in North America. Each of these stories on Murder Inc. Are really interesting on their own, and they're even more awesome when you put 'em all together. So I highly suggest if people like what they hear today. Go back and listen to episode one and two and then keep out. Uh, keep your eyes out because we'll have a couple of more episodes on Murder Inc. And also check out all of our other episodes as well too, because I think you'll see that a lot of the things that we're talking about with Murder Inc. You'll get a lot more out of it if you listen to uh, uh, some of our earlier episodes on the five families, et cetera. [00:02:00] So where do you think we should start off today? Uh, Chris, how about Abe Reis, one of, uh, Brownsville's Finest. Uh, can you tell us about Abe and then maybe how he fits in with some of the other pieces of the Murder Inc. Puzzle. Yeah, a Ellis is, uh, I'm not sure if he's like really, uh, at the average person would know who a Ellis is. I'm sure people who've studied a bit of mob history would probably know who Abelli is. Um, he's, I mean, I'm not giving anything away. He ends up becoming a. Uh, probably one of the greatest informants in, in history, but at this point, uh, he's not, uh, yeah. A res was born to, uh, Austrian Jewish immigrants in Brownsville on May 10th, 1906. Uh, his father, like, he worked in the, uh, garment industry, but, uh, when the depression hits, um, it, when the depression hit, he lost his job, obviously, and I, right. Apparently he was selling like, [00:03:00] uh, On the streets. What, what is kisha? Exactly? Again, it's like a potato kind of ball. Uh, what I'm thinking is that it's probably, it shows you that working in the garment, uh, factory wasn't the greatest job, but there was definitely worse jobs out there. Yeah. Uh, um, yeah, he was like selling Kisha on the street to like, you know, make, basically make eggs, meat. Like, you know, like, am I going to eat today? Type thing. Right. How many, how many of these things did I sell? Um, Yeah, and he would end up, he would go to school until about the eighth grade and, but he dropped out. Obviously it wasn't for him. Um, pretty typical kind of upbringing for somebody during somebody living in Brownsville at the time. We explored it on their previous episodes, just how, I mean, Brownsville probably was one of the worst. Places in the world from everything that I've read. And, uh, it was like a breeding ground for these, uh, type of characters that I were gonna be getting more [00:04:00] into. When he dropped outta school, it was like kind of, uh, this is when he met up with his friend, uh, um, uh, Martin Goldstein. Um, He had a nickname, Bugsy Goldstein, with, um, we talked about it on the previous episode two, where Bugsy was just kind of a term I thought. I initially thought it was just for Bugsy Siegel, but apparently there was quite a few mobs that had the term bugsy. Apparently. He, apparently, the way you spelled it, uh, you spell it for him. It's with like two Gs instead of one. I guess that was for him. Make him stand out. I don't know. Um, Yeah, Bugsy. Goldstein's pretty interesting. Apparently a lot of like the early mob movies, like the old kind of black and white ones with the Steve, was it Cagney? And um, apparently they, a lot of the actors, uh, kind of used Martin, uh, Goldstein as like a template, uh, for their characters or how they would. Perform being an actor, uh, perform being a gangster in their performances. I thought that was pretty interesting when I was [00:05:00] reading it, but I learned that and um, I believe it was, what's the book that I read? Uh, tough Jews by Robert, uh, Rob Cohen. It's a very good book, actually explores all about, uh, murder Inc. And the Jewish Mafia. And then around this time, um, Yeah, and then it abe's like first jail sentence, actually, believe it or not, was like stealing $2 worth of gum. He got sent to jail for that at quite a young age. So now we move on to the Shapiro Brothers and how, uh, they play into the game of the formation of Murder, Inc. Yeah, I don't think, uh, I, I almost guarantee that nobody's probably ever heard of the Shapiro Brothers. I know I hadn't heard about them until, uh, I started researching Murder Inc. And didn't quite realize they play like a really important, uh, part in this entire thing. In a lot of ways they kind of. Helped create Murder Inc. I mean, they obviously didn't mean to do that, but they They did. Yeah. The Shapiro [00:06:00] brothers were Meyer, uh, Irv Na Irving, and, uh, Willie, they ran much of the, the Brownsville neighborhood. Like they, uh, they did like prostitution, uh, a lot of booze, a lot of, um, um, typical lone shark, like all the typical like mafia. Um, Mainstays that you would think, uh, prostitution was actually, was quite big actually. Apparently, like if, um, husbands would like lend, like, borrow money from the Shapiro brothers and couldn't pay it back, they would like get their wives to start prostituting, stuff like that. Like these are not, yeah, and that's how they, that's how basically they, you know, the. Couple would pay back their debt. Like it's just really, really horrible type of stuff that was going on in Brownsville at the time. Um, yeah. And the Shapiro brothers, you know, they saw like the talent in somebody like a res and uh, uh, uh, Goldstein. So they started working for them, like Kuan Young age, uh, basically doing kind of like the grunt work, you know, [00:07:00] collecting the money, doing petty crimes, maybe, you know, small. Small time, b Andes, um, things of that nature. You know, like typical, like if you were working at a factory, you start, you know, stocking the shelves and then you kind of slowly move your way up, uh, in the factory. But you know, this is organized crime. So there's a different types of hazards, uh, as you're moving up, uh, your way up the company. Uh, yeah, A would end up getting caught. Um, With the crime. And he got ended up getting sentenced to, uh, two years in, uh, juvie, uh, like juvenile, uh, prison. And the sh Shapiro brothers failed to, uh, help him out all. Typically, how this would work with these types of gangs at this time is, You would do the crimes and then you, you'd get paid, but then like a certain amount of money would go in a pot that was used to like say, pay cops off or pay off lawyers or payoff judges. So if you did get caught, maybe the, the sentence wouldn't be, uh, so long or you probably [00:08:00] could get right. Get off, uh, Scott free. Right. But the Shapiro brothers didn't do any of this for Abe and. Basically, Abe came to the conclusion that he was gonna get revenge against the Shapiro brothers for treating him so poorly. And he also thought that he could do what the Shapiro brothers were doing in Brownsville, but better. It's really interesting that, um, these Shapiro brothers, I think of it all the people we've talked about. I mean, really in this whole episode, there's gonna be a lot of characters who I think most people would, it would not be their. A name brand Mafiosi. There're, uh, there's a couple who might be more familiar, but man, these guys sound like they should, everybody should know this story. I was blown away when I read it. I was like, like, how have they not made a movie about this or something, you know, like it seems. Taylor, like this whole conflict. You don't even have to include Murder Inc. We're gonna get into it a little bit more. I'm like, this is Mafia movie heaven. Like, I don't, why hasn't this been done yet? I guess I, I can't give you a [00:09:00] good explanation. Why not? I, I don't know. People are just, People don't want to put money into type of projects like this nowadays. I don't know. Yeah, or maybe it just never, I mean, it is such the, really, the scummier part, like the, it's really hard to put a shine on some of these people. And I think as the more we learn about Murder Inc, it's very difficult to find anything redeeming in a lot of these characters. Uh, and. Speaking of Reli and Shapiro, I think that in a way it's maybe Reis was expecting too much honor among thieves, but anyways, clearly there is an honor among thieves. So how does this conflict between Relic and Shapiro, the Shapiro brothers, develop and, you know, what kind of, what does the conflict lead to? They, they both into the conclusion, uh, Goldstein and, uh, a Morales that, um, If they wanted [00:10:00] revenge. The Shapiro brothers, they also knew that they like them alone, weren't gonna be able to do it. Like the Shapiro brothers were really no joke. Right? Like these guys were the top dogs in that neighborhood. Um, yeah, initially, like they were first they like started like opening up, um, Slot machines in, uh, the Shapiro's neighborhood with the backing of, uh, believe it or not, I guess Meyer Lansky took a liking to Abe and Goldstein and, uh, Meyer was looking into, he wanted to like expand his, uh, his like gambling business into some of the poor neighborhoods in New York. Um, and the connection, like be between like a bres and I guess this name, it's, I don't know, it's not really important to the story, but George. Uh, de he was like the Italian guy and he was like, the connection between, um, he was like the go go between guy. We're gonna run into a lot of the, these go between guys as we go through this episode between, uh, Meyer, [00:11:00] Lansky and Abe and, uh, Goldstein. Uh, yeah. As soon as they set up these, uh, slot machines, they, they actually, initially they were thriving. They were rivaling the Shapiro brothers, and then the Shapiro brothers said like, well, we gotta put none to this right now. Right? Because this, this was their biggest money maker for a lot of these mob guys. These slot machines were really, Their biggest money maker cuz it was just consistent work. It was just consistent money coming in. Right? Uh, like all the Bottega and everything, everybody had slot machines and their, it's crazy to think cuz they, they were illegal, um, to have, but every store had these slot machines. You know, you'd think that the cops would just go in there and start. Taking them out. There was a mayor in New York at one time that like apparently collected hundreds of these slot machines and just tossed them in the middle of the ocean or something in the middle of the lake or something like that. Um, thinking like, yeah, we'll, we'll just collect them all and just get rid of 'em. I think we touched on that and uh, when we talked about Frank Castello and when the Fly family episodes were a bit, [00:12:00] uh, I think we should do down in the road maybe we'll talk about that mirror cuz it's a pretty funny story. Um, So, yeah. And, um, one night, apparently a Bras and Goldstein and dfa, they got some inside information that the, the Shapiro brothers were leaving somewhere. Uh, but it turned out the, uh, turned out the inside information wasn't, uh, Uh, was like, uh, fool's gold basically. And, um, the Shapiro brothers, uh, ambushed them and didn't end up killing any of them, but they, I believe he, they, they all got wounded. Um, but while this was going on, Um, Meyer Shapiro actually kidnapped, uh, Abe's, uh, girlfriend and, um, you know, would keep this family friendly. So, um, you know, did some things to her that he, uh, shouldn't have done. Uh, and which furthered, angered a res, obviously, right. And now the [00:13:00] conflict went from like, oh, you didn't visit to me in jail to like, you're doing this. Um, so it just ratcheted up even more. Now at, at this point we've introduced the Shapiro Brothers. We've introduced a res and we're going to introduce a couple other key players. And I know it can be tough to keep track of all these names in an audio format, but really just sit back and enjoy the Enjoy the Ride. Uh, it will really help to at least be introduced to all of these guys, even if you don't remember every detail about them. They all play their own interesting role in the development and the legacy of Murder Inc. And even some of these guys have two. Names that are distinctly different for one guy. So don't get, uh, don't worry about keeping track of all these names, but our next name of one person who had two names, Harry Strauss or he, he was also known as Pittsburgh. Phil, what's his story? Yeah, like I had mentioned earlier, [00:14:00] uh, they, the, uh, a brass and Goldstein knew they kind of couldn't take on the Shapiro brothers themselves, and they, they kind of did by just like opening up the slot machines. But after we had just talked about earlier, I mean, it became really crystal clear, like, you know, they were almost killed. They, they started to have to recruit people. Harry Strauss was a guy, uh, he was born in 1905 in Brooklyn, New York. Um, he like, Kind of, he hung out with like Goldstein and Reis, but he was, I, I, I guess would consider kind of like a wild car in the sense of like, he didn't really work for anybody. He wasn't really attached to anybody. Um, yeah, like he had this weird nickname, Pittsburgh, Phil, and. Even the people who have like studied this for a living don't really understand where the nickname Pittsburgh Phil came from. Cause from everything that they've read, he never actually visited Pittsburgh. So I, I'm, I don't know, you guys can just make up, but there has to have been like some reason for it. It [00:15:00] is just been lost. Through time. Right? Like, it just seems like an odd thing, like your friend, it must have been like an inside joke with friends or something. Yeah. And then we just don't, we don't know what the joke is, right. Um, yeah, so like, uh, Harry Straus was, was apparently, he was quite a tall man and he was kind of built like a football player. He was like a, he was an like an attractive looking dude. I mean, you can look up pictures of this guy and you know, he's, I don't know. He's not a bad looking guy, really. Um, I can see why the way he liked him. Um, yeah, and he's, uh, Pittsburgh, Phils like famous for potentially maybe being one of the most ruthless hitman in the history of the mob, depending on who you talk to from. Everything that I've read, like I've read, people say he's probably killed up towards a hundred people and I've seen some people put it up to 500 people and his kills weren't like just in New York, like he traveled all around the states. So all the different like [00:16:00] families or different criminal organizations, like I said, he was kind of a freelance hitman. Um, Would hire him to do jobs, they, oh, I need somebody to get taken out in Florida, or I need somebody to get taken out in, you know, Cleveland or Detroit or wherever. Right. And he would do it. Um, as reading about, uh, Harry Straus though, I just, I kind of made this observation, or I'm sure people are much more familiar with the. The Iceman Richard Linsky. And if you read Richard Linsey's story, it sounds kind of similar to Harry Strauss's story where Harry St. Strauss is hired from, hired by all the different families, go around all the country to to take care of special jobs. This is exactly what Richard Kolinsky claims. It almost seems like, well, if Richard's making it all up, he kind of ride a boat. Pittsburgh Phil, and used his story as kind of a template for his toll tales. I just thought that was a an interesting observation. What do you think, [00:17:00] Steve? Here we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast, and many other great shows. Go over to parthenon podcast.com to learn more. And here is a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, that would be a really cool thing if he did do that. Like the, the real deal. Harry Straus did the things that he, that Richard, the Iceman Kalinsky claimed to do. And, uh, one of the things that I always come back to when I think about people like this who killed a hundred, maybe up to 500 people, which is absolutely staggering and mind blowing, but you, you gotta think, are these people? Is it. Purely work for them? Or is there always a serial killer element [00:18:00] to them? Because like you think about, um, if you wanna take it like, like to its extreme, like the, um, some of the famous snipers in the wars. Yeah, they're doing it for God and Country, and Harry Reis is doing it for money and for the the organization. But what is going on in somebody's mind who can personally kill so many human beings? There's gotta be something else going on there, and I'd love to see studies about it. That's probably almost something that's so borderline on Taboo that you really almost can't study it. Yeah. If I had to pick where some of these guys are, like, kind of straddle the line between, like is he just a really effective soldier or is he your serial killer? I would say everything that I read about Harry Struse, he's just a straight up serial killer that was, that, that enjoyed, really enjoyed what he did. Uh, you know, he was famous sort of tying people up. Uh, I'm not sure how to describe [00:19:00] it. It was basically that he would tie 'em up like with their. From their ankles and I would like go around their neck and then basically when they would move, they would slowly kind of strangle, um, themselves. Apparently he quite enjoyed watching that. I mean, that's not, you know what I mean? That's not like we're gonna psycho own the desert, you know what I mean? Like, we're gonna take a guy out in the desert cuz he. You know, he hasn't paid his Vic payment or something, or you know, he's gonna, you know, he's gonna rot to the cops. Let's just, we gotta get him out outta the picture, you know, or this, that type of, you know, we'll, we'll get into it with some of the stuff with Murder Inc. Where a lot of these guys are. I do surely believe they weren't criminals. They, they, a lot, some of these guys probably would've just been serial killers. Now moving on, we can enter a, uh, Italian into the mix. Frank Abbado, uh, uh, what was Frank's pedigree and how does he start to fit in with this? At, at least at this point, predominantly Jewish gangsters. [00:20:00] Frank, he didn't waste any time. Like he, he was pretty much born to become a criminal, you know, in his, in, uh, like even in his teens, he was making money, like extorting businesses and threatening to torch them down. I think he actually did burn down a couple of businesses just to show he wasn't joking around. He was a teenager Reviewing this, you know, you read about like, what's going on in Brownsville and in and around this area at this time. It still blows my mind. It reads something. You mentioned Mogadishu. It reads. Kind of like that where, you know, they're just firefights in the streets. People are just burning downstairs. Uh, um, like stuff you're freedom about happen, happen to get like third world countries really. Right. Um, Yeah, he would end up joining, uh, a gang, like I pointed out, that predominantly worked in the, the Ocean Hills section of New York. Uh, and quickly became a lieutenant of a gentleman named, uh, Harry May, who we're gonna get into in a little bit. Yeah. And like he helped, like working, he helped like organize like [00:21:00] gambling and rocket rack, like racketeering schemes, lone sharking. And, you know, he became a pretty proficient hitman himself. Um, that's why he was a lieutenant. Right. He kind of ran like the day to day operations of this gang. I mean, Harry wasn't, he wasn't like a hands off boss or anything. He was like right in there too. He ended up getting arrested for, uh, beating up a police officer. Well, he ended up beating up like a police officer and he was quite, quite young and, um, He ended up having to go to like reform school and while he was at this uh, reform school, he got the nickname The Dasher cuz apparently, uh, because of his skill at sports, in particular baseball, and I was reading apparently like if he had lived a different life or had gone down a different road, uh, uh, the people around him were fairly convinced that he could have played in the major leagues. Um, but obviously that didn't happen, right? Uh, he still stayed a criminal until the very end. Um, yeah. And [00:22:00] Frank, he had a reputation for, I mean, this is kind of weird mentioned earlier about the more unsavory elements of organized crime. And in particular, murder, Inc. There's really nothing glamorous about any of these guys, really. It's, they're all disgusting animals. Um, apparently Frank had a reputation of just crawling around the neighborhood and picking up, you know, there's no way to sugarcoat a leg like sh. Teenage girls and you know, doing stuff that he shouldn't have been doing. And yeah, he is a sexual predator. Yeah. Really that's, at the end of the day, it was a sexual predator. You know, you guys can fill in the blanks yourselves, right? I'm not gonna get into all the details or what have you. Like I, I read about it, so, I mean, you guys don't, you can read about it if you want. I just don't think it's necessary. Basically, Frank would take this informa, well, at least this olive branch that Abe and, uh, Goldstein and his Straus came up with like, oh, let's join gangs. If we join our gangs together, we can take on the Shapiro Brothers and [00:23:00] we'll, uh, Split it down the middle, which is what Frank does. He does take it to uh uh, Harry, happy My Own, which is a funny nickname that we'll get into in a little bit. You know what I think is really interesting hearing about stories about like people like Frank Abbado who beat up a police officer as a kid, and you hear these stories like, I mean, now that would be virtually unheard of. For somebody, you know, even in the roughest neighborhoods for a teenager to beat up a, a cop. But I just thought of a story of a, um, old timer who lived in our neighborhood and he grew up in the, I, I'm, I don't think as early as the twenties, but definitely in the thirties. And in his high school, he was in a vocational program. One of the teachers stole his tools and like that be something that's pretty unusual in this day and age that a teacher is gonna go and steal a teenager's [00:24:00] tools. And this, this neighbor of mine who was old when I knew him, but back in his teenage, he beat up the teacher and took his tools back. And I mean, I think you hear a lot of stories about there that I think things back then were just so much looser on stuff like that. I think, yeah, I think so too. I think part of it was, I mean, cops literally walked the beat too at that time. Right? Where. There was no, like, there was cop cars and they obviously had cars, but a lot of it was cops just literally walking up and down the streets and taking re like you mentioned, like reactive policing. Like, oh, someone's getting robbed. We gotta do something about this. You know? Where nowadays most people hardly ever see a, I don't know, maybe it's different than the states, but up here, like you hardly ever, you never see cops walking to be like, I never see a cop, not. In their car. Mm-hmm. And the only time I see them is because, I don't know, well, not me personally, but if you're like speeding [00:25:00] or you know, you didn't stop at a stop sign or, I don't know, stuff like that really. Um, where back then, you know, getting into like, arguments with cops, it was probably, I don't know, probably a regular occurrence cuz you'd probably be the same cop in that neighborhood for, you know, months on end or even years. Um, so like the end, the, um, I don't know, like the, the Byzantine nature of the way the police force works now, where you got through like walls and walls and walls to like interact with the cop, like just didn't exist then. It's like you interacted with these guys every day. They were kind of like just part of the neighborhood. That's my guess. I betcha too, like actually have being ready to fight and. Knock somebody, uh, with your Billy club, like that was probably your training. If you couldn't do that or if you got beat up too many times, that's probably how you learn that policing wasn't for you. You know what I mean? Like you were, well, I mean nothing to fight not too long ago. Like not too long ago, they used to have a, he [00:26:00] heightened weight requirement to be a police officer. I believe it was. You had to be like over six foot and like I know at least a buck 80 or a buck 85 or something like that. Um, they've obviously dropped those requirements now, but yeah, they're for, I assume for that exact reason you had to have been able to, You know, whack somebody with a Billy bat and hold your own in streetlight, which is so, it sounds so crazy now, but I mean, it does make sense to a degree. Um, you know, we talk about policing and stuff now and how, you know, cops are too quick to use their guns and what have you in certain situations or. It would be nice to, you know, maybe having a guy that killed hold this own industry fight and has been in several street fights and doesn't panic under those type of circumstances. I mean, maybe sometimes it's, that's not a bad thing to have a police officer. Well, and like you said back then, you're walking the beat. And I think that in not all police [00:27:00] departments did they necessarily carry guns, but they were carrying six shooters at the at the absolute most, and. There's no calling for backup because you don't have a radio. You're gonna, if you're, if a thug or a street tough, like somebody like Frank Abado gets in your face, you better be ready to fight because it could be a fight for your life. It's, I mean, it's so mind bogglingly different today. I mean, as much as you know, police in certain circumstances, if they're on the highway or something like that, they may. Be in situations that are in, uh, at that grave, but it's not a regular course of their duty. Like it would be somebody who was walking the beat in one of those neighborhoods like Brownsville. So then we get into this next guy that you kind of teased to us. Harry Happy, my own, and he's another really important part of the story. Yeah, Harry happy, my own, he [00:28:00] actually got the nickname with the, the happy was the fact that he was never happy. Apparently. He just had a permanent scowl on his face and he was like a, he was a mean, uh, so-and-so, so people used to call him happy as like, like a joke. Um, Harry happy, my own like if, uh, Pittsburgh, Phil was, um, say like the most ruthless or the, I mean, my own wasn't that far off really. He was, he was quite a character, which we'll get into, um, little bit more in the, the next episode, but Yeah. Yeah. He was born in 1908 and like the actual gang was called the Ocean Hills, uh, hooligans. That was the name of the gang that we had been talking about earlier. Um, Like I pointed out, Frank Abu became his, uh, understudy and yeah, we've talked about, um, how he got that nickname and yeah. But, uh, Harry, um, had a close relationship with this guy named, uh, [00:29:00] Lewis Capone, who actually wasn't, uh, he's not related to, uh, related to Al Capone and all, uh, loose Capone was, uh, Um, I guess he was kind of, I guess you could describe him as like the go between guy, between say, people like, uh, Harry, my own Harry STRs and a Reis. Um, the go between to say the higher ups, like the people like Albert Anastasia. Who were, you know, high up in the Italian, uh, mafia at the time? Um, yeah, Lewis was born in, uh, 1906. He was actually born in Naples, so he, he wasn't actually born in the States. Unlike, uh, some of these other guys, uh, Uh, and he moved with his family to New York at a quite a young age. Uh, Lewis ran like a, he ran like a cafe that served like coffees and sweets, but it was like a friend, like this cafe was almost kind of like used as a recruiting station to basically like recruit, like potential hoodlums that they could use to commit [00:30:00] various crimes or, you know, guys like, you know, I don't know, checking out prospects basically. Um, I guess, uh, I, some of these mafioso would be like, oh, have you seen any, uh, you know, young kids come through the, any potential talent coming through? And yeah, Lewis would kind of take 'em under their wing and then introduce 'em to like different people. Um, yeah, Lewis also had like a pretty strong connections to, I think we'll end up doing a series on this. The, the Purple Gang in New York. I mean, sorry, in Detroit, it. Uh, which was like a very powerful gang. The more, like, I kind of went down a little rabbit hole and was doing the research with this, um, for this episode, and I, I was, I was really shocked just how powerful these guys were. Um, and Lewis also, like I said in the first episode, like Joe o Donis would be coming back into the picture. Uh, Lewis Capone had strong ties to Joe Donis, right. And Joe Donis will end up becoming, you'll have actually a fair amount to do with, uh, Murder Inc. In a [00:31:00] lot of ways in terms of coming up with contracts for, uh, for the hitman. Um, and in, in a lot of ways, uh, Louis Capone was the guy that kind of. Kept the whole thing together, really. Right. He was like, the guy, like I said, he was the go-between guy. So like the guys on the streets would have their complaints and they'd go to Lewis, and Lewis would, uh, you know, uh, give the information to the higher up. And um, he's the one that kind of kept everybody, you know. Cool. You know? Cause for the most part we're dealing with stone called lunatics. Right. Lewis is the one that kind of, um, Made sure it all worked together. Now you've, now that we've talked about this cast of main characters and we, we see the organization that they're setting up that relies and his gang, they want to start forming this organization where they'll be able to take on the Shapiro Brothers and they build up something by getting these Italians involved, they [00:32:00] is. Something again, that's something pretty serious to take on. Let's go and find out how does this now become a war between the Shapiro Brothers and then this new, what did you call it? The combination and with Harry Strauss and my own and Ado. Yeah, that's what, yeah, that's what they called. It was the combination. I mean, um, before they could get like official word, uh, to take out this gang, Lewis had to take this information up to Albert Anastasia, uh, who's, I'm pretty sure if people know kind of a passing history of the mob. They've probably heard of Albert Anastasia. So Albert Anastasia had to give his approval. To take out the Shapiro brothers. And, um, he wasn't very happy with the Shapiro brothers for a lot of different reasons. And he said, yeah, go ahead, you know, do it. Um, and even within this gang, they, they, they came to the agreement that they would split things evenly once they, uh, They took out the Shapiro Brothers. [00:33:00] So as you can see, there was, it wasn't just as simple as like, oh, we're just gonna take out the Shapiro Brothers, cuz they had done that. Then they, they would've pissed off Albert Anastasia, which would've pissed off the guys who had really a lot of power, like the Lucky Lucianos and the Meyer Lanskys and the, uh, the National Crime Syndicate. Right. So you had to go through channels basically. In a lot of ways, kind of like how a corporation works, you can't just go yell at the c e o, you gotta go to the middle manager and there's a re, it seems frustrating at the time when you're dealing with stuff like that, but there's a reason why it, it works the way it does. So you don't have like drastic changes quickly and the people at the top know exactly what's going on, which is, I mean, they have to, it's really important. Um, Yeah, so between like the Shapiros and the, the New gang, the combination, you know, they, um, had multiple hits on each other. Like a lot of 'em failed. A lot of the stuff was like taking, uh, place right in the streets, right, right in the over open, which is I [00:34:00] always thought was a little crazy. But, um, after failing to kidnap, uh, Irving Shapiro a couple of times, or a res was able to, uh, catch him one day on the streets and. Apparently just beat the living crap out of him on the streets and then shot him right in the head, uh, just right on the open. Um, so he got, you know, he's slowly getting his revenge against the Shapiro brothers. Um, and the other brother Meyers Shapiro, him, he would, uh, Abras would end up sneaking up on him on the streets. I guess he saw him, uh, and, uh, yeah, just shot him in the face, uh, multiple times. Uh, Right out in the open witnesses, the whole nine yards. Um, and the one brother William Shapiro, uh, who I guess was fairly smart cuz he was able to run away from these guys for three years, but eventually they did, uh, catch up to him and, um, they did kidnap him. They dragged him, dragged him to [00:35:00] one of his gang, one of their gang hide oats, I guess when the heat was getting too rough. This is a place where they would hide out, um, Yeah. And, uh, they would basically, yeah, they'd beat the crop out of him, like to both the inch on to a boat when he was about to die. Really? I, I think they thought he did die. Um, and they stuffed him in a brown. Bag and threw 'em in the back of their trunk and they were going out to go bury 'em to get rid of the body. And apparently a ba uh, you know, like a pedestrian or some, uh, somebody saw them and they only kind of got the job halfway done and they ended up finding, uh, um, William Shapiro, and immediately when they, they, the, the coroner and everything, like did the autopsy, they realized pretty quickly that just, you know, William hadn't passed by the time that they were burying him. The, they buried a guy alive, which is, I mean, out of all the, uh, Kind of stories that we're gonna get to in this podcast. Like that's [00:36:00] one of the more that one sticks with me the most. It's the fact that they literally buried a guy alive. I don't know if they meant to do it. I don't think they did. I think they thought that he was done for, but I mean, that's what they did. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. We get through this just fascinating story of throughout these past several episodes of labor slugging and all these different things really come together. The Shapiro Brothers who they set up an organization, but then the really, the, a more brutal organization comes in and takes what they've built and they're gonna take it even a step further. Uh, it's pretty amazing how all these threads are starting to come together. And you see what I mean guys? When I like, how has this not been made into a movie? Like we just went through this, I'm like, this is the stuff that like mafia, like this would make like the perfect [00:37:00] mafia movie. You know, like, uh, and it's crazy that, that this story's not more well known cuz it really is like an insane war with like legitimately just insane people. And I just, it's crazy to me that this is not more well known. I mean, maybe. I've never heard anybody talk about the, the Shapiro brothers and you know, like the origins of a res and happy my own and all these, like even Pittsburgh, Phil, like Harry Strauss. I'm sure if you went on the street, like nobody knows who this guy is and he could have potentially been responsible over over 500 hits. It's, it's nuts. I wonder, part of it is the, the, the history is so complicated, and I think that this should be a case study almost for people who are studying organized crime and honestly how organizations develop this organic nature. And, uh, it's top down, it's bottom up. The Harry Reis has a plan and he finds [00:38:00] the right people who get him tied into a bigger organization. It's a. Fascinating story, and I wonder if it maybe doesn't get as much coverage as other stories because there is a pretty complicated nature to it. I think that's partially what it is, where some of these, a lot of these, I don't wanna say a lot, but some of these mob stories you can kind of follow and it's, it's got a relatively easy, um, narrative to follow. Like John Gotti's rise and fall. Right. It's pretty, I mean, anyone can kind of pick it up and they, they get. Or something like Murder Inc. To like really kind of get what, what is going on here? It's, it's really complicated cuz you need to know kind of the history of Bronzeville and Word that they got concept of like a, a, you know, a professional hit squad from the mob come about and. You know, how did even the gang form itself? It's like, oh, you know, there was like this Jewish faction, there was this Italian faction, and then there's these in between guys [00:39:00] and then like, there's Albert Anastasia who's over here, but he's like at the very top. And Leke was actually one of the biggest racketeers in the history of the United States. But he's also running this, and his buddy Jacob Shapiro is, uh, you know, like it's, there's so many names and there's so many moving parts. We're. Quite literally, like I said, it's almost like three gangs coming together out of a marriage in convenience really. And the really higher ups recognizing that, hey, we got something here with all these guys. Like they're all stone cold psychopaths, and we could really use a cadre stone cold psychopath to hope is take care of business. Or if you look at something like Al Capone's rise in Chicago, he. You can, there's a lot of really messy details of how Capone gets established, but really after the Valenti uh, Valentine's Day massacre, it all falls into place and it, it's a great, almost like John Wick story, whereas [00:40:00] certain people get killed and, you know, it, it flows along well where this you're really, uh, You have to make a a case study of how organizations work and how different factions come together that are very dissimilar in a lot of ways, but then also have these certain connection points. And I think that in a way you have to examine it sort of in a way that we're doing it here. We're gonna leave the narrative of Murder Inc. Right here for the day. But, uh, Chris, you had some things, what we might call fun facts about Abe, uh, Abe Reis and a few of the other people that really didn't fit into the narrative, but are worth, uh, at least sharing here. When the commission kind of got started, when like the Castle Ma war was over and then like, um, um, Lucky Luciano was left in charge, um, after he killed Marzano. They had this big meeting in Chicago and Al [00:41:00] Capone was there and it was all the heads of the five families. And you know, like all the major heads of all the organized crime families across the states really. Um, and like Al Capone was hosting it, apparently Rellis. Was at this meeting, he made such a name for himself after he took out the Shapiro Brothers. And I just got this image of this guy, you know, coming up from the a h l and like, this is my first game at the n Hhl. I mean, cause you know, at the time, like I'm sure most people even at the time, like within organized crime, maybe they might have heard of brass, but they probably. Most of 'em probably go, who's this guy? I have no idea who he is. I just got this image of him like, you know, just like staring at Al Capone or something like that. Or Lucky Luciano with like awe as I score, I'm meeting Wayne Gretzky type thing. As you can tell, I'm Canadian cause I'm using all these hockey references. It really does show you though that how. How he did something really special. And to have a seat at that table is very impressive. [00:42:00] And then you have a little something about Harry Strauss and his, some of his, uh, uh, psychopathic killing technique. Yeah. He, he had this, uh, apparently had this, he was so good with an ice pick. And I, I read this and I don't know how true it is, but I read it. Apparently he was able to ice pick somebody like. Was like right about like a behind the ear and is the way it was described and he could do it so well that like, like very little blood would like come out and like even the person would die instantly and like apparently, like when doctors and stuff would show up to the crime scene and stuff like that, like until they actually got the body back to the hospital, they initially thought like, oh, this person died of natural causes. Um, And it was like quick and quiet and apparently it was his, it was his go-to to get a job done quick. Which I mean brings up another kind of parallel to Richard Kalinsky in a lot of ways, cuz Richard talked about using arsenic where he could just spray arsenic on like food or you know, in somebody's face and he could just walk [00:43:00] away and then like the doctors would show up and be like, oh, they died of a heart attack. Which is, you know, did you get that impression when I, or was cyanide, was it? Yeah, it was, sorry. It was cyanide. One thing that we probably, we won't get into a lot of the guts and the blood and the guts and the really. Gross son, for a lack of a better word, details, but I think there is something to say about some of the, the methods that they came up with. Now, finally, as one last little point we can bring up, it's really interesting to talk about the relationship between the Jewish and the Italian gangsters and. Would you call this moment in this partnership, kind of a progressive moment of interethnic relations, even though we're talking about crime, does crime bring, uh, everybody together basically? I like, I don't know, like I've read this a lot where they're like, I dunno, ethnic relations were like way better within the mob than they were in like the rest of the [00:44:00] country. And I mean in some, I guess you could argue in some ways yes, that was true. Or you know, in particular you look at like Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky's relationship, but. I mean, you guys just listened to the entire episode, like these ethnic relationships kind of ran, and maybe they were better than the rest of the country in some ways, but they kind of ran along kind of typical lines, really, like the Jewish guys kind of stuck with the Jewish guys and the Italian guys kind of stuck with the Italian guys and Yeah, sure. They worked together, but they've, like the Italian guys would have their intermediaries and then like, The Jewish guys would've their grow between guys too. I mean, it was like a kind of like a meme that like the early mob was like, was like a progressive force and ethnic relationships in the States, and that's just not the impression I really get. I mean, you can't look at Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky's relationship and say like, oh yeah, that was the norm. It's like, no, that was the exception. They worked together, but they did stay [00:45:00] separate in a lot of ways. I think too that it was just really, as far as the Italian and the Jewish connection went in, particularly in New York City and those neighborhoods. It was just something that was very unusual in American history where these two, these two groups kind of did in a lot of ways meld together because they had, they were living in a very similar circumstances. They, uh, Were working similar jobs, and I think that that's something that carried through history and not just with crime, but the, there was a lot of crossover. But I think to kind of, I don't even know what kind of lesson you wanna pull from with the organized crime that m Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano built this up. Like I, I, I don't even understand like what the meme of his progressive relationships. They were criminals working together. So really that we're gonna leave it [00:46:00] there today and we're gonna get into a lot of exciting stuff where we're really gonna get into the meat of Murder Inc. Mustache, Chris and I wanna thank everybody for listening. The best thing you can do to help us out is to tell a friend about the show, tell a couple of friends so that your friends can become friends of ours, and we'll talk to you next time. Forget about it. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime a to zhi history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.[00:47:00]See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coming Soon: The Numbers Racket Now and Then
July 3, 2023 - 2 min
Coming Soon on Organized Crime and Punishment! You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Click to Subscribe: https://omny.fm/shows/organized-crime-and-punishment/playlists/podcast.rss email: crime@atozhistorypage.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Murder Incorporated – The Faces of Murder
June 28, 2023 - 41 min
Title: Murder Incorporated – The Faces of Murder Original Publication Date: 6/28/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/x0pe5BivSoK Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, Mustache Chris and Steve will continue to delve into the history and background of Murder Incorporated. We look at how organized crime outfits in New York City became to dip their toes into organized labor unions and labor-management relations issues during the early 20th Century. This will lead to a series of conflicts referred to as the Labor Slugger Wars. We will also begin to introduce some of the key players involved in forming Murder Inc, including Abe Reles, Meyer Lanksy, Bugsy Seigel and more. #TrueCrimeStories #OrganizedCrime #MurderInc #Mobsters #CriminalUnderworld #Assassins #CrimeSyndicate #Hitmen #InfamousKillings #GanglandHistory #DarkSideofthe1930s #CrimeFamily #MafiaChronicles #ContractKillers #GangsterCulture You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.atozhistorypage.com email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris. Here we are again and we're gonna talk some more about Murder Inc. Before we get in too far, let's recapitulate a little bit about what we've talked about previously with Murder Inc. It all starts off with this bugs in Meyer Gang, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, and then we fold in some more characters. Joe Adonis, all of this in this stew of these. Immigrant neighborhoods of Brownsville and the lower East [00:01:00] side of Manhattan and its conditions that really made America and what maybe made America great of the immigrants and working hard and working hard to make a better life, but it also created some of the conditions for the very worst crime that America has ever seen. So as we're moving forward, keep all of that in mind as we learn new players and we learn about new people, who are new people, who are getting involved in new events, in this whole idea of Murder Inc. That it's all happening in this really fascinating. Petri Dish of American History. Now, Chris, get us started today with Leke Buck Halter and Jacob Shapiro. How do they fit into this next part of the story of Murder Inc? Yeah. The way we kind of planned it out was like the next two episodes are just gonna introduce like, all the major players in Murder [00:02:00] Inc. Like I th the previous episode I pointed out, like when we came up with the idea, I didn't, you know, I thought going into it, You know, this would be kind of relatively easy to do, and then once you start doing the research, it's, it's really kind of complicated. There's a lot of moving parts. So, uh, we've kind of broken it up. So I, I believe it's gonna be pretty easy to follow for anyone really. Like you won't have to have any background really in, on the subject matter to walk away from. And, yeah, I understand what Murder Inc is. It's a lot of people too, and it's, I know that I don't like getting bombarded with a lot of people and biographies, but it really is important for this story to see how all of these different characters fit together. So definitely hang in there with us as we introduce new characters. Some characters will exit the stage, some will fly off of the stage, as you'll see. Let's start off with Leke and Jacob Shapiro and how [00:03:00] they fit into this whole. Criminal underworld that we're, we're slowly setting up here. And, uh, Jacob Shapiro were both, uh, Jewish immigrants, like, uh, from poor Jewish immigrant families, which, uh, you know, a lot of, um, Jews were coming to the United States at this time. And, uh, predominantly, most of them were born in, in LE's case. So he was born in the, uh, lower east side of Manhattan. In the year in 1897. Yeah, from my research, Leke was kind of a play on words. His mother used to call him Little Lewis. LE's father was, you know, a hardworking, like newly arrived immigrant into, uh, the United States. He ran a hardware store and, uh, You know, in some ways it was kind of a modern American success story, right? You know, you'd come here, you open up a hardware store, and, you know, America's given you this opportunity that, uh, he wouldn't have had in, uh, the pale settlement, right? Where, uh, His family came from. Unfortunately, in [00:04:00] 1909, LE's, uh, father passed away. But from what I've read, uh, by all accounts, Leke was a pretty like successful student growing up. You know, he had, he was honor, he had honor rules. He was, uh, uh, remarkably intelligent, you know, especially coming from such a poor neighborhood and rough background. Um, This is one thing I thought was a little weird though. I guess maybe it was a little more common back then, like, um, like his mother decided to just move to Arizona. It reminds me a little bit of, uh, Roy de Mayo where, um, his mother just. Picked up and left and just kind kinda left them there. Uh, uh, from what I read, she went there for, um, health reasons. I guess the dryer air would help with her. Um, I'm trying to think, uh, I'm trying to dock holiday. Didn't he move like out to the desert Kilo? Yeah. And for, I assume she was probably suffering from something like that. And, uh, The dryer air apparently is better [00:05:00] for, um, people suffering from like, I guess, chest uh, ailments or lung ailments, uh, than like the stuffy air, than of living in a big city like New York. Yeah. She would move there and then like, I don't know, basically Leke was kind of left in charge of his younger sister and obviously was too much for him. Right. He was, you know, by all accounts, was virtually an orphan at a very young age. I think that that's so interesting that how different it was back then where. Father probably wasn't that old up and died. Mother cuts out to go live in Arizona. You could see and leaves Leke alone with his sister. You could see how somebody could break bad, so to speak, in that situation where you gotta make money. I'm sure his mother didn't set him up with a huge nest egg. Like you said, his father was a first immigration, first generation immigrant, just trying to scrape by. [00:06:00] Those are, those were very hard times that really people who are not that distantly related to us, lived through, I, it's almost unimaginable to us today that our, our relatives would've lived like that not that long ago. Yeah, and stuff like that was like fairly common. I mean, it's slightly different example, but I mean over in England, like you know, you would send your kids to like boarding school and wouldn't see them for months at a time. And I don't know, apparently this was just like normal. Like, I mean, I don't even like going a few days without seeing my kid. I couldn't imagine just being like, All right, little Lewis. You know, I'm moved to Arizona and back then it was like moving to Arizona was like practically like moving into a different country, right? The infrastructure just wasn't there, right? Like they had trains and stuff like that, but you know, they weren't the most efficient and they were expensive and slow. Well, yeah, that, I mean, it would've taken her probably a couple of weeks to get out there to actually get settled and the [00:07:00] communications would've been virtually Nell. Let's get into a little bit more of LE's criminal background. Yeah. So in 1915, uh, Leke would be charged with his, uh, He would be charged with those first crimes, like, so pretty early on, like, you know, teenage years. He's already, he's already getting involved in crime. Uh, those charges would end up getting dropped. Uh, could be like a reoccurring thing with Leke. He, you know, he gets lucky, uh, a fair amount of times. Um, And yeah, like he would end up doing like a bunch of stints in prison, like kind of shortish ish stints, you know, for petty crimes. You know, B Andes, uh, you know, uh, I don't know, like sl like low tier, like racketeering and like being a muscle man. Um, in 1920 though, like the longest sentence, uh, that he got, He was there for 30 months. Right. Which is kind of no joke, especially back then. [00:08:00] You people think prisons are rough. Now, can you imagine what prisons were like back then, man? Like breeding ground for, you know, like creating like, you know, just really tough characters, right? Um. You know, it's just a different world back then. And, but you pointed out it really wasn't that long ago in terms of like, American history, even just human history. It's, you know, just a blunt on the radar really. Um, yeah. And, uh, Leke was gonna, like, he was described as like a quiet man too, right? So Leke would be, He would rather listen than talk. Like he didn't talk, he didn't get very excited. Uh, people talk about like, very rarely did they ever see Leke, uh, kind of lose his temper. Um, I thought this was kind of interesting too, that like he ended up bear marrying this woman Betty, uh, Waserman, who was uh, she was a widow from Russia. And, uh, he would end up like adopting her. Her kid later on, um, as his own kid, and [00:09:00] that would be the only kid he would ever have in his life. What do you think of somebody like Leke who. His father's square. He's trying to do his best. His family, you know, from everything we know has became very highly successful. But this one guy becomes a, a really l hardened criminal. What do you think about that? I think it can, I think it comes down to like, I was thinking about this this week, right? Because like, cuz like I believe his sisters and his brothers, they all became like doctors or lawyers or druggist at the time. Like that's what they called him was druggist. But it's a pharmacist. Pharmacist is what we would call him now. Um, druggist just sounds like he's like a drug dealer I guess, but I mean, sometimes. You know, you read about some of the stuff and it's like, I don't know, is there much of a, yeah, the lines pretty thin. It's, you know. Yeah. But I honestly, I think it comes down to like kind of like people idolize, I think. I think there's like a genetic trait to criminal criminality too. I mean, that's when you start [00:10:00] getting into like, Kind of iffy territory. Like, is like criminality, like a genetic problem? Can we take care of this type thing? But I do think that there's some people that are predisposed to this type of behavior, uh, given say living in a place like Brownsville. They're, you know what I mean? Like they're gonna jump at it. Steve, here again, with a quick word from our sponsors. Let's set up the next player, Jacob Shapiro. Uh, somebody he's born again. He is a immigrant from the Russian Empire of Modern Day Belarus, but he grows up in a, uh, very, in a similar, uh, kind of wave as Leke in that similar neighborhood, similar idea you might say. Yeah. Um, Jacob would, I would say probably, whereas like, Leke kind of, would you, you [00:11:00] could argue Leke chose to become a criminal in, in some ways. Like I think Jacob Shapiro didn't really have, uh, really much of a choice. Like he was an orphan at a very young age. Uh, he grew up in a Catholic. Projectory in New York, which probably wasn't easy for him being, being a Jew and living in basically a Catholic orphanage. Uh, I, it wasn't just for Catholics. They would take anybody. Right. But that probably wasn't easy for a Jewish, uh, for a young Jewish man. Um, yeah. And early in his life, you know, like I pointed out earlier, they would run into, uh, leke and um, It's interesting, like apparently, uh, this is how they ran into each other. They were both trying to rob like the same place and, but instead of like fighting with each other, I'm like, no, this is my money. This is my money. They just decided that they were gonna split the money together and that's kind of how their friendship started. Uh, it's interesting, like Leke, uh, and Jacob Shapiro's, uh, Uh, [00:12:00] relationship kind of mirrors a little bit. Meyer Lansky's and Bugsy Siegel's relationship or Leke was more kind of like the Meyer Lansky of their relationship. And Jacob's Shapiro was more, he was more of the muscle. He was the Bugsy Siegel, uh, uh, aspect of their partnership. That's something I noticed when I was doing my research. Um, Yeah. And then this kind of leads us to, um, Shapiro and Leke would get involved in, you know, we're gonna get into it in just a second, something that's called the labor sluggers war, which is, uh, and doing my research. I had never even heard about this, uh, the, these conflicts that went on, but it, I'm not surprised. I just really haven't. Heard too much about it and, uh, yeah, I had Jacob Shapiro had like a funny nickname. I guess one of the more interesting nicknames in the mob is in Garra and apparently like in Yiddish, like, get outta here. But he would like say in such like such a thick Yiddish accent that when he would. I guess [00:13:00] scream at people to get outta here. It would kind of come. I was like, girl. Yeah. I think that this labor, slugger war is really interesting aspect to get into because I mean, anybody who's somewhat familiar with history knows that there was a lot of management labor conflict workers versus. Bosses and that sort of thing. It's interesting to see how the mafia gets flipped on its head. In this episode, they're helping the, the management and the companies and then it almost flips on a dime that they then take over the union racket. So I'm really interested to see how that plays out. Yeah, like you pointed out like with industrialization in the United States, and it was ha like when industrialization happened in the States, it happened quick, right? So it was like, I wouldn't say like it was overnight, but in a lot of ways it was, oh, we have this new tool. We have to do it as quickly as we possibly can. Right. And this like, this inevitably [00:14:00] led to like conflicts between workers and factory owners, right? I mean, the. I don't know, like the left, I, I don't, I guess the left wing view of this conflict, but like, it's very easy to, I don't know, demonize one side and like patronize the other side. And I mean, it's complicated, right? Like a lot of these guys that were setting up these factories were, and a lot of cases were putting up like huge sums of their own money, right? And they needed, they needed to see like a significant, they, they weren't doing this stuff to like just get by, right? Like they wanted to do. Well, um, So like it was, but at the same time, in terms of doing that, you're inevitably gonna have conflicts with the, with the workers. Really. I mean, a lot of these guys, like we pointed out earlier, a lot of the people that were working in these factories were like newly arrived Jewish immigrants. Uh, that. Went from like, say, working in the fields in Poland to all of a sudden they're getting cramped in like an industrial workspace and it's a totally alien. I mean, Carl [00:15:00] Marks talked about this and I mean, that's not, I don't agree with Carl Marks and I don't know what things, but I, I would say this is one thing he did really capture that was kind of correct, like factory work in a lot of ways is. Is dehumanizing. And especially if you're say like a farmer or PA coming from the field, it's, it's, you know, it's alienating, it's dehumanizing. It's uh, it's totally different. So let's talk about how did these unions and corporations and well now, how these unions and companies got were in conflict with each other, and then how and why would they use this, this tough muscle against each other. Yeah. Well, so like the, like the workers would argue like they had certain rights and I mean, rightfully so. They did like, they wanted say certain amount of hours, worked, certain safety concerns, and then the factory owners would be like, well, that's cutting into my profits and if I have to put this, this, and this, it's gonna cut even more [00:16:00] into the profits, gonna raise costs for everything. And then the workers would be like, well, we're going on strike. And then the factory owners are like, okay, fine. You guys go on strike. We're gonna hire. Scab workers were cheap, right? And then these workers would be like, hell no, you're not. And you know, they needed muscle to, you know, beat up these scab workers. Or sometimes the factory owners needed muscle to get their, you know, their own workers to go back to work, um, and stop being on strike. So it's only kind of natural that, you know, people who specialize in violence such as gangsters saw an opportunity here and thought. Man, there's a lot of money to be made here and we don't necessarily have to work for one side or the other. And it, it, it really is interesting that they, they could play both sides of the field and just make so much money off of it and not really have any care in the world who they were supporting. Yeah. That's it. Right? Like, cuz the only thing that they were supporting was. [00:17:00] The dollar really. Right? Like, you know, who's gonna pay me more money? All right, I'll be your Muslim. I mean, when we get into Jimmy Hoff, uh, you know, this is kind of like the origins of like gangsterism and, and unions and factory owners. This is kind of where it starts. But when we get into like Jimmy Hoffa, like way down the road, I'm, I'm not sure when we were gonna do that, but that's gonna be a huge thing. Like, you know, initially, like when Jimmy Hoffa was. Starting out, like he was just following a practice that had always gone on for forever. I mean, a lot of people have like these like romantic notions of revolution and like, oh, if we just follow the right doctrine and we do this and that, like, you know, everything will kind of fit into play. It's been, you know, I mean, in reality it's unique characters like, These gangsters to actually get any, to get certain things done. Really? I mean, what was Stalin really? I mean, Stalin was a revolutionary, but in a lot of ways he was kind of like a [00:18:00] gangster. He was like robbing banks and I mean, he was going to the revolutionary cause. But I mean, I've also, I've often wondered, I mean, what type of mob, uh, Stalin would've been, you know, cuz he, in a lot of ways he was a gangster. So let's set up this first, uh, labor slugger war, uh, from 1913 to 1917. Yeah, we're not gonna get into like super, like tons of detail about like a lot of these ones. But, uh, yeah. So there was a guy named like Joe Grr, Rosen Wag and Dopey Benny Fien. They both like, they both like led like different gangs and like, they would fight amongst each other, but, uh, but they would, uh, end up like uniting and like forming like a, like a strong alliance a. Basically kind of dominated like the unions, like the way that we were just explaining how this process, uh, kind of happened. Right. And uh, basically like created like a powerful racketeering uh, operation, right? Because [00:19:00] that's kind of how it all worked was like, In a lot of ways, like these gangsters could control, you know, whether these factors are running or whether they're aren't running right. Because they're the ones that had all the muscle really, in, in a lot of ways they were like the most important players. Um, so like the, you know, the factory owners kind of had to like pay them respect, but also the unions kind of had to pay them respect. Right. It's the, it's the really, the perfect. It's the perfect racket. Not to, not to sound cheesy, but it's the truth. Um, yeah. But these two guys together, they were just so powerful. Like the various other gangs, like even, um, even, even if they were like United, really couldn't take them all on, uh, couldn't take them on. That's how powerful these guys were in New York at the time. Um, yeah. And then 1913 there was like a, Massive gunfight on the streets. No one was a, no one was actually killed at this. But it like, you know, it just, it's stuff like that, like are you having like an open gunfight in the middle of [00:20:00] the day on the streets? You know, like multiple p people just shooting bullets, like randomly. Uh, the authorities actually have to step in and start doing something about that. Joey, the greaser, one of his hitman would end up getting charged with murder. The murder of like one of these opposing gangs and he would end up like testifying and then dopey, Benny Fien would end up, uh, would also end up finding himself on murder charges himself. That basically ends kind of like the first labor slugger wars. Both these guys end up just going to jail. And don't worry, there will be another labor slugger war. The second labor slugger war of 18 or 19? 18 to 1919. What, uh, what was the continuation of this conflict? Yeah. With Joey Grr going to jail and Benny Finn going to jail. Uh, there's an, a guy that came up, A kid dropper, Nathan Kaplan and uh, Johnny Spanish. I tried looking up. I don't [00:21:00] think that was his actual name. I think that was just kind of a nickname. They were like rivals with each other, right? These are so, like, you know, with, uh, Benny going to jail and Joe Laris are going to jail. These were the gangs that were vying to try to get in charge of this like, really powerful racket. Um, they decided like, like instead of fighting with each other, let's join forces. We, we have the two most powerful gangs. Then we'll run it together. Right. Um, But as you can point as, uh, you can see with the fact that it only lasted a year, this alliance didn't really last very long. I think it was about like eight months, five months from I read, and this is how long this alliance lasted. And, uh, Johnny, uh, like Spanish would end up leaving the gang and they would, you know, uh, Kaplan and him would end up fighting and, uh, Johnny Spanish would, uh, end up getting killed probably by Kaplan, but were not a hundred percent. Sure. And that leads [00:22:00] us to the third Labor slogan award, which brings us, uh, closer to where Jacob Shapiro and, uh, Le Beko start getting into the picture. It really is fascinating that even though this is, we're getting, we're in the time of the World War I. We can see it's before prohibition, but the, the writing is on the wall with prohibition at this point that it's coming down the pipe. But the mafia's and the organized crime, the real hooks are into this labor, racketeering, and labor muscle, even at this very, very early point in mafia history. Yeah, well, I mean, like we pointed out that it, it really is, it's brilliant in a lot of ways. Like, cuz it doesn't matter which direction you go into, you can make money, you know? And like, and you're also extremely powerful because in a lot of [00:23:00] ways you're running like a huge important aspect of the economy and it's, it's something that kind of goes. It's not something that kinda like grabs the headlines in a lot of ways, right? Where say like drug dealing or even prohibition, you know, like this person's like sneaking booze or this person's, uh, I don't know, say like dealing heroin like that, that grabs headlines, that brings attention in a lot of ways. Like this type of stuff can kind of go unnoticed. Uh, Or unreported in a lot of ways cuz it's, it's very complicated. You know, like I've left a lot out of it just cuz it's, it is so complicated. There's so many different players, even me, like kind of researching it, uh, you know, years ahead of time and people have had all like the, uh, you know, All the resources available to them to research something that, you know, kind of happened like a hundred years ago. Um, it's still, it's still difficult to really understand exactly how it all worked out. Imagine living it at the time. It would've been very difficult to uncover all this, you know, [00:24:00] um, investigative journalism is only one reason. We don't see it a ton anymore, or not like we used to. It's, it's very expensive to do and it's also very dangerous. Uh, yeah. So, Yeah. So it brings us to the third labor slugger war, which starts in, um, 1923. So Kaplan kind of ran. Labor racketeering, unopposed for four years after he killed Johnny Spanish. Really? Um, and, but by like the, around the 1920s, he started facing competition. And this is where, like I pointed out, Jacob, uh, Shapiro and Le Boko, uh, started entering the picture again. Right? So like when we introduced them, we kind of just introduced like their early life. And then this is. Really where they start becoming powerful together. Um, and this brings us to this one character, uh, Jacob Origin. He had a little, he had a nickname, little Augie, I'm just gonna call him Little Augie. Uh, from [00:25:00] this point on, uh, little Augie grew up in a, grew up around like labor slugging his, his entire life. He worked under Benny Finn, which is the guy that we had introduced in the first laborer, slugger war, and kind of learned the ropes and. Was a rising star within this, um, you know, powerful, uh, racket that was going on in New York at the time. So, but like when Benny Finn was kind of taken out of the picture and Johnny Spanish was, uh, taken out of the picture, Kaplan, and, you know, rightfully so, kind of saw, um, little AIE is, uh, Somebody to worry about. So he was kind of pushed to, pushed to the side for a little bit, but he ends up, uh, he ends up, you know, coming back relatively quickly. He ends up forming his own gang, well, like an alliance of gangs and. You know, it includes people like Lap Balter, Jacob Shapiro, and another guy that I think we'll end up doing like kind of a short episode on this guy named Jack [00:26:00] Legs Diamond. I was reading a bit about him. He doesn't really, I don't know, he doesn't really fit in enough to like, For Murder Inc. Per se. Um, so I kind of left him out, like doing a little biography on him, but he, he led a pretty crazy life. Like, I think he, I think people tried to kill him like six times before they actually got it done. One of the times we'll get into in a little bit here. Yeah. And then 1923, like a full on war broke out between, um, Kaplan and, uh, little Augie's New gang. Um, One night, uh, there was a fight on Essex Street and led to like the death of like two innocent bystanders. So like I saying, like in a lot of ways these guys were just, you know, having happen, having open gun fights in the middle of the street in broad daylight, it's just, it's really crazy to, it's really crazy to think about. I mean, it's, we see it sometime. We see it now sometimes with like drive-bys and. You know, like, uh, those are usually kind of like stupid low end gangs. Like the ones that [00:27:00] actually, uh, are kind of smart and trying to run it a bit like a business. They kind of discourage that type of behavior cuz it brings a lot of heat. But that's one thing I've noticed, like reading, um, this, uh, early history of the mob where. In doing our research, we were kind of used to like reading about, uh, you know, like the five families and like, later on and there was like, you know, like, don't let the violence go on the streets. Don't call attention to the authorities where like these early gangsters, they just don't seem to care. They just, just do it. You know, like, just have shootouts on the streets, innocent bystanders, uh, whatever just happens. This collateral damage, they just don't really seem to care as much. Um, maybe that was. I think that maybe that has something to do with the fact that the authorities just didn't have the type of resources, the power that they have nowadays. But it is interesting that there was less. I don't know. There was less hesitation to do stuff like that. I don't know. Did you find that interesting? Yeah, I found that so interesting. At [00:28:00] just across that whole time period, there just seem, I mean, as much as they wanna say how violent of a society we have today, I mean, there was literal gunfights in the streets with people with machine guns, firefi, you know, like I. Mogadishu style firefights all the time. And I think maybe, I mean this is wild speculation, but maybe one of the reasons that the commission came around and toned down the violence. At least, or at least kept it inside of the, the family so to speak, is that people were getting sick of this. And that's where the FBI started to come in and they were, the government started policing more and the organized crime knew they had to tamp it down. I mean, this is the, a little later Bonnie and Clyde shooting up, you know, just shooting up towns and getting. Gunning cops down in the, in the middle of [00:29:00] the street. That stuff was starting to wear a little thin by the late twenties, getting into the thirties. Yeah, I just don't think that's what I think. I just don't think the, the authorities really had the resources to do much about it. We talk about like neighborhoods now where, you know, cops go in and nobody talks. I can only imagine, imagine going into a place like Brownsville and be like, did you see anything? Oh, I didn't see anything I could probably was a hundred times worse. Uh, and they just did like, they just didn't have the technology really. You think about it, right? Like, Cars were still kind of a relatively newish thing. And the radio, like the radio, uh, I mean, the government wasn't bringing in the type of revenue that it brings in now. You know, it was still kind of a belief of like as low taxes as possible. I know like income tax and stuff was starting to came about. Uh, What year was it? It was like in World War I. It was a war measures act, was it not? But still the [00:30:00] government, like the federal government itself, and even the local governments were much smaller. Like they didn't have the type of resources and revenue that they have now to be able to take care of some of these problems. Now I can argue whether that was good or bad. That's neither here nor there, but it, I think, The reality was they just didn't have the resources to be able to take care of these gangsters. And, and the gangsters knew it too. So I think it was a very different idea of policing too, that the p it was very reactive. If it didn't spread outside a certain neighborhoods, the crime, they didn't really care about it. And if it did go into the neighborhoods they cared about, then they were gonna come down on it full force with clubs and. Shooting and disappearing people. It was not the idea that we have of proactive policing and that the police are going to be pulling people over and all of those sorts of things that we probably take for [00:31:00] granted, and that maybe has become too excessive in a lot of cases and policing today. But I mean, As, but as much as we, uh, talk about reactive policing today, the police were almost a hundred percent reactive back then. Yeah, there was no, there was really no proactive policing back then. You know, really Not at all. It'd be like, oh, this happened. Okay, we gotta do something about it. Yeah, let's go crack some heads. Let's throw some people in jail. Let's throw some people into the river and then move on from there and not look at, and the government, besides that, that, I mean, it would've been unthinkable in any aspect of, you know, that's, Maybe starting to look into root causes of crime is happening at this time, but it's very much in its infancy. Little Augie ended up hiring a man by the name of Lewis, uh, Cohen. Yeah. And he killed a Kaplan on, [00:32:00] uh, August, uh, 28. 1923. And with the death of Kaplan, little Augie had virtual control of the, uh, lager, labor slugging operation that was going on in New York. And then that leads into our fourth and final Labor slugger conflict, which will really bring us full circle back to where we're going with this whole idea of Murder Inc. Yeah. So, um, yeah, the fourth War is, uh, basically Leke and Jacob Shapiro. Uh, don't, don't like what little Augie is, uh, doing and not just little, not just them, but, uh, you know, Arnold Roth scene. Um, Meyer Lansky in a lot of ways, we're trying to convince, uh, little Augie that, you know, typical labor slugging activity, which is, you know, just go and beat up heads and do this and do that. They were trying to convince him that, uh, like this is, this isn't gonna last very much longer, [00:33:00] and the authorities really aren't gonna put up with it anymore. What you really should be trying to do is like, really infiltrate the unions like, Start becoming like put people in charge of like local chapters. You know, maybe yourself end up becoming the head of the union, you know, a little Augie. And I mean, in his defense he grew up around traditional labor slogging. He's like, well this is what I've done my whole life. I go, why am I gonna change how I'm doing this now? Um, And kind of refused to, uh, change. And Meyer Lansky, uh, uh, and Ron Arnold Rothstein gave the backing to, uh, lek and Jacob Shapiro to, you know, make a move on Little Augie, get him under the picture because Jacob and Leke kind of saw. Saw the future too. And they saw what Meyer Lansky and, uh, and Arnold Rothstein saw what was the future of, uh, labor racketeering in United States. And in New York in particular. It really is, it's the [00:34:00] meeting of the brains in the of. The labor con controlling the labor unions. It started off as just bashing heads, and then you stu the, you get new people thinking maybe we can do this in a slightly different way and control it even more. You really see the evolution. Yeah. And then, so in October, 1927, uh, Jacob Shapiro and Leke killed Little Augie. Uh, they would end up getting charged with this murder, and it was dropped because there, there wasn't enough collaborating evidence. Um, And they ended up wounding his, uh, bodyguard at the w was the guy that had introduced a little bit Jack Diamond, I already mentioned. We'll probably do a little short episode on him just cuz he, he really is a crazy story with that guy. Uh, he was an, he was an Irish guy actually. Just, you know, was a little side note. Uh, yeah. With little Augie out of the picture. Um, [00:35:00] lek and Shapiro were. Left in charge of labor racketeering in New York, and lucky would run labor racketeering in New York from this point on until his death, he would, I believe, ended up becoming one of the most powerful labor racketeers that the United States is. Ever seen, and then you see how it moves on from there, where this money and this racket just keeps moving forward and forward and forward into the forties and the fifties and the sixties, and a whole empire is built up out of this one activity that we see start all the way back in the 19 teens. That arguably in a lot of ways is still with us today, this very day. Oh yeah, for sure. Like, it's not as like, as, like, it's not like Jimmy Hoffa's time or this time period that we're talking about, like the mob's still all involved in construction. You know, like they're still all involved in [00:36:00] the unions. They're not as much as they used to be, but they're, they're still, they're still involved, you know? Um, I don't think that will ever stop. Cause this just seems to kind of go hand in hand. You know, like the bosses could use somebody from the mafia. The unions could use people from the mafia too. They're helpful people when you need certain things done. You know, it sounds cliche, but it's the truth. Yeah. And it all exists in this gray area that's semi-legal, semi illegal. It's really hard. For authorities to bust it up. I mean, if the, if it was easy, it would've been done decades ago, nearly a century ago, and we still hear about labor unions that have mafia connections. And even for the people involved. And sometimes it's a gray area. Like, uh, I had read, I read Frank Sharon's book, which was the, which would the, to paint, uh, to paint houses, which was what the Irishman [00:37:00] was based on the recent movie, at least, I guess it's a couple of years old now. But, uh, you know, he, he thought like the, like his greatest achievement in life was like becoming like a, a leader of like a local chapter. Um, Because he kind of believed in what he was doing with, as bizarre as sounds like, even for some of the guys involved, it was a little like, you know, like, am I a union guy or am like, I'm, I'm a mobster too. And you know, some guys just kind of, they didn't care about any of that, but there's examples of guys that, and at least they thought they were doing the right thing. Where does this lead us into, into the full story of Murder Inc. This murderous organization that lasts such a long time in the formative years of the Mafia? Well, by, I like Jacob Shapiro and Leke were kind of their own pair together. Right? And when we, when Murder Inc. Forms, they were, you know, two of the most powerful [00:38:00] guys. Uh, In Within Murder Inc. Right along with Albert Anastasia. Um, and then, then the next episode we're gonna talk about is kind of this other faction that forms together with the likes of say, Hey, Bres and Harry Strauss and Happy My Own and Frank Abbi, and this kind of whole conflict with the Shapiro Brothers. But in a lot of ways they're two separate things, right? Like Leke and. Jacob, like they're doing their own thing over here and a res and what we're gonna get into the next episode is like another thing over here, and then they kind of merge together. That's, that was my idea of splitting the two episodes up and splitting these kind of mini biographies up of the two. Because if you try to do it all together, it's too many names. It gets confusing. So we have this, uh, the, the idea of this labor racket and then the. The national syndicate and all of these pieces are gonna all come together to make this new [00:39:00] organization that we are, we know when as the mafia. So I know, I'm excited to talk more about it. I'm sure Chris is more excited. What do you, maybe just to give a little teaser, what do you think is the, the next piece that's really gonna. Get people thinking more about this organization, murder Inc. I think the guy that we're gonna end up talking about a bit is Harry Strauss. Uh, Straus, uh, uh, I, I'm sure everyone's a little, they're a little bit more familiar with the, uh, the Iceman, Richard Kalinsky, and. Researching Harry I, uh, or Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, Phil, which is a weird nickname and nobody really seems to understand. He'd never been to Pittsburgh and nobody really seems to understand why he has that nickname. But, uh, we're like Richard. It's kind of, we're not exactly sure what he's, what he's telling the truth or is it, is he just lying? The total, he's definitely lying about some [00:40:00] of it. Uh, some of the stuff that he talks about. With Strauss, it's, he's the real deal. And I was thinking about this kind of, when we were reading it, I'm like, well, if Richard made it all up, I mean, I think he kind of used Strauss as a template, just to give you a little teaser about, uh, what we're about to get into with that. Definitely check us, check out the next episode where we continue the, our Tale of Murder, Inc. If you wanna support the show, there's so many ways to support the show, but the. Best way to support it is by telling a friend about the show. Tell your friends so that they can become friends of ours. Yeah, forget about it guys. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our [00:41:00] website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime a to zhi history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Greek Gods and Gangsters
June 26, 2023 - 1 min
Coming Soon on Organized Crime and Punishment! You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Click to Subscribe: https://omny.fm/shows/organized-crime-and-punishment/playlists/podcast.rss email: crime@atozhistorypage.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Murder Incorporated – The Birth of Death
June 21, 2023 - 38 min
Title: Murder Incorporated – The Birth of Death Original Publication Date: 6/21/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/4BUbAtAxXfe Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve will begin to peel back the layers of the notorious mafia organization, Murder Incorporated. We will look at the very beginnings of this group of murderers for hire. You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.atozhistorypage.com email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris. All right guys. We have something really special on hand for you in this episode. And then for a couple of future episodes, we are going to really delve deeply into Murder Inc. And The Murder Inc. Is just an, a fascinating subject and a fascinating piece of the, the early, early modern you might say. Iteration of the Mafia and it really stretched over the, the early [00:01:00] formation of the mafia and then into the mafia that we know today, the commission-based system. Chris, maybe you can just start us off today and tell us a little bit about Overall Murder, Inc. Yeah, just to kind of like quickly break it down, like Murder Inc. Was the enforcement wing, the murder wing, to put it bluntly, of the, uh, national crime syndicate and ran from, uh, 19, uh, 29 to 1941. Um, It's up to a debate like how many murders the Murder Inc. Was actually responsible for. Some people put in the thousands, some people put in the hundreds. You know, one thing we do know for sure though, that like the murders spanned across the entire United States. Um, yeah, murder Inc was like, mainly, it was like mainly kind of composed of like Italian, um, street hoods, Jewish, uh, street hoods. There were some Irish people in there, but it was mainly Italians and it was like a joint effort between like, [00:02:00] Jewish gang, like Jewish gangsters and Italian gangsters really? And um, you know, from my research, like they called this thing like the National Crime Syndicate, which was apparently was like, the way they described it was like a loose alliance of like Irish and Italian and Jewish gangs. And even like some black gangs were part of the syndicate. And then the idea was like they would all. Work out their differences between each other, like within the syndicate and, you know, all kind of, you know, work out their problems and try to work towards the same goal. I don't know. I personally, I think they just didn't really, at the time, they didn't really understand how the commission worked. And like the National Crime syndicate was kind of like a fill-in for, I could be wrong about this, but like the Italian, like the commission worked with other gangs too. But the Italians were at the top. You know, there was no disputing that it's not like they were equals, um, and the commission would moderate disputes between, uh, other, other gangs too, especially [00:03:00] like if it affected their business. But, you know, for, from the research I've done, they called it the National Crime Syndicate. So that's what we're gonna call it. I really get from, from the discussions that we've had and that the re the research that I've looked into that it definitely was that either the National Crime Syndicate was, like you said, a misunderstanding of what the commission was really about, or maybe it was a proto version of the commission and that that it would eventually, I guess you might say it's slowly turned into the commission, but I, I get the sense that this whole idea of the National Crime Syndicate is more media inspired than it was of an actual thing. Well, even, yeah, even the name Murder Inc. Was like, that was created by the media. They didn't, uh, they didn't call it Murder Inc. I believe it was, it was called The Combination is really what it was called. Um, but yeah, I, I think it's something that like the media kind of came up with and I mean, [00:04:00] to a degree they kind of got it right, but. I mean, Italians and like the Italians and Jews were unequal footing, like the Italians were firmly on top. Um, like we'll get into it. There was a lot of Jews that were like high ranking within the organized like crime world. Right. But the Italians came first, and Jews were kind of, were second really. Whenever they talk about the National Crime Syndicate, it sounds like they're trying to say that this was a, uh, like a a, a mega, a supergroup or something of, of Gangland people. And I, I don't, I think that it was Luciano running the. Program with key supporters like Meyer Lansky. He was almost, it seemed like his conciliary or chief advisor, but it really was. It was the Italian mafia gangs that were running the show, but they had these spinoffs of certain Jewish [00:05:00] gangs, certain Jewish, um, Independent contractors, you might call them, and even Italians and like you said, Irish, but it was, it was essentially. The core of what would become the commission as instituted by, uh, lucky Luciano. Get into kind of the de like, you know, a little bit of the details or what have you, like, you know, if a Jewish guy was having a problem with a maid, Italian guy, Because, you know, people were getting made at this point, like the made Italian guy isn't, you know, unless it was like some, something really egregious. They like the, they're gonna side with the Italian guys, uh, like a hundred percent of the time. You know, like, I, I don't know. It's not to belabor a point. I just. I just find it. I found that was a little interesting, the fact that, like you pointed out, I think it was kind of a media driven thing and they didn't really kind of understand how organized crime really functioned in New York at the time. They were kind of just chipping away at the edges. [00:06:00] A big part of this episode is really to just set up the, the, the origin story of Murder Inc. And where did this whole idea of a group of hardcore assassins, essentially where it came out of, and one of the real hotbeds of it is this section of the Brooklyn section, A neighborhood inside of a neighborhood. Brownsville. Can you tell us, What it was like to live in Brownsville in the 1920s and 1930s. Yeah, I'm writing the notes. I, I started realizing, I mean, you, you really can't, uh, understand the Murder Inc. Story and, um, organized crime in New York, really without kind of understanding Brownsville. It's so integral to, uh, Why these guys became the way they became. So yeah, like the early history of Brownsville and like much of New York history, it can be traced back to the, uh, the Dutch, it was not a nice part of, uh, [00:07:00] New York. It was like swampy and was pretty far from like the central hub. The land was auctioned off and man named Charles s uh, Brown in 1866, that's where it gets its name. Eventually Brownsville. He actually particularly advertised, uh, his new development to Jews living in lower Manhattan. And we'll get into it in a little bit. But Brownsville was, uh, Nickname was Little Jerusalem soon after this. Yeah, so like by the 1980s, like Brownsville was kind of, was used as like a dumping ground too, uh, for that, like the, like glue from the factories and it just wasn't very nice place to live. So it was like kind of advertised as. You know, come here, it's cheaper. At this point, the unions really hadn't gotten involved. So like this was a way for a lot of like, uh, newly arrived immigrants to try to get away from like, the struggles of trying to even get into the union. And it was, uh, particularly advertised to newly arrived eastern [00:08:00] Europeans, but in particular, uh, Ashkenazi Jews coming from, uh, like the pale settlement in Russia. And it's really interesting that it's not an A, it's built as a slightly nicer place to live than the teaming. Tenements of lower Manhattan, which are at that time fairly as close to about hell on Earth. As you can get The, the population densities are through the absolute roof. In lower Manhattan, a lot of the apartments are death traps if there's ever a fire. So you have a chance of living in a terrible place or a slightly less terrible place. So that gives these immigrants a place to at least. Try to stretch their wings a little bit and get the, the slice of the American dream, I guess you might say, that they were really coming for. Yeah. But I mean, Brownsville wasn't, um, was still, wasn't a very nice place to love either. [00:09:00] We'll get it to that in a little bit. Like you pointed out in like lower Manhattan, like they were living in like these like tenement housing basically. Uh, where like, You know, like a house, like a housing unit that maybe even fit for two families. There was like six families fitting, uh, living in these places. It's, it's absolutely horrifying when you like see the pictures of these places and, um, just how people were living, you know, just honest people that were like just trying to. Struggle by, and they're having to live in these conditions. It's, it's, you know, people complain about like modern inconveniences now. Like it's, it's crazy. Not, not that long ago what our ancestors were living in, uh, like a lot of these places didn't have indoor plumbing. Um, so, which, which would mean like, you know, you know, your excess, you know, the stuff that comes out would just get thrown out windows or thrown out on the streets and. That leads to all different types of problems, obviously like respiratory illnesses and even [00:10:00] like a lot of this work was like kind of dangerous work, so it was pretty easy to like cut yourself and, you know, just say you happen to fall and, you know, some muds mixed in with some, uh, you know, I can't sugar coat some crap. Like literally crap, you know, the cut could get infected and it's not like these people had easy access to doctors. Um, Very easily couldn't call gang. You might have to lose the hand, or you know, you could die from it very easily. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. And then that's the, that's another person who can't work to feed the family. And that really leads into that these places, these ethnic enclaves in places like New York, but it was in the cities all across the US and Canada, became breeding grounds for criminality, honestly, because, I mean, It seems like it was [00:11:00] a mixture of that the police didn't really know what to do, uh, to police these neighborhoods and nobody really cared what went on in them. No. Cause a lot of like, uh, you know, not to sound like, I don't know, like some calm me or something like that, but, It's the truth though, like a lot of these factory owners, it's like you pointed out, it's like well just get somebody new. You know? Like they didn't really care and, and you know, local officials didn't really care unless has started to kind of spilling out into like different neighborhoods. But for the most part they were able to kind of contain it and, you know, certain enclaves and, you know, these people were just kind of, Dirt really. You know, like I came across like a crazy stats and researching a little bit of just the history of Brownsville. Like by 19 10, 60 6% of the residents were first generation immigrants and like 80% of those immigrants were from Russia. So there was mostly as Nazi Jews, it was. Pretty much virtually a Jewish neighborhood [00:12:00] by 1910. Um, and that's what actually Brownsville got, like the nickname Little Jerusalem and. There's some pretty cool history to it too. Like the, like the dense, it's not like this anymore. From my understanding. A lot of the Jews have obviously moved out. There's probably still some there, but most of 'em have moved out. But at the time, like they built like tons and tons of synagogues and a lot of these synagogues are still there. A lot of them converted into uh, churches, but there's still a couple of synagogues there at day back. To this, uh, early, uh, immigration. From my understanding of the, and that's maybe why these particular Jewish immigrants got along so well with Italians, uh, immigrants in these neighborhoods. A they grew, they were living in. Pretty much in the same areas. In the same neighborhoods. And they really did have this very similar outlook that was very different from the established society in New York. They were [00:13:00] southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, and you see that conflict developing between Southern and eastern Europeans that were just flooding in. As immigrants in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, as opposed to the predominantly western European society that had predominated since really the early 18 hundreds, and the mass immigration of the Irish, who really upset that whole apple cart. Yeah. You know, like in American history, I, I don't mean you talk to people nowadays and they have like this impression that like, just like immigration is just, I don't know, it's just never stop type thing. But it's not really real reality. Like there was waves, right? Like America was founded as, it was a very Anglo country. Yes, there was a lot of different groups, but it was like a very Anglo society. And then like that first wave of. Irish and German, but a lot of it was Irish immigration coming in. Kind of. It did change the country in a lot of ways, and then [00:14:00] this, I guess you can call it like the second great wave of immigration of like Southern Italians and Ukrainians and, uh, Ashkenazi Jews changed it fundamentally in another way. Let's get, um, Into the, what is the origin story of Murder, Inc. Where do we start off with them outside of, we've said sort of the milieu of what was going on in their, in the neighborhoods and in the, in the streets of New York. But what gets us to the, the beginning of actual murder, Inc. Yeah, so like the origins of Murder Inc. Can kind of, it can be traced back to the, uh, bugs and Meyer Gang and the Bugs. And Meyer Gang was like a gang that was led by, uh, Meyer Lansky. I, I'm sure the audience, uh, people listening to this probably know who Meyer Lansky is, and Bugsy Siegel, uh, they were both obviously Jewish, uh, Yeah, they met when they were teenagers. Uh, I, I read an interesting story apparently was they were playing, I don't, Meyer Lansky was there [00:15:00] and Buzzy Siegels there and they were playing some, uh, some card game. And it was illegal at the time to be playing on the streets. And the cops were coming to break it up and. Uh, Bugsy Siegel had like a gun out and Meyer Lansky like knocked the gun out of his hand and threw it in the trash can. Um, and obviously that was the right thing to do cause of, you know, brandishing a gun to a cop when you're a teenager's. Probably not a good idea. And, and apparently they argued for a bit and then they end up striking like a, obviously a lifelong friendship. It's, I, I read that Bugsy was commonly given, so there was more than one Bugsy, Bugsy, Moran, and there was a few other ones that Bugsy was, uh, a nickname that somebody would get for being crazy. Yeah, yeah. On it. There's a couple bugsy in the, as we go further along in this story, um, That, that was one thing I learned too. I thought that was unique to Bugsy Siegel, but apparently it's not. It was just, you know, people who just had like a hot head [00:16:00] temper would just fly off the wall or had like a crazy look on their face. I guess it was a saying, you know, oh, they're going bugsy. They the Bugsy and Bugsy and Meyer form up their gang and it's pretty. Typical standard gang stuff at that time. A little protection, a little numbers, a little gambling, a little of this. How do Bugsy, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky move up in the criminal world? Yeah, like, so they, yeah, when it was foreign, it was kind of like, uh, They'd lend themselves out to like, uh, you like a defensive organization or like a ra. Like, you know, like if these gangs are giving you a hard time us and we'll take care of it, right? You pay us and then we'll take care of those protection rack sorts of things. Protection racket type thing, right? Like, you know, kind of how. I don't know. The gangs still run like this, really, you know, and nothing, it hasn't really changed all that much. Um, yeah, bugs and Meyer would end up, uh, Bugsy Siegel and, um, and sorry, Meyer [00:17:00] Lansky would end up, uh, doing work with, uh, lucky Luciano. And, uh, Brian Costello, and this is kind of how they start working with the Italian mafia who were like the real power brokers in New York. Um, yeah. And they would specialize in like, uh, providing hitman, you know, stealing trucks, enforcement for gambling establishments and bars. Didn't they get involved with this guy, Joe Adonis, and he was certainly somebody who had a quite a high opinion of himself. How does, how do they get involved with Joe Adonis and man, and tell us some background on Joe Adonis. I think he's somebody that somebody who's at least familiar with, the Mafia has probably heard his name, but he doesn't come up as one of your top tier guys. Yeah, so the Bugs and Meyer Gang was, uh, kind of hired as, uh, was, yeah. Was frankly employed by Joe Donis. And Joe Donis was like head of a gang. It was called the Broadway Gang, which was like a, it was like a massive gang. They [00:18:00] ran liquor basically in like the high end area eras, like, uh, areas, uh, during prohibition. Um, yeah, like could you point it out? I think Joe Donis is kind of one of those people. I don't know if he's been completely forgotten about, but it's not, You don't hear his name very often. It's not like Lucky Luciano. It's not like, uh, Bugsy Siegel or Meyer Lansky. I don't think they're gonna be making a movie about, uh, Joe Adonis anytime soon. I think they'd make a cool movie, but I just don't think it's gonna happen. Um, Yeah. Like he was a major player in like the early history in the mob. Right. Especially in particular, uh, boot lagging. Um, his actual name was, uh, Joseph of Anthony Do Doto. That's, uh, that's, I've never heard that before. Doto. No, that's a unique name. I, i looking at, I was like, that is weird. That's a one of a kind named Doto. Um. Yeah, and he took like the, the name Joe Donis because he was, I guess he was looking at himself in the mirror and he saw like, he thought he [00:19:00] looked like an Adonis. Like he looked like a Greek God. I mean, he's not bad looking, but I pulled up a picture of him now and I'm like, yeah, he's not a bad looking guy. I mean, he is pretty, he'd probably lose a couple pounds, but you know what I mean, like, I don't know about a Greek God. Yeah, it's a little bit, uh, I think there's a little narcissism there, but I, how does he fit into the whole story where it's something We haven't gotten into this, this whole series, but we will definitely get into it, the whole beginning of the, the mafia with the Joe, the boss, Mazari. And where does he fit in with this whole, with that whole situation? Oh yeah. So Joe, the boss, he, um, like, he ran New York and he, um, lucky Luciano was like working with him. And this was during the Castle Lamari war. And Joe, the boss, he, he had feelings that Lucky Luciano wasn't, uh, being loyal or was [00:20:00] gonna portray him. So Joe, the boss, thinking, you know, uh, Joe Adonis was loyal, went to him with a, a contract. He like, Hey, you want to take out Lucky Luciano for me? You, you know, make some money. You're gonna move up. And Joe Adonis, uh, being loyal to his friend, lucky Luciano told, uh, lucky Luciano that, uh, Joe the boss was gonna do this. And, uh, I mean, the rest is, uh, history. Uh, lucky Luciano ends up taking out, uh, Joe the boss, based off the information that, uh, Joe Adonis gave him, he strike basically Joe Donis gave him the Inform and Lucky Luciano Striked. Uh, first, do you know, did Joe Adonis live happily ever after? From my understanding, I, he was at, I believe he was at, at the Joe Mastery. Hit. Um, apparently he was the one driving the car or something. That was when they went in and killed Joe Masseria. And this is what I read. Apparently he was like shaking the Bugsy. Siegel had to take a hand to the steering [00:21:00] wheel or something like that. I, I could begin that mixed up with another story. Yeah. But he ended up like running the, the Broadway gang, which was like, You know, one of the most successful bootlegging gangs in American history really, uh, he would end up working with like Arnold Rothstein, who would encourage them to, you know, raise the quality of the liquor that they were bringing in. Stop selling gut rod stuff. Uh, I'm not as familiar with these clubs, but like, um, Some of the, one of the clubs is the store club. Another uh, club is called the Silver Slipper. Another club is called The 21 Club. What he ended up doing too, and it's like Arnold Rothstein was, I guess he kind of saw. That like prohibition wasn't gonna last forever. Like Joe Donis ended up, I believe, buying like a lot of real estate and, and, and a lot of these clubs and ended up, uh, owning a lot of the real estate. So when Prohibition was over, he was, yeah, he was fine then, uh, bugs and Meyer, what place did they have in the big cast La Marre War. [00:22:00] Oh yeah. So they, they, like, they were lo working with like, uh, lucky Luciano. And, um, so at first they were fighting for Joel, the boss, but then they ended up killing Joel, the boss, uh, in like kind of a double cross to put uh, Marzano in power, but then they quickly turned on Marzano too. And the bugs and Meyer gang, uh, in particular, Meyer Lansky hired a bunch of, uh, Jewish hitman, um, one of them being Bugsy Siegel, another one being called Red Levine, another one, uh, Abraham Weinberg. And they just as IRS agents and snuck into, uh, Marzano's office and. You know, killed him from, I think of Bugsy. Siegel like stabbed him a bunch of times too. And like, there was a great, um, I recently watched the Lansky movie with the Harvey Kittel, and then there's a great scene that sh depicts this, uh, hit. Uh, Marzano and, uh, it is very [00:23:00] well done. If you audience, it's a good movie, you should watch it. Uh, kind of get an idea of how this hit went down. Uh, that movie does a very good job of, uh, depicting it, but I, I always kind of have found it was a little funny that they dressed up as Iris agents, but uh, you know, like it's funny like, oh, I'm gonna kill you with taxes and all, like, where I'm actually going to kill you. And, uh, they hired Jewish guys cuz uh, Marin, Donald didn't. Didn't hang out with Jewish people, so he didn't know who these guys were. He didn't, he wouldn't have known any of their faces. That's two interesting things about Marzano is that he had a huge blindside there that he didn't really know much about the Italians either. He was fairly recent immigrant to the, the mafia scene in New York, and you can see that that difference between the mustache Pete's and. The, the street gangs, the lucky Luciano had his finger on the pulse of everything. He wasn't gonna get caught by [00:24:00] a a, any, anybody trying to hit him like that. He would've known all these guys. Marzano, who's aloof and thinks of himself as the Julius Caesar of the American mafia. He didn't have his hands really dirty like that. No, and like Mari Arizona, they kind of put it in perspective like a lot of these, what was the Castle Lamari gang was like you pointed out like newly arrived immigrants from Sicily, and this was kickstarted by, at the rise of Benito Muan fascism that me kind of made a point of cracking down and organized crime in southern Italy and Sicily. So a lot of these guys just fled and they went to the. Place where, you know, Sicilians and Italians were living, which was in New York, you know, and they brought like the organized crime with them, um, you know, thinking, you know, they knew how to run it better than the people living in new, like j, like people like Joe the boss and like the, the American Italians. Like, oh, they knew better. Like we're, you know, we're the OGs [00:25:00] of Osa Nostra we're coming right from Sicily. Right. The other thing that I found was really interesting, I believe it was on that hit, and I don't remember which one of the guys it was, but he, he was an Orthodox Jew who was so observant he wouldn't do hits on the Sabbath, and I think that that is so fascinating. And Kristen Mustache. Chris and I have done an episode on Religion in the Mafia, and it just blows my mind of how many of these, of how many of these, uh, gangsters. Were very religious, yet they're killing people. They're running drugs, prostitution, shakedowns, gambling, like every vice you can possibly think of they're into. Yet they, they don't see a problem with the fact that they're also quite religious. I believe the game, I think it was Red Levine who was the guy that wouldn't do, I could be wrong about that. So if anybody in the audience knows, just correct me. That's the one red [00:26:00] I was thinking and I didn't wanna go on the record on it. No, I believe it was Red Levine. That was the guy that wouldn't, he wouldn't do anything on the Sabbath, which is like you pointed out, it's really, it's really kind of bizarre. But like Meyer Lansky was, uh, I wouldn't say he was like religious or what have you, but he was, he was Jewish, right? Um, he didn't. Tried to hide his Jewishness or anything like that. Um, he, I believe, would attend synagogue from time to time. I believe he did read the, read the Torah. Um, I wouldn't say he wasn't like a devout, uh, a devout Jew or a devout orthodox, uh, Jew, but his Jewishness was really, was really important to 'em. And I'm sure there was a lot of temptation to try to. You know, downgraded or kind of get rid of it. Considering, you know, the people that were really running organized crime in New York where he lived, um, were Italians and Catholic. I, I think it overall, maybe the [00:27:00] higher level of religiosity that it was just something that. Culturally people did. But I'm mean that guy who was an observant Orthodox Jew who kept the Sabbath and everything, from everything that I've seen and read, that he was very serious about it. Uh, and I think that, that it's the, it's so incongruent, but it's fascinating. Let's wrap up today with a few final thoughts. Uh, just to put a final point, lucky Luciano, that we've talked about this many, many times. Lucky Luciano winds up kind of becoming the king of the hill. After Joe the boss, Mazari is dead and then Marzano's dead. He sets up this thing that at least they called at the time the National Crime Syndicate with Meyer Lansky, and it becomes the proto Commission. But what are some of your final thoughts as we move on? Just for people to keep in their heads that there's this, this idea of. The five families, the commission of a really [00:28:00] more formalized mafia structure. How does Murder Inc fit into this? It was actually like, it was Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky that really kind of pushed for a formation of like an enforcement wing for this, the newly formed national crime syndicate. Um, you know, just kind of like my takeaways from it to, it's, I always find it really funny when people talk about Meyer Lansky and they say, You know, he's kind of like, just like the brainiac and he is like the, you know, he's the guy that's like crunching the numbers. He's like the human calculator reality was like Meyer Lansky was just as ruthless as all these other guys. It's something that, I don't know why it seems to kind of get left out. Um, And even Bugsy Siegel, I never, there was that movie Bugsy that kind of presents, uh, Bugsy. Siegel's, like, yeah, he's a little bit crazy, but he's kind of like a fun loving type of crazy, no, Bugsy Siegel was like a stone called psychopath, like even cops. At the time talked about, uh, [00:29:00] you know, like some of these guys would kill and it would just kind of be work where it was like Bugsy Siegel enjoyed, like hurting people. He enjoyed torturing people. Um, I thought that was like, uh, this initial research. It's uh, it's quite remarkable how this has all kind of been kind of forgotten. I don't know. What's your opinion? I agree with that, that movie Bugsy, maybe Lansky and Bugsy, those two movies will talk about in the future, especially if that's something that people are interested in. But that movie did portray Bugsy Siegel as sort of a fun loving little. Crazy. Yeah, sure. A gangster, but, uh, more of the romantic version of the gangster. And I think, I don't like those movies. These guys are not romantic. There's interesting elements to it and there is a, a kind of a cool factor, but they're still criminal murderers who are into the, they're, they're hurting regular people. And I think to, we can go into a way of putting [00:30:00] them up on a pedestal that we shouldn't put them on. Yeah, for sure. You know, and even Lucky Luciano to a degree, he kind of gets, uh, this reputation as like, oh, he was like the brains of the operation type thing. Like he was the one that was able to like organize this all together and he was like the smart guy. And I mean, he was all those things. He was really a smart guy. But like Lucky Luciano and with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel really pushed for what eventually would be nicknamed Murder Incorporated, which was responsible for. You know, it could be upwards to thousands of deaths. I will say though, that as me personally, I love studying organizations and how they develop. It was genius in a way of how they set up the, the commission and putting checks and balances that the gangs, the five families wouldn't constantly be fighting it out with each other. That. To put out hits on other gang, on other members of other [00:31:00] families. You had to go through this process. They had these sit downs and everybody had buy-in in it. It, it took a long time before people really broke the system. I mean, you could almost argue, I mean, uh, you could give us some examples, but John Gotti was the, one of the big ones to break the system. The, and the, there was a couple of others along the way, but. People really g generally respected the system and if they did buck the system, they paid for it. Yeah. You know, like the, like the invention of something like Murder Inc. It just, it does make sense, right? Where you hired like a cadre of hitman really, that, you know, had like, we'll get into the details of how it ran, but there was like layers and layers and layers and layers of like, protection from the guys at the very top who were kind of. You know, giving the final say of what to do and what not to do. Um, it's not like people in the national crime scene, they can go like, oh, [00:32:00] somebody robbed my casino, which was illegal, you know? Or, you know, so-and-so is gonna go talk to the cops. You can't go to the court and be like, go. You know, like this guy, this guy's gonna rat, or this guy's gonna be informant, but like, he's actually this and you know, like, this guy robbed my casino, or this guy stole my heroin. Like you need an enforcement wing of it. And I mean that, it's kind of how, in reality, this is kind of how the police force works and the courts work in our country, right? It's not much different really without, you know, without the threat of violence that the whole thing doesn't really work. So, It makes sense for something like the national crime system to get to come up with a system. Like Murder Inc. Where like, okay, if you're not gonna follow the rules or you're gonna break the rules, or you're gonna jeopardize everybody's, uh, livelihoods because you're gonna talk or you're gonna steal, or you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that, you're gonna have to answer to this. And it's nicknamed, [00:33:00] incorporated, you know, it kind of has like a way of making sure that people don't do those types of things. And I mean, really at the end of the day, the. One of the big reasons why people don't commit crimes is the threat of violence, right? It's either, you know, the cops like shaking you down or beating you up or stopping you, but at the threat of violence can be take many different forms. In the case of Murder, Inc. It's literally murdering you. Where in the case of the state, it could potentially mean 10 years in jail, you know? And everybody kind of knows what goes on in these jails, right? They're not nice places. Well, and we're gonna go there. We might as well talk about it, that the state. In the post Westphalian system that we live in has the monopoly of violence. These people in the mafia are living in this gray zone outside of the state, and so they formed their own monopoly of violence and it worked pretty well. And it's, it tamped [00:34:00] down a lot of the chaos that could have happened, and it, I think, I would wonder what you would say to me, it seemed like it, it in. Closed the, the chaos you had the Colombo family. That was chaos constantly, but it never really blew up outside of the Colombo family. It stayed inside. Problems that were inside of families, stayed inside of families, and it didn't cause these massive wars. Family wars, that's exactly like why the commission came about was they didn't want this stuff spilling out on the streets. I mean, we're gonna get into it kind of like early history of like some of the, uh, key members of Murder Inc. Like Leke Bulk, uh, Epk and, uh, Jacob Shapiro and really happy my own. And, you know, a res and you kind of look at like the early history of a lot of these guys. Like the violence was spilling out on the streets quite frequently. You know, like literally like, kind of think like gangs, New York, like that amazing opening fight scene. But [00:35:00] they're not like using knives like they're using guns and shooting each other in the middle of the street. Right? And, uh, you know, it's just not. It's just not good for business. Right. And that's why it came about, like the commission came about, like, and it also to like kind of regulate themselves, but also to like regulate other gangs too, where like if you were doing business, like that's fine, you can do business, you have to pay a tax or what have you. But like if you start doing your business in the sense that like, you know, you and if some other opposing gang and the, the violence starts breaking it on the streets, it's like, oh no. Now that's starting to affect the commission, which is. The, you know, the superpower, I guess, of all of the organized crime. And once you start affecting the commission, you're gonna have to answer the limb, and they have their own means of taking care of this stuff. So it would regulate even those gangs on the streets because they didn't want to have to deal with, you know, the full power of the commission coming down on them. We're gonna put, we're gonna put a pin in it, so to speak here. There's gonna be much, much more [00:36:00] about Murder Inc. And future episodes, so definitely get tuned in. We're gonna talk about the further development of Murder Inc. And then their ultimate downfall. So if anybody wants to get in contact with us or has some comments or feedback, I know mustache Chris and I would love to hear it from you. You can reach us at the email address crime az history page.com. Search us up on social media, find all of it in the show notes. The biggest thing you can do for us is if you're enjoying what you hear, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the podcast so that they can become friends of ours. Yeah. Yeah. Just tell your friends guys, cause I mean, by the, by the time that we're done doing this Murder Inc. Uh, thing, I mean the, it's pretty crazy. We did a whole episode and haven't even really touched on Murder Inc. Yet. You know, like we touched on Joe Donis. He'll, he comes back into the story too. We touched on like, the history of Brownsville and, um, Meyer Lansky and [00:37:00] Bugsy Siegel. They're going to, obviously they're. Involved in this story too. All right. And keep your, keep your pod catchers updated and we will talk to you next time. Forget about it. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime A to Z history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.[00:38:00]See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Living in a Violent Society
June 19, 2023 - 2 min
Coming Soon on Organized Crime and Punishment! You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Click to Subscribe: https://omny.fm/shows/organized-crime-and-punishment/playlists/podcast.rss email: crime@atozhistorypage.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Valachi's Papers - Joe Valachi and the End of Silence
June 14, 2023 - 49 min
Title: Valachi's Papers - Joe Valachi and the End of Silence Original Publication Date: 6/14/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/5XUpe5gBiMk Description: Welcome back to Organized Crime and Punishment! In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve dive deep into the captivating history and background of Joseph Valachi, a notorious figure in the world of organized crime. Join us as we explore his fascinating life, from his early days as a low-level enforcer to his unprecedented decision to become a government informant. We start by examining the infamous "Valachi Papers" – both the groundbreaking memoir and the subsequent movie adaptation. We discuss how Valachi's firsthand account provided unprecedented insights into the inner workings of the Italian-American Mafia, exposing its hierarchy, rituals, and codes of conduct. We delve into the impact of the Valachi Papers on law enforcement, public perception, and popular culture, as the revelations shook the criminal underworld to its core. Moving on, we explore the extensive literature surrounding Joe Valachi. From investigative journalism to biographies and historical accounts. Throughout this episode, we unravel the layers of secrecy and intrigue surrounding Joe Valachi, shedding light on his enigmatic persona and the profound impact he had on the world of organized crime. Join us as we examine the legacy of a man who dared to break the code of silence and redefine the landscape of law enforcement's battle against the mob. #JoeValachi #ValachiPapers #MafiaInformant #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #MobHistory You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.atozhistorypage.com email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris. I'd like to welcome you back to the show today and I'd also like to, as always, welcome back mustache, Chris. Today we're going to discuss the fascinating story of Joe Valachi, and this is where we really start to do some deep. Dives into mafia history and looking at our sources. Today we're going to talk about Joe Valachi and really what became the canonical story of how the early mafia developed and then how it [00:01:00] later began to collapse with one of its very first informants. What we could also refer to as rats. We're also going to, as a part of that, discuss the movie and the book, the Velo Papers, which was a mixture of myth and legend in history altogether. Joe's story through the book, the movie, and what we know from history is the basis really for how we study and understand the mafia. For better or for worse. One of the things with the mafia is it's, it really is a gift that keeps on giving, especially for a history that's so new. I mean, we're talking about events here that are less than a hundred years old and they're learning new information all the time about it. It really is. It's a great. Bit of American history on a lot for a lot of reasons, but I think we'll, we'll start to get into some of those reasons as we, as we go along. And [00:02:00] just to give a little bit of a background on Joe Valachi. Joe Valachi was the first major rat, you might call him, but he was the first person in the mafia to turn government witness. Uh, and maybe what was so important about that, Well, he was the, one of the, I mean there had been previous guys, I'm trying to remember his name right now. He was a guy in Murder Incorporated. He, he, he turned Rat two, but he never actually got to spell the beans about anything cuz they, they got to him first. Um, but he was going to, uh, but Joe Valachi actually just. Said some of the, you know, the, some of the deeper secrets of the mob, omerta, how the ceremony works, the structure, the f b I had been wiring wire tapping a lot of these guys, but at the time, you could wire tap them, but you couldn't disclose it. So, They probably had somewhat of an idea of how this thing worked and how it was structured, and, but Joe Valachi put it right out in the [00:03:00] open. They filled in a lot of blanks for the FBI in terms of, you know, how does, uh, this essentially what is a secret society function and why are they so difficult to penetrate? That's probably the thing that was the most important about Joe Valachi is that he did, he, they had all those indivi individual pieces. The, the F FBI knew who lucky Luciano was. They knew who. Joe, me and um, Sal Marzano Genevese. They knew who all these people were. They knew that they were linked in some way, but Joe Valachi was kind of the guy who fleshed out the whole skeleton of what they had, and he showed that background of. Where Omerta came from and what omerta the, the code of Silence was all about, and I thought that that was what Joe Vei really. Blew up about the mafia is that nobody really in [00:04:00] law enforcement knew that. Yeah. And he also coin, he also, uh, made public the term the Costa Costa Nostra, which was what the maf, the mafia doesn't call itself the mafia. They probably do now, but at the time they didn't call themselves the Mafia. And, uh, Costa Nostra, if I'm. Remembering this correctly means our thing. Yeah. And so, yeah, they would call themselves La Nostra. And even going further back into kind of the, the pre-history, the murky pre-history of Italian Americans in the late 18 hundreds, the early 19 hundreds, they had something from Sicily called The Black Hand, which was. Basically the coz Nostra or our thing, but um, in a little different format you might say. Yeah. And they were famous for when they did hits, they would put a black hand on the body so people would know who did it. And it was a mysterious uh, yeah. Organization. No one really knew anything about it. Uh, if I'm not mistaken, it started [00:05:00] in New Orleans. Right. And then just kind of worked its way up through the states. Yeah. They, it also, this, this time period really changed when Joe Vela hit the scene in the early part of the 20th century, in the twenties and the thirties. A lot of these Italian gangs, uh, were really connected to the old world. And they were just, that they were gangs. There was a group of a couple of guys, maybe a lot of guys, but they didn't have the structure. They did. And that's, Joe Valachi entered the, the scene right as the mafia. The Italian American mafia was getting very organized. Yeah, I would say he enters the scene when there's kind of a rev. I would say it's a revolution that's going on in the mafia where they're changing how everything is organized and getting away. This is getting further on in the movie, but. Like getting away from the old ways in Sicily and they called them [00:06:00] mustache Petes. And getting into like non-traditional markets that the old Sicilian mafia wouldn't, wouldn't dare get involved in. That's probably is the, a really good thing to point out. It's this whole idea of the, the old school gangsters, the ones who were, a lot of these guys were directly from Italy. But they, some of the newer, the, there was really an older group versus a younger group. And the mustache, Petes, they were the ones who were the, the old timers and they were really entrenched in the old ways from Sicily and Southern Italy. And in the most part, if you look at 'em, a lot of those guys, those mustache Petes came to the US when they were older, where somebody like, uh, Vito Genovese and Lucky Luciano and some of these younger guys, they came to America when they were really young. So they, uh, they were really, they had kind of that American brashness to them. That's the, that's one of [00:07:00] the key moments here is that. There was two guys primarily in New York City, Joe the boss, Mazari and Salvato Marzano, who were these old school mustache? Petes. Their main bosses were lucky. Luciano, Vito Genovese, who were the kind of a new generation, but. If I'm not mistaken, Joe, the boss, and Salvador Marzano were only about 10 years older than, uh, Luciano and Genovese to me. I w from re from my reading and watching this movie, the biggest difference between say Lucky Luciano and, uh, vio Genovese. And you can throw like Meyer Lansky. I know he's not Italian, but um, The biggest difference between him and say, Joe the boss is lucky. Luciano always saw himself as an American and these older guys saw themselves as Italian. So it, it's a identity difference in my opinion. That's the where [00:08:00] Lucky Luciano, yeah, he might look towards Sicily and you know, have some reverence for it, but he's not gonna like listen to these guys in terms of how I'm gonna run my gangster empire in the United States. These guys can bugger off, they can take care of whatever in Sicily where Marano would look. Probably look to Sicily and seek advice. I, yeah, I think it's a lot of the, it's almost like the old school divide between any immigrant, between the parents and the kids. Like you can almost see it where like a lot of times you'll see the parents will talk to the kids in. Like their familial language or their, uh, ancestral language. And then you see the kid who maybe he, even if the kid was born in the old country, but they came here super young, and then that kid will go and answer the parent in English and they, it's. It becomes that difference, that cultural difference that you're, that you're speaking of, that they [00:09:00] just, they couldn't see eye to eye with each other on, on these basic things where you have the younger guys who view themselves as. Italian Americans, but really Americans who wanna be in all these things, and they're not necessarily averse to working with the Jewish gangsters or the Dutch ones or the German ones. They just wanna make money like kind of the American dream type thing. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah. Yeah. That to me is the biggest difference is that there was just a, a big cultural divide and just outlook on, uh, how things should be run. And it was, I mean, there was no compromise between these two visions of what the, uh, American Mafia should be. Then there's this thing that gets that really, I wonder if this is really the turning point to the, the [00:10:00] whole mafia and now remember the, for the most part, law enforcement, like we were saying, new kind of these things, but this is the, a lot of what we're talking about that we kind of take as. As, um, gospel of the Mafia now, but these are things that weren't really known until Joe Valachi told about them. And one of the things is the Costella Mar Mae War, which was a yearlong fight between Joe the boss, mazare and Maranzano over the control of the Mafia and the us. And it was fought mostly in N Y C, but it engulfed the mafia, LA Nostra all over North America. Um, Maybe tell us a little bit about that war and we can maybe get into and talk a little bit of how that just totally changed the mafia. Yeah, so Mariza Marzano comes in the, the image I get is kind of like a conquering war lord, like I'm coming from Sicily. I mean, [00:11:00] he'd been in the States for a little while, but he, he's like you pointed out, he had lived in Sicily for most of his life and he's coming from Sicily and he's gonna take on Joe the boss and. Joe, the boss has this idea that he's gonna be the boss of all bosses, and at first, Marzano says that that's not the case. He wants to run it with like, uh, an aristocracy of the bosses where the, the five bosses in New York will come to some kind of agreement that quickly changes when he wins the war, as we'll find out later. Um, But yeah, breeding about this war is pretty crazy. Like hundreds of people were killed and people were switching sides back and forth. It, it does, it reminds me of, uh, a civil war going on in the, the United States, almost like a country within a country, and Arizona ends up. Winning at the end with the help of Lucky Luciano cuz he turns on his boss, Joe, the boss, kills him with an agreement with, uh, that Mariza is gonna win the war because [00:12:00] Marzano said what I pointed out earlier, that the five families are gonna kind of run this as like a aristocracy of, uh, elites. Buddy then he changes Marzano. He's, um, highly educated. He was studying to be a priest. He knew the classics. He modeled himself as sort of like a conquering Roman. Yeah. He was obsessed with Julius Caesar and they, they touched on it in the movie where he gives Joe Valachi, uh, I believe it's Caesar's campaigns in North Africa and. Just basic. He knows that Joe's not very well educated, but he tells him like, try reading it and um, yeah, he kind of sees himself as a conquering warlord really. Um, I mean, what was Julius Caesar? That's what he was, he was a politician. Yes. But he's most famous for conquering lands. Joe Vichi, he really interested me because he was so different. He was Italian. Uh, he was born here though, so he was really, in a lot of ways [00:13:00] separated from these guys. And I get the gist from reading the book and watching the movie badge. Joe Vichi wasn't. Going to be an up and comer in these, in the, uh, organization that he really was basically a soldier in every way of the word. He was not going to be a leader or a boss, or even like a low level manager. No, he was semi-literate. He came from a family, I believe. There was 17 kids, but only six of them survived. Uh, there was very low emphasis on education and his growing up, but he was a, a great driver, apparently great getaway driver. And that's how he kind of got into this. Um, he was part of a game. He just a small time criminal. Yeah. But he was a good, he was a really good driver and they showed him the movie and I mean, you always need a good getaway driver. So that's kind of how he got. Into it. He was never gonna rise up though. Like I said, he was kind of semi, [00:14:00] semi-literate. He was kind of a dullard, to be honest with you. After all of this Marzano, he wins the war and he really reorganized the entire mafia in the US and he's really the one who organized the traditional five families in New York. And. In a way he was really trying to unite the tribes, so to speak. And if, if I'm not mistaken, the really the point of the five families was to give everybody these five major. Gangs, you could call them their own turf so that we wouldn't get another war like this major war. Because like you said, this was not like a little gang squabble. This was hundreds of people getting killed all daily. Yeah. And on the streets, like people just mowing down people with Tommy guns and you know, in busy supermarkets it was, this is, it's not good for the mob to have this happening because, You don't [00:15:00] want it like spilling out to regular people and then it becomes an issue where they start getting the, the police really have to start doing something about this, where the government really has to take this serious, um, yeah, so he sets up the five families, but then he immediately, almost immediately breaks his promise that he made to Lucky Luciano and he calls himself, um, I can't pronounce it. What's, what's it? The boss of all bosses? Yeah, the Kapo. Tuti ka, which just means the boss of all the bosses. Oh. And he's gonna be kind of the, I mean, you could almost call it an emperor because each of those five bosses are the five families. They're kind of like kings and their own rights. But Marzano is putting himself above all of them, uh, which is a really interesting way to go about it. I mean, it kind of makes sense where you have one guy's responsible for slightly making the decisions like it. I. If you look at how the kind of the Persian empire [00:16:00] ran, like he, there was a king of kings, but the Persian empire was pretty hands off. But there was certain things where the, you had to do for the king of Kings. I think that's what Arizona was trying to, uh, set up and keeping everybody happy. But the whole problem was, the reason this whole war happened in the first race was cuz Joe, the boss, called himself the boss of bosses. And luckily Luciano was like, This guy, he immediately went back on his deal and they end up killing him too. And then Lucky Luciano sets up what is basically the modern mob now. Yeah. And part of the reason that, um, Marzano wanted to, to be the boss of the bosses was to have a system to. Deal with the squabbles. And that's sort of the next thing. And the, the military structure that Marzano kind of puts in where you have bosses and under bosses and crew bosses and then soldiers [00:17:00] and where they would each answer to the boss or the capo. And then that coppo would have to really, if they had a squabble with another family, they'd have to go through the boss of all bosses. To iron that out, which in Yeah, in a, in a way, that's a good thing. What Luciano kind of brings to the table is that they're gonna set up a commission where all of the, they call it the commission where all of the five, the heads of the five families and some of the families from places around the US like Detroit and Los Angeles and Buffalo would come together and. They would, um, kind of conci solve their problems. Yeah. It, it kind of reminds me a little bit of how the, the, the, uh, uh, Polish Lithuania empire ran where, yeah, there was like a king, but they weren't really in charge. It was like this group of [00:18:00] aristocrats and they would. Pick a king who's kind of a, it, it changed over time, but it got to the point where the king had literally no power at all. Does that, does that, does that comparison work? Yeah, I think that, uh, initially Marzano wanted it to be more Persian Empire King, but it would, it, it was just never gonna happen. But one thing that I think is cool about the way he set that up is that, Really the, for the way that law enforcement worked back then. Every single layer from a soldier to a crew boss to an underboss, to the boss, to the boss of all bosses, it kept insulating the higher you went up. And it really wasn't until Joseph Lac came around that they could start at. Cracking into those higher echelons because you could always say, well, hey, that was the soldier who did the bank robbery or was doing [00:19:00] prostitution or whatever. That wasn't me. Even though they were kicking the money upstairs, it really wasn't until the. Eighties and the nineties where the, the Ricoh Laws racketeer influenced and Corrupt Organizations act became federal law, that prosecutors could come in and start dismantling this organization that had really, uh, insulated themselves from very much, uh, uh, actionability, you might call it, from law, law enforcement. And the way they set up the system, as you pointed out, it's kind of like. Peeling layers off an onion. This is what gave the Italian mafia such a, an advantage over all the other type of, uh, um, mobsters slash gangsters, cuz the Jewish mafia didn't have this highly structured organization. The Irish mob never had it, and the various other ethnic groups didn't have it where, and also the mafia also had this ability to. If the boss died or something happened to the [00:20:00] boss, it could seem almost seamlessly just be replaced. Where if you look at other ethnic group, Uh, other ethnic groups, gangs, that's usually not what happened at all. But the reason this happened is because of this structure that they brought from Sicily and modified it a bit and applied it to the states. And by the time you get to the boss, the Boston can legitimately say, I didn't tell anybody to do anything cuz he really didn't have to tell anybody to do anything. These guys, a lot of these guys would just do this stuff on their own initiative and obviously they would control it to a degree, but, It would be hard to pin anything on them. That and, and all of that. And then they, I think what, what you're saying too, what they brought over from Sicily is they brought that structure that these were established families. And like you said, if, if something happened to the boss of one family, it was almost like a medieval kingdom. They, they could. Put in a new boss where in a lot of other or organized crimes and gangs, [00:21:00] if a boss, the person who's kind of the glue of the, of the whole thing dies or goes to jail, a lot of times it can just fall apart from there. It's very rare. Like somebody like, um, Al Chapo. Who runs the whole organization. It was like essentially he wasn't even in jail. And yeah, most organized crime was very different than this. This really hierarchical setup that the Mafia did. Yeah, and well, and there was really good reasons to keep silence too, which is one of the big reasons why they were so difficult. And so, Difficult to infiltrate and so difficult, uh, I mean, so successful is a lot of guys legitimately did not say anything, and there was like two reasons for it. Either they, they did truly believe that being a rat is the worst thing in the world, or they knew if they ratted, that was it. Like their whole thing. Family would. That probably is the big difference in what maybe opened the door for someone like Valachi to [00:22:00] become a a government witness, is that the mafia in the US and maybe that's kind of becoming Americanized. They don't seem like they were as. Apt to kill like somebody's whole family maybe, because that would bring down too much heat on them. You know? That's kind of maybe the thing that would've gotten serious law enforcement attention is somebody's whole family gets killed. Or maybe it's just that idea of, you know, the. Um, they just didn't feel like they had the heart, like in Sicily and those old guys from Sicily, like, yeah, you break Erta, that's a hundred percent, you're gonna have your whole family killed for that. And we see other gangs and um, ethnic mafia do that, but it seems like it's more of a thing that comes from. A very different point of view and becomes harder and harder when you, for some reason, I don't know, and maybe I'm wrong in this, I don't know what you [00:23:00] think, Chris, but once you come to like America or North America, it becomes harder to enforce that. Yeah, I would say that. And I mean, and there was practical, like the mafia did. They weren't going around, let's say like the cartels, slaughtering just entire towns or villages or what have that just never happened with the American Mafia. They would go after family members sometimes, depending on the, the situation, but it was pretty rare. For the most part. It was like kind of a. It was a rule actually, but it was a, something that was just enforced. Like you don't go after kids. You don't go after wives. Because a lot of the times, I mean, the kids didn't really, the kids didn't do what the father did, you know? And a lot of these guys had kids themselves. So they figured like if we kill their kids, then. They might come and kill our kids, my kids. Right. So I mean, it, it's one thing that's a little bit more little admirable about the American mafia is the fact that a lot of the violence, for the most part didn't really [00:24:00] spill out on the streets. It was kept in-house. I found too that a lot of these people in the mafia, and I think it's kind of a, a, a little bit of the American dream, that when you come here, You people don't necessarily want their kids to be involved in that kind of thing, that they don't, you know, whether it's a person who comes from another country who immigrates and they have to work, work their butt off at a, a traditional job, they want their kids to do better. And a lot of these mobsters mafia guys, they had, they didn't want their kids to be eaten. Running and gunning. They wanted their kids to go to college or to get a good job. They didn't want very few. A few of them really got their kids involved in the, in their rackets. Yeah. That is really interesting too, where like they, yeah, they want something better for their kids. There's only like a, I mean, John Gotti's kids are pretty famous for [00:25:00] getting involved in it, but. I don't think, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think God, John Gotti really wanted them to get involved in it. They just kind of saw what Dad did and I wanna do the same thing that Dad did. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's always gonna be, certain people are going to get attracted to that sort of thing. But like, um, Carlo Gambino, who really doesn't play into this Valachi papers, but I, he was a first generation, uh, mobster and. I think all of his, none of his kids, they, uh, one or two of them might have been peripherally involved in the mafia, but most of them were just completely legitimate white collar workers. And it's, it's, it's good for the organization too, because if you're just promoting your kids and extended family members, the nepotism starts creeping in, right. And people get jealous. And, you know, we're dealing with people that. You know, they don't, for the most part, don't really have any quorums about killing somebody [00:26:00] or starting a war or what have you. Um, so it, it does make a lot of, I just thought of that right now, like it makes sense to not really want to have your family involved because you'll start getting accused of that, uh, type of nepotism. When Joe, whenever Joe Vei goes and he spills his guts to the, and he doesn't really spill his guts, at least in the movie the way it's portrayed. I, um, don't recall in the book, but I, I have the feeling that the FBI, as much as Joe Vei, once he decides to flip, it was hard for him to do it. But maybe let's talk about why did Joe Valachi decide to, uh, Become a rat, if you will. Yeah. So Joe Valachi, he gets busted for, um, I believe he was dealing heroin and went to jail. And at the time they were cracking down really hard on the, uh, drug trafficking, even just minor stuff. So he was going How long was his prison sentence again? I can't remember. It was a long time and [00:27:00] was in excess of 10 years. It might have been 15 or even 20 years, which he wasn't a young guy when they brought him in. Yeah, and I mean, this is where the, the mafia has this touchy, iffy feeling about dealing drugs or certain families like Banded and other families kind of encouraged it, but they all kind of took the money. Paul ca uh, Castellano is probably the famous one. He's like, oh, you can't deal drugs. But he was taking drug money from drug dealers and that's kind of what led to his, his demise cuz of that, uh, hypocrisy. But yeah. So Don Vito, uh, Vito Genovese. Is worried that Joe Vivace is gonna rap because of how long his prison sentence is, right? This is one of the reasons that the mob didn't really want these guys dealing drugs, especially like made men, because the prison sentences for so long there's way too much incentive to talk. So even before talking to Joe about what was going on, and he sends Hitman to go kill him, and they tried to kill him in the, uh, shower [00:28:00] and he ends up getting, uh, a meeting with Don Vito, who. Basically gives him the kiss of death. Um, I don't know if that's like an actual thing. I guess I assume, I think it's Joe said, said it was, gives him the kiss of death. Then Joe basically makes up his mind. Well, it's like, I'm, I'm gonna rat. At least I can get separated from these guys. Like, I'm not dying for somebody who doesn't even believe that I'm not a rat. I think that's a good way to get into kind of Joe's psychology. I, I honestly think that, I mean, Vito was acting crazy and Vito was never gonna get outta jail either from the, from this, the way it look like. He was pretty old and he got a pretty long sentence. But I guess the, the, maybe a Vito hadn't been so crazy, like kind of paranoid and tried to kill Vichi. But then again, he thought Valachi was a rat even before he thought Valachi was involved in getting. [00:29:00] The, the whole, the whole family busted up. Yeah. But I mean, based on what I've read and what I've saw, I don't really understand how, uh, Vito Geneve thought that, and maybe it was paranoia. And this is something that had kind of followed Vito his whole life, this, uh, paranoia and this quick temper and not. Really thinking things through, like he was up on a murder charge. He was, he used to be, he was a boss at one point and he ended up getting up on a murder charge and having to flee the, the country to Sicily and then ends up coming back. Um, so this is, this type of behavior had followed, uh, Vito. His whole life, Vito, he went, it was right around World War ii and Vito became a real bit real tight with Mussolini while he was over there, and that really tainted him when he came back because Lucky Luciano for everything the, uh, you could say about Lucky Luciano, he was a r a [00:30:00] war hero in his own right. He didn't go fight overseas, but. German infiltrators tried to come into the docks in New York City to Spy and Sabotage, and Luciano locked that down and the government was, they were very appreciative of what it, what he did. They kind of. Screwed him a after the war, but Luciano went a long way to helping win World War ii. But then you have Don Vito coming back from Italy, who's rubbing shoulders with Mussolini. That must have caused some friction, and a lot of these mafia guys went to the wars too. Yeah. And like the other important thing too that Lucky Lucio had done was at any point he really could have shut down the docks. Like back in the day the mafia ran the docks in one way or another, and they could have just called stirred up a general strike and caused a lot of chaos during the war. And if those dogs weren't open, the [00:31:00] supplies aren't going overseas, and the government knew that. So that's. You know, that's why they talked to, uh, Luciano and they came to this kind of agreement. One thing I think, and it's a little controversial, but it, I think it's worth talking about, is a lot of the movie is, is really a two man play between Valachi and the F B I agent, who's his, uh, who's taking Valachi story. And so this, the Valachi. Turn state's witness in 1968, and this movie comes out in 1972. And I wonder was, and there's a lot of conversation and dialogue between the F B I agent and Valachi and the F B I agents all high and mighty, and you know the, I'm the good guy and you're the bad guy. And I wonder how that kind of. Sat in people's mouths in the, in the sixties and in the seventies when there was a [00:32:00] real growing distrust in the government based on Vietnam and Watergate. Well, Watergate hadn't quite happened yet, but a lot of things had been coming out where, uh, the hippie movement where people st had started to get a real distrust in the government. And I wonder, How people would've taken that back then. I'm, I mean, I mean, Nixon's silent majority was still there too, right? And these people were for the most part, pro. No, I wouldn't say they were like pro F b I, but they weren't. Uh, As anti-government, anti and law, law enforcement, uh, I say some of the other groups that you were talking about, but yeah, it would've been interesting to see. I would love to, maybe I'll read a review that came out at the time and wonder if they touched on this as kind of glorification of the F B I. I'd love to throw that out too to people. Kind of break the fourth wall here of people who are listening, who are maybe of an age who remember that, uh, what were they thinking?[00:33:00] I remember my father saying something when we watched the movie that they watched it on tv, the, the Senate hearings of Valachi, and it's was like watching their uncle. Spilling the beans on all this stuff. Uh, kind of the uncle who you thought, well, maybe the, maybe he was, uh, in the mafia or something, but just, you know, you would've never known it. But then you have this guy who lo seems like an old uncle or an old grandfather, and he is just talking about like this most vile criminality. Yeah, it would. Yeah, I would, we should, I'm gonna look that up actually. I want to, and please tell us if you were alive at the time and watched any of these hearings, cuz I'd be really interested to hear just kind of how you viewed it. Do you think that if something like that happened nowadays, If somebody goes, and if something like this happened nowadays, could it even happen nowadays where somebody like Joe Vichi comes out [00:34:00] and completely blows up an organization, would people even care? Or are we kind of too jaded now and. The, uh, almost into the second half of the early second half of the 21st century. We, we just don't believe this sort of thing anymore. We just don't care. I mean, I would say it would probably get politicized in some way or another. I mean, you could say Julian Asge is similar to Joe Vichi and there's like, what? Half the country hates the guy, and then the other half of the country thinks he's a great guy. I, I would assume something similar like that would probably happen or somebody like Snowden who maybe because he broke a, a part of government conspiracy, we won't get into all of that, but somebody, most of what Snowden came out and said was proven to be true, but in a lot of ways what he did it, it compromised things to a certain degree and people will disagree with that. But it's, it sort of is kind of in that vein of [00:35:00] Joe Valachi of. Tearing back a curtain on something that was not very pretty. And it's also like if there's parallels between the mob and the government, in a lot of ways the government doesn't like people when they, you know, expose some of the dirty laundry and some of the secrets of how all this runs, like Snowden or Asange and. I mean, the mo mob doesn't like it either. When Joe fci, uh, Joe FCIs telling, uh, how this whole thing runs, how Costa Nostra our thing works. Um, I mean, there's a, there's tons of parallels between how the government kind of runs and how the mob runs. It really is. It's a, I think of Joe Vichi and I just thought of this, which maybe we can hash this out. Joe Vici is maybe more of a whistleblower than he was a rat. So to speak. Do you think about the, that the person who blew blew up Enron and said like, this is all, uh, total house of Cards. And [00:36:00] there, there was one for, uh, the who did that in the tobacco industry. And we see that all the time where when somebody comes out and layers lays out the really. Ugly truth of what's going on in organizations. A lot of people are going to herald it. And there's gonna be a lot of people who have a lot, who have a lot of problems with what the person's doing with entrenched interests. And there's, its up debate too, like, is Joe Valachi a rat? Uh, a rat, or is he, like you said, a whistleblower? I mean, to me, a rat is somebody who gets caught doing a crime that they. You know, like doing, and they said they'd signed up for the mafia and they figured, well, I can get 10 years knocked off my sentence if I start spilling the beans about breaking Erta. But I mean, in Joe's defense, like Don Vito was trying to kill him, what else was he supposed to do? And Don Vito on top of that, [00:37:00] wasn't just trying to kill him. He wanted to humiliate Joe, which why is Don Vito really? Lowering himself to the, uh, the, the small time cog in the machine. Don Vito's going out of his way to just make a, a fool out of him. Joe Vichi said that, um, he would kill himself if Don Vito gave the word, but Don Vito wanted, wanted. Joe Vichi to get whacked and made a fool out of, and I think you kind of can see why, uh, somebody like Joe Vichi might just say, well, you know, no, I'm not gonna put myself up to this. Yeah. So we seen the like movie, like in terms of emerita and keeping your word it, think about how Joe got into the mob really. Uh, Marito gave him, made him a made man. I assume at the time they were a little bit more quick in making people, cuz there was a war going on and they needed. Bodies, maybe Joe [00:38:00] in a different situation. Probably he might not even ever get me. I could be wrong. Um, cuz he wasn't particularly a good earner and he wasn't really kind of psychotic, so he couldn't really use him for hits. He was just a guy that was there. Um, But you turn around and you make, you take this blood oath and you're holding a image of a burning saint. And you know, if I break the silence, I'm going to, I'm gonna burn in hell for the rest of my life. And you know, it goes on literally like three months later, lucky Luciano, who took the same oath is killing the boss. And imagine what that kind of does to a person who just signed up for blood oath and then watching, you know, the top rank eyes just saying, screw it. Like it doesn't matter. Yeah. It, it is really, it, it is fascinating. The, the story of Joe Vici that, like you said, he wasn't somebody who earned, he was a bagman. He was the gopher really, of somebody who drove and. [00:39:00] Did all of that stuff. He wasn't somebody who was ever going to be ambitious. And he wasn't ambitious in jail. He just wanted to do his time. Yeah. He just wanted to be left alone and just do his time and he wasn't, you know, wasn't left alone. And, but I mean, he, the more I read about job too, he kind of seems like a vmr like in jail, he gets even a longer sentence because, He thinks this random prisoner that's coming up to him is a hit man that Don Vito had sent, and he ends up killing him. And so they, he gets a, you know, he gets a life sentence, slapped onto his, uh, slapped onto his sentence, and then the way he got busted with the drugs and he got busted when he was a minute, man. He just, I don't know, he seems kind of like a, I don't know, a buler. Does that make sense? Yeah. He was really in it, the best place he could be as a driver. He had a. Little restaurant that was his front, but otherwise, most of the stuff he did is Don Vito would say, go drive my [00:40:00] girlfriend here, or go pick up this package there. Like that's all the stuff he was really doing. It's, it's not like he was running these major operations or anything, and he didn't even really do many hits. No, he probably was at, um, I think he was at some hits. I don't think he actually did any. He hits himself, but he was the driver. So when the hit was done, it was his job to, you know, get outta town as fast as possible. I wonder what, uh, you think of the movie, because the movie was really at an interesting place. It was done by Dino de Lois, and it has a very foreign film to it. If you watch it, it is. Quite different than any other mafia movie you'll watch. It has more of a play aspect to it, and I thought watching it, that this is probably the kind of movie that you really would like. Yeah, it, yeah, I did it. I, I really enjoyed it. Uh, Charles Bronson hits it out of the park. Um, it has like a, a very kind of spaghetti western kind of feel to it. Yeah. [00:41:00] Uh, Just because some of the actors or voices are doved and, but I mean, for the most part, the performances are all fun. And I mean, the guy plays, uh, Marzano. He has this like, this really weird accent where, um, I don't even know how to describe, how would you describe it? I think he was almost overplay. An Italian accent, even though the guy was Italian, like it wasn't a natural Italian, you know, inflected English. It was somebody who was acting to have an Italian accent. Yeah, but he, I don't know. I liked him too, cuz he was fun to watch on screen. Like I enjoyed his, uh, performance and. I mean, it's, it's for a movie, there's really not like a ton of violence, but there's like one scene in particular that's like, really, it's like really far out there. People should go and watch that, watch this movie and you'll know the scene we're talking about exactly. But we're not gonna mention it. And [00:42:00] this podcast to keep it, uh, minivan safe, but without showing a single thing. It's one of the most horrific scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Yeah, it's, it's, it's rocks got wrenching, eh? Yeah. And I mean, I think Bronson, he really does a good job carrying the movie. He gives a really great performance. Um, I, I've always thought Bronson's been a pretty underrated actor anyways. I know he's famous for playing like the Death Wish guy and the endless sequels, but when Bronson's on, he's, he's. Very good actor. He, he's very sub subdued, which is, uh, not something you typically see out of people who are famous for action movies. I could see a lot of people lumping Bronson in with Nicholas Cage because they kind of have people either love him or hate him in a lot, in a similar way to Nicholas Cage and me love him. Charles Bronson, uh, he's probably top three [00:43:00] favorite actors of mine. He's also in one of my favorite movies too, once Upon a Time In The West, which was a spaghetti. What, like the magnum Opus Spaghetti We Western that Sergio Leoni, uh, directed and Charles Bronson starred in that movie. And there's just huge parts of that movie. Uh, I think eventually one day maybe we'll do like a Western series. We'll get down and down the road and we'll do that one. It's a, it's a movie where a lot not much is said and Bronson. Does a brilliant job. He doesn't even have a name in the movie. Uh, just conveying all different types of emotions with his, uh, steely eyes. One problem that I had with the movie, and it was actually a problem that Charles Bronson had with the movie, is that they're really telling about 40 years. Of a story, but Charles Bronson plays somebody where he starts off and he is in his late teens, early twenties, and then he is playing somebody almost into their seventies. And I think in a way that didn't work. And [00:44:00] I think what they could have done is maybe had somebody young play Joe ve. Yeah. When he, in his younger time. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that could have worked better than having Charles Bronson, because he always looked like 40 something Charles Bronson in the whole movie. Yeah. I, things like that. Don't, I don't know. I, I've never really been, I. Much of a stickler for thing, for that type of stuff, but I could see why people would have an issue with it. It's like you see Bronson like the first time he goes into jail, and I think he's like in his early twenties where Joe would've been in his early twenties at that time and Yeah. Yeah. He looks like he's 40 years old. I, I think they put a little dye in his hair and that was about it. Yeah, that was in all the characters, they never really, they always looked the same. And I think they could have done, they maybe could have separated that out a little better. And then you have a supposedly 70 year old, Joe Vici when he is going to the [00:45:00] jail in the sixties. And, um, besides gray hair, he's completely ripped. Look, you know. Oh yeah. Looking like a 40 year old man, you know, in good shape. Yeah, that was, yeah. Brons has always been in pretty good, like most of his life. He's been in, always been in pretty good shape and he's not like the typical like muscle guy. He's. He's, he looks like slim and athletic and, uh, like you pointed, just fit. Doesn't look like a 70 year old man, like a 70 year old man. Don't, I don't care how much you work out, how much you take care of yourself, you're gonna have a little bit of a gut and the muscles are gonna sag a little bit. Your skin's gonna look a little leathery. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, that, that was kind of a mess to the movie, but I, I mean, it was minor, but it also kind of led in it. I, I think it, it gave you more of that play feel to it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it, it, it, yeah, it for a movie that's kind of based on what happened, from my understanding, it's pretty accurate to the [00:46:00] story that Joe told it. It has kind of, um, Like you pointed like a play field to it. It's not, it almost seems kind of like a fantasy. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it does. I think that, I think that's a really great way to describe it is it does have kind of a fantasy feel to it. To me that's what made it a little bit more, that's what made it enjoyable because a lot of the mob movies that will end up talking about are like super gritty and super have like a super realistic kind of tone to them. And you know, this is, it gives you something a little bit different. Throughout this entire series, we're going to be hitting on some, some certain themes that will just keep coming up time and time again. And, uh, as I was putting brainstorming these, I was thinking is why was the mafia so powerful and why does the mafia have such a mystique to it? And is the mafia an American folklore or legend? And is the mafia sort of the new Western and old West that, um, [00:47:00] And those are tho these are just some of my ideas and I thought maybe today we could just tackle one of these. Why does the Mafia have such a mystique? If you look at the, what the Mafia was able to accomplish, and I mean a relatively short period of time, it's, it's pretty incredible in terms of like running a lot of labor unions, uh, gambling. They basically built Vegas, um, And potentially maybe being involved in the assassination of the president. We'll get into that later. Yeah. So if you look at like, somebody like Lucky Luci, uh, Luciano, he's extremely intelligent and he had this will to power where he is willing to take risks and risk everything to, uh, to get his vision of the mob. And if you look at Capone, it's just a, a general, it's just a very interesting story how this guy came about and. Was one of the richest Americans of all time built on a criminal empire, and everybody knew that the empire was criminal, yet nothing was done about it. Like very, they did end up getting him later, but [00:48:00] I mean, people kind of. People liked Al Capone for a long time, when even when he was alive, and it changed as he got older. Um, it, and the, the mystique, I think too is the fact that the mob is kind of a country within a country. They live by their own rules. They don't live by the government's rules. They don't live by, um, what the, the police and the F B I and what typical society tells, tells them what they should be doing. They, they have their own thing as they, as they. Call it. We're gonna leave it at that for today. I just wanna mention though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the Organized Crime and Punishment Podcast so that your friends can become friends of ours. Forget about it guys. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a history [00:49:00] and crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime A to Z history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Not Management Material
June 12, 2023 - 2 min
Coming Soon on Organized Crime and Punishment! You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Click to Subscribe: https://omny.fm/shows/organized-crime-and-punishment/playlists/podcast.rss email: crime@atozhistorypage.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUuSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet the Families – The Genovese Family
June 7, 2023 - 51 min
Title: Meet the Families – The Genovese Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/eTZcBjMKbEs Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve will delve into the captivating world of organized crime as we explore the history and operations of the Genovese Crime Family. Named after its founder, Vito Genovese, this notorious Italian-American mafia syndicate has left an indelible mark on the annals of organized crime. Join us as we unravel the origins, key players, and lasting influence of the Genovese Crime Family, shedding light on its illicit activities and impact on American society. Join us as we explore the pivotal role of Charlie "Lucky" Luciano and Frank Costello in the family's ascendancy during the Prohibition and beyond, the beginnings of The Commission, and the family's wide-ranging criminal enterprises, including gambling, labor racketeering, narcotics, and extortion. #organizedcrime #GenoveseFamily #mafiahistory #truecrime #underworldtales You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: https://atozhistorypage.start.page www.atozhistorypage.com email: crime@atozhistorypage.com www.organizedcrimeandpunishment.com Parthenon Podcast Network Home: parthenonpodcast.com On Social Media: https://www.youtube.com/@atozhistory https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage https://facebook.com/atozhistorypage https://twitter.com/atozhistorypage https://www.instagram.com/atozhistorypage/ Music Provided by: Music from "5/8 Socket" by Rico's Gruv Used by permission. © 2021 All Rights Reserved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=210vQJ4-Ns0 https://open.spotify.com/album/32EOkwDG1YdZwfm8pFOzUu Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris. Steve here mustache. Chris and I are back at it with another installment of five families in five episodes just to set the stage. These episodes are meant to lay some of the groundwork and provide us with the a reference to the five PO most powerful mafia families in New York City and in the American Mafia. These overview episodes of the Pivotal families that form the golden age of the Italian-American Mafia in the United States will lead us in so many different directions and future episodes. We'll dig into the stories of all of these families and mafia organizations all [00:01:00] around the UN United States and even into Canada. We will also dig into the dark distance past of the Pre five family era. In the five families, we get an important anchor point for any study of the American mob before or after. We highly encourage you to revisit these episodes and tell your friends about them so they can become friends of ours. Now, today we have the Genovese. Family or the Genovese say family. I'm sure we'll switch around how we say that for you. Um, mustache, why don't you start us right at the beginning. What is sort of the pre-history and early history of the Genovese family? Yeah, so like the Genevieve's family can like literally trace its origins back to Amer the American mafia in New York. Really its roots are in the, the Morelo Gang, which was one of the first major, um, Mafia's and uh, I would say actually it was probably the first mafia in [00:02:00] New York. Really? Yeah. And there was another guy at that, uh, there was a, a guy at the time, uh, Ignasio, the Wolf Loop ball. He was the boss of, uh, little Italy and he married one of morale who was the in charge of the Morre gang. He married one of his, uh, half sisters and then kind of united these two gangs together to kind of create like the, I dunno, the. Super mafia New York at the time. Right. Uh, he was in charge of, uh, little, little Italy or, and, uh, they ran like a giant counterfeiting like, uh, scheme. I think they were printing off like $5 bills, like fake $5 bills. And they were working with the mafia. So like back in the homeland in Sicily and. Eventually they, they got caught. Uh, we're gonna probably end up talking about this detective. He, uh, down the road, Joe, uh, Joseph Petino. He's kind of like a Sherlock Holmes around this time. I, I [00:03:00] recently just finished a book about him. He's a fascinating guy, and, uh, he was like one of the first, um, Police officers to really kind of, uh, identify the mafia. At the time, it was kind of, it was referred to as like the black hand organization organized like criminality in New York. He was one of the guys that really led, uh, like a crusade against it. He ended up dying and Sicily, but he did, um, get these guy, these two guys rung up on, uh, like counterfeiting charges and they ended up getting, uh, I think it was sentenced to 25 years in prison. I think they got deported later on. And the, that starts into the next big phase of the Mafia with Joe the boss, Mezzer, and he forms his, uh, own gang using this as a, the more gang, as a kind of a nucleus. We're gonna get into it, like, kind of like the pre, pre-history. It's, it's, it's, it's really complicated. There's like a. There's a war called the Ma Lafia and Kimora War. And [00:04:00] like, so, you know, for the purposes of this show, um, now it's at the end of the mafia. The Sicilian Mafia wins the war. Most of the Kimora who are from, uh, Neopolitan, um, from Naples, uh, Neopolitans, um, Either they were killed or they were sent to prison, or they ended up joining the, uh, Sicilian Mafia. And so Joe Mazare, who's also known as Joe, the boss, uh, ends up becoming, basically running the, the entire organized crime in New York City. You know, in that one point, it's just crazy to think like all the people that were like, um, Working under him at one point. And, uh, if anybody's like familiar with just, you know, basic mafia history, like Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia Meyer, Lansky, even though he wasn't Italian, he was Jewish, you know, Bugsy Siegel, these were all guys that were working underneath. [00:05:00] Um, Joe Masseria, I would say it's like this is the All-star, uh, mafia crew in the history in the mafia. Really all these guys ended up founding families or, uh, having. You know, long eventful careers in the mafia. Joe the boss, mazare, gets into a big war, which we'll get into with, uh, Salvato Marzano. And what kind of comes out of that whole thing? Salvato Marzano basically leads a, yeah, it leads to wars like, uh, Joe, the boss, Joe the boss, ends up. Getting killed. He ends up getting, he was betrayed by his own underlings, uh, lucky Luciano and, uh, Meyer Lansky and Betsy Siegel and those guys. And, um, yeah. And then Marzano takes over for a little bit and Lucky Luciano thought, you know, we'll get Marzano in there and he'll be like, a little less, uh, fascistic or, I don't know the term you want to use iron fisted that, uh, A little less [00:06:00] iron fisted than say Joe Lo Joe the boss was, but lucky immediately doesn't like what Mariza's doing. He starts using the title, uh, boss of All Bosses and does away with him too. He actually sets up this little scheme where, IRS agents are gonna sneak into Marzano's office and he got, he actually got, uh, Meyer Lansky and Betsy Siegel to like recruit, uh, some Jewish hoods from around the area. So Marzano wouldn't really know who these guys are, cuz it's not like Marzano was hanging out with, uh, many Jews at the time. I don't even know if he spoke English, to be honest with you. Um, so then they sneak in and they kill 'em. And that leaves basically lucky and in charge in New York, and he sets up the commission system. That's a famous. Now in Chicago, actually it was done at a meeting in Chicago and Al Capone was there and basically anybody that was in important. Really, it's pretty amazing that all this stuff happens. [00:07:00] It happens so quickly. And the mafia's before this, it's these different gangs of, um, chemos and. La Nostra and all these mafia and all the different Italian gangs, and they're just kind of running their own little things. Some are bigger, some are smaller. You have Jewish gangs in there, and then all this whole thing starts developing and developing and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you have, I mean, really. I don't know if Lucky Luciano was necessarily brilliant or but between him and Meyer Lansky, the, the two of them together, that power team really absolutely recreated organized crime in the us. Yeah, I would say, I would say, I would say in terms of organized criminality, I'd say, yeah, lucky was a visionary in a lot of ways where there's kind of like a misunderstanding of like Meno I find where. [00:08:00] People think like Mari Arizona is just trying to become like the boss of bosses, like the king of Kings. But he actually did set up like the five family system and something kind of like the commission where, but like he was gonna be like the he charge of it. Like the best way I can kind of describe, like, I would describe it sort of kind of like how a medieval kingdom would run where yes, the king was at. Was on the top and kind of what he said was final word, but he couldn't really, he couldn't just go around like decreeing things, like he had to come with some. We get to have like support of like the, the dukes and the local bishops and you where like the system that, uh, lucky ends up setting up is the best way. I describes him as kind of like a democratic oligarchy where. In theory, all the families are equal, but there was more than just five families. There was a lot of different families part of the commission, but it was the New York family is pretty much everything. So these five families and the head of these five [00:09:00] families would run like this democratic oligarchy, I guess, where they'd all have votes on, you know, important matters, wars and. Um, you know, who's gonna get whacked and not get whacked and, you know, are we gonna get involved in drugs or not get involved in drugs and stuff of that nature? Well, Marzano was from Italy and like you said, he maybe didn't even speak English. And he comes in and he has, uh, uh, these highfalutin ideas that I'm going to recreate this. And it's kind of based on the Roman military and it's kind of based on how the Catholic church ran and how a medieval uh, A medieval futile system worked, but I'm gonna be the, the, like you said, the King of the Kings, where Lucky Luciano was a, he wasn't born in the US but I think he came here when he was very young. He understood what the street was all about in New York City and how these gangs actually and [00:10:00] practically work together. Oh yeah, for sure. And like, yeah, lucky he was, I don't believe he was born in the States. He was born in, uh, SIU. But. He was American, right? Like even later on in his life and he gets deported to Sicily and there's a story about, I think he was talking to some ki, some American actor and name escapes me right now where he just wanted to talk to him because he is the key miss hearing a New York accent. Right. And I mean that's one of the sadder like when we'll end, probably end up doing a series unlucky, but yeah. Lucky was an American through and through where Zao or like America was kind of like a foreign country to him. Now lucky steps up. And he forms really what, at this point we might call the American Mafia 2.0. After all of this kind of from the primordial stew of Italian, uh, slash American criminal criminality, lucky Luciano really forms what we [00:11:00] know of as the mafia. How does he do that? Yeah. So through like setting up the, the commission, right. And they had a big meeting in Chicago and there was an agreement that, uh, like I pointed out, like things would be democratically elected, there'd be no more boss of bosses. Cuz the way Lucky looked at it as this whole Boss of bosses title was what led to all these conflicts to begin with, like the, like the war that we had just previously talked about. But, but even before that, there was the mafia and the Kimora war and the way Lucky kind of looked at it was like, None of this stuff is good for business really, and none of this stuff is good for us because like if there's people dying on the streets and there's wars going on, no one's making money. The police are, the police start getting involved and you know, it's the best way to run this thing is like to as quietly as we possibly can under, you know, underneath the surface where nobody really notices. And the cops. Don't like the police organizations don't feel like [00:12:00] they have to. They're being forced to do something about it. A lot of the times they didn't really, you know, like your local police officer at the time when, when they were still a walking in the bead, they'd be happy to accept a bribe and turn a blind eye. But it gets to the point where you don't know people are getting shot in the middle of the street and it's like, you know, there's pushback enough from the public where it's like, you guys have to do something about this. And then they have no choice in the matter. They have to. And it's kind of a mix of the, the criminality. They have this low end things like running, uh, numbers games and slot machines that are in every little corner store. They're also into drugs and unions and they have a lot of, um, in the mafia parlance, they're wedding their beak in a lot of little games and a lot of big games. And we can kind of see that different. Of the families had, either they were more involved in the small time stuff or like Lucky and his version and gang, [00:13:00] they're kind of in the bigger game. Bigger money stuff. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like each kind of family, uh, like the bons was always. They were always big time drug dealers. Right. And the, the Genovese is like, I've always kind of thought of them as like the, they're like the Ivy League mafia. Like they're like the top and the top, right? It's like them and the Gambinos or like the head honcho. Um, especially to the Genevieve. We'll, we'll talk about that when we get. Little later in the episode, in my opinion. Um, yeah, pretty quickly the commission, the whole commission system is put to the test where duck, uh, there was a gentleman named Dutch, Dutch Schultz, and he was, he was a big time gangster in the area and. They were running into trouble with a, with a gentleman named Thomas Dewey. I mean, if you're a little familiar with history, you know who Thomas Dewey is, right? He, you know, he ran for president. Um, didn't win, right? But he ran, he was a, you know, he is a big time American politician, right? But [00:14:00] he, uh, he saw an opportunity, uh, depends on the way you look at it. I think he was legitimately upset about organized crime and, um, In New York in generals. Yeah. So he saw an op opera. Thomas Dewey saw an opportunity to go after Lucky Luciano and organized crime in general and, and, uh, You know, he was one of these like crusader types where they weren't gonna be bribe this guy off. Right? That's why they go get Thomas Dewey, right? Like he probably could have taken bribe money and, you know, I'm sure he was threatened and all, you know, all the typical stuff with them, Maia does to people to uh, you know, get them to stop doing stuff, something they don't want them to do. And Thomas Dewey never didn't, it never felt. Into that trap. So Dutch Schultz came up. This idea was like, well, we're just gonna kill him. The commission was like, look. He's like, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like we're not killing this guy. Like, are you nuts? You know how much heat that's gonna cost [00:15:00] And, uh, So the commission had their, like their first sit down where all the heads of the families talked about like, well what are we gonna do with this Dutch guy? Cuz he seems dead set, he is gonna kill Thomas through. And he is like, you know, they sat down and apparently the meeting was six hours and they decided no, we gotta kill Dutch cuz it's just, he's not listening, he's flying off the handle, he is not following the rules. And that's what they ended up doing. Dutch is one of the great hotheads. There's so many hotheads in mafia history, and Dutch Schultz is one of the great ones. And I believe he was another Jewish gangster as well. I'm not, I think he was German. I have, I'll have to double check on that. That could be a series in and of itself, of the, and we've been talking a lot about this, of what made the American Mafia what it was, and it's a lot of it is the interface of all these different ethnicities that were paid, basically living right on top of. Each other and the tenements and the neighborhoods of New York. We get into, uh, [00:16:00] Charlie Lucky's Luck is about to run out. What happens to Char Charlie? Lucky and who replaces him? Thomas Dewey. He goes after, uh, lucky Luciano. He gets him up on, uh, uh, Compulsory, uh, what do they call it? It was compulsory, uh, prostitution, basically, they basically charged him with human trafficking. Uh, but the case is, if you, we'll get into it, but a little bit like, just to give a quick overview, like it is a little kind of flimsy where, you know, some of the girls talked about like being basically like sex slaves and then, but then later they ended up recanting it. Uh, The whole case is a little kind of wishy washy, but at the end of the day, you know, lucky got charged. He ends up, he goes to jail. Um, which is funny cuz like lucky, he was probably one of the guys that they should really make a movie about this. We're lucky between Lucky and Tommy Thomas, Dewey, and like, The back and forth between the two of them, because I [00:17:00] mean, a lot of ways Lucky saved Thomas's life. He could've just said, Dodge, you don't have at it. This guy's having to be a lot of trouble. That Tommy's the one that ends up putting him in jail. I wonder if Tom, I wonder if Dewey knew that in his lifetime that. Like lucky, pretty much saved his life. It'd be, it'd be fascinating. I, I'm sure I could find it somewhere. I don't know off the top of my head, but it's fascinating to think about Steve. Here we are a member of the Pathon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Richard Lims, this American President, and other great shows. Go to paron podcast.com to learn more, and here is a quick word from our sponsors. Everything I've ever seen of Thomas Dewey is that he was such a square shooter. I don't think he would've cared that he would've put somebody in jail. Like I just don't think he played that game, but, and so this is all happening in the 1930s at this point, [00:18:00] right? Yeah. And so how do we lead into once, uh, lucky he, he's out fairly much out of the picture in the day-to-day operation who takes over after him. Uh, Lucky's in jail at the time, and he's. Kind of running the family outta prison, but he leaves the, I guess, the day-to-day operations, the acting position, to a gentleman named Vito Geneve. You know, we had talked about earlier, a lot of these, they grew up together, right? Like lucky and Vito. They've known each other for a good chunk of their lives. Um, and I think it was like it was down to Vito and Frank Castello and Lucky went with Vito. I guess maybe we'll get into the differences between Vito and Frank Castello in little bit and then we'll discuss some. Just quickly, there's apparently a movie coming out. Uh, about the two of them, like you were saying, Vito and Lucky Luciano, I think they even called them the Young Turks. They were [00:19:00] like the young generation stepping up against the mustache pizza of Mazari and Marzano, even though they weren't really that much. Younger than Marzano. I think they was less than 10 years younger, but they had a, a way different attitude. And so maybe, uh, talk a little bit about Vito and his early time as being the, the boss of the, of this new family. Or of his new family, you might say, he gets put in charge and, but like, pretty much, like pretty quickly he ends up having to flee to Italy, to be quite honest with you. He gets caught up in some murder charges and he just flees, um, and on, and then Frank Costello ends up becoming the boss. But what's interesting during like this whole time period, it's like, World War II breaks out, right? And the federal government ends up going to, you know, lucky Luciano saying like, you know, can you like make sure like nothing goes on at the Harbors in New York and stuff like [00:20:00] that so we can get like supplies to the troops. And he is like, yeah, no problem. I'm an American. And it ends up coming out later that, um, It was really embarrassing for the government where this agreement, uh, becomes public and they, I again, think they had made a deal with Lucky that they were gonna let him outta jail early, but I think they changed that deal and said, look, well, here's the deal. Y you can get outta jail, but we're gonna dep you're going back to Sicily and that you have to stay there. And that's basically what happened. And Lucky goes to Sicily and Frank Costello, uh, takes over the family. And, uh, Frank's an interesting guy where, if you could think of the guy that's like, it's like, yeah, he's a, he's a gangster Barry, but he's not really a. The stuff that you typically associate with a gangster, like Frank Costello's, not bad guy. Like he's not prone to violence, he's not quick tempered. He's very much like a businessman. And like when people talk about like how the mafia is just like, oh, they're just like [00:21:00] businessman and they just doing this and you know, they just do this and this and you know, like sometimes they have to use violence. Like a lot of the times these people don't know what they're talking about, but uh, Like Frank Costal is kind of like the meme of what people think of like a mobster, like, uh, you know, he's like a businessman. He doesn't do, he doesn't do anything really wrong. It's like they, he's just doesn't want to pay taxes to the government type thing. But he like set up this huge empire of slot machines in New York, like bringing in tons and tons and tons and tons of money. I think I read somewhere he had like 25,000 slot machines in New York at one point, and like at one point the mayor. Basically took like thousands of these slot machines and threw 'em in the middle of the ocean or some somewhere and like he was having a hard time with it. And like, and then apparently like Huey Long at one point goes to Frank Castello and be like, you know what? I don't care about your gambling. Uh, here's the deal. Like you can open up as many gambling joints in slot machines in Louisiana as you want, as long as the state. [00:22:00] As long as we get a 10% cut of it, we don't care. Right. And you know, like, uh, that's where Frank made most of his money was in Elite like. Gambling. Really. Which it's crazy for people to think of it now, but at the time, yeah, it was, it was illegal. Yeah. Lotteries, illegal slot machines illegal? Uh, I don't, in Louisiana to this day, there's pretty much slot machine parlors and. Every single rest stop if you drive through there. And that, that's how it goes in a lot of other places too, when they, you know, they basically legalized these number rackets that the mafia was just making money hands over fists and they just legalized it and moved on from there. But it's was such huge money. It was more than, like you said, that's, it was the. I don't know if white collar is, uh, quite the right word, but it was the not breaking somebody's, uh, fingers over owing [00:23:00] $25 and being late on a, uh, on a 25 cent vig payment. This is huge money and we have. Costello's running the joint. He's running the family. Lucky Luciano's kind of floating around on the peripheries. Uh, it's, there's no zoom in the forties for him to be able to run the organization from the, from a distance. But Vito Genovese is on his way back in. How does he come back into the story of this family of his family? Yeah. So Vito, yeah, he fled to Italy, really? Right. Uh, Sicily when for the murder, um, that we'll get into in a little bit, right? Uh, during this entire time, he is just cozying up with Benino Mis, you know, like they're good pals and he is helping out and it's, there's like, um, the. Just a little side pit. Like there's a, there's a belief that like bonito Mussolini, like really [00:24:00] took on the mob and kind of destroyed it in, in, in Southern Italy. And in some ways it is true. Right? Uh, a lot of, I would say there's like two things that kind of formed the American mafia to prohibition would be one, because it just, it filled, it gave them a huge war chest really. And. I would say like the, the fascist crackdown on, uh, mafia, uh, mafia activity and Sicily and Southern Italy, cuz a lot of these guys had just fled and went to New York. Right. Which just filled up their ranks more. Uh, I'd say like those were two big things that happened, but. You know, veto didn't have a, didn't have a problem working with this guy. Um, uh, and I dunno, there's this belief that like, Venito Mu was like super anti mafia. I mean, I don't know. It depends. Like, if you're like veto and you're willing to work, sure. Like, well, why not? You know, I'm willing to work with you too. Right. So, yeah, he's [00:25:00] working with Sini, but like as soon as the war turns, Um, you know, Vito being the swell guy that he is, it's like, oh, no, no, I'm gonna go work for the allies now. And he was helping the allies with like supply, you know, local supply issues in terms of like troops getting food and what have you. And he was skimming off the top obviously throughout this entire time and doing like, illegal activities. And I even at like in, uh, sorry. There was like an army officer in Italy and he was, um, I'm trying to tell like the, the, um, US military, like what Vito was doing, and they're like, we don't want to hear it. Just, just leave it be. But Vito finds himself in trouble a little bit like back home where um, one of the, uh, somebody uh, ended up turning like state witness or whatever. And I says that Vito was involved in Bo Chi's murder and, um, Basically is being, you know, forced to go back to the United States to stand trial for, uh, this murder. And something interesting happens though, like anybody that can collaborate, the evidence that were [00:26:00] willing to testify in court just ends up dead. So the charges ended up getting chopped. And the judge actually had a famous, pretty funny thing to say to him. He's like, I cannot speak for the jury, but I believe that there was even a shred of corroborating evidence. He would've been condemned, the electric chair. So yeah, he gets off on all the charges and now he's back in the United States and the way he looks at it, you know, I had to flee because I was on murder charges. I, you know, I was the head of the family. This is my gig, and he actually hires a, a young hitman by the name of, uh, Vincent Gigante Young, up and coming mob. Uh, we're gonna get into him in a little bit, uh, hires him, but, you know, Vincent screws it up. He, he shoots him in the head, but he just grazes him so he doesn't actually kill, uh, Frank Costello and. Frank Costal just looks at this and he's just like, you know what, man? Like, I've, I've made my money. I'm out. Yeah. [00:27:00] I'm out. Like, I don't, I don't want any part of this. Like, vito's since Vito's a not case, right? Even right from the, like early on they, they, the new veto was nuts. Right? That's kind of why they liked having morale, because in that, You know, in the mafia lifestyle, it's good to have someone who's a little author rocker when you need 'em, right? Uh, Frank's like, I'm out, and he just steps aside, you know, which is. I can't think of any other example of that happening in the American mafia. You know, I even, you know, he even went to court and they were prying him like, well, who shot you? Who do you think shot you? And then you know, Frank just didn't talk, which is crazy when you com. Compare it to like, say the Colombo family or the Bono family where they found themselves in situations like this, this would've broke out into full on civil wars within the families where the, the, the Genovese family. This is handled about as smoothly as you can possibly imagine. You know, it probably would've been better if Frank had just stayed in power and Vito was just out of the picture. But, you know, [00:28:00] this is what happened. Frank stepped aside and, you know, probably. Like I said, he was just down with it and he probably saw like, well, this could potentially learn lead to a civil war. And this is just not good for anybody in the family. It's not good for the mafia. So it's just, you know, let Vito run it for a bit and man, oh man. With, uh, what Vito and the American Mafia and the Italian Mafia got involved in and post World War II Europe. With the Vatican, the Vatican bank, the o s s that would become the c i a, like you think we're starting to, uh, put on our tinfoil fedoras right now. But this is stuff that's been proven as a fact and we will probably more than just do a series on this. We'll probably do an entire season on all of that stuff. And that the, the American Mafia linked to all of these really. You could almost say weird anti-communist things going on, but just the, the great game that unfolded after [00:29:00] World World War II that mafia money was central to is an absolutely fascinating thing. But just to put a pin in that for a moment, what was, uh, The success or lack thereof of, uh, Don Vito after he takes firm control, one of the first things that he does is like, when he takes over, is he and is insistent that there would be a big, uh, mafia Summit to kind of legitimize his new, uh, the fact that he's the new head of the, uh, What is now called the Genevie family at this point? Um, it was called the, the Luciano family, uh, previously, but, uh, I don't know. Vito, I don't know. I did, they, I wonder if they have like a vote on that. It's like, we're just gonna change the name or something. It just, I, I haven't figured that out yet. Where like, sometimes they keep the name and then other times they just change it. Oh, I was just thinking about it right now. And I think we'll get into that with the Gambino family too. Uh, that the family's just kind of morphed into [00:30:00] a new name, and I don't know if that's maybe just what they're called by the outside. The, um, and then that just kind of caught. Because there was the Bono family, it was like they were still called the Bonanno family, but apparently when Joe Massino took over, I don't know, they were calling it the Massino family, cuz they were so ashamed of Joe Bono in his book. But I mean, it's still referred to as the Bono family. It's just weird, like, Seems like kind of like this early-ish period, the names would change and they haven't changed since. So anyways, uh, she gets us into this. We've been talking about the Appalachian meeting and dropping hints about it, but Vito is absolutely central to this meeting. Yeah, he called, well, he's the one who, he's the one that spearheaded this meeting. He wanted to like legitimize his rule. And, you know, I'm the, I'm the boss and at this time it was kind of unofficial, but like the Genevie family was the most powerful family. And who was ever in charge of the Genovese [00:31:00] family's kind of like the boss, the bosses really, and sort of Right. Uh, that wasn't a real title, but. They were the most powerful. Uh, he holds this meeting and it's a complete nutter disaster. You know, it gets raided. A lot of mob uh, bosses end up going to jail for, you know, not long stretches, but like three to five years. Some of 'em, some, some of them longer. Other ones are just being, uh, like were just harassed from this point on. And, um, but the big thing that came out with that meeting was. There was really no denying that there was like a centrally organized crime syndicate that was predominantly ran by, uh, Sicilians and Southern Italians in the United States where like, uh, f B, like F the F B I and Jagar Hoover were very, uh, kind of hands off. They, they didn't really wanna admit this was the case. I'm sure they knew, but they were kind of, they were focused more on other things, like in terms of like internal subversion with [00:32:00] communists and. Stuff of that nature and like more kind of Cold War stuff. But at the this point there's just, you can't just deny it anymore. You can't pretend like it's not real. Like you have a meeting where all these people are meeting up at one place to discuss, discuss like criminality and how to organize it in the United States. There's just, there was just no denying it anymore, right? And it was very in your face and very public. What happens? To veto as we move on after the Appalachian. He made a lot of enemies at this. Uh, after this debacle, what happens to him in the aftermath of Appalachian? Yeah, so there's like a combination of two things. The, the Appalachian meeting was. I think it gave like an a, an a convenient, I don't wanna say excuse, but it gave like the convenient reason for like the other families. They kind of wanted to knock down the Geneve family. A couple pegs cuz I had previously leave message. Uh, me mentioned that they were the one the most powerful, they [00:33:00] were the most powerful families. So they saw this as an opportunity to kind of knock them down a little bit. Um, A lot of people just didn't like Vito. He wasn't a very likable person. He wasn't, wasn't remarkably intelligent either. Um, from what I read that apparently there was like a drug busting scheme basically set up by like Lucky Luciano, who, you know, he was still involved distant ly, but they would still talk to Lucky. Right. You know, he set the whole thing up. Um, Carlo Gambino, Frank Costello was, you know, other mobs guys would still turn to Frank and ask for advice and you know what to do in certain situations, right? Uh, and Tommy Lucchese like set up this entrapment scheme where Vito was caught. Dealing drugs and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which is, it had to have been entrapment or they like, they had to have something had to have been set up. Cause I can't see a boss of a mafia family like dealing drugs [00:34:00] himself. Can you like, from everything I've read in the mo, like they're just not involved in that end of it. And I mean, that's the whole thing is to insulate them from the street level. So they must have in some way set him up. He goes to jail and. But at the same time, another gentleman goes to jail, roughly around the same time, uh, Joe Occi and um, yeah, Joe Vei was like a soldier in the Genovese family for, you know, quite some time. Right? Uh, I think it was, yeah, for a good chunk of his life. Really. Uh, while Joe's in prison though, he becomes like convinced that Vito is trying to kill him. And even at one point, It's hard to say accidentally killed somebody that he thought was a hit man from the DeVito from, uh, that was sent by Vito. But he, uh, he plunged, uh, a, a prisoner to death thinking that he was a hit man. Turned out not to be fearing for his life and probably wanting to get, realizing he's never gonna get outta prison for the rest of his life. So maybe trying to get. You know, a little bit of a [00:35:00] deal, or maybe he just legitimately felt bad about the life that he led. Uh, turned state witness and decides that he's gonna talk about the inner workings of the. Of the mafia. It was the first guy to really break with Erta in any significant fashion. Yeah, it's so, it's so funny that we talk about people who bro, uh, later on much, much later, who break the code of silence. But it was pretty early on in the, in the rise of the mafia where. People broke the, the code and there's always been, you know, what you might call stool pigeons along the way, who dropped stuff, but nothing like Joe Ceci did. And we will get into a whole different thing with, uh, with Joe Ceci in a very soon. Let's wrap up today as we kind of. Cruise into the ending here of at least our overview of the Genovese family. What happens after the demise of Genovese? [00:36:00] He just pretty much just died in prison. And then what happens in, after his fall, Beto dies in jail. He was like, he was kind of running it from jail for a bit. Right? That's, it's remarkable that he wasn't, he wasn't actually so much happened when he was in charge, but. He was only in charge for like a little bit. None of it was good. So, you know what I mean? The gene bes family's like, try to, they come up with this, like this system where, I guess in a sense to ensure that something like Vito, uh, Don Vito doesn't happen again. Really? Or they, they set up like kind of like a ruling panel at first, and then they, they, they take it a little step. They take it a step further or a gentleman by. Philip Lombardo is actually named the boss, but they, they set up the system where they would have the actual boss and then they have the front boss. So, The front boss is the one that the cops and the F B I and the wire tops are supposed to think, are, think is actually running [00:37:00] the thing. Well there's the real boss is behind all of this and this is kind of unique to the Genovese family cuz another family really set up a system like this. It's, it's crazy. They think they'll, I think a lot of them, I think nowadays kind of have a system set up like this. Like I don't think we know. Who's actually in charge of the Colombo family now, and it's been like that for like a regionally long. We know the Colombo family's there, we just have no idea who's in charge of it. Um, so I think they kind of took a cue from the Genovese family, but, uh, it is actually a really kind of brilliant system. If you think about it, cause it's like kind of like a double deception and on top of it, like other than like Joe Velosi, the Genovese family's pretty famous for pretty, like, not many people really have broken erta. Not a lot of people have turned state witness. So it's like this layer on top of layer of secrecy where it just becomes more and more difficult for the authorities to really get [00:38:00] to. The, the beating heart of the, uh, of the syndicate. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. After all of this, it's a one thing, leads to another, leads to another, and we introduce, uh, one of our favorites, Vincent the Chin, Gigante, which was all, he was often called the odd father. And uh, he's another one. We're just gonna crew cruise over him. But, uh, UEI, we're gonna do a whole thing on this guy too. Talk a little bit, just set up the chin a little bit for us. Like, like you pointed out, like the Vince the Shin Gigante is probably one of the most intriguing mafia figures of all time. Um, he becomes like the actual boss and then he, his front boss is, uh, Anthony Fat, Tony Saleno, which is, we're, we'll probably end up doing a whole series on him too. Right? Uh, he. Just the amount of money that Solaro made was just [00:39:00] insane. Insane. Uh, and, uh, yeah, so Vince, Vince the Chin, he'd been around them all for, like, we had talked about 'em just earlier in this episode. You know, like this dude led in a pretty insane life. Like how many guys can say like they shot a mob boss failed at doing it, never got charged. With anything. And then also nobody tried to kill him. And like later on he ends up becoming the boss of that same family, you know, like, uh, taco, about just being lucky. They should have called him that, that should have been his nickname and was like lucky. So he like takes up the secrecy to like, he like ratches it up to 11, like the, you know, like a spinal tap reference. But he really did. Where. Like they had set up this whole system where they had like the front boss and then they had like the actual boss behind the scenes. Like Chin took it a step further where like, yeah, he had like Sono who, who was his front boss, but then he also, he was the actual boss, but he would act insane and he [00:40:00] kept up this act for a really long time. Like, like quite literally just walking around town in bathrobes, like exposing himself, like pissing on the side of the streets. Um, Going to weekly psychiatric meetings, whether you'd have doctors write off that he was like an insane person, uh, taking showers with a suit on. So when, like, if cops came around the house, like he would literally be taking like showers with his suits on and like, even, it fooled a lot of people. I mean, because he kept this act up so well, he should have been an actor, really. Like even some of the mob guys were like, Like we know that he's faking it, but like he can't be this good. Like he's gotta be a little off his rocker. Right. And I've heard different theories where like he actually did have some mental problems and like, so like if when he had to, you know, really ratchet it up, he would just. He would plan it out and then like get off his meds for a little bit. So like, it was kind of like he was acting it, but it was [00:41:00] like being off the meds obviously made it more believable. But it fooled everybody. I mean, even at the Mafia Commission trial, like they, that. Uh, uh, fat Tony Solarno, like he ends up getting involved in all of this and he ends up going to jail for the rest of his life. Um, you know, in just an example of just how powerful like the, the code of emer was in the Genovese family, like Tony Solarno could've been like, I, you guys are going after the bosses, like, I'm. Not the boss. Like, you got this all wrong. Like, I'm just pretending to be the boss. I can give you who the actual boss is, but he never ends up talking. The, the prosecutors and like the, a lot of the people in the F B I and the local law enforcement were fooled. They, they honestly thought Chin was just, just an insane person, but in reality, he was running probably the most powerful crime family in New York. It reminds me of a book in a movie called The Prestige, and the whole thing of that book in the movie was that these [00:42:00] magicians basically completely changed their lives just for the benefit of their magic show. Like their magic tricks relied on them living their entire life's lives. Completely abnormally and not to how they really were. It was two, two twins. I mean, we could get into all of that, but the Chin is an absolute 100% real life example of somebody who always played their role. So that. You always, I think he played it so much that he probably actually did turn into it. I mean, I don't see how you couldn't, or the, um, there, there's so many examples of that sort of thing where to, in order for people to believe you have to, you cannot take the mask off for an instant. And he really pulled that off. And for that, I mean, I hate to say it, but I almost have to commend somebody who, [00:43:00] with the head to. That amount of dedication for sure. Right. I mean, and even like, he would take it up the layers of like, um, security too, or like he, depending on where he was living at the time, like the house was never left alone and that the person's job was to make sure, like it wasn't getting bugged and like, you know, if you were speaking to him, you either had to point to your chin or you had to. Like do a circle with a C in it, you know, just in regular conversation, like, you know, stuff that you would think about like, you know, this is kind of stuff that like teenagers would come up with to be like, secret. But I, yeah, it makes sense. Like it really does make, it would work. Um, it just seems like something like a blue collar criminal type would come up with and be like, oh, just don't see my name. Just spell it on the air with a c or something. Do you know what I mean? Like, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna pretend they'd be crazy this entire time. It was effective, man. Like, it really did, it really did work. And that's why till this day, [00:44:00] like the Genovese family is probably the most powerful family in New York right now. But, you know, that's getting a little ahead of ourselves. Eventually the chin does go down though. Uh, and it's a, it's a really interesting story and they kind of do, the police and the prosecutors do crack his, this facade he puts on of his mental illness and then Gig and Gigante died and. 2005, kind of what's the rest of the story of, you said they're the most powerful family Probably at the time, or as much as we, as we know, and, and just wrapping up because, um, we only have a couple more families left to go. How would you. Compare, what's the flavor of the Genovese family as opposed to some of these other families instead of all the five families? The Genovese family really can't put it in any other way. They just got it right. Like they just got it. You know, like if, how to run [00:45:00] a criminal syndicate, really, uh, like the, the secrecy that they use, like the adhering to erta, uh, Making tons and tons of money. Right. That's the thing with the, we didn't really get into that as much this episode, but we will in later episode. It's just the Genovese family just made so much money, like they were involved in this window installing scheme, which is actually kind of what brought Vincent. See down. At one point they were installing almost 80% of the windows that went in. Any public housing that went in that was built in New York, 80%, I think they were bringing, I think that that scheme alone brought in like 400 million or something. They estimate in terms of just like, you know, doing the racketeering thing, you know, or you know, it's like kickbacks here and kickbacks there and like, I think I saw something like the, the amount of money that it cost install a window in the uni in New York in comparison to other cities was like as astronomically like [00:46:00] by like a factor of a hundred more cost more or something like that. They also didn't like, like, The Genovese family also didn't let internal family squabbles break out into like large civil wars. It just didn't happen. Like if you look at how the Frank Costello and Vito situation, which really easily could have take, could have destroyed the family, really just didn't happen. Where if, and if you compare that to like the other families, just simply. Not the case. Like if you look at the, it just, they just didn't have like a lot of the, like the pitfalls that the other families, like if you look at, say the Gambino family, like especially when John Gotti comes, comes along, it's the flash and the openness is. Pretty ends up, ends up destroying that family. Really. We we're gonna end up doing a series on Gotti. Right. But I don't think there's any denying it in a lot of ways. He, he kind of single-handedly destroyed that family, uh, because of how open he was and, You know, it, it's interesting to contrast maybe, maybe we can do [00:47:00] an episode on that too, where we contrast John Gotti and Vincent Jae, cuz in a lot of ways they're like polar opposites from each other. Where John Gotti was wearing fancy suits. He's out in the public talking to the reporters and Vincent was, you know, pissing in a corner, in a bath roll, acting crazy. Do you know what I, I mean, like, it, it's a totally different kind of approach to criminality or John's like, I know I'm gonna jail. I'm just gonna enjoy my time while I have it. Where Vincent was like, I'm gonna tr I don't know, try not to go to jail. And I mean, I don't think there's any arguing that Vince's a Vince Vincent had chick's approach was much better in terms of the longevity of, of his family, where. I mean, there is something to say with Gotti. It's like, well, you know what? You're gonna go to jail. You might as well have fun before you. You do. I think you see what somebody like, uh, with the Genovese family and the chin, uh, Gigante with the things that they were doing. They were almost, they were in that gray area of. [00:48:00] Yeah, you're, you're installing windows in public housing developments, and it was almost like they were the city and the contractors were just putting that money out to steal. It's like putting a, uh, bag of Skittles in front of your kid. It's a, don't eat the Skittles. It's, it's against the rules, but the, you still left a big bowl of Skittles in front of them, and you, you left the room. And I think with the, with that, That huge money and contracting and contracts. It, it was all about being in that gray zone of legal and illegal, and that's why they made so much more money. And I, you contrast that to the Bono family where I, you know, I like to go back to the example of them breaking open parking meters for quarters. Like that's the spectrum you have there of criminality. You have. People, uh, like chin [00:49:00] Gigante in the gray zone of, uh, multimillion dollar contracts that are illegal but kind of not illegal and all, all the way to just the most low level crime you could possibly imagine. If you look at the Colombo family, right? Like we did an episode on them, right? And it was just constant civil war, really. Like anything, like to fight. Yeah, we're gonna have a war over it, um, throughout its entire history. And then if you, the Lucchese family's the only family that comes close to what the Genovese family was. Uh, I would say too small. Like they never, I don't think they ever brought in the type of revenue that the Genovese family did, but in terms of just running smoothly up until. Vic Gas Pipe completely ruined it. That's probably the closest comparison. And like you had mentioned, the Bono family, right? Like the constant turnover and the leadership of the Bono family. And [00:50:00] then, you know, they also let an F B I agent, like into the inter santum with the family, which is not good, i's gonna say like the Genovese family. In terms of the five families, they're, you know, they're the Ivy League, they're the Harvard, uh, They're the Harvard class out of all the, uh, uh, mafia families in North America. Well, thanks again for joining us. We're cruising through these five families. We're just getting us set up to really d do deep dives into. All of these subjects, so if there's something that you wanna hear more about, definitely reach out to us by email, social media. You can find links to all of that in the show notes and just go and tell a friend so that they can become a friend of ours and we'll talk to you next time. Yeah. See you guys. Uh, I hope you're enjoying these episodes and, uh, forget about it. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and [00:51:00] Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media and how to support the show. Go to our website, A to z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime A to Z history page.com. All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Meet Your Hosts

Steve Guerra is a historian and podcaster who hosts three different shows. He started with the History of the Papacy Podcast in 2013. In 2017, Steve began Beyond the Big Screen, a podcast that delves into the fascinating stories behind films through lively interviews. His newest show, Organized Crime and Punishment, takes a deep dive into the roots, evolution, and impact of organized crime across different cultures and countries.

Mustache Chris is the co-host of Organized Crime and Punishment. He is from the True North, born and bred in Toronto, Canada. Some say he bears a striking resemblance to Gambino Crime Family associate Chris Rosenberg, but we'll leave that up to you.