Gangland Wire

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins interviews bestselling author Mark Shaw about his explosive new research into the JFK and RFK assassinations — and the hidden role of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Shaw breaks down newly uncovered FBI documents, including Marcello’s alleged 1985 prison confession claiming involvement in JFK’s murder. We explore Marcello’s long-running war with Robert Kennedy, the suspicious death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, and significant inconsistencies in the official story of RFK’s assassination. This conversation challenges the lone-gunman narrative and exposes how organized crime, politics, and government investigations may have collided to shape American history. Subscribe to get notified about new content. 0:10 The Kennedy Connection 21:37 Sirhan’s Background Uncovered 31:56 The Role of Marcello in Assassinations 44:54 The Quest for Justice 🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube 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] Aaron Cohen began to expose a goings-on in Louisiana, which eventually came to the attention of Robert Kennedy and a Senate committee investigating corruption. [0:11] Through Robert Kennedy’s efforts in the Justice Department, our organized crime and racketeering section really was established. That was a Robert Kennedy brainchild. To concentrate a group of prosecutors, who were specially trained to engage in traditional organized crime investigations. Marcello and other mobsters who appeared before the committee refused to acknowledge the existence of the mafia. Even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover seemed to concur. For the reason for Marcello’s absence, he was still subpoenaed to appear before the McClellan Committee. Marcello defiantly pleaded the Fifth Amendment to 66 questions that Robert Kennedy directed toward him. His arrogance and contempt for the proceedings provided even more incentive for Robert Kennedy to attack the mafia. [1:02] Marcello even refused to answer the question of where he was born. This very withholding of information became the weapon that Robert Kennedy would use to go after Marcello. 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 with a special guest today. Man, you know, recently, guys, I had always just gone along with the fact Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Sirhan Sirhan acted alone. And those investigations were all legit and they were accurate. [1:36] And, you know, over the last year, there’s been a lot of stuff come out and I’ve started looking into this and I’m beginning to wonder myself. And so I was able to find Mark Shaw, who we have sitting here, who has done more work than maybe anybody on this whole thing. And he’s come up with some really compelling evidence on a mob connection on Carlos Mosello. So welcome, Mark. I’m really glad to have you on the show. Thank you, sir. So Mark, God, I was looking over your credentials here. You’ve been doing this for 30 years or so, or your whole life, I guess. And, and you’ve got him. Oh, you got 30. I know where I got the number 30. You got 30 books out there. You’ve done, and you’ve really, you’ve done a bunch of them on the JFK investigation and murder. So, guys, I’m going to put up his website, put a link on his website, and you’ll see what all those books are. So, if you want to really take some more deep dives into the JFK thing. [2:32] Go to that and get some of his books. And this book is a little more about the RFK. See, I just really always assumed Sirhan Sirhan did it, Mark. I don’t know what to say. It’s just that’s the only information I ever heard was Sirhan Sirhan did it. And they got the video of him doing it. So there’s no doubt, I guess, I don’t know if he did it or not now. So let’s, uh, uh, and Carlos Marcello was so involved in all this. Let’s start unpacking this a little bit, if we will, if we could like, okay, let’s talk a little bit about Carlos Marcello. How does he figure into both of them? Well, I felt like you did. You know, I grew up when I was real young, when JFK was assassinated, I just took what J Edgar Hoover said about Oswald alone. You know, I’d never even thought about it for years and years and years. And then I practiced law with Melvin Belli, who, you know, that name, the famous lawyer in San Francisco. Yeah. And I wrote a biography of him and I started to learn about his mafia connections. [3:32] And his main client, for instance, was Mickey Cohen, who you I’m sure you know that name. Yeah. Oh, yeah. West Coast racketeer, killer, all of that. And I started to wonder about Belli’s representation of Jack Ruby. So I looked into that and that led me to the 1960 election. and some of the mafia, Joe Kennedy, bringing them in to win Chicago so they could get JFK elected. So that made me wonder about all that. I wrote a book called The Poison Patriarch about that. And then I found out about this Dorothy Kilgallen that was the most credible reporter to have ever covered the JFK assassination. So that got me into writing these different books. The Reporter Who Knew Too Much was the first one, and it did well, and so I kept going and going. But today we want to talk about the Marcello effect, I would call it, on both the JFK assassination and now the new evidence that I have in the book Abuse of Power coming out December 2nd, indicating that Marcello was not only responsible, in my opinion, for JFK’s assassination, but also Robert Kennedy’s. And I think the most amazing news to your listeners, as it was to me when I found out about it earlier this year, when the JFK assassination records were released, finally, after all these years, I came across a FBI file. [4:58] And basically, the long and short of it is a confession by Carlos Marcello. And it happened on March 4th, 1985. I’ve got it in front of me. When Jack Ronald Van Landingham, an inmate at the Seagalville Federal Institution, Pareto Institution in Texas, said the following. He was in the company of Carlos Marcello and another inmate at the Federal Corrections Institute yard in Texarkana, Texas, in the courtyard, engaged in conversation. Carlos Marcello discussed his intense dislike of former president John Kennedy, as he often did. Unlike other such tirades against Kennedy, however, on this occasion, Carlos Marcello said, referring to President Kennedy, yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself. Now, you have to pause and really think about those words. [5:53] Would Marcello have done that? Because, as you know, most mafia were supposed to keep their mouth shut. Was he just bragging? What was he doing this? or, you know, what was his motive for saying that to this Van Leningham, who actually was a government’s plant who they had put in there to set up Marcello, trying to get information about him regarding the JFK assassination. So I was a little bit dubious of it. And I went, though, back into some research and everything. And I found out more about why this happened. And it seemed to be more credible to me all the time. And then I found out that there was actually an auto recording. [6:35] And I think you know that what they had done is give this snitch a transistor radio with a microphone in there. And so the confession was audio taped. Now, the location now of that audio tape, which has never been released, I want to talk about a little bit later. But this changes everything because I feel like, in fact, that it validates a lot of my research and that of Dorothy Kilgallen in my first four books. Because we always pointed the finger at Marcello, And Kilgallen, who was the only reporter to have interviewed Jack Ruby, and Jack Ruby sent her to New Orleans, the home of Carlos Marcello. And things go on from there to where Dorothy, finally in 1965, 60 years ago, is mysteriously killed right as she’s writing a book for Random House implicating Marcello. So Marcello is in the middle of all of that. And if you know if you’re if you and your listeners know his history it was frank costello in new york who set up marcello in new orleans now i’ve interviewed several people down there who knew him and he was not somebody that you want to mess around with that’s for sure and it’s it’s very i always look at motive like you did when you were a detective and marcello obviously and now shut up for a minute uh marcello had obviously the strongest motive to have eliminated uh jfk. [8:02] When Bobby Kennedy became attorney general, the first thing that he did was go after they swore that they would never go after the media or go after the mafia if they’d help him elect JFK president. First thing he did was was deport Marcello to Central America, where he almost died. Marcello spent two agonizing months in exile. After making his way through the rugged Central American jungle, Marcello somehow got back to Louisiana. How exactly Marcello was able to re-enter the U.S. is uncertain. Investigator Ed Becker believes Marcello used his connections to sneak back into the country. When he got back in the United States, Robert Kennedy charged him with racketeering. [8:43] And Marcello knew that Bobby Kennedy was going to keep going after him. So what did he think? Smart man that he was. [8:52] If I kill Bobby Kennedy, which I want to have happen, then Jack Kennedy will come after me with everything the government has. But if I eliminate JFK, Bobby Kennedy will be powerless. And that’s exactly what happened. Now, we’re going to t

In this powerful episode of Gangland Wire, retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tegan Broadwater, a former Fort Worth Police officer, musician, and undercover operative whose story reads like a movie script. Broadwater takes listeners on a riveting journey from his early years as a professional musician to his dramatic turn infiltrating one of America’s most dangerous street gangs—the Crips. Drawing from his book Life in the Fishbowl, he details how music, culture, and human connection became unexpected tools for survival and success inside the underworld. Listeners will hear: How Tegan Broadwater transitioned from touring musician to undercover police officer, bringing creativity and adaptability to the streets. The story of his two-year infiltration into the Crips—posing as a South Texas drug dealer with the help of a trusted informant. His insights into gang hierarchy, loyalty, and manipulation, and how understanding culture was key to earning trust. The moral challenges of living undercover—forming friendships with men he would eventually arrest. The emotional impact of a major gang raid that ended with over 50 arrests, and how it changed his outlook on justice and humanity. His decision to donate proceeds from his book to the children of incarcerated parents aims to break the cycle of violence. He continues to share lessons on leadership, empathy, and cultural understanding through his private security firm and new podcast projects.   Broadwater’s story isn’t just about crime and undercover operations—it’s about identity, compassion, and the human cost of violence. This episode offers a rare look at what it means to live behind a mask while still holding onto one’s purpose. 🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube 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. 1:08 Life in the Fishbowl 4:54 The Dangerous Fishbowl 11:09 Going Undercover with the Crips 14:14 The Kingpin and His Operations 26:54 Encountering the Mob 34:27 Comparing Gangs and Organized Crime 44:30 Tegan’s Current Projects and Future Goals Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. I have a guest today that is another former cop, just like me, worked for the Fort Worth PD. I’m talking with Tegan Broadwater. Now, Tegan has an unusual background. He was a professional musician at one time who ended up going deep undercover to infiltrate the Crips. Now, you know that the Crips is a black gang, don’t you? I know you guys do. The Crips and the Bloods. If you know anything at all about inner city crime, the Crips and the Bloods or the gangs, well, here’s this white dude goes undercover with the Crips. Now, we’re going to find out how he did that. I’m dying to know myself. So welcome, Teagan. [0:42] Thank you. I appreciate you having me. All right. Now, let’s tell us a little bit about yourself. You just told me kind of nomadic growing up. You went to high school in Houston. You ended up in Fort Worth working for the PD. But you also have been a professional musician and you have a podcast today, written a book, Life in the Fishbowl. You have a company called the Tactical Systems Network. So tell us a little bit about yourself. [1:08] Yeah, I mean, music was my original passion, and from fourth grade on until my late 20s, that was all I wanted to do. So I went to college for music, went to a prestigious jazz program, and was touring on the road and got signed by a label at one of the early South by Southwest conferences back in the 90s, and just grew a little weary of the music industry itself. I love music, and I still consider myself a creative for the book and the music and stuff that I still do today. I still love to express myself. I think it also played a great role in leveraging it in cop work. So ultimately what happened was as I grew tired of the industry and sharing two beds with five dudes at a day’s end in Oklahoma City on the road, I also had a kid. [1:57] In 95 I had a kid and I thought, man, I do not want to be gone. So I decided to, at the behest of a few cops that used to come see us play when we were in town they talked me into doing that which was crazy because i just never imagined anything else so i cut eight inches of locks off and retook my driver’s license picture so the guys wouldn’t criticize me when i applied yeah and got into the pd i applied actually at houston pd and for pd and whoever was going to take me first and fort worth was quick to the draw and and although i had absolutely no experience in police work or firearms or anything like that i feel like I really had the type of personality that they needed. I don’t know if they realized that or not, but from the jump, I really wanted to work undercover because I felt like, you know, here I am. I’ve been touring with multicultural bands. I’m the only white guy in this group and that group and whatever. And I’m going to a music school, a bunch of artists and stuff. And so I feel like even in high school, I’d hang out with the jocks, I’d hang out with the smokers, hang out with the whoever. We’re just kind of a pliable personality, just like good people. So I felt like I could really excel at that. And it turns out that I really could. So I got into the police work and ended up being really. [3:14] Really proficient with a firearm because, again, they teach you how to use it. And I had no bad habits to unlearn. So, you know, I took to all that stuff really well. Yeah. And so, most of us do somewhere. But, you know, I ended up just politicking to try to go to the worst part of town, so to speak, with the highest crime areas so that I could gain more experience. I was super ambitious, learned a lot about the neighborhoods. And at one point, you know, I was trying to. [3:44] Get into a narcotics unit and as a six foot one white stiff nerd a little more difficult to do so, i started creating my own resume i politicked some of the captains to try to re-implement some of the old weed and seed programs and and learned how to write search warrants and procured some old used expired gear from swat and after just a few years i was i was spending my shift, making covered buys and learning how to do a few undercover buys. And then at the end of every shift, we would earn overtime and go crack doors down some old dilapidated crack houses and, you know, make some cases that way. And so by the time I applied to narcotics for my fourth time, they couldn’t deny me because I had a bunch of informants. I had, you know, several hundred, pardon me, several hundred dynamic search warrants under my belt and all that kind of stuff. So, ultimately, I was accepted there, and what ironically turned out to be a place that I used to work a lot in, there’s an area of town where it was a gang-ridden part of town where you had the Bloods and the Crips divided by one single street. [4:54] But in terms of the turf, there was a six-square block area with one way in and one way out that was particularly dangerous and particularly problematic. [5:03] We always rode down there too deep and the cops deemed it the fishbowl because every time you went down there people were radioing in everybody got a warning ahead of time and it made it really difficult for for us to do work down there tons of violence i remember answering calls down there you know bloody females and kids screaming and you know having domestic disturbance calls and displacing these kids and just a real crazy situation but fortunately for me having done those warrants for the few years preceding narcotics when the problems finally arose where the finally they had a killing down there that that drew the attention of the city council. [5:41] They got together with the chief of police and said, what can we do? We need to pull all stops to get this little segment of town cleaned up. Because obviously there are good people that are down there being held hostage by these jerks that are just shooting each other and making it impossible for anyone to live a normal life. And these people that are innocents are too poor to just stop and move. It’s not as easy as that. So they started doing all the typical things. Of course, they’re not consulting me. I’m just a grunt. And they’re doing jump outs with unmarked bans and writing search warrants and pulling over everybody that moves and trying to get people to flip and obviously to no avail or else that would have worked prior. So, yeah. My whole idea, me being the genius that I am, I went to an informant and said, hey, what do you think of this idea? I said, you pose as somebody that I’m trying to fund. I’m going to pose as T. I’m a big-time dope dealer from South Texas and just had my source busted by the feds. I’m coming up to North Texas, and I’m trying to get my game restarted. [6:43] But you are the poor crack dude that’s trying to do his little hustle. Because if I’m some kind of big timer and I’m trying to infiltrate Crips here via the dope trade, I certainly can’t go start down at the corners and start buying $25 rack rocks. But I could roll down there with you and tell them that I’m just buying for you. And that was the premise that we went with. He laughed his ass off at first, obviously, too, because obviously the fitting in, I fit in by fitting out, by standing out, right? I wasn’t going to try to fit into that mold. And I even played ignorant along the way by wearing, you know, 49ers, Falcons jerseys and stuff down there in the blue territories. [7:28] And they’d pull me aside and say, fool, what are you doing? You fool, wh

In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with former FBI agent Séamus McElearney, author of Flipping Capo, for a deep dive into one of the most remarkable Mafia investigations and how he took down the DeCavalcante Family. McElearney recounts his unlikely path from the world of banking to the FBI, driven by a lifelong fascination with law enforcement. Despite being told he didn’t have the “right background,” he pushed forward—eventually landing in New York’s Organized Crime Squad C-10, where he investigated both the Bonanno and DeCavalcante crime families. He describes the rare and demanding experience of working two Mafia families at once, and the teamwork required to dismantle them from the inside out. As the conversation turns to his book, Flipping Capo, McElearney explains the years-long process of writing it and the rigorous FBI review needed to ensure no sensitive investigative techniques were revealed. He shares early memories of notorious boss Joe Massino, and the high-stakes surveillance and arrests that defined his career. A major focus of the episode is the arrest and flipping of Anthony Capo, a feared DeCavalcante soldier—and the first made member of that family ever to cooperate with the government. McElearney walks listeners through the tension of that operation, his calculated approach to treating Capo with respect, and the psychological tightrope that ultimately persuaded Capo to talk. That single decision triggered a domino effect of cooperation that helped bring down the New Jersey mob family many believe inspired The Sopranos. Gary and Séamus dive into the proffer process, cooperation agreements, and the behind-the-scenes strategies used to turn high-level mobsters. McElearney also draws comparisons between real mob figures and the fictional world of The Sopranos, revealing how much of the hit series was grounded in the actual cases he worked. The interview closes with McElearney’s reflections on how organized crime continues to evolve. While today’s mob may look different from the one he battled in the ’90s, he stresses that the methods—and the money—still flow. His candid insights offer a rare look into the changing face of the American Mafia and the ongoing fight to contain it. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. 2:26 Seamus’ FBI Journey 6:26 Inside the DeCavalcante Family 9:05 The Process of Flipping 10:27 Comparing Families 12:30 The First Cooperation 17:43 The Proffer Process 25:03 Protecting Cooperators 27:44 The Murder of Joseph Canigliaro 29:42 Life on Trial 30:28 The Real Sopranos 39:43 Leading the Columbo Squad 44:15 Major Arrests and Cases 50:57 Final Thoughts and Stories Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00]Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. [0:07]Welcome to Gangland Wire [0:07]I have a former FBI agent as my guest today. And, you know, I love having these FBI agents on. I’ve had a lot of them on and I worked with a lot of the guys and they’re really good guy. Everyone I ever met and worked with was a really good guy. Now they got their deadhead just like we did. But these aggressive guys are the ones that write books and I’ve got one on today. Seamus McElherney. Welcome, Seamus. Thank you. It’s great to be here. All right. Well, an Irish name now working on the Italian mob, huh? How come you weren’t working on the Westie? So they were maybe gone by the time you came around. There’s no such thing. [0:47]Oh, yeah. You got your code. You Irish guys got your code, too. All right, Seamus, you got a book, Killing, or Killing, Flipping Capo. I want to see it back up over your shoulder there. Really interesting book, guys. He flipped a guy named Anthony Capo. And he really took down the real Sopranos, if you will. So Seamus, tell us a little about how you got started with the FBI, your early career. Okay. When I got out of school, I really didn’t know what to do. And I got into banking and I just decided that was really not for me. And I got lucky where I got to meet an FBI agent. and I was just so fascinated by the work. It seemed like every day was different. You know, one day you could meet a CEO and another day you could be doing surveillance. It just, the job just seemed really interesting. [1:38]Like fascinating to me. So I decided to try to become an agent. And I was constantly told, Shane, you should never become an agent. You didn’t have the background for it. And one, one, a motto in life to me is persistence beats resistance. And I was just determined to become an agent. And back then in the late 1990s, it was a long process and it took me close to two years to actually become an agent. And I was selected to go down to training and I was very fortunate to be selected to go down to training. Now it was your first office back up in New York and the, one of the organized crime squads, or did you go out into boonies and then come back? I actually was born and raised in New York, and I was fortunate to be selected to be sent back to New York. So my first squad, I was sent back to the city, back to 26 Federal Plaza, [2:26]Seamus’ FBI Journey [2:24]and I was assigned to a squad called C-10. And C-10 was an organized crime squad, which was responsible for the Bonanno family, and then later became the DeCavocanti family as well, which I can explain to you yeah yeah we’ll get we’ll get deep into that now now let’s let me ask you a little bit about the book tell the guys a little bit about the process of writing a book from your fbi experiences. [2:47]It’s a long process. First of all, I was contacted by someone who was interested [2:55]Writing a Book [2:53]in writing a book based upon my career. People had encouraged me to write a book because I had a very successful career. And when you work organized crime, it’s never just about you. It’s about the people that you work with, right? It’s definitely a team. It’s never just one person. I had great supervisors. I had great teammates. I had a great partner. And so I was approached to write a book. So then I had no idea. So there was an agent, a famous agent, an undercover agent named Jack Garcia. So I kind of really leaned on him to kind of learn how to write a book. And it’s a long process. You have to get an agent, the publisher, a co-author I had. And then when you finally have all that, and you do have the manuscript ready to be written, you have to send it down to the FBI. And that is a long process. The FBI, in this instance, probably took over a year for them to review the book because what they want to make sure is you’re not revealing any investigative techniques. Fortunately for me, a lot of the information that is in the book is public information because of all the trials that I did. Interesting. Yeah, it is. It is quite a I know it was quite a process. [4:00]Now, the banana squad, you work in a banana squad. You know, we know a little bit about the banana squad. [4:07]Was Joe Pacino the boss when you first came in? Yes, he was. And I actually had the pleasure of arresting Joe as well. Ah, interesting. I did a show on Joe. He’s a really interesting guy. I know my friend, who was at the banana squad, I think just before you were, and he talked a lot of, to me personally, he won’t go on the show, but he talked a lot about Joe Massino. He said, actually, saw him in the courtroom one time later on, he hadn’t seen him in several years. And, and Joe looked across the courtroom. He said, Doug, how are you doing? He said, Joe was that kind of guy. He was real personal. He was. [4:44]Yeah, so when I first got to the squad, the supervisor at the time was a gentleman named Jack Steubing, and he had the thought process to go after Joe and his money. So there was two accountants that were assigned to a squad at that time. It was Kimberly McCaffrey and Jeff Solette, and they were targeted to go after Joe and his money. And it was a very successful case. And when we arrested Joe, I think it was in January of 2003, I believe it was, I was assigned to be part of that arrest team. Interesting. You know, McCaffrey and Sled are going to be talking about that case out at the Mob Museum sometime in the near future. I can’t remember exactly when it is. And it was a hell of a case. I think it just happened, actually. Oh, did it? Okay. I actually just spoke to Jeff, so I think it just happened about a week or two ago. Okay. Yeah, I tried to get him to come on the show, and I think maybe he was committed to doing something else, and I didn’t keep after him. And I don’t like to pester people, you know. [5:44]And Fensell was the one that said, you got to get Jeff Sillett. You got to get Jeff Sillett. When I looked into that money angle of it, that was pretty interesting about how they were laundering their money through the parking lots and just millions. And when he gave up, like $10 million or something? I mean, it’s unbelievable. Yes. And that’s that’s one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I don’t think the public or the press really put this together where that squad, C-10, is a very unique squad where we were dismantling the two families at the same time. Half the family was working the Bonanno family and half the family was working the Cavalcanti family. So it’s a very unique squad during that six or seven year time period where we were dismantling two families at the same time. [6:26]Inside the DeCavalcanti Family [6:26]Interesting and and that gets us into the dekavocante family i could always struggle with that name for some

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jay Baer to explore the hidden, human side of organized crime’s biggest names — Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John Gotti, and Paul Castellano. Jay’s book, Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano, takes a unique look beyond the murders, rackets, and headlines to reveal how these mobsters actually lived — what they ate, how they dressed, their relationships with religion, and how they handled immense power and wealth. Listeners will hear: How Al Capone’s family sold his spaghetti sauce recipe to Ragu — their first commercial product. Why Meyer Lansky, the most devout of the four, was denied the right to die in Israel by Prime Minister Golda Meir. The lavish lifestyle and fatal missteps of Paul Castellano, the “Howard Hughes of the Mafia.”   The contrast between Gotti’s flamboyance and Lansky’s low profile — and how each approach shaped their downfall. The staggering fortunes these men built — and how, in the end, they all lost it. Jay also shares his own lifelong fascination with organized crime, his career outside writing, and his upcoming project, How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required, a look at mob values like loyalty, respect, and power through a modern lens. Gary and Jay swap mob history from New York to Kansas City, including a discussion of the real story behind scenes from Casino and Kansas City’s own underworld power struggles. ON AMAZON Wayne said 5.0 out of 5 stars Great Facts on the Mob Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021Format: Kindle If your looking for a good fast interesting read on the Mafia, this is the book for you. Full of information on mob types that most have no clue about. You can’t lose with this book I believe. 🎧 Listen now to uncover the side of the mob you’ve never heard before. 📘 Get the book: Mob Life: The Private World of Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano by Jay Robert Baer on Amazon 00:00 – Intro: Gary Jenkins welcomes Jay Baer 01:00 – Why Jay wrote Mob Life and his lifelong fascination with gangsters 03:30 – From detailing cars to writing true crime books 05:30 – Gary and Jay’s early mob reading influences 07:00 – Researching Al Capone’s private life 08:00 – Capone’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe sold to Ragu 09:00 – John Gotti’s love for Cracker Barrel and biscuits & gravy 10:00 – Meyer Lansky’s religious life and denied burial in Israel 12:00 – Castellano’s wealth, arrogance, and fall 14:00 – Jay’s next book: How to Live Like a Gangster — No Prison Required 15:00 – Loyalty and respect in the mob vs. business life 16:00 – How Castellano’s aloofness led to his murder 18:00 – The real Joe Watts story — the German who made millions 20:00 – Gary shares Kansas City mob stories and Casino connections 23:00 – The failed car bombing of underboss Tuffy DeLuna 25:00 – The Mob Museum and modern mob myths 26:00 – Jay shows his book Mob Life and shares fun mob trivia 28:00 – How much money mob bosses really made — and lost 30:00 – Why law enforcement didn’t chase mob money before the drug era 31:00 – Joe Massino’s $10 million cash and gold surrender 32:00 – Final thoughts: The mob’s empire always ends the same way Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Gary Jenkins: Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective and I am now a mob historian and with the podcast and a few other things, some books and stuff out there. Gary Jenkins: And I interview other mob authors as well as research stories. And today I have an author named Jay Bear. He has written a book about the mob, a really good, solid, historical, factually true book as kind of a basis for a novel he wants to write. So Jay, welcome. Jay Baer: Oh, thank you. I’m, I’m happy to be here. Jay Baer: This is really great. So I’m looking forward to this interview. Gary Jenkins: All right, Jay. Well, you know, we, we like the mob here and we like the the facts about the mob. When I read about your book, that’s, that’s when I got hold of you. I thought, well, this is so interesting. It is Mob life, the private world of [00:01:00] Capone, Lansky, Gotti, and Castellano. Gary Jenkins: And what did Al Capone wear? How much did it cost? Where did he buy it? You know, what, what kind of Italian, right? What kind of, what kind of food did Gotti like besides Italian and, and that kind of a thing. So I, that, that was really interesting, those esoteric little details that we don’t really know usually. Jay Baer: What I wanted to do is I wanted to tell a different story. Everybody writes books about their crimes and law enforcement’s effort to put them away. We’ve heard all that. So this was like something I wanted to do for years. Let me just tell a different story. And I did, and the book is filled with, you know what? Jay Baer: How much money they made, what they, how they dressed religious views really. Which there wasn’t very much in religious views except for May Lansky. The rest of them were, even, even Paul Castellano, the the bishop did not wanna bury him in a Catholic, in, in a Catholic cemetery. And they fought him on it and they got him to do it. Jay Baer: [00:02:00] But yeah, none of ’em had really any religious views except for, may Lansky. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: He went to synagogue on a regular basis. He belonged, he did a lot of stuff, you know, during the war to help you know, catch the Nazis. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: In fact, there’s a book out there, an older book with called Luciano’s Luck and it’s about their, what they did and how they got involved in the, you know, world War ii. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Yeah, I had heard that. I’ve never really, I talked to one guy, an author that had a book really about the, more about the Navy guy that approached Luciano in prison and then worked with this guy named Sox Sox Lanza, who had the Fulton Street Fish market in, in trying to gather information about any possible Nazi saboteurs. Gary Jenkins: But I’ve never really got into that. Mayor Lansky area. So Jay, tell us a little bit about where you come from. You’re not, you’re not a career author. Sometimes I have guys that that’s all they ever done. They’ve been newspaper reporters and written books and stuff. Tell us a little [00:03:00] bit about yourself. Jay Baer: Well, I’m from New York based, you know, originally you can probably tell with my voice, you know, forget about it and all that stuff. I knew you were from north of me. Where are you? Kansas, Missouri. Oh, okay. So. My father moved us down here to Florida, like, oh my God. 1972, and I’ve been here ever since. So, but I, I de, I started detailing cars when I was 28, and I’ve been doing that ever since and it’s, you know, brought me, right now I’m kind of like, I only work in the mornings, you know, I’m almost 70, so I’m kind of like maybe semi-retired. Jay Baer: Yeah. But I’m never gonna retire because, I gotta find something to do all the time. So I write, and right now, you know, I wrote this book, mob Life and I wrote a book before that called Angels of Death. It’s about two girls who are on the run for murder and they become killers for hire and realize they’re in love with each other. Jay Baer: And I also wrote a nonfiction book about public speaking ’cause I [00:04:00] used to teach public speaking. I’m a distinguished Toastmaster. I did a lot of speaking over the years. I taught hundreds of people how to overcome their fear of speaking. So I wrote, I, I took my course and I put it into a book. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Jay Baer: It was only a very short book. Jay Baer: ’cause you know, people don’t need a lot. I don’t think people need a lot of information to be successful, but I’ve always been interested in gangsters ever since I was a kid. You know, my, my friends were listening to The Beatles. I was reading books about. Capone and May Lansky. So there’s something about them that always intrigued me, their power, the women, the way that they just controlled so much, you know, they’re very powerful men. Jay Baer: And it’s just something I’ve kept, kept on for, oh my God, since 35 years. No, 55 years. Ever since I was a kid, 15 years old, I’ve been interested in gangsters. So, and I decided, hey, it’s time to write about ’em. [00:05:00] Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You know what just outta teens in my teens, I first read my first. True Crime book, which was in Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Gary Jenkins: And man, that book, I was hooked then in that true crime. And so I was, I was in junior college right outta high school and, and I found green was it Greenfeld Jungle? By Ova DeMars. It was all about the mob in Las Vegas. It was. Thick, real dense book, but, but I bought into it, man, I, I love that book. I devoured that book. Gary Jenkins: I, I read one by a guy named Ken, a New York City detective named I think it was Joe Erno or Tony Tony Erno, I can’t remember his erno and read that. And he really. You know, made these gangsters come alive in that book back then. And I remember even, even back then, I thought, boy, that veto genovese, that was a bad, that’s a bad dude. Gary Jenkins: So they I understand. I got hooked on it early myself. Jay Baer: Oh, that was a nonfiction book. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Right. Oh, okay. Jay Baer: Yeah. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of stuff [00:06:00] out there like that. I mean, fiction, like, I’m, I’m, I’m rereading The Godfather ’cause I like the way Mar

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Burt Gonzalez, a veteran officer from the Miami-Dade Police Department, for an unfiltered look inside one of the most violent and chaotic eras in American law enforcement history. Bert has published his story title The Real Greatest Show on Earth. With decades of experience spanning multiple divisions, Burt recounts the transformation of Dade County’s police force—from Metro-Dade to Miami-Dade—and now back to an elected sheriff. He walks us through the gritty evolution of policing in South Florida, where the drug trade fueled daily violence and cartel wars left bodies in the streets. Burt shares firsthand stories from Miami’s cocaine-crazed years, including a shocking drug bust that netted 208 kilos of cocaine and over a million dollars in cash, offering a vivid glimpse into the unpredictable and dangerous life of a street cop. Beyond the shootouts and seizures, we explore the human side of policing—the growing mental health crisis in Miami-Dade, the deadly unpredictability of domestic violence calls, and the emotional toll that constant exposure to trauma takes on officers. Burt emphasizes the importance of training, de-escalation, and support systems for those on the front lines. The conversation also previews Burt’s upcoming show, Sergeant Maverick, a podcast where he’ll tackle everything from police work and politics to financial advice for first responders—and even the decline of customer service in America. Join us for this candid, eye-opening conversation as Burt Gonzalez pulls back the curtain on the realities, dangers, and hard-earned lessons of Miami policing during the height of America’s drug war. Click here to get the book, The Real Greatest Show on Earth Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, welcome to the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m back here, and I have a fellow copper from down in Miami-Dade County, Florida, Burt Gonzalez. And, you know, I worked all the jobs on the police department, mainly spent my time in intelligence, so that’s why I focus on organized crime. But I worked all the rest of the jobs, almost all of them. I never was a wheel man. But other than that, I think I did everything. And Burt’s done a lot of things, too. So welcome, Bert. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. And guys, you need to know, and we’ll talk about this later, Bert has a book out there about his career and some great stories called The Real Greatest Show on Earth. And believe me, Bert, it is the real greatest show on Earth, isn’t it? Well, that’s why I named the book that. [0:49] I was thinking about what is it that we do and what do we call it out there ourselves, in the street, in the homes of our citizens and everything. And really, it’s a circus. So that’s where I came up with that. True circus. All right, now tell the guys a little bit about your department that you spent your time in and how you ended up going on that department and a little bit about the history of it and what it was like as you went over the years. So go ahead. So I was with Miami-Dade Police, formerly known as Metro-Dade Police, when I joined in 1983. And in the areas where my family moved here from New York and I followed a year later, the area was unincorporated Dade County at the time. It wasn’t called Miami-Dade County yet. [1:40] And so the police of the jurisdiction was Metro Dade police. And our neighbor behind our house, Bob Johns, was a sergeant with Metro. So then all of my interactions, I’ve seen Metro everywhere. And then as I got to know Bob and I got to know more about the department, [2:00] Metro Dade is the largest department in the Southeast United States. Now is Miami Dade. It still is. And it’s the sheriff’s office, even though we didn’t call ourselves that. We just called ourselves Metro-Dade and now Miami-Dade Police. It is a sheriff’s office as of a few weeks ago again. First time in 60 years we’ve elected a sheriff. And that involves all the politics about the county governing itself away from the capital, Tallahassee. And then the voters here a couple of years ago said, we want to have an elected sheriff again, as opposed to an appointed director by the mayor and the county commission. And you know, as well as I do, that if you have an appointed chief or an appointed director, the mayor has control over them. So the director is not answerable to the citizens or the chief of police isn’t really answerable to the citizens. They’re answerable to the mayor. [3:04] And it caused a lot of problems. And finally, the citizens down here said, we want an elected sheriff again. In November, we elected a sheriff. One of my colleagues, Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who highly qualified, she was an assistant director with us. So now we’re the sheriff’s office again. [3:22] So the more I learned of what department I wanted to apply to, it was going to be Metro-Dade and only Metro-Dade. I didn’t think about the city of Miami, which is another, the second largest department in South Florida. [3:37] But it was going to be Metro all the way. And there’s going to be folks that may be here, listen to this, and going to say, well, that sounds pretty arrogant. Well, it is the best department down here for sure. And it is a leading agency around the country. And we’re very proud of that reputation. So I joined Metro, like I said, in 83. [4:00] And two years later my brother got out of the army and he came on as well and I gotta tell you at that time it was the height of the cocaine cowboy wars when we came on. [4:13] This is what I was thinking, Miami Vice. You say Miami area in 1983. I’m thinking Miami Vice, maybe. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a kilo of cocaine anywhere. I mean, it was everywhere. And the district that I work, Southwest District, we had a lot of dopers that lived there. They built these big houses. And of course, oh, that’s not a doper there. Of course not, right? [4:41] Cameras outside. You know, and the thing about the cowboy wars at that time, besides the fact that cocaine was everywhere, we had a lot of dead bodies dropping all the time. And there was a time literally every day we were finding bodies all over the county, all our different districts. And the homicide rate was so high that our department had to create a specialized narcotics-focused homicide squad to handle it. So when you say Miami Vice, and also, I’m sure you’ve seen it and many of your viewers and our fellow colleagues, Scarface. Yeah. The movie Scarface. And that scene, I’m always reminded of that scene where Tony Montana and his crew are walking into the banks with duffel bags full of cash. Yeah. Well, I’ve got one story about that. And I was working, I worked mostly uniform in my career. I did a lot of training as well, but I also did plainclothes work. [5:58] And we did a lot of street-level narcotics. So I was on this crime suppression team playing clothes, and we were getting hit with a lot of driveway robbers. We have an affluent area in the district I was working. And from the expensive department stores. [6:19] Macy’s, Bloomingdale, Neiman Marcus, the people would get followed home and get robbed in their driveway. And they’re driving an expensive car, You know, so we got assigned to do surveillances and try to catch these bad guys. And, uh, like I wrote in the book, I always describe a bad guy as an asshole bad guy. Yeah. Cause that’s what they are. Right. So what we were doing these surveillances and we hired extra officers, uh, to increase our numbers. Cause we were a small plainclothes squad. Mark, Sylvia and I, uh, went down this one street one night about eight o’clock at night. And it was dark, and as we drove by this one house, we see two guys looking in the picture window next to the front door. Look really suspicious. We drove down the street. We didn’t see a car in the driveway. We came around. They were gone. Okay, we got something here. Go down, park in somebody’s driveway. I got out, told the owner who we were. Can we park in your driveway? We’re going to watch this house. We called the rest of the squad in. we surveilled for a while. [7:30] No movement so we went to the house Mark and I went to the back of the house, and what we in the backs of a lot of Florida houses they have what’s called the Florida room it’s like a second living room that’s in the back of the house next to the yard or the pool, generally screened in or something like that when the other guys went to the front door and knocked on the door and a relatively of a young woman came to the door and Joe on our squad who had the gift of gab, she, he started, uh, interviewing her and said, well, there’s two guys that were just here and they’re gone. And she goes, there’s nobody here. [8:13] So they relayed that to Mark and I, and we’re staring at the two guys in the floor room with the kids in the, in the back of the house. Uh-oh. Okay. Right. So, you know, the, the plot thickens, right? Yes. Joe talked his way into the house and got the lady to sign a consent to search. We secured it. He did have a gift to gab, man. Big time. Big time. We secured the two. [8:40] Asshole bad guys, because that’s what they turned out to be. And we searched the house. In one of the rooms, we found Mac 11 machine guns. We found a table with a ledger book on it that was a code book that we sent to the DEA. [8:59] We found suitcases with coffee grounds. Because at that time, the dopers were running the drugs or coffee grounds to throw the

In this explosive episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into one of the most complex and mysterious figures of the Cold War era—Ricardo “Monkey” Morales, a Cuban exile whose life intersected with the CIA, the anti-Castro underground, Las Vegas mobsters, and even the JFK assassination. Gary welcomes Rick Morales Jr., son of Monkey Morales, and author Sean Oliver, co-writer of the new book Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad. Together, they unravel the incredible life of a man who was at once a patriot, a spy, and a killer. Rick recounts growing up in Miami’s Little Havana, where his father’s shadow loomed large—rumored to have ties to the JFK assassination and known for his secret missions across the world. From escaping Cuba as a disillusioned Castro loyalist to training as part of the CIA’s Operation 40 assassination unit, Monkey Morales lived a life that reads like a spy thriller. Sean Oliver walks listeners through Monkey’s covert missions in Africa’s Congo, his deep ties to other operatives like Frank Sturgis and Barry Seal, and the secret wars that connected Cuban exiles, the CIA, and organized crime. The conversation also explores how Monkey became entangled with Lefty Rosenthal, the Chicago Outfit’s Las Vegas gambling mastermind, and how his bomb-making skills were used in mob turf wars across Florida. The discussion culminates with Morales Jr.’s chilling memory of his father confessing he was in Dallas on the day President Kennedy was shot—and that he had seen Lee Harvey Oswald in a CIA training camp. Whether you believe Morales was a hero, a villain, or both, his story weaves through some of the darkest and most intriguing chapters of 20th-century American history. 📘 Get the book: Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad 🎙️ Highlights include: • How Monkey Morales went from a Cuban intelligence officer to a CIA-trained operative • The secretive Operation 40 and its links to the Bay of Pigs, the Congo, Watergate, and Dallas • Morales’s work for the FBI and the CIA—and his dangerous double life in Miami • His connection to mob figure Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and the Outfit’s Florida operations • A firsthand account from Morales Jr. about his father’s claim to have seen Oswald in CIA training • The moral code of Miami’s Cuban bombers—and how it vanished when Colombian cartels arrived Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript Speaker: [00:00:00] All right, well, hey, all you wire tappers out there. It’s good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. Uh. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective turned podcaster now, and I have another story and we’re gonna talk a little bit about the JFK murder and a connection to it, and a little bit about Lefty Rosenthal. Speaker: And you guys know that I know a lot about ref lefty Rosenthal because he was calling back to Kansas City every once in a while to our mob guys and, and so, so I’m really anxious to talk about this story, but first, let me introduce my guest today and I’m really excited to have these guys on here. Speaker: I have Rick Morales, Rick Morales, Jr, actually, and Sean Oliver. Welcome guys. Well, thanks Gary. Love the show. So, uh, you know, I, I looked at the two chapters you sent me and, and learned about the book and, and a little bit about your lives and especially yours, Rick, and it’s, it’s just fascinating as hell. Speaker: Rick and I were talking a little bit before you [00:01:00] came on here. We, I didn’t tape it or anything, Sean, and about I had, you know, I was a policeman and I had kids growing up and, and Rick, his dad wasn’t a policeman, but his dad was, was in that. Kind of a violent, kind of a uh, occupation, if you will, about bringing that edge of violence home to your family. Speaker: And there’s no way to, you don’t, you know, you know, let it loose on them, but you’ve been in some violent circumstance. All day long, or Rick’s case, maybe his dad’s case, maybe for the last several weeks. And then he comes home and, and so it’s, it’s just an interesting, uh, family dynamic I always think. But, let’s start with you, Sean. Speaker: Tell us a little bit about where you came from. I know you’re an author and you’ve been into wrestling. Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I’m from a planet called New Jersey. No, no. Strange. I think you’ve covered a lot of my residents in the past. I, neighbor, just a couple of weeks ago ago, I heard you doing Bobby Manna, who was very much a, a local of mine. Speaker 2: Yeah. And my neighbor, Chuck Webner, who you may or may not know, not a mobster, [00:02:00] but I was a, I was a film and television actor for a long time. I, um, I directed television commercials. I, I was in entertainment and then I fell into covering professional wrestling. I wasn’t a wrestler myself. I know the physique has you fooled. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had a pro wrestling production company, and then through that, kind of fell into that world. And so my first few books when I started writing were covering that world. And then, um, wrote some novels and then, uh, my first foray into true Crime, certainly not reading it, but writing it came when I met a man. Speaker 2: Beside me known as, uh, Rick Morales Jr. When I found out who his father was. And I went on a hunt for someone alive who could talk to me about Ricardo Monkey Morales. And that’s how I met Rick, I guess six years ago now, Rick. Yeah. Speaker 3: Six years. Speaker 2: Yeah. And we began [00:03:00] developing the story initially for television, um, as it’s, uh, really lends itself to an episodic. Speaker 2: It’s, yeah, it’s so vast to the story, but COVID hit production shut down. We, it was impossible for anyone to produce anything of this scope. So about two years ago, I said to Rick, we had been past our last. Pass was, uh, Rob Reiner, I guess. And I said, Rick, I, let’s do this as a book. You know, I have an inn in the publishing world. Speaker 2: I have, you know, multiple books out. Let’s tell your dad, we gotta get the story out. So that’s when we started doing this for publication. Speaker: Interesting, interesting. And it is interesting story. We go from, uh, JFK assassination to Las Vegas, like I said, and, and a whole bunch of stuff down in South America. Rick, you gotta tell us about yourself. Speaker: You know, Richard Morales. Yeah, Ricardo Mon Monkey Jr. I guess her dad was called Monkey Morales. So tell us a little bit about [00:04:00] your childhood. It had to be a little bit different than a lot of other childhood. Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaker: yeah. A little Speaker 3: bit different than Sean’s, I would say. Yeah. I was, uh, born in Miami. I got older brother, younger brother, and a sister. Speaker 3: I was born in 63 in Miami the same year. JFK gets second vaccinated. So I was there, but I wasn’t able to. To watch my dad do much ’cause I was only a couple of months old. So grew up in Miami. My dad and my mom left Cuba. My dad was a G two government agent for the Castro government when it took over. Speaker 3: And then during the two years between 58, 59 or 59 and 60. Disillusioned as much as many were. He was trying to figure out which way the direction of the country was going, and eventually they, uh, tried to kill him. They, they put him on a hit list because his father was a judge for Batista’s regime and [00:05:00] had, his father was a judge in the Batista regime, so they were eliminating anybody that had to do anything with the Batist regime. Speaker 3: So eventually he escapes through the Brazilian embassy. He spends like 82 days there with a bunch of other people. And, uh, eventually they’re taken out and he moves to Miami where he immediately goes to work for Cuban revolutionary groups. Because he’s, he is got the abilities. He’s a bomb maker. He is a master bomb maker. Speaker 3: He is a sniper, so he’s been trained in the government and all those things. So he joins Cuban power groups in Miami trying to fight. Against the castor regime and, and the power. And that’s where he starts making his name for himself and then that leads to further jobs with government agencies. CIA what All this time we’re kids. Speaker 3: We’re not aware in the early ages, like when I’m young, I’m not aware of what my father is [00:06:00] doing, but eventually there comes times when I see news stories on tv, they try to hide it from us, but they can’t. We hear stories from friends. I would go to friend’s house when I was young and they would one day be my friend, and then the next day they weren’t allowed. Speaker 3: And when I would ask them at school, what happened is, your dad’s Monkey Morales, he was involved in the JF Kennedy assassination. That’s what everybody in Little Havana was saying. And so they weren’t allowed to come to my house anymore for fear of anything happening at my house that they would become, uh. Speaker 3: Involved and heard or something. So I grew up with that stigma, you know, uh, as a child. Wow. Speaker: Crazy. Well, like, do you guys, uh, Sean, did you did you get into investigating any of these pro anti-Castro groups down in Southern Miami? They were, it was Southern Florida. They were all kinds of little groups down there. Speaker 2: Yeah, so you’ve got Cuban exiles coming here [00:07:00] landing in the waiting arms of the CIA who are able to train arm, and with the intention of sending them back into Cuba to take care of Cast

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins welcomes author Gregory Macalino, whose book “Little Pussy and Long Branch: Perfect Together” offers a deep dive into New Jersey’s underworld and the life of one of its most notorious figures—Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo. Gregory begins by sharing his own story, growing up in Monmouth County amid the Italian-American enclaves where whispers of mob activity were part of daily life. His firsthand familiarity with the gambling, politics, and personalities that shaped the Jersey Shore inspired him to explore Russo’s remarkable and brutal reign. Gary and Gregory trace Little Pussy Russo’s rise from a small-time Newark street thief to a powerful player in the Genovese crime family, detailing how he infiltrated Long Branch’s political and law enforcement circles to control the town for over twenty years. Gregory explains Russo’s business acumen, his use of gambling and real estate ventures to mask criminal operations, and the dangerous rivalries that emerged with independent drug dealers who threatened his dominance. Listeners will hear how Little Pussy Russo’s empire ultimately unraveled amid violence, betrayal, and federal pressure. Gregory recounts dramatic gangland episodes, family connections, and the eventual collapse of a criminal fiefdom that had once seemed untouchable. The conversation also touches on how Russo’s world parallels modern portrayals of mob life—especially The Sopranos—revealing just how much real New Jersey mobsters influenced America’s favorite mafia fiction. As the discussion closes, Gregory reflects on the lasting cultural footprint of men like Russo and what their stories teach us about power, corruption, and community identity. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. For those of you who don’t know me, most of you do, I think, sometimes, a lot of repeat listeners out there, and I really appreciate all you guys that always come back and make comments on my YouTube channel and comment on my Gangland Wire podcast group page, and so I really appreciate all you. And for you guys that don’t know me, I was with the Kansas City Police Department. I spent about 14 years in the intelligence unit. We worked the Sabella crime family here in Kansas city and a variety of other things like that, uh, retired and did a couple other things and find out my last retirement gig is I’m a podcaster. And then this has just been so much fun for me, guys. I really appreciate all your support. I’m getting to know all these authors all around the United States. There’s not a place. If you’re an intelligence, you like to have contacts where you can learn something or find out something or get something done. Well, there’s not any city, I don’t think, in the United States, I don’t know somebody that’s been on my podcast that I can call them up or email them and say, what about this or what about that?   [1:06] So it’s really broadened my life and this made my life much richer. So anyhow, today, without further ado, we have Gregory Macalino. Gregory, welcome.   [1:17] Thank you. Great to be here, really, truly. Yeah, well, I really, as I told you when we were talking before, I really am pleased about getting you on the show and about your book that you wrote, Little Pussy and Long Branch, Perfect Together. This is about New Jersey and not just like New Jersey, just across the river, but down into New Jersey. And there’s a lot of mafia activity that went on down there. And I’ve not really covered it very much, just a little bit. Years ago, Scott D.J. did a book. Uh, I can’t remember the name of it now that got up into New Jersey. Uh, gang state, or I’m sorry, garden state gangland, garden state gangland. Yeah. And that was a God, that was, I was one of my early interviews. I sometime maybe in the first year, like five or six years ago. So.   [2:04] Gregory has put together a book about Anthony Little Pussy and Long Branch, which is part of the Genovese family. And he has really studied this, but he grew up here. So, Gregory, tell us about your life. And you grew up in this area in Monmouth County and Long Branch. And what did you see that then stirred you to eventually write this book about it? Well you know um being in lawn branch you will find out that there is a huge italian community and someone everybody knew everybody that knew someone that was connected and somehow and not like heavy hitters or anything like that but more like you know there was tons and tons of bookies there was numbers runners uh the local the local mob dudes used to hire high school kids that I went to high school with to be the runners.   [2:56] And so everybody knew somebody that was connected. And you couldn’t help but know. And as you read the book, you will come to find out that Little Pussy completely infiltrated the whole municipality in terms of the local politicians, the city council.   [3:14] There’s accusations of the police chief. There’s also Monmouth County police higher-ups that he completely corrupted and he basically ran the town of long branch for 20 years and he was in headlines constantly making headlines for 20 years and you’ll be amazed that there used to be a local newspaper it was over 100 years old it was called um the the daily register i’m sorry the daily record it was out of long branch it was over 100 years old it stopped i think it started in the 1880s and it stopped in like the late 1970s so or just around just about 100 years old and And if you went a month without a blaring headline about the mob in Long Branch, you’d be completely surprised. Because I went through micro-spice and tons of records from the old newspapers. And every other week, there was some big major headline about Anthony Pussy Russo and his little gang of guys and what was going down.   [4:14] And it was prevalent. It was just a constant. It’s amazing. I believe it. I tell you a little side story. Uh, when my son was in high school, he had this friend from who actually spent all of his life up until they got to high school and his dad moved back here in Tom’s river, New Jersey, which is kind of down in that area. And so my son, what they had, he loves sports and this kid loves sports. And he had, I looked down what he had. He had a parlay card. I said, where did you get that? He said, oh, he said, Eddie gets them. His dad gets them at work. He gets them from some guy that has one of those, uh, tow main wagons that comes around those coffee wagons and he gets them. And so we’re making our picks. I said, what are you doing?   [5:02] And he said, well, you know, I don’t know. Big Ed got them, gave them to Eddie’s, you know, we’re just making our picks. We like put five bucks down or I think like put, I think only put a dollar, a dollar down on our picks. I just said, oh my God. I tell you what, we didn’t have anything like that growing up, but in Tom’s River, New Jersey and Long Branch in New Jersey, that was pretty prevalent. I got to say, you probably saw stuff like that yourself when you were in high school and on up since then. Yeah. That’s like, that’s like 40 minutes South of Long Branch. Also, Eddie Murphy, Eddie will be so proud of me to do this show. And I have to, I got to get ahold of him as soon as I get off of here.   [5:42] And I’ll probably give him this book after I get done with it. Cause he’ll be really excited to read it. Anyhow, let’s talk about Anthony big pussy Russo.   [5:54] And, and he was, he was little pussy. His brother was big pussy. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. I got a little pussy. I just, my, my, I was trying to do two things at once in my mind. So go ahead. You go ahead and start telling us about this guy. Okay. So Auntie Little Pussy is from the Newark area. They migrated up to Newark from Brazil, the family. They were from a lot of Italians. Half of the Italians went to America and half the other Italians went to South America. So his family went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, I believe, and then they migrated to Newark. And he was born 1916, I believe. He was one of 13 children. the father died early and so he was on the streets of newark and he had two older brothers one was called ralph and the other one was called john ralph and john started working for richie boyardo who was a big you know big time bootlegger in newark and this is before the mafia was formulated before you know there was five family all that this is during prohibition and and So Anthony was like the runt of the family, and he idolized his brother, John.   [7:05] Well, one thing led to another. They all started working for Richie Boyardo. The only reason Anthony Little Pussy rose to the heights he did is because of his brother, John. John was the opposite of him. Anthony was boisterous, a loudmouth. He loved to draw attention to himself and supposedly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. But his brother was the total opposite of him. And he was a heavy hitter. He ended up going to jail in the 20s for a prohibition murder in the service of Richie the Boot. But because Richie at this point had influence, the 30-year stint that John got was reduced to only 10 years he got out. Meanwhile, the older brother, Ralph, was an incorrigible, unbelievable, and he was being told constantly by Richie the Boot, cool it, cool it, cool it. He didn’t.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Tim Richards, a former St. Louis intelligence officer and author of Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie. Tim brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge from his years investigating the mob and navigating the thin line between law enforcement and organized crime. We dive deep into the history and dynamics of the St. Louis crime families and their ties—or lack thereof—to Kansas City and Chicago. Tim reveals how the St. Louis mob and the Syrian mob were into labor racketeering, ghost workers, and union control, profiting off federally funded projects. Click here to buy Crooks Kill and Cops Lie and to see all of Tim’s books • Listeners will hear gritty stories about: • The interplay between Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago mob families. • The “Syrian” mafia’s role in local unions, vengeance, and violence. • St. Louis mob figures like Paul Leisure, Mike Trupiano, and Jesse Stoneking. • An unforgettable encounter with Trupiano during a traffic stop. • The challenges police faced without legal wiretaps, relying instead on FBI intelligence. • The ripple effects of mob influence reach as far as Las Vegas gambling operations. From bloody reprisals to uneasy alliances, Tim shares not just history but lived experience—vivid accounts of hit jobs, betrayals, and the complexities of policing organized crime. As he reflects on how law enforcement strategies and technology have evolved, Tim leaves us with a powerful reminder of the mob’s enduring mark on Midwestern history. If you want an insider’s perspective on St. Louis mobsters and the Midwest underworld, you won’t want to miss this one. Subscribe to get more stories every week. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:03 Welcome to Gangland Wire 1:02 Exploring Kansas City and St. Louis Mob Ties 4:19 The Influence of the Chicago Mafia 8:56 The Aladdin Hotel and Skimming Operations 11:41 A Deep Dive into Paul Leisure’s Fate 15:12 The Old Italian Mafia and Its Tactics 23:09 Changes in Policing and Mafia Control 24:54 Personal Stories from the Streets 27:43 The Rise and Fall of Jesse Stoneking 33:05 Reflections on Organized Crime and Histor [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio, Gangland Wire. I have another former intelligence unit detective, Tim Richards. Now, you know, and if you don’t, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m sorry, guys. Some of you all may be new listeners. I’m Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. Got this podcast, Gangland Wire. We deal with the mob. And I worked a mob in Kansas City, and Tim Richards worked in it in St. Louis, just across the state. So welcome, Tim. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I’m really glad to have you. I was really glad to find this book. I’ve been working on a book myself. So I’m looking at your book, seeing how you did certain things and then going back to mine. And my story is a little bit different, I guess, but different, but the same. You know, we had very similar experiences, guys. When Tim and I first started talking on the phone, you know, it was like, oh, my God, that’s like I was talking to another guy in the same unit, you know, because we had the same kind of experiences. [0:59] Some of them we’ll talk about, some of them we won’t talk about on here. But we’re going to talk about the mafia primarily. And Tim, what I always found interesting, even back then in the 70s, there seemed to be little to no relationship or connection between Kansas City and St. Louis crime families. Do you remember that like that? Yeah, I recall that. We knew that Nick Zabella was a powerful guy in the families. But we never really saw anything that he was insane. St louis the chicago mafia controlled st louis with some help from detroit the detroit mafia. [1:37] They the chicago mafia came in here in the late 50s when they were rebuilding downtown st louis and they built the poplar street bridge which was called the tunnel project, they came through east st louis with a guy by the name of buster workman who controlled everything in East St. Louis, and they used ghost workers. It was a federal-funded bridge-building event, and they used ghost workers there, and these guys were getting rich. And in the meantime, they came over to St. Louis and infiltrated our two labor workers, 110 and 42. They also infiltrated 562, which is a five-fitters union, a very wealthy union, and they had them for decades. And they apparently Eventually controlled them 110 was controlled totally And 42 was controlled totally By the Chicago mob. [2:34] 562 eventually went under It was controlled totally by the Chicago mob And The Chicago mob ran everything here, Allegedly Some dabbling by Detroit I don’t know how they worked that out But Detroit had some function here But um, Yeah, Tim, you go in your Crook’s Kill and Cops Lie book, guys, and I recommend you get this if you want an inside look at the St. Louis Police Intelligence Unit at Police Intelligence Everywhere, why this book will give it to you. And you have a second book before we get too far into this. Hold that one up. I couldn’t find my copy. It’s over across the room somewhere. This is actually the sequel to Crook’s Kill, Cops Lie. Okay. It’s just another St. Louis Intelligence book. The unit was referred to as Intel 210, which was the code name for the unit within the police department. And this is my second book pertaining to the St. Louis Organized Crime Advice. This goes deeply into the intelligence unit and what we actually did and the things that went on between cops and crooks and FBI agents. And we were whores for the FBI. [3:48] We did all this shit. And the FBI would come over to our office and glean it all. But we didn’t care. We enjoyed what we were doing. And we got to know these FBI guys, and we didn’t mind helping them. The thing is that we couldn’t get legal wiretaps. They could. And so we gave them information, whatever they needed. But anyway, both of my books pertain to that, intelligence and how the unit cops and the FBI and the other feds worked together trying to get these guys together. [4:20] It’s interesting. In St. Louis and Kansas City, from looking at your book, it was basically the same, different than in other cities, I think. [4:30] We really worked closely with the FBI also. And like you said, we were their go boys. We went out and they said, hey, we got this going on. Why don’t you go check this out? Well, see the FBI, they have these high level sources because they’ve got all this power and all this money to spread around. And, you know, they can kick a damn grand jury indictment aside if they want in order to put pressure on somebody. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have any local wiretaps. We finally got a law. We ran one here and it was, I tell you what, you never want to do a wiretap unless you got a huge, huge, huge budget, which we never do. So, you know, it’s the same way here. It’s really interesting, you know, the talk about the labor racketeering in particular. You go into that pretty in depth because there’s more than just Chicago and more than Italian mafias. And then you had the Syrian mob in St. Louis that got heavy into union racketeering. So it’s just a really interesting mix down there, Tim. [5:32] Well, the Syrian mob, it was named, it was actually Lebanese. Oh, that’s right. The FBI named it the Syrian mob, and it stuck. The newspapers picked up on it. We picked up on it. It was referred to as the Syrian mob. But they were political people. They were all politicians and business people within St. Louis. And the Leisure, Paul Leisure, Anthony Leisure, Paul Leisure was a hitman for years for the Chicago mafia here in St. Louis. But Tony Giordano, they wanted to kill another Syrian guy by the name of Jimmy Michaels for control of a 110, local 110. [6:11] Anthony Giordano told him to lay off of him because the Chicago mob told him, we don’t want him killed. He had worked with them, for them, for years over in East St. Louis for Buster Workman. So Anthony Giordano told the Leisure to lay off of him. The reason they hated him so much is because some Michael’s family killed a Leisure guy over in East St. Louis was back in the 50s shot him in a bar and got away with it and killed him and so there was there was a feud there between the two Syrian families the Lebanese families so the feud just festered and festered and festered and they wanted to kill jimmy michaels for two reasons revenge and control of local 110 jim uh anthony giordano died and that left jimmy michaels wide open so they blew him up in broad daylight with a car bomb on i-55 during rush hour and uh, But then this gang war broke out. Then the Michaels retaliated and blew up Paul Leisure in front of his mom. So I was at both of those scenes, certainly. They’re in my book. My picture’s in the book at the scene. [7:21] But it was an interesting time there. And the politicians were scurrying because they’d been in bed with these people for the last 30 years. I bet, yeah. I mean, yeah, they were scurrying. And it was just really crazy. There was another Lebanese family by the name of Webby, Sarkis Webby Sr. Was a lawyer and a very influential guy. And he owned the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. And they were skimming the money there. Somehow, this is how the Detroit Mafia comes into this. The Detroit Mafia, the New York Mafia, and the Chicago Ma

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins pulls back the curtain on one of the FBI’s most troubling scandals—the case of Joe Stabile, a corrupt FBI agent whose fall from grace revealed just how deep organized crime’s influence could run. The story begins in November 1978, when Stabile pled guilty to corruption charges. But as Gary explains, that plea was only the tip of the iceberg. Behind it lay years of whispered rumors, shady deals, and quiet payoffs—stories that painted Stabile not as a straight-arrow G-man, but as a hustler working both sides of the law. Drawing on conversations with retired FBI agents who once worked alongside Stabile, Gary explores the tangled web of mob connections and compromised investigations. Listeners will hear how mobsters slipped him bribes to make gambling cases disappear, and how his background as a New York City cop may have set the stage for the choices that pulled him deeper into the mob’s orbit. The episode also highlights the work of honest agents, such as Tony Villano, who began piecing together the truth about Stabile’s corruption. Through case files, informant accounts, and law enforcement interviews, Gary demonstrates how the FBI struggled with a culture of silence that often protected its own—even when integrity was at stake. As the story unfolds, the lines between right and wrong blur, exposing systemic cracks inside federal law enforcement during a time when the Bureau was shifting its focus and fighting for credibility. Gary closes with reflections on the lasting impact of the Stabile case: what it meant for the FBI’s war on organized crime, and how Stabile himself may have continued to live in the shadows after his conviction—a man caught between two worlds, crime and law enforcement, never fully belonging to either. This is a must-listen for true crime fans, Mafia historians, and anyone fascinated by how organized crime once ruled the Jersey Shore. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. 0:06 Introduction to Joe Stabile 1:19 The Corruption Unveiled 3:14 Breakfast with Retired Agents 5:59 The Connection to Organized Crime 9:06 Investigating Stabile’s Allegations 14:18 The Gambler’s Payoff 20:19 Confronting Stabile 21:39 The Aftermath of the Indictment 23:35 Stabile’s New Life 25:39 Reflections on Undercover Operations [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence [0:04] Unit detective back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I welcome each and every one of you. I’ve got a story that it’s really interesting how I found out about this. That’s part of the story. Let’s go back. Here’s what I’m talking about. A corrupt FBI agent named Joe Stabile. That’s S-T-A-B-I-L-E. November 1978. [0:26] It was a Monday and FBI agent Joe Stabile was pleading guilty in federal court to corruption charges. Now, you don’t hear about this very much. I know a couple of three here in Kansas City over the years that got popped for doing something. A couple of them were involved in a stolen party or a stolen property ring. A couple of others were one of them was just running his mouth too much and he was drinking too much. I don’t think they actually end up charging him anything, but he did run his run his mouth way too much. Joseph Beal only admitted in this guilty plea that he lied about some money transactions, but that’s just a tip of the iceberg in this, folks. [1:03] The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District was sitting in the spectators that day, and afterwards he would say, you know, this just shows the determination of the Department of Justice to root out misconduct wherever it may be found in federal law enforcement. [1:16] Well, you know, that’s a pretty strong statement after. So you’ll find that they kicked this under the rug as long as they could. Absolutely as long as they could. The head of the organized crime task force there at the time said that there was a bunch of money that Stabile could not account for. He was writing some checks. He was taking some money in and then paying some money back out in a deal. And it was dirty and they had him, but they didn’t have him that good. So they dismissed some other charges and charged him with perjury, and he denied receiving any illegal money. He had actually been involved with a New York City policeman and got a $15,000 payment for dismissing getting a case handled for the Clumbo family. But it really, in the end, he wasn’t really convicted for that. It was a gambling deal involved. He was involved with New York City policemen. [2:06] Now, during that time, there was another New York agent named Anthony Avilano, who had made several allegations of wrongdoing against Joe Stabile. They both worked in the Colombo squad early on when they first met. And really, this became, there was a lot of agents sticking up for Stabile, just like I found that with that H. Paul Rico. There were agents, and they never really found any agents. There were policemen who made a case on him for being involved in a murder, a contract killing. He was a Boston agent. But there was a couple of agents that I interviewed and wrote a book several years ago, and they swear that he didn’t have anything to do with that. So that was part of that whole filthy Boston office where John Conley ended up getting popped out of. And anyhow, they tried to say this was a Sicilian feud between several agents that were of Italian-American extraction. Well, that’s a good way to pass this off and denigrate people. But it really wasn’t that. This guy, this guy was dirty. [3:10] He ended up, he got about five years in the penitentiary and a fine. But let’s go back and take a deeper look at this case. And here’s how I got into it. I was having breakfast with a couple of local retired FBI agents. I mentioned this book, Brick Agent, and asked if they had ever read it or heard about it. And it’s written by a former agent who was assigned to the OC squad in New York City in the 60s and 70s. His name was Tony Villano, and it’s a pretty good book. [3:39] It’s hard to find. It’s really hard to find, folks. So good luck if you go out and try to buy it. I’ll put a link to, I think there’s one that’s like $35 or $36, maybe $40. I can’t remember. I was able to find it online. If you work real hard, you can find it in the Internet Archive online and get a look at it. But it’s hard to do. Now, Volano, I started looking at Volano partly in this book and got interested in him because he was actually the first agent to develop Greg Scarpa. And he worked with Scarpa for quite a while. And when Villano retired and really with no, you know, no smell of any kind of hinky panky going on, like what later happened with Scarpa. Uh, but when he retired, Scarpa refused to be introduced to another agent, carry on any kind of relationship with the FBI. Uh, several years later, this Linda Vecchio made a run on Scarpa and brought him back in as a top echelon informant. And then they did a lot of stuff with him. Now, now, uh. [4:41] Villano is the guy that sent Scarpa down into Mississippi, and in his book, Brick Agent, he tells that story a couple of different ways with some slightly different twists on some of the things that have come out since. And he also names two different people as the informants that they sent down to the south to do these different undercover things on the Ku Klux Klan and try to find those bodies down there and the three civil rights workers down in Philadelphia and solve the murder of Medgar Evers. And there was another one, too. And he names, Villano names two different people trying to cover for Scarpa to make sure nobody can trace this back down to this one guy and it was Scarpa. So anyhow, that morning we were talking about Brick Agent Book and the name Joe Stabile came up because Bill Owsley has read the book. And he said that he worked with Joe Stabile when he was a pretty new agent here in Kansas City who was assigned to the OC squad in Kansas City. Now, Bill has two books on the Kansas City crime family, really great books. You want the whole overall picture of organized crime in Kansas City, his book Open City. [5:53] And then concerning his career, the second book is Mobsters in Our Myths. And that really starts about the time he got here in the 60s. And he was a case agent on the straw man case or the guy that really started the whole thing that brought down the Midwest crime families from skimming from Las Vegas casinos. Bill Owsley was the original case agent on that. You know, it’s funny, by the time they actually had their trials, he was retired. And an even funnier story, ironic maybe you might call this, he was retired and he was doing different jobs in retirement. He worked for the NFL, I think, and maybe the NFL. [6:32] Major league baseball but he did some of those kinds of things and and alan glick came to town to testify now alan glick was a guy that got the 62 million dollar loan thanks to the bob and was kicking back through lefty rosenthal to put him in the context and and bill owsley he needed a bodyguard and a chauffeur so bill owsley took the job of bodyguarding and chauffeuring uh alan glick back and forth to the court when he came in to testify and you know uh you know so much for the mob’s going to go out and kill you if you testify against them because they never did anything to this guy. And he did hire some off-duty policemen out in San Francisco and he hired Bill at the time to do the bodyguard. But he didn’t take great pains to get protection. But I digress. Let’s go b

This is a bonus episode that contains a sample from the new, exciting podcast Chinatown Sting. The Chinatown Sting is a gripping investigative show about a group of mothers who took down Manhattan Chinatown’s drug kingpin, Machine Gun Johnny. Lidia Jean unravels an entire network of women who were roped into Johnny’s criminal underworld and found themselves playing the ultimate high-stakes game. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Listen to a preview of The Chinatown Sting now and find it wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season, ad-free, with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on The Chinatown Sting Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, a former KCPD Intelligence Detective, is joined by Lydia Jean Kott (LJ), a producer at Pushkin Industries, the company founded by Malcolm Gladwell. LJ brings us inside the making of Chinatown Sting, a gripping new podcast that uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Chinese organized crime, China White heroin, and characters like Machinegun Johnny in New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s. LJ explains how her interest in the case was sparked by a personal connection—her boyfriend’s mother was a federal prosecutor involved in the original sting. That legendary case centered on heroin smuggled from Hong Kong into Chinatown, hidden in packages and distributed through a network of mahjong-playing mothers. What began with a flagged parcel at the post office unraveled into a high-stakes undercover investigation. We explore how law enforcement managed to penetrate this tight-knit immigrant community, the risks taken by prosecutors like Beryl Howell, and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in the middle—including a woman forced to choose between betraying a friend or saving herself. LJ also delves into the history of Chinatowns in America, where family associations and Tongs—formed initially as mutual aid societies—became intertwined with the vice industry. She connects this legacy to gangs like the Flying Dragons and their ties back to organized crime in Hong Kong.   Our discussion is not just about drugs, gangs, and federal stings—it’s about storytelling, community, and the pursuit of survival. LJ shares how she and her co-reporter pieced the story together over the course of years of interviews and archival research, giving voice to people often overlooked in the larger mob narrative.   If you’re fascinated by organized crime, hidden histories, or the way law enforcement takes on international networks, Chinatown Sting is a podcast you won’t want to miss. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.   Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  xx Gary Jenkins : [00:00:00] Hey, welcome all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective turned podcaster. Gary Jenkins : I did a few other things in between, but this is the love of my life here, guys. And I was just talking with our guests that I don’t do this for the money, but I do it for fun and, and it is a lot of fun and, and I can tell my guests today. Does it to earn a living, but she does it a lot for fun. She really is into it. Gary Jenkins : So it’s Lydia Jean Kott, or we call her lj. Welcome. Lj, L.J. : thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of the show and it’s an honor to get to be on it and to get to talk to you. Gary Jenkins : Well, cool. Thank you for that compliment. I really appreciate that. Kind of makes it worthwhile keeping coming back. I get those nice comments on my YouTube channel quite a little bit. Gary Jenkins : That kinda keeps me coming back when I get down a little bit. Anyhow first of all, you’re. You’re with something called Pushkin, P-U-S-H-K-I-N, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company. I think he started it and had [00:01:00] the first podcast early in the days. Mm-hmm. You know, I’m like one of the earliest I am the earliest Mafia podcast. Gary Jenkins : I think that ever first one had ever started, I believe long before. When did you start? Oh, . 2015, I believe. L.J. : Okay. Yeah. Early, early podcast days, Gary Jenkins : early podcast. I listened to Serial and I thought, man, I think I could do that and tell police stories. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Gary Jenkins : So tell the guys a little bit about. Gary Jenkins : Pushkin and how this podcast industry works. We talked about this a little bit before, and I’m always kind of curious myself. You know, I’m, I’m what they call A GDI that’s a goddamn independent. If you don’t know what a GDI is, ask my son if he’s gonna join a fraternity. He said, yeah, A GDI. So I’m a GDI. Gary Jenkins : But LJ is with a company and, but she’s been all in all areas and aspects of the business. So tell the guys a little bit about. What we talked about, how this podcasting business works. L.J. : . So [00:02:00] Pushkin is a podcasting company in New York City and we do a whole, we produce a whole bunch of different podcasts. L.J. : So we produce a podcast called Against the Rules, which is hosted by Michael Lewis, who wrote my Ball story. Yeah, that’s Gary Jenkins : a great one. But guys Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, who’s a guy that wrote Moneyball. This is a great one. Go ahead. L.J. : So yeah, so that’s the you know, that’s the podcast that I work on, so I’m a producer on that show. L.J. : And Happiness Lab and Revisionist History. So we make a bunch of shows and we have, you know, people can come to Pushkin with ideas for shows, and then there’s producers on staff, people like myself who then would help you make the show. You know, sometimes ideas originate within the company. So I actually, as a producer, pitched this idea to the higher ups at Pushkin, and then it became a show. Gary Jenkins : And this one here, this one here, to clarify, guys, this one here, Chinatown Sting is the name of it. We’re gonna talk about. Chinese organized crime for a change rather than the Italian organized crime or some drug organization what we call a peckerwood. Peckerwood is non [00:03:00] Italian, by the way. Lj Gary Jenkins : yeah. I never Gary Jenkins: heard that. Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s kinda local. It’s little bit like saying hillbilly or a redneck drug association. But anyhow we use it as non Italian in Kansas City. Anyhow, she’s gonna talk about some Chinese organized crime. So it’s I’m really fascinated. I really wanna learn about this. I had just. Gary Jenkins : I was just thinking I need to do a story about Chinese organized crime and, and I was finding a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not a lot. So, and then this opportunity came along and, and you know, I’m, I’m kind of promoting a competing podcast, if you will, but if you guys are like me, I listen to so many different podcasts that, you know, we’re not in competition with each other. Gary Jenkins : A, a rising ship lifts all a rising tide lifts all boats anyhow, right. L.J. : Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to both the Gangland Wire and the Chinatown sting. You can, you can. Complimentary podcast. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. They are, they are in many ways, a little. I they complimentary L.J. : actually. Gary Jenkins : Yeah. A little different aspect of organized crime. Gary Jenkins : So LJ tell us about, you know, how’d you [00:04:00] first get interested in this story? Like I said, I was harping a hard time finding much about Chinese organized crime. So tell us how you got into it. L.J. : So I, there isn’t, especially when I started working on this, which was like three years ago, there wasn’t very much about Chinese organized crime at all. L.J. : But I, this is a little bit of a reveal of the podcast, but I got interested in it because my boyfriend’s mom, actually, her name is Beryl Howell, . L.J. : But her career got started as a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in New York City, in the eastern District. And her first big case started with this undercover sting that happened. In Brooklyn, because that’s where the eastern Eastern District of New York is. And this case is kind of legendary in my boyfriend’s family. L.J. : And I’ve known her actually, you know, for a really long time. So I’d always heard about this case and how this was the case that, you know, it helped, et cetera. It was her first big case. She was just a baby prosecutor at the time, et cetera, off in her career. It made a [00:05:00] huge impression on her. It was kind of like family lore. L.J. : And as a journalist, I’ve always been like. I wanna get to the bottom of it. Like I wanna find out, I’ve heard about her side of the story of this case, but I wanna find out about the people who, you know, who else was involved and kind of paint a full picture of this case. So it took me about, I think three or four years and I found a co reporter who speaks Cantonese. L.J. : Her name is Sh Wang. And we worked on it together. And we’ve been telling the story of this case. And what was really helpful is that we barrel my boyfriend’s mom. Has this, she gave me this suitcase that was full of thousands of pages of court documents that she had saved. So it’s all public record, but since this is from the 1980s yeah, you know, it can be, you can only read the documents in the courthouse actually, or you have to pay like a dollar in actual quarters to get it home. Gary Jenkins: Yes, L.J. : I had the advantage of having this suitcase where I could look through and it also had, you know, her notes and things that she underlined. So that was really helpful. So I spent, you know, we started by. [00:06:00] Reading those documents and then trying to find the people who are in the documents. Gary Jenkins : Wow. Gary Jenkins : That’s so tell us about searching for some of these people that are in their documents. That’s really hard to do because you’re, you’re looking into a closed society, a totally closed society to outsiders for the most part, except for the cops. I’m sure you, it was easy to find some of the agents or cops. Gary Jenkins : How did you start, when you start with the cops, how, how did that work? Was it a task force that you could find some supervisors and then they could turn you on to guys that would talk to you? L.J. : Yeah, I mean, maybe it would be helpful, so to start with the, you know, like what the case was, the story? So yeah, basically,

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with Dan O’Sullivan from the new podcast The Outfit to discuss the incredible story of Ken Eto, known in Outfit circles as “Tokyo Joe.” Ken Eto was unique: the only Japanese American member of the Chicago Outfit, and the only man to survive being shot three times in the head. Eto was the Outfit’s gambling kingpin on Chicago’s North Side, controlling operations along Rush Street, policy wheels in Black neighborhoods, Chinese games in Chinatown, and the Puerto Rican “bolita” numbers racket. His empire generated millions of dollars each year, placing him among the highest-ranking members of the Outfit. But success had its price. In 1980, the FBI caught Eto in a sting, and his Outfit bosses grew nervous—especially since he had ties to a cocaine deal with the Genovese family. Invited to dinner by a mobster who had never broken bread with him before, Eto knew it was a setup. Two gunmen shot him three times in the head. Miraculously, he lived, and his survival changed the history of the Outfit. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.   Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here [00:00:00] Hey, y’all, you wire tapers out there. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City. Missouri Police Intelligence unit detective with his own podcast. Now, believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for quite a while. Guys, if a lot of you guys have been following me for five, six years, you know, guys, you know, I was one of the first guys that did this podcast this kind of a podcast. And so I have with us today, one of the, maybe the most recent iteration of a Mafia podcast. I have Dan O’Sullivan welcome, Dan. Thank you, Gary. And I like you staking your territory, you know, like that I’m I’m a Johnny. Come lately. It’s true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m a og. You’re the og. Exactly. I’m og. Yeah, right. I mean, I’m an associate. You’re the godfather here, you know? And there you go. We gotta get the pecking order down. This is how. As was said to me by a historian, you know, the mob makes discipline in the military look like nothing, you know, so, yeah. However it [00:01:00] works, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah. That discipline is, and there’s no appeal either, right? Yeah. So anyhow Dan and I, I think you’re gonna have a partner in that. You’re gonna have a podcast called The Outfit. Is that the name of it? That’s right. The outfit got, which is, go ahead. You got it exactly right, Gary. Yeah. We me and my co-host, Alana Hope Levinson our new podcast, the outfits launching August 14th and just every week we’re doing a different mob story that kind of explains something about, you know, America and, and you know, so whether it’s how the milk wars in Chicago led to us having expiration dates on milk cartons, that’s a crazy story to, you know. Who we’re gonna talk about a little bit the history of Japanese Americans in the US or. Americans in Russia during the nineties and seeing that transition of democracy and the mob there. So we just we’re having a lot of fun doing that. But it’s great to be on your [00:02:00] show. I, I’ve loved your show for years, so really an honor to be here. Well, thank you so much. You know, I when I do a program here in the city, I usually started off with a comparison of, I want you people to remember all Italians are not criminals. Yeah. And, and what happened during. The turn of the century is really, has happened here recently. Mm-hmm. What happened was, all these people from a really poor country, Southern Italy and Sicily, came to the United States. They just wanted a piece of the pie. Right. They just wanted to, to have a, a way to get by. They wanted to earn, you know, earn a living and, and get a meal, and they weren’t able to do that. They come here. At that time, the Irish and the English and the Germans, we had all the good jobs, right? We had all the police jobs, the fire jobs, they were squeezed out. They really could hardly get that kind of a job. And so they had push carts and, and you know, spaghetti joints as they used to call ’em restaurants, you could always do that. But they brought this thing from the old country called the Mafia, [00:03:00] and you’ve got all these young men who are bright and, and. Aggressive and, and you know, and then prohibition comes along and they take it. Yeah, they take it and they run with it. And, and you know, the same way today you got all these Hispanics come up and you got this narcotics thing, and, and they’re, you know, they don’t, you know, we’re keeping ’em squeezed out for the most part. They don’t speak the language and look a little different, so you’re kind of squeezed out. So it is not comparing, not exactly apples and oranges, but there’s a lot of similarities there on newly arrived immigrant populations. And they’re not all criminals. It’s such a good point that this repetition just, you know, I mean, look, I’m a journalist. I’ve covered the mob. I’ve written about it and, and tried to get really educated on it. Just you see this cycle over and over again. You know, like you said, my last name’s O Sullivan, the Irish. By the time the Italians and Jews started coming more. Numbers to the us. Well look at Chicago. The Irish first off had been gangsters too, but they had just clammed up the ladder a little bit where they [00:04:00] controlled the political machinery. They controlled police, fire departments, these civil service jobs. So what was left, you know, by the time these guys came along, it was more just the same way, the more criminal thing. And you know, if you look at the stats today, I believe, I believe immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans. Yeah, true. So, you know, because most of them are coming here to work, you know? Yeah, I know. So yeah, it’s, it repeats itself. It’s absolutely true. Yeah. It wasn’t, I think it was Mark Twain said, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it rhymes. That’s a, that guy the pride of Missouri, right? I mean, or is it Missouri Pride of Missouri? Gotta quote him. Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, Dan, so let’s talk about you know, some of the things you’ve done in your career. You’ve done a variety of things in the news and, and media. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve done in your past. Yeah, so I, I, we were talking earlier, I started out as a sports writer actually, which is, I, I was always interested in the mob for reasons I’ll, I’ll maybe get into, but doing sports [00:05:00] writing, I realized you kind of brush up against organized crime just in the course of doing that, you know? Yeah. So I wrote a piece, God, over 10 years ago now about. Labor exploitation and pro wrestling and you know, that that was run a bit and still to a degree is, is run a bit along underworld lines, you know with these sorts of shady syndicates all over the country. And, and over time that changed with the WWF and WE but still very dangerous for the guys involved. Obviously Hulk Hogan just passed away and, you know, kind of. And embodied it shifting from like a carnival thing to big business. But so I remember an outgrowth of that was the former boss of the WWE e Vince McMahon, it’s not well remembered, was prosecuted by the federal government. For trafficking steroids. And they, it really was prosecuted like a mob case where they got a doctor to flip who was [00:06:00] supplying the, you know, whatever he wanted and shipping it across the country. So. I got into this bizarre story of a stabbing of an NBA player and the, the police subsequently breaking another. This was in New York, subsequently breaking another NBA player’s leg with a baton. So I just started to drift towards crime. And then a few years ago, I wrote a story for Chicago Magazine. That was the history of the life of Kento, who I, I thought was just a, yeah. Fascinating figure, and I couldn’t believe no one had done a deep dive on him. So I, I did that and and here I am today, now doing, now doing a lesser version of your podcast. Well, I’m sure it’ll be good. You’re gonna have high production values. I can see that already better than I had, especially when I first started. They’re a little bit better now, but they’re still not really. Good high production values. Well let, before we get into Ken Etto, let’s talk about you. You mentioned you had a personal connection to the mob, your father, and something happened when Yeah. Where’d you grow [00:07:00] up and, yeah, because you’re not from Chicago, that’s not a Chicago accent, I know that. No, that’s right. And yeah, so I grew up on Long Island in New York originally, which, you know, I was born in 1987, so I was just at the time that the mob was starting to get into trouble on Long Island because. At the time, I, I was a kid there. They were still very much in control, but the commission trial had happened. These, I grew up with all the, the John Gotti trials and, and obviously Long Island was very important, particularly to the Lucchese family for garbage and, and sanitation. And so my father was a telephone lineman for telephone splicer, excuse me. He would get irate if I said lineman. He was a splicer for the phone company for first Belan and then Verizon Ninex. But, so he had this very interesting thing of he would go out to these neighborhoods on Long Island that were. Mob neighborhoods where they all lived, like bedroom communities for the mob. A

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins sits down with journalist and author Rich Gazarik to explore a little-known corner of mob history—one that ties the Pittsburgh Mafia to Fidel Castro, stolen guns, and even the Kennedy assassination. Rich’s latest book, Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia, shines a spotlight on Sam Mannarino, a Pittsburgh mob captain under boss John LaRocca, who hatched a wild plan in the early 1960s: supply Fidel Castro with hundreds of stolen weapons in hopes of carving out a piece of Cuba’s casino action. The scheme included an audacious plot to rip off 300 rifles from a National Guard armory in Ohio—an operation that quickly unraveled into chaos. From there, the conversation broadens into the Pittsburgh mob’s stranglehold on its city, including political corruption, bribery, and intimidation that reached into the mayor’s office and the police department. Rich recounts how Mannarino and his crew maintained a façade of respectability while ruling through violence and fear, leaving a lasting mark on Pittsburgh’s civic life. Drawing on decades of investigative journalism and declassified JFK assassination files, Rich also connects the dots between the Pittsburgh Mafia and broader mob influence in the 1960s. We discuss how figures like Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante emerged in congressional investigations, feeding speculation that the Mafia’s reach extended into Dallas on November 22, 1963. This episode uncovers a forgotten piece of organized crime history where local corruption, mob ambition, and Cold War politics collided. If you want to understand how Pittsburgh’s underworld tied into national events, you won’t want to miss this deep dive with Rich Gazarik. And get his book Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia here. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, this is Gary Jenkins, [0:02] retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. I’m here in the studio of Gangland Wire, and I have a story that is kind of topical right now because there’s a movie being made about November 1963. And this isn’t exactly about Kennedy assassination, but it’s all around the Kennedy assassination. And it’s about mob guys having connections down in Cuba and with Castro and out of Pittsburgh of all places. Now, go figure that. You know, I always think of Tropicante down in Tampa, and you’ve got Marcello down in New Orleans. You’ve got Ardo up in Chicago, and you always think of them, Giancana, having those connections. Well, there was a Pittsburgh guy named Sam Mannarino who had extensive connections down in Cuba. So welcome, Rich Gazarek. [0:51] Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Good to have you. Rich, tell the guys the name of your book. I don’t have to. I’d have to lean over here and read it. It’s a little bit long. So tell the guys the name of your book and a little bit about what it’s about. It’s called Gun Smuggling, Castro, and the Pittsburgh Mafia. And it was a faction of the Pittsburgh Mafia. [1:11] John LaRocco was the godfather of the Pittsburgh Mom. Sam Mannarino was one of his captains. And Mannarino and his brother Kelly had a casino in Cuba, San Suu Kyi, outside of Havana. And they didn’t do very well with it and they eventually sold it. And at the time, Fulgincia Batista was getting a little bit greedy and he was on the outs with some of the mobsters because he wanted a bigger cut. And Sam Mannarino was wondering, what if I helped Castro in his revolution? Do you think he would. [1:51] Benefit? And do you think he would be gracious and maybe reward me with some influence in the gambling industry? And he had a longtime gambler friend who was managing by the name of Norman Rothman. And Rothman said, hey, I think we should go with Castro. Let’s put our chips on Castro. But Sam wasn’t a very right guy. And what he didn’t realize is that Fidel Castro hated the mob as much as he hated Fulgencio Batista, and there was no chance. [2:21] But nevertheless, he wanted to try to ingratiate himself with him. So he came up with this harebrained scheme to provide Castro with guns. Mannarino went around looking for a crew to steal some weapons, so they centered on a National Guard armory in Canton, Ohio. And one night after the armory closed through the day, Somebody simply walked in, opened the door, and walked out with over 300 guns. No force break-in, no evidence of any kind of destruction. They simply must have had a key or an inside man. Put them in a van, drove off, never saw them again. They brought the guns to Kensington, Pennsylvania, which is a mob town just north of Pittsburgh. And they stored in Sam Mannarino’s son-in-law’s beer distributor. [3:19] And then they drove, now I’ll explain to you a little geography here. I was raised in that area and I was 10 years old when this happened, but I wasn’t far from New Kensington. The Allegheny River separates Allegheny County from Westmoreland County. So I lived on the Allegheny County side and I spent my misspent youth in New Kensington in pool halls and gowls. Half-hour’s costs. So let me ask you a question a little bit about this now. John LaRocca, he was like the godfather of this entire area, really, even down in West Virginia. He was into eastern Ohio, all of western Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia. Yeah, but he was not involved. I just want to make it clear. He was not involved in this. This was one of Sam’s, one of his many harebrained schemes, and he was on his own. Sam and Kelly Montarino, they ran this New Kensington area, which I hear you describe was a little bit like East St. Louis or Kansas. You got the main big city, but then you got the seedy side of town. That’s what I hear you describe, like Cicero to Chicago. Right, exactly. And it was big. I mean, New Kensington in its heyday had gambling casinos throughout the town, houses of prostitution. But one of the things that was interesting was It’s. [4:42] Alcoa was headquartered in New Kensington for a number of decades now. Yeah. And as long as Alcoa prospered, the mafia prospered. They made a ton of money because they had bookies on the shop floor at Alcoa every day up until noon collecting bets. So they were both intertwined a lot. And that’s part of the theme of the book is that the interconnection between the mafia and Alcoa. Because when Alcoa eventually left in the early 70s, the mob died. It just stopped, became the town. The FBI wasn’t even that interested in it anymore. And they had spent a lot of time investigating the Manorinos. So they get this group together and they steal the guns. And then they brought them over across the river, Allegheny River, into Allegheny County. And it’s funny because I lived close when I was a boy. It was 10. I lived close to that airport. I remember reading the papers. It was big news to get this thing to come in. And they make all these arrests, all set for San Mannarino. They got all these people. In the woods was the state police, customs, and border patrol agents. [5:56] They were waiting for the guns to come. So the guns come. They’re loaded on the plane. And just as they’re about to move in on them, the plane takes off. [6:06] Now, it was overweight. didn’t have a full tank of gas. So what they did was the pilot decided he was going to scoot down to Morgantown, West Virginia to refuel. [6:17] Border Patrol called the West Virginia State Police and they were waiting for the plane. And then the Border Patrol commandeered the plane and flew down and helped make the arrest. So everybody thought, well, this is it. It’s done. But it turns out there was a lot more to it. Sam wanted to continue to buy weapons for Castro, but he needed a way to finance it. [6:44] So he turned to his mafia brothers in Canada. They went up to Brockville, Ontario, and got a crew, and they broke into a bank and stole over $12 million. [6:58] Now, part of that haul was over $2 million in bearer bonds. And they thought, you know, we can use this as collateral. So Sam sent one of his colleagues to Switzerland, and he goes to this bank and said, we want to borrow some money, and we’re going to use these bonds as collateral. Well, the bankers got a little suspicious. They looked at the bonds, and the edges of the paper were singed from fire from when these guys broke into the vault and used settling torches to get the boxes open. So, they called the Swiss police, the Swiss police called the Interpol, Interpol called the Mounties in Canada, and the Mounties called the FBI. And we have this international intrigue going on with Mannarino’s people meeting [7:52] Castro’s agents in Italy to pass the bonds to him. Of course, at the end, Sam and all his colleagues got arrested in the United States for possession of those bonds. They didn’t get arrested for breaking into it because they weren’t in Canada at the time, but they did get arrested for possessing those stolen securities. [8:12] So they went to trial in Chicago, and Sam’s luck held out, and all but one guy was acquitted, and he walked on it. By that time, John LaRocca was fed up, and so was Kelly, his brother, who fed up with the publicity that Sam was generating, and it kind of retired and put him on the shelf, so to speak. And Sam started talking to the FBI Having these long conversations. [8:39] And at one point When I was going through these FBI records I started looking

In this gripping episode of Gangland Wire, retired intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Jonathan Dyer to explore one of the most complex and dangerous figures in Mafia history—Greg Scarpa, the Colombo family enforcer known as The Grim Reaper. Dyer, whose career spans military intelligence, law, and education, brings deep insight into Scarpa’s remarkable—and chilling—dual role as both a ruthless mob killer and a prized FBI top echelon informant. Together, Gary and Jonathan unpack the moral ambiguities, betrayals, and calculated violence that defined Scarpa’s career in the turbulent world of organized crime. Listeners will hear: How Scarpa balanced loyalty to the mob with his covert cooperation with the FBI.   The structured, almost corporate way his crew operated—and how he enforced discipline with fear and bloodshed. The darker corners of his personal life, including family ties, marriages, and the impact of his choices on his children. The violent episodes, such as the murder of Mary Bari, underscore his brutality and the Mafia’s code of protection. From Cold War–era law enforcement collusion to the inner workings of New York’s underworld, this episode reveals how Scarpa manipulated both sides of the law to maintain power. Jonathan Dyer’s latest book, Greg Scarpa: Legendary Evil, offers the foundation for a conversation that will leave you questioning where law enforcement ends and organized crime begins. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of [0:03] Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, an entire Kansas City, Missouri police detective. Worked at the Organized Crime Unit or the Intelligence Unit for many years. And now I’ve got a podcast and we’re all about the organized crime. As you guys know, all you regular guys and for new people, it’s all about organized crime, particularly the Italian mafia in the United States. Now, I have an author here today, Jonathan Dyer. And Jonathan, I really am excited about having you on here because you have a different take about a much cussed and discussed subject or person, Gregory the Grim Reaper Scarpa. So welcome, Jonathan. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background. Where’d you come from other than Marshall? We found out we have similar backgrounds, Marshall, Missouri, rural Missouri, farm life and Kansas City. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself. Well, in 1981, Gary, I joined the Army and spent about a year and a half in Monterey Defense Language Institute learning Russian. [1:10] After that, I went to Goodfellow Air Force Base for some cryptologic training. And then after that, I went to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade for some more training and then shipped overseas to Berlin for three years trying to keep tabs on the Soviet Army during the Cold War. After the Army, I entered law school at UC Davis in California. And after law school, I practiced law for about 10 years as a civil litigator. And then in 1999, I switched careers and became a teacher and taught government and U.S. History and criminal law and retired during the pandemic. And now I live in central Texas. Interesting. [1:52] This is off the subject a little bit, but I’ve always been curious about that language school. FBI agents go to that and military people go to it. I have tried to learn Spanish. You know, I’m a pretty good tourist. I’ve tried to learn French most recently. I haven’t been there yet after I’ve worked on it with Duolingo, the new app to help you learn a language. But it’s so hard to learn a foreign language. It is so hard. Do they have some tricks or techniques? I mean, did you really learn to converse in Russian or were you just like, you know, able to order a pizza or something? Well, the basic course in the Russian, at least back in the early 1980s, was 47 weeks long. And Gary, they’ve been at it for a while. So I think they have a pretty good plan. And it’s intense. You’re in a classroom six hours a day, and then you have about two or three hours of homework at night. So you’re not just like I would do now, just kind of dabbling in it a little bit, looking at the sticks. And then after that first year, and it’s going to sound like I’m patting myself on the back here, but I don’t mean to do that. If you do well, you can take another six months right away. And at the end of that year and a half, I was certainly conversant in Russian. I was reading Russian. It was a good deal of fluency. [3:16] But I haven’t really worked on it since then. So, frankly, it’s mostly disappeared. But I think it’s back in there somewhere. And if I needed to call up on it, I think I could bring it up. It would be if you went into a conversation with somebody who was a Russian speaker only, I guarantee, uh, you would slip back into it pretty shortly if you went to Russia. Now, was that full immersion? Did you like, we’re not allowed to speak English any other time and didn’t, you weren’t with any other English speakers or were they that rigorous? [3:45] No, it wasn’t. I mean, particularly in the beginning, there’s no way to exist or survive without being able to speak English. And there was the classroom work in that second six months that I talked about was entirely in Russian, except for the military portion of it. We had some military senior NCOs who were also our instructors and they would flip back and forth between English and Russian. But our teachers in general were native Russian speakers. And again, during that last six months of the year and a half of training, it was, at least in the classroom, exclusively in Russian. Yeah. Wow. In order to pick up the nuances, if you’re doing an overhear or looking at documents or whatever, in order to pick up the nuances of the country, if you will, that’s another thing. You really have to know the language well. [4:48] Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I’ve heard that indicates fluency is if you understand the sense of humor of a foreign language. And I think I got to that point. Oh, we’re good. And certainly the Russian sense of humor is different from the American sense of humor, but, um, again, um, not really doing much with it since my discharge from the army. Uh, even that I think is probably, uh. [5:14] Difficult to access at this point to be fine. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I just, uh, sorry to digress guys, but I just always found this fascinating learning a foreign language. I’ve always found that fascinating as hell. I went to Mexico and I spent two weeks living with a family down there. And that was the, that’s why I asked that question. That was a rule. You were not supposed to speak English and they were not supposed to speak English with you. Although we, we had to cheat a little bit, but it was true. It’s hard boy, but that full immersion, uh, that, That’ll really amp up your ability to speak. Yeah, there’s a very steep learning curve, and that’ll do it. Jonathan Dyer is the author of 12 books, including six on Cold War espionage, a thriller series, The Nick Temple Files, which sounds interesting as hell. So, guys, I’ll have a link to his author page on Amazon in order to find some of these other books that he’s written. And it sounds like you’ve got a little inside track on the espionage thriller genre for what you did for a living, kind of like Ian Fleming and his James Bond series. Right. [6:22] But what we’re here today to talk about is organized crime in the mafia. Jonathan wrote a book called Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil. Now, a lot of you guys know Greg Scarpa. Greg Scarpa. There’s our man himself, the many faces of mafia killer. And I guess my first question would be, he’s been covered quite a little bit. And I was reading your book and you really have some interesting takes on this guy. But what got you interested in Greg Scarpa? Well, a writing partner and I were working on some scripts for a possible streaming series. And it was about the Brooklyn Mafia during the late 1970s and into the 1980s. And of course, Scarpa was the main character in that whole drama. And so my writing partner suggested I write a Scarpa biography. And at first I said, no, thanks. I’ve written fiction and I hadn’t written a book-length piece of nonfiction. You know, in graduate school, law school, you write nonfiction, but nothing like this. And he kept pushing, gently but pushing, and finally I relented and said, okay, I’ll do it, and started researching it. And that’s how I got to writing a biography of Scarlett. [7:46] What did you find about Scarpa that, you know, why would his story be of interest in 2025? [7:55] Yeah, I think the duality of Scarpa’s nature, the fact that he was both a mafia good fellow and at times a capo and also an FBI informant is just absolutely fascinating. You know, the stories about law enforcement and the mafia sometimes are very, they’re intertwined as law enforcement attempts to get a handle on the mafia. And sometimes there’s a closeness between them that is fascinating. And that’s certainly the case with Scarpa and his 25 out of 30 years being a top echelon criminal informant to the FBI. So I think that’s fascinating for people. And his personal life is fascinating, too. Yeah, it is. It is really fascinating. And there’s been so much that’s come out about him. It’s amazing. You know, another thing I found re

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with Keith Grounsell, a veteran lawman whose career spanned patrol, specialized units, and high-stakes undercover work with the DEA. Keith takes us inside the hidden world of narcotics investigations, sharing stories that reveal both the danger and the human toll of living a double life. We talk about how Keith’s upbringing as the son of a Marine pushed him toward public service, and how his path eventually led him into the shadowy world of drug traffickers. He recalls the adrenaline of undercover drug deals, the razor’s-edge risks, and the constant challenge of protecting his cover while keeping his integrity as a cop intact. Keith also reflects on the strain this life put on his family and the psychological pressure of staying in character for months at a time. His advice to new officers is candid and practical—emphasizing the need for physical fitness, community ties, and strong mental health to survive the demands of the job. Our conversation widens to the broader impact of drug trafficking on crime and communities, and the need for law enforcement to adapt to ever-changing threats. Keith also shares his writing journey, a four-book series titled Narc’s Tale, which chronicles his undercover assignments and the lessons he carried forward. This episode offers both gripping stories from the field and a rare inside look at the toll—and the nobility—of narcotics enforcement. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here 0:04 Welcome to Gangland Wire 1:07 Becoming a Police Officer 3:33 Life as an Undercover Agent 6:08 Tales from the Trenches 8:41 The Depths of Undercover Work 12:39 Surviving Dangerous Encounters 16:29 The Art of Blending In 21:06 The Challenges of Undercover Props 25:58 Navigating the Drug Underworld 28:14 Building Trust in Dangerous Situations 33:58 The High Stakes of Undercover Operations 36:58 Major Drug Busts in Kansas 42:08 Lessons from the Cartel 45:27 Advice for Young Law Enforcement 48:29 Writing and Reflection in Law Enforcement [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio at Gangland [0:02] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I am a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective, as most of you know, because I’ve got a lot of regular listeners. And those that don’t know, that’s who I am. And I have another copper here with me today. I’ve got Keith Grounsel. Keith, welcome. Hey, Gary. Thanks for having me on the show. I’ll tell you what, Keith. I love talking to and interviewing, but then our conversations before and after talking to these other coppers that have worked around the country. It’s always fun. We talk the same language, I’ve noticed. And that’s around the world, too. I haven’t worked internationally. We’re a universal group of people that always collaborate together and get along in different environments. Yeah. And then we start telling stories and it really gets good. [0:49] That’s right. But we can’t record all those stories. So we don’t want to record some. We don’t want to record. All right, Keith. Now you became a cop, you know, where are you from originally? [1:04] And then what, what, what made you think that you wanted to be a police officer? Me, I wanted to be a cowboy. [1:10] And so that was a close job to being a cowboy. So how about you? Yes. It’s kind of funny. My dad was a United States Marine, 22 years. So I was raised by a career Marine. I was actually born in Beaufort, South Carolina at Parris Island at the Beaufort Naval Hospital there. And so I always knew I wanted to do some sort of service. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. I either wanted to go in the military, in the United States Marines, or do something else. And then I saw law enforcement probably around middle school when I really got interested in law enforcement and ended up going to college on a soccer scholarship, majored in sociology and criminal justice and got a job in law enforcement just in my local town right there and just fell in love with it and kind of found a knack in my career for going after drug traffickers. That was kind of my thing. More local level, not traffickers as a rookie cop, more just local bust and some occasional dealers and users and things like that. I really found it was giving me a natural high chasing them. It’s like hunting humans. And I was like, man, this is what I want to do right here. So I emphasized that and I studied my tail off. I learned a lot about drug dealers, drug trafficking, drug users. And I led the department for a couple of two of the last three years in the first department in drug arrest. [2:29] So I went from there and transferred to a much larger agency, one of the top largest agencies in the state of South Carolina in Greenville, South Carolina. And it was pretty much day one orientation. They yanked me out of orientation. I take me to the captain’s office, say, from now on, you’re not allowed to associate with police officers. Now, granted, I’ve been a cop three years at this time. [2:51] And you need to work in the vice narcotics unit. You’re going to report it this time. This is your sergeant. This is who your supervisor is and just go with them. And I had some older gentlemen in there that kind of took me under his wing and a female that worked undercover and another undercover. And they taught me the ropes, man. It was trial by fire. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I made a lot of mistakes to tell you the truth. And thank God, didn’t get indicted, didn’t get in any big trouble and left there after a year, went to the sheriff’s office, much larger agency, did three years undercover there. Then I wanted to reach that pinnacle in my career, I felt, in drug enforcement. [3:30] And I worked really hard and was hired on as a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and did that. Man, I spent about a total of six years deep undercover. And that’s taxing on a family is taxing on you as an individual. And I had an opportunity to, I tried to actually. [3:49] Transfer from out where I was in Kansas with the DEA back to South Carolina, where I had a support system for my family and I couldn’t get a transfer. So I had an opportunity to do some Department of State contracting and I left the DEA and went to Afghanistan for a few years. That’s where I got into contracting. I did that for a few years, got injured in Afghanistan, came back, worked my way back up, became a chief investigator, became a chief of police, I quickly learned the political realm and fighting corruption as a chief is very tough in a small town. [4:23] I lost my job early on getting in for 14 months, came back, indicted the mayor for public corruption. He got convicted in a three day trial of two or three crimes against moral turpitude and invited invited the head of investigations for a rape and murder cover up. And he pled guilty in that and then indicted the chief of police before me for extortion and his charges were dismissed on technicality. So I went through a gamut of different things and I came back, lasted about four years total and two more years after that. And we went from number 28, number one, safest city in the entire state. We went after the drug traffickers. I trained my whole entire department in drug enforcement and community policing. And it drastically helped the community and made it a safer place. But politics rared its ugly head again and the people that weren’t indicted, they brought some people in to run to oust me as a chief and I had to go and that’s why I got back into contracting. I went to Haiti for two years I went to West Africa for a couple years. I went to India Jordan, different places like that doing contract work and then I came back became a chief again. I was glutton for that punishment. [5:33] I probably shouldn’t have done it a second time to be honest with you because I feel like i ran into the same thing i i helped the city drop 100 safety rankings in about a year period things were going really good until i uncovered some some corruption uh involving some police officers and went to deal with it and they dealt with me and it was time to go so so since that’s been about a year now now about to get go back overseas so my career has been you know a crazy career, to say the least, and I feel like I’ve lived 10 lives. [6:08] So you had a four-book series called Narc’s Tale. I do. So tell us, tell us, you know, some of your stories as an undercover. I can’t think. Absolutely. Garden City, Kansas with DEA or, or maybe you have something like, well, your early cases there when you were. Oh, absolutely. There had to be some stuff that, that, that your hair back on the back of your head standing out and, and your shit your neck for a little bit. Give it, give us some of those stories out of your book. So I felt like I was kind of blessed as a, as an undercover, especially a deep undercover. Not many deep undercovers have worked at the city level, then the county level, then the federal level. So I got to experience all of it. And I will say this as a tribute really to the local narcs. Some of the most dangerous stuff that I ever did was dealing with a drug addict who was selling drugs. I mean, somebody like that that is high will shoot you in the face just to get enough money to buy a crap rock. So when I was working undercover at the street level, I ended up buying from two cop killers. and I didn’t even know they were cop killers in drug h

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with veteran Chicago journalist Chuck Goudie, whose decades of reporting have made him one of Chicago’s most respected voices on organized crime. A fan of the show asked for more Chicago stories—and this conversation delivers. We dive into the legacy of the Spilotro family, sparked by the recent passing of John Spilotro, brother of the infamous Las Vegas mob figure Tony Spilotro. Chuck shares his reflections on how the Outfit has evolved, from its heyday of dominance in gambling, loansharking, and union racketeering to its much smaller—yet still persistent—presence today. Together, we revisit the Outfit’s historic ties to the Teamsters, the Strawman trials, and the legendary names like Anthony Accardo who shaped Chicago’s mob identity. Chuck solves a mystery and provides the name of the man who killed Sam Giancana. Chuck also offers personal insights into how mob families navigated the push and pull of blood ties, with some members rising into notoriety while others tried to lead straight lives under the shadow of organized crime. Our conversation shifts to Chuck’s recent investigative work on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, exploring the long-standing theories and mob connections that keep the story alive decades later. This episode blends history, reflection, and storytelling—offering both an inside look at Chicago’s Outfit and a reminder of why these stories still captivate us today. 1:02 The Legacy of John Drummond 4:11 Current Status of the Outfit 7:28 The Last of the Spilotro Family 10:02 Family Dynamics of the Spilotros 13:18 Frank Calabrese’s Las Vegas Fame 13:25 Giancana’s Murder Investigation and who did it 18:18 Surveillance in the Giancana Case 22:03 The Straw Man Trials 25:40 Ken Eto’s Gangland Story 27:52 Investigating Jimmy Hoffa’s Disappearance 31:03 Closing Thoughts with Chuck Goudie Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the [0:02] studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective here in Kansas City. And, you know, guys, I have, I was talking with a fan not too long ago from Chicago, I think on the, maybe the Facebook group, and he said, you need to do more Chicago stories. And I had to admit, I hadn’t done that many Chicago stories. I got caught up in New York a lot, It seemed like, and anyhow, we’re back to Chicago and another guy’s mentioned to another guy and we were talking and, and somebody said, I don’t remember who, maybe that original fan said you need to get Chuck Goudie on there. He’s been doing a lot of reporting on the outfit over the years. And I didn’t really know who Chuck was. So I started searching. He did a recent story about the death of the last spilotro brother, John spilotro. So I thought, man, this is, this is it. This is what I got to do. So welcome, Chuck Goudie from Chicago. Well, it’s quite an introduction. Some might call it a eulogy, but thankfully that’s not what he does. [1:02] Really? Now, I think I told you earlier, you know, last time I interviewed a Chicago newsman, it was John Bulldog Drummond. Bulldog Drummond, I tell you what, he was the dean of Chicago newsmen, television newsmen, when it came to reporting on the mob. There’s no doubt about it. And so I really welcome you, Chuck. You’re kind of the new modern John Drummond. Thanks, Gary, for that. I’m happy to be mentioned in the same sentence or thought with John Drummond. I had the good fortune of working kind of side by side with him, different networks in the 1980s and into the 90s when he was still at it. And he certainly did. He set the stage for mob coverage in Chicago. The outfit, as it’s known here, and John is still up and at him. And the times that I’ve spoken to him recently, we talk about the fact that on TV news in Chicago, I’m kind of the last person standing to keep track of these things. And so it’s a heavy case of documents, as we say, to carry around these days. But there’s still interest in it in Chicago. with not only the history of it, but where things stand in 2025. [2:20] Yeah, I’ve noticed that on the Facebook groups, and they’re real heavily participated in might be the right word, because a lot of comments, a lot of people know, a lot of family members of mob guys that seem like are participating. It’s true. [2:37] So you got to be careful what you say if you live up there. Kind of like that here in Kansas City. I kind of have to be careful. We got all these family members around. [2:45] That is true. Well, I’m always careful. And I do hear from people when I report on the deaths of old timers or even new guys who are trying to run the show these days. People do pay attention to it. That’s for sure. Yeah, they still got something going. What would you say, just to encapsulate what the outfit is today in Chicago? [3:09] Well, there is a little bit of a range as to what the outfit status is these days, depending on who you talk to. The FBI still contends that the outfit is operating, that there are people who are still in positions of power, and that the street crews are still in place as they were even 50 years ago. Everybody seems to agree that it doesn’t have the numbers that it once did. And I think that that should be evident. Some people think there may be only 10 or 15 day-to-day active members of the Chicago mob these days. But I think most people agree that it’s in the dozens, but certainly no more than 100. And the rackets are the same, similar kinds of things. but not the amount of money trading hands these days. But they still run in the same circles. [4:07] It’s still the same rackets that we saw decades ago in Chicago. Loan sharking, prostitution, a healthy, illegal gambling business that the outfit oversees, even as gambling largely is legal here and other places these days. Some union racketeering underway still. Um, so the same kinds of things, maybe just not as potent as it once was. Interesting. [4:36] So speaking of the union racketeering now, let’s go back into history a little bit. You were in Kansas City during the straw man trials when that’s what really, to me, it was the peak of the outfit’s national influence at that point in time. Because they owned the Teamsters and the Teamsters Pension Fund and can make all those loans. So that was quite a time, wasn’t it? Those days of straw man in Kansas City was the heyday, certainly in terms of dollars changing hands and the interconnection between the Kansas City mob, Chicago outfit, Cleveland, to some degree, New York and some organized crime families in the Northeast. And then Las Vegas, obviously, was the linchpin of it all, at least when it came to straw man. Yeah. And that’s when really Tony spilotro, his name rose to the top. It wasn’t before I have a, I listened to a wiretap where Joe Augusto was in Las Vegas is reading a newspaper to Tuffy DeLuna about, uh, that there were, somebody was writing out there and said, uh, spilotro and Aiuppa moving West. And Nick Civella in the background says, oh, God. [5:54] Well, as you know, there’s a body of thought that Tony spilotro basically engineered his own demise by the way he operated in public. And if he had just kept quiet and not been as public about it, he probably would still be around today. So we’re into the spilotro family. Yeah. The demise of the spilotro family. That’s John spilotro. I’d never heard of him. Tell the guy, and I don’t think most people have, tell us about him a little bit. I had never heard of John spilotro either. I probably saw him on a list of spilotro family members years ago, but he wasn’t a major player. He certainly kept the quietest of all the Spalatros, certainly far more than his brother Tony did. [6:39] John spilotro lived in Vegas, Uh, apparently went out there with, uh, with the other brothers who landed in Vegas in the late seventies, early eighties. And, uh, and John spilotro kept quiet, although he was thought to be involved in, in a number of the rackets that the spilotro is most notably Tony got involved in, in the early days out there, the hole in the wall gang and other things that we’re familiar with. And so when I heard that John spilotro had died, I thought it was worth a TV news story, certainly here in Chicago. That’s a notorious family, infamous, if you will. And it was interesting to us, and I was to viewers, that this was the last of [7:25] the spilotro crime family, as we put it. And so that was the story that we did a few weeks ago after hearing John had died. Now, I believe that he ran the gold rush, which was a notorious pawn shop and jewelry place and was a notorious fence for stolen goods from all over the southwest part of the United States. So he had to know something, didn’t he? [7:52] Absolutely. And I don’t think anybody disputes that. But back then, you knew that it was Tony who was in charge of the family business and the outfit business in Las Vegas. And so he kind of fell in the line and knew his place, I think. I talked to his son shortly after he died, who was an attorney, a very well-considered, well-regarded attorney in Las Vegas, talked about his father’s death. He knows exactly what happened over the years. [8:26] It’s not a high point, especially for somebody who went to law school, is now a practicing member of the bar and knows h

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into the life of James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke. Prompted by listener Paul Blackwood of Edinburgh, Gary explores Burke’s world beyond the headlines of the Lufthansa heist. From his turbulent childhood in foster homes and orphanages to his rise as a feared and respected mobster in the Lucchese family, Burke’s story is one of violence, loyalty, and paranoia. Gary traces Burke’s early years of crime, his ties with Henry Hill and Paul Vario, and the meticulous planning of the Lufthansa heist that netted millions—and left a trail of blood in its aftermath. The episode also covers Burke’s role in gambling and drug rackets, his eventual downfall in the Boston College point-shaving scandal, and his complicated legacy in mob history. Was Jimmy the Gent a loyal operator, or a ruthless killer who trusted no one? Tune in for a gripping exploration of one of organized crime’s most enigmatic figures. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here 0:06 Introduction to Jimmy Burke 1:12 The Rise of Jimmy the Gent 6:19 Jimmy’s Early Life and Influences 10:25 Family Ties and Notorious Names 14:41 Criminal Ventures Begin 17:51 The Notorious Lufthansa Heist 23:57 The Boston College Scandal 30:49 Conclusion and Legacy [0:00] I had a listener named Paul Blackwood from Edinburgh, Scotland, [0:04] email me with some great compliments about the show. So thank you, Paul. Hope you’re listening to this.  I will try to remember to send you an email just before I release this one. However, Paul suggested that I do a story that focuses more specifically on Jimmy Burke, also known as Jimmy the Gent. And I looked around, and I agreed with Paul. Burke is mentioned on many podcasts because we all want to discuss the famous Lufthansa. I want to talk about Henry Hill, some of the other mob people in the Lucchese family, but it seems like I wasn’t really finding a show that was just focused on Burke. So, James, Jimmy the Gent, Burke and where he came from and where he went. [0:43] Oh, and don’t forget to hit me up on Venmo, buy me a cup of coffee once in a while, or maybe go donate on the podcast. I appreciate it. It helps pay the bills and keep me going. Now, Burke may be one of the most famous mob associates of all times, I would say. Oh, there’s some in Chicago. They had a lot of associates in Chicago. But because of, of course, Henry Hill and Robert De Niro playing him, [1:07] why, he probably would be the most famous mob guy who is not a made man. If Henry Hill had not gone into witness protection, if Henry Hill had not done that book with Nicholas Pelleggi, Wise Guys, or if the famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese hadn’t taken Wise Guys and Pellegi’s book and got Pellegi to help write a script and titled it Goodfellas. And when Robert De Niro took the part of Jimmy the Gent, his place in history was assured, I’ll tell you that, especially in mob history. In my humble opinion, this book and film were arguably the best depictions of day-to-day mob life ever that I’ve ever seen. I thought it was amazing. He did a heck of a job at the casino. [1:55] And to see the egos of these guys, once they turn, are just amazing. When Lefty Rosenthal heard Robert De Niro was going to play him, he told Pelleggio, oh yeah, I’ll work with you, I’ll work on this. And I’m not sure what brought Henry Hill around, but I got a feeling it was probably the same thing. He found out Ray Liotta was going to play his part in a movie. Really, when these guys like Pelleggio start writing a book about this, They got the huge budget and they pay these guys, you know, no telling how much money, six figures and up. Heck, they paid Frank Galatis $5,000. Just sit down and talk to them the first time for 30, 40 minutes. So when you actually start telling a person’s life story and on the big screen and in the book, why it’s worth a lot of money, it’s life changing money. I got a feeling. Now, the screenwriters in the film Goodfellas changed the name of Jimmy Burke to Jimmy Conway. there was some kickback from the family and they were wanting a piece of the action so they just changed the name. [2:54] Now, some people have claimed that, of course, this movie came out while Burke was still alive. He was in the penitentiary, and they said that he was so happy to have Robert De Niro play him that he phoned De Niro from the prison to give him a few pointers. And De Niro is pretty well known for this. He reaches out to these guys and meets them and spends a lot of time with them trying to get a feel for their character and what it would be like to be them for a while. Nicholas Pelleggi, they say, denies this, that De Niro and Burke have never spoken. But he said there were men around the set who knew Burke, and Henry Hill would have been one of them, and knew him really well and gave De Niro pointers. I kind of like the story that De Niro got a hold of Burke in a penitentiary and talked to him. [3:40] Burke was played by Donald Sutherland in another film called The Big Heist. See, everybody wants to talk about Lufthansa. I don’t know how many books there’s been written on that, several. It was a heck of a robbery. We’ll get into that a little bit later. But let’s take a look to see where Jimmy Burke came from. He was born in the Bronx, New York, so he never strayed too far from his birthplace. Like a guy, like if I’d have stayed up in Plattsburgh, Missouri, I’d have never got out of Clinton County. He was the illegitimate son to a woman named Jane Conway, who was a prostitute. He was actually an immigrant from Dublin, Ireland, so he was a real Irishman. He was the son of an immigrant directly from Ireland. The name of his father was never known. You know, the mother may not even known who the father was. At the age of two, the social services in New York City took little Jimmy Conway and put him in the first of many homes and also be in some orphan homes or whatever they, I don’t know if they call them orphan homes anymore. They call them group living situations more than likely. But a large part of his early years was spent in an orphan home ran by the Roman Catholic Church, ran by nuns. They’d say that after she gave him up at age two, he never saw her again. [4:50] Now, as with many of these throwaway kids, he was in a lot of different places, the institutions, but a lot of different foster homes. You know, these people take in kids, and some of them are good, some of them aren’t so good. They’re just doing it for the money, and some of them take them in for sexual reasons. And so he would suffer physical and sexual abuse in some of these different places. He had a pivotal event that really shaped his life at age 13. He got in an argument with a foster father while driving in a car that the man turned around to smack Burke in the back seat. And we’ve all been there, you know, don’t make me reach back there and whack you. When this guy did this, he crashed the car and he died. The deceased man’s widow blamed Burke and gave him regular beatings until he was actually taken back into social services and placed with another family. The next one, sometime after that, I don’t know if it was the one directly after that, but sometime after that, a family named Burke, which is where he ended up with this name, Burke, took him in as a foster child. And they had a, he would say later that it was a clean, comfortable and safe environment. And he loved those people. He lived out his teenage years on Rockaway Beach, close to Ocean Promenade. You guys that live in New York City and know that, you’ll know exactly where that is. And he never really strayed too far from there either, kind of across the bay just a little bit. He said Burke would never forget their kindness, and for the rest of his life, he would visit these foster parents on special occasions. And when he started making some money, he started leaving large amounts of cash [6:16] and unmarked envelopes for them periodically. [6:19] The Burke family had adopted him, so he took the family name and kept it. Some say that he buried part of the 1978 Lufthansa heist, some of the loot that was never found at the Burke house on their property. [6:32] The majority of the take from that caper has never, ever been found. One of the mysteries of that, kind of like the, not the Lindbergh money, the money from, we had a kidnapping like the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder here in Kansas City. And they paid $600,000 and they only got about half of it back. And half of it ended up with the St. Louis policeman who was working with the St. Louis mob. And some of the money ended up in Chicago later on, but they never found about $300,000 of that $600,000. Jimmy Burke got older, getting up in his upper teens and 20s in 1920. [7:07] He, of course, his trouble with the law became more serious. Age of 18, actually, in 1949, he got five years in penitentiary for forgery, and he was already working for a Colombo family member named Dominic Remo Sarsani. They had a counterfeit check ring going. I remember working some of these guys. Somebody would steal a check from a business. Somebody would get what we used to call a check protector, And then they would, on that business account, or maybe they would take one check from that business account or get a picture of it and make up a bunch of others. They might even have been totally fake checks or they might have bee

Retired Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins interviews author Robert Webster, president of the Kenton County Historical Society, about his book, The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy. Webster revisits one of America’s deadliest nightclub fires, unearthing the possible mafia ties, cover-ups, and shocking safety failures that shaped this haunting night. Robert Webster outlines the rise of the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, noting its glamorous past hosting Las Vegas–worthy shows—and its lasting link with organized crime in Northern Kentucky. The 1977 Fire and Its Devastation On May 28, 1977, the club was engulfed in flames, ultimately claiming 165 lives—making it one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history. Safety Failures and Code Violations Webster discusses staggering oversights: overcrowding far beyond legal capacity, lack of marked or accessible exits, absence of sprinklers or alarms, unsafe wiring, poor construction, and inadequate regulatory enforcement—true firetrap conditions. Unraveling the “Untold” Story What truly sets Webster’s work apart is his examination of the controversial claim that mafia operatives may have deliberately set the fire in retaliation for the owner’s refusal to cooperate—a theory supported by previously unreleased documents, crew testimonies, and survivor accounts. Investigative and Legal Aftermath The episode highlights the State’s formal review of the arson allegations, which concluded they lacked “proof,” being largely speculative. Meanwhile, Webster’s book earned him a 2013 Kentucky History Award for its contribution to the record. Click here to get this fascinating account of this devastating fire in The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] well hey, all you wire tapper’s. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a, a little bit different sort of a story. It’s it’s part mob and, and part fire protection and a huge fire that was you know, it really hit the headlines all over the United States back in the seventies. It’s Bob Webster, Bob really appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate the invitation. Looking forward to it now, Bob, you got, you got a pretty good accent. You, you got about as good an accent as I do. We’re a little bit different speaking, aren’t we? Little bit a little bit different. My New York fans and my Chicago fans I bet. And my Southern fans you know, you got that, we got that kind of Midwest twang, I guess, if you will. Exactly. Kentucky and I’m from Missouri and you know, Bob, my, my first relatives came, of course, from Virginia first, then to Kentucky, and then onto Missouri. It’s the, okay. It was the immigrant path back there in the 18 hundreds, and I got a ton of them that some of ’em are still down there actually from they came here in the [00:01:00] 1860s, just before the Civil War. They came to Missouri, but okay, but deep roots there in Kentucky. Oh, guys, the, the book is inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club, the untold story behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy, and it happened in May 28th, 1977 as the Supper Club right along the Ohio River. And Bob is from that area and he does a lot of local history down there. And Bob, you’ve got other books out there, correct? I do, I’m working on number eight right now. Beverly Hills is certainly the most popular, but I’ve written books on other local history topics. I also have sort of a textbook out that’s covers the, just a generalization of of history of Northern Kentucky came out about four years ago and just finished a historical fiction book. I, a lot of my, counterparts kind of teased me for writing a partly fiction book, but it’s based on a true story. So I can get by with it, but certainly almost everything that I write is nonfiction, just the facts. Yeah. And this is totally [00:02:00] nonfiction, correct? Oh, absolutely. I looked at it well, researched, searched, and everything’s documented. There’s end notes for every chapter. It’s, yeah, I could tell. So yeah, and I understand that right in historical fiction because. Can, you can make it more of an entertaining read, and you can tie things together that nobody knows, with a little literary or poetic license, if you will. And it does make it a little more entertaining to read sometimes. Yeah. Broaden out your audience somewhat, which we’re always trying to broaden our audience, aren’t we? Yeah. Like I said, it’s based on a true story here locally, one of the neighboring counties, it’s interesting that I’ve had several people contact me and say, I, I know what you’re really talking about. I know this, I know the real story you’re talking about. We don’t wanna be sued. They know the truth part of everything, now, what is that historical fiction about? Is it a Kentucky crime? It’s actually a murder mystery based on my own family. You know, I mentioned off camera that my first book was a family history [00:03:00] project, about 700 pages. So it was well in depth, but, you start researching things and almost every family runs into something that they were, not aware of. I ran into a murder. The more I read in the newspaper, I’m like, this doesn’t sound like it really happened this way. This, this something else must be going on. So I did some research and said, this would make a really interesting book. I’d have to change some names and some facts and things. But it’s called Ellison Station and it’s based on a little town in Grant County. And it’s gone over real well. Oh, well. Great, great. Well, let’s get back to the book at hand and back to the Mafia. ’cause the mafia had a big part in getting this started or organized crime. Out of I believe it was Cleveland, or was it Cincinnati? Oh, the yeah, the actually Newport, Kentucky right on the, we’re right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay. They have some. Gambling and illegal activity that dates all the way back before [00:04:00] 1800. But the Volted Act with illegal alcohol peach, mit, Jimmy Brink, buck Brady, some of the well-known names here locally started the bootlegging operation. But, that’s when the mafia really moved into the area. Originally from Detroit, they were part of the little Jewish Navy. But Frank Milano I, I pronounce it mo Delete, D-A-L-I-T-Z. Came down and, and he formed what they called the Cleveland four. So it was Mo and Sam Tucker and Morris Kleinman and Lou Rothko. And the early 1930s, mid 1930s, they moved in, pretty much, took over Newport took over part of Cincinnati, some of the other areas as well. But they really took over northern Kentucky, and the police and everyone down in Frankfort didn’t seem to pay any attention to what was going on way up here in northern Kentucky. They just consider us part of Cincinnati, I suppose. But they moved in and basically torched a lot of [00:05:00] the owners of the clubs back then with the same philosophy either. Sell us your club and we’ll keep you on as a manager and pay you a little bit of a, a stippen or we’re you’re gonna be outta business. And most of ’em most of the club owners took heed and, and sold their clubs. But there were a couple of people Glen Schmidt or Peach mit who owned the Glen Hotel in Newport said, no, he’s not gonna be bought out. They burned him out too. Mm-hmm. But he moved out of town just a few miles to what, what is now Southgate, Kentucky. And he reopened what was the king castle. It was it had been vacant for a few years, but he figured he, he’d let the mob have Newport and he was gonna open up his club there in Southgate. But on February 3rd, 1936, the mob burned his place down again. And it would’ve gone unnoticed like all the other fires that had been going on for the last four or five [00:06:00] years. But there was a little 5-year-old girl who was the niece of the caretaker of the property, and she was killed in that fire. So there was an investigation and several of the mobsters went to jail Masterson, who was probably the mastermind, we think. Got away scot free. But bottom line is he was able to rebuild the club there. He renamed it the Beverly Hills Club, then it became the Beverly Hills Country Club. Mm-hmm. This is before the summer club era. But the mob didn’t give up. They they moved in started harassing customers. They robbed the payroll a couple of times. They also performed what was called ding Doning. I don’t know if. If you’ve heard of that. But they would send four or five of their henchmen into the lobby of this Glen hotel, and they would just urinate on the floor. They would do that every day. And he finally said, okay, I give up. And he sold the place to the mob. So by 1940 [00:07:00] 1938 to 1942, there were over 30. Illegal gambling casinos in northern Kentucky, all operated by the Cleveland syndicate. Yeah, that’s mo d was, he, he was quite a mover and shaker. It’s kind of interesting. He ends up being a a sterling citizen giving back to charity and everything out in Las Vegas. But yeah, those four guys you mentioned, those four Jewish guys, that Jewish cabal, if you will. Maybe not the best word, but, but cartel that started that they’re gonna end up starting Las Vegas basically, but they absolutely right here in this Beverly Hills Country Club, if I remember right. Yeah, they absolutely. Is that what you would call carpet joint back then? Is that wha

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with writer and mob historian Stone Wallace—a man whose path has crossed acting, broadcasting, boxing, and a lifelong fascination with organized crime. The focus of today’s conversation is Stone Wallace’s latest book, Hollywood and the Chicago Boys, which uncovers how the Chicago Outfit quietly moved in on Hollywood in the 1930s. With Prohibition fading, figures like Frank Nitti and Tony Accardo shifted their sights to new rackets in film unions, projection booths, and studio lots. Stone Wallace’s obsession with the mob began at age seven with a library book on the 1920s. It lit a fire that would eventually lead Wallace to explore the violent glamour of the underworld in both fiction and nonfiction. Stone Wallace shares how he created the fictional studio boss Sam Bast, modeled after several real-life moguls, and how mob-connected actors like George Raft blurred the lines between movie star and made man. From behind-the-scenes extortion to real-life gangland enforcers like Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, this episode connects the dots between celluloid dreams and street-level muscle. Stone Wallace’s Amazon author page. 🔍 Highlights: Why Frank Nitti saw Hollywood as the Outfit’s next goldmine The real mob ties of actor George Raft The creation of Sam Bast, a fictional composite of Hollywood studio heads Extortion in the projectionist booths and labor unions Mobster myths vs. brutal realities—how fiction reflects fact 📚 Featured Book: Hollywood and the Chicago Boys by Stone Wallace — a hardboiled blend of true crime and noir fiction 🎬 Notable Names Discussed: Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, George Raft, Jack McGurn, Sam Giancana 💬 Quote of the Episode: “Hollywood wasn’t just glitz and cameras. It was a new racket—and the Outfit wanted in.” 0:02 Introduction to the Underworld 1:25 Early Fascination with the Mob 2:29 Hollywood and the Chicago Boys 5:34 The Allure of George Raft 7:22 Researching the Mob’s Hollywood Infiltration 12:05 The Role of Unions in the Mob 14:51 Tony Accardo: The Complex Character 17:05 The Impact of the Mob on Society 23:04 Writing Westerns and a Modern Sheriff 25:43 Upcoming Films and Future Projects Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, worked a mob in Kansas City for, I don’t know, 14, 15 years. And now in retirement, I am still investigating the mob. So, you know, I interviewed different authors who’ve written mob books, and I’ve got one on the line right now, Stone Wallace. Stone Wallace, he’s been an actor, a broadcast announcer, a boxer, a celebrity interviewer himself. I’ve interviewed a couple of celebrities No big ones But a creative writing guy Media instructor Written advertising. [0:38] For different companies And he really started out writing westerns If I remember right Oh yeah He wrote stories If you ever read Louis L’Amour Which I did when I was young He wrote those kinds of stories But later he got into the mob So Stonewallis, welcome Thank you very much, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be here speaking with you on your broadcast. Well, it’s great to have you on. Tell the guys a little bit about your life, anything you would want them to know about you. Well, I suppose the most important thing would be that I’ve always had an interest in the underworld, and it started at a very young age. I was about seven years old or so when I was visiting my aunt, [1:21] and she had a library book there about the 1920s. And I was sitting there, I kind of flipped through the pages and I came to the section about the underworld, especially the Chicago underworld. [1:33] And I don’t know what it was, but something pretty much clicked at that point. And I just found it incredibly fascinating. And it just kind of stayed with me. And to this day, it has never actually left me. I’ve been fascinated by the mob, especially the Chicago underworld. And I’ve done a lot of research into it. In fact, when I was in grade three, our teacher asked us to write a little short essay about, you know, an important historical figure. And I chose Al Capone, which raised a few eyebrows at that time. But that’s how I went. And it just pretty much grew from there. And I became a fan of the old TV series, The Untouchables, and was fortunate later on in life to interview Robert Stack. And it just grew from there. It’s never gone away. I’ve always been just totally fascinated by historical mobsters. Well, interesting. And your book that we’re going to talk about that has just [2:27] come out is Hollywood and the Chicago Boys. I know a little bit about that story. These guys, they went out and they extorted the heck out of those film studios out there. They made a lot of money through the unions and then… After the unions, of course, the union extortion can then lead into extorting the employers. That’s what they did. And they, you know, they knew how to do that in Chicago. But first, you wrote a book about George Raft, the man who would be Bogart. Now, George Raft is, I mean, he had his own real mafia background. [3:03] So tell us a little bit about George Raft. Well, I became interested in George Raft back in 1972 when I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle in Chicago. [3:12] And they were playing a couple of George Raft movies. We never got them here in Winnipeg. They didn’t really play those kind of films here too much. But they played each Don I Die, and I forget the other picture, but each Don I Die in particular really just captivated me. I know who James Cagney was and I always admired him. But there was something about George Raft in this film, the strength and the presence that he had, that I just became instantly fascinated with him and began researching his life and his career and finding out he was a very interesting fellow. He did have underworld connections. In fact, that helped bring him to Hollywood back in the 1930s through working with Oney Madden, the bootlegger. But James Cagney, I think, summed it up best about George Raft. He said, George Raft was of the underworld, but he wasn’t in the underworld. I believe he was in the fringes because he did help Oney Madden deliver liquor during Prohibition, but he was never actually, you know, a tough guy gangster type, although that’s what he became famous for in movies, and plus his friendships with people like Oney Madden, and particularly Bugsy Siegel. Yeah, that would have happened out there in Hollywood, for sure, because Siegel had a lot of connections out there before his life was ended in Hollywood, and I read something about where Madden is the one that really suggested that he try his luck in the movies and bankrolled him a little bit until he got a break, which is important. [4:35] So that’s the heck of a story on George Rappings. The real gangster who became a movie star. These guys all want to become movie stars. We’ve got one in Kansas City, kind of like to become a movie star, but he did it. Well, Bugsy Siegel, Bugsy Siegel as well, apparently had aspirations to get into film work, according to George Raft. [4:55] He bought motion picture equipment and apparently had George make some footage of him doing various roles. I’d love to see those films. I don’t know if they even exist anymore, But he had aspirations to be a film star, I guess, based on his friendship with George. Well, if you can act, I can act too. But unfortunately, or fortunately, that never came to be. Yeah, I think we all think, well, that acting looks so easy. Anybody could do it. But believe me, nobody can do it except the people who are blessed with that talent, in my opinion. [5:30] Well, George Raft, don’t forget, basically, he was always criticized for his acting. They said he was very wooden. He didn’t show a lot of emotion, but he basically played himself. I mean, you look at someone like Humphrey Bogart, he could vary his characterizations from playing a tough guy in the Petrified Forest to doing Treasure of Sierra Madre, the Maltese Falcon, the African Queen. George Raft’s films basically had him playing the same character, whether it was a gangster or a hero or a working man. The George Raft personality always seemed to come through in those roles. [6:04] Interesting. Interesting. So talking about Hollywood, let’s start talking about Hollywood and Chicago boys. How’d you get in? How’d you do your research? I know this is actually a historical fiction, but it’s based on real people and real facts. So tell us about doing the research on this and what you learned. Well, again, my interest in Chicago and Hollywood, I love old movies and stuff like that, and of course with my interest in your draft. I wanted to write a book that was like a fact fiction dealing with the Chicago mob moving into attempting to take over the Hollywood unions after Capone went away because Prohibition came to an end, and that was their most lucrative source of income. So, you know, Frank Nitti and Cardo and Paul Rica, they wanted to look into new areas to expand their rackets and started off with the theater owners in Chicago, but they decided to go beyond that, go right to the source. So in my book, what they do is

In this episode, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence detective, Gary Jenkins, interviews Gary Clemente, who offers profound insights drawn from his father’s legacy as a pioneering FBI agent in the fight against organized crime. Gary recounts his father’s pivotal role during the 1957 Appalachian mob conclave, detailing his unique rapport with notorious figures like Carlo Gambino and the psychological dynamics of engaging with mobsters such as Tommy Greco. We explore the complexities of mob family structures across the U.S. and how Peter Clemente’s fluency in Sicilian and understanding of criminal culture enriched FBI operations. Gary shares stories from his father’s extensive writings, promising future revelations about their historical battle against organized crime and the impact of these narratives on American history. 0:07 Introduction to Gary Clemente 2:45 Peter Clemente’s Unique FBI Career 8:32 Encounter with Tommy Greco 12:50 The Threats of the Mafia 17:04 Respect Among Mobsters 24:00 The Mafia’s Structure and Connections 29:48 Stolen Goods and Local Crime 32:47 Nicola Gentile’s Memoirs 35:13 Hoover and the FBI’s Golden Era Get Gary Clement’s book: Untold Mafia Tales From the FBI’s Top Hoodlum Squad Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:07]Introduction to Gary Clemente [0:02]Wire. I have a guest who has been on before, Gary Clemente. Now, Gary Clemente’s dad was Peter Clemente, and he was one of the first members of the Top Hoodlum Squad in New York City and the first Sicilian FBI agent, I believe, that was assigned to the FBI anyhow. So, Gary, welcome. Thank you for having me back, Gary. Appreciate it. Long time no see. Yeah, really. Now, we talked about his investigation of Carlo Gambino before, and he was all over Carlo Gambino, and the Gambino squad even went down to Florida and ran some wires on him or hidden microphone down in Florida. Done. It was a pretty interesting story. So tell the guys a little bit, remind us a little bit about your father and what he was so unusual in that way. He was from Sicily, I believe, and spoke Sicilian, but was also attached to the Top Hoodlum Squad. So tell us about him. Exactly. Well, again, thanks for having me on, Gary. It’s an honor to be on your program. You You’ve got a lot of great information. You’ve got a lot of mob guys on there. You’re killing it on this program. No pun intended. Thank you. We like to kill it. [1:24]Kill it, but not really kill it. Yeah, really. I can’t do the crime. I can’t do the time. You know what Beretta said. If you can’t do the crime, don’t do the time. Well, I can’t do the time, so I don’t really physically kill it. But anyhow, thank you. Well, my pop was Peter C. Clemente, and he was a special agent with the FBI from 1950 to 1976. And in the early part of his career, he was doing security background checks to see if people were trying to get positions in the federal government that were very sensitive and whether they were members of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Workers Party. So then 1957 comes around and they have the Appalachian mob conclave with all the top mobsters that were there that got together. Many of the big shots were there. Gambino was there, Genovese, Profaci, all the big shots were there. There were about 60 or so of them. And when that happened, when that got revealed, my father heard about it. The FBI started to put together a top hoodlum program. And every city would have its own top hoodlum squad. My father was in the New York office at that time. He wanted to be part of the New York. [2:45]Peter Clemente’s Unique FBI Career [2:46]Top hoodlum squad so he put him for transfer into that squad because he said look i speak sicilian i wasn’t born in sicily my parents were born there my grandparents were born there but i speak the language and i could deal with these people well i was very attractive to the bureau at that time because they did not have that many sicilian speaking yeah fbi agents so he became a part of the top of the squad, and proceeded to investigate all of these mobsters. Some of the first things he did was he did the first ever summary reports about people like Carlo Gambino and even Meyer Lansky. Meyer Lansky was not a part of the mafia, technically speaking, but he was a big associate. He helped to make a lot of money for them. So he did the first government summaries for them. Eventually, my father became the first one ever to do a face-to-face interview with Carlo Gambino on the streets of Brooklyn, New York. [3:49]Spoke with him face-to-face because he wanted to hear his voice, wanted to get the tenor and spirit of his voice. If they ever wiretapped him, my father would be able to identify his voice as the culprit, the one behind the crimes possibly being committed. After that in 1957 in 1962 my father became part of a wiretapping event that was the first ever time that carlo gambino had ever been wiretapped and this was a pretty monumental at the golden gate hotel slash motel in miami beach florida now picture this on one side of the room is Carlo Gambino in his suite, along with his wife Kate. [4:35]And people like Tommy Palmer, who was really known as Tommy Greco, and Jimmy Palmisano. Two of his lieutenants that used to come and visit him in that suite. For six weeks, he was there. Now, on the other side of that wall, that suite was none other than somebody with a white reel-to-reel a tape recorder along with a partner listening in on the conversations and, of Gambino through the wiretap that they put in the A block. And Gambino’s man happened to be my father along with his partner, listening to his conversations and recording all of that. [5:18]And as I mentioned, Tommy Greco, a.k.a. Tommy Palmer, was one of the trusted lieutenants that Gambino used to consort with at that suite at that time. and my father used to listen in on those conversations. [5:37]Yeah, this Tommy Greco or Tommy Palmer, your father, he must have been a guy that was on the streets. He got out of his car, as we say. We used to have guys, some of them just stayed in their car. Some guys would get out in their cars and get on the streets and talk to these people and get close to them. And your dad must have been one of those guys because he had a little run-in with Tommy Greco. [6:00]Tommy Greco became the only mobster that ever threatened uh peter clemente to his face and so you want to talk about that a little bit you got a whole chapter in your book here uh untold mafia tales from the fbi top hoodlum squad you got a whole chapter on old tommy palmer and this situation tommy palmer guys you may or may not know him he’s not exactly a household name and in the mob business but he was a he had been under lucky Luciano prior to ended up working under, uh, Carlo Gambino. And he was, uh, he was an old school guy that went way back to the Lonzas. He, he operated out of the Lonza restaurant, may have heard of Sox Lonza. He was in that family. Sox Lonza was a guy that ran the Fulton street fish market for the mob. And he was also the guy that, uh, the, uh, Navy went to when Lucky Luciano said he’d get people to help the Navy during World War II. These Lonzas, they were real instrumental in giving information about any possible saboteurs or Nazi spies during World War II. [7:10]Tommy Palmer, Tommy Greco, he is a guy that was a witness to a lot of history back in those days. Tell us about Tommy Palmer and your father. Well, Tommy was a trusted lieutenant, as I said, with Gambino, and he was one of the individuals that visited a lot. With Gambino when he was at the Golden Gate Motel and the wiretaps were on. I don’t believe my father ever told Tommy that he was on the other side of the wall wiretapping him and was privy to his conversation with Gambino. I don’t believe that my father ever said that to him. He never told me whether he did or not. I don’t think that he did. [7:54]But years later, after my father was transferred from the New York FBI office down to the Miami office. He was still investigating organized crime as part of the Six Squad, they called it. And my father used to drive by Tommy’s place at the Taramina Cooperative Apartments in the Hallandale, Hollywood area to visit in on him to see what he’s up to, to see if he’s dead or alive. Yeah. [8:32]Encounter with Tommy Greco [8:27]Because you didn’t know half the time. Somebody could just think he’s up and disappear. And if he’s one of your subjects, you need to keep up on all of this. So every once in a while, he would visit Tommy, but not in a very social way. Tommy never liked it. He was always bothered by it, very annoyed by it. When my father would come by and see me, you probably know that too, Gary. You investigated the people. You would visit them, keep up on them. They didn’t want to see you. They weren’t very happy about it. [8:57]So one day my father went to see him knocks on his door Tommy opens it up Tommy’s upset about this and he winds up pointing a finger, You know, my father like this. And he was really, and then he shook his head. And he said, these are the words he said that my father wrote down. He said, Clemente, if I’m the bad guy they say I am, did you ever stop to think I might get so pissed off at