Organized Crime and Punishment

Title: Meet the Family – The Colombo Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/XWBD8FGosVh Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast, Mustache Chris and Steve take a look into the captivating history and intricate background of the notorious Colombo crime family. From its origins in the early 20th century to its rise as one of New York's most powerful Mafia organizations, we explore the key figures, pivotal events, and inner workings of this influential criminal syndicate. Discover how the family became embroiled in various illicit activities, such as racketeering, gambling, and labor unions, as well as their involvement in high-profile incidents like the "Colombo Wars." Join us as we uncover the dark secrets and fascinating anecdotes that shape the legacy of the Colombo crime family. #ColomboCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #TrueCrime #OrganizedCrime #NewYorkMafia 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. Welcome back to the show. I'm Steve and I am joined by our very own mustache. Chris Mustache, how you doing this fine evening? Oh, I'm doing pretty good myself and I'm pretty excited to talk about the Colombo crime family. It's, uh, it's one of the more wild stories in the mob, like the Bonanno family's pretty wild story with the colombos are are pretty insane. We're pretty much, we're piling on one wild story on top of another here. Now in the, in this episode, [00:01:00] we're continuing our flyover summary of the Five Crime Families of New York, five Families and five episodes. These episodes are the primer that will be a great reference as mustache. Chris and I dive into many of the incredible stories that involve these families and crimes across the United States and beyond. The focus of today's episode is another family with a really unique story. The Colombo family, the colombos, have experienced ups and downs and all throughout their history. And so Chris, what would you say is your really quick, uh, elevator speech, introduction to the Colombo family? What maybe makes them different or unique amongst the organizations we've talked about and will talk about? I'd say out of all the families, the Colombo family is probably the most chaotic and violent semester I could describe it. Um, [00:02:00] you can definitely tell and we'll get into it later. It's definitely the youngest family out of the mall, and it shows in their history. I mean, there's a, there's some, there's some similarities with the Bonanos and the Colombos, but the Bonanos didn't really have the type of civil wars that the Colombos. Had that, uh, we're gonna get into in a little bit, like if I had to pick one word for the Colombo family, or I guess two, it would be violent chaos, right? That's, that's the stage for today. Let's, uh, as we like to always start off, what's, what's the early history of the Colombo family? Where do they come from? Out of all the families, the Colombo family's actually the youngest, uh, out of all, uh, the five major, uh, Uh, New York crime families. Um, actually it got Joe Provac is like, ends up being, he's like gonna be like the, the leader of the family. It's a, we call it the Colombo family now, but at the time it would've been called the [00:03:00] Profaci family when Joe, uh, Profaci was around and, um, Yeah, he was born in Palermo, Sicily where a lot of these guys come from, even still to this day. That's where Laso and Ostra is based in Sicily. So he arrived in New York, but then he, uh, quickly moved to, uh, Chicago where he ran a grocery store. And, uh, but it wasn't successful, so he had to move back to New York. And this is kind of at the time that. And from what I've read, this is where he started kind of getting involved in the local gangs in North America and. So, uh, the, around this time period, it started up in all of the oil importing business. So I guess if any of our audiences have watched The Godfather, I mean, that's probably where they got it from was Joe Provac running a, this olive oil importing business, which I, from my understanding, he just kept it going his entire life. I guess he gave him a little [00:04:00] bit of air of legitimacy and it was, was really successful. Um, yeah, from like everything that I've read and even like for like really hardcore like mafia historians, it's um, a little difficult to understand just how Joe Profaci was able to rise up in the, uh, New York, uh, mafia scene so quickly. Um, He had connections back, back in Sicily. Um, but you know, given that the little amount of experience that he had and kind of just the history that we do know of, like opening up a failed grocery store and importing olive oil, it doesn't really scream to you. Uh, like this guy's gonna be a boss of one of the most powerful crime families in the in, in North America. But somehow he does rise up to the, to the challenge. Can you talk about, uh, after the Casta La Marce war, which we'll eventually get into and discuss more, how does Joe Profaci come to [00:05:00] the, come to the top? Yeah, so like, he, he ran like, um, Basically ran like the gang, like a gang in Brooklyn or what have you. And the, the, the Castle Lamari War broke out. Uh, we're gonna get into it. We talked about it on previous episodes, but at the, you know, uh, Salvator Orano wins, he's quickly killed. Lucky Luciano takes over, Joe Bonano and all that, but, J him, uh, Joe Profaci and Joe Beo had a very close, uh, friendship. So maybe this is also one of the ways that Joe pr, Joe Profaci was able to move up pretty quickly. And the, uh, In the, uh, uh, Italian mafia scene in New York. And, uh, between the two of them, they kind of formed like a conservative wing of the commission, is how I would kind of describe it. Um, plus like, uh, the two of them together, it kept the, so say, just say in theory that the other three families decided to gang up and they wanted to like, take [00:06:00] on say just Joe or just, uh, a bon. They really couldn't do it with Joe Profaci and Joe Bono being tied to the hip the way they were. Uh, so it kind of kept like a balancing, uh, act within the family itself. Within the, uh, commission itself, Joe Profaci, he made most of his money, you know, with the mafia mainstays, you know, racketeering, drug trafficking, loan sharking. Uh, but he actually, he made a, a fortune during the World War II when, like, uh, the demand for olive oil. You know, went through the roof and, you know, he was running an olive oil onboarding business. So, so it really sounds like he could have been just the, he got loaded right guy, right time. Like in everywhere in his legitimate businesses and in his, uh, mafia businesses. Yeah, I would, yeah, I would describe him as lucky in a way. I mean, he was shrewd enough to take advantage of the luck that presented to him. Right. But I mean, in a lot of ways he was kind of a lucky guy. Um, and he made like a [00:07:00] crazy amount of money. Uh, I was. From my research I was reading like he actually moved into like, uh, Teddy Roosevelt's old house in New York, and Joe Profaci also put on like this, this kind of act that he was like a super devout Catholic and I mean he donated to a lot of like the community I guess, but. You know, there was like a push at one point to like get him knighthood by, you know, his friends and family. And the Catholic church was, I think they were thinking about it at one point because he just donated so much to the church. And then, you know, people, you know, smarter people stepped in and be like, yeah, do you not know who this guy is? Do you not like it never happened. But it just shows you like, uh, the amount of influence that he did have. I mean, and that's a really interesting thing because. When somebody is making such boatloads of money from a legitimate enterprise, it's kind of hard to tease out if they really are as criminal as what Joe Profaci [00:08:00] was, uh, especially if it's not completely in the open. I mean, these are still secret societies, but all of this eventual, uh, criminal activity does land Joe into some legal trouble. Yeah, by the 1950s, Josie Lee, he finds himself in like kind of, this is usually how they get a lot of these guys is like income tax invasion and he was facing like potential for deportation. It, it's weird cuz like I was, did you know this, that apparently like even if you make like the money that you make is like illegally obtained, you still have to file it on your income. Yeah. I did not know like I did. Like that's. That seems, that seems kind of crazy, but that's usually how they catch these guys and they, I've never understood this about the guys just pay the taxes. Like they'll still make a ton of money and it'd just be like one less thing you have to worry about. You know what I mean? I guess they just, they just get so greedy, you know? Like they would still make a ton of money and I get like, nobody wants to pay taxes, but you know, you look like this is how they got Al Capone and [00:09:00] this is how they got so-and-so, and this is, you know, there's a pattern here. Just pay, just pay the money. And then, then they don't have a case on that. I just, I've never understood that about these guys. It just seems, I don't know, it just seems like you're playing with the devil with that right. I think there's a bunch of different A, because it is illegal money and then when you launder it, it's a lot of the laundering ways are illegal, so it's really, it's hard to keep even in the best of circumstances and you're a hundred percent above board to stay completely in the right with the tax man. And then you have all these complicated schemes to launder money to move money around. It's almost impossible to not. Be in some way evading taxes. And I mean, let's be honest, like you said, these guys are evading taxes too. Yeah, yeah. No, I guess, yeah, that's take, I just, I don't know. I just think they're. I don't know. Hired like a really smart accountant to [00:10:00] figure it out, you know what I mean? Like just so the government would have a difficult time making this case. But I mean, time and time again it seems to be their go-to is the income tax invasion. I think it's because it is so loose goosey that it's a great entryway ended, ended. Breaking open their books too. Yeah. And it's like, I, I'm from Canada, so like, it's like American tax law is a little, it's, I don't know, it's very, I don't wanna say it's like very different. It's just not something I've really had to deal with. Right. And the changes from like state to state, the way you guys do it and like candidates a little bit more, I mean, we have differences like between provinces and provinces, but like our. Under our taxes. There's a little bit more streamlined I find, and I say, I've heard, like Americans talks about, talk about like tax season, and I'm just, yeah, I don't know. I just get bewildered because it just seems like there's just so much to it.[00:11:00] Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Now Joe, he's at the, the famous Appalachian meeting. How does, and the, the Appalachian meeting is something we will 100% do a much more of a, uh, discussion on. But what, how does Joe come out of this infamous Appalachian meeting? Oh yeah. So like the Appalachian meeting was like this giant meeting put together by Vito Genovese or all these top mo bosses from New York, but like across the entire USA came to have a meeting to discuss, you know, the entire direction of the mob, really. Like, you know, like what's our stance on drug trafficking? What's our stance on this and that. And it was kind of a way for Vito to, I mean the least the way he perceived it was kind of legitimize his, um, His rule, because at the time the Geneveve family was like, by far the most powerful family. So you were kind of like the boss of [00:12:00] bosses type thing, uh, Joe. But it ends up getting broken up. Right? Um, the police, uh, you know, they just start wondering like, why is this guy Joe the barber, like, uh, who. Like kind of rented out the area. They knew that he was kind of a mob guy, and it's like, why are all, like, why is there like 200 of these guys coming all at once? And they saw all these fancy cars coming in and they, they broke it up and uh, Joe found himself, uh, Potentially facing like five years in prison for, uh, attending this meeting. But you know, Joe being, uh, the lucky guy that he was, he ended up doing no time for it. Then we move on to the, probably one of the craziest of crazy things in the Mafia, we bring in another Joe, uh, that we can very easily keep separated from. Joe Profaci. That's crazy. Joe Gallo. Yeah, it's funny you bring in another Jo. I was never telling you when I was writing the notes for this and I was like, just too many Joes. It's like, Joe says this, [00:13:00] Joe. Then there's more Joes coming. Like it's, it's like, just pick a different name guys. Uh, yeah, Joe Profaci, he was like a successful boss, but he also had like a reputation. Um, and it was Wellar, right, for being really cheap to his fellow, fellow family members. Uh, Joe Bono and I, Joe Profaci aren't mustache Petes, but they're. I don't know, like the, kind of like the traditional mafioso. A lot of these guys, they, I don't know, I just do not like them. They just rubbed me the wrong way. He had a reputation for being very cheap and like he also forced like the, uh, uh, the, the guys in his family to like pay like a $25 a month like tax to be part of the family and from. This practice kind of makes sense because in theory it's supposed to be stashed for, you know, in case somebody gets caught or the family finds themselves in like legal problems. It's kind of like an insurance policy really. Right. You know, like you pay in, if you found, you find yourself like [00:14:00] getting caught with, I don't know, trafficking drugs or loan sharking. Okay, this is why you were paying this tax. We're going to use this money to, you know, hire the best lawyers and. But Joe was just like pocketing the money, right? Like, and from my understanding, the rest of the families weren't even, weren't doing this. This was like kind of a practice from back in Sicily and just really pissed off a lot of people in the family and on top of being cheap and hoarding a lot of the money. Um, Yeah, and this is kind of where crazy Joe and his brother, uh, Larry, enter the picture. We have a ton of stuff on Crazy Joe, but really in short it, it joe, it crazy Joe that is Gallo. There are mafia and everything except for name that Joe Crazy. Joe Gallo doesn't get made in all this. He's not even technically in the mafia and he's making a play to be in charge. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of set it up like a [00:15:00] little bit. So like, like Joe and his brother Larry, the, you know, the Gallo crew were very, like, they were loyal to Profaci. They were good money makers, they were good earners, they were good enforcers. Um, And Joe Profaci was having, uh, uh, trouble with this one mobster, um, Frank Abdo, Marco. Yeah. He, he ran like a very successful numbers game and like, uh, you know, legal gambling and stuff like that. Right. Numbers is kind of, I don't know. It's basically the lottery is really what it is, right? Pretty much, yeah. That's basically all it like, but, but back in the day, like doing, like running the lot, it seems crazy now, but back in the day, like running like a lottery was like illegal. And, um, you know, like people would win, you know, you would win sometimes. Like the, the payouts were anything crazy like we see nowadays millions and millions of dollars and stuff like that. Like your guys ga like. Uh, lotteries in the states are insane. Um, close to like almost a, it was like the biggest [00:16:00] one. It's like 500 million or something. I think there was one that was close to a billion dollars, if not more than that. Not too long ago. Yeah. But Frank was refusing to pay the tax to Joe Profaci, and this, the way Joe Profaci saw this was like, you're, you're, it's a slop in the face of the boss of the family, and it's like a disease. It's gonna start spreading to the rest of the guys. And I have to make an. Example out of him, and apparently Joe Profaci ordered Frank to get killed. And it's a little murky exactly what happened. Uh, some say like Joe Gallo did it, and with the understanding that like if he did this hit for Joe Profaci, he would move up in the family and he would actually start getting like a proper payout and he was gonna get, um, you know, Frank's number, uh, Numbers, rackets, and, you know, Frank died. And, you know, let's just say that, let's just go with that story, that that's what actually happened. You know, Joe [00:17:00] Profaci, you know, reneg on, uh, his, uh, agreement with Joe Gallo and Joe Gallo just blows a gasket, and that essentially leads us into the first Colombo war. Yeah, that's really kind of what sets it off is Joe, Joe not treating his soldiers properly and just being greedy. It's really, at the end of the day, all of this could have been avoided if Joe just kind of treated people a bit better and more fairly in terms of financially. I mean, there's a lot we can learn in history from that too, right? Where. People had just been slightly less greedy at different points in history. A lot of the problems that they end up facing later could have been really avoided in terms of, you know, we can think about it, like not paying, uh, you know, not paying your mercenaries pro properly or soldiers properly. Like how many times has that, uh, how many times can we point to history where that's led to, like major problems? And so the how, uh, really quickly to go through this because we'll definitely [00:18:00] address these more specifically in, uh, up in upcoming episodes. How's the first Colombo war wrap up? Oh yeah. So just to kind of give a, go through quickly, uh, Joe Gallo, like kidnapped, uh, high ranking officials in the Colombo family. He almost kids that he was gonna kidnap. Joe Profaci himself that Joe Profaci fled. He stayed in Florida for a bit cuz he was friends with the Santo traffic anti, which is another guy we're gonna get into later. He is, uh, Big time mob person in, in the history of the mob. Um, yeah. And they come to some kind of agreement where like Joe was gonna release 'em and then he ends up doing it. And, but of course, Joe Profaci being the way that Joe Profaci is, um, immediately reneg on the deal and tries to, you know, tries to kill Joe and, uh, Larry. And at this point, it's still really the Profaci family. We [00:19:00] haven't moved. Yeah, it gets backdated to calling it the Colombo's wards, but at this point Colombo is what, where is, uh, another Joe, Joe Colombo. That's like the quick overview of the war. Like Joe Gallo ends up going to jail for like extortion, right? So he's kind of out of the picture for a bit like the Gallo. There's still like the Gallo crew, right? Um, yeah, he goes to jail. Uh, I believe it was like seven years he went to jail for, so he kind of, he's kind of out of the picture. Joe Profaci dies of cancer. Um, I mean, he was pretty, and I think it was in the movie they, that we, uh, talked about, uh, was. They had him like the iron lung machine Oh yeah. Or something that, yeah. But Joe just sends up, you know, pretty, um, unceremoniously, I guess, which just, uh, died of cancer and his underboss Joe, uh, Manco, uh, Takes over the family. Carmine Persico is another guy that we're gonna get into in a little [00:20:00] bit. He, he was originally part of the Gallo crew, and then he like traded, he, um, we betrayed them and joined the Profaci faction of the family. And like, yeah, like he. And then they tried to kill him with like car bombs. So like even well after Joe Gallo goes to jail, like the war's still kind of going on still. And just kind of put in perspective just how crazy this war was. Like the mob always like had a big no-no about car bombs. You just couldn't do it, uh, in the states and was a different story. Um, Just because of like the potential of like, uh, you know, hitting innocent bystanders. And then, uh, Joe Magia, Coco, how many Joes are we up to for. Five now six Joe's, Joe Meley Coco, he's really not cut out for the boss business and they push him out of the way and Joe Colombo takes over. So now we're finally at the Colombo family and that really, um, Leads us into the next [00:21:00] part of the story. Who is this Joe Colombo character? The way, uh, Maggliocco, uh, gets kicked outta the picture. They, the, the commission uncovers a plot that him and Joe Bonno had, where Joe Bonano was gonna try to basically take over the commission and by extension, take over, become like the boss of bosses and failed miserably. Um, Joe Mcco just wasn't. Just wasn't Joe Profaci, he wasn't a remarkably, uh, intelligent individual from everything that I understand. Uh, the commission gets him off though. Lets him go kind of go free. Um, the re one of the reasons, I mean, the reason they the entire plot, um, was uncovered was because Joe Colombo, his, who was working under, uh, Joe Mag Maggliocco, Um, he was supposed to perform one of the hits, but instead he, he went to Carlo Gambino and the rest of the fine families and said like, this is what these guys are up to. So he basically betrayed his boss to become the [00:22:00] boss. Then Colombo Colombo settles the family in a little bit, but then as soon as crazy Joe gets outta jail, it's back on. Yeah. So when Joe ends up becoming boss, he was the youngest, um, boss in, out of the five families at the time. He was, he was only 41 years old. Right. Uh, You know, a lot of these guys even later on, like they're usually pretty old by the time they get to become boss. Right. But it, I guess it was a unique circumstance when Colombo became, um, yeah. When Colombo became, uh, the boss and yeah, he does a pretty good job of actually kind of bringing stability to the family and like a guiding light. Uh, he wasn't like Joe Profaci in the sense of, he wasn't like super greedy and he was kind of a street guy too. He wasn't like the man in the ivory tower. Um, He was on the streets with a lot of these guys. Right. You know, still the boss. Right. But, um, you know, he had a connection with the, some of the, some of the guys who were doing the dirty work in [00:23:00] terms of making money for the family. And, uh, yeah, he actually, he gets an end, he puts an end to the, the, um, the, uh, first Colombo war, but. I mean, as soon as Joe gets out of the jail, he, you know, he goes to Joe Colombo and is like, you know, you gotta pay me. Uh, was he wanted a hundred thousand dollars or something to end the war? And Joe's like, no, I'm not. I'm sorry. Colombos is like, no, I'm not. Are you insane, gonna give you five grand or something like that. And, uh, the way Joe Gallo saw it was like, well, you guys made this piece, but I was in jail. I didn't have anything to do with this. So in my opinion, the war's still going on. Then Joe Colombo, in all this time, he's getting involved in this Italian anti, uh, anti defamation league at, um, that is like an Italian American Civil Rights League and. We'll discuss a lot of this. Was this a fake phenomenon that Joe Colombo was trying to do [00:24:00] to plaster over and give some respectability, or did Joe Colombo really believe this, but whatever the case is, it became kind of a thing. It's weird because like he, he did such a good job of trying to, bringing like stability to the family and then he does something where he sets up the Italian Civil Rights League, which is like, it's, oh, you guys can go on YouTube and you need watch the rallies and, and speeches. It was all over the news. It was a big thing. I mean, one of the reasons, it was a big thing. It was just like, A lot of the unions with the mobs were basically running. Were like, you know, your worker's gotta go, gonna attend this rally, otherwise there's gonna be issues. Right. Um, but it's weird because like I said, he was bringing stability to the family and then he kind of, this kind of comes at a, I don't know, like out of left field really like. It would have like, kind of the opposite effect of all the work that he was trying to do to fix up the problem. Like the mess that Joe Profaci left. Um, cuz it just brings like such a limelight [00:25:00] onto the mob. Right? I, I don't know, like the way I kinda look at it is like he, he saw like how the civil, like the, you know, the civil rights movement was a really good, um, basically weapon that you could turn against the federal government and. Basically like weaponizing, like protesting, like for, you know, to get what you want really. Where maybe his tool might be a better tool. I don't know. Right. But the way I would say is that's the way I think he kind of saw it where it's like, well if I set up this Italian civil rights league and he is like the FBI's coming down on um, US hard, if I can make this like an Italian civil rights issue, I could take the offense to the F B I where they're. You know, they're gonna stop investigating the mob. They're not gonna use words like OSA, Nostra, they're not gonna use the words like the mob and organized crime and association with Italians because it becomes a civil rights issue. And that leads to all the different types [00:26:00] of legal problems and maybe potentially the F B I starts taking a step back, you know, in terms of actually investigating all these issues because, It's just not worth the potential legal ramifications involved in it. You know, I probably not a popular opinion, but if you do look at, uh, what we traditionally think as the Civil Rights movement, right to, um, You know, there was it, you know, it got to the point where even some of the not so good stuff that was going on, going on in it, you know, in terms of like communists and what have you, I don't think that's really even up for debate anymore really. That's not really a controversial position. It's just, I mean, the f b I would try to expose some of this stuff, but you know, it got to the point where it just, it was just the p, it was just such a PR nightmare that they just. Stop doing it. Oh, then I think you put yourself in the place of the, the 19, early 1970s. By that [00:27:00] point, people know the V and this is, we're getting past the Jagar Hoover era, and this is probably going into different, uh, Different, uh, sidetracks and rabbit holes that, uh, we don't wanna spend too much time in. But it was just after the Ed Jer Hoover era, the f b i, where the people were actually starting to see the really ugly abuses that the F B I had done too. Civil rights organizations and all these different groups and people were kind of sick of it. So I think that Joe Colombo, whether it was, you know, what his mix was, I think maybe he believed somewhat in, in the whole civil rights aspect of the Italian American Civil Rights League, but it was also a. Great business move. The more I thought about it, cuz I was like, it's such a bizarre thing in mob history. It's like really, this just kind of just comes outta nowhere, you know what I mean? And then, but it really is, [00:28:00] if it was able to work in terms of like a, like an offensive tool against the F B I, like a, you know, like we're gonna take the attack to them and sort of. Um, always being on the defensive. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Like it really, it could have worked maybe if it happened at a slightly different time. Uh, it could have worked or even somebody, if somebody else was doing it, maybe not. You know Joe Colombo, who's leading it, who was clearly a boss of one of the five families, but like, it really is a brilliant idea. Now, uh, Colombo, he's actually murdered at one of these rallies and it was, Probably at the behest of crazy Joe Gallo, which moves us even further into the second Colombo war. How does the second Colombo war wrap up and what's the new organizational structure that comes out of it? Oh yeah. So like one of the, I believe it was the second, uh, Italian civil rights, [00:29:00] uh, league rally, Joe Colombo was shot by a guy named, uh, Jerome, uh Johnson. He didn't die. I actually didn't die immediately. He was paralyzed and I believe he was like, On, on and off li uh, on and off life support for a couple years, and then he died later. Uh, pretty terrible way to go it if you ask me. Uh, yeah, like you mentioned, like, uh, there's a lot of, a lot of people are convinced that Joe did it, like Joe Gallo, but I mean, there's all different types of theories about. Like who actually did it? I mean, maybe the commission did it, you know, or they, they were sick of this Italian civil rights league and the amount of heat that it was bringing intention and, you know, they did it. Uh, And everyone just assumed that Joe Gallo would've been the one who did it, right? I mean, uh, the guy who did it was, uh, African American and Joe Gallo was pretty famous for, at the time, like working with, uh, African American gangs, which a lot of the other Italian mob guys weren't. [00:30:00] Uh, Really working with, but this guy, I did, uh, Jermaine, uh, Jerome, uh, Jackson. I did a little bit of research on him. He was kind of like a wannabe mobster kind of guy. Like he would hang out at these clubs and stuff like that. So, I don't know. I've heard different things. I've heard people convinced that Joe Gallo did it, or I've heard people say that Joe Gallo probably. Didn't actually do, didn't actually do this. So I mean there's evidence to lend into both perspectives. Now how does the war end up? So when Joe Colombo is, uh, shot and obviously put out a commission, you know, a guy named Joseph Joey Ya Covelli, his name, the acting boss, and. Uh, but he actually waited to, uh, take revenge against, uh, Joe Gallo just because of the amount of, you know, this was on TV when Joe Gallo, um, when Joe Colombo was shot. So there was like a lot of heat on the mob at the time, and he decided it would just not be a good idea to, um, take a [00:31:00] revenge immediately. Um, and like, even like the. The, like the police were had like men following Joe Gallo round. Like that's how much heat there was on the, it's so bizarre to be like, like why would the police care? Or if somebody decided to whack Joe Gallo a career criminal. Like I, but I guess it, it made the, it would make the F B I and like police organizations look bad if they just kind of were letting this chaos just run amuck. Right. That's like, I guess that would be the logic behind it. Um. Maybe because of that. Joe Gallo murder was so flagrant too, right in the middle of Little Italy, and there's so many different connections, so many people have claimed to do it. Uh, the guy from the Irishman, that movie, uh, he claimed to do it. A couple of other people to have done the hit. Yeah, it was such a, I mean, that just brought heat on everybody. [00:32:00] Yeah, so they, well, they waited a year and then they, the Joe, like probably almost like infamous hits in mob history was, you know, shot and killed at his, on his birthday at Umberto's GLM house, which is, from my understanding, it's all open and you can have a, like a meal there. Maybe one day, maybe we'll do like a podcast from there. It's one day or something. Um, I'm sure they probably would've, I'm sure they're sick of people doing it. And I think it's not in the same location. There's something else there now. Oh, okay. They're still in Umberto's clam house, but it's a couple of blocks away. So they, when Joe was killed, uh, Albert Gallo, one of his brothers decided to take revenge and, um, hired like a, hired a hit man, but he ended up killing like not the four people that were supposed to get killed. They were like four innocent people. You know, it's, Just an example, like we're talking about all these civil wars and stuff like that. Like this is the craziness of the Colombo family, and it was like [00:33:00] almost kind of baked into the cake, like right from the get go. And it just continues throughout its entire history. Uh, like at no point does it ever seem to really have like a time to breathe. Um, Yeah. So, uh, Joey Yak, he was like fearing for his life, so he, he fled. He's like, I, I don't want any part of this, right? Uh, um, yeah, but the, the Carmine Persico was gonna end up taking over the job, but then he found himself in trouble and look, get into him. Well, he's gonna have his own series where like he's just, where Joe Profaci was very lucky. Car combine, Persico was probably the exact opposite in terms of like every crime. It seemed like he committed, he ended up getting caught for it. Then Zo Elio, he took over, but he was, he wasn't even in charge for like a year. I think he ended up, he ended up going to jail himself. Right. So you just had like a string of quickly changing bosses, which is just never a good sign for. Anything in terms of like running a nation or a business or an [00:34:00] anything basically really like you need some staab, you need sta. That's the key is you need stability at the top. He, the guy might not have to be, he might not be like the best boss or, but if he's just there and he is ready to like, and he's ready to like, Run the ship somewhat smoothly. It's better than just having a series of, uh, different bosses, especially in quick succession. But a guy named Joey Bocato took over. Uh, he took over for bit. He wasn't actually interested in, uh, being the boss of the Colombo family, but he took over. So like, uh, I'll help kind of fix this a bit. Right. And uh, he was actually able to bring like an end to the, to the, I guess you can say like the second Colombo award, but it depends, like if you're Joey Gallo, the first one never ended. So this has just been going on the whole time. Right. Uh, I would say like it never really did end. Like it was just kind of like a ceasefire and. Just kind of continued, right? And really this whole Carmine Persico era of all [00:35:00] these different bosses and, uh, all these different organizational changes and they're trying to do all these different things. This all leads into the third Colombo war. And we'll try and like, maybe not. Bury ourselves in names in this episode because we can start to sort out these names as we go along into the, into the podcast series on the five families and on individual stories. So what precipitates this third Colombo war bra cono, like as soon as he ends the war, which is they just basically come to the conclusion that, uh, the rest of the Gallo crew, the Genovese family, is just gonna. Take 'em on. And that's it. The Cumbo war's over, which is, I mean, that's pretty fascinating. Uh, I've never really heard too of that happening very often. But, uh, I guess the situation was just so unique and then everyone wanted just the war 10. Yeah, [00:36:00] so he, as soon as that's done, he is like, I'm out. I'm gonna go do my own thing again. While in jail, Carmine Persico was named the boss of the family, and Thomas Debella was named, uh, he was kind of like the guy that was in charge of the, I don't know, the day-to-day operations. Um, And Thomas, he, in the sense Thomas was good, was a good like acting B uh, acting boss cuz he was kind of like the opposite of Joe Gallo and Joe Colombo in the sense like he hated being in the spotlight at all. Like where those two guys were, you know, Joe Gallo was like, you know, hanging out with movie stars and Joe Lumbo was like on TV every day talking about Italian civil rights. You know, he could say, um, so this is something definitely the family, uh, needed. And this is a little kind of like side bit about the family too, where like the, the Gambino family kind of like looked at all this chaos that was happen happening in the Colombo family and just kind of slowly started chipping [00:37:00] away at their rackets. And this is where, I mean, there's many different reasons why the Gambino family ends up becoming like one of the most powerful families. Uh, Uh, if not the most powerful family at one point. Uh, well this is one of the reasons they were kind of chipping away at the Colombo family. Uh, but they were always kind of somewhat close at this time. Yeah. They were chipping, they were like kind of chipping away at their rockets and it's just kind of crazy that Carmine Parco threw all this time period. He is in the early seventies. Pretty much takes over and in different iterations is the, fairly much in control until almost the, almost to up to this day. He dies in 2 20 19, but he still can't seem to bring stability to this organization. Well, it doesn't help when he's finding himself in and outta jail like every couple of years too, right? Like, uh, I'm just going through our notes right [00:38:00] now and it's, you know, he was in jail when he was named Boss and then, you know, the Thomas retired in 1977 cuz he was an older guy and he just, you know, I just bad, oh. It's like, I don't wanna be doing this until, you know, the day I die. So just leave me alone. You know, that like he was released, uh, Carmine was released in 79, but then he ended up just going back to jail in 1981. You know, like, so he is just, he's running the family. Yeah. But like, how well can you run a family just being in and outta prison the entire time? And, you know, I can only imagine trying to run like, You know, a vast, like intricate, uh, uh, mafia family, and you're doing it from prison and you're doing like, you know, people like relaying notes and it's like, bro, I can only imagine like the kind of broken telephone information that that would be getting down to like the average soldier. Like they probably have no idea what's going on. Which probably again, because Perico was so in the can so often, that just, it opened up the feeding [00:39:00] frenzy on their carcass to have other groups like the Gambinos just chipping away at them. Now, how does this whole story wrap up? Uh, like I had mentioned, the Carman Parsco died in, in prison as it were in March of 2019. What happens to this family after that? Yeah, so like, uh, Carmine Persico, he, he got caught up in the big Mafia Commission trial and like we're gonna do a whole series on that. And basically from that point on, just spends the rest of his life in prison. But he, you know, he's dead set that he was gonna run the family from. Prison basically. And he names a guy, uh, Victor Arena, as like the, um, as his acting boss, really. Like he's the boss of the streets. Um, and, but it was, I dunno, from my understanding, like his Carmine had brothers too, so like, Um, Victor was supposed to be kind of a placeholder [00:40:00] until his brother came back. And this is kind of what leads to, um, third Colombo war where, uh, you know, Victor's like, he's the guy in the streets. He's actually running the thing day to day, and he starts seeing, like, Carmine Persico is like, this guy's just losing touch for reality. He's, he's not out here, he doesn't see what's going on. Um, and you know, Victor Arena, he, like, he calls up, uh, Calls for help from his friend, like he was close friends with John Gotti, like, which is the Gambino Cumbo connection they were talking about earlier to, uh, you know, help call like a meeting with the, at the commission where basically they were asking the commissions like, can we just get rid of online Persico? Like, he's gonna be in jail for the rest of his life. He's never gonna get out. Can we just say I'm the boss and let's just be done with it. Um, the commission decided like, You know what, this is an inter-family thing and which is so crazy to me. It's almost like they wanted this to happen [00:41:00] and we're like, what did you think was gonna happen? Like Carmine Perko wasn't gonna hear about like Victor doing this and I, it almost seems like they, they did do it on purpose. So like they can keep the Colombo family week. Um, yeah, they decide like, oh, this is an inter-family thing. I don't want, we don't want anything to do with this. I know Victor Reina decides, you know what, I'm just gonna call a, like a, a vote with the capos themselves, ordered his, uh, under boss to, you know, go collect the, the votes from the capos and. The one couple that he, uh, his underboss that he told to go collect the votes, he ends up telling Kamar Persico that like Victor Arena is trying to pull a coop and carma in Persico blows a gasket. And then, so let's, uh, let's wrap up the story for today as we're cruising to the end. What's pretty much the end of the story for the Colombos? Oh yeah, so this is like kind of known as like the third Colombo war, and it's, [00:42:00] it's a big one, right? There's a lot of dead bodies, there's a lot of missing people, a lot of kidnapping. It's uh, it's actually more violent than the previous two Colombo wars that we had talked about. So like within like, I don't know, what would you say? Like 30, 30 years has been three civil wars within this family. And pretty much two that never really ended, like the first civil war, Colombo War really let bled into the second one. 12 people we know for sure were killed. Like two people were like innocent bystanders. 18 people went missing. So just assumed that those people were dead and like by the end of it, like by the end of this war. 42 members of the Carmine Persico faction went to jail. 14 members of the arena faction went to jail. And I mean like Carmine's running this war out of jail. You know, like what makes me think is like, what are, what are the authorities doing? You know, like they must know that he's doing this in [00:43:00] jail. They must have some kind of idea cuz it's a war. Like you figure people would be coming in and outta there all the time, like, You know, like, I don't know, I just think you would get something on tape or what have you. But basically like the war ends because Vic or Reno goes to jail for, you know, the typical mafia crimes, you know, racketeering, uh, drug trafficking in loan sharking. And that's pretty much the, I'm mean, the, the end of the story really is the, it, it all wraps up as just the insanity of this family that. They just cannot seem to hold it together and just be criminals, basically. Like they're constantly fighting amongst each the each other. Yeah. Like, uh, I mean the Persico, I guess was Yeah, was in charge of the family up until like the day he died. Like he pointed out. It was like 2000 wasn't that long ago. Right. Um, you know, and like even that third [00:44:00] war, I mean, it just kind of, I mean, it ended just cuz everyone went to jail. Like it wouldn't, you know, who knows how long it would've just kept on going if people, not everyone had gone to jail. Um, but like we had talked about the colom, I mean the Bono family and like the Bono family had its problems, obviously. Right. You know, like Donny Brasco, like changing leadership and um, like a sequence of bosses. But in terms of. This all like full on like civil war that went on in the Colombo family. It's very unique. Like the Lucchese family didn't really have this type of problem and they ended up having like their, their own problems with psychopaths, like, you know, Anthony Castle and Victor Muo. But you know, you look at the Geneve family and it's like, yeah, they would have, they had like some internal conflict and. You know, the Gambino family too, but nothing, nothing remotely close to what went on in the Colombo family. I mean, it makes it a fascinating read cuz it's, it kind of does read like what you [00:45:00] see, you know, kind of in like cheap, cheesy, uh, bee Hollywood movies about the mob or like, you know, They're all killing each other and it's just constant civil war. I mean, that was the Club o family though, in a lot of ways from pretty much, you know, from, you know, I guess the latter half of Joe Profacis career onward, it just never stopped. And so that's where we're gonna put a pin on it. And for this episode, look for more of these five epi, five families and five episodes, and then definitely look forward to, as we deep dive into a lot of these topics, especially the topics we talked today, will also look into films and movies that depicted these events because that's almost as interesting as the events themselves, some of these films that were made about people like Joe Gallo. So I definitely hope. But people stick around and give us a try. If you like what you're hearing, leave Apple Podcast reviews, reviews wherever you [00:46:00] go. And tell a friend. Tell a friend so that they can become friends of ours too. Yeah. I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode. I had fun researching it and. You know, it's, I knew the Colombo family was crazy. I just didn't realize how crazy it was when you start putting it all in perspective. But yeah, you know, make sure you listen to the next episode. 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.

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.

Title: Meet the Families – The Bonanno Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/56fj9ZeNboz Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the intriguing history and notorious exploits of the Bonanno Crime Family, one of the most prominent Mafia families in American history. Join us as we peel back the layers of secrecy and explore the rise, power, and eventual downfall of this formidable criminal organization. From their roots in Sicily to their establishment in New York City and beyond, we examine the inner workings of the Bonanno Crime Family, highlighting key figures, pivotal events, and their impact on the underworld. Get ready for an immersive journey into the dark underbelly of organized crime. #BonannoCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #Mobsters #Gangsters #UnderworldChronicles #CriminalEmpires #MafiaWars #PowerStruggles #IllegalActivities #PodcastEpisode #CrimeFamilies #MobHistory #MafiaLegends #ProhibitionEra #TurfWars #FBIInfiltration #TrueCrimePodcast #MobPodcast 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. Thanks for joining Mustache, Chris and I again, as we talk about history, the mafia and crime, and we are still taking on our Five families in five episodes and these episodes, we're going to do a high flyover summary of each of the five major families. Of the New York City mafia. These episodes will be a great reference as we dive into the many fascinating stories of organized crime in the mafia, in the United States and beyond. And I really suggest one as we go forward into our more deep dive episodes as you come back and listen [00:01:00] to these ones to get yourself, uh, reacquainted with the families we're talking about, and just for good old fashioned fun. But today we're going to look at the background of one of the most fascinating and colorful families in the history of organized crime, the Bonanno family, and I think at, probably in the course of this whole series, the Bonannos will probably be, they'll get. Maybe not the most of tension, but they're gonna get a lot of attention now. Mustache. Overall, what would you say is the main theme of the Bono family, and maybe how would you describe them? We'll give you a trick question. How would you describe the Bono family in one or two words? Dirty and violent. Those, it would be the two I would describe, uh, the Bono family, cuz it, a lot of it, a lot of the stuff they're involved in was like the dirtier side of the mob, the drug trafficking. And uh, I mean they had some of the most ruthless, uh, [00:02:00] killers in the history of the mob too. Dirty and violent. I mean, and that was, um, uh, we previously talked, we had talked about the movie Donny Brasco and, um, And th that's one thing that Donnie Brasco really kind of, kind of captured about the Bono family. It was just the type of crimes and stuff they were doing was just very, just dirty work. Yeah. I think you, in this episode, when you, whenever we talk about the Bono family, wipe the slate clean of all this, the Godfather with the honor and the family and all that stuff, J, it all goes out the window with the Bonanos and we can really just, Start at the beginning, where'd the Bono family come from? Oh yeah. So the origins of the Bono family, they're, they're one of the old, the oldest families actually in the New York mafia. They, their origins is in Castle Amari Delk. And, um, Which is a famous region in Sicily. It's where a lot of these, uh, mobsters that em ended up immigrating to the United [00:03:00] States, uh, came from. And the head of this family was Giuseppe Pepe Bono, who's actually, you know, this is where Joe Bono famous Joe Bonano gets his, uh, Name from, uh, right off the bat, they're already getting their tendrils into places outside of New York. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it, this is like the origins, origins of the family. So it all, it all starts in Sicily. And one of that's the one more interesting things about the Manto family is the fact that, uh, out of all the five families, they're definitely the most Sicilian out of all the five families. They, they're the ones with the closest ties. Throughout its entire history that, going back to Sicily, I mean, this is, we'll get into the drug trafficking and, um, the connections are right there from the very get-go. Like, uh, s Stephan o Mandino, who was the boss of the, uh, and he was also, he was close to, uh, Joe Bono too. [00:04:00] And this is where he comes from too, right? He was the boss of the, uh, Buffalo family. Yeah, we're gonna just, uh, that's a theme that'll keep developing throughout this episode is that the, the bonanos are probably the most connected into Italy for better and for worse. It's, uh, very interesting. Now we are, we'll talk more in detail in other episodes about the Casta Lamar war, but, uh, it's the, the Casta Lamar War is really the origin story for all of these five families. Where did the Bonanos stand in that? Oh, okay. Yeah. So the Castle Lamari War was just to give like a kind of a light overview. It was, there was the Castle Lamari, uh, gangs in New York. Right. And this is like, quite literally, this is a lot of these gangs. They came from that region. That's why they were called that. Uh, and then there was Joe, the boss, who practically ran New York as like the cop. Who would they. Copy. [00:05:00] Basically, like before the title he, he ran New York. Right. Uh, but there was like a brewing conflict between uh, these two factions. And you know, when we get into, we're gonna do like a series on this war just cuz it was so important. Uh, there was like an older, younger generation part to it too. And there was a guy named, uh, Cola, who, uh, I'm trying to, I can't seem to remember his last name right now, but he initially was the leader of the cast lamari faction that was fighting against, uh, Joe the boss. But pretty quickly he. Wasn't cut out for the job. And, uh, one of the most famous mon uh, mobs, salvatory, uh, Marzano came directly from Sicily to lead this conflict against, uh, the Joe Deba and the Mare clan, I guess you could call them Maer faction. And, uh, very briefly, how does the bonanno faction, uh, crime family [00:06:00] come out of this war? Like I said, and Chris has said, we're gonna get into this war big time, but, uh, just to move the story forward a little bit with the Bonannos, how does, how do they work out of this? Okay, so Joe, the, uh, Joe Bonano was like, he was very close to the Salvatory, uh, Marzano. Um, if you read in his book, the Man of Honor, he talks very glowingly about Marzano, um, at the, you know, so to skip to the end, Marzano wins the war, but it's like a pure victory and he's only in charge for a little bit, uh, quite quickly. Lucky Luciano and, uh, Uh, others turn on Marzano, they kill him and. This is where it gets a little iffy with Joe Bono or Joe claims. He didn't know anything about what was gonna happen to Marino, but it's interesting because he ends up becoming the youngest boss to rule a family. He was [00:07:00] 26 at the time when he became the Bon boss of the the Bono family, which is basically just a continuation of the Marzano family. It just, he just, Changed the name or, or just became the Bono family. I personally think Joe knew what was gonna happen. He just didn't say anything. And cuz he saw, well, you know, I'm gonna benefit from this. Right? I mean, and in his defense, I don't know, what was he gonna do, like fight another war? Right. I think there was a general agreement amongst pretty much everybody that the, uh, trying to avoid a, another one of these big mafia wars that spanned across the entire United States and. A lot of ways was not a good, was, uh, was probably a good thing to avoid. He seemed to have had his foot. He was one of the young Turks, like, uh, lucky Luciano. But he also had a lot of characteristics of these old mustache Petes, or the quote unquote old timers, even though they weren't that old Joe the [00:08:00] boss, mere and, uh, Marzano, they weren't that old, but compare an attitude. They were a lot different than the young. Up in comers. Yeah. We'll, like, we'll get into it a little because we're gonna talk about Joe a bit. Um. Yeah, Joe, he's a, I don't know, he is an interesting guy. Like there's some ways like he is, I don't know, like if you read his book, he, he believes he is like a very traditionalist, like conservative, like if you read Joe's book, and this is kind of like what you would think, like, I don't know, Al Pacino from The Godfather would write about his life or something like that. Like it's not really reality. I mean, he was like a part of the conservative faction of the, the commission, but. In a lot of ways he wasn't really conservative. We'll get into that in a little bit. So let's talk about the Joe Bonano era. Joe Bonano, like regardless of what my personal opinions about him is, was a very successful mafia boss. Right. And, uh, like I pointed out [00:09:00] early, it came to the conclusion like, it probably best that we avoid one of these big wars. And, uh, bono kind of, he ran the family, uh, Like a little bit more, a little differently than like the kind of the other families. Like there was a strong emphasis on family ties and he did try to run it where he was seen as like the father figure and, you know, he made his money with the mafia mate, stays playing the numbers, uh, loan sharking, ex, you know, extortion. Um, and you also like had a big part in expanding the Bono family. This is, or. Like Joe Bono was the, was the guy that expanded the. The Bono family into Canada and, and, and in particular Montreal. And in a lot of ways he tried to bring like, kind of, uh, how the, uh, Sicilians would run the, their mafia and Sicily. He tried to bring that over into the, uh, bono family over here in the United States. And I, I, [00:10:00] I believe it in some ways it had, uh, lasting effects, obviously for the rest of the history of the Bonno family. What were some of their, uh, what did the, the sort of, uh, scams and crimes that Joe Bono, Joe Bananas got in, got the family into. Oh, like this is like, you know, like the typical kind of mafia fair or whatever. Right. Um, I mean, this is the relatively early in his rain, but like later on he, he's gonna get the, the Bono family's really hardcore into, um, Drug trafficking. Right. He'll deny it up and down. His son will say, oh, I didn't know anything about it and I, they're all lying. Right? But, uh, because that was one of the unique things about the Bono family is they dealt drugs and. They didn't bother trying to cover it up as opposed to a lot of these other families where they tried to, I don't know, at least keep kind of a distance to it. Um, yeah. And then Joe also had like a very strong [00:11:00] alliance with uh, Joe Profaci. And I was saying to you earlier this week, I don't think I'm like, they're not allowed to use the name Joe anymore. I was just writing notes for this. And it's literally Joe, Joe, Joe and Joe. And Joe and Joe. And another Joe. Um, and yeah, they kind of made off like the, um, the conservative wing of the, uh, commission system, but it was a little bit like more important than that. Like with those two, like kind of tied to de together, it kept like a balance of power within the commission where. It's just if like the Genovese Lucchese and the Gambino families decided like, oh, we're just gonna move in on Bono, or we're just gonna move in on Perfa, they couldn't do it right, because with the two of them connected, uh, so closely, it uh, pretty much assured that the, uh, that the commission system worked the way it was supposed to. It's pretty amazing, um, that this idea, the commission, it really did keep the mafia [00:12:00] stable for a long time. That these wars, they never were able to get two families together to knock out a third or, you know, it kept a, a situation of five families from totally cannibalizing each other, which is pretty amazing. The other thing I find amazing is that, um, How could the, how could the bonos ever say that they weren't into drugs? When the whole thing of that time period, the drugs were coming from Sicily and they were the most closely associated with Sicily. I mean, it's, it's absurd to say otherwise. Because Joe Bonano is, I, I, I don't know. I suggest to the audience just read his book, A Man of Honor. It's interesting, but it'll make you like kind of understand people like crazy Joe Gallo and some of these other guys that were really just sick and tired of these bosses cuz they were just. He's so full of crap. Sorry, for lack of a better word. Right? Like kind of [00:13:00] delusional about like what they, what they actually were. Yeah. But like, I guess kind of get back to the narrative was like, so Joe Provac dies. We're gonna do an episode on the Colombos. We're gonna talk a lot about Profaci. He's probably gonna get his own series too, cuz he is such an important mob boss. Uh, Joe Profaci dies and it kind of throws the balance of power outta whack and the, uh, In the commission there, Joe Bono kind of fearing that the other families were gonna gang up on him cuz a lot of 'em, they didn't like him really personally. They didn't like him personally, and they didn't like him and Joe and the way they were running things. He decides that he's gonna strike out first. So he comes out with the scheme with, uh, uh, Joe Profacis. Underboss, Manco. They're gonna strike out first and um, they get caught basically. And the, one of the reasons they get caught is, Joe, uh, uh, his underboss, who was Joe Colombo, rats them out saying like, oh, they're gonna come and get kill you, uh, Carlo Gambino and [00:14:00] Joe Flees, uh, to Montreal, cuz that's just the type of person Joe is. And leaves, uh, uh, uh, Maggliocco to. Deal with the commission by himself. Surprisingly, the commission shows a, a fair amount of restraint. They're like, they don't kill him. They tell him he has to put a, I think it was a couple grand, 50 grand fine, and that was it. He was just, wasn't allowed to be any, had anything to do with organized crime anymore. I think part of it was that he was kind of old and they both knew that. Joe was the one that actually came up with this idea and he was the real brains behind the operation. So Joe flees to Montreal. He actually goes to prison in Canada for a little bit. Um, and then when he comes back to New York, he claims that he got kid, he was kidnapped. Uh, I don't know, there's a little debate about what actually happened there, but to kind of speed things along, [00:15:00] Joe ends up having a heart attack. And offers to, uh, step down basically. And we should probably mention, and we'll review this along the way, is that the commission is this group of the leaders of the five families. And it's supposedly, at least if there's any sort of inter-family problems that they take it to, uh, this meeting or standing body of mob leaders that will. In some way iron out the problem. And so theoretically one mafia boss couldn't whack another person in another family or the boss or anything like that without going through the commission. And that's another thing that just shockingly worked pretty well for a long time. Yeah, I like shock, especially when you're, you start getting into like the type of personalities that you're dealing with. You're not dealing with like the most well-adjusted individuals, you know what I mean? Like, we're dealing with, [00:16:00] you know, sometimes borderline serial killers and psychopaths and narcissistic personalities. And so it ran really well for a really long time. I actually, sorry, I, we gotta back up just a little bit. Um. Yeah. So when Joe got kidnapped, a lot of the people in the Bono family, they kind of felt abandoned by Joe. He wasn't really around. He had like fled to Montreal, like before getting kidnapped. And there the, there's a war that breaks out called the, uh, the first they called the Banana War because that was Joe's nickname that nobody ever said it to his face, but they used to call him Joe Bananas. And, uh, it's uh, between, People who were loyal to uh, uh, bill Bono and um, The people who were, uh, supporting the new upstart, Casper Corio. And this goes on for quite some time actually. It's a, a fairly big war, like from, it's one of the first like internal family wars that I am I, that I'm [00:17:00] aware of. The war ends. Like I pointed out, Joe has a, has a heart attack and he basically offers to step down and the commission agrees and they say, okay, well you gotta move to Arizona and you're not allowed to come to New York anymore. And. That's that Steve, here again, we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows. Go to Paron podcast to learn more. And now here is a quick word from our sponsors. What's the power situation in the Bono family at this point? Oh, so, okay. They go through like a series of bosses after Joe. This is where the kind of the chaotic factor of the Bono family starts coming in. Like once Joe's out of the picture and it's like a series of bosses. Na [00:18:00] uh. Was another guy he took over. He died pretty quickly of natural causes, cuz they were, these were like old men I guess in the sense they were thinking like we put like an old guy in charge who'll bring some kind of stability to the family cuz they're, I don't know, they, you know, they've seen a lot of things. They're wise, it makes sense, right? But then there's a point where it's like maybe they're too old. You know what I mean? It doesn't help like if they're just dying after two or three years, cuz that's not stable at all either. Right. But like, kind of put this in perspective though, for the Bono family, just how crazy, like a couple years were like, you know, he went from having Joe trying to like basically overthrow the commission that led to a civil war. That led to Joe like fleeing the country to like stepping down to going through three bosses with all in the span of a couple years. Now, if you're like a, a coppo or like a street guy who, like, who are you supposed to be loyal to and um, Like exactly [00:19:00] what are you supposed to do? Well, then you also have to remember in the the mafia hierarchy you have these, the, the next level of management, so to speak, the capos, they're all hungry to become bosses themselves, so you're kind of like, you're trying to wrangle sharks basically. It's kind of like the, like the, the, the barracks emperors, I guess during Roman Empire, right? Where the emperors had to be afraid of their own generals. Cause I mean, a lot of the times they'd be the ones like doing them in and then eventually they, they switched up how that system worked later on. But it's, it is very, Very similar. You know, like this week I'd been think I'd been reading a bit about Roman and, and researching Mafia too, and a lot of similarities in kind of how their societies ran. So if we look at it in this way that Joe Bono, bono gets us, he's basically the boss through. The formative years of the mafia all the [00:20:00] way into the golden era of the sixties and into the seventies. He's out of the picture. And then we have this next, uh, group that you think we're getting stability and we're not with the Philip Relli, rusty Roselli and Carmine Galante era, rusty Elli, who's, uh, In some ways they were kind of like joint rulers, not by choice. It just kind of happened that way. Yeah. Rusty was named, uh, head of the Bono family in the 1974. He set up a pretty brilliant racket, actually was lu with lunch wagon. So kind of what you think like, uh, You know, like lunch trucks showing up to like factories and stuff like that. And I dunno, he'd be selling sandwiches and stuff like that over there, but he'd be also doing the gambling and drugs and, you know, numbers and, um, so he had like a whole rocket set up of these lunch trucks. And it's a, it's pretty brilliant cuz most of this type of business is, it [00:21:00] doesn't require, there's not like contracts at, at least at this time, it's probably different now, but at the time, you know, You're not getting involved in like government contracts. It's all cash. It's, you know what I mean? It's probably a lot of guys that you maybe grew up personally. Right. That's another thing with these, with the mafia family, like a lot of these guys don't leave very far from where they're born. So a lot of these people that they're doing business with, they probably grew up with, went to high school with, know their parents, their brothers or sisters. It really sounds like typical classical mafia stuff. Out of the lunch trucks you run. Numbers you run, you know, just a, you have a facade of a legitimate business and then you have all these side scams that just basically they get away with. Yeah. The lunch truck scam was like a Bono maizee. When we get to Joe Massino, that's. Kind of how he made a big chunk of his money. He was running these lunch trucks. Uh, but Rusty Relli is all he was plagued with. [00:22:00] He was just very un unlikely, unlucky in comparison to other mobs, like mob guys like cuz. Within a year of being named boss, he was thrown to jail. So that there's another thing like, well, finally we have this new boss and he seems to be smart and he knows what he's doing. Within a year. He is, he's in jail. And this is probably a good time to bring in the zips thereof, almost a parallel organization inside of the bons. Yeah. So the, the whole zip, uh, situation, actually just kind of back it up a little bit, um, Joe Bonano was close to another gangster, uh, Carmine Galante. Right. And he actually was with Joe Bonano when they intended this famous meeting that happened in, uh, that actually happened in Sicily, where a lot of the, the drug trafficking, uh, details and the contracts and, uh, was gonna go down and. Carmine Galle is a, is a pretty, he was a pretty [00:23:00] interesting character. Uh, absolutely psychotic in my opinion. Like probably the most psychotic, uh, person I've uh, ever read about in the mob. Uh, you know, this guy like shot and killed police officers. You know, uh, just to give you an example, um, Yeah. So when Joe talk, like Joe Bono talks about like not knowing about the drug trafficking, well, he talks about this trip in Sicily and says, oh, you know, I went to go see where my grandparents were from and you know, like, I went to go see sightseeing when in actuality it's like, no, he was just setting up the drug trafficking, uh, connections. Lucky Luciano was at this meeting also, and, and this is really where they make these really. Deep connections with bringing over straight up Sicilian Coza Nostra guys to become members of the, to fill in the ranks, so to speak, of the bons. But they don't even, they don't really integrate with the, uh, [00:24:00] Italian American mafia really form their own body. You might call it. Yeah, really. Uh, so Carmine Galante, uh, well, he wasn't the only one. The zips were, there was an agreement that at this meeting that the, the Sicilians would come to the United States and they'd help with driving trafficking drugs. Uh, Enforcing and Carmine Galante was all for it, right? Because he saw an opportunity of like being able to create his own personal army that was separate from the American mafia. Carmine Galante too, also spent time in Montreal, where this is what, where the. The system kind of worked. It was like the drugs would get manufactured in Sicily and then they would get shipped to Montreal and, you know, different parts of Canada. Like some of it would just get shipped right to the States. But a big hub was in Montreal, and then from Montreal the drugs would go into New York. Right. And there was a, you know, there was good reasons for it. And Canada doesn't have a strict [00:25:00] drug drug laws as, uh, the United States. Um, And a lot of these zips would be the ones kind of at least helping facilitate this process. Uh, to put it in perspective, like when Carmine Glan was in Montreal and we're talking like, you know, pretty like 1960s at this time, like late 19, he made like 50 million from trafficking drugs and like gambling and, you know, kind of lone sharking. But a big, big chunk of it was just, um, Trafficking drugs, 50 million at that time. It's just insane. And you can't discount Montreal either. How it's such a key transit point. So much stuff comes into the port of Montreal. And yeah, a lot of stuff came into the port of New York, but Montreal, uh, Montreal was sort of a, a, a choke point that if the mafia got control of that, they could control a lot of distribution from there. Easy [00:26:00] distribution too. Things could go down the St. Lawrence and get into the central part of the US and Canada really easily, or through road traffic when customs and, uh, immigration wasn't so strict. You know, trucks could flow from Canada into the US and back and forth and it wasn't a, a big deal at all. You know, not that nowhere near the security that there is now. Oh yeah, for sure. Right. Uh, yeah, just this, like the Americans called these people zips that they were not very, uh, happy, uh, like we wouldn't say it to their face, right? Cuz a lot of these guys were just stone called killers. It was a derogatory term. Like I, I, I don't know, I don't speak Sicilian. I don't personally really know anybody that speaks to Simian, but apparently these guys spoke. I guess the Sicilian that they spoke was like very fast, and that's why they called it zip. Um, I don't even know at this time how many, I'm sure a lot of American mob guys [00:27:00] spoke. Italian spoke like Sy, like the is Simian dialect, but there's probably a lot of them where it was not, it was like definitely their second language used to call. Yeah, they used to call 'em like grease balls and like all types of drugs. A lot of them, the, a lot of the American guys even within the BANO fam were not very happy having these zips over here and for like justified reasons too. Like in Sicily, the way things are done is just different than the way they had been doing for. Things in America, right? Like the Sicilians don't care. Like they'll just use car bombs. They don't like, they'll kill cops. They'll have violence support like, like spill out on the streets, where a lot of these American mafia guys, they just saw them as like lunatics and like not. Not understanding what, like, no, this is, this is not how we do it in New York, but we don't shoot cops. We don't use car bombs. We don't, we try to keep the violence in house as much as possible. We'll talk about this a lot more the, [00:28:00] I feel like a lot of the points in this episode of, we could probably, if this was in writing, we'd have a hyperlink to the next episode where we talk about these things. But we're gonna talk a lot about this, and we've talked about the. Death of Carmine Gale, and we will be hearing about him again and again. But what's the short story to get people's mindset on? How did, what were the circumstances around Carmine Gale's death? Yeah, so when Rusty was in jail, Carmine Gale kind of made himself boss of the Bon Bernardo family. Uh, even though he really wasn't, I mean, he had an incredible amount of wealth that we. Had just talked about. Right. So I mean, it makes sense, right? And he was extremely ruthless. But the thing with Carmine Glancy is he just, he didn't make any friends without, with anybody else in the commission or even within his own family. He just wasn't well liked. He was greedy. He was, uh, Petty was ruthless. Um, he basically just tried to [00:29:00] do his own thing and as we'll learn quickly as we start talking about a lot of these characters, the, the type of guys that try to go outside of the commission or try to play by their own rules, there's a self-correcting mechanism and the commission, that's why it lasted as long as it did. Effectively, right, because to take care of these types of people. Yeah. So Carman, galante wa gets killed with the approval of the commission. Uh, you can actually look at a photo of, uh, the, the death. He actually has a cigar in his mouth. It's, it's pretty gruesome. So if you're, you know, squeamish about that type of stuff, I wouldn't suggest looking at it, but it's, it's a cool part of, uh, history. Now that Carmen Galante is out of the way, now we move into our next phase where, uh, uh, rusty Elli is in charge, and things get very bleak in this period. What happens next when Carmine is killed? The, uh, Rusty's back in charge, right? He's in jail like. Believe at this. I think he was outta jail [00:30:00] for a couple years and he got thrown back in jail. Uh, he effectively spent his entire tenure as boss in jail. I know that sounds crazy, but I mean, it would, it lends to just the craziness of the Bono family and how disorganized it was in comparison to the other, in comparison to some of the other families. Yeah. But the Bono family kind of splits into two factions after Carmine Galante is dead, there's like a Sicilian faction read, but let. By, uh, Alfonso in Delicato. His, his name is Sunny Red, and there's a faction that's loyal to Rusty Elli, which is led by the likes of Joe Massino and Sonny Black, who are, uh, Sonny Black's famous for, and lefty lefty ruggiero's in this group too, they're famous for the, in the movie Johnny Nebraska. Uh, so. Joe Massino gets information that the Sicilian faction is going to [00:31:00] try to take out the Rusty Elli faction and take the family away from Rusty Elli. Joe Massino, uh, brings this information to the commission and you know, Paul Castellano tells him, you know, take care of it right away, right? So he gets approval to take out these three capos, which is probably one of the most famous, uh, Murders in the history of the mafia. It feels like we've talked about this so many times, but we're gonna do an episode just on these three murders cuz it, it's a big subject and we, we'd probably talk an hour about just these three murders alone. Probably do a series on it just cuz of all the different characters. Be honest with you. Uh. But, you know, short story, uh, short the, uh, the Sicilian fashion's taken out, and Philip Elli is in charge, and Joe Massino is kind of like the acting boss. You have this, this murder of the three capos. It has [00:32:00] so many different threads of the mafia all get woven into this one story. It's really, uh, I, I, I think it's one of those things in history when you read history and it's like, wow, this is really exciting stuff. Like when you can see that. Everything that you've been reading and you read a little bit here and you read a little bit there and it's like, holy smokes. They all tie back into this one event. And I think in the mafia, that one event is the murder of the three capos. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely right up there. Right? It's like up, up there at the Castle Artery War, the three Coppos. Um, Those are the, like the two two kind of like right off the top of my head is the like really, really, really important moments in the New York Mafia history. Yeah. During this entire time, we're not gonna kind of get into this cuz that's such a big subject, but like during the three Kapo murders and Rusty's in jail, and this is silly faction and the loyalist, uh, to Relli, like, this [00:33:00] is when, uh, operation Don Nebraska was going on. This entire time. Right. Uh, which is made famous in Joe Pistone's book, but also the movie and. You know, you can, Joe, he does, uh, uh, interviews and stuff like that once in a while so he can check out, uh, some of the interesting stories he has about his, uh, time as an undercover agent. Once Joe does, uh, come out, this leads to kind of like the, the darkest period, at least the. The, the lowest, the low for the, uh, Bonanno family. Like the Bono family just gets kicked outta the commission cuz the way the rest of the commission looks at it. Like, we can't trust these people. They had like an undercover F B I agent that they were pushing to get made into the family and they just kicked them out. I mean, it was kind of a blessing in disguise as we'll. Get into it a little, well, I guess I can say right now, like, you know, later in the eighties, you know, uh, Rudy Giuliani, which is, it'd be interesting and maybe one day, [00:34:00] you know, down the road we'd do a series on him cuz he's such an important character, especially in later mob history. He leads the commission trial and, but the Bono families actually kind of spared the worst of it because te they weren't technically part of the commission. They were kind of like a wild card, really. Yeah, you could really say they weren't in the mafia anymore or they weren't in the American Mafia because the American Mafia is this highly regulated entity run by the commission. Yeah, and I mean even like, even like before Joe, the rest of the families must have looked at like just kind of the craziness that was going on the Bonanno family in terms of like the, the zips and the drug trafficking, like the multiple changes of bosses and just the, the complete nutter chaos after Joe Bono and even Joe, even during Joe's tenure, he tried to take out the commission. I could even before Joe Pito and I can kind of see the commission going like, yeah. You know what, guys? I don't, [00:35:00] I don't really want to talk about like the, the inner sanctum, the holies or the holies or whatever, you know, like the inner inner workings with you guys, cuz like this is nuts. Like, you guys gotta figure this out. Maybe we can talk later. And then, uh, we're put, putting aside totally the whole, the sixth family, the Montreal Mafia under Vito Zuto, which was very closely tied in with the Bonanos. And we really won't talk about them very much today. But that's another thing to keep in your mind, is that there's this whole other organization in Montreal. Very closely aligned in all of the happenings of the bons, but really their own separate thing. Get us into the, uh, as we're wrapping up today, that basically what you might call the post Donny Brasco era of the Bonanno family. Yeah. The po Yeah. Post Donny, Nebraska kind of post-mission trial, sort of like, uh, so Rusty Elli dies in, uh, 1991 [00:36:00] and Joe Massino ends up becoming boss. Right. Uh, I, Joe, I, Joe Massino played his courage, right? In this entire situation. I'm sure there was a lot of people in his ear telling him like, why don't you become boss? So just do it like Rusty's. He's never getting outta jail. He is an old, old man. But Joe, I think he did the right thing, like he. Was practically the acting boss, but you know, he showed enough reference to the traditional rules knowing that if he just, you know, kind of took over the boss position. I think in the back of his mind he was trying to set up some kind of stability within the Bono family by following the rules. Cuz he could have very easily have just said, I'm the boss. Like, what are you gonna do about it? You're in jail. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's nothing he could've done about it. Right. Uh, so Joe Massino becomes, uh, Yeah, becomes boss and immediately he kind of changes how things are done because during the [00:37:00] commission trial they, they, they used a statute called the rico, uh, the RICO Laws. And it, the F B I and law enforcement in general was just hyper focused on organized crimes, especially in America, but in general, but especially in New York. Uh, you know, like the cold, the Cold War was still going up. Well, Was still kind of like, it was winding down, so there was less emphasis on that, like the civil rights movement had came and passed so they could focus almost all their resources on the mafia. So Joe kind of changes things, how things had always been done with the mafia. Like he, he starts closing down all the social clubs where, uh, These guys used to hang out. Uh, probably like a famous example of one of these social clubs is the one in Donny, Nebraska or the Veterans Club, or, uh, Michael Matson. That's where they all hang out, you know, and he thought, and rightfully so, like these places are just too easy to bug, right? Uh, he kind of [00:38:00] changes how the whole. Structure work. He ended all kind of joint jobs with other families. Just thinking like, I can't, like I can't really trust these guys cause I'm not overseeing them. Right. So it was just bono's doing bono work. Uh, And then like each crew would be responsible for one particular task and that was it. Right? And none of them would actually really have like direct contact with Joe himself. So they would go through Salvatory Vitality, who was his brother-in-law. And it was kind of like creating like layers and layers and layers of defense against like, uh, Ricoh laws. Basically trying to ensure that they. Couldn't tie anything to him and then thus like tried to take down the entire family. And it worked. It was highly effective. Uh, cuz Joe was boss for like a really long time. Like he even took it so far that like if people talked to him, even if they were in the same room, they weren't allowed to say his [00:39:00] name, they had to pull on his ear, pull on their ear. And then that's how they know. Okay. Yeah, I'm talk like we're talking to Joe. It just, uh, I think that the mafia, it was changing with the times too that these, these ideas of these social clubs were such sinning ducks because in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, there was a lot of social clubs that were completely legitimate around of where men would go and play cards and drink. And drink coffee in the morning, drink beer in the afternoon and hang around all day. And you start getting into the eighties and the nineties and people just weren't doing that anymore. So if you had a bunch of guys sitting around in a social club, there's all day just kind of puttering around playing cards. That was just a, like a shining a laser beam flashlight on yourself to the police. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, and the, like, a lot of the things that Joe did, and [00:40:00] then I was thinking about this when I was, at least the Bonanno film became like a, kind of like how terrorist cells run in like Afghanistan and like the Middle East really, where they're like, they're all working towards the same thing, but they're so, like they're completely caught off from one another. Uh, that seems to be the type of system where Joe. Was trying to set up where I could think eventually his idea would be like nobody in the Gambino family talked to anybody in the Bono family. Nobody in the Bono family talked to anybody in the Genovese family. And yes, they were all working towards the same goal, but. Completely separate from another one. Right? Because that was a big part of the commission trial was in the sense is, yeah, these are all different families, but they're all working in tandem together, right? So in a, in a sense it's like one large criminal organization as opposed to like just charging, say the Bono family for something. You know, like cuz they were tied in with the Genovese. But if you could try to keep the whole thing separate [00:41:00] from one another. If it did go to court, they would have a harder time trying to make like a gigantic case. Like it makes sense to me. He's a, he's Joe's a remarkably, I always get, of all the guys that I've read about so far, he strikes me as being one of the more intelligent guys out of all the, uh, mob guys. Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. How does this family eventually just completely go over the cliff? They, they have just, it seems of this family. They just go from one disaster to the next, to the next, to the next W. Let's wrap up today with pretty much their last. Uh, bang up until the two thousands, really, like the Bono family was the most powerful family in, in New York. I mean, and quite remarkable when you think about like, the job that Joe was able to do, like he took a, took over a [00:42:00] family that was like strife with Civil War Boss in jail, kicked it with the commission and witness fan of a couple years, took him up to the, the, uh, to the very top. But the thing that ends up taking like. Sends the whole thing crashing to the ground is forensic accountants. Uh, that's an actual job than the F B I has. And I guess they'd been monitoring like the Bono and his associates for a really long time, and I guess they. They saw like there was a bunch of taxes that weren't getting paid and kind of like just, you know, shady deals, uh, in relation to, uh, basically I guess it was running parking lots in New York. Right. Which I assume is big time money. Just, I know from living in Toronto, it's, it's huge cuz you can't find parking. Barry Weinberg, who was. Doing business with Canella, who was one of one of the coppos in the Bono family. The F B I brings Barry in and basically tells him like we know, like we have forensic evidence, accounting [00:43:00] evidence. I know that that's never gonna make me not laugh. Show me like these shady deals and you're gonna go to jail. Jail for a really long time unless you do this for us. Like, Who knows. I mean, the f b I could have just been bluffing, right? Like maybe they didn't have like a enough information to send him to jail. But like Barry's just the type of guy that, at least from what I've read, he was just way in over his head dealing with these types of people. He seemed, he's kind of reminds me of, I dunno if you guys ever seen the movie Carlito's Way, he's, uh, Sean Penn. He's like the. Like the lawyer or whatever is like pretending to be like a gangster, but he, you know, as soon as stuff gets serious, he just can't do it. So he agrees to wear a wire and he gets, uh, this cop on, uh, charges and he was already at, previously on charges from, I believe it was extortion or something of the sword. So he, he potentially was looking at 25. Years in jail and he starts talking. I mean, once he starts talking the whole [00:44:00] system, the whole family just starts talking. Cuz Joe was actually quite proud that no, as crazy as it sounds with all the craziness in the banal family, they had never had a guy turned in informant, which is none of the other families could say that. It's remarkable that they, they're one of the oldest families, and it wasn't up until the two thousands before somebody actually became an informant. Yeah, that's a, it's fascinating. And then the informant winds up being the boss. So his, his, uh, test his, uh, inf information, Lisa indictment of another guy named Frank Cop, and then Salvator Vitali, his brother-in-law, ends up getting caught into all of this. And then Joe ends up getting caught into all of this and. Because they all start just ratting on each other, right? Because they're, cuz they're looking at like, multiple offense. So it's not like they just got caught with one thing. A lot of these guys were, you know, up, up on charges or probably going to jail for one thing and it's, you know, you add the charge on top of the charge and [00:45:00] all of a sudden you're looking at, you know, 35, 40, 50 years in jail. Right. Um, I mean this is, I mean, you could say whether it was effective or not, I would personally say it was effective, like, kind of going hard on. These mob guys, uh, I mean, I mean the results speak for themselves, right? The, I think the, uh, the law enforcement and the legal system, it worked, right? Uh, it, it got these guys to start ratting each other out and start talking. Um, But Joe himself, you know, he, he was laco, he was Costa Nostra to, I wouldn't say the very end, well, before we, you know, like we'll get to the end. But he was, he was a gangster his whole life, right? He, he did truly believe, like, you know, you don't talk, you don't, uh, you do your time and you know, here it is. Like as soon as things get a little bit tough, like everyone starts riding on each other and they start riding on him, and. Joe adds, actually he's a little bit unlucky [00:46:00] cuz like one of the charges that he was up, uh, For, I believe it was a, I think it was extortion, but it, I think it up to a certain amount, like, uh, depending on how big the extortion or the rocket was or, no, it was racketeering, uh, um, violence in the aid of racketeering. It was, uh, actually carried the death penalty at this time. So Joe Massino was looking at the death penalty and he's just looking at the situation. He goes like, I spent my whole life, like these guys were like my family. And they're all turning on me. They're all turning on me, and he decides, you know what? I'm just gonna do it myself. And Joe turns in informants and he actually, at one point, you know, he wears a wire and gets his own underboss. Uh, Vinny gorgeous, which is such a great bob. Maybe he actually ran like beauty polls or something like that, and like, was very insidious about how he looked. And he gets him on tape admitting to a murder and, uh, Yeah, Joe becomes [00:47:00] the first mob boss to ever become an informant. You know, it's, it's crazy how quickly it all fell apart considering how well ran it was, uh, under Joe. But, you know, with the severity of the crimes and, and new laws and the new technology, the government has it at its disposal. It's harder to do, it's just harder to commit crimes now. Um, that's why a lot of. I would argue like a lot of the new crop of the Mafia guys coming up, they're just not, I just don't think you're gonna get people like a Joe Macino anymore, or you're, you know, like a Carlo Gambino or even like a Paul Castellano. I just don't think you were gonna get these type of guys anymore, cuz they, they look at the situation, it's just, It's just so difficult to make money in it now and then, like the, the laws are so severe. Uh, I just think a lot of these guys end up just doing other stuff. I was just reading this, uh, book by a federal prosecutor and it wasn't in, uh, about the mafia at all, but he was explaining a lot of the process [00:48:00] of how they. Break these cases, and I think the system that the federal government has set up has done as much as even the laws like the Ricoh, they have such strict sentencing guidelines and so such tough sentencing. A a, a small drug charge could bring somebody 5, 10, 15 years in the hardcore. Prison with almost no possibility for early release or a little bit of early release. Like if you get a 15 year sentence, you're gonna spend pretty darn close to 15 years in jail. And they just use that. Oh, well it. They have the, the prosecutor can make a plea of clemency if the person helps the, with the judge and they can get half of their sentence, three quarters of their sentence knocked off. So now they have every incentive in the world to go after the next guy and the next guy and the next guy. [00:49:00] And it, it is a system where, It really is designed to knock down one peg after another, after another. Whether it works as far as rehabilitating people or if it really is a punitive measure, that's something we can discuss. Uh, you know, it's send in your emails or thoughts. We'd love to hear them, but that it is a very effective method of taking one. Down, uh, criminal organizations, it definitely worked with the mob, right? I don't think there's, there's really any denying that, in my opinion. It definitely worked for the American mob. Now, is it gonna work on some of the, these newer organizations like the Cartels and stuff like that? You know, we'll have to wait and see, right? But, For the, it completely destroyed the American mob, the, the harsher sentencing. And then because of the harsher sentencing, a lot of these guys would talk. And then once that's broke, right, [00:50:00] the, the erta, uh, the trust that, you know, your fellow mobsters aren't gonna rat on you. The whole system comes crumbling down, right? Because there ha if, if you don't have that, then, I mean, really, what are you doing? Like, why are you even in this organization? Uh, if the second somebody goes to jail, they're just gonna start ratting. Um, you know, everyone's not like Sunny Franes who like quite literally spent his entire 50 years in jail and in rat. You know, most people aren't like that. They're gonna look at a 50 year sentence and go, yeah, I'm gonna talk. Um, Joe's actually, from my understanding, he is alive now actually because of his, uh, cooperation, uh, with, uh, you know, finding, uh, bodies and, uh, hoping that other mobster, uh, mob guys, uh, caught up on charges themselves. Uh, yeah, he got compassionate release and I believe he's under police supervision and. Is alive and well. He's [00:51:00] quite old now. I believe he's like in his late seventies. But yeah, he's alive and I think that's where we can leave it today. This is just one of our five episodes on the Five Families Look for episodes that do really deep dives into many of the topics we talked about today. And we, I know, uh, Speaking for Chris and I, mustache, Chris and I, we wanna, we would love to hear what you want to hear more about. So get in contact with us on all the, the usual ways and, uh, we will definitely talk to you soon. We're gonna do the, the five families and then, you know, this is, we came up, came up with this idea to just, I think just give a general overview of the entire. History of the five family. So when we start doing the deep dives, you guys can, you know, revisit these episodes and you'll kind of have like a narrative history to keep all these names in perspective and, uh, you know, kind of put a [00:52:00] timeline on all the different things that we're gonna be talking about. So look for us on social media. You can email, website, Facebook. It will all be in the show notes, and we will talk to you next time. 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 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.[00:53:00]    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Title: Meet the Family – The Lucchese Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/X9w3YHxILre Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the riveting background and rich history of the Lucchese crime family, one of the infamous Five Families of the American Mafia. From its origins in the early 20th century to its prominence in organized crime during the mid-1900s, we explore the rise of this formidable syndicate and its notorious leaders. Through engaging narratives, we uncover the family's involvement in various illicit activities such as gambling, extortion, and drug trafficking, as well as its complex network of operations and alliances. With intriguing anecdotes and insightful interviews, we shed light on the inner workings of the Lucchese family and the impact it had on the criminal underworld. Join us as we unravel the untold stories of power, loyalty, and betrayal that shaped the legacy of this iconic crime organization. ‘ #LuccheseCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrimeChronicles #TrueCrimePodcast You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places:   www.atozhistorypage.com 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. Welcome back again as we take on five Mob Families and five episodes. I'm Steve, and as always, I'm joined by our very own mustache. Chris Mustache, how you doing? 10 on this, uh, lovely day. I'm doing pretty good myself, but, uh, I'm pretty excited to get into the, uh, Lucchese crime family. It's, uh, it's one of the lesser known crime families. I think, uh, uh, everyone kind of talks about like the Gambinos and like the Colombos cuz they've done, but the Lucchese is one of those families. It's, they kind of flown underneath the radar, I think, and we're gonna see, they have a. Fascinating history. [00:01:00] Now, these episodes are meant to, uh, kind of ground us and provide a reference into the history of the mafia. Uh, these are overview episodes of the Pivotal families that form the, the quote unquote golden age of the Italian Mafia in the United States. In future episodes, we will do deep dives into stories that involve all of these families and sometimes all of these families together and mafia organizations all over the United States and even into Canada. We will dive even further into the past to a time. Before the five families even existed, but the five families will always be an important reference point, uh, and we highly encourage you to revisit these episodes and, you know, tell your friends about them so they can become friends of ours as well. So you mentioned we're talking about the Lucchese family today, so why don't you tell us about where did the Lucchese family come from and what was their [00:02:00] origin story? Yeah, so like the early, early origin story of, uh, the Lucchese family is, it can actually get traced back to, it was a gang called the Theo Gang. And, uh, before like the Five Families and the commission came about, uh, New York and just organized crime in general. I wouldn't say it was really organized. It was, it was just like gangs, right. And the Morello Gang was a, was a Sicilian, uh, mafia gang, right. And. Actually, in researching this episode, I actually learned about this war. Um, That they had with the Kimora, who are the, uh, neopolitan, uh, mafia. Uh, they're still around, obviously, right? Uh, but they had a war with the, this, the, this morale gang, which was the kind of represented the Sicilian, uh, OSA Nostra and New York and. Yeah, they ended up winning this war. Guy Gaitano Rena, uh, was uh, was a member of [00:03:00] this morale gang, but, uh, he kind of stayed out of this, this conflict himself personally and just kind of focused on his gang that was based in East Harlem, in the Bronx. And so that's pretty much, I mean, that, that whole war with the, uh, the Kimora was really the. I guess you'd, and that was way back in 1915, like the early part of the, uh, 20th century that's sort of maybe like the World War I before the Castle La Marse war that you could maybe equate to World War ii. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Really, cuz it really, it took the kamora out of the. New York really like, mean, the neopolitans are still there. But the outcome of that war really was the Sicilian La Nostra, which has a different, uh, organizational structure, was gonna run New York really. And the, uh, the Comor, which is, it still has like an organizational structure. And one day we're, we'll get into. Kind of how all the different mafia in, uh, that [00:04:00] come out of, uh, Southern Italy. But the Kamo is, it's much more like kind of loosely structured, whereas the, uh, luster is more top down heavy this whole war or after the cast Lamar war lead us into the cast, the kind of the next step of the, uh, the development because we don't really have a Luque family yet. Yeah, at this point it's more kind of like just a gang. Uh, so right now he became like a pretty powerful boss during the prohibition era. And he was actually pretty, he was closely in line to, uh, Joe Ma. He was known as the boss. He, he was the most powerful, uh, mafia boss in New York at the time. Um, So when the Castle Lamari war broke out, uh, which was basically like, it was a war between different factions within the Sicilian Mafia, when it did break out, uh, Rena kind of tried to stay on the sidelines. He didn't really. [00:05:00] I don't know. He didn't really want to get in involved per se, but I mean, he kind of played, I don't know. He tried to talk, you know, both sides of his mouth really. Uh, Joe, uh, Masseria finds out that, uh, he was maybe potentially switching sides. Uh, And you know, upon hearing this potential portrayal, he sends, uh, veto Geneva who, you know, we're going to get more familiar with, like as we go through this podcast and this history of the New York Mafia, uh, to kill. Uh, Rena, uh, with the help of, uh, Tommy Galliano. Tommy Lucchese, which is what later the family's actually gonna be called, after they, uh, they, they killed Rena. They were, you know, they were his, uh, Rena's own kind of lieutenants, right? Thinking, oh, like we're gonna take over all the, uh, industries that Sabrina was in charge of. But that's not what [00:06:00] happened. Joe Erio, who was not, uh, I wouldn't say he was like the brightest man in the face of the earth. Very ar very, comes across as very arrogant in my research. Ends up putting his own guy in charge of, uh, that gang and, uh, You know, Tommy and, uh, the two Tommy's are none too happy about it. After this, the, you basically have a crime family with two bosses, which is a kind of a weird situation. Maybe tell us about this, uh, time of the two Tommy's. Yeah, so they ended up, how the time of the two Tommy's kind of actually happens is, you know, both Tommy's were the, the guy, um, His nickname, I'm trying to remember. His nickname was Joseph plo. Benzo. He was known as, I believe, the Fat Pete. They lured him into one of the office buildings that they owned. They killed him and basically took over the the gang. And then Joe Masseria died soon after that. [00:07:00] Right. So they're the ones left in charge. Um, Yeah. Ba yes, it's, it's interesting cuz uh, from my research, at least with the New York families, I'm not sure, I haven't come across where two guys were of equally in charge. They just kind of ran different aspects of the family. I, in my research of the Bono family, that's never happened. The Colombo family, the Gambino family or the Genovese family. Um, but at this, you know, it was too. You know, two guys kind of tied at the hip. Uh, were running this family and, um, they specialized in like the garment rackets, a lot of union work, carjackings, uh, and they both, uh, played different roles. Were Tommy, uh, Galiano, um, Was the kind of the guy behind the scenes. He kept an extremely low profile, and we'll get into that in a little bit. And Tommy Luc was more of the face of the family. He was the guy on the streets, you know, kind [00:08:00] of directing traffic. He'd be like, think about it. If you work in a warehouse, you have like the manager that's in the office who's, you know, crunching the numbers, and then you have the manager that's. They're both equal, but the one guy specializes in just being actually on the floor of the warehouse, making sure that the operations are going smoothly. It's, uh, it's a really weird situation and it also makes me think, uh, that, that the Lucchese family is really, they're living off of basically the crumbs that are falling off the plate of society. That there was just so much wealth hanging around that it was easy for them to get involved with the garment industry that had so much money attached to it, and unions that had so much money going onto it. And, uh, hijacking car, uh, Trucks that, you know what? If a truck got hijacked, they would just write it off and it wasn't big a big deal because there was just so much money that was floating around. You just made more money. Oh [00:09:00] yeah, for sure. Right. And um, yeah, exactly what you said. Like, and you know, a lot of the stuff like, uh, nowadays a little bit different cuz we have a lot of modern technology, but back then, like it was difficult to stop people from doing some of the stuff, you know, like just stealing cars and, you know, stealing trucks. Um, you know, and like a lot of the times the drivers would be in on it, right? They'd grow up in these same neighborhoods with these guys. So a lot of the times they'd probably know. Some of the people that were, you know, stealing the trucks and they'd get a little payoff and you know, like, what happened? Oh, they showed up in nowhere. They threatened to kill me, yada, yada yada. Yeah. And that goes the story. And they'd get a little bit of a kickback too. Right. And because of the technology and everything at the time, you know, companies themselves would have difficulties just even trying to stop this from happening. Plus the cops are getting kickbacks too. I mean, some things change and, uh, you know, we don't see like carjackings like we. We're going back, going on back in the times that [00:10:00] we're talking about, but it still happens. Uh, how does the one, Tommy and exit the stage? And we move into a phase where one Tommy eventually becomes the overall boss during this entire time, the six, the family's, uh, you know, keeping a low profile. Um, You know, running their successful industries. I mean, one of the reasons they kind of had to keep a low profile too was the Joe Bono and Joe Profaci and Stefano Macino kind of had a controlling wing of the commission. I, I believe in the previous episodes, they referred to as kind of like the conservative wing of the Mafia Commission. So they tried to not ruffle too many. Uh, feathers there. Um, the guy pointed out Tommy Lucchese was kinda the face of the family. He, he attended the Havana Conference, which is one day we'll talk about that. It was a major mafia conference that went on in Cuba, and we're gonna down the road, we're gonna end up talking to a lot about Cuba in terms of the mafia and what went on there.[00:11:00] Um, just a lot of major decisions were made there, but Galileo, uh, he ended up dying of. To be honest with you, we don't even really know if he died or if he retired. That's how little we know about this guy, really. And I, I actually did try to do like a, a fair amount of research and don't really know, like Tommy Lucchese at a Senate hearings said, you know, died in February 16th, the 1951, but, Who knows, he could have been, he's probably lying, you know, he could have just retired somewhere or died later. Um, it just goes to show you just the, what a shadow we figure this guy was and the pains that he took to, uh, You know, stay out of the limelight. And, you know, by the end of it, Tommy's the, you know, there's only one Tommy left, so, and he's running the family, which is, it's interesting when you con contrast it to the other families where there was this seamless transfer of power and then the one Tommy [00:12:00] dies, the next Tommy takes over and there's no power struggle. There's no civil war going on here. It's just a seamless, uh, Transition from one to another. And I believe they must have had conversations about long-term goals. Like how, how is this family in the long-term gonna stay successful? How, how in the long-term is this family gonna stay, uh, coherent. And they, they probably had, like they talked about long-term goals, they probably would go on for 25 years. Where if you look at something, say the Bono family, In particular, like as soon as the head of the family was out of the picture, it was just chaos. And then it was, the chaos would lead to, you know, somebody taking it over, but then it, as soon as they were out of the picture, because of the chaos that was created previously, and it was just that vicious cycle that just kept on going and going and going. And in, in the long, you can't create long-term goals. You can't, uh, create, uh, create a calm or coherent, uh, [00:13:00] work environment for. Everyone else around you. And it's, uh, chaos is interesting in the sense that it's, it's like a ball going down the hill. It just keeps on building momentum and momentum. I mean, you can use an example, say like the Roman Empire never was able to really master this transfer of power and. It's probably one of the biggest faults of the empire, and because every time an emperor died, everyone be holding their breath. Oh, what's gonna happen? Whereas if you contrast it to the Lucchese family, well, it's just business as usual. Right. None of our goals have changed. Steve, here again, we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows. Go to Parthenon podcast to learn more. And now here is a quick word from our sponsors. And so many of these [00:14:00] families had factions and side factions and side factions, and I don't get the the gist that the Luca Lucchese family necessarily had all these factions inside of each other that really almost hated each other. Not as bad as, as other families. Like they had their, they had like, they had a New Jersey faction, they had a Bronx faction, a Queens faction, you know, and then they were all competing with each other trying to, you know, make more money than the other guys were. Right. You know, this is just, I mean, that's how every kind of organization runs, right? Well, at least successful ones. Everyone's trying to one up each other, right? But they're doing it within like relatively calm, coherent, uh, environment, right? It's not chaos. Like say the Bonano family or somebody like Joe Pistone. Uh, could just, you know, watch, walk in. And in five years they were talking about making him a mate, guy, you know, like just the impression, I get this, that would not happen in the Lucchese family. And I mean, and the people in charge, you know, did a [00:15:00] good job of just running the family in terms of making sure that the, the guys underneath them, the soldiers that, you know, the guys that are actually doing the grunt work are. At least they felt like they weren't getting screwed over. Or if you say, oh, he's the Bono family again, if you contrast it to the Bono family, people were ready to turn on Carmine Lanci and a hat, right? Because they saw him as being greedy, uh, and petty and, and felt like they were getting screwed over. And same thing with the Samely applies to Joe Bonnell and rightfully so. I mean, And then we can look at the Colombo family was the same thing. Joe Profaci hoarding all this wealth and not sharing it with the Gallo brothers and the rest of the, you know, people, the street guys. And you know, there's a lesson to be learned here. If people feel like they're being taken care of, for the most part, they'll stay loyal. The second they don't feel like they're getting taken care of, they usually got a turn on you. Or at least if the system is fair, if it's, [00:16:00] you know, it's not just the boss hoarding all the cash and screwing over the guys who are earning it. Well, and that's the thing, right? It's like, and it's also like a big part of, it's just the impression that the guys are getting, right? Like the Tommy Lucchese was, you know, obviously extremely wealthy man. Um, but he made, you know, he made sure that at least the, the guys on the ground who kind of kept him in power were. Uh, at least taken care of. Now there's a big power grab as it always seems to happen. What's this power grab involving Tommy Lucchese? Yeah, there was a big, uh, kind of changing the guard power grab and I guess in the sense, right, like I had pointed out earlier, the Lucchese family in general was uh, kind of in a precarious, uh, situation where they didn't wanna rock the boat too much cuz they were one of the weak. Er, uh, families. So Vito Geneve, and we'll get into, like I said, we're gonna get, we'll probably end up doing a, a series on him, right? Because he's [00:17:00] such a big, uh, pivotal character in the history of the American Mafia. Um, Tommy Lucchese was like, kind of an orchestrator and helping Vito Geneve and Carlo Gambino, uh, get, uh, into power really. Uh, So Tommy Lucchese, uh, kind of helped Phil facilitate, uh, Vito Geneva's, uh, hiring, uh, Vincent Gigante, which is another guy that we're gonna do a big series on. He was referred to as The Chin. He's most probably famous for walking around New York, acting like a crazy person in a bathrobe, peeing himself, uh, for. So cops wouldn't think he was a, was a mob boss and was pretty successful at doing it for quite some time. Uh, to carry out a hit on Frank Costello, who was kind of, there was no term the boss of bosses, but Frank Costello, if there was the boss of bosses, Frank Costello was the boss of bosses and, [00:18:00] um, But it didn't work. It didn't end up killing him, uh, Vincent, you know, not, you know, that would be a crazy story to tell the grandkids if you think about it. It's like, oh yeah, I tried to kill a mob boss and didn't work, and I'm still here to talk about it. Uh, but it, it worked in the sense that Frank Costello's just like, you know what, man? I don't want any part of this. I'm, I'm getting hold. Uh, I've made my money. You know what? I'll just retire and I'm not gonna talk. Right. Because they did try to get, uh, I think Frank kind of had a pretty good idea who, who was up to it and he just refused to talk. Uh, and then, uh, for Carlo Gambino, uh, it's, uh, there's a lot of different stories about what happened to Albert Anastasia, the. You know, some people say like Joey Gallo had something to do with it, and I've heard like a lot of different other people, and I think maybe one day we'll, we'll do a deep dive. Exactly who killed Albert Anastasia. But Albert Anastasia was, uh, [00:19:00] not well liked by a lot of the other mafia families, and he was particularly, he was acting crazy too at this time. Uh, at the end of the day, uh, Tommy Lucchese helped, uh, get rid of, uh, Albert Anastasia and Carlo Gambino took over the family and uh, that's where he gets his name and it still has his name now, the Gambino family. That's one of the pivotable pivotal time periods in the mafia is Frank Costello gets, they attempt to whack him. He doesn't die, but he just basically bows out and says, I'm out. Anastasia takes over. He gets whacked. It causes all this turmoil. Uh, then we get to the next point, the major, uh, The Appalachian meeting, which it, this one will come up in every single episode we talk about. So it's, and again, this is another one that will deserve its own episode or several. So what was the Lucchese role in the Appalachian meeting? And [00:20:00] just to set the stage, like, uh, I kind of alluded to, is that. We don't need to know a ton about the Appalachian meeting right now, but it's the, it's a major mafia meeting that happens in upstate New York that gets busted up and it causes a ton of chaos throughout the mafia. How does the lu, uh, Casey family fit into that? Well, the app, yeah. This meeting was basically the brainchild of Vito Genovese where he, he wanted to bring all the bosses together and the high ranking mafia officials, and they would, uh, have a sit down, I guess, talk about business, right? And like it got busted up and it, um, Pretty much made the existence of the organized crime in the mafia in the United States. Um, we couldn't really deny it anymore like it existed and, you know, it went on for a little while longer where people argue that just how powerful it is and exactly what is it, [00:21:00] you know exactly what it is, you know, what is it exactly, but, um, Basically this, uh, meeting, um, destroys veto, genovese's reputation and the eyes of the rest of the families. And, you know, I, I did a little bit of research and, you know, some people theorize that like Tommy and Carlo, uh, Gambino basically set up Genovese on drug charges to get 'em thrown in. To get him thrown in jail. And that's actually what happened. Veto Genovese goes to jail, uh, for drug trafficking related charges, and he's kind of outta the picture. Tommy Lucchese dies of cancer in July of 67, and you, uh, mentioned in the notes that he never spent a day of. A day in his 44 year career, basically in prison, which is absolutely mind boggling, especially when we start to look at the mobsters that come up later. I mean, they're constantly being pinched and they're in and out of the can where.[00:22:00] Lucchese doesn't spend a day inside behind bars. That's pretty amazing. I, it's a combination of things, right? Like Todd, the Lucchese family took like pains to kind of create real relationships with, you know, different lawyers and uh, politicians, which I'm sure helped. Right. I'm sure there were problems. We charges against him, but none of them, you know, actually made it to court really. Cause, you know, palms were greased or papers were lost. But it does go that like Tommy Lucia, like as an individual, took great pains to, uh, make sure that he didn't directly get involved in a lot of this type of stuff, or they would have a difficult time pinning a lot of this stuff on him, because I think he, he really understood that like it all stems from the head and then it goes down. To the rest of the family. Right. So if he had got thrown in jail, and we'll talk about, uh, well we talked about in the Bonano family, you know, like bosses running families from jail and, and infamously we're gonna [00:23:00] talk about the Colombo family, uh, down the road about Yeah. Bosses just running the family from jail's. Just, it's not good. It's, you know, causes all types of conflicts and. But it is, like you pointed out, remarkable, that if a guy who basically devoted his life to, you know, trafficking, drugs and racketeering, and money laundering and murder, didn't spend a day in jail for 44 years. Now, what's the next step after Lucchese dies at in 67, which in a way is kind of on the eve of the seventies and all the insanity that happens during the seventies. Who takes over after him? So there's like a stop gap guy, like Tommy wanted, uh, was, uh, Anthony Corrao, who was, that's who he wanted to make boss. But he was, uh, I think he was in jail at the time. He was up on charges for, um, uh, Can't remember exactly. I think it was like something related to racketeering. So the interim boss, [00:24:00] Carmine Chaunti was named, uh, the Interim Boss. There was an understanding as soon as uh, COR was done with his legal problems, he ended up, uh, taking over. Uh, tra Muti was, uh, He was only in power for a very short time. He was. He was an old man. He was. He was. He had like health problems, but he also got caught up in the French connection, which is, we'll probably end up doing, we're gonna do a series on that too, right? Because that was a huge drug trafficking operation. We'll probably end up talking about the movie too, which is one of my favorite movies. Uh, Still, like, I even like the, I like the second one too, personally. A lot of people don't like the second one. I like the second one too. Um, I, in my research though of this, uh, I, I, it came across this crazy story where, so the heroin that was seized from the French connection, I assuming you guys know that the French connection was a, was a heroin trafficking operation, not just heroin. They did other drugs too, but it was mainly heroin. [00:25:00] Um, So they seized, uh, a, a ton of this heroin and it was staying in the, uh, police department's like evidence locker, right? Uh, either the mop did it themselves or they paid some other criminals to actually go break into this evidence locker and try to steal like the heroin, and they stole about. I think it was like around 70 million to a hundred million dollars worth of heroin from this police evidence locker. And the cops only found out when they started seeing bugs all around the precinct and they realized, oh, all those bags are just full of flour. There's no heroin in it. So it's just, it's real. It just shows you like the, the, the, uh, The technical, like the, uh, the fingers that the, the mob had in all aspects of, um, New York society at the time, because obviously they didn't just like, you know, hold the police officers up, like the, the police officers let them get into this evidence locker to steal all this heroin. Um, the fact that they thought they could get away [00:26:00] with it, I mean, I guess in a sense they did, cuz they, they, they did steal the 70 million of heroin back is, it's incredible. Just the, uh, The amount of power and the amount of reach that they had. Alright, so Tra Trai is really just a placeholder and, uh, tell us about Anthony Carlo and how uh, he takes over. Yeah, Anthony Corrals, he is one of the more successful mob bosses in the history of, uh, the American Mafia. He, he came from a queens ion of the, uh, family, and he was specially well connected with, uh, more of like the labor racketeering aspect of the mafia. Um, he actually had a pretty close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union at one point, and. You know, like just, uh, just a list of the kind of unions that he was involved in. It was like painters and decorators, the conduit workers union, the United Textile, uh, workers Union. [00:27:00] It's a little weird now, I guess from modern audiences, but like even restaurant. Like restaurant workers had unions, you know, um, they don't really exist anymore. So there was pretty much like a union for pretty much like any industry you think of. There was a union involved in it, in the mob, usually had some, had their fingers in it. And the Anthony Corral kind of specialized in this, uh, this type of, uh, legal activity that the mob was usually involved in during this time. Uh, and he's also involved with this other character who I know is one of your favorites, gas Pipe, Gaspipe, Caso. Tell us a little bit about how he, uh, gets involved. Oh yeah. So Anthony Corrao, he, uh, just to kind of lay it out a little bit, uh, like I said, he was running the, the family basically the same way that Tommy Luc was running it, you know, kind of keeping a low profile, you know, uh, nothing big, nothing flashy, uh, and even, and he took some [00:28:00] security measures himself, or he would drive around in this, this Jaguar using like, I guess at the time, like they had like phones in the Jaguar. So he wouldn't like actually do sit downs. This is where he would do all his business. The F b I ended up getting a bug in this Jaguar and basically heard everything Anthony got caught up in the big mafia commission trial, which is, you know, we'll probably end up doing a series on that cuz that was a, like a massive endeavor. But, you know, to make it really short, the idea was they were going to use the RICO statue to charge all the Maia families all at once. And you know, it was a. It was successful, right? Uh, Anthony realized that he was gonna be looking at Lifetime in prison. There was no way he was gonna get off any of these charges. And, uh, basically turned to two guys, uh, Vic Muso and Anthony Gaspipe, uh, coso to uh, take over the Lucchese family, and I'm sure he probably regrets [00:29:00] doing this, considering, uh, it takes a 180 turn as soon as these guys get in charge. Yeah, so let's, I mean, this is crazy stuff. So let's get into this a little bit more. Uh, Anthony Caso and Vic Muso. Oh yeah. So like the Lucchese family for the most part had the reputation as being kind of one of the more peaceful families as we laid out. And all the five families, little internal strife, virtually no civil war. Um, Virtually no violence on the streets, but as soon as, uh, Vic Muso and gas pipe start getting involved, it almost completely changes over. It almost completely changes overnight. Now, I don't know this for sure, but I kind of think that Anthony Corr was, I don't think he was, W too excited to put these guys in charge. He must have had a pretty good idea that these guys were pretty insane. But I guess he kind of looked at the situations like, I guess I could run the family from prison, [00:30:00] but that's not good either. Right? And maybe he just was done with it. He just didn't want anything to do with it and he just didn't see any better options. Um, that's my personal opinion, but yeah. You know, like kind of give you an example, like as soon as like, Uh, MUO and gas pipe take over. They, they immediately go after this, the New Jersey faction, which is like a big faction within the Lucchese family, and start saying like, oh, we want 50% of everything that you make, which is just insane. Like, you know, even just a little bit of, but like they're, you know, you got taxed and you had to kick, kick, uh, but 50%, it's just insane. And like when they refused to do it, Uh, the, you know, gas piping muo, just like, okay, well we're just gonna kill you all. Wish they immediately just all start fleeing. This is just an example of the insanity, right? Um, even [00:31:00] like car stuff, like car bombs is it's, I know it sounds a little weird, but like, like in the American Mafia, they were kind of like a big. No, no, like he just, he didn't do car bombs and Sicily, that's a totally different type of story, but over here it was really kind of frowned upon. And, um, and you know, I'm making a long story short, but when John Gotti killed Paul Castellano, um, without the commission's approval, There were members of the commission that were none too happy about this. Vincent Gigante, uh, was none too happy about this, and to be honest, neither were Muo and Gas pipe. They actually tried to kill, uh, John Gotti at one point, but they, they failed. They ended up just killing his underboss, but they, you know, use car bombs doing this, which is just their logic. And Castle actually talks about this. He's like, well, you know, The idea was if we used a carbo, the cops wouldn't think it was us. [00:32:00] Cause Mafia didn't use Carbos. I mean, I, I get it to a certain degree. I still, still seems a little crazy to me. But yeah, I, I, I kind of see his logic that, and that's another that. Paul Castellano murder is another one of those pivotal moments to always keep in your mind of that generation. I heard this really interesting discussion and it was completely, uh, off the topic of the mafia, but um, The guy was talking about the difference between a gangster and a hoodlum. And a gangster is somebody who's, who plans. And you know, they're all criminals, gangsters, hoodlums, but gangsters plan, they think about their scams and their schemes and they try to keep trouble at its minimal, where the hoodlum is the loud mouth who's, you know, ready to burn down the world to make a couple extra sense. And I see, you know, after all this, Study we've done of these. I feel like at [00:33:00] around this time of the seventies, the mafia starts transforming from gangsters into hoodlums. Yeah. And I think part of it, and is the stakes just kind of got L like once Ricoh kind of got involved and. You know, people started talking and like informants started to become like an everyday thing. I know it sounds crazy, but back in not that long ago from, you know, the time we're talking about with Kaso, just people didn't talk, like Frank Costello was almost killed and we were just talking about, and he refused to talk and. But once the charges started be beginning higher and higher, especially stuff related to drug trafficking and something like the commission trial where all the bosses were charged at once in this massive trial, I, I think the, the stakes got higher and people started getting more and more paranoid about who was gonna talk next. And, I mean, that was the exact. That was the whole point of, you know, doing tougher sentences. That was the whole point of doing something like a, like [00:34:00] Ricoh charges was to get these guys paranoid so they would start acting irrationally. I think gas pipe was just also just a stone cold cycle path too. Right? Like I think without Ricoh or any of this, he would still be acting this way. Now let's move on a little bit more in the story as we move a, uh, see how, uh, things develop with gas pipe in a moose cell. Where does this go? Oh, okay. So they end up getting caught. And we're g when we talk about Vincent Ja, uh, Gigante, there was a window fitting scam where basically they ran like a rack. They were, I, I believe like all the window, all the window fitting that was done in New York. They were getting a chunk of, and like a, like a mafia tax basically. Um, They end up getting caught up in this too, uh, with Vincent Gigante. So they, they go into hiding and they name, uh, Alphons. Uh, l Dco is like the acting boss. Uh, they'll probably [00:35:00] regret this later, but let's, we'll get it to in a second. But yeah, he had been, uh, always. Part of the mob, really. Right. Uh, I, I, I think I've read something crazy. It was like he was associate of the mob for like 40 plus years or something, but was never made. And then like, you know, when he was like an old man, basically, he, he didn't ended up getting made. Um, yeah. And so like even when them ruling afar, like they increasingly were. Just getting more and more crazy, like accusing people of being informants and like, ironically in the sense and like ordering heads and a couple of these hits were botched, uh, you know, basically turning like people that weren't informants, informants where they're like, oh, these guys are gonna like, they're gonna kill me. I'm like, I'm just going to the cops like, and I'm just gonna talk. I don't wanna die. Um, Probably the most famous one of these like botch hits, was like Peter Fat Pete, uh, Choda, uh, [00:36:00] Chodo, I believe that's how you pronounce that last name. He was like a high ranking guy in this window fitting scam. And they. Shot him, not them personally, but the hit, he got hit like 12 times and somehow didn't die. And I was, and I was reading that apparently, apparently it was because he, one of the reasons was because he was so fat, you know, that sounds cruel, but he was like over 500. He was like, oh, close to. I think he was like around four 50 when Wow. He got shot. And so like the extra layer of fat actually helped him a bit in terms of slowing down the bullets from hitting his like internal organs. Uh, I guess in the, you know, you think like when you shoot like a gun, Into like, uh, I you're more familiar with like guns, but like, you know, when into that gel type stuff? Yeah. And it can stop the bullet, like something like that. Right. Uh, so like as after he got shot [00:37:00] 12 times, he was just like, yeah, I'm not, Doing this anymore. And he, he turned informant and basically, you know, exposed the entire window fitting scam. You know, also like gas pipe tried to, you know, kill, um, go after his family, which is like a new, that's a new thing in the mafia that they just didn't do that in America. They did. They left families out of it. You know, gas also tried to like burn down his grandmother's house. Like this dude was something else mad. I mean, you know, very, um, it's a very interesting character. Not interesting, a good way. Just a stone cold, crazy psychopath. Um, um, You know, and then they blame Alfonz l Diarco. They're like, well, you failed in this hit. Like, you're, you're probably gonna turn it for me. We're, we're gonna take revenge on you. So they tried killing him. Uh, Alfonz, uh, catches it in time. Uh, he, he was going to go to a meeting and he saw a guy hide a [00:38:00] gun in a, in the bathroom. Right. You know, kind of like a, like the Godfather, you know. He ran and he was the first actual boss, acting or otherwise, and then turned state witness. Um, you know, save his life. And I know I, I, I read a little bit of how he saw it and he's just like, this is just not what I grew up in. It changed, you know, how people going after people's families, car bombings, this type of craziness is, this is not the mafia I grew up when, I mean, I, I would argue that the mafia they grew up in was not very good at Saul, but they, it wasn't this kind a. It was different, right? It wasn't this the best, I guess I can use like a pop culture. It wasn't this kind of like Scarface style craziness, you know? Like it was, it was a different type of craziness. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors is. [00:39:00] Let's wrap up today, and there's a, a definitely a bunch of stuff that will be, will dive much deeper into, but to really wrap up the Lucchese family, almost up to our current day, we have the. Crooked cops and just some, pretty much, it just the bottom completely falls out on the family. Oh, yeah. So eventually gas pipe and muo were both caught. Uh, MUO was caught and it was in 1991, and then gas pipe was caught in 1990. It just, 1993. It kind of just shows you just how, you know, this is recent history really in terms of what we're talking about. Right. Uh, they both obviously were, you know, sent to prison. Uh, it's interesting how they both kind of took two different approaches. Like a muo just refused to talk about anything. Right. Uh, and gas pipe. As soon as he went to jail, he was like, oh yeah, I'll start talking. Why not? [00:40:00] And one of the biggest bombshells that he, uh, he ends up talking about is the fact that he had two New York, uh, city police officers on his payroll. Uh, these are the famous mafia cops, uh, Louis Eppolito and, uh, Steven Carpa. They basically, they spent their 44 year career working for BA exclusively the Lucchese family. Uh, You know, leaking evidence, stealing stuff from police lockers, but between the, that we know for sure. But between the years, uh, 1986 and. 1990, they base, they killed eight people. You know, we know that for sure. They probably killed more. I'm currently reading a, a book, uh, about them. Um, and you know, when we get along this, these two guys will probably be like a multi-part episode cuz it, it really is just such an insane story, these two police officers and just how this entire thing went down. Um, [00:41:00] Even like police officers at the time noticed that there was this weird tension between like the Lucchese family, the Gambino family, and the Jenny VAs family, and they've basically pinpointed that this weird tension where people were kind of randomly going, missing once in a while where it was because of these two cops. And that's just insane. And, and we'll, we'll definitely have to address that. And just the general deep, deep, deep corruption inside of the N Y P D and other police agencies and how they would have to reform themselves after this and re and how they'll ha they had to reform their images if their images ever really did get reformed after that. Uh, so take us to the end and. Maybe, uh, talk about what are some other topics that you would really like to zoom in more out of this Lucchese family gas pipe. He, he goes to the jail and he says like, you know, he basically says like, I'll become an [00:42:00] informant. Kind of like Sammy the Bull did initially the, like, the Persecutors and the FBI was like, yeah, hey, like, you know, we got a mafia boss turning informant, right? And then they start seeing the person that gas pipe is and they start. You know, he starts telling them the stories and they're just like, they slowly start realizing like, yeah, we can't have this guy come on the stand because it's, it's just gonna make us look bad. It's gonna make the government look bad. It's gonna make the FBI look bad. Like this guy is absolutely insane. I think one of the things that kind of. Made them realize this. And that's the story that Gaspipe talks about where he, he claims that he buried alive. Some guy infl like a drug, some drug smuggler in Florida just, you know, buried him alive. And he's laughing about it and they're like, Yeah, we, we, we can't do this. Like we can't, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, it's too like he's too, it's too evil. I mean, you have somebody like Simon, the [00:43:00] Bull Gravano, who's basically a, just a gigantic BS artist and he could sell any story, but you put somebody like gas pipe, casa up there, he's an honest to goodness psychopath. You know, there's no tweaking his story. To make him look good on the stand. Yeah, I'd be, this is just kind of my personal opinion. I go like, somebody like gas pipe is, are they a serial killer? Are they like a soldier in the mafia Gas pipe is. Right on that line. I would say probably, probably a serial killer. You know, even, uh, like eventually we'll talk about, we'll talk about Roy de Mayo, right? And he's like one of those guys that's like right on the line. But in gas pipe is, I don't know. He, the, just the impression that I get off of just reading him, he's, he's right on that, he's right on that line. Like, is he, I mean, if you were to call him Mr. Serial, it'd be like, Yeah, I'm not [00:44:00] gonna argue with you too much about that. I'd be like having Hannibal Lecter on the stand or something, you know what I mean? Or like pissing the government off really is, you know, Sammy starts talking about, he was like, oh, I have an F B I agent that was on the payroll too, and they're just like, shut up about that. You're not allowed to talk about that. And you know, to be honest with you, he was probably telling the truth about that too. And we'll never know who this guy was. Um, and. He also has talked about, you know how Sammy the bull, you know, bought drugs off him and he was a big drug trafficker because when Sammy turned and informant, that was like a big thing. It was, well, like Sammy did what he wasn't involved in. He wasn't involved in the crack cocaine, he wasn't involved in the heroin. Um, I don't know why that was like a stickling point, but you know, that was all not. True obviously, because, you know, a couple years later he was caught up, you know, in the witness protection program, trafficking, like being a huge, uh, I believe it was ecstasy that he was trafficking. Yeah. Plus, you know, whatever type [00:45:00] of other drugs he'd probably get his hands on. Um, the main drug was ecstasy. Um, so Castle wasn't lying about that. Uh, I guess in the sense they were trying to keep the, because there was a lot of people protesting at the time when Sammy Le Bull became an informant and ended up basically getting away, you know, with probably killing 30 people and getting off with nothing. Not only just nothing, he was put in the witness protection program because I, he, he was the guy that gave the information that got John Gotti. You know, it just made the f b I look, it made the f b I look bad. It made the, the, you know, the, the government look bad is the fact that they were willing to work cuz they were so desperate to get Gotti, that they were willing to work with somebody like Sammy Lebo literally making a deal with the devil. And this is probably one of the reasons why they never actually used Castle, right? Because they, they saw like, oh, we'll agree tied ourselves in a pretzel using the same the bowl and then we're just gonna be end up doing the same thing. With this guy. If not, I mean, I would argue that Caso [00:46:00] was worse than Gravano, but I mean, Gravano was not, was not much better either. And really in the end, all these old guys die out. Kaso dies of Covid, uh, in 2020. All the other guys die in the late 20 teens. And that really leads us to the end of the story. There'll definitely be stories about what happens to these, what's the next generation, what's basically the, uh, post-modern mafia we could get into that. It's really a. I'd love to hear what the audience has to say. What do you wanna learn? Because we touched upon a million different really interesting issues here. What do you wanna hear more about? You should, you know, definitely reach out to us if there's something in particular that you want to have us tackle more. Oh yeah, for sure. Cuz this was just like these five, uh, episodes about the five major families is, it's basically just to kind of give you guys an overview [00:47:00] of the entire, you know, a big picture look of the entire mafia and just kind of the general narrative history of each one of these families. So, you know, if we say we start doing an episode about, about. Uh, you know, Steven Car coppa and George Eppolito, you guys will already, if you've listened to this episode, you already have like a general history of the entire Lucchese crime family and you know who Gas Pipe is and who is Anthony Corrao, and an idea of what the mission, the commission trial was, because it can be a little. Just speaking from personal experience, if you just kind of drop into one of these things, it can be a little confusing without kind of an overall narrative structure to the, uh, to the entire thing. And check us out on social media. You can find all of that in the show notes and tell a friend of yours to become a friend of ours, and we will talk to you next time. Yeah. See you guys forget about it. You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, [00:48:00] 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.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Title: Meet the Families – The Gambino Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/N78OGme4bhq Description: In this episode of Organized and Punishment, Mustache Chris and Steve unravel the captivating history of the #GambinoCrimeFamily, an infamous Mafia organization that left an indelible mark on American organized crime. From its humble beginnings to its rise to power, we delve into the story of this notorious family. Under the leadership of Carlo Gambino, the Gambino crime family established itself as a force to be reckoned with. From Prohibition-era bootlegging to involvement in various criminal activities, #CarloGambino's reign witnessed the family's ascent to prominence. Tune in as we explore the shadows of the #GambinoCrimeFamily and its impact on the criminal underworld. #GambinoCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrimePodcast #CarloGambino #CriminalEmpire #PowerfulFamilies #AmericanMafia #CrimeSyndicate #ProhibitionEra #Mobsters #CrimeBoss #InfamousFamily #GangsterLife #CriminalUnderworld #GambinoLegacy You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: 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 with another five families in five episodes. I am Steve and I'm joined by our partner in Crime Mustache, Chris. Today we are telling the story of one of the most famous or possibly infamous Mafia families, the big one, the Gambino family. Of all the families, the Gambinos are likely to be the family. Most people are familiar with. That being said, the Gambinos have one of the most complicated histories of all the families, and they were central in some way or in some way connected to almost all of the stories that we will tell in this first season of organized crime and punishment. So let's get [00:01:00] started. Chris, just overall, what's your thought about the the Gambino family? When you think of like the stereotypical mafia guy from the movie, it's like the Gambino family. This is what I would think of, right? Uh, wearing the, maybe because this is more so like John Gotti, like wearing the flashy suits and you know, talking to the media and stuff like that. I don't know. Out of all the families, I say the Gambino family, family's probably the most fun to read about. Yeah, I think we're gonna see that they're the most, I guess you might saw, say, the most varied. They're, they're into the real, in the, in the trenches kind of crime stuff, but they're also in the highest of high finance and white collar crime. They really, uh, they, they embraced all of it, the blue collar to the white collar crime, but, Let's go, uh, and talk about the kind of the, the origins. And again, we're, we're gonna go deep into history with this one, but we're just going to really skim over it. All of these with all of the [00:02:00] episodes. We're gonna go into some deep dives into the very earliest of the mafia, but where does this Gambino family set its roots? The Gambino family can trace his origins back to the Qui gang, which is, uh, they were part of the Igna, uh, which was led by, uh, sorry, Ignasio, uh, Lupu, who was, uh, like a newly arrived, uh, Sicilian immigrant in New York, who ba basically ran, uh, Little Italy, his nickname was The Wolf. Right. So that kind of gives you an idea of the type of character this guy was. Yeah. But he ended up finding himself in jail. Uh, for, had some, it was a massive, uh, counterfeiting money scheme. And I think one, well eventually we're gonna get into it cuz it involves like a very famous Italian detective. This is like the very early. Um, mafia history, like goes all the way back to like Sicily, right? It's a fascinating story, but once, uh, Lupu went to jail, it kind of paved the way for, uh, Salvador, uh, qui to, uh, [00:03:00] take over the gang, right? So like the bigger gang qui was a, you know, it was a good mobster. He didn't waste any time. Like, he, uh, formed a bunch of alliances with different gangs in New York and outside of the United States. And, um, By the end of it, he had formed like one of the most powerful gangs in New York. Really? And in the United States by extension. Right? Because even at this early time, that's where all the power was really. He was in New York. You'll have like a brief respite with uh, Al Capone in Chicago, but you know, who controls New York basically controls organized crime. Moving on to the next step, we bring in our old. Pal Joe the boss, Mezzer, who we're, will definitely talk a lot more about him, but he's kind of the next phase and um, I think people will be at least somewhat familiar that it seems to me. And I wonder what you think of this as like these very early mafia groups, they're like essentially like the prototypical gang of a, uh, a couple of [00:04:00] hoodlums gangsters. They control maybe a small couple of streets, but then. They become a little bit more organized and a little bit bigger with like the next step of Joe the boss, Mezzer, and then we're gonna see that they even get more organized. And that seems to be kind of the theme is that it, the, the mafia becomes more and more organized with each war that comes along. Yeah, for sure. It's kind of like, kind of like how a nation forms really, right? It starts as like a tribal, maybe city state type situation. Then it gets more organized and it spreads its influence and the state becomes a little bit more hierarchical and more, more organized us, and in a lot of ways it's kind of how. Say you think of like, uh, we were just talking about Rome the other day, and it's kind of how Rome started. Right? Started us as a small city and slowly became more organized and the Senate became more complicated and, you know, there was rigid structures were put in [00:05:00] place. It's kind of how the mob started, right? Except in this case it's small street gangs of usually people that grew up together. And slowly these gangs start getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the, the stakes become higher and higher. And it seems that this is really the, you know what I've been trying to search for, what's the Americanization of this? And that seems to be the Americanization is getting more and more organized that in Italy, I didn't, don't really see much of an an, an analogy of. The system that got built in America with the Kimora or the Erta or the the Mafia proper in Sicily. It doesn't seem to have ever had that level of cohesion like the American Mafia built of these families that were all, I mean, they always were fighting with each other, but there was at least some idea that there needed to be cohesion. That seems like that's maybe what is the American spin on the mafia. Yeah, even the, even the [00:06:00] idea of, um, we've already talked about it, but the, the commission, right, like the, that was the Sicilian Mafia actually kind of took that idea from the American Mafia and it worked for a little bit in Sicily. Well, one, you know, down the world will actually do like a proper history on the. Sicilian mafia, like in in Sicily, it's, it's, I'd be completely honest with you, it's hard to get material to do a lot of, like, I've done some research but surprising that not much is actually written in English. And you know, I'm not gonna learn Sicilian anytime soon. So it's, um, but one day we're gonna, we're gonna crack that open cuz there's some, it's a fascinating story really, and it's a lot different than the American mafia. Now we move on. You know, just a long story short, Joe the boss, Mazzer, he kills de qui. And then, so that leads us into the Mazare times. But then Earl Pa Salvador Marzano comes in and that leads to the Casta La Marza War. Let's talk a little bit about that. [00:07:00] Like you pointed out, like Joe Maser, uh, killed, uh, a Salvator di, and um, It basically put that at the, to kind of set it up like the Joe Mazare kind of ran, what was the Morelo gang? Quill ran like the opposing gang in New York. Right. So when Joe Mazare killed Qui, he basically killed his top competition. Right. Um, and then that's when the, the, the Marzano, uh, clan comes in and. Did they become like the top competition to, uh, Joe the boss? Uh, so yeah, the Tequila gang wasn't like really so much of a thing during the Castle Lamari war, but by the end of it, Vincent, uh, manga, uh, Mangano was, uh, named the head of that particular gang. And then it changes its name to the. The Mangano, uh, family. Tell us a little bit about Vincent Mangano. He was like, he was like a pretty conservative, uh, element in the, for the [00:08:00] mafia, right? And in a lot of ways he was kind of like a. He was kind of like a mustache Pete, really. Right? Uh, yeah. He didn't really get along with some of the younger guys. Right. Like Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky. He was kind of, um, standoffish really. He didn't, I don't know. He was an uneasy relationship between, uh, between those guys. Right. Uh, as opposed to if you look at the relationship between like Lucky Luciano and even like with. With him and Joe Bono initially, and Joe, they all seemed like they were pretty good friends. We start to get into the next phase with Albert Anastasia, and he's a wild character. When Vincent Mangano was um, named boss, he, Albert Anastasia, I think he was kind of told that Albert Anastasia was going to be the underboss of the family, and yeah, they didn't really get along all that well. Like Vincent just. You know, he didn't, didn't trust him. Made him feel uneasy. I mean, Albert Anastasia, he ran an [00:09:00] organization that was called, it was literally called Murder Incorporated, right? Where their job was to just take care of people that were gonna talk or, you know, hits for the other five families. And Murder Incorporated was pretty, you know, it was pretty fascinating. Like, uh, we're gonna do like a deep dive on that too, right? But like the. They used a lot of like, uh, they used Italians, but they used a lot of like Jewish hitman and Irish hitman, um, to kind of give themselves a little bit of distance or it's like, oh, it's not just Italians. Like, look, you know, it's like there's some Jews doing this too. It's a wide variety of murderous psychos in our gang. Yeah. Basically. And like Albert Anastasia is, you know, just to kind of give you an idea, like he, his, his nickname was Lord High Executioner. Right. This was a guy that you'll, during this series, you flying, like there's guys that do hits and it's just part of the job, right? That's the way they look. It's like a soldier, really. Like, you know, I gotta kill. This person, you know, [00:10:00] it is what it is. Right. Al Anastasia actually did like, enjoy torturing people and murdering people. He was a stone cold psychopath, but he was a really good earner too, you know? Uh, he basically ran the waterfront, like him and his, uh, him and his, I believe it was his brother, basically, um, ran. Um, the long, like I said, the International Longshoreman's Association really like, well, they had like high influence in it. Uh, yeah. But that's where Albert made most of his money, was in the, uh, Was in the waterfront, and especially at this time, that's basically how everything came into the country. And people weren't, there wasn't like big transport jets and big airport. There were airports, but it wasn't, wasn't as big of a thing. Most of it was via water. The Murder, Inc. And we'll get into, like you said, a deep dive into Murder, Inc. But whenever I think about Murder Inc, it makes me think a lot about the Gemini gang and Roy de Mayo, which will. They won't come around for many [00:11:00] years later than this, but it, uh, will, we will definitely do a deep dive on the Gemini gang. It seemed to be like this, the glomeration of people, AER Anastasia and the lead who's a psycho brings in other psychos, and it didn't really matter that they weren't necessarily Italian, like there was Dutch Schultz. I think he was a member of Murder Inc. And all sorts of just other s. Psychologically very twisted. People who, you know, get in these murder for higher games and they, uh, just love killing people. Like that comes before even earning or anything like that. Like that. You see the really psycho end of crime in these guys. Well, it's funny cuz like people get this, uh, like this, uh, I I, there's like this image that I, I think people get of like, say somebody like Lucky Luciano who was like, oh no, like, he wasn't like a to, he wasn't a total psychopath. Like, he was just like trying to earn money and [00:12:00] like, look at how a, you know, brilliant like mob, like mob guy was. I'm like, what Murder Incorporated was his idea? From everything that I've read. Oh, really? So, you know what I mean? Like it was his idea, like it was gonna be the enforcement wing of the commission. Really. And I, I mean, I get it right, because to, I mean, you're running like an organization. It's sole purposes to. Make money through illegal means, and somebody decides like they're going to talk, you know, where like regular people can just go to court, deal with their issues. These guys can't go to court, you know, be like, oh, this guy stole my heroin. Or you know, this guy stole this illegal booze that I was selling. Or, you know, this prostitute ripped me off. Or, you know what I mean? Like the, so they have to, uh, they have to basically enforce their own rules and this is the way they went about it. I mean, They don't have to do the stuff. Like, we're not gonna get into all the details about, you know, stuff that Albert did. But let's just say it's, I don't know, some of these mob guys like straddle a [00:13:00] line between like, are they just like killers or are they like, I mean, are they serial killers or are they just soldiers? And Albert's is definitely. Firmly on the line of, I'd say he was, he was a serial killer. Steve, here again, we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows. What's the transition then between Vincent Mangano to Albert Anastasia? Well, Albert just comes to OC conclusion that he is just gonna, he's gonna kill Vincent and his brother, and that's exactly what happened. They never found, uh, Vincent Mangano, uh, Phil. They did find, um, I think it was a couple weeks later, but, [00:14:00] uh, Vincent, we still don't know where his body is. We don't know for sure who killed him, to be honest with you. It was Albert, right. But yeah, we don't have to prosecute him in an court of law. We can, it was a, it was an like, but like there was like a commission, uh, like the commission had a hearing about it, cuz it's, this is a big no no, you can't just take out a, you know, a member of the, uh, a boss, you know, let, you can't even take out a ma guy without approval, let alone a boss. So the commission has a hearing, Albert says, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Um, but. Just in case, uh, you know, he was trying to kill me first, but that's what he, that's, that's his argument. Right. So he is like admitting to it without actually admitting to it. And the commission just kind of went along with it. Cuz like, to be quite honest with you, the majority of the people on the commission, Albert and Stasia scared the living crap out of them. I mean, he ran. They knew what he was capable of because they hired him to do the jobs with and [00:15:00] mortar incorporated. Right. So now l let's, um, can you just briefly tell us about Albert Anastasia, his, uh, reign, uh, as boss? It, yeah. I wasn't, uh, very long like Frank. He. What he ended up, how he ended up becoming boss was basically Frank Costello said he wanted him to be boss. And I, you know, Frank Costello being a smart guy, said, well, if I, you know, if I'm around this guy, people aren't gonna really kind of try to screw around with me too much. Um, so yeah, but Albert. Just some people are just not meant to be in charge of things. And Albert, just like one of these people, like, he was just very bullish and the way he went about business, like even at one point he started to open up like opposing uh, casinos in Cuba to like rival Meyer Lansky's, which was just not a good idea and was. Basically just rubbing everybody the wrong way and acting like a, like a psychopath that he was. And the commission comes to the conclusion that, um, you know, we have [00:16:00] to get rid of this guy, right? And, you know, he gets killed in 1957. But to be honest with you, we never know who, we don't know who actually killed Albert. I mean, there's theories. Joe Gallo used to tell people that he was the one who did the hit, but I'm not a hundred percent sure he is telling the truth about that. That seems like something to brag about on the streets. Yeah, I mean, I think that would've been cool, but, um, I mean, who knows? I guess he doesn't have a Yeah, a reason to lie about it. Necessarily, you know, you're one of the, you know, the street tufts or whatever, and you go around telling everybody like, I, you know, I'm the one that killed the, you know, the Lord high executioner. You know, don't screw around with me. I mean, yeah, it gives you a little bit of street cred, right. And if you repeat something enough, people will be like, oh, I guess he's telling the truth about it. You know, when we have Albert Anastasia out of the way. Who fills up that power vacuum? There was a kind of an, an agreement with Carlo Gambino, lucky Luciano Meyer, Lansky, kind of Vito [00:17:00] Genovese, uh, to like get rid of Albert and then Carlo would take over, would take over the family. Carlo Gambino, and this is now, it becomes known as the Gambino family. And from this point on, it's gonna be known as the Gambino family. It's interest, I, I think I mentioned this on the last episode, on at one point it seemed like it changed, the family name changed depending on who was in charge. And then they just stopped doing it like, you know what I mean? Now, like everyone just keeps the same name. I wonder why I, I just, It'd be interesting to find out why that changed. That is interesting. Like the bonanos kind of stuck early. Uh, the Colombos, that one, not exactly. It, it seems like they kind of froze at different times. Castello took over and it wasn't, it was still, it was known as like the Luciano. Uh, but for the Genovese family was known as the Lucio family, right. Still. Right. So it wasn't known as the Costello family. And then when Vito took over [00:18:00] as the Geneve family and just stayed that, especially named after, probably one of the, probably the worst boss out of the mall was Vito Genovese. Right. But yeah. Had to get back to Carla. Takes over after Albert, uh, passes away. And then he names Anello De Crok is named as his underboss, who's, uh, That might be a mob. I don't know if the average person would know him, but he, he's quite famous himself. Yeah. He's no joke. I, if you do any reading at all into the Gambino family, Neil de Laroche is in TE's finger in every pie. Well, he'd been around for, he's been around, he'd been around forever. Right. And we're gonna get into it a little bit, but like, yeah, he was like John Gotti's mentor, and I would say car like j Carlo Gambino. His reign was probably one of the, if not the most successful reigns in mafia. History of all the five families, really, like one of the first things that he did was help get rid of veto genovese. So that was a good thing for them on the general right. We're gonna do, we'll do [00:19:00] end up, probably end up doing like a dive in Vito cuz It is. He, he has a really wild, so we talked to a little bit about it on the Genovese's, uh, family episode, but didn't really do it justice. Just how crazy this guy. Was, yeah. And then like he built like a, like a huge off shho casino gambling empire with Meyer Lansky, uh, in Cuba. You know, if you guys, uh, are familiar with history, you know, that was one of the big reasons why Castro kind of came about was the mob basically took over Cuba, uh, and. Turned it to like a, a giant resort and a giant casino. Really. The min, the administration that was in charge of Cuba at the time was completely fine with this. And the average Cuban was looking at this and going like, what's going on? Like, what's happening to our country? Right? And that's how somebody, you know, maybe Castro wasn't the answer, but that's kind of how somebody like Castro comes about because there's legitimate grievances going on here. And he was also involved in discovering the plot, [00:20:00] uh, that Joe Bono had. Uh, Uh, against the, uh, the, the rest of the commission. He gets bon, he kicks Bono out of the, uh, the picture. And at this point really, whereas the Genovese family before was probably the top dog family, the Gambino family. From this point on, i, I becomes, The most powerful family. It's, it's usually like, uh, you know, who's, who's the most powerful family? Is it the Gambinos or Geneve? And they kind of, they kind of trade it off, right? Nobody, nobody has ever been able to really, except for. For maybe a short period when everybody went to jail, where the Bono family was the most powerful. Um, for the vast majority of the American Mafia history, it's a tie between the Gambinos and the Genovese. The Genovese were probably better earners. The Gambinos are always bigger. It also seems that this is the time period where the Gambinos, like all of these families would have different power centers. Uh, the Bonanos, they, uh, you know, their power centers were [00:21:00] even in. Canada and other places where with the, even with inside of New York City, you might have a cruise operating out Little Italy and then some outta Brooklyn, some out of the Bronx, where this, the Gambino family, their division was more between the street guys and then the white collar guys and the union guys, like they had this high, high end. Kind of money making machine through the unions, through contracts, through construction. But then you also had the guys, the holdup guys and the ones just stealing truckloads of merch and stuff like that. This is like the kind of the white collar crime aspect. Well, I was always there, but like I think Carlo Gambino had a big part of making that much more important part of the, uh, Gambino organization. Yeah. And then. Um, Joe Colombo was the one that actually spoiled Joe Bono's plot. So like Caro Gambino ends up making him head of the [00:22:00] Colombo family, which the Colombo family, it's not a, a satellite state of the, of the Gambino family, but it's heavily dependent on the Gambino family. Right. Even the Gambinos like start working in on a, their own rockets. And even at one point, like Carlo Gambino was, uh, influential in naming the, um, one of the bosses, the Lucchese family. Didn't last very long, um, because he ended up, uh, Carmine Tar Mo Car. Car. We talked about Carmine tar tea. He ended up getting caught up in the French connection. Uh, Uh, drug trafficking, uh, scandals. So we're, we'll, we're gonna do a whole thing on the French connection too, down the road. But yeah, he was only short-lived, I mean, even, even in the Genovese family, Carl Gambino, uh, kind of pushed for this guy named Frank, uh, Terri to, uh, Takeover is at the acting boss. It just kind of shows you the amount of influence that Carlo Gambino had over the entire commission. I mean, he [00:23:00] really was kind of the boss of bosses. He was the guy running the show, and from my understanding, Carlo was super low key and for the most part, like he didn't want his I, his son, Tommy would get involved in the criminal side of things, but for the most part, I think he. Pushed his kids towards being completely legit. Yeah, I mean, he was, I mean, if you couldn't come up with a better boss than Carlo Gambino really like in terms of like keeping him low keyed, bringing in lots of money, taking care of business that needed to get taken care of, you know, and like unlike most mobsters, he like, he just, he died of natural causes in 1976. He didn't die in prison. He wasn't. You know, he wasn't killed like pretty remarkable considering like the amount of times of these characters that we talked about, and most of the time they either end up dying in prison or they get killed themselves. Not many guys can say they just died peacefully of natural causes. No, not at all. And [00:24:00] his, the heir to the throne, Paul Castellano will not die of natural causes. Obviously. He passed away. He named Paul Castellano as the, uh, the new boss of the Gambino family, which was a little shocking to a lot of, uh, a lot of people in the, uh, um, in the Gambino family cuz they, uh, they. Just assumed that an was gonna take over the, uh, position concerning he was the underboss. And, you know, I'd been working underneath Carlo Gambino this entire time, but, um, that's not what happened. I, you know, from everything I've read that Carlo Gambino kind of felt that the Gambino family would be better served, focusing more on the white. Collar type crimes that Paul Castellano was, uh, you know, specialized in, in terms of like, you know, construction and labor racketeering and things of that nature. But what ended up happening is it effectively just kind of split the family in half really. Like he had the white collar faction, which is. You know, Paul [00:25:00] Castellano was in charge of, and then you have, uh, the, the street guys, the blue collar faction that an was basically, uh, in charge of, I think with Paul Castellano he's in, you can put him in that category of. Just completely greedy mobsters. I have no doubt that Paul Castellano with his legitimate businesses probably would've made just as much money as with this mafia money, but he just couldn't. I think there just was never enough, and I think he also liked playing mafia, like being the Don and all that. I think he loved that. Part of it, but I don't think his heart was really in it. And I don't think that he really understood that he couldn't control these wild lions like Alo, Dick crochet and John Gotti. Like I, I think he thought like, oh, I'm the done, you know, [00:26:00] like old school, you know, almost the, the Godfather movie syndrome with him. Well, yeah, I mean that's a lot of how, that's kind of how the street guys felt about it, like in their eyes, you know, Paul Castellano just didn't have any legitimacy. Um, they, and a lot of, they, uh, de Crok was their boss, really. Um, that's the way they viewed it, and that's kind of how. It ran. I mean, maybe, maybe this is how Carlo Gambino thought this was gonna happen, where, you know, like, we're gonna run the empire with like two emperors and one emperor's gonna be focused on this part of the business and another emperor's gonna be focused on this part of the business. But, you know, it sounds like a great idea in theory, but. In practice, unless there's like somebody really remarkable overseeing the whole thing. Say like somebody like a dial and usually doesn't, usually doesn't work. Right. Like I said, Paul, well, Paul made a huge chunk of his money, was highly influential in the concrete club, [00:27:00] which is something probably do a little deep dive on that too. Like throughout the series were basically all the concrete. At one point that was being poured in New York, the mafia was getting a kickback on and you couldn't like, Even the people that were like literally just pouring the concrete and like actually doing the work, like the union, uh, part of it too, the mob controlled a lot of those unions. So to be able to get the union labor that you needed to do some of these bigger projects, I, so basically every step of the way the mob was getting a kickback on, they called it the concrete club because each family kind of got a little bit of a kickback out of it. Right. But the Gambino family was the one getting the most right. Going back to Paul Castellano when you have, you know what the, basically the Gambino crime family was, was a dis diversified company and it had different departments, and you need a leader who really understands all of the, the, you needed somebody who understood the white collar and you needed [00:28:00] somebody who had legitimacy on the streets. You got that in Carlo Gambino, but that type of person isn't cut from every cloth. Like, do you have the Aldi? Grocery store in, in Canada. It's a, it's a German company, but that's an, that's neither here nor there. But their, their whole philosophy is that when they hire somebody, like they hire managers and, um, They pay them top dollar, but you're gonna, you have to work for a certain time as a amount of time as a cashier. Then you have to work as a certain amount of time in the meat department, a certain time working in as a stock person, a certain part of the time as a janitor. And then if you wanna go higher up, you have to work at at different. Parts in the corporate office and payroll and accounts receivable, like the, you have to have the experience and know what it's actually like to work all this job. They're not just hiring a manager who, you [00:29:00] know, lords it up over everybody but doesn't know how to do the job. And yeah, you didn't get that in Paul Castellano. He wasn't somebody who was knocking overheads of car drivers to, uh, you know, stick up a, uh, load of. Cigarettes. You know, he never sold cigarettes on the street. Like that just wasn't his type of thing. And I don't think he could ever talk the language of a John Gotti. Well then when, when we get into like Gotti's reign, I mean you could argue that the problem with his reign was the reverse. Yeah, reverse. Right. Really. Yeah. Wrap us up with, uh, Paul Castellano. Castellano. He, uh, he get himself gets caught up in the giant commission trial that, uh, uh, that happens. We're gonna do a, we're gonna do a deep dive on this commission trial too, cuz it involves a lot of people like Rudy Giuliani and. Lawyers and basically the entire New York mob at the time, except for, uh, you know, John Gotti [00:30:00] gets spirited cause he wasn't a boss. But, uh, yeah, he names, uh, John Gotti and, uh, Thomas, uh, Belotti as the acting bosses, I guess kind of keeping up with this separation of powers to a degree where like Thomas Bilotti was more close to Paul Castellano and John Gotti was more close to Anella del Croach. This is like a big part of the Gambino history is the conflict, uh, between Paul Castellano and John Gotti. Like John Gotti had always been, uh, he always hated Paul Castella. I never liked him at all. Didn't take him very serious, and no, getting too deep into John Gotti. He had like childhood friends and his brother, uh, gene Gotti and Anthony. Uh, Ruggiero, they were caught up in a, like a drug trafficking, uh, scheme. And when we do our deep dive on Gotti, we'll get into all these characters. Uh, Ruggiero Gotti were like best friends from growing up. It's kind of like if you watch the movie and like a, like a mob movie, and they're [00:31:00] like kids and they're like, oh, we're gonna be best friends forever like this. Legitimately, what's the case between, uh, Gotti and uh, Ruggiero? Uh, Ruggiero was known as like, uh, he was known as quack quack cuz he would just wouldn't stop talking. He got caught in a bug talking about, uh, Drug trafficking and a bunch of, bunch of other stuff that he shouldn't have been talked to, shouldn't have been talking about. Paul Castellano ends up demanding like the, he wanted the transcripts to know, like, I wanna know what these guys are actually talking about. And uh, Anthony said, I'm not giving you anything. Right. And then Paul Castellano threatens to, uh, he's gonna demote John Gotti if he doesn't get these transcripts. I mean, and. Paul Castellano's defense. Like I would be demanding these transcripts too. You know what I mean? Like my name's on these tape, like I'm the one in charge of the bloody family. Um, you know, like things come down, they're probably gonna come after me. Um, you know, but it was. He was kind of at this moment, like when that, when that all went down where John [00:32:00] Gotti starts coming up with like, the idea, like, we gotta take, I gotta take Paul Castellano out. And he sets up like a conspiracy, um, group, really, um, with uh, secret society. Within a secret society. They're gonna end up, they ended up calling it the fist. That's a pretty badass name. I'm not gonna lie. Um, with Sammy the Bull and you know, like Frank DeCicco and, uh, Joseph Armon, uh, Monet, who was, I didn't realize this, but like he had, he could trace his like, you know, his relations in the family, like right back to, uh, the Mangano era, um, the sort of the Mangano era, which is, you know, it just kind of led a little bit of credibility to what John Gotti was doing, uh, and. Yeah, so like, uh, an de laro, he ends up dying of, uh, cancer and Paul Castellano doesn't attend the, uh, the [00:33:00] funeral, which, you know, sent John Gotti off. Like, how did you do this? This is your own underboss, y yada, yada, yada, you know? And like him and, uh, Gotti were, uh, again, an and Gotti were like, you know, really close. He was his mentor. And I think, uh, Anello was the only thing kind of holding Gotti back from actually taking out Carlo Gambino, cuz Anello. Was, he was still an old school mob guy. Right? Like he followed the rules, right? Like he didn't like, I don't think an was a really big fan of Paul Casto himself, but, you know, Carlo Gambino, his boss said he was the boss and you know, he followed the rules and he was the underboss. Right. Um, it's interesting to think what would've happened with the Gambino family if like an Ella Croach was actually named Boss and say, Paul Castellano was the underboss. It's interesting to think about if. A lot of this doesn't happen. Well, obviously, probably none of this probably happens, and maybe we were talking about a totally different history of the Gambino [00:34:00] family. Ella Go dies. And then Paul Castellano is caught up in this, the the commission trial case. And he, he names Thomas Bilotti, the new, the new Underboss, and then Thomas, uh, Gambino as the new acting boss. And this just sets. This just, you know, adding fuel to the fire where God is like, cuz even Thomas Bilotti was not a well liked, uh, individual himself. I read a little bit about, apparently he was like a nuclear bomb going off where like, like he'd get him like a little bit angry, like to the point where he'd just start freaking out and they would just get worse and worse and worse and like, he'd just wouldn't make it. He wasn't. He wasn't a really remarkable person either. He was kind of like, I guess you would call like a, a brown noser. You know, like those type, they come to the conclusion and we gotta, we gotta get rid of Paul. And, uh, you know, John Gotti will say, claim that his life was in danger. You know, it's, it's very possible Paul Castellano to talk about breaking up his, uh, his crew and. Spreading it, spreading it throughout the family. Baby's trying to ice isolate Gotti and, you know, eventually was gonna take him [00:35:00] out. But John Gotti, you know, they str, he strikes first on, on December 26th, 1985, they uh, shoot Thomas Bilotti and Paul Castellano in front of Sparks Steakhouse, which is probably. Probably the most famous mob hit of all time. I mean, it's, it's definitely like top three, top five. Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Yeah, I would say that, I mean, that was, I can kind of remember it when it even happened that it was huge news. I mean, that was the news. So tell us, um, you know, we can't. Obviously get into everything with John Gotti, and we will definitely spend some time on Gotti, but give us kind of the, the brief overview of John Gotti's career as boss. There was like an internal. Investigation by the commission where like, oh, you know, like what actually [00:36:00] happened? Gotti said he didn't have anything to do with the Castano hit. I don't think anybody actually believed that, but he ended up being named the new boss, the Gambino family. And, uh, on January 15th, 1986, He named Frank De, uh, Jaco as his, uh, as his Underboss and Ruggiero and, uh, Sammy the bull, who will get into it a little bit. Uh, were named as capos. Uh, just to kind of put it in perspective, like just how much money the mob was bringing in this time. This one family alone, the Gambino family was bringing in 500 million a year. I mean, that's just, I mean, I haven't done the research into that, but I would've to imagine that puts them in with almost any company at that time. Like Coca-Cola. I mean, you name it. I would've to imagine. Well, and then we, when you start getting into like these guys, it's like a lot of them are just like, they're just like meatheads. You know what I mean? But they're running like this company that's worth like [00:37:00] $500 million, you know? Like we'll get it to it a little bit. Like when we, uh, Just talk about just overall John Gotti, like at the end of it. But I did kind of put in perspective, maybe John was a little bit over his head, you know, like in terms of running the, running, something that was bringing in that much revenue. Not everyone was happy that John Gotti was, uh, named boss. And uh, two of these gentlemen that were uh, not happy was Vincent the Chink auntie and, uh, Anthony Corrao. And they actually hired, uh, Corrao actually. Contracted out a hit to get rid of Gotti, to set an example, because you can't just, you know what Gotti did was it's, it's actually funny to think about, like in terms of just killing a boss. It's happened twice in the Gambino family. Really? Like Albert and Anastasia killed, uh, Vincent and nothing. Ha Well, it happened three times. I actually killed Vincent. Nothing happened. Uh, Vincent Mangano and then Albert was killed. You know, [00:38:00] probably, you know, through Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino and those guys working together and, uh, hiring somebody we don't know who. And then Paul Castellano was killed. It just came to my head right now. I can't think of another family where that three bosses were killed and like pretty three distinct errors of the, uh, and of the mafia too. Vincent wasn't happy and, uh, Anthony wasn't happy. They ended up hiring, uh, Vic Muzo and Gaspipe Caso, who we talked about on the Lucchese episode. And those guys were pretty crazy to, uh uh, Carry out a hit happens in, uh, April 13th, 1986. The car bomb was used and they probably would've got Gotti to be honest with you, but he had just happened to cancel, uh, some meeting that he was supposed to attend at the time, and it was only Frank DeCicco, his underboss that was in the car, he ended up getting killed. This hit is unique in the sense that like the American Mafia was kind of. Never really used car bombs, like in New York, uh, in [00:39:00] particular, like they never used car bombs cuz for fear of like heising hitting innocent bystanders and drawing heat, it was just car bombs were, no-no, but in Sicily it was, that's just due course. And like the, the zips, which are like newly arrived Sian Mafioso in America, that's what they, that's what the American counterparts would call 'em. Were zips pretty famous for using these car bombs. So the Gambino family wasn't sure. Who did it exactly. Like they didn't know. Was it like one of the other bosses or was it these zips? Um, so it caused like a little bit of confusion about, you know, exactly what happened. You know, imagine if you were Gotti, uh, you know, like you just really, it happened, happened. You just canceled like a meeting and that basically saved your life. Yeah. Even like, well, I mean a lot of these ma guys, especially later on like Gotti, like found himself up on like racketeering charges and stuff like that. And I'm not gonna get into all the details here. Like when we do our deep dive on Gotti, we will, he [00:40:00] paid off and intimidated the jury and this is kind of where he gets the name, the Teflon done, cuz nothing sticks to him cuz the government keeps on trying to get things to stick and nothing ever does. Uh, And just in general, like John Gotti not being able to get convicted was kind of like a big eyesore for the government cuz they, they had this big commission trial where they, you know, they got all the bosses and, you know, here's Gotti. He's like the one last boss like we need to get, and, uh, must well find him a little bit. They, they'll probably be much soup to anything to get go to get Gotti. And I think they must have been starting to realize that it was whack-a-mole, that as soon as one person, they took out one person that the next one. And that's why so much of how the government dealt with this crime, they had to really change it because you had to really root out the problem, like an infection. You can't leave any infection in there, it's just gonna completely explode again. And they had to find ways to really [00:41:00] make. Deep cracks into the organization and really split it up, and that's one of the things that Rudy Giuliana Giuliani did love him or hate him, that you can't deny what he did to the mafia. You know, we'll get into the downfall of John Gotti at this point. So the f b I was able to, uh, successfully, uh, bug the Raven Knights Social Club, which is where Gotti and his crew would hang out. Yeah. They were actually able to find like there was like a secret apartment in this club. That was, unless you knew about it, you wouldn't have actually been able to see it. But they, I guess they ended up finding out about this and they got, that's where they got the, the bug put in place. And this is where Gotti and them would discuss business because they tried bugging the, the Raven Night Club. But they would, the music would play. They'd play the music so lot, like you could get it bugged, but. None of the conversations were useful cuz you couldn't really hear exactly what they were saying. Right. So, I mean, the, a lot of these [00:42:00] mob guys will turn the radio right up. John Gotti, they used to discuss business in this club because he was actually deaf in one year. So he, he couldn't have the music turned all the way up. So they, you just have to talk to him normal, otherwise he wouldn't be able to hear you. And basically through this bug, they were able to charge Gotti with. Four murders and, uh, they ended up getting Sammy the bull with like, racketeering. So like leading up to the trial, like Gotti was denied using his regular lawyers. The state argued that, uh, his, uh, lawyers they had previously used in the, in his criminal cases were actually involved in this criminal enterprise. To be quite honest with the state wasn't lying about that. Like it's, uh, it's not a. Me, right? It's an actual thing. There's mob lawyers, right? And they're basically mob, they're basically mobsters. We'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about, uh, Vito Zuto, but they played the tapes though, to Sammy the Bowl thinking, you know, like, this is what Gotti was saying about you. And apparently Gotti was kind [00:43:00] of blaming some of the murders on Samuel Bowl, or Lee kind of pressured him into doing it, to be quite honest with you. Maybe he, he probably wasn't lying about that. You know, he talked about like, you know, Sammy was dumb, he was greedy and. Yada, yada, yada. And Sammy listened to all these tapes and none of which are lies, but it's all true. Sammy listened to these tapes and, you know, decided I'm just gonna turn state witness, right? I, I, you know, Sammy says like, there was no way that they were gonna win the case. And like, I don't know, even if they, even if he. Ex I've read things where like, Sammy came to the conclusion that like even if he got off, like he would end up having to like go on a killing screen himself just to protect himself. You know what I mean? Cuz everyone would've thought he would've like ratted. And I don't know, it was a kind of convoluted logic why he turned state witness, but it doesn't matter. He, he became, he turned state witnesses probably. The most famous, [00:44:00] you know, mobster Turncoat. I mean, I, I'm assuming a lot of people know who Sammy the Bull Gravano is, right? I mean, he is just, I think he shows how maybe that the government got too zealous and taking down John Gotti to let somebody like Sammy the bull gravano off. Basically, Scott Free is. I mean, that's such a miscarriage of justice. Somebody who murdered 19 people at least, I mean, you don't know with him of how much he's lying. I, I just think that that showed that the whole Sammy the Bull Gravano episode, and we can, we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about this much more and I'd love to hear what people out there have to say about it. I think that's maybe when the government went too far. And maybe made a pact with the devil too much to take down the bigger fish. I, personally, I think it makes 'em look bad, right? [00:45:00] Like I've listened to, you know, uh, prosecutors and FBI agents and stuff like that. Talk about like, you know, Sammy was like, I. So amazing on the stand. You know, he didn't lie about his involvement in like certain things and it's like, well no, he kind of did. He said he wasn't dealing drugs and that was a lie. You know, he admitted to 19 murders and it was definitely more than that. Um, like you have a guy on the stand that's like, I killed 19 people, but like, this guy's worse. Yeah. Like, what is that? It's just cra that's, it Just made, it made, in my opinion, it just made them look like. Crave and desperate. You know, like we just got, we have to get this last mob, the big mob boss, you know, we got them all, we got all the others. We gotta get this guy. And he keeps on making fun of us cuz none of our char, you know, none of our charges stick to him. And it, it just, I don't know. It's, it seemed really embarrassing, like, you know, even at the time, like, this isn't just hindsight, like people were protesting the fact that they were using Samuel Bull Gravano as a state witness, like a known [00:46:00] murdering lunatic slash like drug trafficker. Right. But the government denied that he was a drug. He had anything to do with drugs, which is so crazy. Yeah. It's a nature problem. I think it's ama, like you said, it's a huge. Dark stain on federal law enforcement. Gotti ends up getting charged with the murder. So he ends up going to life, going to jail for life. Same. The bull by the end of it, only ended up serving one year, and then he was in part of the witness protection program, which he, uh, didn't follow the rules in that either. And, you know, surprise, surprise, years later it was caught running a, a giant ecstasy drug trafficking ring in, uh, Arizona. Oh golly. Could you imagine a career criminal murderer, drug dealer? Sammy, like he wrote a book too about like, which is just all, it's just all lies. Like it's, I don't know. The whole thing is as a whole dark stain on the American legal system in my opinion, like really is. [00:47:00] Really is pathetic. It really is embarrassing what they had to do to get John. They could have got Gotti on the numerous other things that he had been doing. They just would've had to have built a better case. No, they relied on Sam Bo Gravano to get John Gotti thrown in jail. Like it's just really, just doesn't, it just really scummy. It doesn't make the government look good at all. The failure of the government success that, and it's still what they really use today. It's the strategy of getting one person to rat on the next person higher up in the organization and it, they really haven't changed their tune very much in the almost 30 years since Gotti and newer criminal organizations are. That's what they do is they change the way they operate. And that's why, you know, they're not having as much success with cartels and that sort of thing is because the, the, the criminals have changed. The government's still trying to do the same thing that worked to [00:48:00] take down the mafia. Well, I mean, getting the guys to ride at each other is, I mean, it's not a bad strategy, right? Or trying to get guys to turn state witness. It's like, but like, when does it become too much? Like, like Sammy, the bowl is like, like a couple football fields large, too much. Do you know? Do you know what I mean? Like, Like he should have been in jail for life right there with Gotti. Yeah. Think that that's probably the biggest thing is that Sammy should have gone down with Gotti. I mean, they were, Sammy was John Gotti's right-hand man. Anything that Gotti's hands were dirty on. Sammy's were just as dirty. I think used the strategy of. Somebody gets busted with some drugs on, on the low end, like just a user. Well, you give the user a break to get the dealer and then the dealer, you get him to get his guy and like, but the higher you start going up the chain, the more D involved everybody is, and you're not, are you really doing [00:49:00] society and justice? A service by saying that somebody who's just slightly less guilty than the next guy up gets to get a free pass. Like, no, that's not how it should work. Yeah. So yeah, to kind of wrap it up like, uh, uh, John Gotti's sons and, uh, running the family for a bit, we're gonna get until him later cuz the, the. That's a fascinating story. Uh, Gotti would die in prison in, uh, 2002. And, uh, I don't know if he exactly if he said this, but I remember reading it that he actually said this and he said like, in this life you either end up in a coffin or a prison and. That's exactly what Gotti did. Like Gotti. He never broke a Marisa. He never, you know, he signed up for this. He said, you know, I'm Osa Nostra. I signed up for this for life and come what may be, you know, it's either I'm gonna probably end up in prison or I'm gonna wind up in a coffin early. And that's what happened. He wind up in prison and I'm [00:50:00] sure there was a lot of temptation to start talking. You know, like, not that he was gonna ever get outta prison, but he maybe could have gone into a nicer prison. Maybe he could have got liberties in terms of like, you know, visiting family outside of prison, you know, under surveillance obviously. But, uh, he never did any of that. This is the Marky end of our five families and five episodes, and they're really the primer and the overview is a way to get her beak wet in the the Mafia history mustache. Chris and I will do deep dives into many of the topics we've chatted about today, but definitely keep these five families. In five episodes as your reference for future episodes, you may be listening to something in a future episode and thinking, oh yeah, how did that fit in? Come back, listen to these episodes, and I think that it'll always give you a good place to set your feet into. When we get into future episodes, we will definitely be holding down this corner of the internet, so come [00:51:00] back, listen again. If you wanna reach out, email us, contact us on social media. Leave a rating and review on your podcaster of choice, but the biggest thing is we wanna hear, if you want, uh, if there's something that you want a more specific deep dive of, definitely let us know. Really, the best thing you can do is tell if your friends about this podcast so that they too 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 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 [00:52:00] time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Title: Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023 Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/yLZmG8rmOUx Description: Welcome to the Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast. Hosts Mustache Chris and Steve will take you on a tour of the history of crime in the United States and beyond. You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: 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. Welcome to this very first episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, a history and crime podcast. My name is Steve and I am joined by my co-host mustache Chris. In this podcast, we are going to give you the basic, Concept of organized crime and punishment, a history podcast, and really break down what we're going to try and do in this show. Now, Chris, maybe tell us a little bit how we met and where the genesis of this podcast came from. Oh, yeah, me and you've been talking for I don't know how many years now. Four or five [00:01:00] years at least. Yeah, I don't know. We met like just via Facebook really? Right on history podcasts, arguing with people about events in history, really. And then me and you kind of just tended to agree on a lot of stuff. We're still arguing about history to this day. Now this podcast, and it's maybe we're the right rebels to make this kind of podcast, a history podcast on true crime. Now, Chris became a regular guest on my previous podcast Beyond the Big Screen, and we really started talking about very different kind of movie and beyond the big screen, but it, it developed over time into talking about true crime and especially organized crime. Yeah, initially we were, I think for first movie we were discussing like when, uh, we were talking about like, me, you know, coming on your, uh, podcast once in a while was the Prometheus and I turned into like a, almost like, it felt like a month [00:02:00] discussion about the movie. And then, you know, we've done like a lot of, made a lot of content together actually. Uh, and beyond the big screen. We also did a series on eight man outs, which was. Really cool. It ties into, cuz it's kind of about organized crime, maybe we can revisit that for this podcast that we're doing now. And then we kind of shifted, we were gonna do like a little series on the Mafia and I think we picked out like, I think it was like six movies we were gonna do initially and then I. Just kind of one thing led to another and we kept on adding movies. We kept on saying, oh, we gotta do like a background episode on this. And like more and more of the research was more about like the history behind these movies. And you know, we decided let's just do a organized crime podcast. When we started diving into the, talking about these mafia movies and we talk about this movie and that movie. We both started to feel kind of constrained that we had to tie it to a movie because there's so many [00:03:00] great stories that go beyond any movie and it's like, oh, I wish we could talk about this topic or that topic. The Appalachian conference or the uh, the story of the Colombo family. But we really couldn't because there wasn't a movie that directly tied to it. And that's where we started to think that, let's stretch this out. And that's what this podcast is really going to be about is deep dives into so many aspects of organized crime and things that you can look forward to. In this very first series our we're going to look into. The five families of New York, we're going to look into really individualized stories of the five Families of New York, focusing really in this first series about the golden age of the mafia, of how we define it, of the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, and then into the nineties. But from there we have a lot of different [00:04:00] plans to get into. Specific moments of the mafia and not even, and we're looking beyond the mafia as well. We're looking at organized crime all over the world, and that's really what we wanna try and do is bring a historical light to the true crime genre. Yeah, for sure. Cuz like we're both kind of history nerds, right? Like we mentioned earlier, we, that's how we met was just like arguing about history on history podcast pages, right? And me and you were always discussing history and you know, when we were initially kind of coming up with the idea, like I went looking and I mean there's a lot of podcasts or with mafia content. I wouldn't say a lot, but there's some, but a lot of them are more. They don't really bring like, kind of like a historical perspective to it, uh, that I, I find that we, we are gonna try to do it with this podcast where we're gonna take the material seriously. We're gonna try to do like really big, [00:05:00] deep dives into these, uh, into these subjects. So, you know, just a little teaser, we're gonna be talking about Murder Inc. And I've been writing the notes and doing the research and it just keeps on getting deeper and deeper and deeper. That's really what's unique about what we're going to do is we're following all the trails. You can put up one of those corkboards with the pictures and the strings connecting all the people. That's what we're really going to try to do. Chris nor I are historians, we're not academics. We're just really highly interested people and hobbyists who want to go. Deep, deep, deep into this topic of true crime in the mafia and take it really where it goes and where it takes us. We're gonna try and make connections throughout all of these series, between many of the different stories, because we're really looking at. Many, many parallel stories that really aren't even completely [00:06:00] told right now. The academics are still trying to figure out these stories, so we're gonna try and present it to you as best as we possibly can from the perspective of. Not academic historians, but people who are really interested because honestly, that's how the detectives are looking at it. That's how journalists are looking at it. We're trying to look at it from a lot of different perspectives. Oh yeah, for sure. And like, and just to be honest too, like there's really not, like there's some like serious academic work being done about like the mafia history in general, but in, it's one of those things that it's there, it's still relatively new. Right. So a lot of like the researcher would have you is like from journalists. Uh, it's a relatively new field, like mafia research in terms of like serious academic work where, you know, people with like master's degrees and PhDs are studying the subject as, uh, like their further thesis and, uh, thesises and stuff like that, right? Um, but [00:07:00] like, you know, we're gonna try our best to be as accurate as we possibly can. I think we both came to the agreement too, that, you know, in terms of like kind of our own personal opinions, we're gonna be a little bit more. Open about them in terms of, you know, what we think happened or what could have happened, or maybe what should have been done. So that'll be interesting. We're not gonna leave you without content on this first episode. In this first episode, you're going to get made into the Organized Crime and Punishment Podcast. Now, getting made or becoming a made man is the process by which a qualified, bonafide person is initiated into the mafia. And the process in the US evolved from a longstanding secret society initiation rules in the Sicilian and the Southern Italian Mafia organized crime. The mafia initiation process is what you would call in a. Phased in [00:08:00] ritual process, and there's many examples of phased in initiation processes in religion and other secret societies. And we can go all the way back to the Roman times with mystery cults and that sort of thing. And even in a way, Christianity initially, the way it initially handled it. Initiation into the religion was a phased in. Uh, and we can definitely see analogies between 19th century secret societies of Europe and mafia initiation. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of similarities into, I mean, you can make a lot of comparisons to like, say Freemasons and. You know, we don't know much about the Rosa Crucian, but like little we do know about it in terms of the secrecy and like how you were initiated. Um, I mean, it's really how the, why the mafia was able to work so well for as long as it did was because it was a secret society that [00:09:00] law enforcement or just people in general couldn't easily enter. Now it's pretty interesting because we know a lot about the initiation process of the mafia in the United States. Really, for the most part, a person, a perspective member, had to become a known associate of an already made member. Uh, there's a famous person, uh, who he didn't become a rap per se, but he, uh, Exited the life, and he was a really high ranking member of the Colombo family. And he said, you don't sign. You don't fill out an application for the mafia. You have to know somebody who's gonna vouch for you. And then you had to become an earner, so to speak, or someone who could prove that they could make money for the organization. Then after that the books had to be open, which means that the entire mafia organization, which [00:10:00] is called the commission, which we will, we will talk about extensively in the series, was needed to be ready to take on new members and that certain perspective members met. Certain qualifications, such as they had to be 100% Italian, or even in some cases 100% Sicilian. Then there's the actual ritual of initiation, and maybe Chris, you can describe the init, the initiation process. Yeah. Most like, uh, most famously, uh, Joe Occi kind of described it. So the first time we really got a. Kind of a clear idea of the initiation process. And according to him, you would have your finger pricked with a needle. And I've heard different, like the way you described it, and then I've heard like different things. But apparently this blood would fall onto like, uh, Like a picture of a saint and then they would burn the saint. Right? When you, uh, [00:11:00] get initiated in, you basically have to say that like, this is your family. Now it becomes first before you even your own family and you know, breaking erta, you're basically saying you're signing away, you know, is a death sentence. And then that card of the saint where the blood is dripped onto, that's burned in the person's hand. Usually the most important members of the family would be at that introduction. And then there's a formal introduction. Of the gathered members of that this person is now made as a member that we've heard that we get this story from several different mob informants or former made members of the Mafia. So with some. Differences, but you can kind of probably see that the process evolved throughout time. It evolved from the Sicilians and the Southern Italian [00:12:00] organizations took on a certain flare in the United States, and then throughout the decades that slightly changed and probably different ceremonies went in different directions. As Chris alluded to, the first made member to discuss the ceremony in detail was also one of the very first high profile mafia members to testify for the government or basically what we might call rat out. His, his family members on the inner workings, and this was a Genevese family soldier named Joe Lac way back in the 1960s. So right now we're going to listen to a clip of. A Congressional testimony by Joe Vecchi and in this clip in front of the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, also called the McClellan Committee. Joe vei describes the initiation ritual in quite [00:13:00] detail. Let, let's listen to Joe Ceci in his own words, explain the ceremony himself. The table, which was a long table and there was a gun and a knife on the table. And, uh, how many were at the table? About 35 to 40 and sat me down and, uh, and, and made me repeat an Italian. Did they set you down at the table or in a chair Out front. Come sat me down on the end of the table with MUN and Z doing the talking next to Mun and z. Alright. Now you sat next to him, then what happened? Well, he had the knife and a gun on the table. I repeated some words he told me, but I only could explain what he meant. I could repeat the Wordss. But they were in Sicilian. They were what? In Sicilian? In Sicilians. Didn't understand. You repeated what? You didn't understand what they meant right then they explained. They explained what they meant. Who explained Mariza well, he could [00:14:00] talk pretty good English. Mariza. He talked 12 languages. Uh, getting a good, he went on to explain that you lived by the gun and by the knife, and you died by the gun and by the knife. Yes. What kind of a ceremony did you go through? Well, then, and taken that oath. Well, then I, uh, a, uh, he gave me, uh, a piece of paper. I supposed to, you know, invite it. And, uh, well now without burning the paper, just take a piece of paper there and show us what, what, how you did it. You don't need to set the paper up, Barb, but take a piece of, give him a piece of paper. Let's demonstrate just what you did in other ways, not this piece of paper. This piece of paper is born. Paper is burning. Light it. Yeah. And then in your hand you'll say, Well, again, they give you words in [00:15:00] Italian, but I know what it meant. In other words, while you were repeating the words, you were burning the paper. Right? This is the way I brain if I expose this organization, and you would, that was, uh, you of, of the fate that was to befall you. If you betrayed the organization right? Until a piece of paper blanked, you'd be burned ashes. Right? Alright, now what else did you do in that ceremony? Then after that, they, uh, They, uh, got around a table and they true numbers, they do what numbers between one to five, for instance? How you mean? Well, here, like this throw tree or one or five, let's say the way you got a table there right now, everybody throws a number in. Otherwise we'd start down there at the table. Somebody would hold up a number of each one and hold up some fingers. Yeah, we con they could hold up as many as they wanted to. Up to five. Up to five. Well, that's about all I got over here. Well, let's say we start from you, Senator. Yeah. We start with me and let's say [00:16:00] it's 35, 40. Say I put up two, right? And here. Put up some. Yeah, you add it all up. Let's say we, you add it all up. Let's say we get a figure about 38. About 38 all. And we start from you. And let's say you go all around and it comes to, uh, Send that next to you. Yeah. He's next to me. He is my, what you call Godfather, then. He, he, he picks your finger. Who? Who? The godfather. He picks your finger. He picks your finger with a needle, makes a little blood come out. In other words, that's the express to blood relation. Supposed to be like brothers. Uh, that's the letting of blood. That's right. In other words, uh, Yes. Symbolic as a fact. You're willing to spill your blood, right? To give your blood, to give your life. Yeah. As to what I'm telling you now, I need to go no fo you to just say nothing else. This is what I'm telling you, what I'm [00:17:00] exposing to you in the press and everybody, this is my doom. This is the promise I'm breaking, that I, even if I talk. I should never talk about this and I'm doing so that's my best way to explain it. That is the highest oath you took. Right. In other words, that was the most sacred in in this organization. Right. I want you, but you would never tell this. Right? Right. So based on that clip, Chris, what do you think about getting made and what do you think about Joe ve Laci's description of this process? It's sounds intense. You know, like it's no, like, it's no small endeavor. Um, yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds cliche, but it really isn't cliche. Like when you sign up to the mafia, you're signing up for life. There's no leaving the life, you know, there's only two ways. You're really leaving the life. It's, uh, you become a rat. Well, I mean there, I guess there's three, right? You become a rat and you ride on all your friends. You know, people that you grew up with, [00:18:00] uh, you know their, you know their family, you know their kids. You wind up in a coffin or you wind up in jail, you know, it's no small. It's, it's, it's very seriously, it's a very serious endeavor when you join the mafia. And I think that Joe Ceci really shows the way, hi. He wasn't born into the mafia. His parent, his father wasn't in the mafia. His uncles weren't in the mafia. He really got, he was in the the double As if we're gonna use a baseball metaphor of crime. He was noticed by the mafia and then he met the qualifications. He proved that he was an earner and then he got brought in as a made man. He, he really exemplifies that process of how someone can move up into the mafia as a way to advance their criminal career. Yeah. You know, cuz they give in [00:19:00] and it's not necessarily, you don't even necessarily have to be like a very remarkable individual. You know, Joe Vei wasn't, You know, super intelligent. He was kind of a dullard really, to be honest with you. Like, uh, he didn't even know, like basic geography of the United States and stuff like that. Like, there's, like, they'd, they'd be asking him a question about like, oh, do you know about what was going on in this state? And he'd be turning to his lawyer and people thought he was like a, like, oh, should I be talking? He's like, no. He's literally asking like, where is this? I don't know where this is. Like you pointed out, he could earn. You know, for a long time he was loyal. He was in the mafia for a very long time before he turned rats. And there's a whole story for, you know, why he ended up becoming rats or whatever word you want to use. Yeah. He was in, in the family and he kind, you know, he never worked for himself out very high, but he, you know, he was a soldier and you know, people. People knew who Joe Vei was. This episode is meant to just wet your beak a little on what mustache [00:20:00] Chris and I are going to do in this new podcast. Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast, five episodes on the background of the big. Five New York families are available right now to download and listen to. You can listen on On Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you find podcasts. Leave a rating review on your podcast or of choice. That really helps us know what you're thinking. If you want to join the conversation, follow us on social media by searching for a two Z history page, or you can email us. At Crime A two Z history page.com. More importantly, if you like what you hear, tell your friends about organized crime and punishment so that your friends can become friends of ours. Thanks for becoming friends of ours. Guys, forget about it. The music for Organized Crime and Punishment is provided by my [00:21:00] friend Rick, and the song is called Five Eighth Socket by Rico's Groove. That's Rico's groove, G R U v. To find more great music like this, go right now and subscribe to Ricoh's Groove on YouTube and Spotify. You could search for Ricoh's Groove on those platforms or find links in the show notes. 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.[00:22:00]  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment: A History and Crime Podcast Description: Thank you for joining hosts Mustache Chris and Steve as they explore the fascinating history of crime. You can learn more about Organized Crime and Punishment and subscribe at all these great places: 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 Title: Meet the Families – The Gambino Family Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.