Gary and Mike also explore the uneasy dance between lawmen and mobsters—a world where unexpected moments of mutual respect could coexist with threats of violence. Mike shares stories of face-to-face encounters with figures like Rusty Rastelli of the Bonanno Family, offering rare insights into how respect, fear, and human decency sometimes blurred the lines between hunter and hunted.

The episode dives even deeper into the chase for Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico of the Colombo Family. Mike recounts the painstaking hours of investigation, the calculated street-level work, and the tension that came with tracking a fugitive deeply embedded in a culture of secrecy and retribution. His personal stories illuminate how local knowledge and personal relationships can make or break a case.

This conversation crosses borders, too. Mike recalls his work in Sicily, where American and Italian law enforcement collaborated to disrupt crime syndicates that spanned the Atlantic. From tense raids to split-second tactical decisions, these stories reveal the global scope of the mob and the relentless pursuit of those who hunt them.

Throughout the episode, Mike doesn’t shy away from the psychological cost of the job, navigating threats from criminal networks while maintaining unbreakable bonds with fellow officers. He reflects on these life-changing experiences in his book, Adapt and Overcome, which he describes as part memoir, part raw look at the human side of life on the front lines of America’s war against organized crime.

For true crime fans, mob history buffs, or anyone fascinated by the delicate balance of law enforcement in high-risk territory, this episode is packed with vivid stories and personal reflections that remind us what it truly takes to track—and confront—the mob.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

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[0:00 ] Well, hey, welcome all you wiretappers out there. It’s good to be back here

[0:02 ] in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. And we’re going to, you know, we talk about the mafia a lot, and we’re going to learn a lot more about the mob, especially the New York City mob with a retired U.S. Marshal, Mike Pizzi. And I know I butchered that a lot, Mike, but come on. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, Mike, I’m going to read you a little review I read on your book. A truly outstanding book not only gives the reader an understanding of what the U.S. Marshal Service does, it also takes you on a journey through its recent history that turned into what it is today. You come away from reading it with a true appreciation of the men and women

[0:47 ] who serve in it. And I’ll wholeheartedly agree with that, Mike. And you’ve got a lot of great stories about mob guys that you had something to do with. So let’s start talking about kind of your early, you were raised around the mob. So tell us about that.

[1:03 ] Yep. I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Brooklyn and lived there most of my life. And the house I was born in was one house off the corner of an infamous area known as 13th Avenue. And Sammy the Bull talks about it a lot because he was in a gang that was a little further down the street. But my bedroom window was the back of the Grim Reapers Mafia Club. And that’s Gregory Scarpa. And so I grew up basically around those people, knew many of them, didn’t like a lot of them. And I particularly never liked this fellow, Greg Scarpa, as some of the guys I grew up with started to be attracted in his direction. I didn’t like it. So when I was, I was about 17 years old and I joined the Marines and I left the neighborhood for four years.

[2:07 ] One of my assignments in the Marines was actually the Marine barracks at Naples, Italy. Oh, really? Where now you’re going to be shocked at this. And I have the proof. Everything I say could prove. Where Lucky Luciano had an art studio on the same street where I was living. Because we didn’t live on a base. We lived in a barracks. And the name of the street was Via Michelangelo di Caravaggio. So it was in the area called Manzoni in Naples, and I got to know him. Oh, really? Yeah. He ran a couple of clubs downtown, the El Sombrero and another club. And we’d make our way every other weekend when we had off. We never went out in uniform. We weren’t allowed to. And I think the guy really loved Americans. And he would come to a local bar near our building where we were living in Manzoni and, he’d talk to us, you know, he’d come in with some of his bodyguards and some young girls, some foolish young Marines would go over and ask the girls, the dads without asking his permission. That was a big mistake.

[3:21 ] So later on, I had a friend at another Marines house after we were wall out of the Marine Corps and he talked me into becoming a deputy marshal. I was driving trucks at the time where it was such a rough job that the guys never spoke. They only grunted. And I actually started to understand the grunts.

[3:46 ] I think I worked a job or two like that in my late teens. Before that, I was a cement laborer. So, you know, just anyway, it was kind of a very good introduction to being around a lot of rough people. Yeah. But they worked hard. Eventually, I ended up in the marshal service and my partner, it was kind of like almost a place where the Democratic and Republican clubs would send people to retire. You know, a lot of the guys, some of the guys really worked hard, but a lot of them weren’t. They weren’t interested in working hard. So me and my partner, who I think was, his name is Jack Brophy, was the smartest guy I ever met.

[4:35 ] And we started to do things that nobody else would do. We would take warrants and work in the morning and go out and work at night. And we hooked up with a group of Federal Bureau Narcotic Agents. Now I’m going to take you back a little bit. They were part of the Treasury Department at the time. And if you look at some of the people that were in that group, You had former OSS people, and maybe the OSS had then evolved into being the CIA. Later on, it was learned that some of these people had dual roles in the government. So we would go out with them after hours and look for people and do things and work and learned a lot. They were really very good investigators. And so we did a lot of fugitive work and in conjunction with them as well. You know, Mike, that Federal Bureau of Narcotics was…

[5:30 ] The only agency at the time that gathered information on organized crime, on the mob, when the FBI was out chasing communists down and wearing suits and ties and interviewing people, the FBN, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, had been for years, been chasing down the mob people and putting the connections together. So you fell in with a good group of guys there. They’re really a pre-mobile law enforcement agency. And I’m going to tell you that I got all of my organized crime photographs and charts from the old Federal Bureau Narcotics.

[6:06 ] That was part of my study that I was doing. So they really, as you said, they were the number one group that was involved in this organized crime and they were putting it together. And so, ironically, at this time, if you remember the name of Joe Bonanno. Oh, yeah. He claimed that he was taken, kidnapped, and he disappeared. I remember that. And I’m in the Southern District of New York, which covers Manhattan, the Bronx, and 11 counties upstate.

[6:37 ] And I’m looking at Joe Bonanno. He’s sitting in the courtroom with an attorney by the name of Al Krieger. And I said to this other deputy, I said, that’s Joe Bonanno. He’s wanted. So we walked over and we arrested him. And we brought him down into our detentio