Gangland Wire

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with former drug trafficker Carlos Perez for a direct, unfiltered discussion about the evolution of the drug trade in America. Carlos has a new book out titled Pedro Pan: The Product of a Revolution Gone Bad The conversation opens with recent controversy surrounding the reported death of  the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader El Mencho, and what that development signals for the balance of power among modern Mexican cartels. From there, Gary and Carlos trace the arc of the drug trade from the Caribbean smuggling routes of the 1970s and 1980s to the dominance of today’s cartel-controlled corridors. Carlos reflects on the era of Ronald Reagan and the early “War on Drugs,” describing a time when enforcement was uneven and smugglers routinely exploited weak regulatory environments in places like the Bahamas. He explains how traffickers adapted faster than policymakers, using maritime routes, small aircraft, and coordinated pickup operations to move multi-ton quantities of narcotics. Gary and Carlos contrast those earlier days with modern interdiction efforts—advanced Coast Guard surveillance, satellite tracking, military-grade radar, and cross-border intelligence sharing. What was once opportunistic smuggling has evolved into highly structured cartel logistics supported by corrupt officials and narco-state dynamics. Carlos provides a candid account of his own rise in the trade. Starting as a construction laborer, he moved into pickup crews retrieving floating bales of drugs in open water. Over time, he became involved in larger-scale operations involving aircraft and organized distribution networks. He details the operational mechanics, the risks, and the constant calculation between profit and prison—or worse. The discussion also explores the blurred lines between political authority and cartel influence. Carlos explains how governments in certain regions became intertwined with trafficking operations, illustrating how power, money, and violence intersect across borders. In the second half of the episode, Carlos shifts to a personal reckoning. He discusses the moral compromises required in the drug trade and the toll it takes on family and identity. Ultimately, he chose to step away, prioritizing stability and long-term survival over fast money. Now living a legitimate life, Carlos has documented his journey in his book Pedro Pan: The Product of a Revolution Gone Bad, offering readers a firsthand account of smuggling culture, Cuban heritage, revolution-era influences, and the psychological weight of that world. His story reflects both personal accountability and a broader commentary on the human side of organized crime. This episode blends law enforcement perspective with insider testimony, giving listeners a rare dual lens: the cop who chased traffickers and the man who once outran them. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence [0:03] Unit detective. It’s great to be back here in the studio. It’s a cold day in Kansas City, Missouri, but we’re going to talk to a warm state and with a man that lives in that warm state, Carlos Perez. Welcome, Carlos. How are you doing, Gary? Doing good? Yeah, I’m doing good. A little cold, and I know it’s much warmer down there. We talked about that. Carlos was involved in the drug business, which is quite topical right now, especially today. Now, this won’t come out today, but as of over the weekend, the Mexican government arrested the El Mencho, the head of that, I can’t remember the name of that cartel. It was a Western Mexico, the state of Jalisco cartel. And somehow he got killed on the way to Mexico City as they’re transporting him. And his guys, the cartel members, are going crazy. Carlos, let’s talk about that a little bit, about this new war on drugs. When I was in Ronnie Reagan’s war on drugs, it was different than it is now. Now we have this new war on drugs with blowing drug boats out of the water. And this guy dies on the way to the bigger jail. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. Carlos, how would you, as a former drug trafficker, how do you react to that? [1:18] The laws change. And the more that the smugglers change, the more that the system to catch them changes also. In fact, when you’re talking about Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs, there was quite a few things that allowed the smugglers to succeed. One was, most of it, and I’m talking Caribbean now, most of it was going through the Bahamas. The Bahamas had laws at that time where anything governmental was not allowed to land nor dock a boat anywhere in the Bahamas without the permission of the Bahamian government. Which, by the time they got to wherever, if they reacted, if they were advised of some drugs coming in, it would take them a long time to react. I think they had two boats for all the islands that had to travel back and forth. You never, you couldn’t, they couldn’t, the DEA, the Coast Guard, they couldn’t catch you. [2:12] And when you fly a plane in, you just land anywhere and say hello to the DEA as they’re flying by because they can’t land. And therefore, you score the load that you have. Nowadays, Jesus God Almighty, now you’ve got the Coast Guard out there. You’ve got the Coast Guard citation constantly flying, plus Navy. But you couldn’t get it done. And back in those days, that’s the way it was done. It was the Bahamas played a huge part. The prime minister of the Bahamas was so heavily, even though he never. [2:42] Did any time or anything he was heavily involved he took payoffs to left left and right the whole the situation is completely different now you got AWACS flying overhead that can hear you when you’re in the bathroom anybody here’s my opinion on that I want to know who in the hell was in charge of sending those boats out of Venezuela that after the first one got blown up who was telling them to keep sending boats over now if maduro this is my theory if maduro was smart he would have stopped that if he was really the one in charge he would have gone god you got to make me look better you can’t keep doing it that tells me he was not in charge of the shit okay so there’s someone behind that kept going send them we got to see if we can score keep the score, i don’t know how he kept doing that that was to me that was such a stupid move especially when you You see that you’ve got half of America’s Navy sitting on your doorstep, and you keep trying to send drugs. What are you, nuts? The Pacific, they should have gone over to the Pacific, where there’s less surveillance, and maybe run it up the Pacific coast by land. [3:53] Okay. Try to get it into Mexico by land. Because back in the day, Mexico was not really involved at all in that. It was the Caribbean. And then when the Colombian cartel, which was Medellin cartel, when they stopped losing so many loads, they started to go to Mexico. And through Mexico, they just flew small planes, landed in the woods somewhere in Mexico, and then they moved it up. That was not – you weren’t doing that in the Caribbean by that time. And talking about Reagan’s war on drugs, I had two – this is the sideline. I had two little boats coming in from the Bahamas that had marijuana on them. [4:35] I still got to laugh at this freaking idiot. One of them, they were coming in from – Bimney’s only 47 miles away. You can almost do it on the fumes of a gas tank. This guy forgot to gas up. Coming over, he gets stopped by the Marine Patrol, right? As they’re searching him, the other boat had gone through but was wondering where his partner was, and he goes back to see where the guy is. [5:01] How’s that for – anyway, they get them both. It was a total of about 1,200 pounds. That had come from Jamaica, that’s about –, And the vice president, who was Bush, was at the Coast Guard dock when they were unloading the boats. And I was sitting there watching, going, damn, they look like my boats. And when I investigated, it was a—but that was one little incident that had happened. But the difference between yesterday, yesteryear, and now is chronologically things change. They trump the other everybody that was a president or that that had something to do with stopping the trade with drugs never really stuck their foot in deep to stop it it makes me feel like yeah you’re not really you’re talking a lot but you’re not really doing much because if i was a cop my god i usually i’d have had all kinds of medals from stopping these people because it’s an easy thing but no one really had the interest who was involved economically up the top god and only In the Bahamas, I knew who it was. It was the prime minister. Knew his people real well. In the States, everything changes every couple of years. And you don’t know what they’re thinking, what their process of thought is to try to stop this. You know what it was? None. They didn’t try. Okay, they did not try. [6:22] There used to be, oh God, probably about two or three DC-3s a night landing in Bimini, 47 miles away. Okay? Each one of them had 10,000 pounds on it. The boats were running up the river, the Miami River. Once you get inside on a river, inside land, you pretty much already scored. That changed. Then it went to freighters, fast boats going out, picking up, coming in. Then when the United States stopped that, when they declared, we’re going to be able to stop any boat anywhere in international waters. You couldn’t do it back then. [7:02]

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with author and historian Gary Clemente for a deep dive into the remarkable life of Nicola Gentile, one of the most influential yet little-known figures in early American organized crime. Click here to find books by mob expert Gary Celemente Gentile was no street thug. Born in Sicily in 1884, he immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and became a roving Mafia diplomat—trusted to mediate disputes among crime families in cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pueblo, Chicago, and beyond. Known as Zio Nicola (“Uncle Nick”), Gentile operated as a stabilizing force during the most violent period of Mafia history, including Prohibition and the Castellammarese War. Clemente reveals that Gentile’s story survives largely because Gentile broke the ultimate Mafia rule: he wrote memoirs. Those writings—published in Italy in the 1960s—were seized by the FBI and later translated by Clemente’s father, Peter Clemente, one of the first Sicilian-born agents assigned to the FBI’s elite Top Hoodlum Squad. The episode offers rare insight into those translations and the intelligence value they held for federal investigators. The discussion traces Gentile’s interactions with legendary figures such as Carlo Gambino, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Vito Genovese, as well as his behind-the-scenes role in shaping the Mafia’s modern organizational structure—including the creation of the national Commission. The episode also explores Gentile’s personal contradictions: a lifelong criminal who saw himself as an honorable man, a mediator capable of violence, and a romantic who later believed a lover betrayed him to federal authorities. After fleeing the U.S. under indictment, Gentile returned to Sicily, where he later provided intelligence to Allied forces during World War II—another unlikely chapter in an already extraordinary life. Despite being sentenced to death by Mafia leaders for publishing his memoirs, Gentile was spared due to the respect he commanded on both sides of the Atlantic. He died peacefully in Sicily in 1970, leaving behind a story so expansive it feels tailor-made for film. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am a former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now turned podcaster and documented filmmaker. We record the mafia, everything we can about the mob. And today I’ve been wanting to do this story, guys, as a man named Nicola Gentile. Did I get that right, Gary? Beautiful. All right. This is Gary Clemente, and Gary’s been on before, or GP Clemente. He’s been on before. His father was Peter Clemente, who was one of the original Sicilian-born FBI agents in the United States and did a lot of translation work with Bellacci. And he’s written, he’s writing books. So we talked about the first book, but tell just a little bit more about it. And guys, I’ll have links to that book. And then tell me a little bit about the two more you have coming out. The first book that I wrote in a series of books about my father’s lengthy FBI career is called Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. [1:04] And it’s about my father’s career in the mafia from 1950 to 1976. And in 1957, he became a part of the Top Hoodlum squad, which is an elite group that J.H. Goober started as part of the Top Hoodlum program. And what happened was in 1957, they had a big mafia conclave meeting in Appalachian, New York. [1:30] And they had about 60 members of the mafia throughout the country, all the bosses that attended this meeting. And it became publicized. The cops were there. They confiscated their identification, their wallets, the money, everything. And it got released into the news. This was a big story. [1:50] So what happened was J. Edgar Hoover at that time had been denying the existence of the mafia for a number of reasons. Probably because he didn’t want to get involved with all of the muck of trying to prosecute these gangland people because he knew that they had a lot of buffers between the bosses and the guys committing the murders. So he knew it was going to be difficult, and it would blemish their conviction record and rate. So he kind of stayed away from it, denied the existence of the mafia, And along comes this Appalachian Conclave meeting. It got released into the news, and everybody was up in arms about this. That’s when Hoover decided to start the Top Hoodland program, because there was absolutely no denial of what was going on here, that there was some sort of vast criminal organization that was highly organized, and he had to do something about it. So in 1957, my father became part of the Top Hoodlum program. [2:54] And in particular, the Top Hoodlum squad in New York City, which is really a hotbed of mafia criminal activity. You couldn’t get any more hotter than what they had. They had five mafia families alone in New York. And the first book was really about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino, how Carlo Gambino became one of his original subjects for him to study and to profile. [3:24] He was ordered to do that, and he was happy to do that. The book is really about him confronting face-to-face with Carlo Gambino, and then afterwards wiretapping him at the Golden Gate Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He was on the other side of a wall. From Gambino for six weeks. Gambino did not know he was on the other side of the wall wiretapping him with another agent. So that’s what the first book was about. And the second book is about really the backstory of my father’s life before he got into the FBI a little bit. Then his first years in the Bureau, when he was a part of the investigation of the Communist Party and the Workers’, Party and the few offices that he was in, like the Springfield, Illinois office, and also Cleveland. And then he became a part of the New York office. He was still investigating communist activities at the time. And then he became a part of the Top Woodland squad. And his milieu, his wheelhouse, became organized crime and the mafia. So that’s generally what has happened so far. The second book is being released this coming month, and it will We’ll have book two and book three talking about these sorts of things. [4:44] Interesting. Interesting. All right, guys, I’ll have a link to the old book down there in the show notes and look for that new book coming up and we’ll get back together. I’ll get back with Gary after the book comes out sometime and we’ll do another show. And we’re not going to talk about the mafia so much. We’re going to talk about these activities, which I think is interesting, of the FBI against the Social Workers Party and the Communist Party USA because they did a lot of work. When I was growing up, Gary, do you remember I Led Three Lives, the TV show about, his last name was Phil Brick. It was a weekly TV show about an undercover FBI agent who supposedly was working as a member of the Communist Party. He would go to these meetings and things like that. Do you remember that? I Led Three Lives. I do remember that. That show goes way, way back. What year was that show? Oh, that had to be 1953, 54. I had to be like 9, 10 years old, 55. I was 10 years old, so it probably may be 1955. I do remember the show. I think I’ve seen reruns of it. Yeah, I bet it’s on YouTube. I have to look that up for fun one of these days. [5:52] Issue Machine’s show back then, we will talk about this later on at another time as regards to the second book. Back in the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s main enemy was the Communist Party. It wasn’t organized crime. That was his top focus. He wrote a book called Masters of Deceit. And people, I think everybody, they should have this book in public school system, but they don’t want to do that today. Today’s public school system, they try to inculcate youngsters in more social activities and social warriors and not learning about the perils of Marxism and communism. [6:33] Okay, today we’re going to talk about Nicola Gentile. Now, 1903, he was a Sicilian immigrant that came to the United States, and he found a lot of opportunity among the other Sicilian immigrants because he was a blackhander, if you will, when he first got here. He was a criminal who came over from Sicily, but he was able to move among all the different families, all the different cities, and settle disputes and help people get organized and do things like that. Gary, start telling us a little bit about what you remember about Nicola Gentile. First of all, I want to tell people that Nicola Gentile was an uber jovelace. He was jovelace on steroids. Somebody later on in his life, toward the end of his life, he wrote his memoirs down. This was in 1963. So what happened was he published his memoirs in Italy. He had a co-author, he had another journalist write these memoirs down in Sicilia. [7:36] These memoirs were then grabbed by the FBI and they were given to my father. My father had the papers written in Sicilian. And I remember as a boy in 1963, when this happened, my father was sitting at a table translating these memoirs with my grandmother. Now, my grandmother grew up not too far away. My grandmother and my grandfather grew up not too far away from Nicola Gentile. Nicola was born in the town of Siculiana. Try to say that, Gary. [8:14] I give. I said that one real fast. So he’s writing these, translating the memoirs with my Sicilian-speaking grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather spoke, my grandparents, my father spoke Sicilian as well, too. He grew up with that as a little boy. But my grandmother and my grandfather were helping him translate these papers. These are the FBI papers. This is a copy. This is a copy of the FBI

In this episode, Gary Jenkins, retired intelligence detective, sits down with veteran true crime authors Frank Gerardot and Burl Barer to examine their book Where Murder Lies, a case that intersects Russian organized crime, Italian mob connections, and a troubling claim of wrongful conviction. At the center of the story is Jimmy Kitlas, a young man who struggled with learning disabilities and instability after aging out of a rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles. Facing homelessness and limited options, he gravitated toward individuals connected to the Russian mob, seeking protection and belonging. Instead, he was drawn into criminal schemes—including check fraud and drug trafficking—engineered by experienced mob figures who exploited his vulnerabilities. Frank and Burl provide historical context on the rise of Russian organized crime in the United States, particularly in neighborhoods like Brighton Beach. Unlike the rigid hierarchy of traditional Mafia families, these groups often operated through looser networks, engaging in lucrative scams such as gas tax fraud alongside Italian crime figures. The authors explain how these alliances blurred lines between ethnic crime groups and created new power structures within the American underworld. The discussion then shifts to the murder that reshaped Jimmy’s life. What began as manipulation and grooming evolved into betrayal, jealousy, and ultimately violence. The authors detail how Jimmy’s arrest followed a carefully orchestrated narrative that shifted blame onto him while shielding more powerful figures. Through examination of court records and transcripts, Gerardot and Barer argue that investigative failures and prosecutorial decisions compounded the injustice. 0:02 Introduction and Guests 0:47 Wrongful Conviction Discussion 4:26 Kelly Lee’s Influence 6:33 Russian Mob Background 12:28 Jimmy Kitlas’ Journey 18:47 Investigative Challenges 22:58 The Murder Plot 26:45 Russian Mob Operations 28:29 Geographic Control in LA 31:29 Trust and Collaboration 35:03 Daniel Patterson’s Role 37:10 Conclusion and Book Promotions Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, and I have two guests today. Frank Girdo. Is that correct, Frank? Girdo? That’s pretty good. Gerardot. I’ll take it. Gerardot. Gerardot. Just don’t pronounce a T at the end, right? Yes, sir. [0:24] And Burl Barer. Is it Barer, Burl? Yep, that’s close enough for government work. Joe’s enough for government work. That’s the story of my life, as everybody knows. I like to get it close. And we never let the real facts get in the way of a good story either. So let’s just get going here. We like to tell stories on this channel. That’s what my guys like is stories. [0:44] Stories about the Russian mob and maybe a little bit about the Italian mob. And we also got a story about a wrongful conviction, which is a kind of a hot topic right now. We’re seeing a lot of different things in these true crime shows about wrongful convictions. And there’s been, I think a lot of them have been uncovered. In the last few years because people started paying attention to that a little more than they used to. When I was a policeman, they didn’t pay any attention. Never heard of a wrongful conviction. I really congratulate you investigators and authors and true crime diggers out there that see these things and then go take a look at them because they need to be taken and given a look at. So Burl Baer is an Edgar winning author and two-time Anthony Ward nominee. He’s got a lot of experience in reporting. I see you’ve been in the Hollywood Reporter, even the London Sunday Telegraph, New York Times, USA Today. [1:38] You’ve got, I believe you’ve got some other, what else do you do, Burrell? I watch a lot of TV, watch a lot of movies. What kind of shows have you been on? You’ve done other investigations here. Yeah. I did almost, Frank and I have done most of those shows. Deadly Women, Deadly Sins, Behind Mansion Walls, you know, all. [1:57] Do you name them and claim them? We’ve probably been on them. All right. And Frank Gerardot, you’re a journalist, radio host. You’ve authored several true crime nonfiction books, co-author with Burl on A Taste for Murder, Betrayal in Blue. And you did one with somebody else named Byrne. Oh, that was about John Orr. And I read that book. Actually, I read that book, that John Orr. That was a hell of a story, man. That was a hell of a story. Several years ago. So that’s a, it’s a crazy thing. And that, that, that book really tells the story of John Orr through his daughter’s perspective. Ah, okay. And, and I don’t remember which one I read. I read one. I listened to a podcast about the whole thing all the way through guys. That was the LA County was an LA County fireman, fire investigator who was sat in his own fire all up and down in California. Oh yeah. He would go up North. He was in Southern California. He would go up north to a fire conference and he’d set fires on the way back. It was crazy, craziest story I ever read. And after he got arrested, the number of arson fires in California declined by 70%. I’ll be darned. I’ll be darned. He set brush fires, just all kinds of fires. It was crazy. Name of that book is Burn, Guys, if you’re interested in that by Frank Cardo. That’s the French pronunciation. Yes, sir. Yes. [3:18] So these two guys, they have their publicist, God Hold Me, and they introduced me to this book, Where Murder Lies. It is a fascinating look, and they did a real great examination of the Russian mob, a little connection to the Italian mob in New York City as part of this investigation into really a wrongful conviction case, a wrongful conviction of a kid who was, I guess we don’t use the word retarded anymore. He was mentally disabled and retarded in some manner. I’m not sure exactly how to describe that anymore. How would you guys describe him? So, yeah, I think he’s differently abled. We’ll say that. He’s actually a pretty smart guy. He speaks a lot of languages. He read this book in a night. [4:01] He just, I think more of his problem is that he’s maybe learning. He had learning difficulties. And as you’ll see when we get into the book here, he had a lot of physical and emotional trauma growing up. Okay. Jimmy Kittlis was his name. Yes. And a woman named… Kelly Lee. [4:22] A woman named Kelly Lee got you guys interested in this story. It’s a wrongful conviction story that strays into this mob ties. Who was she? Now, who was Kelly Lee? [4:32] I could tell you about Kelly Lee. She was one of the first people I met when I came to Los Angeles in November of 2003. Three, she was doing intake at Teshuvah, which is a Jewish community kind of rehab for people with all-matter recovery issues. I’d just been through a bad patch, et cetera. He needed some help. She did my intake. Wound up becoming friends with her and her husband. And a few years later, we’re having dinner together. She says, oh, Pearl, you’re a true crime writer. I go, duh, yeah. And she pulls out a handful of court transcripts that are difficult to get nowadays. Thank you. Says, take a look at this. She was, at the time this murder took place, what I would term an unlicensed pharmaceutical supplier on the streets of West Hollywood. Correctly. Gotcha. Marijuana, primarily. Yeah. And she had six arrests for selling pot, which now would probably get her a community service award here. Yeah. Times were different. And when Jimmy Kittlis ages out of the facilities or whatever down in Lake Elsinore. When he turns 18, they just put him on a bus with a ticket to West Hollywood. Goodbye. [5:49] And he gets off. He meets her. She’s a very compassionate person. She can see that this kid is really childlike. Babe in the woods or babe on the street, he’s really going to get taken advantage of. She takes him under her wing like a surrogate mom and tries to tell him and teach him how to survive on the street. And then she said, he’s like a child. Could be really eager to please, super polite, has the intentions man of a goldfish. Oh, look, there’s a castle. Oh, look, there’s a castle. It’d be very easily used. [6:28] It had a lot of sexual energy. He needed a girlfriend. He got one and got her pregnant. And she really tried to help these kids, But she couldn’t be with him 24-7 And she certainly raised her eyebrows When she saw who was spending a lot of time With this couple And that was a well-known fellow In the Russian mob, Yeah, I read that So let’s talk a little bit about the Russian mob So you guys really went in the background When they first came to Brighton Beach Tell the guys a little bit about that background. [7:02] Yeah, sure. As the Soviet Union began to crumble, a lot of Russian Jews found their way to New York, and they found their way to Brighton Beach. And they set up a sort of black market trading system among themselves and within the community with all the sort of standard features of mafia, right? Protection, extortion, sometimes murder, certainly dealing in black market stuff like drugs. [7:32] Clubs, prostitution, just about every kind of crime you can think of happening in a neighborhood that’s protected by a mafia. These guys were controlling in this neighborhood of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach. What I thought was interesting, and readers will probably find interesting too, is that there’s not a real setup like a commission or families. The Russian mob really operates mor

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Aaron Mead to discuss his gripping novel Body in the Barrel, a story inspired by a real-life discovery in Lake Mead that shocked the nation. In 2022, as water levels at Lake Mead dropped to historic lows, authorities discovered a body in a barrel with a gunshot wound to the head—a killing style that many investigators immediately linked to organized crime. The discovery triggered speculation that the remains could date back to the 1970s or 1980s, the heyday of mob activity in Las Vegas. Aaron Mead explains how this discovery sparked the idea for his novel. Although Mead is a longtime water engineer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the mystery of the barrel victim and the history of mob activity in Las Vegas inspired him to craft a fictional story grounded in real events. Gary and Aaron dive deep into the Chicago Outfit’s influence in Las Vegas, discussing figures like Tony Spilotro and hitman Frank Cullotta, whose violent methods and stories helped shape the mythology of organized crime in the desert. They also explore the long-standing mob practice of disposing of bodies in barrels, including the infamous case of mobster Johnny Roselli, whose body was also discovered stuffed in a drum. The conversation examines several possible identities of the Lake Mead victim, including casino insiders and Outfit associates who disappeared during the era of casino skimming. Mead’s novel follows a fictional mob associate named Lenny Battaglia, who becomes terrified when news breaks about the barrel discovery. The reason? He knows there’s another barrel—with his victim—still resting somewhere in Lake Mead. The discussion moves beyond mob history into the psychological consequences of violence, comparing Mead’s story to classic works like Crime and Punishment. Rather than focusing on a traditional “whodunit,” the novel explores what happens after the crime, examining guilt, fear, and the moral weight carried by those who commit violence. Gary and Aaron also discuss the broader context of violence in American culture, including parallels between organized crime murders and modern tragedies such as the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Finally, the conversation shifts to Mead’s professional expertise in Western water law and the Colorado River, explaining how drought and declining water levels at Lake Mead are literally revealing pieces of hidden history—sometimes including crimes buried for decades. This episode blends mob history, real crime mysteries, and fiction inspired by true events, offering listeners a fascinating look at how the past can resurface in unexpected ways. Click here to find Body in a Barrel Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:02]Introduction to Gangland Wire [0:00]Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Now I have a podcast and I interview real crime mobsters, policemen, FBI agents, do authors that are doing true crime books. And I do authors that are doing novels that are based on true crime. Because we stick with true crime as close as we can here, guys. You know that. And today I have one of those authors that has written a book that is a novel, but it’s based on a lot of real events in Las Vegas. And we all know a little bit about Las Vegas and the Mafia. So Aaron Mead, welcome, Aaron. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s great to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your history. [0:47]Sure. Yeah, I’m actually I’ve been working as an engineer, a water engineer for 30 some odd years. And so I come by my writing habit as a sort of a side interest. I, I, yeah, I just, I got a very, I’ve got a varied educational background too. So I started out as a, as an engineer in my training and then just had a creative itch and went back to school, ended up doing a PhD in philosophy of all things. And while I was doing that, I, I thought I might be an academic. I thought I might be a professor at one time and through the job search, things didn’t really work out. I did find a job, but it just wasn’t going to pay well enough, consider moving my family across the country for it. So I ended up not going into academia, but I stuck with writing, which was my favorite part of the PhD, the dissertation. [1:31]And I just started writing different things, some nonfiction stuff related to my dissertation research, but then just got an idea for a story, wrote a novel. It’s still sitting in the drawer. I’m interested in publishing that someday. But this idea for the book related to kind of Las Vegas mob stuff actually came connected with my work as a water engineer. So I work for Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. We import water to Southern California from the Colorado River. And so I track the Colorado River news pretty closely. And in 2022, the lake was dropping because of drought and overuse. And this body in a barrel showed up on the shore of Lake Mead. And there was a gunshot wound to the head. And this looked an awful lot like a mob hit to the authorities. And so this just piqued my interest and got me thinking about how did this barrel get there and this body and what’s the story behind it. And I started doing a little research and it turns out that the clothing on the body was pretty well preserved. [2:29]So the police dated it to the late 70s, early 80s potentially. And that’s of course the heyday of the mob activities in Las Vegas. It got me onto the Chicago outfit and, Some of the characters involved in the outfits activity in Vegas there. And so my story just went from there. But, yeah, I guess that’s a little about me and the story. So, yeah. Yeah. Those are the days when Tony Spolatro was really active out there. Chicago outfit man on the scene, if you will. And Body in a Barrel, another interesting Chicago link is they found a guy named Johnny Roselli, who was a highly placed mob guy who was connected to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He had been their guy before Spalatro. He had been their representative out in the West, and they found his body in a barrel down in Florida. Wow, okay. There’s some reference there. [3:21]I’d read a little that this is a pretty popular method of body disposal in various times. And Tony Spalatro was, I understand that they haven’t actually identified the victim yet, but the kind of style of killing they think is pretty connected with something Tony Spalatro might do. I guess the sort of low caliber gunshot wound was a popular way to dispose of it, to whack people just because it was a little less messy than a high caliber weapon. Yeah, this is one they call it a lupara blanca, which means white shotgun in Italian. And that means that you never find the body. In this case, they found the body. Every once in a while, they’ll find the body. Not very often, though. Usually they hide them pretty good. Now, who’d ever thought that Lake Mead would drop that much? Yeah, they dropped it at 100 feet of water, and I don’t think anybody expected it to drop that low. And it could go even lower in the next couple of years here, honestly. Really? Oh, really? It’s still dropping. I thought there’d been some more rain and some snow up in the mountains that were going to add to that. It’s going to be still dropping, huh? Yeah, there has been a fair bit of precipitation this year, but in the areas that count most, where you get most of the runoff, which is up in the mountains of Colorado and Utah, it’s really quite dry, actually. They’ve had some rain, but not much snow, and so they’re talking about a snow drought. Yeah, things could. It just depends. We’ll see how things develop, but it could get bad. Yeah, talk about that gun now. Chicago was noted. [4:40]For using these 22 caliber high standard i think they’re browning semi-automatic pistols with a silencer on it and they had them out there i believe and they also another interesting thing about the outfit in order to keep the sound down they would load their own shells and so they were had less powder in them and sometimes the shells didn’t do the job that they wanted to do now frank Kulata, who was in Las Vegas working for Tony Splattro during these years, he tells a story about trying to kill a guy with one of those guns and how he had such a hard time getting him killed. So I don’t know how many holes were in this guy’s head, but you got to get somebody just right in the head with that .22 caliber pistol. Yeah, they say it had to be pretty close range. You’re talking about the Jerry Listener murder, I think. Is that right? Yeah. I read about that one. That’s actually the kind of the murder in question in my book is based on that loosely. And so yeah, Kolata advises my main character, Lenny, to load his gun with half loads because they’ve lost their silencer or something. So that’ll keep the sound down. But yeah, I guess Lister ended up with multiple bullets to the head. And when they found them, more than you’d imagine would be necessary. [5:55]Really? There’s a guy that worked for the Stardust named Jay VanderWalk that disappeared at the time. It disappeared for a long time. Did you look at that one, too, as some of your source material? Yeah. So there’s this great article that’s been turned into a podcast on the Mob Museum website. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that in Las Vegas there. And they suggest there mi

Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history through his unique perspective on the mafia. In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins welcomes an unusual guest from the world of organized crime storytelling—cartoonist Brett Juliano, creator of the Dust Bunny Mafia comic series. Instead of traditional books or documentaries, Brett tells real Mafia stories through short, three-panel comics featuring his unique cartoon characters while staying grounded in historical research and documented sources. Brett explains how his lifelong interest in animation and storytelling evolved into a project that blends true crime history with visual humor and commentary. After moving to Chicago, he became fascinated with the city’s underworld history and began transforming real mob stories into illustrated comic strips that challenge Hollywood myths and highlight lesser-known facts about organized crime. His work draws on true crime books, FBI files, court transcripts, and podcasts, including Gangland Wire itself. Each comic strip distills a real historical moment into a visual gag or ironic twist that reveals the strange reality behind mob legends. Gary and Brett discuss several Dust Bunny Mafia comics and the real events behind them: The “Sicilian Flu” Courtroom Act A humorous look at a tactic sometimes used by mob figures: appearing frail in court to gain sympathy or delay proceedings. Wiseguys who were partying the night before might suddenly appear in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets or hooked to oxygen tanks when they walked into court. Lucky Luciano and the Myth of “Lucky” Brett examines the legendary story that Charles “Lucky” Luciano got his nickname after surviving a brutal kidnapping and beating. His comic plays with the idea that mobsters often exaggerated their own legends—especially when trying to impress people. The Kansas City Mob Search – Carl “Tuffy” DeLuna One comic comes directly from Gary Jenkins’ own experience investigating the Kansas City mob. When police searched DeLuna’s home in 1979, the mobster calmly offered coffee and eventually led investigators straight to the basement, where incriminating notes were stored. The scene shows how, sometimes, the truth of organized crime investigations is stranger than fiction. Bugsy Siegel in Rainy Portland Another comic explores the obscure story of Bugsy Siegel visiting Portland to meet local crime boss Al Winters, only to endure two straight weeks of rain—highlighting the contrast between Hollywood-style mob glamour and the less glamorous reality of underworld negotiations. A New Graphic Anthology on Kickstarter Brett is now launching a major new collection of his comics titled: “Family Business: An Offer You Can’t Refuse.” The book will include: 130+ pages of full-color comics More than 230 true crime strips Historical commentary explaining the real story behind each comic Additional artwork parodying mob businesses and underworld culture The project will be funded through a Kickstarter campaign beginning March 24, with the finished book expected to ship later in the year once printing is completed. Click here for 👉 Kickstarter Campaign:  Where to Find Brett Juliano You can explore Brett’s comics, books, and merchandise here: Dust Bunny Mafia Website:  Online Store: Brett also shares his comics across social media platforms including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook groups focused on organized crime history. For fans of Mafia history, Dust Bunny Mafia offers a refreshing twist—true crime storytelling through comics that balance humor with serious historical research. As Gary notes during the interview, separating myth from reality is essential in mob history, and Brett’s work uses a creative medium to do exactly that. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [00:00:00] hey, are you Wire tappers? Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective and, I investigated the Mafia and I’m still working on the Mafia only. We work on mafia history now, and I have a kind of unusual, different sort of a story today. I have a man who has been doing. Cartoons based on real mob stories, but he has his own little cartoon characters. It’s called Dust Bunny Mafia. If you’re on my gangland Wire podcast group, you might’ve seen that, and he’s on other places in social media. So welcome Brett Juliano. Welcome Brett. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me on. All right, cool. Guys, let me, I’m just gonna give you a little taste of what this looks like. It’s when I first saw it. That, that’s interesting. I appreciate a, a different way of doing these kinds of things. All right. That should be, there you go. All right. There you go. There’s which one was that? That was the Sicilian flu. Brett tell the guys a little bit about, what got you [00:01:00] into this and then we’ll talk about each one of these images that you sent me. Yeah, so I’ve been doing comics and the Dust Bunny mafia for over a dozen years. Long story short, I wanted to be a animator when I was, young. And then as I grew up, I always loved the idea of telling stories through visual form. And then after moving out to Chicago about 10 years ago, I really wanted to connect with the principle of the local history of the Chicago Underworld and retell it through my Dust Bunny Mafia Comex. I try and. Do it in a way in which the I try to break the myths of Hollywood and a lot of things. I try and get my, research through primary sources. So I’ll, listen to True Crime podcasts like yours. I have a huge collection at home of True Crime books, looking through FBI files, court transcripts, things like that. And [00:02:00] I just want to. Find ways to compose those things into three panel comics that kind of address myths and other, aspects of the mafia. So I know you, you came to the Mob Con out in Las Vegas and had a whole display of different things. So you even have a whole little a book too, don’t you? Or you’ve got one or more books that are a little bit longer than just a one three panel? Yes. Yeah, I’ve got, with the Dust Bunny Mafia comic. Overall I am, I’ve done about 10 books total. Okay. I’ve got three big graphic novel trade collections, and then, as you’re aware, the little based on true story booklets like these ones, like where these scripts come in, I now am collecting that into a larger anthology collection that’s gonna be 132 page full color that has over 200. About 230 individual strips with the commentary. Do you have a website or how do people [00:03:00] get hold of you if they’d want to get some of this? Yeah, you can find me comics dot dust bunny mafia.com or Dust Bunny mafia dot Big Cartel is the online store and I ship everything out myself. I’ve done a bunch of crowdfunding campaigns, over 20 of them, and I’ve shipped all over the world with my comics and basically searched Dust Bunny Mafia. I’m on. Like you mentioned earlier, a lot of the Facebook groups, I’m on Instagram, threads X, all the all the social platforms and I’ll guys, I’ll have a link to his website in the in the show notes. Brett, tell us a little bit about this one. This is the or I’ve got the Sicilian flu. Tell us about this story here. What’s the real story here? So that story comes that strip is based on an interview with Joaquin Phoenix, Joaquin Garcia, excuse me who was known as Jack. And [00:04:00] he was interviewed, I believe on the Before the Lights podcast with Tommy Canal. And he was telling a story about Greg De Palma going to court one day and while he was being, while he was being, deposed and brought in for questioning. Basically it’s addressing the myth of the actions and the over exaggerations that mob officers will do to tie things up or misdirect. So he was talking about how. The wise guys will be out eating and drinking, partying, at night or on the weekends. And then they’ll come to court in a wheelchair, maybe have a blanket. Some of ’em will even throw, have a little oxygen tank and, just the absurdity of things that they will, the lengths they will go to to try and misdirect or hope things up. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a common kind of a deal that more not just mobsters do that. There’s other criminals have done that too. I’ve seen that myself. So let’s talk about [00:05:00] two is let be a lady. Get that one up there. All right. What’s the story of luck? Be a lady. So luck Be a lady is talking about the myth of Charles Luck, Luciano’s nickname of Lucky. Yes. And about, how it was one night, one kidnapping that, where he got the scar and the people dragged him into, Staten Island. They. Speed him overnight, tortured him, set him free, and then that’s how it was, that one event is what made him or gave him the nickname. Lucky. When in actuality what I’m paring here is that, he’s trying to impress girls in my comic and, with each drink and stuff, he adds more myth and more legend to the nickname. And. I believe, the event happened. I’m not trying to discredit that. I just [00:06:00] think he, and I’ve seen sources say that he had the nickname long before the beating and like the one night, event. And it wasn’t that instance that gave him the nickname Lucky. Interesting. I never thought about that, what I always thought. I think that was I think he reported that himself in that book that he wrote with another author. I think that’s where that story came from. I’m not sure but I always figured he probably had some coppers tuned him up and, but he had to make it into a much better story and make himself much tougher. Yeah, of

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with retired FBI agent Geoff Kelly, a specialist in art theft investigations who inherited one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American history—the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He recently wrote a book about this theft titled 13 Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Kelly’s law enforcement career began as a New York City transit police officer before transitioning to the FBI. Like many agents, he initially sought violent crime work. Instead, he was assigned to economic crimes before eventually transferring to a violent crime squad. It was there that he encountered the Gardner case—a cold case largely untouched by senior agents at the time. The robbery itself remains extraordinary: two men posing as police officers gained entry to the museum and stole 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt. More than three decades later, none of the works have been recovered. Inside the Gardner Heist Geoff explains how art theft is often misunderstood. Popular culture portrays refined, sophisticated criminals orchestrating elaborate capers. The reality, he says, is usually more opportunistic and frequently violent. Art theft often intersects with organized crime, drug trafficking, and even homicide. Massachusetts has a documented history of art-related crimes, and several individuals connected to the Gardner investigation met violent ends. The criminal underworld surrounding stolen art is less about wealthy collectors hiding paintings in private vaults and more about leverage—using artwork as collateral in criminal negotiations. The FBI’s Art Crime Evolution Following the 2003 looting of Iraq’s National Museum during the Baghdad invasion, the FBI formalized its Art Crime Team. Kelly discusses how intelligence gathering, informants, and international cooperation became central tools in recovering stolen artifacts. He emphasizes that solving art crimes often depends less on forensic breakthroughs and more on human intelligence. Informants remain essential, especially in cases where organized crime overlaps with high-value theft. Kelly also discusses his upcoming book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, which explores the intersections of mobsters, murder, and the illicit art market. Organized Crime and the Reality of Stolen Art Drawing on my own experience working organized crime in Kansas City, I found clear parallels between traditional mob rackets and art theft networks. The same structures—intimidation, secrecy, and violence—apply. Once a painting disappears into criminal circulation, it becomes a liability as much as an asset. Kelly challenges the myth that thieves profit easily from masterpieces. High-profile works are difficult to sell. The black-market art world is volatile and dangerous. In many cases, the artwork becomes bargaining collateral rather than a cash windfall. A Case Still Waiting for Closure More than 30 years later, the Gardner Museum still displays empty frames where the paintings once hung. Kelly remains committed to the idea that public awareness may eventually generate new leads.  The Gardner heist stands as both a cultural tragedy and a criminal mystery—one that continues to intersect with organized crime, violence, and international intrigue. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, you guys, Gary Jenkins back here in studio Gangland Wire. Y’all know me. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I have in the studio today… Jeff Kelly, he’s a now-retired FBI agent. He was an expert in recovering stolen artifacts and art pieces. He was involved. He wasn’t involved in the original theft of the Boston art theft, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but he ended up inheriting that case. So welcome, Jeff. Hi. Thanks, Gary. Nice to be here. And guys, I need to mention this right off the bat. Jeff has a book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Be out on Amazon. I’ll have links down below in the show notes if you want to get that book. I think it would be pretty interesting. I was telling Jeff, I just interviewed Joe Ford, the million-dollar detective, the guy that goes after classic cars, and I read that book. I love these kind of caper kind of books and caper crimes. Those are the ones I like the best is the caper crimes. And Jeff is an expert at working caper crimes. And that’s what these are, capers. So Jeff, how did you get into this? Now you came on the FBI. You were a policeman before, I believe. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your FBI career. Yeah, I started out with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police in New York City. It was a transit cop. I did that for three years. And then I got into the FBI in October of 95. [1:30] And my goal was always, I wanted to work violent crime. That’s what drew me to law enforcement in the first place, working bank robberies and kidnappings and fugitives. I had to do my five years on working economic crime, telemarketing fraud. It was interesting, but not all that exciting. And finally in 2000, I got my transfer to the violent crime squad. And I loved working it. And I did it for my entire career from then on, right up until my retirement in 2024. But back then, art theft was considered a major theft violation, [2:01] and it was worked by the Violent Crime Squad. And so in 2002… My supervisor dumped this old moribund cold case in my lap. It was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. [2:15] Nobody wanted it on the squad, so they figured, let’s give it to the new guy. I was ecstatic to get it because I’d heard about it. I went to school in Boston. I went to Boston University and graduated the year before it happened, but I knew about it. [2:28] That’s how I started working this case, this particular case, and then the following year during the U.S., there was a, the U.S. And coalition forces invaded Baghdad in Iraq. And during a 36-hour period, more than 15,000 objects of very, very important cultural history were looted from the National Museum of Iraq. And it’s really one of the most important museums in the world in terms of our shared history. Kind of the cradle of civilization over there in the Tigers and Euphrates River. Yeah, and that was the time when the FBI kind of belatedly realized that there was no art crime team to investigate this. And of course, FBI agents have been working art theft like any other property crime since the beginning of the FBI’s existence, but there was no codified team. So they did a canvas for the team in 2004 and I applied for it because at this point I’d been working the Gardner case for a couple of years and really was fascinated by it and made the team. And so then over the next 20 years, we continued to expand the team both in size and in scope and in our intelligence base and knowledge base. And when I left the Bureau in 2024, it was and still is a tremendous team with a lot of very dedicated and professional agents and professional support. [3:51] Now, guys, if you don’t know about the Isabella Stewart Gardner case, there was a Netflix documentary on it a few years ago. It was an art museum in Boston. [4:01] Two guys showed up. They had Boston police uniforms on, and they got in. They basically, it was an armed robbery, and they took control of the museum. The guards were in there late at night and took these really valuable paintings out. I believe you told me earlier they were Remington paintings. We’ll get into that. And it was a violent crime. It was an armed robbery of paintings, and you told me about other armed robberies of paintings. I think you got into some other armed robberies of paintings. You always think of, as you mentioned before, the Thomas Crown Affair character that goes out and does these sophisticated art thefts. That’s not always true, is it? It’s never that way, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Everybody wants to believe that art thefts are pulled off by the Thomas Crown Affairs and these gentlemen thieves repel in through skylights and do all that fancy stuff, put it in their underground lair. That’s just not the way it works. But if you look to art theft. [4:55] Massachusetts really is a cradle of art theft in this country, and it’s very unique. The first armed robbery of a museum occurred in Boston in 1972. It was committed by a guy named Al Monday, who was a prolific art thief. And they stole four pieces from the Worcester Art Museum in central Massachusetts with a gun. They ended up shooting the guard. And one of the pieces that they stole was a Rembrandt called St. Bartholomew. [5:26] And in keeping with the milieu of true art thieves, the paintings were stored on a pig farm just over the state line in Rhode Island. And when this Connecticut safecracker by the name of Chucky Carlo, who was looking at some serious time in prison for some of the crimes that he committed, when he found out that Al Monday had these paintings, he just simply kidnapped Al Monday and stuck a gun in his ribs and said he would kill him if he didn’t give him the paintings. which is no honor among thieves. And Al turned over the paintings, Chucky returned them, and he got a very significant break on his pending jail sentence. Right here in 1972, Boston thieves see Rembrandt as a valuable get-out-of-jail-free card. [6:09] And then if we jump forward three years to 1975, there was a very skilled art thief,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Host retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins dives into the shadowy intersection of organized gambling and college athletics through the story of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal.  During the early 1960s, Rosenthal built his reputation by identifying weaknesses in sports systems, particularly among vulnerable college athletes. He met one who could not be bought, Mickey Bruce of Oregon. At the center of this story is a little-known but pivotal attempt at a fix involving the Oregon Ducks. Rosenthal and his associate, David Budin, believed they had found an opening, but they ran headlong into the integrity of Oregon halfback Mickey Bruce. Bruce flatly refused the bribe, setting off a chain reaction that would help expose a much wider pattern of corruption in college sports.   I break down how this wasn’t an isolated incident but part of a nationwide effort by gamblers to influence outcomes and exploit young athletes. The episode explores the mechanics of organized gambling, attempts to fix games, and why college sports became such an attractive target for mob-connected bookmakers. The story reaches a dramatic turning point during U.S. Senate hearings on gambling in college athletics, where Mickey Bruce publicly identified Lefty Rosenthal as one of the men who tried to corrupt him. It’s a rare moment in mob history—one where a gambler is named in open testimony by a player who refused to bend.   From there, I trace Rosenthal’s continued rise in the gambling world, from Miami to Las Vegas, where he would help shape modern sports betting while repeatedly managing to stay one step ahead of serious legal consequences. Rosenthal’s story raises enduring questions about accountability, the limits of law enforcement, and why some figures seem untouchable. I close the episode by reflecting on Rosenthal’s legacy—and on Mickey Bruce’s quiet heroism.   Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 The Story Begins 4:14 The Bribe Attempt 7:58 The Aftermath of Scandal 12:26 The Rise of Lefty 14:34 College Sports and Corruption 18:58 The Online Gambling Boom 22:26 The Fall of Adrian McPherson 24:24 Mickey Bruce’s Legacy [0:00] Hey, hey, all you wiretappers, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I worked a mob for about 14 years, and now I tell some mob stories, as many as I can find. And we all know Lefty Rosenthal. We all know Robert De Niro played him as Ace Rothstein in the film movie Casino. And that movie, part of the reason it was so good that Nicholas Pelleggi, the screenwriter, and wrote the book, was able to spend hours and hours interviewing Lefty Rosenthal in real life. He had gone to Florida by then and it seemed like the mob wasn’t after him anymore. They had one attempted bombing of him, if you remember. [0:41] So it was a really good movie. There’s really good depiction of that era and that system that they had going out there. Let’s go back on Lefty Rosenthal’s history to a guy that he couldn’t corrupt. Lefty Rosenthal thought he could corrupt anybody, but he found a guy that he couldn’t corrupt. It was really one of his early cases where law enforcement, the FBI, and other state law enforcement agencies figured out Lefty Rosenthal was somebody, and he was a pretty big gambler. He was a nationwide gambler. In 1960, the Oregon Ducks had a pretty good team. What a name, the Oregon Ducks. They had a man named Dave Grayson and the quarterback with Dave Gross in the backfield. They had a 5’3 All-American receiver named Cleveland Jones. What a name, Cleveland Jones. They went 7-2-1. They lost to Michigan, and they also lost to eventual Rose Bowl champ Washington. But this was good enough to gain a Liberty Bowl invite to play Penn State. Oregon lost the bowl and played in two feet of snow and freezing temperatures in Philadelphia that year. [1:50] But the biggest news of the season was made during their trip to Ann Arbor to play Michigan. They had this potential All-American player named Mickey Bruce, who really was obscure compared to especially this Dave Gross or this Cleveland Jones, who was an unusual player. He was a president of his fraternity. He was a former Little League World Series star. He was the son of an attorney. He was a team captain. He played halfback and defensive back. And there was two professional gamblers came to Ann Arbor that year and they didn’t know much about this guy, but they did know, one of them’s name was Budin, David Budin, and the other one was Frank Lefty Rosenthal. They didn’t know much about Mickey Bruce, but they had a connection to him. A guy who played for the Oregon State basketball team named Jimmy Granada and knew Boudin from when they were little kids growing up on the basketball courts in New York City. Now, Granada told Mickey that he had two friends staying at the team hotel and they needed tickets. This time, players could then were given tickets and they could turn around and sell them to people. Boudin ended up finding him and introduced himself and said he was Jimmy Granada’s friend and invited Mickey up to the room and said, I’m the guy that needs a couple of tickets. [3:15] Mickey was a little bit hesitant, but didn’t know this guy. He’s probably got a New York accent, probably slick, more than likely. He hesitated at first and booted and said, just take a few minutes. I just want to get you to go and get those tickets. And so he goes him, so he follows him into the room and he finds Lefty Rosenthal waiting there, who he doesn’t know and won’t even have any idea who he is till much later. So they chatted a little bit about the game as people will and ask him questions about the team. And Rosenthal mentioned that Oregon was a six-point underdog. He said, do you don’t think a player could be bribed? Mickey said, I suppose they could. Buden then cut in. He said, Mickey, he said, what do you think it would cost to ensure that Michigan won by at least eight points? Mickey plays along. He says, you’re the big-time gamblers. You should know. So Buden said, about $5,000. And Mickey said, that’s probably fine. [4:14] Mickey said, let me check into this. And he said, I’m late for a team meeting and I got to get going. So they made plans to meet later on about 9 p.m. Mickey was no fool or small town rube. His father had been a Chicago attorney and he now practice in El Cajon, California. [4:31] He raced to catch up with his teammates and told an assistant coach about the bribe who told the athletic director, who then called in the Michigan State Police, who called in the FBI. And they told Mickey to go ahead and show up at 9 p.m. at the meeting in the hotel room. They don’t want to apprehend Buden and Rosenthal right now. They want to get some more information and really get a real solid bribery attempt out of them. So acting on the advice of these cops, Mickey goes back to the hotel room that evening. [5:00] Buden and Rosenthal start talking to him. And so they gave him tips about how to carry out this scheme without attracting any attention. Buden and Rosenthal say, we’ll give you an extra $5,000 and you can get the quarterback, Dave Gross, to go along with this scheme. He said, Mickey, you just need to let some pass receivers get behind you once in a while and let them run up the score a little bit. And you’re not going to win anyhow, more than likely. Get the quarterback to call a few wrong plays nobody really ever noticed. And he said, I’ll give you each $5,000 after the game if you’ll do that. He also offered Mickey $100 a week just to call him at his house down in Florida and update him about the health of Oregon’s team before weekly betting lines were released makes you wonder how many guys did Rosenthal have calling him to update him on injuries and everything on different college teams and professional too. Because I know from doing a story before that Ocardo and a lot of the Chicago gangsters really valued Rosenthal’s tips on making their football bets. He seemed to have some kind of an inside track. [6:08] As he got ready to leave, Mickey said, oh, wait a minute. I gave you those tickets. You got to pay me, which were only worth about three bucks each. And so Lefty gave him 50 bucks for the two tickets. Mickey would remember later that he had to roll $100 bills in his pocket, which is typical for a high-flyer, high-rolling kind of a dude like that, have a big roll of cash in your pocket. And then you reach down in, peel some off so everybody can see how much money you got in your pocket. Rosenthal said, hey, I got to leave tonight, but see my friend Buden in the morning, David Buden, and he’ll give you the money. Mickey agreed, went back to his room. The next morning, while eating breakfast with his teammates, he sees a state trooper leading Buden out of the hotel in handcuffs, and then missed Lefty Rosenthal, who, as he had told them the night before, the Lefty was going to be leaving, and they had made a good bribery attempt. I don’t know what the police were waiting on. They were trying to make an even better case or something. I guess they probably They wanted him to go back in and catch them all together with the money. But then lefty left, and they went ahead and pulled the trigger early. You never know how these things work out exactly and what was at play. During the game, Mickey, I tell you what, Mickey played his heart out. He got an interception for a touchdown. It didn’t make any difference. Michigan won easily, 21 to nothing, and easily covered the six-p

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, continues his deep dive into organized crime history with prolific Mafia author Jeffrey Sussman. Sussman, the author of eight books on organized crime, joins Jenkins for a wide-ranging conversation that spans the rise, violence, prosecutions, and survival tactics of La Cosa Nostra in America. Drawing from works like Backbeat Gangsters and his latest release Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions, Sussman offers sharp insight into how the Mafia enforced silence, eliminated enemies, and adapted to government pressure. The discussion opens with omertà, the Mafia’s infamous code of silence, and how mob warfare enforced loyalty through fear. Sussman recounts notorious hits and mob wars that shaped organized crime, then shifts to landmark prosecutions led by Thomas Dewey, whose relentless pursuit of Murder Incorporated dismantled the mob’s most feared execution squad. Jenkins and Sussman examine the disastrous Appalachian Conference, where Vito Genovese overplayed his hand, drawing national attention to the Mafia and setting the stage for informants like Joe Valachi to break decades of secrecy. The episode also explores the Mafia’s darkest execution methods, including lupara bianca—murders designed to leave no body and no evidence—along with chilling stories involving Mad Sam DeStefano. The assassination attempt on Joe Colombo, and its ties to Joey Gallo, highlight how ego and publicity often proved fatal in the mob world. The episode concludes with Sussman previewing his upcoming book on the Garment District, blending personal family history with organized crime’s grip on American industry. Together, Jenkins and Sussman deliver a sweeping, chronological look at how the Mafia rose, fractured, and endured—leaving a permanent mark on American culture. Get his book Mafia Hits, Misses, Wars, and Prosecutions. ⏱️ Episode Chapters 00:00 – Introduction and Jeffrey Sussman’s Mafia work 03:45 – Omertà and enforcing silence 07:30 – Mafia hits and internal wars 12:10 – Thomas Dewey and Murder Incorporated 18:40 – St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 23:30 – Formation of the Five Families 28:50 – Italian and Jewish mob alliances 34:20 – Capone, Lansky, and Luciano 39:45 – Appalachian Conference fallout 45:10 – Vito Genovese and Joe Valachi 50:30 – Lupara blanca and body disposal 55:20 – Mad Sam DeStefano’s brutality 59:40 – Joe Colombo assassination 1:05:30 – Betrayal and mob survival 1:10:50 – Sussman’s upcoming Garment District book   [0:00] Hey, welcome, all you Wiretipers, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, as you can see. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. I have a guest today. He is a prolific author about the mob in the United States. We have several interviews in the archives with Jeffrey Sussman. Welcome, Jeffrey. Thank you, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be with you once again. All right. How many mob books you got? Eight or nine, I think. Eight or nine. I know you’ve covered Tinseltown, the L.A. Families, the crime in L.A., the Chicago. What are some of those? I did Las Vegas, which had a number of the Chicago outfit members in it. I did Big Apple Gangsters. Oh, yeah. My last one was Backbeat Gangsters about the rock music business. Oh, yeah. And then I did also one about boxing and the mob, how the mob controlled boxing. And then my new book is Mafia Hits, Misses Wars and Prosecutions. The update is February 19th. All right. Guys, when I release this, we’re doing this, actually, we’re doing this before Christmas. But when this comes out, while you’ll be able to go to the Amazon link that I’ll have in there, get that book, we’ll have, you’ll see a picture of it as we go along. So you’ll know what the cover looks like. It sounds really interesting, especially about the Mafia Misses. But I’m sure that’s interesting. [1:29] Well, the mob, that’s their way of enforcing their rules. The omerta, somebody talks, they’re going to rub you out, supposedly. And by mob, we’re talking about primarily La Cosa Nostra, Sicilian-based organized crime in the United States. Yeah. The five families particularly have brought this up front. The five families have really perfected this as an art, killing their rivals, killing people that threaten them in any way, killing people that they even had a contract on Tom Dewey, the prosecutor, I believe, at one time. That would be a bomb miss, wouldn’t it? Yeah, actually, what happened with that is Dutch Schultz wanted the commission to take out a contract on Tom Dewey, and they said, no, we can’t do that, because if we do that, it’ll bring down too much heat on us. And so the mob wound up killing Dutch Schultz because he was too much of a threat to them in some ways. But the irony was that if they had killed him, Lucky Luciano never would have been prosecuted. He was prosecuted by Thomas Dewey. Lucky Bookhalter never would have been prosecuted and gone to the electric chair, several others as well. So, by not killing Dewey, they set themselves up to be arrested and get either very long prison terms or go to the electric chair. [2:57] Yeah, Dewey sent, I think it was four members of Murder Incorporated to the electric chair and the head of it, the Lepke book halter. And then he arrested and got a conviction against Lucky Luciano for pimping and pandering, which should have been a fairly short sentence, just a couple of years. But he had him sentenced to 50 years in prison, which is amazing, the pimping. [3:20] So if they had killed Thomas Dewey, they probably would have been better off. But that’s 2020 hindsight. Yeah, hindsight’s always 2020. And a cost-benefit analysis, if you want to apply that, why the cost of killing Tom Dooley might have been much less than the actual benefit was. That’s right. Exactly. And they came to realize that, but it was too late for them. I think they always do a cost-benefit analysis in some manner. How much heat’s going to come down from this? Can we take the heat? Because I know in Kansas City, our mob boss, Nick Savella, was in the penitentiary. He was about to get out, and he sent word out, said I want all unfinished business taken care of by the time I get out. Because when I get out, I do not want all these headlines, because murder generates headlines. And so there was like three murders in rapid succession right after that. [4:13] So they worry about the press and hits, murders generate press. So let’s go back and talk about some particular ones. One of the most famous ones was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Do you cover that? [4:26] Yeah, I start with the assassination of Arnold Rothstein in 1928, and then I go right into the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I go into the Castel Marari’s War, the birth of the five families. They had a famous meeting at the Franconia Hotel where the Jewish and Italian gangsters decided to form an alliance rather than fight one another. I went through the trial and conviction of Al Capone, the Bug and Meyer gang. Which evolved into Murder Incorporated, and then how Mayor LaGuardia went after the mob in New York and drove out Frank Costello, who had all the slot machines in New York, drove him down to Louisiana, where Frank Costello paid Huey Long a million dollars to let him operate slot machines all around New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana. And then there was William Dwyer, O’Dwyer, and Burton Turkus, who prosecuted the mob, other members of Murder Incorporated, and then how the federal government was using deportation to get rid of a lot of the mobsters, and how the mafia insinuated itself with entertainers and was controlling entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and others. [5:44] And then the Appalachian Conference, and what an embarrassment that was to Vito Genovese, who wanted to declare himself the boss of bosses. Instead, he became the schmuck of schmucks because the FBI invaded this. And there was a theory that this was really set up, Meyer Lansky, Carl Gambino, and Lucky Luciano, because they didn’t want Vito Genovese to become the boss of bosses because Vito Genovese was responsible for the attempted murder of Frank Costello, and they wanted to get rid of him. After they embarrassed him with Appalachian, And then they set him up for a drug buy. Which is ridiculous because you don’t have the head of a mafia family going out on the street and buying heroin from someone. But that’s what they got him for. And they sent him off to prison for 15 years where he died. But in the realm of unintended consequences, which we just heard some, he goes down to Atlanta and a guy named Joe Valacci is down there. And he thinks that Vito Genovese is given to the fisheye and maybe wants to have him killed. [6:52] If Vito Genovese is not in Atlanta, Joe Valacci does not turn and become the first big important witness against the mob in the United States that couple that with Appalachian. And embarrassment to the FBI and then this Joe Valacci coming out with all these stories explaining what all that meant, the organized crime in the United States, why we may not have the investigation that subsequently came out of all that. It’s crazy, huh? Yeah, exactly. In terms of unintended consequences, because if Vito Genovese hadn’t given the kiss of death, supposedly, to Joe Valacci, you never would have had Joe Valacci’s testimony about how the mob operates. He opened so many doors and told so many secrets. It was a real revelation to the world. [7:42] Now, what about these murders? And I understand they call them a lupara blanca, where the body is never found. Did you talk about any of those or look into that at all? [7:53] We’ve had them in Kansas City, where it’s obviously a mob murder. They even will send a message to the family. We had one where the guy disappeared. Nobody ever found his body. But somebody called the family and said, hey, go u

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, steps outside traditional Mafia territory and into a shadowy world just as dangerous—and just as fascinating: the international theft of ultra-rare automobiles.  Gary is joined by author Stayton Bonner, former senior editor at Rolling Stone, and legendary car-recovery specialist Joe Ford, the real-life figure behind Bonner’s book The Million Dollar Car Detective. At the center of the story is a breathtaking pre-World War II automobile—the Talbot-Lago Teardrop Coupé—once described as the most beautiful car in the world. Stolen from a Milwaukee industrialist’s garage in 2001, the car vanished into the international underground of elite collectors, forged paperwork, and high-stakes deception. Joe Ford explains how he became the go-to investigator when rare cars worth millions disappear—and why stolen vehicles are far harder to recover than stolen art. What follows is a years-long global hunt involving disgruntled mechanics, fabricated titles, shell corporations, Swiss intermediaries, and a billionaire buyer now locked in civil litigation. Bonner adds rich historical context, tracing the car’s glamorous past—from European aristocracy to Hollywood royalty—and exposing how loneliness, obsession, and greed often surround these legendary machines. The conversation expands into other notorious cases, including the disappearance of the original James Bond Aston Martin from Goldfinger, and how wealthy collectors sometimes knowingly harbor stolen artifacts. This episode is a true-crime story without guns or gangs—but filled with deception, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of justice across borders. If you love investigative work, high-end crime, and stories that feel like James Bond meets Gone in 60 Seconds, this one’s for you. 🔑 Key Topics Covered The theft of a $7 million Talbot-Lago Teardrop Coupé How stolen cars are laundered through forged provenance Why rare automobiles are harder to recover than fine art Civil vs. criminal liability in stolen property cases The global black market for elite collector vehicles The missing Goldfinger Aston Martin mystery How billionaires and shell companies complicate recovery 📘 Featured Book The Million Dollar Car Detective by Stayton Bonner   🎧 About the Guests Stayton Bonner – Former Rolling Stone senior editor and investigative journalist Joe Ford – International car-theft investigator specializing in ultra-rare vehicles Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Tanscript Gary jenkins: [00:00:00] well, hey, all your wire tapper’s. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective. And I have a story today. It’s not particularly about the mafia, but it’s about a subject I’m really interested in. That’s fast cars and rear cars. And, and I’m kind of a gearhead, as you all know, and love my motorcycles. But, uh, this is about some really cool cars and, and I have here. A couple of guys that, uh, particularly one Joe Ford who is a, a guy, a detective that goes out and finds rare stolen cars, which I think is just fascinating. So I have Staton Bonner, who’s a former senior editor Rolling Stone. He’s written a book called The Million Dollar Detective, and that million dollar detective is Joe Ford. So welcome guys. Gary, thanks for having us. All right. So, uh, I, I guess let’s start off with, with Staton. Tell me a little bit about yourself. You, you are a writer for Rolling Stone and, and written another book. I, I see. And, uh, so just tell us a little bit about yourself. Stayton: Uh, yes, [00:01:00] sir. Former senior editor Rolling Stone Magazine wrote a book a few years ago, uh, Altru Stories. About a bare and knuckle boxer working to give his daughter a, a better life in New York City through these underground fights. This story though, uh, is the most a amazing story I’ve come across, uh, in my years as a journalist. I don’t know if you’re a fan of James Bond gone in 60 seconds. Catch me if you can. Uh, but this story is right in line with that. You know, a lot of my work as a reporter editor is just looking for stories. So I was scouring regional newspapers. When I came across this small story in a Milwaukee publication and it just immediately grabbed me, it jumped off. Uh, you know, in 2001, a $7 million stolen car was stolen in the middle of the night in Milwaukee from an industrialist private garage. Three men in overalls cut security lines broke in. Absconded in the middle of the night with this very rare vehicle case closed with cold years later, a [00:02:00] detective Joe Ford gets a call from the French Alps, and a uh, disgruntled mechanic said he knew the whereabouts of this stolen car that authorities have been looking for around the world for years. That really set off the chase that kicks off this book. It’s about, obviously it’s about a rare car, but it’s interesting because it gets into the veneer just underneath this high society world of people like Ralph Lauren and various heads of of industry. Buying and selling rare cars for many tens of millions of dollars. There is a criminal enterprise underneath that, as you have with any rare art world dealing in fakes, forgeries stolen goods and all of that. And that’s when Joe Ford, the car detective comes in. You know, I talked with authorities police FBI, you know, there’s not a dedicated unit to recovering stolen cars as they have with stolen artwork. So when a, when something a 10 million do dollar car gets taken. Uh, he, they said, they told me there’s one guy they [00:03:00] call and, uh, that’s Joe Ford. You don’t have to be a car person to love this book. The Million Dollar Car Detective just is really a good cat and mouse chase story. Um, and I’m, I’m thrilled to be here to talk about it. Gary jenkins: Great. We all love cat and mouse chase story as I do anyhow. So Joe Ford, uh, tell us about yourself. How did you end up in this position to be the million dollar car theft detective? Joe Ford: Accidentally. I started out as an architect in New Orleans, then went to law school, didn’t practice law, but I had a classic car dealership in Louisiana and in Florida. And being involved in the car world, you learn about things. And then it was, uh, years later I ended up recovering a stolen acid martin for a guy and it was successful. And then, uh, got into a contract to recover a stolen $18 million Ferrari race car. And was successful and then heard about this from a French mechanic who is hadn’t been paid by somebody in Switzerland. So he spills the [00:04:00] beans and, and gives me a clue. And I’ve been on this hunt for a car taken in 2001 and I’ve been litigating for over eight years now against an LLC owned by a billionaire set up just to buy this car outta Switzerland. And. My opinion is it was set up because he knew it was stolen, he knew it had paperwork issues and knew he would have to litigate to clear title. And I’m now litigating to clear that title, but I intend to retrieve the car. And for me and my partner, I partnered up with the heirs of the original Milwaukee theft of victims. And, uh, we’re in court now against this Gary jenkins: LLC. So, if I remember my, uh, property law from law school is you can’t, if you don’t have good title to something, you can’t pass it on to somebody else. Any, any. Passing on is an illegal transaction, and whoever pays money for something with a bad title just by eats it, eats it, is my, if I remember right, [00:05:00] that correct. Joe Ford: That that’s correct. And it, it goes down the chain. You can buy a stolen car from one guy, he can sell it to another, he can sell it to another. Nobody acquires title because the thief didn’t have it, and each guy sues the prior guy to try to get his money back and the property gets returned to the victims. Gary jenkins: That’s, Joe Ford: that is the, the law of the world. Gary jenkins: Interesting. I remember my law school, right? It’s been a few years. Yeah. But I remember that. Right. Uh, so, you know, in this, this world, you know, we know about the jewel thefts. You know, the Marlboro Diamond never appeared back. The Chicago outfit guy stole this Marlboro diamond in, in London and mailed it to somebody. It never did reappear. Many times these paintings don’t ever reappear for years and years. And we always, there’s always a speculation. There’s these, these, reclusive, super wealthy collectors or, uh, Arabian Saudi Arabian princes or something that will keep these things. Are any of those rumors true? Is that what happens with these cars? I mean, how do you hide a car? Especially one is what [00:06:00] this car that you’re looking for is a Talbot Lego. Teardrop coop. Really distinctive, looking real. And I’ll have a picture of this up there, guys. Really distinctive looking car. So how, oh yeah, I see it up on your, uh, uh, up over your head there. So h how does this work? I guess a little bit about how this works. Joe Ford: Lemme Gary jenkins: just Joe Ford: go ahead, Stayton: lemme just give a little context. So just for the big picture, Gary, you know, uh. Again for your listeners, I’m not sure, you know, rare cars it’s relatively smaller niche market in high-end collectibles, but it’s also, uh, the fastest rising sector. So you have, you know, folks who make a lot of money you know, they wanna diversify their assets. It could be any number of things including, Picassos, Basquiats, uh, whatever. But what’s a lot more fun, when I interviewed all these people

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins takes listeners deep into one of the most chilling and revealing moments in Chicago mob history—a secretive 1967 party for Mob stalwart, Fi Fi Buccieri. It was held at the legendary Edgewater Beach Hotel. What appeared to be a lavish celebration was, in reality, a tightly controlled gathering of roughly 300 mobsters, political figures, and underworld insiders. The occasion marked the 40th birthday of feared Chicago Outfit enforcer Fiore “Fifi” Buccieri, a man whose reputation for violence made him one of the most dangerous figures in the city. Despite not being invited, veteran journalist Bob Wiedrich managed to infiltrate the event, raising serious questions about security, secrecy, and the gathering’s true purpose. This was no ordinary party. Federal surveillance later revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the room bugged, capturing disturbing conversations—including laughter and casual recollections of torture and murder by Buccieri and his associates. Central to this episode is Buccieri’s alleged role in the brutal torture and murder of William “Action” Jackson, a crime that horrified even seasoned law-enforcement agents. These wiretap recordings provide rare insight into the mindset of mob enforcers and the normalization of extreme violence within the Chicago Outfit during the 1960s. The timing of the party was critical. Chicago boss Sam Giancana had recently been released from prison, and rumors swirled that major power moves were underway. Evidence suggests this birthday celebration doubled as a covert mob summit, where leadership issues, alliances, and strategic decisions were quietly discussed away from public view. This party was a who’s who of the Chicago Outfit. Men like Mike Glitta, Teets Battalgia, Ceaser DiVarco, Ross Prio, Larry The Hood Bounaguidi, Irvin Weiner, Dominic DiBello, Wee Willie Messino, Joseph Cortino ( former chief of police in Forest Park and several others. You will learn how Anthony Accardo and his driver Jackie Cerone avoided the scene when the cops started taking pictures and writing down names. I also explore the role of the Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club, an organization tied to questionable fundraising activities that blurred the lines between organized crime, business interests, and local politics. These raffles and social events weren’t just about money—they were about influence, access, and control. Throughout the episode, I break down the cast of characters who attended this gathering: loan sharks, enforcers, racketeers, and political fixers. Their interconnected stories reveal a dense web of loyalty, fear, and ambition that defined the Chicago mob scene at its peak.   This episode uses the Edgewater Beach Hotel as more than a setting—it becomes a symbol of mob glamour masking ruthless criminal reality. It’s a reminder of how deeply organized crime once penetrated American society, and why these stories continue to fascinate, disturb, and resonate today. 0:04 Chicago Mob Tales 1:39 Fifi Buccieri ‘s Infamy 3:19 Giancana’s Absence 4:22 The Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club 5:36 Edgewater Beach Hotel 8:36 Police Intelligence Operation 12:22 The Notorious Players 16:02 Entertainment at the Banquet 18:54 Reflections on the Meeting Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there in gangland, wireland, [0:03] especially you guys up in Chicago. Yeah, I’ve done several stories on Chicago. I’m on a Chicago trip right now, I guess. I’m going to do one more with our friend, Mr. Cooley, Bob Cooley. We just haven’t set up a time yet, but I’m going to do one more with him for sure. But I’m going to keep some of these Chicago stories up. I got such a great reaction. You know, you guys, you know, like and share these, as they say, on the apps and on YouTube. But anyhow, let’s go back to March of 1967. [0:36] There was a real well-known reporter named Bob Wendrick at the time. He really covered the mob in Chicago. I mean, he might as well have been a member of the mob in Chicago. He was so close to so many people up there. And he had some really good sources and some inside tracks. And he went to a party, but he wasn’t invited to that party. You know, they never really were going to invite Bob Weindrich to a party. It was $25 a plate. There was about 300 outfit mobsters and their associates attended this party. Some of their political associates even. They called a chief of police and I think a mayor of a suburban city. It was at the Edgewater Hotel. It was sponsored by the Santa Fe Saddle and Gun Club. It was to honor the birthday of outfit enforcer, killer, and loan shark Fiore Fifi Bussieri. Fifi was a vicious killer, man. I mean, he was bad. Straight out of the Capone days. [1:36] And he was kind of best known in more modern times. It happened not too long before this party, I believe, or around this time, maybe right after. [1:48] He took part in the multi-day, I believe, three-day torture and murder of a bookie, a great big fat bookie named William Action Jackson. There’s some images, some pictures, a picture of him in his trunk was showing a lot of the torture that they did to him out there. I’ve seen it on the Internet. They kind of cut back on those pictures and try to keep those from getting circulated around on Facebook and some of the social media apps. I assume it’s still out there. Um, but anyhow, the Bureau had a, had a hidden microphone in a guy’s house, Jackie, the lackey Saron, who was, uh, uh, a Cardo’s driver at the time had a, had a hidden microphone in there and Jackie Saron and a couple others. And one of them was Fifi Sierra, Bussieri. I don’t remember who else it was. We’re laughing about Lacks and Jackson’s reactions to the cattle prod and some of the other gruesome details. [2:45] They thought he was talking to the hated FBI agent Bill Romer at the time, but in fact, he was not. He wasn’t talking to anybody. I did find one blurb where he was thought to be a child molester. So, you know, I don’t know. And I’m thinking it was a child of one of his girlfriends or something like that. I’m not sure. But anyhow, they tortured the heck out of him for about three days. Fifi came out of the 42 gang. If you remember, it was Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, so that meant there was 41 in Alibaba’s gang, and they wanted to have one more [3:17] than Alibaba, so they named themselves the 42 Gang. This party happened just as Sam Giancana was getting out of jail. [3:25] He didn’t attend, and he left for Mexico about that time to avoid further grand jury appearances. He’d been in jail about a year, I think, because they give him the old give you immunity and you have to testify. If you don’t, then they find you in contempt of court and send you to penitentiary or a jail for a year or so for the length of grand jury. And so he left town right after that and went down to Mexico for several years. Some speculate this meeting was really to get everybody together in one place and have some private meetings off the side without law enforcement really knowing what was going on, where Ricardo and Paul the Waiter Rica would name Joey Doves Iupa as the new boss in place of Gen Cona and make some other personnel shifts. You know, a few years later, when Giancana comes back, there’ll be a whole string of murders around the time he’s murdered because of some of his people that were always loyal to Giancana. [4:22] This Santa Fe Saddling Gun Club, anybody ever heard of that? I had not heard of this before. It was a registered club. The president was Joseph Scaramuza, who owned a gun store at Halstead & Taylor, which is, I believe that’s right down there in the middle of Mobland. There was an informant in the jfk files as i was researching scaramusa there was an informant that claimed that scaramusa knew jack ruby well and as they checked into scaramusa over that they found found that this halstead gun store that he owned had sold three pistols that were recovered after some puerto rican terrorists shot up the house of representative a few years before now you know what all that means i don’t know but uh and i remember that when i was a little kid these puerto Puerto Ricans, uh, now, uh, they tried to, they were trying to assassinate Harry Truman, who was staying out of the white house and the Blair house, uh, which is, I think maybe that’s where the vice president stays. Sometimes I’m not sure. Anyhow, he was not in the white house and they, they had a plan to assassinate him. They also went into the house of representatives and shot it up. They wanted complete freedom from the United States at the time. Now there’s not been any Puerto Rican freedom movement since that I know of. Anyhow, um. [5:36] The Edgewater Beach was a faded but once grand dom of hotels along Lake Michigan. They had their own beach for a while. Then something moved in between them and the beach. And it was about to declare bankruptcy. It was located a few guys that live in Chicago. It was 5555 North Sheridan. [5:56] And now members of the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit had found out about that themselves. It was like Weindrich had. Maybe they hip Weindrich to it. That all works, all that little undercover stuff. You have an employee at the Edgewater who knows somebody who knows somebody, and the work starts leaking out. When you have something this big, you have 300 people there, and it was really to make some money too, charged $25 a plate, and they did another little fundraiser. They’ve been selling raffle tickets all over C

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins talks with author Linda Stasi about her historical novel, The Descendant, inspired by her own Italian-American family history. Stasi traces her ancestors’ journey from Sicily to the Colorado mining camps, revealing the brutal realities faced by immigrant laborers in the American West. The conversation explores the violent labor struggles surrounding the Ludlow Massacre and the role of powerful figures like John D. Rockefeller, as well as the diverse immigrant communities that shaped Colorado’s mining towns. Stasi challenges stereotypes about Italians in America, highlighting their roles as workers, ranchers, and community builders—not just mobsters. Jenkins and Stasi also discuss Prohibition-era bootlegging and the early roots of organized crime in places like Pueblo, weaving together documented history with deeply personal family stories of survival, violence, and resilience. Drawing on her background as a journalist, Stasi reflects on loss, perseverance, and the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, making The Descendants both a historical narrative and an emotional family legacy. Click here to find the Descendant. 0:04 Introduction to Linda Stasi 3:12 The Role of Women in History 7:05 Bootlegging and the Mafia’s Rise 9:31 Discovering Family Connections 14:59 Immigrant Struggles and Success 19:02 Childhood Stories of Resilience 24:04 Serendipity in New York 26:19 Linda’s Journey as a Journalist Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here.  [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, glad to be back here in studio, Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, and I have an interview for you. This is going to be a historical fiction author. This is going to be a historical fiction book by a writer whose family lived the life of, whose family, This is going to be a real issue. This book is going to, we’re going to talk about a book. We’re going to talk with an author about the book. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi. We’re going to talk with the author, Linda Stasi, about her book, The Descendants. Now, she wrote a historical fiction, but it’s based on her actual family’s history. [0:50] From Sicily to New York to California. The wild west of colorado now get that you never heard of many italians out west in colorado but she’s going to tell us a lot more about that and how they were actually ended up being part of the pueblo colorado mafia the corvino family and then got involved in bootlegging and and then later were involved in ranching and different things like that so it’s uh it’s a little different take on the mob in the United States that we usually get, but I like to do things that are a little bit different. So welcome, Linda Stasey. Historical fiction, how much of it is true? Is it from family stories? All the stories are true. I’ll ask you that here in a little bit. Okay, all the stories are true. All right. All the stories are true. [1:41] It’s based on not only stories that were told to me by my mother and her sisters and my uncles and so forth, But it’s also based on a lot of actual events that took place while they were living in Colorado. And it’s based on the fact that, you know, people don’t know this. We watch all these movies and we think everybody who settled the West talk like John Wayne. There were 30 different languages spoken right in the minds of Colorado. So my uncles rode the range and they were, drovers and they were Italian. I mean, they were first generation. They were born in Italy and they made their way with all these other guys who were speaking Greek and Mexican and you name it. It wasn’t a lot of people talking like, hey, how are you doing, partner? How are you doing, bard? Talking like I do. Right. [2:46] But it took a long time for you you can blame the movies for that and the dominant uh uh caucasian culture for that right and you know there was that what was the movie the the martin scorsese movie killers of the flower moon oh yeah all the uh native americans spoke like they were from like movie set in color and oklahoma so he was like what. [3:13] Yeah, well, it’s the movies, I guess. [3:25] Unlike any women that I would have thought would have been around at that time. They were rebellious, and they did what they wanted, and they had a terrible, mean father. And I also wanted to tell this story. That’s what I started out telling. But I ended up telling the story of the resilience of the immigrants who came to this country. For example, with the Italians and the Sicilians, there had been earthquakes and tsunamis and droughts. So Rockefeller sent these men that he called padrones to the poorest sections of Sicily, the most drought-affected section, looking for young bucks to come and work. And he promised them, he’d say, oh, the president of America wants to give you land, he wants to give you this. Well, they found themselves taken in the most horrific of conditions and brought to Ellis Island, where they were herded onto cattle cars and taken to the mines of Colorado, where they worked 20-hour days. They were paid in company script, so they couldn’t even buy anything. Their families followed them. They were told that their families were coming for free, and they were coming for free, but they weren’t. They had to pay for their passage, which could never be paid for because it was just company script. [4:55] And then in 1914, the United Mine Workers came in, and there were all these immigrants, Greeks and mostly Italians, and they struck, and Rockefeller fired everyone who struck. So the United Mine Workers set up a tent city in Ludlow. [5:14] And at night, Rockefeller would send his goons in who were—he actually paid the National Guard and a detective agency called Baldwin Feltz to come in. And they had a turret-mounted machine gun that they called the Death Squad Special, and they’d just start spraying. So the miners, the striking miners, built trenches under their tents for their women and children to hide. when the bullets started flying. And then at some point, Rockefeller said, you’re not being effective enough. They haven’t gone back to work. Do what you have to do. So these goons went in and they poured oil on top of the tents. And they set them on fire. [6:00] And they burnt dozens of women and children to death. They went in. The government claimed it was 21 people, but there was a female reporter who counted 60-something. and they were cutting the heads and the hands off of people, the children and women, so they couldn’t be identified. It all ended very badly and none of Rockefeller’s people or Rockefeller got in trouble. They went before Congress and Rockefeller basically said they had no right to strike. And that was that. So here are all these men and women now living wild in the mountains of Colorado, not speaking the language, not. Being literate, not able to read and write. [6:44] And living in shacks on mountains in the hurricane, I mean, in the blizzards and whatnot. And then it’s so odd. In 1916, Colorado declared prohibition, which was four years before the rest of the country. [7:00] So these guys said, well, we need to make booze. We need to make wine. What do you mean you can’t have booze and wine? So that’s how bootlegging started in Colorado. And that’s how the mafia began in the West. with these guys. [7:18] It’s kind of interesting. As I was looking down through your book, I did a story on the more modern mafia. This started during bootlegging times in Pueblo, and I noticed in your book, I refer to Pueblo, this was the Corvino brothers. So did you study that? Is that some of the background that you used to make, you know, use a story? You used real stories as well as, you know, the real stories from your family, real stories from history. Well, the Carlinos are my family. Oh, you’re related to the Carlinos. Well, what happened was I didn’t know that. And my cousin Karen came across this photo of the man who was her son. [7:59] Grandfather that she never met because he was killed in the longest gunfight in Colorado history when she was 10 days old. And he was Charlie Carlino. So she came across it and we met, we ended up meeting the family. Sam Carlino is my cousin and he owns like this big barbecue joint in san jose california and uh we’ve become very friendly so i i said i look i’m looking at this and i think wait a minute vito carlino is the father he has three sons and one daughter the youngest son charlie who was the the handsome man about town cowboy, they had a rival family called the dannas in bootlegging and charlie carlino and his bodyguard were riding across the baxter street bridge driving in one direction and the dannas were coming in the other direction and the dannas got out and and killed them and it’s exactly what I’m thinking to myself, Vito Corleone, three sons, Charlie gets killed on the bridge while the two cars are… I thought, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I mean. [9:26] It can’t be that coincidental, right? No. No, it can’t be. Even the bridge. Somebody was doing their research. [9:46] And had baby Charlotte, who was only 10 days old at the time. So all these stories are true, and it started other gunfights and so forth and so on. But I thought, holy shit. That’s my family. I had no idea. I mean, I knew my aunt was married to a guy whose name was Charlie Carlino, And I should show you the picture because he looks like the missing link from the village people. He’s got big fur chaps on and a cowboy hat. I

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with author Craig McGuire to discuss his gripping book, Empire City Under Siege, a deep dive into three decades of FBI manhunts, mob wars, and organized-crime investigations in New York City. Craig explains how the project grew out of his collaboration with retired FBI agent Anthony John Nelson, whose career spanned the most violent and chaotic years of New York’s Mafia history. From Nelson’s early days as a radio dispatcher in 1969 to his transition into undercover and frontline investigative work, the book captures the gritty reality of law enforcement during the 1970s and 1980s. We explore how Nelson’s career mirrored the evolution of organized crime and law-enforcement tactics, including the rise of undercover stings, inter-agency cooperation, and the increasing role of technology. Craig highlights the close working relationship between Nelson and NYPD detective Kenny McCabe, whose deep knowledge of Mafia families and quiet professionalism led to major breakthroughs against organized crime. He tells how these two investigators wathced and uncovered the Gambino Family Roy DeMeo crew under Paul Castellano and Nino Gaggi. Throughout the conversation, Craig shares vivid, often humorous slice-of-life stories from the book—tense undercover moments, dangerous confrontations, and the emotional toll of living a double life. These anecdotes reveal not only the danger of the job but also the camaraderie and resilience that sustained agents and detectives working in the shadows. The episode closes with a reminder that Empire City Under Siege is as much about honoring unsung law-enforcement professionals as it is about mob history. Craig encourages listeners to support true-crime storytelling that preserves these firsthand accounts before they’re lost to time. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:02 Welcome Back to Gangland Wire 2:14 The Journey to Anthony John Nelson 4:46 The Life and Work of Law Enforcement 15:00 Inside Anthony Nelson’s Early Career 26:49 The Dynamic Duo: Nelson and McCabe 30:16 Tales from the Underworld 35:55 The Tragedy of Everett Hatcher 39:12 The High-Stakes World of Undercover Work 40:56 Closing Thoughts and Inspirations transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I say the same thing every time. I hope it doesn’t bore you too much, but I am back here in the Gangland Wire studio. And I have today an author who interviewed and wrote a book with an FBI agent named Anthony John Nelson, who was one of the premier FBI agents in New York City that was working the mob. And even more interesting about him to me was he formed a partnership with a local copper named Kenny McCabe, who you may know the name. I had read the name before several times as I started researching this and looking at the book, but he was a mob buster supreme and Agent Nelson really formed a dynamic duo. But first, let’s start talking to Craig, your book, Empire City Under Seize, Three Decades of New York FBI Field Office Manhunts, Murders and Mafia Wars. How did you get involved with Anthony John Nelson? [0:55] Hi, Gary. Thanks for having me on your show. Big fan. Appreciate the opportunity. Very interesting and winding path that led me to Anthony’s doorstep. I also previously wrote another book, Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys, which was about an enforcer in the Colombo family during the Third Colombo War. And I was introduced to Carmine Imbriali through Thomas Dades. Tommy Dades, he’s a famous retired NYPD detective. So after the success of that book, Tommy introduced me to another member of law enforcement. I started to work on a project that sort of fell apart. And one of the sort of consultants, friends that I met with during that was Anthony Nelson. And then one day as that, due to my own fumbling, as that project was falling apart, I had a delightful breakfast with Anthony and his wonderful wife, Sydney, Cindy, one Sunday morning. And Anthony’s pulling out all these clips of all these investigations and all these Jerry Capiche gangland clips. And it was just fascinating. And so I started to realize that there’s something here because I’m also a true crime fan and I remember many of these cases. [2:08] So it took a while to get Anthony to agree to write a book. He’s not one for the spotlight. He’s really your sort of quintessential G-man, modern G-man. It’s also somewhat of a throwback. But he eventually was interested in doing a book if we didn’t just shine the spotlight on him. Gary, you should know the original, the working title of the book was In the Company of Courage. And that’s really the theme that Anthony wanted to bring forth. You’ll notice throughout the book, there are some vignettes and some biographical information about many of the members of law enforcement that I interviewed, but then we also covered and who are no longer with us. It was my privilege to write this book sharing Anthony’s amazing history, 30 years at the FBI and then several years at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office as an investigator. And just like one of the themes is just to really shed some light on the valuable work that members of law enforcement, including you, sir. Thank you for your service. And we think too often these days, members of law enforcement are maligned and there’s a negative light cast on them. It’s the most difficult job in the world. And we just want to make sure that we’re shining some light on that valuable work that the thousands of members of men and women in law enforcement do every day protecting us. [3:24] I appreciate that. I’ll tell you what, all the way from the rookie on the street making those domestic violence calls and party armed calls and armed robbery alarms calls that are, there’s nothing there the first five times you go. And then all of a sudden there’s a guy running out with a gun all the way up to the homicide detectives. And even the people that handle the budget, they all paid their dues out on the streets and organized crime investigators, of course, and narcotics. I really appreciate that. It’s a thankless job for the most part. Once in a while, you get a little thanks, but not much. As we used to say, it was fun. I can’t believe they pay us to do this. [4:01] Gary, it’s like you’re repeating some of the lines of Frank Pergola to Al King, just like that. And that’s key, that thankless piece. I remember interviewing Frank Pergola, just famous New York City detective, worked on Son of Sam. He also worked on solving 79 homicides related to the Gambinos and the DeMeo family. And he echoed those same sentiments. While you’re investigating a case, it’s the victims’ families and the victims, their nerves are so fraught. It’s such a stressful situation. And the members of law enforcement bear the brunt of a lot of that frustration. [4:41] And too often, there’s no thank you at the end. And it’s not that they want to thank you. It’s just that they want the sort of closure, not even the recognition, just some sort of realization that they did a great job. And it’s unfortunate that they don’t, that doesn’t happen as often as it should. I appreciate it. Let’s talk about Anthony Nelson. He sounds like a very interesting character. Talk a little bit about what you learned from him about his early career. And I want to tell you something, that recalcitrance, I believe that’s the word, $25 word if I’ve ever heard one. His refusal to really make himself a hero or the center of attention. That’s pretty common among cops and FBI agents. I’ve noticed we’ve got, I’ve got a good friend here in Kansas City, wrote a book about the mafia in Kansas City called Mopsers in Our Mist, but he refused to put himself into the book. He had a publishing company that wanted him to do it and was going to pay him to do it, but it had to have him as a hero. He said, we have to have a hero in this book. He says, I won’t do it. So that Mr. Nelson, Agent Nelson, that’s not that uncommon. So tell us a little more about some of his early cases. [5:49] Anthony Nelson, interestingly enough, his career trajectory and really his life tracks with the latter half of the last century. And a lot of the technological evolution, the rise of organized crime post-prohibition, these themes of urbanization, radicalization that came out from the starting in the middle of the century. But really heating up as a young Anthony Nelson joins the FBI in 1969, really mostly in administrative roles, radio dispatcher first, eventually he’s an electronics technician. So I’m sure, Gary, you can reflect on, and some of this will resonate with you, just how archaic some of the technology was. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah. Back then, we have some fantastic anecdotes and stories in the book, but just also like, for example, when you’re responding to a hostage crisis and you don’t have a cell phone, you don’t have minimal communications and talking about, you better make sure you have a pocket full of dimes and knocking on a neighbor’s door because time is of the essence and to establish contact. So just some of this great, really interesting material there. Eventually, Anthony was sworn in as an agent in 1976, and he entered the FBI Academy at Quantico, graduated in 77. [7:13] And interestingly enough, Anthony reflects like some of his fellow graduates, perhaps were not as keen on going to New York, one of the larger field offices, perhaps wanting to cut their teeth at a smaller office, but he obviously wanted to go home. So he was, and he jumped right into the fray, rea

In this powerful and wide-ranging episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Ken Behr, author of One Step Over the Line: Confessions of a Marijuana Mercenary. Behr tells his astonishing life story—from teenage marijuana dealer in South Florida, to high-level drug runner and smuggler, to DEA cooperating source working major international cases. Along the way, he offers rare, first-hand insight into how large-scale drug operations actually worked during the height of the War on Drugs—and why that war, in his view, has largely failed. From Smuggler to Source Behr describes growing up during the explosion of the drug trade in South Florida during the 1970s and 1980s, where smuggling marijuana and cocaine became almost commonplace. He explains how he moved from street-level dealing into large-scale logistics—off-loading planes, running covert runways in the Everglades, moving thousands of pounds of marijuana, and participating in international smuggling operations involving Canada, Jamaica, Colombia, and the Bahamas. After multiple arrests—including a serious RICO case that threatened him with decades in prison—Behr made the life-altering decision to cooperate with the DEA. What followed was a tense and dangerous double life as an undercover operative, helping law enforcement dismantle major trafficking networks while living under constant pressure and fear of exposure. Inside the Mechanics of the Drug Trade This episode goes deep into the nuts and bolts of organized drug trafficking, including: How clandestine runways were built and dismantled in minutes How aircraft were guided into unlit landing zones How smuggling crews were paid and organized Why most drug operations ultimately collapse from inside The role of asset seizures in federal drug enforcement Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [00:00:00] well, hey, all your wire taps. It’s good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I have a special guest today. He has a book called, uh, title is One Step Over the Line and, and he went several steps over the line, I think in his life. Ken Bearer, welcome Ken. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Now, Ken, Ken is a, was a marijuana smuggler at one time and, and ended up working with the DEA, so he went from one side over to my side and, and I always like to talk to you guys that that helped us in law enforcement and I, there’s a lot of guys that don’t like that out there, but I like you guys you were a huge help to us in law enforcement and ended up doing the right thing after you made a lot of money. So tell us about the money. We were just starting to talk about the money. Tell us about the money, all those millions and millions of dollars that you drug smuggler makes. What happens? Well, I, you know, like I said, um, Jimmy Buffett’s song a pirate looks at 40, basically, he says, I made enough money to to buy Miami and pissed it away all so fast, never meant to last. And, and that’s what happens. I do know a few people that have [00:01:00] put away money. One of my friends that we did a lot of money together, a lot of drug dealing and a lot of moving some product, and he’s put the money away. Got in bed with some other guy that was, you know, legal, bought a bunch of warehouses, and now he lives a great life, living off the money he put away. Yeah. If the rents and stuff, he, he got into real estate. Other guys have got into real estate and they got out and they ended up doing okay. ’cause now they’re drawing all those rents. That’s a good way to money. Exactly what he did. Uh, my favorite, I was telling you a favorite story of mine was the guy that was a small time dealer used to hang out at the beach. And, uh, we en he ended up saving $80,000, which was a lot of money back then. Yeah. And then put it all, went to school to be a culinary chef and then got a job at the Marriott as a culinary chef and a chef. So he, you know, he really took the money, made a little bit of money, didn’t make a lot Yeah. But made enough to go to school and do something with his life. That’s so, um, that’s a great one. That’s a good one [00:02:00] there. That’s real. Yeah. But he wasn’t a big time guy. Yeah. You know what, what happens is you might make a big lick. You know, I, I never made million dollar moves. I have lots of friends that did. I always said I didn’t want to be a smuggler. ’cause I was making a steady living, being a drug runner. If you brought in 40, 50,000 pounds of weed, you would come to me and then I would move it across the country and sell it in different, along with other guys like me. Having said that, so I say I’m a guy that never wanted to do a smuggling trip. I’ve done 12 of them. Yeah. Even though, you know, and you know, if you’ve been in the DEA side twelve’s a lot for somebody usually. Yeah. That’s a lot. They don’t make, there’s no longevity. Two or three trips. No. You know, I did it for 20 years. Yeah. And then finally I got busted one time in Massachusetts in 1988. We had 40,000 pounds stuck up in Canada. So a friend of mine comes to me, another friend had the 40,000 pounds up there. He couldn’t sell it. He goes, Hey, you wanna help me smuggle [00:03:00] this back into America? Which, you know, is going the wrong direction. The farther north it goes, the more money it’s worth. I would’ve taken it to Greenland for Christ’s sakes. Yeah. But, we smuggled it back in. What we did this time was obviously they, they brought a freighter or a big ship to bring the 40,000 pounds into Canada. Mm-hmm. He added, stuffed in a fish a fish packing plant in a freezer somewhere up there. And so we used the sea plane and we flew from a lake in Canada to a lake in Maine where the plane would pull up, I’d unload. Then stash it. And we really did like to get 1400 pounds. We had to go through like six or seven trips. ’cause the plane would only hold 200 and something pounds. Yeah. And a sea plane can’t land at night. It has to land during the day. Yeah. You can’t land a plane in the middle of a lake in the night, I guess yourself. Yeah. I see. Uh, and so we got, I got busted moving that load to another market and that cost, uh, [00:04:00] cost me about $80,000 in two years of fighting in court to get out of that. Yeah. Uh, but I did beat the case for illegal search and seizure. So one for the good guys. It wasn’t for the good guys. Well the constitution, he pulled me over looking for fireworks and, ’cause it was 4th of July and, yeah. The name of that chapter in the book is why I never work on a holiday. So you don’t wanna spend your holiday in jail ’cause there’s no, you can’t on your birthday. So another, the second time I got busted was in 92. So just a couple years later after, basically I was in the system for two years with the loss, you know, fighting it and that, that was for Rico. I was looking at 25 years. But, uh, but like a normal smuggling trip. I’ll tell you one, we did, I brought, I actually did my first smuggling trip. I was on the run in Jamaica from a, a case that I got named in and I was like 19 living down in Jamaica to cool out. And then my buddies came down. So we ended up bringing out 600 pounds. So that was my first tr I was about 19 or [00:05:00] 20 years old when I did my first trip. I brought out 600 pounds outta Jamaica. A friend of mine had a little Navajo and we flew it out with that, but. I’ll give you an example of a smuggling trip. So a friend of mine came to me and he wanted to load 300 kilos of Coke in Columbia and bring it into America. And he wanted to know if I knew anybody that could load him 300 kilos. So I did. I introduced him to a friend of mine that Ronnie Vest. He’s the only person you’ll appreciate this. Remember how he kept wanting to extradite all the, the guys from Columbia when we got busted, indict him? Yes. And of course, Escobar’s living in his own jail with his own exit. Yeah. You know, and yeah. So the Columbian government says, well, we want somebody, why don’t you extradite somebody to America, to Columbia? So Ronnie Vest had gotten caught bringing a load of weed outta Columbia. You know, they sent ’em back to America. So that colo, the Americans go, I’ll tell you what you want. Somebody. And Ronnie Vests got the first good friend of mine, first American to be [00:06:00] extradited to Columbia to serve time. So he did a couple years in the Columbian prison. And so he’s the one that had the cocaine connection now. ’cause he spent time in Columbia. Yeah. And you know, so we brought in 300 kilos of Coke. He actually, I didn’t load it. He got another load from somebody else. But, so in the middle of the night, you set up on a road to nowhere in the Everglades, there’s so many Floridas flat, you’ve got all these desolate areas. We go out there with four or five guys. We take, I have some of ’em here somewhere. Callum glow sticks. You know the, the, the glow sticks you break, uh, yeah. And some flashing lights throw ’em out there. Yeah. And we set up a, yeah, the pilot came in and we all laid in the woods waiting for the plane to come in. And as soon as the pilot clicks. The mic four times. It’s, we all click our mics four times and then we run out. He said to his copilot, he says, look, I mean, we lit up this road from the sky. He goes, it looks like MIA [00:07:00] behind the international airport. But it happens like that within a couple, like a minute, we’ll light that whole thing up. Me and one other guy run down the runway. It’s a lot, it’s a long run, believe me. We put out the lights, we gotta put out the center lights and then the mark

In this bonus episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins takes listeners back to 1970s Chicago for a series of lesser-known yet revealing stories about the Chicago Outfit, centered on violent enforcer Frank Schweihs, also known as “Frank the German.”   The episode begins with a personal side quest—tracking down the mystery of Tony Accardo and his rare red 1950s Mercedes sports car, possibly a 300 SL. These exotic cars were produced in limited numbers, and with Accardo’s history attached, the vehicle could be worth a fortune today. The question is: where did it go?   From there, the story moves deep into Outfit territory. Schweihs was a feared figure who worked under Joseph Lombardo and alongside other notorious mobsters. I recount an undercover operation involving a wired Old Town business owner who helped federal agents capture Schweihs, extorting money, one of the cases that eventually put him behind bars. The episode also explores a remarkable undercover IRS investigation in which an agent posing as a criminal associate gained Schweihs’ trust. Listeners hear about crooked real estate deals, political corruption, bribe demands, and just how casually violence was discussed inside the Outfit’s inner circle—including talk of bombing a politician’s car when business deals stalled.   These stories offer a raw, street-level look at how the Chicago Outfit operated during its peak years—how intimidation, corruption, and violence were everyday tools of business—and why figures like Frank Schweihs remain symbols of the Outfit’s brutality. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 00:00 – Introduction and Chicago Bonus Episode 00:24 – Tony Accardo’s Red Mercedes Mystery 02:55 – The Chicago Outfit in the 1970s 03:31 – Frank Schweihs and the Extortion Case 04:42 – Undercover IRS Agent Inside the Outfit 06:33 – Corruption, Real Estate, and Political Payoffs 08:37 – Violence Threats and Taking the Case Down 09:35 – Windy City Mafia and Final Thoughts Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective here back in the studio with a little bonus episode, Gangland Wire. And I’ve been doing a bunch of Chicago stuff, as you know. Well, here’s one more before I stray away from Chicago. I had been away from Chicago for a long time and I missed it. I missed you guys up there. And, you know, here’s another thing before I really get started in this story. Okay. [0:24] I’m on a mission right now. I remembered an old story about Tony Accardo had a 1950s Mercedes SL, and I think it was a Gull Wing, but I’m not sure. It was a 300 SL. [0:40] He for sure had a 1950s Mercedes red sports car. And I always wondered, you know, I wonder what happened to that car. You know, I ought to be able to run that down. I interviewed a guy recently about an investigation into finding an extremely rare exotic car that was worth like $25 million or something. It was a teardrop, German-made, something about a Talbert Lago or some game like that. Anyhow, so it got me thinking. And they were talking about running down the cars and the history on cars, the Provence on cars. And they said, when you have a really good story attached to a car, it makes it worth a whole lot more money than normal. And I called up a friend of mine that wheels and deals in classic cars through Mecham’s. And I think there’s another auto auction. He said, oh, yeah. He said, man, you can find that car. If it hadn’t already had that priced into it, the fact that Tony Accardo sold it or owned it, then it would be worth a whole lot more money. So I thought, well, let’s just see if we can’t find that car. I started looking into it. These 1950s Mercedes 300 SLs, there wasn’t very many I’ve made. There was only a couple thousand I’ve made in over several years’ time. And the best I could tell, they’re all accounted for in some manner. I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. I started asking around and trying to find people that could help me with sources on that. So if you know anybody that’s a real expert on these old Mercedes sports cars. [2:10] Send them to me. Have them email me at ganglandwire at gmail.com or something like that. And if you are, you know, give me a call, 816-931-3535. I just think it would be fun to find it. I’d do a little show on it if I found it. And find out what happened to it. Now, it might make somebody really happy. We can find it, and he didn’t know that it was Tony Accardo’s old car. Now, these old VINs, you know, now they’re 17 digits. Well, back then, they were like six or seven digits, and to trace it through the VIN, that old a car, with no more than I have to go on right now, it’s just almost impossible. I need to find, narrow down that maybe somebody has a story about who had it and try to find that person and then work down from there if maybe that person still has it. I don’t know. But it would be a fun little, it’s going to be a fun little project. But anyhow, let’s go up to Chicago in the 1970s. You know, you were rocking and rolling up there in Chicago. The outfit ruled. We just had all that information from Bob Cooley and all the things that he did and he was involved in up there. And they owned the city. You know, they damn near owned the whole city. So there’s one guy named Frank Schweihs. Now you may have heard of Frank Schweihs. He was called the German, Frank, the German Schweihs. He was a guy that Red Wemette met who has his show. [3:31] Can’t even think of the name of it anymore. He had a show with Adam out in Las Vegas. Red Wemette. He kind of went into the employ of the FBI. Nobody really had a case on him. He was just tired of him shaking him down. So he volunteered, and Frank Schweihs was coming around extorting money from him. He had a dirty bookstore or something like that in Old Town. Frank Schweihs had a restaurant in Old Town. Frank Schweihs started coming around, and Red Wilmette let the bureau wire up his TV. So it had a camera and a microphone in it, and it recorded all kinds of information about Frank Schweihs. And they ended up convicting him of extorting money from Red Wilmette. He was also a defendant in the Family Seekers trial, and I think Red testified in that. Frank Schweihs, he had gotten introduced to an IRS agent named Johnson, but he was going under the name Virgil Williams. Now, Virgil Williams, we’re just going to call him Virgil Williams. He was a black dude. He was a big black dude, looked like a former, you know, defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears or something. [4:42] And he had started out, the IRS had put him undercover, working the South Side and working policy back in the earlier 60s. And somehow he got introduced to Frank Schweihs as this guy who was, you know, involved in gambling and involved in the rackets in some manner on the south side and the black rackets. Frank was trying to sell him his restaurant in Old Town. Of course, he was trying to rip him off is what he was trying to do. You don’t just do business with a guy like Frank Schweihs. Absolutely, you do not do business with him. If you start going down that path, what he’s going to do, he’s going to rip you off in some manner. Guys start telling stories about later on, he’s at the trial and around that time he’s interviewed and he start telling stories about working with Frank, he said, Frank, and he would sit around the restaurant and talk and drink and, and Frank would say, we’re in about undercover agents. And he said, yeah, he said, I can spot him a mile off. He said, no undercover is ever going to get close to me. He said, uh, you know, I can just hear, I can pick out who’s going up and down the street out there and who’s an undercover agent. And he’d point out people. Of course, this guy knew that they really weren’t undercover agents, but you know, he, you know, would act like, oh yeah, you’re really cool, Frank, you’re a guy I need to do business with. You know what time it is. He said the one time, Frank told him, he said, I wish that us whites were as aggressive and binding as you blacks are. He said, the guy said, I said, I almost choked on that. [6:11] He said, who’s more violent than Frank Schweihs? And he worked for Joy the Clown Lombardo. And, you know, Harry Aleman was in that mix and the Wild Bunch. And, I mean, who’s more violent and vicious than those guys? I don’t think anybody. But he thought that blacks really had it going on when it came to the violence thing. [6:33] It was a hell of a story. He also, after he got done, he didn’t have much more on Frank, but talked about he was trying to, he got in. Frank probably hooked him up with this guy, a guy named Herman Kaye. And he told him that he would buy a building from him. And actually, the building was owned by Goodwill Industries. And this Herman Kay was kind of a high-ranking person in Goodwill Industries. And, and he was going to sell it for $325,000 in cash. He said, uh, uh, Johnson walked in. He said, I just dumped $325,000 in cash right on his, uh, desk. And so this guy said, oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. Cause he was, he was, you know, front of himself off was like a black dope dealer. It had just tons of cash. [7:18] He said, you know, we can’t do it like that. You know, we got to figure out how to get that in the check. And then you got to pay me and pay me so much under the table. And so they ended up making a case on this guy for ripping over $400,000 off in a series of real estate deals in which the Goodwill industries are the victim. Now, who would

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Mafia Genealogist Justin Cascio joins Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins to explore one of the most remarkable—and overlooked—figures of the Prohibition era: Pasqualina Albano Siniscalchi, the so-called Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts. At the dawn of Prohibition in 1921, Pasqualina was a young widow living in Springfield’s South End when she inherited her late husband’s powerful bootlegging operation—one of the largest in western Massachusetts. Rather than step aside, she took control. Pasqualina ruled a crew of toughs and bootleggers, oversaw liquor distribution, and launched a relentless campaign of vengeance against rivals who challenged her authority. Newspapers dubbed her The Bootleg Queen, but her fight went far beyond rival gangs. She clashed with lawmakers, battled competing bootleggers, and even faced resistance from within her own family—all while operating in service of a secret society that would never fully accept her because she was a woman. Her story exposes the contradictions of organized crime: loyalty demanded without equality, power wielded without recognition. Cascio draws from years of meticulous research and family histories to bring Pasqualina’s story to life, revealing her pivotal role in early Mafia expansion in New England and the hidden influence women could wield behind the scenes. His book, Pasqualina: The True Story of the Bootleg Queen of Springfield, challenges long-held assumptions about gender, power, and the Mafia during Prohibition. If you’re interested in Prohibition-era crime, New England Mafia history, or the untold stories of women who shaped organized crime from the shadows, this episode is one you won’t want to miss. Learn more about Justin and his work on Mafia Geneology by clicking this sentence. Get Justin’s book, Pasqualina: The Bootleg Queen of Springfield, Massachusetts Listen now on Gangland Wire — available on all major podcast platforms and YouTube. 0:02 Introduction to Mafia Genealogy 1:16 Pasqualina Albano’s Story 2:30 Family Reunion Revelations 4:56 The Impact of Prohibition 7:45 Prejudice and Organized Crime 10:50 Connecting the Genovese Family 12:34 Views from Sicily 13:50 Cultural Differences in Dress 16:37 Encounters with Modern Gangsters 18:36 Gina’s Documentary and Art 23:53 The Romance of the Gangster 27:24 The Nature of Risk 28:46 The Evolution of Organized Crime 33:16 Closing Thoughts and Future Plans Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’ve got on tap here a repeat guest. He’s been on before. I had a little technical glitch this morning with the internet, and I had to scurry around and do something different. I totally forgot about what I was going to talk about with Justin, but I knew Justin’s been on there before. I knew he does mafia genealogy, and I knew he knows his stuff, and so he doesn’t really need a lot of help from me. So this is Justin Cascio from the website and some books, some mafia genealogies. Welcome, Justin. Thanks so much, Gary. Great to be here. Really. And you’re from the Springfield, Massachusetts area. And so that’s been some of your emphasis has been on that area. But you’ve done a lot of other mob genealogy, correct? Yes. On my website, on mafiagenealogy.com, I write about a whole lot of different places that the mafia has been in the United States. In fact, coming up, I’m going to be writing about Kansas City. But for the last 25 years or so, I’ve lived in New England. I live about 20 miles away from Springfield, Massachusetts, which if you’ve heard of Anthony Aralata or Bruno or the Shabelli brothers, then you know the Springfield crew of the Genovese crime family. [1:12] And I’ve been following them pretty closely since I’ve lived here. A few years ago, I got into the story of Pasqualina Albano, who was a bootlegger in Springfield during Prohibition. [1:25] That’s what my new book is about. Yeah. Oh, that’s a new book, right? I’m sorry. I didn’t pick up real quick there. And she’s done a documentary recently that hasn’t been seen by very many people. And they really, she was a woman. They do use the A at the end. Those of us that know about romance languages would know as probably a woman, but she’s a woman. And she was running a certain segment of bootlegging back during the 30s and late 20s, exactly when it was, which is really unusual. She must have been a powerful individual. I think that she was a very remarkable person, so I couldn’t find out enough about her. I really needed to understand how it was possible that somebody who the Mafia would never have accepted as a member allowed her to lead this crew for so long, even into the years when it was associated with Vito Genovese and that crime family. Yeah. Don’t you imagine it was, she must have been making money for them. [2:24] She was making money for her family, for sure. Got a few people probably pretty comfortable, yeah. [2:30] So that family, you went to a family reunion recently and learned quite a little bit. You want to tell your experiences about that? Yes. So, Pasqualea Albano, that bootlegger, has a nephew who is now 101 years old. His name is Mario Fiore. And when he turned 100, I was invited to his birthday party. And it was an enormous scene. It was tremendous. In fact, it’s a cliche, but the opening scene of The Godfather, if you imagine that wedding scene, it’s what it looks like. There’s a guy singing live on a PA system. There’s a pizza oven parked over here. There’s kids in the pool. There’s so many people, so much food, and this great big lawn and incredible view. Just an amazing scene to be at. And I met so many different people who were in Mario’s family. I met people who came over from Italy to come celebrate his birthday and talked with them as much as I could. I have no Italian, by the way. So we did the best we could. But I also talked to her American relative. She has all these grand nieces and nephews, and nieces and nephews who are still living, who were at this party and told me stories and drew little family trees for me. And what I was able to get a real good sense of is how the family feels about this legacy. Because not just Pasqualina, who was in organized crime, so many of her relatives were involved as well and continued to be up until the 80s, at least. [4:00] So the name, was it Albano? Was it got on in the modern times? The last name, was it still Albano? Was there another name? There are a few. Let’s see. I want some more modern names. There’s Mario Fiore. So he is one of her nephews. And then there’s Rex Cunningham Jr., who is one of her grandnephews. There’s the Sentinellos. So Jimmy Sentinello, who owns the Mardi Gras, or he did anyway. It’s a nude club, you know, a gentleman’s club, as they say. A gentleman’s club. We use that term loosely. Oh, boy, do we? Another old term that I picked up from the newspapers that I just love and like to bring back is sporting figure. Yeah, even sporting man. They don’t play sports. They’re not athletes. They’re sporting figures. I know. I heard that when I was a kid. Somebody was a sporting man. Yep. [4:57] This has been a family tradition. It’s something that has been passed down through the generations, and it’s something that I talk about in the book. But mostly what I’m focused on in the plot of the story is about Pasqualea’s time during Prohibition when this gang was turning into something bigger, turning into a part of this American mafia. Yeah. Interesting. And so tell us a little bit about how that developed. You had a Genovese family that moved in and she got hooked up with them. How did that develop? Yeah. More end of modern times. Early on, so 1920, beginning of Prohibition, Pasqualea Albana was newly married to this sporting figure, we’ll call him, Carlo Sinascocci. And I’m probably pronouncing that last name as wrong as well. He also came from a family of notable people who were involved in organized crime, getting into scrapes in Little Italy, New York City. There’s a whole separate side story about his cousins and all the things that they were getting into before Carlo even got on the scene. So by the time he arrived in New York City, he had a bit of a reputation preceding him because of these relatives of his. [6:06] And Pascalina was a young woman in Springfield. And the first question I even had writing about her is, how did she meet this guy? He was a Brooklyn saloon keeper. She was the daughter of a grocer in Springfield, three and a half hours away on the train. Like, why do they even know each other? And so trying to piece all that together, how that was reasonable for them to know one another and move in the same circles, and then for him to immediately, when he moved to Springfield, start picking up with vice because it was before Prohibition. So he was involved in gambling and police violence. And you could see some of the beginnings of the corruption already happening where he’s getting police protection before prohibition even begins. And then once it starts, he is the king of Water Street, which was the main drag of Little Italy. He was the guy you went to if you wanted to buy wholesale. [6:57] Justin, I have a question here. I was just discussing this with who’s half Italian, I guess, FBI agent that worked the mob here in Kansas City. We were talking about this, the prejudice that Italian people felt when they first got here, especially. And Bill’s about 90, and so he said his father told him. His father worked at a ba

In this episode, we delve into the intricate world of the Chicago Outfit’s informants, featuring insights from my late friend, Cam Robinson, and Paul Whitcomb, a well-respected expert on the mob. This special compilation draws from past interviews and shorts that once highlighted various informants who operated during the notorious 1980s era of organized crime in Chicago. Through a series of concise segments, we explore the lives of key players who chose to turn against the Outfit, revealing the complex motivations and consequences of their decisions. We kick things off by revisiting the tale of Paul “Peanuts” Pansko, an influential figure leading the Polish faction of the Outfit. Pansko’s criminal activities, including a racetrack heist, not only placed him in dangerous territory but also set into motion a chain of events that would later link to the infamous Family Secrets trial. It’s during this journey that we outline how interconnected the informants’ narratives are, showcasing how Pansko’s actions inadvertently unraveled parts of the organization.   The discussion shifts to more dramatic stories, including Mario Rainone. Rainone’s infamous decision to cooperate with the authorities opened the door to significant revelations about Lenny Patrick, one of the highest-ranking Outfit members to switch sides. Rainone’s tapes ultimately led to the dismantling of major sections of the Outfit’s operations, including political connections that had long shielded them from legal repercussions.   We also explore the tale of Ken “Tokyo Joe” Eto, a Japanese mobster who thrived within the Outfit’s ranks. His attempts at self-preservation after surviving an assassination effort highlighted the stark realities faced by those who navigated the perilous landscape of organized crime. As he eventually became a witness for the prosecution, Eto’s insights illuminated the internal workings of one of Chicago’s most feared organizations. The episode further examines dramatic betrayals and deadly encounters that shaped the Outfit’s legacy. From the chilling events surrounding the murders of the Spilotro brothers, orchestrated by their own associates for reasons steeped in loyalty and betrayal, to the grim fate that met informants like Al Toco and the impact of domestic discord on organized crime, each tale is a window into the bleak realities faced by both mobsters and informants alike. As we round out the episode, we reflect on the cultural dynamics surrounding informants, particularly how personal relationships and family ties heavily influenced their decisions to cooperate. It becomes clear through the interviews that while fear of retribution often compels loyalty, the specter of betrayal looms large within the mob. This multifaceted examination blends personal stories with historical context, providing a deeper understanding of the Chicago Outfit’s complexity and its operatives. Join us in this retrospective journey through the shadows of organized crime as we pay homage to those who bravely shared their stories, revealing the inner workings of a criminal empire that continues to fascinate and terrify in equal measure. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, guys, after listening to Bob Cooley, one of the more damaging sources and witness and informant to the Chicago Outfit outside of the Calabrese family, [0:13] Nick and his nephew, Frank Jr., I got the rest of the Chicago Outfit informants on tap here. No, not really. They’re not coming in. But I did do a story. I did a series of shorts a few years, or I don’t know, two or three years ago, maybe. [0:32] I interviewed my late friend, Cam Robinson, rest in peace, Cam. So you get to hear from him again. And Paul Whitcomb, who is a Chicago outfit expert, he’s been on this. They used to have some kind of a round table show up there. I don’t know if they still have it or not with the Seiferts. But anyhow, I got these guys to sit down with me and talk about all the different informants in Chicago during the, it was during the 80s. So this is just kind of a series of shorts that I put up before. They’re six or eight minutes long, I think, each one of them, that they talk about different informants. This kind of threw it together as another little bonus episode we’ve done. And I went to Chicago, if you notice, after Johnny Russo, which I apologize for in a way, I don’t know. I mean, the guy’s got some crazy-ass stories, doesn’t he? Who am I to say that he didn’t do it? But most people know that he didn’t do most of that stuff. Anyhow, so I threw up another Chicago right away about the guy that had the race wire that they killed, James Reagan. [1:38] Then i had this interview that i’d been doing during those last couple weeks with bob cooley who’s appeared uh out of nowhere and he’ll maybe see him on some other shows now he’s he’s wanting to do shows he tells me so after hearing bob cooley talk i thought well i’m doing do one more i want to just throw it up as an extra uh from some of my old chicago outfit stuff and that’ll finish me off on the Chicago outfit for a while. I hadn’t, I hadn’t been in Chicago, uh, doing shows about Chicago for quite a while. And, and I didn’t want to, uh, neglect you guys. You know, I get a lot of books written about New York and I’ve got all these authors that are wanting to do these books about New York. Uh, not so much about Chicago. So if you got anybody that, you know, wants to, got a book and wants to come on the show, uh, talking about the outfit, why steer them to me. So anyhow, just sit back and relax and enjoy. [2:37] My late, great friend, Cam Robinson. One more look at Cam, for those of you who remember him, and Paul Whitcomb. And we’re going to talk about famous snitches from Chicago. Thanks, guys. Well, let’s move along now to, this is kind of interesting, Paul Peanuts Panczko, who was the leader of the Polish branch of the outfield. Is that what you would call Peanuts Panczko, the leader of the Polish branch? If the Polish branch is the Panczko family, which you could easily say there were three brothers, then yeah, that wouldn’t be right. We haven’t really done a show on them. I don’t know a whole lot about them other than they were released at all. So we said non-Italian, Peckerwood, as we call them at Kansas City, professional criminals who did a lot of business with different outfit people. And he did a robbery of a racetrack. I think it’s the Balmoral Racetrack. It’s the name of it. James Duke Basile and then Panczko was in trouble for that and he convinced Basile to come in and they did some talking remember anything about that situation, you know in a lot of ways you. [3:50] Panczko could be considered one of the first dominoes that eventually led to the Family Secrets trial. Panczko, as you said, led to Dookie Bazile, who they had done robberies together. Bazile led them to Scarpelli, who was a much higher guy. I mean, there’s debate, but he was, because there was a making ceremony at this time, but Scarpelli was pretty highly ranked. I mean, he was a known killer, and he was up there. He was in the wild bunch. But Scarpelli then did tell them about a lot of the things that Frank Calabrese had done. [4:28] He wasn’t known as well as Scarpelli had brought him up to be. And a lot of those things dominoed into what would eventually lead to family secrets years later. [4:42] Scarpelli, I think, did not know so much about Nick, but he did know about Frank. And so a lot of that information sort of filled in the gaps. And even though Frank Calabrese Jr. Led them led them to Nick They A lot of seeds were planted And can be traced back to Pianus Pansico Um. [5:01] So it is kind of an interesting line. Basile, he wore a wire on Scarpelli and not even talking about a lot of these things. It’s not the FBI knew about that. They were in a car together. Right. If I remember right, he even talked about a mob graveyard. They went up there and they found two or three bodies. One of them was connected. It wasn’t anybody really important, but one of them was connected to Harry Aleman. So it was a pretty important wearing of a wire on Scarpelli, who then came at himself for a while. And that’s what led to the family secrets. He talked about Frank Calabrese. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that’s right. And some of those bodies in that graveyard were 10 years apart, which was interesting. I’ve got, it’s on the map that I created, but some of those bodies, there was years in between them. So it was something they were going back to and they believed that there were a lot of things there they did not find. Yeah, because they built a health care facility or something. They built some big building over where there would have been bodies. Right. Right. And the fascinating thing about this is Scarpelli, like, just like Cam said, this guy was a serious killer. He was a muscle builder. He was a terrifying guy. I mean, he had almost inhuman physical strength. Yeah. And when he flipped, he was completely debriefed by the FBI and the DOJ and then decided to try and change his mind. [6:27] But before he could do that He hung himself in the bathroom Of the Metropolitan Correctional Center With his hands behind his back And a bag over his head, Who was he in prison with? Who was he in MCC with, Paul? Was it anybody? He did happen to be in the MCC with the German at the time. He bound his hands behind his back and put a bag over his own head. He did. He did. And so the outfit continues to somehow persuade people to take their own lives rather than test

In this special short episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins presents a wild and largely forgotten chapter from Bob Cooley’s life—the former Chicago Outfit fixer, gambler, and lawyer whose career straddled the worlds of organized crime, corruption, and courtroom drama. Fresh off a long-form interview with Cooley, Gary pulls out a standalone story that feels almost too strange to be true: Cooley’s first real legal case, involving the infamous Chicago martial arts cult figure Count Dante, self-proclaimed “Deadliest Man Alive.” The episode revisits 1970s Chicago, when Count Dante ran multiple dojos across the city and cultivated a fearsome public image. A rivalry with a competing martial arts school—the Green Dragon Dojo—boiled over into violence when Dante and his followers stormed the school armed with medieval-style weapons. The confrontation ended with one man dead, and Dante charged with murder. At the time, Bob Cooley wasn’t even officially a lawyer yet—he had just taken the bar exam and was still working as a Chicago police officer. Despite that, Count Dante tracked him down, hired him on the spot, and insisted Cooley would be his attorney. What followed was a surreal two-year relationship involving Chicago nightlife, the Playboy Club and Mansion, mob figures, bar fights, and mounting public attention. When the case finally went to trial, the courtroom devolved into chaos as rival martial artists from both sides reenacted the violence with shouting, threats, and theatrical testimony. The judge, fed up with the spectacle, dismissed the case outright—instantly launching Bob Cooley’s reputation as a lawyer who had “beaten” a murder charge. Get Bob Cooley’s book When Corruption Was King. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey guys, this is a little shorty, uh, part of the long interview I did with Bob Cooley, former Chicago outfit, mob fixer, lawyer, uh, general man about town gambler been in, uh, not in witness protection, but he has been off the radar for several years and in hiding. He recently came back and he got hold of me and he wanted to come on the podcast. And you know, I’ve done one story about him, part of his story. This is another part of his story that’s kind of separate from everything else. It’s about a guy by the name of Count Dante. Now, he was kind of well-known in Chicago at the time back in the 70s. You’ll see some images of him in the show. He liked Bob. He got hold of Bob, and he wanted him to defend him. And Bob wasn’t even out of law school yet, but he wanted him to defend him. He had got in an argument with something called the Green Dragon Dojo. He had a dojo, and he had a whole bunch of dojos around town. [1:04] And he was pretty successful, but he built himself as a deadliest man alive. And this other dojo, they said something bad about him or something. I don’t know exactly how it started. So he took a crew of his and went over to the Green Dragon Dojo and kicked in the front door and went in. they had a big battle and they had maces and spears and, and a huge big fight. And somebody ends up getting killed in this fight. So they charged the count with murder and end up going to trial. Uh, Bob’s got, he’ll talk a little bit about it and, and, and his relationship with the count. They became good friends and he did a lot of stuff with the count over two years. It’s, uh, he didn’t say a lot, but, uh, enough to let you know that he and the count were, were pals for a while. In the end, Bob defends him. He’s just out of law school. It was first case, really first client, I think maybe. And they go to trial and, and both the prosecution puts on all their. [2:03] Prosecution witnesses, which are people of this Green Dragon dojo. And then Bob puts on the count and some of his people. And by the time they get done screaming and yelling and almost replaying this whole fight in the courtroom, the judge is so fed up with the whole thing that he just dismisses the whole case. And of course, when the count, he goes around telling everybody how Bob Cooley helped him beat a murder case. And from then on, you know, that’s the start of his reputation as a lawyer so it’s a it’s a hell of a story i’ll tell you that right now it’s a it’s a heck of a story so i’m in the police station now i’m in in fact after that that’s when i got involved out there with all the mobsters and the rest of them in the 18th district when i wasn’t able to work i was i was working undercover out there with them because it was something to do and uh. [2:58] I’m in the police station. I get a call to come into the police station because I’m in law school. I had just taken the bar. I had just taken the bar, and I knew I passed it. I just did. I never had a problem with anything. I knew that it was just a matter of when I’d be practicing law. I get a call to come into the police station. And when I come in there, there was this silly looking guy with a cape, with one of those, a C-tooth mesh outfit with a cape on and using blue eyes and with what I call the Dante beard. And he says, you’re Bob Foley? Yeah. Yeah. He says, you know, can I talk to you? [3:46] Can I talk to you? And I said, he says, John Began told me that, you know, this is where you’re working now. He said, I’d like to talk to you. He said, I have a little problem. And we go upstairs. His little problem was it was front page news in the papers. And I didn’t notice it or realize it. He was involved. He was charged with murder because he had been involved in that situation up there at the Green Dragon. He had broken in there, and they had killed, and his friend Jim Concevic had gotten killed. But anyhow, he said, and I’m charged with murder. He says, and I want to hire you. I says, you want to hire me? I says, I’m not a lawyer yet. He says to me, I’ve been following you. I’ve been, he says, I’ve noticed, I’ve known who you were for a long time, he said, and I’ve really been anxious to maybe get to, you know, I didn’t know where you were or whatever happened to you, he said, but he said, he said, I knew you at Mount Carmel, he said, you were a wrestler, he said, I was a wrestler too, he said, I was a wrestler too, and I didn’t remember his name, because it was John Kean at the time, I didn’t, I didn’t remember him, you know, for anything. He says, I haven’t passed the bar yet. He says, but John, sure you are, and I’m sure you will. [5:16] And if you don’t pass the bar, I want you to find me somebody. He says, because John tells me, you know all kinds of people. You have a lot of connections, which I did. I had been friendly with a lot of judges and a lot of other people who had known me for a number of years as a policeman and whatever. And when I first started practicing, even before I started practicing, a lot of these were friends of mine at the time. But anyhow, he says, so he gives me $5,000, and he says, and he said to me, if you don’t, he said, I said, well, then here’s what you can do. I said, and he had one of the big-name lawyers in Chicago. I think his name was Conley. He was one of the top lawyers in the city. Just tell him, tell him, continue. You don’t want to, because the case was set for trial. It was supposed to go to trial in a couple of weeks. Oh, yeah. I says, tell him you want to get it continued. Yeah. No way. This is front page. This is front page. Newspaper. Yeah. [6:26] The deadliest man in the world. And it was, you know, when they broke into this place and constipated a spear put through him, the count had pulled the guy’s eye out or whatever. This is at this Green Dragon. It was like a Green Dragon. It was a restaurant. No, no, no. The Green Dragon was a school. It was a Kung Fu school. Oh. In the Kung Fu school, they teach you how to use weapons, maces and swords and daggers. The Count had a number of skulls, but they were skulls just to teach you how to fight with your hands and teach you how to do it, you know, not with weapons, just by your hands. They broke the count. [7:12] The place itself had like one of those real thick wooden doors. I don’t know how he did it, but he broke it off the hinges when he went in there, and he came in with like four people. There were four people and himself, Joey Casello, Konsevic, and I forgot the other two guys’ names. But they broke in there. When they broke in there, one of the guys came at the count with one of those maces, those big ball things that you throw around. And the count took his eye out. He blocked it, took his eye out. Wow. In Konsevic, they threw a spear through him. They first hit him with a, and they put a spear right through him. What was this all about? What was the deal? What had happened was the count, the count got a call from the guy, the guy who owned it. They were competitors. The count had all kinds of these schools. And the other guy from the other school, the count had about six schools all throughout the city. [8:17] The other guy that owned that called the count and called him a pussy. He called him because he was upset because a lot of his students were going to the count. And he calls up there and basically said, you’re nothing but a pussy or something like that. Whatever he said, I don’t know what it was. But the count told him, you motherfucker, I’ll see you. And with six of his guys he went over there and broke in the door during one of the classes, and that’s when this quick fight broke off but when Tonsavik got stabbed he ran about a block away and that’s when he fell over for dead, so anyhow so you got a continuance I assume you got a continuance so then what h

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins sits down with Bob Cooley, the once–well-connected Chicago lawyer who lived at the center of the city’s most notorious corruption machine. After years out of the public eye, Cooley recently resurfaced to revisit his explosive memoir, When Corruption Was King—and this conversation offers a rare, firsthand look at how organized crime, politics, and the court system intersected in Chicago for decades. Cooley traces his journey from growing up in a police family to serving as a Chicago police officer and ultimately becoming a criminal defense attorney whose real job was quietly fixing cases for the Chicago Outfit. His deep understanding of the judicial system made him indispensable to mob-connected power brokers like Pat Marcy, a political fixer with direct access to judges, prosecutors, and court clerks. Inside the Chicago Corruption Machine Cooley explains how verdicts were bought, cases were steered, and justice was manipulated—what insiders called the “Chicago Method.” He describes his relationships with key figures in organized crime, including gambling bosses like Marco D’Amico and violent enforcers such as Harry Aleman and Tony Spilotro, painting a chilling picture of life inside a world where loyalty was enforced by fear.   As his role deepened, so did the psychological toll. Cooley recounts living under constant threat, including a contract placed on his life after he refused to betray a fellow associate—an event that forced him to confront the cost of the life he was leading. Turning Point: Becoming a Federal Witness The episode covers Cooley’s pivotal decision in 1986 to cooperate with federal authorities, a move that helped dismantle powerful corruption networks through FBI Operation Gambat. Cooley breaks down how political connections—not just street-level violence—allowed the Outfit to operate with near-total impunity for so long.   Along the way, Cooley reflects on the moral reckoning that led him to turn on the system that had enriched and protected him, framing his story as one not just of crime and betrayal, but of reckoning and redemption. What Listeners Will Hear How Bob Cooley became the Outfit’s go-to case fixer The role of Pat Marcy and political corruption in Chicago courts Firsthand stories involving Marco D’Amico, Harry Aleman, and Tony Spilotro The emotional and psychological strain of living among violent criminals The decision to cooperate and the impact of Operation Gambat Why Cooley believes Chicago’s corruption endured for generations Why This Episode Matters Bob Cooley is one of the few people who saw the Chicago Outfit from inside the courtroom and the back rooms of power. His story reveals how deeply organized crime embedded itself into the institutions meant to uphold the law—and what it cost those who tried to escape it.   This episode sets the stage for a deeper follow-up conversation, where Gary and Cooley will continue unpacking the most dangerous and revealing moments of his life. Resources   Book: When Corruption Was King by Bob Cooley Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 Prelude to Bob Cooley’s Story 1:57 Bob Cooley’s Background 5:24 The Chicago Outfit Connection 8:24 The Turning Point 15:20 The Rise of a Mob Lawyer 23:54 A Life of Crime and Consequences 26:03 The Incident at the Police Station 50:27 The Count and His Influence 1:19:51 The Murder of a Friend 1:35:26 Contracts and Betrayal 1:40:36 Conclusion and Future Stories Transcript [0:00] Well, hey guys, this is a little prelude to my next story. Bob Cooley was a Chicago lawyer and an outfit associate who had been in, who has been in hiding for many years. I contacted him about six or seven years ago when I first started a podcast, I was able to get a phone number on him and, and got him on the phone. He was, I think it was out in the desert in Las Vegas area at the time. And at the time he was trying to sell his book when corruption was king to a movie producer And he really didn’t want to overexpose himself, and they didn’t really want him to do anything. And eventually, COVID hit, and the movie production was canceled. And it was just all over. There were several movie productions were canceled during COVID, if I remember right. A couple people who I have interviewed and had a movie deal going. Well, Bob recently remembered me, and he contacted me. He just called me out of the clear blue, and he wanted to revive his book and his story. He’s been, you know, way out of the limelight for a long time. And so I thought, well, I always wanted to interview this guy because he’s got a real insider’s knowledge to Chicago Outfit, the one that very few people have.   [1:08] You know, here’s what he knows about. And he provides valuable insight into the inner workings of the Outfit. And I don’t mean, you know, scheming up how to kill people and how to do robberies and burglars and all that. But the Chicago court system and Chicago politics, that’s a, that’s a, the, the mob, a mafia family can’t exist unless they have connections into the political system and especially the court system. Otherwise, what good are they? You know, I mean, they, they just take your money where they give you back. They can’t protect you from anybody.   [1:42] So I need to give you a little more of the backstory before we go on to the actual interview with Bob, because he kind of rambles a little bit and goes off and comes back and drops   [1:54] names that we don’t have time to go into explanation. So here’s a little bit of what he talked about. He went from being, as I said before, Chicago Outfit’s trusted fixer in the court system, and he eventually became the government star witness against them. He’s born, he’s about my age. He was born in 1943. He was an Irish-American police family and came from the Chicago South side. He was a cop himself for a short period of time, but he was going to law school while he was a policeman. And once he started practicing law, he moved right into criminal law and into first ward politics and the judicial world downtown.   [2:36] And that’s where the outfit and the old democratic machine intersected. He was in a restaurant called Counselor’s Row, which was right down. Bob had an office downtown. Well, he’s inside that system, and he uses his insider’s knowledge to fix cases. Once an outfit started noticing him that he could fix a case if he wanted to, he immediately became connected to the first ward power broker and outfit political conduit, a guy named Pat Marcy. Pat Marcy knew all the judges He knew all the court clerks And all the police officers And Bob was getting to know him too During this time But Bob was a guy who was out in He was a lawyer And he was working inside the court system Marcy was just a downtown fixer.   [3:22] But Bob got to where he could guarantee acquittals or light sentences for whoever came to him with the right amount of money, whether it be a mobster or a bookmaker or a juice loan guy or a crap politician, whoever it was, Bob could fix the case.   [3:36] One of the main guys tied to his work he was kind of attached to a crew everybody’s owned by somebody he was attached to the Elmwood Park crew and Marco D’Amico who was under John DeFranco and I can’t remember who was before DeFranco, was kind of his boss and he was a gambling boss and Bob was a huge gambler I mean a huge gambler and Bob will help fix cases for some notorious people Really, one of the most important stories that we’ll go into in the second episode of this is Harry the Hook Aleman. And he also helped fix the case for Tony Spolatro and several others. He’s always paid him in cash. And he lived large. As you’ll see, he lived large. And he moved comfortably between mobsters and politicians and judges. And he was one of the insiders back in the 70s, 60s or 70s mainly. He was an insider. But by the 80s, he’s burned out. He’s disgusted with himself. He sees some things that he doesn’t like. They put a contract out on him once because he wouldn’t give somebody up as an informant, and he tipped one of his clients off that he was going to come out that he was an informant, and the guy was able to escape, I believe. Well, I have to go back and listen to my own story.   [4:53] Finally in 1986 he walked unannounced they didn’t have a case on him and he walked unannounced in the U.S. Courthouse and offered himself up to take down this whole Pat Marcy and the whole mobster political clique in Chicago and he wore a wire for FBI an operation called Operation Gambat which is a gambling attorney because he was a huge gambler   [5:17] huge huge gambler and they did a sweeping probe and indicted tons of people over this. So let’s go ahead and listen to Robert Cooley.   [5:31] Uh, he, he, like I said, he’s a little bit rambling and a little bit hard to follow sometimes, but some of these names and, and, uh, and in the first episode, we’ll really talk about his history and, uh, where he came from and how he came up. He’ll mention somebody called the count and I’ll do that whole count story and a whole nother thing. So when he talks about the count, just disregard that it’ll be a short or something. And I got to tell that count story. It’s an interesting story. Uh, he, he gets involved with the only own, uh, association, uh, and, uh, and the, uh, Chinese Tong gang in, uh, Chicago and Chicago’s Chinatown. Uh, some of the other people he’ll talk about are Marco D’Amico, as I said, and D’Amico’s top aide, Rick Glantini, uh, another, uh, connected guy and worked for the city of Chicago is Robert Abinat

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with Robert “Bob” Cooley, the Chicago lawyer whose extraordinary journey took him from deep inside the Outfit’s criminal operations to becoming one of the federal government’s most valuable witnesses against organized crime. Cooley pulls back the curtain on the hidden machinery of Chicago’s underworld, describing how corruption, bribery, and violence shaped the Chicago Outfit’s power in the 1970s and beyond. As a lawyer, gambler, and trusted insider, Cooley saw firsthand how mob influence tilted the scales of justice—often in open daylight. Inside the “Chicago Method” of Courtroom Corruption Cooley explains the notorious system of judicial bribery he once helped facilitate—what he calls the “Chicago Method.” He walks listeners through: How defense attorneys worked directly with Outfit associates to buy favorable rulings. The process of approaching and bribing judges. Why weak forensic standards of the era made witness discrediting the key mob strategy. His personal involvement in the infamous Harry Aleman murder case, where clear guilt was erased by corruption. Life in the Outfit: Gambling, Debt, and Mob Justice Cooley recounts his early days gambling with Chicago Outfit associates, including Marco D’Amico, Jackie Cerrone, and John DeFranzo. Notable stories include: The violent implications of unpaid gambling debts in mob circles. Tense interactions with bookmaker Hal Smith and the chaotic fallout of a bounced check involving mobster Eddie Corrado. How D’Amico often stepped in—sometimes with intimidation—to shield Cooley from harm. These stories reflect the daily volatility of life inside the Outfit, where money, fear, and loyalty intersect constantly. Bob Cooley has a great book titled When Corruption Was King where he goes into even greater detail and has many more stories from his life inside the Chicago Mob. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:06 Introduction to Bob Cooley 1:32 Life as an Outfit Gambler 2:00 My Relationship with Marco D’Amico 10:40 The Story of Hal Smith 11:05 A Dangerous Encounter 20:21 Meeting Sally D 22:23 A Contract on My Life 22:37 The Harry Alleman Case 34:47 Inside the Courtroom 51:08 The Verdict 52:26 Warning the Judge 53:49 The Case Against the Policewoman 58:36 Navigating the Legal Maze 1:08:14 The Outcome and Its Consequences 1:11:39 The Decision to Flip 1:24:38 A Father’s Influence 1:33:57 The Corruption Revealed 1:50:12 Political Connections 2:02:07 The Setup for Robbery 2:20:29 Consequences of Loyalty transcript [0:00] Hey, guys, my guest today is a former Chicago outfit associate named Robert Bob Cooley. He has a book out there titled When Corruption Was King. I highly recommend you get it if you want to look inside the Chicago outfit of the 1970s. Now, Bob’s going to tell us about his life as an outfit gambler, lawyer, and I use payoff to judges to get many, many not guilty verdicts. Now, I always call this the Chicago method. This happened for, I know, for Harry Ailman, a case we’re going to talk about, Tony Spolatro got one of these not-guilties. Now, the outfit member associate who is blessed to get this fix put in for him may be charged with a crime, even up to murder. And he gets a lawyer, a connected lawyer, and they’ll demand a bench trial. That means that only a judge makes the decision. A lawyer, like my guest, who worked with a political fixer named Pat Marcy. [0:53] They’ll work together and they’ll get a friendly judge assigned to that case and then they’ll bribe the judge. And all that judge needs is some kind of alibi witnesses and any kind of information to discredit any prosecution witnesses. Now, this is back in the olden days before you had all this DNA and all that kind of thing. So physical evidence was not really a part of it. Mainly, it was from witnesses. And they just have to discredit any prosecution witness. Then the judge can say, well, state hadn’t really proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt and issue a not guilty verdict and walk away. Now, our guest, Bob Cooley, is going to take us inside this world. [1:29] And it’s a world of beatings, murders, bribes, and other kinds of plots. He was a member of the Elmwood Park crew. He was a big gambler. He was a big loan shark. And he worked for a guy named Marco D’Amico, who was their gambling boss and loan shark in that crew. Among other bosses in this powerful crew were Jackie Cerrone, who will go on and become the underboss and eventually the boss for a short [1:55] period of time. and John no-nose DeFranzo, who will also go on to become the boss eventually. What was your relationship with Marco D’Amico? I talked about when I first came into the 18th district, when I came into work there, and they put me back in uniform, the first person I met was Rick Borelli. Rick Borelli, he was Marco’s cousin. [2:23] When I started gambling right away with Rick, within a couple of days, I’m being his face, and I’m calling and making bets. There was a restaurant across the street where every Wednesday and sometimes a couple days a week, I would meet with Ricky. And one of the first people he brought in there was Marco. Was Marco. And Marco would usually be with a person or two. And I thought they were just bookmakers. [2:55] And I started being friendly with him, meeting him there. Then I started having card games Up in my apartment And, Because now I’m making, in the very beginning, I’m making first $100 extra a week. And within a couple of weeks, I’m making $500, $600 extra a week. And within about a month, I’m making $1,000, sometimes more than that. So now I’m having card games, relatively big card games, because I’ve got a bankroll. I’ve got probably about $5,000, $6,000, which seemed like a lot of money to me. Initially uh and after a while that was a daily that was a daily deal but uh so we we started having card games up there and then we started socializing we started now he’d be at these nightclubs all the time when when i’d go to make my payoffs he was part of the main group there he was one of the call he was right he was right under jack right under at that time originally Jackie Cerrone, and then he was right under Johnny DeFranco. [4:07] But he was… And we became real good friends. We would double date and we spent a lot of time together. And we had these big card games. And that’s when I realized how powerful these people were. Because after one of the card games, there was somebody that was brought in, a guy named Corrado. I’m pretty sure his name was I can’t think of his first name, but Corrado was this person that somebody brought into the game. And after we finished playing cards, and I won all the time. I mean, I was a real good card player, and I wouldn’t drink. I’d supply liquor and food and everything, but I wouldn’t drink. And as the others drank, they were the same as at my office. After we finish up, this guy says, you want to play some? We can play maybe some gin. just human being. And he was there with another friend of his who just sat there and watched. So we played, not gin, but blackjack. We played and passed cards back and forth when you win. Then you’re the dealer and back and forth. And I lost, I think I lost about $4,000 or $13,000 to him. [5:26] I lost the cash that I had. I had cash about $5,000 or $6,000. And I gave him a check for the rest. You know, but everything I was doing was wrong, you know. Yeah, one of those nights. It’s in there. And it’s funny because you asked about Marco. [5:47] And I thought, you know, oh, well, and whatever. And I gave him a check. I said, no, it’s a good check. And it was. It was for my office. It was an office check that I gave him. And that next morning, I’m meeting with Ricky and with Marco at this restaurant across from the station before I go in and to work. And I said, son of a B. I said, you know, they had a bad night first ever. Marco wasn’t at that game, at that particular game. And what happened? I said, I blew about 12,000. Okay, but you? Wow. And I said, yeah, I said, one of the guys at the game played some, I played some blackjack with somebody. What was his name? Eddie, Eddie Corrado. Eddie Corrado. He said, that mother, he said, stop payment on the check. He said, stop payment on the check. He said, because it wasn’t nine o’clock. It was only like, you know, seven, you know, seven 30 or whatever. He said, and when he gets ahold of you, arrange to have him come to your house. Tell him you’ll have the money for him at your house. So that’s what I, that’s what I do. So I stopped payment on it probably about five after nine. I get a call from, from Mr. Corrado. You mother fucker. [7:17] I said, no, no. I said, there wasn’t enough money in the account. I said, I’m sorry. I said, all right, then I’ll be over. I said, no, no, no. I said, I’m in court right now. I said, I’m in court. I said, I’m going to be tied up all day. I’ll meet you at my place. I’ll meet you back there. Well, I’ll be there. You better have that. I want cash and you better have it. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m at home. Marco comes in. And he was there with Tony and Tony was there and Ricky was there. And Ricky was there. And they come over a little ahead of time and he comes in. I live on the 27th floor. The doorbell rings. Up he comes with some big mustache. [8:00] I open the door. You better have the fucking money and whatever. And I try to look nervous. I try to look real nervous. and when you walk into my apartment you walk in and you see the kitchen right in front of you and to the lef

Retired Kansas City, Missouri, Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins tells the story of the unsolved murder of James Ragen. Gary Jenkins digs into an old-school Chicago Outfit story pulled from a vintage newspaper clip by legendary columnist Drew Pearson. The article centers on James M. Ragen,” a key figure in the Continental Press and Racing Wire—and what happened when the Outfit decided it wanted total control of the race wire business. This is a gritty snapshot of how Chicago’s underworld allegedly dominated legitimate businesses in the 1940s—bars, taverns, suppliers, and especially gambling infrastructure—then used violence and influence to keep it that way. Gary returned to Chicago Outfit history after spotting an old Drew Pearson column: “A Songbird Who Sang, Murdered.” Who James Ragen was: a major player in distributing horse racing results nationwide How race wire services powered mob-controlled bookmaking across U.S. cities The Outfit’s push to muscle in with a competing racing wire—and the warning: don’t compete with Chicago Mob-linked figure Mo Annenberg and the money behind race wire “tolls” and kickbacks.  Outfit names mentioned in the takeover fight, including “Greasy Thumb” Jake Guzik and others from the era. Pearson claimed that Ragen gave information about mob domination in Chicago to the U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark, and that resulted in his murder. The broad daylight attack: a fruit truck pulls alongside, and a machine gun ambush erupts at a stoplight, and James Ragen goes down in a hail of .45 bullets. The “stranger-than-fiction” twist: Ragen later dies, and an autopsy allegedly finds a tube of mercury in his stomach. Why the case remained murky: the coroner allegedly refused to pin it cleanly as murder (per Pearson’s reporting) Gary frames it as a reminder of how deep the Outfit’s influence ran in city systems and politics. Memorable Moments Ragen/Reagan’s fatalistic line (as told by Pearson): “If they want you, they’re gonna get you.” The bizarre mercury detail and Gary asking listeners if they’ve ever heard anything like it Why This Story Matters This bonus episode connects the dots between information networks (race results), organized gambling, and the Outfit’s approach to business: control the pipeline, control the profit—and crush anyone who won’t move aside. Gary invites listeners to share any other “old but gold” Chicago Outfit stories or clippings worth covering in future bonus episodes—and reminds everyone to check out his books and films (search Gary Jenkins on Amazon or visit his website). Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript James Ragen race wire story Speaker: [00:00:00] Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio. Gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City, Missouri Police Detective, formerly of the Intelligence Unit. I spent 14 years there investigating organized crime in Kansas City. Best 14 years of my life. Speaker: I think sometimes you know, I’ve got this True Crime podcast and we focus on the mob and I haven’t. Been to Chicago for a little bit, it seemed like. And I was, I was looking through some stuff from the Chicago outfit Facebook page, and there’s a newspaper clip on the, the, the group that has newspaper clips on it that had an article by a man named Drew Pearson. Speaker: Now, drew Pearson was a real famous columnist back in the forties and fifties, and the title of it is A Songbird Who, mur, who Sang, murdered. Now he starts off talking about the singing of Joe Vce. I guess he, he wrote this article about the time Joe Vce had all the newspapers, Andre, and talked about the New York mob. Speaker: But he had [00:01:00] a guy who talked about the Chicago outfit. He said that, he feels, he said that he felt responsible for the death of this informant outta Chicago. So he dropped in, he said he dropped into the morgue of Chicago’s American newspaper to refresh his memory just about this guy and, and what he said. This guy was a man named James M. Reagan, who was a of the continental press and racing wire. He was machine gunned down from a fruit truck. In August 14th, 1946, Speaker: Reagan, before he died, had told him many things in, in 1946 four years before the Koff Commission and just before he got killed. Reagan told Drew Pearson about the Chicago Mob rule and gave him permission to take it to the Attorney General of the United States, Tom Clark. Now, Tom Clark is the same guy who [00:02:00] commuted the sentences of. Speaker: The four Chicago outfit bosses who were given tenure prison sentences for the Hollywood scandal for, for trying to extort money from Hollywood unions and Hollywood film companies. Now this story that he told was about hotels and taverns and nightclubs and restaurants, and he said they’re all dominated by the mob in Chicago. Speaker: He said to hire a bartender, to buy ice cubes or to launder. Roller towels. Those are the old towels that you used to pull down in the bathrooms. I don’t think they have ’em anymore. Speaker: And they take those towels out and send them off and they’d launder ’em and give you a freshman to buy any beer. To replenish your alcohol supply in a bar, you had to do business with the mob. The mob ruled a very large part of Chicago. He took this story back to Attorney General Clark, who authorized a dozen or so FBI men to check on Reagan’s facts. Speaker: Couple weeks later, they reported back and he said, this is all [00:03:00] true. They also reported that the control of the underworld reached in a very high places in Chicago and political places, and then Illinois too, also to Tom Clark, although nobody really knew that at the time and, and only indirectly. Some of these rules of the underworld in Chicago were on the surface, respected businessmen and, and politicians whose names were household words in Chicago. Speaker: Some of them had reformed, but they still controlled the mob. They, which means that they maybe didn’t go out and do mob stuff anymore, but they still were, had some control in the mob. In some respects, Reagan’s information was much more important than that at Joe Bachi, especially when it came to Chicago. Speaker: Achi didn’t know anything about Chicago, didn’t talk about Chicago, but the Justice Department in Washington had no jurisdiction at the time, which is kind of interesting. They had to pass a lot of special laws in order to bring the feds in or catch these guys on a, some kind of a interstate. Violation [00:04:00] now, they just didn’t wanna do it because they had interstate theft at that time. Speaker: There’s a lot of things they could do. Transportation, women across state lines for immoral purposes. They could use the interstate transportation of stolen autos. There was all kinds of stuff they could use, but, but they wouldn’t use it. Claim the state’s rights city of Chicago and state of Illinois responsible, not the FBI or the Justice Department now, ain’t, that’s something they claim they had no responsibility for all this crime going on in Chicago. Speaker: Lot different than it is today. The feds are trying to, to send the national Guard in and, and all the new federal police, a newly hired federal police , into Chicago to. Clean up Chicago. So back then they didn’t want anything to do with Chicago. Called drew Pearson back a little later, shortly after, and there was a leaky place up there in Washington. Speaker: He said the mob. Was wise to him. They were out to get him and he asked for FBI protection, the FBI did give him a bodyguard for a short period of time. But you know, it, that didn’t last. And Reagan [00:05:00] himself was not exactly a saint. He was, he was the the bar boss of the continental racing wire. And he, you know, he distributed raising results. Speaker: And there’s a huge amount of gambling in all the different cities that was ran by the mob. And the results came over this continental racing wire. Immediately you could have a race in, in upstate in Saratoga. And when that, that race was done, the results were sent back to Chicago and Kansas City and Baltimore, and, and Cleveland and all those states. Speaker: And he was involved with a mob associate named Mo Annenberg and distributing this news to RS all over the country. He actually had some minor altercations with this Mo Annenberg, who was definitely a mob associate when Annenberg wanted to increase the race wire tolls to some certain publications that that weren’t kicking back to the mob. Speaker: He wanted almost, he wanted to almost triple him from $200 a week to $500 a week. And his troubles really began because [00:06:00] Chicago Mob had started their own racing wire that was gonna compete with them. And, you know, you just don’t compete with the Chicago outfit on a business level. You just don’t compete with them. Speaker: A couple of names he said, Jaime Levin and greasy th. And greasy thumb, Jake Guzzi directed that battle to take over the race wire. The former Illinois State Senator involved Pat Burns. He was working for the mob acquired property over over, over the tracks where men with binoculars could flash the odds and the race results to offices, which then in turn sent ’em out over the wire to bookmakers all over the country. Speaker: And Reagan’s continental wire was already doing the same thing. And the take on this was fabulous for the mob and the mob demanded Reagan move over and let them have it all. You know, the mob, you just don’t, if they wanna move in, they’re gonna take it all. They’re always gonna take it all. Probably that’s wh