Podcasts about Gangland

Dustin and Seth are back with more reactions to the second day of the deadCenter Film Festival: day two. On this episode, we get to talk about a couple of features: Gangland and Pale Night. Tune in to hear our thoughts and keep up with the festival!

A gangland criminal found dead in garda custody was the chief suspect in the knife attack on Thomas Griffin last weekend who died while trying to escape across the River Liffey. For more on this Anton was joined by Robin Schiller, Senior Journalist, Irish Independent .

A gangland criminal found dead in garda custody was the chief suspect in the knife attack on Thomas Griffin last weekend who died while trying to escape across the River Liffey. For more on this Anton was joined by Robin Schiller, Senior Journalist, Irish Independent .

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Frank Hayde to explore his latest book, Hoffa's Connection. Hayde, a Kansas City native and noted mob historian, brings forward a largely overlooked figure in organized crime history—Sylvia Pagano. The conversation centers on Pagano's rise from Kansas City to Detroit, where she operated at the intersection of organized crime and labor unions under Jimmy Hoffa. Known for her effectiveness as a union organizer, Pagano infiltrated workplaces, signed up members, and quietly maintained ties to powerful mob figures. Her ability to navigate both worlds made her a key behind-the-scenes operator during a volatile era in American labor history. Hayde details Pagano's role in helping broker alliances between the Mafia and the Teamsters during a turbulent strike, marking a turning point in the relationship between organized crime and labor. Drawing from FBI wiretaps, he reveals candid conversations that shed light on her relationships with influential mob leaders like Tony Giacalone and Moe Dalitz, emphasizing her strategic importance across multiple crime families. The episode also explores the life of Chucky O’Brien, who grew up surrounded by Hoffa and organized crime figures. Through Hayde's research and interviews, listeners gain insight into the generational impact of mob ties, as well as the strict code of silence that governed both mother and son. Beyond individual stories, the discussion expands to the broader national network connecting crime families and labor unions. Pagano's reach extended well beyond regional boundaries, illustrating how organized crime leveraged union influence across the country. This episode offers a fresh perspective on the enduring mystery surrounding Hoffa's disappearance by examining the deeper historical context—and the overlooked players like Sylvia Pagano who helped shape it. It's a detailed look at power, loyalty, and survival within the American Mafia. The book is Hoffa’s Connections:The Story of Sylvia Pagano: the Kansas City Girl at the Center of the Mafia’s Alliance with the Teamsters Union  xxx [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:03] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, later sergeant. I have this podcast, Gangland Wire. I’ve got a website. If you want to go check my website out, I’ve got a few things for sale on there. And you can go rent the documentaries I’ve done about the Kansas City mob on Amazon. Just search my name. I’m all over the internet. Just search my name and mafia and you’ll find more you ever wanted to know about me and the mob and what I’ve done. And today I have a really a former Kansas City boy, a Kansas City native who has done several books on the mob, particularly the Kansas City mob. And he’s got a most recent one that I find just really fascinating. It’s a little known story that will help shed the light on Jimmy Hoffa, a little bit more light than most of you ever knew. There’s some questions that I had myself that’s not really in the in the popular culture about Jimmy Hoffa. It’s Frank Hayde. Welcome, Frank. Thanks, Gary. Great to be with you again. All right, Frank. We’ve done Mafia Dreams and Mafia and the Machine. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your books. [1:13] I grew up in Kansas City. My family stretches way back in Kansas City, and they were involved in the political machine under Pendergast, and so I heard a lot of stories about those days growing up. Later in my career with the National Park Service, I worked a short stint at the Harry Truman National Historic Site, where I learned more about local history, more about the political machine and the mob in Kansas City. So that’s where my interest started. [1:39] And then many years later, I wrote The Mafia and the Machine, and then followed that up with some of these other books, including this most recent one, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Kansas City girl at the center of the Mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters. You know, that’s the mouthful, I know. You know how it is with the subtitle. You can try to get the, summarize the entire book in your subtitle. So, that’s what that is. Yeah. When you look up a book or you see it online or whatever, you want to know quickly what it’s about. So I see that title, Hoffa. Oh, that’s interesting. I thought everything was done about Hoffa. Then you got this subtitle in here and you say, oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know about this. And I didn’t myself, this Sylvia Pagano. And the story starts in Kansas City. It’s a fascinating story, guys. I want to tell you, it is a fascinating story. [2:31] But before we get started, Frank was a park ranger, a law enforcement park ranger for the National Park Service for 20 years. And he has a really interesting mob interaction when he was in, I believe you run a temporary assignment out in California. Tell the guys about your mafia interaction as a law enforcement officer. [2:53] Yeah. So I was actually at the park service 32 years. 20 of those were law enforcement and just retired. But in the summer of 2024, I got to go out to Redwood National Park on what we call a detail, which is a temporary assignment. They were shorthanded and needed a little extra help. And I knew the place pretty well because I had worked there earlier in my career. So I went out there and it’s a beautiful place. And I was on patrol and I came upon a campsite and there was some violations going on. Nothing major, just the typical stuff that we see as park rangers. And I contacted the occupants of this campsite and I got their licenses and I was back in my vehicle running the licenses. There was a male and a female and the female, I noticed it was a New York license and Brooklyn address and last name is Scarpa. I said, no, that can’t be. That’d be too much of a coincidence. And ran the information, recontacted the subject. And I asked the female, I said, by any chance, are you related to Greg Scarpa? She said, oh, yeah, that was my grandfather. And Greg Jr. was my father. [4:02] And I guess I had to laugh. And by then, I had already written a ticket or two, I think, for just petty offenses. And so I handed her ticket and then asked her if she’d take a picture with me. But she was real nice. She understood that people don’t mind, and she was great. She took a picture with me, and she was more than happy to talk about her father and her grandfather. And it was all very interesting and just quite the coincidence. Yeah, really. That was quite a coincidence. Not only the main coincidence was that you knew her. And then a lot of people might know the name. You really knew the name. Yeah, no. And you had this whole interest in it to talk about. Yeah, I can tell you that 99% of park rangers, you have no idea. Now, if you’re a Brooklyn cop, that’s different. But I was probably the only park ranger alive that would have made that connection because of my interest in the topic. I’ve been trying to get Greg Scarlett Jr. to come on. He’s made some intimations to somebody else. He followed my Facebook group, and I followed his. And so I don’t know. I reached out indirectly. I don’t know exactly how to get a hold of him. Maybe I’ll package this little story up and I’ll send that to him. Maybe that’ll get him to come on the show. Except you wrote the tickets, damn it. That’s the problem. I hope he won’t come after me to write in his daughter’s tickets. Yeah. [5:25] All right, Frank. So let’s go in this most recent book, Hoffa’s Connection. How did you, Sylvia Pagano, how did you even get onto that name other than, did you start, she’s Chucky O’Brien’s mother, who most guys know if you’re really into Hoffa at all, or even on the little bit, Chucky O’Brien was, everybody thought he was like his illegitimate son a lot of times or his surrogate son. And he was really close to Hoffa and drove him around. I was going through your book. He was a guy that Hoffa could send around to other mob people because he was half Italian himself and both sides trusted him to carry messages and do meetings and things like that. So how did you get onto this originally? So I got a call from Jack Goldsmith, who’s a very interesting man because he is the learned hand professor of law at Harvard University, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former assistant attorney general under President Bush. But for me, the most interesting thing about him was that he is Chucky O’Brien’s stepson. [6:29] And he was working on his book, Inhofe’s Shadow, when he contacted me. It’s a great book. I would recommend it to all the wiretappers. But it’s about Chucky. And he wanted to know if I had come across any information on Chucky O’Brien in my research for the Mafia and the Machine, because Chucky was from Kansas City. I said, what? Chucky O’Brien was from Kansas City? Because I knew all about Chucky O’Brien, but I had no idea he was from Kansas City. So that shocked me. And I don’t think very few people knew that. His Kansas City roots were scarcely known. Everybody just thought of Chucky as a Detroit guy. But when I finally read Goldsmith’s book, it’s about Chucky, but he touches on Sylvia. And I found what he wrote about Sylvia to be completely fascinating, especially because she was Kansas City. And so I thought, shoot, she’s in my wheelhouse. I thought, wow, she would make a great subject for a book. But I balked at it because she was so secretive that she left hardly anything information, hardly any documents exist about Sylvia. It’s just she wasn’t like the men that she associated with who were so extensively documented. There was just very little known about her, not even very many photographs in existence. [7:44] But fortunately, I got together with Pat Faisal in Kansas City. He’s a terrific researcher. You’ve worked with him a lot, Gary. You’ve had him on your show, I think. I think he’s written a couple of really important books on local history, and he had come across her independently of me, and through his own research, he had stumbled on just a brief mention or two of Sylvia Pagano in various FBI documents. [8:09] And so we decided to put our heads together, and Pat helped me with the research, did the lion’s share of the research, fed it to me, and then I would write the story. And that’s how it came together. [8:21] Interesting. And Frank, one of the coolest things, the research that Pat found was those wiretaps or bugs that the illegal bugs the FBI had in her house. And so they got a lot of really great conversations and they’re all transcribed and out there for somebody to find. So to me, that was fascinating. [8:45] Yes, that was probably our best source are these transcripts from the illegal microphones that the FBI placed in homes and businesses of organized crime associates all over the country back in the 60s. Got some great information from those. Sylvia talking freely in her apartment. Candidly, because she doesn’t know anybody’s list. And they had him in Tony Giacalone’s home juice company in Detroit also. And Sylvia was often a topic of conversation over there as well. By the way, Tony Giacalone was Sylvia’s paramour for many years. They had a long affair. People who think that Sylvia had an affair with Hoffa that produced Chucky O’Brien, [9:28] And that is not accurate. Chucky, we know who Chucky’s father was. He was a criminal out of St. Louis from the time he was a boy and went to prison when he was a young guy, was recruited from prison to come to Kansas City and work as a driver, for none other than Charlie Banagio. And so that put him right at the center of the action. [9:53] And Sylvia, having married the young man that put her right, she was already at the center of the action because she knew all the movers and shakers in the North End at that time already from the time she was a girl. But they became very much a part of Banagio’s network. And this was one fact that really blew me away that I didn’t know. And I don’t think you know it or Owsley or O’Malley or really anybody in Kansas City that Charlie Banagio was Chuckie O’Brien’s godfather. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Yeah. That is interesting. So Sylvia Pagano, she lives down there in the North End, what we call the North End folks, which is our little Italy. There’s a big church that anchors that neighborhood. And that’s where all the people came from Southern Italy and Sicily, moved into Kansas City and were associated with the church down there. After them, the Vietnamese came in and the church sponsored a lot of the Vietnamese and settled in that same neighborhood as it became a shifting neighborhood. So she’s down over there in Little Italy or the North End. And she meets a guy named Michael. Was it Three Fingers? [11:03] Oh, yeah. Frankie. Frankie Three Fingers. Coppola. Coppola, yeah. So tell us about that relationship. Yeah, that’s really interesting because Frankie Three Fingers… Hasn’t really been chronicled much as part of the Kansas City family. Because he was a roving guy, he had a lot of clout in both Italy and the U.S., and he had memberships in multiple families, and he was a high-ranking status too. So wherever he went, whether it was Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, New Orleans, he was all over the place, and he was well-respected wherever he went. But he was in Kansas City for quite a long time. He was strongly associated with Padagio. And it appears from all the evidence, as well as testimony from organized crime experts in Detroit, that Frankie Three Fingers escorted Sylvia to Detroit after her marriage with Charles O’Brien ended in about 1941 in Kansas City. [12:13] So Sylvia arrives in Detroit on the arm of Frank Coppola, and that put her on the fast track to getting to know the upper echelon of the Detroit family and mobsters, top mobsters beyond Detroit. Coppola was associated with Costello in his slot machine racket down in New Orleans. [12:36] And later, after he got deported back to Italy, He worked with Lucky Luciano to put together the whole narcotics syndicate network that included the French Connection. So tremendously influential as a mobster. Sylvia could really not have picked a more influential and well-connected guy as a boyfriend. That really put her on the fast track to getting to know a lot of the most powerful guys in the country. Really interesting guy. Frank Copeland. I’ll just say it and maybe someone else can run with it. I don’t know if it’ll be me or not, but he would make a great subject for a book. Yeah, he’s not very well known. And the mob used to have this guy, Nikolai Gentile. He traveled around to different families and brokered different deals. I think back before communication was so fast and you didn’t fly from one city to the other, you had to take a train. That’s a whole day on the train to get one city to the other. Telephone communication wasn’t that good. You didn’t hardly make long distance phone calls back there in the 20s and 30s. I don’t think they were hard. So you have guys like this that then travel around and take messages that are trusted by the different cities. And so he had to be one of those guys. [13:52] You’re exactly right. In fact, he knew Nicola Gentile. [13:58] Gentile is also, I speak about him in this book also. He plays a role, a pretty important one, and he describes some events that are really fascinating. This story actually doesn’t begin in Kansas City. It begins in Pueblo, Colorado. There’s three geographic areas that are really emphasized in this story. Pueblo, Colorado, Kansas City, and Detroit. But Nicola Gentili and Frank Coppola knew each other in the United States, and they knew each other in Italy. And you’re exactly right, they had a similar role as traveling diplomats within the mafia. Very interesting. Not too many other guys, especially later on. They had Johnny Roselli, who was really well-traveled, and some others. But in those early days, a couple of these guys, Coppola, Gentile, I don’t know if there was any others or not, but that was what they did. They were all over the place, and they were so well-connected, and they really had memberships in multiple families. And that seems to have faded away later. You didn’t hear too much about guys that had more than one member. So occasionally somebody would switch families, but yeah, they were really interesting, [15:11] real, what you would call international mystery men, I think. Interesting. So she had an affair with him, and he brought her up to Detroit and started making connections in Detroit, if I remember the story right, with the Jackalones. And so what. [15:27] Take us on from there. How does she then move in with Hoffa? And she’s like in the middle between the Peckerwood truck drivers and the Italian mob, which they both needed each other and they worked well together for a long time. So how does she end up in the center of that? Yeah, she’s still quite young when she gets to Detroit. She’s just early 20s, maybe mid 20s at that point. But and here she is she’s immediately meeting all of the wise guys but she was still she needed a job she needed work i’m sure coppola helped her out to some extent but he had his own wife he had his own he probably had another mistress or two as well i mean she needed to make a she needed to make a living and raise her son chucky and um she got a job with the teamsters at that time in In Detroit, unions were strong. There was a lot of unions, and it was the capital of industrial unionism at that time. And so that just became a natural choice. She ended up meeting Burke Brennan initially, actually, even before Hoffa. Brennan was Hoffa’s right-hand guy. [16:36] And he gave her a job with the Teamsters as a salter. She was an organizer, and a good one, and a legit organizer. But her specialty was salting. Now, what’s that? So she was a union representative, and she would get a job in a factory or a warehouse, just an ordinary job. And she would go to work, just like everybody else, punch the clock. But while she was there, her real objective was signing other people up to join the union. So she’s like a secret agent in a way, buried into the normal workforce, but with a real different agenda. And she was real good at it. And the union guys noticed that she worked really hard and she was loyal and that she would keep her mouth shut. And so those were the same qualities that the mob guys admired. So this was at the time, though, and this is very important, when most of the unions and the mob were still at odds with each other. Back then, the gangsters were getting hired by companies to break strikes and to oppose unions. [17:47] And there was a particularly bad strike going on. It lasted a long time. The Teamsters were striking the Detroit Lumber Company. This was at about 42. And it was violent. And Hoffa could see the writing on the wall that the Teamsters were losing the battle. It went on and on. It was violent. And that’s where Sylvia Pagano stepped in. Burt Brennan told Jimmy Hoffa he should talk to Facci. Facci was Italian for face. And that was Sylvia’s nickname that she got when she was young back in Kansas City. Had a very pretty face. And so they called her the face. So Hoffa talked to Fauci and she set up a basically like a summit meeting peace conference, more or less. And they brokered a deal where the mob switched sides and became allies with the Teamsters against the Detroit Lumber Company. So that was really the moment that changed history, brought the mafia into the Teamsters orbit and vice versa. And that’s all traceable right back to Sylvia Pagano. [18:55] Wow. That’s interesting. I always wondered what the genesis of that was with Hoffa and the mob. And of course, we can see how it developed, but what that actual birth of that was. I think you’ve stumbled across the birth of it. You also… [19:11] We’re able to stumble across the birth of the Eastern families and New York families connection to Hoffa, which that that gets even bigger. Tell us a little bit about that. She was involved in that, believe it or not, guys. And just like in Detroit, back in New York, there’s Johnny Dio. He was busting up labor union strikes for the companies. Yeah, I think that to some degree in New York, New Jersey, that some Teamsters locals had already been infiltrated by the mafia independently and maybe unbeknownst to Hoffa in Detroit. But it really became a big thing with Hoffa and with Sylvia’s brokering that alliance. Little isolated examples of mob infiltration, I think, were already happening in Detroit. But once again, as Hoffa’s progressing in his career, moving up the ranks, he always had his eye on the top job. He wanted to be the president of the IBT. And of course, he knew he needed help in the Northeast for that, to realize that goal. And so with Sylvia helped set up meetings with Tony Ducks Corral Johnny Diagordi Tony Provenzano and Sylvia had gotten to know Provenzano in Detroit because he had strong connections to Detroit let’s see his cousin was married to. [20:39] Tony Giacalone’s cousin was married to Tony Pro, I believe, or vice versa. That’s your book. Yeah. I’d have to go back and read my own book. Yeah, it’s hard to keep up. Hard to remember all the details. All these players. Giacalone’s cousin was married to Provenzano. And so Sylvia had already met Provenzano in Detroit. And Chucky, her son, had already started calling him Uncle Tony. And so she had this great connection to Provenzano. And so she helped facilitate the Teamsters Mob Alliance in New York and New Jersey, just as she had in Detroit. And then it goes on from there. Then she later, we’re moving forward now, but she would later become the link between Hoffa and his closest contact in Cleveland, which was Moe Daylitz. She became the link between Hoffa and Alan Dorfman in Chicago. And she became the link between Hoffa and the Sevilla brothers in Kansas City. So she really was, and this is all, they taught, there’s a, from those FBI tapes, those illegal FBI tapes, we have Tony Zarelli and Nick Sevilla in Florida speaking about Sylvia Pagano and her relationship as a liaison between the Detroit family and between the Kansas City family. Like, there’s your proof right there. Not that you need it. She was really… [22:09] The guys, a lot of them really liked, adored her in the sense of she did have an affair with a couple of them, and she was a good-looking woman. A lot of them had, Moe Dalitz was known to have a crush on Sylvia, possibly an affair with Sylvia. But she was more than your mob mole, right? She was a dealmaker. She was an advisor. She was a liaison. She brought money to the table. She did deals with the guys. She helped broker some pension fund loans, all these things. So what I like to say about Sylvia is that we all know that the mob never inducted women into their ranks. But if they had, Sylvia Pagana would have been their first choice because she worked hard. She was loyal. [22:56] She kept her mouth shut. And she really lived truer to the code than some of the men did. She was 100% omerta. She really was. and she learned that in the north end of Kansas City, where Umerta was extremely strong even up into this century after it wasn’t so strong in other places and so she passed that on to Chucky O’Brien. He was also a real strong adherent to the code of silence. Yeah, I think we have to remember Chucky O’Brien was half Italian. His father was Italian. No. [23:33] So his mother, Sylvia, was the Italian. Mother, Sylvia, yeah. Yeah, his dad was Irish. Yeah, I got that mixed up. Exactly, asked backwards. But yeah, he was half Italian. And so he really talked the talk, and he moved right in. All these guys were like his uncle, Uncle Nick, Uncle Quirk, and that kind of thing. So he came back to Kansas City. Tell a little bit about Chuckie O’Brien and Kansas City. Yeah, so in 1950, he’d been in Detroit for about nine years by that point. 1950, he’s getting into high school age, and Sylvia sent him back to Kansas City to live on Independence Avenue with his grandparents, and he went to Cardinal Glennon High School. [24:13] And became a good athlete, started dating a gal from the old neighborhood who was a lot like Sylvia. I think that’s really interesting because Chucky really idolized his mother, but he never really, when he was young at least, got to spend as much time with her as he wanted. He spent a lot of time back in Kansas City. He spent a lot of time at his uncle’s house in Detroit because Sylvia was so busy with Hoffa and with the mob. So here’s Chucky in Kansas City. He meets a gal from Sylvia’s old neighborhood who has other things in common with Sylvia and who even looks, in my opinion, quite a lot like Sylvia. And he would eventually take her back to Detroit and marry her and have a family together. But his main objective, it really in Kansas City wasn’t so much going to school. It was becoming a truck driver. He wanted to become a truck driver so that he could put himself on the path to becoming a union organizer like his hero and surrogate father, Jimmy Hoffa. And according to Chucky, Uncle Nick and Uncle Cork got him his first job as a driver and got him his first union card with local 541. [25:23] And this was right at the time when Local 541 was becoming ground zero for labor strife and union corruption in the United States. And Gary, you said a key word earlier, which was Peckerwood. And that’s who was running the Kansas City Teamsters at the time. It was dominated by Peckerwood guys, country boys, basically, and like Hoffa. And these guys were just as bad as the Italian gangsters who were more famous. They ran those locals with intimidation and terror, and they were violent, and they were very ambitious. They had political power. [26:08] Make a long story short, in 1953 in Kansas City, we had an inter-union labor war. And it was the Teamsters versus almost every other union in town. And Teamsters were trying to dominate a lot of these other unions is what it was. And so you had a complete paralysis of the entire construction industry for three months. Imagine just all construction stopping for three months in any metro area and how devastating that is to the economy. 23,000 Kansas Citians were out of work. The Teamsters were refusing to pick up or deliver supplies. And that eventually morphed into violence and sabotage. You had guys going into battle at construction sites. People were getting badly injured. People were getting kidnapped. It was, and then furthermore, we had four military defense projects centered in the Kansas City area, and this is right at the height of the Korean War. So these military installations were suffering work stoppages also. So this was unacceptable in Washington. And Congress swooped in with hearings and an investigation. [27:17] And they called this, basically, it was, I think the exact language was something like the most forbidding chapter in the history of American unions, something like that. It was a big deal. This history has been mostly forgotten. But Kansas City was [27:32] completely paralyzed for about three months. And that was the union that was the local mainly primarily local 541 which chucky was a young member of he was too young at that time to get drawn into the politics of the union i don’t believe that he was on the front lines of these these battles and violence that was happening he was just a brand new truck driver at the time but he was part of that in the sense that he was a local a member of the local at the time this stuff was happening so yeah that’s that’s what happened when Chucky came back to Kansas City. [28:07] Interesting. And that must have been the time when Roy Williams started moving up the ladder and the mob was moving in and they moved this auto ring and some of his people out. And Roy Lee Williams must have, with the support of Nick Civella and the local mob, must have moved right on in. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. The main guy behind all the strife and violence I was just talking about was Orville Ring, classic quintessential Peckerwood guy and then after all this happened Hoffa swooped in and helped negotiate an end to these conflicts in 1953 and, And Nick Civella and his crime family, they were all watching all this from the wings, planning and scheming. Wow, there’s a lot going on here. How can we capitalize on this? [28:50] So in the aftermath of it all, the Savellas basically intimidated Orville Ring out of the Union. He went back to his farm. Later, he was killed in an accident on his farm, which a lot of people thought was the mob, that the mob did it. But it looked probably just an accident. And I think a tractor rolled over on him or something like that. But yeah, Roy Williams. So at this time, just basically the Italians were taken over from the Peckerwoods. There were still some useful Peckerwoods, and they worked together. And Roy Williams was the key guy there. This is when Nick Civella and he started working together to take over the Teamsters in Kansas City. You’re exactly right. And the rest is history. Really? really. Roy Williams is an interesting guy. He was a war hero from World War II. He had several bronze stars and he was a huge war hero, but he knew which side of the bread got the butter. And so he went with that and he went with Nick Civella. And he did, he bucked up to him a few times, but Nick Civella, actually in a famous scene, Nick Civella had him picked up and driven somewhere and shined a bright light in his eyes and said, you will go along with this scheme. [30:05] So it’s, but he kept going along to almost, he almost, he did become the president of the union for a short period of time, almost right there at the end of his life and when everybody was going to jail. But he was Nick Civella’s protege and Nick Civella’s puppet for his whole life and the whole Teamsters union was. [30:24] Yeah and that story you mentioned with the white spotlight shining in his eyes they kidnapped him and took him into this empty warehouse and i always point to that as just one of those. [30:34] Terrifying stories about how the mob used to work and yeah man and that wasn’t the only time that they intimidated roy williams in that manner so he like you said he was this tough guy war hero He was a big guy, and yet even a guy like that can get intimidated into doing whatever these guys tell him to do because his tactics that they used were just terrifying. Yeah. I read one thing where he later on, he claimed when he turned and gave evidence and talked to the Bureau that he claimed that they also threatened his wife and children during one of these sit downs with him. I mean, they did the same thing to Alan Glick out in Las Vegas. Tuffy DeLuna was out there, and he read off Alan Glick’s name of his wife and his children. He said, you may find yourself expendable, but I don’t think you’re going to find your family expendable and read off their names. So there’s two good examples of them. Say that Bob never messes with your family. There’s two good examples of them using the family and family as threats. Yeah. [31:40] It’s very tough. Yeah, it is. I heard knowing Mo Dalitz, to me, that was key because he was such a mover and an operator. Talk a little more about that. He had been in Cleveland. He had to set her up with Bill Presser. And that was primarily Jewish mobsters in Cleveland, seemed to me like. And then he also had all those connections to Chicago to get to Red Dorfman, his son, Alan Dorfman. Talk a little more about that relationship with Mo Dalitz. In Mo Dalitz’s biography, I can’t think of the name of the author at the moment, but that author states that Sylvia was one of Mo Dalitz’s lovers. I’m not sure if that’s true or not. I do think that Mo Dalitz, at the very least, had a crush on Sylvia, but also respected her very much. And she, just as she had with the Detroit family before, she brokered an alliance with Daylitz. What happened was Daylitz had a laundry empire, was a rum runner and a racketeer and a leader in the Jewish mob. But he also had a lot of legitimate businesses, including a laundry empire in Detroit and Cleveland. [32:53] And while he was still in Detroit, before he really made his move to Cleveland, his permanent move to Cleveland, his laundries, along with other laundry owners, they bonded together in an association. And they were very anti-union. And they were basically at odds with the Teamsters. And until Sylvia swooped in. And Sylvia had her own connections by now to the Laundry Workers Union also. So she’s working for the Teamsters, and she’s very close to Hoffa, but she then married a guy named John Paris, who was the head of the Laundry Workers Union. [33:32] So Sylvia knows Hoffa, and she knows the head of the Laundry Workers Union very closely, and she knows Dalitz. So she’s the one who’s positioned to bring these people together, sit them down at the same table, and start working together, start negotiating. And that’s what she did with Daylitz. And so that led to Daylitz paying off Hoffa, basically, to settle this contract on terms that were favorable to Daylitz and the other laundry owners. [34:07] But you could say that Hoffa, in that case, sold out his members, at least at that time. Now, I do want to make it clear that most rank-and-file teamsters for many decades loved Hoffa because he definitely did negotiate some great contracts that brought truck drivers into the middle class, got them very good pay and benefits. And it’s only fair, it’s only right to give him credit because as somebody once said about Hoffa. [34:33] He was always a criminal, but also always a teamster. And he worked very hard for his membership. He never stopped working. And it was sincere, I do believe. But there were times when he, the ends justified the means and he did whatever he had to do to keep the union alive, but also to serve himself and enrich himself. And that was one of those cases where the membership lost out a little bit when Hoffa and Daylitz formed their alliance with the initiation and the help of Sylvia Pagano. Interesting. So let’s go back to Chucky O’Brien for a minute. He goes back up from Kansas City. He ends up back up in Detroit and working very closely with Jimmy Hoffa. And you talked to his son. Yeah. And to make that, and he was probably a huge help and some insight into what his father was like. So talk about Chucky O’Brien when he got back with Hoffa. Yeah, so he goes back to Detroit. [35:31] And he steps right back into the Hoffa family circle because Sylvia became part of the Hoffa family. She was Josephine Hoffa’s best friend. Jimmy Hoffa relied on her not only for important work in the union and for important connections to the mob, but he also relied on her heavily as Josephine’s personal assistant and caretaker. Sylvia worked extremely hard serving other people. And she was an excellent caretaker to Josephine who needed a lot of care, had very poor health, made worse by severe alcoholism. And Sylvia was a wonderful caretaker. But Chucky stepped right back into that family orbit. Later, when his own kids were small, Chucky and his wife and his kids moved into the Hoffa house. They’d all lived under the same roof for quite a few years. But Sylvia was really the glue that kept it all together and Chucky’s son who’s also named Chuck O’Brien he was a young boy at this time so his memories of his grandmother. [36:42] And Jimmy Hoffa started when he was a young boy and continued up until Sylvia died when he was in his late teens, but he was a great source for the book helped out a lot I really appreciate him And it was interesting to have direct access to someone who actually lived under the same roof with Jimmy Hoffa. So he was not privy, young Chuck was not privy to any inside information or any mob dealings or anything like that. But he later moved to Kansas City and went to work in the River Key for his uncle at the Godfather Lounge, which just a couple of years later was torched in the River Key War. And then young Chuck had worked in professional hockey for a while. And then he became a truck driver and joined Local 41. And so all this history just comes full circle and repeats itself. And I was a little fascinated by these Sylvia’s grandkids who were born and raised in Detroit. They both ended up back in Kansas City in the land of their parents and their grandparents. And they ended up in the same neighborhoods that Sylvia had been born in many years before. [37:57] Interesting. And Chucky O’Brien, then he’s kind of Hoffa’s driver sometimes. And Aaron Renner on up to the end of Hoffa’s life was even implicated at the very end. Some people claim that he helped set Hoffa up because he was the one person that Hoffa trusted. And that one movie, The Irishman or whatever, really threw a lot of shade on Chucky O’Brien. So how did you deal with that. [38:21] Yeah, I think Chucky got a real bad rap, and as I used to study Hoffa and read all the Hoffa books, I always thought, I always had a very low opinion of Chucky O’Brien, and he became the butt of a joke, and he was portrayed as this blundering, not-too-bright guy who either helped kill his surrogate father or was duped into giving him a ride to where he was killed without knowing what was going on and without being able to, realize it to the point where he could have maybe helped Hoffa. I think Jack Goldsmith put all that to rest. He really changed my opinion of Chucky in his book, but I realized that Chucky had been misunderstood in many ways. Was he involved in Hoffa’s disappearance or not? I think Goldsmith basically vindicates Chucky. [39:15] However, I do believe that there’s still some evidence that could strongly suggest that even in light of what Goldsmith wrote, that Chucky could still have known more than he let on. But he was so committed to Emerita that he took a lot of secrets to his grave, I believe. What’s interesting is some of the other co-conspirators in the Hoffa thing ended up dead, like Sally Buggs, and got killed in Little Italy a few years later, and the prevailing wisdom, at least, was to, keep him quiet about the Hoffa case. And they would have probably done the same thing to Chucky if Chucky could have pointed the finger at anybody or implicated anybody. And I’m sure he could have. I’m sure he knew some things about that. He was so close to Giacalone. Chucky was very close to Tony Giacalone and to Tony Provenzano. [40:07] And I think that Chucky survived because Giacalone trusted him 100% just as Sylvia Pagano’s son. Giacalone’s trust in Chucky to not give anybody up was just so rock solid. And he loved Chucky. And I think that he was also honoring Sylvia by allowing Chucky to stay alive. So I know I’m straying from your initial question, Gary. There’s so much going on with the whole Chuck O’Brien thing and his involvement. It gets very interesting. You have to get really down in the weeds with it to understand all of it. But I think that Goldsmith’s book is a great read for anybody who’s interested in Hoffa and the whole case. I definitely would recommend it. So it may come down to Chuck O’Brien. And was he more loyal to the mob, to the mafia and their code? Or more loyal to Hoffa and the Teamsters? as Hoffa as an individual, not to the teams or his union, but Hoffa as an individual. Was he more loyal to Hoffa or more loyal to the union or more loyal to the mob? And giving up those guys, he has to turn his back on everything. [41:21] The union and the mob. And so I can see where he, whatever he knew, [41:25] he was not going to say a word. It would be to his advantage. He has no, they didn’t have a hammer on him. Wasn’t a criminal. They didn’t have a life sentence hanging over his head for anything. They did have, they did prosecute Chucky on a federal case. It was a small time thing. He took some, maybe took some gifts from a, from an employer in his role as a union guy, some small gifts. And then he had also got caught up in a cargo theft case, which is all documented in the book, Office of Connection. But the law enforcement did have a couple of cases that they could apply pressure onto Chucky. But he didn’t say a word, and he just went to prison and served his time. He didn’t have to serve too much time. He was only in for about a year, I think. It was a low-level felony. But he just, he’d never thought once about turning state’s witness. He just went and served his time and got back out and went on with his life. [42:25] Yeah. It’s those 50 and 75-year sentences that’ll make the right attorneys. You get even, I used to say, when they came up, those sentencing guidelines for cocaine dealers, you could make a guy talk about his mother when he’s looking. He’s 40 years old and he’s looking at a 50, 75-year sentence. Yeah. I do have to say, though, if there’s one guy that might, and there was a few of them who went and served a hard time. Yeah, a long time until they’re old. Rather than give anybody else up. And I think Chucky would have been one of those guys. I do. Yeah. [42:57] Having been raised by sylvia pagano he was just so committed to that culture and those traditions and that way of life and and omerta yeah sylvia even had almost a kind of a halfway making ceremony for chucky she arranged for the top guys in detroit when he came back to detroit from kansas city in the early 50s tony giacalone put together a little event where chucky walked into the back room of grecian gardens restaurant in detroit and all the top guys were sitting around a table and he made a pledge of loyalty to them at that time and then he sat down and broke bread with them and he didn’t prick his finger and burn a card and he wasn’t made into the family but it was all halfway a little bit and they did that for sylvia and because they just valued her so much they respected her and they needed her they she was the connection to their most valuable asset, which was Jimmy Hoffa. So that tells you a little bit about how much respect they had for Sylvia and also for Chucky’s unique role. Here he is. [44:05] He’s he’s the son of charlie banagio’s low-level chauffeur yeah and yet he’s sitting down with guys like meyer lansky in florida he’s sitting down with all the top guys in detroit chicago inu acardo rica rosanova all these top guys in chicago then he would sit down with them on behalf of jimmy hoff he was he probably i say in the book that he probably had more chucky o’brien the son of, Banagio’s chauffeur probably had more sit-downs with high-level mobsters than Nick Civella did. As Hoffa’s representative, that was the life. And he knew how to handle that kind of thing because he was raised by Sylvia. So he knew how to say, what not to say, how to behave himself in those types of meetings. So that came naturally to him. And he was Hoffa’s gopher. He drove in places. He took Hoffa’s wife to her medical appointments. He did low-level stuff like that, but he also did more important work, more sensitive stuff, like sitting down with mob bosses and relaying information back and forth, just like as Sylvia had taught him to do. [45:16] That’s fascinating. I tell you what, guys, Frank Hayde, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Ken City girl at the center of the mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters Union. I might have links in here. You better get this book. This is untrod territory. Unplowed ground, as we used to say on the farm. This is fresh stuff that you’ve read. There’s so many books out there about Hoffa and his disappearance that they just want to, come on, we can’t do this. I can’t do this again, Hoffa’s disappearance. You’re never going to find his body. You’re never going to figure out exactly who killed him. Nobody’s going to talk, and anybody that could is dead. But this unearthed some really fresh, interesting information about Hoffa and his connection with the Italian La Cosa Nostra in the United States, the entire United States, really. Yes. Thank you, Gary. That was a very nice little summary of it. And I really appreciate you. You’ve had me on your show before, my other books, and I listened to your podcast. Can’t get enough of it. You do terrific work. All us wire trappers love you, man. And we all appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Are you still doing the, are we still buying you cups of coffee and that kind of stuff? Yeah, you can always buy me a cup of coffee and hit the donate button. [46:29] I forget about doing that. I’ve been doing this so long and I got a few guys that hit it regularly and some never do. I do this for the pure joy of it anyhow, but it helps to have a little extra money coming in now and then. When you were selling books yesterday, you love writing this book. You love all that research and putting it together and educating people, but it’s nice to get paid for it too. [46:50] It’s a small-time racket, but hey. It’s a small-time racket. Another interesting thing, Frank, we were talking about people doing time, getting so much time, and trying to force them to talk. Yesterday, Frank had a program at the library, and we had a local guy who was a subject of his last book, Mafia Dreams, who was a mob hanger-on guy when he was a young guy. And he got caught up in a murder, an accidental murder in a way. That it’s a long story and you have to get mafia dreams to learn about it. The next generation of the wannabe. [47:25] Italian mafia guys in kansas city and so that guy was there he did 25 years 25 years for what we call felony murder another guy he transported a friend of his to a drug by only the guy killed the man was selling the or tried to kill the man that was selling the drugs and the fbi had it set up and ran in and shot and killed the kid who almanese had carried up to the drug ripoff and And so they charged this driver with felony murder, and he did 25 years, just got out about four or five years ago. He could have talked. He had enough to buy him a lot of grace on that 25-year sentence, and he did every minute of it. He never said a word, and it was hard time. It was state time here in Missouri. Yeah, I think that’s true. I think he is representative of Kansas City in a way, because I do believe that in Kansas City, the Code of Emerita persisted longer than most places. And yeah, when you’re 24 years old, I think he was 24 at the time that he was sentenced. Maybe he was 25 and you get sentenced to 25 and a half years. [48:38] And you have the chance to whittle that down by giving up information on your friends. And you don’t take it, and you choose to do the 25 and a half years, that’s hardcore. And he did, and those are the best years of his life that he’ll never get back. But he is out now, and he’s making a legitimate living and keeping his nose clean and just trying to make up for a lot of lost time. Yeah, he is. 25 years will straighten your mind out, won’t it? Yeah. Man. All right, Frank. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Hey, thanks again, Gary. Don’t forget to donate Bob the Bob Gary cup of coffee, y’all. Thank you. Okay, Gary. Okay, Frank. That was great. Talk to you later.

In this episode of Scotland Today, Dawn revisits one of Scotland's most chilling unsolved gangland double murders: the deaths of John Nisbet and William Lindsay in October 1999. This detailed retelling covers the timeline of the case, from the last known movements of the victims and the forensic investigation, to suspects and the lingering impact on the victims' families and the wider community. The episode marks the 12 May 2000 renewed police appeal, highlighting the enduring quest for answers in this decades-old mystery.Watch on YoutubeThree Takeaways from the Episode:Unsolved Gangland Murders Remain a MysteryThe double murder of John Nisbet and William Lindsay in 1999 marked by the meticulous planning and execution of the killers, as well as their confidence in covering their tracks.Police Investigations Faced Obstacles Despite ProgressDespite a significant police response—including forensic tests, DNA profiling, ballistic analysis, and identifying prime suspects—no one was ever charged. The investigation was hampered by fear, silence, and the lack of decisive evidence.Victims' Families Still Seek ClosureMore than two decades later, the families of John Nisbet and William Lindsay remain without answers or justice, while the suspected main perpetrator, Lee Smith, died before facing trial and the case remains officially unsolved.SOURCES:Please see our website for all source material and photos at https://scottishmurders.com/episodes/nisbetandlindsay/British Newspaper Archives Affiliate LinkSUPPORT US:Ko-fi - ko-fi.com/scottishmurdersMerch - teepublic.com/user/scottishmurdersWebsite - scottishmurders.comInstagram - @scottishmurderspodcastCREDITS:Scottish Murders is a production of CluarantonnHosted by Dawn YoungResearched, Written and Edited by Dawn YoungProduction Company Name by Granny RobertsonMUSIC:epidemicsound

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.

In this episode, host Gary Jenkins, a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, sits down with author and mob expert Springs Toledo and discusses the Boston Winter Hill Gang and its notorious members. Springs' book, “Don’t Talk About Joe Mac: The Life, Wars, and Secret History of the Man Behind the Winter Hill Gang” Springs Toledo provides an exhaustive look at Joe McDonald aka Mac, a pivotal yet often overlooked figure in the Boston criminal landscape, especially during the 1960s-1990s. Springs, a Boston native, brings a unique perspective and personal anecdotes that enrich our understanding of the intersections of crime, family, and community within the city. They explore Joe Mac’s early life and how his background shaped his role in organized crime. Springs shares how Mac was an elder statesman in the underworld, feared and respected for his ability to organize the rackets in Somerville and maintain a significant network of relationships across various neighborhoods. Joe Mac's methods of operation were emblematic of a time when the Irish underworld was gaining ground in a city dominated by Italian crime families. Springs discusses the stark differences in these organizations, from their cultural practices to their hierarchies. Springs also highlights the complexities of Joe Mac's personal life, discussing his relationships with his family, especially his daughter Jacqueline. Their conversations reveal a side of Mac rarely seen in crime stories — a devoted father struggling with his dual identity as a loving parent and a cold-blooded criminal. Throughout the episode, Springs captures the essence of Mac's character, noting that while he was involved in heinous acts, he also exhibited genuine love for his family, a contradiction that adds depth to his narrative. As the conversation unfolds, we examine the dynamics within the Winter Hill Gang, particularly the relationships among Joe Mac, prominent figures like Whitey Bulger, and Howie Carr. Springs shares fascinating insights into Mac's cautious nature and strategic approach to power. He articulates how Mac operated in the shadows, steering clear of public scrutiny while effectively managing the group's criminal enterprises. The episode paints a vivid portrait of a gang operating amid violence, betrayal, and survival. In addition to discussing the various criminal exploits, Springs shares some gripping anecdotes that illustrate the real-life implications of this lifestyle. His stories about Joe’s attempts to balance family life while dodging law enforcement showcase the constant threat that loomed over their lives, encapsulating the dangerous allure and traumatizing consequences of organized crime. We also touch upon the significant events that defined the gang wars in Boston, including Joe Mac’s suspected involvement in notorious hits and how the landscape of crime shifted in response to law enforcement's increased focus on organized crime. Springs dives into the enigmatic character of Joe Mac, unraveling his military background, his unyielding commitment to the underworld, and how he managed to stay a step ahead of rivals and authorities alike. In closing, Springs reflects on the motivations behind his book—his desire to portray the human side of a man branded a monster while exploring the broader themes of morality, family, and the haunting legacy of crime. As we wrap up, it becomes clear that “Don’t Talk About Joe Mac” is not just a biography of an infamous crime figure, but a complex narrative that invites readers to ponder the true cost of a life steeped in organized crime. This episode is a riveting exploration of character, culture, and crime, offering audiences an engaging glimpse into the storied history of Boston organized crime, the Winter Hill gang through the lens of one of its most pivotal figures, Joe Mac. 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. Springs Toledo JOe mac Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] hey, all your wire tappers out there. Gary Jenkins back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence unit detective, doing a podcast mainly about organized crime. We might stray into drugs every once in a while, but primarily about Italian based organized crime or, and then sometimes we get into Irish based organized crime. I’ve done a story on the Westie in the past and a few other stories like that. So today we’re gonna talk about the. Crossing of the Irish and and the Italians in Boston area, which is a really well known, famous story. A lot of great characters. And I have with me a man who wrote a book about this. Springs Toledo, welcome Springs. Springs Toledo: Thank you very much, Gary. Happy to be here. Gary Jenkins: Great. Now guys, the books is, don’t Talk about Joe Mack the Life Wars and Secret History of the Man Behind The Winter Hill Gang. And I’ve always wondered about this Winter Hill gang. I’ve always heard of it and Whitey Bulger came out of that and was so famous, but I’ve never really. [00:01:00] Seen anything or know anything about the background of it. And Springs, Toledo has somebody, a guy called Joe Mack that was involved in that and he’s really gone into it in depth. Springs, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this. Springs Toledo: I’m a native of Boston, which did help, the accent helped open doors. Gary Jenkins: We can tell. Springs Toledo: But I don’t even try to hide it anymore. And I have a background in, in boxing, which also helps, that’s a breeding ground for, leg breakers and enforcers. Historically, in Boston, a lot of ex fighters became gangsters or, involved in that life. I went to Northeastern got a graduate degree in criminology. And I I didn’t, I never became a police officer. I worked with, actually with juvenile delinquents and troubled youth for many years. I’ve written several books some about boxing, some about an historical figure named John Brown, who’s an abolitionist, so I’m running the gamut. But Joe McDonald was a name that I heard whispered for many years, growing up. He had a very long criminal career over five decades.[00:02:00] And, so he was considered something very serious. But what I began to notice as the book started coming out after John Madano became a cooperating witness, as he’d say. Is that not much was known about this individual. What I knew is that he was about 20 years older than everybody else. So he’s an elder statesman in that world. So I started poking around. I know some guys who were involved in that life. I know some other guys who were very connected to very serious individuals who were active in the Boston Underworld during these years, the sixties, seventies, eighties, into the nineties. Yeah. So I started, asking around and the things I started to hear were very downright alarming about who this man was and that he was the guy not Whitey Bulger. There was what they’ll all tell you the deeper you get into the operators in that world is that Whitey Bulger is. Largely a mythology. And that in Somerville especially, he wasn’t really that respected. Joe Mack, however, was Joe Mack was, he [00:03:00] was the go-to guy. And upon doing all kinds of research, field research, but also I’m trying to corroborate everything. People are saying you can’t just take what people have to say at face value, especially if they’re, underworld figures. Yeah. A lot of ’em have a self-interest as so what I would do, I had a little strategy. What I would do is I would talk to one guy in Southie if I heard a story that sounded intriguing or something about Joe Mack, what have you, and then I’d try to find another guy in Somerville or East Boston or Hy Park who didn’t necessarily know that individual. And if the stories match, I’d look into it further. For instance, I wanna make sure the guy wasn’t in prison at that time, that he’s allegedly known to have done something. So that’s how I began to put together a picture. And what the u unanimously what I found out is that Joe McDonald was really the, he’s the one that put together organized crime in Somerville, centered in Winter Hill. He organized the launch sh the rackets loan, sharking booking, sports betting, all of that. And he was a very feared individual.[00:04:00] He looked like a building superintendent. He was balding. He, no, he was nothing flashy about him. He was family man. But so I started digging deeper and I got his military records, and then the picture really started to come together because of what he went through during World War II in the South Pacific and the trauma that he suffered. I didn’t wanna write a straight True crime book. So I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want it to be ordinary. I wanted it to be get underneath the behavior. It’s the, the criminology major is, was showing it’s yeah. Was coming to the fore. So I wanna get underneath it. So I consider this book more of a nonfiction noir. ‘Cause if you watch those old movies, a lot of ’em have a theme where you have, the main character, the anti-hero. These are movies from the forties, all black and white. All shadowy. Yeah. They come back from World War ii and they’re troubled. They’re shell-shocked. JoEM, Joe Mack came back and he’s marred. Something about his personality had changed and he’s one of the few individuals that I’ve encountered who [00:05:00] actually age into crime. He didn’t age out of it like everybody else. He aged into it. But he was very good at what he did. He was a brilliant individual. Very strong-willed. Someone said that I talked to, they said that, all the fear, whatever fear he had was knocked out of him, in SVO sound. When his ship went down, which was a USS Quincy with his brother on it. So he became a, began to emerge as a fascinating figure. But what. Made me decide to write the book was when I was hooked up with his daughter by TJ English. I reached out to him and he, he told me about Jackie McDonald. I reached out to her and I said, I’m thinking about writing a book about your father, Joe McDonald. I don’t think that the the literature on him now really got him right. And she said, give me a night to drink about it. Yeah, so the next morning she told me she was she’ll tell me everything she knows and she was the right person because first of all, she was named for the brother that he lost in SVO sound that he never got over his little brother. Her name’s [00:06:00] Jacqueline. And like her father, she’s absolutely brilliant. She’s charismatic. She is incredibly honest. If she’s not sure about something she’d say. So nothing in it was, what she told me was about herself. It was nothing was ego driven. She wanted to tell the truth of her father. And what I began to realize early on is that you know this, you have victims of guys like Joe McDonald who killed dozens of people professionally, but he was a murderer. There’s no doubt about it. And you have a lot of victims, including in his own family. Not that he intended to hurt his daughters and his son, but his, who he was and what he was, did a lot of damage to his own family and she was the perfect person to talk to because she was so honest. She’s also very funny if, you read about her in the book, she comes across as a real character, very charismatic. So her story runs parallel with his, she comes out about the middle of the book. I trace her life alongside with his, and she had a memoir that she did many years ago and she shared that with me. [00:07:00] She’s she really is a force of good, if you will, in the book. She’s the one to cheer for, she’s the one to root for. Joe McDonald is a formidable figure, but he’s a dark and shadow. We figure. I do bring him out as much as I can and he is fascinating, but. I felt like I needed someone to root for the reader, yeah. And also, it’s women who love true crime the most. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: That’s so Springs Toledo: had to give nod to them, they’re gonna buy it. Gary Jenkins: That is true. And a story like this will will attract men and women both, sometimes those just straight, kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. Of true crime books are not really attractive to women. That’s really interesting that. You’re showing the human side of this guy instead of just the crime side, which there every one of these guys that are professional criminals in this life have a human side. They, that’s what one thing that fascinated me about ’em, even way back when I started, went into the intelligence unit is these guys all had families and they had kids going to St. Pius up here and they played football and the families all showed up [00:08:00] when their kids played football and they were in little league and all that kind of normal stuff. On one hand, but yet they came over into the CI city in here. They came from the suburbs over in the city and were these gangsters all night long, and then went back home to their suburban homes. So that family side. That’s really interesting. I’m glad you did that. Springs Toledo: That’s compartmentalization. And Joe was the best at it. But there was something unusual about this case and that is that. Joe told nothing to anybody. His Winter Hill partners barely knew about his personal life. They didn’t know much about him. Yeah, nobody knew much about him. ’cause he didn’t confide in anybody. He did it the way you’re supposed to do it. As an organized, if you’re gonna get into organized crime, you want to follow his lead. And he lived a tough life. It’s nothing to get into in terms of choosing that as an occupation. However, he did confide in his daughters. He trusted them and he told them an awful lot, which he didn’t realize was traumatizing them. But. Jackie McDonald is blessed with a very good memory, so she was able to fill in [00:09:00] a lot of blanks about some of which were cold case murders and other just, real eyebrow raising incidents that happened. I think this book would’ve been invaluable to the FBI. Right up to the early nineties interest because of the stuff that came out, several cold case murders. I think I solved them. And, they were attributable, well attributed. I attribute them to Joe, a few. I know he did. But, people didn’t know, and he was a, excuse my saying, but he had. He was a real talent for that. He knew how to get you. He knew how to find you. He knew how to get you. And he also, like I said, he didn’t have any fear, so there was nothing holding him back. And that’s a difference from Whitey Bulger. What people don’t realize is that Whitey Bulger was a very careful man. And that’s why a lot of murders attributed to Whitey Bulger. He didn’t do, it doesn’t even, it, it offends his personality. He was the kind of guy, if he’s gonna kill you, you’re gonna be in the basement tied to a chair, or you’re gonna be a woman. He’s not on Northern Avenue in Boston in broad daylight, killing Brian Halleran. It’s not true. That’s not Whitey [00:10:00] bulge, that’s not how he operated. Joe Mack was a different beast altogether, and yet he was never indicted for murder. He was questioned maybe for one of them. And the title is really a reason for that because you didn’t talk about Joe Mack. That’s actually, that’s that’s. I like the title a lot. It took me a long time to get to that title. First title was Hey Joe, ’cause of the song. And I was like, ah. Nobody said, Hey, Joe to him. Where you going with that gun in your hand, huh? That’s right. You’re good. Yeah. Jimmy Hendrix. And then another title was the Wars of Joe Mack. That was a little too masculine that works, but it was too masculine. Yeah, don’t talk about Joe Mack really captures, what he was and how he operated. Gary Jenkins: Springs set the geographic scene. I’ve always been a little bit confused about this in Boston. IU Boston is unlike Kansas City, for example, what I’m familiar with. It has these really distinct areas in neighborhoods. Set the scene, the Italians African Americans, the Irish what set that up for us? [00:11:00] Springs Toledo: Okay, this is the, fifties, sixties, seventies that, that’s where most of the book is occurring. Especially 60, 70, actually into the eighties. Boston first of all it’s basically back then was an Irish Catholic city. Yeah. There were other ethnicities, but it was overrun with the Irish and there were neighborhoods. So you had. You had neighborhood crews, you had crews that were operated out of East Boston. That’s Barboza, south Boston was several of them. Jamaica Plain, the North End obviously was where the mafia was. Sented La Ostra. Somerville, Charlestown. And a lot of, most of these guys who were got into criminality. Not only did they have families, they also had occupations. They were long showmen, they were roofers. They had jobs. I’m a policeman. And back then policemen, you didn’t make a lot of money. So you were encouraged to supplement your income. Oh yeah. Some of these guys were, they were detectives by day and they’re doing heists at night and that was not uncommon. And. Over time, certain organizations [00:12:00] became more organized and the Irish, remember, were barely organized. They were more like, it was more like the old West when things got hot. It was also a whiskey driven, a lot of the heinous acts and the murders that started to happen with that, the Irish gang war in the sixties, everybody was drunk. Some of these guys were really nice guys and then they got to the whiskey and forget it. They become monsters. Not everybody, but but. Boston was also very segregated. Not like the south. It was, there was natural neighborhoods, I was in Hy Park, that’s where I came up. If I went to Southy, there was a problem ’cause I didn’t know a lot of people there. If somebody from Southie went to the North End, it’s a problem. You are Irish, you shouldn’t be here. You didn’t cross boundaries. Mattapan was Jewish and then it became black. Same thing. So everybody congregating together is very tribal in that sense. Less so now, but there are still pockets, what’s upsetting to me is that you barely hear the accent, and you’re walking through Boston, you don’t hear the accent too much anymore. You have to get to Dorchester. That’s their accent’s. 10 times worse than mine, [00:13:00] and mine’s pretty bad but Joe Mack was Joe Mack was born in Medford, Massachusetts. He then, he was in Somerville by about 1950. His mother had moved there as as clan, if you will. Had moved there, his sisters and brothers. And so he was in Somerville in Winter Hill, and that’s where he started to operate and that’s where he started to put things together. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. You say Winter Hill. So let’s talk about the beginnings or this Winter Hill gang. I’ve heard of this. Many times. And Whitey Bulger of course popularized it. So tell me about the Winter Hill gang and Howie Carr. And there’s a famous picture that see on internet or on Facebook with our Underboss Tuffy Luna and this guy that was the head of the Winter Hill gang and a couple other gangsters from New York. So tell us about the beginning of this Winter Hill gang. Springs Toledo: We deserves a lot of credit. He’s the one that really brought the stuff out beginning in the eighties. He had the guts to mention Joe Mack in print. That’s high risk. I’m not sure how much he did it, but he was really [00:14:00] attuned to it early. And he had some great books, but winter Hill’s a neighborhood in Somerville. It’s not South Boston. You talk to guys who were associated with the Winter Hill Gang, what they called the Hill. Really? It was called The Hill by those who were a part of that organization. They get very resentful about Whitey Belgium and some of them will say that Whitey Belger wasn’t Winter Hill. Whitey Belgium was a partner, but he was South Boston. Okay. Once, and it’s a big story, but once he, it’s all in the book. But once he betrayed his partners in 79. With Fleming and all the partners just about were either they were all indicted except for about this big horse racing scheme that was going on, across several states. But Whitey and Fleming were unindicted co-conspirators, and that was hint number one that prompted Joe to go to Howie Winter, who was the face of the organization and say, I’m gonna kill them both. He was talked out of it because it’d be too much heat because Whitey had some very serious connections. You can’t take that away from him. And so he was a high [00:15:00] risk hit. Joe would’ve done it anyway and would’ve probably made him disappear or threw it at another organization to get the heat off the hill. But he was restrained, which was, I thought was a big mistake, but who can tell then? But after he cleared the field of his rivals, who. Where his partners in the Winter Hill gang he ostensibly should have taken over the rackets in Somerville, but that wasn’t really the case. He had salty that was his turf. He was a local guy. Salty was really where he was. He was no longer really welcome is my understanding from guys who I talked to were there, he was basically chased out of the Marshall Motor’s garage in Somerville in Winter Hill, and that’s when he went to the Lancaster garage in, on North End, which is closer to home, closer to his. Space of operations. Yeah. But Whitey was very treacherous and he was Machiavellian in his methods. Joe at the time was already on the lamb because I don’t think Whitey would’ve survived that if Joe was close and saw what he was doing. So it’s a lot of what could have been, if Joe wasn’t in the wind because of several other crimes and murders he was [00:16:00] doing at the time, he was actually on the FBI’s 10 most wanted on 76, long before Whitey was on it. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So then the relationship between Howie Carr and Joe Mack how was that, how did that shake down? Springs Toledo: Howie Winter, you mean, Gary Jenkins: or Howie Winter, I’m sorry. Springs Toledo: Yeah. Howie Winter was mentored by Joe Mack. See, Joe Mack was really, he was like the general, he was like the general on the field. The Irish don’t operate in a hierarchy. That’s an Italian thing. There’s no ring kissing in an Irish pub. It’s just a different culture. What they were partners. You had one guy up front. He was the face of it. That’s Howie. Howie was the face of it before Howie’s buddy McClain. In the early, in the early sixties. Joe though, the guy in the shadows, he used to say, I’m at the back of the bus. He’s at the back of the bus, but he’s the one with the map. He’s the go-to guy. The guy up front is the guy that gets hit. That’s the guy that gets indicted. So Joe was astute enough to, just stay in the [00:17:00] background, let the kids have it. But they were. Very close, very close. During the war they were, very tight-knit organization. These were friends. They were very affectionate with each other. They took care of one another. This is before Whitey came in. He was, he poisoned the well. But Joe and Howie and Buddy McClean and they, anos when they come in, they were very close. It was a kind of a band of brothers in a way. But Joe still made. Maintain that, everybody was at arms length with him. He was careful about everybody. There was a rift between Howie and Joe later in their respective lives in the in the eighties, into the nineties. I’m told that it was healed. I don’t think it was, and that’s unfortunate. But they were close to most of their lives, they literally went to war together on, on the street, you’re gonna form strong bonds when you know you’re looking at this guy and you gotta rely on him to watch your back. And Gary Jenkins: yeah, Springs Toledo: that’s what was happening. Gary Jenkins: So Irish, they didn’t kick up, if you will, to somebody above them. Everybody was a kind of a independent operator. If you got a piece of action and you had something going that you didn’t have to kick up to [00:18:00] somebody to be part of the Winter Hill gang, if you will. Springs Toledo: That was where the, there were a lot of crews around. They were called independents. And there’s a lot of them around in Boston in the sixties. But if you got too big and you started making real money, Patri was a power in Boston. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Springs Toledo: Raymond Patri, he was a power in Boston. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s two schools of thought. Some believe that Winter Hill had to always kick up to them, kick to Providence. Others say? No, not really. Because first of all, he loved Buddy McClean. Buddy McClain was he was a very charismatic guy, very tough guy, and he was a man of his word, so they really liked him. So there’s the other school of thought is that, they liked Buddy, they gave him a pass on that. But every now and then they’d have to do him favors, maybe do some hits, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But again, but in, in Boston it’s, like I said, it’s mostly Irish, it’s not set up like New York where the Italians are a real power that’s right there. He, one guy, matter of fact a name of one of the chapters in the book where I get into the Gangland war. Is Boston was [00:19:00] overrun with sick bastards, quote unquote, because there was just so many dangerous guys. There wasn’t a few here and there, like the gallows or it, there was hundreds of guys and there was damn near psychopathic they were called and underworld polls. There was savages, they go right to your house. And it was too many. This, one guy actually several believed that if there was a problem between Rhode Island. The Boston Underworld, meaning Boston Writ Lodge, including Somerville, Medford, Malden, all that. That. The Italians would’ve come to the table. ’cause the Irish underworld, the Boston Underworld here would’ve made it very much not worth it. Not worth the blood and the treasure. So it’s, yes, with very interesting culture here. What you couldn’t control the Boston underworld. They would just, Boston itself has a reputation. You don’t wanna invade this place. Gary Jenkins: Yeah, just ask the English, huh? Springs Toledo: Exactly. Yeah. We go way back with that stuff. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Yeah it’s, I was at I went into the north end and looked around at Prince Street and all the place where [00:20:00] Jerry Angelo and all that was going on, and that is such a small. Discreet little area in that then, so you, they just operated and he was not any kind of a real power. It didn’t seem to be like, compared to patriarchal. He was under patriarchal of course. And he didn’t really, it’s like the Irish all had their own thing all around him. All, and he didn’t really have didn’t, I didn’t find any, anything I’ve ever seen where there was much to do between those two. Was there, did he have anything about that? Springs Toledo: He had he had two guys joe Russo, he was a killer. He was a very serious individual and a guy who has two names. Some call him Byi, some call him Zino. Larry was his name. Very serious guy. But that’s two guys. The other dangerous guys in the north end. They were getting up there in age. Meanwhile, like you just alluded to, this sur this surrounded, by these, these crazy guys. Yeah, but they, they did. There was some interplay, there was some contracts would be given to the Hill, for instance. That happened several times. The Hill would borrow [00:21:00] money from Angelou and Jou had a lot of money. They’d borrow money from him. Whitey Belger borrowed money from him with Fleming and actually didn’t pay it back. And then Joe Mack got out of the can. This is 80 late 86, 87, and him and Howie went to Fleming and Whitey and said, listen, you’re paying them back. Matter of fact, you’re paying them back a million because you made us look bad. We pay our debts, you pay him, you pay in back 1 million. And they did. They Whitey Bulger. Yeah. Whitey Bulger did not step two, Joe McDonald. In other words he wasn’t the power that Johnny Depp would have us believe. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. So let’s go back to the family just a little bit. His daughter Jack Le, so when he went to prison, did she talk about that? I have a friend who went to prison for several years and he talks, tells me a lot about his kids coming to visit him in prison. Did he talk about that? Did she talk about that? How that affected her? Springs Toledo: She she talks about her whole life and how he was a shadow in her life. She loved him, [00:22:00] but he brought a lot of chains behind him and a lot of ghosts and a lot of fear of FBI raids and things like that. Even when he was on the run from the FBI was on the, top 10 most wanted, it’s only six o’clock news all over the place in every post office. He would just show up and see her. He thought he was being a dutiful father. He’s showing up. He’s got these black sideburns, glued onto his face and she could see the ink dripping. He got his rug on his head he startled her a lot. So she. He was a cause of great anxiety. And then she became a mother, and then things started to change. She had to protect her boys. And while, he looked like he could be a good grandfather, he was an extremely dangerous man. And when he went away to prison, she tried to be a good daughter. She would send him clippings. Matter of fact, she sent him a clipping of I think it was a national examiner because her father was in it. It was about the top 10. FBI fugitives. And she pointed out she was into astronomy and she astrology and she pointed [00:23:00] out that Joe Mack and another guy named Leo Corey had the same birthday, July 14th. So she thought he’d get a kick outta that. He gets outta prison a few years later, and he shows up at her house with Leo Corey. Who’s still on the top 10 most wanted. And she, he opens the door. He said, do you remember this guy? And she turned, that, that was a scary, that was a very scary moment for her. Yeah. He’s bringing very, this is a convicted murderer. It’s a multiple murderer. She’s got bringing, he’s bringing it to her house like he’s an old friend. So that kind of stuff happened a lot. It almost show off like that. Look what I can do. Yeah. So she had, I, she did love him and she has since forgiven him. And I think this book is part of her process to forgive, what he put her through and what he put his other children through. Not intentionally, he tried to be a good father, but how can you. In that position. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. When you bring that violence into the home, and you can’t help but bring that aura of [00:24:00] violence with you. When you live that life and when you come back into the home, there’s still that edge of violence that, that unspoken communication, you jump every time, somebody pulls up out in front and you’re running to the window to see who it is and there’s just always, always on edge. I, that would be it. Springs Toledo: Here’s a good story. So he’s on the run. This is in the I think it’s the late sixties. Joe’s on the run. She’s at home and Joe set his wife and kids up in Malden and a house on the hill. And originally he was gonna live there too. And it’s a, it is a great place. He’s up, he’s on a corner. He’s on a hill. You can see Boston from it. So it’s got a great vantage point for kind of a, a paranoid damaged war veteran. Yeah. So a call comes into the house. Voice says, you know who this is. She’s about 11, 12 years old. Voice says, you know who this is? Yes. Meet me at the bottom of the hill. So she gets her sister Patty and they meet their dad at the bottom of the hill. He takes them bowling and saga. He’s got the disguise on. Yeah. He’s got so many IDs, fake IDs, and he’s they [00:25:00] go to they, they go bowl and. You gotta wait for Lane. So he’s sitting there like this, he got his arms out. He’s feeling good about himself. He’s a good dad. He got his two teenage girls here and one of ’em, one of ’em, almost a teenager. And suddenly over the intercom, Thomas Campbell, your lane is ready. And he’s just sitting there. Thomas Campbell, he’s just sitting there. Finally his daughter says, pat says, dad, that’s you. Oh. And off he goes. So he wasn’t even sure who he was half the time. Yeah. So he’s my heart went out to him in that sense because here’s a man who made some very dark life choices and he’s trying to be a conventional father. Meanwhile, he’s gotta keep his eye on the clock, on the door, on the phone and everything else, all day long. Not to mention the fact that, there’s, it was dangerous lifestyle. But, his daughters, I, his daughters, they idolize him and they loved him. They didn’t fear him, he never raised his hand to them, never raised his hand to them, but they feared what he brought with ’em. Yeah. And that’s a theme book. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a, that’s that is so interesting. Think about this [00:26:00] era or of violent violence. I think somewhere in the book I noticed I was going through it where he may have been possibly one of the suspects on the Joe Barbosa head out in San Francisco when they finally got him and in. Springs Toledo: That’s fascinating because actually I had to take out ’cause of the publisher, I take about 15,000 words, but I really get into that. But that had to go. But what happened was. He had to go out there and kill a federal witness. And this guy was a civilian. This guy looked like a grandfather. And but he was gonna be a fence for some rear stamps that Joe had taken a million dollars worth of rear stamps. And this guy was gonna be the fence. He was a rear stamp collector out in Sierra Madre. Long story short, in January of 1976, Joe Mack drives out there, shoots him in the head five times in front of his wife, and then in February, that’s when Bob Bozer is killed February, 1976. This is January, 1976. Now, what I heard from two sources, and they’re pretty good, is that Joe did not go from Sierra Madre, [00:27:00] California back to Somerville. What he did was he went to Laurel Canyon and that’s where Alex Rocco was staying. Alex Rocco du played Mo Green in The Godfather. Oh, Gary Jenkins: yeah. Yeah. Springs Toledo: Yeah, he was a Winter Hill guy and Joe stayed with him on the lamb for so many weeks. I don’t know if it’s true. I couldn’t chase that down. No way you’re gonna find that out. But it was an intriguing little tidbit. So then in in February Bob Bozer is killed. Now when that news hit a bar in Boston called Clocks was a mob hangout. The bartender who knew all these guys. He got off the phone and he yelled out to the bar that Bleepity bleep stool pigeon. Animal Barbosa is dead and gone. God bless Joe Mack. That’s what he said. He just assumed Joe Mack did it. So what I’m trying to chase that down and what happens is so I’m talking to guys, who’re talking to guys. What I [00:28:00] found out is that one guy said no, this that, that wasn’t Joe that was kept in-house among the Italians because Bob Bza really took apart the Italians influences Yeah. In Boston. Yeah. He took them apart with lies. And however, there were three people in that van. I got these I got freedom of information documents and. What I was told by a made guy actually, is that it was Russo and Byi Zino. They’re the ones that took out Bob Bozo with a shotgun from a van. The van two seats were taken out of the van. The windows were painted black. This. Side windows were painted black and peeps were drilled into the side door and the back, so they worked hard to get ’em, but there was a third man in the van, so that’s a little intriguing. Could it have been Joe? I don’t know. Probably not. I’d have to say probably not, but nice story. And then from there, and then literally just a few weeks after that, Joe was in disguise. Remember now he’s already on the news as a as a top 10 fugitive. The FBI’s looking [00:29:00] for, and where is he? He’s in Walpole. How did I find out? I got everybody’s prison records. I could, and Brian Halleran, who turns up later in the book and then turns up dead later in the book. He’s in prison. Joe visits him. How do I know? It’s Joe’s Alias? John A. Kelly, that was his alias at the time. So he’s wanted by the FBI, he’s on the news and literally a week or two later. He’s visiting somebody in Walpole State Prison. From there, I trace him to Montreal. What’s he doing in Montreal? He’s sticking, he’s holding up a an ahed car robbery. With the Montreal Express, they had a great program, the Montreal Express. And Somerville, what they would do is they would just swap guys to do these big highs, get these ika, get these banks, and then just return. So it was awfully hard to catch ’em ’cause they’re just doing like a swap off. Yeah. Joe Mack. Was up there. And what he was doing was, and he, it was a white van, which raises an eyebrow, another white van. And the Amed car, the guy wouldn’t open the door. So they open up the [00:30:00] door of the back doors of the white van. And there is a World War II Browning anti-aircraft gun. And guess who’s behind it? Joe Mack. So this is a very busy man, and he should be, he’s retirement age but did he kill Boba? Probably not, but there was a third guy there. I would not be surprised. I know the Italians used him. Gary Jenkins: You brought something to Montreal Express Now what’s that? I, that I’m not from, I’ve not heard that term before. Springs Toledo: I wasn’t either, but that a lot of guys told me they Gary Jenkins: back heard your story there. Springs Toledo: Yeah, there is. Yeah. They were they were up, they were they were bank robbers. They went for the armor trucks. That was their forte. Very well organized. Very skilled. They were specialized and they would swap off with, winter Hills, sometimes with Southie and South Boston, I should say. South Boston and Somerville would, they were very close, they were very much aligned. They would swap off. I think one of ’em was the brother of a Bruins hockey player. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. These guys, they got their connections. I found out more and more after I since I started doing this podcast, how many connections people [00:31:00] had between cities and even within a city connections to regular look like Square John, businessmen and just connections all over the place. It’s Springs Toledo: all over the place. Matter of fact, Joe was Joe was in contact with the guys who escaped from Alcatraz. I couldn’t prove it, but I heard that, he was sending them money and, and supporting them. I pro I didn’t find nearly 50% of what Joe was up to, but that’s more than anybody else. I think before this book, we knew about 2% of what he was up to. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: It was Springs Toledo: pretty guy. Sure. Yeah. He was a footnote in the most of the books. Just a footnote, if that. So Gary Jenkins: that’s the smart one, the one that keeps his head down and keeps out of the papers and everything. Did that, did you talk to John Ano? Springs Toledo: Yes. Yeah. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. Springs Toledo: I did. He was he loved, first thing he said was how much he loved him. All these guys, very serious guys. They’re very powerful guys in the underworld. And when I brought his name up the ones who were close to him, they would say I love that. I love that man. Loved him. They loved and [00:32:00] revered him. Other guys who were not as close to him, but who were very, operatives in the bus world. I bring his name up now, he’s been gone since 1997. And they’d look around like this. And they say, oh gee. So you know, his name is still enough to and matter of fact, I was told early on when I was poking around that I’m poking around in dangerous places and Joe still has friends and you don’t wanna cross these guys, so even now his his shadow still looms, if you will, but I think it approve of what I did because, what I heard is that he’s very honest. He would not want any biographer to pull a pull punches about who and what he was. I didn’t, yeah. But some of his friends warned me. They were, you gotta be careful with this, but I call it bachelor’s privilege. I’m not married, I have no kids. If I end up in a ditch, who cares? So I can take risks. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. That’s some truth. It’s just that last few minutes before you’d done the dish, you go, oh shit, I wish I was anywhere but here. I, Springs Toledo: I would ask to talk to a priest. Let me get a confession. That what you gotta do, Gary Jenkins: you Springs Toledo: know, Gary Jenkins: you’d be like I think it was Tony Citro. Supposedly the story was he [00:33:00] wanted to know if he could say a quick prayer before they did him in, but Springs Toledo: I hope they let him, Gary Jenkins: I don’t know. Steve Fleming, we met, you’d mentioned about Steve Fleming, the Rifleman, who was whitey’s buddy and you, I think you mentioned you had a story about Steve Fleming. Springs Toledo: Steve Fleming was it’s interesting he doesn’t appear too much in the book. One of the things I had to do with this, I had to do my best to keep the names down. One of the a fatal flaw in a whole lot of Boston and Underworld books than any underworld books is there was just 8,000 names. Too many names. There’s too many names. So I, so I mentioned him a few times ’cause you have to, but I’m not focused on Fleming, but I can tell you that Joe was very suspicious of Fleming as early as he was very suspicious of Whitey. He respected him. Fleming was a killer. More of an ambush killer than than a Savage or a guy who took a lot of risks. He was a lot like Whitey, like that. But no, Joe didn’t trust him because. He had a long bid and he got out early, and that’s always a cause for concern among those guys. Why are [00:34:00] you out early? They got a story and the stories backed up by the government. They were already in cahoots. Gary Jenkins: Yeah. Springs Toledo: But with the names, there was one guy, this is an example. He was actually an MDC cop who was part of the Winter Hill gang in the early sixties, and his name was Russ Nicholson. I don’t wanna keep saying Russ Nicholson, the cop. So I shortened it to Russ the cop. Yeah. And then as things went on and the, police department realized that this guy’s involved in the rackets, they forced him to resign. So then I started calling them Rust, the ex cop. Then Rusty ex-cop gets clipped probably by Georgie McLaughlin. He’s dead, so now he’s Rust the dead ex-cop. So I’m trying to be polite to the reader and keep the names down. Gary Jenkins: Interesting. That’s a good idea that I know about that, that people say I love what you did, but there’s too many names. I got confused who was who. So it’s Springs Toledo: yeah, Gary Jenkins: it’s always a problem with these deals. All right, Springs, Toledo. [00:35:00] Let’s see. All of a sudden I like there it is. There you go guys. And guys, I will have your his link to for all his books and the show notes and of course links to my books too, but links to all of these guy, these books. You had some even about John Brown. You wanna go back into little Civil War history? Why check those out too. Guys, thanks so much for coming on the show. Springs Toledo: My pleasure.

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins reports his previous contributor, Matt, who he interviewed on a new theory on the Carmine Galante hit, answers questions we have seen on various social media outlets. Matt claims the U.S. attorney and the FBI got it wrong when they alleged and convicted Bruno Indelicato for this murder. Challenging the official story, Matt reveals new theories, missing evidence, and the role of younger mobsters in one of the Mafia's most infamous assassinations. In this bonus episode, I had Matt record his answers to the doubters of his theory. click here to see the book Made on Long Island.   [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, this is Gary Jenkins, as a lot of you know, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective [0:06] and now podcast host and producer and all that. And I was contacted by my guest I had on recently, who was only known as Matt. He’s a guy who supplied all the information to the author of Brantley Scarbrough, who wrote Made in Long Island. That was just out a couple of weeks ago. And I’ve never met Scarborough, and I don’t know any more about him. and I’ve never met Matt in person. I’ve had some emails and some Zoom calls with Matt, but I’ve never actually seen him either. But I recognize his accent, and he does come from the Long Island, New York area. And he does have some interesting stories about growing up with younger mobsters and the Bonanno and Gambino families and doing the fireworks business with Gotti and some of the other horse racing fixing business and that kind of thing, but he made quite a claim that the accepted suspects and the hit on the banana wannabe boss, Carmine the Cigar Galante. [1:11] Was not who the government claims it is. [1:14] And the government only claims one guy, and that’s Bruno or Anthony Bruno Indelicato. He claims it was some young guys who had a grudge against Galante, and they heard that this hit was approved by the commission, and they jumped in there and did it before Joe Massino got his crew set and were all ready to go and carry out this approved hit. Now, there’s no dispute that the commission approved this hit, I don’t think. There may be some disagreement about who actually carried it out. I think there’s no doubt that the two Zips, who were bodyguards, Cesare Bonaventure and Baldassario Amato, did not resist the hit. They took no action and just walked out and left, and then were interviewed by the government later on. Of course, they wouldn’t say anything. They probably knew he was scheduled to be hit, and they knew this was coming. And both were promoted in the Bonanno family right after, so that tells you something. Now, in the commission trial, that’s where Anthony Delicato got convicted for the hit on Carmine Galante. And in the commission trial, the government did convict Tony Salerno, boss of the Genovese family. [2:26] Anthony Tony Dux Corralo, boss of the Lucchese family, Gennaro Jerry Lang Langella, the Colombo family acting boss and regular underboss, Salvatore Tom Mix Santoro, who was a Lucchese family underboss. Christopher Christie Tick Funari, Lucchese family consigliere. [2:45] Ralph, little Ralphie Scopo, the Colombo family soldier. Carmine Junior Persico, who was the boss of the Colombo crime family at that time. [2:55] Stefano Canone, Bonanno family consigliere. [3:00] Anthony Bruno Indelicato, Bonanno family capo. Paul Castellano and Mr. Neal, Neal Delacroche, were not in the trial because they died. They were charged, but they died just before the trial. Now, on the YouTube show we did, we got a lot of comments and Matt’s got a lot of questions. And he wants to address and clarify why he doesn’t believe that the government’s claim that Anthony Delacato and two unknown men killed Galante. So I said, you know, I don’t know what to tell you. I said, you know, record and clarify your claim and see if you can address any of these questions that people have had in the comments section. Now, this may end up like all the competing theories on Jimmy Hoffa’s death and where his body by body might be. I don’t know. But at least Frank Sheeran, the Irishman, did not claim the Galante hit as best I can remember. So anyhow, here’s Matt’s story. I just want to say thank you so much for the interest we’ve generated from Gary’s Gangland podcast. [4:03] A lot of learning goes on here, and that’s where I’m going to start off. One item keeps coming up, and believe me, I’m not being the slightest bit condescending. If you don’t study this stuff and look at it, you have no way of knowing this. If you were to punch in right now, because we’ve done it, like Google searches, what evidence was used against Bruno and Delicato? Well, one thing that comes up, and a couple people referenced in the emails and on the posts, was ballistics. [4:27] They had ballistic evidence against Bruno Indelicato. Boy, that’s pretty strong. I mean, ballistic evidence is very, very strong. So let’s go through the ballistic evidence. Let me start off by saying there’s none. What you’re reading on that, and if you read the fine print closely and go back to the source, that is AI-generated garbage. That’s why we don’t like AI. The definition of ballistic evidence would be something like this. We pulled a slug out of a wall. We pulled a slug out of a victim. We locked a guy up. The guy had that gun on him. We matched that slug to that gun. That is ballistic evidence. There was absolutely none of that presented against Bruno Indelicato, despite what AI says. Again, if you take away one thing, please take away the fact that don’t ever use AI as a source. Now, I know one other thing people asked about was the progression on all this. And again, the book details it with so many stories, so many different John Gotti stories in there that people never heard about. But here’s a brief summary of the progression. [5:28] Our friends were young. We were crazy. We dealt fireworks. We dealt so much, they had to bring in the boss. The boss at that time for that area was John Gotti. To us, it was the same as John Smith. We never heard of the guy. He was great to us. We sold a ton of fireworks. He gave us more and more locations, more and more responsibility. Our friends made a fortune. One of our friends, we thought, had a car accident. Two of the bodyguards who helped our friends kill Galante, Baldo and Chesaree, they approached us at a wake and said, look, your friend was not the victim of an accident. Your friend was the victim of a homicide authorized by Galante. We verified there was bulletholes in his car from the impound yard, from the police sources we had. Kept it under wraps for two years. One of the card games, Angelo got word to our friend Tommy that the commission, in fact, did authorize a hit on Galante. The hit was to be done conjunctively with the Gambinos and the Bananos. Our friend Tommy jumped the gate. He said, we’re going to avenge our friend’s death, put together the team that did it. The details are shocking about what our team did to get the hit done. I mean, details you’re shocked about an alibi jumping off of a boat to create an alibi. I want people to read about this. Having police sources helping the hit, Including holding the spaces on July 12th When the hit went down Holding two different parking spaces at that location I hope this helps people Now I want to get back to another one that keeps coming up People keep saying Oh well they’re on tape celebrating. [6:57] People, please, we’ve made some videos on this at YouTube. Go look at them. You can pull them up. They’re online. You can find them. [7:05] There’s a bunch of sources that have them. Watch the raw video. That is not a celebration. That is a beef being put in. Sonny Red Indelicato is furious. He’s going at it with his consigliere, Stefano Canaan, Stevie Beefs. And you can see in his face, you can see his body language and mannerisms. He walks away from him and then he rushes back quickly and goes to his face. That is not a celebration. That’s anger. Stefano Canone actually points in back of him, pointing at the Ravenite. And he’s basically telling him, look, we’ve registered the beef. Neil is inside. Neil is trying to decipher all of this also, because, again, the whole conflict was this. The commission ordered this hit. People say, oh, they approved that. I’m telling you, the commission, the ones who ordered the hit, they gave the work to Joe Massino, who was going to oversee the job. However, the commission specified that it had to be done jointly between the Gambino family and the Bonanno family. Sonny Red and Indelicato was furious that he was left out of the hit. Simultaneously, John Gotti over in Ozone Park, Queens, was furious that he was let out of the hit. [8:19] You just have to understand, in Cosa Nostra, you do not go out and celebrate a hit after it’s done. You don’t even show your face. Everything in a hit like this is meticulously planned and organized. You know exactly where the getaway cars are going to go and who’s going to chop them up. There is no shot in the world that an expert like Sonny Redd is going to leave a getaway car from a triple homicide out in the middle of the street. That does not happen. Let me tell you something. That’s called botching a hit, both of those acts. If you botch a hit in Cosa Nostra, you’re the next one on the other end of the next hit. You’re going to get hit. There’s plenty of cases where people screwed up hits and didn’t dispose of vehicles properly, and they’re the next ones to get hit. So anyone who thinks it’s a celebration and thinks that that’s Cosa Nostra protocol to go out and celebrate is sadly mistaken. That’s why right away the FBI and Cosa Nostra members knew, obviously, Sonny Red Indelicato, his brother JB, Phil Lucky, Bruno and Delicato, all those guys had nothing to do with the hit. If they did, they would have been buried in a safe house. They would not be out in front of what we call the FBI screen test at Mr. Neal’s Club, the Ravenite in Manhattan. Now, people also say another phrase or two that I really love, the smell test. Okay, the smell test. Let’s talk about that. You had two trials going on simultaneously in 1985. [9:48] Same building, Brooklyn, Pizza Connection case and the commission case. The FBI had been broken down into five different squads, one for each family. You know them all, Colombo, Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, and of course, the Bonanno. Now, the Bonanno section of the FBI, the Bonanno squad, had the most to do in these cases. Most, if not all, the pizza connection focused on the Bonannos, and a good chunk, especially 100% of the Gallant they hit, focused on the Bonannos, and that was in the commission case. These guys talk to each other. They live, eat, and breathe with each other. So if you want to talk about a smell test, can somebody tell me why in Richard Martin, he was the prosecutor, by the way, in the Pizza Connection case, they absolutely refused to say who killed Delonte in that case? [10:39] They came out and said in the indictment and in testimony, three unknown males killed Delonte. [10:46] Now, people talk about it’s easy to see. Bruno and Delicato did it. So you want to tell me that five and six years after the hit, FBI agents that were on the Banano squad, they couldn’t come out and say Bruno and Delicato did it. Why? Because they knew he didn’t. They didn’t want to get a perjury rap. Richard Martin didn’t want to blow his case by telling nonsense that Bruno and Delicato did it. If it was common knowledge that Bruno Indelicato did it, and if there was a legitimate shred of evidence that Bruno Delicato did the work, the Pizza Connection case would have also said Bruno Indelicato is one of the shooters. It did not. That’s what doesn’t pass the smell test. But they even went to an appellate court to throw out any testimony about Galante’s murder in the Pizza Connection case. And sure enough, the judge agreed and said, yeah, we’re not putting one stitch of Galante’s murder in the Pizza Connection case. Now, had those FBI agents in the Bonanno Squad had presented legitimate evidence against Bruno and Delicato in the Pizza Connection case, be it ballistic, be it anything, the judge wouldn’t have done that, but he did. Read the transcripts of the case we have. There was nothing like that presented against Bruno in that case. And again, that’s why the FBI in the Pizza Connection case kept saying, we have no idea who killed Carmine Galante. That is critical for people to understand. [12:10] And last note, I want to get on to people wondering about the Joe Messino angle. Yes, Joe Messino, when he flipped right out after his conviction, he gave up murders all the way back from 1969. Now, Joe Mezzino had a motivation. If he left out any crime or any detail and failed to disclose anything, they throw him out of the program. They did the same to gas pipe case, so they threw him out of the program. So Joe Messino, of course, is going to tell the feds every single thing he knew about the Bonanno family’s involvement with the Galante hit. [12:46] Joe Messino, you know, did come out and say, yes, he got the order and he informed Rusty about the hit. But notice that’s when the trail stops. Joe Messina, who was a hands on guy, never came back and said, hey, Sonny Red did the hit with his kid Bruno and his brother JB. He gave them no details why because he didn’t have details thank you so much again for all of your questions and comments so guys that’s matt’s reasoning and that’s his story the government did not charge or convict any of the others for this murder any other people for this murder in that commission trial now those guys who were convicted were convicted for racketeering under rico and the murder of Galante was not a racketeering. That was a criminal predicate offense that proved that there was an organization known as a commission. It existed, and they ordered criminal acts. And this was a criminal act that they ordered. They need a predicate act where they’ve ordered criminal acts. And the Galante hit was one of them, and murder’s the best one to throw out there. And I think they convicted him based on his palm print on the getaway car that they found. [13:55] They never claimed during the trial to know the other two hit men. So I’ll leave it up to you guys to argue this out in the comments section on my YouTube shows with Matt or on this one here. And he’ll be monitoring those and, you know, come back with any questions that you have. So thanks, Matt, for this interesting look at Young Associates of Gotti and the fireworks business and the horse race fixing business and your theory based on information from your friends in the younger element of the New York mob. And you were kind of on the periphery of that yourself and the people that you [14:29] talked to that were really basically were involved in this hit and the setup. I thought it was really slick using cops to block out parking spots and then to pull out if it was all good to go. And leave the area so that’s uh didn’t have ring cameras and all the cameras back then so we’re gonna never know how much all that’s true you know but it’s uh history is is kind of an agreed upon set of facts or lies or whatever because eventually we agree upon it and that’s becomes the history and this is some of the history of the new york mob in the 70s to the 80s and the murder of Lilo or Carmine the Cigar Galante. Thanks, guys, so much for tuning in. And don’t forget to hit on YouTube, like and subscribe. Post this on your own social media pages and let other people know about the show. We like to get a lot of people watching or listening and watching to the show.  

Jonathan Gill looked like he hadn't a care in the world when he turned up at Temple Street Children's Hospital last December to deliver presents to sick children. But at the same time, the self-proffessed professional mediator, was being investigated for killing of mobster Robbie Lawlor. Now authorities in the North want to prosecute the 44-year-old, from Malahide Road on the capital's northside for Lawlor's assassination in Belfast on April 4, 2020. Host: Fionnán Sheahan Guest: Eamonn See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

'All Them Dogs' by Djamel White is one of the most eagerly anticipated Irish debut novels of 2026.It follows a young man who returns to west Dublin and a life of gangland crime following a period abroad. He finds himself working closely with an enforcer for a local crime boss and it soon becomes apparent that there is mutual attraction between the pair.Djamel joins The Last Word to discuss his debut novel and his journey to publication.Catch the full chat by pressing the 'Play' button on this page!

Unpacking the bizarre true crime case of an Australian aquarium's tiger shark that vomited up a severed arm which spawned an investigation into fraud, conspiracy, and murder: the Shark Arm Case. Note: Cameras will be back next week. Get the podcast ad-free: https://www.redwebpod.com On a national holiday in 1935, crowds gathered at a Sydney aquarium to marvel at a newly captured tiger shark. Awe quickly turned to horror when the predator regurgitated a human arm; perfectly preserved and bearing a distinct tattoo. Forensics would reveal the limb wasn't bitten off, but rather removed with a sharp tool. Further clues led police into a tangled web of fraud, murder, and conspiracy. Today, we explore the puzzling Shark Arm Case. Sensitive topics: Animal mutilation, mentions of suicide, attempted suicide, murder, dismemberment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gangland war has become like folklore in the tale of crime in Australia. From 1995, dozens of murders occurred in Melbourne in a wrestle over drugs and egos involving notorious underworld figures such as Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and the Morans.At the centre of it all was Stuart Bateson, a detective with the Purana taskforce.Today, John Silvester - who wrote the definitive account of the gangland war - talks to Bateson about what investigating this violent web of crooks was really like, and hear part of a recording of a real gangland hit.Bateson talks to Sly ahead of the release of a new three-part documentary from Channel Nine called Naked City: Hitmen, which screens from March 4.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Purana Taskforce Detective Stuart Bateson joined Sly of the Underworld to reveal what really happened during the infamous gangland wars of the early 2000s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Police have announced a new taskforce just a day after former NRL star Matt Utai was gunned down outside his Sydney home. Since then another two other houses that are allegedly linked to his son have been targeted - one firebombed and the other peppered with bullets by masked gunmen. In this episode of The Briefing, Natarsha Belling is joined by 7NEWS Reporter Liam Tapper to unpack these latest developments as rival gangs seek revenge at all costs. There is no suggestion Matt Utai nor any of his family members impacted by the Sydney attacks are involved in criminal activity. Headlines: Pauline Hanson issues partial apology for suggesting there are no 'good' Muslims, Hillary Clinton accuses Trump's administration of Epstein files 'cover-up' and Australians' pay rises are not keeping up with the rising cost of living Follow The Briefing: TikTok: @thebriefingpodInstagram: @thebriefingpodcast YouTube: @TheBriefingPodcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This segment of Straight Shooters with Lucy Zelić captures the jarring contrast of modern Sydney. From the chilling "normalised" violence of the Coconut Cartel’s brazen shootings to a spirited, lighthearted argument over whether Olympic ice dancing is a legitimate sport or merely performance art.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The federal Liberal Party's infighting and fears over dire polling are coming to a head now that Angus Taylor's finally revealed he's challenging Sussan Ley for the leadership.She's the first woman to lead the party and is less than a year into the job of opposition leader as the Coalition tries to find its way after being thumped at the last election.There's been a flurry of front bench resignations and the vote's expected to take place either tonight or tomorrow morning, but it remains unclear whether moderates who previously supported Sussan Ley will defect to Angus Taylor who's more conservative.US attorney general Pam Bondi has clashed with Democrats at a congressional hearing, where she was questioned over the censorship of names in the Epstein files.She says she's "deeply sorry" for what victims of Jeffrey Epstein have gone through, but refused to apologise for errors and questionable redactions in the documents.Survivors say they'll keep fighting to expose Epstein's alleged accomplices.And Victorian premier Jacinta Allan has resisted calls for a royal commission, after a scathing report found billions of dollars were funnelled from taxpayers to bikies, gangland figures, and even killers on state-run construction sites where she was the responsible minister.She says any allegations of corrupt behaviour were referred to the relevant authorities.The premier says any misuse of taxpayer funds haven't been proven, and has refused to probe the matter further.

Sly of the Underworld played this audio for the first time ever.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ten years ago today, a gun attack at the Regency Hotel sent shockwaves through Ireland and marked a turning point in modern gangland history. In broad daylight, heavily armed men disguised as gardaí stormed a boxing weigh-in, killing David Byrne and triggering a violent feud that would leave Dublin gripped by fear for years to come. ­ Former senior garda Michael O'Sullivan looks back on the day that reshaped Irish organised crime, and its lasting consequences.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ten years on from the Regency attack, Mick and Paul reflect on the day that shocked Ireland and changed the course of gangland violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brazen drive-by shootings at children’s football matches and violent public executions were fuelled by some of Australia’s most dangerous criminals. For over a decade, the underworld was trying to run Melbourne, erupting into the deadly gangland wars. Former detective Andrew Stamper joins Gary Jubelin to share how he caught some of the most notorious criminals, why every major player ended up locked up or dead and how the death of Carl Williams ultimately ended the war. Want to hear more from I Catch Killers? Visit news.com.au. Watch episodes of I Catch Killers on our YouTube channel here. Like the show? Get more at icatchkillers.com.au Advertising enquiries: newspodcastssold@news.com.au Questions for Gary: icatchkillers@news.com.au Get in touch with the show by joining our Facebook group, and visiting us on Instagram or Tiktok.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You can enjoy exclusive and intense erotic audio by grabbing your copy of the Sensual Awakening App on the Apple Store,or downloading the very unofficial and unapproved Android version from WyldeInBed.com In the shadowy underworld where power and loyalty are everything, one woman must rise above the chaos and claim her throne. Mary never imagined that she would become the leader of the city's most feared gang. But when her husband, the former leader, was brutally murdered, she had no choice but to step into the role."Passion and Power: Mary's Forbidden Desires" is an electrifying tale of lust, betrayal, and dangerous liaisons. As Mary navigates the treacherous waters of gang leadership, she finds herself caught in a web of deception, where every move could be her last.Since taking the reins, Mary has faced threats from all sides, but none more perilous than the looming menace of a rival gang determined to seize her territory. Just when she thinks she has a handle on the situation, an unexpected betrayal rocks her world, bringing her face to face with a ghost from her past—her high school crush, Jake.Jake, now a mysterious and powerful figure in the criminal underworld, reappears in Mary's life with a dangerous proposition. Their chemistry is undeniable, igniting a wildfire of forbidden desire that threatens to consume them both. As old flames reignite, Mary must decide whether to trust Jake or risk everything she has fought for.As Mary delves deeper into this perilous alliance, she discovers that Jake holds secrets that could either save her or destroy her. Their nights become a tempest of passion, where every touch is a battle for dominance, and every kiss a surrender to the flames of their shared past.Passion and Power: Mary's Forbidden Desires" is a story of a woman who must harness her inner strength and navigate a labyrinth of treachery and lust. Can Mary maintain her grip on power while succumbing to the irresistible pull of her forbidden desires? Or will the dangerous game she plays lead to her ultimate downfall?Join Mary on this pulse-pounding journey, where every decision is a gamble, and every passion-fueled encounter could be her last. "Passion and Power: Mary's Forbidden Desires" promises to keep you on the edge of your seat, with a story that is as thrilling as it is tantalizing.Dive into a world where power and pleasure collide, and discover if Mary can rise above her enemies while embracing the wild, untamed desires that burn within her. Will she emerge victorious, or will her forbidden love be her undoing?Find out in "Passion and Power: Mary's Forbidden Desires"—a tale of love, lust, and lethal ambition that will leave you breathless.

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Prince Harrys war with the press is back in court. But this time its different Swiss nightclub fire What to know about flashover fire dangers Restaurants say big chains pretend to be independents on apps Artemis II Nasas mega Moon rocket arrives at launch pad Heated Rivalry author I thought ice hockey romance was too steamy for TV Toxic mums groups I left after Id had enough of being judged Greenlands future must be decided by its people, says Lisa Nandy Gangland killing at a funeral shocks idyllic French island Newspaper headlines Blackmail over Greenland and Jenricks bizarre plot Merthyr Tydfil men rescue nine month old baby trapped in burning car

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Israel pushes back on Trumps picks for executives on Gaza Board of Peace Gangland killing at a funeral shocks idyllic French island Five dead after high speed train collision in Spain Starmer tells Trump in phone call Tariff threat over Greenland wrong Andrew Rosindell quits Tories and defects to Reform UK Toxic mums groups I left after Id had enough of being judged Merthyr Tydfil men rescue nine month old baby trapped in burning car BBC demands tighter vetting after Apprentice candidates offensive social media posts Minister confident issues over Hillsborough Law can be resolved Chip wreck Thousands of chips wash ashore near Eastbourne

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: In a country known for its liberal drugs policies, organised crime operated for years under the public's nose – until a series of shocking killings revealed how deep the problem went By Jessica Loudis. Read by Alice Arnold. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Today we’re heading back to a court in Melbourne with crime writer Chris Vedelago. It was the day when one of the last remaining figures from the city’s gangland war, Tony Mokbel, was released on bail thanks to a legal scandal like no other. Mokbel had convictions quashed over the so-called ‘Lawyer X’ saga and since this episode was aired, he was freed from prison. We’re bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns next week. Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we’re heading back to a court in Melbourne with crime writer Chris Vedelago. It was the day when one of the last remaining figures from the city’s gangland war, Tony Mokbel, was released on bail thanks to a legal scandal like no other. Mokbel had convictions quashed over the so-called ‘Lawyer X’ saga and since this episode was aired, he was freed from prison. We’re bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns next week. Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was first published in June 2025. In the early hours of May 8th, two masked men in a stolen Audi staged a drive-by shooting, firing nine shots indiscriminately at houses on Limerick's Hyde Road, including at April Collins's home. More shots were fired at a Collins-owned home on the Hyde Road in November 2024, and in two separate attacks in January 2025. Since then, there have been a dozen violent incidents, including pipe and petrol bomb attacks.The Garda Emergency Response Unit now conducts nightly armed checkpoints in flashpoint areas. The gangs appear undeterred.Between February and April, the Cork-based bomb disposal unit was deployed on multiple occasions to deal with pipe bombs seized in Limerick's criminal strongholds.In 2012 there was hope that the violent territorial feud between the city's key drug suppliers, the McCarthy-Dundon gang and the Keane-Collopy gang had been calmed, particularly with the jailing of key members of the Dundon family. April Collins's evidence sealed the case for the State. She moved away from Hyde Road following the court case but in late 2023 she moved back and tit-for-tat attacks ensued.And what of the new generation street criminals? Some are so young they were not even born when the original feud was in at its peak, but their actions show those gang lines that were drawn still exist: that the feud has never gone away.Brian Carroll tells In the News about the resurgence in drug-related gang violence in Limerick.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Suzanne Brennan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retired Kansas City, Missouri, Police Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins tells the story of the unsolved murder of James Ragen. Gary Jenkins digs into an old-school Chicago Outfit story pulled from a vintage newspaper clip by legendary columnist Drew Pearson. The article centers on James M. Ragen,” a key figure in the Continental Press and Racing Wire—and what happened when the Outfit decided it wanted total control of the race wire business. This is a gritty snapshot of how Chicago's underworld allegedly dominated legitimate businesses in the 1940s—bars, taverns, suppliers, and especially gambling infrastructure—then used violence and influence to keep it that way. Gary returned to Chicago Outfit history after spotting an old Drew Pearson column: “A Songbird Who Sang, Murdered.” Who James Ragen was: a major player in distributing horse racing results nationwide How race wire services powered mob-controlled bookmaking across U.S. cities The Outfit's push to muscle in with a competing racing wire—and the warning: don't compete with Chicago Mob-linked figure Mo Annenberg and the money behind race wire “tolls” and kickbacks.  Outfit names mentioned in the takeover fight, including “Greasy Thumb” Jake Guzik and others from the era. Pearson claimed that Ragen gave information about mob domination in Chicago to the U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark, and that resulted in his murder. The broad daylight attack: a fruit truck pulls alongside, and a machine gun ambush erupts at a stoplight, and James Ragen goes down in a hail of .45 bullets. The “stranger-than-fiction” twist: Ragen later dies, and an autopsy allegedly finds a tube of mercury in his stomach. Why the case remained murky: the coroner allegedly refused to pin it cleanly as murder (per Pearson's reporting) Gary frames it as a reminder of how deep the Outfit’s influence ran in city systems and politics. Memorable Moments Ragen/Reagan's fatalistic line (as told by Pearson): “If they want you, they're gonna get you.” The bizarre mercury detail and Gary asking listeners if they've ever heard anything like it Why This Story Matters This bonus episode connects the dots between information networks (race results), organized gambling, and the Outfit's approach to business: control the pipeline, control the profit—and crush anyone who won't move aside. Gary invites listeners to share any other “old but gold” Chicago Outfit stories or clippings worth covering in future bonus episodes—and reminds everyone to check out his books and films (search Gary Jenkins on Amazon or visit his website). Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript James Ragen race wire story Speaker: [00:00:00] Well, hey, all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio. Gangland wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City, Missouri Police Detective, formerly of the Intelligence Unit. I spent 14 years there investigating organized crime in Kansas City. Best 14 years of my life. Speaker: I think sometimes you know, I’ve got this True Crime podcast and we focus on the mob and I haven’t. Been to Chicago for a little bit, it seemed like. And I was, I was looking through some stuff from the Chicago outfit Facebook page, and there’s a newspaper clip on the, the, the group that has newspaper clips on it that had an article by a man named Drew Pearson. Speaker: Now, drew Pearson was a real famous columnist back in the forties and fifties, and the title of it is A Songbird Who, mur, who Sang, murdered. Now he starts off talking about the singing of Joe Vce. I guess he, he wrote this article about the time Joe Vce had all the newspapers, Andre, and talked about the New York mob. Speaker: But he had [00:01:00] a guy who talked about the Chicago outfit. He said that, he feels, he said that he felt responsible for the death of this informant outta Chicago. So he dropped in, he said he dropped into the morgue of Chicago’s American newspaper to refresh his memory just about this guy and, and what he said. This guy was a man named James M. Reagan, who was a of the continental press and racing wire. He was machine gunned down from a fruit truck. In August 14th, 1946, Speaker: Reagan, before he died, had told him many things in, in 1946 four years before the Koff Commission and just before he got killed. Reagan told Drew Pearson about the Chicago Mob rule and gave him permission to take it to the Attorney General of the United States, Tom Clark. Now, Tom Clark is the same guy who [00:02:00] commuted the sentences of. Speaker: The four Chicago outfit bosses who were given tenure prison sentences for the Hollywood scandal for, for trying to extort money from Hollywood unions and Hollywood film companies. Now this story that he told was about hotels and taverns and nightclubs and restaurants, and he said they’re all dominated by the mob in Chicago. Speaker: He said to hire a bartender, to buy ice cubes or to launder. Roller towels. Those are the old towels that you used to pull down in the bathrooms. I don’t think they have ’em anymore. Speaker: And they take those towels out and send them off and they’d launder ’em and give you a freshman to buy any beer. To replenish your alcohol supply in a bar, you had to do business with the mob. The mob ruled a very large part of Chicago. He took this story back to Attorney General Clark, who authorized a dozen or so FBI men to check on Reagan’s facts. Speaker: Couple weeks later, they reported back and he said, this is all [00:03:00] true. They also reported that the control of the underworld reached in a very high places in Chicago and political places, and then Illinois too, also to Tom Clark, although nobody really knew that at the time and, and only indirectly. Some of these rules of the underworld in Chicago were on the surface, respected businessmen and, and politicians whose names were household words in Chicago. Speaker: Some of them had reformed, but they still controlled the mob. They, which means that they maybe didn’t go out and do mob stuff anymore, but they still were, had some control in the mob. In some respects, Reagan’s information was much more important than that at Joe Bachi, especially when it came to Chicago. Speaker: Achi didn’t know anything about Chicago, didn’t talk about Chicago, but the Justice Department in Washington had no jurisdiction at the time, which is kind of interesting. They had to pass a lot of special laws in order to bring the feds in or catch these guys on a, some kind of a interstate. Violation [00:04:00] now, they just didn’t wanna do it because they had interstate theft at that time. Speaker: There’s a lot of things they could do. Transportation, women across state lines for immoral purposes. They could use the interstate transportation of stolen autos. There was all kinds of stuff they could use, but, but they wouldn’t use it. Claim the state’s rights city of Chicago and state of Illinois responsible, not the FBI or the Justice Department now, ain’t, that’s something they claim they had no responsibility for all this crime going on in Chicago. Speaker: Lot different than it is today. The feds are trying to, to send the national Guard in and, and all the new federal police, a newly hired federal police , into Chicago to. Clean up Chicago. So back then they didn’t want anything to do with Chicago. Called drew Pearson back a little later, shortly after, and there was a leaky place up there in Washington. Speaker: He said the mob. Was wise to him. They were out to get him and he asked for FBI protection, the FBI did give him a bodyguard for a short period of time. But you know, it, that didn’t last. And Reagan [00:05:00] himself was not exactly a saint. He was, he was the the bar boss of the continental racing wire. And he, you know, he distributed raising results. Speaker: And there’s a huge amount of gambling in all the different cities that was ran by the mob. And the results came over this continental racing wire. Immediately you could have a race in, in upstate in Saratoga. And when that, that race was done, the results were sent back to Chicago and Kansas City and Baltimore, and, and Cleveland and all those states. Speaker: And he was involved with a mob associate named Mo Annenberg and distributing this news to RS all over the country. He actually had some minor altercations with this Mo Annenberg, who was definitely a mob associate when Annenberg wanted to increase the race wire tolls to some certain publications that that weren’t kicking back to the mob. Speaker: He wanted almost, he wanted to almost triple him from $200 a week to $500 a week. And his troubles really began because [00:06:00] Chicago Mob had started their own racing wire that was gonna compete with them. And, you know, you just don’t compete with the Chicago outfit on a business level. You just don’t compete with them. Speaker: A couple of names he said, Jaime Levin and greasy th. And greasy thumb, Jake Guzzi directed that battle to take over the race wire. The former Illinois State Senator involved Pat Burns. He was working for the mob acquired property over over, over the tracks where men with binoculars could flash the odds and the race results to offices, which then in turn sent ’em out over the wire to bookmakers all over the country. Speaker: And Reagan’s continental wire was already doing the same thing. And the take on this was fabulous for the mob and the mob demanded Reagan move over and let them have it all. You know, the mob, you just don’t, if they wanna move in, they’re gonna take it all. They’re always gonna take it all. Probably that’s what induced Reagan to talk to him. Speaker: Do Drew Pearson [00:07:00] opines and ’cause he had threats on his life even before this. And, and I think he thought maybe he could bring a lot of federal heat onto the mob in Chicago. That then would back them off from trying to take over the race wire business. You know, it’s you know, it’s a way to use the FBI or the police to take out competition really, is probably what it really comes down to, what it really was. Speaker: You know, drew Pearson says, you know, when a man calls you on the phone and tells you in detail about one time he found two gunmen laying outside his home, waiting for him to come out, and he tries to do something about it. And that’s when he called the FBI you know, and they said, manpower short, we got other problems to handle. Speaker: And. And Reagan kept calling Drew Pearson and kept calling saying, you know, my life’s in danger. And, and Drew Pearson, he was telling the truth. Reagan finally hired two bodyguards, what he should have done all on his own before a retired policeman named Walter Peltier and a truck driver named Marty Waltz. Speaker: The retired policeman might be okay, although that [00:08:00] would be suspect with a mob in Chicago. He just as soon turned him over for a little more money as guard him. I got a feeling. Two months after. Reagan talked to Drew Pearson. He was driving home about five 30 in the afternoon. A gray sedan with Indiana plates stopped in front of him in per Pershing Road and State Street. Speaker: The traffic light turned and the two bodyguards were following him in a close behind. They expected trouble, but not till they got home. And not in broad daylight on the streets of Chicago and downtown Chicago with all the traffic around. Well, a fruit truck, a light delivery truck with crates of fruit on it, and a tarponing across the top. Speaker: Pulled up alongside Reagan at this light. All of a sudden the Taron was pulled aside. This just like TV folks, machine gun stressed out and bam, bam, bam. I mean, they, they fired off round after round into Reagan’s car, light changed in the fruit truck, and the gray sedan moved on out. [00:09:00] Reagan was taken immediate to a hospital, and he was still alive, and he was kind of philosophical. Speaker: According to Drew Pearson. He says, well, I guess if they want you, they’re gonna get you. This was not the end of the story though. Re Reagan began to recover from the mods bullets. Three Chicago cops had sat in shifts outside his hospital room, one on each shift, and, and so, you know, they couldn’t finish the job in the hospital room, and Reagan got better and better. Speaker: But then finally on August 14th, this is about what, two months later, he dies. The autopsy showed that there was a tube of mercury had been placed inside his stomach enough to kill three men. Now, go figure. Have you ever heard of that? They placed it, I somehow they placed a tube of. Mercury in his stomach. Speaker: I guess he threw some of the wounds he had or something. They must have had a doctor involved. I’m not sure how that happened. That’s a, that’s a weird one there folks. That is something else. Any of you guys ever heard [00:10:00] anything more strange than that? Let me know. But put his tube of mercury in his stomach. Speaker: Crazy. The coroner ruled that he could not charge murder since he couldn’t say whether Reagan had died of gunshot wounds or of mercury poison. I think he’d charge murder either way. Well it sounded like the coroner was on the take too. You know, the outfit had Chicago wired in most of the political offices in 19 46, 47, 48. Speaker: Clear up to really up to the seventies, and the operation Graylord started knocking some of that out. They don’t know. They just don’t know whether some mobster came in there and or they bribed somebody. But more than likely, they bribed somebody to get that tube of mercury in his stomach. Death of James N. Speaker: Reagan remains one of Chicago’s 974 unsolved Gangland Slain since 1919, and that this was back in the fifties or so when this article was written. So that’s the end of James Reagan and the end of [00:11:00] his. Wire service, a continental press and racing wire in the total domination of Chicago, of the wire services, especially west of New York. Speaker: I mean Chicago. They wanted to rule everything west of New York and they did so. Anyhow. If you got any other old stories like that that are kind of interesting, let me know. I’m putting this up as a little bonus episode, and I really appreciate y’all tuning in. Don’t forget, I got books and movies out there to sell and go to my website or go to Amazon, just search for Gary Jenkins. Speaker: You might wanna take a look at the VA website. If you’re in, been in the service and you think you have a problem with PTSD or alcoholism or anything like that, if you have a problem with gambling via 8 1 800. Bets off or whatever. Your state has all the gambling casinos in the United States. Speaker: Whenever they get awarded a gambling license, they have to kick in so much money to provide services for people with problems with [00:12:00] gambling. They have problems with alcoholism straight you know, our friend Anthony Ruano, he’s got a website out there. Just go to his website and he’s, there’s a way to contact him on that. Speaker: I used, I sometimes say a number. I’m not sure if that number’s still any good. And I guess that’s all I got. Thanks a lot guys.

Starting in the mid 2010's, Sweden's gang wars transformed from neighborhood disputes into a national crisis, driven by splintered immigrant-area crews who now recruit teenage hitmen willing to kill for a few thousand dollars. At the center of the chaos, the bitter feud between Shottaz and Death Patrol, two rival networks whose bombings, kidnappings, and retaliatory shootings have turned Stockholm's suburbs into warzones. The murder of chart-topping rapper Einár shocked the country, a killing that symbolized how deeply the underworld had bled into mainstream Swedish life. How did one of Europe's safest countries turn into a gangland battleground? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Alpha Whiskey grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Manchester within the gypsy community & was exposed to the highest levels of criminality as a child, bare knuckle boxing and then going on the run with his mother which led to them both becoming homeless and at the point, he joined the RAF and went on to becom one of the most highly decorated members of the SAS.This is the first time he has told his story, buckle up for this one.BIG THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!Target Lifts: https://targetlifts.co.uk/Marc Oliver:Offer 20% Upgrade on Gift Voucher Spend £500 Get £600. Use Code: https://marcoliver.com/gift-voucher-promotion/Free Bespoke Shirt with any Suit - worth £275. Use Code: https://marcoliver.com/free-bespoke-shirt-with-any-suit/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The ABC's biggest investigative true crime podcast Unravel has just dropped their new season, Huntsman, and it's already rocketing up the podcast charts.You might remember when former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was convicted of murder in the High Country. The story made headlines when Lynn admitted to burning the campers' bodies to cover his tracks.But behind the scenes, people who knew him years ago began talking and sending messages.It sparked an ABC investigation that uncovered the full story of his dark past and his abusive relationship with his first wife, Lisa Lynn, which ended in tragedy.In this new season, investigative reporter Rachael Brown uncovers the details of Greg Lynn's former life and the fear and damage he left behind him in the suburbs.You can find the podcast on ABC listen, or search for Unravel: Huntsman wherever you get your podcasts.

From the IRA member he unknowingly trained, to the gangland figure he later exposed as a prolific sexual predator, Paul Williams has spent decades events that make headlines, and others that never see the light of day. On todays Indo Daily, the veteran crime correspondent brings us inside two of the most captivating and lesser known stories of his career, as told in his new book Crooks 2. The following podcast contains discussion on child sexual assault, so please take care while listening. If you have been effected by anything in today's podcast, you can find a list of resources by searching independent.ie/helplines See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A romantic Valentine's Day night out at the opera and a fancy restaurant results in broken hearts and a gang war with laser tommy guns set to a performance of Rigoletto! We talk about the best-dressed characters, guest appearances by Jane Lynch and Miguel Ferrer, an homage to a real-life mafia massacre, Hammerhead's attempted coup, Gwen's makeover, Flash's character development, and much more in this masterpiece of an episode!We're watching The Spectacular Spider-Man: Season 2, Episode 10: “Gangland”.Website⁠ | ⁠Patreon⁠ | ⁠Discord⁠Part of The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast CollectiveContact us: @WallopingWebPod on ⁠Bluesky⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠Email: ⁠wallopingwebsnapperspodcast@gmail.com⁠Theme song features: ⁠“Resonance (Cyan & Ladybot Remix)” by HOME⁠ | ⁠License (CC BY 3.0)⁠

Garden State Gangland: The Rise of the Mob in New Jerseyhttps://amzn.to/47eXkGpThe Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wiseguys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that's over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California. And many of the stories have never been told. Deitche weaves his narrative through significant, as well as some lesser-known, mob figures who were vital components in the underworld machine.New Jersey's organized crime history has been one of the most colorful in the country, serving as the home of some of the most powerful, as well as below-the-radar, mobsters in the Country. And though overshadowed by the emphasis on New York City, the mob and New Jersey have, over the years, become synonymous, in both pop culture and in law enforcement. But for all the press that has been dedicated to the mob and New Jersey, for all the law enforcement activity against the mob, and for all the pop culture references, there has never truly been an examination of the rise of the mob in New Jersey from a historical perspective. Until now.In Garden State Gangland, Scott M. Deitche sets the historical record straight by providing the first overall history of the mob in New Jersey, from the early turn of the century Black Hand gangs to the present, and looks at how influential they were was, not only to goings-on the Garden State but across the New York metro region and the country as a whole.https://amzn.to/3W8zAi4Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

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We asked you what news stories you wanted covered this week and from sunscreen SFP fails to Keith and Nicole's break up, Trump's new plan for Gaza and Nurses being able to prescribe our medications, there was one thing we still hadn't touched on. You asked us to cleanse the timeline. The news right now, has been a lot, and you were keen to hear something that held a little more hope. Today, we hear more about Robert Irwin's adventures on Dancing With The Stars, find out why Mary Fowler was keen to take to the Paris fashion week runway and we speak to Mamamia's resident Swiftie Tina Burke, about all the exhausting things happening around Taylor Swift's new album release. And there's more, have a listen and get into the long weekend with a little more light in your news feed And in headlines today, Travellers heading to America or France may have holiday plans interrupted due to Paris protests and the US government shut down; British police have declared a deadly rampage on a synagogue in northern England a terror attack; Gangland kingpin Tony Mokbel will finally learn today whether his bid to quash drug convictions over the Lawyer X scandal has succeeded; Nicole Kidman has turned to the one person who has always been by her side in hard times, her sister Antonia, the pair seen hiking in Nashville in the aftermath of Nicole's divorce filing from husband Keith UrbanTHE END BITS Support independent women's media Check out The Quicky Instagram here Listen to Morning Tea celebrity headlines here GET IN TOUCHShare your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice note or email us at thequicky@mamamia.com.au CREDITS Hosts: Taylah Strano & Claire Murphy Guest: Audio Producer: Lu HillBecome a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Smac Has issues With Wack100, Rich Trapper Marks Out Flakko, Viiiral Way, ODM Slim & Gangland Niem! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a London couple were found dead in a lover's lane, in 1987, evidence pointed quickly at some of the city's most notorious gangland figures — both established and upcoming. But despite informants and wiretaps the trail ran cold.Then another body showed up. Then another. Before long, cops were connecting the dots between four different killings, all carried out in disturbing fashion across the British capital. And it looked a lot like the Metropolitan Police, London's historic force, was directly involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with Keith Grounsell, a veteran lawman whose career spanned patrol, specialized units, and high-stakes undercover work with the DEA. Keith takes us inside the hidden world of narcotics investigations, sharing stories that reveal both the danger and the human toll of living a double life. We talk about how Keith's upbringing as the son of a Marine pushed him toward public service, and how his path eventually led him into the shadowy world of drug traffickers. He recalls the adrenaline of undercover drug deals, the razor's-edge risks, and the constant challenge of protecting his cover while keeping his integrity as a cop intact. Keith also reflects on the strain this life put on his family and the psychological pressure of staying in character for months at a time. His advice to new officers is candid and practical—emphasizing the need for physical fitness, community ties, and strong mental health to survive the demands of the job. Our conversation widens to the broader impact of drug trafficking on crime and communities, and the need for law enforcement to adapt to ever-changing threats. Keith also shares his writing journey, a four-book series titled Narc's Tale, which chronicles his undercover assignments and the lessons he carried forward. This episode offers both gripping stories from the field and a rare inside look at the toll—and the nobility—of narcotics enforcement. Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee" To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here 0:04 Welcome to Gangland Wire 1:07 Becoming a Police Officer 3:33 Life as an Undercover Agent 6:08 Tales from the Trenches 8:41 The Depths of Undercover Work 12:39 Surviving Dangerous Encounters 16:29 The Art of Blending In 21:06 The Challenges of Undercover Props 25:58 Navigating the Drug Underworld 28:14 Building Trust in Dangerous Situations 33:58 The High Stakes of Undercover Operations 36:58 Major Drug Busts in Kansas 42:08 Lessons from the Cartel 45:27 Advice for Young Law Enforcement 48:29 Writing and Reflection in Law Enforcement [0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio at Gangland [0:02] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I am a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Detective, as most of you know, because I've got a lot of regular listeners. And those that don't know, that's who I am. And I have another copper here with me today. I've got Keith Grounsel. Keith, welcome. Hey, Gary. Thanks for having me on the show. I'll tell you what, Keith. I love talking to and interviewing, but then our conversations before and after talking to these other coppers that have worked around the country. It's always fun. We talk the same language, I've noticed. And that's around the world, too. I haven't worked internationally. We're a universal group of people that always collaborate together and get along in different environments. Yeah. And then we start telling stories and it really gets good. [0:49] That's right. But we can't record all those stories. So we don't want to record some. We don't want to record. All right, Keith. Now you became a cop, you know, where are you from originally? [1:04] And then what, what, what made you think that you wanted to be a police officer? Me, I wanted to be a cowboy. [1:10] And so that was a close job to being a cowboy. So how about you? Yes. It's kind of funny. My dad was a United States Marine, 22 years.

A Blast From The Past: The FBI and Philadelphia's Cold Case Homicide Detectives sent shock waves across the city with the takedown last week of drug dealer Richard Leidy in the previously unsolved assassination of rival drug dealer Gino Marconi in April 1999. The 26 year old gangland style killing rocked South Philly and is one of half a dozen cold case murders federal organized crime investigators and homicide detectives have been working on for years. Lots of questions remain unanswered. What was the motive? Is this connected to organized crime? Who else might have been involved in the well planned hit and what will a new grand jury probing the case turn up in the coming weeks. Mob expert and author George Anastasia joins the show once again to help break it all down.

Over the past 20 years, Limerick has been widely regarded as a shining example of urban regeneration, and it seemed that the place once dubbed "stab city" had finally exorcised the dark forces and dangerous criminals that had plagued it. But with gangland violence on the rise once again, have those old demons come back to haunt it? Read David Raleigh's piece here (Hyperlink: http://independent.ie/irish-news/its-about-turf-wars-and-personal-grudges-limerick-on-the-brink-as-locals-fear-return-to-dark-days-of-gangland-violence/a858757603.html) Host: Fionnán Sheahan | Guest: David RaleighSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence detective, Gary Jenkins, interviews Gary Clemente, who offers profound insights drawn from his father's legacy as a pioneering FBI agent in the fight against organized crime. Gary recounts his father's pivotal role during the 1957 Appalachian mob conclave, detailing his unique rapport with notorious figures like Carlo Gambino and the psychological dynamics of engaging with mobsters such as Tommy Greco. We explore the complexities of mob family structures across the U.S. and how Peter Clemente's fluency in Sicilian and understanding of criminal culture enriched FBI operations. Gary shares stories from his father's extensive writings, promising future revelations about their historical battle against organized crime and the impact of these narratives on American history. 0:07 Introduction to Gary Clemente 2:45 Peter Clemente's Unique FBI Career 8:32 Encounter with Tommy Greco 12:50 The Threats of the Mafia 17:04 Respect Among Mobsters 24:00 The Mafia's Structure and Connections 29:48 Stolen Goods and Local Crime 32:47 Nicola Gentile's Memoirs 35:13 Hoover and the FBI's Golden Era Get Gary Clement's book: Untold Mafia Tales From the FBI's Top Hoodlum Squad Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee" To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.  To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. Transcript [0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:07]Introduction to Gary Clemente [0:02]Wire. I have a guest who has been on before, Gary Clemente. Now, Gary Clemente's dad was Peter Clemente, and he was one of the first members of the Top Hoodlum Squad in New York City and the first Sicilian FBI agent, I believe, that was assigned to the FBI anyhow. So, Gary, welcome. Thank you for having me back, Gary. Appreciate it. Long time no see. Yeah, really. Now, we talked about his investigation of Carlo Gambino before, and he was all over Carlo Gambino, and the Gambino squad even went down to Florida and ran some wires on him or hidden microphone down in Florida. Done. It was a pretty interesting story. So tell the guys a little bit, remind us a little bit about your father and what he was so unusual in that way. He was from Sicily, I believe, and spoke Sicilian, but was also attached to the Top Hoodlum Squad. So tell us about him. Exactly. Well, again, thanks for having me on, Gary. It's an honor to be on your program. You You've got a lot of great information. You've got a lot of mob guys on there. You're killing it on this program. No pun intended. Thank you. We like to kill it. [1:24]Kill it, but not really kill it. Yeah, really. I can't do the crime. I can't do the time. You know what Beretta said. If you can't do the crime, don't do the time. Well, I can't do the time, so I don't really physically kill it. But anyhow, thank you. Well, my pop was Peter C. Clemente, and he was a special agent with the FBI from 1950 to 1976. And in the early part of his career, he was doing security background checks to see if people were trying to get positions in the federal government that were very sensitive and whether they were members of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Workers Party. So then 1957 comes around and they have the Appalachian mob conclave with all the top mobsters that were there that got together. Many of the big shots were there. Gambino was there,

Felicia Djamirze grew up in the criminal underworld, then became a beauty queen. But her life outside the pageant circuit was mired in the world of drugs, bikie gangs and violence (CW: graphic discussion of domestic violence and crime) Felicia Djamirze is a counsellor, an advocate for women's justice, a three-time Miss Australia winner and a convicted drug trafficker.Felicia grew up surrounded by drug abuse and crime in a rough part of Sydney. Her family was marked by addiction and connections to the criminal underworld.As she got older, Felicia attracted a lot of attention for her looks, eventually finding the world of beauty pageants, which she thought was her way out.But behind the scenes, Felicia's life was far from glamorous.While living with a partner who was in a bikie gang, she survived severe domestic violence. Then, during her next relationship she was caught up in an horrifically violent encounter with the Queensland Police when they burst into her home to arrest her partner for dealing meth.Felicia admitted her involvement and was convicted for drug trafficking. In the aftermath, she retrained as a counsellor and mental health advocate. She now aims to use her experiences to help others find a way out of the justice system and re-enter, unashamedly, into the real world.Further informationContent warning: this episode of Conversations contains descriptions of domestic violence. Help and Support is always available.If you are experiencing Domestic Violence 1800 Respect is available 24 hours a day on 1800 737 732.For support with PTSD in Australia, Lifeline (13 11 14) and Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467) offer crisis support.Felicia's book Accessory is published by Affirm Press.This episode of Conversations was produced my Meggie Morris, executive producer is Nicola Harrison.It explores crime, conviction history, police brutality, bikies, meth, substance abuse, epic origin stories, family dynamics, relationships, prison, outlaw motorcycle gangs, arms dealing, ice, Russian mafia, Hells Angels, Bandidos, Rebels, Comancheros, Finks, and Mongols.Find out more about the Conversations Live National Tour on the ABC website.

Crime Editor for The Daily Telegraph, Mark Morri, joined Tim Webster with the latest and disturbing trend of the gangland wars being played out in public.

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Howard Blum is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Dark Invasion, the Edgar Award–winner American Lightning, as well as Wanted!, The Gold Exodus, Gangland, The Floor of Heaven and Night of the Assassins. Blum is a contributing editor at Airmail, his series of articles on The Idaho Murders were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. While at the New York Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Read Howard Blum at Air Mail 

Thanks to everyone who supported the podcast on Patreon this year. Don't miss out on getting every new episode early plus all the other fun stuff we have planned for 2025! https://patreon.com/372pages Ahhh, coziness. Licorice. The sound of ice cream being slopped down while kidnap victims await their fate. Long arms being deftly handled by … Continue reading "372 Pages Ep 178 – The Quilting Cruise Ep 4 – A Cozy Gangland Murder"

This week, Cy meets a comedy legend and Chad has a revolutionary life insurance pitch. Head on over to Chad's YouTube page to watch this episode! --- Follow us on Instagram! Chad Daniels (@ThatChadDaniels) is a Dad, Comedian, and pancake lover. With over 750 million streams of his 5 albums to date, his audio plays are in the 99th percentile in comedy and music on Pandora alone, averaging over 1MM per week. Chad's previous album, Footprints on the Moon was the most streamed comedy album of 2017, and he has 6 late-night appearances and a Comedy Central Half Hour under his belt. Cy Amundson (@CyAmundson) With appearances on Conan, Adam Devine's House Party, and Comedy Central's This is Not Happening, Cy Amundson is fast-proving himself in the world of standup comedy. After cutting his teeth at Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, has since appeared on Family Guy and American Dad and as a host on ESPN's SportsCenter on Snapchat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices