Podcast appearances and mentions of Al Capone

American gangster and businessman

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Latest podcast episodes about Al Capone

The Incredible Journey
Al Capone – American Gangster

The Incredible Journey

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2026 28:30


Al Capone, a name that still echoes through the annals of American crime history, was one of the most notorious gangsters of all time. Born in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, Alphonse Gabriel Capone rose from humble beginnings to become the kingpin of organised crime in Chicago during the Prohibition era. Known for his charismatic personality and ruthless tactics, Capone built an empire based on bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling. He cultivated a Robin Hood-like image, opening soup kitchens during the Great Depression while simultaneously orchestrating brutal acts of violence and murder against rival gangs. This was Capone's Chicago—a city where every shadow held a secret, every handshake could be a deal with the devil, and at the centre of it all, pulling the strings, stood the undisputed king of America's criminal underworld.His story continues to serve as a powerful reminder of the consequences of the misuse of power.

The Show on KMOX
Paul Brown's search for the 1904 Worlds Fair Ferris Wheel axle now part of the MO History Museum

The Show on KMOX

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2026 17:43


KMOX alum and former ABC 30 reporter Paul Brown joins Amy Marxkors and Michael Kelley in-studio to discuss the legend of the Ferris Wheel at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Brown set out to find the remnants of the Wheel while reporting for ABC 30 in 1999 and actually dug up part of the edge of Forest park in a live newscast. He says the show was the highest rated in the history of that station's newscasts. Did he end up finding the elusive axle to the Ferris Wheel? "I was Geraldo Rivera on Al Capone's vault," jokes Brown. (Photo Courtesy: Paul Brown)

TrineDay: The Journey Podcast
The Journey 189: Corruption 101 with John Loftus and Dan Luzadder – A Continuing Education

TrineDay: The Journey Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2026 45:04


 The Journey 189: Corruption 101 with John Loftus and Dan Luzadder – A Continuing Education TrineDay socialsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/trinedaypressInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/trinedaypressX: https://x.com/TrineDayKris Millegan and Todd Baumann speak to John Loftus and Dan Luzadder about the realities of corruption in government and the press.John Loftus is the author of America's Nazi Secret among several other books, and his new upcoming book My Client's Were Spies about his time as an attorney for sources in the Intelligence Community hoping to get more information about certain events in American history declassified, like he had done with the material on OPERATION PAPERCLIP in the 1980s, which produced an appearance on 60 Minutes in 1982 that was nominated for an Emmy award.America's Nazi Secret: https://trineday.com/products/americas-nazi-secretMy Clients Were Spies: https://trineday.com/products/myclients-were-spiesDan Luzadder is an American journalist and author whose lengthy newspaper career began as a teenaged police reporter in the last days of linotypes. He came of age amid hagiographic newsroom characters who believed shoe leather reporting, tight deadlines and well-placed sources were journalism's divinity. He has written for the New York Daily News and the New York Times, shared a Pulitzer Prize (1983) for general local reporting, won a national public service award from the American Bar Association for exposing corruption in federal courts, and is a member of the Scripps Howard Journalism Hall of Fame. He resides with his wife, Nancy, in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of The Manchurian Journalist: Lawrence Wright, the CIA and the Corruption of American Journalism. (Trine Day). He is currently at work on a book and investigative documentary series on a cold-case crime spree in Speedway, Indiana in 1978, and is completing a book exploring the American myth of Al Capone.Manchurian Journalist: Lawrence Wright, the CIA, and the Corruption of American Journalism: https://trineday.com/products/manchurian-journalist-lawrence-wright-the-cia-and-the-corruption-of-american-journalism

The Horror Squad Podcast
Episode 437: Signs (2002)

The Horror Squad Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2026 58:37


This week, we take to the skies as we review M Night Shyamalan's Signs. Also in this episode, Joe is away so Todd and Steve take over and discuss a simpler time when things like crop circles, alien autopsies and the contents of Al Capone's vault felt like existing new world developments. Todd also discusses the conventions he is attending the next few weeks and Steve reviews a pair of controversial films in the Watch Watched segment. All that and more! Music provided by www.purple-planet.com

Sportlanders, The Podcast
Cheaters, Mobsters, and the Six Bullets That Birthed Baseball's All-Star Game

Sportlanders, The Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2026 30:40


THE FIRST ALL-STAR GAME with author Randall Sullivan What happens when a botched assassination attempt on a president, the “Outfit,” the Great Depression, and the Legend of Babe Ruth collide in Chicago? Author Randall Sullivan reveals how the first so-called “Game of the Century” helped pull America out of its darkest era. Discover the untold history of baseball's first All-Star Game and the legends that shaped the sport. In 1933, an assassin fired six bullets at President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami. Every single bullet missed FDR, but they fatally struck Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Out of the political chaos of that assassination, a city's desperation to escape the shadow of Al Capone's crime syndicate, and the darkest, most terrifying days of the Great Depression, an unbelievable gamble was born. To save the city's morale, a new mayor and a sports editor dreamed up the ultimate distraction: the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The Book THE FIRST ALL-STAR GAME: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads (Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2, 2026) Summary Brian O'Leary sits down with three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Randall Sullivan to discuss his new book, THE FIRST ALL-STAR GAME: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads (Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2, 2026). Sullivan explains that the book was born from his discouragement over modern political polarization, leading him to research how the United States survived the Great Depression. The conversation traces the chain reaction of events that created the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and the first-ever All-Star Game. This includes a Miami assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt that resulted in the death of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Throughout the episode, we dive into the towering mythos of Babe Ruth, noting that his absence in 1925 caused American League attendance to plummet. We also explore the cultural fallout of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, the iron-fisted rule of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the forgotten legacies of players like Chuck Klein and Lefty O'Doul. Key Takeaways The Origins of the All-Star Game: The 1933 game was staged as a one-off exhibition for the Chicago World's Fair. It was pitched by sports editor Arch Ward to Mayor Edward Nash to boost morale after Mayor Cermak's tragic death. Babe Ruth's Unmatched Stardom: Ruth's absence due to illness in 1925 caused American League attendance to drop by 34%. Furthermore, he holds the top three WAR (Wins Above Replacement) seasons in Major League history. That's just the tip of the iceberg of the Ruthian Legend (and reality). The Black Sox Legacy: The 1919 scandal resulted in a complicated trial where players were acquitted by a working-class jury. However, Judge Landis later banned them for life, restoring baseball's image in the eyes of the outraged American public. Overlooked Baseball Legends: Sullivan argues that Lefty O'Doul deserves Hall of Fame recognition. O'Doul not only hit .398 with 254 hits in a 154-game season, but he was also instrumental in bringing baseball to Japan and in developing it there. Chapters Introduction to Randall Sullivan and his new book, The First All-Star Game. Finding inspiration in America's resilience during the Great Depression. FDR's assassination attempt and its connection to the Chicago World's Fair. The creation of the “Game of the Century” by Arch Ward. Babe Ruth's towering legacy and massive impact on baseball attendance. The 1919 Black Sox scandal trial and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Unfairly judged players: The forgotten greatness of Chuck Klein. Why Lefty O'Doul deserves a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Final thoughts on the historical significance of the 1933 All-Star Game. Memorable Quotes “If Michael Jordan had been injured in a season, maybe NBA attendance would've dropped by 3.4%… but without Babe Ruth, it dropped by 34%.” – Randall Sullivan “I want people to understand… that this was more than a game. And it was more than the inauguration of a tradition. It was a turning point in American history.” – Randall Sullivan Resources Mentioned THE FIRST ALL-STAR GAME: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads (Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2, 2026). By Randall Sullivan The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created. By Jane Leavy The Called Shot: Babe Ruth, the Chicago Cubs, and the Unforgettable Major League Baseball Season of 1932. By Thomas Wolf Baseball in the Roaring Twenties: The Yankees, the Cardinals, and the Captivating 1926 Season. By Thomas Wolf Eight Men Out (1988 Film). Arch: A Promoter, Not a Poet : The Story of Arch Ward. By Thomas B. Littlewood Relevant Content published at UNRELENTING – The O'Leary Review Thomas Wolf on The Brian D. O'Leary Show. Discussion on BASEBALL IN THE ROARING TWENTIES. (September 30, 2025) Is this still baseball? How the All-Star Game lost its heart. MLB's shift toward speed and sponsorship is eroding America's Game, but fans don't have to take it lying down (July 15, 2025) What the History Books Scrubbed from the 1927 Yankees. Forget the sanitized myths of the 1927 Yankees. Before Murderer's Row became immortal, they were hot-headed brawlers fueled by bizarre blunders, petty feuds, and a morning diet of warm blood. (October 3, 2025) Cubs Announcer Became President Thanks to Baseball. Before Ronald Reagan saved the free world from Soviet nuclear annihilation, he was a $75-per-week radio announcer recreating Cubs games hundreds of miles from Wrigley Field. (October 4, 2025) How a Utility Infielder Eavesdropped His Way to Oblivion. Fred McMullin (one of the “Eight Men Out”) and the fatal price of the shortcut. (May 19, 2026) Refuse the Sanitized Version of America. Join UNRELENTING. If today's unvarnished look at baseball's gritty past resonated with you, step into the inner circle. UNRELENTING – The O'Leary Review is a relentless defense of our cultural heritage, athletic tradition, and economic independence against elites who seek to sanitize our history. Support the Mission & Enter The Junto Upgrade to a paid subscription to access our private council and unlock our entire historical archive. The Monthly Option ($14.99/month or $100/year): Get unrestricted access to The Junto (our private community for real-time strategy), the Full Vault of locked essays and podcasts, monthly strategic briefs, and our curated reading list. Founding Member ($497/year) — Strictly limited to 20 members: Get all previous benefits, plus four private 1:1 strategy consultations per year to refine your business or copy, and priority access to all future products. Let's reverse the decline. Upgrade Your Subscription Here: https://briandoleary.substack.com/subscribe

Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast
The Untouchables (1987)

Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2026 59:22


Nobody Gets Off This Staircase: Krissy, Nathan, and Pete Take On The UntouchablesWelcome to this episode of The Most Excellent 80s Movies. Hosts Krissy Lenz and Nathan Blackwell are joined by special guest Pete Wright—podcast impresario and pod boss at TruStory FM—to dig into Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987), where the real question isn't whether Al Capone goes down, but how far a straight-arrow fed is willing to bend to make it happen.The central tension here is a juicy one: Kevin Costner's deliberately bland Elliot Ness surrounded by Sean Connery's full-voltage Obi-Wan energy and Andy Garcia's silk-jacketed handsomeness. Is Costner's wooden earnestness a character choice or just… Costner being Costner? The gang has feelings. Meanwhile, Pete makes a compelling case that David Mamet is at his very best when someone else is in the director's chair—and that De Palma's camera (hello, split diopter) transforms stilted period dialogue into something genuinely cinematic.What keeps the conversation sparking is the sheer audacity of the filmmaking: an improvised staircase sequence that became the movie's most iconic scene, Armani-clad gangsters that make everyone want to buy overcoats for a city they don't live in, and a baby carriage that shows up twice in two consecutive episodes of the pod. The episode stays premise-level throughout, so you can jump in clean and still feel every gut punch.TruStory FM | Membership (early, ad-free access + bonus content): Join | Socials: Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky | Learn more about the hosts: Neighborhood Comedy Theatre | Squishy StudiosIf you could only pick one scene from this movie to show someone who'd never seen it, which one would you choose—and why? ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

Hallmark Mysteries & More
The Way Home Season 4 Ep 7: Did We Just Figure Everything Out?

Hallmark Mysteries & More

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2026 23:23


We would love to hear from you. Send us your thoughts or suggestions. The Way Home just name-dropped "Some Like It Hot" and Eric is not letting it go. Nick called himself Spats. The character Spats in that film witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Al Capone is connected. The 1920s timeline suddenly has a lot more layers, and this episode is either brilliant or a little too ambitious. Eric and Andrea break down Season 5 Episode 7 with questions, theories, and at least one genuine concern.What You'll Hear•       Why Eric thinks Sam is the "keeper of the pond" and what that might mean for Del's future with him, including the moment Del says "I love you" while concussed and who she was actually talking to•       The "Some Like It Hot" Easter egg: how Spats, Al Capone, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre connect directly to Nick's time travel story in the 1920s•       Casey calling Alice selfish and why that mirrors exactly what fans have been saying about Kat for seasons•       Elliot making a deliberate choice not to jump into the pond, and the "Big Fish" arrest photo that raises a huge question about where his arc is going•       Fern and Cliff's steamy 1920s kiss, the key hidden in the piano, and what it all might mean with only three episodes left•       The honest take on the Al Capone/Tessa direction: did The Way Home bite off more than it can chew?Chapters0:00 - Welcome + Where We Are in Season 54:15 - Casey, Sam, and the Keeper of the Pond8:30 - The "Some Like It Hot" Easter Egg You Missed13:00 - Tessa Calls Everyone Out (And She's Right)16:45 - Elliot's Big Fish Twist + The Al Capone Problem20:30 - The Key in the Piano, 11:11, and Final Theories23:23 - See You for Haunted HarmonyDid you clock the "Some Like It Hot" connection before Eric brought it up, or did that one slip past you? Tell us in the comments.New episodes every week. Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a The Way Home breakdown or Hallmark deep dive.

PENDENTE: Rubrica su Cinema, letteratura, fumetto ed esperienze culturali
Ancora tanto da scoprire: Il massacro del giorno di San Valentino

PENDENTE: Rubrica su Cinema, letteratura, fumetto ed esperienze culturali

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2026 19:49


Non è mai troppo tardi per ricordare l'arte e l'eredità di un grande uomo di cinema mai troppo valorizzato e che ha saputo valore nel suo piccolo la bellezza della settima arte. E quindi ecco una piccola retrospettiva sui film da me prediletti di Roger William Corman.Corman si dimostrò sempre interessato a narrare le famigerate gesta dei più noti criminali del novecento americano. E quindi perché non dire la propria su Al Capone e su "Il massacro del giorno di San Valentino"?

I Remember Liking That Movie Podcast
The Untouchables (1987): Still The Best Gangster Movie Ever Made?

I Remember Liking That Movie Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2026 75:41


Remember The Untouchables from 1987 starring Kevin Costner & Sean Connery? We remember it being the bee's knees. A real hotsy-totsy gangster picture where every problem could be solved with a quick quip & a Tommy Gun. Every scene is packed with tough mugs, and enough lead flying around Chicago to start a scrap metal shortage. We remember Robert De Niro's Al Capone being one scary palooka, and our good guys trying to clean up the town one wise guy at a time. But is this Prohibition-era classic still the cat's pajamas, or has it gone the way of bathtub gin and twenty-cent cigars? So grab your fedora, tell the coppers to take a hike, and join us as we revisit The Untouchables to find out if this old-time gangster flick still packs a wallop.

GamesMyMomFound
The Untouchables (Film 225) - GMMF

GamesMyMomFound

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2026 78:26


Feel like a drink?  We take a look at one of the movies our Patrons chose for us to cover The Untouchables.   A movie loosely based on Elliott Ness's time when they took down Al Capone.  Travel back to the 1930s with us as we have to speak easy to get a drink and talk about this 1987 Film. Starring Mike Albertin, Tiffany Albertin, Kenneth Sanity, Bill Tucker, and John. A Gamer Looks at 40 - https://agamerlooksat40.com/ Carrying My Cross - https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/carrying-my-cross-a-faith-journey-podcast/id1865524685 Phoebe's Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/theletsplayprincess Phoebe's Podcast - https://nerdsabroadcast.podbean.com/ Zac's Podcast - https://linktr.ee/absolutelythebest Helena - https://linktr.ee/helhathfury Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GamesMyMomFound Follow us on Facebook. Instagram - gamesmymomfound_ YouTube  - https://youtube.com/c/GamesMyMomFoundPodcast Discord - https://discord.gg/ Hidden Figures (Film 208) - GMMF https://gamesmymomfoundpodcast.podbean.com/e/hidden-figures-film-208-gmmf Carrie 1976 (Film 175) - GMMF https://gamesmymomfoundpodcast.podbean.com/e/carrie-1976-film-175-gmmf

The Members Only Podcast: A Mafia History Podcast
#49: History of the Pittsburgh Mob (Part Four): The Rise of the Monastero's

The Members Only Podcast: A Mafia History Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2026 126:36


In this episode of The Gangland History Podcast's ongoing History of the Pittsburgh Mob series, we explore the rise of the Monastero brothers—Stefano “Big Steve” Monastero, Salvatore “Sam” Monastero, and their older brother Loreto—as Pittsburgh's underworld transforms during the violent early years of Prohibition.At the center of the story are Stefano and Sam Monastero, two brothers who rise from immigrant beginnings to become the dominant force in Pittsburgh's bootlegging empire during the 1920s. While Pittsburgh's underworld fractures after the deaths of early leaders like Gregorio Conti and Martin M. Burke, Stefano and Sam quietly build something far more organized, powerful, and dangerous—an expanding criminal network rooted in bootlegging, extortion, violence, and control of the city's illicit liquor trade.But before the Monasteros become Pittsburgh's closest equivalent to Al Capone, their story begins decades earlier in Sicily and New Orleans. This episode traces the family's origins in Caccamo, Sicily, the infamous assassination of New Orleans Police Chief David C. Hennessy in 1890, and the shocking lynching of Stefano and Sam's father, Pietro Monastero, during the Parish Prison mob violence of 1891—one of the largest mass lynchings in American history.From there, we follow the Monastero family's journey to Pittsburgh, where the brothers become deeply connected to the city's growing Mafia networks through the fruit and produce trade, the Pittsburgh Fruit Exchange, and the rapidly expanding underground economy created by Prohibition.This episode also explores:The collapse of Pittsburgh's early Mafia leadership after Gregorio Conti's murderThe rise of Pittsburgh's Prohibition bootlegging economyThe Monasteros' connections to figures like Salvatore Catanzaro, Nicola Gentile, Salvatore Calderone, and Nicasio LandolinaThe growth of the Pittsburgh Fruit Exchange and the brothers' warehouse operations in the Strip DistrictThe mysterious 1920 bombing near the Monastero organizationLoreto Monastero's shocking murder case, asylum commitment, and escapeThe emergence of early Mafia hierarchy and initiation rituals in PittsburghThe rise of Stefano Monastero as Pittsburgh's dominant bootlegging bossThe violent murder of Luigi “The Big Gorilla” Lamendola and the growing underworld war surrounding the MonasterosBy the mid-1920s, Stefano and Sam Monastero are no longer simply participating in Pittsburgh's underworld—they are reshaping it. What emerges during this period is the foundation of the modern Pittsburgh Mafia.This episode is based on extensive research using immigration records, newspapers, census documents, court records, FBI files, historical archives, and firsthand family accounts to reconstruct one of the most important—and least understood—chapters in organized crime history.Subscribe to The Gangland History Podcast for more deep dives into Prohibition, La Cosa Nostra, Mafia history, and the forgotten underworld history of Pittsburgh.

History Unplugged Podcast
Al Capone's Missing $100 Million, and the TV Journalist Who Embarrassed Himself to Find It

History Unplugged Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2026 52:50


On the night of April 21, 1986, an estimated 30 million Americans sat in front of their televisions waiting for a moment that almost no one alive had ever seen: a live, prime-time excavation of a gangster's secret vault. Geraldo Rivera, recently fired from ABC News and hungry for a comeback, had convinced Tribune Broadcasting to stake its credibility on a two-hour live special built around a single, tantalizing question: what had Al Capone hidden in the sealed basement of his Chicago headquarters? The network flew in IRS agents to handle the expected cash, a county medical examiner to process any bodies, and locksmiths to crack whatever fortress Capone had left behind. What they found, on live television, in front of 30 million viewers, was dirt and a few empty gin bottles. William Hazelgrove, author of Capone's Vault, joins the show to explain why the special was a ratings triumph anyway, and why that's the more interesting story. Capone had been dead for nearly 40 years, yet his myth was so potent, his legend so carefully self-constructed during his lifetime, that the mere possibility of a hidden room full of gold and skeletons was enough to hold the country's attention for two hours. The empty vault didn't kill the spectacle, it completed it, proving that anticipation is a more powerful television engine than any actual revelation. What Geraldo Rivera stumbled into that night, almost by accident, was the blueprint for every reality TV cliffhanger, true-crime docuseries, and hype-culture livestream that would follow in the next four decades.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Destination Terror
Hot Springs Arkansas: Haunted Bathhouses, Gangster Ghosts & The Ouachita River

Destination Terror

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2026 14:00


Join Carman Carrion on a haunted vacation to Hot Springs, Arkansas—America's original spa town with a dark and deadly past. In this episode of Destination Terror, Carman broadcasts from a cabin on the Ouachita River to explore the sinister history lurking beneath Hot Springs' healing waters. Discover why Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel made this mountain town their criminal headquarters during Prohibition. Hear the terrifying tales of the Lady in White at the Arlington Hotel, the ghostly woman who haunts the Fordyce Bathhouse, and the drowned spirits still calling for help from the depths of the Ouachita River. From the opulent Art Deco bathhouses of Bathhouse Row to the gangster-era gambling dens, from mysterious ghost lights hovering over dark waters to shadowy figures in speakeasy bars—Hot Springs is where healing and horror collide. Whether you're planning your own trip to Hot Springs National Park or just love a good ghost story, this episode reveals the haunted secrets of Arkansas's most beautiful—and most deadly—destination. Featured locations: Bathhouse Row, Fordyce Bathhouse, Quapaw Bathhouse, The Arlington Hotel, The Ohio Club, Ouachita River, Lake Hamilton Content warnings: References to organized crime violence, murder, drowning deaths Produced for Eeriecast Network EXPLORE MORE SPINE-CHILLING CONTENT: Freaky Folklore: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/freaky-folklore Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon (Ad-Free + Bonus Content): https://www.patreon.com/c/CarmanCarrion Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/carmancarrion CONNECT WITH CARMAN: Website: https://www.carman-carrion.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarmanCarrion Twitter/X: https://x.com/CarmanCarrion Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmancarrion/ SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0uiX155WEJnN7QVRfo3aQY iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freaky-folklore/id1550361184 Your support helps bring you more terrifying tales. DISCOVER MORE HORROR: http://eeriecast.com/ https://www.carman-carrion.com/ THE CRYPT SHOP: https://the-crypt-shop-2.myshopify.com/ MUSIC CREDITS: Music and sound effects provided by: CO.AG, Myuu, Jinglepunks, Epidemic Sound, Kevin MacLeod, Dark Music, and Soundstripe.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American Hauntings Podcast
Murder in a Flower Shop

American Hauntings Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2026 64:24 Transcription Available


“To hell with them Sicilians!”It was just an off-hand comment – a remark that was usually delivered with a smirk. Dean O'Banion and his North Siders were quick to say it. They didn't care. The South Side mob, run by John Torrio and Al Capone, were tolerated – they weren't pals. They were business associates and if it wasn't for the money they made for O'Banion and his crew, they'd have nothing to do with them at all.So, “to hell with them Sicilians” became a remark that often passed between them with a laugh. Other people, though, didn't find it so funny. To a Sicilian, it was a deadly insult – a quip that would eventually mark a man for death.And that man, of course, was O'Banion himself. And as brash and confident as he was, he never saw it coming.Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859New Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/troytaylorodditiesCheck out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.comWant an episode every week, plus other awesome perks and discounts? Check out our Patreon pageFind out merch at AmericanHauntingsClothing.comFollow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTLFollow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast, @TroyTaylorgram, @CodyBeckSTLThis episode was written by Troy TaylorProduced and edited by Cody BeckOur Sponsors:* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/hauntingsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Spotlight on Good People | The Salon Podcast  by Robert of Philadelphia Salons

Christian Busk is the founder and principal of Busk & Associates, serving as a visionary landscape architect who has spent over 40 years shaping the aesthetic of Naples. In Part 1 of our interview, he shares incredible stories of physically moving historic homes to save them from demolition, designing the city's first vanishing-edge pool, and his mission to preserve and elevate the natural beauty of Southwest Florida.

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast
438: The Capone's Vault Fiasco w/ William Hazelgrove

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2026 53:16


In 1986, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults drew a larger audience than the Super Bowl or David Frost's interview with Richard Nixon. The special was intended as a comeback for journalist Geraldo Rivera, built around the dramatic opening of a "vault" beneath Chicago's Lexington Hotel, rumored to contain Al Capone's riches. But when the vault was finally opened live the moment didn't deliver what millions of viewers were expecting. My guest is William Hazelgrove, author of Capone's Vault: The Real Story of the Biggest Disaster in Television History. His book traces how the idea came together, combining Rivera's career arc with the mythology of Capone's hidden fortune, and reconstructs the broadcast itself along with its fallout, showing how the event became a defining example of live television gone wrong. The author's website: https://www.williamhazelgrove.com/ The author on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@williamhazelgrove 30% off sitewide at Batch! Go here and support the show: ⁠⁠⁠hellobatch.com/NOTORIOUS⁠⁠⁠ and use the code NOTORIOUS at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bloody Beaver
Richard "Two Gun" Hart (ENCORE)

Bloody Beaver

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2026 52:54


Enjoy this encore presentation of Richard "Two Gun" Hart. New episodes continue next week! By the mid-1920s, Al Capone was the undisputed kingpin of Chicago and was feverishly working to expand his empire. The only thing standing in the way of his ambitions was an overzealous Nebraska lawman known as Richard “Two Gun” Hart. The mysterious Hart claimed to be half Native American and appeared like something straight out of a Hollywood Western. Still, he was said to be both fearless and incorruptible, going down in history as one of the most effective Prohibition Agents of all time. But Richard Hart harbored a dark secret that even his wife and children were unaware of. It turns out that the straight-shooting lawman and the notorious gangster were connected in more ways than one. Check out the website! https://www.wildwestextra.com/   Email me! https://www.wildwestextra.com/contact/   Free Newsletter! https://wildwestjosh.substack.com/   Buy Me A Coffee!  https://buymeacoffee.com/wildwest   Join Patreon for ad-free bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/wildwestextra   Merch! https://wildwestextramerch.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gangland Wire
Boston’s Mafia Rackets, IRS Wars, and Mob Secrets

Gangland Wire

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2026 28:44 Transcription Available


In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins interviews Eddie Inserra about the Boston Mafia. He is the author of Confidence of the Mob: The IRS Agent Who Took down the Mob – Then Advised Them, a deeply researched account of his grandfather, Fred G. Pastore, a key figure in early IRS efforts to dismantle organized crime. Fred Pastore was part of the IRS's early “racket squad,” targeting Boston Mafia enterprises. His work paralleled the groundbreaking financial investigations that helped bring down figures like Al Capone, demonstrating how financial crimes could succeed where traditional policing struggled. Then, he leaves the IRS and advises the Boston Mafia. Eddie recounts how he uncovered his grandfather's story through a remarkable archive of family documents, photos, and recordings. These materials revealed a complicated dual life: Fred was both a relentless investigator and, later, a trusted confidant to certain Boston Mafia figures. This paradox sits at the center of the book and this conversation. A major focus of the discussion is the “pinball racket”—a widespread illegal gambling operation hidden in plain sight within bars and storefronts. Fred's investigations exposed how these machines generated significant underground revenue streams for organized crime, particularly in Boston. Eddie details the innovative and often risky techniques the IRS used to infiltrate these operations, including undercover work within corporations like Raytheon, where illegal gambling rings had taken root among employees. The episode also explores the institutional challenges Fred faced. His aggressive tactics and unconventional relationships eventually brought him into conflict with IRS leadership and political figures, forcing his resignation. In a striking turn, Fred leveraged his deep knowledge of organized crime to advise former mob associates—highlighting the blurred moral boundaries that often exist in this world.   Eddie adds a personal dimension, sharing memories of growing up around his grandfather and describing the cultural landscape of Boston's North End, where family, community, and organized crime often intersected. These stories provide insight into how relationships between law enforcement and mob figures could be shaped by proximity, respect, and shared environments.  The conversation concludes with a look ahead at Eddie's upcoming podcast, which will expand on these themes through interviews with former IRS agents, mob associates, and others connected to Fred Pastore's extraordinary life.   This episode offers a rare look at the gray areas of justice—where the line between hunter and ally becomes increasingly difficult to define. Check out the book: Confidence of the Mob: The IRS Agent Who Took down the Mob – Then Advised Them, Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, are you wire tapers? Good to be back here in the studio. Gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit Detective. Glad to be back in the studio. I have a man on the line who’s written a really interesting book called Confidence of the Mob, the RIRS agent who took down the mafia and then advised him. So that’s what’s interesting about this. Here’s a man. The, it was part of the early racket squad with the IRS intelligence who were the guys that went after the mafia and in all the different cities, most famously in Chicago, and took down Al Capone, and he ends up in a conflict with his bosses over informant and then. He goes into business as an accountant and ends up advising Jerry Angelo and some and childhood friends, really. ’cause he grew up in the north end of Boston. So this is his grandson Eddie and Sarah. Welcome Eddie. Eddy Inserra: Hey, thanks Gary. Glad to be here. Gary Jenkins: All right guys. Now there’s the book and I’ll have [00:01:00] links to it in the, the show notes as well as you can see the book over Eddie’s right hand shoulder there. You’ll get it. Now. First thing I wanna bring up about this book, Eddie, is I’m gonna ask you a little bit about how you got into this, but about this QR code you have in there, guys, there’s a QR code in there. I don’t know, about a quarter of the way in. Tell us about that and what was your idea to do there? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, so the QR code takes you to our website, which is it links to confidence of the mob.com. And this project started off as me interviewing a bunch of people about. My grandfather’s story. So I have all these audio clips, I have all these documents that I found in the box that my mother gave me that really had my grandfather’s complete career in there. So it’s more of a evidence-based website where if you scan that QR code, you can access some of the documents. Listen to some of the clips by the book, just learn more about the story overall. So it’s, the QR code is meant to be interactive, so you can take from what’s on the book into your phone and just explore more, [00:02:00] right? Gary Jenkins: Really interesting that with the new internet and you can do so much more and make your, what used to be just a hardcover. Paperback or hardcover piece of, a bunch of papers together and you can go onto the internet and you can find so much more with really not that much effort and a little bit of effort on your part. I know that I did something like that with a book I did. And it is a little bit of effort, but it’s not as much effort as is really, I think for that to further instruct people, teach people what that life was like for your subject. ’cause that’s what you’re trying to do, is you wanna tell people what. Your grandfather’s life was like, and so that’s I think it was just ingenious of you to doing that. I haven’t really seen that. I don’t think there’s probably other books that I didn’t notice, but I had not seen that before. Anyhow Eddie, let’s let’s go back. You’re the grandson. Fred g Pastor, tell us how you got into this, your earliest memories of this. Did you know your grandfather when you were a little kid and probably didn’t get the stories you wish you’d gotten? More than likely [00:03:00] I’d have him. But tell us a little bit about that. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, so he actually passed away when I was eight years old, so I got to know him for eight years. He passed away in 1988, and then, I knew my grandfather was always, when you see your grandfather, he is always happy when you’re, a little kid. One side of him, always happy, generous smile on his face, always laughing. Typical grandfather give you candy when no one’s looking. Things like that. So typical grandfather, I found out later on that his life was much more complex than I had thought. And when I was younger, he had an office. So I’d go into the office and I’d, everybody would be doing accounting work. He’d have probably about, he had about six or seven employees, maybe more at some, sometimes I’d go into the office and I’m just a kid running around the hallways and sitting at the desks. My father worked there as well. And yeah, I’m just watching them push papers and write down numbers and stuff like that. So I didn’t think it was too, I thought it was pretty boring. It was cool, but it was boring. But later I found out much more about him. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So later on in life, how did you stumble [00:04:00] across this whole dualistic life He had in a way I would maybe dualistic not at the same time but these two careers that he had how did you stumble across that? Eddy Inserra: There was a box that my mother had in her attic, and it was a, an old Florida citrus oranges box carton and overflowing with papers. And she, about 10 to 12 years ago, she gave it to me and said, Eddie, I want to give you these documents that your grandfather’s documents. I don’t know what’s in them, but there yours now. So I said, okay, great. And I pulled out a couple of documents and I looked at them. One was like an accounting ledger. E exactly what I expected. Some, some numbers and things like that. And I put ’em back in the box and I said, lemme put this on the shelf and I’ll take a look at the other documents some other time. So a couple weeks later, I go back into it and I pull out some papers and I start seeing profiles for big names and organized crime that I had heard of in the past. Jerry Angiulo, Raymond Patriarchal profiles on Racketeers Bernie [00:05:00] McGarry, doc Gansky, all these huge. Folklore names from Boston gambling and numbers and mafia times from the 1950s to the 1960s. I started piecing it together and I said and then I find a telegram in there to, to the White House Bobby Kennedy and JFK from my grandfather saying, I need to meet you at the White House right away regarding this Bernard Goldfine case that I’m working on. And I just started piecing this together and I said whoa. I never knew anything about the IRS side, but. He was really the tip of the spear. You mentioned like Elliot Ness, Al Capone earlier. It was the same sort of division, the intelligence division that he was working in, but he was in the Northeast District and it was, this was obviously after Capone that era, but next generation of, racket squad leaders, and he was the tip of the spear in Boston and the FBI didn’t have jurisdiction at that time to go after these racketeers. It was the IRS at that time. Later on, after he switched sides, so to say the FBI took over, but at that time, the IRS was the [00:06:00] potent weapon against these racketeers. So I’ve got all his documentation on investigations, case notes commendations it’s just really a treasure trove of, his whole career. And I pieced this together over years. There’s hundreds of documents, had to put a timeline together. Gary Jenkins: Really. Eddy Inserra: You’ve done investigative work, you know how that stuff works and I didn’t know anything about it, so it was just complete disorganized mess and had to pull it all together. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: The first thing you have to do is get a timeline. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: That is paramount. When you’re doing something like that, you have to get a time. In order to keep things straight. Otherwise, it just becomes a, it’s just, you can never get it straight in your mind. Interesting. You know that the IRS back in the day was the premier organization that, that and the the the Federal Narcotics people were the ones that went after the mafia, whereas the FBI wasn’t, and you know what people don’t understand about the IRS many people, the IRS is just this big, huge. Organization that’ll come down on you when you [00:07:00] cheat on your taxes. But it’s really two divisions. There’s a civil division, but then there’s this criminal division, which was called the Intelligence Unit for a long time. And then I think your grandfather what I read in your book was he went into some special squad within the intelligence division called the Racket Squad. Is that right? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, that’s correct. The Racket squad was a specialized division inside of the Intelligence Division. Okay. Which only went after high profile Racketeers. And there was even an old TV show if you go on YouTube and look up Racket Squad. Yeah. There was a TV show about that. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: I remembered. I think no, it was gangbusters on the radio, but Racket Squad was on tv. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So he grew up with a lot of the mobsters in the Boston area. Correct. Eddy Inserra: Correct. He was born in 1919, the same year as Jerry Angiulo. They were the same age which you’ll hear that name a lot and a lot of your listeners know. Jerry Angiulo was the under boss of Raymond Patriarch in Boston. And so they grew up right across through the bridge. [00:08:00] So Fred grew up actually in East Boston and Jerry grew up in the North end, and I confirmed that they did know each other when they were kids. I don’t know how deep that relationship went, but they did know each other when they were kids. And there was another man who ended up becoming partners with Fred later on in his post IRS career who he grew up with named Guy Spano. And he was also in East Boston at that time, and they were all this they knew each other, Gary Jenkins: interesting. Fred, knowing all these people, he knows about the bars and stuff and I noticed one of the things that was interesting, one of the things looked like early cases. He went after the pinball racket. Guys back in the day, every corner store bars, they all had pinball machines and they were a great way. To launder money and get all this cash money in and not pay their taxes on kinda like a cover charge that strip clubs get today. Whether there’s a way to, to get line cash money in that didn’t really go through the cash register. Tell us about that pinball racket. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, the pinball racket was a big deal back then. There was a lot of paperwork in [00:09:00] his box about that. There was a map that he had inside that box that showed all the different places he was raiding in Massachusetts just for the pinball machine. Pinball machines and the pinball machines back then were a game, not a game of skill because they didn’t have flippers on them. So the flippers that, that came on later, then it became a game of skill and it wasn’t actually just throwing your money away and gambling, so to say. So they weren’t able to go after them after they added flippers to the machines. But before the flippers interesting. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, I did, I didn’t really realize that I saw one of those when I was. You my late teens over in Kansas City, Kansas, and now I didn’t really realize what the deal was. What it was if you play it so much and get lucky and your ball goes to a certain place, then you win. But if it doesn’t and there’s no way to have it, is all pure luck. That’s the difference. I’ll be darned. I never thought about that. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Of course from then, that’s gambling and that’s where the money is. So he [00:10:00] continues on going after mobsters, Italian mobsters in that area of the country in organized, more organized gambling. So tell us a few of his other organized gambling investigations. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, he went after the Italians. He also did go after a lot of the Irish too that in his paperwork too. Wimpy Bennett, Walter Wimpy Bennett. There was a lot of, in Jewish DKI, like I mentioned. Yeah, a couple other too but yeah, one, one big investigation that really put him on the map was. The Raytheon investigation. Raytheon we know as a big defense company and they’re headquartered in Massachusetts. They always have been, I don’t know if they still are, but they have been up until a few years ago. But huge corporation and during that time was the Cold War. So they’re supposed to be building missiles, but they called the IRS saying, Hey, listen, we’ve got a problem. Our production, our manufacturing floor, everybody’s supposed to be working, but. They’re all not on the floor and they’re gambling somewhere. We don’t know where, we don’t know the root cause of this syndicate, but it’s in all of our buildings and people are consuming their time, playing the [00:11:00] daily numbers, betting on sports, all kinds of stuff. And they couldn’t really get to the root of it to root it out of the system. So they called the IRS, they assigned Fred, my grandfather to the case, and he took the lead. He ended up sending a bunch of his agents in undercover as janitors, and they had to go through the whole process, the whole hiring process as a normal, employee would try to get hired. So they’d have to submit an application, go through the test, all that stuff. Because the, it was just so embedded in Ray Raytheon that someone would. Tipped them off. So he got a bunch of these janitors in and they ended up finding out that the, there was long lines going to the bathroom all day long. And that’s, they were making the bets, taking the bets in the bathroom stalls in multiple locations. They rated them all at the simultaneously and they got a bunch of leads after that for more mafia stuff, but it was a big mafia gambling syndicate embedded in the US government sort of defense contractor. So that got him, that was on the cover of the newspapers. It was in. Magazines. It was a big deal. [00:12:00] So Gary Jenkins: Interesting. After that is that he gets crossways with. His bosses and with the US attorney’s office eventually. Was there any other cases I see on the headline here, Pastore names Paul’s, me and politicians behind the bookies. So how did he get into to finding who the bookies were paying off? Eddy Inserra: So he, he had an undercover confidential informant, I should say, who was giving him a lot of information. And we were real in the book. Who that was, we didn’t know at the time. Nobody in my family knew until a few years ago, and that’s, we’re talking 60, 50, 60 years ago. And even the president and RFK at the time wanted to know his confidential informant. So Fred was getting some really good information. They didn’t know where it was coming from. And Fred had made a deal at the time with Eisenhower and the chief of the IRS that. He’d keep this confidential informant on his, on the payroll, but the only people that would know about it was Eisenhower, the chief of the [00:13:00] IRS under Eisenhower and Fred. And then JFK came in, RFK came in as the Attorney General and they wanted to know whose confidential informant was and he would never give him up. So that, that caused some tension between Fred and RFK. Before that there was another case. With a man called Frank Aya. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he’s out, he was out of Worcester part of the, actually, gen Outta Worcester. Yeah, outta Gary Jenkins: Worcester. Okay. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Part of the Genovese faction so New York, but I, their territory went all the way up to Worcester. And the FBI was actually investigating him for the Brinks robbery in Boston. Gary Jenkins: Oh, Eddy Inserra: really? At the time. So they were looking for leads because they had understood that one of the guys was from Worcester. They’re, they assumed so they went interrogating him, and he said no, I’m not a criminal. I’m just a bookmaker. And as soon as he said that I guess Hoover didn’t want anything to do with Bookmaking at the FBI. So they just threw their hands up and they threw it at the IRS and [00:14:00] that fell in my grandfather’s lap. And so he started digging into IAC and he, he actually built a case against him. He ended up going to jail. But during that process, when he was investigating Ioni, Ioni gave up another man. His name was Bernard Goldfine. Wasn’t in the mafia. He’s a big businessman. He owned all these textile manufacturing companies. And he kept getting the contracts for all the US government, military uniforms every year. So no one else would ever win. And my grandfather exposed that there was some bribery and corruption going on. Between him and Eisenhower’s chief of staff named Sherman Adams. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, Eddy Inserra: I Gary Jenkins: remember, I remember that. Sherman Adams he went down. I remember that. Eddy Inserra: Do you remember the Una coat? That’s what that was the big Gary Jenkins: thing. Yeah. I forgotten about that. Somebody gave me this Una coat. I never was sure what a Una coat was, but yeah, I forgotten about that. The Vicuna code and he and everything, they found all these papers that be. For Eisenhower to four eight C, it’d have to say [00:15:00] KSA Sherman Adams. That was a big deal. While he was spooning feeding Eisenhower all the, anything that he wanted to have. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. That’s funny you remember that because that’s, yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That was huge at the time in the fifties. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. For some reason, he bribed him with a lot of things, hotel rooms, cash, all these things. But the Vicuna code, for some reason, stuck in the media, and that was my grandfather’s work, was exposing that and yeah. That was a big deal at the time and after he exposed that and with him not giving up that confidential informant. RFK wanted Fred out of Massachusetts. Pretty much out of the cross heads. We can get into that if you want, but yeah that’s the next Gary Jenkins: thing. What would he want? We, because Kennedy’s of course, were Boston area, new England based, and a lot of their people probably could then get in trouble with because of Fred Pastore and his bulldog attitude towards enforcing the law. Was that the deal? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, Fred would follow the money. I know that’s a common thing, but he really would follow the money. And from what I [00:16:00] understand, I wasn’t there, I didn’t live at that time, but from what I understand, he followed the money and wherever it led him and that led him right up to the White House. You know how politics are there, it’s a dirty game. So I’m sure that might’ve been someone who gave money to the candidate, maybe even the same guy, Bernard Goldfine or somebody. And if Fred dug that up, they could get. The same treatment Sherman Adams did. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. Eddy Inserra: They wanted Fred out of there. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: So what happened then? They it seemed like they, they repressed him to reveal his informant or something like and he ended up, either I quit or, I have to give up my informant. Is that, was that what it came down to? Hobson’s choice like that? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, it came down to that. They tried to actually reassign him to Syracuse. New York was really, it was a demotion in pay and in actually title as well. So he would’ve been brought down. He wouldn’t have been in the rack racket squad. He would’ve been down to a special agent again, and would’ve been a step backwards and they would’ve had him out of the mix in Boston. And that’s really what they wanted to accomplish is silence Fred. Yeah. [00:17:00] So he was faced with a decision, do I take that demotion and that’s the end of it, or. Do what he actually did, which was, took him back to his up upbringing in East Boston. Tough poor kid when you actually have to face the bully, I think. And that street grit that he actually said no. You know what? He held his own press conference in downtown Boston and he said, I’m resigning from the IRS today. And I’m opening up my own tax fraud defense firm right across the street. He wanted to view them out the window every day. He had a chip on his shoulder. And so he ended up advising the same kind of people and some of the same people that he was previously going after at the IRS. And he was like a super weapon for those guys because he knew all the legalities and the loopholes and how to structure your businesses and things like that. So Gary Jenkins: yeah, I noticed there was like a Fred Angiulo was that Jerry’s brother then. Eddy Inserra: I don’t know if there was a Fred, if there was Gary Jenkins: a wonder. I thought it, it was Fred. I may have got [00:18:00] that name wrong, Nick in the Nick in my head, because your dad, your grandpa’s name was Fred Pastor. But anyhow, there he defended Angiulo and some of their people, he, he knew everybody went to North End at eight and, they were socially compatible, if you will. So tell us a little bit about that, what you learned about those, that part of his life. Eddy Inserra: Obviously post IRS career, I learned that from my mother and other people, that on the weekends Fred would go on Friday night. Him and his his daughter whose youngest daughter is Charmin, which is my mother. Oldest daughter’s, Pam and my grandmother is Nina. And they would go into Boston to the north end and they’d go down there for, to go to the bakery sit out front. The women would sit out front eating pastry, and Fred would go out back for about 15 minutes and. To me it was him giving advice maybe face to face. To, to Jerry and he’d come out 15 minutes with a paper bag from what I’ve heard. And and that would be it. Then they’d go to the fruit market and then they’d go home and they’d go out to Stella’s. [00:19:00] Restaurant in the North End on Fleet Street at the time, which is a famous spot. Even, JFK, they used to go there. But it was a real famous spot. Fred would be there a lot with the family. And on the weekends my mother remembers. So the Injus, by the way, Jerry and Jula, there was five brothers who really ran their empire together. But Jerry was the head of it and the genius with numbers. And he shared that with Fred. They both had a genius with numbers. So that was some that was interesting. And Nick would, his brother Nick would go to Fred’s house on Sundays, and my mother would call him Uncle Nick. He’d always bring something. One time he brought a pet dog for them. They had a dog, and he’d bring all kinds of gifts and they always saw the nice side to these people. Even in the office, when I went to the office and I met a couple of these people when I was young, I didn’t know who they were, but I, you’d always see the nice side because. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, Eddy Inserra: Fred was the golden goose helping them keep their money, but most importantly keeping them outta jail. So Gary Jenkins: interesting. Huh? That’s a, that’s quite a career switch. [00:20:00] The were you in 98 Prince Street? The famous 98 Prince Street. I went to the north end, went around, took some pictures and stuff. It’s nothing like it, it’s described, but back in the day, other than, it’s really cool, those little narrow brick streets and restaurants and everything. Talk about the north end over there. Eddy Inserra: The north end is that’s the Italian enclave of the city. Boston has different enclaves, different cultural enclaves I should say. And the North end is the the Italian, it actually was the was the Irish before the Italian. So a lot of people don’t know that. But I didn’t know that. The Italian section, and that’s where there’s, world class Italian food restaurants, every 10 feet. And. It’s a tight knit community. Everybody knows everybody especially back then. So you walk down the street, you’ll see people hanging on the corner and if when you’re, when you were a kid you’d go get your fireworks there at the park and, illegal fireworks and get whatever you want. But yeah, 98 Prince Street was where Jerry ran his sort of headquarters out of there and they called it the doghouse. That was, [00:21:00] they knew they had eyes looking out for them as well being there. So the whole neighborhood was really looking out for them. And eventually the FBI caught them by wiretapping a vehicle up front. Yeah. So inside. But yeah, it’s really tight knit Italian. If you come to Boston, I really recommend you go, especially if you want to eat some nice food and see how this still some remnants of how it used to be, like you said, those brick roads and things like that. It’s pretty nostalgic and interesting. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really cool. I’d highly recommend any of you guys. You go out to, you, go to Boston, go to the north end and eat and just walk around. It’s really nice, although it’s pretty busy on the weekends, so a lot of people down there, man and some of the restaurants, there were long lines to get into ’em around dinnertime. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, try if you can make a reservation, try to, if not. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. Good bakeries too that the nicer places. I can’t even remember the names of ’em now. I had ’em that day. But anyhow, so I have to, I’m gonna flip back just a little bit. I made a jotted down a note [00:22:00] about Frank, the cheese man c Chiara, who was at Apple Lake. He did he who was the consigliere, I think for Patri arca. I believe your grandfather went after him or had some dealings with him. Do you remember that? Eddy Inserra: Yeah, he, there was some documents in the box about him and they were telling him he was definitely the concierge for arraignment at the time. And there were documents that Fred’s team was actually tracking him. They were watching him, he was going to Cuba back and forth to Cuba at that time. And so they thought he was moving money or just setting things up with a casino and things like that down there. They couldn’t, I don’t know if they actually got him to go to jail. I don’t remember if they were able to prosecute him, but they were checking him at the airport. I remember they checked his passport. But he was the, he was a money man as well, so he was known to be like the bank at that time. Gary Jenkins: Did did your grandfather have any trouble? His own troubles with the IRS af? Did they come after him or try to go after him at any point in time? Later in his career? Usually they [00:23:00] do. Yeah. They could be pretty vindictive. I’ve seen it here where an FBI agent then becomes a white collar crime lawyer. And boy, I tell you what, his old buddies, he was, they, he, a friend of mine went like that and he was surprised. He was shocked how p how his old friends from the bureau treated him. So did he have any problems like that? Eddy Inserra: In fact, he had a big problem like that as soon as he wouldn’t give up, his informant’s name. That became a problem actually. The the FBI called him in one of the documents that I have. It’s a memo that he wrote right after he came back from the FBI interrogating him. So he was told to report to the FBI in Boston by himself. And this was from his IRS superiors that say that, they want you over there, you gotta go talk to them. And so he went over there. And there was two agents in the room with Fred and they interrogated him asking if he had taken bribes at all. Yeah. And Fred used he, he outwitted them saying, I can’t say anything. This is an on ongoing investigation. If he, if you want me to say anything about this, you’re gonna have to get my [00:24:00] superiors to sign off on this. And, whatever the process was. And he felt like it was unbelievable because he said, who’s accusing me of this? They wouldn’t tell him. But eventually he figured out that it was this textile manufacturer that I mentioned earlier, Bernard Goldfine, his sort of right hand woman, her name was Mildred Paperman. She had she’d already been convicted and so was Bernard Goldfine, but they had said that Fred was taking bribes from them. So they’re taking this information from convicted, felons. And she said she had proof of it. So she had a check made up to the initials, FGP and who else, that’s Fred’s initials. Yeah. Fred G passed story. So Fred started laughing when they pulled that out. He said, do you guys have any idea who this is? It’s not me. And it was for Maine Senator Frederick g Payne, with the same initials. And that was easily documented in his paperwork that he was accepting bribes from gold mines. It’s really interesting how he outsmarted them [00:25:00] and I guess they didn’t do their homework good enough, but, they went after him hard and even after he left the IR Rs they tried to, I think one of, one of the documents says you didn’t report $2 of your tax income or something like that. Just busted his dogs. Oh my Gary Jenkins: God. I’m in a heap of trouble then. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. But the thing that he did have. And I, I can’t say it for sure, but he did have, in his back pocket, was a list of police and politicians that did take bribes. And that’s what up in, in that newspaper behind me, he was supposed to release this list. There was the media believed that he was gonna release these names during his press conference. He didn’t, and I believe that was an insurance policy that he kept in his pocket to keep them away. That’s my belief. I can’t confirm that, but that’s my sort of theory on that. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. I tell you what in Boston, greater Boston, that area, having a list of policemen and politicians that have been taking bribes, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Just take out about 10 out and name the rest. Eddy Inserra: I tell you what, [00:26:00] I do have that list. It was in the bar. Gary Jenkins: Oh, do you? Oh really? Yeah. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Is Gary Jenkins: that gonna be on your website? Is that gonna be on your website or are you just keeping that to yourself? Eddy Inserra: I thought long and hard about that, and I don’t think it’s fair to ruin or tarnish any family or anything like that. So I, that’s not gonna come out. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Interesting. Eddy Inserra: That has nothing to do with me. That’s not my, Gary Jenkins: I, I’d have to agree with that, that those were different times, different days. Yeah. And there’s no use hurting in what would be innocent people today with that kind of information, especially Boston seemed like it’s a. A small community in, in, in a way, it’s not like New York where you’re spread out over all these boroughs and Los Angeles, where you’re spread out over, 25% of the state. It’s more like Kansas City, more like a small area that is Boston. And so a lot of people, everybody knows each other in some manner. Eddy Inserra: Yeah exactly. Couple of degrees of separation if that. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Gary Jenkins: All right, Eddie and [00:27:00] Sarah, confidence of the mob, the IRS agent who took down the mafia and then advised them. So a really interesting book. Guys. I’ll have links to the website or to the Amazon page where you can buy this book. I’d highly recommend you buy it and when you do, go in there see, I don’t know, it’s about a quarter of the way in and find that find that QR code and. Go to that website and listen to some, I listened to a couple of three of those interviews. Really interesting stuff. That off the stuff that you can’t get everything in, but it’s interesting. I understand about that. Eddy Inserra: Thanks Gary. Yeah. That’s a upcoming podcast. We’re gonna have all full interviews and all that stuff with all. Oh, Gary Jenkins: Are you gonna do one yourself or with somebody there in Boston? Eddy Inserra: We’ve, it’s not gonna be a live podcast. It’s actually a bunch of clips thrown together. So it’s, oh, Gary Jenkins: I see. Eddy Inserra: Okay. Yeah we put it all together. It’s taken a couple years, so far, 12 episodes. We’ve got IRS agents in there, mafia members. We’ve got Fred’s ex clients and family. It’s really interesting. So you can check [00:28:00] that out on the website. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. When is that coming? Eddy Inserra: So we’re shooting to start releasing the end of May. So last week in May. Okay. Gary Jenkins: I love board. I always need another podcast to listen to myself. Eddy Inserra: Yeah. Yeah. Only gonna be one season. It’s not gonna be a multiple season thing. Gary Jenkins: That, that was my next question. It was gonna be a limit limited edition, if you will. Limited season. You’re not gonna keep going year in and year out like I do. Eddy Inserra: Yeah, no, there’s not enough content, but we’ll do behind the scenes and we’ll do some live stuff in Boston and things like that. Yeah. Okay. If anybody knew Fred or of him, please contact me too on the website. Okay. Love to hear about. Gary Jenkins: All right. Great. Alright Eddie and Sarah, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Eddy Inserra: Thanks, Gary. Great to meet you.

Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier
Brilliant but Violent: The Birdman of Alcatraz

Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2026 24:03


Alcatraz prison in California, built on a small, rocky island in the Bay of San Francisco, operated from the time of the US Civil War in the 1860s until it was closed in 1963. The island's remote location made it the perfect site for a prison, but this location also made it expensive to maintain, and the cost of maintenance finally led to its closure. During the years it operated, Alcatraz housed many infamous prisoners including Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly, but the one prisoner whose nickname is synonymous with the prison is The Birdman of Alcatraz. Why am I telling you about Alcatraz and its prisoners? Because this episode is about Robert Stroud, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz. You may not associate Stroud with Alaska, but he was originally incarcerated for a murder he committed in Juneau. Robert Stroud spent 54 years in prison, and he was in solitary confinement for 42 of those years. He is one of Alaska's most famous criminals. Sources: Bovsun, Mara. November 10, 2019. “Justice story: How the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz' soared to fame.” New York Daily News. Brennan, Tom. 2001. Murder at 40 Below. Chapter 4: “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Kenmore, WA: Epicenter Press. Ott, Tim. August 20, 2020. “Robert Stroud.” Biography. “Robert Franklin Stroud.” n.d. Murderpedia. __________ ______________________ Join the Last Frontier Club’s Free Tier and receive updates, bonus episodes, and more. ______ Robin Barefield lives in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, where she and her husband own a remote lodge. She has a master's degree in fish and wildlife biology and is a wildlife-viewing and fishing guide. Robin has published six novels: Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman's Daughter, Karluk Bones, Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge, and The Ultimate Hunt. She has also published two non-fiction books: Kodiak Island Wildlife and Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier. She draws on her love and appreciation of the Alaska wilderness as well as her scientific background when writing. Subscribe to Robin’s free, monthly Murder and Mystery Newsletter for more stories about true crime and mystery from Alaska. Join her on: Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn Visit her website at http://robinbarefield.com Check out her books at Amazon Send me an email: robinbarefield76@gmail.com ___________________________________________ Would you like to support Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier? Become a patron and join The Last Frontier Club. Each month, Robin will provide one or more of the following to club members. · An extra episode of Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier is available only for club members. Behind-the-scenes glimpses of life and wildlife in the Kodiak wilderness. · Breaking news about ongoing murder cases and new crimes in Alaska _______________________________________________________________ Merchandise! Visit the Store              

NashVillager
May 4, 2026: Al Capone, Middle Tennessean?

NashVillager

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2026 15:52


Al Capone was a bootlegger, not a moonshiner, but he found a use for the same hilly area used to hide stills from the revenuers. Plus, the local news for May 4, 2026, and Kacey Musgraves.  Credits: This is a production of Nashville Public RadioHost/producer: Nina CardonaEditor: LaTonya TurnerAdditional support: Mack Linebaugh, Tony Gonzalez, Megan Jones and the staff of WPLN and WNXP

The Steve Gruber Show
Day Break | Chaos in Washington, Cracks in Elections, and a Country on Edge

The Steve Gruber Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2026 114:13


Day Break | Chaos in Washington, Cracks in Elections, and a Country on Edge --- 00:00 Monologue 19:02 – Dr. Jeremy M. Levin, Executive Chairman of Ovid Therapeutics and Chairman Emeritus of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Levin discusses his book Biotech in the Balance and the growing challenges facing the biotech industry. He explains how distrust, regulation, and policy decisions could impact innovation and national competitiveness. 27:56 – Kamden Mulder, William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism. Mulder discusses findings from a DOJ report regarding the treatment of Christians with traditional beliefs. She outlines the broader implications for religious liberty and government policy. 37:55 - Monologue 46:58 – James David Dickson, political commentator and host of the James Dickson Podcast. Dickson explores the debate surrounding citizen-only voting and why it has become a major political flashpoint. He provides insight into how the issue is shaping state and national conversations. 57:01 – Rep. Tim Walberg, U.S. Representative for Michigan's 5th District. Walberg discusses the passage of a DHS funding bill and ongoing redistricting battles across the country. He explains how these developments could impact policy and representation. 1:05:53 – William Elliott Hazelgrove, bestselling author. Hazelgrove discusses his new book Capone's Vault and the historical intrigue surrounding Al Capone. He highlights the real story behind one of America's most famous unsolved mysteries. 1:16:05 - Monologue 1:25:03 – Steve Dulan, professor and licensed attorney. Dulan discusses proposed legislation that would hold gun sellers liable for selling to prohibited individuals. He explains the legal implications and potential impact on Second Amendment issues. 1:35:08 – Seth Barron, writer and editor. Barron discusses his new book Weaponized and the themes it explores. He outlines how institutions and systems are being used in modern political and cultural conflicts. 1:43:57 – Timothy K. Minella, Director of Higher Education at the Goldwater Institute. Minella discusses recent DEI-related changes at the University of Michigan. He explains why some critics believe the cuts may not be as significant as they appear. --- Check out our brand new podcast, 'Forgotten America'... The twelfth episode is live NOW at Steve Gruber on YouTube! Link below: https://youtu.be/1XbEJhJ6Wrk

EquiRatings Jumping Podcast
RED MILLS Special: Brash Says Hello to Shanghai

EquiRatings Jumping Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2026 39:05


Charlotte Smet is joined by Sam Watson for a RED MILLS Special previewing the LGCT of Shanghai, and there is one name at the centre of the conversation: Scott Brash. The world number one heads to Shanghai in extraordinary form, with four five-star Grand Prix wins already this season and two serious contenders in his string. Hello Jefferson, now 17 and arguably in the form of his career, arrives after a perfect start to 2026, while Hello Chadora Lady returns as the defending LGCT Grand Prix of Shanghai winner after her recent victory in Paris. Charlotte and Sam discuss Scott's place in the world number one race, with Kent Farrington and Richard Vogel continuing to apply pressure from elsewhere on the global circuit. They also look at new partnerships for Ben Maher and Max Kühner, the return of Peder Fredricson's Al Capone de Karmel, Sophie Hinners and Iron Dames Sinclair, Brazil's growing strength, and the horses who could shape the road to Aachen. There is also plenty of Sam chaos, from Baywatch slow-motion runs to "Perfect Jeff" emotion, as the team looks ahead to another huge weekend in the 2026 jumping season.

Choses à Savoir HISTOIRE
Pourquoi le rival d'Al Capone a survécu par hasard ?

Choses à Savoir HISTOIRE

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2026 2:12


Le 14 février 1929, au cœur de Chicago, la guerre entre gangs atteint un sommet de violence. Cette période, marquée par la Prohibition, voit s'affronter des organisations criminelles pour le contrôle du trafic d'alcool clandestin. D'un côté, le clan dirigé par Al Capone ; de l'autre, celui de George “Bugs” Moran.Ce matin-là, vers 10h30, plusieurs hommes du gang de Moran se trouvent dans un garage du quartier de Lincoln Park, au 2122 North Clark Street. Ils pensent participer à une livraison d'alcool. Soudain, deux individus déguisés en policiers font irruption, accompagnés de complices en civil. Dans un réflexe conditionné, les hommes présents obéissent sans résistance.Les faux policiers leur ordonnent de se placer face au mur, comme lors d'une arrestation classique. Puis, sans avertissement, les tireurs ouvrent le feu avec des mitraillettes Thompson. En quelques secondes, plus de 70 balles sont tirées. Sept hommes sont abattus. L'un d'eux, grièvement blessé, survivra quelques heures, mais sans jamais révéler d'informations utiles.Fait crucial : Moran lui-même échappe au massacre. En arrivant sur place, il aperçoit ce qu'il croit être une véritable intervention de police et préfère rebrousser chemin. Cette coïncidence renforce le mystère autour de l'opération.L'efficacité et la mise en scène de l'attaque suggèrent une planification minutieuse. Le déguisement en policiers n'est pas anodin : il permet d'éviter toute résistance et d'assurer une exécution rapide. Ce détail marquera durablement les esprits et contribuera à la légende du crime organisé américain.Très vite, les soupçons se tournent vers Al Capone, dont les hommes auraient orchestré l'opération pour éliminer leur principal rival. Pourtant, malgré les évidences, aucune preuve formelle ne permettra de l'inculper. Capone se trouve alors en Floride, et son alibi tient juridiquement.L'enquête, menée dans un contexte de corruption et de moyens limités, piétine. Plusieurs suspects sont interrogés, notamment des membres du gang de Capone, mais aucun ne sera condamné pour ce crime. Le massacre reste officiellement non résolu.Cet événement a néanmoins un impact majeur. Il choque l'opinion publique par sa brutalité et contribue à durcir la lutte contre le crime organisé. Paradoxalement, c'est moins pour ce massacre que pour fraude fiscale qu'Al Capone sera finalement arrêté et condamné en 1931.Le massacre de la Saint-Valentin reste aujourd'hui l'un des épisodes les plus emblématiques de l'histoire mafieuse américaine : une démonstration de violence, de stratégie… et d'impunité. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Books In the Middle Podcast
Al Capone Does My Shirts By Gennifer Choldenko (Historical Fiction)

Books In the Middle Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2026 4:09


Send us Fan MailAl Capone Does My Shirts    By Gennifer CholdenkoMoose really doesn't want to leave his home in Santa Monica to move to Alcatraz Island.  His father takes a job as a guard so the family can get Natalie, Moose's sister, into a special school.  Even though Natalie is older than Moose she acts much younger, and the whole family has to make changes for her.  And this time, that change means Moose is living on an island with Al Capone.Recommended for grades 6 and up. Support the show

The Doctor Who Show
Blood, Booze & the Doctor

The Doctor Who Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2026 92:49


In today's episode we look at the 1994 Virgin New Adventure, Blood Harvest. Dekker is a private eye, an honest one. But when Al Capone hires him to investigate a new joint called "Doc's", he knows this is one job he can't refuse. And just why are the Doctor and Ace selling illegal booze in a town full of murderous gangsters? Meanwhile, Bernice has been abandoned on a vampire-infested planet outside normal space. There she meets a mysterious stranger called Romanadvoratrelundar — and discovers an ancient and malevolent power, linking 1929 Chicago with a lair of immortal evil. The consequences of this story are inextricably linked to events in the Doctor's past. Before that, we kick things off with the usual mix of news and short topics. Then, after the Blood Harvest chat, we open the mailbag for a ton of feedback from our listeners on a number of topics. Enjoy, dear listener. Contact us: Bluesky: @thedwshow.net X / Twitter: @theDWshow Email: hello@theDWshow.net Substack: thedwshow.substack.com Facebook: facebook.com/theDWshow

Paranormal Activity with Yvette Fielding
MURDERS THAT HAUNT: The Case of Lizzie Borden & The Victims That Never Really Left

Paranormal Activity with Yvette Fielding

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2026 29:27


In the latest instalment of Murders That Haunt, Yvette Fielding turns her attention to one of the most infamous and unresolved criminal cases in American history.Fall River, Massachusetts, 1892.On a sweltering August morning, wealthy businessman Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found brutally murdered inside their own home.Their daughter Lizzie was tried, acquitted, and never charged again.The case was never solved.But something, it seems, has never left that house on Second Street.This week, Yvette explores the full story of Lizzie Borden: the woman, the trial, the mystery.Before stepping into the paranormal legacy that has made the Borden house one of the most investigated locations in the United States.From the heavy, deliberate footsteps that climb the staircase and stop dead on the landing, eerily mirroring Abby Borden's final moments, to the unexplained indentations that appear on the bed in the very room where she was slaughtered: the reports from guests and investigators are as unsettling as the murders themselves.We look at the sightings of a silent woman in Victorian dress, the curious presence that moves objects and leaves guests with a creeping sensation of being watched from just over their shoulder, and the haunting detail that perhaps says it all: someone was in that house, and nobody could prove who.Joining the case files of Mary Blandy, Al Capone, Mary Ann Cotton, Amelia Dyer, H.H. Holmes and The Corned Beef Killer Ethel Major, Lizzie Borden takes her place in the series as a woman history couldn't convict, and a house that refuses to forget.Lock the doors and make sure you don't go upstairs alone!A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bob Sirott
The Entertainment Report: Al Capone, Geraldo Rivera, and Alan Osmond

Bob Sirott

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2026


Blockbuster Blake Stubbs joins Bob Sirott to share details about the death of Alan Osmond and the history of his contribution to The Osmonds through the years. He also talk about the 40th anniversary of Geraldo Rivera’s report on Al Capone’s vault and how it was just the beginning of his career.

In the Market with Janet Parshall
Grounded Faith

In the Market with Janet Parshall

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2026 44:54 Transcription Available


On In The Market with Janet Parshall this week Todd Hampson joined us to answer your questions on the end times and the important role Israel plays in future prophecy. We heard sobering truth and hopeful guidance from Dr. Daniel Emina as he addressed the topic of suicide with clear guidance on how to find your way out of that darkness. National defense expert Bill Gertz was back to update on what China is doing while all eyes are turned toward the conflict with Iran, including a new exclusion zone off of Shanghai and the hacking of Starlink. 40 years ago the nation was riveted to their televisions awaiting the secrets of Al Capone’s vault. Author William Hazelgrove joins us to share the inside story of this legendary broadcast failure. As we close out the week, you are invited to another examination of some of the top headlines of the week through the lens of God’s unchanging word.Become a Parshall Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/inthemarket/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the Market with Janet Parshall
Capone's Vault

In the Market with Janet Parshall

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2026 45:11 Transcription Available


It's been 40 years since Americans were riveted to their TV to watch The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults. It was a high-wire, high-reward, high-disaster broadcast that was meant to be a comeback for journalist Geraldo Rivera, who had been fired from ABC after fifteen years -but the live broadcast didn't go to plan. Join us as best-selling author William Elliott Hazelgrove discusses the biggest boondoggle in U.S. broadcast history and his newest book Capone’s Vault.Become a Parshall Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/inthemarket/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural
The Spirits of Shaker's Cigar Bar, Part Two | Guest Bob Weiss

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2026 27:46


This is Part Two of our conversation.Shaker's Cigar Bar in Milwaukee has built a reputation that goes well beyond food, drinks, and cigars—one shaped by a past that doesn't seem to stay in the past.The property itself has a long and complicated history. The land was once a cemetery before becoming a Prohibition-era speakeasy and brothel with ties to Al Capone. That alone raises questions—but it's what continues to be reported inside that keeps those questions alive.Disembodied voices. Footsteps with no one there. Objects that don't stay where they're left. Some encounters seem tied to specific figures—a young girl near the bathrooms, a woman upstairs—while others are harder to define, especially in the basement, where many describe a presence that feels distinctly out of place.Renovations uncovered human remains, adding another layer to an already uneasy history. But for those who spend time inside Shaker's, the activity isn't something confined to stories or rumors—it's something people say they've experienced firsthand.So what is really going on inside Shaker's Cigar Bar? Today on The Grave Talks, a conversation with Shakers Cigar Bar owner/founder, Bob Weiss.For more information visit their website at: shakerscigarbar.com.#HauntedBar #RealHauntings #GhostEncounters #ParanormalActivity #ShakersCigarBar #ShadowFigures #DisembodiedVoices #GhostStories #HauntedAmerica #DarkEnergy #ParanormalPodcast #TheGraveTalks #MilwaukeeHaunting #HauntedHistory #Paranormal #GhostsLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

Bob Sirott
This Week in Chicago History: Harold Washington, Al Capone, and Red Solo Cup

Bob Sirott

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2026


Anna Davlantes, WGN Radio's investigative correspondent, joins Bob Sirott to share what happened this week in Chicago history. Stories include the election of former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, the first cellphone call, the debut of the Red Solo Cup, and more. Sponsored by UI Health.

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural
The Spirits of Shaker's Cigar Bar, Part One | Guest Bob Weiss

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2026 27:31


Shaker's Cigar Bar in Milwaukee has built a reputation that goes well beyond food, drinks, and cigars—one shaped by a past that doesn't seem to stay in the past.The property itself has a long and complicated history. The land was once a cemetery before becoming a Prohibition-era speakeasy and brothel with ties to Al Capone. That alone raises questions—but it's what continues to be reported inside that keeps those questions alive.Disembodied voices. Footsteps with no one there. Objects that don't stay where they're left. Some encounters seem tied to specific figures—a young girl near the bathrooms, a woman upstairs—while others are harder to define, especially in the basement, where many describe a presence that feels distinctly out of place.Renovations uncovered human remains, adding another layer to an already uneasy history. But for those who spend time inside Shaker's, the activity isn't something confined to stories or rumors—it's something people say they've experienced firsthand.So what is really going on inside Shaker's Cigar Bar? Today on The Grave Talks, a conversation with Shakers Cigar Bar owner/founder, Bob Weiss.For more information visit their website at: shakerscigarbar.com.#HauntedBar #RealHauntings #GhostEncounters #ParanormalActivity #ShakersCigarBar #ShadowFigures #DisembodiedVoices #GhostStories #HauntedAmerica #DarkEnergy #ParanormalPodcast #TheGraveTalks #MilwaukeeHaunting #HauntedHistory #Paranormal #GhostsLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

American Hauntings Podcast
Riddled With Bullets

American Hauntings Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2026 89:14 Transcription Available


As John Torrio was dividing up Chicago into territories so that the gangs could fairly supply the city with bootleg liquor, Al Capone was coming into his own in the Windy City...Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859New Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/troytaylorodditiesCheck out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.comWant an episode every week, plus other awesome perks and discounts? Check out our Patreon pageFind out merch at AmericanHauntingsClothing.comFollow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTLFollow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast, @TroyTaylorgram, @CodyBeckSTLThis episode was written by Troy TaylorProduced and edited by Cody BeckOur Sponsors:* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/hauntingsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Firearms Radio Network (All Shows)
Double Tap 457 – Dusky on Welfare

Firearms Radio Network (All Shows)

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2026


Double Tap - Ep 457 This episode of Double Tap is brought to you by: Blue Alpha Night Fision (Code: WLSISLIFE Die Free Co. (Code: WLSISLIFE) Flatline Fiber Co (Code: WLS15) Bowers Group (Code: WLS) Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171  Show Titles   GunCon.net Tickets on sale now. Use code AGENCY171 DEAR WLS Question from Boone I'm wanting to make a SBR 350 legend ar but I'm wondering what barrel lengths to consider. I'm not wanting to get too short for hunting up to 100 yards. What length would you recommend? And I'm also considering building a 6mm ARC at a later date and what length would be reasonable for it? Question from Adam B I have acquired some cool WWII flags and one has a bring back letter. It is in the old blue duplicator paper and was wrapped with a cover sheet. When i opened up what I thought was just a cover sheet, it was actually a very faint letter for the second flag. Do you know of any place that can restore or recover the document to give the second flag its story. NO Jeremy, I won't sell them to you. Question from Fisher Cat Hey knucklefucks, what are your opinions of the lever action rifle from Henry that's in 556/223? I've been debating on buying one over an ar15 because who doesn't love a lever action? Love the show Question from Dennis H Will Gideon optics be making the mediator 2 in with a green reticle? Also wondering if this would be a sufficient optic for a semi automatic shotgun? Question from Jon F Hey fellas! Long time listener, first time caller. I have a Marlin 1895 trapper in 45-70, this is my primary hunting rifle and I want to get a can for it. I'd like to keep it as light a possible and still be somewhat hearing safe. Also this will most likely stay on this gun, so direct mount (11/16-24). What do you think is my best option? I was leaning towards the dreadnought but I'm not stuck on it. Question from Andrew L I'm in process of printing and building an AR22 based on the CMMG conversion system. I'm also adding an FTN5 can and most likely, a 3-position safety. My question is, have any of you had experience with this kind of setup and what kind of reliability did it have? I'm just looking for something fun to build and shoot but also the secret stash of SHTF supply of files and parts. I'm curious to what you guys have printed or used, what kind of material, print settings etc that had worked best for you. I know there's been some talk about a dedicated show or segment for 3d printed stuff and I'd be fully onboard for that! I'd even contribute if I can or you need. Thanks for the great work! I listen while at work or my 1-hour commute to or from it. Notes: FUCK THE LIBTARDS… GUN INDUSTRY NEWS Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition File Lawsuit Over National Park Service Federal Facilities Firearms Ban The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and a private citizen have filed a lawsuit challenging the National Park Service's ban on carrying firearms in federal facilities such as visitor centers, ranger stations, and maintenance buildings. The suit argues that this prohibition violates Second Amendment rights by forcing law-abiding visitors to disarm to comply with park registration rules, citing Supreme Court precedents like Bruen. SAF leaders describe the ‘sensitive places' restrictions as attempts to circumvent public carry protections. Springfield Armory Echelon 4.5″ Adopted by St. Louis County Police Department The St. Louis County Police Department has selected the Springfield Armory Echelon 4.5F 9mm striker-fired pistol as its new duty sidearm, citing positive feedback on performance, ergonomics, and slide features from transition training. The Echelon features a patent-pending Central Operating Group with a self-contained stainless steel chassis for quick grip module swaps, including three backstraps, and a Variable Interface System supporting over 30 optics footprints via self-locking pins. Fully ambidextrous controls benefit left-handed officers, with the department recommending it as a durable, configurable platform.0 Ruger Gen II American Rifles – Left-Handed Ranch Configuration Ruger has announced left-handed versions of its Gen II American bolt-action rifles, starting with the Ranch configuration. These feature improved stocks with adjustable length-of-pull and comb, a three-position safety, and Cerakote finishes. Chambered in straight-wall and intermediate calibers suited for hunting and short-barreled applications. MDT S90 SPUHR to V-Mount Adapter and M-LOK to V-Mount 90° Adapter for Send-It Gen2 Electronic Level MDT Sporting Goods has released two new V-Mount adapters for the Send-It Gen2 Electronic Level: the S90 SPUHR to V-Mount Adapter and the M-LOK to V-Mount 90° Adapter. These adapters enable integration with Spuhr mounts and M-LOK slots, allowing repositioning of the electronic level off the top rail for improved flexibility in precision rifle setups. They address mounting limitations caused by large optics, night vision, and thermals by expanding the V-Mount ecosystem. SK Customs Recreates Al Capone's ‘Sweetheart' Colt 1911 in Limited Edition of 200 Units SK Guns (SK Customs) has released a limited-edition recreation of Al Capone's iconic ‘Sweetheart' Colt 1911, chambered in .45 ACP with classic Government Model design. The pistol features detailed floral engravings, custom sights matching the original, polished and blued finish, checkered front strap and mainspring housing, and grips of genuine vintage red deer stag. Announced on April 10, 2026, only 200 units are produced, numbered 001 through 200. IWI US Arad-5 Rifle IWI US has launched the Arad-5 rifle, now manufactured at their new facility in Andersonville, Tennessee. This 5.56x45mm NATO rifle features a semi-monolithic upper with patented CamLok barrel lock-up and a short-stroke piston gas system. It is the first major product from their expanded domestic operation, originally developed for Israel's Tier 1 units. 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Gangland Wire
Ice Pick Willie

Gangland Wire

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2026 Transcription Available


In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with Salt Lake City author Flats to discuss his book, Ice Pick Willie: The Life and Times of Israel Alderman. We take a deep dive into the shadowy world of Israel “Icepick Willie” Alderman—a largely forgotten but deeply embedded figure in early 20th-century organized crime. Willie's criminal career traces back to Prohibition-era New York, where he began as a jewelry thief before evolving into something far more lethal. His nickname came from his preferred weapon: an ordinary household ice pick. In the 1920s, it was common, inconspicuous, and devastatingly effective. Flats explains how Willie's method allowed him to carry out murders quietly and efficiently, often avoiding the attention that accompanied more public gangland shootings. We follow Willie's movements from New York to Minneapolis and eventually into the orbit of Chicago's violent underworld. Along the way, he intersected with major figures of organized crime, including Meyer Lansky, Charles Luciano, and Bugs Moran. Flats outlines the shifting alliances and rivalries that defined the era, placing Willie within the broader context of gang wars that culminated in events like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The conversation also examines Willie's transition from violent enforcer to gambling operative as organized crime evolved and shifted westward. As Las Vegas rose with legalized gambling, figures like Willie adapted—moving from street-level brutality to more structured rackets under established mob leadership. Despite brushing against major historical events and powerful crime bosses, Icepick Willie faded into relative obscurity. Flats and I explore why certain gangsters become legends while others—equally dangerous and influential—slip into the margins of history. We also touch on Willie's odd cultural afterlife, including regional pop-culture references that keep his name alive in unexpected ways. This episode provides both a character study of a cold and calculated killer and a broader examination of how organized crime adapted from Prohibition chaos to structured syndicates. It's a detailed look at a man who operated in the shadows—lethal, efficient, and nearly forgotten. Flats' book, Ice Pick Willie: The Life and Times of Israel Alderman, is available now on Amazon. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, welcome all you wiretappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:03] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. As most of you, I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective turned podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I got a couple of documentary films you can rent on Amazon if you choose. I’ll have links in the show notes. Or just go to Amazon and search my name and you’ll find my stuff. But anyhow, today I have a friend of mine from Salt Lake City called Flats. And he’s just Flats, all right? And he’s written a book about a man named Icepick Willie. Now, Icepick Willie has got a great, cool nickname. I’m surprised that he didn’t last through history a little better because people had an easy-to-remembering cool nickname. His real name is Israel Alderman. Now, Flats has been researching him. He got a hold of me because I did a show on David Berman, who ended up in Las Vegas. He was a Jewish gambler from Minneapolis. And ice pick ends up out there connected to him somehow. And I didn’t really stumble. I stumbled a little bit across that, but I couldn’t remember what it was. But anyhow, welcome flats. [1:09] Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. All right. Go ahead. I’m sorry. I’m always open for any chance to talk about Ice Pick Willie, one of my favorite people. And if you guys out there know anything about Ice Pick Willie, get a hold of me and I’ll connect you up with Flats. And I’ll have his Gmail in the show notes. But either that or get a hold of me pretty easy. Any rumors or stories, lies, anything about him. [1:38] But in the meantime, in a couple of weeks, actually, by the time this podcast is out, that book’s going to be up on Amazon. But you can always go back. You can always pull those down and add more information in and then put them back up if you want. So that’s a good way to go. Nicknames are interesting. I once talked about doing a show on nicknames and how people got them, and I just never got around to it. And many times you can see how people get their nicknames. Al Capone, Scarface Al. He’s got the big scar on his face, right? Here’s one. One of Icepick’s Willie’s contemporaries, a guy named Albert, was it Tannenbaum? Yeah, Tannenbaum. And he was called Tick Tock. And I looked that up because, like I said, he was a contemporary of Icepick Willie’s. And he got the name Tick Tock because somebody said you move all the time. You’re always like a watch. You’re Tick Tocking all the time. And, of course, there’s Anthony Accardo, who they called Joe Batters. And his guys gave him that. They used to call him Joe. And that was because he beat up somebody with a baseball bat so bad that Al Capone said, you’re a real Joe batters. But he also, many times the press will give people these nicknames. And they gave Anthony Accardo the nickname of the big tuna because he was big. And they had a picture of him with a huge big tuna he had caught. There’s Joe Bananas Bonnano. That speaks for itself, Joe Bananas. And I think the press gave him that. First question, Flats, you know how Icepick Willie got his nickname? The nickname came… [3:06] From when he was in Minneapolis, he apparently picked it up. And this is something which he admitted to later on in his life. He claimed to have taken about 11, 12 victims out by using an ice pick in the ear. [3:27] And ice picks were actually really common back in the 20s everywhere. People had them. Everyone had them in their homes. and they were a real popular tool among Murder Incorporated members. It’s a handy thing, small, quiet kind of a tool. [3:49] Normally, a knife-pick killing was something that took maybe three or four people, not counting the victim. They’d crowd around him and grab his arms, whatever, and then somebody’d do him, they’d haul him off. Uh, Willie had managed to turn this into a one man operation. He’d take his victim. [4:11] He’d be up at the bar with a drinking buddy, get this guy really liquored up, and he’d slip his ice pick out of his jacket. Boom, real quick in the air, ice pick’s gone, the guy’s down on the bar. Not much blood because it’s an ice pick. Forensics wasn’t real hot back in the 20s, so a lot of times they would diagnose this as a brain aneurysm. But the guy would slump over the bar, drunk, dead drunk, and then they’d just haul him off. The story is they’d take him in the back room, he’d go down the coal chute, which everybody had back then, out into a truck, they’d haul off the body. The people that went down the coal chute, they were all pretty much forgotten. But Willie, he seemed to have stuck around. Now, in Minneapolis, apparently he’s still a real popular figure. Memorable, which is funny because Minneapolis, for all my research, is the place there is the least documented evidence about. [5:19] But that seems to be that and Las Vegas are where he’s best known. There’s even a company in Minneapolis that does a nail polish they named Ice Rick Willie. It’s a popular culture thing there. Yeah. Now, did he start out in New York with Erlansky? He started out in New York. He grew up on the Lower East Side. Like so many people, Benny Siegel and Meyer, everybody came from there. Early on, and back by the 20s, Meyer had hooked up with Charlie Luciano, and most of the serious Jewish gangsters came under Meyer’s umbrella, so to speak. And this Willie supposedly, according to another author, this is when Willie hooked up with Meyer, was early on during Prohibition. But Willie didn’t start out as a bootlegger. He started out with a bunch of jewelry store robbers, but they were pretty notorious at him. God, his first record of him was, oh, when was it? About 1925. [6:34] He got a charge for robbery. Not a lot of details on it. The charge was dismissed, and it seems to be a pretty common thing throughout his entire life as far as resolution of his legal issue. But anyway, then right after Christmas, that’s in year 25, he was going by Izzy Alderman back then. Israel, Izzy was his nickname. He didn’t get into Willie till later, but he went into with a couple other guys and they hit a jewelry store for about $75,000 worth of jewelry. Oh, wow. That’s a pretty good chunk of change back then. That’s a score, man. That is a real score back then. Oh, yeah. And then a few months later, along with a couple other people, he hit another jewelry store in the Bronx, William Sims Robbery. This one was pretty well publicized. And they go in, they take the, everybody there, the owner, employees, customers, tie them up, they’re in the back room, they grab trays full of gems, usually diamonds, they’re out the door, never even touched the cash register. So they got about a hundred grand on that. Got away. Next morning. [7:59] Another jeweler, Sam Candle, as he was opening up his shop to let a friend in, some guys come pushing into the door. Izzy’s with them again. Once more, the same M.O., everybody’s in the back room tied up. Another hundred grand or so worth the gems. So they’re doing pretty good by now. Wow, yeah. I assume that whenever they fenced them, did you find out much about how they fenced them? Did the Italians get a piece of the action? Did they make him pay up, or did Meyer Lansky get a piece of that? I’m sure that Meyer was somehow connected to this. He got a piece of everything that was going on in the Jewish world. And originally, at that point in time, there was not a lot of interaction between the Italian mobsters and the Jewish mobsters. They had their own little thing that they kept to themselves. They felt safer that way. They could trust everybody. It was actually pretty much Meyer and Charlie Luciano that moved things past that point. I see. But up till then, everything was coming under Meyer’s thing. So they were doing pretty good until they did a robbery. [9:19] There was a jeweler, Aaron Roddark. Now, about 18 months earlier, he’d had an attempted robbery where he had shot and killed one of the robbers as they were running out of the store. So he got a bunch of publicity called the Fighting Jewelers in the press, a popular guy. About a year and a half later, another crew walks in. This is Izzy’s crew. [9:50] When they come in, same thing, the fighting jeweler, he goes for his gun. Doesn’t work out so well this time. This time, he’s shot and killed. But they didn’t get any jewels. They take off again. [10:05] But now they’re hot. This is big news. Fighting jewelers murdered. Big publicity, big public outcry. And cops are looking for them hot and heavy by now. [10:17] And by now, so a few weeks, couple weeks after the fighting jewelers murdered, one of Izzy’s crew was picked up, coming out of a doctor’s office, for a gunshot wound, where he’d been treated. Cots get word of this, they pick him up, and he immediately starts confessing to all the jewelry store robbers, giving up partners. They pick up a couple more people pretty soon everybody is just singing like canary it’s like the mormon tavern fire or something so the cops are looking for everybody they haven’t got they pick up almost everybody the two people are missing from the last robbery where the guy was murdered is Izzy Alderman and one of the other guys Robert Byrd. [11:09] So Izzy and Robert they know they’re hot They’ve got warrants out. They know the police are looking. They’ve got this information because they’re connected to whoever. So they leave town. They’re on their way to Chicago. They’re going to go there to hide out, take care of business for a couple reasons. One is Robert Berg has brother, Ollie, who is tied in with the Northside Bugs Moran gang in Chicago. Ago, Holly is also a jewelry driver and right about the time, right before. [11:47] His brother, Robert, gets to Chicago. Ollie and a couple guys are on an Illinois Central commuter train. They robbed three jewelry salesmen while they’re on the train of their jewels, managed to get off the train and get away. They got picked up about 12 hours later, though. So now his brother, Ollie, is in prison again, of course. But Robert is connected. They have connections to the Northside gang. Through the brother, through Ollie. And this is a safe place for them to go, relatively safe. At that point in time, Chicago’s got the beer wars going on, and so it wasn’t a real safe place to be. But they had out there, they’re there maybe a week or so. The cops raid a hotel room, they pick up Robert Burke. They also find a bunch of jewelry, which they trace back to the New York robbery. So they know this is all tied together now. They don’t get Willie. Izzy is still at that point. So Robert Berg, now he’s back to New York going to prison too. Izzy needs a new partner. Berg had a guy he was running around with, Red McLaughlin. [13:06] Red’s partner’s in jail, and Izzy’s partner’s in jail, so they came up a little bit. But now Red already at this point the cops are looking for him hot and heavy in Chicago a little while before they found him. [13:24] The cops saw him on the side of the road, Red was on the running board of the car, reaching through the window, choking the driver. The driver turned out to be, of course, a jewelry salesman with the jewelry in the car. Red explained to the cop that his friend was just having some kind of a fit, and he was trying to help him. The cop wasn’t going for it, and so Red was off to jail. He managed to get bailed out. And as soon as he’s out, he just goes off on all kinds of things. By now, the cops are looking for him for being involved in some kidnappings and bootlegging and murders. One newspaper article called him the man of a hundred brides. He’s like Lon Chaney of the criminal world or something. So now the cops are really hot after Red. He’s junk bail. He’s doing all this other stuff. There they raid a hotel, the Webster Hotel in Chicago. They’ve got a tip. That’s where they’re going to find him. Yeah. They don’t find Red, but they find his buddy in there. They find him, and he’s got a suitcase full of guns. [14:38] But no, he knows this is turned out to be actually Izzy Alderman, but he knows the cops are looking for Izzy Alderman. So he tells the cops his name’s Robert Lewis. They don’t know any better. Things are different back then. Yeah. He also told them that he was a bootlegger from Detroit. And that, I guess, would explain having a suitcase full of guns. And when they get ready to arrest him, he tells the cops they’re going to be wasting their time because he says he has some high connections in the illegal liquor business in town here. And apparently he was right because all of his charges were dismissed as soon as they haul him in once again. Back then, it seemed in Chicago, because of Al Capone, Bugs Moran. [15:30] New York with Meyer and Charlie, Prohibition contributed to it a lot. Corruption was just fantastic. So you could buy your people’s way out of everything, which was nice if that’s what you were doing. Yeah so anyway Robert Bird disappears and now Willie all of his partners all of his connections everybody’s locked up missing dead something he’s out of work again but he’s in Chicago since 1927 they’re in the middle of the beer wars he’s a starker a tough muscle man starker’s Jewish term so he hooks up right away They were Bugs Moran on the North side. Bugs is more, the Bugs Moran gang, they were people like Frank Foster, Ed Newberry. He had other Jewish gangsters working with him at the time. So Lizzie fit in pretty good. And it isn’t long at all, maybe a month later, he gets cops pull over a car. They find Frank Foster and Izzy Alderman in there. And they’ve got guns, of course. And once again, the charges just disappear. Everybody goes on their way. [16:51] So things are rolling along. The beer wars are going good. And now we get into the taxi cab wars. because in Chicago back then, that’s how you settled everything. You had a war. There were two cab companies mostly going on in Chicago at the time, and they were shooting up each other’s cab offices and throwing bombs and shooting up cabs. So the Yellow Cab Company puts out a hefty reward for the people involved, which leads to another made by the cops on this time. It was a Broadway apartment where there were supposed to be people involved in all of this. [17:30] Among the people they find, first off, Frank Foster, who at the time was a high-ranking member of Bugs Moran’s group on the north side. They also find another bunch of people, one of them named Harry Davidson. This was, again, Izzy Alderman, but he knew that the cops were looking for Izzy Alderman, and they were looking for Robert Lewis by then. So that was Harry Davidson, and that worked out. And, of course, everybody gets charged with concealed weapons, and then the charges are dropped, and catch and release. Yeah, catch and release Chicago. It was really interesting. So shortly after this, of course, this is 1929 in Chicago, and it’s Valentine’s Day. We all know what happened there. Now this brought major heat, major attention from everyone nationwide, the student. [18:30] And surprisingly, later in life, like I said, he used to almost brag about his activity as he got older. One of the things he would tell people is that he missed the St. Valentine’s Day massacre because he was in the bathroom. Yeah, I was going to say, he missed that. The bathroom wasn’t in SMT partage, if that was the case. They had an outhouse, Flats. They had an outhouse out back. That’s true. Yeah, he was close enough to do that activity. Yeah. He was just caught up in the middle of all the major things happening throughout Gangland at that point in time. Really? How does he end up in Minneapolis? It’s reasonably close to Chicago, and there are some connections. It is. [19:19] Before he ends up back in Minneapolis, first he ends up back in New York. What happens now in New York, they’ve got their own problems going on between the two gangs back then. Yeah, they had the Castle Marie’s War during that time, I believe, or sometime around then. It broke out. Actually, it happens right after he gets shot. But as he gets picked up, there’d been a shooting that they had. First, they had the Easter Massacre, where a few people get shot up. And then the Fox Lake Massacre. Like I said, everything in Chicago was wars or massacres. And by the time the Fox Lake massacre happened, it was after the Valentine’s Day thing. Izzy Alderman, Frank Foster, Ted Newberry, and probably at least 6, 8, 10 other people affected. They left the Northside gang, and they moved south and joined up with El Capote. [20:21] Obviously, they could see where everything’s going. I mean, everyone at the outside is winning. But the authorities were aware of it. So after the Easter massacre and the Fox Lake massacre, now the cops know there’s going to be all kinds of retaliation. Fox Lake thing, Al Capone’s people got shot up. So cops are out on the street looking for people. They pull over a car racing down the street. They find Frank Foster, Izzy Alderman again, out with their guns. Once again, they get hauled in, arrested, catching release. Shortly after this, now we get a reporter, Jake Lingle. Jake Lingle, he was crooked. He was on the take. He was one of these $65 a week reporters who vacations in Hawaii and has an apartment on Lake George Drive, that kind of thing. He even said he had a fancy piece of gold jewelry that was a gift from Al Capone. Anyway, he gets into trouble with people there. He gets killed. [21:32] Now, everybody knows you can’t. The people you don’t kill are cops and newsmen. Jake Lengel gets killed, and now, once again, it’s like St. Valentine’s Day all over again. Big public outcry. Cops are hot and heavy. They know somehow Izzy Alderman is somehow tied into this. Frank Foster’s tied into it. So they’re hunting them. And a few months later, a cop spots Izzy. He’s in a restaurant with another guy, Joe Condi. They’re eating dinner. Cop recognized Izzy because he was really, which is surprising, he was really well known then to the cops, to the press, to other gangsters. [22:19] And yet today, who was Izzy Aldenman? Who was Ice-Pick Willie? So time goes by. But the cop spots him, recognizes him, grabs, snatters him up, and arrests him. As soon as they come out of the restaurant, runs him in for questioning for the Lingle murder. They get him in. There’s nothing they can tie him to the Lingle case with. So they charge him with vagrants. This is a new deal, a new tool that prosecutors are using in Chicago. Yeah. We know you’re a gangster. We can’t prove anything, so we’re going to arrest you for vagrancy because you have no physical means of support. You don’t have a job. [23:07] When Izzy was arrested at this time, he had about $650 in his pocket. This is worth like over 12 grand today so yeah the economy’s good when vagrants are carrying that kind of money obviously but they get arrested charged with first they’re brought in before a judge one judge mccordy he says there’s nothing to hold them on the lingual thing so they’re free to go the minute they walk out of the court building they get arrested charged with vacancy taken in front of another judge, Judge Lyle. Now, Judge Lyle, he’s known, he’s a holy terror when it comes to gangsters. He’s just after them. And even he admits the vagrancy thing, I’m not sure it’s really valid, but we’re going to charge you anyway. First thing is, he says, is I want a lawyer. So the judge tells the court reporter, the defendant has no comment at this time. And then in what’s probably the shortest trial in history, Izzy and his buddy are found guilty. [24:21] And shipped away to jail in a matter of like 10 minutes or something. How long was the sentence for? How long was the sentence for? They were sentenced to six months in jail. Okay. Surveillance. Okay. So now their lawyer comes back, goes back to the first judge, McGordy, who had released them on the Lingle chart. [24:49] And he convinced her, I don’t know, for whatever reason, Judge McGurdy says, no, I have jurisdiction in this case because they were brought before me first. And so he issues a bond and sets them free again. As soon as they walk out of the courthouse, they’re re-arrested again for vagrancy. At this point, their lawyer, the lawyer’s upset. And he’s telling, he tells the cops, that’s it. If you’re going to take them in on this bullshit again, you got to take me too. So they all went down to the station, the lawyer with them, charged with vagrancy again, locked up. Judge Lyle, like I say, Judge Lyle was not a friend of these people. He missed their fail at $10,000 on the vagrancy charge. And then he immediately changed it to $20,000 a piece because he was afraid they might make the $10,000 bail. These vagrants, mind you. So they’re backed off in jail. [25:56] Late that night, the lawyer, who’s also out of jail at this point, finds another judge who is either totally unaware of this case or he’s very aware of it. Either way, this judge says, oh, no, that’s way too much bail for vagrancy. The bail should be $100 for that. And as he says, they’re bailing at $100. They’re out again. Boom. So the next day, they go to court facing the, vagrancy charge in front of Judge Lyle. Judge Lyle immediately says, no, your bond was issued falsely, charges him with another $20,000 bail, has him re-arrested. Oh, my God. So they get their bond reduced to $10,000. They bail out of jail. They go to court. [26:51] Finally, on the vagrancy charges, maybe a month later. They’ve been dealing with this now for almost two months. Vagrancy charge. First day of the actual vagrancy trial, Izzy goes in, they arrest him for the burglaries back in New York, charging with hoax. So now they’re ignoring the vagrancy charge. They’ve got him locked up. They’re holding him for extradition to New York. He fights this still. He holds out finally in December, just a couple days before Christmas. He ends up back in New York to face the vagrants. He’s charged with the robberies and the murder of the fighting jeweler. Finally, everything gets dropped back in New York. You know, this is Meyer and Charlie’s area. All the charges are dropped. He’s free and clear again. He’s back home, so he sticks around. and it’s just in time because, as you mentioned, the Castle Marie’s war breaks out like a month later. [27:57] There’s no actual evidence, a lot of evidence of his involvement, but coincidentally, he is charged with murder about a month after the war breaks out. And, of course, his charges drop again, too, like they are. And then as the war goes on, first, Charlie Luciano, he swapped, changed his sides, they whacked Joe the boss, and then they set up Maranzano. [28:27] And Salvador Marenzano gets shot and killed in a restaurant, supposedly by a hit squad of Jewish gangsters that Meyer organized, because Meyer and Charlie were pretty close at this point in time. It isn’t sure who all was involved in that. Benny Siegel was supposed to be one of the shooters. And there’s no mention of Izzy being involved in it, but once again, just coincidentally, he left for France a couple of weeks after the shooting, where he stays until the end of the year when they first held at a couple of conferences. The one where Charlie Luciano organized pretty much the Italian crime family And then a couple months later, Meyer had one where he organized Jewish people, except Meyer had more of a national thing, whereas Charlie’s was more of the New York Five family kind of thing. [29:37] So anyway, at this time, I guess moving along here, Dave Berman, as you’re familiar with, being a Jewish mobster out of the Midwest, he’d come under Meyer’s umbrella. And then in 1927, he gets called to New York. He ends up in New York. At the time, Meyer, the Bugs and Meyer gang, especially being Budgie Siegel and Meyer Lansky, had this thing going where they were kidnapping rival bootleggers. Bootlegging was big business. Meyer was taking control of all of that. It was coming, especially coming in from Canada, which is where the Midwest came in, coming in by boatloads from Canada. We were drinking Canada Dry. Yeah, good one. So Dave Berman, he ends up in New York. Another bootlegger named Abe Sharlin gets kidnapped. [30:45] And the family agrees to pay like a $50,000 ransom to get him back. So when the two guys show up to collect the ransom, instead of a pile of money, there’s a pile of cops waiting for him. Immediately, a shootout breaks out. The one guy jumps out of the car, pulls out his gun, big shootout, people running everywhere. One guy shot and killed. The other guy, he surrenders. That’s Dave Berman. So Dave Berman, it’s, doing this for Meyer, but the cops don’t know that for sure. But they arrest him. He’s off to Sing for seven years for kidnapping. [31:27] Actually, back then, Sing, the prison in Ossining, New York, sat on the river, and so most people sent there, prisoners were shipped up there by boat. That’s where the term sent up the river. I didn’t realize that. Cool. So he does his time while he’s locked up there there’s not a lot of Willie doesn’t show up a lot but there is one specific mention of him, B Kittle he was a nightclub singer back in the early 30s young girl goes to New York chasing her dream ends up working at the nightclub that just happens to be to hang out for the mobsters. She doesn’t know this, but… And actually, she ends up marrying Mo Sedway later on. And Mo Sedway was one of Meyer Lansky’s close people, Benny’s people. She does remark, though, that she remembers there were two guys she’d always see sitting over at a table in the corner drinking together. One of them, she said, was Izzy Alderman, who she said was a lieutenant for Moe Sedway, and the other was Fat Irish Green. [32:51] Fat Irish Green was Benny’s bodyguard, hang-around-everywhere kind of guy. We always see the same people popping up all through this thing. Izzy’s plugged into this bunch. So anyway, we jump ahead a couple years. Dave Berman gets out of prison. Gets out of prison immediately. Meets up with Mo Sedway and Meyer and Charlie, everybody there. Dave’s been a stand-up guy. He kept his mouth shut about everything. He took his beef. He was good about it. But the story goes, they offer him a million dollars in cash for his loyalty. Fire took the judge. More employers should be like him. [33:42] Dave said he didn’t want the money. He wanted to be, he wanted control of gambling in Minneapolis. His mother lived there. His brother, Chickie, was there running small-time gambling thing. That’s where he wanted to go. And they say, okie-dokie, which I think is a good example of the influence, shall we say, that the East Coast group had over the rest of the country. They can just, I’ll give you this city in the Midwest. But before A.V. heads there, interestingly enough, there’s a couple of treasury bond robberies, big treasury bond robberies that happened in New York. They need total like over $2 million. [34:31] Big bucks and the FBI tracks down some of the bonds to a Minneapolis gangster, so when they arrest him along with him the Minneapolis gangster his name was Royce Boris Royce not that it’s a big deal but with him they pick up Davey Berman Davey the Jew is what he was called at that time they weren’t quite as politically correct, They got Dave Berman, they got Moe Subway, and there was a guy that the newspapers called, one account called him Jacob Irish Greenberg, and another one called him Jack Green Greenberg. So this would have been Fat Irish Green, it was Jacob Greenberg. [35:21] Once again, by the time it was done, acquittals all the way around. Wonderful things for him. Now Davey Berman pays off to Minneapolis to join his brother in the gambling thing. He gets there. Brother Chickie was running gambling initially. Isidore, or Kid Khan, was in charge. Isidore Bloomfield was in charge of the Minneapolis thing. And his brother, Yiddy Bloom. Yeah. But, of course, Davey’s here now. Since Kid Khan and his bunch were also Jewish popsters, that means they are linked to Meyer. And when Meyer says, okay, here’s Davey, now that’s how it goes. Davey immediately starts expanding the gambling joints into horse booking and race wire and craft games and everything. And he’s a good businessman. He’s sharp. And he’s learned a lot, apparently, from Meyer because he knows how to keep his name and people out of the name. Back then in Minneapolis, they had a deal. It was called the O’Connor Existence. [36:41] For the it was a deal that the local police had with gangster you could come to our town, and we won’t bother you we’ll leave you alone three conditions you check in with us when you get here so we know you’re here you of course make various payments to the necessary police and city officials and it was an orphan’s fund to the widows and orphans fund the police, and you promised that you will not commit any crimes major crimes while you’re in twin cities minneapolis st paul and if they’d agree to that they could stay there safely no matter who was looking for them so this also made it kind of more attractive i think for dave burman and people like him because obviously all you got to do is pay people off you’re good to go yeah kind of like the hot springs of the north, huh? Oh, yeah. So, once again, with this kind of ability, you don’t find a lot of mention of. [37:52] Dave Berman or his crew, especially in Minneapolis, and some of the police records have been lost there over the years. So that made it a little harder, too, to track things down. There are a couple of interesting things. For example, now, part of the Berman crew, one of them especially was Slippy Sherr, a guy named Phillip Sherr. They went by Slippy. He was really an interesting sort of guy. He was definitely a violent person he was constantly charged with assaults and murders and of course the charges were always dropped there was one occasion he was out with some friends in a bar they end up in an argument with the bar owner turns into a fight the bar owner goes outside flags down a motorcycle cop who’s going by the motorcycle cop goes back in with the bar owner and they proceed to get in a fist fight with Flippy and his friends, they get lumped up pretty good. Later, when they go to court. [39:01] The officer made a remark in court about, he said, all in all, it was pretty fair fight all the way around. And he said, for the most part, they’re pretty nice guys when they’re not drinking. Yeah. So aren’t we all? He was that kind of the guy Flippi was bollocked, Oh, another example of that. Willie ends up, by the time he hits Minneapolis, he’s become Willie Alden. He’s given up the Izzy thing, trying to put that behind him. Now, his focus is gambling. He’s like Dave Berman. It’s a muscle, maybe, behind Dave Berman. But he’s mellowed out a lot, and you don’t hear a lot about him. In one incident, though, they were golfers of all things. They loved golfing. And this is the 30s. So, of course, they can only golf at the Jewish golf course. Jewish people weren’t allowed at the regular country club. They’re out golfing. Flippy, sure, he would always join them. We wanted to force them. They didn’t deal with golf well. They’d get upset easily. I know the feeling. I know. [40:19] So on one occasion, Flippi slices a ball over into a neighboring farmer’s field. There’s an 18-year-old kid over there farming his potato crop. And Flippi, being argumentative, is a problem breaks out over the ball, him and this kid. Pretty soon, Flippi’s over there in the field. First, he starts wailing on the kid with his fist. And then he starts beating on him with his golf club until he knocks him out. Oh, man. This is like a $30,000 golf club. Game for flippy by the time it’s over and probably got extra strokes on that hole while he was there. [41:03] That the berman crew ran in minneapolis was 613 hennepin this was they were regularly it seemed like it was an annual thing it’s probably a deal they hadn’t once a year the cops would hit 613 Hennepin, they’d raid it, they’d charge him with gambling, whatever, and they’d pay their fine, let it go. But like clockwork, if you check the newspapers, once a year, it’s 13 Hennepin. So finally, last time, 1940, they go in, and now their cops are hyped. Big, great, they ain’t got all these cops, they’re ready to get the door down, charge in. To get there, Doors are wide open. Cop belt all run in. There’s still hot coffee on the stove. There’s a chalkboard full of all the race results. Everything but people. The places. There’s nobody in the place. This upset him made more of an embarrassment, I think, than anything for the police. He finally got beat out on that one. [42:09] That was 613 Hennepin. Was that the address and the name of the spot, 613 Hennepin? Or was that Hennepin’s like a common name up in Minneapolis? It was called the TMA Club. Okay, and the address was 613 Hennepin. Yeah, it actually had a couple of different names, But the address, no matter what club was at that address, whatever they called, it was the same thing. Yeah, I got you. They just sold. Now, about this time, this is late 1930s, of course, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Silver Church thing, the support group, so to speak, in the States, right? Yeah, yeah. And Judge Perlman from New York got a hold of Meyer Lansky. Yeah. See if he could offer assistance. And among the people that Meyer called was Dave Berman, of course, in Minneapolis. And Dave said, sure, I’d be glad to help. And Willie would be glad to help, too. Dave was a little nervous about Willie’s assistance because they really didn’t want anybody killed. And he wasn’t sure about that with Willie. But as it turns out, they said that Silver Shirts held their meeting at the Elks Club in town. and J.B. Berman showed up with some friends and baseball bats. [43:32] It took him about 10 minutes to clear the place out. A couple more go-rounds like this and the silver shirts, all the… [43:42] Nazi groups, neo-Nazis, whatever, they changed their mind about having these kind of meetings there. Like in New York, when they had Nuremeyer brought his people in, they were not extremely friendly to the Nazis, which is understandable. So the Silver Shirts complained to the mayor, Mayor LaGuardia, demanding protection for their rallies and their marches. And the mayor is obligated by law to protect them, to provide them with the support. And he did. He rounded up all of the black and Jewish officers he could find and assigned them to that duty. His mother was Jewish. Yeah, crazy times. It’s hard to believe. If you don’t read it in history yourself, you wouldn’t know it. It’s really something that’s been a gift under the rug. We had those Nazi sympathizers right up to World War II. It was crazy. Oh, it was amazing. People like Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, who wrote The International Jew. At one time, if you bought a new Ford, you’d get a free copy of that book. [44:57] I read that somewhere, The International Jew, that Jewish conspiracy that’s supposed to take over the world and have all the money and everything. Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s ridiculous. They just want to take over gambling. It’s obvious. Yeah, really. Then they wanted to move all these guys you mentioned, Mo Sedway and Mayor Lansky, of course, and Buggy Siegel. They all end up out in Las Vegas. They take it all to Las Vegas, don’t they? Yeah, and like I said, right from the very beginning, you’ll see the same name over and over. Benny Siegel, Gus Greenbaum, Joe Stacker. They had an amazing bunch. And if you look at it, most of them died in bed. Yeah. [45:43] It was a whole different, probably, mindset than you’d see with the Italian gangsters at that time. These are people who managed to stay out of jail, stay out of the press, and stay out of the ground and make money. Yeah. A FBI agent here in Kansas City gave me a quote one time on a documentary I was doing. He was talking about this national crime syndicate. And he said, yeah, he said, the Italians provided the brawn, and the Jews provided the brains. Pretty much how well you got to Vegas, obviously the Jewish groups around the country had been running gambling. They were smart. Meyer especially was a visionary. This guy was a genius in Meyer’s mind. And he could see that, obviously, Prohibition, as wonderful as it was for them, wasn’t going to last forever. But he could see the future in gambling. And I’m sure he didn’t foresee Las Vegas back when Prohibition was repealed, but he did see the direction things were going. [46:55] He developed gambling all over the country. And then when Vegas came along, this was just a wonderful thing for legalized gambling. They had the expertise, the experience, the knowledge, all they needed. Because opening casino is an expensive venture, so they needed more money. The Italians provided extra cash, and the Jewish groups had all the experience and the knowledge to run there. That’s where, back in the one conference, the Fraconia conference that Meyer organized, where he organized the Jewish groups around the nation, at that time he convinced, both groups were convinced that it was time that they start working together and not be at odds with them. with each other. Yeah, no, it was actually, it turned out to be a real profitable agreement as time went on. Yeah, especially in Las Vegas, so. [47:55] I’ll tell you what, Flatsy, it’s a hell of a book. That’s a hell of a story you’ve got there, guys. [48:00] We’re not going to disclose everything because we’ve got to go on out to Las Vegas, but we’re not going to disclose everything. We want you to buy that book. It really sounds interesting. It’s really a walk through the history and the expansion of organized crime from the early days from the Castle of Racey War and Chicago and the Beer Wars to Minneapolis and on out to Las Vegas. It’s a hell of a story. and Ice-Pick Willie was there for all of it, it sounds to me like. That’s what I found so amazing is pretty much every major event in gangland history at that point in time, he would somehow evolve there. And yet, here like 50 years or so after he’s dead, nobody even remembers him. They will now. The people he knew, the people he associated with, the things he’s seen, what a life really guys the book is Ice Pick Willie the life and times of Israel Alderman and the author is Flats F-L-A-T-S and I will have a link to that book on Amazon when this comes out so thanks a lot Flats I really appreciate you coming on and telling those stories, you betcha thanks for having me.

Review It Yourself
The Untouchables (1987) Part Two with co-host Sarah

Review It Yourself

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2026 41:54


Violence escalates, loyalties fracture, justice turns brutally personal.In Part Two of their deep dive into The Untouchables, Sean and co-host Sarah break down the explosive second half of Brian De Palma's Prohibition-era crime classic. If Part One explored myth-making and morality, this episode tackles consequence, sacrifice, and the film's unforgettable climax.From the emotional weight of Sean Connery's Oscar-winning performance to the operatic violence that defines De Palma's directing style, we analyse how the story of Eliot Ness versus Al Capone reaches its dramatic peak.We explore the tension between justice and revenge, the cost of incorruptibility, and whether the film earns its legendary status among gangster cinema greats.Starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro, this 1987 crime epic blends Hollywood spectacle with historical myth.But does the courtroom finale deliver? Does the violence feel operatic or excessive? And does The Untouchables still hold up for modern audiences?In this episode, we discuss:The emotional impact of Malone's arcThe morality of Ness's final choicesThe famous Union Station sequence and De Palma's visual storytellingThe balance between historical fact and cinematic legendWhether The Untouchables deserves its classic statusIf you're searching for:The Untouchables 1987 reviewThe Untouchables podcast discussionBrian De Palma film analysisSean Connery Oscar performance breakdownGangster movie deep dive podcast…this episode delivers sharp film criticism, humour, debate, and honest takes.Sarah returns as co-host for this two-part breakdown. (No external projects to plug this week—just pure film conversation and classic cinema appreciation.)Why Listen?Whether you're a long-time fan of The Untouchables or revisiting it decades later, this episode will make you rethink its themes, performances, and cultural legacy. Expect passionate disagreement, strong opinions, and thoughtful analysis of one of the most iconic crime films of the 1980s.If you enjoy deep-dive movie reviews, classic film discussion, and spirited debate — this is the podcast for you.Please Note: There are direct quotes used in this review, which include the use of contextual slurs/stereotypes. These are used purely as quotes from the film and to aid discussion, as the film's dialogue reflects the bigoted, harsh atmosphere of 1930's Prohibition-Era Chicago. There is no intention to cause offence or distress.Follow & Contact Review It YourselfStay connected and join the conversation:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reviewityourselfpodcast2021X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/YourselfReviewBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reviewityourself.bsky.socialThreads: https://www.threads.net/@reviewityourselfpodcast2021Email: reviewityourselfpodcast@gmail.comWe love hearing your thoughts, episode suggestions, and hot takes.Support the PodcastIf you enjoy Review It Yourself and want to help us grow:Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite platformLeave a 5-star rating and written review on Apple Podcasts (this massively boosts discoverability)Share this episode on social mediaRecommend the podcast to fellow film fansYour support helps the show reach new listeners and continue producing in-depth film reviews every week.Listen now and decide for yourself: is this crime epic truly untouchable? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Review It Yourself
The Untouchables (1987) Part One with co-host Sarah

Review It Yourself

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2026 63:06


Corruption, crime, and Connery—diving deep into De Palma's classic.In this episode of Review It Yourself, we break down the first half of The Untouchables—the iconic Prohibition-era crime thriller directed by Brian De Palma. Joined by co-host Sarah, we explore the film's powerful opening act, its larger-than-life characters, and why this stylish gangster epic still commands attention nearly four decades later.From the tense cat-and-mouse battle between federal agent Eliot Ness and Chicago crime boss Al Capone, to the unforgettable performances by Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro, we unpack what makes this film such a standout in the gangster genre. Is it the script? The score? The mythologising of law enforcement? Or Connery's scene-stealing gravitas?Expect thoughtful film analysis, sharp opinions, historical context around Prohibition-era Chicago, and a discussion about how Hollywood reshapes real-life events into cinematic legend. Whether you're a long-time fan of classic crime dramas or discovering this film for the first time, this episode offers insight, debate, and plenty of appreciation for one of the 1980s' most celebrated gangster movies.We discuss:The film's themes of justice, morality, and myth-makingThe dynamic between Ness and MaloneDe Palma's directorial style and use of tensionPerformances that elevate the materialHow The Untouchables compares to other mob classicsIf you love deep-dive movie reviews, classic cinema breakdowns, and honest film discussion, this episode is for you.Please Note: There are direct quotes used in this review, which include the use of contextual slurs/stereotypes. These are used purely as quotes from the film and to aid discussion, as the film's dialogue reflects the bigoted, harsh atmosphere of 1930's Prohibition-Era Chicago. There is no intention to cause offence or distress.Follow & Contact Review It Yourself:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reviewityourselfpodcast2021X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/YourselfReviewBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reviewityourself.bsky.socialThreads: https://www.threads.net/@reviewityourselfpodcast2021Email: reviewityourselfpodcast@gmail.comSupport the Podcast:If you enjoy Review It Yourself, please:Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platformLeave a 5-star rating and written review on Apple Podcasts to help boost visibilityShare this episode with fellow film fansFollow us on social media for updates and future episodesYour support helps the podcast grow, reach new listeners, and continue producing in-depth film reviews.Part Two of our The Untouchables discussion available now—where we continue analysing the film's most iconic sequences and its lasting legacy in crime cinema.Listen now and decide for yourself… is The Untouchables truly untouchable? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MUNDO BABEL
La Mafia que nos Gobierna

MUNDO BABEL

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2026 114:27


Organización con ánimo de lucro que bajo fachada de “honorable sociedad” opera sobre voluntades, marcos legales, silencios cómplices. Conocida como Mafia o "cosa nostra”, sea cual sea el nombre utilizado, destinada a la “recaudación" via extorsión con el pretexto de la “protección”. Peliculas como el Padrino I, II y III ilustran su "modus operandi” y Al Capone el referente italoamericano en tiempos de Ley Seca. De la violencia extrema a la infiltración en instituciones y medios, unos apuntes al natural sobre la “nuestra de cada día”. Fred Buscaglione, en la BSO, entre otros gemas.. La historia se repite. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

Morbid
Tillie Klimek: Mrs. Bluebeard of Chicago

Morbid

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2026 49:39


Chicago in the 1920s is often remembered for the rise of organized crime and it's larger than life leaders like Al Capone and Johnny Torrio. While these men and their organizations surely shaped the city's identity, their infamy and influence were, at least for a short time, rivaled by a group of young women whose murderous acts would dominate headlines in papers around the country throughout the decade. While Beulah Annan and Belva Gardner—the real-life inspiration for the musical Chicago—were arguably the most well known of the female murders from this era, their famous murders were preceded by the equally sensationalized murder spree of Tillie Klimek. Between 1914 and 1921, Klimek was believed to have killed as many as seven people including four husbands. While her crimes would ultimately land her in the Illinois State Penitentiary for the rest of her life, her exploits and criminal trial were sensational and occupied the front pages of city newspapers for years. Buy Tickets to our LIVE SHOW at Radio City Music Hall on June 27th! References Chicago Tribune. 1922. "Death called mere routine in posion home." Chicago Tribune, November 15: 1. —. 1922. "Find arsenic, arrest wife and stepson." Chicago Tribune, October 27: 1. —. 1922. "Klimek poison list is twenty; arrest 1 more." Chicago Tribune, November 19: 1. —. 1922. "Koulik friend sought in new poison charge." Chicago Tribune, November 26: 5. —. 1922. "Mystery deaths in poison case may reach 20." Chicago Tribune, November 14: 3. —. 1923. "Tillie Klimek is strong witness in own defense." Chicago Tribune, March 13: 7. Danville Commercial News. 1923. "The woman, not the jury, was on trial." Chicago Tribune, March 30: 8. Forbes, Genevieve. 1923. "Grave digger tells of goings on at Klimks'." Chicago Tribune, March 10: 3. —. 1923. "How Mrs. Klimek jested of death of husband told." Chicago Tribune, March 9: 7. —. 1923. "Life in prison for woman as arch poisoner." Chicago Tribune, March 14: 1. —. 1923. "'Ma' Koulik, wise in jail learning, goes back home." Chicago Tribune, November 9: 4. —. 1923. "Poison evidence robs Mrs. Klimek of indifference." Chicago Tribune, March 11: 7. International News Service. 1922. "May exhume bodies of four former husbands." Waukegan News-Sun, October 27: 12. Lynch, Charles. 1923. "Ask hanging for 2 women charged with murder orgy." Belvidere Daily Republican, March 6: 1. Telfer, Tori. 2017. Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. United Press. 1922. "Chicago police suspect second 'Mrs. BLuebeard'." Freeport Journal-Standard, November 4: 1. Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New World Podcast
Nearly New World: Capone

New World Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2026 53:49


This week on the New World Pictures Podcast, we explore the “hills” of Chicago as seen in this action crime feature 1975's CAPONE, a movie New World Pictures nearly released! Join us as we analyzing its unique (and questionable) perspective and the overwhelming number of characters, spoiler alert, most of whom are barely introduced! Starring Ben Gazzara (SAINT JACK) as a both young and old Al Capone (though, mostly old), Sylvester Stallone (DEATH RACE 2000) as a young and alive Frank Nitti, Susan Blakely as the true Lord of Flatbush, and the greatest name to ever exist in Hollywood, Royal Dano (HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY) as short term Chicago Mayor Anton J Cermak! If you love film deep dives into syphilis (and, really, who doesn't?!) and have always wanted to learn more about Marc's eclectic work history, leading into a surprisingly detailed and entertaining look behind the scenes into the pros and cons of being a newspaper delivery boy, from early mornings to the realities of the industry, then you won't want to miss a single minute of this episode. Tune in the to another classic Nearly New World! For more about the New World Pictures Podcast, including previous episodes, t-shirts, mugs, sweatshirts, other merch and more, we DARE YOU to head here: https://newworldpicturespodcast.com/For all the shows in Someone's Favorite Productions Podcast Network, head here:  https://www.someonesfavoriteproductions.com/ #NewWorldPicturesPodcast #Someonesfavoriteproductions #ChicagoMovies #Capone #MovieBreakdown

Three Bean Salad
Show Us Your Onions

Three Bean Salad

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2026 59:20


The Moon landings. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The conviction of Al Capone. Everyone remembers exactly where they were when the news broke of these landmark moments in history. Well get memorising your surroundings people because it's about to happen again. That's right. None of your common-or-garden bean-machine-spewed topics this week. Oh no. Prepare to drink in a world first and please welcome the inaugural episode of a podcast format that takes The Rule Book, tears it to shreds then pickles it to prevent spoilage in case it turns out we need it later after all - it's “Show us your onions!”.With thanks to our editor Laura Grimshaw.Join our PATREON for ad-free episodes and bonus/video episodes: www.patreon.com/threebeansaladMerch available here: www.threebeansaladshop.comGet in touch: threebeansaladpod@gmail.com Insta: threebeansaladpod

CONFLICTED
How Money Laundering Took Over the World

CONFLICTED

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2026 59:55


In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to journalist Oliver Bollough about his illuminating new book ⁠Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Oliver and Thomas discuss: Iranian oil money flowing into London property Russian oligarch wealth parked in Western banks Al Capone to Miami: evolution of money laundering Jeffrey Epstein and elite financial fixers network $100 bills fuelling global criminal cash economy White House insiders profiting from crypto and stablecoins Chinese gangs laundering cartel money worldwide Hawala and ancient trade-based money transfer systems Find Oliver on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/olbullough/⁠ Join the Conflicted Community here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find Conflicted on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/MHconflicted⁠⁠⁠⁠ And Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted⁠⁠⁠⁠ And Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod⁠⁠⁠⁠ And YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sdlF1mY5t4⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠⁠⁠⁠ Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wisdom for the Heart
Ransomed! (1 Peter 1:18-21)

Wisdom for the Heart

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2026 40:44 Transcription Available


Share a commentA clean name is priceless, and this message argues you can't purchase it with success, money, or moral effort. We start with two stories that linger: a mob-connected lawyer who turns on Al Capone at great personal cost, and his son Butch O'Hare, a WWII pilot whose bravery becomes legend. Both stories set up one theme: real freedom always has a price, and someone pays it.From 1 Peter 1:18-21, we walk through four portraits of Jesus that make the gospel concrete and personal. Peter says we're redeemed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, the unblemished and spotless Lamb of God. We connect the dots to the Passover, Isaiah's suffering servant, and the stunning claim that the church is purchased with God's own blood. Along the way, we challenge the “futile way of life” that gets inherited and normalized, and we ask what kind of legacy we're actually handing to our kids and grandkids.Then we go deeper: the cross is not plan B. Scripture presents the crucifixion as foreknown and arranged before the foundation of the world, which changes how we think about God's providence and our assurance. The gospel isn't only true “for the world,” it must become true “for me,” with faith placed in Christ alone and hope anchored in the God who raised Him from the dead. If you've ever wondered what redemption really means, why the Bible talks so much about blood, and how resurrection victory reshapes daily life, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the line that challenged you most.Explore all of our Biblically Faithful Resources at https://www.wisdomonline.org Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Wisdom for the Heart on Oneplace.com
Ransomed! (1 Peter 1:18-21)

Wisdom for the Heart on Oneplace.com

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2026 40:51 Transcription Available


Share a commentA clean name is priceless, and this message argues you can't purchase it with success, money, or moral effort. We start with two stories that linger: a mob-connected lawyer who turns on Al Capone at great personal cost, and his son Butch O'Hare, a WWII pilot whose bravery becomes legend. Both stories set up one theme: real freedom always has a price, and someone pays it.From 1 Peter 1:18-21, we walk through four portraits of Jesus that make the gospel concrete and personal. Peter says we're redeemed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, the unblemished and spotless Lamb of God. We connect the dots to the Passover, Isaiah's suffering servant, and the stunning claim that the church is purchased with God's own blood. Along the way, we challenge the “futile way of life” that gets inherited and normalized, and we ask what kind of legacy we're actually handing to our kids and grandkids.Then we go deeper: the cross is not plan B. Scripture presents the crucifixion as foreknown and arranged before the foundation of the world, which changes how we think about God's providence and our assurance. The gospel isn't only true “for the world,” it must become true “for me,” with faith placed in Christ alone and hope anchored in the God who raised Him from the dead. If you've ever wondered what redemption really means, why the Bible talks so much about blood, and how resurrection victory reshapes daily life, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the line that challenged you most.What does it look like to live a holy life? In In Pursuit of Holiness, Stephen shows you how to think clearly, resist sin, and live differently in a culture that pulls you the other way. Move beyond information to real application. Get your copy today and take your next step with Christ. https://bit.ly/4v5aktw Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Throughline
Al Capone and the transformation of the IRS

Throughline

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2026 51:37


Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerful tools — and most effective weapons. This episode originally published in May of 2025.Guests: Joe Thorndike, historian for Tax Analysts and author of Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR. Paul Camacho, retired special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and member of the board of directors at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Jason Scott Smith, historian at The University of New Mexico and author of two books about FDR and the New Deal.Lawrence Reed, president emeritus of The Foundation for Economic Education.To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

American Hauntings Podcast
Gangs of Chicago

American Hauntings Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2026 115:18 Transcription Available


John Torrio was finally exactly where he wanted to be. With his uncle, Big Jim Colosimo out of the way, his business expanding across the South Side of the city and into the suburbs, and his trustworthy young right-hand man, Al Capone, at his side, he was ready to start dividing up the Chicago into territories. With all the various gangs that already existed in the city eager to jump into the liquor business, Torrio knew that it would be impossible to keep the peace without a plan...Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859New Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/troytaylorodditiesCheck out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.comWant an episode every week, plus other awesome perks and discounts? Check out our Patreon pageFind out merch at AmericanHauntingsClothing.comFollow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTLFollow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast, @TroyTaylorgram, @CodyBeckSTLThis episode was written by Troy TaylorProduced and edited by Cody BeckAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gangland Wire
Nicola Gentile: The Mafia's Traveling Peacemaker

Gangland Wire

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2026 Transcription Available


In this episode of Gangland Wire, host Gary Jenkins sits down with author and historian Gary Clemente for a deep dive into the remarkable life of Nicola Gentile, one of the most influential yet little-known figures in early American organized crime. Click here to find books by mob expert Gary Celemente Gentile was no street thug. Born in Sicily in 1884, he immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s and became a roving Mafia diplomat—trusted to mediate disputes among crime families in cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pueblo, Chicago, and beyond. Known as Zio Nicola (“Uncle Nick”), Gentile operated as a stabilizing force during the most violent period of Mafia history, including Prohibition and the Castellammarese War. Clemente reveals that Gentile's story survives largely because Gentile broke the ultimate Mafia rule: he wrote memoirs. Those writings—published in Italy in the 1960s—were seized by the FBI and later translated by Clemente's father, Peter Clemente, one of the first Sicilian-born agents assigned to the FBI's elite Top Hoodlum Squad. The episode offers rare insight into those translations and the intelligence value they held for federal investigators. The discussion traces Gentile's interactions with legendary figures such as Carlo Gambino, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Vito Genovese, as well as his behind-the-scenes role in shaping the Mafia's modern organizational structure—including the creation of the national Commission. The episode also explores Gentile's personal contradictions: a lifelong criminal who saw himself as an honorable man, a mediator capable of violence, and a romantic who later believed a lover betrayed him to federal authorities. After fleeing the U.S. under indictment, Gentile returned to Sicily, where he later provided intelligence to Allied forces during World War II—another unlikely chapter in an already extraordinary life. Despite being sentenced to death by Mafia leaders for publishing his memoirs, Gentile was spared due to the respect he commanded on both sides of the Atlantic. He died peacefully in Sicily in 1970, leaving behind a story so expansive it feels tailor-made for film. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I am a former Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now turned podcaster and documented filmmaker. We record the mafia, everything we can about the mob. And today I’ve been wanting to do this story, guys, as a man named Nicola Gentile. Did I get that right, Gary? Beautiful. All right. This is Gary Clemente, and Gary’s been on before, or GP Clemente. He’s been on before. His father was Peter Clemente, who was one of the original Sicilian-born FBI agents in the United States and did a lot of translation work with Bellacci. And he’s written, he’s writing books. So we talked about the first book, but tell just a little bit more about it. And guys, I’ll have links to that book. And then tell me a little bit about the two more you have coming out. The first book that I wrote in a series of books about my father’s lengthy FBI career is called Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. [1:04] And it’s about my father’s career in the mafia from 1950 to 1976. And in 1957, he became a part of the Top Hoodlum squad, which is an elite group that J.H. Goober started as part of the Top Hoodlum program. And what happened was in 1957, they had a big mafia conclave meeting in Appalachian, New York. [1:30] And they had about 60 members of the mafia throughout the country, all the bosses that attended this meeting. And it became publicized. The cops were there. They confiscated their identification, their wallets, the money, everything. And it got released into the news. This was a big story. [1:50] So what happened was J. Edgar Hoover at that time had been denying the existence of the mafia for a number of reasons. Probably because he didn’t want to get involved with all of the muck of trying to prosecute these gangland people because he knew that they had a lot of buffers between the bosses and the guys committing the murders. So he knew it was going to be difficult, and it would blemish their conviction record and rate. So he kind of stayed away from it, denied the existence of the mafia, And along comes this Appalachian Conclave meeting. It got released into the news, and everybody was up in arms about this. That’s when Hoover decided to start the Top Hoodland program, because there was absolutely no denial of what was going on here, that there was some sort of vast criminal organization that was highly organized, and he had to do something about it. So in 1957, my father became part of the Top Hoodlum program. [2:54] And in particular, the Top Hoodlum squad in New York City, which is really a hotbed of mafia criminal activity. You couldn’t get any more hotter than what they had. They had five mafia families alone in New York. And the first book was really about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino, how Carlo Gambino became one of his original subjects for him to study and to profile. [3:24] He was ordered to do that, and he was happy to do that. The book is really about him confronting face-to-face with Carlo Gambino, and then afterwards wiretapping him at the Golden Gate Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He was on the other side of a wall. From Gambino for six weeks. Gambino did not know he was on the other side of the wall wiretapping him with another agent. So that’s what the first book was about. And the second book is about really the backstory of my father’s life before he got into the FBI a little bit. Then his first years in the Bureau, when he was a part of the investigation of the Communist Party and the Workers’, Party and the few offices that he was in, like the Springfield, Illinois office, and also Cleveland. And then he became a part of the New York office. He was still investigating communist activities at the time. And then he became a part of the Top Woodland squad. And his milieu, his wheelhouse, became organized crime and the mafia. So that’s generally what has happened so far. The second book is being released this coming month, and it will We’ll have book two and book three talking about these sorts of things. [4:44] Interesting. Interesting. All right, guys, I’ll have a link to the old book down there in the show notes and look for that new book coming up and we’ll get back together. I’ll get back with Gary after the book comes out sometime and we’ll do another show. And we’re not going to talk about the mafia so much. We’re going to talk about these activities, which I think is interesting, of the FBI against the Social Workers Party and the Communist Party USA because they did a lot of work. When I was growing up, Gary, do you remember I Led Three Lives, the TV show about, his last name was Phil Brick. It was a weekly TV show about an undercover FBI agent who supposedly was working as a member of the Communist Party. He would go to these meetings and things like that. Do you remember that? I Led Three Lives. I do remember that. That show goes way, way back. What year was that show? Oh, that had to be 1953, 54. I had to be like 9, 10 years old, 55. I was 10 years old, so it probably may be 1955. I do remember the show. I think I’ve seen reruns of it. Yeah, I bet it’s on YouTube. I have to look that up for fun one of these days. [5:52] Issue Machine’s show back then, we will talk about this later on at another time as regards to the second book. Back in the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s main enemy was the Communist Party. It wasn’t organized crime. That was his top focus. He wrote a book called Masters of Deceit. And people, I think everybody, they should have this book in public school system, but they don’t want to do that today. Today’s public school system, they try to inculcate youngsters in more social activities and social warriors and not learning about the perils of Marxism and communism. [6:33] Okay, today we’re going to talk about Nicola Gentile. Now, 1903, he was a Sicilian immigrant that came to the United States, and he found a lot of opportunity among the other Sicilian immigrants because he was a blackhander, if you will, when he first got here. He was a criminal who came over from Sicily, but he was able to move among all the different families, all the different cities, and settle disputes and help people get organized and do things like that. Gary, start telling us a little bit about what you remember about Nicola Gentile. First of all, I want to tell people that Nicola Gentile was an uber jovelace. He was jovelace on steroids. Somebody later on in his life, toward the end of his life, he wrote his memoirs down. This was in 1963. So what happened was he published his memoirs in Italy. He had a co-author, he had another journalist write these memoirs down in Sicilia. [7:36] These memoirs were then grabbed by the FBI and they were given to my father. My father had the papers written in Sicilian. And I remember as a boy in 1963, when this happened, my father was sitting at a table translating these memoirs with my grandmother. Now, my grandmother grew up not too far away. My grandmother and my grandfather grew up not too far away from Nicola Gentile. Nicola was born in the town of Siculiana. Try to say that, Gary. [8:14] I give. I said that one real fast. So he’s writing these, translating the memoirs with my Sicilian-speaking grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather spoke, my grandparents, my father spoke Sicilian as well, too. He grew up with that as a little boy. But my grandmother and my grandfather were helping him translate these papers. These are the FBI papers. This is a copy. This is a copy of the FBI photocopy after it got translated. And my father did write some notes here and there. You can see it’s fairly light. The print is fairly light on it. I do have some post-it notes or notations, comments on it. But this is about 185 pages that were translated. And the language is quite formal, I’ll read to you a little bit of the first page What Nicola Gentile wrote as he started off Before you get started there, was that book ever translated? Is that available here in English form like on Amazon as a book you can buy today? I know a lot of people are wondering, can I find that? [9:34] That’s a good question. I haven’t gone that far yet. Okay, all right. I don’t know. I’ll take a look. That is a good question. But this is the translation that my father and my grandparents did. And whether it came out that way in these books that are out now, I don’t know. There are some books that do talk about Nicola Jantili, but I don’t know if there are any English translation books. So this is how the first page of Nicola’s book opens. Siculiana, a small town of Sicily, did not, prior to 1900, offer any opportunity for work or secondary school education for the betterment of life of its youth. [10:22] The greater portion of whom in which there existed the disposition encouraged by the family while still young frequented the shop of an artisan where they struggled to learn a trade, but at the same time often neglecting school so that illiteracy reigned supreme. So that’s the sort of language that Nicola used in it. And it’s quite interesting. It’s a bit formal. He does jump around a bit from his activities from one place to another. He talks a lot about how he knew practically everybody in the mob at that time. He knew people like Luciano. He knew he interacted with Al Capone. He interacted with Vito Genovese. He interacted with Albert the Mad Hatter, Anastasia. These were all the big shots. I’m talking about in the 1920s through the 1930s and all the way after. If you remember that in the 1920s, the 1919 prohibition happened, okay? That’s what really blew up out of everything, the prestige, the money, and the power of the mafia. That’s how it grew because of prohibition. and they were able to bootleg liquor, and Nikola was indeed a part of this. [11:51] He traveled around a lot. Now, what was the deal with that? He was in New York. I think that was his base, and that’s where he got started, but he traveled to, I think, New Orleans, or did he come up from New Orleans? I can’t remember. He was in Kansas City. He was in Cleveland. He was in Pueblo, Colorado. He made some connections. There’s a really old, early family in Pueblo, Colorado. I’ve talked to a descendant of that family, and I’ve talked to another author that knew quite a little bit about it so he traveled around to these different families what was the story with that, For whatever reason, he was a robing ambassador and a mediator. Look, you’re talking about organized crime. You’re talking about the mafia. You’re talking about vicious people who had one thing and one thing only in mind. What was it? Duh, money. Money and power. Because of that, you’re going to have disputes. You’re going to have arguments. You’re going to have people being killed as a result of it. And Gentile was the sort of individual that, think of Nicola Gentile as a Vida Colleone. [12:59] Think of him as a godfather figure. Very wise, understanding how to mediate the disputes, realizing that, as everybody else did, that if we do not mediate these disputes, what will happen? We will be at each other’s throats like animals. Yeah. And our organization cannot exist. Our universe, our world cannot exist if this happens. So we must mediate these disputes. We must have an organizational structure. We must have a boss. We must have an underboss. We must have a consigliere, an advisor, who tells, who gives words of wisdom about how to proceed with business. Whether to take somebody out, how to proceed in such a fashion. So all of that was a part of the world. And it existed for many years, for many decades because of that. [14:01] Now, let me start off a little bit to tell you the beginnings of Nicola so we can lead up to how he got to this position. So he was born in 1884. He came to America at the age of 19 and went to New York. He travels to Kansas City to meet with his brother Vincent, who lived in Topeka, Kansas, not too far away from Kansas City. He started working out in the Santa Fe Railroad, and he became a linen peddler, and he did make some money doing that. He returned to Italy in 1909. He married in 1910 and had a daughter named Maria. Now, in his papers, you really don’t hear anything more about that happening. You don’t hear anything about his wife, children, nothing. And it isn’t until later on, at the very end of his memoirs, he talks about the women in his life. We’ll get to that later. But so what happened was he returns back from Italy, gets back to America, and he goes to Canada. Then he moves to San Francisco with his brother, and he continues to sell linen until 1914. And it isn’t until he was a year or two later, maybe about the age of 19, 20 or so, he starts getting involved with the Honor Society. [15:27] Now, he knows about the Honor Society from back in Sicily. He’s been well aware of it. He’s been involved with it. At the age of 15, he had been convicted of a crime, and he had been sentenced to jail at the age of 15. So he wasn’t new to the world of organized crime. He knew it from back in Sicily. It’s a very deep fabric of the world of Sicily at that time. Why is that? Because in Sicily, in those years, in the late 1800s, you had either what? You had a sort of a feudal system where people were working for these large landowners, and the landowners were absentee landowners, okay? They delegated authority to people underneath them, and the people working for their land and working on their land were really, for example, a lot of poverty happened because of it. So to bridge that sort of gap with poverty, the Mafia started, in other words, and they called it the Honor Society. These were men of honor. And Nicola Gentile describes it as the, let me see here. [16:39] He describes the honor society, originating many years ago in antiquity, and it gives the right to defend the honor of the weak and to respect human law. With these principles as its guide, it’s still operated within the mafia. So you understand that within the honor society, here’s the code that we must be civilized, even though we’re acting like animals. [17:08] We don’t want to act too much like animals but otherwise we will destroy, the golden goose so this is what they put in the back of their minds we must act in a civilized manner, so that was the understanding of how the outer society worked so he went to New York he went to Brooklyn, and at that time the mafia probably had 2,000 2,000 members of the mafia in New York at that time, between the five families. They call them Bocate families. So he joined the Outer Society in Pittsburgh. [17:49] And soon after, he was asked by Gregorio Conte, the head of the mob boss in Pittsburgh, to do a killing for him. Okay? Now, he doesn’t say whether this was an initiation right, because that’s what they usually did in the mafia. You had to kill somebody in order to be initiated into the mafia, become a member of it. So he was ordered to do a killing, and what happened was he confronted this individual in front of a restaurant. His brother shoots the victim in front of the restaurant. He runs away before Nikola, empties his gun into the guy. Paul runs away. Nicola’s standing there with his gun. People are yelling and screaming, oh my gosh, he did it. He killed this person. Paul is running down the street. He takes his firearm. He shoots it up in the air. [18:45] Scares the crowd away. Nicola runs away. He escapes from that scene. Now, Nicola really has never, throughout his mafia career, he’s never been arrested. It isn’t until later on in his life that he actually does get under the eye of the police and he becomes indicted and will get arrested. So that’s what happens to him later on. But later, during his life in the mob, he does not get arrested in any way, shape, or form. Although he got to Italy, when he goes back to Italy, he was under the scrutiny of the police there and he had been arrested. He gets out on bail, and he was accused of crimes there. So he was pretty slippery. But in terms of what we’re talking about, his mediation skills, little by little, he becomes this sort of individual that people look at as somebody that can mediate their problems and to tamper down the situation that can become very hot. And he became somebody that the other mobsters called, they called him Uncle Nick or Zio Nicola, Zio Cola, Uncle Cola. They saw him as a sort of a vunticular figure. [20:07] That could ameliorate these disputes and these situations that they were involved with. In Kansas City, our mob boss was Nick Savella for a long time, and I was looking over some wiretaps, and people were talking about him, and one of his underlings was talking to another underling about something he was going to take to him, and he called him Zeo the whole time. They always referred to him as Zeo, so that’s a term of honor and respect throughout the mafia world. [20:37] That’s right. As I keep saying, the mafia was able to exist for as long as it did because they had an organizational structure. They had a code of honor that kept them from not acting like wild animals too much. Too much. A lot of these people, you’ve met more than your share of criminals. Gary, you know how many of these people can be. Some of them can be very business-like. Some of them can be very vicious, vicious, sick people too. And the great scarpets of the world that would kill dozens of people. These were psychopaths. You had your whole range. You had your whole range of people. And the fascinating thing about Gentile was that he knew a lot of these individuals. You talked about the Kansas City, the Kansas City entity. Yes, Pueblo, Colorado did have its problems at that time. And somebody had been killed, the Pueblo, Colorado family, and that sort of spilled over into Kansas City. Kansas City was asking to mediate the situation, and it was Chile mediated the situation because of it. [21:57] Chantina became the boss of the Kansas City family. Now, he does not get into this in great depth about what he did in Kansas City at Boston, but it was a temporary thing. He was bopping around from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Kansas City. He went to New York. He was in Boston. He was far away, San Francisco, Los Angeles. He was all over the place. And he was very well respected. He had a lot to do with what was going on in Chicago with Al Capone. Interestingly enough, Al Capone, at that time, when Gentile encountered him, his family, if you want to call it his crime family, had a lot of international entities in it. It wasn’t an Italian thing. He had a lot of different people from different ethnic backgrounds as a part of his organization. It wasn’t until Nicola comes around and the mafia bosses came around and told him, look, this is what the mafia is like. We’re not an international group here. [23:08] It’s strictly Italian. You want to be a part of it, you need to buy into this. Okay. And that’s indeed what he did, bought into the mafia, marginalize the people that were not Italians. Booted them out and or killed them sometimes and started his own mafia italian thing in chicago which became very very well known as as a bloody place to believe bloody bloody place to be because of the the killings that they had prior to him being a part of the mafia officially there were a tremendous amount of gangland killings as you know in chicago so he had a large part to and he He did keep a lot of those other ethnicities around as players, as people he could use, though. And on into Frank Nitti’s time and on up into current modern times, up into the 50s and 60s, they had several people that were on the periphery would be associates. But I guess he had more organization of Sicilians, it looks to me like, over the years. Yes, yes, he did. What happened eventually was, as Gary, the Castellamareci War erupted in the 1930s. That’s another hard one to say, Castellamareci. Castellamareci. I can say that, Castellamareci. [24:35] Try to say that real fast. So what happened, the Castellamareci War erupted. In June, the boss mazzeria was the boss of bosses. They called him the king. Was the boss of the Capetituticape, the boss of bosses, okay? [24:53] And Mazzaria was wielding a very heavy hand that a lot of the other bosses in the country did not like at that time. And in particular, Maranzano became his chief foe. And he was originally from the Castellammare area of Sicily, okay? and his henchmen, his crew, the men around him were from that area. So they had a big war with the children past Mazaria. They wanted to assume power. A lot of people were dying. They were dropping like flies, especially over in New York. And Nicola Gentile was one of the people that were trying to mediate this situation between Mazaria and Marazano. Originally, Nicola sided with Mazaria, but then the ties changed. In turn, everybody wanted Mazaria dead. All the other bosses wanted him dead, including Capone. Mazaria was eventually executed in, I believe it was 1931. [26:05] And so Salvatore Marzano assumes power, okay? The people that Mazaria had underneath him, And Marisano said, we need to get rid of these guys. So he wound up killing all of the mazzarela boys. So everybody was saying, look, I don’t see any end of this bloodshed. We don’t need this publicity, okay? We need to operate in the shadows, okay? And Carlo Gambino was an expert at doing that. So what happened was the war ended. Marisano took over. He kills the boys. But then after that Marzano, what happens power gets to his head and easily lies the crown of the king, Marzano eventually gets killed by the other bosses and it was Vito Genovese. [27:00] It was Vito Genovese that was ordered to do the hit on Marazano with his crew. And as a result of that, Gary, the other bosses said, look, we need more structure here. There’s too much bloodshed. We can’t have this going on forever and ever. So they created a commission. Now, they did have other commissions before. They did have general assemblies like that. And so they created a commission that included Lucky Luciano, included Al Capone. [27:35] Included Joe Profaggi, included Joe Bananas as part of the commission to settle down, settle things down. Now, I said that originally, when we started that, that they had an Appalachian conclave, right? They had about 60 bosses, 60, 80 bosses there at that conclave. That’s big. Believe it or not, while the big war was going on, Al Capone had a meeting on his dime in Boston, I believe. Guess who was there? I’m sorry, about 500. They had 500 mafia guys there. And there was no publicity about it. Not what happened later on in Appalachian, New York. So here you have, you imagine, 500 mob guys meeting at a hotel in Boston, and it wasn’t covered by the media at that time. But that’s part and parcel of what Nicola was involved with, some of the people he was involved with at that time. So what happens to him later on? What stirs him to write this book? [28:44] What happened was, toward the latter part of his life, he starts to talk about a couple of women that he was involved with. He talks about, I will put all the paperwork so you can actually hear the words that he talks about. He talks about how he met this woman named Maria. [29:08] He meets this woman named Maria, and he really captures his imagination. He doesn’t talk about that he had been married, that he also had a child, too. He had a child named Maria. So he meets this woman named Maria, and she’s really stricken with him. And to the point where she tells him that she’s so smitten with him that I’m going to read what, He tried to pose as a jewelry salesman so that he could meet her. He says, I suspected that you weren’t a jewelry salesman. She says to him, she said, you did. She whispered in my ear, lightly touching my earlobe with her lips. She used to finish by kissing me on the mouth wild with love. There were moments of passion that our bodies would entwine, palpitating with love, and which would later be abandoned with languid reproves. So that’s the sort of language he used. And at one point, he talks about how he liked going to her apartment to visit her when he was feeling edgy. [30:28] You’re a mobster. You feel a little bit edgy. You’re always looking over your shoulder, right? So he was happy to go to her apartment to calm down, and she would talk to him. And she says, Mary was happy to see me. She used to tell me, Nick, that’s how she called me, you are an extraordinary man. You don’t know with what fear and respect those Boers, the Shacatani, speaker view. The Shacatani were the people of Sciacca, Sicily, that were mobsters that he associated with. It says, your name impresses everyone. Any woman alive brought to live among this rabble would be happy to be your co-worker, to wear men’s clothes, and at the necessary time of the occasion should present itself, to embrace a Tommy gun and die in your arm. [31:26] So that’s the sort of romantic verbiage that they used at the time. So what happened, too, was he sees her, then eventually he meets another woman named Dorothy. [31:41] She professes herself to be Irish to begin with, but then he finds out later as she tells him, I’m actually not Irish. I come from a Sicilian family. But she just wanted to impress him somehow to get his eyes. She was very attracted to him, to this woman, Dorothy. What happened was they have a love affair with each other, and Nikola, this is to the very end of his story here, Nikola had been involved with a gambling house in New York, and the gambling house was starting to go underwater. He needed money, so it was proposed to him by another mobster by the name of Jacono to do some narcotic trafficking down in Texas and Louisiana. [32:31] He gets the permission to do so from his bosses. Look, Nicola was still a roving asset, and he had to get permission to do things so that he could acquire enough money for investments, so he can give them money back, so he gets permission to do this. He starts getting involved with the drug trafficking trade in Texas and Louisiana, and he sees that he’s being tailed a lot. He doesn’t understand why. He says, out of nowhere, the police would show up. How did they find out? At the same time, he was trying to contact Dorothy. Before he left, Dorothy asked him. [33:11] Will I be seeing you much? She said, I don’t know. I could be gone six months or a year. She says that she’s so heartbroken about this. And he leaves and he gets involved with the drug trade. And he’s asking these questions about how is it that the cops are showing up at these different places where we are trying to transact business? What happens was he tried to contact Dorothy at different places where she said that she could be contacted. She didn’t get back to him. So he puts two and two together. He thinks that he believes that Dorothy was actually a treasury agent. She had been spying on him, that she was the Mata Hari, so to speak, and was feeding the information to the feds. to where he was. So what happened was they indicted him, got out on bail on $18,000 bail, and he was urged to be a stowaway to get to Italy. So he stows away on a ship, gets back to Italy. And interestingly enough, Gary. [34:23] He starts at World War II erupts, and he becomes an asset to the Allies in Sicily. He’s given them intelligence about what’s happening in Sicily with the mafia in Sicily. And the mafia in Sicily did not want to have anything to do with Mussolini. Mussolini was trying to bag on them big time. He’s trying to shut them down. And Nicola helped the Allies with intelligence reports on what was going on in Sicily. And that was a big part of what he was doing. And then later on, it wasn’t until 1963 or so, and he was still getting involved. He was still getting involved with the mafia at that time, doing criminal activities. But he wasn’t welcomed as much as he had been before. But he was still involved with them. What happened was the 60s came around, and he started writing his memoirs. He was an older man, and he started writing these things down on paper. [35:28] Which is what a mafia member does not do. You do not speak a word, let alone try to write it on paper. Otherwise, it’s a penalty of death. So he wrote all of these memoirs down in 1963. It got published that he was sentenced to death. But one of the mafia families in Sicily refused to do it. They refused to do it because he had a lot of respect. Members of the mafia in the U.S. And also in Sicily respected Gintilian very much because he had this godfather air about him. He had the Vita Corleone air about him. I will talk to you, and I will come up with a solution for you. Everybody’s calmed down by that. They’re not so excited and bloodthirsty when they hear that. They sense him to death. The mafia family in Sicily refused to carry out the hit. The book was published, and he lived the rest of his life in peace. He died peacefully as an old man in Sicily in 1970. Wow, 1970. That’s a hell of a story. That is a hell of a story, man. [36:44] I’m telling you you can make a movie out of this man’s life oh yeah literally the way he was jumping around from one place to the other he was really a maverick rogue sort of individual who is who did not have a higher education about him but was extremely intelligent and was able to use this and that’s what that’s why they respected him a lot of these individuals that he dealt with were boars and uneducated individuals to begin with. Many of them were highly intelligent. And as my dad always told me, his son, these individuals, especially the mob bosses, they could have been tycoons of finance. They could have been industrial tycoons, wizards of finance and economics and Wall Street if they had wanted to, but they did not want to. So they choose a life of crime. [37:40] Interesting. I’ll tell you what, that’s a hell of a story, Gary. That is a really cool story. I’d always wanted to do this guy’s story, mainly because I knew of his Kansas City connection. I talked to our local FBI agent here that has chronicled a lot of these things, got a book out there about those early days, and he’s excited. He’s looking forward to listening to this. So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Gary Clemente, GP Clemente. His father was Peter Clemente, the first Sicilian-born member of the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad. And Gary has been translating his works, is what he did. He wrote down a lot of stuff, and Gary’s been translating. He’s putting it down to a series of books. It’s called, let’s see, it is Untold Mafia Tales from the FBI Top Hoodlum Squad, I believe. I think I can read that on your event there. He does speaking events, too. If you’re back east, you’re from New York City area. Where are you from? Where do you speak at? I originally grew up in New Jersey, not too far from one of the Sopranos guys. [38:47] In New Jersey, my father was working at the New York office at that time and decided to buy a home in the suburbs of New York, not too far away from New York City. So that’s where I grew up. On the right side of the track. If somebody wants to get a hold of you to do a speaking engagement, though, how do they find you? They can get a hold of me at my email, gpclementibooks, gpclementibooks, at gmail.com. And I’m also on X, gpclementi16, I’m also on X. And the book is available on Amazon. You can pick it up there, and it’s doing quite well. I’m looking forward to the next one coming out next month. Yeah, I bet you’re looking forward to that. Yeah, and if you get his book, be sure and give him a review. Give him a good review on whatever review you want to give, but give him a good review. Please. [39:48] Because it helps these guys a lot to get a good review. More people will buy their book. And we, guys, we all want to encourage these mob historians. And Gary has done a real great job at chronicling the history, not just the blood and guts. We all like the blood and guts stories and the murder stories, but the entire history. You were talking about them being out in Pueblo, Colorado, and I just couldn’t figure that out. I just talked to a woman whose ancestors were in Pueblo, Colorado, connected to the mob out there. And she said that what it is, there was lead mines out there, and a lot of Sicilians were miners, and they went to that southern Colorado area to work in the mines. And I know we have a large group of Sicilian populations in southwest Missouri where there were strip mines down there for coal. And it’s a huge family of them down there. And so it’s, you know, where the work was is where people went to, and that’s how they ended up spread around the country. [40:45] That’s right. There were many Sicilians in San Francisco, Louisiana. Believe it or not, when Sicilians were in Louisiana when they first immigrated to Louisiana, there were several of them that had been home because they were looked upon as less than human. And the locals did not want them infiltrating their population. So it didn’t just happen to African-Americans, it also happened to Sicilians. Yeah, I’ve read about that story. So it’s an immigrant experience. Any group of immigrants that comes to the United States at first. [41:25] You know, the greater population, the English and the Irish and the Germans already have the good jobs and they keep them pushed out. And they have a different language, totally different language. And everybody else is speaking English. And so it’s really hard for an immigrant population to move in. That’s why they have to start businesses. And along with them, they brought the mafia. They had brought this tradition of the mafia that is shadow government, if you will, for them. Well, that’s true. And I must add that even though I talk a lot about the mafia and the world of the mafia, the Cosa Nostra, that my father was involved with, My father would be the first to tell you he was not proud of the criminal association and organization that these people started. He was not proud of it in any way. In fact, if you read my first book, you will read the part about how my father confronted Carlo Gambino and told him to his face that he was not proud of what Gambino and his associates were doing. And the bad name that they were bringing upon other Italian and Sicilians that had come to this country, like my grandparents, that work hard and made something of themselves. It’s not something to be proud of. Fascinating, interesting, but it’s not something that I’m certainly not proud of either. But pretty amazing, considering these people could have done something more honest. [42:51] But they chose not to. That’s a whole other story and movie to talk about. Yeah, it is. Gary Clemente, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks so much. You’re welcome. Thank you, Gary. Great being here. Gary to Gary. Gary to Gary, yeah. You know, they don’t name Gary anymore. Gary, little kids, Gary anymore. That was back right after the war in the early 50s. Everybody was named Gary. I had three Garys, I think, in my class. I tell you, I went to this movie with my grandkids. It’s called Zootopia. And they had a character in there called Gary the Snake. [43:27] So that’s what we’ve devolved down to, We’re nothing but snakes, Gary Guys, I really appreciate y’all tuning in And don’t forget to like and subscribe And down in the show notes, I’m going to have links to this stuff And I’ve got links to some of the stuff that I sell My books and DVDs If you want to rent them, I’ve got a link to that You can rent my DVDs for $1.99 So thanks a lot, guys. Okay, Gary, thank you. Hey, thank you, Gary. Thank you very much. Really appreciate that you’re having me on. Really enjoy it. Anything I can do for you, please let me know. Anything I can do. You know that I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book, right? I didn’t remember. I do so much sometimes, Gary, that I forget all what I do good. Yeah, I’ve got your endorsement on the back of the book. I gave you a good endorsement. All right. The second book, the one that’s coming out, the one that’s coming out, we’ll have the same thing on there. You got some author blurbs? You got enough author blurbs on there? Yeah, yeah. Your endorsement will be on the back of the next book, too. Okay, all right, all right. All right, Gary. Thanks a lot, my friend. Hey, thank you, buddy. Anything in Kansas City. When the other book comes out, I’ll let you know. Yeah, let me know. We’ll do that show here in a couple of months. Okay? Hey, thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, all right. Stay safe. Okay, buddy. Take care. Bye-bye.

Franck Ferrand raconte...
A Chicago, Eliot Ness contre Al Capone, alias "Scarface" : la chute du plus puissant parrain de la pègre américaine

Franck Ferrand raconte...

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 22:02


Remontez dans les années 1920 avec Franck Ferrand pour découvrir l'histoire fascinante d'Al Capone, le plus puissant parrain de la pègre américaine.

American History Tellers
St. Valentines Day Massacre: Closing In On Capone | 3

American History Tellers

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2026 36:07


In the aftermath of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, authorities faced mounting pressure to clean up Chicago and take down the violent mobsters who overran the city – most notoriously, Al Capone. The federal government took on the challenge, pursuing Capone relentlessly. In the end, Capone did go down – not for murder, but for tax evasion. And since Capone's conviction in the 1930s, this unorthodox charge has been used repeatedly to bring down otherwise “ungettable” criminals. To discuss how the feds finally closed in on Capone, Lindsay speaks with Jonathan Eig, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

American History Tellers
St. Valentines Day Massacre | Public Enemy No. 1 | 2

American History Tellers

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2026 38:36


On Valentine's Day 1929, seven men were gunned down in a Chicago garage in an attack that stunned the nation. Photographs of the bloody scene appeared on front pages across the country, and the public reacted with horror. Even in Chicago—a city hardened by daily gang violence—the message was clear: this was different.City officials were under intense pressure to respond, and suspicion quickly fell on the city's most powerful gang leader, Al Capone. But proving who ordered the hit would be far more difficult than expected. And as investigators struggled to build their case, the fallout from the massacre would change Chicago—and Capone's fate—forever.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.